The Progressive Spiral of Eternity

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Hi Friends,

Here is the final session of our exploration through the last book of the Bible. In this conversation we discussed chapters 19-22 of Revelation.

We’re done with the Apocalypse, but we’re not finished learning from one another and growing in the Spirit.

Heads Up!Given that this coming Sunday is Reformation Sunday, starting tomorrow night we will kick-off a short series dedicated to the five Solas of the Reformation:

Sola Scriptura

Sola Fide

Sola Gratia

Sola Christus

Soli Deo Gloria

The Solas are a shorthand slogan that captures the ethos and endeavor of Luther’s preaching movement; in that, the Solas provide Christians with the linguistic rules to ensure that they are always speaking gospel when they attempt to gospel another person.

How to join us:

You can join us live and ask questions at our Riverside Studio. Note, Riverside works best with Chrome or Edge as your browser. Here’s the link.

You can join the livestream at YouTube. Here’s the link.

You can find it here on Substack after Monday.

Back to our final session Revelation…

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Here is the passage from Robert Jenson with which I began the session:

The result is that the canonical account of Ezekiel's vision is rather like Luke's account of the Christian mission. It lacks closure. And perhaps for a similar reason, the story is expected to continue. Indeed, the canonical Ezekiel's lack of a proper ending makes a decisive point about its content. Whatever story may be told about the final goal of God's way with us, it must not be told as the achievement of a thereafter static perfection. Had Ezekiel or his editors wrapped everything up neatly, they would have belied the story they had been telling about God. For the heaven of popular apprehension, where nothing more ever happens, is not a place into which the biblical God would or indeed could bring his people. Rather, whatever blessing we may in a particular context invoke to speak of the kingdom, we must imagine a sort of spiral of the granting and pursuit of that blessing. That is why throughout Christian history, Love has been the favored blessing by which to characterize the life of the kingdom. For love is the gift and goal that once given and achieved is both a completed work and each time a new beginning. Jonathan Edwards having in biblical fashion equated knowledge and love put it so. It seems to be quite a wrong notion of the happiness of heaven that it is in that manner unchangeable that it admits not of new joys. On the contrary, the saints will be progressive all eternity.

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