Life in the pandemic XXI: Back to the future......

Back in September last year I asserted that no-one could predict the future, at least with any certainty or precision. This was at the time when there was lot’s of debate about scientific modelling that was showing new waves of COVID19 cases, with their attendant increases in hospitalisations and deaths. As we come towards the end of another UK lockdown, the models and the predictions flowing from them seem to be a lot less controversial than they were. The prediction that kicked off much of the controversy (500 000 UK deaths if nothing was done) doesn’t seem quite so unbelievable now, given that, even with the heroic efforts of so many, about 126 000 lives have been lost in the UK to the virus. The modelling did its job, informing (although some would still claim misinforming) decisions. But I also alluded to another source of information, providing an important perspective on our future. It’s this I want to return to.

I do so with a degree of trepidation. Despite the occasional claim to the contrary, prediction about really complicated things like society (and much else besides) is a mugs game, and always has been. History is littered with bold and completely unfulfilled predictions. Never mind duff predictions from remote history. Remember Francis Fukuyama’s declarations about the end of history and the triumph of Western liberal democracy in the early 1990s? Trouble is nobody told the new autocrats like Putin, Xi and Erdogan, or for that matter Trump supporters (who can still be found in depressingly large numbers all over the US). On a lighter note, you won’t be surprised to learn that the Star Trek franchise is an even worse guide to the future. Given that the “Eugenics Wars” should have happened in the 1990s (about thirty years after the making of the original series), I’m afraid we can have no confidence that first contact with the Vulcans and the first warp flight will take place only 42 years hence.

Christians also have a bad (and probably deserved) reputation for the same kind of thing, although we arguably have fewer excuses. As to our individual and collective future we should be comfortable entrusting ourselves to the God who knows the future, regardless of whether He provides us with the details or not. And my suspicion is that often He has not, and does not, because it would distort both our perspective and our priorities. There is perhaps a hint of this at the end of John’s Gospel. Jesus has just restored Peter (after Peter’s denial of Him before the crucifixion), and in conversation He then alludes to what will happen to Peter in the future. Peter then asks about John who is nearby, to be told (essentially) to mind his own beeswax – although that’s not a literal translation of the original (see John 21:21,22). Although Jesus could have gone into great detail about both Peter and John’s futures, He’s fairly cryptic about Peter’s, and doesn’t give away anything about John’s.

There is one particular event the precise timing of which Jesus is famously tight-lipped about – the time of His own second advent. Indeed, He goes much further than simply not saying when it will take place. While it might be possible to detect a trajectory towards His return in the shape of events, He says clearly “..concerning the day and hour no one knows” (Matt24:36). The problem was even the Apostles (as well as later Christian “leaders”) had a habit of not hearing what was being said to them. So just before His ascension they enquired about the timing of events, only to be told, as Peter had been told individually, that it was none of their beeswax (again, not a literal translation; Acts 1:7). They had other business to be about. So, of all the things that Christians might be expected to discuss, write about, seek to discern and fall out about, one thing we should not be exercised about is the precise time of His return. However, some of us still aren’t listening.

Perhaps the best known example of Jesus’ own words being ignored in this matter is that of the Millerites, the predecessors of the Seventh Day Adventists (although some would dispute this characterisation). From about 1818 onwards, William Miller prophesied that the world would end and Christ would return “around” 1843. By the 1840’s there were those within the movement prepared to get more precise. As the world staggered into 1844, and then through the early months of 1844, some in the movement, rather than draw the obvious conclusion, sharpened the prediction to 22^nd October 22^nd, 1844. Eventually Miller himself endorsed this date, and the rest, as they say is history. Miller, it turns out, was not an aberration.

Herbert Armstrong was a 1930’s equivalent of the modern TV Evangelist (ie a radio evangelist), who managed to accumulate many of the trappings of his modern successors with whom he overlapped (he died in 1986). Various sources report him predicting Christ’s return in 1936, 1943, the “end of the world war”, 1972 and 1975.  Harold Camping was another serial offender and radio evangelist, who is best known for his prediction that the rapture would occur on 21^st May 2011. To be fair, in 2012 he wrote: "We humbly acknowledge we were wrong about the timing." He died at the age of 92 in 2013. More recently still we had David Mead’s prediction of the end of the world on September 3^rd, 2017.  You could easily add to this list from those who manage to keep just on the right side of Christian orthodoxy otherwise, to others who are either way over the line, or aren’t interested in any line at all.

History has demonstrated that none of these predictions were made by prophets, because the main qualification of a prophet is that they get it right (Deut 18:22)! And of course all of this is a dangerous distraction from two things that should occupy us. Jesus first advent was long prophesied, and probably just as long doubted, until it was largely forgotten about. When he came, it came as a shock. And His arrival was just the beginning. His exit (that we are about to remember again over Easter) was, and is, also a shocker. Here are truths worth focussing on and thinking about. We have plenty to go on. But the truth is that having delivered on the promises of His first advent, at some point He will deliver on the promise of His second advent. I should not neglect the reality of His promised return; it should have a bearing on both my thinking and my behaviour, it should both encourage and motivate. However, rather than stare at the sky (metaphorically for us, literally for the Apostles), there’s important business to be about here and now. He’ll take care of the rest.

Ignoring my own advice though, I do have one final prediction to make: somewhere, someone is factoring the pandemic into their calculations. Look out for an announcement sometime soon. See what I did there?

Life in the pandemic XX: It feels a bit like 1517….

As well as enjoying box-sets of the West Wing, I spend quite a lot of my time reading history. It was my best subject at school, and I would have taken it further. But in my school bright kids applied to do other stuff at University, so I stumbled into science. However, I was never cured of the history bug. You won’t be too surprised to learn therefore that I’m reading some history at the moment - Alistair McGrath’s “Reformation Thought”.

Over the years I’ve read various accounts of the events, personalities, thinking, politics and impacts of the sixteenth century, famously starting with Luther’s posting of his 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, on the 31st October 1517. Of course, as McGrath point outs, this didn’t happen because Luther woke up that particular morning and on a whim decided that this would be a wizard wheeze. It may have been a discrete event (and not everyone is agreed that it occurred where and when it is said to) but it wasn’t just a discrete event. Many things preceded it, some of which had impacted on Luther himself, and there were many other things influencing him indirectly. All of this undoubtedly shaped his thinking and actions; this is the nature of things. And what followed, what is now termed “the Reformation”, did not then unfold in a vacuum either. There was a lot going on beside and around the theological outrage of one particular German monk, and a lot that then flowed out from his actions. All of this rich tapestry is what we call providence. But we like to identify points in time and places in space, and for the start of the Reformation a Wittenberg church door in 1517 will do. But the before and after turns out, at least to my mind, to be really interesting.

As to before, one wonders how Biblical Christianity survived given the state of the institutional church at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Philosophy was in fine fettle, with rise of humanism in the universities of the day, and renewed interest in the ideas of antiquity, perhaps reaching a high point in the person of Erasmus. Art, including of course church art, was flourishing; this after all was the age of Leonardo. Literacy rates were low, but were climbing, perhaps reaching around 10% by 1500; this doesn’t sound like a lot but it would have an important bearing on the spread and development of reformation ideas. Under the surface, one big change was the arrival and evolution of printing in Western Europe from the East. But the Church in Western Europe was mired in corruption and confusion, and arguably had been for centuries. Somewhere, no doubt, what we might call a Gospel remnant remained; this was certainly Broadbent’s contention, and is the thrust of his famous book (“The Pilgrim Church”). However, this was not at all obvious, at least to mainstream, documented history. In general, the knowledge of what was, and what was not, Bible truth must have been fairly limited, at least as limited as access to Bibles. At this point in history there were no vernacular translations, and the Vulgate, which was available in monasteries and universities, partly made the problem worse by being a relatively poor translation from the original Bible languages into Latin. It also confused the canonical books of the Bible with the (non-canonical) apocrypha (although this was and is a matter of contention). Mind you, as what happened afterwards rather demonstrates, none of this was a particular problem for the God who weaves the tapestry of human events.

The 21^st century seems to be very different from the 16^th. And in so many ways it is. An easy parallel could be drawn between the COVID19 pandemic, and the outbreaks of plague which still occasionally occurred in the time of the reformers. But the plague devastated in ways scarcely conceivable in the modern world. Two years after Luther pinned up his theses, the plague struck the Swiss town of Zurich, where Zwingli, one of the other early reformers, was at work. Between a quarter and third of the population were wiped out, and Zwingli was nearly among their number. Bad as COVID is, it is nowhere near this deadly. However, if in the midst of our pandemic, you had begun to wonder if there was more to life, and wanted to find out what the Scriptures (ie the 66 books of the Bible) had to say on the topic, you’d be spoilt for choice. Even in lockdown, you’d be able to download to a device of your choice the very words of God, from sites like Bible Hub and Bible Gateway and many others beside. Our problem is manifestly not, as in the early 16^th century, the unavailability of the Word of God in our own language. It is freely available. Many of us have a copy somewhere in our homes, some of us have multiple copies, in multiple versions. Yet, paradoxically, although the Bible is widely available, confusion and ignorance about what is taught and revealed in its pages abound. Confusion and ignorance, I would suggest, on a par with 1517. And not only in society, “out there”.

Recent statistics have highlighted utter confusion about what is taught in the Bible, even among those who self-identify with labels like “practicing Christian” and “evangelical”. According to the “State of Theology” survey, in 2018 71% of self-identified UK Christians (74% of those identifying as evangelicals) agreed with the statement “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God”. The 2020 figure for US evangelicals was 56%. What about the statement “The Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being”? What do you think? I think that Scripture is quite clear on this. But it is a point of contention between orthodox Christian belief and some of the cults and sects. So, your view as to the truth of this statement is neither trivial nor unimportant. It turns out that in the 2018 SoT survey, 69% of UK practicing Christians (55% of evangelicals) agreed with the statement. It is, of course, untrue. The Holy Spirit is a person, with the attributes of a person, and is the third person of the Trinity, standing in personal relationship with other persons (divine and otherwise). There is data on a whole series of other statements on the site that you can peruse at your leisure. Indeed you can take the survey yourself, and compare your own views with the US or UK populations, and various sub-populations.

Now I know one can quibble with the basis of any survey. One can question the wording of some the statements, and the coverage of various topics. This particular survey is done online, and therefore one could also quibble with the nature of the underlying samples. But demoting two out of three persons of the Trinity strikes me as indicating pretty serious confusion. Even amongst church going folk, even those who are attending churches where Scripture is being taught (or is claimed to be taught) confusion and ignorance of what the Bible actually teaches apparently abounds, a bit like the early 16^th Century. But the reason is clearly not because the unavailability of the Bible in the vernacular.

Clarity about what the Bible teaches is both possible and desirable. Answers are to be had. They reside in that Bible which is, mercifully, freely available to us (at least at the moment). But it is apparently a closed book many of us. Mind you, what is apparent is rarely the whole story. One wonders how this part of the tapestry will look when it is complete.