Kerygmania: Revelation 21:5 "See, I make all things new"
Here is a link to the interlinear text of this verse.
In the premillenial setting I grew up in, I always understood this as meaning that after the eschaton, Jesus would be installing a new one of everything worth while: a (brand) new Heaven, new Earth, etc.
But looking into this passage for a recent sermon I discovered that one gloss of this verse mentioned in Thayer's lexicon is "bring all things into a new and better condition", an idea which is taken up in a couple of more recent French translations I looked at.
Mind officially blown.
Is the prospect of "making all things new", then, not so much one of substitution as one of transformation of what already exists? That led me off into all sorts of thoughts relating to Christ reconciling the world to himself, swallowing up evil, and so on, but I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the meaning of this verse in particular.
In the premillenial setting I grew up in, I always understood this as meaning that after the eschaton, Jesus would be installing a new one of everything worth while: a (brand) new Heaven, new Earth, etc.
But looking into this passage for a recent sermon I discovered that one gloss of this verse mentioned in Thayer's lexicon is "bring all things into a new and better condition", an idea which is taken up in a couple of more recent French translations I looked at.
Mind officially blown.
Is the prospect of "making all things new", then, not so much one of substitution as one of transformation of what already exists? That led me off into all sorts of thoughts relating to Christ reconciling the world to himself, swallowing up evil, and so on, but I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on the meaning of this verse in particular.
Comments
As to heaven, I suppose there was war in it...
Yes, Christ being the first fruits, anticipating when all creation is glorified / transformed after the eschaton?
Could you unpack this a little, please? Do you see the church (I.e. followers of Christ) as bringing about the new heavens and new earth through their work for the Kingdom and increasingly pushing back the forces of evil (I think it’s the Church Triumphant position)?
In my cultic decades this was after the Millennium - which is running late! All of reality (i.e. 'the universe') was going to be upgraded, transcended, glorified after all the incorrigible had been annihilated. Same as you I suspect.
Now? It's a metaphor for the hope of postmortem transcendence. Which would be nice... And an even more strained metaphor for the idea of the incarnation changing everything for one now. Faites vos jeux!
David Bentley Hart has a controversial but, IMO, very useful and intriguing article here about the resurrection.
That's the historical teaching of the church illustrated in the phrase 'rest in peace and rise in glory" isn't it? Where Heaven comes down to Earth and the Earth is effectively 'resurrected' (all creation goes through a similar transformative process to Christ at resurrection).
As someone who grew up in a similar premillennial setting, I would be interested in knowing what your 'current working theology' was prior to reading that particular interpretation of that verse - because I assume in the interim you have been exposed to other forms of eschatology both directly and indirectly (in the works of Lewis, Wright and others).
I reckon I first really thought about the idea of transformed embodiment, with a new but recognisable body, in my teens, on a youth camp.
More ideas on embodiment and transformation followed with a uni friend asserting that Durham cathedral would be in the New Earth since it was clearly one of the things on this earth worth saving.
I think the next big influence after that was indeed Lewis' The Great Divorce. I don't read much theology at all and I've never read NT Wright.
The difference rereading that verse made to me was seeing more scope for universal reconciliation and transformation, encompassing the reconciliation and transformation of evil, which in my limited understanding is more of an Orthodox way of looking at things.
I guess my personal jury is still out on whether Hell a) exists b) is in fact how some experience Heaven (cf. Lewis' dwarfs) c) is utlimately empty, or is more of an antithesis of existence, an absence of anything, than a 'positive'.
[That is interesting to me for different reasons - my premillennial setting was a very auto-didactic one which I suspect isn't uncommon; and the abiding reaction against that is a strong subscription to the idea that all the Churches teaching across space and time is both necessary and a intended as a blessing to the Church as a whole. I don't read a huge amount of theology any longer - though I listen to some theological stuff and seek it out on occasion.]
There are also echoes of that in Colossians (1:15-20) as well as the various imagery used for the new creation in Isaiah.