What's In Your Wallet?

Published on by D. G. Hart

Will it still be there after the resurrection? Will you still have a wallet?

I do not think it is gnostic to believe that Christians will not have access to their pre-resurrection savings accounts in the new heavens and new earth. In fact, countless Christian organizations and ministries solicit donations precisely because practically every Christian on this earth knows that what he now owns he will not possess once he dies. Now, maybe we get it all back (with interest?). But since wills and other legal arrangements see every believer make provisions to zero out his books, so that all his possessions go to someone else, does the idea of redeeming the material world indicate that most Christians need to reconsider how they prepare to meet their maker?

Believe me, when Matt Tuininga argues for continuity between the pre- and post-resurrection world, I am tempted. After all, if the books I have written (which are part of the material world) will survive the end of the world, perhaps I’ll have a chance to present a copy of Defending the Faith to J. Gresham Machen (not to mention being able to show my parents what I wrote since they went to be with the Lord). But I have no more confidence that the circumstances of the new heavens and new earth will include the contents of my curriculum vitae any more than that of my wallet.

Maybe Matt’s case for environmentalism only extends to God’s possessions and not to mine. So the fields and streams and cattle and trees, which all belong to the Lord, may show up in the world to come because they are God’s. What belongs to those who won’t be glorified, remains with those who need no glorification. But since much of the world that ultimately belongs to the Lord, provisionally belongs to farmers, developers, and investors, then the material world to survive the world’s end may be reserved to those remotest parts of Canada, Brazil, and Siberia, where ownership does not apply.

But if the point is that the human body, which is part of the material world, will be resurrected and so functions as an example of other material things that will be saved, redeemed, or resurrected, then why not my cash, credit cards, books, cats, house, and herb garden?

Or maybe we only see through a glass darkly.

54 thoughts on “What's In Your Wallet?”

  1. Hi Dr. Hart,
    Speaking of wallets, I just got mine out as I had a plumber out this morning for a very stubborn clog in one of the 60 year old galvanized pipes. It got me thinking about waste and excrement. “Will our resurrected bodies produce waste? Will my house need pipes if it gets resurrected too? Will it belong to me or to one of the seven prior owners?”

    Great post. Thanks!

    Ginger

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  2. I heard a sermon about this:

    There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

    42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

    Sure seems like it would have been a simple thing to say we’ll pretty much be the same after resurrection, wouldn’t it? If this is all the apostle knew, how do these guys today know more?

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  4. Look at the body of Jesus. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t think anything was strange about their Divine guest. The apostles in the upper room didn’t think that Jesus’ body was unusual—except that he could pass through walls, it seems. He ate fish before them, as if to say that his body retained significant continuity with his body before his death.

    Have whatever ideas about the Resurrection you like. Maybe there is a place for “common” things, like the Resurrection, to be tethered to the Scriptures, however.

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  6. I’m pretty sure that my wallet will have in it exactly what is in it right now. Nothing.

    I make really good money (almost $12,000 a year)…but I can’t manage to save a dime of it.

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  8. Phil, you’re trying too hard to disagree. The “normal” body of our Lord was not one that the disciples recognized, after living and breathing with him for three years. Imagine not recognizing your wife after a three-day hiatus.

    And you think the Resurrection is common? Have you been reading Hume again?

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  9. Steve – A) Your poverty makes you holy and virtuous B) Call the Redeemer NYC co-ed diaconate and they will assist you. Footnote — as a small business owner that’s about what I will clear this year…

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  10. I wish this post reflected remotely what I was arguing.

    My argument is not that any of the particulars you discuss here will necessarily appear as we know them in the new heavens and the new earth. Just as our bodies go through significant change and transformation, so will the creation. My argument is simply, based on Romans 8, Colossians 1:15-20, numerous other NT passages that describe the way that “all things” are subjected to Jesus, and numerous OT passages that portray the coming kingdom as being in at least a form of continuity with the present creation, that in Christ God redeems all things, and will therefore make all things new, such that the new heavens and the new earth will represent the teleological goal in continuity with the present creation. Remember, substance and accidents.

    I understand that you’re not comfortable with this language. But let’s at least be clear about what I am, and what I am NOT arguing.

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  11. Matthew, it’s fairly questionable that Rom 8, refers to much beyond the resurrection of the body. Kline does a fairly convincing job of arguing the ‘groaning’ of the creation is from being cursed to be a graveyard for an imago dei creation it was meant to serve not war with and ultimately consume-dust to dust, thus the whole birthing and revealing of the sons of glory. I believe the relevant OT reference is in Isaiah, could be wrong, I don’t have time to double check now. But likely this verse in Rom has been made a wax-nose by ‘renewalists’ to expand the redemptive work of Christ beyond it’s rightful objects; imago dei creation.

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  12. Our hope is not continuity but discontinuity. Our hope is not one (conditional) covenant which does not change, but a new covenant. “The new society of Jesus is the triumphant declaration of independence from the models of fallen world cultures in the name of God’s original creation purpose. The Niebuhrs try to interpret the distinction between the old and the new as a conflict between creation and redemption.” John Howard Yoder, “The Price of Discipleship”

    “What holds down the standards that apply to this present world is the weight of sin, NOT a divinely revealed lower order for secular society.” Christian Witness to the State, p72.

    But if we hope for the new, does that mean that the old was dung? Does that mean no infant initiation into a conditional covenant? Does that mean that we will have to count old things lost?

    1 Cor 7:26, “Because of the present constraint, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is.”

    The “constraint” is the sum of difficult challenges coughed up by a world that is simultaneously, on the one hand, lost and subject to catastrophic judgment, and, on the other, mysteriously ruled by Christ until death itself is destroyed (1 Cor 15:25-26). (Carson)

    Romans 12 and 13 Christians have two different citizenships (or two beasts as two masters). Since the earth is the Lord’s, we do not have to withdraw from the earth because it is this same earth to which Jesus is coming again. We are not going to heaven. Jesus is coming back to this earth from heaven.

    In his specific Philippians context, Paul concludes that the better gain (both for the people he writes to and for Christ) is to continue to live in this present world so as to proclaim the gospel. (Later perhaps will come discontinuity and martyrdom!).

    I Corinthians 15 promises that the justified elect will “put on immortality”. This is not a promise that we are now immortal, nor is it a promise that we will become immortal as soon as we die. But it is God’s promise, guaranteed by Christ’s resurrection, that those who belong to Christ will on the day He comes back to this earth be given immortality.

    But we are already citizens of heaven, and because of that, D.G is correct to point to our sense of dislocation We are “not yet” home, “not yet” immortal, nor have we yet found what we are looking for….

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  14. Erik, you have to wonder if that saturation allows for number of grown men in a given community living in mom’s basement eating hot pockets(cue south park).

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  15. The promise about “all in all” in I Cor 15:24-28 involves the destruction of Christ’s enemies, not their redemption. For example, death is the last enemy, and death will die (not be redeemed). Christ’s Lordship does not mean that whorehouses are redeemed. Christ’s Lordship means that whorehouses are off limits to Christ’s creatures.

    Isaiah 24 Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate, and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants…

    3 The earth shall be utterly empty and utterly plundered;
    for the Lord has spoken this word.
    4 The earth mourns and withers;
    the world languishes and withers;
    the highest people of the earth languish.
    5 The earth lies defiled
    under its inhabitants;
    for they have transgressed the laws,
    violated the statutes,
    broken the everlasting covenant.
    6 Therefore a curse devours the earth,
    and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
    therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched, and few are left.
    7 The wine mourns,
    the vine languishes,
    all the merry-hearted sigh.
    8 The mirth of the tambourines is stilled,
    the noise of the jubilant has ceased,
    the mirth of the lyre is stilled.
    9 No more do they drink wine with singing;
    strong drink is bitter to those who drink it.
    10 The wasted city is broken down; every house is shut up so that none can enter.
    11 There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine; all joy has grown dark;
    the gladness of the earth is banished…
    17 Terror and the pit and the snare
    are upon you, O inhabitant of the earth!
    18 He who flees at the sound of the terror
    shall fall into the pit,
    and he who climbs out of the pit
    shall be caught in the snare.
    For the windows of heaven are opened,
    and the foundations of the earth tremble.
    19 The earth is utterly broken,
    the earth is split apart,
    the earth is violently shaken.
    20 The earth staggers like a drunken man;
    it sways like a hut….
    21 On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven, and the kings of the earth, on the earth.
    22 They will be gathered together as prisoners in a pit; they will be shut up in a prison, and after many days they will be punished.

    Isaiah 26:17 Like a pregnant woman
    who writhes and cries out in her pangs
    when she is near to giving birth,
    so were we because of you, O Lord;
    18 but we have given birth to wind.
    We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth…
    19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
    You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
    For your dew is a dew of light,
    and the earth will give birth to the dead.
    20 Come, my people, enter your chambers,
    and shut your doors behind you;
    hide yourselves for a little while
    until the fury has passed by.
    21 For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place
    to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,
    and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,
    and will no more cover its slain.

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  16. McMark, you’ll appreciate this, a recent convert to RC has argued that the idea of the wrath of God being visited upon Christ in our stead is an illegitimate way to understand the context of the covenant of grace.

    Isaiah 26:17 Like a pregnant woman
    who writhes and cries out in her pangs
    when she is near to giving birth,
    so were we because of you, O Lord;
    18 but we have given birth to wind.
    We have accomplished no deliverance in the earth…
    19 Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.
    You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!
    For your dew is a dew of light,
    and the earth will give birth to the dead.
    20 Come, my people, enter your chambers,
    and shut your doors behind you;
    hide yourselves for a little while
    until the fury has passed by.
    21 For behold, the Lord is coming out from his place
    to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity,
    and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it,
    and will no more cover its slain.

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  17. Sean, are you talking about Jason or Beckwith? Who’s denying substitutionary Trinitarian atonement? Of course all those who teach that Christ died for those who will still perish are basically denying just propitiation.

    My Roman Catholic friends tell me that Luther and Calvin “added on” to the gospel by talking about a creation “mandate” to get married and get a job and call that job a “Christian vocation”. They have a point, but I warn them not to confuse Luther and Calvin with Os Guinness and Francis Short-pants.Did Calvin really say that grace will “redeem your work” or “change your work” or “turn your work into a vocation”? Did Luther believe that “the priesthood of the believer” means that being a clergyman is being a “professional” and that every Christian has a responsibility to become some kind of “professional”?

    What’s next? Christian readers? Christian historians? Sometimes the “cosmic gospel” is just another false gospel.

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  18. Chortles.

    Thanks. But there is NO virtue in being poor.

    I hope someday there’s a ruling class in this country who isn’t hell bent on making it so tough for thge small businessman.Hang in there.

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  20. Matt, since you are trying to put things “simply,” then why doesn’t “all things” include what’s in my wallet? I didn’t claim that you were saying that. But you didn’t offer many qualifications either. And when you received push back on limiting “all things” to certain creatures, you used the g-word.

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  22. Related to this, it always amazes me how many folks in the Reformed world take what is clearly a future promise from Revelation 21 (“I am making all things new”) and apply that to the here and now, despite I Peter 1:13 (“Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed;”) and Hebrews 13:14 (“For here we have no enduring city;”) and the whole thrust of the NT to set our eyes on what is seen, but on what is unseen (cf. I Cor. 4). And it does get tiresome to be called gnostic when we remind our folks where their true hope is, which comes only through death.

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  24. Darryl,

    It seems to me that Matt has answered your question “why doesn’t “all things” include what’s in my wallet?” with reference to Calvin’s commentary on the subject:

    This doesn’t mean, of course, that every last individual, or every particular of creation will be renewed. As John Calvin argues in his commentary on 2 Peter 3, making use of Aristotelian logic, it is the substance of creation that will be renewed, not the accidents. “Of the elements of the world I shall only say this one thing, that they are to be consumed only that they may be renovated, their substance still remaining the same, as it may be easily gathered from Romans 8:21 and from other passages.” As Calvin warns, we should be wary of theological speculation that seeks to identify precisely the sort of continuity this entails.

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  26. Darryl,

    Understood, but I don’t see why the answer he provided does not satisfy you, or why the g word is so offensive to you. If creation is to be destroyed rather than restored, then our salvation is in escaping from the creation. Why is this not a gnostic gospel

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  27. Don, because I believe in the resurrection. There will be a new heavens and new earth and human bodies will inhabit it. But if those bodies still produce waste, where will it go in a perfect world? And if those bodies still have sexual organs, why no procreation? In other words, we don’t know what it will be like. And to let this world set the imaginative bar for what the next world will be like seems to be pretty unimaginative. Haven’t you read Narnia? Think outside the box, man.

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  28. Whatever God wants in the new world will be there.

    For people to insist that their (self-declared) good works places an obligation on Him to make sure these things remain is too much.

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  29. “If creation is to be destroyed rather than restored, then our salvation is in escaping from the creation”

    So if my blues records aren’t going to last a thousand years then I won’t dust them now? You must be one of those hobgoblins from that other thread. Too many college classes, I figure.

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  30. Darryl,

    Admittedly there is much we do not know about the eschaton, especially regarding the impact of the elimination of sin and its potential. But what we do know, we only know because God has revealed it through creation (general revelation) and His word (special revelation). If creation will be destroyed, what does that say about the truth of God revealed through it — some truth will not endure or that it will be revealed in a different manner altogether? Regarding imagination, it seems that your position eliminates even the possibility of imagination.

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  32. Don, I wasn’t thinking about you at all, no misreading, I was just stating my general axiom.

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  33. Muddy,

    Switch to iTunes or CD 🙂 Beyond that, I would love to engage in dialogue but am not sure where you are coming from — and I don’t mean what thread for I’m sure you are able to read, assimilate and draw conclusions for yourself.

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  35. Don, sounds good.

    I assure you that about 95% of what is copied and pasted on OL is completely ignored. A good sign is it is coming from one of 3 names these days….

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  36. Don, have not critters gone extinct? What does that say about what they revealed? Haven’t cities and civilizations gone under? Didn’t they reveal something about God? You’re not really thinking this one through. Plus, Peter says creation will be destroyed. Sorry. It’s in God’s word. Who are you going to believe?

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  37. Kent,

    I hear you. I have interacted with OL in the past, but not in the last several months. I agree with Darryl on a whole lot, especially his take on worship as expressed in ‘With Reverence and Awe.’ I am now reading ‘A Secular Faith’ and find that there is much I can agree with. My concern with his theology though has always been with the way he and guys like DVD (I’ve read LGTK) treat creation as penultimate. Though his position allows him to enjoy creation and culture (e.g., ‘The Wire’) it is ambivalent as to how creation and culture are to glorify God. I do not come from a neo-Cal position that advocates ‘redeeming culture’ but rather a position that sees creation as a precious gift of God and culture as a way to express our love of, to and through Him (Col 1:15) via this revelation. Christian and non-Christian are able to do this (though with different motives) because we are all created in His image, and thus desire the ultimate good, which for a Christian is God and soli deo gloria.

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  38. Don, blues on scratchy records work. Robert Johnson shouldn’t sound computery.

    But here’s what I’m up to. You say “If creation is to be destroyed rather than restored, then our salvation is in escaping from the creation” but there’s no reason those two have to go together. I say the heavens will disappear with a roar and the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. But I still like a beer and Charley Patton. They go together just fine.

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  39. Don, how is creation destroyed and made new Gnostic? Wouldn’t Gnostic be more like destroyed, full stop? But since you’re inclined to take Tuininga’s lead, I’ll make the same point to you as I did to him: 2k isn’t about dissing creation, it’s about following Christianity’s own lead an emphasizing the anthropocentric nature of salvation as opposed to an expansive view. It’s not a matter of neglecting wider creation, but simply a matter of priority, as in covenant theology, as in Jesus lived and died for his people (and wider creation waits and groans for them to be revealed so that it may then be restored as well).

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  40. Darryl,

    I don’t think you are making a fair comparison. Both general and special revelation are progressive, having their telos in Christ. What is true of the whole cannot be ascribed to its parts.

    As far as 2 Peter 3 is concerned, I, like Matt, go with Calvin. If you really want to be faithful to letting God’s word be final, look how He described the perishing of the world by the flood. Clearly He is speaking not of the end of the world as we know it, but of the judgement that purifies, in the case of Noah by water, and in the case of final judgement by fire.

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  41. Don, okay, let God’s word be final. Full stop. That means Calvin doesn’t settle it.

    Progressivism is dangerous. And it’s especially confounding when progress is backward — as in moving forward but backward to 1 AD.

    Please do better.

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  42. Darryl,

    Ok. When I use the word ‘progressive’, I’m thinking in Vosian terminology. Per Vos, redemptive history is both incarnate and organic (i.e., from seed form to attainment of full growth.) The destruction of creation would rob the final redemptive act of both those qualities, would it not?

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  43. Zrim,

    I don’t believe the way you have put it (“creation destroyed and made new”) is faithful to OL theology. Isn’t it more like creation destroyed and remade from scratch, except for mankind?

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  44. Don, I’m not sure that there is much difference between the renewal of imago Dei creation and non-imago Dei creation. My point has to do with which is being renewed right now, namely you and me, not our dogs and governments.

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  45. MM,

    By escaping from creation, I didn’t mean that you can’t enjoy the blues and drinking beer. I see both as having meaning beyond the here and now. That is what gives a fuller joy to those pleasures. If the creation is destroyed, what is the meaning of the beer and the blues but to drink away your sorrows while lamenting your depressing circumstances?

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  46. Zrim,

    Ok, but I think you have me pegged as a neo-Cal transformationalist, which I am not.

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  47. Don, when you get behind the suggestion of Gnosticism for resisting an expansive view of redemption, it sure seems like some variant of transformationism.

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  48. That’s one way to read it, Don. But maybe blues is one way of acknowledging the tension between already/not yet, and it a way of grounding in present reality rather than escaping from it. Beer? In moderation, its an enjoyment of creation. Let’s not buy into the fundamentalist sin lists.

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  50. Darryl,

    True enough, but the lack of smoothness does not equal discontinuity. Christ, the heavenly Man, does not exist in a separate reality, nor will we when we bear the heavenly image. Praise God that the new reality will look very different from present reality, but it flows from present reality being purified ultimately by divine fire in the final judgement as it was purified in Noah’s time by the flood, metaphorically speaking (which is exactly how, it seems to me, Peter was speaking.)

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  51. Zrim,

    Yes, I do believe that a gnostic view of the gospel precludes an expansive view of redemption, but the Bible does not portray redemption or the heavenly city which Abraham looked forward to as the city built on a man-made foundation (Augustiine’s city of man), but rather as one built on a heavenly foundation, i.e., Christ the heavenly man (Augustines city of God.) The city of God is most definitely expanding, here and now, but not yet complete. A gnostic gospel replaces the already with a discontinuous not yet.

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  52. MM,

    That is exactly what I am saying. True enjoyment of creation can only be grounded in the truth that creation is good, but in need of restoration, not destruction. I like what Jim Jordan says about drinking alcohol. The non-Christian drinks to forget while the Christian drinks to remember.

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  53. Don, which is why prioritizing the anthropocentric nature of redemption isn’t Gnostic, because to do so isn’t to preclude an expansive redemption whatsoever. It would seem to me a Gnostic gospel would not only preclude redemption having anything to do with a new earth but also resurrected bodies. 2k robustly affirms both, it’s just that the human bodies (and souls) come first, then the new earth.

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