Material Offerings, Eucharist, and Our Vision of the Future Life

The future life envisioned by Holy Scripture involves a restored physical universe, a “renewal of all things” — a New Heavens and New Earth (e.g. Rev. 21).  It’s true, however, that if we were to take a poll of western Christians about their views on what the future life will be like, we’d likely get a very different prevailing view: something like a disembodied existence, a “heaven” that is an immaterial existence. Critics of that prevailing western view have often laid the blame on the influence of a Platonic dualism (where immaterial “spirit” and material “flesh” are juxtaposed as higher and lower modes of existence). This criticism is mostly right.

And how we view the future is indicative of what we think God really cares about — what is God’s ultimate plan for the world?  What is the goal toward which everything is moving?  When Christians think that all God really cares about is the spirit (or “soul”) of human beings, and not the whole created order (including our bodies), then this profoundly shapes our orientation toward life in the present.  Do we attend only to “the soul,” or also to the body, or indeed to the whole creation?  If God cares about and is redeeming all of it, then the scope of our participation in God’s mission includes all of it.  (N.T. Wright has a nice interview in Time Magazine on this issue, emphasizing the cosmic scope of redemption, the truth that in Jesus Christ God is working out the redemption of all things. I posted a sermon I recently preached on this issue as well.)

I'm thinking about this today because I happened to be reading the early church father Irenaeus, who related this issue very practically to a host of issues in his struggle against Gnosticism in the early church. In the section cited in my devotional reading this morning, he points to the fact that our calling to offer material things to God speaks to God's redemptive purposes for creation.  Irenaeus points out that it doesn’t make sense to offer to God what one thinks God cares little or nothing about — we offer “our” treasure and care for those in physical need, for instance, precisely because God intends his creation and all our “posessions” to be ordered around his redemptive purposes in the world, which are indeed cosmic in scope.  We don’t offer material things to God to prove that they don’t matter to us, so that we can get rid of what God doesn’t care about.  Rather, we offer them to God so that they can be used in a manner consistent with his mission to restore all things to himself — precisely because he does care about them.

Of course, Irenaeus ultimately grounds his discussion of these things in the incarnation — God uniting himself to humanity and to the physical world when he becomes human as Jesus Christ -- and in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the firstfruits of the New Creation. And in the section I read today he also applies God’s work in redeeming “flesh” to the regular worship of the Church, through the Eucharist: physical elements that by the Spirit provide nourishment to our bodies and our souls, by communicating the body and blood of Christ to us:

“Then, again, how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the body of the Lord and with His blood, goes to corruption, and does not partake of life?  Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the things just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit.  For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 18.5).

Whenever we offer material things to God (whether in the form of financial resources, caring for the creation or those in physical need, etc.), and whenever we participate in the Eucharist, we do so because our bodies and the physicality of all creation are part of the fabric of God’s good intentions for us and for the world, and indeed a part of what God is redeeming in Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.

Comments

[Steve Hayner]

N.T. Wright's new book, "Surprised by Hope" works on the themes of resurrection, heaven and mission in light of just these realities. It is well worth the read.

[Jeff Straka]

"Surprised by Hope" is one of the best books I have ever read, and I think it should be considered required reading for leaders and laity! Three other books that I find to be extremely helpful in re-orienting or restructuring ones Christian worldview (which to ME is the "horse" in front of the "cart" in understanding "missional") are "Engaging God's World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living" by Cornelius Plantiga Jr., and "Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview" by Albert Wolters, and "Heaven is a Place on Earth: Why Everything You Do Matters to God" by Michael Wittmer. These might be worth adding to your suggested reading list on the left side of the blog, if you agree!

[Jeff Straka]

Oh, I forgot one other book: "For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care", by Steven Bouma-Prediger.

[Michael Walker]

Thanks very much for these comments and suggestions. I just got Wright's "Surprised by Hope" and have thumbed through it. It looks characteristically brilliant. Jeff, I agree that Plantinga's short book, Engaging God's World, and Wolters' book are two of the best and most readable books on these issues. I am inclined toward Dutch Calvinism in general and I think that this thread of the Reformed tradition anticipated a great many of the general insights now being emphasized by the "missional church movement." Another good, straightforward walk through biblical eschatology is Anthony Hoekema's "The Bible and the Future." I'll see what I can do about getting some of these suggestions added to the sidebar of The Outbox. We need to update it!