Christian Hope among Rivals

How Life-Organizing Stories Anticipate the End of Evil

Zeigler

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781532604638
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Hope is a widespread, if not a universal, human experience. For centuries, followers of Jesus of Nazareth have ordered their lives around a central hope. How is their experience similar to or different from others who live by hope? This book seeks an answer in the idea that living by hope involves living within a peculiar story of the world--an incomplete story. The stories that shape these hopes are threatened by evil, however it may be defined--he hopeful struggle as characters caught up in plots that move toward resolution. They exercise an as-yet unverified hope that evil will not prevail. In this regard, the hope of Christians is similar to others. Yet, it is different because they wait for the God of Jesus to transform the world to match the promise he made to Abraham. To arrive at this conclusion, this book takes a detour through four model life-organizing stories. Christians and participants in other stories-of-the-world may not agree on the ultimate ground for hope. However, taking a detour into the hopeful experience of another may help uncover a place where rivals can stand together long enough to talk.

1

Zombie Jesus

I am pastor of a smaller, urban Christian congregation within the Lutheran tradition. I struggle to help the members of our congregation live faithfully in a pluralistic confluence of cultures within which the traditional Christian faith looks more and more like a weird mix of fantasy and delusion. When the “resurrection of the dead” came up in a recent Bible study meeting at a local coffee shop, one of our dearly-loved, regular participants, Sean—a man in his mid-thirties, the nephew of one of our elderly members—commented, “So you’re basically telling us to believe in Zombie Jesus.”

This book offers a Christian account of hope in general in order to show the distinctiveness of Christian hope in particular. The central question is, “How does Christian hope compare to other kinds of hope?” I assume that some readers will be more like Sean—interested, but skeptical, and perhaps even amused by the traditional Christian hope. If so, I think you will find my account of hope in general helpful to your purposes. Some readers will be like the others at our coffee shop Bible study—struggling to hope like a Christian and to show others how to do likewise. For you, I think my account of the distinctiveness of Christian hope will be helpful.

While I have attempted to investigate this question with academic rigor, my heart is also in it, something like an oncology researcher who has lost a loved one to cancer. Each week, I lead my congregation to “look for the resurrection of the dead” and publically confess their hope in him who “will come again to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.” I struggle to help our congregation more clearly articulate and more practically orient our shared way of life around this hope. This book is designed to help others in that struggle.

A struggle typically has two sides. I am directly addressing the Christian side. Indirectly, I address those who struggle with or against traditional Christian teaching. I offer conceptual clarity on the human capacity to hope in order to identify the distinctiveness of the hope confessed in the Christian Scriptures and re-stated in the ecumenical creeds. I answer the question, “How does Christian hope compare with other forms of eschatological hope?”

Eschatology is a technical term for discussion about how hope begins and where it leads. It’s a term I have found useful because it allows me to focus on a particular kind of hope—not just any passing wish, such as “I hope my package arrives today” or “I hope we don’t get freezing rain,” but an enduring hope—one around which I could organize my life. Let’s call it eschatological hope. This sort of hope is at the heart of Christian faith, but Christians aren’t the only ones who hope in this way.

So how does Christian hope compare to others? If you asked this question to a hundred informed people in North America, you would get at least two kinds of answers. One answer will assume that Christian hope is beyond compare; another, that Christian hope is essentially like any other. Both assumptions work against what I present in this book, so we will address them up front. The problem is not that these assumptions are completely false. The problem is that they anticipate a resolution of conflict that has not yet occurred.

Constantinian Assumptions

Each of these assumptions was expressed by two scholars who wrote something significant about eschatological hope. The first was conveyed by Hans Schwarz, an accomplished Christian scholar who had worked for more than forty years in international and inter-denominational settings. For Schwarz, Christian hope was beyond compare. In this regard, he speaks for many conservative, evangelical, and confessional Christians. The second assumption was conveyed by Immanuel Kant. As one of the most influential prophets of the modern, secular world, he speaks—in regard to this assumption—for many people who feel aversion to the words conservative, evangelical, and confessional.

Assumption 1: Christian Hope Is beyond Compare

I can’t imagine living without hope. That is a sentiment often expressed by those who hold the first assumption. They believe Christian hope is the true hope. Everything else is delusion. This need not be expressed in a pompous, arrogant tone. It can be an expression of heart-felt pity for those who either do not know or do not accept the hope offered in Jesus Christ. In the introduction to his Eschatology,1 Hans Schwarz, an internationally respected ecumenical, Lutheran theologian,2 exhibited this first assumption. When Schwarz said he finds it “impossible to dispense with the eschatological expectations of the Christian faith and still maintain a meaningful hope in the future,”3 I hear him speaking in a tone of heart-felt pity for those who live without the hope of Christ. Schwarz argued that Christian eschatology “is crucial for our time” because it alone offers the hope of a meaningful and certain future.4 Christian hope, as “proleptic anticipation,”5 has no rival. It is beyond compare. Present-day “obsession with the present” and ancient pessimism, which was typically “confined to a cyclical understanding of time,” are both noneschatological because they offer no “meaningful goal.” And even though a modern, linear view of time promises the possibility of progress, it offers no certainty because it exchanged “God-confidence” for “self-confidence.” Since self-reliance is uncertain, it yields “no ultimate hope.”6 Schwarz developed this argument in great detail, and his core assumption was constant throughout: the only choices are Christian hope or hopelessness.

This assumption is closely related to those held by the Apostle Paul. He wrote to the Ephesian converts: “Remember that you were [once] separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”7 Although, Paul probably recognized the questionable status of his professed hope, assuming he wrote this letter “in chains” (Eph 6:20) and under Roman custody. As Luke reported, Paul had previously declared, “I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers” (Acts 26:6). After explaining himself, Paul urged the visiting King Agrippa to endorse his claim. Agrippa responded: “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” (Acts 26:28). Paul boldly asserted that the true hope of all people, both Jew and Gentile, commoner and king, is found only in this crucified and resurrected Jesus of Nazareth. But the fact that Paul was rejected by many of his own people and was in the custody of the empire raised questions about the reliability of his testimony. “Paul, you are out of your mind,” said Governor Festus (Acts 26:24). Paul’s claim was not certain in the sense that it could be demonstrated to any rational person of good-will. It was contested and required vindi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Zombie Jesus
• Chapter 2: Comparing Eschatologies
• Chapter 3: Eschatology and Story
• Chapter 4: Narrative Theodicy
• Chapter 5: A Typology of Narrative Theodicies—After Ricoeur
• Chapter 6: Idealist Types
• Chapter 7: Realist Types
• Chapter 8: Staying in the Story
• Conclusion
• Bibliography