Tomorrow

"So do not worry about tomorrow." (Jesus, in Matt 6:34)

"Never Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” (The campaign theme song of Bill Clinton)

I love paradoxes.  I preached recently on Psalm 113, which celebrates a God who is at once exalted in the place of divine enthronement and quite low in the places where God looks, in heaven and on earth. Over the years I have been persuaded that the biblical view of the future sees it as rushing toward us and therefore transforming us, while secular time has us moving toward the future.  With presidential campaigns new and old in the air I have struck by the paradoxical comments at the head of this essay—both of which are good advice in their season.  Our writers again help us sort out the paradoxes and uncertainties of the past, the present, and the future.

Richard Jensen reminds us that Eastern Orthodox theology insists that God became human so that humans might become divine.  The new Luther research by Finnish theologians has claimed that Luther, too, believed in theosis or divinization.  The Lutheran understanding of the indwelling of Christ implies a real participation in God and is analogous to the Orthodox doctrine of theosis.  Jensen proposes that a preaching strategy of thinking in story or thinking in image might be congruent with this understanding of theosis.  God at work in, with, and under a biblical story can also be God at work in the life of the hearer at the same time.  Images taken from the Bible, the arts, or even from everyday life can spark the human imagination to live in the world of the divine.

Mark I. Wegener proposes that Paul’s resurrection treatise in 1 Corinthians 15 is argumentative rather than offering consolation or celebration.  Paul intended to refute those who denied what is now known as the doctrine of the resurrection.  It seems quite likely that Paul consciously used common rhetorical devices in his writings, especially those of persuasive or deliberative speeches.    Verse 12 provides the key to understanding the strategy of the entire chapter.  What is at stake is not the reality of Christ’s resurrection, but whether anyone else, particularly those who believe in and who follow Christ, will also experience a resurrection and life after death.  The burden of Paul’s argument is to prove that those who deny the future resurrection of Christians are wrong.  Paul’s resurrection language may be the most effective way of expressing one’s determination to live as if Christ has been raised and as if his people can anticipate their own resurrections.  Paying closer attention to the rhetorical strategy of the argument in 1 Corinthians 15 helps us understand how this biblical treatise continues to instill in us the assurance of the resurrection.

David Sandmel discusses the significance of Joseph Klausner, a Jewish scholar of Christianity at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Klausner believed that a renewed Jewish nation in the land of Israel would lead the rest of the world to live by the eternal values embodied in the Messianic Idea.  Klausner is also the first credible Jewish scholar to put the modern critical and Jewish study of Jesus before a wide Jewish audience.  While Klausner admired much about Jesus, he felt Paul changed Jesus’ teaching into a form comprehensible to Gentiles by combining it with pagan and Hellenistic elements.  Ironically, he felt that without the assistance of Christianity Judaism would not have survived at all.  Klausner reconstructed western civilization from a decidedly Jewish and Zionist perspective, and primarily for Jewish consumption.  Klausner, almost single-handedly, made the Jewish study of early Christianity a “kosher” subject.

Bruce V. Malchow points out a number of limitations we face in using the Bible to decide moral issues.  The gospel is the central authoritative concern in Scripture and the writers of Scripture were human thinkers and writers even when they were under the Spirit’s guidance.  Lutherans ignore the commandment about graven images from the Decalogue and reapply the third commandment to worship concerns when its original emphasis was on the prohibition of work on the sabbath.  Many Christians today have far different views on war and capital punishment than their scriptural forebears.  The Bible’s statements about homosexuality need to be understood in their historical context.  The sin of Sodom was hardly homosexual behavior by consenting adults.    At times the Bible’s statements about homosexuality are primarily critiques of the Canaanite fertility cult, or its statements are hard to distinguish in kind from obsolete observations about sowing with two kinds of seed or wearing garments made of two kinds of material.

Philip Hefner delivered the funeral sermon for Axel Kildegaard (a professor at Grand View and LSTC from 1948-1985) as a letter to him, celebrating his “human first, then Lutheran” theology and/or his Grundtvigian Lutheranism.  He gives special attention to Brian Swimme, an astrophysicist who went spiritual, and who was a hero to both Axel and Phil.  We also include the wonderfully intimate and treasured comments of Nis Kildegaard at his father’s funeral.

The book of Proverbs weighs in with another thought about our theme:  “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring.” (Prov 27:1).  Compare similarly “One who puts on armor should not brag like one who takes it off.” (1 Kgs 20:11).  Or, more popularly:  “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.”  Listen to another voice from the distaff side:  “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” (Prov. 31:25).  For the life of me, I can’t stop thinking about tomorrow.


Ralph W. Klein
Editor