Army of Priests

I sent this email some time ago to a bible study group after the “Rewards for Works” theology had been discussed. These days my knowledge of this theology has increased and thus my arguments would be different but I still believe this original email contains valuable insights.

I don’t know how many of you guys remember us talking about rewards for works at young adults two weeks ago. The general idea is that we are given different rewards in heaven for what we have done and this might be a higher status or a better job or a bigger house or something like that. I’ve been doing a lot of research and study and this is what I have found.

As far as I can gather “Rewards for Works” theology is a relatively new idea that first appeared in the book “Eternal Security” by Charles Stanley. This book was first printed as recently as 1990 and you can still buy it here (though the reviews are not good). Charles Stanley proposed that there were different “layers of heaven”. In the following quote Charles Stanley refers to the parable in Mathew 25:14-30 about the three servants with the gold and two servants double what they are given whereas one just buries it for safety:

The final verse of this parable is so severe that many commentators assume it is a description of hell. It is not . . . The point of this parable is that in God’s future kingdom, those who were faithful in this life will be rewarded and those who were not will lose any potential reward . . . Before we can understand the full impact of this parable, we must first determine what the “outer darkness” refers to in the context of the parable. It certainly does not mean hell in the parable. How could a master throw a slave into hell? . . . But what actual place was Jesus referring to in the parable? He gave us only one hint: “In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” . . . To be in the “outer darkness” is to be in the kingdom of God but outside the circle of men and women whose faithfulness on this earth earned them a special rank or position of authority… We cannot conceive of the agony and frustration we would feel if we were to undergo such an ordeal: the realization that our unfaithfulness had cost us eternally would be devastating. And so it will be for many believers. Just as those who are found faithful will rejoice, so those who suffer loss will weep.

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Alexandre Kalomiros in The River of Fire explains his idea of heaven and hell as follows. Judgement will be a time when every man and woman shall bow before God. God, who loves all equally, shall pour himself – His love, His presence, His essence, His fire – upon everyone equally. Those that respond to God with love will be consumed with joy, those that hate him will burn in their own malice. To the Eastern Orthodox God gives both Christians and Non-Christians the same thing (note that in the bible fire can represent both wrath and love) but our response determines whether we enjoy this or not. Hell is not the absence of God, but rather suffocation by His presence.

This makes a lot of sense to me. God, who loves us, should not suffer to keep Himself from us because of our rejection. It also deals with all of the “How could a loving God send us to hell?” questions. Heaven and Hell are both best described as states in our attitude towards God. A condition of being. Their positional metaphors are better understood as describing “where we are” in our relationship rather than a physical or spiritual location. Presumably one cannot change their response to God after that have been so completely exposed to Him.

This certainly changes our understanding of what it is to be “saved”. Ever since Anselm’s works western Christianity has understood judgement as being God sentencing us to our fates based on our actions in life. This is the result of Paul’s legal metaphors being taken out of their original 1st century context, being placed in our modern context, and then being stretched to their extremes. Salvation is a legal transaction where by we receive a pardon from judgement because judgement is understood as a bad thing. We are literally saved from the hands of God.

But if our eternal state is a reflection of our response to God than Judgement becomes a good thing. We want to be exposed to God in such an extreme manner. Salvation is not being pardoned from this judgement – which is to be looked forward to. Rather salvation is a process whereby we, who hate God, come to love Him (and we all do know God whether we know that or not). By this process we accept God’s grace and pardon ourselves from our own brokenness and hatred. We are saved not from God, but from the evil that rules and wishes to destroy our life.

At what point does one’s reaction to God turn from agony to joy? The question is the same as asking “at which point can I say I love someone?” There is no formula. No benchmark. No one tells you that you are in love. There is no action that proves it. No test or prayer. You just know. And although you can say “I love you now when I didn’t before” you can never explain at what exact moment you fell in love (though some people fall in love at first sight and this applies with God as well).

And what does such love do to a person whilst they are on earth? They are, in some regards, already in heaven and reflect the joy and peace that accompanies this fact – even in the face of the injustices in this world. They will end their adulteries with the debaucheries of this world and instead pick up their cross and follow Christ. Leading a counter cultural life where they forgive others and love even the most rejected.

However, whilst I love God I am still subject to the awful habits and addictions and brokenness which my old lover – sin – subjected me to. God, my husband, also becomes my healer working to undo the very deep damages evil has ravaged upon me. How can I be married to a physician and not also healed? In this way I am in heaven now, but also not yet. My relationship with God brings me joy, but all relationships take work, and admittedly all of the problems are on my part.

God however is not like a human. He is illusive and never speaks directly or acts the way we expect. Unlike a human, God cannot be understood. God is beyond comprehension, so once my mind creates something I can comprehend I am not worshiping God but rather an idol. My imagination is idolatrous. So I have a relationship with a God who I can nether contact like a human nor conceive. As such my journey is complicated and paradoxical. But that is alright, because the journey is the destination. The relationship, the walk, change itself, is the point. The goal is not to be changed, the goal is to be changing. Let us not hold ourselves up to any other standards.

So, in short, salvation is to be saved from the hell of unchanging rage into the heaven of dynamic love.

(Obviously this is more of a series of ideas than a serious unpacking of scripture. The bible uses a lot of analogies to explain salvation and I think the reason for this is that analogy is the only way we can understand salvation. Attempts at a systematic theology tend to fail on this account.)