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Humor Science & Technology Spirituality Theology

Eschatology: The Holocaust Test

Recently we watched the movie Freedom Writers, which is about a high school teacher who works with inner city students.  It’s a little hokey, but not a bad movie.  At one point, the teacher brings the kids to a holocaust museum, and they meet with some camp survivors.  A somewhat incongruous thought struck me at that moment:  can my theology handle the Holocaust?

Of course, no theology, no reasonable system, can “handle” the Holocaust.  That kind of evil by definition defies reason.  What I mean is, does my theology provide a system of justice that can account for the victims  of the Holocaust?

I’m starting to think of this disturbing question as the “Holocaust Test.”  A theology that can’t pass the Holocaust Test seems too small.  Human history is filled with holocausts.  The Nazi Holocaust is unique in its focus on the Jewish people.  Yet we can also speak of African slavery, of communist dictatorships and gulags, of the killing fields of Cambodia, of Rwanda and Uganda, and so on.  What does our theology say about the innocent blood — the blood of men, women, and young children — that cries out from the ground of human violence?

I’m afraid the very conservative brand of Evangelical theology I’ve inherited fails the Holocaust Test.  The individual eschatology in this system is simple:  those who have heard and responded to the Gospel are in Heaven; those who have not are in Hell.  Anne Frank, and the millions of other Jewish children who died in the Holocaust, simply are lost (assuming they passed the “age of accountability,” whatever that might be).  All of the Jewish adults who died in the Nazi camps, simply are lost.   We should state the logic of this theology in terms that are as unflinching as its teaching:  the residents of Berkenau and Auschwitz went straight from the gas chambers to the flames of Hell.

Obviously, I’m not the first person, or the first Christian, to realize that this view of eschatology is grossly inadquate.  There are many ways of thinking about Christian eschatology that avoid the simplistic poles of hyper-exclusivism and universalism.  On the Roman Catholic side, after Vatican II, there has been much reflection on how the grace extended in Christ through the Church can spill over to non-Catholics and non-professing-Christians.  On the Protestant side, there is Barth, who was a universalist of sorts, and more “evangelical” voices such as Billy Graham, John Stott, Dallas Willard, and others who are by no means universalists, but who strongly suggest that the mystery of God’s salvation cannot be circumscribed by what is visible to us in the human context.

The Holocaust Test forces us to tread in some difficult waters.  I don’t think the Biblical witness, or the Tradition, or reason or experience, support true universalism.  It seems abhorrent to me to suggest that Anne Frank and Hitler share precisely the same fate, whether in Hell or in Heaven.  Freedom means that we have freedom to reject God, and many do reject God, which is the definition of being “lost,” now and in the eschaton.  But, at the same time, the crabbed little “four spiritual laws” view of individual eschatology can’t possibly be the whole story if there is such a thing as divine universal Justice.

What do you think?

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

  • Camping and telescopes with Connor at Cherry Springs — clear skies! http://tinyurl.com/3xqsuo #
  • Cabelas then home #
  • “Justice always wants to hang out with equality, and equality is a real pain in the ass.” — Bono #
  • Quiet saturday– yardwork, whiffle ball #

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Twitter Updates for 2009-06-27

  • Quiet saturday– yardwork, whiffle ball #

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Biblical Seminary Culture Justice Law and Policy

Gleanings Laws for Today

In Missional Theology I, we were required to write  contemporary paraphrase of the gleanings laws in Lev. 19:9-10 and Deut. 24: 19-22. Here is mine:

Now when you develop ever more sophisticated global communication networks that facilitate creativity and trade, when you discover new medicines, when your lands produces the abundance resulting from advanced farming and husbandry technologies and genetically modified stock and seeds, when your study of the human genome yields new insights about human health, when you create new cultural and technological goods from the traditional and biological resources of the South, you shall not seek all the rents available to an efficient monopolist under a strong intellectual property regime; you shall leave a portion of the rents to the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. You shall permit the poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger to access your technologies and information on equitable terms that promote their welfare and development. You shall remember that you were once a developing country and the LORD brought you freedom and abundance; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.

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Biblical Seminary Spirituality

Bono at the Prayer Breakfast

We were assigned to watch this for Missional Theology I.  Outstanding.

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Mission Quote

From the penultimate lecture in BTS Missional Theology I: “Mission flows from Trinity to scripture to who the Church is.”

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Resource for Bruce fans: http…

Resource for Bruce fans: http://cockburnproject.net/ (the hippie Bruce from Canada, not the other Bruce from NJ)

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Bruce Cockburn, The Charity of…

Bruce Cockburn, The Charity of Night: A+. Finally getting my Bruce collection onto my computer.

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Rachel Evans on the "Patriot's Bible"

Here is more from Rachel Evans on the “Patriot’s Bible.”  Exactly right.

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Spirituality

Rachel Evans on "Biblical" Womanhood

This is a great post by Rachel Evans on Jesus Creed.  How often we use the adjective “Biblical” exactly to avoid serious wrestling with the text!