Imagine there’s no Rapture …
Orthodox Holy Tradition says clearly that the Second Coming, the General Resurrection, and the Last Judgment are three facets of one single, overwhelming event. There is no divide (which is the meaning of the heresy of chiliasm, which was rejected in the Second Ecumenical Council, and the reason why we say “and His Kingdom shall have no end” in the Creed). There is no Rapture. There is no Seven Year Tribulation. There is no single human individual who is the Antichrist or the Beast — the Antichrist is not a Jew, not a Muslim, not a Communist, nor is he the Pope or any one of the many theories that have been published over the centuries.
There is no literal thousand-year-long Millennium. There is no reappearance of Satan setting off the last Armageddon.
There will indeed come the Great Universal Transfiguration that overwhelms time and space and all Creation.
This is the Kingdom if its infinite, almost terrifying fullness and glory.
Fr. Jonathan Tobias, the last judgment and the problem of goathood
This I believe.
I will not say that the Orthodox Church is the only church that rejects all the rapture crap, because I don’t believe it is. But it’s also true that not every church that rejects all the rapture crap still believes in the Second Coming, the General Resurrection, and the Last Judgment. That kind of narrows things down a lot.
A periodic reminder
I’ve no doubt posted this quote before:
The shift from church power to state power is not the victory of peaceable reason over irrational religious violence. The more we tell ourselves it is, the more we are capable of ignoring the violence we do in the name of reason and freedom.
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence
Liturgy
In a culture that values spontaneity, liturgy grounds us in something enduring. In a culture that assumes truth is a product of the mind, liturgy helps us experience truth in mind, body, and spirit.
Book blurb for Mark Galli’s Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy
Modern worship
On a related note:
[A]ny attempt to “modernise” liturgy in terms of making it more acceptable to modern society (i.e. “pastoral respectability”) should be undertaken with extreme caution; the warning of Charles Davis is paramount here:
My thesis is that there is no modern form of worship, because worship itself is outdated in the modern world and Christian Faith a state of deviancy from contemporary culture.
Bryan D. Spinks, “Christian Worship or Cultural Incantations?”, Studia Liturgical, vol. 12 (1977), 1, 12-13 (quoting Charles Davis, “Ghetto or Desert: Liturgy in a Cultural Dilemma” in Worship and Secularization (1970), pp. 10-27, p. 12).
Thanks to @letters on micro.blog who appears to read such things voraciously.
The teleological void
My college students have worked hard getting impressive credentials since at least middle school and will continue to do so long after college. When I ask them where this is all going, they are befuddled. “This is just what you do,” they often answer. Anything else is impractical, unrealistic, and useless. They have been going their whole lives without asking or being asked “where to?” Asking such a question means stopping, thinking, and perhaps changing direction, all things that religion and humanities have us do. But our society has no interest in silence or pausing.
Terence Sweeney, Why Religion and the Humanities Are in Decline
The evangelical soul
This baffling essay proves that although Mere Orthodoxy is consistently good, it’s not unvaryingly good. The author lost me at the construct “the evangelical soul.”
(Mere Orthodoxy, by the way and once again, is not a Orthodox website; it is a Reformed-leaning Protestant website that considers itself orthodox and “leans young.” It’s usually pretty good; I don’t subscribe to anything for the sole purpose of dissing it.)
What if?
Our professor asked a hypothetical question: “If the bones of Jesus were discovered, and if there were some way to absolutely confirm that they were the bones of Jesus, would you still be a Christian?”
Every other member of the class confirmed that he or she would remain a Christian, making statements such as “I would not lose my faith,” or “Jesus was a great teacher and philosopher.”I was dumbfounded and utterly dismayed. How was it possible that such intelligent, committed, and educated Catholics could give such responses? Did they not realize the fundamental importance of the Resurrection of Christ? If not, why not? My response was, “If the bones of Jesus were discovered, I would be outta here! I would no longer be a Christian!” I explained that the Resurrection is an absolute necessity to the Christian faith. The class listened politely, but no one seemed at all impressed or influenced by my answer.
Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Thinking Orthodox
We are in the grip of a grim, despairing rebellion against reality that imagines itself to be the engine of moral progress.
The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world.
You can read most of my more impromptu stuff here (cathartic venting) and here (the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real). Both should work in your RSS aggregator, like Feedly or Reeder, should you want to make a habit of it. I’m even playing around a bit here, but uncertain whether I’ll persist.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 