And the Lord spake, saying, “What was I thinking?!”

Preterists who deny a physical Resurrection of the Dead have been accused of being gnostic (because we supposedly believe that only spiritual reality matters and that the physical world is evil). Yet those who demand a destruction of the physical universe and the replacement with a spiritual new heavens and new earth are surely closer to this belief than are full preterists. We don’t see a reason to believe that the earth and the physical universe will not sustain us into virtual perpetuity. Our strictly spiritual Kingdom is more likely to take over the realm of the physical as we apply the mandate for dominion in every area of our lives. Those looking forward to a restoration of the physical universe need look no further than the preterist’s Kingdom of God made manifest in us, the sons of God, the co-heirs with Jesus.

Genesis 1:28 shows us the original intention God had for man: man was tasked with subduing the earth and ruling over it and its creatures. Now, think theoretically for a second. Was God thwarted in His plan? Was He forced to go back to the drawing board because man did something God knew he was going to do all along? Was the sum of human history a waste because no sooner did God give us the mandate, but we screwed up? Was God’s experiment with a physical universe a dismal failure that He’s been stuck with for millennia, while He sits up there and waits (for something or other) to wipe it off the map and forget the whole embarrassing experience? Poor God. Better luck next time!

This view is untenable for someone who believes that God is omnipotent and omniscient. So it’s really no wonder that Calvin and others devoted especially to the concept of God’s sovereignty should resort to the defense, “Well…God really wanted it that way! Yeah, He didn’t fail: He planned the whole fiasc–, uh, glorious plan!”

I think, rather, that His plan will be fulfilled and that His first-century work was a new beginning. We see a similar pattern in the flood account. What happened after God wiped out the wicked with the Flood? He started again, with the same earth and the same animals, and the faithful; in fact, the only change was in the topology and the exclusion of the wicked from the land. That’s what happened in AD 70. Noah, like Adam, was charged with populating the land with offspring and subduing the creation (Gen. 9:1-3, 7). So it is with us.

When Christendom has finally understood and embraced its reinvigorated Kingdom mandate, the physical world will reap the benefits. This goes for improvement in medical science: the world reshaped by the influence of Christianity has already done much in this direction, but there could be more. For instance, could Christians leading science in the far off future eventually essentially marginalize physical suffering, perhaps even going so far as to subjugate physical death? What about the environment? I don’t just mean caring for it in the ecological sense, but being able to predict and manipulate even the weather — sure, it sounds Star Trek, but my point is that the sky’s the limit. In a few millennia, the fallen world as we know it may be a distant memory, fading away much like the mother’s childbirth pain once she holds the newborn in her arms.

Is this fantasy?

Technorati : eschatology, theology

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