Risky Hope
Hopeful Eschatology Lived Faithfully
Eschatology, or the theology of last things, can be a daunting and viscous subject which carries baggage and culturally formed ideologies. But for the Wesleyan, eschatology should be a subject full of radical hope centered in the reality of the Christ event and a Christ making all things new. A Wesleyan eschatology is an eschatology of new creation ethics within an existential response to new creation hope. The essay will discuss how Wesleyan eschatology views salvation as therapeutic healing, highlighting the radical hope it offers. From that base, the hope of restoration and new creation living will be shown, including what the judgement of God entails. Finally, the Wesleyan response to new creation through living an intentional life engaging in the world through a centered understanding of what is "worthy of our finitude."[1]
The foundation of Wesleyan eschatology lies in Wesleyan perspectives on sin and salvation. The hope and direction of the eschatological movement is that faith can make us well as we place our trust fully in God.
Through that faith, we are justified and regenerated, thus tackling any tension between a legal concern raised by sin and the therapeutic concern of sin's effects. The tension can be seen in Colossians chapter two when Paul speaks of the legal demands of sin (not God) being set aside by the work of the Cross. The therapeutic is seen in the fact that while sin has legal demands, God heals this demand through a relational method (the Cross).[2] As Diana Leclerc states, "Underlying Wesley’s understanding of sin we find one of his strongest metaphors for salvation: salvation as healing. This necessarily led Wesley to an understanding of sin as 'disease.' Salvation is 'therapeutic.'"[3] The therapeutic nature of salvation which heals sin should help to explain and define the hopeful nature of Wesleyan eschatology as movement in and toward new creation.
Living in new creation reality points toward the radical hope present in Wesleyan eschatology. It is a hope which seeks restoration. Brent Peterson defines eschatology in worship as "the conversation celebrating the healing and life available to people now by the Spirit and the future hope that the kingdom of God will be fully consummated."[4] This is a consummation of healing and restoration and is a reality now and a reality yet to come. Tim Gaines explains in depth how eschatological hope is not just about wishful thinking but an enacting movement. "Wishful thinking about the future isn’t eschatology. Eschatological hope is living now as if that reality has already dawned... Like a student who didn’t wait until class was over to take a nap, the church doesn’t wait to do the work of new creation.[5] Gaines says that "[t]his is why the eschatological ethics of new creation are far more than wishful thinking—they are hopeful living. The body of Christ at work is called by God and empowered by the Spirit to be a vision and real embodiment of the future God is giving to the world."[6] Even in a reality of new creation, suffering, illness, oppression, and pain will exist. N. T. Wright points to the yet to come full restoration of hopeful eschatology in renewed bodies. "In particular, this new body will be immortal. That is, it will have passed beyond death not just in the temporal sense (that it happens to have gone through a particular moment and event) but also in the ontological sense of no longer being subject to sickness, injury, decay, and death itself."[7] Hopeful eschatology has a center in current new creation and future restoration, but that hopefulness also extends to the judgement of God.
The contemporary world often sees God's judgment as negative, but scriptures portray it as positive.[8] God judges as an evaluation seeking to judge the actions or attitudes of a people against that of what love would demand. In that context, the judgment of God becomes good news. "In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, and oppression, the thought that there might come a day when the wicked are firmly put in their place and the poor and weak are given their due is the best news there can be."[9] Wesleyans engage in enacting God's restorative justice, hopeful for a future of rescue and restoration. Alan Kreider quotes Cyprian, and the early persecuted church's hope. "On the day of reckoning, Jesus Christ, the Judge and the Avenger, will come in power to vindicate his suffering people with fire. When Christ 'revenges himself, [he] is destined to revenge us, the people of his Church and the number of all the just from the beginning of the world.' Since Christ’s day has not yet come, Cyprian urges Christians, as they anticipate the day, to live patiently."[10] While Wesleyans may embrace Kreider's idea, they also value actively pursuing justice in the present.
Working for new creation hope and the eschatological hope of the here and the yet to come, James Cone illuminates the cry of African-American Christians during the height of lynchings in the United States.
They proclaimed what they felt in song and sermon and let the truth of their proclamation bear witness to God’s redemptive presence in their resistance to oppression. Their sense of redemption through Jesus’ cross was not a propositional belief or a doctrine derived from the study of theology. Redemption was an amazing experience of salvation, an eschatological promise of freedom that gave transcendent meaning to black lives that no lynching tree could take from them.[11]
Wesleyan eschatology rejects the idea that the world is going to be destroyed and that the faithful will be taken away. Wesleyans strive to make the world better through justice, restoration, and preaching about the power of relational salvation.. Wesleyans approach the truth of a hopeful eschatology through existential actions and thoughts of faithfulness. There is a sense in which Wesleyan eschatology, rather than being an understanding of certitude, is an embracing of the faith as "risk with direction."[12] Faithfulness is centered in a love of God above all else; a love which drives the Wesleyan impulse to work with the Spirit to help intact new creation in the here and now, as well as point to an ultimate hope. Aaron Simmons captures this hopeful lifestyle in his book Camping With Kierkegaard;
To love one thing is to reject something else as the ultimate object of that love. This can easily be seen when it comes to how we spend our time. What we do reflects what we value, and ultimately what we love. Yes, there are plenty of social and institutional obstacles to our time being radically responsive to our genuine agency. Poverty, historical injustice, marginalization, etc., all serve to strip away the freedom of finitude for far too many who have not benefited from the privilege of social identities that have been historically empowered. Nonetheless, we must own up to the fact that all of us make choices, so far as functionally possible given our social location, and far too often we choose to elevate the insignificant to the level of the ultimate. Doing so necessarily means degrading the ultimate to something short of its true value.[13]
Wesleyans embrace the finitude of the present by working to make a better future for those who cannot see a hopeful future. This drives the Wesleyan impulse toward the marginalized and the outcasts of society. Reflecting Jesus in a suffering world is worthy of the Wesleyan's finitude while looking with hope to a time of completeness in a remade heaven and earth. Because of this hope, there is an optimism for a future state of improvement and restoration Wesleyans do not abandon. Tim Gaines explains this examination of life in a Wesleyan context; a life examined. "A Christian ethics in the Wesleyan tradition opens the possibility that we don’t need to leave our work, our training, or even ourselves. It does inquire as to whether those things are aligned toward the new creation God is bringing. It helps us find where our work may not be entirely attuned to new creation and calls upon us to make adjustments. In calling those fishermen to follow, Jesus didn’t tell them to stop being Galilean fishermen."[14] We examine who we are while examining if that is worthy of who we can be in an eschatological hope. By adopting this approach, we can easily let go of fatalism, dualism, and other negative beliefs, and focus on hopeful restoration now and in the future.
The Wesleyan approach to eschatology is one that is centered within the soteriological truth of healing from sin. Because that healing is both personal and communal, Wesleyans look to a restoration in the present. That restoration is of the person and of society, even in the face of suffering and oppression. Wesleyans view God's judgment as a way to evaluate and address destructive systems and sin, making it a welcome and joyful occurrence. The judgment of God frees Wesleyans to examine the things in life and whether they are worthy of the present finitude. Engaging in the life lived in eschatological hope, Wesleyans work with the Spirit to create a more just world of hope.
Works Cited
Brandon Brown. Substack. Parson Brown (blog), September 11, 2023. https://open.substack.com/pub/parsonbrown/p/this-is-the-way.
Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Reprint edition. ORBIS, 2011.
Gaines, Timothy R. Christian Ethics. The Wesleyan Theology Series. Kansas City, MO: The Foundry Publishing, 2021.
J. Aaron Simmons. Camping with Kierkegaard: Faithfulness as a Way of Life. Wisdom/Work, 2023.
Kreider, Alan. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016.
Leclerc, Diane. Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology. Kansas City, Mo: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2010.
Peterson, Brent. Created to Worship: God’s Invitation to Become Fully Human. Beacon Hill Press, 2012.
Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. 1st ed. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
[1] J. Aaron Simmons, Camping with Kierkegaard: Faithfulness as a Way of Life (Wisdom/Work, 2023).
[2] Brandon Brown, Substack, Parson Brown (blog), September 11, 2023, https://open.substack.com/pub/parsonbrown/p/this-is-the-way.
[3] Diane Leclerc, Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology (Kansas City, Mo: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2010), loc. 3266.
[4] Brent Peterson, Created to Worship: God’s Invitation to Become Fully Human (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 17.
[5] Timothy R. Gaines, Christian Ethics, The Wesleyan Theology Series (Kansas City, MO: The Foundry Publishing, 2021), loc. 1709.
[6] Gaines, loc. 1839.
[7] N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Reprint edition (HarperOne, 2009), 159.
[8] Wright, 137.
[9] Wright, 137.
[10] Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016), 29.
[11] James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Reprint edition (ORBIS, 2011), 114.
[12] J. Aaron Simmons, Camping With Kierkegaard, 24.
[13] J. Aaron Simmons, 93.
[14] Gaines, Christian Ethics, 242.