Tag: Second Coming

The Church as Tension between the Old and New Worlds

It is not obvious indeed that man—inspire of all presumed radical changes in his ideas and worldview—remains essentially the same? He faces the same problems, is challenged with the same eternal mysteries: those of birth and death, of suffering, joy, love, loneliness, and above all, of the ultimate meaning of his life. Philosophers may have changed their terminology; in fact they debate the same questions. Science may have radically altered the external conditions of life; but it remains helpless—and today more than ever—in solving the ultimate questions of man’s existence. And this essential “sameness” of man is nowhere better revealed than in his recurring “returns” to religiosity and credulity, which today include witchcraft, magic, orientalist of all shades, mysticism of all brands, and primitivism of all flavors.

The tragedy, then, is not that the Church has failed to “understand” the wired and to follow it in all its pseudo-metamorphoses. Rather, the tragedy lies in this: that she followed the world too much, adopting for the explanation of her faith philosophies and though forms alien to it, polluting her piety with the old, pre-christian dichotomy of the “natural” verses the “supernatural” and her worship with either legalistic or magical connotations, abandoning above all that which stood at the very heart of the early Christian faith: the experience of the Church herself as tension between the old and the new, between “this world” and the “world to come,” as the presence “in the midst of us,” and thus the anticipation, of the Kingdom of God.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 150-151

The Sacraments Pass Us Over Into the Kingdom of God

The holy water in Baptism, the bread and wine in the Eucharist, stand for, i.e. represent the whole of creation, but creation as it will be at the end, when it will be consummated in God, when He will fill all things with Himself.

It is this end that is revealed, anticipated, made already real to us in the sacrament; and in this sense each sacrament makes us pass over into the Kingdom of God. It is because the Church herself is the sacrament of this passage and in each of her sacraments takes us there, into the Kingdom of God, that the water of Baptism is holy, i.e. the very presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit; that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are truly, i.e. really, and with a reality more real than all the “objective” realities of “this world,” the Body and Blood of Christ, His parousia, His presence among us. Thus consecration is always the manifestation, the epiphany of that End, of that ultimate Reality for which the world was created, which was fulfilled by Christ through His Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, which the Holy Spirit reveals today in the Church  and which will be consummated in the Kingdom “to come.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 49-50

God-Christ will judge according to works and then the millenium begins

Ye who are to be inhabitants of the heavens with God-Christ, hold fast the beginning, look at all things from heaven.  Let simplicity, let meekness dwell in your body.  Be not angry with thy devout brother without a cause, for ye shall receive whatever ye may have done from him.  This has pleased Christ, that the dead should rise again, yea, with their bodies; and those, too, whom in this world the fire has burned, when six thousand years are completed, and the world has come to an end.  The heaven in the meantime is changed with an altered course, for then the wicked are burnt up with divine fire.  The creature with groaning burns with the anger of the highest God.  Those who are more worthy, and who are begotten of an illustrious stem, and the men of nobility under the conquered Antichrist, according to God’s command living again in the world for a thousand years, indeed, that they may serve the saints, and the High One, under a servile yoke, that they may bear victuals on their neck.  Moreover, that they may be judged again when the reign is finished.  They who make God of no account when the thousandth year is finished shall perish by fire, when they themselves shall speak to the mountains.  All flesh in the monuments and tombs is restored according to its deed:  they are plunged in hell; they bear their punishments in the world; they are shown to them, and they read the things transacted from heaven; the reward according to one’s deeds in a perpetual tyranny.

Commodianus
Instructions of Commodianus
Chapter LXXX

The fire of God is experienced differently for the wicked than the righteous

In the flame of fire the Lord will judge the wicked.  But the fire shall not touch the just, but shall by all means lick them up.  In one place they delay, but a part has wept at the judgment.  Such will be the heat, that the stones themselves shall melt.  The winds assemble into lightnings, the heavenly wrath rages; and wherever the wicked man fleeth, he is seized upon by this fire.  There will be no succour nor ship of he sea.  Amen, flames on the nations, and the Medes and Parthians burn for a thousand years, as the hidden words of John declare.  For then after a thousand years they are delivered over to Gehenna; and he whose work they were, with them are burnt up.

Commodianus
Instructions of Commodianus
Chapter XLIII

Christ has carried his flesh into heaven as a sign that ours will also reside in heaven

Jesus is still sitting there at the right hand of the Father, man, yet God—the last Adam, yet the primary Word—flesh and blood, yet purer than ours—who “shall descend in like manner as He ascended into heaven” the same both in substance and form, as the angels affirmed, so as even to be recognised by those who pierced Him. Designated, as He is, “the Mediator between God and man,” He keeps in His own self the deposit of the flesh which has been committed to Him by both parties—the pledge and security of its entire perfection. For as “He has given to us the earnest of the Spirit,” so has He received from us the earnest of the flesh, and has carried it with Him into heaven as a pledge of that complete entirety which is one day to be restored to it. Be not disquieted, O flesh and blood, with any care; in Christ you have acquired both heaven and the kingdom of God. Otherwise, if they say that you are not in Christ, let them also say that Christ is not in heaven, since they have denied you heaven.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter LI

Man must appear at the judgment in both body and soul

Thus it follows that the fulness and perfection of the judgment consists simply in representing the interests of the entire human being. Now, since the entire man consists of the union of the two natures, he must therefore appear in both, as it is right that he should be judged in his entirety; nor, of course, did he pass through life except in his entire state.  As therefore he lived, so also must he be judged, because he has to be judged concerning the way in which he lived. For life is the cause of judgment, and it must undergo investigation in as many natures as it possessed when it discharged its vital functions.

Tertullian
On the Resurrection of the Flesh
Chapter XIV

Those who deny his flesh will one day witness him in the flesh

They too who crucified Him shall see and acknowledge Him; that is to say, His very flesh, against which they spent their fury, and without which it would be impossible for Himself either to exist or to be seen; so that they must blush with shame who affirm that His flesh sits in heaven void of sensation, like a sheath only, Christ being withdrawn from it; as well as those who (maintain) that His flesh and soul are just the same thing, or else that His soul is all that exists, but that His flesh no longer lives.

Tertullian
On the Flesh of Christ
Chapter XXIV

Man appears before the judgment seat of Christ in the body

In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.” Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences, and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies. For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition, wherein the merit was itself achieved.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XII

Christ is the High Priest of both the circumcision and the uncircumcision

Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter IX

A millennial kingdom on Earth before reign in heaven

But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, “let down from heaven,” which the apostle also calls “our mother from above;” and, while declaring that our πολίτευμα , or citizenship, is in heaven, he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven.

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book III
Chapter XXV