Against the Theology of Glory (Part 1)

by on March 4, 2026

Many Christians today take it as an article of faith that God must deliver Christians from trials and tribulations. This is an age in which Benny Hinn’s ridiculous books have sold millions, and he is but the latest charlatan selling health and wealth to gullible Christians. Why is such a view—that God wants us to be healthy and wealthy and not to suffer—so plausible to so many? There are a variety of answers.

The first answer is that this is nothing new. There have always been competitors to the Christian teaching on suffering. Martin Luther railed against what he called a “theology of glory”—a theology that replaces Christ with something else or seeks to get to God without Christ the Mediator. The theology of glory I have in mind is the reigning American triumphalism of revivalist (and Reformed) evangelicalism. Almost weekly some well-meaning evangelical announces that there is a coming revival. Bill Bright has been announcing a revival for years. Meanwhile, real weekly church attendance rests at 10 percent and rather less who attend to the means of grace in two services.

If there is precious little empirical evidence for this alleged revival, why the apparent excitement? Another partial answer is the powerful influence of modernity on American Christians. One of the chief doctrines of modernity has been progress, that things are getting better every day in every way. As a schoolboy I remember teachers reciting this as a mantra. Such an idea of progress, whether personal or corporate (social or ecclesial), is not biblical. It is founded in the doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man; in the notion that God has left the world to us, and we must make of it what we will; and in a denial of the doctrine of original sin.

The modern doctrine of progress has fit hand in glove with inherent flesh- and world-denying tendencies of American fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are famous for what they are (or used to be) against. In days past, they were against movies, cards, and liquor. Now they make movies and produce cards with Jesus’s picture on them. I guess liquor is still mostly taboo, but they have often identified the “world” not as an ethical category but as an ontological category, thereby identifying the “world” with creation so that it is their very flesh they must overcome. This is a mild sort of Gnosticism, and it is not hard to find Gnostic strains influencing fundamentalism in the modern period to this very day.

Some years ago in Chicago, I heard on one radio station a fundamentalist offering secret knowledge (gnosis) about how to speak in tongues for $29.95: “Send now before midnight.” On the other end of the dial, I heard a hyper-dispensationalist explaining how the Pauline Epistles are “not for today.” He, too, would give me the secret insights for a sum. It was dueling mystery religions and, ironically, the combatants would deny they had anything in common at all.

Both, however, are children of the Higher Life movement. Both were offering, in their own ways, the secret to overcoming my humanity. Like the old monks (whom they would repudiate), both were calling me not to trust in Christ and his righteousness imputed to me, but to take that next step toward the blessing, whatever it might be.

So it is that both are also the children of modernity, are more or less Pelagian, really believe in progress (personally, morally, if not socially), but are also selling world flight. Doubtless both of them also hold the sort of premillennial eschatology that features deliverance from the tribulation through the rapture; followed by a seven-year tribulation, a sort of purgatory/second chance for those who missed the first bus; followed by the earthly millennium, during which Jesus, the Lamb of God offered once for all, is said to reign on an earthly throne in Jerusalem watching Jewish priests offer sacrificial memorial lambs. The golden age is said to be followed by Armageddon and then, eventually, the judgment. The point here is the view that God ought to deliver his people from rather than through tribulation has been fed and made plausible by the modern American desire to conquer nature through the use of technology.

Part of the attraction of Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth is that it is a form of esoteric knowledge. The other part of the attraction is that the rapture is said to come before suffering and in order to deliver Christians from suffering. It is not surprising that this view has gained such immense popularity at the same time as the rise of modernity.

One of the most obnoxious forms of triumphalism to afflict the American church is reconstructionist postmillennialism. It is most ironic that reconstructionist postmillennialism is actually quite like dispensational premillennialism in significant ways. Like hyper-dispensationalism and Pentecostalism, they are more closely related than they might like to acknowledge.

The other side of world-denying premillennialism is the rise of a new version of postmillennialism, which, though somewhat more world affirming, also features a golden age, in their view, brought about by the preaching of the gospel. Though some versions at least teach a great apostasy in the church before the golden age, postmillennialism has attractions similar to premillennialism: secret, esoteric knowledge; a future earthly golden age; and progress. The influence of the modern doctrine of progress is even more obvious in the case of contemporary postmillennialism.

In recent decades, however, under the formulations of David Chilton, R. J. Rushdoony, Greg Bahnsen, and others, a “world flight” of another sort has become more prominent. These reconstructionist postmillennialists (in distinction from the more traditional postmillennialism of Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield) are denying the necessity of suffering for the Christian. Instead, they argue that the suffering anticipated for the church was actually completed before AD 70. This new postmillennial school is now advocating a version of what appears to be triumphalism.

By triumphalism, I mean the attitude that tends to think of the church as “irresistibly conquering throughout the centuries . . . seemingly more interested in upholding its own rights and privileges than in promoting the salvation of all.”1

There is evidence that Scripture addresses and rejects triumphalism. One writer describes Paul’s opponents at Philippi as having the following positions: “the attaching of little significance to the Cross, a confident triumphalist theology, a strongly realized eschatology, and religious and moral perfectionism through obedience to Torah, especially circumcision.”2

It is my contention that both versions of triumphalism/world flight are mistakes. Rather, the Christian ethic and eschatology entail that we affirm this world as essentially good, if fallen, and that we are called not to flee (or be secretly raptured from) suffering for Christ between the first and second advents. Suffering for Christ is not an exception; it is the rule for Christians, a mark of this interadventual age. Our model is the incarnation. All true Christians affirm that Jesus was true man and true God. The apostle John says that anyone who denies the humanity of Christ is anti-Christ. Jesus—the God-man, the true man, the second Adam—actively obeyed his Father and suffered through his entire life, and especially in his passion and death. This is the pattern for the Christian life.

Amillennialists, who hold that there is no earthly golden age, that we are now in the millennium (i.e., Revelation 20 symbolically describes the inter-adventual period), predictably find themselves between these two poles. There is a great deal that has been fulfilled by the first advent of Jesus. Thus, Paul says all the promises of God have their yea and amen in Christ. Yet there is a great amount of tension between what has been fulfilled in principle and what is yet to be consummated. Anthony Hoekema, an amillennialist, finds a great deal of incentive for godly living in the tension produced by the amillennial stress on the “already” aspect and the “impending” (consummation) aspect of eschatology.

For instance, this tension implies that the struggle against sin continues throughout this present life. Yet the struggle is to be engaged in, not in defeat but in the confidence of victory. We know that Christ has dealt a death blow to Satan’s kingdom and that Satan’s doom is certain.3

This is true not only on an individual level but on a cosmic level as well. The relationship between the “already” and the “not yet” is not one of absolute antithesis but rather one of continuity. The former is a foretaste of the latter. The New Testament teaches that there is a close connection between the quality of our present life and the quality of the life beyond the grave. To indicate the way in which the present life is related to the life to come, the New Testament uses such figures as the prize, the crown, the fruit, the harvest, the grain and the ear, sowing and reaping (see. Gal 6.8). Concepts of this sort teach us that we have a responsibility to live for God’s praise to the best of our ability, even while we continue to fall short of perfection.4

It is in response to the popular trend of reconstructionist triumphalism that I offer a brief examination of the role of suffering in the New Testament as a mark of the progress of redemption and the impact of eschatology on the ethics of the New Testament. The purpose of this study is not to be exhaustive but to be suggestive of a third way of viewing our relationship to this world and the question of “world flight.”

Far from being a mere adjunct to the Christian life, suffering is, in the New Testament, an almost essential mark of the Christian life. Contrary to triumphalism, suffering more often than not is a sign of blessing, not wealth or power. The relation of suffering to the personal eschatological questions has not been completely ignored by the church. The eschatological necessity of suffering is implied in the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. We are first to persevere through sin and temptation. Secondarily, we are to persevere through persecution. This is a reflection of the biblical doctrine of suffering.

Suffering is a pervasive theme in the New Testament. Several factors figure prominently in this theme of the suffering of Christians. A brief look at a few passages should be enough to establish the thesis that in the New Testament, suffering is eschatologically necessary; that is, Christian suffering is a mark of the new covenant.

It is a commonplace among New Testament writers that when those who are opposed to Christ lash out at us, it is actually Christ they seek to hurt. It was understood in the New Testament that the same rejection of Christ that led to his crucifixion would continue. So expected was it among the church that Paul foretells the Thessalonians in his first letter, 3:4, that “we are about to suffer, just as also it occurred and you know.”5

This common notion lies behind passages such as Philippians 1:13, 20 and especially verse 29; Romans 5:1–11; 8:35–38; and 2 Corinthians 1:3–11, and especially verse 5 where Paul makes the striking statement that the “sufferings of Christ overflow unto us.”

Key Terms

The key verbs for suffering are anechomai, pascho, adikeo, and their derivatives. Anecho refers to relieving words (Heb 13:22) and other objects. It often refers to receiving things from men or, in the case of 2 Timothy 4:3, not receiving or bearing with sound doctrine. Though the word is middle in form, and thus we would expect it to be deponent in meaning, it is used as a passive exclusively in the New Testament. Anechomai is not used often in the New Testament to refer directly to suffering. It is worth noting where it does because of the passive force of the word. In 1 Corinthians 4:12 It has the sense of “enduring or receiving” sufferings. In 2 Thessalonians 1:4 the word is used to describe the thlipsin that the Thessalonians endured.

Adikeo generally is used to designate “hurting” or “injuring” someone. In Acts 25:10, Paul declares that he has not injured (edikesa) the Jews. The first text using this verb, which tends toward the idea of enduring hurt, is 1 Corinthians 6:7 where, using the passive form, Paul exhorts them to be willing to be wronged (adikeisthe). In 2 Corinthians 7:12 he uses the verb to describe a “wronged” party in a dispute.

This term also occurs in the book of Revelation. In 2:11 the Lord promises that the second death will not harm (adikethe) the overcomer. In 6:6 it refers to “damaging” the oil and the wine. It is used in 7:3 of doing “harm” to the earth. The only deviation from this pattern is in 22:11, where John uses this verb to characterize someone who acts unjustly.

Pascho is the New Testament verb associated most often with our Lord’s vicarious suffering. Of the three words, this one occurs most frequently in the New Testament. In Matthew 16:21; 17:12 (see parallels Mark 8:31; 9:12); Luke 22:15; 24:26, 46; Acts 1:3; 3:18; 17:3; Hebrews 2:18; 5:8; 9:26; 13:12, pascho refers to the suffering of Christ on the cross. Thus, in these contexts, given the centrality of the cross in the Gospels, the message of the cross provides the core meaning for this word in the New Testament. This verb, however, is not applied just to Christ. In Acts 9:16 Luke records the word of the ascended Lord that Ananias is to communicate to Paul: “I will show him how much it is necessary [dei ] to suffer for my name.” Applied to us, the word has a derivative meaning. We suffer not the outpouring of God’s wrath, for Christ has suffered eschatologically once for all, but in the New Testament Epistles, especially, we suffer the outpouring of the wrath of the world, Satan, and the powers of this age.

The verb dei is the term most often used to communicate necessity. It is also central to my thesis. It is relatively easy to demonstrate the force of dei in the New Testament. The clearest example is John 3:14: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so also it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up.” It is necessary, in that it is the requisite for salvation (v. 15). It has this sort of force in many places throughout the New Testament. It is with passages like John 3:14–15 in mind that I am speaking of “eschatological necessity.”

Theologically, we speak of consequent necessity. It was not necessary for God to save man, but having willed to save some, the cross became a necessity to the accomplishment of the divine will. Our suffering does not have the same necessity. But it does have a derived necessity. It is derived from our union with Christ. I hope to show that union with Christ in the New Testament necessarily entails suffering. We suffer because of our union with Christ. We suffered and died in Him. So also do we now suffer subsequent to His suffering.

Notes

  1. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 14 (1967), under “triumphalism”.
  2. Christopher L. Mearns, New Testament Student (vol. 3, 1987), 194–204.
  3. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Eerdmans, 1979), 71.
  4. Hoekema, 71.
  5. Glenn W. Barker, William L. Lane, and J. Ramsey Michaels, The New Testament Speaks (Harpercollins College, 1969), 153.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2012.

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  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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