Wednesday 3 June 2009

Richard Hays on New Testament Eschatology

Richard Hays, ‘“Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven?” New Testament Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium’, Modern Theology 16:1 (2000), 115-35.

Hays discusses what he sees as the ‘three unsatisfactory strategies’ of the Johannine option (eternal life now), the Jesus Seminar (driving a wedge between Jesus and the gospels), and N.T. Wright (apocalyptic eschatology historicised) (117-25).

He then lists seven reasons why the New Testament’s apocalyptic eschatology is essential to the Christian faith (125-31):

(1) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to carry Israel’s story forward.
(2) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for interpreting the cross as a saving event for the world.
(3) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for the gospel’s political critique of pagan culture.
(4) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to resist ecclesial complacency and triumphalism.
(5) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology in order to affirm the body.
(6) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to ground its mission.
(7) The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to speak with integrity about suffering and death.

The passage of time has not disconfirmed apocalyptic hope any more than it had for those to whom 2 Peter was addressed.

He concludes:

‘The recovery of unabashed apocalyptic theology is… a recommendation pressed upon us by the character of the New Testament witnesses themselves, who steadily and adamantly construe the significance of Jesus’ proclamation, as well as his death and resurrection, within apocalyptic categories… If, as I have contended, the canonical New Testament is strongly apocalyptic in its interpretation of the story of Jesus, then to live and think within that story will necessarily draw the church into sharing its apocalyptic frame of reference. As we are formed by the story, we will learn to discern our own place as servants charged to watch expectantly in this time between the times’ (133).

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