The Second Coming: What Is It Really About?

Class Schedule
29 January 2003, Wednesday 7:30 PM Is This What The Future Holds?
9 February 2003, Sunday 11:45 AM
26 February 2003, Wednesday 7:30 PM The End Times are NOW
9 March 2003, Sunday 11:45 AM
TBD The End of Cosmology
13 April 2003, Sunday 11:45 AM
  1. introduction
  2. eschatology: the study of the End Times [Hill]
  3. four views of the Book of Revelations [Gregg and Grimsrud]
    1. historicist:
      • the historic Protestant approach
      • prewritten record of history from the time of the apostle to the end of the world
      • fulfillment is in progress and has been unfolding for 2000 years
      • rarely subscribed to today; though Seventh-Day Adventist do and there exists a small movement to revive it.
      • breaking of the seven seals == the "barbarian" invasions that sacked Rome, or the destruction of Jerusalem by Rome
      • the scorpion/locusts (5th trumpet) == the Arab armies that conqueored Byzantium
      • the serpent-tailed horses (6th trumpet) == the Turks
      • the "beast" (the Antichrist) == the papacy
      • 1 day == 1 year
    2. preterist:
      • fulfillment was in the ancient past, shortly after the author's time
      • thus, in the author's future, but our past
      • some feel the final chapters point to our future
      • ("left wing" preterists believe that Revelations just describes events in John's time and his future predictions never happened.)
      • date Revelation before 70 AD
      • predicts the fall of Jerusalem; the fall of Rome; the Second Coming
    3. futurist:
      • the majority of prophecies have NOT been fulfilled yet
      • most apply everything after Chapter 4 to a relatively short time before the Second Coming
      • held by the majority of popular evangelical writers and teachers
      • most subscribe to dispensationalism (s. premillennialism and the Rapture below)
      • Revelations in three divisions:
        1. past: Rev. 1
        2. present: Rev. 2-3
        3. future: Rev. 4ff
      • continuous chronology:
        1. the Rapture: Rev. 4:1
          • if all Christians and the Church are in heaven, who cares about the rest of Revelations?
        2. Tribulation = 7 or 3 1/2 years = Rev. 6-19
        3. Parousia = Rev. 19
        4. Millennium = Rev. 20
        5. New Creation = Rev. 21-22
      • sometimes two parallel future descriptions
        1. Rev. 4-11
        2. Rev. 12-19
      • usually literal, non-symbolic interpretation
        • not really with dispensationalism
      • s. also Daniel 9:24-27 [Archer (Feinberg)]
        • Dan. 9:27 -- 7 year chronological framework
        • Rev. 6-18 -- detail the judgements of this perios
    4. spiritual (or idealist or symbolic):
      • Revelations is not predicting the future
      • it is a great drama depicting transcendent spiritual realities
      • for example, the conflict of Christ and Satan, Good and Evil
      • fulfillment is spiritual and/or recurrent
      • applicable in any historic age
      • battles => spiritual warfare or persecutionof Christians and Church
      • sea beast => satanically inspired political opposition to Church
      • land beast => opposition of pagan or corrupt religion to Christianity
      • Harlot => compromised church or seduction of society
  4. the futurist interpretation:
  5. the spiritual interpretation [Grimsrud][Hill]
  6. a scientific view of the End Times [Ellis]
    1. introduction [Hill]
      • this is about Eschatology: the study of the End Times
      • Eschatology is bound up with Resurrection of the Body (see proceeding)
      • therefore, we need to accommadate scientific discovery without rationalizing away basic Christian notions, such as the Resurrection
      • Three problems raised by science:
        1. early Christians had limited view of the cosmos: geocentric universe
        2. early Christians had limited view of history: history measured in a few thousand years and locally
        3. early Christians had limited view of Creation: the end returns to the edenic beginning
      • the ancients typically saw a downward vector of the spirit:
        • The Fall from Eden
        • and we continue to descend
      • vs. an evolutionary perspective of ascent
    2. topics:
      • cosmology
      • biology
      • artificial intelligence
    3. Coyne: Seeking the Future
      1. Beware of the "God of the gaps"
        • God is not a filler explanation for observations we cannot explain scientifically
        • the science "mind of God" is not a person, but a structure of information along the lines of Plato
        • science observes the physical; theology interprets the physical and the transcendental
      2. Science answers 'how'; theology 'why'
        • how may be scientific cosmology and biological evolution
        • Genesis stories tell of all of creation's dependence on God
      3. The bible provides no scientific theory
        • an anthology
        • God is one: there is no second God of evil
        • Creation depends on God and is good = beautiful
        • Creation is, therefore, contingent and discoverable/studiable
    4. cosmology: Barrow: The Far, Far Future
      • Heat Death of the Universe: An ever-expanding universe
        1. Second Law of Thermodynamics: Order tends to disorder until reaching thermodynamic equalibrium or ... total entropy (disorder) of a closed system can never decrease
        2. Universe expands indefinitely
        3. Matter transforms to radiation (photons, neutrinos, gravitons moving freely)
        4. Universe cools to an uniform temptature in about 15,000 million years)
        5. All dies
        6. However, Hawking has discovered that ...
          • the gravitational fields carry entropy
          • thus, the max possible entropy of the universe is greater than that of matter and radition
          • therefore, heat death may never be reached
        7. what will happen to life in this expanding universe?
          • broadly define life
          • life => information processing: what conditions allow info processing to continue?
      • or will the universe re-collapse ...
        1. the currently favored inflationary theory suggests an oscillating universe
        2. eternal cycles of expansion and collapse
        3. If the 2nd thermodynamic law governs the evolution from cycle to cycle, the cycles get bigger and bigger (i.e., at each cycle, the universe gets bigger before it collapses).
        4. therefore "earlier" cycles result in smaller universes
        5. if Einstein's cosmological constant exists and is positive, its repulsive gravitational effect will eventually cause the oscillations to cease and launch the universe into an accelerating expansion from which it cannot escape
      • unanswered questions:
        1. will there be an "end" or asymptote of any sort(s)?
        2. will it be of "us" in particular, of life in general, of matter, of space or time, or of the entire universe?
        3. will the end be sudden or gradual?
          • the cosmic constants may be drifting and could drift out of the bio support band
          • different areas or domains in the cosmos may by asymetrical, i.e., have different fundamental physical properties
          • black holes are consuming matter and energy, but does expel this energy in a fashion that may result in holes in space-time
          • symmetry breaking: a shift in the fundamental forces; what happens if we are in store for another one? we would likely just disappear (a cosmic "rapture"?)
          • another sudden end: we hit a singularity or get zapped by a cosmic gravitational shock wave
        4. can there be cycles of behavior or some form o fnatural or artificial selection of universes over long periods of time?
        5. will something always be changing in an ever-expanding universe or are we headed for stasis?
        6. what is the impact of the apparent existence of the cosmological constant, or cosmic vacuum energy, in the universe?
      • Einstein's cosmological constant (the cosmic vacuum energy)
        1. as the universe expands, the density of matter decreases, but the constant stays constant
        2. therefore, it will tend to dominate the universe as it expands
        3. it ultimately determines the shape of space and the rate of expansion: the de Sitter universe
        4. the de Sitter universe is the most symmetrical universe possible.
        5. therefore, no matter what shape the universe began with, it converges to this one
        6. thus, information is lost; everything smooths out.
        7. if the vacuum energy is not present:
          • information can be stored and preserved, since variations in gravitational energy will be available for exploitation
          • "life" could perpetuate itself
        8. if the vacuum energy is present:
          • evolution converges on uniformity
          • information processing cannot continue
      • So where is the Second Coming ...
        1. Futurist: Jesus is coming and will "rapture" us long before any of this happens
        2. Spiritual: the Second Coming is continuously emerging
    5. biology
      • Does Biology Have An Eschatology, And If So Does It Have Cosmological Implications?; Simon Conway Morris
      • The deep structure of the universe indicates life's inevitability.
      • Evolution is not random, but via emergence and convergence, life seems destined.
      • Note though, at the outset of the modern scientific revolutions:
        1. Copernicus removed us from the center of the universe
        2. Darwin removed us from uniqueness
        3. A second Fall from Grace
        4. We are not just "insignificant", but "invisible" in the vastness of the cosmos
        5. From a strictly naturalist point of view, no teleos
        6. And therefore, no Eschaton: no parousia, etc
        7. Pascal: "eternal silence of those infinite spaces"
        8. but ...
      • What if the biosphere consists of a structure that is not only consistent with being a plenitude, but is preordained to bearing life and sentience who can reach transcendental heights?
      • Consider the possibility of indigeneous life on other planets:
        • Mars
        • Europa
      • The protential forms that life can take are almost unlimited.
      • However, the actual forms that arise are constrained.
      • Thus, rather than being an accident, are we preordained?
      • Though there are many evolutionary routes, they tend in certain directions
      • Consider emergence and convergence: higher-order structures that impose a wider set of patterns just now being uncovered.
      • Examples of independent evolution that converges:
        • camera eye of the vertebrate and of the octopus
        • echolocation
        • electrogeneration
        • electroreception
        • olfaction
        • vocalization
      • Evolutionary trends:
        1. despite the combinatorial immensity of biological form, the end points are both strongly limited and reached with remarkable effectiveness
        2. the world shows an extraordinary economy of using a restricted number of building blocks, such as amino acids, to construct extraordinary organic architecture
        3. not only is there an emergence of complexity, but the options available are limited: resulting in sight, smell, hearing and probably intellect
      • implications of these:
        1. the emergence of advanced sentience is inherent from the origin of life
        2. since we have evolutionary origins, our self-understanding needs to be directed to recognizing the natural order as integral to ourselves
      • Given that sentience is destined, the creation has potential -- and coincides with sentience.
      • Further if this sentience is destined for transcendence, the creation is Incarnational.
    6. artificial intelligence
      • Artificial INtelligence and the Far Future, Margaret A. Boden
      • also Do Digital Creatures Dream of Photonic Love?
      • Computers and cybernetics in general are evolving
        1. lacked emotion and autonomy
        2. A-Life developed that was autonomous using techniques of evolution
        3. but are a-creatures alive? yes, no, sort-of
      • But will AI, A-Life undermine the "dignity", worth, and specialness of human beings?
        • Gary Kasparov felt so, in his battle with Deep Blue
        • threaten any religion centered on the uniqueness of humans
      • A-Life appears "Magean", magical
      • In some respects A-Life appears almost like people:
        • intriguing
        • impressive
        • unpredictable
        • largely unintelligible
        • dangerously uncontrollable
        • emergent
        • bottom-up self-organizing
        • self-replicating
        • open-ended evolving
      • In other respects more alien than aliens:
        • See C. Adami
        • the material, such as silicon or quanta, out of which the digital cosmos is built is immaterial to digital life, unlike in the biological medium where carbon-based life is essentially related to and dependent on the physical material.
        • the medium is logical, not physical -- purely platonic.
        • the speed of the machines is immaterial, since the unit of time is the CPU clock cycle. No matter how long or short that unit is physically, the unit would be experienced the same by digital life. However for networked computers, such as in the Internet, relative CPU clock speeds do become important.
        • The topology of the space (the RAM memory) is non-Euclidean. It is temporal, rather than spatial. There is no meaningful spatial distance between points. The meaningful measure is the time it takes to move data from memory cell to memory cell. All pairs of points are, therefore, equidistant within a single computer regardless of the actual physical location. Within the digital cosmos from computer to computer (node to node) the metric depends on the nodes relative physical location on the net and traffic conditions, such as congestion and routing patterns, at the time of transfer. Therefore, the nature of the space is not only complex, but dynamic.
        • The two valuable resources in this alien environment are CPU time and information.
        • As an example of the alienness of the digital cosmos, if we wish to translate the concept of "emergence" to an AI, how would we? Could we say that it means "to be born out of" or "to come out of" or "to arise from"? Yet all of these metaphors are alien to an AI. An AI would have no experience of organic birth. n its non-Euclidean metric space, "coming" and "arising" have no relevance. How then would you describe "emergence"? In Whiteheadian Process, as we perish and then become, we become concrete, emerging from the influences of past actualities, of God's lure, and of our choices. Similarly, an AI would have the experience of concrescence in the instantiation of objects. "Emergence" could then be described as "to concresce out of".
        • As another example, consider parenthood. The notion of "father" and "mother" is entirely alien to the digital environment. Descent in genetic programs is by cloning: each genome has one and only one parent of which it is genetically identical except for any mutations. The single parent is neither female nor male. Therefore, the traditional metaphor of parenthood is simply imposed for our convenience. It is not intrinsically meaningful to digital life.
        • there is no night and day in the digital cosmos
      • But can A-Life have free choice?
        1. free choice guided by:
          • moral principles
          • personal preferences and life goals
          • knowledge of the world, including other people's needs and attitudes
          • predictions of, and comparisons between, the possible consequences
          • self-image (the sort of person one aspires to)
        2. items 2, 3, 4 are topics of AI research
        3. not just consequences must be part of the judgement, but intentions
      • emotion is essential to intelligence
        • emotions evolved to help schedule resource-limited behaviours in the service of many conflicting motives or goals.
        • consider Cog, Kismit, etc. at MIT
        • emotions and self-image needed to set intelligent goals
        • recursion enables reflexive information processing
      • embodiment
        1. How essential is the body to life and intelligence?
        2. Can a digital abstraction be alive? Or does it require a body?
        3. Consider the extended body of modern humans, where such things as a car, a jet, a cane, a word processor mediates the world for us to the point we no longer note the extender
        4. religion can be one of these extenders: so essential that a person without access to their religious artifacts would have his/her personhood undermined
      • What does this mean for the far future?
        1. s. Cyber Angels
        2. cybercloning
        3. cyberborgs
        4. indigeneous digital life
        5. is it possible for us to upload our minds? to the WWW and live forever?
        6. if so, what happens to our souls?
        7. is this God's intent for us, so we continue to proclaim the gospel to the End?
        8. could this be how we incarnate Christ in the Far Future?
  7. putting it all together: relevancy for our times

References

  1. Archer, Gleason L., Paul D. Feinberg, Douglas J. Moo, Richard R. Reiter; The Rapture: Pre-, Mid-, or Post- Tribulational?; ©1984 Zondervan.
  2. Callahan, Tim; Bible Prophecy: Failure or Fulfillment?; Millennium Press ©1997.
  3. Clouse, Robert G. ed.; The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views; ©1977 Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.
  4. Ellis, George F. R.; The Far-Future Universe: Eschatology from a Cosmic Perspective; Templeton Foundation Press; ©2002.
  5. Gregg, Steve; Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary; Thomas Nelson; ©1997.
  6. Grimsrud, Ted; Triumph of the Lamb; Herald Press; ©1987.
  7. Hill, Craig C.; In God's Time: The Bible and the Future; $copy; 2002 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.