Time at the Far End of Life

This is a very personal note to my brothers and sisters nearing the end of their allotted term. It is time to start thinking in critical time. Life eventually boils down to time, particularly for those of us at the far end of life: how much time do we have left and what shall we do with it? At age 89 I have just begun to ponder both of these questions some three months after the death of my wife of 67 years from Alzheimer’s. From age 20 through her passing she, and later our children, formed the basis of all my decisions about time. The time we spent was always our time together or, when the children came along, family time. When Alzheimer’s manifested itself, I became her caregiver and my time became her time.

How much time is left and what to do with it are not existential questions that necessarily trouble those in youth or middle age.  The very young initially have their time taken-up with schooling mandated by the state, family associated activities, and, later, things concerned with preparation for life’s long haul: occupation, marriage, children, etc. For the middle aged there is daily work for paychecks to pay for the things of life that have claimed one’s time. All things being equal, these two questions about critical time belong particularly to those of us at the far end of life, and those terminally ill. Once life has irrevocably changed (retirement, death of a spouse, advanced old age, terminal illness, etc.) we stand in a critical moment, at a critical juncture, where we are turning into that period of life we begin to recognize as our final days.

            The ancient Greeks recognized the nature of critical time and distinguished generally between two words for time: Chronos (χρονος) and Kairos (καιρος). Chronos designated “a definite time, a period of time, a while, a season,” but Kairos with respect to time designated “the right point of time, the proper time or season for action, the exact or critical time.”¹ The latter moment is where many of us now find ourselves, at a critical juncture facing the end of our days at some unknown point in the not-too-distant future. The question is very personal: what to do with these final days?

Since Peggy died, I have received advice for dealing with loneliness and grief in various forms: pamphlets from funeral homes, personal advice from good friends, calls from social workers, etc. The advice, probably coming from experience (personal and otherwise), is informally the same: seek counseling from a licensed therapist; find a support group; volunteer with some social service agency, hospital, or charity; take a class; perhaps take a trip where one is forced to make new acquaintances; find reasons to visit with old friends; take up a hobby or immerse oneself in hobbies of long standing. All of these are helpful suggestions. But, somehow, they have not resonated with me, being so close to the end of this final term of life (pardon the academic allusion). I have strong family support from my children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, most of whom live right near in my neighborhood.

What religious rationalists might do, when confronted with a ponderable crisis, is pick up a Bible. In spite of its many blemishes, mistakes, and other shortcomings it records the ponderings of religious folk of two ancient religions over a 1300- year period, roughly from the Israelite Exodus (around 1250 BCE to the writing of 2 Peter (around 125CE).² Not unreasonably one may expect here and there to find helpful suggestions. I found a convenient “hook” for pondering my last days in Eph 5:15-16 and Col 4:5. Two of Paul’s students, writings under the pseudonym of “Paul, an apostle” (i.e., they are putting words in Paul’s mouth)³ urge their readers to be wise “making the most of crucial time” (εξαγοραζομενοι τον καιρον),⁴ the only two instances in the New Testament that these two words are used together. How does one “make the most of crucial time”? The authors of these two texts do not share the specifics of their thinking about that question. Hence, everyone must decide for themselves what will be their specific response to their latter days. In short, they must decide in what they will invest themselves, considering their abilities, health, and interests.

            I have not yet finished the pondering process, but I have come up with four general suggestions (devoid of specifics because everyone is different) that have been helpful to me for staying engaged: 1. Make an effort to stay involved in living to the best of your abilities, and resist withdrawing into yourself. 2. Aim to make a contribution to the lives of others. 3. Learn something new every day (you just have to be curious). 4. Keep a sense of humor about yourself and your situation in life. There is nothing in these suggestions that is profound, but they are certainly cogent.

One other suggestion comes from the Apostle Paul himself. Writing from prison (Phil 1:7, 12-17) from Rome, Caesarea, or Ephesus (Phil 1:13; 4:22),⁵ Paul harbored hopes that his situation might yet change for the better (Phil 1:19, 26-27; 2:24). But whether it did or not was unimportant and he asserts: “I have learned how to manage in whatever circumstances I find myself” (Phil 4:11).⁶ Good advice for those of us at the far end.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The abridged version of Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (from the 7^th edition of Liddell and Scott; Oxford: Clarendon, 1975). Here are some examples in the New Testament of time used as “the proper time or season for action”: Mark 1:15; 11:13; Matt 13:30; 21:34; 26:18; Luke 12:56; 21:8; John 7:6, 8; Acts 3:20; 7:20; Rom 9:9; 13:11; 1 Cor 4:5; 7:29; Eph 5:16; Col 4:5.

²See Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019), 2.

³For the pseudonymity of these two letters, see W. G. Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament (Howard Kee, trans. 17^th ed. rev.; Abingdon, 1975), Colossians, 340-46; Ephesians, 357-163.

⁴This is my translation of the expression in Eph 5:16 and Col 4:5. In some older translations (for example, King James Version) one may find the expression translated as “redeeming the time,” which doesn’t quite communicate the Greek, in my view.

⁵See Kϋmmel, Introduction, 324-32.

⁶A. J. Dewey, et al., The Authentic Letters of Paul (Polebridge, 2010), 181. This is the only occurrence of αυταρκης in the New Testament. The usual translation of the word as “contented,” is inadequate.

Time-does it move forward or in Circles?

I know; it sounds like a trick question. But in the ancient world time was circular. The earth continually renewed itself through the regular recurring cycles of nature: Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter. Such a cycle is basically “startime” (the sun is a star) produced by the rotation of the earth around the sun in our solar system giving us also, in addition to the recurring seasons of the year, the time of day: dawn, noon, sunset, night. These cycles are described as the theory of the eternal return. “The universe and all existence and energy [have] been recurring, and will continue to recur in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space. The theory is found in Indian [India] philosophy and ancient Egypt and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics” in the Greek tradition.¹ In many ways, without modern precision, cyclical time replicates our own system of sidereal time—time as tracked by clocks, watches, and chronometers. In short, except for daylight savings time, your watch is keyed to the circle of the earth around the sun.

The Judeo-Christian view of time, on the other hand, is linear. Everything originated in God’s act of creation (Genesis 1:1-2:4a; 2:4b-3:24) and moves forward toward the inevitable Day of the Lord at which moment “the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the works that are upon it will be burned up” (2 Pet 3:10 RSV)—and time will be no more. All events in world history, from creation to end, are believed included in this forward movement, which gives an illusion of progress in history.

Today we experience time from both of these perspectives. Reckoning time from a linear perspective and a cyclical perspective both prove useful for us in order to situate ourselves in time—e.g., hour of the day, season of the year, century provided by our linear calendar. We also experience time in other ways—as passing fast or slow, depending on how occupied we are in a given situation; as either individual and private or epochal and public—for example, one’s personal birthday celebration as opposed to the end of WWII. Life is believed to be a progressive series of such milestones or epochs—at least as we calculate time today.

The idea that time is linear is aided by a decision to distinguish the passage of time between BC (before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini—in the year of the Lord). This theological plot on time, which shifts time from circular to linear is credited to Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor in 525 AD; his system was not widely accepted until after 800AD, however. The BC/AD system of Exiguus was used to number the years in the Gregorian and Julian calendars. Our modern calendar derives from the Gregorian Calendar, which is the most widely used calendar in the world today.² Modern critical scholars change BC/AD designations to BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) in order to secularize the divisions. The segments remain essentially the same, however.

One comes to realize the core problem of time by addressing the following question: how are all personal and public epochs since the beginning of time linked so as to give us a single linear sequence of time with all events taking their place in a relentless progression toward a particular goal?³

Historians also think of the movement of history as a linear movement. History is defined as “a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events as steps in the sequence of human activities.”⁴ Historical narrative is an attempt to reconstruct the past, not in its aggregate totality, but in what the historian considers its more significant aspects. In my view, however, history itself is something other than a historical narrative.⁵ Nevertheless modern historians still see time and human history moving forward in a linear line. Yet here we are making circles around the sun locked into a solar system going no place in particular. How do you see it?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

³This argument is adapted from, and with apologies to, John Dominic Crossan, Raid on the Articulate. Comic Eschatology in Jesus and Borges (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 133-136.

⁴Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (2002), s. v. “history.”

⁵Hedrick, “History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel,” Wry Thoughts about Religion Blog, Dec 22, 2013.

Groundhog Day and Historical Progress

Many of us of advanced age and/or who suffer from life-threatening health issues decided in 2020 to withdraw from the world and isolate ourselves because we are at high risk of catching covid19. Since last March we have voluntarily quarantined ourselves from society and live in small bubbles available only to a small number of people. Over the last year our lives have become very much like the 1993 film Groundhog Day. In the film Bill Murray plays a Pittsburg weatherman who covers the Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, PA. He becomes trapped in a time loop forcing him to relive February 2 repeatedly. Eventually he recognizes that he is in a time loop, although no one else does.¹

Life in the bubble is repetitive and there is a sameness to the events of a typical day: wake up; dry and put away dishes; check email; prepare breakfast; TV news; morning ablutions; retire to respective offices to do whatever; prepare lunch; short nap; back to the offices; walk for an hour; check the snail mail (bills); evening news and dinner; doze before TV; retire. This pattern is repeated the next morning and ad infinitum. As a result, I find I am beginning to lose a sense of progress and continuity in time and history, since I seem to be living in an eternal present where everything repeats itself.

            History is defined as a “chronological record of significant events, often containing an explanation of their causes.” If truth be told, however, we humans invented the concept of time to explain our obsolescence and demise (aging and death), and we discovered the ellipse of the earth around the sun in a 24-hour period. We invented and named the hours of the day, the days of the week, and the months of the year. We even invent the connectedness of events by explaining their causes (about which historians frequently disagree) and this becomes the basis of our linear concept of time.²

            A competitor to the linear view of time is the “concept that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring and will continue to recur in a self-similar form and infinite number of times across infinite time and space.” This concept is called the eternal return or the eternal recurrence.³ One biblical writer who seems to reflect such a view of time is Ecclesiastes:

That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been. (Eccl 3:15)

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. (Eccl 1:9)

In this biblical writer’s tone lies a deep weariness and monotony (Eccl 1:2-11; 2:11, 17, 22-23; 7:1-8), occasioned by how he has come to view life:

The central theme of the sage’s reflections is that life is disappointing and transitory—like a momentary breath (1:2-11). There is a weary sameness to life (3:15); it passes like a shadow (6:12). Being governed by chance (9:11-12), life is unfair: the righteous perish early and the wicked live out long lives (7:15).⁴

The Apostle Paul, on the other hand, had a theologically based linear view of time.⁵ He believed that he lived between two great events, the time of God’s great victory over sin and death at the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus, on the one hand, and the Parousia (appearing) of Jesus and the end of the world (1 Cor 15:20-24; I Thess 4:13-18; 1 Cor 6:29-31), on the other. As such he lived between the already and the not yet (Rom 8:15/ 8:23; 1 Cor 1:2/1 Thess 5:23-24). That is to say: he already had received the blessings of salvation, but he still looks forward to the completion of his salvation. Thus, in Paul’s view the follower of Christ was numbered among those “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11), that is, between the end of the old world/age and the beginning of the new. In other words, Paul saw time moving forward in a linear way from the resurrection to the time of Christ’s coming again and the end of time.

            This brings me back to the present pandemic moment: are we locked into a series of repeating 24-hour elliptical cycles, or does time actually move relentlessly forward in a linear line toward some unknown goal?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day_(film). The film was selected by The Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry and the term “Groundhog Day” has made its way into the English language to describe a monotonous, unpleasant, and repetitive situation.

²See Hedrick, “History, Historical Narrative, and Mark’s Gospel,” Sunday December 3, 2013: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=history

³https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return

⁴Hedrick, The Wisdom of Jesus. Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church (Cascade, 2014), 70.

⁵Hedrick, “Time—does it move forward or in Circles,” Saturday, June 1, 2019: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/search?q=Time

An Uncommonly Modern Question

For the first time in history retired folk of the working class must ponder this question: how should I spend my time? After the Social Security Act of 1935, and the economic boom of WWII, when jobs were plentiful and salaries on the increase, many of the working class found they could retire and live comfortably without being forced to supplement their retirement income—a situation that formerly appertained only to the independently wealthy. Today my wife and I are flexible enough to begin the day with “Well what are you doing today?” Less than a hundred years ago such a question would have been unimaginable for members of the working class. The aged, having no pension or other means of support, would still be scrambling to eke out a daily living.
     I thought about this question last Saturday while struggling with the Greek prologue to a turn-of-the-century novel. The novel (Η Φóνισσα, The Murderess) was written by Aleksandros Papadiamantis in 1903. The prologue (1971) by Giannis Katzinis is written in rather turgid and inflated Greek (my apologies to Katzinis). Some might consider such a pedantic exercise a rather extravagant and wasteful use of personal time (about 4 hours each week), and wonder why am I not doing something more beneficial for society/the church/humanity, etc. with my time? Such a question leads me in turn to the bigger question: exactly what should I be doing with my time, when paid employment is no longer necessary?
       I am well aware of the numerous appeals from charitable, educational, public, and religious groups for money and volunteers to support their causes—actually more in the recent past than I can ever remember. These appeals for money and volunteers prompt for me a more specific and personal question: should appeals from charities for gifts and volunteer service, and solicitations for “pay-back” take precedence over individual activities of personal interest with regard to flexible time and disposable income?
       It seems to me that there are four broad but basic reasons why people in reasonably good health spend their time and money as they do: personal necessity, personal interest, humanitarian and religious reasons, and public welfare concerns.
       If the Jesus tradition and the Christian tradition (they are not the same thing) are drawn upon for help in making sense of things in life, little practical guidance will be found to help resolve the question as to how flexible time and disposable income should be spent.
       I know of nothing specifically on point in the early Christian tradition that helps the retired working class practically balance the numerous appeals for their time and resources by charitable groups. At least two stories and several sayings in the Jesus tradition (as critically assessed), however, at least relate to this issue.
     To the man who asked Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life, Jesus said sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow me (Mark 10:17-22). The gospels represent Jesus as a kind of wandering mendicant—or at least as someone who depended solely on God (a cynic would interpret this as depending on the kindness of others) for his daily needs (Matt 6:25-33). The story suggests that there are no such concepts as disposable funds and discretionary time; rather one must be fully engaged with Jesus in homeless “mendicancy.” Here is a saying from the Gospel of Thomas (69B) that probably originated with Jesus, which reflects a similar attitude: “Those who go hungry to fill the starving belly of another are blessed.” In other words all your resources are at the disposal of the needy other. The saying simply does not address the needs of the one blessed—so exactly how long must I go hungry before I tend to my own very practical needs?
       Oddly enough Paul is more practical in soliciting funds as an offering from his “gatherings of saints” for the poor “saints” in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8-9; Gal 2:10; Rom 15:25-29). His principle seems to be proportionate giving based on what a person has (2 Cor 12-13). Even though he encouraged a liberal attitude in giving (2 Cor 8:3-4, he specifically did not encourage them to exhaust their own resources (2 Cor 8:13), and he left it up to the individual to decide what should be his/her part in the offering (2 Cor 9:7; 1 Cor 16:2). He was, however, convinced that the “Gentile gatherings of saints” had an obligation to assist the poor saints in Jerusalem (Rom 15:27).
       If one follows Jesus and the choice offered to the man in the gospel story, the result will be that the candle of one’s charity will flame rather brilliantly for the moment—but eventually it dies. If one takes the attitude “I have mine; you get yours,” and turns a deaf ear to the evident need all around the result eventually will be that the world becomes a jungle in which only the fittest and the most ruthless survive. The responsible answer seems to lie somewhere between these two alternatives—and where that point lies is the individual’s choice.
     For my part, tomorrow, I will finish the turgid Greek introduction to the Papadiamantis novel, Η Φóνισσα, and the following week I will begin reading the novel itself. I only hope the Greek of Papadiamantis is more accessible.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

Armageddon and the Apocalypse

Modern day "prophets" are continuously warning us that Armageddon¹ or the Apocalypse² or the Day of the Lord is near. They claim to know "the signs of the times," and describe certain historical events as harbingers of the end—precursors to the day of the Lord. They base their dire predictions on what they regard as ancient biblical prophecies that have predicted certain events in our day, which they think will trigger an end-time scenario. They hope to persuade us through fear, and entangle us in their webs of misinformation.

 

            "Prophets" have been predicting the end of the world from Judeo-Christian texts at least since the Isaiah Apocalypse (24-27), and there is no lack of such people in the public media today. When their prophecies fail, as they inevitably must, they recalibrate the time of the end, and then these also fail. Eventually these self-styled "prophets" pass from public view—only to be replaced by other such "prophets."

 

            In the New Testament the "book ends" of end-time speculations are provided by the earliest writer (Paul) and the latest writer (the author of Second Peter). The end-time in Second Peter (middle second century) is generic—a simple prediction that the world will end at some unspecified future time, and includes an encouragement to live holy and godly lives, but with few specifics as to what that lifestyle includes (2 Pet 3:1-14).

 

Do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Pet 3:8).

 

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 the works that are upon it will be burned up (2 Pet 3:10).

 

Therefore, beloved, since you wait for these [events], be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace (2 Pet 3:14).

 

Paul, on the other hand, imagines that the end of the world is actually happening in his own day in the middle first century (1 Cor 7:26, 29; 1 Cor 10:11). In the face of this present crisis he attempts a bit of social engineering in the daily lives of his readers. For example, here is his rule in all the churches: in view of the fact that the end of the world is now happening, people should remain in the social circumstances in which they find themselves (1 Cor 7:17, 20). Hence, if one is a slave, "never mind" (1 Cor 7:21).³ If circumcised, don't try to remove the marks of circumcision; if not circumcised, don't seek circumcision (7:18). If unmarried, or a widow, one should stay single (7:8). If married, a wife should not separate from her husband, and if she does she should remain single; and for the husband—no divorces (7:11-13). If one is living with a "virgin"⁴ either marry her or not, it makes no difference (7:36-38), but he preferred that people remain single as he was (1 Cor 7:8).

 

            There have been many attempts to predict the precise time of the end, and such attempts have always been able to attract a gullible audience for their nonsense. What usually happens is that the predictions fail, and then the "prophet" recalibrates the time of the end, which also fails in its turn. This, for example, was what happened in the case of the early nineteenth-century end-time "prophet," William Miller, leader of the Millerites, who predicted the return of Christ in 1843 or 1844.⁵

 

            If one gets hooked in the nets of these admittedly charismatic figures, prepare to be disappointed—as all have been through the years. People simply cannot predict the future and that statement includes even the authors of the biblical texts. Believing the predictions of modern day "prophets" will not make them come true—as the uniform experience of history proves.⁶ The fact that none of these prophetic figures through history have been correct is the one certain datum of such speculations about the end.

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹Armageddon; see Revelation 16:12-16. The word appears only once in the Bible.

 

²Apocalypse is a disclosure or revelation. As used of the end, it is the uncovering of the secrets of the end of the world.

 

³Paul, however, violates his rule, and concedes that if slaves have the opportunity to secure freedom, they should seize it.

 

⁴"Virgin" (Parthenos; παρθένος) in this passage (1 Cor 7:36-40) is usually translated "betrothed." James Moffat, however, translates it "a maid who is a spiritual bride."

 

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher).

 

⁶See John R. Hall, Apocalypse. From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (2009), 147-56.

Can you be too Goal Oriented?

I think there is something to be said for just “chilling out”; that is, relax and let life happen. My late wife was fond of telling me, “Relax and smell the roses,” but I was always much too busy trying to meet a goal of one sort or another. Goals are inevitably terminal by design. Once accomplished (or unrealized) we move on to set others. Goals proliferate, but occasionally the unexpected happens rendering all our goals insignificant in the face of some life-changing event.

Every goal-oriented person has at least four general periods in which time-sensitive goals are set, whether s/he knows it or not. Quotidian goals are activities that open or mark a given day. For example, most of us set goals for ourselves to meet in our daily routine: such things as a healthy breakfast, socially acceptable hygiene, personal appearance, and on-time arrival at obligations, or job interview. Goals such as these are almost the basic minimum for successful living in community. It would not be easy to eliminate them.

Many of us set short-range goals for ourselves to accomplish in the near-time frame. For example, one becomes dissatisfied with one’s job and starts looking for another, or we decide we want new living accommodations and look for another space. Neither of these is achievable overnight but as short-term goals they might occupy us for weeks, if not months. Short-term goals are part of life’s inevitable change but they also upset our set routines.

Many of us also set long-range goals for ourselves that take years and a lot of work to accomplish, such as working toward college graduation or completing graduate school, or perhaps one wants to make a trip abroad, something that cannot be done in the near-term but by laying money aside and planning we might just be able to swing a vacation on that Greek island of our dreams at some point in the future. Long-term goals usually involve setting many short-term plans that must be met first.

Strategic goals, on the other hand, are something quite different. They come near the end of life and constitute something we have been planning all our lives. Likely the achieving of these goals will only become evident in retrospect. For example, the goal of having a comfortable retirement involves the realization of a great number of other objectives throughout life that require planning as well: what will my final annual retirement annuity be, what will be the amount of my savings upon retirement, will my investments be secure and prosper? A strategic goal is something that one will fret over all through one’s working years.

At some point, given time, we will also ponder our personal mortality. Another strategic goal, expressed here in the most general way, is the hope that we will be found to have satisfied the standards of the considerable powers of the universe with the time we were given. Some of us orient our lives around preparing for that moment of the “dying of the light”—others not so much. It is reported that even Jesus pondered his own mortality before his death (Mark 14:32-42), and the experience was greatly distressing and troubling to him (Mark 14:33-34).¹ According to Mark, he acquiesced, by accepting the inevitability of the moment. It is a rational act to accept the inevitably of one’s death. Nevertheless, that does not mean we cannot still “rage, rage, against the dying of the light.”²

My point in this odd essay is that if we are ambitious, goals are an inevitable part of life, and so is the end of life. Having too many goals, and the commitments they entail, can clutter our living with immeasurable minutiae, excessive pressure, and a great deal of time expenditure. Such a heavy investment of time may cause us to miss the wonder of Being altogether. So, find a way to relax, smell the roses, and chill out!

Here are three stanzas of a poem that is not writ in any book (perhaps wisely so). They express my own frustrations some years ago when I was feeling the pressure of too many irons in the fires of my own goal making. It seems obvious that I had too much on my plate.

Cloistered Space

Blessed be Free-Spaces

who bestow sanity and peace,

And Holy Passages-Between,

Who grants surcease

From demanding Musts

that loudly fill Silence

With shrill dis-ease,

Debilitating Indolence

Cursed be Duty and Decorum,

Twin Nemesis of Ease,

Those who plunder the House of Idleness

With loathsome and irritating Demands,

Omnivorous, crude, belching Time-Eaters,

Who forage in the Holidays

On Leisure and Repose.

Curse thee, we curse thee, we curse thee.

Oh, Blissful Solitude,

Irenic eye of Charybdis!

Bless us with Hiatus;

Seal us with infinite Vacuity.

From Thrall we seek release.

Baleful Locked-in,

She of the Ireful-Eye,

Chief Guard of Servitude.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Mark composed the story, inventing its dialogue, but there is a kernel of history at its core as a second witness attests (Heb 5:7).

²Dylan Thomas, “Do not go Gentle into that Good Night.”

The Second Coming of Christ

Contemporary churches, particularly of a conservative disposition, have as a prominent tenet of their faith the belief that Christ will come a "second time" at some point after his crucifixion/resurrection (around 30 CE).

This expression "second coming" appears, so far as I know, only one time in the New Testament:

[H]e has appeared once for all at the climax of history to abolish sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as it is our human lot to die once, with judgment to follow, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of mankind, and will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await him. (Heb 9:26–28, Revised English Bible)¹

Here is the same passage in another translation:

[H]e has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes the judgment, so Christ having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (RSV)

It is interesting to me that the second coming referred to in this passage in Hebrews does not sound as if it is part of the Day of God and the final judgment of the world as it appears in Rev 20:11–15; Matt 25:31–46; 2 Pet 3:10–13. The event in Hebrews (and 1 Thess 4:13–18) seems to be a different kind of event in which Christ returns "to save those eagerly waiting for him," as Hebrews puts it (RSV). This suggests that Christ followers will not face a final judgment at the end of time.

The usual expression in the New Testament for the return of the Lord is parousia. English words used to translate parousia are: "presence, coming, advent."² Only eleven of the twenty-four uses of parousia, however, reference the coming of Jesus/Christ/Lord Jesus Christ/Lord Jesus.³ The other thirteen refer to: the coming of the Son of Man, Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus, Titus, Paul's bodily presence, Paul, the Lawless One, Day of God.⁴

            There are several sayings of Jesus stating that he will come again.⁵ The earliest reference to a return of Jesus, however, is 1 Thess 4:13–18, where it is usually thought to be part of the Hebrew end-time Last Judgment scenario, the Day of God/Lord (see Isaiah 2 and 9, and Amos 2:1–3:21). Second Thessalonians is a disputed Pauline letter and its writer differs from Paul's own view in the undisputed First Thessalonians letter, where Paul held that "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night" (1 Thess 5:2–3). In 2 Thess 2:1–12, on the other hand, the author writes that certain "signs" must happen before the parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ occurs. When those signs take place, people have fair warning that the parousia is near.

There is also to be considered a different idea about the (final?) Resurrection, a view held by Hymenaeus (who was excommunicated by the "Paul" of 1 Tim 1:19–20, a disputed Epistle attributed to Paul) and Philetus (2 Tim 2:18). Hymeneus believed that "the resurrection is past already." Apparently, these men denied the future resurrection of the physical body and held the resurrection to be a spiritual event in which one has died and risen with Christ, an event depicted in the experience of baptism (Rom 6:3–5). Compare the following statement in the later Gnostic essay, Treatise on Resurrection NHC I, 45.29–46.2:

Now if we are manifest in this world wearing him, we are that one's beams, and we are embraced by him until our setting, that is to say our death in this life. We are drawn to heaven by him, like beams by the sun, not being restrained by anything. This is the spiritual resurrection, which swallows up the psychic in the same way as the fleshly.⁶

The psychē is usually thought of as the soul, or if one prefers, from this contrast, the essential inner you, as opposed to the outer fleshly you. This writer claims that the "spiritual resurrection" incorporates them both. Hence, in the early second century there were two ways of viewing the resurrection of the dead: a completely spiritual experience and the physical events at the last judgment at the end of time. Paul would have agreed in part with Hymeneus (1 Cor 15:35–50).⁷ Paul anticipated a resurrection of believers that was at once bodily and spiritual. This appears to be what he describes in 1 Thess 4:13–18 and refers to in Rom 8:23.

            With respect to end time speculations, it might be wise to recall that toward the end of the first century there was a widespread belief that the Roman emperor Nero (who died 68 CE) would return to the throne of Rome again. It did not happen (or maybe it hasn't happened yet?). Believing a thing to be so, however, doesn't make it so.⁸

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹The date of Hebrews is uncertain. One recent dating (Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews [Hermeneia, 1989], 9]) dates the writing somewhere between 60–80. An earlier dating (Kϋmmel, Introduction to the New Testament [rev. ed.; SCM, 1975), 403] dates the writing between 80–90.

²W. Bauer and F. W. Danker, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. (3^rd ed.; University of Chicago, 2000).

³1 Cor 15:23; 1 Thess 2:19, 3:3, 4:15, 5:23; Jas 5:7, 8; 2 Pet 1:16, 3:4; 1 John 2:28; Matt 24:1.

⁴Matt 24:27, 37, 39; 1 Cor 16:17; 2 Cor 7:6, 7; 10:10; Phil 1:26, 2:12; 2 Thess 2:1, 8, 9; 2 Pet 3:12.

⁵For example, John 24:2–3, 18. I do not include the Son of Man sayings (Matt:24:27–30; Rev 16:15; 22:7, 12, 20) as the Son of Man may be a different figure.

⁶Malcolm Peel, Treatise on the Resurrection, vol. I, 123–57 in H. Attridge, ed. Nag Hammadi Codex I (The Jung Codex) (NHS 22; 2 vols.; Brill, 1985).

⁷1 Cor 15:51–55 is likely a reference to the "Second" coming (and not the Hebrew expectation of Judgment Day). at which time dead followers of Christ will "meet the Lord in the air" to forever be with him (1 Thess 4:13–18), the moment when the believer is changed in the "twinkling of an eye," receiving their "spiritual bodies" (Rom 8:23).

⁸http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Redivivus

Mystery, Reason, and Faith #2

Early Christians struggled to understand their faith rationally.  This essay continues the essay of July 27, 2013.

The mystery of all things united in Christ.  Some Pauline disciples believed that "in the fullness of time" God intended to gather into Christ the sum total of everything in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:9-10)—i.e., all things and all beings.  Christ becomes a receptacle for everything in the universe in the fullness of time so as to establish a kind of cosmic harmony and unity—just as it all had begun in Christ (Col 1:16-17; cf. Rom 11:36; 1 Cor 8:6).

 

The very concept is breathtaking, albeit a bit strange—all things are united in Christ and nothing exists outside him.  Christ in a sense becomes "the all in all" of the universe, i.e., its plenitude.  With the universe gathered "in Christ," it would be sanctified—ie. e., made holy.  The distance between the sacred and profane would be overcome, and the profane transformed into the sacred.  At the same time, it was clearly an odd idea for those who lived in the first century—hence their description of it as mystery.  But it is even odder for those of us who live in the 21^st century.  How exactly can such a concept be understood in the modern scientific age?  The universe is clearly expanding rather than contracting—and what exactly do you suppose "sanctified matter" might be anyway?

 

The mystery of lawlessness already at work.  In 2 Thess 2:1-12 the author corrects a misapprehension that the day of the Lord had already come.  The assertion is that it cannot have come, since it must first be preceded by "the rebellion" and by the appearance of the "man of lawlessness."  The mystery lies in the fact that already "lawlessness" is at work—although the lawless one has not yet been revealed.  In other words, there is an established timetable for the coming of the day of the Lord, and the mystery is that the scheme has been partially breached or compromised.  How can that be?  How explain that lawlessness is already at work even though "what restrains" (2 Thess 2:7) is still in place and the man of lawlessness has not yet appeared?  This kind of thinking is called apocalyptic eschatology, a kind of thinking in which imagined schemes are devised to account for what will transpire at the end time (cf. 2 Esdras 6:1-34).  Such thinking imposes a fictive plot on history that never happens.  On the other hand, Christianity was clearly more successful with its fictive plot on time separating a pagan time-frame from a Christian time-frame by Before the Common Era and Anno Domine.

 

The mystery of Christ.  The "Christ event" is by far the most perplexing of these mysteries.  This mystery, more than anything, revealed the difficulty that later followers of Jesus had with the most basic concept of their faith (1 Timothy 3:16).  They preached the mystery of Christ (Col 4:2-4)—that is, how could it be that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor 5:19)?  How could it be that all the treasures of wisdom had come to be in Christ (Col 2:1-3)?  How could the gospel of a crucified Jewish teacher be the wisdom of God destined from the ages to bring about human glorification (1 Cor 2:7)?

 

The early followers of Jesus did not settle the questions evoked by these mysteries—in fact, they never even really grappled with them.  They contented themselves with the idea that the solutions to these mysteries reside in the mind of God, and naturally remain incomprehensible to the human mind (Rom 11:33).  There was a surprising lack of curiosity or inquisitiveness on their part that apparently resulted in a reluctance to pursue them.  Certainly part of this mind-set was due to the idea that they regarded their teaching as absolutely true, but principally it was because they considered inquisitiveness (ἐκζητήση) a negative attribute.  The word appears in the New Testament where it is translated as "speculations" (ἐκζητήσεις).  Inquisitiveness also carries with it the idea of getting to the bottom of things—or making an investigation.  Hence there existed a kind of early anti-intellectualism on the part of the early Christians.  They simply ignored these issues, until much later when the diversity in the church forced later leaders to address them.  The mystery of Christ was eventually directly addressed in the councils of the fourth century, but never really resolved.  It was simply glossed over by adoption of an arbitrary scheme (the doctrine of the Trinity) at the Council of Nicaea in 325.

 

Mystery is a puzzle to be deciphered.  The word "mystery" is used only three times in the canonical gospels, and all in the same parallel context (Mark 4:11-12 = Matt 13:11, 13 = Luke 8:10).  The word does not indicate a divine mystery, as it appears elsewhere.  In the gospels a mystery is a deliberate strategy used by Jesus to present information about the kingdom of God in oblique language in order to obfuscate the understanding of the masses.  In the Apocalypse, on the other hand, it is generally used almost as the equivalent of a "puzzle" (Rev 1:20; 17:5, 7) to be solved.  In Rev 10:7, on the other hand, it is a divine mystery that would be accomplished at the trumpet call of the seventh angel.  This obscure reference to the "mystery of God" is not really made clear to the reader, but it is clearly a divine secret about to be unveiled.

 

Should Christianity be understood as one of the mystery religions that emerged about the same time it did?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

The Privative Life of God

Can it be true that God has a private life? Folks at my church seem to assume that God is always on duty, 24/7—particularly to receive all prayers. People seem to think God is even available to make spiritual house calls and hospital visits on a moment’s notice. Imagine; going to God in prayer and sensing a message glimmering in your mind: “call back in a week; on vacation!” Yet there are hints in the Bible that God does have something like a private life—moments when he is away from being hands-on (so to speak) running the world. The ancient Graeco-Roman Gods, on the other hand, are regularly depicted as having private lives.¹ I grant you that Yahweh’s free moments are all depicted in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible (OT). The New Testament (NT) writers are not much-given to reflecting on God anthropomorphically (i.e., depicting God as being human).² Nevertheless these hints are there in OT.

            One indisputable attestation of God’s private life is revealed at the creation when God “finished his work and rested on the seventh day from all his work” and immediately “hallowed the seventh day” of the week (Gen 2:2-3), presumably as a day of rest (Exodus 20:8-11). What do you do when you are resting? The answer is, anything but work!³

The depiction of God as “walking in the garden [of Eden] in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8) and making innocuous chit-chat (before the conversation got serious, Gen 3:9-13) with Adam and Eve sounds as if God’s refreshing pause in the heat of the day was spoiled by the coming of age of Adam and Eve.

            For some reason, God attempts to kill Moses as Moses is on his way to Egypt. God meets Moses at a lodging place on the way and tries to kill him (Exodus 4:24). It does not appear that God is acting in the performance of his official duties, however. Apparently, this act is “off the books” (not an official act) but a clandestine act, if you will, for God fails to kill him—Is this kind of thing something God does in his spare time, do you suppose? Perhaps! God’s all too casual “back-room bargain” with Satan (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6) to allow a testing of Job’s piety appears similar to the incident with Moses. No wonder Jesus followers prayed that they not be put to the test (Matt 6:13=Luke 11:4). God’s bargain with Satan to prove Job’s piety to Satan appears pointless and hence a waste of God’s time.

            There is one kind of thing that God is represented as doing quite frequently in the Bible. One finds repeated references to God “changing his mind,” or “repenting” about things he has done or things he intended to do.⁴ For example, God “was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6:6-7). He later changed his mind again, even about his previous change of mind to destroy everything he had created, because Noah subsequently found favor in his eyes (Gen 6:8). God must have spent a great deal of time mulling over his deeds and pondering what his next course of action should be in the circumstances. One mulls and ponders in the spare moments that one has available—not in the busy moments of life. The frequency with which God ponders certain of his actions suggests that he spent a lot of time reflecting, pondering, and being inactive while in self-recriminating thought.

            There is also “evidence” from sherds, pottery, and the Bible that God may have had a wife (or significant other) at some point in the dim past. It has been suggested by an Oxford scholar, who now teaches at Exeter, that at one time the goddess Asherah (Deut 16:21; I Kgs 14:23) was considered a consort (wife, significant other) of the Hebrew God, Yahweh.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to [Francesca] Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th-century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

"The inscription is a petition for a blessing," she shares. "Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from 'Yahweh and his Asherah.' Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair. And now a handful of similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife."⁵

This is an interesting development that, if true, certainly support the idea that God at one time was thought to have a private life.

            I think, however, I can hear someone thinking quietly: “But you haven’t proven God has a private life. All you have shown is that an ancient semitic tribe at one time suspected the God they worshipped had odd moments when he might have been doing something other than ‘God-like’ things.” And that someone would be correct! When talk of God commences, we are always at the mercy of human imagination. For all God-talk has little to do with factuality. All words about God, like grass in its season, pass with each generation that coined them, like the dissonance between old and new covenants (Heb 8:1-13). Unless members of the tribe get together and canonize their words about God as an iconic object.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹See, for example, Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (2 vols.; George Braziller, 1959), vol. 1. 53-55. This section describes Zeus’ philandering ways, and his home life with Hera, his wife.

²This gap between the OT and NT in God-thought happens between the more primitive anthropomorphic thinking of the OT authors and the slightly-more “philosophically” oriented NT authors. Even one ancient Hebrew prophet recognized the wrong headedness of thinking of God in human terms (1 Sam 15:29).

³Some of the kinds of things God did in his “creation work” are reflected in God’s answer to Job (38-41). Today, God is generally thought-of as doing “religious” work, like answering prayer (or not), rewarding the faithful, and punishing the wicked.

⁴Repent, means to change one’s mind; sometimes translated as “relented”: Exod 32:14; I Sam 15:11, 35; 2 Sam 24:15-16; 1 Chron 21:15; Jer 8:8; 15:6; 18:10; 26:3, 13, 19; 42:10; Amos 7:3, 6; Jonah 3:9-10.

⁵Jennifer Viegas, NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42154769

A Brief Essay about Nothing

Why is it not the case that nothing exists—no rivers, grass, trees, rocks, animals, people, stars, empty space, etc.? In short, why is there nothing at all? My question is about cosmogony, that is, about the genesis of the ordered universe. The Judeo-Christian answer to the question, learned in religious schools, is the myth of creation.¹ The first account of Creation (Gen 1:1-31) begins as follows:²

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness (Gen 1:1-4 RSV).

From this account God is depicted as initially calling into being, or generating from nothing, an amorphous watery mass without firmament into a dark void (Gen 1:6-10). God brought order to this chaos, and then filled the earth with life.

Does one need God to explain the genesis of an ordered world? If so, then the explanation for the genesis of everything is based on religious belief, but sectarian religious belief will not satisfy some as an explanation for there are other Gods and other cosmogonies competing with the Genesis narrative.³ The objection to using theology to explain the genesis of an ordered world is that there is absolutely no verifiable evidence that anything preceded the universe as we know it.

Modern evolutionary theories for the genesis of the universe do not address the originating cause (if cause there be). Theories are of three types:

a universe which starts from a point origin at a finite time in the past and expands continuously to become infinitely large after an infinite time;

a universe whose radius has a certain value at the initial moment of time, and thence expands to become infinite after an infinite time;

a universe which expands from zero radius to a certain maximum and then collapses to zero again; this process of oscillation being capable of indefinite repetition. Within each of these main categories a large number of possible models can be constructed differing in various points of detail.⁴

The competitor to these evolutionary types is the steady-state or continuous theory of creation.

The steady-state model is an alternative to the Big Bang Theory of the evolution of the universe just above. In the steady-state model, the density of matter in the expanding universe remains unchanged due to a continuous creation of matter, thus adhering to the perfect cosmological principle, a principle that asserts that the observable universe is basically the same at any time as well as at any place.⁵ The history of the universe on the steady-state model extends to an indefinite time in the past and future.⁶

While the steady-state model enjoyed some minority support in the scientific mainstream until the mid-20th century, it is now rejected by the vast majority of cosmologists, astrophysicists, and astronomers, as the observational evidence points to a hot Big Bang cosmogony with a finite age of the universe, which the steady-state model does not predict.⁷ The theory of a steady-state universe is seriously challenged by the evidence that the universe is expanding. This demonstrated reality makes the “Big Bang” theory of the genesis of the universe far more plausible, and raises in an urgent way the question of what generated the “Big Bang”—unless we decide that the question is unanswerable.

            The question “what generated the universe” or put another way “why is there nothing at all” I personally find to be unanswerable, but for me it is an important question. It makes me more confident in the proposition that “God” is. “God” in this case, however, is not the personal God of Judeo-Christian faith, but rather the nonexistent point of origin whence all began.⁸ What do you think?

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

¹Virtually every society has a myth of creation to explain the origin of everything. See J. E. Wright, “Cosmogony, Cosmology” in NIDB 1:755-763.

²The second account is Gen 2:4-3:24.

³See for example the short collection of myths of the world before creation from the Pacific basin: Carl Sagan, Cosmos (Wings, 1980), 256-60.

⁴Young, Exploring the Universe (Oxford, 1971), 419-20.

⁵https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle#Perfect_cosmological_principle

⁶Young, Exploring the Universe, 411.

⁷https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_model ; Young, Exploring the Universe, 380-81.

⁸Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths (Cascade, 2019): “Matter and Spirit: Making Sense of it All,” 174-77; and also for an earlier version: http://blog.charleshedrick.com/2015/08/matter-and-spirit-making-sense-of-it-all.html

A Religious Experience?

What are religious experiences and whence do they arise? I raise the question because certain observations seem to challenge the adjective “religious” as being produced by spirit forces outside oneself. Here are the first two observations:

If God is spirit (John 4:24), then God is not an entity existing in space and time, as we human beings do. We humans are existents, bound in space and time during our brief lives. God, on the other hand, appears to be nothing more than a concept, an invention of the human imagination, whose nature and character changes with each religious group and/or individual. Hence, it appears that God, however conceived, has no independent being, which exactly corresponds to any of those ideations of the human mind.

The rationale for this surprising statement is self-evident when viewed from the perspective of the history of world religions. Each religion (and there have been a lot of religions through human history) conceives God differently, yet the adherents of this or that religion believe that God is exactly like what they conceive. In short, they believe their view is the only accurate and true view that captures the essence of God. But, alas, different understandings of God do exist in other religions and the adherents of these other religions likewise think that their understanding of God is exactly how God is.¹

Here is the third observation:

Spirit may still be “tangible,” however; depending on how it is conceived. If spirit is conceived as an entity that takes up space, like visible steam from a tea kettle, or the nearly invisible vapor arising from a heated substance, or the taste left in the rum cake when the “spirits” have evaporated, then it is tangible. If spirit is not left-over taste, or vaporous mist—or something barely visible to the naked eye; that is, if spirit does not leave an image on the retina of the eye, what is it?

I would suppose that God, as intangible spirit, is likely a denizen of a parallel spirit(ual) universe, a complex that does not occupy space and time. In this case, God is not part of the physical universe, but “over there” in the spirit(ual) universe, along with other invisible spirits (good, evil, and unclean), demons, devils, Satan, and other spiritual forces, such as angels, the Prince of the Power of the Air (Eph 2:2), the Principalities and Powers in heavenly places (Eph 3:10), the world rulers of the present darkness (Eph 6:12), the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places (Eph 6:12), angels, principalities, powers (Romans 8:38), etc.,² and including the myriads of other spirits humankind has invented through time.

I boil these three lengthy observations down into three propositions: (1) God, if God there be, does not occupy space and time and (2) is not part of our universe; (3) our human inability to access God directly renders any description of God completely subjective and idiosyncratic.

If these propositions have any merit, then what we think of as a “religious” experience is simply a human response to a perceived “attraction” from a putative spirit world,³ and the “substance” of our religious experiences is all of our own making; it arises from within an individual and is formed by human experience; that is, it derives from what we have been taught by others, from our personal reading, from social conditioning, and the like. In other words, we humans create at a subliminal level “religious” experiences for ourselves out of our personal experiences.

William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature, examines religious experiences by beginning with individuals who claim to have had such experiences. He examines “the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.”⁴ For an experience to qualify as religious, James cites three criteria: it must reflect religious luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness. He finds that the essence of religion is human feeling “characterized as a zest for life” coupled with a sense that there is something wrong with us that requires a solution whereby we can be saved from wrongness by connecting with higher power. There are two types of religious psyches: the healthy minded who are unburdened by a sense of sin, and the sick souls who are burdened with a sense of sin. Conversion occurs for the latter person, whereby the divided and unhappy self becomes unified and happy. James has been criticized for relying too closely on liberal-Protestant sources and citing insufficient non-Christian anecdotes. This brief statement of the analysis of religious experience sounds very similar to what I stated in the preceding paragraph.

I realize that many will object that I have gone off the deep end by claiming that spirits, Holy or otherwise, are not found in our universe. Spirits, however, like God, can only be analyzed indirectly through the anecdotal claims of human beings who claim to have experienced them. Our inability to examine spirits directly renders any attempt to describe them completely subjective and idiosyncratic. In short, the evidence for spirits, Holy or otherwise, derives from the psychological makeup of the human beings who claim to have experienced them.

Something to think about!

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Hedrick, “God Does not Exist” pp. 168-70 in Unmasking Biblical Faiths, 168.

²Hedrick, “From Where does a Sense of the Divine Come,” pp. 170-72 in Unmasking, 170.

³Hedrick, Matter and Spirit: Making Sense of it All,” pp. 174-177 in Unmasking, 176-77.

⁴Varieties of Religious Experience. A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green and company, 1905). I am following a review of the book by Tim Knepper: http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/relexp/reviews/review_james01.htm