The End of the World

Review of Ian Paul, Kingdom, Hope and the End of the World: The ‘Now’ and ‘Not Yet’ of Eschatology, (BS 82; Cambridge: Grove Books, 2017). Pbk/pdf. £3.95 from www.grovebooks.co.uk

“The End of the World” makes a nice title for a blog post but if this evoked the future only, the heading has misled you. The full title and sub-title of this latest offering in the Grove Books Biblical Series reminds us of the striking claim made in the New Testament that the end of the world has in one sense already arrived, while in another it is still to come.

With a doctoral thesis on the book of Revelation and a research focus on New Testament, Ian Paul, managing editor of Grove Books and author of this booklet, can be expected to know his stuff and he does. Running a very popular blog and being engaged in church teaching in a variety of ways, Ian can also be expected to communicate well and he does. So, in short, this is a very well written and reliable short introduction to biblical teaching on “the last things”.  

Eschatology is a big field and it would be impossible even for someone of Ian Paul’s calibre to do justice to it in such a short booklet. Here you’ll find a reasonably detailed discussion of Jesus’ Olivet discourse (Matthew 24-25; Mark 13) but only a short comment on the “millennium” (Revelation 20) on which there is in fact a separate Grove booklet (B 5 The Meaning of the Millennium: Revelation 20 and Millennial Expectation) by Michael Gilbertson. You’ll find a short but effective discussion of “rapture” but not of “soul sleep” and related matters (in spite of a hint towards the end). Such decisions are inevitable and the ones made here about what to include and exclude seem to me good ones.

The booklet’s introduction highlights the importance of eschatology, as in a way does the final chapter. Leaving the field to those that go crazy about it is not an option, if we take the New Testament seriously. Eschatology is too important for the fabric of Christian faith for us to be able to avoid getting a handle on it without compromising our faith. A brisk walk through the Old Testament gives us the “background to the theme of God as king and the hope of his intervention in the world” before chapters 3 and 4 explore the Gospels and Paul’s theology (with a glance at Revelation on which the author already published Grove booklets B 28 How to Read the Book of Revelation and E 136 The Ethics of the Book of Revelation). The Gospels, while written later than the letters of Paul, are treated before them on the grounds that they present the teaching of Jesus which shaped the apostle. The final chapter teases out some implications for pastoral practice.

A few more comments under three headings: 

Old Testament

Ian identifies three key assumptions on which biblical eschatology is founded.

First, “the God of Israel is the rightful ruler of the world.”
Second, “humanity does not recognize his rule.”
Third, “God’s authority will not, in the end, be frustrated.”

This is a simple but effective way of showing, among other things, the link between creation and new creation and between God’s kingship over Israel and hope for the whole world. Indeed, as I tried to show in my The Rhetorical Function of the Book of Ezekiel, the concept of God’s kingship is the key for the future hope in Ezekiel.

Ian claims that the third “flows from” the first two but it seems to me in fact a distinct third claim which arguably flows from who God is as much as the first one does. It is only God’s character which makes the third a necessary development beyond the first two assumptions.

Ian rightly points to “delegated dominion” as critical for understanding biblical eschatology as well as other areas of Christian theology. Maybe a stronger link between this concept in general (humanity in the image of God) and the development by which “kingship, especially as exercised by David, becomes the vehicle through which God most clearly exercises his sovereignty” should have been made.

A number of comments on the prophetic eschatology are, maybe due to space constraints, more descriptive than analytical. Thus, e.g., Ian tells us that Jeremiah 30-33 express “profound hope for a full political, geographical and spiritual restoration of the people to new obedience and faithful worship” but does not explore where this hope comes from, logically or theologically.

Where commentary is offered, I was not always at ease with them. E.g., Ian speaks of cosmic expressions in Joel and Isaiah 24-27, moving into “apocalyptic anticipation” in the final parts of the book of Isaiah: “it will not be enough for God to intervene in the present world in order to put things right and restore his authority, for it is the world as it is which is part of the problem (Isa 49.6).” The use of “apocalyptic” for “the final parts of the book of Isaiah” (especially as distinct from Isaiah 24-27!) seems questionable to me.

Other comments do their job well. Thus Ian cleverly speaks of Ezekiel 37 as “a vision which finds full flower in the hope for resurrection from the dead for both the whole people and individuals by the time of the New Testament,” thereby hinting that originally the vision was not read in this way, while doing justice to the fact that this is where reception history took it.

New Testament

There is in the NT both a strong sense of experiencing the fulfilment of OT hopes in Christ and a firm future expectation. Ian captures this well with the phrase “surplus of hope” which he describes as “the difference between what we see already realized of the kingdom in Jesus, and what we do not yet see realized in the present age.” The discussion in chapters 3 and 4 does well to show that the NT can be heard to speak coherently about eschatology and it puts the emphasis where it also lies in the NT, on the giving of the Spirit in the end times, the language of ‘old’ and ‘second’ Adam, the distinction between this age and the age to come, the resurrection of the body, the vindication of Jesus in the destruction of Jerusalem, and the anticipation of his return to earth.

Pastoral Implications

A proper understanding of biblical eschatology 

• helps answering some sensationalist claims that every now and again hit the news, 
• guards against seeing the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 as an eschatological event, and 
• helps with relating an expectation that God can and does offer healing and alleviation of suffering in answer to prayer with the experience that he does not always do so. 

On these I would be in full agreement with Ian. Ian also points out that it guards against the belief that “social reform is the sum total of that the kingdom of God is about” and the view that technology offers human life unlimited possibilities (transhumanism). I agree with what he says here but wonder whether he short-changes us by not teasing out how a future expectation grounded in Scripture might in turn nourish a commitment to social reform.

Finally, a fuller understanding of eschatology reveals to us that there is something not quite right about statements frequently made in the context of funerals. This booklet can help begin addressing an often privatised and disembodied vision of the afterlife.

To order the booklet for £3.95 and post-free in the UK, go to the Grove website.