Amanda Beattie Knocks it Out of the Park.
This post is amazing. Some of the best writing and thinking I’ve heard in a long time.
Emergent Eschatology: First Shot Across the Bow
For those not used to the metaphor above: a shot across the bow is a warning shot related to a threatened naval engagement.
I’ve got three or four sources that I’m actively engaging related to getting a picture of Emergent/Emerging views of the end-times. Tony Jones has a few key comments in his book The New Christians, I just got the book The Coming of the Son of Man by Andrew Perriman (thank you Jon Green for the recommend).
Additionally I’ll be reading and reviewing a book by Kevin Beck, This Book will Change Your World. Thanks to Kevin for comping me a copy of the book, look for a full review next week sometime.
Initial findings:
- Preterism is common in emergent circles.
- Dispensational pre-millenialism (which we at IHOP-KC are inevitably be lumped into…sigh) is considered theologically irresponsible.
- It is primarily reactionary related to popular pre-millenial views as espoused by LaHaye, Lindsey, and Hagee.
A few quotes to illustrate the above points. The bold is mine. Tony Jones says,
Here’s the major theological flaw [with the attempt to evangelize the world to cause Jesus to come back]: it makes the assumption that the activity of God is contingent on the activity of humans, while the biblical narrative seems to indicate that God acts independently of us…A similar defect afflicts the so-called dispensational view of the end-time made popular in the 1970’s by Hal Lindsey in The Late Great Planet Earth and more recently by the jejune Left Behind novels. These propose the dubious theology that the world is going to get worse and worse and worse until it gets so bad that God has to intervene (but not before God whisks away all of the Christians and lets the rest of humanity rot in a satanic hell for seven years). The New Christians p. 99
For those (like me) who didn’t know what ‘jejune’ meant, click here.
And a description by Kevin Beck of a typical dispensational view of eschatology:
God will order up disease and disaster, followed up by World War III on the plains of Armageddon. The only hope—so say the prognosticators of pain—is for God to send Jesus cloud-surfing back to earth to put the cosmos out of its misery.
If so, God will allow you to party it up for all eternity while everyone else—including many people you love—suffer torments that’d make the residents of Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib blush. This Book Will Change Your World, p. 16
For those unfamiliar with American abuses at Abu Ghraib, click here.
To summarize: Those of us who believe in a literal, common sense interpretation of eschatological passages of the Bible (esp. the book of Revelation) believe that God is a sadist on the level of Hitler. This God we promote seems to enjoy creating a hell-on-earth to cause humanity to suffer unimaginable horrors. Not only does God initiate said conditions, but this God invites His sadist disciples to help initiate the suffering by getting people saved and praying for Him to come back.
That view doesn’t seem very accurate to me, but of course it assumes that all literal interpretations of Revelation 6-22 include a rapture prior to the seals, trumpets and bowls.
Still have reading to do, so maybe the rhetoric lightens up. I will also be responding to one or two of the main exegetical arguments for preterism here in the future related to my reading.
Rick Warren: One Sabbath
I am appalled, but not shocked by this video. And here’s the website. (the video is a little long – but the first 3 min or so give you the idea)
Serving the poor without preaching the gospel (if you are a Christian) is like giving a starving person cans of food with no tools to open it. It is cruel and foolish, selfish, and destructive. Providing people with physical health for 70 years is not justice, if they spend eternity in hell.
Jesus primary concern is eternal life; otherwise he would have skipped the whole ‘dying on the cross’ step and just set up effective social planning in the Roman Empire. We do not share the values of Muslims, Hindus, or rabinnical Judaism. We are NOT one with them if we are believers in Jesus.
In fact, Jesus kingdom is actively resisting them – and if we agree with Him we resist the strongholds and principalities that are keeping them in bondage and dragging them into eternal destruction.
Are you willing to give GM, Ford and Chrysler $111?
I’m massively oversimplifying the situation. They want 34 billion dollars. The population of the US is 305,000,000 (approx.)
All things being equal it means the bailout will cost you $111. Are you willing to pay?
As a side note: The combined compensation (in stock options, salary, and bonuses) for the executive teams of these three companies is about 150 million dollars in the last year. That is only the top 5 executives in each company however. With the level of ‘millionaire’ managers who report to these guys, who knows how much is flowing up the wealth ladder?
Towards a Emergent Eschatology
I have been thinking about the Emergent/Emerging movement.
I’ve consumed Tony Jones The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier and Mclaren’s Everything Must Change. Truthfully, I’m not hearing anything new out of Emergent that hasn’t been said for over 10 years. Some dead horses are getting beat here. They do seem to be getting very cute with the Bible. Of couse even that risk-taking “X-treme hermeneutic” edge was always the boiler plate approach in Emergent circles.
What is new are the changing political and social circumstances in the US. These circumstances would seem to confirm emergent suspicions that, indeed, it is the dawn of a New Christianity where Everything is Changing. In one sense, the cultural winds have shifted making the ‘prophets’ of emergent appear to be the those who ‘got it all along.’
Barack Obama’s recent victory is indicative of this trend; as I reported before on this blog, His election included a large percentage of born-again believers who have moved past “one issue” (read pro-life) politics as usual.
The bottom line is that the Emergent movement is gaining speed and confidence and I predict will become the most prominent church culture in the US.
As I’ve been examining some of the buzz around a very particular question has arisen for me: What is Emergent Eschatology?
A simple search on the emergent village website for “end-times” yields nothing. Eschatology gives us five hits, but nothing substantial. “Antichrist”, that gives us a William Yeats poem (that frankly I like a great deal). It would seem from first blush that eschatology is a non-starter in emergent circles.
In any case, I’ll be scouring the emergent/emerging world for a peep of what vantage point they have on the end-times; and I’ll share my findings here as they….um…emerge…
Side note, Zack Hensley is looking at some similar things on his blog lately you may want to check out. I love synergy!
