Introduction

Seventh-day Adventists collectively anticipate the soon return of Jesus with great eagerness. And, they, along with many other Christians, imagine the end of history to be a fiery one. This imagination is informed by numerous passages of Scripture that associate the second coming and final judgement with the language of flames and fire.¹

Yet, how such language be interpreted? Many believers assume this language communicates a universally destructive eschatology; the present natural and human order will be abolished entirely before being recreated. Yet, a closer examination of several theological and Biblical considerations presents some significant problems with this interpretation. In what follows, I will clarify what some of these problems are—theologically, Scripturally, and practically—ultimately advancing the interpretation that the imagery and language of fire is best interpreted as a particular judgment on evil and evildoers that purifies (rather than destroys) the earth and everything on it. Preserving a sense of ontological continuity between this world and the one to come provides Christians motivation for consistent and constructive social and cultural involvement and contribution.

Theological Considerations

God, the Creator

A universally destructive eschatology is in tension with the affirmations found at the opening of the Bible. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God creates and repeatedly, throughout the process, affirms it as being “good.” This affirmation happens seven times— after the creation of light (Gen. 1:4), the land and sea (Gen. 1:10), vegetation (Gen. 1:12), the sun, moon, and stars (Gen. 1:18), sea creatures and birds (Gen. 1:21), land animals (1:25). After creating humans, and surveying all God had done, God declares the whole of the created order “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The goodness of creation reflects the goodness of the Creator, who is also “good” (Psalm 100:5).

Early Christian theologians understood these affirmations as giving ontological value to the created order. In opposition to the Gnostics, the early church fathers used the doctrine of creation to affirm the intrinsic goodness of materiality. Creation was not to be confused with the Fall, as Gnostic sages taught, and salvation was not to be understood as an escape from the body and the physical order. What God had created was not to be disdained but celebrated and responsibly enjoyed. Irenaeus—the student of Polycarp, who was a student of the apostle John—in his engagement with the Gnostics, focused on the goodness of creation to combat the idea that matter is evil and to be escaped.² Augustine argued, similarly, albeit in more philosophical terms, that anything that exists, i.e. has “being,” possessed a degree of goodness because existence itself, derived from God, is good.³

Creation involves more than the natural order. Culture, to draw on H. Richard Niebuhr, is “the artificial, secondary environment” which is imposed on nature, including “speech, education, tradition, myth, science, art, philosophy, government, law, right, beliefs, inventions, technologies.”⁴ According to some Christian thinkers, humans were created to create culture. James Hunter, for example, claims that Christians are “obliged to engage the world, pursuing God’s restorative purposes over all of life, individual and corporate, public and private.”⁵ Hunter grounds his view in what he calls “the mandate of creation.” This mandate, found in the book of Genesis, refers to the instructions the first humans received to “cultivate” and “keep” the garden in which they were placed.⁶ According to Hunter, this applies to humans generally: “People fulfill their individual and collective destiny in the art, music, literature, commerce, law, and scholarship they develop—the families, churches, associations, and communities they live in and sustain—as they reflect the good of God and his designs for flourishing.”⁷

Furthermore, according to the Genesis account, humans are created in God’s image; this involves the capacity for creativity and care-taking. Humans are naturally and essentially (rather than accidental) culture creators. What humans create—culture and cultural artifact—are, therefore, an originally intended part of the created order and the goodness of that creation. This means that the opening chapters of Scripture can be understood to affirm the ontological value of creation, both naturally and culturally.

But what about the Fall? Genesis 1 and 2 are followed by Genesis 3, with the first humans disobeying God, and in doing do, introducing discord and death into the created order. In other words, despite their initial goodness, humans, and the cultural worlds they create and inhabit, are in a fallen state. Because of original sin, and its cumulative effects human nature is “totally depraved.” Therefore, the culture humans produce is fundamentally flawed.

Appreciating this point, however, does not entail the conclusion that the Imago Dei in humans has been entirely obliterated. ‘Total depravity,’ accurately understood, refers to the comprehensive scope of sin’s effect on humanity, one that renders humans relatively helpless to save themselves, rather than sin completely eviscerating human ability for apprehending beauty, goodness, and truth, and acting accordingly. Human nature may be radically self-centered, but humans still retain their God-given intellectual, perceptual, volitional, emotional, and moral abilities, albeit in a diminished form. Some aspects of human nature and culture have certainly been damaged by the sin of Adam and Eve, but it’s essential goodness has not been entirely destroyed. And the same applies to the rest of the created order. Human sin has impacted nature, but the goodness of nature has not been obliterated, either. “This is my Father’s world,” as the hymn goes, “He shines in all that’s fair.”⁸

The Fall should be understood to have marred, perhaps even greatly marred, rather than having destroyed the intrinsic goodness of creation and the image of God in humans. Christian theology, as Paul Tillich points out, affirms that humans are “essentially good, but existentially estranged.”⁹ In other words, despite their fallenness, humans still essentially bear the divine image, rather than being essentially evil and corrupt. This is a crucial distinction, as an emphasis on the goodness of creation is not a denial of sin, but the reminder that the former forms the larger frame in which to acknowledge the latter.

If this is true of humans, it is true of the cultures they produce. Imperfect and flawed humans and social systems, in some way, still continue to reflect their original goodness due to the fact God brought and continues to hold them in existence. While social systems can be greatly misused and abused to bring about great harm, even in a fallen state, humans and human culture(s), in a diminished, yet essential, way reflect God’s goodness. This means that true prophetic critique is rooted in a deep love for individuals and communities that must be reformed, at times drastically, to better reflect the Creator’s will.¹⁰

A universal, catastrophic eschatology presupposes a view of sin that entirely negates the affirmations of Genesis 1. What was good, particularly and collectively, has entirely lost its goodness and God cannot save any of it, but must destroy it completely and begin anew. Such a view of sin, one that understands it to abolish any goodness in creation, misunderstands classical Christian teaching on both creation and sin, granting too much power to sin (one greater than God’s creative power) and underestimates God’s power to both sustain and save.

God, the Son

The affirmation of a universal, catastrophic eschatology also stands in tension with fundamental teachings of Christian theology regarding Jesus. As significant as the framing of the doctrine of creation is for theology, the heart of theology is its vision of God and how God saves. And what makes a theology Christian (rather than Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheistic) is how one thinks God has done this (or not done this) through Jesus.

At one point of its development, the Adventist movement collectively faced a genuine choice regarding this issue—in the words of William James, this would be a choice that is “forced, living, and momentous.”¹¹ The leaders of the fledging denomination, in their eagerness to return to the pure teachings of Scripture and reject any, in their eyes, calcifying accretions of tradition, were, in many ways, left to revisit issues wrestled with and settled earlier by those who preceded them.

One of the earliest theological controversies of the Christian church had to do with the meaning of the word “begotten” in the Bible when it comes to Jesus’ relationship to God. Jesus is referred to as “God’s only-begotten son.”¹² What does this mean? Does “begotten” mean “created”? Some argued so. This would make Jesus literally a son of God, “the father,” a creature, one who had a beginning. In the words of the Arians, who championed this view, “There was a time when he [Jesus] was not.” The other position was that a better translation for the term “begotten” is “generated,” as in the light that is generated by the sun. No metaphor is perfect, but the explanation goes, as the sun cannot be the sun without giving off light, the Father is not the Father without the Son. Therefore, the Son has always existed with the Father and is, therefore, uncreated, i.e. God.

The relevance of what seems—then and now—to be excessive terminological hairsplitting and metaphysical speculation must be underscored. One way to put the significance of the choice is as one that involved how to think about God and God’s relation to creation—either as one prioritizing God’s transcendence from the created order or God’s intimacy with it.¹³ Does God, the source of all things, send someone else to do the difficult and dirty job of saving what has been wounded? Or does God get involved personally? And if it is the latter, how closely does God join God’s self to the created order?

The church in the 4th century collectively opted for the option of translating “begotten” as “generated,” emphasizing the view that, in Jesus, the Creator is getting intimately involved with what has been created rather than sending another creature. In the words of the Nicene Creed—Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God…Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made…who for us…and our salvation, came down.” This is the vision of God that came to define the heart of Christian orthodoxy, one shared officially by all major branches of the Christian Church—Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant.¹⁴

Adventism, however, almost departed from this stream of thinking about God. Many of its leaders, initially sided with Arius, seemingly unaware of the implications of doing so—or the logical contradiction of affirming this view and, at the same time, professing that “God saves.”¹⁵ If God sends a creature to save other creatures, even if this being were an exalted creature, salvation is achieved by a being other than God. It took the insight and influence of a woman with a third-grade education to help them figure it out.¹⁶ “In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived,” Ellen White wrote in The Desire of Ages, a work that would go on to shape the thinking of many Adventists on this matter.¹⁷ Here she clearly sides with the bishops of Nicaea, and if it were not for this, Adventism today would most likely not be a recognizable Christian denomination.¹⁸ And although Adventism, in its official declarations, has been Trinitarian in its doctrine of God, the Arian views of those who in its early years shaped the direction and discourse of Adventism, continue to persist in some sectors of the church.¹⁹

In Jesus, the Creator has drawn close to humanity in an intimate way. Christian orthodoxy affirms that God’s union to humanity is complete and that Jesus is both “fully God and fully human.”²⁰ The Creator, in other words, in Jesus, joins to humanity completely, yet preserves both humanity’s integrity and the Creator’s own. The framers of this paradoxical affirmation deliberately rejected options of thinking or talking about this union as partial²¹ or as obliterating the human.²²

Another astounding aspect of the Christian understanding of God’s union with humanity is the affirmation of its permanence. Jesus is resurrected in a body (Luke 24:36-43) and ascends to God in a body (Acts 1:9). Jesus will return in a body (Acts 1:11). Ellen White draws out the implications of this affirmation by Christian orthodoxy: “It was Satan's purpose to bring about an eternal separation between God and man; but in Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen. In taking our nature, the Savior has bound Himself to humanity by a tie that is never to be broken. Through the eternal ages He is linked with us…” She continues, reflecting what ancient Christian thinkers understood from the story of Jesus’ ascension to God as a human: “God has adopted human nature in the person of His Son, and has carried the same into the highest heaven…In Christ the family of earth and the family of heaven are bound together. Christ glorified is our brother. Heaven is enshrined in humanity, and humanity is enfolded in the bosom of Infinite Love.”²³

God’s permanent union with human nature can also be understood, through humanity (as a part of God’s creation) to be a union with the created order more generally. On this ground, one can follow Moltmann in rejecting “docetic hope.” (Docetism is the Gnostic view that denies the incarnation by claiming Jesus only appeared to have a body, and therefore did not truly suffer on the cross.) “Any kind of docetic hope which leaves earthly conditions or corporeal existence to the mercy of their own contradictoriness and restricts itself to the Church, to the cultus or to believing inwardness, is therefore a denial of the cross,” Jurgen Moltmann argues. “The hope that is born of the cross and the resurrection transforms the negative, contradictory and torturing aspects of the world into terms of ‘not yet,’ and does not suffer them to end in ‘nothing’.”²⁴

Yet, a universally catastrophic eschatology does just this. God makes all things new, but before doing so, reduces the former order of things literally to ashes, i.e. ‘nothing.’ Such an understanding is in tension with the Christian understanding of the incarnation, which affirms God’s intimate union with a broken, but beautiful creation.

God, the Spirit

In addition to being in tension with the theological affirmation of the goodness of creation and the reality and permanence of the incarnation, a universally catastrophic eschatology is also at odds with Christian understandings of God’s work through the Holy Spirit. As pre-millenial realists, unlike their post-millenal, more optimistic, cousins, Adventists have a degenerating view of society’s general trajectory, one that is indicative of the nearness of the second coming.²⁵

This emphasis on the nearness of Christ’s return in the near future can, however, lead to the functional denial of God’s regenerating work in the present, which is both a clear teaching of Scripture and a significant part of Adventism’s Wesleyan heritage. Wolfhart Pannenberg provides an insightful analysis of the New Testament proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, which is key part of the kerygma. The resurrection was a sign that the eschatological age was breaking in or, as Pannenberg puts it: “If Jesus has been raised, then the end of the world has begun.”²⁶ This is not a denial of the Parousia, but the affirmation that God’s work of renewal has already commenced. Hence, according to Pannenberg, the universalistic missionary activity of the early church, which is based on the vision of the Old Testament prophets had of the Messianic age, expressed this conviction.²⁷

Christians influenced by the Wesleyan tradition have affirmed the work of the Holy Spirit before and after explicit faith in Christ and that salvation involves the restoration of human nature.²⁸ Unfortunately, this process of restoration, i.e. sanctification, has often been misunderstood primarily in negative terms as the avoidance of culture—abstaining from R rated movies, popular music, alcohol, tobacco, dancing, etc. But sanctification ultimately has to do with God’s power to restore human nature to love God and love others.²⁹ In other words, holiness is about what individuals do, rather than what they avoid.

So, even if one believes the prospects of good culture are impossible for humans in their fallen state, one should be willing to affirm that sanctified humans can produce a new kind of culture and positively impact the wider culture as salt and light.³⁰ This means that God is already at work in the broken world, through the Spirit, to restore and renew human nature, and through this, aspects of human culture. A universal, catastrophic eschatology, however, denies the value of this work, because, in the end, culture in all its aspects, along with everything else, is destroyed.

Scriptural Considerations

Thus far, I have argued that the affirmation of a universal, catastrophic eschatology stands at odds with central theological affirmations Christians make about the goodness of God’s creation (including humans with their culture-making capacities and the cultural artifacts humans produce, which have been impacted, but not destroyed by the Fall), the depth and permanence of the incarnation, and the work of renewal in the world by the Spirit that has already begun. A universally destructive eschatology, however, seems to find support from certain texts in the Bible, which use the imagery of comprehensive destruction by fire to describe the final judgement. What does one do with such passages?

Examined closely, while some of these passages certainly communicate judgement, it is a particular judgement on evil doers and the forces responsible for evil, rather than a universal judgement on everyone and everything. Take, for example, Revelation 20:10, which states that “the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”³¹ The “beast”, “false prophet”, and the “devil” are specific parties that oppose God and are, thus, the ones subject to judgement by fire. (It should be noted that the language of being “tormented day and night for ever and ever,” are interpreted by Adventist in a non-literal fashion. The eternal torment described here, it is explained, is not really eternal tormenting, but a punishment with eternal consequences.) A few verses later, “death” and “Hades” are also mentioned as being cast into a “lake of fire.”³² In sum, these passages along with the closing chapters of Revelation do not depict the universal destruction of the created order.

Similarly, another influential passage that has shaped the way people think about the final judgement is Malachi 4:1, which envisions the coming Day of the Lord as a day that “will burn like a furnace.” Yet here, the prophet singles out what or who that will be subject to being “burned up”—“All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire…Not a root or a branch will be left to them.”³³ Again, the scope of God’s fiery judgment is particular and limited, rather than universal.

An important passage to consider is 2 Peter 3:10. Here, the final judgement is described in seeming wider, catastrophic terms—“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”³⁴ This is actually the sole Biblical passage that so clearly “invokes the particular eschatology of a total conflagration of the heavens and the earth.”³⁵

Yet, some legitimate questions can be raised about both its translation and interpretation. Is the description to be understood literally? Will the final judgement result in the destruction, not just of the earth, but of stars and planets, i.e. “the heavens,” too? Or is this an example of apocalyptic hyperbole? And speaking of “the earth” and “the works that are therein,” manuscript evidence supports a significant terminological variant when it comes to the verb of the final clause. Some manuscripts which form the basis of popular translations like the King James Version use the verb κατακαίω, which means “to burn up.” Yet, more recent translations, based on the discovery of new Greek manuscripts, use the verb εὑρεθήσεται, which is a passive form of the verb εὑρίσκω, which is best translated as “to find” or “to discover.” Hence, newer translations of this passage, like the English Standard Version, render it as follows: “and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.³⁶ The point of the passage, according to scholars like Richard Bauckham, is the comprehensive nature of the final judgement, rather than its destructive power.³⁷

Beyond the responsible exegesis of particular texts, one that do not indisputably support a universally catastrophic eschatology, Richard Hays reminds us that Scriptural hermeneutics also involves “the synthetic task” of wrestling with inter-canonical tensions and forming a more comprehensive view than what a particular passage says about a given topic.³⁸ Hays’ focus is ethical and he seems to place a priority on the New Testament’s moral concerns and themes. Yet, when it comes to eschatology, it may be fruitful, in the spirit of what Hays suggests, to read various texts that use the eschatological language of fire, ones I am suggesting predominantly depict focused judgement against evil, though the wider vision of the final age provided by the Hebrew prophets.

Walter Brueggemann reminds us that in the Old Testament, “land is a central, if not the central theme of biblical faith.”³⁹ And the enduring vision of the Old Testament is an ultimate return to and restoration and regeneration of the land. The Old Testament vision of eschatology is primarily one of renewal. In this vein, based on a close reading of Isaiah 60, where the prophet depicts the presence of pagan entities like “the ships of Tarshish” (vs. 9), foreign kings and their wealth (vs. 11), and “the cedars of Lebanon” (vs. 13), in the restored Jerusalem, Richard Mouw argues for a transformative, rather than destructive, view of the eschaton, where elements of culture from this age will be preserved in the next. Even things that were once used for idolatrous ends will one day be used to serve and glorify God.⁴⁰

Is it possible that God, through the Spirit is already at work, and at the end of history, rather than destroying all things, God will purify them, preserving what is beautiful, good, and true? In other words, might the imagery and symbolism of fire be better interpreted to connote purification through a limited destruction of evil, rather than a universal obliteration of all things, preserving a sense of ontological continuity between this age and the one to come?

Practical Considerations

Such a reading, in addition to being more consistent with central theological affirmations, and supported by texts like Malachi 3:2-3—“But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver”—would also provide better motivation for consistent and constructive cultural involvement. How one imagines the future affects how one engages the present.⁴¹ The crux of the issue is not the timing of the eschaton, i.e. the when, but what one thinks will happen when Christ returns. In addition to theological and Scriptural considerations, imagining the end of history as involving natural and cultural annihilation on a global scale has potentially negative practical consequences. Miroslav Volf explains the problem succinctly:

The expectation of the eschatological destruction of the world is not consonant with the belief in the goodness of creation: what God will annihilate must either be so bad that it is not possible to be redeemed or so insignificant that it is not worth being redeemed. It is hard to believe in the intrinsic value and goodness of something that God will completely annihilate…Hence Christians who await the destruction of the world (and conveniently refuse to live a schizophrenic life) shy away as a rule…from social and cultural involvement.⁴²

In other words, in addition to its inconsistency with Christian affirmations of creation and salvation, a universally catastrophic eschatology poses a psychological challenge when it comes to involvement. Humans are more prone to invest significant time, effort, and resources into that which will persist. Yet, a belief in the total destruction of something conflicts with an affirmation of its ontological permanence and worth. The present order, much like the material order for the Gnostic, becomes something to be endured, at best, and escaped, at worse. If “the world is not my home,” as some sing, why invest in it in substantively?⁴³

This is not to suggest that a vision of universal eschatological destruction entails an evisceration of all ethical commitments and motivations, but that it can make it difficult to spark and sustain substantive committed efforts in some cases. Often, it must be acknowledged, humans love and commit themselves to some ends—particularly personal relationships—without the consideration of fate or outcome. Think of the lengths parents might go to care for a dying child or the sacrifices some will make for their aging and ailing parents. In fact, the realization that time is limited or short, can lead to an even deeper love, sacrifice, and commitment for someone or something because of its ephemerality—the fragile beauty of the spring blossom, or the couple in love, but soon to be separated due to circumstances beyond their control.

Perhaps, ideally, this is the kind of love and commitment Christians are called to have, and some do have, toward the world. The world is something to be loved and cherished, regardless of ultimate outcome, based on the very fact God has made it. Yet, in reality, prudential calculations also come into play. Why fix-up the car that is headed for the used car lot or the junk yard? How wise is it to use up one’s savings to remodel a home built an eroding coastline? If God will destroy it, how important is it really?

A universal destructive eschatology does not necessarily result in serious cultural/social disengagement. “It is hard”—but not impossible—“to believe in the intrinsic value and goodness of something that God will completely annihilate,” Volf notes. One might be ethically motivated to care and commit one’s self toward the goal of serving and improving the world strictly on the basis of their belief in the creation, incarnation, and salvation. What God has created, been united to, and is saving, is intrinsically valuable regardless of what God will ultimately do to it. At the same time, an eschatological view that emphasizes a radical discontinuity between the present world and the world to come misses out on additional positive motivation for substantive cultural engagement—the prospect that what one works for, invests in, and sacrifices on behalf of will persist into eternity.

Conclusion

Several interpretive questions and options present themselves when it comes to the imagery and language of fire found in the Bible. Should the scope of this fire understood to be universal or particular? Secondly, should the power of the fire be understood in a destructive or refining sense? A universally destructive eschatology, one that envisions the obliteration of the natural and social order before its recreation, is inconsistent with Christian affirmations of God’s work in creation, incarnation, and sanctification. Secondly, while support can be found in Scripture for God’s particular judgement on evil and evil doers, the support for a universally, destructive view rests mostly on single, debated passage, utilizing apocalyptic language—2 Peter 3:10—and is at odds with other Scriptural passages that envision continuity between the present and coming order. Lastly, interpreting fire to be universally destructive can undermine ethical motivation to constructively and consistently address and engage the serious issues facing the world.

Conversely, a view that the imagery of fire and flames as indicates a universal purification of the world—which involves particular judgment on and elimination of evil—is theologically consistent with central Christian affirmations about creation, sin and salvation, finds support in Scripture, and provides additional powerful ethical motivation for sustained social and cultural involvement in the world. Beyond these doctrinal, Scriptural, and practical considerations, however, the heart of the issue is theological in the truest sense—how should one think of God and God’s power to save? The purification view envisions God being akin to a loving, attentive, and skilled surgeon, excising the pervasive and spreading cancer without killing the otherwise terminally-ill patient.