Re: Assurance of faith

drsyme@cablespeed.com wrote:
>
> Of course eschatology is "completely off limits" if you
> erroneously understand biblical eschatology as something
> that is still in the future.
>
> That is why many find biblical eschatology so hard to
> understand, because they have been taught their entire
> lives that these events are future. When you understand
> that the end time events spoken of by Jesus ocurred in
> 70AD, then everything makes perfect sense.

Jack,

you are right, biblical eschatology is not only future, but has many
aspects pertaining to the present. My short note about it was, in this
sense, very incomplete. In the widest sense, eschatology deals with the
"end time" in the sense of realization of the kingdom of God. This is a
breaking-in of God's invisible world into our visible world. In some
respects, this was already happening again and again in Old Testament
times, but much more in Jesus incarnation, proclamation of the gospel,
and death and resurrection. This coming of the kingdom of God is now
happening in the lives of Christians and the Church in many contexts.
This is what I called "practical eschatology". But much of the coming of
the kingdom of God remains to be realized at and after Christ's second
coming, and it is this future part of it which my short remark about
"theoretical eschatology" being off limits to science was meant to deal
with.

All of this coming of the kingdom of God is off limits to science (_not_
to scientists as human persons), in that science cannot deal with
supernatural, spiritual realities.

Samanta's remark about the "creation end of the story" versus the
"eschatological end", in connection with the list's discussions about
the relationship between theological and scientific interpretations of
creation, led me to believe that she somehow tried to hook up her
personal assurance of salvation with learning about what would happen in
the future, and perhaps whether science could say anything about _that_,
rather than just about creation.

See also my response to Graham E. Morbey.

Peter

> On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 06:50:35 +0100
> Peter Ruest <pruest@mail-ms.sunrise.ch> wrote:
> >
> >Samantha, you wrote: "...I'm afraid I still feel that the
> >materials here
> >focus on the creation end of the story and not the
> >eschatological end..."
> >
> >>From what you wrote before, I got the impression that
> >>assurance of faith was
> >your problem, not (theoretical) eschatology. Eschatology
> >has two aspects, a
> >practical and a theoretical one. The practical one
> >revolves around the
> >assurance of faith and the joy of our "blessed hope" for
> >our future after
> >Christ's return, based on the few clear promises
> >Scripture gives us for our
> >practical life of faith today.
> >
> >Theoretical eschatology, on the other hand, deals with
> >the question of what
> >we can know about what will happen, in what sequence,
> >etc. As biblical
> >evidence for these topics is notoriously difficult to
> >interpret, theologians
> >have come up with various different, often incompatible
> >views about this.
> >And various sects or groups have settled on particular
> >speculations, which
> >we better ignore. Jesus said (Matthew 25:13) "Therefore
> >keep watch, because
> >you do not know the day or the hour."
> >
> >As far as science is concerned, we can know and learn
> >lots of things about
> >the past, but only tentative extrapolations about the
> >future. And
> >eschatology, (teaching about the last things) is
> >completely off-limits.
> >Therefore it's quite natural that the ASA list focuses,
> >among other topics,
> >on creation, but hardly, if at all, on eschatology.
> >
> >Peter

-- 
Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland
<pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution
"..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)