Last Judgement

Image and Reality

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A number of the issues we have discussed can be considered in parallel. There are significant differences between them, but we have given three situations where there was one understanding, at least in the early Church and sometimes later, and after time there was a different understanding. The three issues are the genre of Genesis, the time of the end of the world, and the number of the saved.

The cases differ significantly. In regard to Genesis, it is fairly certain that it was interpreted mainly literally throughout most of Christian history, but there were also some exceptions, at least for some passages. There are literary reasons for supposing that it should not be interpreted in this way, and I presented some of them in the linked post, but in practice the change in understanding came about because the facts were inconsistent with supposing that it was a literal historical account. Fr. Harrison objects exactly for this reason: according to him, it is completely unreasonable to change your understanding of the text to conform to the facts. Nor is the change universal; many ordinary Christians and Catholics would still understand the text in a historically literal way. But this is surely not the current understanding of the Magisterium, nor is it objectively reasonable.

In regard to the time of the end, it is likely that the understanding that it would be soon was nearly universal in the early Church, but this cannot be demonstrated with certainty, since this understanding had to change very quickly in order to remain in conformity with experience. The changed understanding itself would thus be universal, although some take this farther than others; thus James Chastek in the linked post argued that the Second Coming is something that happens after human history has already been concluded, but not everyone would say this.

In regard to the number of the saved, the issue was surely much less important. Christ himself at least on one occasion seems to have refused to answer the question: one should not be concerned about how many are saved, but to strive for salvation. And the idea that most people are lost was surely not universal. Origen for example argued that all will be saved. And likewise, I have given only the example of Pope Benedict XVI currently arguing that most people are saved, while it is not clear how common this opinion is. Nonetheless, I have included this because of significant similarities. The Catholic doctrine of the Last Judgement implies that there is a deep truth behind the human tendency to divide people into good people and bad people. According to the doctrine, people will in fact be divided in this way, and the division will last for all eternity. But the human tendency is a bit different. As I suggested in the linked post, people frequently tend to make such a division on the basis of religion and politics and similar matters. Democrats might say that Republicans are heartless evil people; Christians might say that atheists are sinful and immoral people who have rebelled against God. Such a division is sometimes even taken so far that it is incorporated into a person’s idea of religious doctrine: thus for example some people hold a rigid understanding of the idea that there is no salvation outside the Church, and some Muslims say that all non-Muslims go to hell.

In this sense, the natural human tendency is surely deeply flawed. Just because people do not agree with you, or just because they do not belong to your communities, does not mean that they are evil people. If anything, it is obvious that most people are not deeply evil. On the one hand, this provides ammunition for people who would engage in Bulverism against the Christian doctrine; they can say that the doctrine may simply be a result of this flawed tendency. On the other hand, it provides an argument in favor of Pope Benedict XVI’s position, and in fact it is more or less the argument that he makes. This is why I have included it: Christ said certain things, which understood in a fairly simple way seem to imply certain things about the time of the end and the number of the saved. Likewise, Genesis says things which similarly can be taken to imply certain facts about the history of the world. Over time, everyone realized that what seemed implied about the time of the end, simply could not be the case. Many people realized that what seemed implied about the history of the world could not be the case, and at least some people realized that what seemed implied about the number of the saved is unlikely to be the case.

These surely differ in their doctrinal weight. The number of the saved is probably unimportant in a doctrinal sense, even if it might be important to us personally. The other two seem somewhat more important, but it not difficult to argue that such changes do not involve the substance of any doctrine. As I have said previously, one would not describe a contradiction as such as a development. So “the world will not end soon” cannot be a development of “the world will end soon,” but it would not be unreasonable to say that Christians went from one to the other through an improved understanding of the meaning and history of the Church, even if it was one that was forced upon them by the facts. In this sense, it is not unreasonable to understand all of these things in conformity with Newman’s idea of development of doctrine.

But something seems missing here. All of the facts may be consistent with Newman’s idea, but that does not mean that they are not consistent with anything else. And if anything, they seem more suggestive of the hypothesis that Newman rejects, that “Christianity has ever changed from the first and ever accommodates itself to the circumstances of times and seasons,” and which seems to imply that Christianity is not supernatural. To a non-Christian, these facts look like the early Christians were just ignorant, and their ignorance was overcome through the normal progress in the knowledge of truth. And to the extent that they received their religion from Christ, and even to some extent apparently these specific ideas, it looks like Christ was ignorant as well.

Pope Benedict XVI discusses a similar situation in his homilies on Genesis, published as the book In the Beginning:

These words, with which Holy Scripture begins, always have the effect on me of the solemn tolling of a great old bell, which stirs the heart from afar with its beauty and dignity and gives it an inkling of the mystery of eternity. For many of us, moreover, these words recall the memory of our first encounter with Gods holy book, the Bible, which was opened for us at this spot. It at once brought us out of our small child’s world, captivated us with its poetry, and gave us a feeling for the immeasurability of creation and its Creator.

Yet these words give rise to a certain conflict. They are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true? Everything seems to speak against it, for science has long since disposed of the concepts that we have just now heard of – the idea of a world that is completely comprehensible in terms of space and time, and the idea that creation was built up piece by piece over the course of seven days. Instead of this we now face measurements that transcend all comprehension. Today we hear of the Big Bang, which happened billions of years ago and with which the universe began its expansion – an expansion that continues to occur without interruption. And it was not in neat succession that the stars were hung and the green of the fields created; it was rather in complex ways and over vast periods of time that the earth and the universe were constructed as we now know them.

Do these words, then, count for anything? In fact a theologian said not long ago that creation has become an unreal concept. If one is to be intellectually honest one ought to speak no longer of creation but rather of mutation and selection. Are these words true? Or have they perhaps, along with the entire Word of God and the whole biblical tradition, come out of the reveries of the infant age of human history, for which we occasionally experience homesickness but to which we can nevertheless not return, inasmuch as we cannot live on nostalgia? Is there an answer to this that we can claim for ourselves in this day and age?

He is discussing the specific issue of the truth of Genesis, and thus his response is tailored to this:

One answer was already worked out some time ago, as the scientific view of the world was gradually crystallizing; many of you probably came across it in your religious instruction. It says that the Bible is not a natural science textbook, nor does it intend to be such. It is a religious book, and consequently one cannot obtain information about the natural sciences from it. One cannot get from it a scientific explanation of how the world arose; one can only glean religious experience from it. Anything else is an image and a way of describing things whose aim is to make profound realities graspable to human beings. One must distinguish between the form of portrayal and the content that is portrayed. The form would have been chosen from what was understandable at the time – from the images which surrounded the people who lived then, which they used in speaking and thinking, and thanks to which they were able to understand the greater realities. And only the reality that shines through these images would be what was intended and what was truly enduring. Thus Scripture would not wish to inform us about how the different species of plant life gradually appeared or how the sun and the moon and the stars were established. Its purpose ultimately would be to say one thing: God created the world. The world is not, as people used to think then, a chaos of mutually opposed forces; nor is it the dwelling of demonic powers from which human beings must protect themselves. The sun and the moon are not deities that rule over them, and the sky that stretches over their heads is not full of mysterious and adversary divinities. Rather, all of this comes from one power, from God’s eternal Reason, which became – in the Word – the power of creation. All of this comes from the same Word of God that we meet in the act of faith. Thus, insofar as human beings realized that the world came from the Word, they ceased to care about the gods and demons. In addition, the world was freed so that reason might lift itself up to God and so that human beings might approach this God fearlessly. In this Word they experienced the true enlightenment that does away with the gods and the mysterious powers and that reveals to them that there is only one power everywhere and that we are in his hands. This is the living God, and this same power (which created the earth and the stars and which bears the whole universe) is the very one whom we meet in the Word of Holy Scripture. In this Word we come into contact with the real primordial force of the world and with the power that is above all powers.

After this description of a response to the problem, he says that there is still a problem:

I believe that this view is correct, but it is not enough. For when we are told that we have to distinguish between the images themselves and what those images mean, then we can ask in turn: Why wasn’t that said earlier? Evidently it must have been taught differently at one time or else Galileo would never have been put on trial. And so the suspicion grows that ultimately perhaps this way of viewing things is only a trick of the church and of theologians who have run out of solutions but do not want to admit it, and now they are looking for something to hide behind. And on the whole the impression is given that the history of Christianity in the last four hundred years has been a constant rearguard action as the assertions of the faith and of theology have been dismantled piece by piece. People have, it is true, always found tricks as a way of getting out of difficulties. But there is an almost ineluctable fear that we will gradually end up in emptiness and that the time will come when there will be nothing left to defend and hide behind, that the whole landscape of Scripture and of the faith will be overrun by a kind of “reason” that will no longer be able to take any of this seriously.

Along with this there is another disquieting consideration. For one can ask: If theologians or even the church can shift the boundaries here between image and intention, between what lies buried in the past and what is of enduring value, why can they not do so elsewhere – as, for instance, with respect to Jesus’ miracles? And if there, why not also with respect to what is absolutely central – the cross and the resurrection of the Lord? This would be an operation whose aim would be, supposedly, to defend the faith, inasmuch as it would say: Behind what is there, which we can no longer defend, there is something more real. Such an operation often ends up by putting the faith itself in doubt, by raising the question of the honesty of those who are interpreting it and of whether anything at all there is enduring. As far as theological views of this sort are concerned, finally, quite a number of people have the abiding impression that the church’s faith is like a jellyfish: no one can get a grip on it and it has no firm center. It is on the many halfhearted interpretations of the biblical Word that can be found everywhere that a sickly Christianity takes its stand – a Christianity that is no longer true to itself and that consequently cannot radiate encouragement and enthusiasm. It gives, instead, the impression of being an organization that keeps on talking although it has nothing else to say, because twisted words are not convincing and are only concerned to hide their emptiness.

This concern is much like that of Ross Douthat in his comments regarding communion for divorced and remarried couples.

I will give Ratzinger’s response to these issues, and offer some comments on it, in the next post, or possibly later.

The Time is Short

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Jesus says some things indicating that the time of the judgement was unknown, as for example, “But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” And if it is completely unknown, then it would be reasonable to say that it could not be known whether it is long or short. But he also says things, such as those already mentioned, that suggest a short time. In fact, this was true from the beginning of his ministry. Mark describes this:

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Since Daniel 7 says that “his dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed,” it was natural for people to understand from Christ’s preaching that the end of the world was at hand in a literal sense. This does not mean that there cannot be a reasonable understanding of this for Christians living in the present day. But there can be no reasonable doubt that the early Christians in fact held such a belief about the nearness of the end, and that they held this belief on account of this kind of preaching. 

Thus for example when St. John says, “Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour,” his words may be explained in a general sense. But it does not make sense for him to actually say this in this particular way, unless he believes that a very short time remains until the end of the world. In other words, we knew that antichrists would come and then the world would end; and now the antichrists have come; so the world must be about to end.

The second letter of Peter, however, warns against assuming that the end must come quickly:

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed.

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.

Daniel Wallace says, “From one perspective, this short epistle is the most disputed book in the NT canon as to authenticity. From another, the issue of authorship is already settled, at least negatively: the apostle Peter did not write this letter.” By “most disputed book,” he means that the most doubt is put on the question of whether it is actually written by the author to whom it is attributed. He believes himself that St. Peter wrote it, but says that the majority of scholars have already concluded that he did not. Although they have various reasons for their opinion, one of the reasons is the idea that it was written after it was already clear that Christ was not returning soon.

Regardless of how the question of authorship is resolved, this argument is probably unnecessary. Even if the letter was written by St. Peter himself in the 60s, it would have already been 30 years since the time of Christ, and it would already be becoming clear that there was a need to correct people’s idea of the end of the world. The Gospels themselves do something similar. For example, immediately after, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom,” Matthew continues, “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves,” and goes on to give the account of the Transfiguration. By this means he at least suggests, although without saying so explicitly, that the words of Christ were fulfilled in the vision of the apostles at the time.

The Hope Function and the Second Coming

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Ruma Falk writes:

Imagine searching for a paragraph that you read some time ago. You have a visual memory of that paragraph on a right-hand page of a book, toward the top. Though you think you remember the particular book, you are not absolutely certain. Systematically, you begin leafing through the book’s 10 chapters. The paragraph does not turn up in the first chapter, or in the second, third… As you proceed without success through the chapters, does your hope of finding the paragraph in the next chapter increase or decrease? And what of your hope of finding it in the book at all? Imagining yourself in this familiar situation, you may feel that before you reached the end of the book, despair would set it (“this must be the wrong book”). On the other hand, the longer you search the more reluctant you may be to quit, not only because of the efforts invested up to now, but because of a persistent intuition that the chances of finding the paragraph in the next chapter increase after each successive disappointment.

Describing a similar example from fiction, Falk says,

In Arthur Conan Doyle’s story, The Six Napoleons, the great detective Sherlock Holmes deduces that one of six plaster busts of Napoleon conceals a priceless pearl. As the story unfolds, the busts are smashed one by one, until Sherlock finds and dramatically smashes the last one, recovering the pearl. As usual, the detective reveals his reasoning, noting that the numerical chances of finding the pearl in the next bust increased as their number dwindled, until with the last bust it reached certainty. Jones (1966) points out that the scientific viewpoint would doubt Sherlock’s initial certainty, and would start with, say, only a 50% chance that Sherlock’s theory is right: “As successive busts are smashed and no pearl is found, the rising chance of finding it in the next is balanced by the evidence of this growing succession of failures that Sherlock is wrong, and that there isn’t any pearl at all.”

We could think of any number of similar examples from real life. The chance that a single person will get married sometime during the next year will increase as she grows older, at the same time that the total chance that she will get married at all is going down. Of course, at some point there will be a turning point where even the chance of getting married in the next year begins to decrease.

A similar process happens with the idea of the Second Coming. Speaking of the end of the world, James Chastek says,

The end of the world must either be an interruption in human life or an event that occurs after the race has passed away. There are suggestions of the first in Scripture (Mt. 24:40) and in the creed (“judge the living and the dead”), but these ultimately turn out to be ambiguous (“living and dead” seem better understood as speaking of the saved and damned, for example, which is what judgment is about.)

The second interpretation is the better choice. The two judgments have distinct objects and so are not muddled together, and so just as God gives a private judgment to those who have run the course of their life and meet their end either by nature or man, the general judgment happens in the same way. Death is the price to be paid by human life in all its forms, not just by individuals but by the merely human collectives that they form.

The judgment is therefore not coming to save us. It won’t interrupt social evils or break in upon them before they run their course, or leap in front of nature before it finds the keys to making human life just the food source for some other sort of life (like bacteria). We’re in this to its bitter end.

While Chastek does give an argument for his position in principle, one concrete thing that makes his position more likely is the fact that nothing in particular has happened so far. As the scoffers said, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!”

The supplement to St. Thomas’s Summa remarks, “these signs that are mentioned in the gospels, such as wars, fears, and so forth, have been from the beginning of the human race.” This also in a certain way favors Chastek’s account: these things are indeed signs of the end of the world, in the sense that they are signs that the world is a historical reality, and historical realities begin and end.

The Book of Enoch

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The Book of Enoch, while not accepted in general as canonical, is accepted as such by Ethiopian Jews, as well as by some Orthodox churches. And whether considered as inspired or not, it was likely respected by the early Christians, as the book of Jude quotes from it, saying,

It was also about these that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, “See, the Lord is coming with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

This is a quotation from the end of the first chapter of the book of Enoch.

Chapter 46 describes a vision of Enoch:

46:1   At that place, I saw the One to whom belongs the time before time. And his head was white like wool, and there was with him another individual, whose face was like that of a human being. His countenance was full of splendor like that of one among the kodesh malakim.

46:2   And I asked the one -from among the malakim -who was going with me, and who had revealed to me all the secrets regarding the One who was born of human beings, “Who is this, and from whence is he who is going as the prototype of the Before -Time?”

46:3   And he answered me and said to me, “This is the Son of Man, to whom belongs righteousness, and with whom righteousness dwells. And He will open all the hidden storerooms; for YAHWEH of Hosts has chosen Him, and He is destined to be victorious before YAHWEH of Hosts in eternal uprightness.”

46:4   “This Son of Man whom you have seen is the One who would remove the kings and the mighty ones from their comfortable seats and the strong ones from their thrones. He shall loosen the reins of the strong and crush the teeth of the sinners.”

46:5   “He shall depose the kings from their thrones and kingdoms. For they do not extol and magnify HIM, and neither do they obey HIM, the source of their kingship.”

46:6   “The faces of the strong will be slapped and be filled with shame and gloom. Their dwelling places and their beds will be worms. They shall have no hope to rise from their beds, for they do not extol the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts.”

46:7   “And they have become the judges of the stars of heaven; they raise their hands to reach YAHWEH the Most High while walking upon the earth and dwelling in her. They manifest all their deeds in oppression; all their deeds are oppression. Their power depends upon their wealth. And their devotion is to the gods which they have fashioned with their own hands. But they deny the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts.”

46:8   “Yet they like to congregate in HIS houses and with the faithful ones who cling to YAHWEH of Hosts.

The Son of Man is the one “to whom belongs righteousness, and with whom righteousness dwells,” and the following verses indicate the he is the one who was chosen by God to execute justice.

The reason why the kings are deposed is that “they do not extol and magnify him, neither do they obey him, the source of their kingship.” The translator in this case seems to interpret this to refer to God, and thus capitalizes “him,” but the most obvious understanding of the pronoun would be that it refers to the Son of Man. Nonetheless, the fact that he is the source of their kingship might suggest that he is also God in fact, and this is also suggested by the fact that the text goes on to say, “They shall have no hope to rise from their beds, for they do not extol the name of Yahweh of hosts.” This at least suggests that not praising the Son of Man is the same as not praising God.

Chapter 47 describes why a judgment is necessary in the first place:

47:1   “In those days, the prayers of the righteous ascended into heaven, and the blood of the righteous from the earth before YAHWEH of Hosts.”

47:2   “There shall be days when all the kodesh ones who dwell in the heavens above shall dwell together. And with one voice, they shall supplicate and pray -magnifying, praising, and blessing the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts -on behalf of the blood of the righteous ones which has been shed. Their prayers shall not stop from exhaustion before YAHWEH of Hosts -neither will they relax forever -until judgment is executed for them.”

47:3   In those days, I saw Him -the Antecedent of Time, while He was sitting upon the throne of his splendor, and the books of the living ones were open before Him. And all His power in heaven above and His escorts stood before Him.

47:4   The hearts of the kodesh ones are filled with joy, because the number of the righteous has been offered, the prayers of the righteous ones have been heard, and the blood of the righteous has been admitted before YAHWEH of Hosts.

Thus judgment is needed to correct the injustice done to the just by the wicked. Chapter 48 seems to describe the Son of Man as preexisting and as having a predestined role of carrying out the needed judgment:

48:1   Furthermore, in that place I saw the fountain of righteousness, which does not become depleted and is surrounded completely by numerous fountains of wisdom.

48:2   All the thirsty ones drink of the water and become filled with wisdom. Then their dwelling places become with the kodesh, righteous, and elect ones.

48:3   At that hour, that Son of Man was given a name, in the presence of YAHWEH of Hosts, the Before Time; even before the creation of the sun and the moon, before the creation of the stars, He was given a name in the presence of YAHWEH of Hosts.

48:4   He will become a staff for the righteous ones in order that they may lean on Him and not fall. He is the Light of the gentiles and He will become the hope of those who are sick in their hearts.

48:5   All those who dwell upon the earth shall fall and worship before Him; they shall magnify, bless, and sing the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts.

48:6   For this purpose He became the Chosen One; He was concealed in the presence of YAHWEH of Hosts prior to the creation of the world, and for eternity.

48:7   And He has revealed the wisdom of YAHWEH of Hosts to the righteous and the kodesh ones, for He has preserved the portion of the righteous because they have hated and despised this world of oppression together with all its ways of life and its habits in the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts; and because they will be saved in His Name and it is His good pleasure that they have life.

48:8   In those days, the kings of the earth and the mighty landowners shall be humiliated on account of the deeds of their hands. Therefore, on the day of their misery and weariness, they will not be able to save themselves.

48:9   I shall deliver them into the hands of MY elect ones like grass in the fire and like lead in the water, so they shall burn before the face of the kodesh ones and sink before their sight, and no place will be found for them.

48:10   On the day of their weariness, there shall be an obstacle on the earth and they shall fall on their faces; and they shall not rise up again, nor anyone be found who will take them with his hands and raise them up. For they have denied YAHWEH of Hosts and HIS Messiah. Blessed be the NAME of YAHWEH of Hosts!

While one might think that being concealed in the presence of God before the creation of the world might imply only the divine predestination, it would not be unreasonable to read this as implying an eternal preexistence of the Son of Man, even if not in the condition of a man. And it seems that “they will be saved in His Name,” and “it is His good pleasure that they have life,” also refer to the Son of Man. In fact, overall it seems that considered in itself, God would have the role of saving and giving life, and judging the wicked, but in practice God chooses to give these roles to the Son of Man.

Finally, at the end of the text, the Son of Man is identified as the Messiah.