Resurrection, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ. Stanley S. MacLean
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Название: Resurrection, Apocalypse, and the Kingdom of Christ
Автор: Stanley S. MacLean
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Религия: прочее
Серия: Princeton Theological Monograph Series
isbn: 9781621890010
isbn:
This brings us to Torrance’s sermons on Revelation.
C. The Apocalypse: Sermons on Revelation I
1. Christ and the Soul
Of all the sermons Torrance preached, the best known and most original are his published collection on Revelation, titled The Apocalypse Today. It appeared in 1959, but the sermons within were first delivered during the war and just after it while Torrance was a minister at Alyth parish. Needless to say, The Apocalypse Today gives us the best picture of his eschatology in the 1940s. Under sixteen thematic chapters, it covers the whole of Revelation.
Torrance apparently had no intention of ever publishing these sermons but did so “at the request” of many friends and students who longed for “a fresh and straightforward account of the meaning of the Apocalypse for today.”136 “For today” really stood for days that were a throwback to the first century of the church. The 1950s were not as bloody as the 1940s but they were still years of “world distress and conflict,” when people experienced the “plagues of war and the tyranny of oppression.”137 There was no shortage of literature on Revelation in this period, but it was not very good at relating the contents of this book to the present. Roughly, there were two kinds. First, there were the exegetical commentaries, notably R. H. Charles’s monumental two-volume work, which focused on the meaning of the Apocalypse for yesterday, for first-century Christians.138 There were the expository commentaries that tried to make the Apocalypse relevant, but this usually involved extracting the timeless, spiritual truths from the husk of historical and eschatological material.139 Apart from these, one was left with, in Torrance’s words, the “fantastic interpretations of the sects.”140 These interpretations tried to relate the Apocalypse to the modern world, but failed because they took the images and symbols of the book too literally.141
However, The Apocalypse Today does not contain the whole story of Torrance’s engagement with Revelation. Most of the sermons in it originate in 1946, though several originate in 1942.142 Some sermons underwent significant changes by the time they were published; some early sermons never made it into book form.
His first three sermons are not in The Apocalypse Today. This is not surprising, since they are not in line with the historical nature of its eschatology. In the first chapter Torrance defines Apocalypse this way. “[It] is the unveiling of history already invaded and conquered by the Lamb of God. Apocalypse means the tearing aside of the veil of sense and time to reveal the decisive conquest of organic evil by the incarnate Son of God.”143
Those first three sermons, by contrast, reflect Torrance’s early eschatology at Alyth; one that is personal, ahistorical, and rather existentialist. The first one was delivered in 1940 and is about the “Lion and the Lamb” in chapter 5:5ff. “What’s the meaning of this vision?” he asks. He finds three meanings in it. One, it refers to the “liberation of life . . . the sense of the absolute release.”144 Looking deeper, he understands it as an escape from “the bonds of some narrow obsession that blots out all sunshine.”145 Second, there is “salvation in the vision,” salvation for the “hopes you cherished [that were] broken . . . desires of the spirit [that were] broken.”146 Finally, it means “God’s judgement of sin.”147
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