I’ve been discussing themes that will be developed in a forthcoming book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile. The book, God willing and my complying, will be out in the first part of next year. As you may remember from last week, the subject is living an authentic Christian life between the “now” of Christ’s victory and the “not yet” of a promised Kingdom delayed.
Great are the uncertainties and the awesome stakes, in this dialectic, this complex back-and-forth of remembering and anticipation; of living the brief moment of what is between what was and what is to be, never losing sight of a destination that transcends history but does not leave history behind. The “new heaven and new earth” of the book of Revelation does not abandon this heaven and this earth. Rather, they are taken up into transcendent fulfillment. It is not as though this earthly city grows and develops into the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. It is not a matter of historical progress but of eschatological promise.
Eschatology refers to the last things, the final things, the ultimate destination of the story of God’s dealings with the world of his creation. In the Christian view, that destination, that eschaton, has already appeared within history in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright nicely puts it, the resurrection of the crucified Jesus is not a story about a happy ending but about a new beginning. In the resurrection and in the abiding presence of the resurrected Lord in his body, the Church, the absolute future breaks into present time. Because the principalities and powers rage against the new world order inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus, that future is discernible only by faith. In the words of St. Paul, “we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Read it all.
Richard John Neuhaus: What Keeps Us Going
I’ve been discussing themes that will be developed in a forthcoming book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile. The book, God willing and my complying, will be out in the first part of next year. As you may remember from last week, the subject is living an authentic Christian life between the “now” of Christ’s victory and the “not yet” of a promised Kingdom delayed.
Great are the uncertainties and the awesome stakes, in this dialectic, this complex back-and-forth of remembering and anticipation; of living the brief moment of what is between what was and what is to be, never losing sight of a destination that transcends history but does not leave history behind. The “new heaven and new earth” of the book of Revelation does not abandon this heaven and this earth. Rather, they are taken up into transcendent fulfillment. It is not as though this earthly city grows and develops into the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. It is not a matter of historical progress but of eschatological promise.
Eschatology refers to the last things, the final things, the ultimate destination of the story of God’s dealings with the world of his creation. In the Christian view, that destination, that eschaton, has already appeared within history in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. As the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright nicely puts it, the resurrection of the crucified Jesus is not a story about a happy ending but about a new beginning. In the resurrection and in the abiding presence of the resurrected Lord in his body, the Church, the absolute future breaks into present time. Because the principalities and powers rage against the new world order inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus, that future is discernible only by faith. In the words of St. Paul, “we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Read it all.