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<\/a><\/p>\nBEN: Rightly you stress that the resurrection of Jesus involves a real embodied existence, only one that is apparently immune to disease, decay, and death now. And correctly you stress that \u2018dying and going to heaven\u2019 as a form of afterlife is barely mentioned in the NT compared to the stress on new creation, new creatures raised from the dead. After 2,000 years of waiting for the return of Christ, it is perhaps no surprise that the emphasis shifted from life in the future on earth as resurrected people to dying and going to heaven. After all, pastors have to keep doing funerals, and they don\u2019t tend to emphasize \u2018ashes to ashes dust to dust in sure and certain hope of the resurrection\u2019. How frankly does one keep the NT hope of future resurrection alive and well in today\u2019s church, in light of the passage of so much time? Why shouldn\u2019t people see Jesus\u2019 resurrection as an historical anomaly rather than the beginning of the new creation?<\/p>\n
TOM: The passage of time isn\u2019t that important. There is plenty in scripture about waiting and patience. After all, the Jews waited half a millennium for Isaiah 40 to be fulfilled, but it eventually was . . . if we preachers and teachers more regularly preached on 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, and indeed on the resurrection narratives as they stand (which means NOT talking about \u2018going to heaven\u2019 \u2013 the ascension being something different, namely Jesus\u2019 enthronement and the fulfilment of his High Priestly sacrifice) then the funerals would look<\/p>\n
after themselves. It\u2019s perfectly possible to have a resurrection-focused funeral; it\u2019s just that if you\u2019re not preaching about resurrection fairly regularly, and if you\u2019re singing hymns about \u2018way beyond the blue\u2019 or \u2018we\u2019ll fly away\u2019, then it will be much harder . . .<\/p>\n
BEN: One of the texts you highlight is Rom. 8\u2014 \u2018God works all things together for good for those who love Him\u2019. What really do you take this to mean? That not all things that happen to believers are good or from God, but that in the hands of God he can weave it into a larger pattern of life for the good of that person? Or do you think Paul is talking about divine providence in the sense that John Wesley viewed it when he was reflecting on the riot in Wednesbury when he preached there where there were ruffians in the audience prepared to pelt Wesley with rotten eggs, and Wesley said \u2018by a singular providence of God, the crowd pressed in on the ruffians who had come to do mischief and their weapons were smashed in their own pockets, with an odor that arose which was not so sweet as balsam, but nonetheless was an odor pleasing to the Lord who had foiled their designs\u2019. How does divine providence fit into a discussion of natural theology?<\/p>\n
TOM: Nice quotation \u2013 I confess I didn\u2019t know that one. I think in extremis, faced with an angry crowd smelling of rotten eggs, one can be forgiven for quick and perhaps tongue-in-cheek assessments of \u2018what God was doing in all this\u2019. But, as I said before, whatever Romans 8.28 means it does NOT mean that most Christians most of the time ought to be able to say how precisely this or that apparently random occurrence was a fulfillment of God\u2019s perfect will. As a pastor, and in my own life, I\u2019d say that if one is sometimes permitted to see that kind of thing, it is often (not always) much later, and it comes with a humility which is unable as it were to \u2018take advantage\u2019 of having an inside track on God\u2019s purposes . . . There is of course an alternative reading of that verse, in the light of verses 18 to 27, that God works all things for good through [the suffering and wordless prayer of] those who love him . . . but that\u2019s another story . . .<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEN: Rightly you stress that the resurrection of Jesus involves a real embodied existence, only one that is apparently immune to disease, decay, and death now. And correctly you stress that \u2018dying and going to heaven\u2019 as a form of afterlife is barely mentioned in the NT compared to the stress on new creation, new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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