I posted on the social media platform Facebook a statement along the lines of the title of this essay, hoping it would stimulate some interest, which it did. Understandably, the statement called for some explanation, which I now offer.
When I was a child, growing up in a rather conservatively religious setting, I don’t recall hearing the word ‘advent.’ At least not in reference to a specific season, namely the four weeks leading up to Christmas, which is how we know it now. I probably first got acquainted with the term for the season when we moved to the city where one was exposed to more varieties of Christianity, including the broader Mennonite church, which was my background. I became acquainted somewhere along the line with Advent being part of what is referred to as the Church Calendar.
Advent refers to the arrival or the beginning of something. The Christmas Advent season is the time of anticipation of the celebration of the birth of Christ. According to Wikipedia, this Advent appears to have begun in the 5th century, long after the birth of Jesus.
Actually, in the Judeao-Christian traditions, one can speak of three seasons of advent. To begin with, Judaism, at least in its more orthodox forms, is in a season of advent of the coming of the Messiah. This is a state that has lasted at least 2,500 – 2,800 years. That takes us back to the time of the exile of Israel and then Judah, the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of the Jews in what had been Canaan, and subsequently became known as Palestine. This is when Jewish prophets really began to put forward the vision of the coming of the Messiah who would liberate the Children of Israel, restore them to their homeland in Canaan and to their former glory under kings such as David and his son Solomon. Those were the glory days, when the kingdoms, still united, were at their zenith.
Secondly, we have the pre-Christmas season of Advent, which we have already described briefly. If the above date is correct, this has been celebrated for about 1500 years. It is really an anticipation of a commemoration of a past event though, not a real event still to come. For Christians, this past event was the actual coming of the Messiah of which the Jewish prophets spoke, although Judaism staunchly refuses to accept this.
Thirdly, in Christianity we have what is sometimes referred to as the Second Advent. This is the anticipation of the promised return of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. It is sometimes referred to as his Second Coming. This is another millennial time of waiting, also approaching 2,000 years.
There have been skeptics of the veracity of Christianity’s claims since this faith began. Most who really give the religion serious attention will acknowledge that there was this Jesus who was a great moral teacher. Others, interestingly often lawyers, who are experts at uncovering facts, but also some philosophers, concede when they really dig into things, that Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee of Palestine also did miracles and was who he claimed to be – God become man, that he was indeed killed on a Roman cross, but was resurrected to life and then returned to where he came from, generally described as ‘heaven.’. Others, such as Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx and Freud, dismiss all religions as creations of the human imagination to serve a certain purpose, perhaps provide some semblance of reasonably satisfactory answers to life’s questions, or a means of control of the masses.
However, these thinkers and writers have all died and Christianity is still here, actually coming out of the period of Christendom, which began in the 5th century CE, when the Roman Emperor Constantine took control of the Church. This lead to a harmful church-state union, which in some quarters, especially since a pivotal reform movement some 500 years ago now already, is now rejected, resulting in a renewed and revitalized Way that more closely resembles the Church prior to Constantine.
Christian ‘believers’ will testify that the chief reason for their affirmation of this faith is their experience of meeting this risen Christ through his Spirit, which is given them upon their belief. However, many also provide many other more objective (?) proofs of the truth of Christianity. In the statement which led to this writing I stated that advent is one of these proofs. I say this simply because, in the face of all that has been thrown against Christianity, or Judaism for that matter, what is historically more persistent than the tenacious belief in advent. Who promulgates a so-far unfulfilled hope for 2000 years, and which sees no sign of stopping? If there was nothing to Christianity, these beliefs, among others, would have long ago been abandoned, and all we would have been left with is a moral corpus of teachings, exemplified by the life of their founding teacher, like Confucianism or Buddhism. However, the Judeo-Christian religion, and to some extent Islam, remain grounded in a history that looks forward to a conclusion. Advent has never been given up on. That seems to prove something to me.
