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DOCTRINE 3: ESCHATOLOGY
HOEKEMA SUMMARY
From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology.
1. The Holy Spirit, it is said, will prepare the way for the inbreaking of the
final eschatological age by certain prophetic signs (Joel 2).
2. The Spirit is said to be the One who will rest upon the coming redeemer
and equip him with the necessary gifts.
3. The Spirit appears as the source of the future new life of Israel,
including both material blessings and ethical renewal.
4. The Spirit is an eschatological downpayment, as sons and therefore
heirs.
5. He brings transforms us progressively into Christ's likeness.
In the possession of the Spirit we who are in Christ have a foretaste of the
blessings of the age to come, and a pledge and guarantee of the
resurrection of the body. Yet we have only the firstfruits. We look forward
to the final consummation of the kingdom of God, when we shall enjoy
these blessings to the full.
1. The signs of the times occur throughout the end times between Christ's
coming.
2. The church lives in tension between the two and is therefore imperfect.
3. This tension should be an incentive for responsible Christian living.
4. Our self-image should reflect this tension. We are imperfect new
people.
5. This tension helps us to understand the role of suffering in the lives of
believers. We still live in a fallen world. God will remove suffering, in
the mean time he uses it.
6. Our attitude toward culture is related to this tension: continuity and
discontinuity.
HELL
1. The presence of God in holy love, not absence (1 Thess 1:7-10)
2. Cannot expect annihilation (as Stott) because not supported by Bible.
UNIVERSALISM?
1. Palingenesia means regeneration. Only believers will be made new
creations.
2. Apokatastasis menas restoration. The universe will be restored.
3. Anakephalaiosis means recapitulation. Everything is place under Christ's
headship.
4. It is revealed progressively.
THE PAROUSIA
- The last appearance of Christ will be visible, bodily, unexpected and
climactic.
- It will bring resurrection of the dead, end of the old age.
- It gives hope for Christians in the present.
RESURRECTION
- Develops in the OT as an Eschatological hope/promise (Dan 12, Psalm 16,
Eze 37).
- Is the grounds of our eschatological hope (1 Cor 15), the firstfruits of our
salvation.
- Gives bodily content to our hope.
- In some sense we have already been raised with Christ (Eph 2:6, Col 3:1,
Romans 6).
- Christian ethics consists in exhortations to live in accordance with the new
shape of reality.
ESCHATOLOGY
RELIGIOUS NEOPLATONISM
3 Metaphysical structures borrowed from Neoplatanism (which lead to his
understanding of grace):
1. Cosmology
- ‘Only the intelligible really is’.
- Fiercely monistic (the One or the Good). Multiplicity less than
perfect.
- Metaphysically hierarchical – reality extends from (in increasing
complexity) and returns to the One (by means of conversion
through desire and knowledge).
2. Epistemology
- Distinction between temporal world of images and eternal world of
forms.
- Faith, like reason and knowledge, only operates on earthly realities
and so is the way we apprehend Jesus in his earthly ministry.
- Because Jesus is revealed to us in his earthly ministry, he drops out
of view as we pass to the heavenly, direct vision of God...(although
1
How does this square with Satan and the demons becoming corrupt in eternity?
2
This does not account for the fact that the ‘inner man’ is still sinful on earth. It's not just
a war being waged between inner and outer man but between sinful nature and new
creation. These both form part of the inner man….
Augustine does say that Jesus unites the heavenly and the
temporal, therefore we access the heavenly through the
incarnation).
3. Doctrine of God (Theology)
- Incorporeal and unknowable God. “God is known better in not being
known”.
JUSTIFICATION
o ‘God makes a person righteous’. Our loving obedience of God’s law is an
expression of God’s righteousness in us and an integral part of
justification.3 A collapsing of justification and sanctification.
Eschatological salvation is the transfer from change and corruption of time to the
immutability and perfection of eternity.
MEDIEVAL ESCHATOLOGY
Skipped.
PREACHING JUDGMENT
3
It seems that Augustine is getting justification and sanctification confused or collapsing
them into one thing.
CHAPTER 7: CALVIN
Three keys to Calvin:
1. Biblical theology. He added to the advances of the middle ages and the
reformation with the tools of humanism, moving from a four-fold approach
(literal, allegorical, typological, analogical) to a literal-prophetic model
fulfilled in Christ.
2. Trinitarian focus. He understood Christ as the ground of theology and
therefore of eschatology, and the Spirit as the one who applies Christ's
benefits to us via union with him. It is reflected in the structure of the
institutes.
a. Book 1 - father / creator
b. Book 2 - son / redeemer
c. Book 3 - Spirit / unifier
d. Book 4 - Church
3. Integration and application to society and the believer
- For many of the passages which speak of Christ there are other passages
which say the same thing of the Spirit: for example: wisdom, justification and
reconciliation. The spirit functions christologically and eschatalogically in the
same way that Jesus does.
ESCHATOLOGY APPLIED
Calvin is historical and optimistic about the progress of the kingdom of God. It is
advancing. Secular history runs parallel to the growth of the kingdom of God,
who uses secular empires to do his bidding. Secular history is therefore to be
read theologically. God is restoring order via the gospel. However, he
acknowledges that this progress is hidden behind suffering. It is a modified
version of Luther’s brinkmanship: brinkmanship with progress. How does
eschatology touch history? Two ways: election and church history.
ELECTION
Is the personal and beneficial beginning of God’s final purposes, not fuel for
speculation.
1. Christ is the ‘elect one’, the chosen. He is the mirror of election.
2. Is to faith, which is itself the bridge between predestination and glory. Acts
13:48. For Calvin, election explains the miracle of anyone coming to
believe. They are elected to believe in Jesus.
3. Is greater than the individual. The goal of election is the restorative
reordering of the universe.
CHURCH HISTORY
Eschatological restoration is tied to the course of the church by the nature of
God’s rule – he rules by his Spirit and his Word. The complete rule of all becomes
a metaphor for the church. The world is embraced by the eternal condition of the
church. The history of the church re-enacts the death and resurrection of Christ.
She dies and is resurrected over and over again. Therefore the church must
be reforming and reformable.
SUPRA-HISTORY
Christ rules from heaven. The ascension is important to Calvin for these reasons:
1) It keeps their hopes in suspense and therefore alive in the face of
adversity.
2) It means Christ’s personal, spiritual presence with all believers to the end
of the world.
3) It means Christ’s heavenly session on our behalf so that we
a. Already possess heaven
b. Are reconciled to the father and have access to him
c. Are the beneficiaries of Christ’s victorious rule
humility, but it will be one of resurrected glory. The kingdom and its fruits are
present but they are hidden behind the veil of our suffering.
EVALUATION OF CALVIN
1. He heals the divide between word and spirit. He rejects the scholastic interest
in God ‘as he is in himself’ in favour of God ‘as he is toward us’.
2. The nature of the kingdom of God in Christ means we can expect personal
progress in the Christian life.
3. The spirit is the bridge between the two ages.
4. The dialectic between the two ages is critical to a proper understanding of
eschatology. Our experience of the kingdom of God is tied to the two
conditions of Christ’s humanity – one of suffering the other of glory.
5. Against Catholic mysticism, life is indeed heavenly now because we are
united to Christ at the right hand of God. However, it leaves us open to
thinking that the kingdom may be advanced by secular government.
MILLENNIALISM