Eschatology and Political Ends

Kyle Roberts is spot on in pointing out that a robust understanding of evangelical political engagement must be shaped by a creational-eschatological imagination.  He also rightly recognizes that the Gnostic tendencies of some contemporary evangelicals all-too-often contribute to “eschatological escapism.”  As a corrective, Roberts points to a “continualist eschatology” – one grounded in the “embodied, concrete, and visceral” language of the Hebrew prophets and Jesus’ preaching about the Kingdom of God.

Framing political engagement in eschatological terms brings into sharper focus the important distinction between means and ends.  Even if unreflectively, our actions in the political realm are driven by a tacit conception of desired ends and a sense of what means are licit (or illicit) in achieving the same.  Too often, the failure of evangelicals to have honest conversations about these subterranean assumptions has had positively disgraceful repercussions for evangelical witness in the public square.  [Insert your favorite example here.]  Perhaps this is partly why Amy Black wisely calls for humility and charity where there is disagreement about means to achieve the same end. 

Yet for all its weaknesses, blunderings, rhetorical gaffes, and at times, downright viciousness of means, I cannot help but wonder whether what some regard as the “overly narrow” agenda for which conservative evangelicals are regularly lampooned has the right eschatological instinct when it comes to ends.  And quite helpfully, Roberts’s emphasis on the concrete metaphors of Scripture makes this clear.

Consider, for example, abortion and gay marriage.  In many contexts, the mere attachment of these concepts to evangelicals functions as a kind of decisive clipart.  No conversation necessary.  “Yeah, we know the type, those ‘single-issue’ evangelicals.”  The association is meant to suggest that the fixation with these two issues is somehow deeply misguided.  But is it?

As Roberts points out, the creational-eschatological language of Scripture provides a picture of human flourishing – of God’s shalom – in “viscerally physical” terms, of “food, freedom, and a healed creation.”  In fact, the language that shapes these prophetic visions is overwhelmingly material and embarrassingly fecund.  The prophets do not envision the future renewal of the cosmos in terms of abstractions: “partners,” “civil unions,” or the exercise of “autonomous choice.”  Rather, the pages of Scripture, from beginning to end, are filled with the concrete imagery of male and female, husband and wife, bride and bridegroom, of marriage, of the land and of the fruitfulness that attends both. 

Of course, such language is metaphorical.  Thus, it would be overly simplistic to imagine an eschatological future that directly contravenes Dominical teaching: “in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30).  Nevertheless, to the extent that such language ought to shape our conception of the polis of God, it seems fairly clear that intentionally terminating the lives of unborn infants and inverting the sexual order that the creational-eschatological narrative structure of Scripture assumes are actions deeply out of step with a biblical vision of God’s shalom. 

To be sure, as others have rightly pointed out on this thread, a fully-orbed vision of the Kingdom includes the extension of creational fecundity to the poor and marginalized, “the widow and the orphan.”  But as an end, there is, at present, no fundamental disagreement on this aspect of human flourishing between the City of God and the city of man.  No one of good will, from evangelical to atheist, seeks the perpetuation of poverty as an end in itself. 

The same cannot be said about abortion and gay marriage.  While some may view abortion as a tragic necessity, for others, both the freedom to terminate a pregnancy and to express oneself sexually with whomever one wills (assuming consent) are essential dimensions of their tacit, if not explicit, picture of human flourishing.  To the extent that this is true, it constitutes a direct assault on the picture of human flourishing depicted in the prophetic words of Scripture. 

None of this is meant to justify any and every political action of evangelicals who are “up in arms” about these issues.  As I’ve already suggested, some have undeniably employed means to enact these biblical ends in ways that do not show a sufficient regard for either the nature of God’s Kingdom as eschatological (i.e., future and coming) or the means by which we are to bear witness to the same. 

But the basic instinct to regard these two issues as warring against the very fabric God’s covenant promise of future blessing in Christ Jesus strikes me as exactly right.  For it is an instinct grounded in an imagination that has been shaped by the concrete contours of the biblical metaphors.  

Whether this justifies American evangelicals in returning fire by warring against such cultural forces is another matter.  Roberts’s reminder that “social and political action by human agency and imagination cannot and will not usher [God’s Kingdom] in” is apt here.  And perhaps deep reflection upon this simple verity will have the salutary effect of tempering the ambitions of those evangelicals who need it, when it comes to leveraging temporal, earthly power.  Nevertheless, while the weapons of warfare may not be carnal, the biblical rhetoric makes it clear that the realization of the Kingdom is necessarily bound up with struggle.  Thus, evangelicals are not mistaken in their intuitive perception of conflict. 

Roberts is right to conclude that evangelicals should “think a little harder” about the relationship between politics and God’s greater purposes for the cosmos.  And I echo what many others on this thread have suggested in adding that more serious thought should be given to the means by which God’s greater purposes ought (or ought not) to be realized.  At the same time, for reasons here expressed, I’m doubtful that serious eschatological reflection about ends should result in a radical departure from the perspective on life and marriage for which conservative evangelicals are so regularly vilified.  To the extent the fellow, professing evangelicals see it differently, Roberts’s eschatological framework provides a helpful context in which to have a conversation.