Problems of Early Christianity

The Time of Christ's Second Coming

I

Biblical scholars have been at variance as to the time which the New Testament visualises for the return of Jesus Christ from heaven in glory to mark the end of the earth and establish the Kingdom of God. Among the representatives of one view the most prominent figure is Albert Schweitzer, author of the famous book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. In general terms Schweitzer's position is that Jesus pinned everything on the miraculous Kingdom of God coming or being made to come in the very near future. Another opinion, apparently favoured by the majority of commentators, is that, on the whole, we cannot derive any indication of the exact time. A third notion, urged by hot-gospellers, sees our own epoch as heading towards the apocalyptic event. According to the present writer, the dice is loaded definitely in favour of a Schweitzerian standpoint.

Let us begin with St. Paul, whose epistles are the earliest Christian documents* In 1 Thessalonians 4:5 he has the phrase: "... we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord." A little later, in the same epistle (5:23) he writes to his followers his prayer to God that their spirit, soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The first phrase evidently expects the Second Coming to happen within Paul's own lifetime and the lifetime of those to whom he preached. The second statement brings a momentous precision by the mention of the body. William Barclay, a distinguished Bible scholar, comments that the obvious implication is that Paul expected the Thessalonians to be in the body when Christ came and that the coming of Christ

* The text used everywhere in this article is the one originally published from Cambridge in 1899 as The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, according to the received Greek text together with the English Authorised Version (Photographic Reprint, 1922).

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would be within the span of their lives and his own.¹

Paul makes a broad reference to the same situation in Romans 13:11: "... now is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed— " This is in accord with the more explicit assertion in 1 Corinthians 7:29: "But this I say, brethren, the time is short." Here Paul introduces a passage in which he not only believes in the imminence of the Second Coming but also advises all the men whom he is addressing to arrange and order their lives on the assumption that this event is going to happen at any moment now. 1 Corinthians 16:22 sings the identical tune but with a more violent voice: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha." "Anathema" is the Greek for "accursed", and "Maranatha" the Aramaic for "The Lord is at hand" or "Come, Lord!"

Some Bible-students urge that Paul had no idea when the Last Day would arrive. In 1 Thessalonians 5:1 he says: "... of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write to you." But these words occur just before he says: "For yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." Here simply the suddenness of the Day is stressed and against it the Thessalonians are alerted with the admonition: "therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober" (5:6). What is signified is: "The Last Day, although sudden, will dawn in our midst any time now and we should be ready for it."

Even the suddenness is not unqualified. Referring to the thief-simile, Barclay² observes: "That was not to say that [the Lord's Day] would not be preceded by signs (1 Thessalonians 5:2). There would be a time of falling away, and a final contest with evil..." So Paul's flock would be not quite taken by surprise. The sole surprising factor would be the exact instant of the Second Coming's quite early date.

Another anti-Schweitzerian point sought to be made is that according to Paul the Last Day would not come until all the pagans were converted. The reference is to Romans 11:25 where the Jews are told they would not lose the "blindness

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in part" that "has happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in". Surely the concluding phrase need mean nothing more than that the process of converting the Gentiles should reach a proper rounding-off. The epistle to the Romans is one of Paul's latest and he has been at the job of pagan conversion for years and looks forward to a satisfactory fulfilment in the evening of his life. The phrase cannot mean that the conversion of the whole pagan world is the pre-condition for the Last Day's advent. If that were so, we would not have the same Epistle telling us: "... Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed" (13:11). Indeed it is nearer because Paul, the arch-apostle to the Gentiles, has attained a near-plenitude in his labours.

At all places and from beginning to end Paul's picture is basically uniform. The only change noticeable over the years is that at first he expected he would live to see the Last Day (1 Thessalonians 4:17; 1 Corinthians 15:51); later he realised he might die before it (2 Corinthians 5:3; Philippians 1:23). This makes no fundamental change in its imminence.

Turning to the three Synoptic Gospels, we may quote what Mark, the author of the earliest, has to say apropos of the Pauline theme: "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe the gospel" (1:15). One may ask what Mark means by "at hand". His answer is plain in the words he gives to Jesus: "Verily I say unto you, that there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power" (9:1). Again, there is the same clarification: "this generation shall not pass till all these things be done" (13:30).

Matthew confirms Mark, altering only the manner of expression as fits his own editorial need: "There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (16:28). Luke follows suit in his own style: "I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death till they see the kingdom of God" (9:17). Matthew has also put into the mouth of Jesus the

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words: "I say unto you, ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of Man be come" (10:23).

One group of the anti-Schweitzerians will fling against all this testimony another saying from Matthew, which is anticipated in Mark. Mark says of the Second Coming: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the Angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (13:32). Matthew's version runs: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (24:36). The inference drawn is that we are forbidden to speculate about the manner, the date, the time of the Second Coming - in short, that the Second Coming is not to be fixed to the period immediately succeeding the death of Jesus: it might be then or it might be centuries or even millennia later.

The inference is fallacious. What is unknown, except to God, is simply the precise day of the End. There is no hint that the End would not come in the lifetime of Jesus' first followers. Within that period the End may arrive at any moment: the moment is hidden but the period, which is several times affirmed in the Gospels, remains unchanged thereby.

The full light on this point is shed by some words of Paul we have already quoted: "... the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night." The sense we have ascertained is that, although the time was imminent and even some signs would herald it, nobody could tell the precise moment of its striking. This explains what the Gospels signify by saying that none knows the date. The single quantity unknown except to the Father is the exact day of the End. But Jesus is clear that the End is very close.

It is notable that the uncertainty of knowledge of the exact day is mentioned by both Mark (13:32) and Matthew (24:36) in the very context which insists in Mark that "this generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled" (24:34). There is no cleavage of periods at all. The anti-Schweitzerian interpretation we have cited is an argument in the void, with no roots in the actual locus of the words.

Further, Paul's thief-simile reappears in one form or an-

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other in both Mark and Matthew in the very contexts of the supposedly uncertain period. Mark says: "Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crow, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping" (13:35). Matthew brings in even the word "thief" when he reports Jesus: "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come. But know this that if the Goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up. Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh" (24:42-44). Surely the End is to be awaited by the hearers themselves.

Possibly, as a final shot against the cumulative evidence available, two other statements from Matthew will be pressed into service - and these in order to emphasise our own epoch when there is a very wide-spread activity of Christian missionaries. The first passage occurs in the parable of the field. It is the phrase: "He that soweth the good seed is the Son of Man: the field is the world...." (13:37-38). The second is more direct in its bearing on the issue: "And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come" (24:14). The question will be raised: "How can the End be imminent for Matthew's Jesus if the world is to be the soil for his good seed and if the nations of the whole world are first to be acquainted with the Good News of God's Kingdom?"

The reference in the parable-context is really too general to be of any use. The word "world" indicates nothing more than the material setting of Jesus, which, no doubt, is larger than a mere field of the ordinary sower but need not cover the entire extent of the earth. The generality of the word becomes clear in the phrase almost immediately after it: "...the harvest is the end of the world and the reapers are the angels" (13:39). Here "world" is unmistakably a broad manner of denoting the physical milieu, with its living as well as its non-living objects, within which Jesus is at work.

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What is meant by Matthew in the more direct statement becomes seizable from two great announcements by Paul. Galatians 3:26-29 runs: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ"... In Colossians 3:11 Paul adds another pair of categories - "Barbarian, Scythian" - growing one, since "Christ is all, and in all." Men and women of all kinds and of all countries and races are covered by the passage. The implication is that Paul has met examples of them and converted them. As the Bible testifies, he has preached to Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Thessalonians and Romans. We know also of the various travels he made to places far removed from one another. Thanks to him, the Gospel has been preached for such "a witness" as Matthew's words have in mind. And yet Paul unhesitatingly watches for the advent of Jesus the second time. What Matthew intends by his sweeping phrase is that not merely the Jews but the members of many other races - "all nations" - hailing from many countries - "all the world" known to Jesus and his followers - shall be baptized as Christians before the End. This does not necessarily render the End distant.

A general light is thrown on the word "world" by Luke's announcement: "And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed" (2:1). It is obvious that "all the world" can mean no more than the Roman Empire: Caesar Augustus cannot tax any further world.

A more particular illumination on this point can be drawn from the eminent Roman Catholic scholar and priest Raymond E. Brown³ when he contends against the very date - the 60s A.D. - sought for the Gospel of Luke who is commonly taken to be the author too of that history of the early church known as Acts. Brown favours a date after 70 since Luke depends on Mark and the earlier hypothetical document Q. The arguers for the early date posit also Rome for the composition of both the Gospel and Acts on the ground that if Luke wrote

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elsewhere after Paul's death he would not conclude the story [in Acts] with Paul as a captive in Rome. Brown⁴ argues back: "But Luke is not interested biographically in either Peter or Paul, the two main figures of Acts. He thinks of them as instruments in the plan of God whereby witness to Jesus should be borne 'in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth' (1:8). Peter dominates the first half of Acts because he was a major apostolic figure in the mission to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. However, once Peter is instrumental in approving Paul's mission to the Gentiles (Acts 15), Luke be-trays no more interest in Peter. The focus in the second half of Acts shifts to Paul who is brought to Rome, the capital of the Empire, and thus symbolically fulfils the promise of witness 'to the ends of the earth.' The ending of the story at Rome tells us about the purpose of Acts, not about the date of its composition." Brown's date for Acts as well as Luke's Gospel is "in the 80s, give or take ten years".

What we can definitely infer from the prophecy taking into account witness "to the ends of the earth" is that the Second Coming should be not too long after the death of Paul: a time soon after the composition of Acts is indicated.

Here an extra shade of significance is that the mission commanded in Acts 1:8 is explicitly said to be not for future men but for the very companions of Jesus. So "the ends of the earth", of Brown's translation, which the Authorised Version renders with "the uttermost part of the earth", amounts to what they knew of the earth's extension and what was within reach of them during their remaining life-span and according to their capacity of movement: again the Roman Empire. Taken thus, the hyperbolic expression loses its extremism and diminishes in no way the nearness of the Second Coming.

Actually, Palestine itself cannot be regarded as exclusively Jewish rather than a melting-pot of prominent types from everywhere, "all the world" in miniature. I may quote some passages from the book, The Man from Nazareth, by the well-known American Bible-scholar, Harry Emerson Fosdick:⁵

"In Jesus' day Palestine was set in a matrix of Graeco-

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Roman cities. Syria to the north; the coast cities along the Mediterranean such as Jappa, Caesarea, Tyre and Sidon, Tran-sjordania, as the ruins of temples and theatres in such towns as Jerash and Amman still show, were all predominantly influenced by Hellenistic culture.

"Moreover, within Palestine itself some areas apparently were so Gentile in population as to be out-of-bounds for stricter Jews. When Jesus, sending his disciples on their first mission, said, 'Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans' [Matthew 10:5], the implication seems plain that there were recognized Gentile districts in Palestine-Tiberias and Taricheae, for example, cities on the Sea of Galilee, Scythopolis south of the Sea, and Sepphoris just north of Nazareth.

"Galilee, thus surrounded by and infiltrated with Hellenistic influence, was certainly in some degree bilingual. Business could hardly have been carried on around the Sea of Galilee without the use of Greek....Moreover, Jerusalem too must have been bilingual. The most thorough study yet made of the use of Greek in ancient Palestine⁶ concludes: 'The degree of a person's Hellenistic culture depended on his social standing. Probably the upper class knew Greek literature, the middle class was less conversant with it, while the knowledge of the lower class was limited to the vernacular only'...

"There was, indeed, at least one Greek-speaking synagogue in the holy city. "The synagogue of the Freedman (as it was called), and of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of those from Cilicia and Asia' [Acts 6:9]. The milieu in which Jesus worked was far more cosmopolitan than has generally been supposed.

"Even in its central citadel Judaism had never been impervious to foreign influence. The orthodox Jewish angelology and demonology of Jesus' time had come mainly from Persia, and, as for the Essenes, 'Pythagorism, Orphism, Chaldean astral religion, Parsiism and, apparently, even Buddhism all contributed ingredients much transformed on their way to the Jordan Valley.'⁷ The idea of a capsulated Palestinian Judaism

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unaffected by the world's life and thought is a myth...

"The passage in John's Gospel where 'some Greeks,' pilgrims at the temple festival, come to Philip, saying, 'Sir, we wish to see Jesus' [John 12:20 f], has been usually interpreted as representing a later situation - the Gentile world becoming the object of Christianity's mission - read back into the days of Jesus. Such may well have been the motive of this passage in John's Gospel, but in the story itself there is nothing inconsistent with the known situation in Palestine.

"Jesus, while facing the narrower type of Palestinian Judaism, faced, as well, the wider outlook of Hellenistic Judaism, and to suppose, as some critics hold, that words such as "The field is the world' [Matthew 13:38], could not have been his, seems unwarranted...

"At Pentecost, almost immediately after Jesus had gone, the audience which was reported to have heard the disciples preach in Jerusalem contained 'Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappado-cia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians' [Acts 2:9-11]."

The long and short of my contention is that there is nothing in the Matthew sentence to alter the expectation of a near-at-hand Second Coming. Jesus could have meant by "all the world" and "all the nations" the numerous types of non-Jews within Palestine and its environs, to whom the Gospel was to be preached. The shift of focus seen in Matthew shows, as Fosdick⁸ says, "that Jesus first offered his gospel to the Jews, that he thought of his mission as the preparation of his own people for the world-wide Kingdom's coming, and that only after their rejection of him did his movement turn to the Gentiles". The Gentiles are not to be understood in the sense in which we would understand them now - as far-scattered peoples to be reached by a global proselytising mission. Even as the goals of the early Church's spreading activity to Christianise pagans, they are not to be taken as objects of operations

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entailing long periods of time. Jesus' work on the Gentiles no less than on the Jews could have concerned the representatives of the then-known world present in Palestine and in the matrix in which it was set. The work was such as never to contradict his clear-cut vision of a Second Coming very soon after his ministry.

Proof positive of his vision stares us in the face from the latest document (about 150 A.D.) to be included in the New Testament, known as the Second Letter from Peter. It says: "...knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were, from the beginning of the creation" (3:3-4). Here is the confrontation of a keen crisis of faith. The period considered "the last days" is running to its close. The "fathers" of the first Christian generation are dead. What should have happened while they were alive has not taken place. Everything is going on as usual. The cause of the crisis of faith is that the Second Corning which had been promised as an early event has failed to materialise.

To think of original Christianity as viewing the arrival of the world's End at any other time than in the immediate wake of Christ's life in the first century A.D. is to fly in the teeth of the New Testament's evidence.

II

As a corollary we may add a word of warning about the interpretation of whatever cryptic prophecies the New Testament contains. These prophecies relating to various powers and personalities and occurrences preceding the world's End cannot logically be applied to any epoch subsequent to the first couple of Christian generations. As we have observed, there is a strong tendency among certain enthusiasts to read in our own times the signs set forth in vivid figure by the Revelation of St. John the Divine. No doubt, the look-forward to a wonderful consummation of human history is a legitimate

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one for all religious visionaries and can be said to hold true broadly in every epoch for believers in God's providence. But even for them the apocalyptic antecedents pictured in the New Testament should remain untransferable from the milieu in which the author of Revelation lived, inspired with the certitude of Christ's return within a short time to annihilate the evils of the contemporary world.

Revelation was written about 95 A.D. on the island of Patmos which at that time was used by Rome as a place of detention for prisoners whom the emperor ruling from his mighty city, built on seven hills, compelled to work in quarries to procure stone for his building projects. St. John the Divine must have been condemned to labour there, suffering a form of Christian martyrdom as part of the horrible persecutions by the Emperor Domitian who had come to the throne in 81 A.D. Domitian enforced on all his people the worship of himself as a God. Whoever refused to share in this gross official cult had either to die or be punished severely. Both Christians and Jews who found the royal religion a revolting sacrilege were the main victims. The persecutions reached their climax between 93 A.D. and the year 96 when the cruel emperor died. Especially dire were the tribulations of the churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea in the Roman provinces of Asia, to whom John sent his message with the aim of encouragement in the midst of the horrors and plagues visiting the earth: "Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand" (1:3).

Once more we have the sense of the "last things" being round the corner - "the time is at hand" - and therefore of the exclusive applicableness of the described eventualities to the period concerned. Otto A. Piper, in his article "Antichrist" in A Handbook of Christian Theology,⁹ sketches well in a brief compass the semi-religious semi-political significance of the writing: "The Beast that arises from the Abyss (Rev. 11:7; 13:1) symbolises the powers by which the Church is persecuted

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(13:7). In its second appearance the Beast is pictured with features of the Antichrist. It looks like a lamb, i.e., Christ (13:11), yet speaks like a dragon, i.e., a ruler (13:15). The second Beast is accompanied by the false prophet (16:13; 19:20; 20:10), and through him, i.e., under a false religious pretext, organises the nations of the earth for the final battle against God at Armageddon (16:16). The Beast and the false prophet are characterised as deceiving people (13:14; 19:20). For the Seer, the Beast is identical with Rome (cf. 17:9) and more generally with all the governments of the earth who follow its instigation." The identity with Rome emerges from the phraseology of the reference given about the seven-headed Beast: "The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth." The woman symbolises the imperial power centred in Rome of the seven hills. One of the most graphic passages of Revelation describes her and alludes to the destructive judgment passed on her in heaven. An angel tells the Seer: "Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication" (17:1-2). Then John continues: "So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filth-iness of her fornication: and upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus... "(17:3-6).

The vision of Rome's destruction follows: "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen... And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning..." (18:2, 9). Then "the merchants of

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the earth" are beheld mourning over the fall of "that great city Babylon, that mighty city", since no man any longer buys her merchandise of silk and ivory, cinnamon and ointment, frankincense and chariots, slaves and the souls of men (17:10-13). Finally, the magnificent disclosure of a new heaven and a new earth is made by the angel who is sent by God "to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done" and to tell them, "Behold, I come quickly..." (22:6,7). The book concludes with Jesus himself saying, "Surely I come quickly" and the Seer answering, "Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus" (22:20).

Abundantly the Second Coming is proved to have been fixed, by everything in the New Testament, round about the first century A.D. and connected only with the Christians face to face with ancient imperial Rome.

A startling corollary ensues: Christian history after c. 100 A.D. is a phenomenon not envisaged or intended by Christ.

References

1. William Barclay, The Mind of St. Paul (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1972), p. 105.

2. Ibid., p. 169.

3. Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke (New York: Image Books, 1979), p. 236, fn 3.

4. Ibid., p. 236.

5. Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Man from Nazareth (New York: Pocket Books Inc., 1953), pp. 163-4,166,167,170.

6. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, p. 21.

7. Salo Wittenayer Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews (Columbia University), I, p. 156.

8. Fosdick, op. cit., p. 171.

9. A Handbook of Christian Theology, edited by Marvin Halverson and Arthur Cohen (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1962), p. 19.

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