Committed Critic

Matt was raising the question under my last post whether Christianity could simply do away with its claim to end-time supremacy –– what I would call its apocalypticism –– and be ultimately better off. Or to put it another way, can you be a Christian but not think that God will condemn non-believers at the end of time?

With apologies to Matt, I’m not really going to consider here the suggestion that the Gospel writers added all of Jesus’ apocalypticism to his “real” teachings when they wrote the Gospels. I just don’t think that’s a reasonable historical claim, based on a number of points.

It seems to me that scholars who do try to claim Jesus wasn’t apocalyptic are simply trying to salvage a Jesus they like, and as a result they are left without any reasonable explanation for how Christianity came to be so thoroughly apocalyptic, as evidenced by just about every book in the New Testament. What’s more, pretty much the whole impetus behind apocalyptic literature is a preoccupation with justice and the belief that God will vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked, so I’m not sure how we could keep some apocalypticism and do away with Christ’s end-time supremacy (i.e., the idea that he will vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked), either.

NEW REVELATIONS IN SCRIPTURE

So, setting aside the historical question, I’d like to deal with this as an honest theological question. Can we strip Christianity of its apocalypticism –– that is, the idea of a coming end-time judgment in which people are judged and given either eternal life or eternal death based on their religious commitments and behavior –– and still have a viable religion?

Or more importantly to my mind, does God intend for us to somehow move beyond apocalyptic Christianity and embrace Christ as the founder a different kind of faith?

First of all, if we’re taking the Bible as a fully authoritative and final guide to truth about God, then the question pretty much falls apart. Virtually every part of the New Testament depends on this notion of a final judgment, and committment to Jesus is always central to the kind of judgment that’s going to take place.

So to set aside apocalypticism, you have to assume that descriptions in the Bible about how God deals with people are not necessarily eternally true. This may sound offensive at first, but it’s implicit in all the covenants reflected in Scripture, and it’s lurking in the background whenever the New Testament explains what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean––that they somehow replace the way God dealth with people under the old covenant.

One important point to realize is that the Old Testament reflects traditions from hundreds of years, and often its ideas about God change from an earlier time to a later. For example, different parts of the Old Testament disagree on how God deals with human wickedness: does God punish sin to the third and fourth generation (Ex 20:5), or does God only punish the person who commits a sin (Ezek 18:20), or are prosperity and suffering pretty much independent of whether a person is loyal to God (Job)?

We could take these as contradictions of one another (which I admit I’m prone to do), but they could also be seen simply as God choosing to deal with people differently at different times. The implication is that God may have said one thing then, but he’s saying something different now.

END-TIME REWARD AND PUNISHMENT?

To get closer to the point we’re dealing with here –– whether the church can lay aside its apocalyptic theolgoy –– I think it’s significant that the Sinai Covenant and the early history of Israel don’t say anything about an afterlife. The people of God were to be given a promised land, but there was no real notion of what would happen to them after death.

They did have a sort of mythical idea of Sheol, which is essentially the same thing as Hades in Greek thought, a sort of land of the dead. Rather than an actual afterlife, it appears to be a netherworld of only partial existence, more dull and hazy than joyful or painful.

As for heaven, it was described as the place where God and the angels were, but not as the place people went after they died. Elijah may have been taken up to heaven, but he went there alive, and anyway there’s no indication in the early history of Israel that righteous people in general expected to earn such an honor. When Saul raises Samuel’s ghost (a bizarre story in 1 Sam 28:3-25), Samuel comes up from the ground (28:13), not down from heaven.

Later on, however, God’s promises become grander. At the end of Isaiah, for example, we read about “new heavens and a new earth” (65:17; 66:22), in the day when God will set things right again. Yet it looks like this will all happen on earth, where people will continue to grow old and die (Isa 65:20). Isaiah’s vision is a lot like later apocalyptic teachings, but it doesn’t fit with what we see in Revelation (e.g., Rev 21:4).

Then we have the book of Daniel, which is set after Persia conquers Babylon in 539 B.C., but which was probably written after certain political events in Jerusalem in 167 B.C. It describes an actual resurrection of the dead at the end of time –– the only passage in the Old Testament that talks about this. Regardless of when the book was written, it claims that Daniel is told to keep his writings secret until the “time of the end” (Dan 12:4), which means that the message about the resurrection was not intended for people who lived earlier.

So what am I saying? Moses thought that the promised land was the best thing there was. Isaiah thought that God’s ultimate deliverance would be just like earthly life, only better. Daniel thought people would rise from the dead to eternal life, but he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about it until after about 167 B.C.

Whatever you think about biblical inerrancy, it is difficult to deny that later biblical stories expand on the ideas from earlier stories. Just exactly what God will do is not the same in every part of Scripture, but instead we can see certain kinds of trajectories (maybe agreeing or maybe disagreeing with one another) that lead us into a huge assortment of Jewish literature in the centuries before Jesus. Much of that literature (especially 1 Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls) is heavily influenced by apocalyptic ideas.

By the time Jesus came around, many (but not all) Jews believed in the kind of salvation Daniel talked about, that at the end of time God will raise all the dead to be judged, at which time the righteous will be rewarded with eternal life while the wicked will be punished in hell. People naturally had different ideas about just who the “righteous” were.

Jesus continued this kind of teaching, as did all the authors whose books ended up in the New Testament.

DOES IT STOP THERE?

So the question is: Is that the final word on the matter?

Before we conclude too hastily that of course Jesus’ words are eternally true, it is important to remember that Jesus’ teachings about a final judgment were not given to the people in early Israel. Yet I don’t think most of us would conclude, based on that, that God was lying to Israel through Moses.

Rather, the entire history of the writing of the Bible consists of a mixture of affirming, reinterpreting, and overturning previously-held beliefs about God.

And it doesn’t quite work to say that God stopped revealing new things when Jesus came, because development continues even in the New Testament. 2 Peter is written to people who are pretty obviously anxious because Jesus’ promise to return “soon” doesn’t seem to have come true. Their neighbors are starting to mock them (3:4), and Peter reassures them by reinterpreting what his church thought they knew about the end: “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day” (3:8). Appropriately, this line is a virtual quotation from the Book of Jubilees (4:30), a popular Jewish text which used the line to try to explain why Adam didn’t die on the same day he ate the fruit.

Both of these texts are unwilling to say that the scripture they are interpreting is untrue, but both of them use reinterpretation to radically change what others considered to be the plain meaning of the earlier text.

HOW DOES THE CHURCH USE THE BIBLE?

Even for those who agree with this analysis, I don’t really think it gives us a clear answer for what to do with apocalypticism. So we are left with our three options: we can affirm, reinterpret, or overturn.

Should we assume, then, that since Jesus taught extensively (if ambiguously) about the end of the world, Christians are compelled to hold that same teaching? Or should we argue that God calls on the church to continually reinterpret the teachings of Scripture, perhaps seeing the end as a judgment outside of time, rather than a literal historical return of Jesus to earth? Or should we consider overturning the apocalyptic teachings of Jesus, suggesting perhaps that God wanted the church to hold to apocalypticism for a time, but that now we are to move on to other ways of understanding the world?

I tend to go with the first option, because I think the New Testament is too thoroughly apocalyptic for the teaching to be in any way optional. To use a medical analogy: You can remove a lung or a kidney, but you can’t remove, say, all the bone marrow from a person and expect their body to still function.

I imagine we’ll have some other perspectives here, though.

I can’t say that I own a lot of Bruce Springsteen music, but I love the tape of his that I have. He’s an excellent lyricist writing from a working class perspective, kind of like Bob Dylan but easier to follow. Plus his music has a ton of energy. Here is the verse of his that most catches my attention these days, from the song “Badlands” (1978):

Workin’ in the fields
till you get your back burned
Workin’ ’neath the wheel
till you get your facts learned
Baby I got my facts
learned real good right now
You better get it straight darling:

Poor man wanna be rich,
rich man wanna be king
And a king ain’t satisfied
till he rules everything
I wanna go out tonight,
I wanna find out what I got

Well I believe in the love that you gave me
I believe in the faith that could save me
I believe in the hope
and I pray that some day
It may raise me above these badlands…

The best word to describe the tone of the song as a whole (full lyrics here) is probably defiant. The singer seems to have no real expectation that his circumstances will improve, but he’s trying to convince himself (and his lover) that he’s determined to savor life anyway.

I don’t really think Springsteen is trying to be religious in any strong sense of the word, but the allusion to faith, hope, and love is a nice nod to people who know their Bible (1 Cor 13:13). It also highlights how much the idea of hope is wrapped up both in religious faith and in the experience especially of people who live on the border between poor and working class, which Springsteen likes to explore (see his remarkable song The River). It is no great stretch to see commonality between Springsteen’s words here and places in the Gospels that promise reversal of fortunes for the downtrodden (e.g., the beatitudes in Matthew 5 or the Magnificat in Luke 1:46ff).

There’s something here that should challenge religious folks, especially those of us who buy into an apocalyptic worldview where God is supposed to some day put everything right. I don’t know if Springsteen is a Christian, but what’s interesting is that his lyrics here don’t demand any particular religious commitment as the foundation for his hope. And since the situation of the song’s narrator doesn’t seem to offer good earthly reason for hope either, it begs a question: Should we see the song as just reflecting a human tendency to hope for the future whether we have any good reason to or not? And if that’s what humans do, should Christians suspect that our own apocalyptic faith is the same thing, just a groundless hope for a better future?

There’s an assumption in much academic study of religion that religious beliefs and texts arise ultimately from the needs of their adherents and authors, rather than from any explicit kind of divine revelation. That’s not quite to say that people invent their religion out of thin air, but rather that people express hopes or fears that become stories and religious doctrines, which eventually undergird a religion.

I suppose that as a confessing Christian, I’d have to say that this is what the other world religions are in their essence. Certainly God may reveal Godself in different ways to different peoples, but it is difficut (I would argue impossible) to reconcile Christian apocalypticism with the beliefs of religions that make competing claims. So I feel compelled to reject religious pluralism and assume a kind of exclusivism for Christianity. (I’m not a doctrinal purity zealot, but I would argue that some common belief or confession such as “Jesus is Lord” is necessary for Christians.)

The scary thing is that I can’t prove (even to myself) that a developmental process grounded only in wishful thinking isn’t the source of all religions, including mine. And as I’ve suggested here before, the only real reason that I find compelling for holding that Christianity is different is the resurrection of Jesus. This is a strong reason in my view, but it is hardly as thoroughgoing as, say, common Christian claims that the Bible is absolutely perfect and therefore obviously the word of God. Scripture is certainly beautiful, powerful, and brilliant, but its inspiration is impossible to prove even though I believe it, and its supposed perfection is hard to substantiate unless it’s simply assumed and posited at the outset.

Returning to where I started, I love Springsteen’s lyrics, because of their power, their apparent authenticity, and in this case the biblical intertext they play with. I also like that they force me to think critically about my faith, which used to really scare me, but which now just makes me (hopefully) less smug.

Cody asked a couple of questions I really like concerning my previous post. Since I don’t think I can answer them briefly, I’ll do it in at least a couple of different posts. Here’s the first question:

Do you find the Word of God (or word of God) in other sources as well (ancient or modern)?

This could refer to at least two different kinds of sources: non-biblical sources from within the Christian faith, and non-Christian sources from other religions. For this post, I’ll try to address the latter. Basically, do other religions reveal the Word of God?

To begin with, I should say that I consider this an open question. I feel like you have to say that God can reveal Godself in any way at any time, assuming we believe in a God who is free. Some people try to get away with limiting God’s revelation by claiming that God has already announced, in Scripture, that Scripture is God’s final revelation; they would judge, then, that they’re not limiting what God can do but only holding God to God’s word, as it were. (I wish there were a less cumbersome way to write in gender-inclusive language…) This is an attractive idea, especially since it would limit the amount of data theologians have to work with. However, since Scripture appears to contradict itself in any number of places, insisting that God always behave in agreement with Scripture (as if it’s monolithic) is hugely problematic.

Because of this, I’m convinced that there may well be truth from God revealed outside of Scripture. This is hardly a stretch for a Christian, since at least one passage in the Bible says God is revealed outside of Scripture. Paul writes in Romans 1:19-20: For what can be known about God is plain to [the wicked], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.

Do other religions reveal the Word of God?

Although I am open in theory to other sources of revelation, practically speaking I don’t think the Word of God is found elsewhere. That’s my short answer.

For my long answer, I’ll start out by kind of showing my cards, and then afterwards I’ll explain what I ground my view in.

First, I’m decidedly not a pluralist. Part of the reason I place so much weight on the Christian scriptures is that I believe God indeed intends for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be the truth by which all experience of God is mediated. So in addressing other religions, I would follow the view that seems to be endorsed by Paul in Athens in Acts 17. We should seek common ground for discussing God with people of other faiths, but to the extent that their understandings of God differ from the God revealed in Jesus Christ, we should regard them as wrong.

This favoritism toward the Christian tradition, I think, pretty much constrains my answer as to whether the word of God is revealed in other religions. Claiming that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of truth is tantamount to saying that God isn’t revealed in other religions, since their claims to truth would have no independent claim to credibility. If they’re only true when they happen to agree with the Bible, then they don’t have any real credibility. They may be interesting texts to reflect on, but that hardly means they contain God’s special revelation.

Personally, I would claim that the world’s religions are human efforts to understand God based on natural theology, human experience, reason, and creativity. The natural theology those religions engage is fine, as far as it goes, but their human efforts to further define the truth about God, I would say, are more or less futile. Beyond recognizing the existence of a transcendent God who created the world, we are hopelessly reliant on God’s own self-revelation to learn anything true about God. Judaism, in this reading, is based on scriptures that are true but incomplete. The Koran’s truth, I would say, is basically derivative from the Jewish and Christian traditions is uses.

That, essentially, is how I view the relationship between Christianity and the other world religions. No offence is intended, of course, and I assume that many adherents of other religions would make claims about my faith that are similar to those I have made about theirs. If you’re not a pluralist, it’s kind of the nature of the beast.

To say that other relgions involve human efforts hardly gets me off the hook in defending Christian theology. It appears that the Bible is also a product of human thinking and work, so someone might ask whether we can sift the truth from it any better than from the Koran. Exactly how to get at that truth contained in the Christian scriptures is an exceedingly complicated process, and I think (as many do) that ultimately it depends on study, prayer, and discernment within Christian communities.

The best I can do for now is explain why I think it’s reasonable to see the Christian faith as claiming universal validity as, roughly speaking, the one true religion. Basically, I’ll try to show why I think the Bible is incompatible with religious pluralism.

How could it be the only truth?

One difficulty with my position is that I can’t deny that God can reveal Godself in other religions, even in ways that contradict the Christian scriptures. The reason I still argue that God doesn’t reveal Godself in other religions is that pluralism appears to contradict not just occasional passages of the Bible, but rather the major presuppositions concerning the person of Jesus Christ throughout the entirety of the Christian canon. The problem is the combination, consistent in the New Testament writings, between (1) Jesus’ historical particularity and (2) Jesus’ universal significance.

First, let’s consider Jesus’ historical particularity. If we were only talking about God in the abstract, and not Jesus the historical person, we could say that different religions simply had access to different parts of the truth about God. But historically speaking, it seems clear that the other world religions don’t have equal access to facts about Jesus. Islam is the only other religion I know of whose scriptures have any doctrinal claims about Jesus, but the Koran can only make claims as a work written by a later interpreter, in contrast to the authors of the Christian scriptures, at least some of whom had access to eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry.

Some would claim that other early Christian groups had access to true traditions about Jesus, and this is certainly possible. Various traditions later condemned as heretical, such as Gnostic groups, may have been founded based on teachings of people who were as closely connected to Jesus as the authors of the canonical Gospels. The problem is that efforts to connect any of the extant Gnostic texts (i.e., those we have copies of) to real historical traditions independent of the New Testament are questionable; in other words, most Gnostic texts appear to be simply re-interpretations of the New Testament. It is commonplace these days for people who resent Christian orthodoxy to gravitate to Gnostic texts and lend them more historical credibility, it seems to me, than they merit. While their hypotheses could be correct, a responsible historian lends more credibility to the best available evidence.

And as boring as it sounds, the New Testament writings are probably the most credible historical sources, by far, for Jesus and his disciples. That doesn’t make them pure history by any means, but it does suggest they have a credibility that later writings lack. If the earliest Gnostic groups had their own real traditions that they could trace back to Jesus, it appears that those traditions aren’t available (or at any rate, identifiable) to us anymore. And it’s quite possible that those traditions simply didn’t exist until later, and that they have no real link with the historical Jesus or his immediate disciples.

The second point I mentioned above is the universal significance that the New Testament ascribes to Jesus. Almost every book in the NT is written from an apocalyptic perspective, anticipating a universal end of time with Jesus as the key figure. Modern theology tends to set this aside by emphasizing Christianity as an existential religion, whose goal is more about experience of God, finding meaning in life, and improving / redeeming the world around us. But from the apocalyptic perspectives of, e.g., Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, and the author of Revelation, religion deals with an objective reality that includes a coming day of judgment that all people will face.

The closest thing to a non-apocalyptic perspective among the NT Gospels is John, which in certain senses de-historicizes salvation by making it present now rather than focused on the future. However, it still speaks of the last day (e.g., John 6:40), on which humans will be raised to be judged. Furthermore, even if salvation is somewhat de-historicized, Jesus remains decidedly historical as the Word of God who became flesh at a real point in time and lived a genuine human life. John has that historical Jesus make claims such as, “I am the Way, and the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except by me.” If the Exclusive Way to the Father became flesh in a particular place, it is difficult to see (by the definition of exclusive) how another religion could claim to reveal other ways to that same Father.

The point of this is not to use proof texts to make a point, but rather to suggest that the basic perspectives of the New Testament writings point to a universal application of the story of Jesus that is difficult to reconcile with pluralism. Jesus was a real historical person, so we can’t envision him as an idea that is revealed in different ways in other religions. Yet all the earliest interpretations of his person and ministry (at least those that are still extant) saw him as having a universal significance that leaves little room for interpreting him as just one of a variety of religious figures such as Buddha or perhaps Gandhi.

Other ways out

We could simply say that the New Testament is wrong on these points, that these interpretations of Jesus’ person and mission were simply created by early interpreters and used to shape the scriptures. But if those foundational elements are inaccurate, it is difficult to say why any of the NT’s teachings should carry continuing validity.

In the end, many people will conclude that the Christian tradition is deeply flawed and yet wish to keep what they can of it. For me, however, this amounts to wishful thinking––picking and choosing religious beliefs according to what appeals to us and then suggesting they are most likely true.

Whether my own beliefs are wishful thinking as well remains to be determined. However, I still think there are very good historical reasons to conclude that Jesus’ New Testament interpreters drew their primary ideas (such as apocalypticism) from real teachings of Jesus, and that a great deal of what they wrote is trustworthy historically and not just as a faith tradition. To make the case more specifically, I’ll have to put off for future posts.