With Good Friday and Easter upon us I wanted to offer a couple of thoughts on the significance of the resurrection. And I want to offer these thoughts by juxtaposing them with the words of someone else. My intention is not to be polemical and critical here at Easter, but to make a point on the significance of the resurrection.
I want to begin with a few words from the Amazon description of Brian McLaren's new book The Secret Message of Jesus.
He revisits the gospel material from a fresh—and at times radical—perspective. The church has focused on salvation as a means to "heaven after you die" for too long, according to McLaren; we should take Jesus at his word when he says "the kingdom of God is here now," and work to assist that kingdom by being peacemakers and loving others.
Now, for all of my disagreements with Brian McLaren, I want to say that I affirm his emphasis and the emphasis of others on the here-and-now-ness of the gospel. For too long we have given short shrift to the present day implications of the gospel. In focusing on the eternal kingdom of God we have forgotten that the kingdom is a present day reality. So, I do welcome this present day emphasis of McLaren and others, even if I will disagree on some of the particulars of what that looks like.
But having said that I am not willing to admit that evangelicals have erred or overemphasized salvation as a means to "heaven after you die." The reason has to do with Paul's words in I Corinthians 15:19:
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
If Paul says we are to be pitied more than all men if our only hope in Christ is in this life, it seems to me that the counterpart would be to say that we are to be considered the most blessed among all men if we have hope in Christ for after this life.
Hence, the most blessed hope we have in Christ is not a hope for the here and now, it is a hope for eternity - it is the hope of being resurrected to live and reign with Christ for eternity.
This is not to say that hope in Christ in this life, i.e. the here and now aspects of the gospel and the present reality of the kingdom, is not a blessing. But it is a lesser blessing.
The greater blessing is the eternal blessing that comes after this life.
So, I would suggest that evangelicals have been right on by placing the greatest emphasis on what happens after we die, because the blessing that accrues to us after we die is the most blessed thing of the gospel.
Conversely, to the degree that we diminish the emphasis on the "after death" blessings of the gospel, to that degree we show our misunderstanding of the most important emphasis of the gospel.
And of course this is doesn't have to be an either/or. Those who are reminding us of the present day implications of the gospel are doing the right thing, but they need not do this by contrasting their "this-worldly" emphasis with the "other-worldly" emphasis of those who have gone before.
What needs to happen in our gospel preaching is to maintain the priority of the eternal blessings of the gospel, while bring alongside that preaching a discussion of the present day blessings, as a complimentary matter.
It is the hope of resurrection that is always the greatest blessing of the gospel, and what better time to remember that than at Easter.
Related Tags: Books, Religion, Theology, Easter, Resurrection, Christian, Christianity
> What needs to happen in our gospel preaching is to maintain the priority of the eternal blessings of the gospel, while bring alongside that preaching a discussion of the present day blessings, as a complimentary matter.
I don't think we should frame the question as two sets of blessings which compete for dominance. Of course, a focus entirely on one or the other is misguided, resulting in a collapsed theology which is all about social justice but no real knowledge of God, or equally impoverished, all about eternal truths but no real action. But is the ideal really a sort of lopsided balance, skewed toward the "greater blessing" of eternal promises and merely salted with second-hand attention to the “lesser blessings” of the present-day?
I think the Biblical position is more integrated. This position says, if God has given us a glorious eternal inheritance, then we must now begin to live as one worthy of that inheritance. It says, if we are guaranteed an eternal place in heaven then we should now have confidence and boldness before God. It says, if we are the workmanship of a Holy God, then we will bear the fruit of good works today.
Of what use is an eternal truth if it produces no sanctification, no good works, no magnification of His name in the here and now? God says His word never comes back empty; it always accomplishes His desire. (Isaiah 55:11). So we can conclude that theology without real application is not God’s word but is instead some form of human vanity.
Posted by: Kaffinator | April 14, 2006 at 07:11 PM
Kaffinator, God says His word accomplishes what *He* sent it to do. That by no means implies that *we* will accomplish something *we perceive* as dictated by His word. In fact, the experience of the prophets was precisely contrary to that--they preached despite the lack of immediate response from the audience, or even (in the case of Jeremiah) without any call for or hope of such response.
That said, generally I agree that "faith and practice" doesn't just mean "words we believe about things we might do."
I think one important area of inquiry is *what we believe* about the Resurrection and how that, far from *competing* with, *undergirds* our practice here-and-now.
"He that has this hope in him purifies himself...." among other passages that both reinforce and extend the points raised here.
Cheers,
PGE
Posted by: pgepps | April 15, 2006 at 12:14 AM
Good post, David. I would add one thing that's somewhere "between" you and McLaren. Some parts of the church emphasize the future so much to the absolute exclusion of the present, and there needs to be a balance. You said that we have given "short shrift to the present day"; unfortunately there are those who have given no shrift at all.
Posted by: Brendt | April 15, 2006 at 11:30 AM
The quotation-marks catch my attention: "when he says 'the kingdom of God is here now'...."
Where did Jesus say that, in so many unambiguous words, as quoted?
Posted by: Dan Phillips | April 16, 2006 at 10:52 AM
Despite what we might think about his whole theological project, N.T. Wright nails the biblical theme of salvation as "new creation," proving that the scripture really does underwrite some of the renewed interest in going beyond the language of mere life-after-death. Yet, (and this is a big "yet"), the fulness of the renewed future creation is only experienced by those who pass into it through a physical death (and dying in Christ no less), and then, a future bodily resurrection and vindication at the judgment seat of Christ (cf. 2 Cor.5). This" new heavens and new earth" is not an inevitable inheritance of anyone who lives on earth today, nor a reality that we can realize through any degree of sanctified efforts at cultural reform. The present world, and all of its history, must draw to a close at the moment of a future cataclysmic judgment, before that new creation will be brought to fruition. Most of us will experience this as a life-after-death reality. Until then, of course, get busy making the world more kingdom-like in ways that you can -- to do so proves that we have a theology of creation/recreation, and not just a theology of the redemption of souls. But here is no ultimate conflict between a life-after-death understanding of salvation and that of a renewed creation. The mistake would be to pick either emphasis and make it its own "camp" from which to judge the other perspective as entirely wrong-headed.
Posted by: Brian Kay | April 19, 2006 at 01:39 AM