HT: Bryan Lilly
| What’s your eschatology? created with QuizFarm.com |
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You scored as Amillennialist. Amillennialism believes that the 1000 year reign is not literal but figurative, and that Christ began to reign at his ascension. People take some prophetic scripture far too literally in your view.
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No surprise about amillennialism, but I had never heard of “Moltmannian Eschatology”, so I followed a few links and wound up at the quiz creator’s notes:
I put this one in because although he is little-known outside academic circles, [Jürgen] Moltmann has done a more thorough systematic examination of eschatology than perhaps any other theologian. If you’re eschatological interest is concerned with figuring out the hidden meaning of Daniel’s ’seventy weeks’ or what theologians think the Mark of the Beast might be then you’ll be sorely disappointed. Moltmann begins with the cross and resurrection and uses them to interpret history. Just as Christ shared in the sin, suffering and darkness of creation on the cross, so by taking it on himself and being raised to new life he becomes the prototype of what God intends not only for humanity, but the whole of creation itself. God has made the resurrection a promise of what he one day intends to do for all creation – to make it new and free it from the power of sin, injustice and death.
Christians then are to radically affect the present in the light of what God has promised about the age to come. The key to this is the Holy Spirit, who is the ‘power of the age to come’. Our discipleship is a discipleship of the cross and so we too must identify with and fellowship with the outcasts, the victims, the poor and the downtrodden as we take up our cross, because the way to the resurrection is via the cross. God has already announced and guaranteed that in the Future Kingdom of God there will be no suffering, pain, injustice, or death and so our mission in the present is to transform the lives and circumstances of people so that God’s kingdom comes upon them. Eschatology is not like the appendix in the book of history, it is the story of history itself.
Moltmann is highly controversial in places and despite his Lutheran background, much of what he says will seem unfamiliar to most evangelicals but it’s quality stuff. He has written a 400 page systematic doctrine of eschatology called ‘The Coming of God‘, but if heavy theology isn’t your thing then his book ‘Jesus Christ For Today’s World‘ is a good start and is highly readable.
8 Comments
One of the problems with that type of questionnaire is that it assumes meanings of words. For instance, as one who is identified theologically as amillennial, when interpreting passages, I interpret them literally, but not literalistically. However, the quiz identifies only absolutes, i.e. “Is the millennium literal?” can be answered “yes” by amillennialists as well as pre- and post- millennialists, but not according to the “quiz answers”. So some of my answers are consistent with amillennialism, but were reported as supporting premillennialism.
yes, I agree that the questions were pretty loose and assumptive – there were a number of them that I mumbled to myself, “so which part do you want me to agree or disagree with?” I’ve tried to limit myself to extreme “agree” or “disagree” answers with these types of surveys, recognizing the inherent ambiguity of the questions.
That said, I learned about something new, Moltmann, or rather somebody, so I’m glad I took it!
Read Moltmann. That’s all.
CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!
Ha! I figured I could count on blogdom’s resident theological encyclopedia to garnish this thread with a comment. And I still haven’t gotten to Peterson’s book on worship yet…
But seriously, there’s a lot to like in the summary paragraphs above – if they’re even a half accurate description of Moltmann’s work, I think I’ll find it quite intriguing.
I’m a historic premillennialist.
If you want to get into Moltmann’s eschatology, I’d actually suggest you start with his first big book “Theology of Hope”.
Thanks for the recommendation, Doug. I’ll have to spend some more time tonight looking at his breadth of work.
Thanks for the introduction to Moltmannian Eschatology, for it turns out that that is what I hold to, at least 85%.
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[...] ElShaddai Edwards recommended yet another theology quiz, this time What’s your eschatology? Well, I know my eschatology is somewhat confused. I used to be a premillenialist but without believing in a rapture before or during the tribulation. But my position has gradually been changing to something more on the lines of Moltmannian eschatology, to which ElShaddai provides a useful introduction. I studied some Moltmann years ago at London Bible College, and perhaps more of it rubbed off than I realised. But this also ties up with the kind of position I was looking at in my post on the book Breakthrough. So here are my results, based on quite a number of answers in the middle of the spectrum to questions which I could not really answer: [...]
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