Compassionate Eschatology

The Future as Friend

Ted Grimsrud, Michael Hardin, Ted Grimsrud, Michael Hardin, Grimsrud, Hardin

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781608994885
  9781498212694
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621890829
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Do "eschatology" and "peace" go together? Is eschatology mostly about retribution and fear--or compassion and hope? Compassionate Eschatology brings together a group of international scholars representing a wide range of Christian traditions to address these questions. Together they make the case that Christianity's teaching about the "end times" should and can center on Jesus's message of peace and reconciliation. Offering a peace-oriented reading of the Book of Revelation and other biblical materials relevant to Christian eschatology, this book breaks new ground in its consistent message that compassion not retribution stands at the heart of the doctrine of the last things. Besides its creative treatment of biblical materials, Compassionate Eschatology also makes a distinctive contribution in how several essays engage the thought of Rene Girard and his mimetic theory. Girard's project is shown to reinforce the biblical message of eschatological peace.

part one

Interpreting Apocalypse
and Apocalyptic Non-Retributively

1

Biblical Apocalyptic

What Is Being Revealed?

Ted Grimsrud

Eschatology all too often means judgment, vengeance, the bad guys and gals getting their “just desserts.” Probably at least in part because of the titillating allure of violence, and in part because of the attraction of being part of a story when our side wins and the other side loses, eschatology is pretty popular.

But is this kind of eschatology Christian? What might Christian eschatology look like if it is done as if Jesus matters? If we look at Jesus’ own life and teaching, we won’t find a clearer statement of his hierarchy of values than his concise summary of the law and prophets: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul—and, likewise, you shall love your neighbor as you love your own self. This love of God and neighbor is why we are alive. It is what matters the most. The “end” that matters is our purpose for being here, not any knowledge we might think we have about future events. Our purpose is to love—that purpose is the eschatological theme that is central if we do eschatology as if Jesus matters.1

To talk about the “end of the world” biblically points us to our purpose for living in the world. The word “end” can have two different meanings. (1) “End” means the conclusion, the finish, the last part, the final outcome. In this sense, “the end of the world” is something future and has to do with the world ceasing to exist. (2) “End” also, though, means the purpose, what is desired, the intention. “End of the world,” in this sense, is, we could say, what God intends the world to be for. In this sense of “end,” the “end times” have to do with why we live in time.2

The book of Revelation is usually seen as the book of the Bible most concerned with “the end times.” The book of Revelation has always vexed interpreters. Rarely has it been seen as an indispensable source for Christian social ethics; often it has been seen more as an ethical problem.3 I want to suggest, though, that Revelation has potential to speak powerfully to twenty-first-century Christians about our purpose in life.

The Bible generally speaks in the future tense only in service of exhortation toward present faithfulness. The Bible’s concern is that the people of God live in such a way that we will be at home in the New Jerusalem—not with predictions about when and how the future will arrive.

How do we relate “eschatology” with “apocalyptic”? Let me suggest that biblical apocalyptic (which I will differentiate from the genre “apocalyptic literature” that modern scholars have developed) actually is best understood similarly to eschatology. The biblical use of apocalyptic language, like the broader use of prophetic and eschatological language, serves the exhortation to faithfulness in present life.

When I take up the issues of eschatology and biblical apocalyptic, I do so from the standpoint of my commitment to the gospel of peace, and more particularly in trying to construct Christian theology that serves this commitment. I believe that the three main sources for theology—the Bible, tradition, and present experience—all give us mixed signals concerning the gospel of peace and its applicability for our world (which, for example, is why so many Christians in this country support American military actions). For the clarity we need, I think it’s important to add a fourth source for constructive theology: hope or vision.4 Where do we want to go? What do we hope for? And, then, how might we interpret the Bible, tradition, and present experience in ways that serve this hope? That is what I propose to do with the book of Revelation.5

My essay will test the following thesis concerning biblical apocalyptic in service of a compassionate eschatology: What biblical apocalyptic reveals may be seen especially in the formation of communities of faith called to resist imperial hegemony. The power that matters most in biblical apocalyptic is the power of love that sustains these communities in the face of empire.

The Question of Power

The fifth chapter of the book of Revelation begins with a poignant image. The seer, John of Patmos, writes in chapter 4 of an awe-inspiring vision of the throne of God. Surrounding the throne in John’s vision, the entire animate creation worships the one on the throne. In chapter 5, though, a shadow falls. John sees a scroll in the right hand of the one on the throne. From how John describes this scroll (“written on the inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals,” Rev 5:1) and how he regards it (begging for it to be opened), we get the impression that what he’s describing should be understood as, in some sense, history fulfilled, the completion of the project initiated in Genesis one.

The poignancy enters when John sees the scroll but is overcome with grief at the thought that it may not be opened. Who can open the scroll? “No one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it” (5:3).

This account provides us with a metaphor that speaks to much of human history. How can history be redeemed? How can the human project be redirected from brokenness and alienation toward healing and wholeness?

Human beings tend to think of power in terms of the ability to control events, to force others to do one’s will even if that means coercing them. Political power is often linked with the ability to use violence. We are most likely to answer the question of how to open the scroll by asserting the need to “force” it open, to open it by our firepower.

In Revelation 5, John, like most people, seems to assume the scroll will be opened by firepower, power as domination. He weeps bitterly when he thinks no one can be found to open the scroll. However, John then hears an audacious claim. One of the elders immediately comforts John. “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals” (5:4). These images evoke a mighty warrior king (or Messiah) who will open the scroll with the use of force.

John’s vision continues, though, with a shockingly different claim. He may have heard the promise of a warrior king to open the scroll, but he actually sees something altogether different. “Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb” (5:6–8).

According to the next few verses, the creatures and elders, and ultimately the rest of creation, worship this Lamb as the one who does have the power to open the scroll.

Biblical “Apocalyptic”

How does this claim for the power of the Lamb correspond with the claim that power-as-domination is the only way to address the huge problems of human history?

To answer this question, we need to reflect on the message of the biblical materials known as “apocalyptic.” If we focus primarily on the biblical language of “revelation” (from the Greek apokalypsis) and consider this language in the context of the rest of the Christian Bible, we will find that power according to biblical apocalyptic does cohere with John’s vision in Revelation 5. The power that biblical apocalyptic understands to be decisive in human history, the power that will “open the scroll,” is the power of suffering love and communal faithfulness, not the power of weapons of war and coercive force.

The term “apocalyptic” as a label for a genre of ancient Jewish and Christian literature comes from the first several words in Revelation: “The revelation (apokalypsis) of Jesus Christ.” The linking together of apocalypse with Jesus Christ provides our first essential clue for understanding power in biblical apocalyptic. The power of biblical apocalyptic is the power of Jesus Christ.

Most contemporary writing on biblical apocalyptic in general, and Revelation more specifically, does not generally self-consciously link “apocalyptic” with “Jesus Christ.” We don’t allow “Jesus Christ” to shape our understanding of “apocalyptic.” General approaches to apocalyptic may be divided into three general categories, each of which by and large shares with the others the same general sense of what “apocalyptic” conveys.

To think apocalyptically, it is said, is to think in terms of visions of fire from the sky that judge and destroy. The “apocalypse” is a time of catastrophe, of dramatic change, the end of what is and the birth of something drastically new and different. Apocalyptic power, it is implied, is top-down power, the power of might and coercion, vengeance and judgment. As a consequence of God’s exercise of such power, every knee is forced to bow before God—either in joyful submission or in defeated submission.

The three general responses to apocalyptic (all understanding apocalyptic in roughly the same way) include (1) avoidance, (2) historical literalism, and (3) futuristic literalism.

1. Avoidance. Many Christians have simply ignored apocalyptic. It has been seen as the literature of extremists. Many in the early church disputed the acceptance of Revelation into the canon. Much later, John Calvin wrote commentaries on the entire Bible, except Revelation. Martin Luther also considered Revelation to be sub-Christian and taught its avoidance.

More recently, many “mainstream” Christians continue to avoid Revelation, willingly giving over the discussion of this part of the Bible to the prophecy purveyors. Revelation is seen as a book of fear and violent judgment that reinforces many of the most uncivilized tendencies of religious people—and thus is best avoided as much as possible.

2. Historical Literalism. Beginning with the publication of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), the consensus view for most biblical scholars in the historical-critical vein has been to accept the apocalypse-as-world-catastrophe-and-divine-judgment view as being what Jesus, Revelation, and the rest of earliest Christianity literally expected to come very soon. However, obviously they were wrong. Since Schweitzer, the question of how thoroughly this apocalyptic view should be applied to early Christian thought has been vigorously debated. But the general sense that biblical apocalyptic concerns violent power and judgment has not been contest...

Table of contents

• Compassionate Eschatology
• Contributors
• Preface
• part one
• part two
• Bibliography