APOSTOLIC News

Sacramento, California - January 14, 2009. From 1997 to 2000, a group of theologians and scientists explored the question of what science and theology, both separately and together, say about the end of the world and the universe.  Their conclusions are interesting, and the degree of agreement is somewhat surprising.

Science and theology first agree that it is considerably easier for both to speak of the beginning than of the end.  The reason for this is that “beyond as before” doesn’t bother us in the same way as “beyond that is the end.”  Although attention is given to beginnings, not much effort is exerted to discover what is before “the beginning.”  In contrast, the end, or the disappearance of what has been (or the threat of “non-being”), is obviously of ultimate concern to all.  This is either the “beyond that continues,” and signals meaning and hope, or it ceases and gestures toward absurdity. 

Both science and theology also agree that there will come an end to the world.  They share considerable agreement as to how this end will come.  In general, science views the universe as fraught with potential danger.  The end of the world is seen as either a cold and unending death in a universe forever expanding to new levels of immensity in which things are getting further apart, or else it will end in one final, explosive moment which will be the result of movement of billions of years.  The present theory is that sixty-five million years ago an asteroid struck the earth, dramatically impacting the environment.  The dinosaurs, which had reigned on the earth for 150 million years, were wiped out.  This is obviously an approximation based on what are supposedly educated guesses, as there was no one there to report such things.  Further, there is evidence that this approximation is seriously incorrect.  For example, the assumption is that dinosaurs became extinct roughly 150 million years ago.  If that were true, all of the remaining dinosaur bones would be fossilized.  Yet, as recently as 1998, expeditions to the Liscomb dinosaur bone beds in Alaska have recovered and brought back non-fossilized dinosaur bones.  In one case, scientists retrieved an 80 pound jaw bone of a duck-billed dinosaur, which would represent an animal some 40 feet long,

While it is possible that the earth is, indeed, very, very old, and also possible that life of some kind could have existed in this “before,” the fact is, no one knows.  Studying aging and movement patterns in the universe does seem to show that the earth and space existed from the long ago past.  However, had Adam and Eve been observed a few seconds after their creation (as adults), one could have assumed that they had already lived through years of infancy, childhood, and so forth.  How could one be an adult without first having experienced years of growth?  The question then becomes: did God also use the same method, that is, by-passing the natural path of growth, in creating a “mature” universe?  Even for those who do not believe in a “real Adam and Eve, this ancient document which gestures toward such is enough to allow reflection on the fact that the universe could have been created likewise.  Was it created so?  Or, is it also plausible to consider that there could have been a cataclysmic creative event, on a level totally foreign to and unknown to man, in which the processes which we know to take certain amounts of time and which are limited to the constraints of finitude were “accelerated exponentially” in a fiery, creative phenomenon humanly unimaginable?  Was such an event activated and completed in short order by the utterance of the divine creative voice―the same voice which is the “Colossian force” by which all matter and space now cohere? (c.p. Col. 1:17).

In the termination of life, science and theology agree that similar cataclysm could happen with a fiery extinction of life on earth.  Science indicates that the sun, at some future time, will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and turn into a swollen red giant, burning up any life left here on earth.  This will be a fiery collapse into the cosmic melting pot of the end.  Beyond this, science does not go.  It is simply “the end,” beyond which is only silence.

The biblical description of the end agrees with the idea of a fiery termination of the universe.  It is portrayed as a universe in which the heavens will explode and melt down noisily into extinction, burning up the earth’s surface with it.  The stars, of which our sun is one, will combust, burning up and melting.  This is all portrayed as happening with a roaring, crashing, rushing, shrieking, whizzing, booming noise.  The elements (Gr. stoicheia, i.e., basic parts or components) will be dissolved by intense combustion and disappear in fire (I Pet. 3:7, 10-13).  This will be the end.

 The difference between science and theology revolves around the definition of “the end.”  For science, the end is “cessation” or discontinuance.  For theology, the end is “consummation.”  While both present the end as equally radical and epochal, theology views the present as part of a discontinuance, but does so in an even larger “macro” picture of renewal and continuance.  While both agree that death is a sure part of all ends, both personal and cosmic, for theology the end is about a newness that explodes from this end-ed-ness.

This newness is spiritual as well as natural and includes mankind, the earth, and the entire cosmos.  “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5) indicates a transformation of the “old” as well as the “whole.”  The whole universe, since the separation of Genesis 3, has been moving toward the end in ceaseless, universal erosion.  In regards to the individual, renewal begins in the human spirit in the present continuum, that is, prior to the individual end called death (Rom. 8:30).  In contrast, the human body, as well as all other things material, will experience this transformation at the end (Rom 8:17-19, 23).

This idea of the transformation of the human body is especially intriguing.  The “new” will be the redeemed matter of the “old” (I Cor. 15: 42-45), but in a heretofore unknown newness.  Regardless of the degree of dissolution of the old, the distinctive DNA “human print” of every individual evidently remains intact and inviolable in the divine memory bank and will be reactivated and vivified, and will have continuance, after the end of the world.

The earth, as well as the universe as a whole, will experience continuance, and also will do so in a heretofore unknown newness.  It will be an earth with no more sea nor need of light from the sun (Rev. 22:5).  It will be a non-threatening universe without dissonance.  Space beyond earth evidently will become inhabitable and be integrated into a new and ever-expanding process of life (e.g., Isa. 9:7).

 The key event, which provides distinction between the “nothing after the end” position of science and the “continuance after the end” hope found in theology, is the most epochal of all events: the “Christ-event.”  When all results of this event are completed, the entire earth and cosmos will be delivered from discontinuance.  For man, there is an “end” because there was a “Fall,” which created estrangement from the infinite and made him subject to an end, a demise, a discontinuance of being as he has known it.  Man thus exists differently that he is essentially.  This estrangement and its results, i.e. death, is resolved in Christ.  New being is found in Christ.  Christ is the mediator of the gap between finite and infinite.  He, who is the bearer of the final answer, surrenders His finitude and becomes completely transparent to the revelation which He is and which He bears.  He refuses to claim ultimacy for His finite nature even though it was perfect.  Instead, He sacrifices this perfect, historical, finite self.  This is what gives Him universal validity.  If He is left in the sphere of history only, which is finite, He is neither Messiah nor the first-fruits of a New Creation.  Only as He who has sacrificed His earthly existence is He the Spirit which effects continuance and transformation.  By doing so, He overcomes all finite limitations in becoming the ultimate medium of divine revelation and vanquishes the power of what was previously identified as “the end.”  Thus, for those “in Christ,” there is no end, for He has overcome the forces of the entire universe―world. (Gr.kosmos)

Nathaniel J. Wilson, EdD