Dude! I totally had that T-Shirt in middle school!
jurisnaturalist
· 1 year ago
More seriously, Thanks Sam, for opening this necessary can of worms. We will need it if we are going to be able to fish out the differences among Christian responses to current events. I was tutoring two economics students yesterday, both middle-eastern, both wearing head-scarves. As economics often does (especially at GMU) the conversation turned political. The student's concerns turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in contrast to US involvement in Afghanistan/Iraq. Why is the US so supportive of Israel they wanted to know? My explanation: "Many Christians believe that in order for Jesus to come back the nation-state of Israel must re-occupy all of the land promised to the people in the Old Testament, and that the temple must be re-built on the Temple Mount, replacing the Dome of the Rock. They also believe that the nation-state of the United States Government will be blessed if it supports the nation-state of Israel." This was one of the most vulnerable, open, and honest conversations about religion I have ever had with a confessing Muslim. I was able to confess my Lord, while discussing my own Jesus-Politics, and sharing in the grief which actions based on bad theology bring about. While emergents tend to shy away from systematic theology in general, there are important lessons to be derived from a careful study and inspection of correlated doctrines. Dispensationalism almost always ends (begins) with Zionism and implicit statism. The defenses of militarism and moral legislation which follow are among the most grievious blemishes on the Church. Nathanael Snow
Maria Kirby
· 12 months ago
I appreciate your comments, Nathanael. I'm afraid the dispensationalism eschatology will bring the end times, but not in the way those Christians intend. My impression is that they think Jesus is going to come rescue them before the tribulation. However, the way they are behaving they are going to bring the Great Tribulation down upon us all from those who are tired of our hypocrisy.
Al1
· 1 year ago
Thanks for helping me gain a deeper understanding of my own past--pretty much based on option #1. It is certainly changing, but your thoughts help tie the various pieces together. I guess all of our theology is at best informed opinion. We SAY it is based on the Bible, but it still is our understanding of what the Bible is saying. What we understand about the character of God informs how we look at other people (the 'heathen'). And, of course, informs how we see the future unfolding. So, I'm not sure which comes first--ecclesiology or eschatology, or the overall understanding we have of who God is. But each one certainly begins to color the next one, and the cycle continues as we base one building block on what has already been laid. Nathanael's comments on Zionism certainly play into this. And we find it incredibly easy to try to help God fulfill our understanding of Israel's future by fighting their enemies, instead of living out the loving nature of God. I shudder when I realize how much all of our eschatology has already permeated the rest of our life with God. And I rejoice that God has shaken me up enough to begin to gently question much of what I took as 'gospel'. Going back to 'the Gospels' is certainly a good place to learn about the character of God, revealed in Christ. And then build an eschatology based on who God is.
Sagely
· 12 months ago
Thanks for raising the topic of eschatology. All too often this critical bit is left out of our conversations and our dreaming about what Jesus' kingdom looks like.
I think, though, that we need to look for maybe a third option. I've been doing a lot of thinking, talking, listening and reading about the inter-relationships between the way we follow Jesus now and they way Jesus and the early christians talk about the kingdom. I think you and your friend are quite right: our eschatology is at the heart of our ecclesiology. You can see this already in the NT when Paul tells the christians in Thessalonikki how to live on the basis of the sure return of Jesus and the resurrection. This is big stuff for both belief and practice.
But I don't think we're limited either to a vision of the kingdom coming solely at the return of Jesus or solely in our own lives and relationships now (similarly, I think we don't need to make the kingdom just about our souls or just about our material realities). Taking up a theme that's been kicked around theological circles for the last hundred or so years, we need to embrace both the now of the kingdom and it's yet future parts too. Jesus planted the very real seeds of the kingdom here through his life, his death, and his resurrection. But then he returned to the Father and we wait for his coming again (Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again).
So what does this mean for how we think of being the church? It means that we see the seedlings of the kingdom pushing up in our lives now, but not the full-grown tree haning with fruit and birds nesting in its branches. Christians are supposed to be the foretaste to the world of what's to come, sorta of like the Spirit is to be for christians. We seek to make the kingdom visible and touchable in our little spots of dirt and in our homes, in our friendships and in who we'll invite home for a meal. But we never confuse our stumbling and broken efforts to be Jesus' lightning-like return. We're just the provisional reality, what's here to get us through until Jesus remakes the world into a place where people aren't shattered by alcohol, sexual abuse, gang violence or war--a place without multinational coporations and with lots of parks to have picnics in.
folknotions
· 12 months ago
I have two comments on this:
First, jurisnaturalist: While you are right that there are fundamentalist Christians who support Zionism as a result of Christian dispensationalism, I don't think this really accounts for U.S. support of Israel and I think it is damaging to the witness of the church to attribute US-Israeli alliances solely to theology for the following reasons:
1) It overstates the influence of fundamentalist Christianity on US politics. Certainly Barack Obama is no fundamentalist and his appointment of Israeli-hardliner Rahm Emmanuel is a good indication of his support of Zionism in the Middle East. Rahm Emmanuel has even criticized the Bush Administration (they are the fundamentalists, right?) for not being strong enough on their support of Israel.
2) It overlooks the historical and political factors of US-Israeli relations: Israel being seen as the only "modern democracy" in the Middle East by the U.S., the strength of AIPAC, and the stereotypical Islamophobia that pervades American culture (and not "Christianity" per se), which have little to do with dispensationalism.
Second, As for your post Sam, I would highly recommend G.E. Ladd's The Gospel of the Kingdom, as it articulates a premillennial eschatology that the church is already incarnating the Kingdom of God but that the Kingdom is not fully consummated until the return of Christ. This has immense impact on ecclesiology as service toward the building of the Kingdom and in preaching the gospel so that others can join in the work of building the Kingdom. I know this idea is super hip for a lot of Emerging folks but Ladd already articulated this point of view a half-century ago.
All Comments
Thanks Sam, for opening this necessary can of worms. We will need it if we are going to be able to fish out the differences among Christian responses to current events.
I was tutoring two economics students yesterday, both middle-eastern, both wearing head-scarves. As economics often does (especially at GMU) the conversation turned political. The student's concerns turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in contrast to US involvement in Afghanistan/Iraq. Why is the US so supportive of Israel they wanted to know?
My explanation:
"Many Christians believe that in order for Jesus to come back the nation-state of Israel must re-occupy all of the land promised to the people in the Old Testament, and that the temple must be re-built on the Temple Mount, replacing the Dome of the Rock. They also believe that the nation-state of the United States Government will be blessed if it supports the nation-state of Israel."
This was one of the most vulnerable, open, and honest conversations about religion I have ever had with a confessing Muslim. I was able to confess my Lord, while discussing my own Jesus-Politics, and sharing in the grief which actions based on bad theology bring about.
While emergents tend to shy away from systematic theology in general, there are important lessons to be derived from a careful study and inspection of correlated doctrines.
Dispensationalism almost always ends (begins) with Zionism and implicit statism. The defenses of militarism and moral legislation which follow are among the most grievious blemishes on the Church.
Nathanael Snow
I guess all of our theology is at best informed opinion. We SAY it is based on the Bible, but it still is our understanding of what the Bible is saying. What we understand about the character of God informs how we look at other people (the 'heathen'). And, of course, informs how we see the future unfolding. So, I'm not sure which comes first--ecclesiology or eschatology, or the overall understanding we have of who God is. But each one certainly begins to color the next one, and the cycle continues as we base one building block on what has already been laid.
Nathanael's comments on Zionism certainly play into this. And we find it incredibly easy to try to help God fulfill our understanding of Israel's future by fighting their enemies, instead of living out the loving nature of God.
I shudder when I realize how much all of our eschatology has already permeated the rest of our life with God. And I rejoice that God has shaken me up enough to begin to gently question much of what I took as 'gospel'. Going back to 'the Gospels' is certainly a good place to learn about the character of God, revealed in Christ. And then build an eschatology based on who God is.
I think, though, that we need to look for maybe a third option. I've been doing a lot of thinking, talking, listening and reading about the inter-relationships between the way we follow Jesus now and they way Jesus and the early christians talk about the kingdom. I think you and your friend are quite right: our eschatology is at the heart of our ecclesiology. You can see this already in the NT when Paul tells the christians in Thessalonikki how to live on the basis of the sure return of Jesus and the resurrection. This is big stuff for both belief and practice.
But I don't think we're limited either to a vision of the kingdom coming solely at the return of Jesus or solely in our own lives and relationships now (similarly, I think we don't need to make the kingdom just about our souls or just about our material realities). Taking up a theme that's been kicked around theological circles for the last hundred or so years, we need to embrace both the now of the kingdom and it's yet future parts too. Jesus planted the very real seeds of the kingdom here through his life, his death, and his resurrection. But then he returned to the Father and we wait for his coming again (Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again).
So what does this mean for how we think of being the church? It means that we see the seedlings of the kingdom pushing up in our lives now, but not the full-grown tree haning with fruit and birds nesting in its branches. Christians are supposed to be the foretaste to the world of what's to come, sorta of like the Spirit is to be for christians. We seek to make the kingdom visible and touchable in our little spots of dirt and in our homes, in our friendships and in who we'll invite home for a meal. But we never confuse our stumbling and broken efforts to be Jesus' lightning-like return. We're just the provisional reality, what's here to get us through until Jesus remakes the world into a place where people aren't shattered by alcohol, sexual abuse, gang violence or war--a place without multinational coporations and with lots of parks to have picnics in.
First, jurisnaturalist:
While you are right that there are fundamentalist Christians who support Zionism as a result of Christian dispensationalism, I don't think this really accounts for U.S. support of Israel and I think it is damaging to the witness of the church to attribute US-Israeli alliances solely to theology for the following reasons:
1) It overstates the influence of fundamentalist Christianity on US politics. Certainly Barack Obama is no fundamentalist and his appointment of Israeli-hardliner Rahm Emmanuel is a good indication of his support of Zionism in the Middle East. Rahm Emmanuel has even criticized the Bush Administration (they are the fundamentalists, right?) for not being strong enough on their support of Israel.
2) It overlooks the historical and political factors of US-Israeli relations: Israel being seen as the only "modern democracy" in the Middle East by the U.S., the strength of AIPAC, and the stereotypical Islamophobia that pervades American culture (and not "Christianity" per se), which have little to do with dispensationalism.
Second,
As for your post Sam, I would highly recommend G.E. Ladd's The Gospel of the Kingdom, as it articulates a premillennial eschatology that the church is already incarnating the Kingdom of God but that the Kingdom is not fully consummated until the return of Christ. This has immense impact on ecclesiology as service toward the building of the Kingdom and in preaching the gospel so that others can join in the work of building the Kingdom. I know this idea is super hip for a lot of Emerging folks but Ladd already articulated this point of view a half-century ago.