Do You Think the World Will End in Your Lifetime? Part 2

In part two (part one may be found here) Judah looks at the bible for evidence of the resurrection being either an absolutely material event, as Millennialists would have it, or a spiritual reality apart from time and space. Judah finds confirmation of the latter, supported by Swedenborg's vision of a concrete spiritual world. -Editor

Why celebrate New Church Day? What makes the New Church different from any other Christian group? I could compare New Church ideas and practices with a variety of other faith traditions in an effort to explain why it is unique, but you’re probably familiar with the results of such a comparison: the New Church believes in a one-person rather than a three-person God; it teaches a life of repentance; it proclaims that heaven’s gates are open to all good people everywhere, whatever their race, their culture, or their religion. But instead of broadly pointing out the teachings that set apart (or at least define) the New Church, I would like to follow up my previous article on the end of the world by contrasting a New Church view of human resurrection with that of Dispensational Premillennialism. I hope this little study gives you a small but specific sense of how an approach shaped by New Church teachings can revitalize Biblical study—and transform the prospect of death into a balanced hope for an afterlife that is at once concrete and spiritual, at once present and future, and entirely grounded in a personal approach to Jesus Christ in sacred scripture.

First, about the opposition: besides being a mouthful, what is Dispensational Premillennialism? (For the purpose of this article, I’ll dispense with the Dispensational part; it’s a key distinguishing factor on the micro level—as is the Pre- before millennialism—but relative to other religious movements, it’s the millennialism that counts.) In brief, remember the section of Revelation 20 that says that people will reign with Christ for a thousand years? Millennialism is the general term for various flavors of the belief that this passage refers to a future, literal reign on Earth that will last for one thousand years.

Rather than categorically dismissing this worldview as a load of nonsense (a scornful attitude, once unleashed, isn’t too particular in its choice of victim), I will examine Premillennialism in the context of the Bible, which is the common ground we share, and see what kind of resurrection our respective approaches suggest—first, whether the resurrection is spiritual or physical, and second, whether it is exclusively an end-times event or a continuation of life directly after death.

As you might recall, in my last article I referred to the belief, held by Harold Camping and his followers, that the physical last judgment is upon us—if not visibly on May 21st, 2011, then certainly on October 21st of that same year. Although many millennium Christians distance themselves from date-setters like Camping, the basic principle is the same. As millennium scholar Herman Hoyt puts it, in his article on Dispensational Premillennialism in Robert Clouse’s The Meaning of the Millennium,

It will be a literal kingdom in every sense of that word. This kingdom is not an abstract ideal toward which men are striving but will never attain. …The actual place of its central location will be Jerusalem and vicinity (Obad. 12-21). A real King will sit on a material throne (Is. 33:17). (78)

If Christ Himself will be sitting on a material throne, then we can suppose that humans will likewise be of material substance. But if the resurrection is thus physical, then it cannot possibly have happened, or else the dead would be walking among us. It must therefore be future to us all. And yet Jesus suggests that life follows immediately after death.

What does Jesus Himself say? “And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:40). What sort of last day is this? Will this be a rapture during some future, global final judgment? Perhaps. Some Christians certainly read it so. But might it be, at least in part, a different kind of “last day”? Consider this moment when Jesus is on the cross, having just been upbraided by one of his two fellow victims:

But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, "Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong." Then he said to Jesus, "Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom." And Jesus said to him, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise." (Luke 23:40-43)

Recall the promise from John quoted above: if we take it as a statement of reality and apply it to the present story we get some interesting results: the repentant criminal clearly “sees the Son and believes in Him;” as a result, we can assume that he is on track to “have everlasting life,” in keeping with Jesus’ promise. Furthermore, Jesus “will raise him up at the last day:” but will it be a future, earthly last day when this man’s decayed corpse will be revived and breathe our air once more? Judging from this story, no. On the cross, when Jesus replies with, “today you will be with me in Paradise,” notice what happens if we allow this reply to be consistent with His earlier promise. How else could this criminal be with Jesus in Paradise today unless He raised him up? And what other day is it for this dying criminal than his “last day”? Is not the promise being fulfilled? Is not this man about to be raised up, even while his body dies? When he asks to be remembered when Jesus comes into His kingdom, the King replies with an implied correction: not someday—today. Given this analysis, two thousand years ago a reformed criminal was resurrected; two thousand years ago a repentant sinner entered the kingdom of God. But what does immediate spiritual resurrection look like? Is it bodily? Is it in danger of being ethereal, as Hoyt warns (82)? To explore these questions, let’s turn directly to some teachings for the New Church.

In amongst his analysis of the Bible, Swedenborg relates facts about the spiritual world as he sees it, ideas that are, in his view, at the heart of Scripture. One of his chief aims in the work Heaven And Hell is to debunk the myth that spiritual is somehow equivalent to insubstantial (a view we have seen expressed by Hoyt, who resolves the issue by foregoing the non-material altogether). Referring to his dialogue with angels, Swedenborg writes,

I have quite often told them that men in the Christian world are in such blind ignorance about angels and spirits as to believe them to be minds without form, even pure thoughts, of which they have no idea except as something ethereal in which there is some vitality. (§74)

If this were the case, it would be a dull thing to die. Indeed, it is not surprising that Christians have long sought alternative ideas to the dilemma of resurrection. Zachary Hayes, in his What Are They Saying About the End of the World? puts it this way: “In the light of more recent biblical research… many theologians criticized the notion of an immortal soul as an unfortunate Hellenization” (23). The “unfortunate Hellenization” is the depiction of the soul as a disembodied thinking thing—a notion Swedenborg roundly rejects.

On the contrary, he says, the resurrected soul is completely embodied, albeit on a different level from the physical world of time and space. Swedenborg calls these resurrected people angels. He writes,

From all my experience which is now of several years, I can declare and avow that angels as to their form are wholly people, having faces, eyes, ears, bodies, arms, hands and feet, and that they see and hear one another and talk together. In a word, they lack nothing at all that a person has, except that they are not clothed over all with a material body. (§75)

This of course flies in the face of much Christian theology. But, Swedenborg says, in spite of the carefully crafted doctrine of erudite theologians, people seem to have an intuitive sense of the reality of immediate spiritual resurrection. In his work Arcana Coelestia, or Secrets of Heaven, Swedenborg writes,

A person knows [about a concrete afterlife], and so thinks and speaks when he thinks and speaks from his spirit; but when he thinks and speaks from his doctrine, he says very differently—that he is not to rise again till the last day; when yet the last day to everyone is when he dies, and then also is his judgment, as indeed many say. (§5078.6)

This echoes the words of Jesus, both His promise to raise believers up on the last day and His pledge to the penitent criminal crucified next to Him that he would join Him that day in Paradise.

The Dispensational Premillennialists have some things going for them: as represented by Herman Hoyt, they want to take “into consideration every aspect of reality” (68); they want a philosophy that “makes sense,” that “gives meaning to human effort” (69); and they eschew the kind of “spiritualizing” (70) that deprives God of His cosmic, historical power. But in claiming to be literally biblical, they seem unaware that they do in fact “spiritualize” some things (notably, Hoyt sees the stone cut without hands as a metaphorical prophecy of Christ’s supremacy, 91). Clearly, they are employing their discretion in how they read the Bible, not achieving a pure and simple “biblical view” (69). In fact, as we saw in our exploration of New Testament passages, an alternative biblical view invites a radically different picture of the resurrection: far from being a condition of physical resuscitation after millennia of rotting in the grave (or having one’s ashes scattered around the globe), the resurrection becomes an immediate arrival in the kingdom upon the death of the material body. This perspective takes on new appeal and soundness when it is complemented by Swedenborg’s description of tangible spirituality, concrete features of the resurrection similar to what Hoyt anticipates; only with Swedenborg, the substantial, resurrected human being is essentially spiritual, free at last to fully receive the transformation that is truly fundamental to a biblical view: the surrender of the material in preference for the spiritual, when we can finally unite our fractured lives, joining thought to affection, wisdom to love, grounding them in a world where we can freely respond to the Lord’s love, co-acting with Him—reigning, perhaps in a figurative sense, for a thousand years—receiving, according to His promise, “everlasting life.”

Non-scriptural sources:

Clouse, Robert G., editor. The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1977.

Hayes, Zachary. What Are They Saying About the End of the World? New York: Paulist Press, 1983.

Judah Synnestvedt

Judah is enrolled in the Theological School in Bryn Athyn, PA. He lives in Huntingdon Valley with his wife, Lydia, and their baby-to-be.

Comments

[karl birjukov]

Hallo Judah. This was an interesting article to read, and what was most fascinating was the descriptions of 'Jesse's' views last week and the alternative theologies on the last judgement. With regard to the former, one can see Jesse's views reflecting the simple good of the midianites who can barely hold to anything that might resemble truth, while the 'dispensational premilleniast' view reads much like that of the Hittites (or possibly the Philisitnes) who are unable to accept higher truths and end up making a covenant with Isaac when such truths are pitched at their lwer level. In other words, for all the sophistication of the modern world, we can see that the cost of that sophistication has been paid for by a level of understanding that is simply unable to do anything but examine things on a literal level.
The greatest frustration is trying to show how the deeper meanings and insights actually help to expand the mind. What we are up against, however, is the pretence at expansion that currently passes for wisdom but which in itself is a contraction and satisfaction with that contraction.
It is interesting to read in Swedenborg that when he uses the phrase 'these days', that phrase could easil;y apply to our age. For instance, much of the deeper meaning requires that we see that we have both a rational mind and a natural mind and that one is the servant of the other. Get it the wrong way round and instead of the natural mind being rationalised, it is the rational mind that is naturalised, but which then passes iteself as as the height of wisdom, when in fact it is the low end of thought as represented by doubting Thomas.
That is the battle ground upon which we are fighting, but I have to say that for myself, I am very pessimistic about trying to convey New Church thinking to a world that is thoroughly naturalised. After all, if it were not for its large numbers of supporters, I suspect that much of traditional Christian teaching, with its raptures and second coming, would be regarded as cultish.
I suppose what I am trying to say that it really doesn't matter what other Christian groups are thinking, and perhaps one should be more mindful of Gentile groups whiose attitude begins with a much heralthier view, that there is probably more to the nature of reality than current religions can offer. Perhaps a shck tactic would be easier. "Are you waiting for the Second Coming? It's too late; it's been and gone, on the 19th of June in 1757.@ That should set tongues wagging.