My Expectations for Amy Coney Barrett

 I expect that the interviewing and investigating of Amy Coney Barrett to be thoroughly vigorous but not vicious. I desire and expect her personal faith to be respected, but I also expect her answers to respect that the free exercise clause of the Constitution means that all religions have the right to practice as freely as Christians, and that the non-establishment clause means that Christians are not given preferential privilege or government support over other religions. I expect her to render her judgments based on legal principles and not political preferences (recognizing that the boundaries there can be fuzzy). Yes, I actually celebrate that the way she follows Jesus will overflow into the totality of the way she lives, just my pacifist ethics are a direct expression of how I follow Jesus, even though others do not share those views. In that regard, I am looking for authenticity and integrity more than conformity with my opinions. With some relief, I am anticipating that we will not be faced with allegations of sexual harassment or assault that seem to have been accepted as a rite of passage for so many men in positions of power.

 

Gun Rights and Breonna Taylor

I will not, cannot get embroiled in the aftermath of the Breonna Taylor killing, but I have to get my churning mind to stop so I can move on to focusing on care for my wife with Alzheimer’s and her aging father. I will not post this directly to social media but just put it in my Writing Workshop blog. If someone else’s social media post evokes a response, I may just give this link.

Though I am neither a gun owner nor gun advocate, if I understand correctly, one of the cherished arguments for keeping a firearm in the home is to protect yourself, your loved ones, and your property from intruders and attackers. Sometimes the threat is identified as an oppressive government bent on depriving you of your rights.

Again, if I understand correctly, knowing that I am getting public information and was not on the grand jury in the Breonna Taylor case, police were executing a “no-knock” warrant looking for drugs and broke into the apartment with a battering ram. Awakened by the noise of intruders, her boyfriend fired a couple of shots, apparently striking only one of the officers. The police responded with a volley of gunshots that killed Breonna Taylor in her bed. No drugs were found. The grand jury did not return an indictment specific for her killing.

Was not her boyfriend exercising his Second Amendment rights that are so vigorously defended? Or do we have here yet another instance of guns kept for self-defense ending up in unintended tragedy? Or are we faced with another case of open season on Black folk? Or maybe some will suggest that she deserved to be killed for sleeping with her boyfriend. I don’t have answers, and I have nothing to say about the protests of the grand jury's action (or inaction). I regret that an officer was shot (not fatally as Breonna Taylor was) and that firearms were even present. 

There! I wrote it. Maybe now my heart can focus and be at peace.

What Kingdom Are We Expecting?

The combination of challenges at this time are prompting reflection and speculation about the trajectory for the future. Pandemic, fires, hurricanes, racial tensions and civil unrest, election year, economic uncertainty, climate change. In some Christian circles these are being interpreted as signs that the return of Christ is imminent. With some level of irony, some in those circles are reacting to measures being taken to address the concerns as malevolent indicators of impending evil totalitarianism. Some other Christians use some of the same eschatalogical imagery to articulate their distressed but less ominous responses to the particular characteristics of this time. Though I am not going to attempt to sift all of that out, this awareness did remind me of a piece I wrote for my Pilgrim Path blog in July 2017. http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/2017/07/reverse-rapture.html  That prompted me to write a bit of my personal understanding of the history of Christian eschatalogical thought in September of this year (2020). http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-few-landmarks-on-dispensational.html 

During this time of awareness and reflection, the hymn Lead On, O King Eternal came up in my regular rotation of singing a hymn as I start each day, in keeping with the rhythms of Benedictine spirituality. The last half of verse three arrested my attention. “Not with swords loud clashing, nor roll of stirring drums; with deeds of love and mercy, the heavenly kingdom comes.” The words were written in 1887 by Ernest W. Shurtleff (1862-1917) as the graduation hymn for his Andover Theological Seminary class of 1888. He became a congregational pastor, and the words express the understanding of the mission of the Church to be the agent of bringing the Kingdom of God to reality in the world that was common at the time. He died in 1917 doing relief work in France during the Great War (we call it World War I), which certainly fit with his vision and sense of calling.

To be sure, theological trends and styles emerge and fade, developing over time in response to both events and fresh exploration. I don’t believe that undermines at all the credibility of Scripture or the durability of the Gospel. But I think recognizing that this hymn was written before the heyday of dispensationalism is significant, however it is handled and interpreted. I do not want to imply this line from a hymn (or even the whole hymn and its history) are somehow an authoritative key for interpreting biblical eschatology. However, for me it poses a question I have pondered for many years without organizing or setting down my thoughts. That question might be phrased, “What Kingdom are we expecting?”

I have often heard that when Jesus came proclaiming “the Kingdom of God is near,” many of his time mistakenly thought in terms of a political/military kingdom that would overthrow the Roman Empire and establish Israel as not only independent but dominant over the entire world (at least what they knew of the world). This was based on the hope and understanding of restoration they read in the prophets. But when Jesus offered a Kingdom of peace and mercy, compassion and love, it was neither understood nor accepted. Jesus’ contemporaries did not, could not, understand a first and second coming of the Messiah. They missed what Jesus brought in the first coming that still awaits his second coming.

Various eschatalogical schemes seem to me to posit the very things Jesus’ contemporaries were mistakenly looking for. It is often assumed to be in the affirmations of his coming in “power and great glory” as the Wheaton College statement of faith expressed it in 1993 when it removed the specific reference to premillennialism. Though “power and great glory” don’t specify political or military power and glory, they seem to be associated with the dramatic battle imagery of Revelation, as though those were literalistic and not metaphorical or symbolic. Even when they are seen as symbols, they are applied to pretty typically militaristic expressions. I don’t want to get into exegetical controversies but move in a different direction with a broad view.

First, is that it seems to me that to assume that we know better than Jesus’ contemporaries and have a correct understanding of the two commings is arrogant at best. Yes, we have the advantage of the witness of the New Testament and the indwelling Holy Spirit, but I think that ought to inculcate in us humility and a willingness to trust God to be at work in ways that are hidden or not understood by us. I believe authentic faith is to live with the reality that I don’t, can’t, and won’t know most things.

Second, and to me much more important, is the nature of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced. Though each Gospel brings its own distinctive perspective, I see the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6 are the most complete portraits of the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. Because of our human presuppositions, those principles are often regarded as signs of weakness rather than power and great glory. In some eschatalogical schemes they are relegated to a future that we should not even seek to experience here and now. I would suggest that such thinking misses the point that peace and mercy, compassion and love are far more powerful and glorious than the most celebrated political or military imaginable. The cross is mightier than the sword.

Do you remember Daddy Warbucks?

Do you remember Daddy Warbucks from the Little Orphan Annie comic strip (not the more recent musical)? Cartoonist Harold Gray presented him as a foil for his political, free market views, first appearing on September 27, 1924. He had made his fortune from World War I, thus the name Warbucks. He became the benefactor for Little Orphan Annie and Gray presented him in a benevolent way. Though without intending to, Harold Gray may have exposed the ironic inconsistency in which his care for Annie came off as penance for making his fortune off of the suffering, death, and destruction of war. This occurred to me again this week with President Trump’s complaint about those who profiteer from US involvement in an endless sequence of wars, with some at least oblique allusion to President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex. I certainly wouldn’t presume to be able to read President Trump’s mind, and as a Christian pacifist I am sure my perspective deviates from his and most of the country. Yet, I do sense a connection in the concern that wars that are presented to the public as defense of the country are driven by the profit motive if not greed of those who amass fortunes from military spending. Those who pay the highest price are the young people who serve with all noble good intentions, and their families as well as those who have honorably devoted themselves to lifelong military careers. My musings are not intended to express an opinion about the upcoming presidential election, but only to prompt sober reflection on tangled and obscure motivations for some of the most consequential actions of nations.

A Few Landmarks on Dispensational Premillennial History

 In the interest of full disclosure, I do not and never have embraced dispensational premillennialism, so what follows is neither objective nor comprehensive. The church in which I was raised taught a presumptive but not official dispensational premillennialism. I knew of several quiet dissenters, my parents among them. I do remember when debates about details would surface, sometimes quite vigorously, my father would say, “I guess I’m a pan-millennial. God will make everything pan out regardless of what we think.” In my teen years I got quite a bit more serious about my life as a disciple of Jesus and about the Bible. Though I knew and could recite the sequences of the various dispensational charts, I was never able to make them square with my own investigation of the Bible. Then as a young adult (college and graduate school), I began reading in theology and found that classic Reformed Theology gave me a more satisfying window for understanding biblical eschatology.

I want to be quick and crystal clear to say that though I disagree with my dispensational friends and spiritual kin, I have neither question nor reservation about their faith in Jesus nor the integrity of their discipleship. Yes, I believe theology matters, and these differences of opinion do manifest in sometimes contrasting approaches to practical issues personally and in Church and world.

Dispensational premillennialism was developed (some would say invented) by John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible (1909, revised 1917). Interestingly, C. H. Spurgeon, a contemporary of Darby, wrote a pointed theological criticism of Darby and the Plymouth Brethren, which seemed to have more to do with ideas about the meaning of Jesus’ life and ministry than eschatology. While dispensationalism is a recent development in the whole unfolding of church history and Christian theology, in some sense it is the heir of the various forms of chiliasm from the Church’s very early days that took the “thousand years” of Revelation 20:2-7 not only literally but as key to understanding the Kingdom of God. The Council of Nicaea in 325 condemned chiliasm as a heresy asserting Christ’s Kingdom had no end. Dispensational theology addresses this by positing a millennial Kingdom and an eternal Kingdom, each fulfilling different purposes in God’s redemptive plan. Even among themselves, dispensational premillennialists do not all agree about which Kingdom references in the Bible are assigned to each of these Kingdoms. Following Nicaea, much of Christian theology has affirmed the essential unity of the Kingdom of God, and classic Reformed Theology has insisted that there is only one Kingdom of God.

When I was a student in the Wheaton College Grad School (Illinois), the school’s statement of faith included a specific premillennial clause, though it did not specify dispensationalism. Faculty and staff were required to sign on but not students. Some years later they asked me to teach one class (Family Development) in the Christian education department of the Grad School. At that time I was expected to sign onto their statement of faith. I wrote a brief exception stating that I did not believe that premillennialism was the only legitimate way to understand biblical eschatology. Perhaps because it wouldn’t be a factor in the course I was teaching, they accepted me and my exception. I do remember as a student, when we came to eschatology in the systematic theology courses I took with Dr. Charles Horn, he said of Revelation 20:2-7, “My premillennialism hangs by the slender thread of a dubious interpretation of a single obscure paragraph that I do not investigate for economic reasons.” Though he did not live to see it, his witness may have contributed to Wheaton College dropping the premillennial clause from its statement of faith in 1993, recognizing that it was not a theological consensus among evangelicals.

Actually, it was only added in 1926 under the (apparently rather contentious) leadership of Oliver Buswell. Wheaton College was founded in 1860 by Jonathan Blanchard who was a staunch abolitionist and used the college campus as a stop on the Underground Railroad for the protection of runaway slaves. I believe the grave of one such slave who died while there is on the campus. Also, the Black community of Wheaton traces its origins to the welcome and protection they received from Wheaton College. Jonathan Blanchard believed his abolitionist work was a direct expression of the Kingdom of God, and incorporated into the school’s motto that continues today: “For Christ and His Kingdom.” Like others in that time and movement, they believed they were building the Kingdom to which Christ could return. There was some hope that with the abolition of slavery, the stage would be set for Christ to return to be recognized as King. Some have called this post-millennialism. With the wars and despotism of the 20^th century, much of that thinking crumbled.

While the evangelical movement is multi-faceted and does not have an official determiner of acceptable theology, Wheaton College has long been a prominent and influential voice, which is part of what makes both the addition of the premillennial clause in 1926 and its removal in 1993 significant. The current statement says:

We believe in the blessed hope that Jesus Christ will soon return to this earth, personally, visibly, and unexpectedly, in power and great glory, to gather His elect, so raise the dead, to judge the nations, and to bring His Kingdom to fulfillment.

Interestingly, the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals is more general, affirming only “His personal return in power and glory.”