Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope by Ronald J. Allen and Robert D. Cornwall (review)

Reviewed by: Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope by Ronald J. Allen and Robert D. Cornwall Alan D. Hultberg ronald j. allen and robert d. cornwall, Second Thoughts about the Second Coming: Understanding the End Times, Our Future, and Christian Hope (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2023). Pp. 192. $18. Second Thoughts on the Second Coming is a brief introduction from a mainline Protestant perspective to the broad range of eschatological views that have appeared in the history of the church. Though the book focuses primarily on future eschatology, it touches on personal eschatology as well. The authors are candid about their own opinions (Allen combines elements of Jürgen Moltmann, liberation theology, open theism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, and Cornwall is a process theologian), but they try to present the diverse views covered in the book as dispassionately as possible, offering more summary than critique. The book is written on a popular level (complete with study guide) and is intended for small group study. It would make a helpful supplement in a college or seminary course on eschatology. The book is laid out in twenty short chapters arranged in five sections: "Voices from the Bible," "Voices from the History of the Church" (focusing on the Eastern church from the second century through the fall of Byzantium and the Western church from the second century up to the beginning of the nineteenth century), "Millennial Voices" (explaining premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism), "Contemporary Voices" (canvassing especially twentieth-century theological movements outside traditional pre-, post-, and amillennialism), and "Voices on Life after Death." These chapters are followed by a study guide, glossary, notes, guide to further reading, and Scripture index. Second Thoughts presents an impressive spectrum of views, covered with studied understanding yet commendable brevity. The authors pack a lot of information into a small book. There is some repetition of related views (for example, ancient Eastern views of theōsis and modern Eastern Orthodox views), but that may be expected given the layout of the book. The authors are also generally fair in their treatment of each view, though they offer very little assessment. The focus of the book is on the diversity of opinion on eschatology, leaving it up to the reader to decide what to believe on the subject. A reader who is looking for guidance in navigating the viability of the array of opinions will not find it here. This is especially true if a reader is committed to finding the most biblically viable eschatology. Consonant with most mainline Protestant hermeneutics, the biblical witness and its authority are downplayed due to the diversity and historical grounding of the various views. That is, on the one hand, while the authors rightly survey the diverse eschatological views of the Old and New Testaments, there is no real attempt to read the biblical witness as unified or capable of harmonization. On the other hand, the biblical witness (e.g., the NT hope for a physical return of Christ) is understood to represent a worldview that is no longer credible for modern readers, which leads to an endorsement of demythologization (so, there [End Page 390] is a chapter on Rudolf Bultmann) and to the authors' "second thoughts on the second coming." A result of downplaying the biblical witness is that relatively little attention is paid to apocalyptic eschatology generally and to modern millennial views specifically. While admitting that most contemporary Christians believe, as did most first-century Christians, in an apocalyptic eschatology (allowing as well that the kingdom of God had in some sense been inaugurated in the first advent), the authors have as a primary objective to show that apocalyptic eschatology is not (nor ever was) the only option. Thus, when they cover millennial views, the chapters read almost as an afterthought to the rest of the book. Certainly, these chapters are not treated with the same scholarly rigor as the other chapters. Most egregious is their coverage of premillennialism, which they tend to equate with classical dispensationalism. Admittedly, classical dispensational eschatology is probably held by a majority of evangelical laypeople. But classical dispensationalism (both as a system of thought and in the particulars of...