Category Archives: Apocalyptics

The Christian Existence: Contra Systemic Dualisms

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The right and left binary represents a dualism that genuine Christian theology rejects. Dualism generally says that there are equal and opposing forces, light versus dark, in a cyclical battle of yin and yang. The Kingdom of God is grounded in the reality of God become [hu]man. There is no dualism, no competitive relationship between the fallen and unfallen; all of reality is subsumed within the singular person of Jesus Christ. Thus, Christianity, the Gospel comes with different expectations. The Christian is not in a loggerhead with the darkness, per se; the Christian moves and breathes from within the atmosphere of the heavenly Zion. This reality is not of this world, and thus not of the dualisms that often frame this world system. We are emissaries of the living God in the risen Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. In that sense we move differently than others, not being shaped by what the world optically presents to us as if it gets to determine reality by brute presence.

The aforementioned should have an impact on the Christian existence in this world. It should keep us moving towards and from the upward call in Christ Jesus. Politics, culture wars, and the like should never be defined by the whims and whams of the base person, the profane systems of thought progenerated by this world system; the evil age. Jesus is already reigning at the right hand of the Father (see 1 Cor 15), and will come once and for all riding on His white steed with the sword of God proceeding from His mouth. Maranatha

God’s Adversary and Ours: A Brief Theology of the Devil / A Book Impression

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Just finished. It is a good provocative read. It is written in a nice narratival theological style, which definitely works within the spirit and ambit of the Barth style (i.e. engagement with Holy Scripture throughout). Philip re-places a doctrine of the devil into the second article, so, Christology and Soteriology (think Apostleā€™s Creed) versus the traditional placement as found in the first article with reference to original creation and Godā€™s providence. This reorients thinking the devil from emphasizing him as a fallen angel, and instead sees him primarily in the scenery of the wilderness, as the adversary (of Christ), as adventitious, and anarchic. These three themes serve to organize the way that Ziegler seeks to place the devil within a dogmatic location of the second article. And it shouldnā€™t be forgotten that Ziegler is doing all of this work as a type of revitalization of a satanology for and within Reformed theology, proper.

One question I had going into this book was to see if Philip would hold to the idea that the devil is ā€œpersonal,ā€ or if the devil has an ontology of diabolical sorts. In the long and the short of it: yes, Ziegler affirms a type of nothingness beingness (my phraseology) which pairs well with Barthā€™s doctrine of sin or ā€œnothingnessā€ (das Nichtige)ā€”which you can read about in CD III/3 (I also have some passages on that in my Barth Reader).

As a North American evangelical, like myself, I am conditioned to think of the Devil in the first article. As someone who reads Barth and Torrance and Calvin a lot, I am re-conditioned to think within the second article. And so, this clash continues for me, particularly when it comes to such matters as a satanology represents. Beyond that, as a basic evangelical Christian, there are too many real-life encounters that I have had with the demonicā€”ones that mirror those in the Gospels etc.ā€”that experientially keep me from falling into any type of crass physicalism when it comes to the dark spiritual realm. Even so, the themes that Ziegler develops, therein, donā€™t contradict that reality, it just textualizes them in ways that some readers might think envelopes this matter into a purely intellectual exercise; but that would be wrong. Take it up and read for yourself.

God’s Annihilating and Evangelical Word: With Reference to Eberhard Juengal

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Eberhard Juengal is engaging with the address of God, and the role that language plays in that address. He is appealing to Heidegger and others with reference to how certain language games have functioned in the profane world, in regard to anthropologically and socio-linguistically situating people as people; both within their inner-lives, and as that relates to what it means to be a human being in the world at large. After he develops things along these lines for a bit, he gets to the payoff. He receives these types of profane frameworks, particularly within there existentialist hue, and then reifies them from within a Christian theological frame of reference. He shows how Godā€™s address, Godā€™s language towards us, has an eschatological character to it that resituates us in a right and new relationship with Godself. Juengal writes:

The eschatological character of manā€™s distancing from himself has an eminently critical dimension. For, to the extent that this distancing surpasses everything which is, everything which is for itself is made nothing. Every word which addresses man about God is, in that sense, a negating or destroying word. It brings about an annihilation in that it surpasses not only our being-here, but also our past and our future. But distanced from himself in such a way, the man addressed about God is brought into a new, ultimate nearness to himself. That is, to be sure, a nearness of the ego to itself which includes its being before God. The New Testament understands this as the presence which is eschatologically oriented through the guarantee of the Holy Spirit.

The word of God which addresses man about God, has, then, an annihilating effect, for the sake of something new. Evangelical theology may not remain silent about the fact that it is destructive. But, and this is what evangelical theology must chiefly speak of, it is destructive only on the basis of the positive fact that God addresses us about himself in such a way that he promises himself to us. One should not understand it in such a way that God would permit what exists to be made nothing in order then to be able to begin all over again from the beginning, so to speak. The reverse is true: because God, in addressing us about himself in such a way that he promotes himself to us, always creates something new, that which is old becomes nothing.[1]

Juengal elaborates further, particularly with how it relates to the respective theologies of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, in footnote 6 with reference to the above second paragraph:

Thus sin passes away only when it is forgiven; but the forgiveness of sins is always more than the passing away of sin. And in exactly the same way the godless person passes away because he is justified, not in order that he can be justified; the justification of the godless is always more than the passing away of the godless. The actual contrast between the theology of Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten appears to me to consist of this contrasting definition of the theological relationship between the passing away and becoming, of death and life, of judgment and grace. See on this the analysis of Gogartenā€™s writings with special attention to the Luther statements which he cites in W. HĆ¼ffmeier, Gott egen Gott; Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zum Gottes- und TodesverstƤndnis Friedrich Gogartens unter besonderer BerĆ¼cksichtigung seiner Luther-interpretation (TĆ¼bingen dissertation, 1972). On this relationship between Barth and Gogarten I refer to the insightful investigation presented by P. Lange in Konkrete Theologie? Karl Barth und Friedrich Gogarten ā€œZwischen den Zeitenā€ (1992-1993); Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung im Blick auf die Praxis theologischen Verhaltens (Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1972). Karl Barthā€™s dogmatic approach, to define the judgment of God on the basis of grace, that is hermeneutically to say that on the basis of the new the old has become old and passed away (II Cor. 5:17), has been taken up chiefly by Ernst Fuchs and independently developed further hermeneutically.[2]

This hearkens me back to what more contemporarily is being identified by folks like Philip Ziegler, Jamie Davies et al., as Apocalyptic Theology. Essentially, the idea is what I take to be the Pauline idea of Godā€™s disruptive grace (to borrow language from George Hunsinger); that is, that when God addresses us by the Word of God, Jesus Christ, He takes us from our present and visible circumstances, and places us into Himself, in the new creation and resurrected life of Jesus Christ. The result being, that the old is ā€˜annihilated,ā€™ as it were, as the new has come (and continues to come, and will finally come at the second advent of the Christ). Peter refers to this type of theologizing in this way:

10Ā ButĀ the day of the LordĀ will come like a thief, in whichĀ the heavensĀ will pass away with a roar and theĀ elements will be destroyed with intense heat, andĀ the earth andĀ its works will beĀ burned up.

11Ā Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness,Ā 12Ā looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of whichĀ the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and theĀ elements will melt with intense heat!Ā 13Ā But according to HisĀ promise we are looking forĀ new heavens and a new earth,Ā in which righteousness dwells.[3]

As Juengal has underscored for us already, while there is a ā€˜taking awayā€™ there is also a ā€˜bringing anewā€™ that is greater than not less than what has been annihilated in the death of death in Christ. This might remind us of Paulā€™s thinking when he writes, ā€œ17Ā things which areĀ aĀ mereĀ shadow of what is to come; but theĀ substanceĀ belongs to Christ.ā€[4] So, accordingly, there is a passing away of the shadows, which in themselves couldnā€™t handle the weight of what was coming as the antitype of its stead. It isnā€™t that the original and now fallen creation isnā€™t real, but that its inner reality had always already stood before it, as it was first created for its second recreation in the incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and advent of Jesus Christ. That is to say, the first creation, we might say, the first Adam, was something of a placeholder for the coming of his intended reality, in the archetypal, second and greatest Man, Jesus Christ; indeed, for the first Adam, and for all of the world therefrom.

These, are heavy teachings; who can hear them?!

[1] Eberhard JĆ¼ngel,Ā God as the Mystery of the World,Ā trans. by Darrell L. Guder (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf&Stock [reprint], 1983), 175.

[2] Ibid., n. 6.

[3] II Peter 3.10-13, NASB95.

[4] Colossians 2.17, NASB95.

The Character of Barth’s Kantian and Feuerbachian Critique of the Metaphysical gods

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Ludwig Feuerbach

Karl Barth is often identified as a neo-Kantian, or just straight up Kantian in his theological orientation (and methodology). It seems too facile to me to maintain that Barth was somehow a slavish servant of Kant, especially materially. Maybe formally, Barth could be understood to be a Kantian in certain qualified ways. But in the air he breathed to be ā€œKantianā€ or neo-Kantian would be like saying that John Calvin et al. was an Aristotelian, or Scotist for that matter. The point being, often, formalities are not the all-encompassing thing in the theological project. Ultimately, what is at stake is what gets produced materially. In other words, it is surely possible for the theologian to be influenced by some intellectual tradition, and at the same time, under the Christian revelational pressures of thought, indeed, trinitarian pressures, to retext the form (in this case, the Kantian one) in a way wherein the kerygmatic reality becomes the conditioning and driving factor even behind the form itself.

The above is rather abstract, indeed. In order, to incarnate my points with a little more flesh and blood, letā€™s now refer to Eberhard Buschā€™s discussion on these matters, as that pertains to Kantā€™s and Feuerbachā€™s deliverances of a Barthian theology and knowledge of God.

. . . In Barthā€™s view, what Feuerbach ā€œrightfully objected toā€ was that in human religion the one who prays, the pious individual does not ā€œget beyond what he himself has thought and experienced,ā€ that all his ā€œattempts to bridge the gap. . . take place within this world.ā€ The interpretation that leads Barth to entertain Feuerbachā€™s critique of religion is clearly in line with Kantā€™s critique of the assertion that the knowledge of metaphysical truth is on the same level as experiential knowledge. Once again it is Kant in whose thought Barth finds the intellectual possibility of overcoming Feuerbachā€™s critique of religion. He does this by advancing the thesis that God is not a hypothesis (of man) only when he is conceived of per se as the ā€œpresuppositionā€ (of man). Therefore ā€œGodā€ is not untouched by Feuerbachā€™s critique when he is generally understood as a metaphysical reality beyond all human hypotheses, but only when he is understood as ā€œthe origin of the crisis of all objectivity devoid of all objectivity.ā€ After all this we may assume that Barth is especially influenced by Kant, deepened by Neo-Kantianism but also by Feuerbachā€™s critique, when he insists in his Epistle to the Romans that God cannot or only supposedly can be recognized as an object of experiential knowledge. And we may further assume that the same influence is in play when Barth now separates himself from Schleiermacher and his own earlier position with the thesis that God can only be ā€œrecognizedā€ as the critical boundary of human experience.[1]

Busch, in context, is referring to the earlier younger Barth, and yet, he is also notating that the form of Kant remained continuous throughout Barthā€™s theological project; indeed, to the very end. So, Barth surely was a Modern theologian under these terms. But as Bruce McCormack has rightly pointed out elsewhere, Barth, just as Busch has inchoately pressed here, flipped the Kantian project on its head by thinking it through the noumenal and phenomenal being grounded in the enhypostasis of the anhypostatic Son becoming flesh in the singular person of Jesus Christ; as such, removing the odor the type of projectile dualism Kantā€™s theology suffered from.

Conversely, and for the purposes of this post, I think it is interesting to hear some of Buschā€™s commentary on Barth and his respective positioning within the modern German/Swiss theological and philosophical milieu of his day (at formative points in his own intellectual development). Further, I also think Buschā€™s clarification on how Barth deployed Feuerbach, even by creatively sponging the Feuerbachian critique of religion through the Kantian possibility for true transcendence, to be very helpful. I have often referred to Barthā€™s appeal to Feuerbach and Feuerbachā€™s critique of religion as self-immanent-projection; and as far as that goes (because it cannot go all the way), it is a helpful acid to place on the unhealthy aspects of a pietistic venture. But just as Barth understoodā€”because he was a Christian of no small statureā€”Feuerbach and Kant were only useful propaedeutics, insofar that they could be deployed as foils against the manmade gods of the philosophers, and even the scholastics.

Iā€™m afraid this whole post has been rather abstract. The necessary context for this offering is reliant on the readerā€™s own familiarity with these things. Even so, hereā€™s the reduction: knowledge of the genuine Christian triune God is purely contingent on this God Self-disclosing Himself to and for us in the face of Jesus Christ. It is possible, as Barth illustrates, to even use pagans against the appropriation of pagan categories for thinking God. This is what Barth did by using a retexted Kantian form, and a Feuerbachian critique, against ā€œChristianā€ appropriations of God, categorically, that are too contingent upon speculative discursive reasoning, and the ā€œdiscoveriesā€ of the various natural theologians throughout the millennia, respectively; going back as far as Genesis 3, into the Antique Greek philosophers, and the whole stream following. Let God be true and every man a liar.

[1] Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists, trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 119-20.

Stream of Consciousness on the Supernatural

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It is unfortunate that so many Christians in the West, and elsewhere, have so taken on the materialist/physicalist picture of the world, like in the way we process things on a daily basis, that we allow that to impinge, and thus reduce, or negate, the reality of the supranatural reality of all reality. I.e., that humanity, the world, the globe, the earth and the š‘š‘œš‘ š‘šš‘œš‘  itself, is created by the living God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As such, the rest of what Paul identifies as the š‘š‘™š‘’š‘Ÿš‘œš‘šš‘Ž (as he gives that his christological twist) in the epistle to the Colossians, also is necessarily negated; that is, the world of the spiritual realm of angels, demons, demiurges etc., in general.

Often times, in overreaction to the the materialist world, other Christians will go to other extremes and absolutize what has come to be known as the charismatic and even the Pentecostal world picture; where in fact, miracles and the supranatural becomes normalized, categorized, and codified, such that it becomes so normal that, in effect, God and the supranatural has been domesticated to our own personal experiences in consumerist types of ways.

Contrariwise to the aforementioned, a substantive benefit, one of many, of being immersed in Holy Scripture, is that these faulty extremes themselves become negated. The supranatural, the spiritual, miracles, so on and so forth come to have a concrete context. The context, is indeed God’s own free life within itself; within His own Self-determination, not ours. The reality of Jesus Christ, as the Self-determination of God for the world, wherein Heaven and earth, God and humanity, are united in His singular person becomes the norming norm (š‘›š‘œš‘Ÿš‘šš‘Ž š‘›š‘œš‘Ÿš‘šš‘Žš‘›š‘ ) of the real life Christian world picture. The material world (i.e., albeit created and contingent on the upholding power of God’s Word), and the spiritual world (i.e., the inner, eternal, and triune Life of God) have a ground to be thought from in the center of God’s life. The ground is both transcendent and immanent. God’s act in Christ, indeed as that has first been freely determined in God’s choice to not be God without but with us in Jesus Christ, becomes the point of departure by which the Christian world picture comes to have an organicism wherein miracles, the spiritual reality of life (which is the antecedent reality to all of contingent life), the supranatural and natural have an inner-core that is alien to us; that is outside of us (š‘’š‘„š‘”š‘Ÿš‘Ž š‘›š‘œš‘ ). As we live in this world, with this inner-ground of God’s life for us as the grounding-calibration of all things, we can rightly engage with this world, without reduction or negation, in the way it actually is, without it becoming more or less than it is at the same time.

Book Impression: Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages

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I think I am going to start writing more ā€˜Book Impressionsā€™ in the days to come, for the blog. I wonā€™t be writing full fledged reviews, but just presenting my raw impressions as I finish this or that book. By the way, I do read a lot of theology books as time passes by; I just rarely share any of that here (you mostly get my Barth readings and reflections these days). Anyway, I just finished another book, and below is my reflection on it. The book: BernardĀ McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages.

I started this one a couple of years ago. It got tedious at points, but glad I picked it up again and finished. It ended strong. Books like this help put things in perspective. Christian people, in the case of this bookā€™s examination, all the way from the 5th to the 16th centuries have always presented fanciful ideas about why they believed their time in history was in fact the end; and that the arrival of Jesus would be in their lifetimes. But beyond that this book shows all of the schism present in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Further how apocalyptic prophecy etc. was taken up by self-proclaimed prophets to announce the end of this or that evil Pope. Also, in this book theories of history are presented, primary of which is Joachim of Fioreā€™s three statuses view of the history of the church and the world, climaxing in the coming of Christ. Also, in this book, we see how millenarianism was an early development of parts of the church, and how later among the Hussites, apocalypticism was deployed in a way to justify political revolution so on and so forth (much like we see today). What Left Behind theology or more specifically, Dispensational premillennialism foments in the American evangelical churches today, in regard to apocalyptic speculations and its application to current events, is nothing new, and was done even that much more substantively in the past. Indeed, Jesus is coming again, and it could be today (please Lord), but we will never know exactly how ā€œthis is thatā€ until He in fact comes again. Maranatha

Problematizing a Development of Sacra Doctrina within the Church: With Reference to Peter of John Olivi

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Bernard McGinn writes the following with reference to the apocalyptic-theology-of-history present in the mediaeval theologian, Peter of John Oliviā€™s (c. 1248ā€”1298) thought:

The invective Olivi directs against the evidences of the carnal Church is concerned not only with the ecclesiastical abuses of the day, especially with avarice and simony, but also, like Bonaventure before him, with the use of Aristotle in theology. The ProvenƧal Franciscan also expressed belief in a double Antichristā€”the Mystical Antichrist, a coming false pope who would attack the Franciscan Rule, and the Great, or Open Antichrist, whose defeat would usher in the final period of history. Characteristic of Franciscan apocalyptic is his emphasis on the role of Francis as the initiator of the period of renewal and his hope for the conversion of all peoples in the course of the final events.[1]

Olivi was a student of the infamous mediaeval theologian, Bonaventure. But I thought this treatment by McGinn on Olivi was telling. Telling in regard to the patterns and thematics of theological development. Telling, in regard to how theologies and emphases often repeat themselves in various and all periods of theological development throughout history. As McGinn highlights, Olivi was concerned with a ā€œcarnal Churchā€; he was concerned with the imposition of Aristotleā€™s categories upon Christian theology (which of course Thomas Aquians was famous for doing). We also observe, that for Olivi, according to McGinn, he saw that the Catholic church itself had corruption riddling it throughout; he saw the Antichrist coming from within the Church, not without. This latter development is interesting to me because it reminds me of Martin Lutherā€™s view that the office of the Pope would finally produce the Antichrist (the Lutheran Church Wisconsin Synod still holds to this position in their confession). And then, we see in Olivi, a belief in something like a postmillennial understanding of the very end of history. He believes, according to McGinn, that the whole world will be Christianized prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Many things stood out to me in this one paragraph on Oliviā€™s theology. The primary hook for me, and this wonā€™t be surprising to my readers, is that Olivi was critical of Aristotleā€™s presence in the development of the sacra doctrina within the Church. Olivi, like his teacher, Bonaventure, believed that Aristotle could only serve as an artificial grammar for articulating Christian doctrine. Such sucralose, in the minds of Bonaventure and Olivi, respectively, had no place in affecting a theology for the Church, insofar that Aristotle himself thought a construct of God as a pagan.

It is important for Christian folks in the 21st century to get beyond theology purely sourced from Twitter/X and other social media platforms. What the genuine student finds, if they study the books, is that things are much more complex and less concretized than they might want to think. There have been various strands of development, various traditions cultivated in the Churchā€™s history that transcend the parochial and sectarian and absolutized divides we see today on the interwebs. I think this one paragraph alone on Olivi helps to illustrate that point.

Within evangelical/reformed theology today there is a movement towards retrieval. And yet what this has come to mean, especially through the work of someone like Matthew Barrett and Craig Carter, is that what is really being retrieved is one strand of development that is Aristotelian/Thomist heavy; as if ā€˜Christian Aristotelianismā€™ was the only development present within the mediaeval and early and post Reformed churches. This simply is not the case; again, as our passage illustrates.

Conversely, I am anti-Aristotelian myself (no shocker there!) Some might think that this is because of my appreciation for the theologies of Barth and TF Torrance alone. Again, this is not the case. I was anti-Aristotelian way before I ever read Barth and TFT. I was exposed to the Bonaventure-Olivi thread of development twenty-three years ago in seminary. This thread was developed further with the sparker of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther; he looked back to such threads in the via antiqua through his direct mentor, Johann von Staupitz, and before him, Jean Gerson.

Anyway, this post is somewhat of a smorgasbord of hits on various issues; something like a Miscellanies. But I hope, at least, the reader might be able to better appreciate the ā€œproblematizedā€ nature of doctrinal development within the Church of Jesus Christ. In other words, I hope that folks might be alerted to the problem of reducing and then absolutizing oneā€™s pet positions. Surely, we ought to be convicted about the theological things we believe. But those convictions ought to first take shape (in a spiraling and continuous way) through the caldron of toiling with the sources (ad fontes) of the history of interpretation and development of the sacra doctrina.

[1] Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 205.

The Miracle of Gospel Time and the Antidote it Provides for Our Political Time

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Godā€™s covenant life of grace is the inner reality of the external creation and order that we are agents within as His creatures. This implicates everything; especially history, politics, theology, so on and so forth. Godā€™s life of grace joins His life of eternal-time with the tangent of ā€˜calendar-timeā€™ in such a way that the latter finds all of its predication in and through the former. One thing this does is that it at the same miraculous time universalizes and particularizes time and history all in the same go. That is to say, it so expands the horizons of the so-called space-time continuum that it ends up being an inane posture to think that our experiences of our personal-times could serve as the fulcrum for our perception of reality to begin with.

An application of the aforementioned notion on the relationship between eternity and time, as that is conjoined within the miracle of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, could be to use that as the basis for the Christianā€™s approach to matters related to politics, and everything else. In this time, in 2024 in America, we are currently faced with a POTUS election whose ramifications for time to come seem to circumscribe and even eclipse all of time, and all of reality for time to come. And yet in light of the miracle of the incarnation, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, such happenings are relativized by the greater and realer time of Godā€™s time, Godā€™s predication of the world in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. If nothing else, the greatness, the ineffableness of Godā€™s in-breaking, and His continuous in-breaking, into this world, into ā€œourā€ supposed time, ought to place all the fears and anxieties of these times into the womb of the Father where time in reality was first birthed for us in the Theanthropos, the Godman, Jesus Christ.

Here is how father and son duo, Alan and Andrew Torrance, write about these matters as developed in the theology of Karl Barth:

An additional positive point that comes up in Barthā€™s discussion of the moment is that the unity that God establishes between eternity and time is a unity with the whole of timeā€”a unity that holds together in the past, present, and future in the oneness of Godā€™s historical narrative. The idea that moments such as the moment of resurrection and the moment of faith are interconnected in the whole of time is again incomprehensible to us. This is because our thinking is caught up in and conditioned by the ā€œstream of time,ā€ preventing us from seeing the bigger theological picture sub specie aeternitatis. Insofar as we reduce history to our immediate experience of it, we close history off from the one who unites it as a whole. In so doing, we hold ourselves back from seeing that we are living in ā€œthe invisible New Ageā€ in which ā€œeach moment in time is a parable of the eternal ā€˜Momentā€™.ā€ As hard as this is to fathom, the fact that God, for Barth, unites Godself with history means that ā€œevery moment in time bears within it the unborn secret of revelation, and every moment can be thus qualified.ā€ Time, he writes, ā€œis swallowed up in eternity,ā€ which means that flesh is swallowed up ā€œin the infinite victory of the Spirit.ā€ Therefore, every event in history must be understood according to the unity that the eternal God establishes with history and for history.[1]

These are deep considerations, but important ones if we as Christians are going to faithfully fulfil our role as witnesses to Godā€™s meritorious works for us, for this world in Jesus Christ. It ought to keep us from being swallowed by the fear of the absolute immanentizing of this world, as if its own inner source and reality is all there was, is, and is to come. The point, ultimately, as this world, and all that happens within it are predicated by Godā€™s life and redemption of this world, as this world has become Godā€™s world, both as He originally created, and then recreated it from the flesh and blood, from the Eucharist of His life for the world as that has been eternally generate in the bosom of the Father by the hovering and creative movement of the Holy Spirit. The takeaway, for one thing, ought to be that nothing and nobody is greater than historyā€™s reality as that reality has always already been such in the face (prosopon) of Jesus Christ. Christians have a hope and redound that this world currently needs in ways that this world does not understand without Godā€™s Self-revelation and our witness to that as we repose in the surly concreteness of Christā€™s life for this world. Ultimately, what I am getting at with all of this, is that we ought to continue to remain and ā€œoccupyā€ this land, this time, as God-worshippers. This is the basis and telos (purpose) of all of reality, of all of time as that has been gifted for us through Godā€™s pre-destination for us, in His free and gracious election to not be God without us, but with us in the humanity of Jesus Christ. If knowledge of this reality reigns supreme in our movings and breathings we will offer this world, at this time, at Godā€™s time for the world in Christ, a hope that the principalities and powers could only dream about in some sort of perverted parody of self-actualization.

[1] Alan J. Torrance and Andrew B. Torrance,Ā Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and BarthĀ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023), 210.

The Eschatological Nature of Christian Theology

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There is no reason to absolutize any period of theological history, per se. In other words, every season of theological development, within the Churchā€™s history, is open for engagement. The Lord Himself said He would build His Church, and through Paul continued to say that He would, in particular, provide pastors and teachers, so on and so forth. This ought to teach us that Christ has been present, all along, in His Church. He hasnā€™t abandoned it or left it as orphans, but has provided His Holy Spirit to presence Himself and sacra doctrina among those who fellowship with Him in the triune life He shares with the Father and Holy Spirit. So, it is possible, and really necessary, to approach the development of theological dogma within the open frame that is provided by the esse of the Church itself. If we do this, as we ought, we will not elevate one period of ecclesial doctrinal development as sacrosanct over others, per se. This is not to say that there arenā€™t some fundamental inflection points in the Churchā€™s development of essential doctrine, particularly when we think in terms of the catholic developments surrounding Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon, that have helped to regulate the grammar the Church uses in order to speak God in intelligible and articulate ways. But even so, these inflection points in the Churchā€™s history, should not be absolutized in a way that they remain closed off as if final words on the way the Church understands and relates to Christ. They shouldnā€™t be abandoned, but because of the eschatological nature of the development of Christian theological discourse, things always ought to remain open; finding their anchor point in the anchor of the Churchā€™s soul as the High Priest is seated at the Right Hand of the Father always living to make intercession for those who will inherit eternal life. We only are able, because we inhabit these bodies of death still, to see through a glass dimly, even as our proximate knowledge of God in Christ gives way to fuller and deeper understandings of Him, as we are transformed from glory to glory; from Christā€™s full glory for us. We keep pressing into the reality of our life in Christ, growing in His grace and knowledge for us.

An Anthem: The Christian’s Immortality

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As a Christian, as those in union with Jesus Christ, in union with the One who alone dwells in unapproachable Light and Immortality, we live an indestructible life; because our life is indestructible. Our energy is resurrection power of the immortal type; the type that rises from the dead, ascends, and comes again and again, and finally again. Nothing can stop us; death is no match for us; because Life came, assumed death, looked at it, mocked it to its face, and left it in the abyss of nothingness. The Christian is always on the verge of breaking into the eternal reality, never to suffer again. The Christian is unstoppable, because the Christ is first in us that we might be in Him. Let’s keep steaming ahead because one day very soon the heavens will be rolled back like a scroll, and the glory of the Almighty God in Jesus Christ will finally break through, once and for all, in consummate and consuming form. Don’t lose heart, Christian; Jesus is King. Maranatha