Schist, Sandstone, Eschatology, Hope
in the
World According to the Hopeful, and the Anglican Communion
Ted
Riich, B.A., Lo.S.[i]
Abstract
Raving on about what
I know next to nothing proves dissatisfying even to me. But the main points: Hope
is a way of thinking that is of extraordinary value to the hopeful. Eschatology
is the science of proving what they want is what everybody else should be
wanting as well. Joy is forbidden as it is takes time away from praying for the
future that ought to be. Neither should love of neighbor interfere with hope in
any way.
About theology I may not know “schist from sandstone,”
as Uncle Albert might put it.[ii] I
can read the little words between the big words, and I have a dictionary to
look up the words I don’t know what I want them to mean. But I usually do know;
like many “real” theologians, I’m prescient that way. I know what should happen
next.
So,
I’m an . . . eschatologist!
Do
I know what that means? Eschatology. It’s
about the future and what comes with and from it. - ex or e [from, out of] + scatology : Though we live in shit, God
in Christ will pull the faithful out of it; the unfaithful will fall even
deeper in, burning and reeking forever. And ever. Or so, many of my more faithful friends have told me. That
is their hope and salvation.
And I say (to myself), “Thank God they’re saved.”
Then, “Thank God, too, you can’t trust hope.” Because home is empty. Or so I
believe; and so I liked and posted Uncle Albert’s sentence:
All hope is vain,
because the future is not only not yet, it is never yet.
Then, one of my more liberal friends, actually, phoned to say how wrong Uncle Albert was.
“The future may be not yet, but it can’t be never yet,” he protested, “because
it is already.” And: “It is precisely the promise of the future in which we
live in the present. Indeed, we can live in the present only because we have a
future promise in which we hope.” Or, something like that.
I
dared to say that it was my fear (based on experience) that living in the
future actually keeps us from living in the present as effectively as living in
the past does.
“Pay
attention,” I was told. “I didn’t say ‘living in the future’ but ‘living in the
present in the promise of the future.’”
“Well,”
I said, “I’m not sure that ‘living in the present in the promise of the future’
as opposed to ‘living in the future’ [period] is not a distinction without a
difference. But let’s say there is, a difference. What are we living toward? -
our hope that we’re saved and everybody else is pretty much fracked over?”
My liberal friend, remember – he says: “I
wasn’t talking about judgment either. Hope, dammit, and the whole Moltmann
thing, the idea that God is drawing the church first but all creation as well toward
the future God has prepared for us, for it, from the beginning. In Jesus, incidentally. So the future
calls us to live presently as Jesus would have us live - in hope.”
“Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”
We hang up. I look up Moltmann [between modalism
and monophysitism] in my dictionary. I get a glass of
orange juice. I take a pill. I take a nap. All the while, even while I’m
sleeping, I’m thinking “Bullshit.” My friend may know his theology. That is, he
may know who Moltmann is, how many modes the Trinity truly has, and who they
were (or weren’t) in Jesus-the-Christ,[iii] but
he doesn’t know Jesus. The word “hope” never passes his (Jesus’) lips – in any
of the gospels.[iv]
Which brings us to what is going on in the
Anglican Communion, not that I know any more about that than I do about
theology in general. So what follows is undoubtedly more schist and sandstone.
But
one way to see why the large majority of churches in the Communion just have to
suspend the Episcopal Church in the United States from it is this: that
majority thinks that if it doesn’t
suspend these misguided americo-heretico-gayomarryingo pagans, the whole Church
will go to hell in a handbasket. That would be its future. The horny goats
could well drag God’s pure, chaste sheep down into eternal shingle with them.
Hey,
that could happen! At least, you’ve got to think through the possibility. Or, you’ve
got to hope it through. It’s the same
thing really, because hoping is a way of thinking; it’s a way of planning: it’s
a way parsing,[v]
in this case who’s going to be drowning in the shit or swimming in the ether (forever
and ever, amen).
So,
the future gets in the way of the present. Once again: hope gets in the way of
joy and love.[vi]
[i] Lost at Sea
[ii]
There may be a reason not to put any stock in TRV stories from the Bible.
[Link.] Or, it may be a reason to pay attention
to them: I can’t have an axe to grind if I don’t have a grinder. (I can only have
a bludgeon.)
[iii] Moltmann is a
guy. There are no modes in the Trinity, because it doesn’t work that way, so
none of them could have been in Jesus, but if they had been he would have been
human anyway.
[iv]
Hope is a Paul Jesus isn’t enough we’ve got to have a Christ and if we do he’s
got to come again and if he comes again it’s got to be in judgment thing.
[v]
Think it through carefully enough and you can make hope pretty certain. What
all eschatologies have in common – those that frame them know what should
happen. Now how do we make sure?
No comments:
Post a Comment