WARNING: CONTROVERISAL THEOLOGY
This blog post contains a view that is controversial and will require an open mind to consider or condemn. It is not an attack on orthodoxy or a rising heresy, it is another way of looking at our world, our faith, and our times.
-Jeffrey Gassler
Most of us are taught the Square or Linear view of the Church. The Bible and subsequent events that have led up to our time are on a diagram. Genesis is at the beginning and Revelation at the end. This kind of thinking is Greco-Roman and it is the atypical way to look at the Bible. However, the problem is that this view is bound by the fourth dimension: time. God: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are not in time. So this raises a very interesting question. In most Protestant and Reformed Churches Jesus Christ has been crucified. He is no longer on the cross, he made perptiation for out sins and is now Risen and at the Father's right hand. This is true, it is orthodoxy. However, there is a different view that Christ is being perpetually crucified for our sins. That the event while in time is still happening; the blood is still flowing over our blemishes. This Circular or Spherical view is a belief that while we live in time, God and his Church do not. What this conclusion means is that because our Lord lives outside of time, he is witnessing and still responding to Adam in Genesis and to the Church after Christ's Return. Stay with me. If God is outside of time, he can see everything from Alpha to Omega, because he is the Alpha and Omega. That means right now Jesus Christ is sitting on his throne watching himself be crucified on the cross. Brain bending yet? This also means that we are connected to all saints living and dead. Right now Martin Luther is not just buried in a coffin or in Heaven, he is nailing his 99 Thesis on the door of the Church in Germany. It means right now Godfrey of Boullion is entering Jerusalem on the First Crusade. It means the Apostle Paul is speaking to the Corinthians. This means that time does not bind us and that all of God's Children are connected because God himself is not bound by time. There is verse that has confounded believers and given Catholics strange ideas. It says, "pray for the dead." Catholics take this literally and do pray to dead saints, but what if it means something else. What if the Apostles knew about the sphere that is God's Kingdom and that your prayers could actually go back in time via God and assist Joan of Arc, St. John, and even Billy Graham during his crusades?! This would radically change how we view events. God does not see a past, present, and future, because time is not his limitation. He sees it all happening at once and is Omnipresent at all of it at once. That means that at this moment he is with me in 21st century writing this blog and in 2nd century helping Charles the Great.
If we see the Church and The Kingdom of Heaven outside of our lens of time, then everything is present. Right now Christ is dying for you. Christ is still on the cross, but also risen, and also riding on his steed for the return. Our time has not caught up with Christ's Return yet, but it is happening for God. We are past the crucifixion and resurrection, but they are still happening outside of time. What this spherical thinking does is make Scripture and our faith active and not some ancient history that people engage in. It means the Kingdom is alive and that while our feeble and finite minds cannot understand how Christ could be on the cross, risen, seated on the throne, returning, and ruling all at the same time; we know that God can do things we do not understand. We are limited by our Square and Linear view of life. We cannot comprehend with ease anything than a beginning, middle, and end. Yet, God who is eternal life did not have a beginning, and he has no end. So then our linear thinking cannot coexist with Christ because it puts limits He does not live by, nor has ever lived by.
This view that everything in God's Kingdom is happening at once: both past, present, and future brings me comfort. It means that my connection to saints of old is not some obsession with antiquity, but that God is actually using that person right now. Granted I am living post their ministry, but to God it is still happening. Going back to the crucifixion, this changes how we view Christ on the cross. Instead of it just being he died and that settled everything in 30 A.D., he is still dying and covering our sins forever! This means that Catholics actually have it right to erect crucifixes in their cathedrals, chapels, and churches.
If you want your head to really spin, think about this. Once Jesus Christ Returns and establishes the New Heaven and Earth, he will still be dying on the Cross! All the events of the Bible will still be happening, only we will all be living together post those events. Explaining this kind of theology is difficult, how can we: all the saints of all ages be in New Heaven and Earth and still be doing our works prior to the Kingdom Fulfillment? This like the Trinity is something you can never fully explain. It makes sense with God because he lives outside of time and thus has the Past, Present, and Future like a scroll rolled out before him. But we have God inside of us through Jesus Christ & Holy Ghost. So we have the King of Universe who does not live in time, living inside of people who live in time. That is how it works. God is able to connect all of us from the Early Church to the Last Days Church because he is within us all. Granted I cannot talk to Martin Luther face to face (yet, one day on Resurrection Day), but God can if he wanted and the same Infinite and Eternal Creator lives within us both.
That is the best I can do. Like when I try to explain the Trinity and people still scratch their heads I say, "Well not being able to explain God proves to me that he is God." If I could tell everything about the Creator, Savior, and Spirit I would be on his level. How can the creation understand the creator? The same can be applied to this other way of looking at God's Kingdom and the events of the Church from Genesis to Revelation. It is complicated and none of us will ever be fully able to explain it. All I know is that I find greater comforting thinking that God is still covering my sins actively and ruling over my life on the throne. Only God can be two places, in two time periods, and in two positions of authority at the same time. It makes no feasible sense to our feeble thinking, but it reminds me that God is God and
"His ways are higher than ours."
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