N.T. Wright's "Surprised by Hope": The Pirate Review, Day 7
Chapters 8 & 9
When He Appears
&
Jesus the Coming Judge
The 2-chapter discussion on the historical Christian doctrine of Jesus' "second-coming" actually begins at the end of Chapter 7, where Wright introduces the topic by identifying the two prevailing modern misconceptions about the doctrine. One is the literalist "Left Behind" theology present in much of the fundamentalist or "dispensationalist" segment of the church, the propnents of which have naturally tended to believe that if the world is literally going to come to an end and that Jesus is literally going to snatch "true believers" away from it and up to a place called heaven, then why worry about acid rain, or third world debt, or war, or injustice, here on earth. Working and worrying about such things, as Wright often says, would then be like "oiling the wheels of a car that's about to go over a cliff."
The other misconception is precisely the liberal reaction to this ultra-conservative picture, is the marginalization or outright rejection of the early Christian belief that Jesus "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." The proponents of this view don't like either part of the statement, the "come again" part because of its supernatural implication of which they are slightly ashamed, and the "judgment" part because, after all, we don't like things "judgmental," especially religions, inasmuch as they raise the spectre of a vengeful, wrathful deity.
Having set that as the backdrop, Wright goes on to discuss and explain the true, biblical vision of the second coming, dealing in Chapter 8 with the belief that Jesus will come again, and in Chapter 9 with the belief that he will come as judge.
The natural consequence of the cosmological hope, and Jesus' role within it, that Wright has so far sketched is the belief in Jesus' future presence, as opposed to his current absence. But that presence, he insists, will not be us going off to be with him, but that he will come back to us.
Some preliminary points about this. Wright claims that Jesus, during his earthly ministry, said next to nothing about his eventual return. His allusions to 'the son of man coming on the clouds' were references to Daniel 7 and specifically about his vindication after suffering. And all the parables dealing with a king or a master who goes away and then returns were, according to Wright, bound to be heard in their first-centry context as God having gone away and left Israel with her vocation to be the light of the world, and then returning to "judge" her (that scary word again). After all, Jesus was having a hard enough time explaining to his disciples that he had to go to Jerusalem to die. They couldn't take that on board. That wasn't their agenda. Given that, Jesus probably didn't even try to tell them hardly anything about what would happen after that. The Jesus of the Gospels is notorious, after all, for refusing to say things to those who didn't have the capacity to understand them (noteworthy is his silence in the face of Pilate's postmodern question, "What is truth?")
So if the Gospels don't refer to the second coming, where does the idea come from. According to Wright, it comes from the rest of the New Testament, as the early church, particularly Paul, came to understand that the doctrine is the natural consequence of Jesus' climactic fulfillment of the entire Old Testament story. And the main world that the New Testament, especially Paul, uses to describe this event is parousia.
Parousia meant two things to 1st century Jewish. It was sometimes used to refer to God's presence, particularly his healing presence. But primarily, it referred to the tradition that when a king or emperor visited a colony, the people of that province would go out to meet the visiting dignitary as a sign of respect. So when Paul wanted to say two things, that Jesus would one day become present to heal the world, and to say that within the context of his overall message that Jesus was Lord (and, consequently, that Caesar wasn't), the natural word to use would be parousia. Notice that this has nothing to do with floating around on clouds or the destruction of the space/time universe.
Wright then goes on to explain the main passage that has led to the "Left Behind" misconception about Jesus' second coming, namely 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17. I won't expound the argument here, but Wright has written an article that more fully discusses it, which you can read here. Suffice it to say:
"We must remind ourselves yet once more that all Christian language about the future is a set of signposts pointing into a mist. Signposts don't normally provide you with advance photpgraphs of what you'll find at the end of the road, but that doesn't mean they aren't pointing in the right direction."
Wright then discusses the scriptural passages which discuss Jesus' "appearing" as opposed to his "coming," discussing how that word reinforces the biblical vision of heaven interlocking with earth, separated as it were by a thin curtain. When Jesus "appears," it will look to us like he is coming, as it looks to us that the sun is rising. But in reality, it will simply be the curtain being pulled back to reveal Jesus where (bad word) he already is.
Wright then turns to the second aspect of this issue, namely, that when Jesus appears, he will have a specifc role to play: that of judge.
Despite the liberal marginalization of the belief that Jesus will come again as judge, caused primarily by the negative connotations that the word "judgment" has (we Christians haven't done anything to cause that, have we?), the biblical notion of God's future judgment has always been something good, something to celebrate. Judgment is what is required as a precursor to fixing something that is broken. We do it all the time. If our wristwatch says 9:30 a.m., but there's a full moon out, we have to judge that the watch is broken before we set out to fix it.
The same is true of God's promise throughout the Bible to bring justice and peace to the world. And when Jesus was recognized as the Messiah, the human agent through whom God would fulfill His promise to the world, he also became identified as the agent through this particular judgment would occur.
Wright then goes on to discuss perhaps the most controvertial of his view, his understanding of Paul's notion of "justification by faith," in the context that " although people often suppose that because Paul taught justification by faith, not works, there can be no room for a future judgment 'according to works,' this only goes to show how much some have radically misunderstood him."
Like I said, Wright's understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith has been much discussed around theological circles for more than a decade. Just google "Tom Wright Justification Faith" and you will find hundreds of articles and opinions (mostly pretty nasty ones) about the issue. John Piper has recently released an entire book dedicated to critically examining Wright's views on the subject called The Future of Justification. Trevin Wax has a great review series on the book at his blog, Kingdom People. Again, I'm not going to try to reproduce Wright's argument, but you can get the gist of it in a brief article he wrote for Bible Review in 2001 here. The summary of Wright's position is that "Justification by faith is what happens in the present time, anticipating the verdict of the of the future day when God judges the world."
What is the result of this vision of the second coming? First, says Wright, it offers the complete answer to the "Left Behind" nonsense on the one hand and the proponents of the "Cosmic Christ" idea outlined in Chapter 5:
"In his appearing, we find neither a dualist rejection of the present world, nor simply his arrival like a spaceman into the present world, but the transformation of the present world, and ourselves within it, so that it will at last be put to rights, and we with it."
Second, a proper shape and balance are given to the Christian worldview, giving it a beggining, middle, and an end (other places, Wright calls it not an end but a "climax," which is a better word because Rev. 21 & 22 look like they are the beginning of something else). Third, it grounds the task of the church and frees it both from the self-driven energy that supposes that we can build the kingdom by our own efforts, and the despair that supposes we can't do anything. It should do that, anyway. As Wright puts it, in conclusion and as a marker for the discssion to come later in the book:
"What would happen if we were to take seriously our stated belief that Jesus Christ is already the Lord of the world, and that at his name, one day, every knee would bow?"
What would happen indeed.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
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