Eschatological Authenticity: Living Now as You Will Then

Description

The Christian life is fundamentally shaped by the future. What is the future of every Christian life? “The glory of God is a human fully alive,” says St Ireneus. In scripture, this future-life is referred to as our ‘telos’, our ultimate and eventual aim. When Jesus says in Matthew 5.48 to “be perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect,” he’s using a variation of telos – the word teleios. He’s saying we need to be goal-minded, to be consumed with the telos, just as our heavenly father is consumed with the telos. Telos can be conceptualized in two ways. One way is filling a coffee cup all the way to the brim so it spills over. The other involves raising up a bull from infancy to adulthood so it’s mature enough to be a sacrifice. We are meant to be abundantly filled with the Spirit, overflowing, so we might have an excess of grace and lay down our lives in service to Christ and God’s Creation. This curriculum will help you understand the practical implications of being our ‘ultimate and eventual’ selves; and recognize how we live ‘teleically’, meaning ‘called beyond who we are and living as the people we’re meant to become.’