Category: Eschatological Economy

Dear Dr Knight

I am on my second reading of â??EEâ??. As a Lutheran layman I am a reader of First Things and Touchstone. My pastor and good friend has just left our Lutheran church and communion for the Church of Rome. About the time he announced his decision to leave, I ordered â??EEâ?? on a whim and a few reviews. I have found it to be an excellent work in addressing the problems of church division and modernity. I have been quite frustrated with the very questions you address: Creation, Israel, the work of the Holy Spirit, and how I raise my children in the midst of screaming cultural conversations. Thus my second reading. I am captivated by the bookâ??s premise of a Trinitarian theology in which God is bringing his people to a fullness and freedom through his dynamic work: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I have often struggled in this highly individualized culture with how to participate in the life of God as Body of Christ and how the time afforded me fits with that of the fullness of that Body in its history. Thank you for your diligent work. It has helped to clarify much of what was bothering me so much. I shall probably have a number of questions â?? one of which I will ask you now. Do you have an outline of â??EEâ?? that would enable me to teach an adult class in my church? I really believe that Christians of all educational levels (and economic levels) are struggling with the questions your book so helpfully addresses. I intend on developing such a series of classes that relies on scriptural readings, parables, and questions pertinent to the development of an eschatology that informs faith and inspires Christian formation. Can you help me with this?
Sincerely your in Christ,
CG

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Dear Christopher
Many thanks for your wonderful mail.

Yes I do have an outline of The Eschatological Economy, though it needs more work. I have written a series of posts on EE for the blog and to post on Amazon. I will send you what I have, though I don’t know if it will help your class.

As for scriptural material for classes on eschatology that informs faith and Christian formation, I am working on that too. I have been putting together some chapters on Christian formation which I hope will be of some use to the church. I am going to call it The Apprenticeship, and it will cover much of the same ground as The Eschatological Economy, but more accessibly.

Everything that Christians say about time, history and the purpose of the world, which is that we come to share life with God, can be lumped together as eschatology. It is a catch-all for all the issues around our looking forward in hope and faith to his coming again in great glory. This means that we have to say that the world has a plot, but it doesn’t really know what it is, so there are two rival accounts of the plot â?? the worldâ??s and the Lordâ??s. There is a double history: secular history and salvation history. It is the Christian privilege to point out the difference between them. That is the line I would take with a class.

But there are many other and better people working in these areas, I commend their works to you. I have started to compile lists of books on my Amazon homepage, but it is a long job and James Merrick (there is a link from my blog) for example does it better than I do. You can find out what my suggestions are by looking through those lists. It would be a lot quicker than waiting for me to produce new material.

I don’t think there is any need to leave the mainline denominations, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, nor to feel abandoned when someone near, dear or senior does. There are many reasons why individuals might leave this or that congregation, but whether we leave or stay, the Christian life is always going to hurt, but we should always be glad of it.

We English used to think that we were in possession of the gospel: then we decided that we had seen through the gospel. Now we really don’t know what the gospel is, but are still too proud to say that it matters to us. So churches don’t run classes in England, and almost no one asks for classes. Where classes are run, by charismatic churches for example, they tend not to make connections between discipleship and intellect, and don’t see the intellectual side work as real work. The Christian here is a student without a teacher (or teacher without a class) – a sparrow on the rooftop. Thanks. If you want more, please ask me again.

Douglas

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

In The Eschatological Economy I wanted to show that one unfortunate consequence of reading the Scriptures without the doctrine of election of the people of God – first Israel, then also the Church – is that the Christian tradition has under-played the process of formation and transformation, and has little comprehension that a community is being changed, because it is being brought up by its God.

We have to learn the proper interrelations of Christian doctrine, or we will be putting together elements that don’t belong together. When too many scriptural notions are simply superimposed, rather than introduced only at the proper place in a narrative, we confuse what should be distinct accounts of the work of Christ.

The most obvious of these confusions is penal substitution, where sacrifice looks like the frankly pagan propitiation of a needy tyrant. To sum up what I have said so far: sacrifice does not belong with atonement; it is about the transformation of a people, so it belongs with sanctification.

The central Christian confession that ‘Christ died for us according to the Scriptures’ demands that we explain how one person can be for another. The concept of representation is crucial to the doctrine of the atonement. Here we must meet the important philosophical challenge of Kant to representation and atonement. Kant declared that one person cannot stand in for another.

So how is Christ for us ? How does he represent, substitute, intercede, supply what we lack and do what we cannot do for ourselves? The answer must take the form of a narrative of Christ that shows his action as public action, that takes place before the world, before his own people, before the Gentiles and in contest with them – and before God who approves his work.

I have been trying to set out these different audiences of Christ’s work, and to show that these atonement models also make sense in terms of a general purpose anthropology. For others do in fact speak up for us, stand in for us, invest in us – or at least we complain when they don’t.

If we go further and understand that we not merely are, but that we also we have a share in making one another the people we are, we could even call these models of atonement ‘social ontologies’.

A patient interest in Christian doctrine brings us to a concept of participation, which used to be called ‘corporate personality’. We a concept of participation to explain what we mean by the term ‘In Christ’.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

Dear Dr Knight:

Last night a group of us (the others are Protestant pastors and I am an Orthodox priest) here in Des Moines, Iowa, decided to read your book – The Eschatological Economy – as a group. It fits with some other things we have been reading, and they are as interested as I am in what you have to say about Metropolitan John (Zizioulas). Indeed, his Being as Communion may be our next book. I am eager to read your forthcoming work on his theology.

Are you an Anglican?

If we become perplexed at some point in our reading of your book, I may email you for a clarification!

In the peace of Christ,
+Lev

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Dear Father Lev and friends

I am honoured that you have picked The Eschatological Economy for your reading group. Now I really do wish it was a better book.

I wrote it as I was looking around for a systematic theology that could help us diagnose our present church situation, and to explore what Metropolitan John Zizioulas meant by ‘eschatological ontology’, and to get clearer in my own mind how Christ died and lives for us – so three different motives.

Much theology is written in a panic about our present situation. Theologians seem to be waiting for permission from someone before they say anything too Christian – so they don’t seem to be our teachers any more. I think we should give them this permission by praying for them, and writing to them to encourage them to teach us to be disciples. If they do so, the panic will subside and we can start to lay the Christian proposal before the world with a bit more patience and reason.

The life of the Church must be sourced from the whole Christian theological and historical experience, because only the whole deposit of faith makes us the distinct – holy – community of witness, able to communicate this faith and so to be of some use to the world. So The Eschatological Economy reads like a set of demands, made to any theologian who is prepared to receive them, to pass on the whole deposit of faith. I have learned how to make more demands, or pray more prayers, since I wrote it.

I am an Anglican – a ‘catholic evangelical’, I think – with various friends trying to tug me in more Catholic or Orthodox directions. My theology is Reformed and Barthian, but I have learned from TF Torrance and Robert Jenson that we can grow out of the worst of our Western problems if we go back to the Fathers. This is what I have tried to do by making Irenaeus’ account of the formation of man the main narrative, and making all the Augustinian fall-and-sin issues subordinate to this. Then comes the Protestant part of my agenda, which is to set out a good account of the atonement by properly relating ideas of representation, substitution and sacrifice, and to make a decision about penal substitution, and that is what is going on in chapters 3 & 4.

Of course I would like to hear your reactions to The Eschatological Economy, but there are probably other people who would like to know what you make of it too, so I would be especially grateful if you would also copy your questions and reactions into the comment box on the book’s Amazon page, or the DK blog. Then I will not be the only one to be grateful to you.

Best wishes
Douglas Knight

In The Eschatological Economy I argued that the community of Israel brings animals to the temple for their God to inspect and pronounce good (or not), and thus publicly to assess and agree on the progress of this sanctification. It is not that animals are made holy, but that the whole people is being made holy. Its animal gifts are shown as samples for the public inspection of the progress towards this promised transformation. So then it is this transformation, which makes sense of this public demonstration-and-inspection process. God is forming and teaching his people. Within this process God insists that his people report back to him at intervals with demonstrations of their progress, by bringing him samples of their husbandry.

Israel’s action – sacrifice – is also a public parody and demythologisation of the nations. Israel is demonstrating to other nations that their worship is all about propitiation and killing because their gods are needy and tyrannical, and thus not gods at all.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

The variety of information Amazon makes available for each book title grows each month. The Amazon ‘See Inside’ function takes you to the Amazon Online Reader (their equivalent to Google Book Search).

The ‘See Inside’ function now works for The Eschatological Economy : it opens the Amazon Online Reader, which allows you to select ‘Excerpt’ which shows you the beginning of Chapter One.

I now realise that The Eschatological Economy starts with a very steep climb, because the opening of Chapter One is quite dense. I wish the Online Reader showed the Introduction instead, where I set out as simply as I could what this book is about, and briefly what each chapter contains.

But the ‘Search’ function of the Amazon Online Reader is a wonder.

So far I have used it on The Eschatological Economy to search on ‘death of Christ’, and ‘resurrection of Christ’ (and have realised that the ‘of’ complicates matters) and ‘atonement’. Best of all, ‘Holy Spirit’, referred to on 35 pages of The Eschatological Economy. Not bad, eh?

Then you get a list of three-line excerpts in which the search word appears, just enough context to know which references are worth pursuing. Then a click brings up the relevant page.

Though The Eschatological Economy is all about the atonement, I don’t use that word all that much. Nonetheless ‘atonement’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘salvation’ all take you to the relevant discussions in the book. Here are some search results for ‘Atonement’ as they appear in the Amazon Online reader:

6. on Page 142: “… tradition, Karl Barth decided against employing sacrifice as a model for his discussion of the work of Christ. Though the atonement could be presented in sacrificial and priestly terms, Barth believes that these are now antiquated and so presents his account …”

8. on Page 82: “… God has broken through to sweep all sins finally away. Whether hilasterion means the event or the site of atonement, the sins of Israel were all dealt with together on that one day in the year. The atonement of the …”

9. on Page 84: “… talk of representation and substitution is alien to Israelite sacrifice, I suggest that we should see Old Testament talk of atonement of place as a solution, not a problem. If we make a hard distinction between individuals and persons defined by …”

10. on Page 119: “… Israel and the character of Israel’s God.” Comprehension and appropriation of these practices are not secondary to the rituals of atonement themselves, for the rituals are responsible for the formation of Israel’s new mind. According to Milgrom, all Israel’s sacrifice is …”

28. on Page 237: “… itself. The economy of modernity, and all the human and social sciences that support it, is a massive effort of atonement that constitutes this secular so- ciety. It is led by the discipline of economics, itself an ethic masquerading as a …”

29. on Page 244: “… will be justice, both for us and for those who have been denied justice by us. Critics of the forensic atonement ask by what right God brings us to court to try us as sinners. We exercise this right against each …”

‘Modernity’ brings up 70 pages. ‘God’ brings up ten pages of results, because the word appears on 261 pages of the book, ‘man’ on 63 pages. At least we know what The Eschatological Economy is about now.

In The Eschatological Economy I wanted to show that when we talk about sacrifice, in the bible or in ancient pagan world, the first question we have to ask is whose sacrifice? Do we mean Israel’s, or the sacrifices of other nations? The difference between sacrifice in Israel, and sacrifice in the rest of the (pagan) world is the difference between the true God the false gods. Failure to make this distinction confuses everything said about the topic of sacrifice.

I argued that, for Israel, the decisive point about a sacrifice was not that something was killed, but that something was presented – to God and to his people. Sacrifice was a public act so the animal admitted to the temple is a public demonstration that Israel, and the individual Israelite, is admitted by God.

It was also a double act. The sacrifice is coming from God to Israel, and from Israel to God in thanks and recognition of God’s initial gift. God gave Israel gifts and he did so publicly, before the watching world – Thou hast prepared a table for me before the face of mine enemies… (Psalm 23). So sacrifice serves to sustain the relationship of the people with their God, and to show Israel and the gentile world beyond, what that relationship was.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

Recapitulation – God’s reverse engineering of creation. Eschatology has tended to mean that which is to come. Then it meant that which is to come which has actually come in Christ, the proleptic future. Now it means the bow wave of God’s work of recreation, coursing through the created order, renewing everything in line with the end. It’s quite an image, and an idea, and in one sense challengeable at every point, yet we see by faith not be sight. The Church is on the crest of that bow wave, or it should be. Sometimes it isn’t. The world seeks to resist that bow wave, puts up its sand banks, and storm walls. But God just does a new thing, outflanking the world. A crucified God: who’d have thought it?

Douglas Knight reminds us, once again, that we are grafted into Israel, not the other way around. We then partake of Israel’s paideia. We are in the same school as them. Yes, things are different, for Christ has come, who has summed up Israel in himself, yet also, the people of Israel are still being formed. Their story is not a handy source of illustrations, much as we might refer to Shakespeare, or Dickens for illustrations; their story is our story, which is God’s story, his narrative. Israel is still central to God’s plans. This is the election of God, through which the world is blessed.

Pay a visit to the all-new Solly Gratia.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

The Eschatological economy makes daring and provocative claims:

`Christian thought is political. It contradicts other systems of ideas and creates a real encounter and contest of world-views…’

`Modernity is a religion… Modernity and Christianity are both forms of enlightenment, but modernity is the counterfeit version, Christianity the real one…’

`The Word of God identifies Western being as a failure of action and of relatedness, and thus as a failure of being… `

Such bold claims require a radical approach and in an important sense Douglas Knight’s book is about the totality of the real: about God and God’s action and about time and history.

`Modern thought [was] ever ready to take things apart but [was] unable to put them together again’.

Yet, while making bold claims about things theo-logical, the book is also about humanity, perhaps profoundly about humanity. After all, God’s action and being are deeply bound to humanity and there is no knowledge of the Creator God without knowledge of his creature.

From this perspective the book is about personhood, about sanctification and transformation, that is, about paideia, which becomes, in Knight’s use, a key theological term. Special attention is accorded to the `stage’ of this transformation and especially to the role of Israel in this process.

`A Trinitarian and Irenaean view of Israel’s anthropology puts human beings in touch with the creation of which they are members. Humankind is hosted by God and brought up by him into the practice of God’s hospitality.’

The sacrifice of the Son, the event of the cross is shown to be the apex of God’s labour for and with the world, through which we are integrated into the person of the Son through the Holy Spirit, becoming thus members of his body, the Church. All these things are spelled out in conversation with the contemporary (post)modern world, its claims and proposals, systems of ideas, dichotomies, utopias and above all, its idols. It is a conversation to be sure, but it is also a contest and a battle against falsehood and pretense, an affirmation of what really `is’ and what `is to come’, against a rhetoric of `being’ and self-made existence.

In this sense, the book is also about method and sources, as it advocates reflection that listens to the Scriptures and acknowledges the richness of church doctrine and tradition. Indeed, Christianity can and must tell the difference between constructive change and mere decay since `one way of being human is very considerably better than other ways’… Knight modestly claims that there’s nothing really new in his book (This reminds some of us of Zizioulas’ modest stance!)…

Yet the book offers a genuine experience of the `new’, just confirming, perhaps, an underlying theme in Knight’s book: It is only as we respond to God in obedience and praise that we allow him to do new things; we allow Him to labor `changes’ that have a future, changes that conform us to the image of His Son.

After all, the Gospel, as Knight reminds us, `is the most exhilarating thing in the marketplace’… Getting a taste of this pathos alone makes the book worth studying. A must read for all Theology students and preachers but also for philosophers, sociologists and political theorists who engage themselves in `descriptions’ or `prescriptions’ of the contemporary world.

George Ille’s Amazon review

God is judge. This is an idea that has undergone a metamorphosis in my mind. Too often ‘God is judge’ means he is like those guys in red dispensing retributive justice in our British court system. This was Luther’s apprehension of God before he understood things better, but it is an apprehension that seems to creep easily back into Reformed thought on the ground – and possibly Catholic thought too. God is out to punish sins, so watch out. God is a judge, and a judge gives you what you deserve. Okay, he actually gave Jesus what you deserve, as the doctrine goes, but after that, you had better watch out, cos THEN he will give you what you deserve if you don’t behave. Legalism goes hand in hand with this. Of course, it’s not God’s fault at all but the use humans make of the idea.

This would seem to mitigate against the idea of God as punishing judge rather than saving judge, since Christians can be all to quick to judge others, including their salvific position before God – check any Christian debate forum – and I don’t think that that is what is meant. We need a word that covers action on behalf of those in trouble as well as conveying the thought of discernment. Not that God did not punish, but the glee with which people, including Christians, will cut another off for some transgression, is surely not an imitation of God’s actions. No wonder Jesus said forgive seventy times seven times…Something more is intended. Remember, The Eschatological Economy is about paideia, about God training up a dysfunctional houseful of delinquents and outcasts to be a mature family carrying on their father’s work. Is this also where a renewed Protestant thought touches base with Eastern Christianity and its doctrine of theosis, if one sees such a thing from a vocational angle, rather than just a ‘spiritual’ one?

In addition to writing the world’s longest and most charitable book review, Solly blogs perceptively about Israel and Atonement. Visit Solly Gratia.

You can find out more about The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans

In The Eschatological Economy I wanted to show that there are interesting reasons why modern society wants to believe that the concept of sacrifice is vicious and outmoded. Modernity is not only mistaken about this, it is concealing something about itself. Christians certainly need to rediscover a clearer and more trinitarian account, because the concept of sacrifice is central to the gospel and cannot be removed without loss. Jesus Christ is ‘the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world’. My own professor, Colin Gunton, wanted to show that the concept of sacrifice makes sense, but he found it hard to show how. Many other theologians, like the New Testament and patristic scholar Frances Young in her ‘Sacrifice and the Death of Christ’, were saying that ancient people sacrificed, we don’t, so it difficult or even impossible for us to make sense of Christian doctrine, in terms of sacrifice at least. I was amazed to find Karl Barth saying the same thing (Church Dogmatics volume IV.1 p.275). Frances Young and Karl Barth were puzzled because they understood sacrifice as propitiation (placating a fierce judge), which seems to suggest that pain must be experienced, which is very close to saying that God demands the pain. The problem was that the concept of sacrifice had become linked in Augustinian theology to a doctrine of God that was more pagan (Stoic) than Christian.

It is part of the creed of modernity that we have left all our earlier violence and superstition behind. Just as Christianity surpassed paganism, the modern worldview believes that modernity has now surpassed Christianity. The belief that one system and one age gives way to another that is superior, is itself a ‘replacement theology’, or supersessionism. It believes that we used to be religious, but now we are not. It is up to the Christians to pop this balloon, and point out that one religion (Christianity) has been swapped for another (modernity) but it is still an open question which religion is better. Christians have to say that if a society, like ours, gives up Christianity it has not gone beyond Christianity, but simply gone back to the default position and become pagan again.

See The Eschatological Economy at Amazon.com or at Amazon.co.uk or at Eerdmans