Marginal Christianity

Karl Barth gives beautiful expression to the “already/not yet” eschatological dynamic that pervades and structures the New Testament and Christian existence. “The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless...

Karl Barth gives beautiful expression to the “already/not yet” eschatological dynamic that pervades and structures the New Testament and Christian existence. “The war is at an end – even though here and there troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that. It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them anymore. If you have heard the Easter message, you can no longer run around with a tragic face and lead the humourless...

          We noticed last time how the New Testament’s view of “the End” restructures the way we understand the flow of history and our place and role in it as God’s people.   We live between the D-Day of Jesus’ death and resurrection and the V-Day of his return as God’s subversive counter-revolutionary people.   In this post I want to spell out the implications of this a bit further.           Since the “end times” or the “last days” began with Jesus (especially his death and resurrection) and span the period of time till he returns to establish God’s kingdom fully and finally forever, we live between the ”already” of God’s kingdom inaugurated and achieved by Jesus and the “not yet” of its universal reality and acceptance.   This tension of living between the “already” and the “not yet” constitutes the context in which we live out our faith.       ...