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Recovering the divine Narrative:
Advent, Eschatology, and the Preacher
Frederick w. Schmidt
G ^tt-Evangeiical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois
Dividing my life’s work between the chnrch and the academy has given me an interesting vantage point from which to consider some of the challenges facing clergy. Some of those challenges arise ont of the demands associated with parish life, some from the way clergy are prepared, and some of those challenges can be seen in the lives of college and seminary students themselves, even as they prepare to serve toe church. My first fulltime teaching position was in New Testament studies at a small liberal arts college, and in January, 1 often taught a four-week intensive devoted to toe Book of Revelation. Eschatology was at toe center of much of what we discussed. Midway through toe course one year, 1 made a passing observation that prompted one of my students to raise his hand suddenly. 1 realized that we were going to have a far longer conversation than toe time remaining before our break, so 1 suggested we all get a cup of coffee and come back to discuss toe student’s question. When we settled back in, I turned to Brian and said, “Brian, I gather that you take exception to toe last observation that 1 made,” and Brian responded, “No, I take exception to pretty much everything you’ve said up to this point.” Looking back on it, the class reflected many of the same complex challenges that clergy themselves face when preaching during Advent. If there is a single issue at the heart of toe season, it is eschatology. There are few themes that provoke more consternation, confusion, or flat fear, and toe task of preaching through toe Advent texts takes us into toe heart of our own formation on the subject, as wefl as toe haphazard formation of those who sit in our churches’ pews. Judging from my experience with toe subject of eschatology in both the church and toe academy, I would guess that there is toe same kind of bewildering diversity to toe average congregation’s views on the subject that I have detected in my classes over the years. Boto in toe academy and in toe pulpit, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are at least toree groups of people who are potentially a part of your congregation .
Eschatology and the Congregation
SBNRs, Nones, ﻣﺤﺲOthers One group may have no frame of reference at all for a conversation abouteschatology during the Advent season. This first group includes toe so-called “unchurched,’^ “toe spiritual but not religious,”“ ؛toe nones,”3 and “toe seekers,”* but it also includes a number of people who have lived on toe margins of our denominations. The labels used to characterize these groups have evolved quickly, and while those labels are meant to identify a demographic trend, there is no clear delineation between them ٢٠an agreed set of definitions at work. This is partly because toe research has been evolving rapidly, but toe amorphous nature of toe labels can also be traced to toe
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almost prog!־ammat؛c nature of foe way some writers are using tire language. Some scholars are not just at work describing a trend; they are also prescribing a future for tire church, and that goal not only shapes the labels used but conditions the research they do as well.؛ Anticipating what this larger, ill-defined group will understand what is said from fire pulpit is further complicated by fire fact that its separation from fire church may not be as absolute as some people thought initially. One team of researchers suggests , for example, that a higher percentage of SBNRs are foe children of divorced couples, whose religious formation was disrupted by their parents’ separation.6 Others have proffered foe theory that children of parents with lower levels of education ٢٠extremely high levels of education are less likely to receive any faith formation at all. Still others have concluded that “nones” have not rejected religion as such, but certain features of religion, including membership, ecclesiastical bureaucracies, and financial involvement.7 Bofo studies, then, suggest that “nones” and “SBNRs” may know more theology than we might expect. That said, preachers should probably assume that for this first group of people, the sole frame of reference that they may have for the church’s eschatology are foe endless secular apocalypses that abound in our culture. Those stories reveal something about our common fears and hopes. They also tell us something about foe way narrative and “ending” powerfully shape our lives, and bofo points of contact can provide a usefirl way into a conversation with people who know little ٢٠nothing about foe Christian faith. But a conversation about eschatology that takes shape in response to foe logic of the Gospel will re؟uire a good deal of explanation.
Dispensationalists On the other end of the spectrum will be a second group of people who have been solidly influenced by dispensationalist readings ofScripture. In some ways this group of parishioners will pose a bigger challenge for preachers and pastors than people who know little ٢٠nothing about the subject. They will be specific about foe lenses through which they read the Advent lections. They will be certain that they have read those texts in foe only truly orthodox fashion possible, and they will instantly resist any alternative intei^retation. The dispensationalist approach to eschatology originated in nineteenth century England with foe work of John Nelson Darby, who divided foe whole of biblical and human history into two dispensations ٢٠eras: foe dispensation of foe law and foe dispensation of grace. flt€ cross was foe dividing line between foe two eras according to Darby, and his picture of history provided a basic schema for reading Scripture, for assigning foe exegetical primacy of specific texts, and for anticipating foe eschatological future.8 Three things have kept dispensationalist theology alive, even if foe numbers of devoted followers ebbed and flowed for foe better part of two hundred years. The earliest was The كﺀﻢﻣﺀ/ﺢﻣ Reference Bible. In 1909, C.I. Scofield paired notes on dispensationalist readings of Scripture with foe text itself, offering a lens through which biblical eschatology could be read and understood. Given foe daunting nature of eschatological language, Scofield’s notes are foe only interpretation of biblical foeology that many have read. Unsurprisingly, more than one preacher has had to remind people over foe years that foe notes themselves are not inspired. They were
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entirely Sc©field’s work. What is surprising is how durable Scofield’s treatment has been. His Bible continues to be printed by Oxford University Press and widely used over a century later.9 As influential as the Scofield Bible has been, however, it is hard to believe that dispensationalism would enjoy foe influenee it has today if it were not for Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. Lindsey, a student at Dallas Theological Seminary during foe late fifties, was thoroughly immersed in dispensationalist theology. While some of his professors no doubt winced at foe use he made of his lecture notes, Lindsey successfully wed dispensationalism, his own unique approach to current events, and popular marketing in a ground breaking book called The Late Great Planet Earth. Declaring that the end was near, Lindsey capitalized in particular on foe possibility of nuclear war in suggesting that history, technology, and prophecy had finally and convincingly merged with one another, and foe book sold like proverbial “hot cakes.” Late Great wem through thirteen editions and, in spite of shifting political realities, sold over fifteen million copies.“ Beginninginl995,Tim LaHaye followed up witha“fictional”versionofLindsey’s “non-fictional” tour deforce. Cleverly arguing that his stories weren’t scriptural but that they could be, LaHaye abandoned foe effort to use eschatological texts in a more direct fashion and instead told foe story of those who are “left behind.”11 As badly written as they are,LaHaye’s efforts to catechize a new generation ٢٠readers has been even more successful than Lindsey’s. The LeftBehind series has sold over 60 million copies. Seven of foe novels have hit The New York Times bestseller list and foe Left Behind story has spawned a number of spin-offs including children’s books, graphic novels, television series, and first-run movies.“ The latest airing in theatres was foe movie Left Behind: The End Begins, starring Nicholas Cage fois last Dctober.“ ft is perilously easy for preachers to dismiss people who read foe Advent texts with LaHaye’s work in hand ٢٠to assume that no one in their churches has been exposed to LaHaye. Dispensationalists have been so effective at communicating their message that basic familiarity with dispensationalist understandings ofeschatology is more likely than not.14
Members: “،؛ ٣ have met the enemy, and he is us.” A third group in most churches will be members of our congregations. They will know something about eschatology, but they probably won’t be familiar with foe term itself. In fact, what this group will be thinking about as foey hear the Advent lections read is a loose pastiche of half-formed ideas about heaven and hell, judgment and deliverance, scattered political interpretations of the Kingdom of God, and cultural critiques of Scripture that associate some or all of what foey have heard with an outmoded and ancient way of thinking. To make matters more complicated, even as they reject much of what they have been told about foe passages they are hearing, foey will nonetheless think that foe “orthodox” way to read those passages requires that outmoded way of thinking that they have already rejected. Treating eschatology seriously would require them, they think, to abandon ways of thinking that they see as scientific and intellectually virtuous. A church that thinks that Jesus was a good man and a social prophet whose influence is still alive in foe world but not a savior or divine hardly recognizes him as a figure who can speak convincingly about foe end ٢٠purpose of history.
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It is hard to underestimate how poorly formed in the faith the average ehurch member might he. Aeeording to a recent ?ew foundation report, “nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is ‘very important‘ in their lives, and roughly four-inten say they attend worship services at least once a week,” but the same people are “uninformed about toe tenets, practices, history, and leading figures of major faith traditions-including their own.” The report went on to note that “more than fourin -ten Catholics in toe United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that toe bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become toe body and blood of Christ,” and “about half of ?rotestants (53%) cannot correctly identify Martin Luther as toe person whose writings and actions inspired toe ProtestantReformation,which made their religionaseparate branch of Christianity.”15 There was no specific information available in toe report about toe eschatological understandings of toe respondents and nothing specifically about Advent. But if such basic information about toe Christian faith is missing from toe experience of Catholics and Protestants, it hardly stretches toe point to assume that toe same kind of ignorance prevails in connection with cschatology. There are a number of explanations for this state of affairs. One is no doubt pragmatic. Pastors and priests of small churches complain that they lack toe time to spend educating people in toe Christian faith. Leaders of larger congregations with toe resources to do the work offen allow their educational efforts to degenerate into boutique programs, educating people in anything and everything other than toe church’s faith. Regardless, it is clear from toe Pew Study and other surveys that we have failed in our catechetical mission. To paraphrase Pogo, in some cases “we have met toe enemy and toe enemy is us.”
Exploring Advent from the Inside Out
Preaching in Advent, then, requires a sense of toe complexity of our congregations , but it also requires us as preachers to confront our own spiritual and intellectual formation. Do we really believe that Advent marks toe beginning of toe year in a way that is more consequential than any other beginning? What do we mean when we call this an eschatological moment or, more directly, what do we believe about eschatology? How does preparation for that eschatological moment, or waiting on Cod, require of us? How do we read the times in which we live against toe backdrop of the Messiah’s return? To answer those questions in an honest fashion is to begin defining toe task of preaching at Advent from toe inside out. It also helps to define toe themes that we can explore throughout the Advent season. ¥ou will have your own answers to those questions. By way of conversation, allow me to offer answers to them.
In what sense does Advent mark the beginning ofa new year? Positively, Advent is an invitation to enter the drama of salvation history anew, preparing for a new world order. The anticipated coming of toe Messiah, and with him toe coming of the Kingdom of God, is a singular event that changes everything. Advent invites us to live into toe new year focused on toe things of Cod: God’s priorities, God’s way of looking at toe world, God’s way of being in toe world. It is this challenge that makes Advent the beginning of toe year for those who have been
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baptized iate Christ. The obstacle we face in grasping that reality is not the so-called secular world around us. It is the depth of our own conviction that subverts us.* ؛ But the spell that the world exercises over us still needs to be broken, and breaking that spell is not easy. Sandwiched between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the Advent season has become an extended baby shower, satisfying the needs of people who, if they must, are certainly welcome to light candles while they wait for Christmas to arrive. It is a religious sideshow that occupies the attention of people who aren’t quite as busy as the rest of us. The preacher must break that spell, alerting the congregation to its spiritual peril before she can begin to explore the spiritual promise made by God in Advent. That, of course, is always the case with the anticipated “Day of the Lord.” *؛It is judgment to those who fail to appreciate its significance. It is the day of deliverance to those who grasp its promise and prepare for it. Gne way to accomplish that task is to do what the rest of the world wifi do a month later, but will do it a very different way: take stock, evaluate the year behind us, ask what our own schemes really accomplished, name the inadequacy of the salvation we craft for ourselves, and name the places where God has been present, the victories achieved as a result. An effective preacher will not review the year behind us as a tableau of triumphs and fears ٢٠as a series of celebrity moments. The romantic and semimental approach that we take to the year behind us is precisely why on January 2 we begin living our lives in the same way we lived them on December 31. In Advent, an effective preacher will in good Ignatian fashion ask the congregation, “What were the moments that drew us closer to God and others in love?” and “What were the moments that drove us away from God and others?” To begin enshrining that process of Examen in the lffe of a congregation is to begin building a Christian community with the kind of spiritual sensibilities that belong to an Advent people. Driving a wedge between sentimentalism and a preoccupation with what makes us “happy” ٢٠successful, such questions cultivate a commitment to discernment as a spiritual discipline and give the congregation a concrete way of making decisions in the year ahead.®؛
What do we believe about eschatology? To make a sweeping, but I hope helpful generalization, most contemporary eschatologies fall into one of four categories: personal,19 spiritual,20 socio-political, ؛؛ or cosmic.“ Each has some exegetical claims in its favor, which we won’t rehearse here. But none of them, held alone, adequately captures the scope of biblical and Christian eschatology. Nor, for the same reason, can any of the four usefully serve as its center. ft is small wonder, then, that so many conversations about eschatology finally feel smaller and less focused than one might expect from a topic that has been so central to Christian theology, ?ersonal eschatologies appear to leave our world untouched and seem to provide an excuse for treating social issues with casual disregard. Spiritual eschatologies are criticized as quietist in character, ?olitical eschatologies degenerate into human visions of how we might change the world since God is so slow about it. And cosmic eschatologies invite people to “get right with God” and muse about those who might be “left behind.” It is no surprise that people who gravitate to one ٢٠the other view excoriate those who hold a different eschatology. It is no surprise
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that many caricatme the whole conversation about eschatology as speculation about “pie in the sky by and by;” and no surprise that the subject itself seems somehow quaint and irrelevant.** The difficulty with all four eschatologies, and the problem with the conversation itself, is that the focus is squarely on the nature of eschatological transformation and not on foe place of that transformation in salvation history. , ٢٠to put it another way, far too much conversation about eschatology is about our place in that transformation: our salvation, our redemption, our lives, our world, and our social order. The problem wifo that obsession is this: eschatology in the biblical and Christian tradition is not about us. It is about God. ٢٠to put it another way, eschatological hope is about foe promise that in foe end, God will make good on foe claim to be God. It is fois that needs to be communicated from foe pulpit in clear, direct language. Eschatology is not about redeeming your life ٢٠mine. It is not about transforming foe social ٢٠spiritual order, and it is not about saving foe planet. All of that and more wifi happen. But it wifi happen, because in the end, God wifi make good on God’s claim to be God by conquering death and by returning us and foe world to a condition that meets and exceeds the conditions that held sway in foe beginning. ٢٧٠well being, then, and our story are caught up in a larger narrative that is theocentric, not anthropocentric.24
What does waiting in that eschatological place require ofus? By trivializing eschatology, foe Left Behind tableau has robbed us of the specifically eschatological waiting that is characteristic of the Advent texts and can be found in our eucharistie prayers. We are understandably put off by foe fearful quest to avoid being left behind and foe self-righteous picture of those who want to know “Who is going to hell?” Waiting and watching as it is found in Mark 13 and other Advent texts in any year is not about such vain and silly preoccupations. It is about availability. It is about the ability to walk wifo Christ. It is, to reprise what I have just said about eschatology, our willingness to cooperate with foe life-giving message that God wifi make good on God’s claim to be God. Waiting in Advent, then, necessarily requires confession, repentance, and amendment of life, not because God longs to make us feel badly about ourselves and not because God enjoys seeing us in pain, but because it is our own brokenness and sin that makes that availability impossible. That emphasis wifi take us headlong into opposition with our culture. One of foe real challenges of society marked by foe spiritual seeking I described above is that it is often marked by longing for a spiritual life emptied of the need to change and unwilling to acknowledge something ٢٠someone larger than ourselves. More than once I have heard Christian clergy and others argue that we are our own best judges of what we need spiritually, rather than listening for what God wants to give us.* ؛Further, as Karl Menninger noted years ago, our culture has lost its ability to talk about sin.26 As a result we tend to forget that God is God and we are not. But if the central problem wifo foe human race is its inability to acknowledge that God is God, and if that claim lies at foe heart of a narrative that ends wifo God’s firm declaration, “I am,” then there is no internally consistent preaching of Advent that can do without waiting that results in confession, repentance, and amendment of life. These are not unrelated vestiges of an abusive spirituality that foe church
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imposes on othe!־w؛se well-adjusted people outside its walls. It is the truth that we lea™ about ourselves when Scripture reads us.
# ,٧١٠then, ، ؛٠we read the times in ،ﺀﻟﻤﺺ’أﻟﻢﺀwe live against the backdrop ﺀأمﺀ/م Messiah ’ ﺀ return? It is common to think that eschatological language is about sweeping away this world in ^ ٢٠٧of the next. But this approach misunderstands the way eschatology is used in the biblical text. In both the Old and New Testaments, eschatology is not just about the comprehensive healing and redemption that lies ahead. It is about what that remarkable ending says about the present. No matter how long the interlude may last between the first and the second coming of the Messiah, we live out our lives in God’s presence, and both the present and the filture belong to God. The durability ofthat truth does not lie in fulfilling even one of a hundred predictions nor, thankfully, does it depend upon our ability to restore the natural order or remake the social order. It is grounded in the t™th that is the claim of the one who was “in the beginning” and will be made manifest “in the end.”” © ٢٧times, then, are exactly like those of any generation: marked by the responsibility to “wait and watch,” retirin g patient and faithful dependence upon the one whose claim to be God has been guaranteed. We are not diminished by that fact. We do not need to be delivered from this world,nor do we need to abandon ouravailability for the work of God’s kingdom in favor of kingdoms of our own making. It is enough to know that we are the object of God’s love and the bearers of God’s Christ-restored image. In the final analysis, this is the challenge the preacher faces in Advent: the telling of a story, a metanarrative that transcends every other life narrative and becomes not just a reality, but is the reality that governs the life of the church and the year begun in Advent.“ That conviction should be brought home to every congregation, not as an abstraction ٢٠as sentimental hope, but as the wellspring of a life lived and poured out in the presence of God.
Notes 1 R oberte.Fuller,Spiritual,butnotReligious: Understanding UnchurchedAmerica(New York: Oxford University ?ress, 2001). 2 Ibid. 3 The term, “N©nes,” was first coined by Barry Kosmin. See: Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keyser, Religion in a Free Market: Religion and Non-Religious Americans, Who, What, Why, Where (Ithaea: ?aramount Market ?ublishing, 2006), xii. But, as Kosmin notes, the term has taken on a life of its own: Wendy Thomas Russell, “An Interview with the Guy Who Named the ‘Nones,’” January 10, 2013: http://wendythom asrussell.com /nones/ . Cf., for example, the ?ew Religion and ?ublie Life Survey conducted 2012 ’“ :طNones’ on the Rise,” http://ww w.pew forum .org/2012/lQ /Q 9/noneson -the-rise/. 4 See Robert Wuthnow, After Heaven: spirituality in America since the 1950s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), Iff. 5 Cf., for example, Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End ofChurch and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2013). 6 Jiexia Flisa Zhai, Christopher G. Ellison, and Charles E. Stokes, “’Spiritual, But Not Religious’: The Impact of Farental Divorce on the Religious and Spiritual Identities ofYoung Adults in the United States,” Review ofReligious Research 49.4 (2008): 379-394. 7^m ieM anson,“Fanel at F ordh^ focuses on the spiritual AND religious,”NationalCatholicReporter, (December 11,2013): http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/panel-fordham-focuses-spiritual־ and-religious, See also; Nan£yI aXQmAmmerman,$acredStQriestSpiritLLaLIrib.es;Fjnding.RelwiQn
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iR.EY£udjayLifcX Ne.w.-YQrk…Qxford University.Press, 2.Q13..],-2fL.and.LamaJQarlmg,“Lis.tening to the !Nones’; An Interview with Elizabeth Drescher( ״May 2.3,,2Q13);.J1ttp://b luebQatblQgs,uuan org/2014/01/21/n ones-h urt־angry-or-bored/ 8 For more on Darby, see: Eugen Weber, Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults, andMillenialBeliefs through the Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University Fress, 1999), 141-42,181-82. 9 Oxford University Press even publishes what they eall The Old Scofield Study Bible (New ¥ork: Oxford University Press, 2007). For one window into the influenee of the Scofield’s Bible, see: R. Todd Mangum and Mark s. Sweetnam, The Scofield Bible: Its History andlmpact on the Evangelical Church (Colorado Springs: Paternoster Publishing, 2009). 0ل Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970). 11 Tim F. LaHa^e and Jerry B. Jenkins, The Left Behind Collection (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2003). 12 Most articles on the subject of LaHaye’s influenee and the theology ofhis books inevitably goes well beyond that subject to touch LaHaye’s political commitments, so there are few measured theological assessments available. See, for example: Melanie McAlister, “An Empire of Their Own,” The Nation (September 4 ,2003): http;//w m th enatiQ.n,.CQm./artid£/gmpire:their־Qwn?page=(LQ. Fora hands-on assessment of LaHaye’s franchise, see his own website: https://tim lahaye.com /. My own effort to analyze what 1 have also called “roadmap” readings of Scripture’s eschatological content as it is found in the Book of Revelation can be found here: Frederick w. Schmidt, Conversations with Scripture: Revelation, Anglican Association of Biblical Scholars Study Series (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing,2005), Iff. 13 http://www.Ieftbehindmovie.com/about/ 14 See: http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2013/september/syria-survey-end-timesarmageddon “lifeway.html?paging=off. Consider these statistics outlined there: “’41 percent of all U.S. adults, 54 percent of Protestants, and 77 percent of evangelicals believe the world is now living in the biblical end times.’…Nearly 4 in 10 Americans (and 65 percent of white evangelicals) believe recent natural disasters are evidence of the End Times, while 15 percent ofAmericans (and 29 percent of white evangelicals) believe that the end of the world, as predicted in the Book ofRevelation, will occur in their lifetimes…’Nearly 15 percent of people worldwide believe the world will end during their lifetime.”’ 15 http://www.pewforum.org/2QlQ/09/28/u-s-religiQus-knQwledge-survey/ 15 Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann once observed that fee challenge facing fee church is not secularization. What bedevils the church is its failure to believe in the reality of its own sacramental hfe. But that failure of nerve extends to morc than fee church’s lack of confidence in its sacraments. The same diffidence is apparent in fee church’s attitude toward its own creeds. See: Alexander Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament ofthe Kingdom, trans., Paul Kachur (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003). 17 See: Walter Bruegemann, Theology ofthe Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 1997), 646ff. 18 For more on fee Examen or“examination of consciousness,” as well as fee concepts o f“consolation” (“What were fee moments that drew us closer to God and others in love?”) and “desolation” (“What werc fee moments that drove us away from God and others?”), see: John j. English, Spiritual Freedom: From an Experience ofthe Ignatian Exercises to the Art ofSpiritual Guidance, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1995), lllff. 19 There are countless rehearsals of “what happens to us when we die,” which focus on fee personal dimension of eschatology, many of them without ever using fee word. Some of those hail from beyond the walls of fee church (see, for example: Michael Tymn, The After Life Revealed: What Happens After W
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future that sidesteps an une^Í¥0eal commitment to a socio-political eschatology, but the weight of his eschatology centers on what we can do. Notably, M^Laren’s eschatology is deeply shaped by his reaction to the dispensationalist eschatology of his youth. 22 This category includes dispensationalist eschatologies (see below), but it also includes countless secular apocalyptic narratives, many of them rehearsed in popular literature and in him. 23 Cf. my comments earlier this year: Frederiek w. Schmidt, “Frotagonist Corner,” Journalfor Preachers 37.4 (Fentecost, 2014): 47-48. 24 Augustine does not put it ،tuite this way, but he comes close. Recounting Augustine’s reaction to millinerian interpretations in his own day, Paula Fredriksen writes: “Augustine concludes his mediation on final redemption by wrenching all temporal reference away from that amalgm of the seven world-ages and the millennial reign of the saints. The six preceding world ages are indeed historical, he says; but the Great Sabbath, the eschatological seventh day, is the saints themselves who dwellin the heavenly Jerusalem, the eternal visiopacis. ‘Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they will praise you for ever and ever( ’؟Ps. 54:5). After the present age, ،God will rest, as it were, on the seventh day; and he will cause us, who ?،٢٠the seventh day, to find our rest in him’….” See: Paula Fredriksen, “Apocalypticism ,” Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed., Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 52. 25 See: Elizabeth Lesser, The New American Spirituality (New York: Random House, 1998). 26 Karl Menninger, Whatever Became ofSin? 2nd ed. (Portland: Hawthorn Books, 1972). 27 This conclusion accords with the way in which I believe the message of John’s Apocalypse should be understood: “Will those of you who live in Asia Minor, knowing the deeper nature of reality, [movement one: 1:1-5:14] time and the future, [movement two:616:21 – ]ﻟﺖlive your lives in the City of Bablylon or toe City of God [movement toree: 17:1 – 22:21]?” Schmidt, Revelation, 45ff. 28 This challenge has been a subject of concern to me for some time now. I was heartened to find that there are others who share that concern. See N. T. Wright, Surprised by Scripture: Engaging Contemporary Issues (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014). See also a fine review of Wright’s work by Robert Barron, “Reading N. T. Wright with toe Rock,” (July 31,2014): http://www.realclearreligion.org/ articles/2014/07/31/reading nt wright with the rock.html.
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