Why does he Tarry? The Patience of God and the Glory of Humanity
The following is the (slightly modified) conclusion of a paper I recently delivered at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, “What is He Waiting For: Apocalyptic Delay in 2 Peter 3.”
The Question: How Many?
Peter’s statement that “God does not want any to perish, but for everyone to reach repentance” raises at least two questions. The first deals with theology proper—if God does not want anyone to perish, then why do some perish. The second question is the one we are concerned about here: what is God actually waiting for? What does “everyone repenting” really mean and what will trigger the actual end?
The Calvinist answer, “the full number of the elect,” is helpful, but as we said previously it just pushes the question back into theology, into the eternal decree in fact. How many has God chosen and why? Ultimately, God’s full purposes remain hidden from us—though Jesus now knows (Rev. 5). However, with a theological and redemptive-historical lens we can say more than we already have. As Peter reminded us with the flood of Noah, time is not a flat circle; no, it “warps” and moves around God’s redemptive acts. Studying what God has done and how it all moves towards his eternal purpose (that is, studying redemptive-history), enables us to peer into the eternal decree. Peter focuses on the end; but to fully understand what God is waiting for we need to look at the beginning and the middle
Adam and the Garden
For example, in the garden we see God’s principal purpose for creation, it’s τελος. He declares it to Eve and to Adam: “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). Humanity is made to be image, and this is not done for its own sake, but so that we might rule and have dominion. The world is good, but wild, untamed, and “perishable.” It is Adam’s job to cultivate, to garden, to provide order such that the world can flourish and go from perishable to imperishable (1 Cor. 15). That task is too large for one woman and one man. What then are they to do? Have kids; “fill” the earth. Humanity as “image” requires extended human flourishing.
Bavinck notes this in his anthropological discussion. No single human is “image.”
“[Image] can only be somewhat unfolded in its depth and riches in a humanity counting billions of members. Just as the traces of God (vestigia Dei) are spread over many, many works, in both space and time, so also the image of God can only be displayed in all its dimensions and characteristic features in a humanity whose members exist both successively… and contemporaneously side by side.” (Reformed Dogmatics 2:577)
“Be fruitful and multiply;” image is not just something we are; it is something we become as we fulfill the “cultural mandate.” As John puts it, “we do not yet know what we will be” (1 John 3:3). We are image, but we also become image, and it is only when the New arrives that we will fully know what it is to be image.
What is more, our roll as “image” is inextricably tied to creation itself. “Fill the earth;” the earth is the world and realm within which image is realized. We were made to rule; or, rather, if we are understanding things rightly, we must say that the world itself is constituted around Adamic rule. The fortunes of the cosmos are tied to the fortunes of corporate humanity. What is he waiting for? “The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to appear” (Rom. 8:19). He is waiting for image-bearing humanity to reach such a fullness that his original purpose for creation can be realized.
All this to say, “the full number of the elect” is fine, but we must understand that idea within the meta-narrative. We need to understand it not (just) in an individualistic “how one gets saved” kind of way, but corporately. It must be understood within a broader theological and redemptive framework, one that is cosmic in scope and apocalyptic in τελος. What determines the number? The number is the number of fullness; the number is the number that can bear the weight of the rule of glory in the imperishable age.
Resurrection and Redemption
The second major redemptive-historical event we should consider—the second singularity around which time flows—is the resurrection. We must be brief (and if you would like not-brief, let me suggest Gaffin’s Resurrection and Redemption), but Paul’s language of Second Adam tells the whole story. Though the “seed” of repentant humanity is protected throughout the Old Covenant, no son of Adam or daughter of Eve has been found worthy to carry out the ground plan of God to establish his image in creation. Until Jesus. Jesus is worthy (Rev. 5). His ascension is his enthronement. Finally, for the first time in history, a child of Adam sits in the seat around which all the world has been constituted. And he has been given authority to receive any who would come to him as adopted children, as Sons of God.
Thus “grace restores nature.” The resurrection opens up a new stage in the cultural mandate, one in which image-bearing-humanity “multiplies” not only by “birth,” but also by “repentance.” Evangelism is the flip-side of the cultural mandate; it is the application of the cultural mandate post-fall and post-resurrection. It is the cultural mandate in a redemptive mode, fit for the age of God’s patience. Jesus, in his wisdom, has committed the task of gathering “full humanity” to his church. He is the first; he appoints twelve to lay the foundation; and the church continues that work until the last brick has been placed and God might dwell with fullness within in and with his image-bearers in the new creation.
Conclusion
In sum, then: the παντα (“everyone”) is not to be comprehended as an undifferentiated multitude of individuals, but the elect, which is to say the fullness of image-bearing humans who together become eschatological image in the New Heavens and New Earth. God’s waiting, then, is a two-fold mercy. He is patient with the church, giving us time to grow in the perfecting virtue of love as we seek his kingdom, and that patience is also salvation for the world as through love the church calls more and more to repentance. He is waiting for the church to gather in the fullness of redeemed humanity, a fullness sufficient for the care-taking of the New Heavens and the New Earth, which was always to be humanity’s true purpose. Within the time of God’s waiting, the church is an agent of righteousness and redemption, and thus “hastens” the day of God by fulfilling its divinely instituted purpose. In short, God is waiting for the church to fulfill its task of gathering in an eschatological fullness of humanity, the chosen of the Lord, so that the new age, the age in which righteousness dwells, might finally begin.
