Resurrection, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ. Stanley S. MacLean

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      The dynamiting of the world begins at the personal, spiritual level. This happens through the “personal touch of the risen Lord” that “transforms everything into living reality,” that “turns the world upside down, that dispels darkness.”10 The touch of the risen Lord reveals among other things that our relationship to God is highly personal, “far, far more personal than our relations with one another can ever be.”11 Christ’s resurrection is really about the “acute personalization of all our relations with God and all his relations with us.”12

      What accounts for this personal touch? The manhood of the risen Christ. So “what ever happened in the relations of man and God between the incarnation and resurrection” is not invalidated by Easter but, rather, “deepened and extended.”13 A “diffused spirit or ideal projection” could never give us a personal touch.14 We can have that touch only because Christ Jesus is sits enthroned at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

      For Easter 1941, Torrance would preach two sermons on the resurrection; the first based on 1 Cor 15:17–18, the second on 15:20.15 In these sermons, Christ’s resurrection is the sine qua non of Christianity. “If Christ is not risen then you have nothing left worth calling a gospel.”16 “On the fact of the resurrection everything is suspended.”17 “Strike it out” and you have nothing left really, he adds.18 In response to those who believe they can cling to the cross for salvation, he answers: “you must have the resurrection to explain the cross.”19 Without the resurrection, Christ on the cross is, in his view, “dead being alone,” and to look for him there is to “seek the living among the dead.”20

      “But now Christ is risen . . .” The Easter story “is essentially the great Christian message.”21 With these words, Torrance launches into his second sermon. It seems that he felt the men and women at Alyth had embraced a truncated version of Christianity, one that did not take seriously that “but” from 1 Cor 15:20. It is not enough for a Christian, he maintains, to have faith in the incarnation and cross of Christ. They “form only half the truth and in themselves mean nothing” apart from Christ’s resurrection.22

      What was the whole truth that Torrance was driving at on that Easter evening? It is this. “The resurrection is the complete movement from God to God that passes through the lowest point of our humanity.”23 He uses a parabola to illustrate the doctrine. God descends to us, down to the pits of human experience—to guilt, death, hell—before he ascends in the resurrection. And the all-important turning point in the parabola is the “but” Paul used. Soteriologically, this turning point is also God’s “breakthrough in the realms of human bondage, sin and death.”24 God’s victory over these is an objective reality, but it has to become a subjective actuality for Christians. Otherwise, he argues, this great event will be a “mere story” for us. “Until you know the resurrection with power, till you’ve broken through with the risen Christ, you have not begun to know the real joy and liberty of the Gospel.”25

      No such breakthrough will occur, however, until we are taken to the edge of our thoughts, beyond the limit of what we consider possible. That is because the resurrection is “totally incomprehensible by any human standard.”26 We need to “make room for the supernatural,” Torrance pleads, so God can “knock a hole in the midst our world” with the force of “Eternity.”27 Easter is a miracle. It is the miracle of miracles. The world is not the same since Jesus rose from the dead. The resurrection is what separates Christianity from all other religions. Indeed, from Torrance’s perspective, it is not even proper to call Christianity a religion. Christianity is “a person.”28 The resurrection of Jesus Christ, we must not forget, was the resurrection of a man, who is “bone of our bone . . . flesh of our flesh.”29 Because he is risen, this man Jesus can be the personal presence of God to us. That is why he ends this Easter sermon with the great news that Christ is risen not only “for you, but . . . so that he can be near you.”30

      2. “Nunc aeternum”

      The resurrection of Christ also opens up an encounter with “Eternity.” “Eternity has come plumb down from above and intersected our beggarly time,” allowing us to “take to the wings of the spirit.”31 This language too goes back to Auburn, where the incarnation is viewed as the entry of eternity into time.

      The best illustration of this type of eschatology is found in Torrance’s sermon on 2 Pet 3:8. The entire third chapter from Second Peter is one of the best sources of primitive Christian eschatology. It is a defense of the return of Christ—and its cataclysmic impact—in response to doubts about his return. But Torrance shows no interest in these things. Instead, his message is about meeting the eternal God in the midst of time. “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day.” The real value of this verse, then, is that it enables us to see the world from God’s point of view, which is infinitely different from our view of it. If this is done, we will have wings with which “to soar above tensions and limitations of a temporal world.”32 How is this so? The first part of this verse applies to God’s being. “One day in the Divine Mind overrides all finite thinking; for every day has its roots in eternity.”33 It is natural to break time into future, present, and past. But Torrance thinks this distorts the real truth about time, because with God every moment is the eternal moment, the eternal now. This is what is meant, he explains, by the words: “He is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8). God is indeed the eternal one, but eternity should not be conceived as duration without end. It is better to see eternity as a vertical extension, not a horizontal one. “With God you do not live in the past or the future—but in the eternal now. Each day is as a thousand years; each day is crammed with eternity.”34 Since every moment is of the “utmost importance” to God, it should be of like importance to us. “‘Now is the day of Salvation’; each day you make history, for each day is loaded with destiny.”35 If we look upon time from God’s perspective, every moment can be a moment in eternity, in the presence of God. “Do not crowd tomorrow into your today; don’t divide up your life with yesterday, today and tomorrow. Rather, carry Eternity with your today.”36 Here then we have the first wing needed for our flight.

      “A thousand years as one day” refers to the second wing. Torrance is convinced that sin distorts time. It makes the days long. “Sin is sin against the infinite majesty of God and therefore in its guilt; and when God opposes you, your conscience burns and time becomes endless.”37 That is why one day can feel like a thousand years. But when we are justified before God and thus free to remain in his presence, time can fly by without us realizing it. Still, we feel small against the backdrop of history. Perhaps that is why Torrance urges us “get inside Eternity” to find “God’s view,” for then “you’ll see that the whole panorama of history which unfolds before your eyes is all meant for you.”38

      Although we can talk about the two “wings” of time separately, Torrance insists we need both “to fly.” In other words, the two parts of the verse must be “telescoped” together like “twin spectacles” in order get God’s view of the world. “It is only in the supreme effort in which we look through both at once that we get a proper perspective which will transfigure this flat world of time into the bold relief of eternity.”39

      Torrance was not just interested in changing attitudes. His real aim was evangelical, to bring people into a life-changing encounter with the living God, with eternity. What is more, we can detect a “theology of crisis” in his words. He tells his church that if they heed his advice they will be brought to a “moment of decision” in which they will be “confronted by God Himself.”40 As such it will be a moment like no other. It will not be fleeting, like the passing moment of illumination created by a bolt of lightning. “This moment is an eternal crisis, an eternal moment; for you find that eternity has become your contemporary; contemporaneous with every instant of your life, impinging on you at every moment. Face to face with God, faith has reached out and in an everlasting decision grasped eternity and thrust it in its bosom– and now a thousand years are as a day and a day a СКАЧАТЬ