Can We Still Talk about... Judgment?

It's getting harder, isn't it?

With the hoopla over what became the "Rapture Fail" this past weekend,  it may be difficult even to confess words Christians have repeated in worship for at least sixteen centuries:

"We believe that you will come and be our Judge" (Te Deum, ancient Christian hymn).

"He will come again to judge the living and the dead" (Apostles Creed).

"He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end" (Nicene Creed).

Wait. Isn't all of that a lot like what Harold Camping said? 

Yes. It is. And Camping himself is convinced that Judgment Day still did begin, though spiritually, on May 21, 2011. It's just that none of the other things he believed would happen that day-- like earthquakes worldwide releasing long dead bodies from tombs and living Christians being lifted off of the planet to meet Christ a mile or two up in the sky-- accompanied it. Camping still claims the earth will come to a complete end on October 21, 2011. What won't happen is any sort of "tribulation" between now and then. Instead, the earth itself will be dissolved on October 21, making way for a new earth to be created and inhabited by the redeemed.

As October 21 nears, and then passes, I suppose we can expect another media frenzy.

But where does that leave those of us who also confess that Christ will come again to be our Judge? 

Or do we even still believe that? 

John Wesley on the Effects of the Judgment of Christ

John Wesley originally preached a sermon entitled "The Great Assize" at the Assizes for the opening of a day of trials in Bedford, England in 1758. It's one of the Standard Sermons that comprises part of the doctrinal standards of The United Methodist Church. 

There, Wesley boldly proclaimed that as "awful" (which then didn't mean "really bad" but more like "awe-inspiring") as the solemnity of the proceedings of that court on that day would be, even more awful would be the day when all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

There, too, Wesley offered a list of the things that would happen before, during and after the Judgment. Leading up to it, terrible earthquakes all over the earth will occur, the dead will be raised from their graves, the seas will give up their dead, and the angels of the Lord will gather up the elect, placing them to one side (sheep) and leaving the others to the other side (goats) for the final judgment by and before Christ. Wesley has multiple citations from scripture backing every claim he makes here. (Sound familiar?)

So wait. Harold Camping wasn't just drawing on late 19th century evangelical, fundamentalist pre-millennialism or his own flights of fancy with the Bible? No. Many of the specifics of what he predicted-- save for the date-- can be found right here in this sermon by John Wesley-- a sermon we claim as bedrock for our doctrine.  

So what do we do with that? 

Perhaps what Wesley did rather than what Harold Camping has done.

Camping's prophecy appears to have been simply bad news for everyone but "the elect." Judgment Day was coming on May 21. You couldn't do anything about that. You couldn't even really prepare for it.  Anyone not already in the elect was simply doomed. Too bad for them. (I'll admit this gets a bit confusing-- I don't think Camping presented this consistently-- at other times he seems to allow a lot of different people, including people of different religions who followed Jesus without knowing his name to be in that group-- but it's one theme he did present in the lead-up to May 21).

Wesley's approach was different. He was just as confident as Camping that the Judgment would come, though he certainly agreed with Jesus (instead of Camping) that no one did or could know exactly when. But the news of this judgment for Wesley was really good news-- and not just for the "elect" by and by, but for everyone, here and now.

As Wesley put it:

Had all men a deep sense of this, how effectually would it secure the interests of society! For what more forcible motive can be conceived to the practice of genuine morality? To a steady pursuit of solid virtue? An uniform walking in justice, mercy, and truth? What could strengthen our hands in all that is good, and deter us from all evil, like a strong conviction of this, "The Judge standeth at the door;" and we are shortly to stand before him?...

"Wherefore, beloved, seeing ye look for these things," seeing ye know he will come and will not tarry, "be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless." Why should ye not? Why should one of you be found on the left hand at his appearing? He willeth not that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; by repentance, to faith in a bleeding Lord; by faith, to spotless love, to the full image of God renewed in the heart, and producing all holiness of conversation.

Perhaps one might say that Camping had or seemed to proclaim a "deadly hope," while Wesley had a "living hope," a hope for the restraint of societal evils generally, and a hope for the full salvation of all who would receive it by faith and continue to grow into a "spotless love, the full image of God renewed in the heart."

Contemporary Challenges to "The Judgment"

Though Wesley's view of the Judgment is surely more life-giving than Camping's appears to be, let's be honest: Nearly any notion of such a thing is nearly unthinkable in contemporary US and Western culture, and increasingly unthinkable in many US and Western churches.

First, there's the whole notion of there being any actual, historical "Second Coming" in the first place.  That belief itself has been under heavy assault first by skeptics (such as Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson) in the early years of the Enlightenment, but increasingly within significant parts of the academy, clergy and people of the churches themselves since the late 19th century. If these haven't simply scoffed at the idea, they've at least reduced it to a metaphor, much as some scholars and clergy in the 20th century have sought to evacuate any notion of an actual bodily resurrection of Jesus. 

Second, there's the more specific assault of process theologies and philosophies, which posit no "end" either to God or to history, per se, but rather an eternally evolving "process" of give and take in which humans are both co-creators and co-evolvers, if you will, with God, whatever we understand God to be. 

Third, there's the challenge of notions of "emergence" itself-- closely related to but not always directly associated with process theologies per se. If Whitehead and Cobb are the pioneers of "process," Henri Bergson might be the philosophical pioneer of emergence, of everything being in more or less constant flux and change. 

Fourth, there's science and scientism. Science itself cannot speak about such things as an "end" of the universe, much less a God. It is necessarily atheistic in its methodology. That's not a fault, but a feature. Scientism is a description either of science over-reaching into making proclamation about things beyond its actual, self-limited capacity to speak (if it's following its own methods), or other non-scientists committing scientism (the claim that the only things that are real at all are those that can be proven or demonstrated by scientific methods) in other disciplines. 

So, here's the deal. Science deals with process and emergence all the time. These are very helpful models for trying to describe what scientists observe about the physical universe. And as scientific ideas have become more widely taught and propagated to everyone-- face it, your or your neighbor's fifth grader may well know more and regularly use more of the findings of science than Isaac Newton did!-- thinking scientifically about most things, including religious claims, tends to follow. That's not a bad thing! It can be quite a good thing!

Except for scientism. Because here we have a serious problem. Until the advent of quantum physics, and to a large degree despite it since then, science operated by thinking in either/or ways. Either X is the case OR Y is the case. If X is the case, and Y is fundamentally different, then Y cannot be the case at the same time. This led to a serious war and often divorce between scientism (if not science) and religion beginning in the late 19th century and continuing to this day. The scientism that pervades Western thinking must admit that if the universe is infinite and non-ending, as far as science can tell, then there's no way Christ or any person or being could end and start it over again. Science (scientism!) is right, religion (Christianity) just plain wrong-- if not ridiculous or even dangerous (a la Hitchens and Dawkins).

Quantum physics didn't alter this condition. It only added another layer of difficulty. Because now the "uncertainty principle" that leads to only probabilistic outcomes at the very small and very large scale in physics and cosmology gets applied quite frequently (and illegitimately-- in a "scientism-istic" rather than a truly scientific way) to relativize all truth claims in all realms. or at least to limit the possibility of truth in any claim to a very specific cultural, demographic, historical or temporal context.  This means in the end there can be no Judge at all, much less the Judgment Seat of Christ.

I raise these challenges to our doctrinal standard (Wesley's sermon) not in any defensive way.

Nor do I raise them to reject our doctrinal standard. (I embrace it!).

I raise them for the real challenges they are, challenges that appear pervasively in our own thinking, even within my thinking about these things.
 

And so I ask, honestly... 

Can we still talk about Judgment?

And if so, how? 

 

Can We Still Talk about... ? Part 1: The Wrath to Come

Luca Signorelli, The Wrath to Come. Public Domain.

This is part 1 of a series of entries that will invite conversation around theological issues critical to Methodism, as least as John Wesley presented it, that seem to be increasingly challenged by a variety of forces and sources in our churches and in wider theological conversation.

Upcoming topics in this series will include Sin, Judgment, Justification, the New Birth, Sanctification, Perfection, Accountability and others our blog authors may choose to add.

And if you'd like to add to the series, but aren't yet a blog author, just contact me (worship at gbod dot org) and I'll be glad to add you.

Can we 21st Century United Methodists still talk about "the wrath to come"?

Early Methodism

John Wesley assumed one both could and must talk about the wrath to come during the Methodist movement he led in the 18th century.

Indeed, believing in and responding to the reality of "the wrath to come" was foundational to being a Methodist in the first place!

This may seem a strange thing to say about Wesley or the Methodists. While their preaching did refer to the wrath to come on many occasions, their primary emphasis was on the grace of God-- prevenient grace, justifying grace, sanctifying grace, and both responding to and cooperating with God's grace. 

Where Wesley and the Methodists wanted people to head was precisely in response to and toward that grace.

But responding and moving toward that grace was and is also a matter of moving away from something else.

And included in that "something else" was "the wrath to come." 

So significant was a sincere desire to flee the wrath to come that the Wesleys set it as one of the prerequisites for joining a trial class meeting. The journals of John Wesley and the sermons of the Wesley brothers speak of "fleeing the wrath to come" no less than 39 times. It mattered to them. They and other early Methodists pressed the point with people, on many occasions. As we still have in our Discipline in the section describing the General Rules, "There is only one condition previously required of those who desire admission into these societies: "a desire to flee from the wrath to come, and to be saved from their sins."(More on sin in part 2!).

This desire was not simply a one-time experience. This wasn't about scaring people about the coming wrath through a preaching service and getting them to say they wanted to flee on that day. There were many so moved, John Wesley reminds in Sermon 9, "The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption,"  but being moved once was not enough.

They feel the burden of sin, and earnestly desire to flee from the wrath to come. But not long: They seldom suffer the arrows of conviction to go deep into their souls; but quickly stifle the grace of God, and return to their wallowing in the mire. 

What the Wesleys and the Methodists intended was that people would continue to desire to flee the wrath to come throughout their lives and show it by how they lived-- growing in holiness of heart and life as they lived out the General Rules along with others watching over them, and each other, in love.
 

In other words, one could not even start to journey to becoming Methodist, much less continue it, unless one both believed the wrath of God was a reality and was ready to act on that reality-- not just once, but for a lifetime.

The Wrath to Come Recedes

Methodism in the what would become the US was known, widely known, for its energetic preaching, including but not limited to its preaching about the wrath to come. 

But, as Scott Kisker has documented in Mainline or Methodist, as Methodists overall began to move more and more in the direction of respectability through the 19th century, their preaching tended to focus less and less on doctrinal matters, and in particular "the wrath to come." By the late 19th century in the US, those who were still teaching or preaching this doctrine with any intensity tended to be "lumped in" with the increasingly negative aspersions that "popular" or "respectable" US culture regularly cast upon the rising fundamentalist and pre-millenialist movements within US evangelicalism. 

Even in the Wesleys' own day, preaching the wrath to come was not associated with respectability or popularity. John commented on this in Sermon 28, "Discourse on the Sermon on the Mount, 8"
 
O who shall warn this generation of vipers to flee from the wrath to come! Not those who lie at their gate, or cringe at their feet, desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fall from their tables. Not those who court their favour, or fear their frown; none of those who mind earthly things.

But if there be a Christian upon earth, if there be a man who hath overcome the world, who desires nothing but God, and fears none but Him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell; thou, O man of God, speak, and spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet! Cry aloud, and show these honourable sinners the desperate condition wherein they stand! It may be, one in a thousand may have ears to hear; may arise and shake himself from the dust; may break loose from these chains that bind him to the earth, and at length lay up treasures in heaven.  

The Wrath to Come Loses All Its Loveliness
 If the 19th century saw the beginning of the  recession of the wrath to come from Methodist preaching, by the mid-twentieth century such proclamation was more than absent: It was nearly anathema. We were to focus instead on the infinite value of each person and the love of God for all. To raise the spectre of coming wrath was to damage self-esteem, or do psychological violence to people. In some theological circles, notions of any final end or conflagration generating a new creation were dismissed as primitive mythology, fairy tales at the best and dangerous at the worst, and to be taught as such if at all. 

The early 21st century has brought its own challenges. There is the post modern and "emergent" pushback against theologies that include hell or any punitive understandings of atonement, particularly within some of the more rigorously Calvinist and fundamentalist groups that made up the New Religious Right in the 1980s and 1990s. The pushback against talk of any wrath to come extends beyond the church as well, as Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman showed in their book, unChristian, documenting the profoundly negative attitudes of non-Christian young adults and even many evangelical Christian young adults toward such notions. Love Wins, the clever, captivating and controversial 2011 release from Rob Bell, perhaps placed the grave marker for any further talk of wrath to come as a definitively final outcome for anyone for a whole generation of younger evangelicals in the US. 


How do we United Methodists in the US, whose doctrinal standards affirm "the resurrection of the dead; the righteous to life eternal and the wicked to endless condemnation" (Confession of Faith, Article XII) as well as repeatedly warn of "the wrath to come" (Sermons 3, 4, 9,16, and 28,  all part of our doctrinal standards as well), reconcile our teaching with the disfavor and even outright opposition to this doctrine?


Can we even still talk about "the wrath to come" in this environment?


If so, how?