The Second Coming and the new creation

Because the Second Coming is one of the major reasons given by non-Christians for rejecting the idea of creation (and especially of biblical creation) it needs to be addressed in any creationist apologetic. In this post I'll examine this doctrine in the light of an essay by C. S. Lewis. [1.]

Quotes and comments;

A. 'The doctrine of the Second Coming is deeply uncongenial to the whole evolutionary or developmental character of modern thought. We have been taught to think of the world as something that grows slowly towards perfection, something that "progresses" or "evolves." Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope.'

- The theory of evolution gives no basis for a doctrine of evolutionary progress. This idea has been tacked onto it without warrant. ie. there is nothing in the idea of mutation (copying mistakes and their inherent damage to the organism) to warrant the idea of continual progress. In addition, I agree with those who say the idea of progress makes no sense in terms of evolution. (Progress only makes sense in terms of christian theology and biblical doctrine.) This is just one more of the darwinian fables that have been added to the theory itself; added onto it to make it more palatable to the modern mindset. (E. theory in itself is as bleak and barren an idea as there is.) Other addons include stories that claim to account (without warrant) plausible scenarios of the origin of life; stories that claim to account for intelligence, reason, self-consciousness, personality, mathematics, language, etc.

- If there had been no 'first coming' (i.e. creation) the second coming would have no solid foundation. It's only because the Son created the world, that it makes sense he should redeem it on the one hand, and to recreate it on the other. The second coming bears with it the idea of a new heaven and a new earth. i.e. the old earth is judged, so that it might be replaced with a new cosmology entirely. The work of Christ (in the second coming) should not be seen as merely judgmental, but be seen, in a more ultimate sense, as positive and creative.

B. 'It does not even foretell (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought) a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without; an extinguisher popped onto the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play - "Halt!"
To this deep-seated objection I can only reply that, in my opinion, the modern conception of Progress or Evolution (as popularly imagined) is simply a myth, supported by no evidence whatever.

- Many evolutionists have labored hard to conflate the terms progress and evolution. In doing so they have ignored the theory itself, and have substituted (for the public) a sugar coated version of a process that involves continual decay. (What is called evolution is really a hollowing out of creation from within; a kind of 'dry rot' working away at the foundations of the world.)

C. ''I say "evolution, as popularly imagined:" I am not in the least concerned to refute Darwinism as a theorem in biology. There may be flaws in that theorem, but I have here nothing to do with them. There may be signs that biologists are already contemplating a withdrawal from the whole Darwinian position, but I claim to be no judge of such signs. It can even be argued that what Darwin really accounted for was not the origin, but the elimination, of species, but I will not pursue that argument.

- In my opinion Lewis took Darwinism took much to heart; although late in life he seemed to become more critical of it. We see in this quote that he was on the right track, as this is a prescient remark.

D. ''Fuller research into the origins of this potent myth [Neibulung Ring/Wagner] would lead us to the German idealists and thence (as I have heard suggested) through Boehme back to Alchemy. Is the whole dialectical view of history possibly a gigantic projection of the old dream that we can make gold)?

- I guess he means the idea the 'superior' can be formed from the 'base'. (i.e. out of lead we can get gold; i.e. that if 'nature' can do this automatically as it were, then why can't man do it by reason and experiment? (Whether the alchemists were influenced by the ancient Greek evolutionists I don't know.)

E. 'But a great many of the changes produced by evolution are not improvements by any conceivable standard. In battle men save their lives sometimes by advancing and sometimes by retreating. So, in the battle for survival, species save themselves sometimes by increasing, sometimes by jettisoning their powers. There is no general law of progress in biological history.

- There can't be a rational idea of progress under the evolutionary wview because the process is supposedly random and mindless; a process that is the opposite of teleological.

F. 'And, thirdly, even if there were, it would not follow - it is, indeed, manifestly not the case - that there is any law of progress in ethical, cultural, and social history.

- There can't be any coherent idea of progress under the evolutionary wview. Human beings are just animals adapting to ever changing conditions; therefore what they do, believe and say is just the natural response to environmental input (on the behalf of the survivors for existence.) i.e. there can be no right or wrong, merely those who survive and those who do not.

G. 'The idea which here shuts out the Second Coming from our minds, the idea of the world slowly ripening to perfection, is a myth, not a generalization from experience.

- This statement had more force in the years just after ww2 than it does today (after decades of relative peace) but it's still valid. The very idea of perfection makes no sense in terms of M2M evolution. To have perfection you have to measure things against a standard, and the e. wview can't provide you with one. (Ideals only make sense in terms of the biblical wview.)

H. 'One of the most famous predictions was that of poor William Miller in 1843. Miller (whom I take to have been an honest fanatic) dated the Second Coming to the year, the day, and the very minute. A timely comet fostered the delusion. Thousands waited for the Lord at midnight on March 21st, and went home to a late breakfast on the 22nd followed by the jeers of a drunkard.
Clearly, no one wishes to say anything that will reawaken such mass hysteria. We must never speak to simple, excitable people about "the Day" without emphasizing again and again the utter impossibility of prediction. We must try to show them that that impossibility is an essential part of the doctrine.

- While some non-Christians like to mock the idea of an end to history (didn't Gaiman and Pratchett write a novel on the subject?) our secular friends haven't been without their own doomsayers. (I'm known as a master of the understatement.) It seems that we're continually bombarded with predictions of doom from the left side of the theatre. (The global warming fiasco playing out presently being just one such case.) The biblical position is that no one knows when the 'end' will come; the secular left on the other hand seems to know (like Miller himself) to the day and the hour when doom is going to strike. (You might want to acquire the charts of Al Gore... apparently he's willing to let them go cheap.)

While Christians see the second coming as a matter of Providence, non-Christians see it as solely being the work of man... and for this reason are even more anxious when it comes to looking toward the future. (I just read an essay on ecology and sf by Brian Stableford, and he wrote that many among the 'Greens' feel that it is already too late to prevent an inevitable environmental meltdown. I think he mentioned Kim Robinson as being in this camp.)

There's an irony in the fact so many of our educated elite both disbelieve in a second coming, and are waiting daily for some kind of man made apocalypse. (I suppose it's possible the two will be one and the same... but I tend to doubt it.)

I. 'The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question "What if this present were the world's last night?" is equally relevant.'

- That sounds like good advice, but I don't think it's practical. I do think however, that it's something we should remind ourselves of from time to time. (I mean, we can't really live like that can we? I know I can't.) The idea isn't to obsess about the second coming, but instead, to keep focused on the long obedience (as someone called the christian life).

J. 'Some day (and "What if this present were the world's last night?") an absolutely correct verdict - if you like, a perfect critique - will be passed on what each of us is.'

- What alarms us in this (and I include myself) is the idea a perfectly just judge will be sitting on the bench, and not a sentimentalist like Charles Dickens. It's no wonder few of us like the idea of a final judgment. (We don't want life to be trivial, but we don't want it to be as serious as this.) Because we don't like the idea of a second coming, we have good reason not to like the idea of creation. In a truly biblical theology the two things can't be separated.

Notes;
1. The World's Last Night - C. S. Lewis [all quotes are from this essay]
- This is one of Lewis's best essays, and I recommend it highly.