Here’s my working assumption. From the second to the twentieth century Christian “truth” was sustained by a theological superstructure or scaffolding. Recently, that superstructure has begun to look unstable, indeed liable to collapse. If Christian “truth” is to survive into the age to come, the theological framework needs to be dismantled and replaced with a historical or narrative-historical framework. The only Jesus who can save the church is the historical Jesus—the Son who was sent to the vineyard of Israel, in the infinite wisdom of God, to proclaim the coming of a new regime, who was killed, who was raised from the dead, who was exalted to the right hand of God to reign as king over both God’s priestly people and the nations throughout the age to come.

So my argument is that the best way to make sense of Paul’s teaching about the parousia of Christ is to identify the apocalyptic event with the conversion of the nations of the Greek-Roman world through the faithful witness of the persecuted churches. Paul told the story looking forward, drawing on the largely symbolic language of Old Testament prophecy; we tell the story looking backward, using historical methods; and it seems to me that the two accounts line up pretty well. But how does the resurrection of the martyrs (1 Thess. 4:16; Rev. 20:4) fit into this bi-narratival arrangement? Does it belong to the symbolic discourse of prophecy or to history? Or to both?

A good friend of mine has written a simple story in which the apostle Paul is transported to the twenty-first century and is disturbed to find that Jesus still hasn’t come back. It’s clear from his letters that Paul expected Jesus to return within his lifetime, or soon afterwards. But here we are two thousand years later, and there’s still no sign of him. No wonder people are walking away from Christian faith. To the rational mind, the whole notion that Jesus could, at any minute, descend bodily on the clouds of heaven just seems absurd.

Hart’s second meditation, on eschatology, in That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation, ends with a discussion of the distinction between the present age and the age to come. There is some vacillation here, it seems to me, as he shifts between theological and exegetical registers. Or perhaps it comes down to a lack of terminological clarity. A lot gets lost in translation. Or perhaps I just haven’t read the section carefully enough.

I’ve done a couple of posts so far critically reviewing aspects of David Bentley Hart’s magniloquent anti-infernalist treatise That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation. My interest has been mainly in his use of the biblical material; I am not convinced that the theological arguments against hell and for universal salvation need to be made. The first post addresses the claim that God intends that all people will be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). The second looks at Hart’s argument for two eschatological horizons—a final verdict on human history followed by the full restoration of creation.

In this third post I want to consider the arguments in the Second Meditation about heaven and hell and the language of Gehenna in particular, which I think illustrate very well how theology can ruin good interpretation.

A little while back I did a Bible for Normal People podcast interview with Pete Enns and Jared Byas. The question addressed: “Does the New Testament Predict the Future?” It’s now available here. In case anyone listens to it and finds it all rather bewildering, here’s a rough overview of my argument about New Testament eschatology, with a few links to other posts to help fill out the picture.

David Bentley Hart thinks that we find in the New Testament “seemingly contrary eschatological expectations.” The discussion is found in the second meditation, on judgment, in his book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, & Universal Salvation.

He has listed a number of texts which, in his view, appear to “promise a final salvation of all persons and all things, and in the most unqualified terms.” One of the most important is the statement in 1 Timothy 2:4 that God “intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of truth,” which I considered in a recent post. But it must also be admitted that “Jesus speaks of a final judgment, and uses many metaphors to describe the unhappy lot of the condemned.” How are these two aspects—universal salvation and final condemnation—to be reconciled in a coherent theological system?