Hans Spalteholz and I have provided a fresh translation of it in the first volume of Edmund Schlink Works: Ecumenical and Confessional Writings (The Coming Christ and Church Traditions and After the Council), which I edited in 2017. This five-volume project is being published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
In observance of both the start of Lent and Schlink's birthday, I've chosen as the TM pericope for this week the first two sub-sections of Schlink's address (pp. 266ff. from vol. 1 of ESW):
If we inquire about the
future of the world, we cannot help but run into the New Testament’s announcement
of the end of the world. “The form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor.
7.31). “The world with its lust is passing away” (1 John 2.17). The New
Testament at the same time announces to us a great tribulation that will come
upon the world before it passes away: war and famine, a disintegration of
community, massive numbers of deaths, and natural disasters. We are commanded
to pay attention, when such things take place. Where there is talk of the
coming Christ as the hope, such talk is always also about the end of the world.
Against the announcement of its end, the world defends
itself with its own hopes. Even many Christians have grown deaf to this
announcement. They set it aside as Jewish apocalyptic thinking. But at the same
time it is an unavoidable fact that anxiety about the end holds sway over humanity
today. The hopes of the world have become particularly desperate. Everywhere thoughts and dreams are filled with
visions of horrors. One fears that the massive destruction of people that took
place in the two world wars will return in a gigantic escalation. One sees
before one’s very eyes the collapse of skyscrapers and the destruction of
metropolises. The further development of the atomic bomb has most vividly and concretely
opened before us the prospect of the end of humanity and the destruction of the
planet. Precisely with its progressive developments humanity seems to have run
into its limits.
There is, of course, an essential difference between the
anxiety of contemporary humanity and the New Testament announcement of the end.
We are afraid of people who could misuse their power to unleash horrific
catastrophes. We are afraid of the atomic powers of nature over which human
beings could lose their dominion. But according to statements in the New Testament,
the catastrophes of the end times are not merely human misdeeds or the
consequence of human failures but God’s
action. God will prepare the end of
this world. From God’s throne go
forth the commands that send the apocalyptic riders throughout the earth (Rev.
6.1, 3, 5, 7). They are “the bowels of the wrath of God,” which will be poured
out on the earth (Rev. 16.1ff.). God has “given people up to a debased mind, to
do what is of no good” (Rom. 1.28). The end of the world is the Day of God’s judgment.
And we further hear, this judgment over every human
presumption God has given over to Jesus Christ. Christ will come as the Judge
of the world. He will break into the world “like a thief in the night” (1
Thess. 5.2). He will pounce on the world like a vulture on a cadaver (Mt.
24.28). The appearance of Christ will be the end of the world. “Then all the
families on the earth will wail” (Rev. 1.7).
What then has happened to “Christ—the hope of the world”?
If with this theme we only focus on the continued
existence of this threatened world, then we will miss the point of our
conference theme. If we expect from Christ only the securing of this world so
that humanity can pursue undisturbed its freedom, its businesses endeavors, and
the improvement of its standard of living, then Christ is not the hope of the
world, but rather the end of this world’s hopes, for Christ is the world’s end.
The name of Christ does not permit itself to be misused as a slogan in the
struggle for the self-preservation of this world.
The decisive question is not, “How do we get through
these wars and catastrophes?” The real question is, “How can we stand in the
presence of God?” Our real threat
does not come from people, powers, or forces in nature, but rather from God,
whose judgment no one can escape. The hidden root of our anxiety is our anxiety
before God, who will bring to nothing the pride of this world. This is the
question, “Is there a rescue in the face of God’s judgment?”
II.
We will then only speak rightly of Christ as the hope of
the world if we humble ourselves under God and rightly acknowledge God as the Judge
of the world. Yes, we have deserved God’s judgment. We have not given God the
honor that is due to him. We were only thinking of ourselves when we should
have been serving our fellow human beings. We have often enough been silent
when we should have loudly raised our voices. We have too often been afraid
when we should have loved, and judged when we should have forgiven. The unrighteousness,
the oppression, the bloodshed of this world cries to heaven, and the history of
the church itself is not only a praise of God but is again and again a scandal.
“We have sinned, done what is not right, acted wickedly and rebelled. We have
turned from your commands and ordinances” (Dan. 9.5). “If you, Lord, kept a
record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130.3).
Only if we repent and confess that we have forfeited our
lives before God, will we recognize Christ as hope of the world.
Christ is the hope as the
crucified one. Look on this man, crowned with thorns on Golgotha, despised
and rejected, who hangs on the cross! Look on this man with the disfigured body
and the bloody countenance, the very essence of every human woe and shame! Hear
from his mouth the cries, “I thirst,” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?” The pious brought charges against him. The authorities condemned him. His
friends deserted him. But the deepest depth of his agony was his being forsaken
by God, his suffering of God’s judgment. But this man Jesus Christ did not die
for his own sins. “Surely he has borne our
sickness and carried our sorrows” (Is. 53.4a). “He was wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our sins” (v. 5a) God “has made him who knew no
sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness which is
valid before God” (2 Cor. 5.21).
The one who was judged for the world will appear as Judge
of the world. As the one who has borne the sins of the world, Christ is coming to
the world. As the one who died for the world, he acts on behalf of those who
cry to him in God’s sight. We must cling to the crucified one. Upon the
crucified one we must place our hope. Only by faith in him will we find rescue on
the Day of Judgment, will we be declared “not guilty,” despite our sins, for
the crucified one is given to us by God for our righteousness.
Christ is our hope as the
risen one. God has raised the crucified one from the dead. Through this
action God himself has confessed of Jesus, “This man alone died without sin,
this one is my son.” God has torn him from the bands of death and set him into
that life which is free of all the limitations of this world. He is the new
human being. God made Jesus the victor over all his enemies, has lifted him up,
and has given to him “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Mt. 28.18). Christ
is the Lord of the world. But Christ has not kept this victory to himself. Just
as he died for the world, so he also arose for the world. He was victorious over
the powers of sin and transience in order that those who believe in him will
likewise become victors. He thrust his way through to that life, as the first
fruits, in order that many might participate in it as well. Hardly having
escaped from death, the risen one turned to his own who had forsaken him or
even had denied him, presented himself to them, and offered them his greeting,
“Peace be with you!”
On the crucified one who is risen, let us place our hope!
He is our victorious brother, who will appear as Judge of the world. He is the first
fruits of the new creation, who is preparing this world for its end. The
conqueror of every need is coming. He will appear in order to awaken his own,
just as he is awakened, in order to make them victors, just as he is a victor. He
will gather together the new humanity whose head he is. Then there will be a
new creation.
Christ is thus the hope of the
world, not as a guarantor for the continued existence of this world, but rather
as Redeemer from all the bonds of this world. Christ is the hope of the world
in that he calls out people from the world, in that he gathers together his
people from the whole world, the people who are strangers in this world and
whose citizenship is in heaven. Christ is the hope of the world only insofar as
the world does not remain the world, but rather allows itself to be transformed
through repentance and faith. Christ is the end of the world, with its joy and
sorrow, and thus, precisely in this way, is he the hope for the world, for in
the passing away of this world, he will bring forth the new creation.
