I have been participating in an interesting (I think) discussion on 2 Peter 3 and eschatology over at the Sola Panel, found here:
The Sola Panel How new will the new creation be?
Two features of discussion are frustrating: on the one hand, the use of Tom Wright as a bogey man (though the original poster says he didn't intend this, this is certainly how some of the posters have run with it) - 'if Tom Wright believes it, it must be suspicious'. This is no way to have a serious discussion about an important issue.
On the other hand, I think at one point we reached a consensus that discontinuity/continuity are a false alternative, and that the proper biblical/theological picture is both of a destructive judgement and a remarkable renewal - but then people kept on insisting that no, there is NO continuity between this creation and the new creation. This despite all the other texts (Rom 8, Col 1 and others) that do teach continuity. AND in spite of a raft of conservative commentators who see that 2 Peter 3 is not utterly discontinuous (Bauckham, et al). I am not quite sure what is at stake...though for me I think that utterly discontinuous view leads to a denigration of the created order and a rather Gnostic eschatology against which orthodox Christianity has always fought...
See what you think.
30 comments:
Hi Michael.
Re Tom Wright the bogey man.
If Tom Wright has a consistent agenda across everything he has written of downplaying the negative--judgment, destruction, wrath--then I do think that if Tom Wright pushes it, it may be suspicious.
Well that in my view remains to be seen. Wright claims to be giving an account of what the Bible says, and I think he is honest in this (even if mistaken I think in the results). This makes him most certainly not a liberal, as you characterise him. He is more liberal than you and I perhaps, but not a liberal in method. It is quite a simplistic caricature of his work to say he downplays judgement, destruction and wrath, actually. He has a good deal to say about the judgement day, and about the judgement of God (not all that I agree with, but it is there none the less).
But that's not the point I am making: what I am saying is that it is not at all helpful to discussion of an issue that CONSERVATIVE evangelicals disagree on to say 'oh, Tom Wright believes that, therefore it must be suspicious and probably wrong' - especially when any number of more conservative thinkers agree on this, and our disagreement is not methodological (we are all trying to understand what the Bible is saying, not add to it our own impressions). That's pernicious: if I defend the continuity positon, then I am defending Wright, then I must be a slippery liberal? Come on. We can do better than that!
I think Tom Wright is pernicious. The liberals of the early 20th Century denied the reality of a real terrifying wrath and judgment for unbelievers. Tom Wright is more crafty. He doesn't deny it - he never talks about it; he never engages it. He writes commentaries on Matthew that avoid it when it is on the lips of Christ; he writes books about the future and avoids the 'hard passages' like 2 Peter 3.
We are to warn the flock. That is what I made a promise to do.
Furthermore, in my discussion, I never said there was no continuity. There is at least human continuity.
Also, I think that vagueness on judgment is actually more gnostic than the position I am arguing for. The destruction and judgment at the end will be real; physical and painful -- Just as the new creation will be real, physical and beautiful.
Me and my friends tend to view Wright as uncool, since he's way too conservative — and the Sola mob think he's uncool since he's (sorry for giggling) a "pernicious liberal". Oh well, anyone who can be ostracised by that many people must be doing something right...
Well, it is just plainly not true that Wright never talks about it - and in a way that affirms the reality of judgement specifically OVER AGAINST 20th century liberalism. I am looking at pp. 89-90 of 'Evil and the Victory of God' just for starters. So I think more caution should be used in casting such slurs. You don't help your flock if you give a distorted and inaccurate account of Wright (or anyone else) and then they find out the truth is otherwise.
But my real complaint is this. When you say this:
'...then I do think that if Tom Wright pushes it, it may be suspicious'
you cast aspersions by association on anyone who holds a like position. And yet the position in question is not a liberal aberration: it is held by conservative evangelicals who are greatly respected as such.
Furthermore, I assume that you don't think that the bodily resurrection is a suspicious teaching; yet Wright has been pushing this teaching for years...
If I might comment on your original post (and not on NT Wright!) - you asked us what we think is at stake. Well this is where I think an over emphasis on the discontinuity takes us: It turns us into a group of confessing amillenialists dressed up like pre-millenial, dispensationalists who don't believe in the rapture but act like we do anyway. And I didn't get that from reading a text book, I simply see it in the churches I work amongst day in and day out. And quite frankly I think its tragic because it makes our God look like he doesn't give a hoot about people's lives now.
I know this is a gross generalization - but where it is happening I think it is so tragic that it needs to be addressed. To be honest I don't know how the end will work out - how much continuity there is - but I know that Christ is reconicling all things to himself as a result of his death and resurrection and its time we started behaving like we believe it.
Michael,
the sola debate seemed to have exhausted itself before I had time to comment. I agree with you that the Biblical picture is of the renewal of creation. That will take place through a judgement, but it will still be this creation renewed. It is unfair to tie this view to liberalism or even NTW (who is now a quasi-liberal!). It is the classic Reformed view, while the total destruction view has been that of Lutheranism.
What is at stake?
One thing at stake is an important question of hermeneutics. Dispensationalism is partially motivated by a desire to do justice to OT eschatology and its promises of redemption of the land etc. New Creation eschatology can affirm that, but say that what is pictured in the prophets is fulfilled in abundance in new creation. However the alternative view tends to spiritualise the fulfillment. I find the New Creation version far more satisfying.
I have always assumed that my friends who talk about 'heaven' as eschatological shorthand would admit that we looked to the union of heaven and earth in the glorified new creation. However this discussion makes me wonder if there is not a wider gap. It seems to me that the rightly lauded views of O'Donovan are hard to maintain if redemption does not in fact affirm created order. Similarly to speak of a total destruction of creation raises questions of how God is the faithful creator. At best our view of creation is reduced to a narrow anthropological one.
The ethical implications which flow from the views will have to be different, even if the difference is fairly subtle.
One difference - perhaps not an important one - might be on the value placed on the aesthetic...
Thanks for raising O'Donovan. I had thought about his ethical views in relation to this issue, but R&MO was not close to hand at the time. He certainly does not deny the reality and seriousness of judgment! His essay, in TynBul, on the last few chapters of the book of Revelation, might have something to say about it too.
Andrew:
you wrote -
'I think that vagueness on judgment is actually more gnostic than the position I am arguing for'
I hope you wouldn't for a second think that I am being vague about judgment...
Hi Michael,
All my comments were aimed at Wright. Although I think it is important to preach the harsher doctrines while talking about the new creation, otherwise it may be (or appear to be) driven by a liberalizing agenda to only talk about 'nice things'.
Michael, I suspect aesthetics is very important! We need an 'now-not yet' aesthetics not an aesthetic which builds on a 'theologia gloria', but that does not mean that it doesn't matter.
Hi Michael,
Quite a lot hangs on this. What the Bible teaches about the future of this created order has implication for how we view and treat it now. That has obvious implications in the environmental realm, but it also determines how we understand creation work in its many forms, from business to politics, and from the arts to development.
One of the key passages, it seems to me, is God's promise to Noah. The promise never again to destroy creation by flood is a little hollow if it is merely assuring that destruction will not come by one particular method. In context the flood was God "uncreating" this realm, and so the promise is actually one that guarantees this physical order. God will renew, not replace, this world.
Michael,
It appears that you and I were on the same team in the Sola Panel exchange. I too think that an annihilationist reading often leads to a denigration of the present created order, although this is an empirical judgement, rather than a logical necessity. I remain open to the belief that an appropriate social and environmental ethic can be constructed within a 'destruction' framework, although I think it is harder.
What I found so discomforting about the Sola Panel exchange was the narrow focus on 2 Peter 3, and the vague engagement with other texts, like Romans 8. To my mind, Romans 8 is just as perspicuous (if not more so) than 2 Peter 3 on this issue.
On Tom Wright, I simply cannot stomach the vitriol directed at him. He is sometimes wrong, and sometimes right. Like most of us really. Because his projects are so ambitious, he ends up having opinions on a whole host of matters, which predisposes him to being attacked on any number of fronts. Ben Myers comment that his scholarship is often branded too conservative is an important contribution. As a NT major in a secular university, I have found Wright's scholarship both an encouragement and an innovation. He makes the true liberals sit up and take notice in a way most evangelicals can only dream about.
I would be happy to share my dissertation research on the topic of new creation with you.
Blessings,
Mark
Isn't the question just the same as the question about the nature of the Resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15?
To which the answer is that the present one is a seed for the future one - clear continuity and discontinuity.
And when arguing against real liberals on pretty much any New Testament stuff, I'd rather have Tom Wright on my side than almost any other writer.
Mark - love to see your work! Cheers.
Granted, Andrew says that he has a different reading Romans 8, but he hasn't provided any details yet. I'd be interested to see them.
Peter Leithart's short preterist commentary on 2 Peter contains, he states, 5 knockdown arguments to support a first century fulfilment of chapter 3. It's called "The Promise of His Appearing." David Field from Oak Hill College has a summary here:
http://davidpfield.blogspot.com/2006/12/promise-of-his-appearing.html
Basically, every time God restored the Covenant, He referred to it as a new heavens (government - Adam) and a new earth (army - Eve). There will be a physical new heavens and earth one day, but this is not what Peter was referring to. It was the end of the old created order in AD70. After this, worship was no longer centralised on earth but in heaven.
Sounded foreign to me initially, but it's pretty convincing and explains a great many texts we seem to fumble with.
Ah - some characteristic Leithartian understatement, I see!
I am not a preterist or a postmillennialist, and I find postmillennialism quite unconvincing: but what he has added to the debate about 2 Peter 3 is the sense that there is apocalpytic language here that needs to be taken seriously (rather than literalistically)....
Hi there Michael, thanks for your post. Have just discovered sola panel - where have I been!?! With you was also disappointed with the level of debate.
I had always thought the 2Pet3 texts invoked an eschatalogical metaphor of REFINEMENT with its roots in places like Malachi 3. So the primary point being communicated is one of separation and purging; judging and removing that which is corrupt and purifying and keeping that which is valuable. Therefore discontinuity AND continuity. (In fact I am now interested in tracking down all fire images in the Bible now to see the context.)
Well now: what a good idea. If you wanted to do that and report back here (briefly), I could post that as a seperate blogpost. Yes, I had always read fire in 2 Pet 3 as purifying... the 'burning coals on the head of enemy' reference might like wise be a refining rather than destroying fire.
Hi Paulo,
The refinement reading is strongly endorsed by Al Wolters in his 1987 article in Westminster Theological Journal. I think his case has some lexical difficulties, but he too uses Malachi as his chief support. The best challenge to Al Wolters is Edward Adams in his new book "The Stars Will Fall From Heaven". I disagree with quite a lot of what Adams says, but he is a fair and balanced critique of N.T. Wright. Indeed, Adams is a good model of how to debate these issues.
I will never forget Allan Chapple giving a lecture series on Revelation and stressing the continuity of the New Jerusalem with our present world (Rev 21:24, 26-27) "...the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it ... the glory and honour of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it ...". I have found this teaching very helpful and practical in the 8 years since.
Rev 21 certainly has the sense of refinement: good brought in, dross left out. And it's difficult (impossible?) to read the "glory and honour of the nations" as referring exclusively to people.
A simple question. How does fire purify? Isn't it by destroying what will not last and leaving what will? Fire is not either purifying or destroying - it's both.
Yes, that's right - this is what I (and I think others) have been suggesting all along. I would certainly not want to be heard to be suggesting that the eschaton doesn't involve a shattering exclusion and destruction on a cosmic scale. Not at all.
I'm glad to hear that. I think part of the problem is one of language. The language of 21st Century systematic theology often unemotional, bland, and alienating. It often conveys an idea without the conveying the force of that idea.
For instance when people talk about the final judgment day as a great moment of 'continuity and discontinuity' or even 'a refining moment' they might mean a new creation in Christ involving 'a shattering exclusion and destruction on a cosmic scale', but that is not what is heard by many Christians who just read their Bibles and don't read theology.
They read the Bible about the final judgment and they think more along the terrifying lines of Hiroshima. What God did to Jerusalem, to Jesus on the cross is a foretaste of what he will do to this world. Our God is a consuming fire. They live in fear of the final coming in joyful hope of the restoration of all things in Christ. They cry and sing about this.
When they (I should put in I) hear someone speaking about the final judgment in normal theological language - it seems like they are playing with ideas rather than dealing with God.
Also I am not sure all theologians would agree with you Michael. Using safe, theological language and can be a way of not coming out on judgement. See my original comments about Tom Wright - which I certainly stand by. Although I would love for it not be true.
Well maybeso: but I have read plenty of extremely powerful theological statements about the judgement of God made by contemporary systematic theologians. One such is Miroslav Volf in his Exclusion and Embrace book, and again in his Forgiveness book.
Well I'm late but perhaps not too late to this discussion. Firstly, I confess I'm someone who's generally a fan of NT Wright. However in the NTW quote on The Sola Panel, it's unclear whether he's suggesting continuity in both the physical and spiritual or just continuity in our spiritual lives. Perhaps quoting a fuller context would have made that clear.
Anyhow, I'm not aware of any convincing scriptural support for continuity of the physical creation, so 'conservation' should be supported by other theological considerations. Surely conserving or caring for this creation is centred in Genesis 1:26 where "having dominion" is best understood as "being good stewards" or "tendering with loving kindness" (ie 'ruling' as God rules). If we adopt the notion of "looking after this (physical) creation because it's the building blocks for God's new creation", it could easily be understood as God needing us to look after creation otherwise he'll have a harder time repairing the damage. I see no reason to believe that continuity (in the physical) is anything more than God simply reusing what he has already created in an entirely new (renewed) way. However, there is strong biblical support for continuity in the spiritual sense while giving us new physical bodies (eg 1 Cor 15:42-44; 2 Cor 5:17).
What a shame to have come to this discussion so late, given that it is something of a hobby horse of mine and that I have written many posts on the topic. Here is my take on 2 Peter 3 (the key image, I take it, is one of universal exposure to the gaze of God in final judgement, but that final judgement is one of resurrection and vindication for God's groaning creation. Even if there is a death for the creation to be followed by resurrection, this is still a resurrection/transformation of creation. The seed to plant image used in 1 Cor 15 is illustrative, but it is Jesus' own resurrection that is the interpretive key.
As for guilt by association, Wright not only affirms a bodily resurrection, but an orthodox view of the trinity, the full divinity and humanity of Christ, the cruciality of the cross, the universal lordship of Christ, the and much else besides. If one is guilty of liberalism for believing these things which are all heavily pushed by Wright, then I'm a very happy liberal.
And as for what is at stake, as others have said, I suspect that what is close to the heart of at least some of the destructionists is a suspicion of all ecological agendas. I'm curious, how many destructionists also just happen to be anthropogenic climate change sceptics?
Sorry for the typos in previous post.
NB angusj, what do you think of Romans 8, in which the groaning creation is liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God?
If we adopt the notion of "looking after this (physical) creation because it's the building blocks for God's new creation", it could easily be understood as God needing us to look after creation otherwise he'll have a harder time repairing the damage.
Why understand it that way? We look after our bodies (I take it) not only because God made them good, but because they are destined for resurrection, without this implying that we can exercise our way to bodily renewal, or that God will have to work harder to raise a flabby corpse than a well-toned one. The hope of resurrection is not the goal of our efforts, but the reason for them.
I am not sure about the climate change sceptic charge. I would say 'climate change agnosticism' is more likely given the destructionist view. I would also say that the priority of evangelism over other possible good works is felt to be at stake.
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