Browsing by Subject "Eschatology"

This dissertation studies the role and function of lament in the New Testament. It addresses the problem that lament does not seem to be a pervasive feature of the New Testament, particularly when viewed in relation to the Old Testament. In some cases the voice of lament appears subdued or muted altogether in favor of resurrection hope and endurance in suffering. I argue that a careful investigation of the New Testament reveals that it thoroughly incorporates the pattern of Old Testament lament into its proclamation of the gospel, especially in the person of Jesus Christ as he both prays and embodies lament. Jesus represents God's answer to Israel's long-prayed cries of lament, but he also takes up the prayer of lament as a human being; as the Messiah-King, high priest, and prophet of Israel; and as the divine Son of God. Because of this, lament has a dual function in the New Testament: it points to Jesus as the beginning of the fulfillment of lament's cries, and it points forward to the consummation of God's kingdom as guaranteed in Jesus' resurrection. My working definition of lament in the New Testament derives from the Old Testament pattern: lament is a persistent cry for salvation to the God who promises to save, in a situation of suffering or sin, in the confident hope that this God hears and responds to cries, and acts now and in the future to make whole. Lament calls upon God to be true to God's own character and to keep God's own promises, with respect to humanity, Israel, and the church. Although lament texts occur throughout the New Testament--in the Gospels, the epistles, and Revelation--they cluster predominantly in the Gospels, especially in the passion narrative. Therefore, I focus first on the significance of Jesus' laments in the Gospel passion narratives. I discuss the role of lament in all four passion narratives, and then I read these same texts through the lenses of Jesus' humanity, Jesus' messianic identity, and Jesus' divinity. Finally, in the light of this investigation, I consider lament as a prayer of eschatological longing for the kingdom inaugurated by Jesus' death and resurrection.

The New Testament contains two important and potentially conflicting understandings of resurrection. One integrates resurrection into salvation, suggesting that it is restricted to the righteous; this view is found most prominently in the Pauline epistles. The other understands resurrection as a prerequisite for eschatological judgment and therefore explicitly extends it to all; this view is found most prominently in the book of Revelation. In the former, moral transformation is part of the process that results in resurrection; in the latter, moral transformation only affects what comes after resurrection, not the event of resurrection itself. The New Testament itself provides no account of how to hold together these understandings of resurrection and moral transformation.

This dissertation is an investigation of the ways in which second- and third-century Christian authors creatively struggled to bring together these two understandings. I select key authors who are not only important in the history of early Christian discussions of resurrection but who also make extensive use of the Pauline epistles. For each author, I investigate not only how they develop or resist the Pauline connection between resurrection and moral transformation but also how they relate that connection to the doctrine of the resurrection of all to face judgment found in Revelation (if they do at all).

The results are remarkably diverse. Irenaeus develops the Pauline connection between resurrection and moral transformation through the Spirit of God but fails to account for the resurrection of those who do not receive that Spirit in this life (although affirming that resurrection nonetheless). Tertullian begins from the model that takes resurrection to be fundamentally a prerequisite for judgment and struggles to account for Paul's connections between resurrection and salvation. Two Valentinian texts, the Treatise on the Resurrection and the Gospel of Philip, adopt the Pauline model to the exclusion of the resurrection of the wicked. Origen connects resurrection to moral transformation in yet another way, making it an event that pedagogically reflects the moral transformation of all rational creatures--whether for the better or worse. For Methodius of Olympus, the resurrection of the body produces the moral transformation that is the eradication of the entrenched inclination to sin, but the moral transformation in this life that is the resistance of the promptings of that entrenched inclination produces reward after the resurrection. In each case, strategies for holding together the two views found in the New Testament reveal the fundamental theological commitments underlying the author's overall understanding of resurrection.

ABSTRACT

This thesis touches on several massive themes within Christian theology, including questions of ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, and missiology. Yet it is grounded in a very real and practical question. What definition of the church should guide me, as the senior pastor of an incredibly diverse Sabbath-keeping local church in the Seventh-day Adventism denomination,as we develop the strategic vision for this next season of ministry, and decide how we want to fund those goals. What should the “markers” of the church be?

In order to help narrow my focus, I will explore this question in four parts. In Chapter 1, I provide a brief history of Seventh-day Adventism, with a specific focus on the development of the doctrine of the Sabbath and the doctrine of the church, such as it is. In Chapter 2, I turn more directly to various models of the church. Using Avery Dulles as a conversation partner in hiswork Models of the Church, I examine Adventism in the light of some of the most prominent models and note which of these Adventism seems to lean towards. I then recommend a new eschatological understanding of the church that I believe could be uniquely well-suited for Adventism.

In Chapter 3 I turn to the question of the Sabbath. Given that Sabbath-keeping is considered a marker of faithfulness for most Seventh-day Adventists, I propose that the biblical Sabbath has always been about more than humanity’s faithfulness, and that the Sabbath should be seen instead primarily as a pointer to the purpose and faithfulness of God. Drawing from Sigve Tonstad’s book The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day, I suggest a reframed understanding of the Sabbath that includes seeing the Sabbath as an indicator of God’s future purpose promised from the very beginning of creation. I suggest that the Sabbath can best be seen as a promise, grounded in the past, pointing to the future, that shapes and directs the present.

Finally, in Chapter 4, I consider how the idea of the “church as foretaste” and “Sabbath as promise” could shape the lived reality of a local community, and recommend some practices that we as a local church could explore that would help us better embody the coming kingdom of God.

Questions about the nature, purpose, and mission of the church have been asked and answered and asked again for generations. Most recently, the coronavirus pandemic has caused the longest disruption to the regular rhythms and practices of the church in recent memory. Clergy and laity alike are wondering, as we imagine what a post-pandemic life will look like, justwhat impact this new reality will have on the church, which practices will stay the same, and which will shift. A season of new beginnings is an excellent time to reconsider old assumptions, and to recalibrate where needed.

It is my hope that this thesis will be helpful in three ways. First, I hope for it to be helpful on the local church level, especially for Sabbath-keeping churches interested in a reframed perspective on the Sabbath that moves it beyond a question of obedience, to a question of meaning, liberation, and purpose. Secondly, I hope to contribute to the much needed and growing conversation within Seventh-day Adventism regarding Adventist ecclesiology. Over the past two decades, Adventist scholars have become increasingly convinced of the need to further develop our ecclesiology, but it is still a relatively recent field of study within the denomination. This thesis will offer a reframed understanding of Sabbath-keeping that is linked to an eschatologically-shaped ecclesiology.

Finally, I hope this thesis will have something to offer to the broader Christian community. The biblical concept of the Sabbath has experienced something of a renaissance in the wider Christian conversations over the past half-century. The Sabbath has been linked to creation and as a potential response to the environmental crisis; to economics, debt relief and jubilee; and to emancipation, messianic ethics, and spiritual formation. Yet while many of these Christian authors draw on themes inherent in the biblical Sabbath, very few of them have lived in communities already profoundly shaped by its counter-cultural power. We as Adventists are deeply indebted to the gift of the Sabbath; it is my hope that our lived reality can provide inspiration to others.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the book of Genesis as a functioning literary whole, orienting

post-exilic Persian-era Judeans toward their ideal future expectations. While many have

contrasted Genesis' account of origins with the prophetic books' account of the future, this work

argues that Genesis narrates Israel's origins (and the world's) precisely in order to ground Judean

hopes for an eschatological restoration. Employing a speech-act linguistic semiotics, this study

explores the temporal orientation of Genesis and its indexical pointing to the lives and hopes of

its Persian-era users. Promises made throughout Genesis apply not only to the characters of

traditional memory, but also to those who preserved/ composed/ received the text of Genesis.

Divine promises for Israel's future help constitute Israel's ongoing identity. Poor, sparsely

populated, Persian-ruled Judea imagines its mythic destiny as a great nation exemplifying (and

spreading) blessing among the families of the earth, dominating central Palestine in a new pan-

Israelite unity with neighboring Samaria and expanding both territory and population.

Genesis' narrative of Israel's origins and destiny thus dovetails with the Persian-era

expectations attested in Israel's prophetic corpus--a coherent (though variegated) restoration

eschatology. This prophetic eschatology shares mythic traditions with Genesis, using those

traditions typologically to point to Israel's future hope. Taken together, Genesis and the prophetic

corpus identify Israel as a precious seed, carrying forward promises of a yet-to-be-realized

creation fruitfulness and blessing. Those who used this literature identify their disappointments

and tragedies in terms of the mythic destruction and cursing that threaten creation but never

extinguish the line of promise. The dynamic processes of Genesis' usage (its composition

stretching back to the pre-exilic period, and its reception stretching forward to the post-Persian

era) have made Genesis an etiology of Israel's expected future--not of its static present. Because

v

this future will be fully realized only in the coming divine visitation, Genesis cannot be attributed

to an anti-eschatological, hierocratic establishment. Rather, it belongs to the same Persian-era

Judean synthesis which produced the restoration eschatology of the prophetic corpus. This

account of Genesis contributes to a canonical understanding of Second Temple Hebrew literature;

prophetic scrolls and Pentateuchal (Torah) scrolls interact to form a textually based Israelite

identity, founded on trust in a divinely promised future.

As Christians in the United States struggle to sustain hope in the face of global economic, environmental, military, and poverty crises, the most popular source of theological hope for preachers and congregations is that of Jürgen Moltmann and the Moltmannian hope that draws on his work. Moltmannian theology eschews close connections with more-canonically established doctrines of hope, claiming instead on a future-based, this-worldly eschatology that hopes in the God who suffers. An exclusive reliance on a Moltmannian theology of hope deprives the church of crucial resources for a robust eschatological hope and its practices. Critical attention to additional streams of of theologial hope, and to applicable discourses within and without Christian theology, provides the church with strength and resilience to sustain a distinctly Christian theological hope through and beyond disaster, despair, suffering, and death. Jesus Christ, the perfect hope, embodies the life -- earthly and eternal -- of humanity and its eschatological end, a life in which humans can participate, through grace and discipleship.

To make this argument, I survey characteristics of Moltmannian hope and then identify costs of a theological hope that relies exclusively on Moltmannia resources. I review a Patristic and Thomistic grammar of theological hope and its accompanying grammar of God; and I explore possible contributions to theological hope from an assortment of contemporary conversations outside conventionally-identified areas of Christian hope. I conclude with two suggestions for ecclesial formation of Christians in theological hope.