{"id":3329,"date":"2018-03-09T15:53:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T15:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/?p=3329"},"modified":"2018-03-09T15:57:19","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T15:57:19","slug":"1-peter-47-11-and-the-end-of-all-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2018\/03\/09\/1-peter-47-11-and-the-end-of-all-things\/","title":{"rendered":"1 Peter 4:7-11 and the “End” of All Things"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Continuing my reading of 1 Peter, I’ve come to the ominous sounding text of 1 Peter 4:7<\/a>:\u00a0 “The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.”\u00a0 (NRSV).\u00a0 (\u03a0\u1f71\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c4\u1f73\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f24\u03b3\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03b5\u03bd. \u03c3\u03c9\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd\u1f75\u03c3\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u1f75\u03c8\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03c5\u03c7\u1f70\u03c2<\/span>).\u00a0 Harink notes that “[w]e must clarify the meaning of telos<\/em> (end, goal). . . .”\u00a0 He suggests, first, that telos<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

is not in any signifcant sense simply the final point in the cosmic or historical temporal sequence.\u00a0 It is not the end as midnight is the end of a twenty-four-hour day, nor is it near in the sense that midnight is near to 11:59 PM.\u00a0 It is not the next or last thing, but the goal of all things, a goal that subsumes the temporal but cannot be summed up by it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"Harink, Commentary, p. 111.\u00a0 \"\"This is the sense\u00a0telos<\/em> carries in much of Greek thought, and it also seems consistent with New Testament eschatological usage more broadly, so I’m surprised that David Bentley Hart’s translation also reads “Now the end of all things has drawn near.”\u00a0 I’m curious why Hart used a phrase that has such a different resonance in popular culture.<\/p>\n

Harink further argues that “the telos here is not immanent in or intrinsic to the being of all things, something given a priori and awaiting discovery and realization.\u00a0 It is not a possession or potential.\u00a0 It is\u00a0other<\/em>; it is fundamentally\u00a0beyond<\/em>; it is present in its\u00a0coming<\/em>.”\u00a0 Harink Commentary, p. 111.\u00a0 I don’t fully agree with Harink here.\u00a0 As he does consistently throughout this Commentary, Harink radically separates nature and grace, immanence and transcendence, church and world, and so-on.\u00a0 This is a mistake, because it devalues creation and fails to recognize that creation as given is already a gift of grace that anticipates its eschatological realization.<\/p>\n

I agree with Harink that in creation as we now experience it, in the world as we now live in it, the original\u00a0telos<\/em> of creation is only restored by Christ.\u00a0 In that sense, the\u00a0telos<\/em> of creation is not latent and waiting to be discovered, but requires the radical event of resurrection and new creation.\u00a0 Yet even the radical event of resurrection and new creation is not entirely discontinuous with creation as given or with creation as we experience it.\u00a0 Indeed, what is elided in resurrection and new creation — death, despair, evil — is not a part of creation, not a thing in itself, but is a deprivation of creation’s\u00a0telos<\/em>.\u00a0 As St. Paul said, “we know that the whole creation has been groaning\u00a0as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”\u00a0 (Romans 8:22<\/a>).\u00a0 The new creation being birthed cannot be utterly “other” and “beyond” if it derives from the labor pains of this present creation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing my reading of 1 Peter, I’ve come to the ominous sounding text of 1 Peter 4:7:\u00a0 “The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers.”\u00a0 (NRSV).\u00a0 (\u03a0\u1f71\u03bd\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c4\u1f73\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f24\u03b3\u03b3\u03b9\u03ba\u03b5\u03bd. \u03c3\u03c9\u03c6\u03c1\u03bf\u03bd\u1f75\u03c3\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5 \u03bf\u1f56\u03bd \u03ba\u03b1\u1f76 \u03bd\u1f75\u03c8\u03b1\u03c4\u03b5 \u03b5\u1f30\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u03bf\u03c3\u03b5\u03c5\u03c7\u1f70\u03c2).\u00a0 Harink notes that “[w]e must clarify the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-peter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-RH","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3336,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3329\/revisions\/3336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}