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My main reason for posting was I was curious as to what how a preterist views now: is Jesus coming again to bring about the end? Or will life just go on?

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Yeah, Presterists believe that Jesus is returning to earth and that when he does he will enaugurate the eternal state (as opposed to, say, reigning 1,000 years).

Tom

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To me "preterist" is a ten-dollar word that I don't use. (I'll give you two five-dollar words instead!) so, I'm not sure if the "now" and "not-yet" that Anthony Hoekema (and others) of both the Reformed camp and the Eastern Orthodox talk about is "preterist" or not. The Reformed folk I've been around are "amillennial."

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I wonder if Eschatology isn't the final frontier for open theism. Here's a question: Are all three millennial positions (pre-, a-, and post-) consistent with the open view?

Look up! You're redemption draws near!

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So, Tom. I have the same question; or one like it. What does/would an emphasis on the "eschaton" do to shape, to limit, or to expand on an "open theism" position?

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Hey PoW-

I'm out the door early this morning. Will think on this. Off the top of my head I'd suggest that any thought of the END affecting the NOW is functionalist and therefore illegitimate. Forget it.

I'll get back to ya!

Tom

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Tom: The remembering is real remembering of past events, events that anticipate “until he comes.” Is that what you’re getting at?

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Eschatology is not a word that trips easily off the tongues of the Sunday morning coffee klatch. Yet when persons pray, “Thy kingdom come,” they speak, knowingly or not, the language of eschatology. Eschatology voices our tradition’s deepest hope for the fulfillment of God’s Reign. It describes the promised destination of our baptismal waters—the new Jerusalem, the city on the hill—symbol of God’s ever-lasting reign of justice and of peace. Christian eschatology is also the most appropriate theological thematics to interpret and lend context to that strange cultural convergence of fear and hope arising just now as we lurch toward a new millennium.

Too often, however, in the (appropriate) effort to distance itself from the tragic/comic millenarianism of the sectarian fringes and in its (inappropriate) comfort with the status quo, United Methodism has ignored the pervasive eschatological themes of the Christian faith. Compounding our ignorance is the fact that eschatology is just plain difficult to talk about. After all, how does one explain the “here now but not yet” character of the Reign of God? A claim such as this is inherently paradoxical, and paradox, by definition, mocks our attempts to rope it and brand it in the name of theological precision.

It turns out that Christian liturgy offers a different manner for considering eschatology. Liturgy at its best has never settled for reducing meaning to the narrowness of theological positivism; instead it has preferred the primacy of encounter with Holy Mystery, of experiencing the Divine to explaining it. Indeed the grammar and syntax of liturgical practice—the playful engagement with poetry, metaphor, symbol, and song, especially in relation to Book, Table, Font, and a distinctive patterning of Time—provide a unique medium for revealing to human beings (hearts and bodies as well as minds) the deep, even paradoxical mysteries of God’s extraordinary saving grace in Jesus Christ. This includes, of course, the mystery of eschatology.

Rather than talking about eschatology, Christian liturgy invites its participants into an encounter with eschatology. As such, Christian liturgy becomes nothing less than the church’s lived experience of a God who has saved, is saving, and will save the world in and through One who is at once peasant child and cosmic king. In other words, Christian liturgy, by holding together simultaneously and with intensive creativity all the dimensions of this eschatological paradox that elude our well-meaning attempts at explanation, becomes uniquely capable of evoking this reality. And it is finally in worship where persons of faith encounter the God whose faithful past is shaping a present and a future that Christians may anticipate with trust and hope rather than fear or dread.

How does liturgy accomplish this feat? To some extent, attempts at explanation inevitably fall into the same reductionist trap of “explanation” criticized above. On the other hand, sensitivity to the eschatological dynamics operative in our worshiping patterns can only strengthen a community’s faithful response to God and to a culture seemingly overcome with with repeated visions of a millennial apocalypse. An undergirding assumption at work here is that eschatological theology is already embedded in our worshiping practices; therefore we need only tune our “faith senses” into the gifts that God is providing.

We begin with time. Following the insights of Alexander Schmemann, the Orthodox liturgical theologian, I suggest that the Christian patterning of time enacts fundamental theological convictions. According to Schmemann, by the end of the first century, Christians had increasingly segregated themselves from their synagogue communities. Consistent with their experience of the resurrection as central to communal life and identity, they also began to worship on the first day of the week, variously described as “the Lord’s Day” or (more notably) “the Eighth Day” rather than the Sabbath. Schmemann claims this as an example of the manner in which the church’s own emerging liturgy of time (Lord’s Day placed in ‘contrasting conjunction’ with the Jewish week) witnesses to its distinctive theology; in this case a new eschatology—one that, since it is rooted in faith that the messiah long-anticipated by Israel has come and his kingdom has begun, is no longer exclusively future-oriented as is its Jewish source but is instead simultaneously future-oriented and presently fulfilled. 9 Clearly the Lord’s Day does not cancel or nullify the week in the church. For Christians, the Eighth Day marks a new creation, a new reality, a kairos, yet it nonetheless requires the Jewish week for its revelatory opening to the world. Embedded in the church’s creative patterning of time is the paradoxical reciprocity of past, present, and future at the heart of its theological eschatology.

The same pattern is evident in the seasons of the Christian year. Just as the Lord’s Day recasts the Jewish week, so does the Paschal feast of Easter reinterpret and refashion the Passover; likewise the Great 50 Days from Easter to Pentecost the other 6/7 of the year. Again I should stress that these were not policy decisions emanating from denominational headquarters; instead they exemplify the church’s genius for actualizing in its liturgical life its experience of God’s new activity in Jesus Christ within the context of God’s history of salvation.

The season of Advent deserves special attention. Advent manages to be at one and the same time a season of beginnings and endings, a crucible of time that simultaneously enacts past, present, and future. Advent revels in the paradoxical themes of Christian faith: the “here now but not yet fully realized” character of the Reign of God (thus the focus not only on the manger but on “watchfulness” for the return of the cosmic Christ and his reign of justice and peace); as well as the incarnational notion of a “transcendent” God becoming “immanent” in human life (thus the focus on God’s risking the redemption of all creation on the willingness of a peasant women to make a home for God’s flesh). Some churches simply don’t “do” Advent, caught up as they are in the juggernaut of North American cultural Christmas and its consumer countdown. On the other hand, shallow pastoral understanding, teaching, or leadership can make Advent feel like nothing more than the Christmas Grinch stealing away everybody’s holiday fun. As a new millennium emerges, however, the juxtaposition of a White Christmas with John’s imprisonment or a sentimental manger scene with the approaching cloud of judgment offers a rich resource for evoking, confounding, interpreting, and recasting the pervasive cultural ambiguity afflicting the late twentieth century. Practicing Advent watchfulness and its dialectic of prophecy and hope not only resists the current mythology of consumption, it provides a vision and experience of faithful leaning into God’s promised future in the context of God’s saving past. In this way we rightly proclaim and dwell in the tension of “Maranatha” (Our Lord Come) and “Maranatha” (Our Lord has come). 10 In the former, the future is joyfully present; in the latter, it is painfully not yet.

The Eucharist is another liturgical practice brimming with eschatological power. As liturgical and textual scholars have ably demonstrated, Jesus’ instruction to “do my ANEMNESIS" is impoverished when translated as a passive “remembrance.” Eucharistic anamnesis implies action, a remembering, a re-presenting of the history of God’s saving work, including especially the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Mere ordinance will not do here, as clearly the meal means and intends far more. Just as the child’s question at Passover, “Why is this night different from all others?” signals more than a memory exercise in progress, Christians cannot be content with the supper as flat memorial. As Don Saliers suggests, Eucharist is a “foretaste of glory divine” where a Stranger becomes host to the community’s life-giving meal, a messianic banquet that inverts and perhaps even subverts typical human relations of power. 11 In other words, our Eucharistic celebrations are a partial realization of God’s Promised Reign. Eucharist becomes for God’s people an occasion where past and future collapse into present sacramental action, where, through the mystery of grace a historically and culturally bound community finds fellowship with the risen Christ and a host of heavenly witnesses. This eschatological dimension of Eucharist was brought home to me when a recently widowed parishioner, after participating for the first time in an All Saints’ service of Word and Table, described it as follows: “It was an experience of fellowship I’ve never encountered or even considered before. I felt connected to persons I’ve loved and lost but they also seemed out there ahead of me.”

. . . .



(-- Fred P. Edie and his family live on the Isle of Hope near Savannah, Georgia. Edie is a United Methodist pastor and religious educator and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Emory University. )[/i[

Oratorical Festival Topic 2000:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

Oratorical Topic guidelines: What does it mean for you and those around you that God so loved us that He sent His own Son to become one of us dwell among us, teaching us the way of life. What impact does it have on your life that Jesus died on the cross for our salvation, rose from the dead and ascended into heaven with His risen body, uniting humankind with God? What direct impact does God becoming man have on you and your choices and how you react and interact with those around you?


Further suggested focus for Orations (taken from the outline of the SCOBA Encyclical on the Millennium). Using John 1:14 you might want to look at one or more of the following areas in addition to the guidelines written above:

Incarnation, God becoming man, the coming of Christ into the world.

. The Lord is the master of time. Time and history receive new meaning in the coming of Jesus Christ who is the fulfillment of time. What does the liturgical sanctification of time mean in terms of your life?

Anamnesis (remembrance): Memory is the key to identity. Through memory, the past becomes present and shapes the future. Anamnesis is the continual remembrance of God’s saving work and binds us to the whole of salvation history, to all things here on earth and in heaven.

. Repentance, rededication, and renewal Celebration, joy, and hope

. What message does John 1:14 bring to you and modern society

. What does John 1:14 mean in terms of our responsibility to which we live?

...The Liturgy is not to be treated as an aesthetic experience or a therapeutic exercise. Its unique function is to reveal to us the Kingdom of God. This is what we commemorate eternally. The remembrance, that anamnesis of the Kingdom is the source of everything else in the Church. It is this that theology strives to bring to the world. And it comes even to a "post-Christian" world as the gift of healing, of redemption and of joy.
(A. Schmemann)

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Tom, care to enter an ORATORY contest with the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America?

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Not I. But I'm pretty sure Mephi would have a real shot a winning.

Tom

"Every saint has a history and every sinner a future." Oscar Wilde

Section ONE:

* "The kingdom of God is not simply awaited as something that is to come; it is also perceptible as something now present. The resurrection and regeneration in Christ as well are not only awaited in the future, but are also already offered in the present... The period of the presence of Christ and his Church is the period of the 'last days.' It is the period during which God and his kingdom are made manifest in history. It is the beginning of eternal life, which cannot be interrupted by death. ..... Thus, the eschata are at once present yet awaited, experienced yet expected." (p. 51-52)

* "Participation in the kingdom of God brings about an eclipse of time, just as the presence too of the kingdom of God, turns all understanding of logical sequence of time on its head." (p. 54)

* "The Church still stands as a sign of eternity in the world and guides the world towards eternity. The institutions of the Church...transport the mind of man 'from things present to the things to come.'" (pp. 54-55)

* "The Church is not subordinate to time, but leads from time into eternity." (p. 55)

* "For those who become "sons of light," and "sons of day," and behave as sons of light and day in their lives, the "day of the Lord" is already come. These people are already living the "day of the Lord" and contemplating his glory. These things, of course, do not come about simply as a result of a formal receiving of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, but rather through real communion and union with Christ. And just as Christ is not limited by time and space, so the experience too of his presence, or the experience of his "day," is not confined to the 'eschata,' the last times, but is offered here and now. The eschata will not present entirely new things, but will manifest in their full and perfect form those things which exist and are offered already as a sort of betrothal in the Church." (p. 50)


Section TWO:

* The Church cannot preserve her identity in history without developing organically in time and space. And the Church's preaching cannot be offered unaltered to the world without adapting in an appropriate way to her respective environment. (p. 64, 66)

* The question of the correct consideration of tradition is, in the final analysis, a question of the correct consideration of time and space. .......The question of consideration of space and time is a question of whether, and to what extent, man refers the question to a transcendent reality. Without this reference, any understanding of space and time is fragmentary and limited. ....... The only real possibility of reference to a transcendent reality is offered in Christ. It is in the person of Christ that the temporal is united with the eternal, the finite with the transcendental. Union with Christ within space and time. It is a union which brings about the relation to a transcendent reality and true communion. ....... The union with Christ comes about in the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit. ....... Christ, who recapitulates the past, the present and the future, keeps perpetual and indissoluble communion with all the members of his Body, the Church. The tradition of the Apostles, the Fathers and the saints of the Church ministers to this communion between God and man, and finds in it its summary and final expression.

* "Tradition without a direct or indirect link with Christ has no meaning in the Church, and the importance of the various traditions is in direct proportion to the extent of their relationship to Christ." (p. 63)

* "All the traditions that are associated with Christ have a eucharistic or worshipful character. This is why they are offered 'in a mystery" (p. 63)


Section THREE:

* "St. Nicholas Cabasilis points out that for the saints, the future is already present in is life, but its presence is not full and complete, as it will be in the life to come." (p. 84)

* "The Church with her feasts and services actuates the work of divine economy within time, thereby sanctifying the transforming of time of everyday life...she integrates it with, and directs it towards, its eschatological fulfillment--the kingdom of God.

The Church¹s feasts, preeminent among which are the feasts of the Lord, are not mere commemorations. They are opportunities...for communion with Christ and the Church. ....... In following the...cycles of feasts...and the daily cycle of day and night offices, the faithful worshipper lives the whole work of divine economy and comes to share in the life of the kingdom of God even in this present life.

Distinction is made between the movable feasts and fixed feasts of the Church.

The Immovable Feasts are tied to a fixed date in the Church¹s year which begins the first day of September. They present us with specific redemptive interventions of God in the history of man, or with historical persons and events in the life of the church: the Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, Theophany, the Transfiguration, feasts of the Theotokos, and the feasts of the angels and saints. These feasts serve to sanctify time and transform it in the light of the kingdom of God. (p. 87)

* "The Moveable Feasts constitute a special sequence which stands apart from historical time and guides man above and beyond it. Fashioning a new dimension of time as though suspended above that temporality to which history is subjected, it thus offers limitless vistas to the man who is shackled by time.

* "Apart from the movable feasts, which highlight, above all the eschatological character of the Church and her passage from time to eternity, there are also, as we have seen, the immovable feasts, which stress the sanctification of time and the presence of the eternal within it. The Annunciation, the Nativity of Christ, Theophany, the feasts of the Theotokos and the feasts of the angels and the saints stress above all the presence of eternity within time itself.


IN SUMMARY:

* "Liturgical time transfigures physical time and transports us from symbol to truth, from the transient to the eternal, from creation to the Lord of creation. ... Behind the symbolism is the one symbolized. ..... Thus the function of time is to refer creation to the uncreated Creator." (p. 105 )

* "...the mystery (sacrament)...preserves...the memory of all the events in the divine economy, and of the events in the history of mankind in their eschatological perspective." (p. 102)

* "In this way, all time becomes sacred time. Every day and every moment is sanctified because it becomes a bearer of eternity. In the same way, all space becomes sacred because it is sanctified by spiritual worship." (p. 104 )

* Eternal life is not abstract or imaginary. It is God himself, who became man and manifested himself to the world in Christ....for a Christian, the memory of God is made concrete in the memory of Christ and his regenerative work in the world. So the content of the memory of Christ is the Church herself as the Body of Christ, the enter and essence of which is the mystery of the Holy Eucharist." (p. 103)

* "By taking part in the Divine Liturgy and approaching for Holy Communion, the believer experiences the unique and eternal event of his regeneration in Christ. Without ceasing to be in time, he nevertheless shares in eternity. Even one participation in holy Communion would be sufficient for his regeneration. ... Each one of these approaches is the one unrepeatable approach to the mystery of his union with Christ. It represents his approach to, and his progress within, the ties indestructible and constantly renewed communion which deifies the Church. Furthermore, whatever happens in time and is of truth, no longer belongs to time, but to eternity. And what ever is repeated in time and is of truth, is not confined to time but extends into eternity. Thus every Holy Eucharist is a repetition of the unique and unrepeatable Eucharist of the Last Supper." (p. 102)