This is the second in a two-part series. Read part one.
Apocalyptic views of what is currently happening in the world have been mentioned here several times. Orthodox and fundamentalist writers have described Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet who preached about the end of the world (not just the end of the age) and about a second coming. It is not unusual to have a discussion of such views accompanied by the idea that, in order to be “true” Christian, one must believe in the description of the apocalypse found in Daniel and Revelations, with the understanding that without that belief, one will be condemned to eternal punishment after death.
The apocalypse is a very complex subject on two counts. First, the idea of an afterlife, a final battle, and a restoration of a just or beatific Eden is usually full of images constituting a story as complex as the history of WWII—with the added considerations of a moral rebalancing of the cosmos and a new relationship between humankind and its gods and demi-gods. No brief bedtime story here.
I have just finished reading two works that describe and discuss many of the diverse early and contemporary Christian and Jewish views of the afterlife. They also deal with the possibility of the restoration of justice to attain a sense of moral balance in our world, an answer to Job. This diversity of ideas about the apocalypse is the second count. I recently reviewed Robert Miller’s edited work, “The Apocalyptic Jesus: A Debate,” a friendly and scholarly discussion. I also recommend Daniel C. Maguire’s “Christianity Without God: Moving Beyond the Dogmas and Retrieving the Epic Moral Narrative.” The latter book covers many topics, yet Maguire devotes a good chapter to the apocalyptic divine Jesus versus the ethical human teacher Jesus. The benefit of Maguire’s work is that he describes what many scholars have suggested for two hundred years about the significance of each of the views to our behavior toward each other and toward the world, and how the belief in a violent, punishing god has led to an increase in our own violence. I believe even Ignatius, in the second century, was concerned about that. Maguire starts with the strong sociological premise that a tribe tends to design the language and metaphors they use to better understand God by using their own mythos and stories. He backs his ideas with a plenitude of quotes from scholarly sources.
The recent history of the concept is that a century ago Albert Schweitzer wrote a very popular book concluding that people could not know, based on the available evidence, what the historical Jesus said. That conclusion gave much weight to the later tradition over what Jesus might have said. Consequently, laity shifted toward a more literalist view of the Bible in order to give a verisimilitude to the stories of the gospels and the use of the prophets. Even though people, including many of the original disciples, had tried to pinpoint the apocalypse to a certain date, no one had been right. Also, a clear statement in a Gospel has Jesus refusing to predict the apocalypse because he argues there would be no signs and no knowable date, like a “thief in the night.” But we like to think we know something exciting, so we still try and argue.
At the time of Jesus there were many differing views of what the apocalypse was. Basically, it was what drove Moses, a redemption of the unjust and oppressive history that had hurt many people and violated God’s original covenants, turning us all into murders. For him, the creation was good. Do we interpret the garden story where God warned us not to eat the forbidden fruit, quite like we would warn our child not to eat mushrooms, as a fall involving something called “Original Sin”? Or do we see the eating of the fruit as an act that had the painful result of giving us a higher awareness of the possibilities of our goodness and our evilness, making us responsible for our actions? Do we remain naïve bunnies and piglets, or do we become Jobs—devastated, bewildered, and scandalized by the problems of good and evil?
The paradigm of the apocalypse that we bring to our interpretation can vary so much that any two discussants might be talking about two very different possible events with different causes, purposes, and outcomes. Crossan presents a useful taxonomy to describe the possible characteristics, each with two characteristics existing on a continuum. He describes five such continuums. (1) Is the event destructive or transformative? Does it destroy us or many others and the world, doing away with evil by doing away with evil things, or are these things transformed? Here we could have a complete Hiroshima of cosmology or a nonviolent, transformative conversion by way of redemptive forgiveness. Calvin or Wesley? (2) A second continuum deals with the language used—is it materially descriptive of facts, or metaphorical? Is the whore a whore demanding a peace and retributive justice and class obedience established by Roman Power that we have to buy, or by the Jewish social equality and distributive justice that we gain by our Torah and covenantal behavior? (3) A third continuum revolves around the idea that we must either change our behaviors drastically because God is coming and we had better be pure and focused only on God; or secondarily, that we need to change and start living ethically with each other because that is what God has always asked, and God is coming soon to check things out, his son having delivered a rather shocking report of what the one percent is doing. (4) Fourth, is the apocalypse negative, involving the destruction of nations like Palestine, leaving only Israel remaining as the nation that has defeated “in anger and wrath” (Mic 5:15) all other gods of heathen nations—or positive, with the gentile nations joining Israel in being a Light of Justice and Equality (Mic 4:1-4)? (5) Finally, will the Apocalypse require of us passive expectation or active cooperation?
Many of the non-canonical writings and centuries-old descriptions of apocalyptic scenarios varied along these continuum. I suspect that if we used our scholarly and personal imaginations to figure out where we stand and why we stand there, we could arrive at several very meaningful descriptions of the apocalypse that would serve our contending cultures and the world in graceful, nonviolent and creatively nurturing ways.
I will not get into the differences between Allison’s, Borg’s, Crossan’s, or Patterson’s views except to say that they differ about how literally the statements in the Bible should be taken, or ascribed to Jesus the parable teller or Paul, Peter, and the Gospel writers, and the significance and reality of any continuum between The Baptist, Jesus, and Paul. Was Jesus part of the continuum that extended over 40 to 80 years, or was Jesus’s downplaying of its significance while accenting a clearly present social and ethical kingdom bracketed by a spiritually and supernaturally near future event. And how do we handle the fact that they, including Godlike Jesus, were wrong? Here may be a good argument for Maguire’s thesis that a belief in a personal omnipotent god is not necessary in the Jesus movement.
Be that as it may, the debate, framed so that it was a dialogue between equals, resulted in the four realizing the similarity of their arguments. All valued contemporary textual and historical scholarship, and all were concerned about the effect of their ideas on our contemporary problems. All valued tradition, one more for its authority value, the other three for its positing of meaningful ideas. And all realized the need to beware the calcifying effect tradition may have in a world of rapidly evolving problems and solutions. A danger for us is that we may hold our views without facing the challenge of rethinking them or benefiting from the thought and scholarship of others. What is there to fear: a vengeful condemnation by a disobeyed god, or a possible, equally painful correction of natural selection and its consequences?
