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November 8, 2006

This article appears in the Eschatology issue of Trinity News , the magazine of Trinity Church-St. Paul's Chapel.

By Robert Owens Scott and W. Mark Richardson

Jürgen Moltmann has seen the end of the world.

Not in a vision or a dream, but in reality, and all around him. Conscripted with his entire high school class into the German army in 1943, he trembled as bombs from more than a thousand Allied warplanes descended on the city of Hamburg. “A friend who stood next to me was torn into pieces,” he recounted last summer in an interview in the German city of Tübingen, at whose ancient university he taught for many years and where he is now emeritus professor of theology. “I stood up as a miracle to many, nearly unwounded, only a few scratches on the shoulder and on the head.”

He began his theological study as a prisoner-of-war in an education camp in Sherwood Forest where “imprisoned professors of theology taught imprisoned students of theology.” Yet despite the firestorm and captivity, what Moltmann remembers most is that “the beginning was pure grace. I am sure and certain that [Christ] found me when I was lost.”

This overwhelming experience of grace, which has dominated his theological thinking from the start, may explain his message for the Church and the world today: “The Last Judgment is not a terror. We should look forward to [it] with joy.”

In a time when global terrorism, natural disasters, plagues, and wars fuel apocalyptic anxieties, terror seems a more natural response than joy. Certainly it’s more pervasive. Some strains of Christianity — the ones that get the most attention from the media — embrace the terror, speaking of a coming apocalypse in which the good will be lifted up (“raptured”) out of tribulation while the others endure hell on earth before being consigned forever to hell itself, as creation itself is consumed.

The other Christian story, the one that focuses on the joy, the resurrection, and the renewal of all things…well, despite its ancient roots, that one isn’t mentioned as much. As a result, many people believe that the story of a violent God who wreaks bloody vengeance on sinners is the mainstream and historical Christian belief.

In the apocalyptic worldview, good and evil become absolutes. Choosing sides becomes paramount, while working toward reconciliation is seen as weak and even evil. Care of creation is a waste of time. For Moltmann, “Apocalyptic expectation of a catastrophe at the end is the most dangerous thing on earth, because it destroys what should be preserved in the name of God here and now.”

The nature of that catastrophe is spelled out in what is often called “rapture theology,” the end-of-the-world narrative told by televangelists, fundamentalist preachers, and books such as the Left Behind series. (It’s also known as “dispensationalism” and various permutations of “millennialism.”) Bible scholar Barbara R. Rossing of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago has made a study of it.

“It was invented by an evangelical preacher named John Nelson Darby in the 1830s,” Rossing explained. Darby, she says, took the traditional teaching about Jesus’ Second Coming and split it in two. In the first coming Jesus will draw the faithful up to him, where they will watch the coming catas- Joy to (the end of) the world trophe safely from heaven. At Jesus’ final return seven years later, evildoers and the earth itself will be violently destroyed.

Rossing’s assessment of Darby’s theology is blunt: “He made it up. It’s not in the Bible.” She feels that the wildly popular Left Behind novels, which she is often asked about, are essentially “delivery devices for rapture theology.” She tells people that the books are a fun read for those with a stomach for violence — but that it’s important to realize they are fiction in both plot and theology.

She acknowledges that rapture theology sounds biblical, since proponents stitch together verses to support their view. “Certainly Revelation is bloody and that is what the Left Behind novels like to pick up on,” she says. “But if you read carefully, the blood of the lamb in Revelation is not the blood of people who Jesus is killing. It’s his own blood. Jesus is depicted as the lamb who has been slain, a nonviolent lamb who conquers not by killing people but by giving his life and his own blood.”

She also points to the biblical understanding of prophecy: “When John calls [Revelation] prophecy, he is situating it in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets: Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, whose job was to preach God’s word, a word of justice and a word of salvation and comfort.” Moltmann agrees, explaining that the consistent message of prophecy is, “‘God is coming, change your heart!’”

For Moltmann, “The Christian hope is not to come into heaven but the resurrection of the flesh and the life of the world to come…where heaven and earth merge.” The Jesus of rapture theology is a warrior, returning to slay his enemies. Moltmann expects to be judged by “the same Jesus as the Jesus we know from history,” who did not condemn the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) and was willing to give his life for us on the cross.

And there is the crux: Moltmann, who saw a new world born out of the death of the old through “pure grace,” expects nothing less for all of creation. “Christ is the Son of Man and he came to seek what is lost,” he says. “Dare we to say that He was not very successful in seeking the lost? At least He found me. So why should I exclude others?”

For Moltmann, the Final Judgment is a joy, not a terror, because “God’s righteousness is not a statement — ‘this is good and this is bad’ — but is always a creative righteousness. He brings justice to those who suffer violence. He brings justice to the widows and the orphans. And He will bring justification to the sinners by transforming sinners into righteous people.”

Moltmann knows that the issue he’s addressing — damnation for some versus the redemption of all — dates back to the early Church fathers. Origen’s question, “Will God’s love overwhelm even the devil, leaving hell empty?” reverberates from the third century and into the future. The contemporary version may be, “What about Hitler?”

“Hitler would be happy if there would be no final judgment and if he would remain in hell where he is already,” says Moltmann. “The most terrible thing, I believe, which could happen to Hitler, if I use my imagination, is to be transformed into a loving person because he was a hateful person all his life.”

For those who struggle with the concept, Moltmann offers a way to enter into the mind of God through the human heart. “As a pastor, if a family would ask to bury an unbelieving son, would you say, ‘Unfortunately, he must go to hell now?’ I think not.”

Moltmann is anything but doctrinaire. “I myself, I’m not a universalist, because I have a few people I don’t want to see again,” he admits. “But God may be, because He created them. Of course He will not give up one of His own creatures, even the most perverted one. He will not give up them but transform them.”

The challenge to the Church is whether we have the heart, will, and creativity to tell a joyful story of resurrection and restoration that is even more gripping and immediate than the violent tale of rapture theology. To counteract the rhetoric of holy wars, can we find in our understanding of God’s redemptive purpose a language that is equally compelling toward joining in the holy work of reconciliation? Moltmann, Rossing, and others in the field are striving toward that hope. Whether we join them is up to us.

Robert Owens Scott is the director of Trinity Institute. W. Mark Richardson is professor of systematic theology at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church and senior theological fellow of Trinity Institute.

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