by Neil Richardson.
The Old Testament contrasts very sharply the ‘living’ God and lifeless gods – those forces and powers which make us less than human. Biblical writers identify Idolatry as our fundamental, besetting sin, (e.g. Psalm 115.4-8, Wisdom 13.1-9, Romans 1.18-32). Our hope lies in the real, the living God, engaging continuously with us and making time a school of love, so that each present moment is potentially a channel of grace.
But the flow of time brings with it a challenge. From its origins onwards Christian faith has wrestled with the tension between continuity and change. ‘Christianity is always turning itself into something which can be believed’, (T.S. Eliot). Put less provocatively, Christian orthodoxy has to be re-discovered in every generation, (Rowan Williams). Both a fossilized, unchanging faith and untested or unexamined change are likely to lead us into sectarianism and heresy.
In this crisis-ridden time two articles of faith should especially concern us. I refer to what we have called ‘original sin’ and ‘the second coming’.
The phrase ‘original sin’ is problematic if it implies the historical reality of Adam and Eve. But belief in the universal sinfulness of humankind remains an essential part of Christian faith, wilfully blind and incurably optimistic as we tend to be.
I find two themes of St Paul helpful – one challenging, the other encouraging. In Romans 7.7-25 Paul speaks of the sinful ‘I’. That has led us, naturally, to focus on the individual’s sin. But ‘the good which I want to do I fail to do…’ describes not just the individual, but every nation, and even the international community. Think of the woolly, often vague resolutions there have been about increasing overseas aid or reducing stockpiles of nuclear weapons, and, most recently, carbon emissions. Paul’s words now begin to sound more like an epitaph on the entire human race unless -by God’s grace- we repent of our idolatries.
Clearly, we are not where our Creator meant us to be – or where God intends to leave us. As Paul says, ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’, (Romans 3.23).Psalm 8: sheds light on what that means: our Creator made us ‘a little lower than God’, i.e. in God’s image (Genesis 1. 26-7).
But the story of our ‘original sin’ and our divine ‘image’ doesn’t end there. Jesus is the one who reveals the glory of a human being made in God’s image. Christ crucified and risen reveals most fully the divine glory and beauty intended for us all. That beauty, as Dostoevsky says, ‘will save the world’.
There is challenge and good news, too, in a fresh, orthodox understanding of the Second Coming, (not a scriptural phrase). As with the Ascension of Jesus, a literal understanding has to be left behind. For example, a returning Jesus will hardly ‘touch down’ in Jerusalem. (I believe Christian Zionism has this year been identified as a heresy). That contradicts what Paul says about Jerusalem ‘now’ and Jerusalem ‘above’, (Galatians 4. 25-6). It also contradicts what Revelation implies. The holy city’s descent from heaven describes what began to happen with the coming of Jesus,(Revelation 21.1-6; compare John 1.14). The aorist in Revelation 21.6 could not be more emphatic: ‘It is done!’
This is the good news: there is a new creation, (the Kingdom) inaugurated with the coming of Jesus. It is unbiblical and immoral to believe that God will ‘intervene’ and rescue us from nuclear war or a climate disaster. Instead, we face God’s ‘formidable non-intervention’.[1] The Old Testament refers to God ‘hiding his face’ (Isaiah 64.7), the very opposite of the life-giving promise of the Aaronic blessing, (Numbers 6.24-6).
This is the eschatological – i.e. ultimate- tension: God will not save the world without us – and God will not give up either, because God is wholly unchanging love. Paul is surely describing the ‘second coming’ in this verse from Romans: ‘the created universe is waiting with eager expectation for God’s sons (sc. ‘and daughters’) to be revealed’, (Romans 8.19).
In the meantime, we have our idolatry to fight. An over-powering capitalist way of life has taken us all captive. The more affluent we become, the greater seem to be our economic problems, and we ourselves less happy, and more anxious. Which brings us to the world’s poorest people, –increasing in number, their poverty deepening. In the parable of the Sheep and the Goats neither ‘the righteous’ nor ‘the unrighteous’ seem to know that, in encountering the poor, they are encountering the Son of Man – surely, the everywhere-ness of the coming God?
[1] The phrase of the great Methodist historian, Herbert Butterfield. See also my recent book Waking Up to God (Sacristy Press 2022)
Theology Everywhere 
Yes, that expresses the kind of understanding of Original Sin and the Second Coming that I would agree with. Thanks for putting it together! – Geoff.C.
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In ancient Greek and Roman plays, the denouement was often achieved through a god being lowered on to the stage (the deus ex machina), who would punish the villains of the piece, reward the good characters, and enable the hero and heroine to live happily ever after. The second coming of Jesus is very often presented in a similar vein. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” We are told that ‘true’ Christians will then live forever in a perfect world from which non-Christians will have been removed. Some preachers are prepared to give us fine detail of this, suggesting that everyone will have a healthy body, all at the prime of life; there will be no pain or death or disputes; no one ever sad or in need; sin and sinful thoughts will be banished.
But would this make a perfect world? Once all danger, effort, and suffering are removed, there’s no scope for the best human qualities.![]()
Without danger there’s no courage; without shortages, no generosity; without struggle, no achievement; without hurt, no compassion; without uncertainty, no hope or faith; without sacrifice, no love. If there were no death none of us, and none of those whom we have known and loved, would ever have been born because the world would have been full up long ago. Without the deep inter-personal feelings that can lead to grief and heartache, we would never be able to enjoy the wonderful intimate love of the special people with whom we’ve shared so many moments of joy, fun and quiet togetherness. Without the freedom to act wrongly, there’s no virtue. If everything was perfect, there would be no room for development and progress, for vision, or for challenge. This may be an imperfect world, but our responses to these very imperfections have given rise to all the creativity, love and self-sacrifice and the glorious diversity that God has developed in humanity.
When people hark back to the garden of Eden and what the ‘fall’ brought into the world, they tend to forget that God reset the world with the great flood. But he didn’t start again with a ‘perfect’ world. Gen 7: 13-16reads – “That’s the day Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, accompanied by his wife and his sons’ wives, boarded the ship. And with them every kind of wild and domestic animal, clean and unclean animals; all the kinds of creatures that crawl and all kinds of birds and anything that flies. Male and female of every creature came – just as God had commanded Noah. Then God shut the door.”
So Noah was locked in by God with the wild and tame, the clean and unclean, crawlers and fliers, male and female. He not only had the cows and the sheep but also the lions and tigers and poisonous snakes and spiders. Those who make good travelling companions with and those difficult to live with. This world is a very diverse place with a wide range of very different people, each with their own unique personalities, diverse skills and training, and a vast range of life experiences. That’s the world we are given. It’s in this world of contrast and differences and difficulties that we grow spiritually, and we develop relationships.
We have to learn to get on with people who have a different culture from us, who think differently, we have to learn to respect them; we need to appreciate how much we can gain from them in broadening our understanding and our outlook.
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