During the last installment, the take-away lesson is that the Bible doesn't have all that much to say about the origins of evil. Evil seems to predate the biblical story. It's the "void" of Genesis 1.2 or the snake in the Garden or the missing backstory about the satan. To be sure, we can sketch in some of these details, and lots of Christians have. But I wonder, and this was the general point I wanted to make in the last post, if we shouldn't follow the Bible's lead on this and not speculate overmuch about the origins of evil. Perhaps the most biblical thing we can do is do what the Bible does: Assume evil exists and confess that God is that Spirit that moves over creation bringing order, beauty, goodness and light. We can confess at least that much. Why evil exists, I can't say. But I can confess that the Spirit of God is, right now, bringing light into the darkness. And maybe that's the only "creation theology" we really need.
Having considered origins in the last post we turn to endings in this post. And again, the point isn't to be provocative but to reach a conclusion similar to the one from the last post. To be sure, these two posts leave a ton of threads loose and hanging. To help with that, I'll pull all this into a less-speculative post later today.
If in the last post we talked about how we might think about the power/weakness of God in the creation narrative, in this post we swing over to the last book of the Bible to think about how the weakness of God might be viewed in the power displays found in the book of Revelation.
Unfortunately, neither Boyd's God at War or Caputo's The Weakness of God are of much use to us here. In God at War the victory of God over evil in the book of Revelation is, according to Boyd, a fairly straightforward display of power. So that's not helpful given how we are thinking about the weakness of God. As for Caputo, he doesn't much get into eschatology in the The Weakness of God (likely because he doesn't believe in eschatology traditionally understood).
So we are flying bit solo on this. But we can borrow from a host of recent insights about eschatology generally and the book of Revelation specifically. What follows are a three interconnected observations to mull over in thinking about how the weakness of God relates to eschatology.
First, regarding the violence in the book of Revelation, I think we simply lean on the many non-violent readings of Revelation. I'd recommend Reading Revelation Responsibly by Michael Gorman. The key insight in these readings is that the victory over evil in the book of Revelation is won by the weakness and non-violence of God as seen in the enthroned Lamb Who Had Been Slain in Revelation 5:
I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals."In short, any victory of God is won by the weakness of the cross. This is also seen in the book of Revelation in how the martyrs wage war with the weapons of the Lamb:
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders ...
Then there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon and his angels. And the dragon lost the battle, and he and his angels were forced out of heaven. This great dragon -- the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, the one deceiving the whole world -- was thrown down to the earth with all his angels.Note how the "war in heaven" is fought by the saints. The saints defeat evil "by the blood of the Lamb", "by their testimony", and, finally, by the sacrificial giving of their lives like Jesus on the cross.
Then I heard a loud voice shouting across the heavens,
"It has come at last --
salvation and power
and the Kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers and sisters
has been thrown down to earth --
the one who accuses them
before our God day and night.
And they have defeated him by the blood of the Lamb
and by their testimony.
And they did not love their lives so much
that they were afraid to die ..."
The point being, I think the weakness of God can be made consistent with the book of Revelation.
To my second observation.
I think the recent work of scholars such as NT Wright (see his Surprised By Hope) have encouraged us to see the eschatological vision of the New Testament as being more this-worldly than other-worldly. The eschaton and "eternal life" have much more to do with the quality of today's life than with a judgment at "the end times". Our prayer is the same as Jesus': "Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven."
In this view, "the end" is less about a literal, future apocalypse than it is the goal state and the divine, prophetic perspective on our world, right here, right now. We are an eschatological people when we live with "the end" -- the vision of God's ultimate rule where Jesus is Lord -- ever in view
The point being, as we did in the last post, we can bracket questions about "the end" like we can bracket questions about "the beginning". We can be agnostic about those things yet still have a rich, energized and biblical eschatology.
Finally, I would like to make an observation about the ending of the biblical narrative and its similarity to the beginning.
Recall from the last post that, given a certain reading, chaos pre-dates creation. Creation assumes the raw material of chaos, the formless clay that God shapes and calls "good". (An activity we are called as God's image-bearers -- as Adam was called -- to emulate, the creating of goodness out of chaos.) Genesis, in this view, brackets the question about where that chaos -- that raw material -- came from.
What is interesting is that Revelation ends on that same open-ended note. Specifically, in the description of the New Jerusalem, a restoration of Eden's Paradise, there are few curious things. First, it's a city with walls. Why do you need walls? Why not the whole earth restored as a garden? Second, the doors of this city are always open. Why are doors open if no one is on the outside?
On this point -- Are there people outside the walls of the New Jerusalem? -- the text seems mixed. In 21.6-8 it appears that the "outsiders" are consigned to death in the Lake of Fire. But at the end of the text in 22.12-15 it seems like there are people living outside the city. The simple resolution to the paradox is to say that, right now, there are insiders and outsiders, but that at the end of time the outsiders get thrown into the Lake of Fire.
Which is fine as far as that goes, but unless you are an annihilationist most Christians actually do believe there is an "outside" to the New Jerusalem. It's called hell.
The point being, according to most Christians the ending of the Bible brings us back to where we were at the beginning. Which isn't with a vision of total, universal goodness. In Genesis there is chaos and, in the midst of that chaos, the Garden of Eden where the Kingdom of God is experienced. And in the book of Revelation there is a city -- the New Jerusalem -- where the Kingdom of God is experienced and, outside of those walls, there remains an eternal chaos, like at the beginning, which most Christians label as hell. In both visions there are two basic territories. In Genesis it's the formless void versus Eden. In Revelation it's the Lake of Fire (Hell) versus the New Jerusalem. And in both cases evil is associated with the territory opposed to the territory where the Kingdom of God is experienced.
Now am I saying that evil is co-eternal with God, that evil existed alongside God in the beginning and will exist alongside God forever?
No. All I'm saying is that the biblical narrative doesn't get into that question. From beginning to end the Bible simply assumes two locations -- a location where God's rule is experienced and holds sway (Eden, New Jerusalem) and a location which is "outside" God's rule. Biblically, that's all we can say for sure. Anything more is metaphysical speculation that can't be adjudicated with the Bible. Which means that, in my opinion, biblical Christians can be agnostic about all this.
More, if I can circle back to my second point above, if an eschatological perspective is more about today than "the end times" then such agnosticism might have salutary effects upon Christians and the church. This agnosticism keeps us focused on what is most important:
Waging the War of the Lamb to bring the Kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven.
The kernel of the idea in my theology of revolt is simply this: Our only theodicy as Christians is resistance, not violence.
Folks will often-times bring up the Holocaust as a challenge to the theology I'm developing here. So let me address it outright.
First, let's be honest: I don't know how any theodicy could be given in that face of that horror. In fact, I don't think we should be trying to get God off the hook for that. Nor do I think that appeals to divine solidarity help all that much.
Which is why I continue to insist: Resistance is our only theodicy.
In the particular example of my interlocutor's argument about the Holocaust: I wish there had been a bit more militancy in German Christianity during the rise of Nazism. Which is why I tire a bit to reactions such as "I don't like seeing myself in a battle. I just want to love people".
For my part, I take inspiration to keep using the spiritual warfare metaphor from people like the White Rose martyrs.
If you don't know about the White Rose they were college-age students, most were Christians, who began resisting the Nazi regime by printing and dispersing subversive leaflets. They were one of the few Christian voices speaking out against Hitler. They are spiritual heroes of mine and too few people know about them.
A selection from the famous fourth leaflet of the White Rose:
Every word that proceeds from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war. And when he names the name of the Almighty in a most blasphemous manner, he means the almighty evil one, that fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the stinking maw of hell and his might is fundamentally reprobate. To be sure, one must wage the battle against National Socialism using rational means. But whoever still does not believe in the actual existence of demonic powers has not comprehended by far the metaphysical background of this war. Behind the tangible, behind that which can be perceived by the senses, behind all factual, logical considerations stands The Irrational, that is the battle against the demon, against the messengers of the Anti-Christ. Everywhere and at all times, the demons have waited in darkness for the hour in which mankind is weak; in which he voluntarily abandons the position in the world order that is based on freedom and comes from God; in which he yields to the force of the Evil One, disengaging himself from the powers of a higher order. Once he has taken the first step of his own free will, he is driven to take the second and then the third and even more with furiously increasing speed. Everywhere and at every time of greatest danger, people have risen up -- prophets, saints -- who are aware of their freedom, who have pointed to the One God and with His aid have exhorted the people to turn in repentance. Mankind is surely free, but he is defenseless against the Evil One without the true God. He is a like rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without his mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.For dispensing this and their other pamphlets the leaders of the White Rose were beheaded by the Nazis.
I ask you, you as a Christian wrestling for the preservation of your greatest treasure, whether you hesitate, whether you incline toward intrigue, calculation, or procrastination in the hope that someone else will raise his arm in your defense? Has God not given you the strength, the will to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler ...
We will not keep silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not let you alone!
In memory of the White Rose I'm sticking with the spiritual warfare metaphor. Theirs is the Victory of the Lamb.