Eschatological Ambiguity and the Commonwealth of God
Eschatology is
theological reflection on the future, on last things. In constructing an
eschatology we live in the maddening predicament that we are trying to reflect
on the ambiguous future with which we have had no experience. This problem is as
contemporary as it is age-old: When we speak of the future, what information is
reliable? That of the past? Of the present? Uncertainty about the unknown
future mingles with anxiety and fear, and we try to assuage our anxieties by
trying to discern the future.
Ambiguity is a helpful term for this fundamental state of human life in history, the state in which we can never be certain of the future or of the effects of our own current actions. The Commonwealth of God[1] is a classic Christian symbol for a vision of life beyond ambiguity, a life when the goodness of God is fully manifest in human life. Rightly understood, such a symbol can free humans to live fully within ambiguity.
Ambiguity is a helpful term for this fundamental state of human life in history, the state in which we can never be certain of the future or of the effects of our own current actions. The Commonwealth of God[1] is a classic Christian symbol for a vision of life beyond ambiguity, a life when the goodness of God is fully manifest in human life. Rightly understood, such a symbol can free humans to live fully within ambiguity.
My own standard theological
method is one of theological reflection based primarily on Letty Russell’s
“Spiral” methodology. The spiral begins with a question and addresses that
question through four nonlinear steps: reflection on experience, questioning
biblical and church tradition, analyzing social realities, and seeking clues to
transformation.[2] While I
can explore a wealth of biblical and church resources and analyze some social
realities related to the future, I can address experience only indirectly.
Simply put, I have no experience of the future. In answer to the obvious
objection that my theological method is inadequate, I posit that any person
engaging in any theology today must necessarily place herself as subject into
the context of that theology. White men attempting to speak isolated objective
truths about God regarding a given topic are no longer viable as responsible
theologians. Contemporary theology demands an honest accounting of one’s
experience of particularity, and the future lies outside this experience. Still,
as Tillich rightly points out, we must try to address questions of last things
and of God’s future, even recognizing the limitations of such work.[3] Unwilling
so easily to discard my method, I find that my experience most related to
future and eschaton is the experience of ambiguity. My very uncertainty is one
starting point for eschatology.
Lutheran practical
theologian Herbert Anderson, in his 2005 Hein-Fry Lecture “Blessed Ambiguity,”
defines ambiguity thusly: “the ability to understand in more than one way. When
a thing is ambiguous, there is more than one interpretation or explanation.”[4] Anderson goes on to
specify that ambiguity is not simply ambivalence, a psychological fragmentation
in which love and hate or hope and fear coexist in such a way as to demand
resolution to only one or the other option. Rather, ambiguity is connected with
paradox: when confronted by multiple seemingly incongruous possibilities, we
need not choose only one because more than one may be true.[5]
Tillich recognizes
the fundamental nature of human experience of ambiguity throughout his Systematic Theology. In Volume II he
tellingly states that
“Every encounter with reality, whether
with situations, groups, or individuals, is burdened with practical and
theoretical uncertainty. This uncertainty is caused not only by the finitude of
the individuals but also by the ambiguity of that which a person encounters.
Life is marked by ambiguity…”[6]
To be human is to live in ambiguity.
Even the most basic absolutes, good and evil, are subject to ambiguity. Two realities
clarify this assertion: interpretive experience and unknown consequence. Even
the love of a mother for her child can be interpreted negatively, or simply
misinterpreted, by a third party. It can also lead to harm. Obviously the best
intentions can produce the worst results, and the consequences of any action
are unknown. Again we come to the basic human experience that the future is
unknown, and this is the ground for much of all ambiguity in life. One mark of
any theological system is its ability to live with, rather than ignore or
explain away, the basic ambiguities of human life. The theologian who fears the
unknown is apt to invent answers that serve as short-term comforts in a given
context, and such answers can and do have dangerous consequences in people’s
lives.
In a Christian
context, scripture may be our most reliable source for clues to a workable
eschatology, but even this direction does not leave any easy answers. Scripture
itself is ambiguous, being at best a divinely-inspired part of the created
order and at worst the ramblings of wholly fallible human beings. Even if
scripture were unambiguously good or true or correct, any human effort to
comprehend or make sense of it is an act of interpretation, necessarily
ambiguous. Even perfect scriptures could not give perfect answers to imperfect
humans, and yet we must make sense of a senseless world in part through
reflecting on a collection of writings that point however dimly to God.
How we interpret scripture
speaks volumes about our willingness to live with ambiguity, and this is
especially apparent regarding the future and eschatology. One style of contemporary
eschatology can be described as fundamentalist apocalyptic eschatology. Much of
this view relies on a biblical hermeneutic of literalism combined with numerous
assumptions about coded and indirect descriptions of time, the Bible as a
single unified work, and a Jesus whose violence and wrath toward humankind
outweighs his mercy. This 19th century scheme, called
dispensationalism, has since developed into a powerful interpretation in
Christianity and in the world at large. This system reads the Bible in such a
way as to rationally gain certainty about the future. Critical to this
certainty is the triumphant place of pure Christians who will escape the
world’s ambiguities through a biblically-inspired event known as ‘The Rapture.’
Dispensationalist
eschatology posits a heaven so removed from time and earth that history must
end with the destruction of the world and the death and damnation of most
people. God will magically transport the bodies of true believers to some
far-away heaven, leaving the rest of creation to the wrath they see in God. Faithful
Christians, and only faithful Christians, will be given a new earth, so abuse
of the current creation is welcome. The violence and wrath of the returning
Christ in this image gives license to violent and destructive human behavior
until the time of this supposed destruction. Salvation is purely for individual
human souls, and dispensationalists boil the entire Bible down to this twisted,
incomplete message.
Barbara Rossing’s
book The Rapture Exposed rightly refutes
this dispensationalist scheme as un-biblical and harmful to people and the
world. Among other things, she exposes the falseness of its claim to ‘biblical
literalism’ and its utterly un-biblical view of prophecy as predictive script
rather than as a call to repentance and change.[7] Rossing reads the biblical book of
Revelation, the main text dispensationalists misuse in their vision, in its own
historical context. She recognizes the Bible’s overarching message of a God who
demonstrates unending love for the world in the resurrection of Jesus. Rossing
also refutes dispensationalist readings of other biblical texts, including 1
Thessalonians 4, Matthew 24, and John 14. Each of these texts, as Rossing
convincingly asserts, points not to an escapist Rapture but to a living and
ongoing relationship between God and the world.[8] As
Rossing points out, “[t]he whole message of the Bible is that God loves the
world so much that God comes to earth to dwell with us.”[9]
Rightly
understood, prophecy is not an otherworldly prediction but a call to change
within human life and history. When God called Jonah to prophesy to Nineveh, the people
repented and God relented, choosing not to destroy them. This communal
transformation of specific people in the world is the true purpose of prophecy.
The apocalyptic dispensationalist vision of the future is entirely
otherworldly, of existence to be completely replaced by a perfect new creation
for a select few human souls, to the exclusion of the rest of the creation God
called ‘good.’ What dispensationalists fail to recognize is that both prophetic
and apocalyptic visions of the future are fundamentally ambiguous. If prophecy like
Jonah’s were sufficient to bring about right relationship between God and
humankind, there would have been no reason for the death or the resurrection of
Jesus the Christ. Apocalyptic eschatologies can recognize the inability of
humans to effect this relationship, but in doing so must resist the temptation
to otherworldliness.
Here the symbol of
the Commonwealth
of God can help us. Tillich,
using traditional Kingdom language, describes the Commonwealth as “the answer
to the ambiguities of history,”[10]
the state in which ambiguity will no longer be a part of human existence. Only
in the full realization of the Commonwealth will humans and creation again exist
entirely in right relationship with God. For Tillich, the Commonwealth is the
end of history, both in the sense of the chronological finish and as the telos,
the goal toward which history moves.[11] Tillich
would also recognize that history of its own accord is incapable of creating
the Commonwealth through prophecy or other human means. Ultimately God must
act, through Christ in traditional Christian belief, to bring about the
transition out of history and ambiguity and into the fullness of the Commonwealth
that is the goal of history toward God and of God toward creation.
Understanding the Commonwealth symbolically as both pointing to the reality of
right relationship with God and participation in that relationship, however
preliminary that participation may be, is the most helpful eschatological
vision for people acknowledging the depth of ambiguity in human experience.
Symbol as both
pointer and participant brings up the problem that humans cannot participate in
the unambiguous future. The paradoxical participation of the human in the
reality to which the symbol of the Commonwealth of God points is a reality
through the Church which is the body of Christ on earth. The full divinity and
full humanity of Christ allow the human church to participate in the Commonwealth
even as it constantly and necessarily fails to realize the Commonwealth on
Earth. The reality of the Church points to the communal nature of the
Commonwealth, not just for individually ‘saved’ souls but for the inescapably
mutual web of humankind with all of God’s creation. Tillich uses the symbol of
‘essentialization’ to recognize this interlocking nature of salvation; as no
thing is unambiguously positive or negative, no part of creation is beyond
salvation.[12]
Thus judgment is
not of individual souls but of all the creation that God has called ‘good.’
Such judgment is only another name for the essentialization in which ambiguity
will cease in favor of the essential positive that is the content of right
relationship with God. Essence is not only spirit or soul; Christian accounts
of Jesus’ resurrection point to a bodily aspect necessary to this
essentialization and thus necessary to the Commonwealth. Bodily resurrection
and the web of creation imply the salvation of all creation in such a way that
the earth God has called ‘good’ will be part of the Commonwealth. Spatially,
the Commonwealth will include the earth; whether the two are precisely
physically identified is unknown and perhaps doubtful. Thus our own earth
rather than some cloud-adorned ‘heaven’ will be the location of right
relationship with God. I follow Tillich in describing heaven and hell not as
places or eternal states but as symbols of unambiguous blessedness and despair.[13] Dispensationalist
(and other) abuse of the earth thus stands against God’s vision of the
Commonwealth.
It is a tremendous
paradox to see that the Commonwealth will include physical bodies and the
physical earth, but that humans cannot themselves achieve the Commonwealth in
history. Christ has given the Church as a broken symbol of the Commonwealth,
and in calling creation ‘good’ God has given us another symbol of the
Commonwealth, though we continue to break that symbol daily. The realities of
ambiguity are the same realities that negate the possibility of full human
achievement of the Commonwealth. As Tillich said, the realized Commonwealth is
the end of history in both senses: creation, the church, and the rest of
existence drive toward it, but ultimately history must end for the realization
of the Commonwealth. This is because God is beyond history, beyond time, and
because Christ in bringing all of creation into right relationship with God
will move all creation into God rather than inserting God into time. Through
the boundless grace of God in Christ we can be confident that the physical
creation can transcend time even as Christ’s own body transcended death.
Still, though we
cannot achieve the Commonwealth of our own merit, God calls humans constantly
toward right relationship, toward faith in God, love of neighbor, and care of
creation. This message is clear throughout Christian scripture, and provides a
much more sound hermeneutic than that of dispensationalist escapism. Paradoxically,
in order to live in right relation to the future, we must live fully in the
present. The allure of certainty will recede when we only trust in God’s
promise of grace in Jesus Christ, trusting that that promise is sufficient for
us, now and forever. When we trust that God’s promise frees us from fear of the
future, we are freed to live for the present not in the abstract but in the
concrete actions of worshiping God and serving our neighbors and the world.
Martin Luther, a
theologian who knew ambiguity and paradox as well as he did grace, famously
stated his freedom from fear of the unknown future in this way: “If I knew the
world were going to end tomorrow, I would plant a tree.”[14]
Thus freed from the need to worry about the future, we are free to live into
God’s vision of a Commonwealth of mutuality and right relation. Humans will be
able to work toward God’s Commonwealth in our limited, ambiguous ways only when
we know that we need not do so because God alone (yet paradoxically in Trinity)
holds the future.
Works Cited
Anderson,
Herbert, “Blessed Ambiguity” (Hein-Fry Lecture, 2005) Available from http://www.plts.edu/articles/andersonh/heinfryambiguity.html.
Accessed 29 April 2007.
Rossing, Barbara
A, The Rapture Exposed: The Message of
Hope in the Book of Revelation (New
York: Basic Books, 2004).
Russell, Letty, Class
Lecture (lecture for Feminist Theology in Postcolonial Perspective, Yale
Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut, 26 January 2004).
Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology: Volume II: Existence
and the Christ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). [80:
‘Religion, like all life, is ambiguous.’ 132: ‘Every encounter with reality,
whether with situations, groups, or individuals, is burdened with practical and
theoretical uncertainty. This uncertainty is caused not only by the finitude of
the individuals but also by the ambiguity of that which a person encounters.
Life is marked by ambiguity, and one of the ambiguities is that of greatness
and tragedy…. There is no unambiguous evil.” 134: incertitude and finiteness.
163: on 1000 years. ]
____ Systematic Theology: Volume III: Life and
the Spirit; History and the Kingdom
of God (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963).
[1] The Commonwealth of God is a contemporary translation of the
traditional ‘Kingdom
of God’ in which the
image of absolute monarchy is replaced by a somewhat more egalitarian vision.
[2] Letty
Russell, Class Lecture (lecture for Feminist Theology in Postcolonial
Perspective, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut, 26 January 2004).
[3] Paul
Tillich, Systematic Theology: Volume III (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), 396.
[4] Herbert
Anderson, “Blessed Ambiguity” (Hein-Fry Lecture, 2005) Available from http://www.plts.edu/articles/andersonh/heinfryambiguity.html.
Accessed 29 April 2007.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Paul
Tillich, Systematic Theology: Volume II (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1957), 132.
[7] Barbara
A. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed: The
Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 89.
[8] Ibid,
186.
[9] Ibid,
148.
[10]
Tillich, Systematic Theology: Volume III,
357.
[11] Ibid,
394.
[12] Ibid,
409.
[13] Ibid,
418.
[14] Quoted
in Rossing, p. 1.
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