Ethics in the Light of the End

Every ethic has an end in view, a picture of where things are going and what will last. A farmer who expects his land to be taken next year will not plant trees on it. A family that believes nothing will ever change in their village will not build a school. And a church that believes the world is about to be thrown away will think differently about its rivers, its politics and its poor than a church that believes the world will be made new. The study of the last things is called eschatology, from the Greek eschatos, last. This lesson asks how the Christian hope about the end shapes Christian action now.

The New Testament draws that connection constantly, and it usually does so with the word therefore. After a long chapter on the resurrection, Paul concludes, 'Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable. Always excel in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain' (1 Corinthians 15:58). Peter writes that the day of the Lord is coming and asks, 'what kind of people ought you to be?' (2 Peter 3:11). John says, 'everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as Christ is pure' (1 John 3:3). Titus 2:12-13 joins living 'sensible, upright, and godly lives in the present age' with waiting for 'the blessed hope.' In each case, the hope does not make the believer passive. It makes him faithful.

Romans 8 is the fullest account of creation's part in that hope. Paul says that 'the creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God' (8:19). It 'was subjected to futility, not by its own will' (8:20), an echo of the curse on the ground in Genesis 3:17. It has been 'groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time' (8:22). And it waits in hope, because it 'will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God' (8:21). Believers groan too, waiting 'for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies' (8:23). The picture is of labour pains: suffering that is real, and that leads to birth.

Two things follow. First, creation's future is bound to humanity's. The earth fell under futility with human sin, and it will be freed with human redemption. That is why the earlier lessons in this module could treat care for land and animals as part of discipleship rather than a separate hobby. Second, the hope is for the redemption of bodies, not escape from them, and for creation set free, not creation discarded. At least, that is how most interpreters read Romans 8. But other texts seem to speak differently, and Christians are divided about how to put them together.

Some New Testament texts speak of the present world ending in fire. Peter says that 'the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare' (2 Peter 3:10), and that 'the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat' (3:12). Jesus says, 'Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away' (Matthew 24:35). John sees 'a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away' (Revelation 21:1). Psalm 102:26 and Hebrews 1:11 say the heavens and earth 'will perish' and wear out like a garment. Other texts speak of renewal. Peter in Acts speaks of 'the restoration of all things' (Acts 3:21), Jesus of 'the renewal of all things' (Matthew 19:28), and the one on the throne says, 'Behold, I make all things new' (Revelation 21:5). Two main readings try to hold these together.

The first reading holds that the present heavens and earth will be destroyed and replaced by a new creation. Some Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century, such as Johann Gerhard, taught that the world would be annihilated and a new one made, and many evangelical readers today, especially in dispensational traditions, read 2 Peter 3 in a similar way. Their strongest arguments are these. The plain words of 2 Peter 3:10-12, Matthew 24:35 and Revelation 21:1 speak of passing away and destruction by fire, and a reader should not soften them because he prefers another outcome. The new creation is God's free gift, not the product of the old world's improvement, and the emphasis of the New Testament falls on the new act of God, as in Isaiah 65:17, 'I will create new heavens and a new earth.' And this reading guards against a danger: putting hope in the progress of this world rather than in God. Defenders of this view insist that it does not lead to neglect of the earth, because Christians care for creation in obedience to God's present commands in Genesis 2:15 and the law, and out of love for neighbour, whatever its final future.

The second reading holds that the present creation will be purified and renewed, not abolished. This was the dominant view of Irenaeus in the second century, of Thomas Aquinas, and of John Calvin, who commented on Romans 8:21 that creation would be restored to its proper state, and it is held widely in Reformed, Catholic and Orthodox theology today. Recent defenders include N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope (2008) and J. Richard Middleton in A New Heaven and a New Earth (2014). Their strongest arguments are these. Romans 8:21 says that 'the creation itself' will be set free, which is hard to square with its being destroyed. The resurrection of Jesus is the pattern: his body was not discarded and replaced, but raised and transformed, and he is 'the firstfruits' (1 Corinthians 15:20) of a harvest of the same kind. The fire of 2 Peter 3 is a refining and judging fire, as in 1 Corinthians 3:13, and the oldest manuscripts of 3:10 say the earth will be found or laid bare, that is, exposed to judgment, rather than burned up. And Revelation 21-22 pictures a city coming down to earth, with the nations bringing their glory into it (21:24-26), which suggests continuity rather than replacement. They add that God says he makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), not that he makes new things to take their place. Defenders of the first reading answer that the textual question in 2 Peter 3:10 leaves the surrounding words where they were: the heavens still 'disappear with a roar,' the elements are still 'destroyed by fire' and 'melt in the heat' (3:10, 3:12), and in Revelation 20:11 earth and heaven flee from God's presence, 'and no place was found for them.' A refining fire, they say, does not need the heavens to vanish.

Notice that both readings agree on more than they disagree. Both hope for a new heaven and a new earth, 'where righteousness dwells' (2 Peter 3:13). Both expect a bodily resurrection, not a disembodied heaven forever. Both expect judgment on evil and the end of death. And both, at their best, teach that Christians should care for creation now. Where they differ is over whether what Christians do to and in the present creation will in some way carry over into the new, which affects the motive and the tone of creation care but not the duty of it. Paul's word that 'your labor in the Lord is not in vain' (1 Corinthians 15:58) is read by the first group as a promise of reward and by the second as a hint of continuity. The text supports both readings, and a student should be able to defend either.

Jesus began his preaching by announcing that the time was fulfilled and 'the kingdom of God is near' (Mark 1:15). He cast out demons and said, 'the kingdom of God has come upon you' (Luke 11:20). Yet he taught his disciples to pray, 'Your kingdom come' (Matthew 6:10), and spoke of a coming day when the Son of Man would sit on his throne. The kingdom has come, and it is still to come. Christian scholars of the twentieth century gave this tension a name. The Swiss scholar Oscar Cullmann, in Christ and Time (1946), compared it to the Second World War: the decisive battle, D-Day, had been won at the cross and resurrection, but the war went on until the final victory, V-Day, at Christ's return. The American scholar George Eldon Ladd called his book The Presence of the Future (1974). Most Christian traditions today accept some form of this already and not yet.

For ethics this matters a great deal. Because the kingdom has already come, real change is possible now: the sick can be healed, the poor can be fed, enemies can be reconciled, unjust structures can be changed. Jesus' parables of the mustard seed and the leaven (Matthew 13:31-33) say that the kingdom grows from small beginnings. A church that plants trees, frees a widow's land, or refuses a bribe is doing something that belongs to the age to come. But because the kingdom is not yet complete, no change now is final or perfect. The weeds grow with the wheat until the harvest (Matthew 13:30). Christians work for justice without expecting to finish the work, and they suffer loss without concluding that the work was worthless.

The church has disagreed about how much of the kingdom to expect before Christ returns, and its views of the millennium, the thousand years of Revelation 20, are one form of that disagreement. Premillennialists believe Christ will return before a thousand-year reign on earth; many expect the world to grow worse until then, and they have often emphasised evangelism and rescue, though premillennial Christians have also founded hospitals, schools and missions throughout the world. Postmillennialists, such as Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century and many of the American evangelicals who worked to abolish slavery in the nineteenth, believe the gospel will gradually transform the world before Christ returns, and they have often been confident social reformers. Amillennialists, following Augustine's City of God, read the thousand years as the present age of the church, in which Christ reigns and his people suffer and serve, neither expecting the world to get steadily better nor steadily worse. Each view has serious defenders, and each, as history shows, can produce faithful action or a characteristic failure.

The first failure is utopianism: the belief that humans can build the perfect society themselves, now. History has many tragic examples. In 1534 and 1535 a group of radical Anabaptists seized the German city of Münster, declared it the New Jerusalem, abolished private property and practised polygamy under a self-proclaimed king, until the city was retaken and its leaders executed. The Anabaptists who followed Menno Simons rejected that episode and its violence. In the twentieth century, the communist movements of Russia, China, Cambodia and Ethiopia promised a world without classes, and killed millions of people in pursuit of it. Utopias tend to be violent because when people believe they can build heaven on earth, those who stand in the way become enemies of paradise.

Christians have their own milder forms of this failure. The Social Gospel movement in early twentieth-century America, whose leading theologian was Walter Rauschenbusch, author of A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917), did real good in fighting poverty and child labour, but some of its voices spoke as though the kingdom of God could be achieved through social reform. Reinhold Niebuhr, in Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), argued that this optimism did not take sin seriously enough, and that every human achievement, however just, remains marked by pride and self-interest. The prosperity gospel, which promises believers health and wealth now as a right of faith, is another form of the same failure: it claims the blessings of the age to come without waiting for them. Paul's sharp words to the Corinthians fit it: 'Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich' (1 Corinthians 4:8).

The second failure is the opposite: escapism, the belief that this world does not matter because the believer's true home is elsewhere. It can hide behind real verses: 'our citizenship is in heaven' (Philippians 3:20), 'Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things' (Colossians 3:2), 'My kingdom is not of this world' (John 18:36). But those verses describe where the believer's loyalty and hope come from, not a reason to abandon the world. Paul in Philippians 3 goes on to say that the Saviour will come from heaven and transform our bodies (3:21); he does not say we will go there and leave them behind forever. Paul also had to correct some in Thessalonica who stopped working because they thought the end was near, telling them 'If anyone is unwilling to work, he shall not eat' (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Jesus' parables about his return praise the servant 'whose master finds him doing so when he returns' (Matthew 24:46), that is, doing his ordinary work faithfully.

Between the two failures lies Christian hope. It does not expect perfection before Christ returns, so it is not crushed by the slow pace of change or tempted to force the kingdom by violence. It does not despise the present world, so it plants, builds, heals and seeks justice. God's word to the exiles in Babylon is a model: 'Build houses and settle down. Plant gardens and eat their produce' (Jeremiah 29:5), and 'Seek the prosperity of the city to which I have sent you as exiles' (29:7). A well-known saying, often attributed to Martin Luther, says that if he knew the world would end tomorrow, he would still plant an apple tree today. Historians have found no evidence that Luther said it; it first appears in Germany in the twentieth century. But it captures the attitude of hope well, which is perhaps why it is so often repeated.

For many students this lesson is not theoretical. They live where the church is persecuted, where war has destroyed villages, where corruption seems unbeatable, where the rains are failing, or where young people see no future and leave. In such places hope is not a mood but a discipline, and the Bible's teaching on the end was written for exactly such people. Revelation was written to churches facing persecution. Its martyrs cry, 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge those who dwell upon the earth and avenge our blood?' (Revelation 6:10). The answer is not that their suffering does not matter, but that it will be judged and ended, and that God will 'destroy those who destroy the earth' (Revelation 11:18).

Hope gives the oppressed two things. First, it gives them the knowledge that injustice does not have the last word. The Christians who sang under slavery in America, or who prayed in prison under apartheid in South Africa, or who worship today in places where their faith is forbidden, could keep going because they believed the future belonged to God and not to their oppressors. Second, it gives them freedom to act without needing to win. A Christian who refuses a bribe and loses a contract, or who protects a widow's land and is threatened for it, may not see justice in this life. But the Christian hope says that no act of faithfulness is wasted, because 'your labor in the Lord is not in vain' (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Hope also checks the powerful. If every injustice will be judged, then those who use power to take land, exploit workers, abuse the weak or destroy the earth should fear. The Christian ethic of hope is not only comfort for the suffering; it is warning for the oppressor. 'For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ' (2 Corinthians 5:10), and the one who sits on the throne sees everything. A church that preaches the last things honestly will preach both comfort and warning, and both belong to the gospel.

This lesson adds something to every case in your casebook, not a new case. Go back to each case you have written in this track, or at least to the three or four you are most likely to choose for the final lesson, and add a short paragraph headed The light of the end.

In that paragraph, answer three questions. First, what does the Christian hope say about this situation: what will God finally do about the injustice, the suffering or the damage in this case? Second, what can faithful people do now, knowing that the kingdom has come, that real change is possible, and that no act of faithfulness is wasted? Third, what must be left to God, knowing that the kingdom is not yet complete and that no human action will make this situation perfect? Be honest about each. A case in which you can see nothing to do is rare, and a case in which you expect to fix everything is probably being seen through the eyes of utopia.

Then choose the case you think you will work through in the final lesson. It should be a real question from your own church or community, one where you know the setting and can find out the facts, and one where the right answer is not already obvious to you. Write its title at the top of a fresh double page in your notebook. Next lesson, you will work it from beginning to end.