Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe) 9783161509735, 9783161518140

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Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament · 2. Reihe Herausgeber / Editor Jörg Frey (Zürich) Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors Friedrich Avemarie (Marburg) Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala) Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL)

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Eschatology of the New Testament and Some Related Documents Edited by Jan G. van der Watt

Mohr Siebeck

Jan G. van der Watt, born 1952; Professor of New Testament Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands and extraordinary professor at the North-West University, South Africa.

e-ISBN PDF 978-3-16-151814-0 ISBN 978-3-16-150973-5 ISSN 0340-9570 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament, 2. Reihe) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. © 2011 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was printed by Laupp & Göbel in Nehren on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Nädele in Nehren. Printed in Germany.

Preface In theological circles the meaning of the term ‘eschatology’ (first used in the seventeenth century) seems clear – coined on the Greek word H>VFDWRQ, it refers to a set of doctrinal teachings concerning the ‘last’ or ‘final’ things that will occur ‘at the end’. At a conference on the eschatology of the New Testament and some related documents, held at the University of Pretoria in 2007, it became evident that this is more or less where the consensus ends. Simply agreeing on what should be included or excluded when dealing with the concept of eschatology of the New Testament has proven to be a challenge, leading to intense debates. Efforts in formulating an overarching definition that would include the variety and richness of what eschatology is about, has resulted in a deadlock. That is why the authors of this volume were asked to state their views on eschatology in their respective articles – by reviewing the diverse set of articles in this volume the multiple dimensions, variety, depth, mystery as well as problematic nature of analyzing New Testament eschatology will become evident. As such this volume offers a bird’s eye view of the intricacies, variety, similarities and possibilities that arise when one addresses the issue of eschatology. In the introductory chapter Jörg Frey gives some indication of the multiple hurdles that have to be faced: there are the historical questions of the origin and history of religions framework of New Testament eschatology, the tension between the different eschatologies of the New Testament, their coherence and distinctive character, and the hermeneutical issues of the interpretation and application of the eschatologically related ideas of the New Testament. Especially pertinent is the question of the relationship between the eschatological images of the New Testament and those of the present day, since, in essence, eschatology deals with the relationship between the past, present and future – it is a matter of the present experience of people being interconnected with an expectation about the (eternal) future in the light of experiences and prophecies from the past. How literally or figuratively should these eschatological images that express such related elements be understood? Each of these areas offer challenges of their own which are addressed in different ways in the articles, although not every article deals with every problematic aspect. It must be noted that the aim and focus of this volume is not to describe the characteristics and nature of the eschatological material of the New Testament systematically, neither to

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treat the question of the application of the resulting material in current day situations, although the necessity of doing that also is acknowledged.1 Eschatology focuses on specific events related to and expected at the ‘end of times’. These are not just ordinary everyday events but presuppose a period(s) or situation(s) in history in which things were(are) not ideal and are experienced as an (existential) crisis. Hope is created (through, for instance, prophecy or prediction) that this crisis or even the dispensation (situation) within which the crisis is prevalent, will pass and be replaced (in future) by a new changed period in history that will be ideal. The changed situation will bring a final and lasting end to the crisis and inaugurate a new situation in which ideal circumstances result which will prevail. Different aspects are therefore relevant for this process, namely: time (i.e. periods, the question of when, etc.); action (i.e. judgment, regeneration, restoration, the question of how, etc.); and space (i.e. situation, status, place, the question of where, etc.). Central to the eschatology of the New Testament is the coming, presence and future expectations of Jesus Christ. As Messiah, and Son of God, he addressed the crisis of evil and brought the rule and kingdom of God near. He opened up new possibilities of becoming part of this kingdom which inaugurates a new era. Wolter underlines that proclamation and faith are only eschatological events because they proclaim Jesus Christ and belief in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who acted decisively in history and is expected to return to earth soon. This return will herald the final eschatological consummation, starting with the raising of the dead and their transformation as well as the final judgment, leading to destruction of everything that opposes God. This final future consummation is only part of what could be called eschatology – many eschatological expectations that originated in the First Testament were already fulfilled in the past with the coming of the Messiah, inaugurating the era of the coming of the kingdom. For present day readers many of these eschatological events are past already, although they still determine the present day eschatological situation. One should therefore distinguish between past, present and future eschatological events. Apart from this, different categories of eschatological events may be distinguished, for instance, universal (cosmic), individ1

Although current day issues are undeniably part and parcel of eschatological discussions, dealing with the hermeneutical presuppositions for applying the material of ancient documents to situations today, as well as analyzing the different views currently being held would have overburdened this volume. The same applies to the vast amount of material about eschatology that forms part of the Wirkungsgeschichte of this concept through the ages. Our surveys are limited to the analysis of the texts of the New Testament and some related material, which forms and formed the basis and point of departure for considering eschatology.

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ual, or social eschatological events, involving different aspects of the eschatological process. From this it is evident that a complicating factor in considering New Testament eschatology is the relationship between expectations (prophecy), fulfilment during the New Testament period, prophecies still to be fulfilled (like an idyllic new Jerusalem), as well as new prophecies delivered during that period (such as the return of the Messiah). What took place during and after the New Testament times was not a complete consummation of what was expected, although the presence of the eschatological times was experienced in different ways – some eschatological events were still (and still are) awaiting fulfilment: it is indeed a matter of already-not yet. When considering issues related to eschatology, the focus cannot be restricted to events that lie in the future only (from the position of the current reader), rather situations in the present as well as in the past should be considered as part of the process. Identifying, categorizing, and relating these different eschatological events become important tasks in formulating one’s eschatological perspectives. The order of the articles in this volume follows the canonical sequence. Other ways of ordering were possible (i.e. Johannine, Lukan, Pauline material could have been ordered together), but by following the canonical order we hope to give the necessary emphasis to the individual documents as unique writings. For this reason we also asked different authors to deal with, for instance, the Johannine, Pauline or Lukan material. Following the Pauline articles, Wolter gives an overview of the Pauline discussions, since the multiple Pauline letters do offer some cohesion. Some articles on material related to the eschatology of the New Testament are also added. We were interested in how the eschatological ideas of the New Testament were received in documents immediately following them (like Gnostic documents or the writings of the Church Fathers) or documents that overlapped in time (like the Didache). Obviously not all the relevant documents could be treated and a selection had to be made. Since the relevant documents are so numerous overview articles on the eschatology of the Church Fathers and Gnostics have to suffice, with the exception of 2 Clement. This gives some impression of the earlier reception of the eschatological ideas of the New Testament. I would like to thank Petrus Maritz for his editorial assistance, as well as Jörg Frey and Mohr Siebeck for publishing this volume in the WUNT II series. Nijmegen April, 2011

Jan van der Watt

Table of Contents Preface ....................................................................................................... V

Introduction Jörg Frey New Testament Eschatology – an Introduction: Classical Issues, Disputed Themes, and Current Perspectives .............................................. 3

Eschatology: Gospels and Acts Andries van Aarde ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’– Matthew’s Eschatology as the Kingdom of the Heavens that has Come ........................................ 35 Ernest van Eck Eschatology and Kingdom in Mark.......................................................... 64 Michael Wolter Eschatology in the Gospel According to Luke ......................................... 91 Jan van der Watt Eschatology in John – A Continuous Process of Realizing Events ........ 109 Ulrich Busse Eschatologie in der Apostelgeschichte................................................... 141

Eschatology: The Letters of Paul (Pauline and Deutero-Pauline) Cilliers Breytenbach ‘For in Hope We Were Saved’– Discerning Time in Paul’s Letter to the Romans ........................................................................................ 181

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Wolfgang Kraus in collaboration with Martin Kraus On Eschatology in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians ..................... 197 Stephan Joubert Paul’s Apocalyptic Eschatology in 2 Corinthians .................................. 225 Francois Tolmie Living in Hope ‘in the Fullness of Time’ – The Eschatology of Galatians............................................................................................ 239 Petrus J Gräbe ‘And he made known to us the mystery of his will …’ – Reflections on the Eschatology of the Letter to the Ephesians ................................. 256 Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte In Search of Hope. Eschatology in Philippians ...................................... 269 Jeremy Punt Eschatology in Colossians – ‘At Home in the World’............................ 283 Pieter G R de Villiers In the Presence of God – The Eschatology of 1 Thessalonians .............. 302 The Glorious Presence of the Lord – The Eschatology of 2 Thessalonians...................................................................................... 333 Bernhard Mutschler Eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles ..................................................... 362 Jeremy Punt Eschatology in Philemon –‘Biding the Time’ ........................................ 403 Michael Wolter The Distinctiveness of Paul’s Eschatology ............................................ 416

Eschatology: General Epistles, Hebrews and Revelation Gert J Steyn The Eschatology of Hebrews – As Understood within a Cultic Setting . 429 Patrick J Hartin James and Eschatology – Place and Function of Eschatology within a Letter to the ‘Twelve Tribes in the Dispersion’........................ 451

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Fika J van Rensburg The Eschatology of 1 Peter – Hope and Vindication for Visiting and Resident Strangers .......................................................................... 472 Jörg Frey Judgment on the Ungodly and the Parousia of Christ – Eschatology in Jude and 2 Peter ........................................................... 493 Ruben Zimmermann Remembering the Future – Eschatology in the Letters of John .............. 514 Jan A du Rand Depicting Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John ................................. 535

Eschatology: Some Explorations into its Immediate Influence and Development Jonathan A Draper Eschatology in the Didache.................................................................... 567 Hennie Stander The Eschatology of the Theologians of the Second Century.................. 583 Tobias Nicklas Gnostic ‘Eschatologies’ ......................................................................... 601 Wilhelm Pratscher Eschatology in 2 Clement ...................................................................... 629 Hermut Löhr The Role of Eschatology in New Testament Moral Thought – Some Introductory Observations ........................................................... 644

List of Contributors................................................................................ 667 Index of Authors .................................................................................... 671 Index of Sources .................................................................................... 681

Introduction

New Testament Eschatology – an Introduction Classical Issues, Disputed Themes, and Current Perspectives

Jörg Frey Eschatology has always been one of the most disputed fields within New Testament exegesis. The reason for this can only be understood in light of the history of modern interpretation. The present introduction will, therefore, go back to the roots of modern critical exegesis and focus on some of the most fervent debates of New Testament scholarship. Although the heat of those battles has cooled down, some of the theological and hermeneutical questions discussed in earlier periods are still unanswered and deserve being further considered.1 Eschatology – literally translated the ‘teaching of the Last Things’ – is full of unresolved questions that cover a number of dimensions: first, there is the issue of the history-of-religions context and the question of the origins and character of early Christian eschatological imagery, which is still openly debated although in some aspects a wide consensus has been achieved. Even more open – and strongly influenced by hermeneutical presuppositions – is the debate on the internal coherence and distinctive character of the eschatologies not only of the historical Jesus, but also of Paul, John and the other early Christian authors, and – even more – the issue of the coherence of the diverse early Christian eschatologies. Do they enable us to draw a coherent image of the parousia of Christ, of resurrection, judgment and eternal life? The most urgent and problematic field seems to be the question how the eschatological imagination of the New Testament authors is related not only to the ‘real’ world of the addressees but, even more, to the world as we understand it in modern times. This dimension has often set the agenda of the debates within theology and between aca1 A comprehensive book-length treatment of New Testament eschatology is still a desideratum. Cf. however, some important articles by Aune (1992), Klein (1982), Lindemann (1999) and Merklein (1995). The differences represent the variety of scholarship in the last decades. Whereas Klein still continues the lines of the Bultmann school, Lindemann has largely left them behind, and Merklein and especially Aune represent very different viewpoints. See also the comprehensive treatment in New Testament theologies, most thoroughly Hahn (2003, 2.738–798) and the discussion (in comparison with Qumran views) in Hogeterp (2009). For a more recent systematic approach (with consideration of the exegetical discussion) see Schwarz (2000).

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demic theology and Christian communities. It is still debated in broad circles whether the eschatological expectation as expressed in the New Testament is ‘reliable’ as a part of Christian doctrine that can be taught and should be accepted as a truly Christian expectation even today. Or is it, as many critics inferred, merely ‘speculation’ and as such a less reliable part of the Christian doctrine due to the fact that human beings – including the New Testament authors – are simply unable to know the future? Or should one consider New Testament eschatology to be a rather ‘symbolic’ universe that can only be interpreted as an expression of the Christian selfunderstanding or as a means to provide a framework of orientation within a (perceived) crisis of faith, of the respective community, or of the world? What is, therefore, the relationship between eschatology and ‘reality’? The history of interpretation of Revelation, e.g., is full of bizarre attempts to link the visions narrated in that book with real events in political or church history – in order to maintain the idea that the prophetic visions of the last book of the Bible were ‘true prophecy’ and to determine the interpreters’ positioning within the schedule of an allegedly prophesied world and end history. Whereas such interpreters (including theologians such as Martin Luther and Johann Albrecht Bengel2) have tried to tighten the relationship between the eschatological visions of the Bible and the ‘reality’ of world history, others have expressed the suspicion that the eschatological views of the New Testament express or even stimulate a lack of interest in the real problems of this world and society, with the consequence that the apocalyptic views should be rejected for the sake of an orientation towards ‘reality’. 3 But the questions about the relationship between eschatology and ‘real history’ have not only accompanied the interpretation of Revelation, although this last book of the Bible was most often read as a prophecy of the last period in history. But if this book could be marginalized by the mainstream church as a ‘dark’ or even ‘dangerous’ book to be left for the enthusiasts and ‘sectarians’, the issue was unavoidably linked with the central teachings of Paul and also with the teaching of Jesus. Thus, one of the most fervently debated problems has been the question how the idea of the imminent end of the world and of Jesus’ parousia should be understood in 2 Cf. Luther’s Preface to the book of Revelation from 1530 where he reads Revelation as an account of Church history. On Luther’s interpretation cf. Maier (1981, 267–306), more extensively Hofmann (1982). On Bengel’s interpretation of Revelation see Maier (1981, 393–439). On the history of interpretation of Revelation see also Frey (1999, 50– 67), more comprehensively Maier (1981), for the first millennium Kretschmar (1984). 3 It should be noted, however, that not only is Marxist criticism of religion based on a rejection of the ‘other-worldly’ orientation of Christian tradition but also that Marxism as a social utopia is in itself a secularized form of earlier Christian eschatological and chiliastic views.

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the face of the obvious delay of the parousia. Or, phrased even more provokingly: How can we cope with the error of Jesus regarding the end of the world and beginning of the kingdom of God, or, respectively, the error of the apostles (such as Paul) regarding the impending return of Christ? Although the scholarly view that the delay of the parousia was the most important motif of the development of early Christian theology, has been widely abandoned, interpreters cannot deny the fact that at least Paul had expected to see the coming of Christ during his lifetime (cf. 1 Thess 4:15, 17 and 1 Cor 15:52). If this is accepted, the consequence is almost unavoidable: Paul’s expectations are far from being a firm basis of any Christian doctrine of what is to come; they must be interpreted in historical terms as a time-related expression of his own religious viewpoints, as a perspective that had to be corrected at least when Paul – and all the others of the first Christian generation (cf. Mk 9:1; Joh 21:22–23) – had died before the end of the world. Therefore, it has been in the field of eschatology that traditional views of Christian doctrine have had to face their most severe crisis. The historical approach developed in modern interpretation has plainly demonstrated the time-dependent character and the limitations of early Christian views that had formerly been held to represent the ‘Last Things’, the final word about human history. On the other hand, many Christian communities still maintain a naïve understanding of early Christian eschatology, which is almost untouched by debates within academic and critical theology. Especially in conservative or evangelical Protestantism, there are still numerous attempts to construct an eschatological ‘time-table’ or to teach a coherent scheme of eschatological expectation, composed from the harmonization of very diverse elements from different Biblical traditions and books: Thus, the time calculations of the book of Daniel, the narrative sequence of Revelation, and the notion of a ‘rapture’ found in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 are naïvely combined in disregard of the historical situation and perspective of the different authors and books, based on an assumption of a supernatural ‘harmony’ of the different views and teachings of the Biblical authors. The fact that such constructs are even utilized to frighten people or to urge them to accept the ‘good news’ of salvation before the coming plagues, or even to legitimize violence and wars against those who are viewed to represent evil, amply shows that eschatology is one of the most ‘dangerous’ fields of New Testament teaching and that there is a deep and vital need for sober and critical reflection. The crisis of traditional eschatology was most strongly felt within German theological tradition from the impact of enlightenment through the nineteenth century until the school of Rudolf Bultmann. After some terminological remarks (I), I will, therefore, provide a brief sketch of the exe-

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getical (and theological) debate which may not be so well-known within an English speaking and non-European context (II). Then I will briefly comment on some important issues and categories of the exegetical debate (III) and, finally, phrase some preliminary perspectives for further discussion (IV).

1. The Term ‘Eschatology’ and the Confusion of Theological Language ‘Eschatology’, the logos of the ‘Last Things’ (ta eschata; cf. Eccl 7:36), is not an ancient term but was coined in the seventeenth century within classical Lutheran dogmatics. The term can be found first in the title of the fifth part of the dogmatics of Philipp Heinrich Friedlieb published in 1644: Eschatologia seu Florilegium theologicum exhibens locorum de morte, resurrectione mortuorum, extreme iudicio, consummation seculi, inferno seu morte aeterna et denique vita aeterna. In this title the themes of what is meant by ‘eschatologia’ are enumerated: Eschatology is about death, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the end or dissolution of the world, about hell or eternal death and, finally, about eternal life. Somewhat later, the famous Lutheran dogmatist Abraham Calov called the 12th volume of his comprehensive dogmatics Systema locorum theologicorum which appeared in 1677, ǼȈȋǹȉȅȁȅīǿǹ SACRA (Hjelde 1988, 37). Neither of these authors explain the term more precisely. Possibly it is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:24 where WR H>VFDWRQ denotes the act of the final deliverance of the kingdom from Christ to God himself, i.e. the beginning of God’s eternal kingdom (Sauter 1988, 191). In German, the term occurs first in Christian Wilhelm Flügge’s Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, Auferstehung und Vergeltung from 1795 (Hjelde 1988, 97ff.), and, within an exegetical context, as a heading in Gottlob Wilhelm Meyer’s Entwickelung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffes from 1801, where it is adopted with the remark that it had become usual only quite recently (Lona 1984, 14). Thus, eschatology emerged as an exegetical category only about 1800. But only by the influence of the school of the so-called ‘consequent eschatology’, i.e. Johannes Weiss and, more influentially, Albert Schweitzer4, was it moved to the centre of the exegetical and – even more – the theological debate. At least in the early works of the so-called ‘theology of crisis’ or ‘dialectical theology’, eschatology became a central term of Systematic Theology. 4 This term was created by Schweitzer (1906/1913), who thus linked his views with the work of Weiss (1892).

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The precise meaning of the term, however, was often unclear, and the ‘confusion of language’ has been criticized by a number of authors (Hjelde 1988, 15–33; already Holmström 1936, 8–15, and Wanke 1978). This is largely due to the fact that influential theologians of the twentieth century such as Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann used the terms ‘eschatology’ or ‘eschatological’ in a sense that differed completely from its traditional reference to the ‘Last Things’ to be expected in history or at the end of the personal life. Instead, these theologians used the term to express timeless realities or the ultimate perspective on human existence in the present. In his famous exposition on Romans the eminent Swiss theologian Karl Barth phrased most radically and influentially: ‘Christianity, which is not totally and completely eschatology, has totally and completely nothing to do with Christ’.5 Quite similarly, numerous other authors of this period were eager to affirm that eschatology (radically distinguished from ‘apocalypticism’) is not about the end of history but about what is beyond or transcends history. Thus the term got an atemporal meaning, strongly related to the present realities. The new meaning could become usual due to the fact that the term was so prominent in the theological debate that it could not be avoided, whereas on the other hand, most theologians of that period could not consider the traditional idea of a remote final period of history or a remote final judgment of any meaning or even religious value for contemporary thought. What should be considered, instead, was the transcendent or ultimate reality beyond history – and this is what now was called ‘eschatological’. In the theology of Rudolf Bultmann and his school, the term ‘eschatological’ could even adopt the meaning of ‘truly Christian’ (Körner 1957, 77; cf. Frey 1997, 87f.). Due to these terminological changes, theologians are now used to distinguish between a ‘future-oriented’ and a ‘present-oriented’ type of eschatology, i.e. between an expectation of imminent or even more remote acts or dispensations and, on the other hand, the conviction that the things originally expected are now at hand or even fulfilled. In contrast with earlier scholarship, it is no longer possible to use the attribute ‘eschatological’ only for expressions of the first ‘line’ of eschatological thought and to label the second, present-oriented line ‘non-eschatological’. Accordingly, New Testament exegesis also has to distinguish between two ‘lines’ of eschatological expressions or ideas in early Christian texts: first the reference to events, situations or circumstances that were traditionally expected in the future or linked with the end of the individual life or the end of time, and second the idea that at least some of those elements of traditional expectation are now made present or fulfilled (in Christ, in 5 In the German original: ‘Christentum, das nicht ganz und gar und restlos Eschatologie ist, hat mit Christus ganz und gar und restlos nichts zu tun’ (Barth 1921, 298).

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the Christian community or the individual life of the Christian). Thus we find the idea of God’s kingdom still to come (Lk 11:2) or already arrived, e.g. in Jesus’ acts (Lk 11:20), or the idea of resurrection and life to be present in Jesus (Joh 11:25) or expected for ‘the last day’ (Joh 6:39, 40, 44, 54). In some passages, the two ‘lines’ of eschatological expression are even presented side by side in one phrase, thus most clearly in John 5:25 (cf. 4:23): ‘The hour is coming – and now it is’. In this saying, the traditional expectation of a ‘coming’ hour and the announcement that this eschatological hour is now present are straightforwardly connected – with the implication that what was formerly expected is now present when Jesus’ words are proclaimed. Such passages show that it is textually justified to call the present-oriented line of thought ‘eschatological’, since it refers to motifs or themes which were originally or traditionally expected to come, but are now considered to be at hand, in Jesus’ presence or in the time of the community. The question is only, why and how the formerly expected goods or acts can now be considered to be present and, moreover, whether the presence of those goods still allows for a future completion. Can we assume that an early Christian author, such as the Fourth Evangelist, wants to express that the time of the community is, strictly speaking, the last hour of the world, so that there can be no idea left of another last day or another last hour in any future time? Or more generally: Does the fact that the eschaton is made present, exclude any further expectation of eschatological ‘fulfilment’ or ‘consummation’ as (logically) impossible? Or is such an interpretation rather a modern idea, depending on a modern logic, which cannot be applied to an ancient author? It is, therefore, important to describe eschatological expressions as precisely as possible with regard to their orientation toward the present or toward a cosmic or trans-cosmic future. Or, more precisely, it is necessary to ask for the concept of time (and space) involved in such expressions and to interpret them within their ancient context. A second task is, then, to consider how those ideas – phrased within an ancient world-view – can be of theological relevance or even be meaningful for Christian life within the modern or post-modern world view.6 On the field of eschatology, the hermeneutical challenge is most obvious, and a naïve transmission of New Testament concepts into the present – as often practiced in traditional and conservative Christian circles or, especially in evangelical preaching – has to face massive problems.

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Such considerations are absolutely necessary, but they should be kept separate as a second step rather than already setting the scene for the description, classification and historical contextualization. Otherwise, we get into a vicious circle in which we only see what we already know or want to see.

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2. The Deconstruction of Eschatology in the Modern Debate: From Reimarus to Schweitzer and Bultmann To understand the reason for the deconstruction of traditional eschatology, we should briefly look at the history of modern theology and the beginnings of critical exegesis (with particular focus on German Protestantism).7 According to Albert Schweitzer’s famous history of the life-of-Jesus research (Schweitzer 1913, 65), the ‘discovery’ of eschatology can be traced back to the Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768).8 Influenced by the English Deists, Reimarus advocated a type of enlightened ‘natural religion’. The famous ‘fragments’ from his work, published only after his death and anonymously by the philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,9 caused a fierce debate on religion and criticism in German intellectual circles between orthodox defenders of supranaturalism and moderate advocates of enlightenment, the so-called ‘Fragmentenstreit’. In the fragment ‘Von dem Zwecke Jesu und seiner Jünger’, Reimarus radically distinguished between Jesus’ own views and intentions and the later views and intentions of his former disciples, the apostles, thus initiating the historical quest for Jesus. In Reimarus’ own skeptical view, Jesus was a Messianic pretender with political ambitions, but the failure of his way to Jerusalem was veiled by a fraud of his former disciples who took away his corpse, claimed his resurrection, interpreted his fate as sacrificial death and transformed the expectation of the imminent inauguration of the God’s kingdom into the hope for a promised second coming of Jesus. The delay and final non-fulfilment of the expectation of the parousia and modern historical research demonstrate, according to Reimarus, that the traditional Christian hope is based on a fraud, so that the Christian claim of revelation appears to be false. Reimarus’ questioning of New Testament eschatology thus caused a general questioning of Christianity, which since then has been confronted with a suspicion of deception and religious fraud.10

7 Here, I draw largely on my work on the history of research on (not only) Johannine eschatology: Frey (1997). 8 Before Reimarus, there was already the criticism of some Deists such as Matthew Tindal in his work Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) who observed that most of the apostles had erred in their expectation of the parousia of Christ, and concluded that even more parts of their teaching might be erroneous (Erlemann 1995, 2). 9 Reimarus’ work is now published as a whole, cf. Reimarus (1972). On Reimarus see most recently Klein (2009). 10 For the pre-history of the accusation of deception see already the anonymous work (probably written about 1546 by Jacques Gruet against the views of Jean Calvin) De Tribus Impostoribus (= On the Three Deceivers); cf. Gericke (1982).

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The reactions to that challenge were manifold. Apart from the defenders of orthodoxy, scholars such as Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791)11 suggested that in their eschatological ideas, Jesus as well as his apostles had simply adapted themselves to the mindset of their addressees. According to this so-called ‘Akkobmodationstheorie’ (cf. Hornig 1961, 211ff.), the real character of Jesus’ teaching was not shaped by those Jewish or ‘apocalyptic’ elements, but simply by morality and spiritual veneration of God. The elements of future-oriented eschatology in Jesus’ teaching could be viewed as a simple adaptation to the views and ideas of his contemporaries. Consequently, God’s kingdom as actually proclaimed by Jesus, was conceived of not as outward, political and imminent, but as inward, spiritual and already present. The ‘future’ aspect of eschatology was widely dismissed, and only the hope for personal immortality could be retained. As a side effect, the truth of Jesus’ teaching and its claim for revelation were largely based on his distance from contemporary Judaism and its ‘apocalyptic’ eschatological expectations. Interestingly, Semler and others found Jesus’ true eschatology in the Gospel of John, whereas the Synoptic views were regarded as simple adaptations to the mindset of the contemporaries. Thus, the Gospel of John was actually used as the criterion to separate between true religious teaching and mere didactic adaptation. Eschatology was pressed into categories such as outward versus inward, sensual versus spiritual, political versus religious, national-particularistic versus universalistic, and also ‘future-oriented’ versus ‘present’-oriented. During the whole nineteenth century, the debate – at least in German speaking Protestantism – was strongly dominated by different attempts to demonstrate that the truly Christian type of thought was oriented not towards a remote and uncertain ‘kingdom’ in a mythological future or heavenly realm, but rather to this world, to present religious experience and morality. In the intellectual debates of this period, such a concept of Christianity appeared to be the only one that could escape the criticism that had been expressed against the traditional expectation of the parousia of Christ, the resurrection of the dead and the Last Judgment with punishment and reward.12 To intellectuals of this period such a teaching could not reasonably be adopted or was even suspected of being a mere element of clerical rhetoric to keep people under control. And if human behaviour was 11 Semler’s most important contribution to Biblical criticism was his claim (in his work Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanon (4 vols. 1771–1775) that the canonical writings should be investigated freely, without presupposing a particular quality or inspired character, as human writings – and that also their claims regarding authorship, historical reliability etc. should be investigated to be either confirmed or falsified. 12 Humans should do the good for its own sake, not in order to be rewarded. This is, e.g., a basic principle of the ethics of the philosopher Immanuel Kant.

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merely guided by the hope for reward or the fear of punishment, it could not be viewed to be ‘moral’ any more. Human acts should be motivated intrinsically, not just by the hope for a better life in future or in heaven. Thus, early Christian eschatological views could only be valid if they could be interpreted as morally reasonable and thus authoritative for present conduct. The most important battlefield was the preaching of Jesus, although during the nineteenth century scholars had not yet reached a generally accepted solution to the problem of the interrelation between the gospels, let alone determining criteria for identifying the authentic sayings of Jesus. For many interpreters of this period, Luke 17:21 (in Luther’s individualistic translation13) served as a key for understanding the kingdom of God as an internal, present reality, which progressively leads to a growth of morality in human society. This was often combined with some sayings from the Fourth Gospel, because during the nineteenth century, many interpreters still reckoned the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John with some kind of authenticity,14 and thus used John as an additional source for reconstructing Jesus’ teaching. From a philosophical viewpoint, the Johannine type of eschatological teaching could be more easily accepted than Jesus’ sayings about the Son of Man coming with the clouds (cf. Mk 14:62 etc.), as documented in the Synoptics. Accordingly, the ‘apocalyptic’ and futureoriented elements of New Testament eschatology were largely ignored or marginalized, and within such an interpretation, the idea of the (present, internal and ethical) kingdom of God could easily fit into the general views of the late nineteenth century liberal theologians. In German liberal theology, Jesus’ preaching was largely interpreted as an expression of religious ideas related primarily or even merely to the present, not to a distant future. This was changed by the discovery of Jesus’ eschatology, or – one should rather say – the discovery of the future-oriented or ‘apocalyptic’ perspective in the teaching of Jesus. Of course, with regard to the primitive community or even to Paul, the interpreters of the nineteenth century had recognized the expectation of an imminent end or of the parousia, but they had interpreted it as a complex of mythological ideas determined by the 13

Luther’s traditional of the HMQWRa X-P ZCQ reads: „Das Reich Gottes ist inwendig in euch“ (internally within you); similarly KJV: ‘within you’, whereas most contemporary interpreters translate the term ‘among you’ or ‘in your midst’ (NAS), thus also the revised Luther version „mitten unter euch“. 14 The ‘critical consensus’ on the historical value of the Fourth Gospel, with the consequence that John had to be excluded from the search for the ‘Historical Jesus’ was only established at about 1900 and phrased by scholars such as Heinrich Julius Holtzmann, Adolf Jülicher, William Wrede or Alfred Loisy. See, for details Frey (1997, 37–39).

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time or the context of earliest Christianity, or even as an erroneous expectation of Jesus and the apostles, which could be distinguished from the essence and eternal truth of Christian faith. Only a few interpreters had accepted these elements as a characteristic aspect of Jesus’ genuine teaching, among them severe critics of Christian doctrine (as, e.g. David Friedrich Strauss or Franz Overbeck). But the problem was obvious: If there was such an apocalyptic, future-oriented eschatology or, strictly speaking, an erroneous world view at the very roots of Christianity, in Jesus’ own teaching, the only consequence could be that such a teaching and the religion based on it was incompatible with the modern world. To avoid such a consequence, most liberals had tried to keep at least Jesus in the distance away from such a future-oriented or apocalyptic eschatology, and tried to interpret the respective sayings of Jesus as mere adaptations, marginal elements, or even later additions. With the programmatic writing of the young Johannes Weiss (1863– 1914) on Jesus’ preaching on the kingdom of God (Weiss 1892), a provoking new reading was established (Frey 1997, 43–45; Lannert 1989). Weiss interpreted Jesus’ eschatology only according to the Synoptics, without modifying additions from John, and, as a consequence of this, Jesus’ views appeared to be (almost) purely future-oriented.15 In contrast with the leading liberal theologians, Weiss claimed that for the historical Jesus, the kingdom of God was a transcendent reality, and that the liberal idea of an inner-worldly development of the kingdom was historically mistaken. Weiss’ study opened the eyes for the fundamental difference between the ideas of the historical Jesus and modern religious thought. From this point on, the appropriation of Jesus’ teaching in the liberal idea of the internal kingdom and the ‘biblicistic’ way to support the liberal views had become impossible. Now it was clearly pronounced: Jesus’ views were different from ours. Consequently, the modern view of the kingdom (which was also accepted by Weiss) had to be established on other grounds than on a present-oriented (mis)reading of Jesus’ own eschatology. This is the remaining value of Weiss’ provoking book – which was efficiently supported by Albert Schweitzer (1906/1913), who called this viewpoint ‘consequent eschatology’. According to Schweitzer’s (1913, 402–450) own reconstruction, the historical Jesus had been convinced that he was the coming Son of Man. While upholding these eschatological ‘dogmatics’ and with the intention of enforcing the decisive end of history, he went to Jerusalem, but with the failure of his mission this eschatology had definitively collapsed. There is no need to discuss Schweitzer’s reconstruction here, but his systematic 15 In the second edition from 1900, however, Weiss modified his views slightly and considered that there was also a kind of present-orientation in Jesus’ views.

Introduction

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summary is worth noting. ‘The “Son of Man” was buried in the ruins of the collapsing world of eschatology; it is only Jesus, “the Human”, who stayed alive’.16 According to Schweitzer, Jesus’ eschatological views and his ethics must radically be conceived in historical terms, whereas contemporary theology can only develop a ‘mystical’ relationship with Jesus and a radically this-worldly ethics of love. Weiss’ and Schweitzer’s views were not easily adopted by their contemporaries. The predominant liberal school still tried to maintain the view of a present-oriented and ethical Jesus, and the members of the upcoming history-of-religions school (which Weiss belonged to), e.g. William Wrede and Wilhelm Bousset, were also reluctant to adopt the new eschatological view of Jesus’ teachings. Schweitzer’s account of the impasses of the classical life-of-Jesus research inspired parts of German scholarship to dismiss the quest for the Historical Jesus and to focus on other issues. The most important factor for the change of the intellectual climate, however, was World War I, with the collapse of the liberal theology and its belief in the progress of humanity. After the war, a new generation of theologians entered the scene, asking new and more radical questions, e.g. for the real truth of theology, or, in other words, for the radically ‘eschatological’ character of theology. 17 Now the term ‘eschatological’ was used to mark a clear difference from any kind of ‘this-worldly’ or ‘history-oriented’ aspects, it was used to express the ‘infinite qualitative difference’ between the divine and the human. But in contrast with the traditional concept, eschatology was not understood any more as pointing to any event in an expected end-history or within time, but rather in timeless and transcendent categories. This is not only true for the view of Karl Barth but also for the early works of Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) before this scholar developed his particular concept of eschatology in terms of existentialistic thought.18 Thus, in his early book on Jesus, Bultmann accepted the view of his teacher Johannes Weiss that the kingdom of God in Jesus’ proclamation is eschatological and ‘non-worldly’, ‘provided that the idea of eschatology is wholly and radically understood.’19 In Bultmann’s works, ‘eschatological’ is used in a ‘radical’, i.e. non-wordly and atemporal sense. In his later exis16

Schweitzer (1906, 282): ‘Der “Menschensohn” ward begraben in den Trümmern der zusammenstürzenden eschatologischen Welt; lebendig blieb nur Jesus, “der Mensch”...’. 17 Significant for that ‘theology of crisis’ or ‘dialectical theology’ was Karl Barth’s exposition of Romans, with the first edition in 1919, the second, considerably modified edition appeared in 1921, with the phrase quoted above (Barth 1921, 28). 18 For details see Frey (1997, 86–117). 19 Bultmann (1926, 28) (in English Translation: Bultmann 1982, 35).

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tentialist terminology, everything that is particularly Christian can be called ‘eschatological’: Eschatology is now the most important theological principle, and true Christian faith is ‘eschatological existence’. Eschatology has definitively ceased to be a mere (final) part of Christian doctrine, about ‘the Last Things’. It is definitely not about an expected last period or the end of the world but about that what happens now in a strictly definitive mode. ‘Eschatology’ is, thus, about the end of time and history within the ongoing flow of time and history, it is by definition present-oriented.20 Of course, Bultmann was well aware that most New Testament texts talk in mythological terms about ‘eschatological’ events (such as the resurrection of the dead, a last judgment etc.) which were naïvely expected at some point of time in the future. Theologically, however, he was convinced that such a (speculative) kind of ‘information’ about what should happen in the future cannot be of any relevance for the existence of a human being or for Christian self-understanding here and now. The same is true, in Bultmann’s view, for any ‘historical’ information about events in a remote past. Thus, in theological interpretation and in Christian preaching the mythological, future-oriented or ‘apocalyptic’ views should be interpreted in strict reference to the present, as a challenge and a call for decision for the addressees. Bultmann’s definition of eschatology as presentoriented thereby serves as a criterion to distinguish between what is said and what is meant.21 Or, in other words: for hermeneutical reasons, Bultmann felt the obligation to reinterpret mythological or future-oriented elements of the New Testament text in terms of the ‘true’ eschatology, i.e. the orientation towards the present. In the development of New Testament tradition, Bultmann perceived an increase of clarity with regard to the eschatological views (Frey 1997, 107–114): Whereas Jesus’ proclamation and also the views of the primitive community were still shaped by the traditional Jewish expectation of the end, the ‘true’ eschatological awareness was developed in the Hellenistic community and in Paul where the ‘salvation-historical’ orientation was abandoned and the cult of Christ was installed as the representation of the divine. Thus, in Bultmann’s view, true eschatology originates in the critical encounter between Biblical (salvation-historical) and HellenisticGnostic (cosmic) thought. This encounter, or ‘syncretistic process’ resulted in a view that dismissed the temporal paradigm and adopted the idea that humanity is transcended from the perspective of the ‘eschaton’. The most 20 In analogy to his concept of eschatology, Bultmann’s concept of time and history is also strictly opposed to a traditional concept of flowing time and worldly history. The background of these views of time, history and human existence are found in the analysis of existence by the philosopher Martin Heidegger. Cf. Frey (1997, 88–94). 21 Cf. Bultmann (1925, 340).

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advanced state of the development of the eschatological awareness is, then, found in the Gospel of John or, rather, in the work of the evangelist, without the changes and additions he ascribed to the redaction. According to Bultmann, the theological language of the evangelist was based on the Gnostic myth of the redeemer (from an alleged sayings source), not on the apocalyptic or salvation historical views of the ‘mainstream’ church. The evangelist had, therefore, radically eliminated the traditional eschatology and phrased a purely present-oriented eschatology, according to which in Jesus’ mission, in his coming and departure, as proclaimed in the gospel, eternal life and death are fully present realities. Thus, in his famous commentary on John, Bultmann (1948) interprets the work of the evangelist (as he had ‘rearranged’ it) with strong approval while dismissing the alterations and additions of the so-called ecclesiastical redaction. Of course, this interpretation is deeply rooted in Bultmann’s critical views on John’s sources and redaction. But in spite of the ‘hermeneutical circle’, the Fourth Evangelist as reconstructed here could figure as an ‘ideal theologian’, or more precisely: as a ‘Biblical’ forerunner of Bultmann’s own program of existential interpretation or ‘demythologization’ of the mythological language of the New Testament (Frey 1997, 141f.). Due to its coherence and systematic character, Bultmann’s interpretation was highly influential, especially in German Protestant theology,22 but to a lesser degree also in other contexts.23 None of his conservative or liberal critics was able to combine exegetical and hermeneutical aspects resulting in a similarly coherent view. Bultmann’s theology became the most famous example of modern interpretation that was both critical and theological. On the other hand, his rejection of any kind of ‘salvation history’ and his program of ‘demythologization’ provoked numerous critical or even hostile reactions from conservative or pietistic circles. Most English speaking scholars were rather reluctant to adopt Bultmann’s views. This may be partly due to the isolation of German scholarship during World War II, but also to a different tradition of thought in British exegesis, which was more inclined to accept a conservative historical viewpoint (opposed to German criticism). Moreover, 22

Roman Catholic scholarship has remained skeptical against Bultmann. The radical source criticism established in German Protestant scholarship was not allowed for Roman Catholics before the liberalization in the context of Vaticanum II. In contrast with the eschatological views of the Bultmann school, Roman Catholic exegesis preferred a salvation historical perspective as documented, e.g. in the compendium ‘Mysterium Salutis’. 23 Whereas Bultmann’s theology was already debated in the time of World War II (especially due to his provoking lecture on ‘demythologization’ (“Neues Testament und Mythologie“) given in 1941 and the time thereafter, the impact of his views (and his school) on research in other countries was somewhat later, in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly due to the isolation of German scholarship in the years of the war.

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Bultmann’s influential ‘counterpart’, Charles Harold Dodd (1884–1973) had expressed very different views on eschatology. In his work on ‘The Parables of the Kingdom’ (1935), Dodd had expressed his concept of ‘realized eschatology’, i.e. the view that already Jesus’ own references to the kingdom of God referred to a present reality rather than to an apocalyptic expectation of future events. Thus, the ideas of early Christian apocalypticism could be viewed to be a backslide from Jesus’ own preaching, whereas John’s ‘thoroughgoing reinterpretation of eschatological ideas’ (Dodd 1963, 416; cf. Dodd 1953) in a deeply Hellenistic and, as Dodd phrased, ‘non-eschatological’ context could be viewed as a continuation of the authentic view ‘that “the age to come” has come’ (Dodd 1954, 163). Within the German context, the question of present-oriented and futureoriented eschatology was particularly debated with reference to the historical Jesus and, then, to the Gospel of John. In Jesus research, Werner Georg Kümmel (1905–1995) established a view that later became a new consensus. His work on ‘Promise and Fulfilment’ (Kümmel 1945) demonstrated that within the authentic preaching of Jesus there are present-oriented sayings and future-oriented sayings side by side, and it is not possible to dismiss one of these groups completely as inauthentic. Thus neither the view that Jesus had proclaimed a purely present-oriented view, nor the ‘consequent eschatology’ could be maintained, but the relationship between future-orientation and present-orientation had to be discussed on a new level. The most influential reaction against the ‘consequent eschatology’ and also against Bultmann’s dismissal of salvation history was advanced by Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999) in his two works on ‘Christ and Time’ (Cullmann 1946) and ‘Salvation in History’ (Cullmann 1965).24 Already in his first work Cullmann tried to demonstrate that the views of Early Christianity are fundamentally shaped by the tension between the ‘Already-now’ and the ‘Not-yet’ and that the underlying view of such an eschatology is the idea of a continuing time-line between past, present, and future. With such a concept of time, Cullmann provoked the protest of Bultmann and his school, which considered Cullmann’s salvation historical perspective totally mistaken (Bultmann 1967). Historically, Cullmann’s idea of the somewhat naïve early Christian concept of time seemed to appear more appropriate to the New Testament texts than Bultmann’s existential concept of time or the systematic dialectic between time and eternity as advocated by Karl Barth. The problem with Cullmann’s position was that he did not really interact with Bultmann’s hermeneutical and theological views. Thus, his impact in German speaking scholarship was rather limited, whereas many students from the English speaking world found his views 24 On Cullmann’s development and his theology of salvation history see Schlaudraff (1988), cf. also Frey (2009).

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more helpful than the strongly dogmatic views of the Bultmann school. In his second attempt to address the issues of time concept, salvation history and eschatology, Cullmann (1965) elaborated his views and distinguished more clearly between the particular views of the different New Testament authors, but the tension between the ‘already fulfilled’ and ‘not yet completed’ was still considered to be the unifying feature of New Testament eschatology (1965, 154; cf. Frey 1997, 230f.). Since the 1970s the dominance of the Bultmann school and its hermeneutics had faded away, and other theological currents became influential with a stronger consideration of history and especially social history and a more positive view of future-oriented eschatology. The philosophical background changed, and the world-wide challenges such as the threat of nuclear destruction or the ecological crisis stimulated a new interest in apocalyptic imagery. Eschatological expectation was no longer considered as a mere and undue speculation but as a hope that could strengthen humanistic activity and social change.25 And the stronger consideration of Early Christian plurality helped to see the plurality of early Christian eschatological views without harmonizing them or reinterpreting them from a particular dogmatic viewpoint. On the other hand, the ‘classical’ issues from the debate in the early and mid twentieth century continued to be discussed with regard to the different New Testament authors and texts. In English speaking scholarship, the debate has always been more open and less influenced by hermeneutical or dogmatic arguments. But especially in the North American context, some ideas from the Bultmann debate were introduced from the 1960s. The importing of these ideas into English scholarship was mediated by a number of eminent scholars such as, e.g. Helmut Koester, James M. Robinson and Norman Perrin. The influence of these scholars inspired a new paradigm shift, especially in Jesus research, from an eschatological towards a ‘non-eschatological’ interpretation of Jesus’ preaching and towards a new plea for a ‘non-apocalyptic Jesus’. The paradigm shift is seen most prominently in Marcus Borg, a member of the famous ‘Jesus Seminar’. In his work on the parables of Jesus, Norman Perrin had questioned the linear concept of time that had been assumed in the background of Jesus’ eschatology (Perrin 1976, 1–15; cf. 1967, 202ff.), resulting in the notion of the kingdom being switched from a temporal to a non-temporal idea, or rather from a coming to a symbolic reality. The parallels in the Gospel of Thomas, which Helmut Koester dated very early in the middle of the first century, and where a similar nontemporal notion of the kingdom can be found, as well as the search for the earliest strata of the Sayings Source (by Robinson and others) provided 25 Cf., e.g., the eschatological theology of Moltmann (1964). See also Greshake (1995, 864f.).

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additional arguments that lead to a new image of the historical Jesus as a non-eschatological ‘teacher of subversive wisdom’ (Borg 1994, 9; cf. Crossan 1991). And, according to Steven Patterson the notion of the kingdom is transferred into an ethical category: it depends on ‘one’s decision to live out its reality in an act of faithfulness’ (1995, 48). However, Borg’s ‘temperate case for a “non-eschatological” Jesus’ (Borg 1986) also seems to be motivated by strong hermeneutical interests as well. One of his prominent concerns is the suitability of such a concept for contemporary life,26 and his viewpoint is phrased in marked contrast with the apocalyptic tendencies in influential evangelical and fundamentalist circles. One could assume that the academic debate would be very different if such an influential current was not present within North American society, openly working with apocalyptic imagery in religious and political affairs. In Europe where the religious groups are far less powerful, the academic debate is less touched by public and political considerations. In Borg’s argument the concern for questions of social and political order is openly expressed, and an eschatological interpretation of Jesus and his message of the kingdom is viewed as endangering the interest in these questions. In spite of the different political and intellectual context, there is some analogy with the earlier liberal and existential approaches, which were also inclined to dismiss the future-orientation of early Christian eschatology for hermeneutical reasons. I cannot go further into the particular issues here,27 and other political, ethnic and religious contexts could also be considered. But it should be obvious that, regardless of whether interpreters admit this quite clearly or try to veil it, the interpretation of early Christian eschatology in its temporal, spatial, political, social and religious dimensions is strongly influenced by the religious or social viewpoint of the interpreters. Exposing New Testament eschatology is a process within a hermeneutical circle, and the question whether Jesus and the apostles erred fundamentally, whether they adopted contemporary views merely for didactic reasons or whether they just clothed a quite modern view in ancient rhetoric and imagery can hardly be posed in a ‘neutral’, purely scientific manner. Hermeneutical questions of textual authority and religious applicability are vivid as the ‘hidden agenda’ of numerous approaches in scholarship. This is what 26 Cf. Borg (1986, 61), who expresses the hope that such a vision of a noneschatological Jesus could bring Jesus in a more positive relationship with modern culture than the view of Jesus as a mere preacher of the end could allow; see also Borg (1987, 190–204). 27 Of course, the views mentioned, have also received strong rejection, e.g. by Dale Allison who has argued – in my view more convincingly – for a ‘thoroughgoing eschatology’ in Jesus’ preaching. Cf. Allison (1994 and 1998).

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makes the interpretation of early Christian eschatology (the history of the scholarly debate) so complicated.

3. Crucial Issues and Questionable Categories On the basis of the history of research, I will now sketch some of the most important issues and categories involved in the discussion of New Testament texts. Many of them appear rather questionable in the light of modern research, and some are clearly determined by a modern theological agenda. 3.1. Present-Oriented or Future-Oriented Eschatology Since Weiss and Schweitzer, New Testament scholarship has been strongly occupied with the question whether an eschatological view is futureoriented or present-oriented, or whether within or behind the expression of an expectation for the future there is actually a hint that it can be interpreted as an expression of a present-related religious viewpoint or selfawareness. Scholars have often considered that these two modes of eschatological expression, e.g. in Jesus’ preaching or in the Gospel of John, were mutually exclusive, although many ancient texts and authors use them side by side, and a purely ‘presentized’ view without any kind of future-orientation can hardly be found anywhere in antiquity, not even in Gnosticism. But due to the philosophical and theological criticism of the traditional eschatological expectation and the apologetic interests in ‘rescuing’ Christianity by stressing its orientation toward the present, the debate about the temporal orientation of New Testament eschatology was prominent in academic exegesis for a long time. We cannot deny that the sources cause us to ask how the kingdom was thought to be present in Jesus’ acts or to what extent and in which mode the gift of ‘eternal life’ is thought to be a present reality in the Christian community and how it is related with the hope for a physical resurrection from death or life after death. It is an important (but by no means unique) feature of early Christian eschatology that the end-time has already begun with the coming of the Messiah or with the gift of the Spirit. But it appears textually inappropriate (and rather inspired from modern theological ideas) to construct a logical contradiction between future-orientation and presentorientation, as if an awareness of fulfilment or the gift of life in the present should exclude any kind of further expectation. In earliest Christianity, the opposite seems to have happened. The view that some Biblical promises had been fulfilled in Jesus’ coming or his acts, in his resurrection or in the gift of the Spirit, apparently rather intensified the hope for completion in a near future. Probably already in the preaching of Jesus, but certainly in

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Paul, in the Fourth Gospel (as it is transmitted) and in 1 John the presence of the kingdom or the life is combined with a further expectation of eschatological events such as the parousia, resurrection and judgment. A striking parallel has been discovered in the texts of the Qumran community where membership in the ‘covenant’, knowing the divine mysteries and the communion with the angels28 were seen as a present reality of the community without a questioning of the expectation of a future judgment or purification. Despite the clear differences between the Qumran community and early Christianity, the analogy amply demonstrates that the awareness of a present status of ‘salvation’ and the expectation of an impending judgment or even resurrection was by no means contradictory for ancient readers in the context of Second Temple Judaism. Consideration of such parallels should help to avoid undue presuppositions for early Christian authors or prevent from shaping the ‘historical’ image of Jesus, Paul and John according to the desires and categories of contemporary theological thought. 3.2. Eschatology and Apocalypticism Even more questionable is the terminological distinction between eschatology and apocalypticism. Both terms were created in modern times; the German term ‘Apokalyptik’ or the adjective ‘apokalyptisch’ were coined even later than ‘Eschatologie’. The terms were introduced into New Testament scholarship in 1832 by Friedrich Lücke (1791–1855), a student of Friedrich Schleiermacher,29 to describe the tradition commonly represented by Daniel and Revelation. At first, the term was roughly used in the same sense as ‘eschatology’. Only after the redefinition of the term ‘eschatology’ by Bultmann and some of his contemporaries, the two terms began to be used for quite opposite aspects. Whereas ‘eschatology’ was considered to be independent from any precise imagination of end-time events, ‘apocalyptic’ was used for particular manifestations of eschatology that included a detailed imagination of the end time.30 The implication of such a distinction was that eschatology might be an essential element of Christian preaching and the ‘eschatological awareness’ a characteristic feature of Christian faith, where ‘apocalyptic’ images and doctrines could be dis28 29

See already Kuhn (1966), most recently Frey (2007, 45–50). On Lücke, see Christophersen (1999). Cf. Lücke (1832, 22–155). Lücke (23) draws on a writing of the practical theologian Karl Immanuel Nietzsch from 1822 (which is not available any more (cf. Christophersen 1999, 1.368f. n. 2). See also Schmidt (1969, 98– 100). 30 Cf. R. Bultmann (1967b, 476). See also Klein (1982, 271): Eschatology is ‘Ausdruck einer Einstellung’, whereas apocalypticism is ‘ein mögliches Mittel ihrer Verlautbarung’. The background of such an opposition is the view that eschatology can do without precise imaginations and that the apocalyptic imagery can abandoned.

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missed as a speculation or pseudo-knowledge, which is always eagerly sought by sectarians but unnecessary for any true religious viewpoint. Apocalypticism or ‘Jewish eschatology’ was, therefore, considered rather negatively: as a result of the decline within ‘Late Judaism’; as an utopian or illusionary type of thought with the expectation of a this-worldly future; and as an attitude of minor religious value, seeking retribution, Israel’s glory and the final destruction of its enemies.31 Jewish apocalypticism was primarily described by characteristics such as pseudonymous authorship, fictive historical overviews (shaped as vaticinia ex eventu), a strong pessimism towards the created world and a deterministic view of history.32 From the paradigm of Daniel, 4 Ezra or Revelation, scholars considered the temporal dimension and temporal calculation, expectation and speculation the most important aspect within apocalyptic thought. Consequently, the error of the early Christian expectation about the imminent end of history could only demonstrate the fallacy of such a type of speculative thought. Therefore, early Christian authors – if they were ‘good Christian theologians’ – were expected to take distance from such ideas, to abandon time calculation and to cope with the ‘delay’ of the parousia and to move on from Jewish or Judaeo-Christian particularistic views towards a more universalistic and ‘enlightened’ view of ‘eternal life’. In a remarkable struggle, most New Testament scholars were eager to ‘rescue’ Jesus and – if possible – also the apostles from any closer connection with apocalyptic movements or ideas,33 i.e. to show that their preaching was not substantially dependent on apocalyptic imagery or calculations or that such a viewpoint was already abandoned by Jesus himself and then implicitly or explicitly criticized by the New Testament authors.34 A truly Christian viewpoint could be ‘eschatological’, but not ‘apocalyptic’. Accordingly,

31 Cf. the most characteristic description by Wellhausen (1958, 195–196): ‘Ihr Gott ist ein Gott der Wünsche und der Illusion. Sie malt sich auf dem Papier ein Ideal, zu dem in der Wirklichkeit keine Brücke hinüberführt, welches plötzlich durch das Eingreifen eines deus ex machina in die Welt gesetzt werden soll. Sie empfindet nicht, wie die alte echte Prophetie, das schon im Werden Begriffene voraus und stellt auch keine Ziele für das menschliche Handeln auf, die schon in der Gegenwart Geltung haben oder haben sollten. Sie schaut nicht das lebendige Tun der Gottheit, sondern hält sich an den heiligen Buchstaben, in dem sie die Verbriefung ihrer Wünsche sieht, und behandelt ihn als Quelle für ihre dogmatische Spekulation’. See also Müller (1991, 38–40); Frey (1997, 68). 32 Cf. Vielhauer (1963). 33 Cf. the phrase by Koch (1970, 55): ‘das angestrengte Bemühen, Jesus vor der Apokalyptik zu retten’. 34 In this effort, the former Liberals and the later Bultmannians (and some of the present-day North American advocates of a ‘non-apocalyptic Jesus’) are remarkably close to each other.

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the book of Revelation was widely considered as a very Jewish book, or based on Jewish sources, but only marginally ‘christianized’). In more recent research the climate has changed. This is due to a less dogmatic viewpoint in international scholarship and a renewed interest in apocalypticism,35 stimulated not at least by the discoveries from Qumran. From numerous parallels in ancient Jewish and other (Greco-Roman, Egyptian) literature, apocalyptic imagery is now explained as a symbolic world which is not simply an illusionary compensation of disappointment but functions as a force of resistance in situations of distress and persecution. The Qumran discoveries have unearthed manuscript evidence that demonstrates that the origins of the apocalyptic movement are much earlier than previously though and that the Enochic tradition as the earliest branch of Jewish apocalypticism goes back to the third or even fourth century BCE. The most original expression of apocalyptic thought is, therefore, not the type of ‘historical apocalypse’ such as Daniel 10–11 but rather the astronomical wisdom of 1 Enoch 72–82 or the visions of heavenly journeys from 1 Enoch 1–36. This means that at the origins of apocalyptic thought, there is not a speculative dogmatics and calculation of end history but a major symbolic world in which God’s kingdom is present in spite of the foreign rulers and oppressors on earth and also in spite of human sin and injustice (cf. Frey 2007). These insights could lead to a completely different view of Jewish apocalypticism that is not merely interested in timecalculation or in a ‘dogmatics of history’, as earlier scholars had characterized it, but includes a wider variety of temporal and spatial ideas and images from which the language of earliest Christianity is deeply influenced. Moreover, ‘early Jewish apocalypticism was not a matrix of sectarian thought that tended to “self-marginalization” through lack of enculturation in the surrounding Hellenistic world. On the contrary, the full corpus of available Qumran evidence indicates that apocalyptic thought was interwoven with sapiential literature … parabiblical literature…, and apocryphal literature…’ (Hogeterp 2009, 418). Not only the eschatological views of early Christian texts are rooted in that early Jewish context but also the basic ideas of Messianism or Christology cannot be understood without such a mother soil. And if Christology is the view that the former expectation of God’s saving activity is now fulfilled or partly fulfilled in the works and the death and resurrection of Jesus, such a kind of Christology is nothing else than a modification of Jewish apocalyptic or eschatological ideas. One might even say that in the early Christian types of realized or present-oriented eschatology, there is

35 Cf. the proceedings of the important Uppsala conference from 1979 in Hellholm (1983) and the work in the genre ‘apocalypse’ by Collins (1979).

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not a reduction but rather a reinforcement of the apocalyptic ideas inherited from the contemporary Jewish context. This calls for a more detailed analysis of the background of early Christian terms and images without the dogmatic biases and the implicit antiJewish attitude of earlier scholarship. There is no reason to place Jesus or the early Christian authors at a distance from apocalypticism or other Jewish ideas in order to phrase the uniqueness or the religious values of early Christian eschatology. The opposition between eschatology and apocalypticism appears to be an impasse of scholarship.36 3.3. The History-of-Religions Issue: Jewish or Non-Jewish? And which Judaism? Closely linked with the problem of eschatological expectation and the apocalyptic world view is the quest for the history-of-religions background of the eschatological motifs in the New Testament. The expectation of an end of the created world, of the resurrection of the dead and of a last judgment were usually explained from the Jewish background of earliest Christianity, more precisely, from Palestinian Jewish traditions or groups such as Apocalypticism, the Pharisaic movement or – in more recent times – the writings from Qumran (cf. Hogeterp 2009). In contrast with these bloc oriented views, the identified types of a more individualistic eschatology, the hope for individual immortality or concepts of a non-bodily afterlife or of a more spatial, non-temporal view of salvation were rather linked with the Hellenistic, Hellenistic-Jewish, or even Gnostic viewpoints. Thus, interpreters could consider the futureoriented views in Paul and other early Christian authors as mere remnants of Jewish thought which were, then, abandoned by later authors such as the Fourth Evangelist. Even in Paul himself scholars speculated about a move from an earlier apocalyptic view (e.g. in 1 Thess 4:13–18) toward a more Hellenistic concept of individual afterlife (e.g. in 2 Cor 5 or in Phil 1:23), although other passages in Philippians and Romans clearly show the persistence of the temporal expectation of the parousia and the end. But the divide between a collective and an individual expectation,37 a bodily and a non-bodily concept or temporal and a spatial perspective is also inappropriate and does not do justice to the wide variety of concepts within contemporary Judaism. Already in the early Enochic tradition, there are strong spatial dimen36 Thus Aune (1992, 595): ‘When applied to early Christianity, the terms eschatology and apocalypticism are essentially synonymous’. 37 Cf. Erlemann (1995, 413): ‘Kollektiv-universale und individuelle Naherwartung stehen unverbunden nebeneinander und sind nicht aufeinanderfolgenden Entwicklungsstufen zuzuordnen’.

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sions, and these elements are adopted again in later texts. On the other hand, the calculation of appointed times (such as, e.g., in the Book of Jubilees) is one characteristic feature of Palestinian tradition but in contrast with other concepts of Jewish eschatology from the wider circle of the Greco-Roman world (cf. Hogeterp 2009, 110f.). Recent scholarship has become much more aware of the internal variety of contemporary Judaism (or even ‘Judaisms’?), not only between ‘Palestinian’ and ‘Hellenistic’ Judaism but also between the different factions and groups within Palestinian Judaism where Hellenistic influences were present for several centuries.38 On the basis of the sources now available, the history-of-religions issue is far more complicated and deserves a more subtle analysis. Moreover, the idea that true Christian faith should have abandoned its Jewish ‘eggshells’ cannot be accepted any more. On the contrary, scholarship has increasingly recognized the deeply Jewish character of almost all the New Testament writings, including some of the later writings (such as John, Jude and Revelation), so that we must accept that the theological development of early Christian thought did neither include a straightforward or linear distancing from Jewish elements nor a consequent or linear dismissal of apocalyptic or future-oriented eschatological views.39 It has to be admitted that the theological criticism of eschatology was often linked with an open or hidden anti-Jewish attitude. Such a viewpoint goes back to the Lutheran confessions in which the chiliastic hope for an earthly reign of Christ was dismissed as ‘iudaicae opiniones’.40 In the nineteenth century, it was especially the aspect of Jewish ‘particularism’ which seemed to be incompatible with a ‘true’, i.e. universal religion, and chiefly the apocalyptic movement but also the Pharisees were blamed for particularistic viewpoints and expectations. In New Testament research, Jesus’ ‘uniqueness’ was often viewed in those elements of his preaching or appearance by which he differed from his contemporaries. One of the most important differences was apparently the idea that the kingdom had come near or was already inaugurated in his acts or in his appearance. Against that, early Christian apocalyptic views were considered a backslide from Jesus’ own view of time, due to a ‘re-judaizing’ tendency. Generally, the development of early Christian eschatology was conceptualized as a development not only from (Palestinian) apocalyptic views toward a more Hellenized position but also from Jewish views to more or less Greek or Gentile views. But this scholarly pattern (advocated e.g. by liberal theologians 38 39 40

This was most effectively demonstrated by Hengel (1988). On the alleged influence of the delay of the parousia see below. Thus basically in the Lutheran Confessio Augustana, Art. 17 from 1530 (phrased by Philipp Melanchthon).

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such as Harnack) is outdated and must be replaced by a more subtle view of the encounter between Judaism and Hellenism in Palestine and in the Diaspora since the time of Alexander and down to the Rabbinic and Patristic era in which any conjecture of unilinear developments appears to be an oversimplification. 3.4. The Delay of the Parousia and the Development of Early Christianity This is also true for the phenomenon of the ‘delay of the parousia’ which was often considered ‘the most important factor for the transformation of early Christian eschatology from an emphasis on the imminent expectation of the end to a vague expectation sit in the more distant future’ (Aune 1992, 606). Based on the views of Schweitzer, Martin Werner (1941) explained the formation of the Christian dogma from the diminishing of the original imminent expectation of Jesus’ return as ‘Son of Man’ and from the influence of Hellenistic ideas. There is no need to discuss here the issue whether already Jesus did not expect an immediate beginning of the kingdom but that he reckoned with a certain passage of time between his death and the inauguration of the kingdom (thus Kümmel 1945). As a matter of fact, at least some early Christians (such as Paul, cf. also Mk 9:1) did expect the return of Christ during their own lifetime or generation, and the fact that all the disciples of the first generation died before the coming of Christ must have caused some disappointment (cf. Joh 21:22–23). But it is also probable that early Christian communities were able to cope with such a development, especially if their identity was not only built on the expectation of an imminent change or end of the world but rather on a strong experience of the Spirit, a conviction of the fulfilment of Biblical promises and on the belief in Jesus as the exalted Lord. And, as parallels, not only from ‘apocalyptic’ movements in modernity41 but also from the Qumran community (cf. 1QpHab VII 3–14), demonstrate, there were numerous strategies to explain and utilize the alleged ‘delay’ of appointed times: religious groups could postpone the calculated dates or explain the delay as the work of evil or ‘retaining’ powers (cf. 2 Thess 2:7); they could admit that the previous calculations may be wrong or inadequate in view of God’s superiority over time (cf. 2 Pet 3:8); or they could celebrate the delay as a new chance for repentance or mission (2 Pet 3:9; also Mk 13:10; 41 I can only mention the numerous time calculations of particular groups among Pietists, Adventists, Jehova’s Witnesses etc. In my own home area (the south-western part of Germany), the Swabian Pietists did not abandon their faith when the year 1836 passed by without any change. In this year, their ‘church father’ Johann Albrecht Bengel had expected the beginning of the Millennium. They considered that the calculation was probably wrong, or that the end could not be calculated at all, but they retained their fervent eschatological expectation.

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Acts 1:8). In all these cases, the delay as such did not lead to a dissolution of the group or to a crisis of its main convictions. This means, however, that the problem of the delay of the parousia has largely been overestimated. A more detailed analysis of the problem (cf. Erlemann 1995) demonstrates the variety of the expectations of an imminent end or a near ‘revolutionary’ change in the Early Christianity. Short-term-expectation and the experience of delay are both results of an emotional way of experiencing time (Erlemann 1995, 385). External pressure or persecutions, political changes or internal struggles (e.g. with false teachers) could stimulate the eschatological expectation even in later periods. Thus, we find a fervent short-term-expectation even in the second century and later, and such an expectation is often confined to particular groups or the result of a particular situation or experience. Short-term-expectations and the experience of the delay coexisted for a longer time, and the early Christian expectation only disappeared in a longer process that came to a closure not before the time of Constantine (Erlemann 1995, 407–408). Of course, there were some readjustments of earlier expectations, e.g. in Luke-Acts, but we must admit that the ‘delay of the parousia’ cannot be considered a continuous or linear development, nor can it be used as a scale for historically locating or dating early Christian writings. The opposition or alternative between the expectation of the imminent end and the experience of the delay is, therefore, mistaken. The early Christian texts call for a more detailed and precise analysis of their respective concept of time which is not narrowed by such a simple and schematic pattern inspired from a particular period of modern research.

4. Concluding Perspectives Space does not permit a discussion of more categories utilized in modern research. But the brief sketch in this Introduction has demonstrated that there is a need to overcome traditional categories and patterns, and for a fresh look at the various eschatological concepts in early Christian texts, their background and their function. Some fundamental insights and preliminary perspectives can be phrased here. 1. There can be hardly any doubt that motifs and views of Early Christian eschatology are deeply rooted within the Biblical tradition and, even more, within the range of traditions and expectations developed in Second Temple Judaism. Thus the variety of early Christian concepts can only be understood against the background of a thorough knowledge of the variety within earlier and contemporary Jewish eschatological ideas (cf. Aune

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1992), as can now be seen in greater detail within the large number of recently published documents from the Qumran library (Hogeterp 2009). 2. A closer look at the developments and concepts in early Jewish eschatology field can prevent from following some of the inadequate and simplifying categories developed in the history of New Testament research. From the perspective of Jewish texts, not only the divide between future-orientation and present-orientation or between eschatology and apocalyptic appear rather inappropriate but also the argument that apparently conflicting eschatologies point to different groups or authors is considerably weakened in view of the fact that early Jewish compositions (such as the Enochic texts) or even more larger corpora (such as the ‘sectarian’ writings from Qumran or the Qumran library as a whole) can combine quite different eschatological views without any hint that they might be incompatible. 3. Thus, the observation that not only future and present-oriented views but a much wider variety of eschatological concepts and images occur side by side in the sayings of Jesus, in the authentic Pauline epistles or in the Johannine corpus, leads to the question how much coherence can be adequately presupposed for an ancient preacher, author or school? To what degree did different rhetorical situations and interests, e.g. in different Pauline epistles, influence the mode of writing? The inconsistencies between different concepts of judgment, e.g. in the authentic Pauline letters, call for different explanations. Neither should we try to harmonize or systematize them, not is there any compelling argument to separate them and ascribe them to different authors. The same may be true for the apparently conflicting eschatological expressions present in the Johannine Corpus (cf. Frey 2000, 2005). 4. Any concept of linear development in early Christian thought, e.g. from Jewish towards Gentile or Hellenistic concepts, from a short-term future-orientation to present-oriented or timeless concepts or from apocalyptic to non-apocalyptic viewpoints appears too uniform and simplistic and cannot be maintained in view of the variety of the material. Such concepts were too often conjectured from modern ideas of history or from dogmatic viewpoints and particular hermeneutical interests, and are better avoided in historical research. 5. Historically, eschatology is even at the very roots of Christian theology. This is not only due to the fact that the first disciples interpreted the Easter appearances in terms of the expectation of the eschatological resurrection (cf. Käsemann 1960) but even more, insofar eschatology provides the framework of Messianism and Christology. It is, thus, the eschatological expectation which constitutes the matrix of everything that could be said about Jesus’ acts and message, his identity and salvific function.

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6. Different from most contemporary Jewish expectations – but not unparalleled in Early Judaism – is the bipolarity of early Christian views (Erlemann 1996, 173): Whereas most Jewish expectations are based in the Scriptures and oriented towards a future change or fulfilment, early Christians expected the return of the one who had already come. The most distinctive difference from Jewish hopes is, therefore, not found in the details of the imagery, nor in the concept of time but in the fundamental reference to the person, the coming, or the resurrection and enthronement of Jesus. 7. ‘Hope’ is a central element of Christian thought from the very beginning. Already in Paul the noun elpis is already linked with pistis and agape in a triadic sequence (1 Thess 5:8; 1 Cor 13:13). Thus, there is good reason not to consider eschatology only as a final or even marginal locus of Christian theology but to see it in the centre of Christian faith. But this should not be linked with a ‘non-temporal’, or purely present-oriented, existential or transcendentalist concept (as established within the dialectic theology), but deserves reconsideration within a concept which is basically open for a future-oriented view as well. Only within such a concept, can the tension between the expectation for a certain point in a this-worldly or otherworldly future and the present situation of humans or believers be described accurately. 8. A very important field to be explored and discussed is the issue of time concepts. Of course, there are differences between modern and ancient time concepts. But numerous distinctions made in the scholarly literature have been thoroughly criticized (cf. Erlemann 1996, 32f.). It is much too simplistic to contrast the modern understanding of time as ‘linear’ with an alleged ‘cyclic’ (or mythic) concept of antiquity. In antiquity we find both, cyclic and linear structures, and the time concept underlying early Jewish and early Christian eschatology is certainly more linear than cyclic. Early Christian authors such as Paul clearly express the idea of a temporal progress towards a final salvation (cf. Rom 13:11). It is also inadequate to bring the sensitivity for a ‘quality’ of a certain time (often linked with the term kairos) in contrast with the aspect of a rather quantitative view of measuring time (often linked with the term chronos). It is even more simplistic to conjecture that any traditional (and also ‘ancient Mediterranean’ societies) are only oriented towards the present whereas the orientation towards the future is then considered a merely modern and Western (American or even ‘Swiss’42) concern. One should admit that, 42 Cf. the article by Malina (1989). The utilization of cultural anthropology especially in the Malina school leads to numerous oversimplifications, with regard to the ‘ancient Mediterranean’ world (which was very multi-faceted in itself) as well as in the simple contrasting of ‘ancient Mediterranean’ and ‘modern American’ viewpoints. If insights from cultural anthropology should be fruitful (and I think they are to a certain degree)

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even within modernity, there are elements of a cyclic (e.g., the seasons) or qualitative (e.g., ‘honeymoon’) concepts of time. Thus, ancient and modern time concepts are not totally in contrast. Rather, there is in both an aspect of ‘emotional’ perception of time. Time appears short in case of urgency, and time appears long and never ending if something is perceived as boring. Thus, temporal expressions can be used to express or to enhance urgency, and the ‘truth’ of such an expression is not simply in the correspondence with some ‘objective’ ‘reality’. Such aspects must be considered when ancient eschatological expressions are interpreted and when the issue of the ‘reality’ of the eschatological statements is discussed. 9. More recent developments in exegesis, e.g. the inspiration from narratology, the sociology of knowledge or cultural studies have created a better awareness for the function of texts, of particular expressions and of imaginative worlds. They do not always simply convey information, knowledge or teaching but quite often other functions of eschatological language are predominant (cf. Erlemann 1996, 103-134): They express confidence in the fulfilment of God’s promises, the call for alertness and sobriety, the call for a decision and encouragement in view of suffering and martyrdom. All these ‘expressive’ and ‘pragmatic’ functions of eschatological language go beyond the mere dimension of ‘information’ or ‘reality’. This may even explain why sayings could be preserved even when an immediate hope remained unfulfilled, or why expectations can be prolonged into a time beyond their original final goal. 10. Finally, the interpretation of eschatological expressions must be aware that we are always dealing with imagery. Sometimes, the imagery is rich and colourful (as often in apocalyptic texts), in other cases it is rather restrained. But in any case eschatology deals with goods or situations that are not completely ‘at hand’, but are still to be openly revealed, fully realized, or plainly fulfilled. Expressions like the ‘kingdom of God’, the ‘heavenly mansions’ (Joh 14:2) or the ‘spiritual’ (pneumatikos) life in the state of resurrection (cf. 1 Cor 15) deliberately use imaginative language. But even local and temporal frameworks are imaginative categories which help to understand and structure the world or to express convictions and hopes in a structured and conceivable manner. In view of such observations we can understand why even contradictory images are combined or not regarded as logically incompatible and look for the truth of eschatological expectations even if their ‘reality’ appears questionable and cannot be determined by a simple glimpse through the window. But anyway, eschatology is linked with ‘reality’ since the reality of the world and human

they must be used with much more consideration of the local, ethnic, religious and historical variety within antiquity.

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life is not simply identical with its present state or with that what is ‘at hand’. Works Consulted Allison, DC 1994 A Plea for Thoroughgoing Eschatology. JBL 113, 651–668. – 1998 The Eschatology of Jesus, in The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism Collins JJ (ed.), 1, 267–302. Aune, DE 1992 Eschatology (Early Christian). AncBD 2, 594–609. Barth K 1921 Der Römerbrief. München. Boman Th 1952 Das hebräische Denken im Vergleich mit dem Griechischen. Göttingen. Borg MJ 1986 A Temperate Case for a Non-Eschatological Jesus. Foundations and Facets Forum 2.3, 81–102. – 1987 Jesus. A New Vision. San Francisco. – 1994 Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship. Valley Forge. Bultmann R 1925 Das Problem einer theologischen Exegese des Neuen Testaments. Zwischen den Zeiten 3, 334–357. – 1926 Jesus. Tübingen. – 1948 Das Evangelium des Johannes. Göttingen. – 1967a Heilsgeschichte und Geschichte. Zu Oscar Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit, in Exegetica, Dinkler, E (ed.), Tübingen, 356–368. – 1967b Ist die Apokalyptik die Mutter der christlichen Theologie?,” in Exegetica, Dinkler, E (ed.), Tübingen. 476–482. Christophersen, A 1999 Friedrich Lücke (1791–1855). 2 Vols. Berlin & New York. Collins, JJ 1979 Introduction. Towards the Morphology of a Genre, in Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Collins, JJ (ed.), Missoula, 1–20. Crossan, JD 1991 The Historical Jesus. The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. Edinburgh. Cullmann, O 1946 Christus und die Zeit: Die urchristliche Zeit- und Geschichtsauffassung. Zollikon-Zürich. – 1965 Heil als Geschichte, Tübingen. Dodd, CH 1935 The Parables of the Kingdom. London. – 1953 The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge. – 1954 Eternal Life, in New Testament Studies, Manchester, 160–173. – 1963 Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge. Erlemann, K 1995 Naherwartung und Parusieverzögerung im Neuen Testament. Ein Beitrag zur Frage religiöser Zeiterfahrung. Tübingen & Basel. – 1996 Endzeiterwartungen im frühen Christentum. Tübingen & Basel. Frey, J 1997 Die johanneische Eschatologie. Vol. 1: Ihre Probleme im Spiegel der Forschung seit Reimarus. Tübingen. – 1999 Das apokalyptische Millenium, in Millenium. Informationen zum christlichen Mythos der Jahrtausendwende. Gütersloh, 10–72. – 2000 Die johanneische Eschatologie. Vol. 3: Die eschatologische Verkündigung in den johanneischen Texten. Tübingen. – 2005 Eschatology in the Johannine Circle, in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel. Essays by the Members of the SNTS Johannine Writings Seminar, Van Belle, G, Van der Watt, JG & Maritz, P (eds.), Leuven, 47–82.

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– 2007 Die Bedeutung der Qumrantexte für das Verständnis der Apokalyptik im Frühjudentum und im Urchristentum, in Apokalyptik und Qumran, Frey, J & Becker, M (eds.), Paderborn, 11–62. – 2009 Heil und Geschichte im Johannesevangelium. Zum Problem der ‚Heilsgeschichte‘ und zum fundamentalen Geschichtsbezug des Heilsgeschehens im vierten Evangelium, in Heil und Geschichte. Die Geschichtsbezogenheit des Heils und das Problem der Heilsgeschichte in der biblischen Tradition und in der theologischen Deutung, Frey, J, Krauter, S & Lichtenberger, H (eds.), Tübingen, 459–510. Gericke, W 1982 Das Buch ‘De Tribus Impostoribus’. Berlin. Greshake, G 1995 Eschatologie II: Die Geschichte des Traktates; III: Gegenwärtige Diskussion. LThK, 3, 860–685. Hahn, F 2003 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. 2 vols., Tübingen. Hellholm, D (ed.) 1983 Apocalypticism. Tübingen. Hengel, M 1988 Judentum und Hellenismus. Tübingen. Hjelde, S 1987 Das Eschaton und die Eschata. Eine Studie über Sprachgebrauch und Sprachverwirrung in protestantischer Theologie von der Orthodoxie bis zur Gegenwart. München. Hofmann, H-U 1982 Luther und die Johannesapokalypse. Tübingen. Hogeterp, ALA 2009 Expectations of the End. A Comparative Traditio-Historical Study of Eschatological, Apocalyptic and Messianic Ideas in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the New Testament. Leiden & Boston. Holmström, F 1936 Das eschatologische Denken der Gegenwart. Gütersloh. Hornig, G 1961 Die Anfänge der historisch-kritischen Theologie. Johann Salomo Semlers Schriftverständnis und seine Stellung zu Luther. Göttingen. Käsemann, E 1960 Die Anfänge der christlichen Theologie. ZThK 57, 162–185. Klein, D 2009 Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768). Das theologische Werk. Tübingen. Klein G 1982 Eschatologie IV: Neues Testament. TRE 10, 270–299. Koch K 1970 Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik?. Gütersloh. Körner, J 1957 Eschatologie und Geschichte. Eine Untersuchung des Begriffs des Eschatologischen in der Theologie Rudolf Bultmanns. Hamburg-Bergstedt. Kretschmar, G 1985 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Die Geschichte ihrer Auslegung im 1. Jahrtausend. Stuttgart. Kümmel, WG 1945 Verheißung und Erfüllung: Untersuchungen zur eschatologischen Verkündigung Jesu. Zürich. Kuhn, H-W 1966 Enderwartung und gegenwärtiges Heil. Göttingen. Lannert, B 1989 Die Wiederentdeckung der neutestamentlichen Eschatologie durch Johannes Weiss. Tübingen. Lindemann, A 1999 Eschatologie: III. Neues Testament. RGG 2, 1553–1560. Lona, HE 1984 Eschatologie im Kolosser- und Epheserbrief. Würzburg. Lücke, F 1832 Commentar über die Schriften des Evangelisten Johannes 4/1: Versuch einer vollständigen Einleitung in die Offenbarung Johannis und in die gesammte apokalyptische Literatur. Bonn. Maier, G 1981 Die Johannesoffenbarung und die Kirche. Tübingen. Malina, BJ 1989 Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean? CBQ 51, 1–31. Merklein, H 1995 Eschatologie B.I.2: Neues Testament. LThK 3, 868–872. Moltmann J 1964 Theologie der Hoffnung. München. Müller, K 1991 Die frühjüdische Apokalyptik, in Studien zur frühjüdischen Apokalyptik, Stuttgart, 35–173.

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Patterson S 1995 The End of Apocalypse: Rethinking the Eschatological Jesus. Theology Today 52, 29–48. Perrin N 1967 Rediscovering the Teaching of Jesus. New York – 1976 Jesus and the Language of the Kingdom. Philadelphia. Reimarus, HS 1972 Apologie oder Schutzschrift für die vernünftigen Verehrer Gottes, Alexander, G (ed.); 2 vols. Frankfurt a. M. Sauter, G 1988 Begriff und Aufgabe der Eschatologie. NZSThRPh 30, 191–208. Semler, JS 1771–1775 Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Kanon. 4 vols. Halle. Schlaudraff, K-H 1988 Heil als Geschichte? Tübingen. Schmidt, J-M 1969 Die jüdische Apokalyptik. Die Geschichte ihrer Erforschung von den Anfängen bis zu den Textfunden von Qumran. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Schwarz, H 2000 Eschatology. Grand Rapids. Schweitzer, A 1906 Von Reimarus bis Wrede. Tübingen. – 1913 Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung. Tübingen. – 2001 The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Minneapolis. Vielhauer, Ph 1963 Apostolisches, Apokalypsen und Verwandtes, in Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, vol 2, Hennecke, E & Schneemelcher, W, Tübingen, 407–422. Wanke, G 1978 “Eschatologie”. Ein Beispiel theologischer Sprachverwirrung, in Eschatologie im Alten Testament, Preuß, HD (ed.), Darmstadt, 342–360. Weiss, J 1892 Jesu Predigt vom Reiche Gottes. Göttingen. Wellhausen, J 1958 Israelitische und jüdische Geschichte. Berlin. Werner, M 1941 Die Entwicklung des christlichen Dogmas problem-geschichtlich dargestellt. 1941. Bern & Leipzig.

Eschatology: Gospels and Acts

‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’ Matthew’s Eschatology as the Kingdom of the Heavens that has Come

Andries van Aarde 1. Introduction In New Testament theology, the two concepts eschatology and apocalypticism are closely intertwined. Both these concepts involve a fascination with time.1 Nevertheless, since Hengel (1974) eliminated the distinction between Hellenistic and Palestinian Judaism (Sterling 2000, 792), New Testament scholars have begun to abandon the tendency of over-generalizing the concept of time in antiquity. Such a simplification is found, for example, in Cullmann’s (1971) Christ and time: The primitive Christian conception of time and history.2 According to him, ‘We must start from [the] fundamental perception that the symbol of time for Primitive Christianity as well as for Biblical Judaism and the Iranian religion is the line, while in Hellenism it is the circle’ (Cullmann 1971, 5; emphasis in the original).

The implication of Cullmann’s point of view is that any possibility of a socalled ‘interim time’ – a proleptic salvation or ‘realized eschatology’ – in the mind-set of the authors of the New Testament should be discarded too. Cullmann (1956, 165ff.) has also formulated this oversimplified view in an essay, entitled ‘The proleptic deliverance of the body according to the New Testament’, as follows: Our bodies will not rise immediately after death, but only at the end of time. This is the general expectation of the New Testament which, in this respect, differs not only from the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul; but also from the view that the dead live even before the parousia beyond time, and thus at once enjoy the fruits of the final fulfilment.

1 For a present-day perception of time in antiquity as reflected in the New Testament, see inter alia Kreuzer (2005a, 110–114); Kreuzer (2005b, 1–49); Neyrey & Rowe (2008). 2 ‘All philosophical speculation concerning the nature of time, such as is carried on throughout the whole course of Greek philosophy without ever coming to a solution of the question, is quite foreign to Primitive Christianity. Indeed, we can clearly define the conception of the course of time which the New Testament presupposes by stating it in opposition to the typically Greek idea…’ (Cullmann 1971, 50 n. 1–3).

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If this were true, the following expressions in Matthew would not make sense at all: ‘…let your kingdom come and your will be done, on earth as in heaven’ (Mt 6:10); and ‘truly, I say to you, those who followed me when the Son of man will sit on his glorious throne in the renewed world (HMQ WKC SDOLJJHQHVLYD), will also sit on twelve thrones obtaining justice (NULYQRQWHa) for the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Mt 19:28, own translation).3 This essay argues that the ‘plain sense’ communicated by the words quoted above should be taken seriously, namely that ‘the end’ (i.e. the kingdom of the heavens) is announced as already having begun. Statements such as those in Matthew 6:10 and 19:28 express that eschatology in Matthew concerns a reordering of values within the ekklƝsia, that is, a cosmic transformation – or to put it in Crossan’s (in Stewart 2006, 24.25) words, addressed to non-scholars: If your faith tells you that God is just and the world belongs to God, and your experience dreadfully tells you that you’re a small, battered people, then eschatology is probably inevitable, and don’t let us scholars mystify you on it. Eschatology means if the world belongs to God, and is patently unjust, God must clean up the mess of the world. Eschatology is the Great, Divine Clean-Up of the world. Furthermore, if you have an apocalypsis, a special revelation, about that eschatology, it has to mean, but does not necessarily mean, the imminence of that eschatology. It could be about anything to do with it. So, apocalyptic eschatology, in itself, means simply that you are claiming to have some special revelation about this Great Divine Clean-Up.

The same would apply to macarisms such as that the kingdom of the heavens belongs here and now4 to the poor in spirit (Mt 5:3) and to them who are here and now persecuted for the sake of righteousness (Mt 5:10). Even though the ‘time categories’ involved in eschatology and apocalypticism are essentially social constructs, in Gospel studies ‘time’ has also become significant for narrative criticism. Time as a narratological concept applies to the way in which plot analysis is employed in exegesis. The term ‘plot’ implies a narrative that consists of events selected from the lives of people in a particular time and place, which a narrator combines in such a way that it constitutes a causal structure. In other words, a narrative is a discourse in which language is organized in terms of characters moving within a given structure of time and space. In a narrative, characters fulfil interactive roles within episodes that develop into chronologically sequential lines of action. Each sequence contains interactions, insofar as the ac3 This translation is confirmed by Horsley’s (1987, 201–207) interpretation and translation. According to Horsley (1991, 196), ‘those who have followed or persevered with Jesus are to be “establishing justice” for the twelve tribes of Israel in a function very similar to that assigned to the anointed one in PssSol 17:26–32 or to the twelve men and three priests constituting “the Council of the Community” at Qumran in 1 QS 8:1–4’. 4 See especially the present tense of the verb is (HMV WLYQ ) in both these first and last macarisms in the Matthean series of eight (Mt 5:3–10).

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tions of the characters are linked through a causal relationship. It is this causality of action that constitutes the plot of a narrative discourse. An elementary well-structured plot consists of a linear sequence with a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion.5 However, a successful end does not necessarily mean a complete resolution of tension. Most wellorganized narrations remain open-ended, with the result that the reader is drawn into the plot and becomes involved in the interactions. The plot thus continues beyond the actual narration and has a life of its own, even after the words and sentences on the page have come to an end (see Van Aarde 2009). For example, in both Mark and Matthew, the story of the church is not written as it is in Luke-Acts. Rather, the story of the church is implied. After Jesus has triumphed over his opponents in Jerusalem, despite his death, the plot continues beyond Matthew 28:16–20 because of Jesus’ resurrection. In this essay, eschatology and apocalypticism in Matthew are explored by considering the narratological aspect of time, and time as a social construct. Two assumptions in this essay should be mentioned early on. The first is that apocalypticism is unthinkable without a belief in resurrection from death.6 Hence, without lingering too much on the terminology, a brief cameo on the overlapping concepts of eschatology and apocalypticism is in order, particularly because Käsemann’s well-known dictum that apocalyptic(ism)7 is the mother of all Christian theology originated in the context of Matthean studies.8 According to Käsemann (1969, 82–107), the reaction to 5 Aristoteles, Poetica vii.3: R^ORQ GHY HMV WLQ WR H>F RQ DMUFKQ NDL PHYV RQ NDL WH OHXWKYQDMUFK GHY HMVWLQR` DXMWR PHQPK HM[ DMQDYJNKaPHW¨D>OORHMVWLYQPHW¨HMNHLCQR G¨ H^WHURQ SHYIXNHQ HL?QDL K@ JLYQHVTDL WHOHXWK GH WRXMQDQWLYLRQ R^ DXMWR PHW¨ D>OOR SHYIXNHQHL?QDLK@HM[DMQDYJNKaK@Z-aHMSLWRSROXYPHWDGHWRXCWRD>OORRXMGHYQPHYVRQ GH R` NDL DXMWR PHW¨D>OORNDL PHW¨HMNHLCQRH^WHURQ‘...“A whole”, he [Aristotle] says, “is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end”; and each of these terms is then defined. “A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it. A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it”...’ (Butcher 1951, 279–280). 6 Cf. Crossan (in Stewart 2006, 25): ‘Now this apocalyptic eschatology is the absolute – I was going to say background, foreground, matrix, everything to understand resurrection; without it, we’re not even talking about the same thing’. 7 The expression ‘apocalyptic’ is used as an adjective, while the term ‘apocalypticism’ refers to the worldview of apocalyptic groups that sometimes produce a literary document called an ‘apocalypse’ (see Murphy 1994, 160–161). 8 Käsemann’s (1960, 180) specific words are: ‘Die Apokalyptik ist – da man die Predigt Jesu nicht eigentlich als Theologie bezeichen kann – die Mutter aller christlichen Theologie gewesen’. According to Schmithals (1994, 20; cf. 1973, 129; 1975, 72), one

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the death of Jesus by the earliest Jesus group in Jerusalem leads us to the origin of ‘Christian theology’. 9 The second assumption is that this ‘reaction’ concerns Christian ethics, that is, the way in which Jesus’ commission to his disciples is understood. The plot of all canonical gospels develops around the relationship between Jesus’ commission and the disciples’ commission. In Matthew, the readers are challenged by what is often called Jesus’ ‘great commission’, narrated at the close of the plot: would they be like the disciples who received their missionary calling from the risen Jesus in Galilee to ‘disciple’ all people by teaching them to accomplish what Jesus did? This connection between Jesus’ commission and the disciples’ commission is most compactly summarized in Jesus’ petition in the Lord’s Prayer ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10c), a loaded phrase which is presaged by similar rich aphorisms: ‘let your kingdom come’ and ‘let your will be done’. The portrayal in Matthew of the interaction between Jesus and his disciples unfolds against the background of a particular process in history and a particular mind-set. The process may be determined as the so-called separation between the synagogue and the church that started after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE. The mind-set that Matthew took over from Mark (and a later version of Q) was that of an apocalypticism. Like the other Synoptic Gospels, Matthew presents his understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the light of this apocalyptic mindset.10 The apocalyptic expectation in Matthew is that this world will be transformed into the final kingdom of God. can agree with Käsemann, provided that the inter-relationship between apocalypticism and Christianity is historically understood. Seen from a material (sachliche) perspective, however, Christianity did not grow out of apocalypticism but ‘conquered’ it. 9 With regard to ‘apocalyticism’ Käsemann shows that Matthew contains small bits and pieces which do not occur in other Gospels, but helps us to reconstruct Christian origins. Through citations from the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g. Mt 7:22–23; 23:8–10; 5:19), he indicates that behind these texts lies a history containing a clear tension which emanated from ‘theological’ differences concerning the reaction to Jesus’ death. The historical-critical reconstruction of this ‘reaction’ (see Käsemann 1969, 82) is difficult, as only fragments relating to the first Jesus group are available in Acts. However, because of all the small bits and pieces of the mosaic, no clear delineation is possible of what exactly the earliest ‘theology’ entailed. 10 The vicarious death of a martyr was an important dynamic in this expectation, because a martyr dies on behalf of others to procure a better future for them beyond death (see, among others, Theissen 1999, 150). According to their ‘scribal’ exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures, the earliest Jesus followers in Jerusalem claimed that God’s ‘imperial rule’ was inaugurated by Jesus – Israel’s spirit-filled messiah, who triumphed through his victory over death, an event that was ascribed to the Son of man (see Mt 27:51ff.), that triumphant apocalyptic figure who had been expected to come at that point in history when the experiences in this world would be almost unendurable, so that God’s people

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In the recent past, there has been a notable increase in the number of studies published on eschatological expectations in the Gospel of Matthew.11 It is illuminating to reflect on eschatology in Matthew by assessing Käsemann’s dictum, because the backdrop of his insights has influenced many authors in present research, either consciously or unconsciously. Unfortunately, in many of the recent works, the words ‘eschatology’ or ‘apocalypticism’ are absent in the titles; and therefore these studies often overlooked by researchers. A further problem is that theologians who occupy themselves with eschatology and/or apocalypticism in the Gospel of Matthew do not, with very few exceptions, pay attention either to one another or – by way of survey – to the insights of their predecessors. Here I am not thinking only of an occasional reference to the pioneering work of Bornkamm12 (1956), but also about the works of a previous generation of scholars.13 Besides the Introduction (1), this essay consists of the following sections: (2) an assessment of the dictum ‘apocalyptic(ism) is the mother of all Christian theology’ as apocalypticism unfolds in Matthew;14 (3) a short began to fantasize about the inauguration of God’s kingdom, which would transcend the experienced worrisome times (see inter alia Dn 7:13–14). 11 See, for instance, the works of Hagner (1985; 1994); Sim (1996); Hahn (1988); Cope (1989); Orton (1989); Allison (1982); Schaberg (1982); Weren (1979); and Waetjen (1976). 12 Bornkamm (1956) points out that there is a merging (Verklammerung) of ecclesiology and eschatology in Matthew. He considers that the so-called expanded ‘sermons’ of the Matthean Jesus attest to Matthew’s theological view of the relationship between ecclesiology and eschatology. Chapter 13, with its seven parables about the kingdom of heaven, introduces the idea that Matthew’s community is not only a collection of the chosen and the righteous, but a corpus mixtum going to meet the final judgment. At the parousia the ‘wheat’ will be separated from the ‘chaff’. 13 See e.g., Strecker (1966); Walker (1967); Trilling (1969a; 1969b); Kingsbury (1973); Meier (1975); and Senior (1976). Here, too, those works which do not conspicuously include the words ‘eschatology’, ‘apocalypticism’ or ‘parousia’ in their titles are often all too easily ignored by researchers. 14 It is beyond the scope of this article to consider another concern in recent Jesus studies, namely whether or not Jesus was an eschatological figure (see, amongst others, Miller 2001). With regard to Käsemann’s dictum, Murphy (1994, 164) refers to this matter as follows: ‘Since the work of Weiss and Schweitzer, scholars have wrestled with the degree to which apocalypticism influenced Jesus’ thought. Käsemann claimed that although the early church was very apocalyptic, Jesus was not (1969). Presently, there is a strong movement stressing non-apocalyptic aspects of Jesus’ teaching or of earliest Christian tradition, and seeing apocalyptic elements as later additions by the church … On the other side are those who reason from such evidence as Jesus’ association with John the Baptist, whose preaching is considered eschatological, and the apocalyptic nature of much of the early church, that it is likely that Jesus himself was influenced by apocalypticism’ (own emphasis).

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discussion of the notions of eschatology and apocalypticism; (4) an overview of the various sequential lines of action in Matthew; and (5) an examination of eschatology in Matthew as part and parcel of Matthew’s story and its inter-texts.

2. ‘The Mother of all Christian Theology’ Apocalypticism can be seen as one of the various ‘eschatologies’ in the first-century Eastern Mediterranean world. Jesus’ understanding of the ‘kingdom of God’ – or in Matthean terms, the ‘kingdom of the heavens’ – was embedded within the context of ‘ethical eschatology’ (also referred to as social apocalypticism).15 Jesus conveyed his message of the kingdom of God in the form of parables and healings – by means of both sayings and deeds, in other words through teaching and living. According to Käsemann, opposing parties amongst the earliest followers of Jesus laid claim to the gifts of God’s Spirit, while each judged the other with the ‘criteria of the Spirit’. Matthew 7:22–23 (in the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount) is polemically aimed at ‘false prophets’ (cf. also Carter 2000, 191; Garland 1993, 89).16 According to Käsemann, who concurs with Schlatter (1933; 1963), Matthew was probably an ‘ethical rigorist’ and a representative of the earliest ‘Christian rabbinate’.17 Mat15 Asceticism is another form (Crossan 1998, 265–271.283–284). Even prayer creates or presupposes that this world has come to an end and has been replaced by God’s world within which communication between God and humankind takes place, although only for a short time. All eschatologies, ‘asceticism’ or ‘apocalypticism’, advocate that God’s perfect world will be brought about by a termination of the created world which is domesticated by systemic evil. An apocalyptic perspective on the end of the world consists of a cosmic cataclysm and catastrophe expressed by symbolic language pertaining to earthquakes, fallen stars, darkness in daylight, empty tombs, holy wars, etc. Asceticism, on the other hand, also brings the world to its end, for example, by means of celibacy. Another form of ‘eschatology’ is ‘ethical eschatology’ or ‘social apocalypticism’ (Crossan 1998, 273–292). 16 According to Käsemann, this polemic is aimed not at the Pharisees, but at followers of Jesus with a ‘spirit-filled piety’ who claimed that only they had miracle working powers, such as the gifts of prophecy, exorcism and faith healing. (According to Hare 1985, 297–377, Mt 7:21–23 reflects a distinction between ‘eminent Christians’ [=‘church leaders’] and ‘humble Christians’). The corresponding passages in Lk 6:46 and 13:26f. do not contain these concrete examples. It would thus seem as if Matthew (as we also find it in Acts) refers to an enthusiastic group among the ‘Gentile Christians’ in Palestine. Matthew distanced himself from this Jesus group. However, he did not mention or criticize his opponents’ ‘errors’. (Carter 2000, 141 has a similar view on Mt 5:20.) 17 According to Käsemann, Matthew employs the judgment saying in chapter 7:15: ‘Go away from me …’ (3URVHYF HWH DMSR), which also occurs in Psalm 6:9. Matthew

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thew’s criticism centres on the basis of Christ’s ‘absolute rule’ and the ‘eschatological freedom’ of the followers of Jesus. It is a criticism which could only have emanated from those ‘endowed with the Spirit’ and is aimed at people who, within the context of Israel, wanted to exercise authority in the community on the basis of the ‘authority of the Spirit of God’ by means of their teaching of the Torah (Käsemann 1969, 85). Matthew 10:5f. is one place18 where we hear an example of Matthew’s opinion on this matter. Matthew 5:17–20 is another very specific example of the debate about the conservation of the Torah.19 The two groups there-

uses this ‘formal curse’ against his opponents which implies the connotation ‘I did not know you’. He expresses this intent with the ‘legal term’ R-PRORJHLCQ. In Matthew 23:8– 10 we find a debate directed against a similar practice in the context of the ‘Christian rabbinate’. Followers of Jesus used the title ‘rabbi’ to refer a leader as ‘teacher’ (GLGDYV NDORa), ‘father’ (SDWKYU) and ‘tutor’ (NDTKJKWKYa). According to Matthew, these are titles which should be used only for God (or the Christ). 18 This verse does not occur in the other Synoptic Gospels. Here we find the strictest form of ‘Jewish Christendom’, which was not in favour of any mission outside the borders of Israel; even though missionary activity directed at Gentiles was already underway (Acts reports the same matter). Matthew’s aversion to the mission to Gentiles and Samaritans should, according to Käsemann, be understood from an apocalyptic perspective, as was already reported in the Old Testament (e.g., Zech 2:11; cf. also Targum of Isa 2:2b; 2 Esdras 13:49; 2 Bar 72:3–6). According to this notion of the nations’ pilgrimage to Mount Zion, God will gather Israel and the nations on Mount Zion, where they will praise him. God will gather the ‘lost sheep’ and care for the Gentiles. People should not appropriate this honour themselves at God’s expense by themselves carrying out the mission to the Gentiles. The only thing that Matthew expects from the followers of Jesus is that they bring together the ‘lost sheep of Israel’ in order for the parousia of God to arrive. (To Käsemann 1969, 88, this is more or less Paul’s message in Rom 11:25f.). According to Käsemann (1969, 88), ‘it follows that all that can be done in the earthly present is to lead the lost sheep of the house of Israel back into the unity of the messianic people of the twelve tribes for the precise purpose of enabling the parousia to come to pass’. However, the opinion of the other group was that the end of the world had arrived with the Easter events and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. The mission to the Gentiles is an eschatological sign initiated by God and not by human beings. 19 Matthew 5:17–20 is a very specific example of the debate on the conservation of the Torah. Matthew prescribes the conservation of the Torah to the last iota and title. The form of Matthew 5:19 is important, as it can be typified as a ‘sentence of holy law’ – an ‘eschatological jus talionis’ (cf. also Käsemann 1954–1955, 124–147). Besides the Jesus group represented by Matthew, there was another Jesus group. In the past, some have thought that Matthew directs his attack at Paul. According to Käsemann (1969, 87), however, this does not seem entirely to have been the case, although Paul’s influence might be part of what Matthew directed his gospel against. The Temple in Jerusalem was no longer the centre of their life or the symbol of God’s presence. For the first time in the history of the church, a situation arose in which spirit was set against spirit – or to put it in another way – ‘Torah against Torah’.

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fore thought differently about the ‘end of time’.20 Against this background, Käsemann (1969, 89) reconstructs his understanding of the ‘origin of Christian theology’.21 In the end, they were marginalized as a sect22 (cf. especially Duling 1995a, 159–182; 1995b, 1–30). In the midst of the evergrowing mission to Gentiles, they focused their missionary work on the ‘lost sheep of Israel’. Against this backdrop Weren (1979), in his dissertation on Matthew’s eschatology, refers to Matthew’s de-apocalypticizing tendency (Entgeschichtlichung der Eschatolologie).23 By rescinding apocalypticism’s typical dualism between a present despondent time and an imminent time of salvation, Matthew has refocused the attention on the ethics of caring for the poorest of the poor (the RL- H-ODFLYVWRL– Mt 25:45), whom Weren refers to in the title of his book as ‘the brothers of the Son of man’ (de broeders van de Mensenzoon). They were the object of both Jesus’ commission and the disciples’ commission (see Van Aarde 2007b; cf. Weren 1979, 188).24 Thus, Weren (1979, 190) concludes that the eschaton in Mat20 The one group persisted in Israel’s national hope, while the other group went beyond this eschatological tradition – though both lay claim to being filled with the Spirit. ‘Being filled with the Spirit’ resulted in the one group’s limiting mission work to the area within the borders of Israel (as we see in Mt 10:5), while this same ‘being filled with the Spirit’ compelled the other group to engage in missionary activity to the Gentiles (as we see in Acts 13:2). Both groups believed that the parousia would take place soon (as we see in Mk 9:1 and Mt 16:28; 24:34). They believed it would occur in their own time. They celebrated the eucharist in the expectation of the imminent heavenly feast. It was therefore not the issue of being filled with the spirit as such that led to the dispute between the two groups, but the different ‘theologies’ the two groups adhered to. 21 According to Käsemann, the ‘Hellenists’ (see Acts 6 – cf. Riches 1997, 46–47) were driven from Jerusalem and, in Antioch, they became the precursors of the later ‘Pauline apostolate’. The ‘strictly Judaic-Christian group’ gathered in Jerusalem. The members of this Jesus group increasingly found themselves in an ever-growing ‘Gentile Christianity’. 22 For a recent discussion on ‘Matthew’s sectarianism’, see Luz (1985; 1989, 219); Overman (1990, 154); Saldarini (1991, 44–60; 1994, 84–123); Duling (1995a, 159–182; 1995b, 1–30); Sim (1996, 182–192; 1998, 113); Riches (1997, 76–78) and Carter (2000, 43–49). 23 Weren (1979, 188 n. 16, 236) refers inter alia to the work of Sand (1972–1973, 167–177). 24 In my article ‘Jesus’ mission to all of Israel emplotted in Matthew’s story’ (Van Aarde 2007b), I argue that, although the ‘crowd’ and the ‘gentiles’ do not fulfil the same character roles in Matthew’s plot, the two groups function together as the object of the missions of Jesus and the disciples in the post-paschal period. This view disputes the opinion that there is a discontinuity between the ‘Israelite crowd’ as the object of the Jesus-commission and the gentiles as the object of the disciples-commission at the postpaschal level. The commission reported in both Matthew 10 and Matthew 28:16–20 alludes to the mission of Jesus’ twelve disciples to the ‘lost sheep of Israel’.

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thew functions as a continuous present perspective by means of which the readers are challenged not to make peace with their immediate concrete need, but rather to conquer it by concrete actions. Eschatological pronouncements are therefore ethical appeals,25 explicitly expressed in the Lord’s prayer in the petition that God’s kingdom should come, followed by ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (Weren 1979, 190). According to Weren (1979, 188), ‘Matthew cannot [therefore] be regarded as an apocalypticist’,26 because the ethical actions of human beings do not attest to a passivity that is thought to go along with the end of time when this unjust aiǀn is replaced by God’s judgmental act of retribution on behalf of the righteous. However, to see apocalypticism as exclusive of ethics27 is to deny that apocalypticism is one of the various ‘eschatologies’ in the first-century Eastern Mediterranean world and that Jesus’ understanding of God’s kingdom was embedded in the context of ‘ethical eschatology’. However, such an outlook does not devalue our understanding of the heart of a ‘Christian’ apocalypticism (e.g. according to the Book of Revelation and the Synoptic Gospels) as implying that God sits on the heavenly throne, with Christ as the eschatological Son of man at God’s right hand.28 This belief underlies the proclamation that God is just. God’s judgment is no longer only expected, but it is something that is given and that will be disclosed at the parousia. It is already a given to all who are waiting in obedience for the

25 ‘...in de redactie van Mattheüs kan worden aangemerkt, dat hij eschatologische uitspraken verbind met concrete appèls’ (Weren 1979, 190). 26 ‘…Matteüs (kan) niet beschouwd worden als een apocalypticus’ (Weren 1979, 188.236; contra Hadfield 1959, 128–132 and Treese 1958, 281). 27 For example, Sanders (1975, 115): ‘It is unfortunate that we are today experiencing a revival of just the kind of Christianity found in Revelation; but this revival has its ironically fortunate side in that it permits one to see with all clarity the degree to which such a position is ethically destitute. When persons today consciously and deliberately reject all obligation to help to seek to overcome the social, international, and individual problems of our time and insist that such problems are not the concern of the individual because Jesus is coming soon, we have the ultimate retreat from ethical responsibility’. 28 Cf. Hengel (1995, 183.188): ‘In early Christianity analogous ideas are supposed in Matthew 19:28 = Luke 22:30; 1 Corinthians 6:2f. and Revelation 20:4ff. More significant was the parallel tradition that the son of man / messiah as representative and saviour of the true people of God is given the authority to judge; thus documented in the Similitudes of 1 Enoch and in particular in the teaching of Jesus and in earliest Christianity including Matthew 25:31ff. … [A]pparently dependent upon the language of the Similitudes – there [Mt 19:28; 25:31] is twice mentioned that the Son of man “sits on the throne of his glory” and the twelve disciples as the followers of Jesus become his college of associate judges…’ According to Hengel (1995, 173), ‘in particular the motif of sessio ad dexteram was material common to early Christian congregations, whether in Corinth, Antioch or Rome, and in my opinion demonstrates incontestably that they go back to the Jerusalem congregation’ (Cf. Hengel 1995, 155.158.167.181).

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final moment of the parousia, to those who hear and accept the prophetic pronouncements of the last judgment. In Matthew 10:32f., everyone is called on to confess Christ as the future Son of man, to follow the Christ even unto death. With this prophetic proclamation Matthew explains the disciples’ commission to Israel in eschatological terms.29 The disciples are told in Matthew 10:23 that they will not manage to visit all of Israel before the coming of the Son of man. Saldarini (1994, 78) is quite correct in interpreting this Matthean saying as follows: ‘What is envisioned is conflict within the Jewish community (10:23), which is then referred to the imperial authorities, on the model of what happened to Jesus’. The community of Matthew accepted that adversity and suffering still lay ahead for them.30 However, that hope died and, with it, the entire structure of apocalyptic theology in the time after the death of Jesus collapsed. On the basis of the resurrection faith, the community of Matthew awaited the renewal of the ‘twelve tribes’ of Israel,31 while they strove for the conservation of the Torah in Jesus’ terms.32

3. A Cameo on Eschatology and Apocalypticism Before we reflect on the correlation between the pre-paschal Jesus’ commission and the post-paschal disciples’ commission in order to explain the nature of Matthew’s eschatology, a reflection on the referential meanings of the concepts eschatology and apocalypticism is in order. We have seen that apocalypticism is not only a matter of a particular literary genre, but also a socio-religious and cultural phenomenon. However, this distinction between literariness and figurative language should not tempt us to think that people in the Biblical world would regard apocalyptic thinking as supernatural, as opposed to the natural world.33 Understanding an apocalyp29 In Matthew 10:23 the disciples are told that they will not manage to visit all of Israel before the coming of the Son of man. 30 According to Käsemann, it is here that the big difference is found between those filled with the Spirit in Matthew’s community and those filled with the Spirit, for instance, in Corinth (who believed that they had already overcome the worst punishment). For the latter group, the end of history had already taken place. In the light of Matthew 10:22 and 24:13, the ‘eschatological law’ points out that the acceptance of misery and suffering was proof of future salvation by God. Misery and suffering point to the path of redemption. The notions expressed in Matthew 10:23 are closely connected to this idea. 31 Cf. also Stanton (1992, 33); Luomanen (1998, 278) and Yueh-Han Yieh (2004, esp. 287). 32 And, according to Käsemann, also ‘fought against the mission to Gentiles’. 33 The Latin translation of the works of Pseudo-Dionysus in the ninth century introduced the word ‘supernatural’ into the theology of the Western Christendom (Saler 1977,

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tic mindset requires an ethno-methodological sensitivity to the difference between the experiences of people in a Eurocentric context and those of the people of the first-century Mediterranean world. Strictly speaking, apocalypticism involves the view that God’s new age will come very soon and that it will be introduced by catastrophes of cosmic dimensions. The authors of the New Testament writings announce this expectation in varying degrees. Nevertheless, one still needs to be concise concerning the meaning of both the terms apocalypticism and eschatology, noticing that Biblical scholars have begun to investigate the phenomenon of apocalypticism and the concepts of ‘time’ and of ‘apocalyptic eschatology’ from a cultural-anthropological perspective. With regard to time, one may distinguish between experienced time and imagined time (Malina 1996, 192–193). That which is imagined relates to that which one experiences.34 The world beyond experience, for example, the world beyond death, forms an elongation relative to what is experienced in the worldly life.35 What is sometimes called ‘apocalyptic eschatology’ by scholars (e.g. Sim 1996, 31–69), refers to experiences of ‘imaginary time’; and this is related to a consciousness manifested in experiences by means of visions or heavenly auditions that create a trancelike condition. Although these ‘mysterious’ and ‘strange’ imagined experiences were seen as ‘signifying the life of the world of thought’,36 people in antiquity regarded these apocalyptic phenomena as ‘natural’.

38.46). In his work Der Geist des Schamanismus, Walsh (1998, 145) refers as follows to the ancient worldview of diviners: ‘Als Metaphysiker neigen Schamanen dazu, Realisten zu sein. Das heißt, der westliche Mensch wird die oberen und unteren Welten, die der Schamanen durchmißt, höchstwahrscheinlich für mentale Konstruktionen halten, der Schamane dagegen hält sie für eigenständig existierende Reiche’. 34 Johann Kreuzer (2005a) puts it as follows: ‘Die Zeitalter, die der Jetztzeit entgegengehalten werden (das goldene und das der Erdgeborenen), stehen zwar für die rückwärts gewandte Gegenutopie einer mythischen Einheit mit dem Naturgeschehen des Kosmos. Es sind Zeitalter ohne Zeit – vorgeschichtliche Hypothesen, die der Erklärung des Zustands der jetzigen Weltordnung dienen. Aber die Hypothese von den verschiedenen Zeitaltern und ihrem Umlauf spricht dem Kosmos eine Geschichte zu’. 35 See Aristotle, Physica 4.10.218a.4–9: ‘Of time, some parts have been, while others have to be, and not part of it is. For what is “now” is not a part: a part is a measure of the whole, which must be made up of parts. Time on the other hand, is not held to be made up of “nows”’ (see Neyrey & Rowe 2008, n. 34). 36 According to Philo Judaeus, De mutatione nominum 267 (in Neyrey & Rowe 2008, fn. 52), this type of ‘time’ is not ‘measured by the revolutions of sun and moon, but something truly mysterious, strange and new, other than the realm of sight and sense, having its place in the realm of the incorporeal and intelligible, and to it belongs the model and archetype of time, eternity and aeon. The word aeon (DLMZYQ) signifies the life of the world of thought, as time (FURYQRa) is the life of the perceptible’.

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Furthermore, present-day studies on apocalyptic eschatology reveal a ‘sectarian mentality’ (cf. Saldarini 1991, 44–48; Carter 2000, 43). A minority group can be marginalized in a time of crisis. Separated from a ‘parent body’, a ‘sect’, being marginalized, tends to be aware of only two sides of a matter, because a sect tends to distinguish dualistically between right and wrong, the divine and the satanic, a world here and now and a world beyond this one. Apocalypticism is therefore marked by pessimism and determinism on the one hand, and by hope on the other. The present dispensation is seen as miserable, while the transcendent dispensation beyond this one is seen as joyful. Such pessimism and determinism relate well to the conviction that the course of history may be changed, for the sake of oneself and others, by means of the prayers and martyrdom of the ‘righteous’ (Malina 1996, 192–193). This apocalyptic setting unfolds in Matthew in a particular way (see Van Aarde 2005, 7–9). As I have mentioned above, my reconstruction of this context is that Matthew originated in the area of northern Galilee and southern Syria after 70 CE. (*DOLODLYDWZCQHMTQZCQ– Mt 4:15). In this setting, there was conflict between the grammateus Matthew and the village scribes who were in the process of establishing the first phase of a Pharisaic rabbinate. I would suggest that the Gospel of Matthew is a product of scribal activity within the context of the revitalization of villages after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The communities struggled to come to terms with the loss of both the Temple and Jerusalem. Since the city of God no longer existed, they had to find God’s presence in the environment of village communities.37 Amid Roman exploitation, scribes were engaged in village restoration. There was conflict between two sets of scribes: the followers of Jesus, who acknowledged him as messiah, and other Israelites, who upheld a traditional view of the messiah. The conflict centred on the interpretation of the Torah: Jesus as the ‘second Moses’ who fulfilled the Torah or the traditional Mosaic view as it was regulated by the Temple cult.38 37 The Jesus movement in Galilee and the work of early post-70 CE rabbis, called the ‘earlier scribes and sages’ by Horsley (1996, 181–184), can be seen as a ‘revitalization of village communities’. After the temple was destroyed, the Pharisaic scribes and sages reorganised themselves in places such as Jamnia (in Judea), Galilee and Syria. There, in the households of the villages, they tried to duplicate the old value systems of the Temple, especially regulations concerning hierarchy in society and the purity ideology of the Temple. A similar activity of revitalizing village communities was found among the Jesus groups. The value system they implemented was based on Jesus’ alternative understanding of the Torah. 38 According to Käsemann, Easter led to the origins of this ‘theology’, first that of the small Jesus group from within the tradition of Israel which later developed into a sect inside the ‘big church’, until it eventually disappeared with only very few traces (e.g., Mt

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Tension for believers revolves around the pressure which pagan powers placed on both the post 70 CE Temple cult and the ekklƝsia (the transformation of the Temple and Synagogue by the followers of Jesus after 70 CE). In general terms, the apocalyptic crisis was magnified because the presumed relation between the deed and retribution was not realized. The godless were not punished and the righteous were not visibly victorious. As a result of this embarrassment, experienced time was projected into an imaginary time in which God exercises control – in other words, God’s kingdom. In Matthew the expression ‘kingdom of the heavens’ refers only in a very specific sense of the word to the end of the world that awaits creation in the future. It is with regard to this notion of the ‘end of the world’ that the word eschatology comes into play.39 As with ‘imaginary times’ in the remote past ‘when the animals spoke’ (Bourdieu 1963, 60), the remote future would refer to ‘imaginary times’ when the immanent world is replaced by the transcendental world of God. In a sense, God’s world denotes a ‘perfect world’, a ‘divine utopia’ as opposed to our short-lived and corrupt world. The latter is mirrored in Matthew in terms of the post-70 CE

16:19). I agree with Käsemann’s thesis that Matthew conforms with the earliest Jesus group in Jerusalem, but I differ from him in respect of the underlying position of his thesis, namely that Matthew does not reflect an ‘anti-Paulinistic Antiochean’ writing, but rather an ‘intra-Christian’ controversy. To me, both options do not represent the Matthean Sitz im Leben. 39 However, one of the results of studying the formative stages of first-century religions is our awareness of anachronism. As theologians we have become used to terminology which is presumed to refer to phenomena in the Bible, but which was actually then unknown. The term ‘eschatology’ is such a theological concept (actually a theologoumenon because it is only employed in theological circles) from late modern times (cf. Lauer 1981). Malina (1993, 156) shows that ancient Mediterraneans had ‘little interest in [an] abstract future’ and were ‘essentially present-oriented’ (see also Malina 1989, 1–31). This opinion is confirmed by the study of the sociologist Bourdieu (1963, 55–72): ‘The lapse of time which constitutes the present is the whole of an action seen in the unity of a perception, including both the retained past and the anticipated future. The “present” of an action embraces, over and above the perceived present, an horizon of the past and of the future tied to the present because they both belong to the same context of meaning’. According to Neyrey and Rowe (2008), this ‘context of meaning’ (in other words, a social construct narrated in a narrative discourse – AvA) refers to the same phenomenon that Malina (1989, 11–14) refers to as ‘experienced time’. Gosden (1994, 2–5) distinguishes between such ‘experienced time’ and ‘measured time’. The future was separated from ‘present’ experienced time, according to Bourdieu (1963, 61.62), because the Mediterranean people of the first century ‘perceived in the same manner as the actual present to which it is tied by an organic unity’.

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conflict in southern Syria or northern Galilee between village scribes among Jesus groups and synagogical scribes among the Pharisees.40

4. Matthew’s Temporal Sequences Käsemann is quite correct when he says that Matthew’s community became progressively smaller. He is also right when he argues that the historical Jesus did not see himself as the apocalyptic Son of man. Matthew (as Mark, Q2, and Luke) inherited this tradition from the first Jesus group in Jerusalem. However, Käsemann is on the wrong track when he claims that Matthew’s community disappeared in the context of the frühkatholische Christian community, even though the ‘First Gospel’ as such became known within this context and was widely accepted by the ‘catholic church’. Indeed, the history of Matthew’s community seems to have been different. Marginalization occurred in the context of formative Judaism.41 It is against this historical background that Matthew created the narrative world of his discourse. In the plot there is some continuity, as well as an analogy, between the pre-paschal Jesus’ commission (the first sequence referred to above in this essay) and the disciples’ commission (the second 40 However, the debate between Jesus’ teaching and the Pharisees in the gospel tradition (such as the Sayings Gospel Q and the Gospel of Matthew that used Q as a source, cf. Kloppenborg 2000, 200ff.) should therefore not be seen anachronistically as two established institutes, a ‘church’ and a ‘synagogue’, in conflict with each other. Instead, the conflicting interests were the result of a process of institutionalisation that took two directions in the village communities. The gospel reports of Jesus’ teaching in the synagogues in Galilee mention that he was challenged by Pharisaic scribes (see Mk 1:21, 27; 2:1,6). ‘It seems likely that the tradition of Jesus’ teaching behind such literature as Mark, Q, and the Didache would have been cultivated in Galilean communities’ (Horsley 1996, 184). The context of this early scribal activity among Jesus followers and Pharisees was that of the bet-midrash (formative Judaism) rather than that of the bene ha-knessett (normative Judaism). From the second century onwards, the synagogue began functioning separately from the village administration (see Cohen 1992, 157–173; Levine 1992, 201–222). During the period of formative Judaism, the scribe responsible for the Gospel of Matthew seems to have been in conflict with some scribes of the Galilean/ Syrian village administration whose allegiance was given to the elite ex-Jerusalem scribes (cf. Orton 1989, 49). As a grammateus that became a ‘disciple’ of ‘the kingdom of the heavens’ (Mt 13:52), the author of the ‘First Gospel’ could have had his roots in Jerusalem. 41 Within this context, Matthew’s group (and, similarly, Ebionite Jesus groups in Trans-Jordan) disappeared. As an apocalyptic messianic movement, already a marginalized minority within the context of the formative Pharisaic rabbinate, Matthew’s community would have survived only with difficulty on the border between Galilee and Syria after the Bar-Kochba revolt.

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sequence). Through the transmission, conversion and reinterpretation of earlier traditions (oral and written), Matthew transposes the era of Jesus to the era of his marginalized community. This is done in such a way that two ‘worlds’ are simultaneously included as a narrative entity. Matthew’s narrative thus concerns people and things from an earlier time, while the later period in which the gospel arose and communicated is transparent. His narrative tells the story that God came to the world from God’s domain, the kingdom of the heavens. However, instead of manifesting in the Temple, which was once God’s dwelling place among God’s people, but which had degenerated as a result of the actions of the Temple authorities (cf. Mt 21:12ff.), the occupants of Moses’ cathedra (cf. Mt 23:2), God became God-with-us in Jesus, the Messiah or Son of man who is ‘greater than the Temple (Mt 12:6). This Jesus mission had the purpose of forgiving the sins of all people, the SDYQWD WD H>TQK From Matthew’s point of view, Jesus saw this inclusive group as the new ‘eschatological’ community.42 From a chronologically sequential perspective, there are three temporal sequences in the Gospel of Matthew. On the surface, the disciples’ postpaschal commission to the world follows the ‘time’ of Jesus. Whereas Mark wrote against the background of his anticipation of Jesus’ early return, Matthew allows for a possible delay before his return by emphasizing the commission theme. This issue is also present in Mark (cf. Mk 13:10), but, in Matthew, the disciples’ commission is described as an independent epoch with a typical Matthean function, which was to make disciples of all people (cf. Mt 28:16–20) (see Marxsen 1959, 63f.).43 One can therefore

42

More than a decade ago, Stanton argued that in Matthean studies we should abandon concepts such as the ‘true Israel’ and even the ‘new Israel’. According to Stanton (1992, 11), Matthew prefers to speak of a ‘new people’ (Mt 21:43) – ‘in effect a “third race” (tertium genus) over against both Jews and Gentiles’. However, he is of the opinion that ‘Matthew wrote his gospel partly in order to strengthen his readers’ resolve to continue to accept Gentiles’ (Stanton 1992, 281). From a slightly different perspective, Senior (2001, 18) deduces that Matthew’s ‘ultimate goal was the realization of an ecumenical vision uniting Jewish and Gentile Christians in one community’. Saldarini (1994), however, considers the ‘Matthean group’ as ‘a fragile minority still thinking of themselves as Jews and still identified with the Jewish community by others’. Therefore, speaking of the ‘Matthean community’, Saldarini uses the term ‘Christian-Jewish’ rather than ‘Jewish-Christian’. In the same vein, Hertig (1998) suggests that ‘Matthew sought to firmly plant Jewish-Christianity in the soil of Judaism for the sake of the Jews, while simultaneously exhibiting the universal nature of Jewish Christianity for the sake of the Gentiles’ 43 What is fundamental to Marxsen’s theory is that a distinction has to be drawn in Matthew between the ‘time’ of the Old Testament and the ‘time’ of Jesus – or, as Marxsen typifies it, the time of Jesus is an epoch between two others. However, there is some dispute about the number of sequences that are discernible in Matthew, the articulated

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conclude that in Matthew there are three sequences: the sequence of the pre-paschal events; the sequence of the post-paschal events up to the parousia; and the sequence that begins with the parousia. All three these sequences are closely integrated in Matthew’s plot. Compared to Mark which has only two occurrences (Mk 1:15; 14:49) of the prediction that the ‘time of Jesus’ is a fulfilment of a promise (which would be the ‘time of prophets’, that is the time described in the Hebrew Scriptures), the idea of fulfilment plays a far more prominent role in Matthew. Just as Matthew constitutes a connection between the time of the pre-paschal Jesus and the time of the post-paschal evangelist and his community, Matthew creates a connection between the time of Jesus and the time of Moses and the prophets, storied in the Hebrew Scriptures. This connection is expressed in the fulfilment citations in particular. In other words, the conclusion of the time of Jesus refers to a previous beginning, namely that of Moses and the prophets, that of the Hebrew Scriptures (Marxsen 1959, 64). The question concerns the nature of this connection, or continuity, which is expressed in the fulfilment citations, as well as in other citations from and allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Senior 1976, 670). An important issue under discussion is first to find the textual point where the first sequence switches over to the second.44 Familiarity point at which one sequence ends and another begins, and the place and nature of the time of the Old Testament within Matthew’s plot. 44 At the height of a previous generation of redaction-critical exegesis, scholars such as Strecker (1966) and Walker (1967) maintained a position opposed to that of scholars such as Trilling (1969a, 1969b) and Meier (1976). Strecker and Walker agree that three temporal phases can be distinguished in Matthew. Walker (1967, 115) refers to these three temporal phases as the ‘prehistory of the Messiah’, which began with Abraham, the ‘history of the calling of Israel’, which consists of the ministry of John the Baptist as the precursor of the Messiah and Jesus himself as the Mitte der Mitte, and, finally, the ‘history of the mission to the Gentiles’, which began with the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus and extends to the day of judgment and thus partly coincides with the time of the evangelist. Strecker (1966, 184–188) refers to these three temporal phases as the ‘time of the fathers and the prophets’, the ‘time of Jesus’ and the ‘time of the Heidenkirche’. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the ‘time of the prophets and of Jesus’ went over into the ‘eschatological time’. However, unlike Strecker and Walker, Kingsbury (1973, 471) distinguishes not three temporal phases but two. According to him, there is the time of Israel, ‘which is preparatory to and prophetic of the coming of the Messiah’, and there is the time of Jesus, ‘in which the time of Israel finds its fulfillment and which, from the vantage point of Matthew’s day, extends from the commencement of the ministry of John and of Jesus (past) through post-Easter times (present) to the coming consummation of the age (future)’. In other words, there is, strictly speaking, no time of the church in Matthew’s perception of history, ‘for this time’ is subsumed under the ‘last days’ inaugurated by John and Jesus. Thus, Kingsbury differs from Strecker and Walker, not with regard to the beginning of the ‘time of Jesus’, but with regard to the end of this ‘time’. He believes that there was no change in ‘time’ at Jesus’ death and resurrection, but that the ‘eschato-

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with the expressions that Matthew uses to refer to these sequences, especially the sequence of the post-paschal events up to the parousia, is important. The sequence after the parousia is known as, inter alia, K- ]ZKY (Mt 7:14; 18:8; 19:17) or K- ]ZK DLMZYQLRa (Mt 25:46), but also, for example, K- DMSZYOHLD (Mt 7:13), K- JHYHQQD (Mt 10:28) and K- NRYODVLa DLMZYQLRa (Mt 25:46). Other ‘places’ that refer to this ‘time’ are found in Matthew 3:12; 5:22; 18:8,9; 24:51; 25:10,23,30,34,41 and 26:28. This is the ‘time’ that begins with the parousia. This third sequence is only mentioned in Matthew’s gospel (chiefly in parables), but is not expanded upon. For this reason, the poetics of the Gospel of Matthew displays only two basic temporal levels, namely the sequence of the pre-paschal events and the sequence of the post-paschal events. The following temporal phrases mark the time that concludes with Jesus’ resurrection and his appearance and commission to the disciples: HMQ HMNHLYQZ WZC NDLUZC (cf. Mt 11:25; 12:1; 14:1), HMQ WKC Z^UD HMNHLYQK (cf. Mt 8:13; 10:19; 18:1; 26:55), DMSR WKCa Z^UDa HMNHLYQKa (cf. Mt 9:22; 15:28; 17:18), HMQ WKC K-PHYUD HMNHLYQK (cf. Mt 3:1; 7:22; 13:1; 22:23), DMSR¨ HMNHLYQKaWKCaK-PHYUDa (Mt 22:46) and WRYWH (cf. Mt 2:16; 3:13; 4:1). The participles using ‘time’ to depict circumstances in Matthew 2:1, 13, 19 and 4:12 can be added to the above temporal phrases. The following phrases again mark the end of the post-paschal disciples’ commission, that is, the parousia: WHYORa (cf. Mt 10:22; 24:6, 13f.), K- VXQWHOHLYDWRXC DLMZYQRa (Mt 13:39f., 49; 24:3; 28:20) and also HMQHMNHLYQDLaWDLCaK-PHYUDLa(Mt 24:19, 22, 29) and WRYWH (Mt 7:23).

5. Eschatology in Matthew’s Story and its Intertexts Regarding Matthew’s eschatology, Hagner’s (1996, 174-176) contribution to the Festschrift for Robert H Gundry (1982) is particularly significant as he provides a good survey of the relevant textual evidence and theological issues.45 Hagner points out that Matthew’s conception of time amounts to

logical time’ coincides fully with the ‘time of Jesus’. According to this view, the elements promise (Old Testament) and fulfilment (Jesus) separate the two temporal levels of time. Kingsbury (1973, 470; cf. Strecker 1966, 87) builds his argument on the time formula HMQ HNHLYQDLa WDLCa K-PHYUDLa, which appears in Mt 3:1 and 24:19, 22, 29. He considers this time formula to have an exclusive ‘eschatological’ connotation that refers to ‘that period of time which precedes the consummation of the age and the return of Jesus, Son of Man’. 45 These references are to the reprinted edition in the SBL Seminar Papers 1996 (1996, 163–181).

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the notion that ‘the end is announced as having begun’, and that this ‘foundational complexity’ is related to the promises of the scriptures (176), the destruction of Jerusalem, the implied interim period (175ff.) and the coming of the Son of man (174ff.). Hagner’s (1996, 177) opening remarks are a directive. I also concur with his finding at the end of his essay: Any attempt to describe Matthew’s eschatology in a comprehensive manner will find its greatest challenge in coping with the variety of materials that must be dealt with. Matthew’s eschatological perspective, like that of the other evangelists, includes statements concerning not only the future (near or more distant), but also the present, and even the past (i.e. already from the evangelist’s point in time.) There are furthermore statements in Matthew concerning the imminence of eschatological events, as well as others that imply a delay of the end, and even an interim period of considerable length, and last but not least, indications of agnosticism concerning the time of the end.

The directive concerns four issues occurring in this citation: – the role of Moses and the prophets (the promises of the Hebrew Scripture); – the destruction of Jerusalem/the Temple; – the interim period; – the coming of the Son of man. Hagner describes the fall of Jerusalem as imminent and the coming of the Son of man (the Messiah of Israel) as something belonging to the indeterminate future. He sees the ‘ministry of Jesus as the inauguration of eschatology ... in fulfillment of certain ... promises of scriptures’. He describes the implied interim period in Lukan terms as forty days and, indeed, as the open-ended period of the gentile mission. To me, Matthew considers the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple along with the seeing of the Son of man’s coming, anticipated in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The evangelist, then, as an explanation, places these two events within his description of the history of Israel. The events are revealed in Scripture (read in a midrash fashion) and the period of Moses and the prophets (i.e. the ‘time of the Old Testament’)46 should not 46 To restrict the term ‘Hebrew Scriptures = Old Testament’ to the Hebrew canon is historically anachronistic prior to 100 CE (cf. Charlesworth 1985, xxiv). During this period, in which the limits of the Hebrew canon were still fluid, some pseudepigrapha were composed which were not considered by either the synagogue or the church as ‘outside a canon’ (Charlesworth 1985, xxiii). This is specifically true with regard to the Gospel of Matthew. For example, it seems that Matthew was familiar with traditions in, among other writings, 1 Enoch (cf. Isaac 1983, 10), 2 Baruch (cf. Waetjen 1976, 49–52); the lives of the prophets (cf. Garland 1995, 260; Hare 1985, 297–377) and Pseudo-Philo (cf. Harrington 1985, 302). In these documents intertextual parallels occur, resembling each other regarding messianic eschatological symbolism. In this regard, 2 Baruch is very important, for it shares with Matthew an intention to cope with the ‘eschatological mean-

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be viewed as concluded time. Thus, Jesus, who is called the Christ, is the Son of man, and the so-called tension between ‘imminence’ and ‘indeterminate future’ must be understood from the perspective of first-century Mediterranean people of the time. The key to Matthew’s understanding of time is to be found in discerning what I call the turning of the tide. Finally, as motivation for my view, Matthew 27:45–54 is located within the discourse in the plot of Matthew, where this Wende der Zeit is reported. However, when Hagner describes the above-mentioned fundamental problems as questions with regard to (1) the tension between ‘presently realised eschatology’ and ‘eschatology proper’ (‘the eschatology of the future’); (2) the tension between ‘imminence’ and ‘delay’; and (3) the length of the ‘implied interim period’, he expresses himself by means of theological categories which, viewed cultural-anthropologically, are anachronistic and Eurocentric. Matthew’s ‘eschatology’ should rather be explained in terms of a conception of time in which experienced time is correlated with imaginary time. Specifically, the Messiah-Apocalypse of 2 Baruch 53–74 and the Septuagint of Daniel 7:14 should be seen as Matthew’s ‘intertexts’. In the first ‘intertext’, the history of Israel is also, as in Matthew’s genealogical record of the Messiah, divided into three epochs of fourteen seasons each. The second ‘intertext’ illuminates Jesus’ final departure and the ‘great commission’ to the disciples as recorded in Matthew 28:16–20. Even though Matthew does not refer to the resurrected Jesus using Christological titles (cf. Schaberg 1982, 135 n. 33), Schaberg (1982) convincingly indicates that the triadic formula in Matthew 28:16–20 in all probability represents an ‘allusion to the Septuagint of Daniel 7:14’.47 Just as Josephus (Ant 4.326) interprets Moses’ ‘final departure’ in terms of Daniel 7, Matthew ends and begins the story of Jesus and the disciples with a ‘throne-theophany commission’ (Schaberg 1982, 189) by means of his editorial adaptation of a tradition. This point of view is based on the theory that ‘some NT triadic texts,48 of which Matthew 28:19b is one, developed out of an originally Israelite

ing’ of the Temple after the catastrophe of 70 CE and with the emergence of formative Judaism (cf. Klijn 1983, 620). In both Matthew and 2 Baruch, the history of Israel is interpreted by means of apocalyptic imagery in the light of the destruction of the Temple (cf. Saldarini 1994, 14). However, it is extremely difficult to prove dependency on the part of Matthew. It is, as Klijn (1983, 619) argues in respect of 2 Baruch, a common ‘dependency on apocalyptic imagery’. 47 Cf. Davies and Allison (2004, esp. 682–684); Luomanen (1998, 194–260); LaGrand (1999, 236–238); Riches (2005, 137.138). 48 See, e.g., Mk 8:38; 13:32; Mt 25:31–43; 13:36–43; Lk 12:8–9; 1 Thess 4:13–18; 2 Thess 1:5–10; Rev 1:4–7; 5:6–7; 11:15–18 (cf. Schaberg 1982, 286).

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apocalyptic triad’49 (Schaberg 1982, 45). Matthew’s perception of time, namely that the ‘the end is announced as having begun’ refers to the coming of the Son of man and the mission of the ekklƝsia. In view of the question of the justification of the death of martyrs, Daniel 7 is interpreted as a ‘statement of belief in the transcendence of death’. This resurrection faith is packaged in Daniel in terms of an old mythological idea of a ‘transfer of power from one divinity to another’ (cf. Schaberg 1982, 187ff.). Matthew 28:19f. is a midrash type apocalyptic allusion with verbatim similarities to DanielLXX 7:13–14: HMTHZYURXQHMQR-UDPDWLWKCaQXNWRa NDLLMGRXHMSLWZCQQHIHOZCQWRXCRXMUDQRXC  Z-aXL-RaDMQTUZYSRXK>UFHWR NDLZ-aSDODLRaK-PHUZCQSDUKCQ NDLSDUHVWKNRYWHaSDUKCVDQDXMWZC NDLHMGRYTKDXMWZCHM[RXVLYDNDLSDYQWDWDH>TQKWKCaJKCaNDWDJHYQK  NDLSDCVDGRY[DDXMWZCODWUHXYRXVD NDLK-HM[RXVLYDDXMWRXCHM[RXVLYDDLMZYQLRa K^WLaRXMPKDMUTKCNDLK-EDVLOHLYDDXMWRXC K^WLaRXMPKITDUKC

Matthew 28:18–20: NDLSURVHOTZQR-¨,KVRXCaHMODOKVHQDXMWRLCaSDYQWDOHYJZQ  HMGRYTKPRLSDCVDHM[ RXVLYDHMQRXMUDQZCNDLHSLWKCaJKCaSRUHXTHYQWHaRX?Q PDTKWHXYYVDWHSDYQWDWDH>TQK  EDSWLY]RQWHaDXMWRXaHLMaWRR>QRPDWRXCSDWURaNDLWRXCXL-RXCNDLWRXCDMJLYRXSQHX YPDWRa  GLGDYVNRQWHaDXMWRXaWKUHLCQSDYQWDR>VDHMQHWHLODYPKQX-PLCQNDLLMGRXHMJZPHT¨ X-PZCQHLMPLSDYVDaWDaK-PHYUDaH>ZaWKCaVXQWHOHLYDaWRXCDLMZCQRa

Both Daniel 7:13–14 and Matthew 28:18–20 should be read as referring to an eschatological event, namely ‘the beginning of the end of the final kingdom’ (Schaberg 1982, 115). It is not clear in Daniel 7 whether the period of the ‘evil beasts’, whose lives (according to v. 12) have been lengthened, will expire when the authority of him ‘who looks like the Son of man’ will be transferred, or whether everybody, according to verse 14,

49

Probably influenced by formative Christianity’s thinking with regard to the triad Father, Son and Holy Ghost; Matthew changed the references to the Ancient of Days, Son of man and Angels (= ‘those around him’ [NDL RL- SDUHVWKNRYWHaSDUKCVDQDXMWZC]) in Dan 7:13–14, but retained the triadic pattern in Mt 28:19 (cf. Schaberg 1982, 45).

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will serve him immediately.50 In other words, even in Daniel 7 the final moment of ‘imagined’ vindication is not seen as something that would be completely ‘experienced’. It is displaced to the realm where God alone exercises control. This element agrees with the so-called agnosticism in Matthew’s eschatology. In Matthew 28:16–20, the final parousia of the vindicating Son of man is also displaced to the ‘close of the age’. However, Gundry (1982, 545) is right in that the ‘mental seeing of the Son of Man sitting at God’s right hand’ commences, according to Matthew, immediately with the events of which we read in Matthew 27:51b–53.51 The reference to the resurrection of SROOD VZYPDWD WZCQ NHNRLPKPHYQZQ D-JLYZQ (‘many bodies of sleeping saints’) in verse 53 forms the culminating point of Matthew 27:51b–53. Verses 51–54, in their turn, form the climax of the literary structure of Matthew 27 (cf. Witherup 1987, 578). The Old Testament background and the apocalyptic imagery of this passage are well recognised (cf. Kratz 1973; Riebl 1978). Some scholars have tried to show how the reference to the raising of the saints after Jesus’ resurrection should be understood against the description of the death of the divine man (cf. Fascher 1941), the death of the cosmic deity (cf. Kratz 1973), or as a mythological descent into hell to liberate the holy ones (cf. Crossan 1988). It seems that traditions such as those in 2 Maccabees 7, 1 Enoch 51:2 (now contained in 1 En 37–71, the book usually called The similitudes of Enoch), Ezekiel 37:7, 12 as well as the Gospel of Peter 9:35–10:42 could have assisted Matthew in the composition of Matthew 27:52–53 (cf. Crossan 1988, 392–393). In 2 Maccabees 7, the martyrs repeatedly assert their resurrectional victory as a reward for their martyred fidelity. In 1 Enoch 51:1–2 we specifically read: In those days, Sheol will return all the deposits which she has received and hell will give back all that it owes. And he shall choose the righteous and the holy ones from among (the risen dead), for the day when they shall be selected and saved has arrived! (translation according to Crossan).

50 Dan 7:14 displays some resemblance to Mt 28:17. In this last reference to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew, an open-endedness is reported in that some disciples do glorify the resurrected Jesus (NDL LMGRQWHaDXMWRQSURVHNXYQKVDQ), while others do not (RL-GHHMGLYVWDVDQ) (cf. Van Aarde 1994, 102). In the Theodotion edition of Dan LXX 7:14, the words WLPKY and GRXOHXYVRXVLQ are respectively used in place of HM[ RXVLYD and OD WUHXYRXVD 51 Saldarini (1994, 192) describes the resemblance in apocalyptic imagery between Mt 27:51ff. and Mt 28:16ff. as follows: ‘Finally, Jesus’ triumph over death is revealed by miraculous phenomena (earthquake and light, 28:2–3) and a heavenly messenger. He reappears as apocalyptic ruler and Son of God (28: 9–10, 16–20), as he said he would in chapters 24–25’.

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In Ezekiel 37:7, 12, just as in Matthew 27:51b–53 (cf. also Senior 1974, 321), a sequence of earthquakes, the opening of the graves and the resurrection of those buried are mentioned. In the Gospel of Peter we find the description of the ‘escorted and communal resurrection’. Matthew was either unaware of or unconcerned about the awkward conjunction of verses 52 and 53 in his Chapter 27. According to Crossan (1988, 392), Matthew ‘wanted to mention the resurrection of the saints, and this could only happen after the resurrection of Jesus’. What is at stake here is the belief of the followers of Jesus among the Israelites in the communal resurrection. Although it is firmly based on post-exile concepts, the notion of resurrection in the New Testament is divorced from its originating context. Because a new age was seen as having begun with Jesus, for the post-70 CE followers of Jesus, the image of resurrection initiated a metaphoric shift within the symbolic patterns of the apocalyptic code. Apocalypticism locates divine victory over evil and the renewal of creation in the future. The Christian ekklƝsia locates this in the transcendence of death believed to be caused by resurrection of Jesus Christ (therefore it has already been accomplished), and at the same time sees it in the future at the parousia. In Matthew’s plot, the transition between Jesus’ ministry and the disciples’ commission takes place at Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Trilling (1969a; 1969b), in two separate articles, shows that the Wende der Zeit takes place at this point in the Gospel of Matthew (cf. Meier 1975, 207). Trilling says in the first article that Matthew 27:51ff. is highly remarkable, since the death of Jesus not only causes the veil to tear – which, according to The lives of the prophets Hab 12:11–12, signifies God’s judgment of the Temple cult (Garland 1995, 260), the end of the old cultic order – but also causes earthquakes (see Zch 14:4) and the resurrection of the dead (see Ezek 37:13–14 and 1 En 51:1–2). These are eschatological ‘woes’ (Sim 1996, 104). The earthquake is one of the apocalyptic elements; it marks the beginning of the end and the rearrangement of the world (Trilling 1969a, 191–211; Allison 1982, 80–103). According to Sim (1996, 104), ‘[a]ll these cosmic signs ... act as the prelude to the arrival of the Son of man’. The same point of view is expressed in the second article by Trilling, in which he states that, with regard to Matthew 27:51ff., these verses can only be seen as an announcement, through the death of Jesus, of the beginning of the new aeon, a change that encloses the whole cosmos. It is a dramatic anticipation of Jesus’ resurrection in the story of Jesus’ death. It announces the destruction of the old and the dawning of the new time (Trilling 1969b, 212–243; cf. Waetjen 1976, 248). Meier (1975, 207; 1976, 30–35) also believes that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus introduce the Wende der Zeit. However, he holds the view that there is a radical distinction between the ‘old time’ and the ‘new

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time’. He equates the ‘old time’ with the ‘time of the Hebrew Scriptures’ and therefore with the demand for obedience to the Mosaic law and the time of particularism. He equates the ‘new time’ with the period of the universal intent, which began with the death and resurrection of Jesus and was foreshadowed during the ‘old time’, as can be seen in texts such as Matthew 8:5–13 and 15:21–28.52 The use of the Hebrew Scriptures is an important directive to read the narrative as the evangelist intended it to be read. The introductory formula of the fulfilment citations is referred to by Stanton (1992, 348) as the ‘asides of the evangelist’ which ‘are not placed on the lips of Jesus or of other participants in the evangelist’s story’. By means of scriptural proof and fulfilment citations, the Hebrew Scriptures function as the narrator’s commentary. On these, he bases the continuity and analogy between the pre-paschal Jesus’ commission and the post-paschal disciples’ commission. This continuity and analogy lies in the presence of Jesus as God-withus on both temporal levels. Senior (1976, 672f.) also considers that Matthew uses the Hebrew Scriptures to build a continuity and analogy between his image of Jesus and his image of the ekklƝsia. Waetjen puts it as follows: ‘The death of Jesus is also the death of Israel’ (Waetjen 1976, 248) and ‘(T)he promises of the Old Testament have been fulfilled and cancelled at the same time’ (Waetjen 1976, 244). Waetjen (1976, 46–53) indicates how the eschatological turning of the tide in Israel’s history is already narrated at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew in the composition of Jesus’ genealogical record as the Messiah of Israel.53 The Messiah-Apocalypse of 2 Baruch 53–74 also divides the history of Israel into three epochs of fourteen seasons each and, as has already been mentioned, this concurs with the genealogical record of the

52

Meier builds his argument chiefly on the baptismal command to the disciples with regard to the SDQWDWD H>TQK(Mt 28:19). According to him, baptism replaces circumcision, which symbolized the ‘old time’. Just as the particular intent went over into the universal, the demand for obedience to the Mosaic law, according to Meier, falls away with Jesus’ death and resurrection. 53 ‘This differentiation of position between the time of Jesus and the time of the evangelist is inherently supported by the gospel’s eschatology, especially as it is conceived by the introductory genealogy. Israel’s history, which begins with Abraham, is culminated and concluded in its third epoch by the death of Jesus the Messiah. The end also marks the termination of the authority of the scribes and Pharisees. The new Israel, which is established by his disciples after his resurrection from the dead (Mt 18:16–20), is discontinuous with the old and therefore is no longer subordinate to the former occupants of Moses’ cathedra’ (Waetjen 1976, 218).

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Messiah in Matthew.54 In Matthew 1:17, the periods of David and the Babylonian exile mark both the end of a previous epoch and the commencement of the next one in the history of Israel. These two transitions are related to the presence or absence of the Temple in Jerusalem. Both periods are constructed in such a way as to consist of fourteen generations. The third epoch, which marks the commencement of the second Temple period, ends with the unlucky number thirteen when Matthew refers to the birth of R- ¨,KVRXCa R- OHJRYPHQRa FULVWRYa. However, Matthew (1:17) states categorically that this last phase is also made up of fourteen generations. In terms of the period of the previous two epochs in the history of Israel, one can expect that the period of the Messiah, like that of David and the Babylonian exile, is related to the end of a period, which concludes with the destruction of the Temple, and to the commencement of a new Temple period. From Iser’s (2006a, 64) perspective on a receptionaesthetic reading scenario, this unnamed fourteenth generation forms a gap (Leerstelle) in the plot of the narrative which the exegete must fill with information gained from internal material from the narrative itself or from external material from intertexts related to Matthew. I would like to call the transition from the thirteenth period to the notmentioned fourteenth in this history the ‘eschatological turning of the tide’. The thirteenth period is concerned with the high point of Temple corruption which passes into the experience of the final destruction of the Temple cult of Jerusalem in the midst of cosmic catastrophes. The fourteenth is concerned with the construction of a Temple which is not built by human hands. Matthew projects the death of the righteous Jesus, which he experiences as the result of extraordinary Temple corruption, into the imaginary time of the vision of the coming of the Son of man. Looking back to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, Matthew describes both the death of the Messiah and the vision of the coming of the Son of man. This view of the history of Israel leads Matthew to a specific adaptation of the traditions concerning the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. Both events are seen by Matthew as having been anticipated when, in Matthew 27:45–53, he adapts apocalyptic traditions. From his present experience of the ecclesia pressa, against the background of the 54

Waetjen (1976, 63 n. 9) mentions that this insight may be found, probably for the first time in 1841–1844 in Hoffmann, and that it was afterwards taken over by Zahn en Stendahl. Matthew’s apocalyptic model of the history of Israel which culminates in the messianic period concurs with the Messiah-Apocalypse of 2 Baruch 53–54. In this Apocalypse, we also find three epochs of fourteen periods each, which are portrayed in terms of the ‘procedure time’ of the rainy seasons. Here too, the presence or absence of the Temple in Jerusalem is an indication of good and bad periods in the history of Israel. The messianic empire forms the grand finale.

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rift with the synagogue, he leaves his readers in the hands of God, who alone decides the close of the age (VXQWHOHLYD WRXC DLMZCQRa), so that the church, in the mission to the SDYQWDWD H>TQK, experiences a sense that Jesus is God-with-us, for the followers of Jesus have seen the Son of man come.

6. Finding This essay argues that Matthew describes both the fall of Jerusalem, including the destruction of the Temple, and the vision of the coming of the Son of man as having been anticipated in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus; and that Matthew places these two events, in an explanatory fashion, in his description of the history of Israel. It shows that these events are revealed in Scripture and that, for the ekklƝsia, the validity of Moses and the prophets (the Hebrew Scriptures) is not something in the past. It is argued that Jesus, who is called the Christ, is the Son of man and that the tension between ‘imminence’ and ‘indeterminate future’ must be understood from the perspective of Matthew’s perception on time – the key to this understanding is located in recognizing that Matthew 27:45–54 is the narration within the plot where this Wende der Zeit is reported. For Matthew, eschatology is the end that has come. In Jesus’ words, eschatology is about the ethical fulfilment of God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. Works Consulted Allison, DC 1982 The end of the ages has come: An early interpretation of the passion and resurrection of Jesus. Philadelphia. Aristotle, Physica, edited by WD Ross 1966 Aristotelis physica. Oxford. Bornkamm, G 1961 Enderwartung und Auslegung im Matthäus-evangelium, in Überlieferung und Auslegung im Matthäusevangelium, Bornkamm, G; Barth, G und Held, HJ (eds.), Neukirchen, 13–47. Bourdieu, P 1963 The attitude of the Algerian peasant toward time, in Mediterranean countrymen: Essays in the social anthropology of the Mediterranean, Pitt-Rivers, J (ed.), Paris, 55–72. Butcher, SH 1951 Aristotle’s theory of poetry and fine art, with critical text and translation of The Poetics. With a prefatory essay, Aristotelian literary criticism by Gassner, J. New York. Carter, W 2000 Matthew and the margins: A socio-political and religious reading. Sheffield. Charlesworth, JH (ed.) 1983 The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 1: Apocalyptic literature and Testaments. London. – 1985a The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2: Expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, fragments of lost Judeo-Hellenistic works. Garden City.

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– 1985b Introduction for the General Reader, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Volume 2: Expansions of the ‘Old Testament’ and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical literature, Prayers, Psalms, and Odes, fragments of lost Judeo-Hellenistic works, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), Garden City, xxi–xxxiv. Cohen, JD 1992 The place of the rabbi in Jewish society of the second century, in The Galilee in late antiquity. Levine, LI (ed.), New York, 157–173. Cope, OL 1989 ‘To the close of the age’: The role of apocalyptic thought in the Gospel of Matthew, in Apocalyptic and the New Testament: Essays in honour of J. Louis Martyn, Marcus, J & Soards, ML (eds.), Sheffield, 113–124. Crossan, JD 1988 The cross that spoke: The origins of the Passion narrative. San Francisco. – 1998 The birth of Christianity: Discovering what happened in the years immediately after the execution of Jesus. San Francisco. Cullmann, O 1971 Christ and time: The primitive Christian conception of time and history. London. – 1956 The proleptic deliverance of the body according to the New Testament, in The Early Church, Higgins, AJB (ed.). London. Davies, WD & Allison, DC 2004 A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Volume III. London. Duling, DC 1995a The Matthean brotherhood and marginal scribal leadership, in Modeling early Christianity: Social-scientific studies of the New Testament in its context, Esler, P (ed.), London, 159–182. – 1995b Matthew and marginality. HTS 51(1), 1–30. Fascher, E 1941 Anastasis-Resurrectio-Auferstehung: Eine program-matische Studie zum Thema ‘Sprache und Offenbarung’. ZNW 40, 166–229. Garland, DE 1993 Reading Matthew: A literary and theological commentary on the First Gospel. New York. – 1995 Reading Matthew: A literary and theological commentary on the First Gospel. New York. Gosden, C 1994 Social being and time. Oxford. Gundry, RH 1982 Matthew: A commentary on its literary and theological art. Grand Rapids. Hadfield, P 1959 Matthew the apocalyptic editor. LondQHolbRev 28, 128–132. Hagner, DA 1985 Apocalyptic motifs in the Gospel of Matthew: Continuity and discontinuity. Horizons in Biblical Theology 7, 53–82. – 1994 Matthew’s eschatology in To tell the mystery, in Essays on New Testament eschatology in honor of Robert G Gundry, Schmidt, TE & Silva, M (eds.), Sheffield, 49–71. Hahn, F 1988 Die eschatologische Rede Matthäus 24 und 25, in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium: Festschrift für Wilhelm Pesch, Schenke, L (ed.), Stuttgart, 109– 126. Hare, DRA 1985 The Lives of the Prophets, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), Garden City, 297–377. – 1993 Matthew. Louisville. Harrington, DJ 1985 Pseudo-Philo, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), Garden City, 297–377. Hengel, M 1974 Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their encounter in Palestine during the early Hellenistic period. London. – 1995 ‘Sit at my right hand!’, in Studies in early Christology, Edinburgh, 119–226. Hertig, P 1998 Matthew’s narrative use of Galilee in the multicultural and missiological journeys of Jesus. Lewiston.

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Horsley, RA 1987 Jesus and the spiral of violence: Popular Jewish resistance in Roman Palestine. San Francisco. – 1991 Q and Jesus: Assumptions, approaches and analyses. Semeia 55, 175–209. – 1996 Archeology, history, and society in Galilee: The social context of Jesus and the rabbis. Valley Forge. Isaac, E 1983 1 (Ethiopic Apocalypse of) Enoch, in The Old Testament Pseudepigraphia, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), London, 5–89. Iser, W 2006a Reception theory, in How to do theory, Iser W, Malden, 57–69. Käsemann, E 1954–1955 Sätze heiligen Rechtes im Neuen Testament. NTS 1, 248–260. – 1960 Die Anfänge christlicher Theologie. ZThK 57, 162–185. – 1969 The beginnings of Christian theology, in New Testament questions of today, London, 82–107. Kingsbury, JD 1973 The structure of Matthew’s Gospel and his concept of salvationhistory. CBQ 35, 451–474. – 1977 Matthew. Philadelphia. Klijn, AFJ 1983 2 (Syriac Apocalypse of) Baruch, in The Old Testament Pseudepigraphia, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), London, 615–652. Kloppenborg, JS 2000 Excavating Q: The history and setting of the Sayings Gospel. Minneapolis. Kratz, R 1973 Auferweckung als Befreiung: Eine Stunde zur Passions- und Auferstehungstheologie des Matthäus. Stuttgart. Kreuzer, J 2005a Zeit- und Geschichtsbild, in Neues Testament und Antike Kultur, Band 3: Weltauffasung – Kult – Ethos, Zangenberg, J (ed.), Neukirchen-Vluyn, 110–114. – 2005b Von der erlebten zur gezählten Zeit: Die Anfänge der Zeitphilosophie in der Antike, in Die Realität der Zeit, Kreuzer, J & Mohr, G (eds.), München, 1–49. Lauer, RH 1981 Temporal man: The meaning and uses of social time. New York. LaGrand, J 1999 The earliest Christian mission to ‘all nations’ in the light of Matthew’s Gospel. Grand Rapids. Levine, LI 1992 The sages and the synagogue in late antiquity, in The Galilee in late antiquity, Levine, LE (ed.), New York, 201–222. Luomanen, P 1998 Entering the kingdom of heaven: A study on the structure of Matthew’s view of salvation. Tübingen. Luz, U 1989 Matthew 1–7: A commentary. Minneapolis. Malina, BJ 1993 Windows on the world of Jesus: Time travel to ancient Judea. Louisville. Marxsen, W 1959 Der Evangelist Markus: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Evangeliums. Göttingen. Meier, JP 1975 Salvation-history in Matthew: In search of a starting point. CBQ 37, 203– 215. – 1976 Law and history in Matthew’s gospel: A redactional study of Mt. 5:17–48. Rome. Miller, RJ (ed.) 2001 The apocalyptic Jesus: A debate. Santa Rosa. Murphy, FJ 1994 Apocalypses and apocalypticism: The state of the question. Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 2, 147–180. Neyrey, JH & Rowe, E 2008 ‘Telling time’ in the Fourth Gospel. HTS 64(1), 391–320. Orton, DE 1989 The understanding scribe: Matthew and the apocalyptic ideal. Sheffield. Overman, JA 1990 Matthew’s gospel and formative Judaism: The social world of the Matthean community. Minneapolis. Riches, J 1997 Matthew. Sheffield. – 2005 Matthew’s missionary strategy in colonial perspective, in The Gospel of Matthew in its Roman imperial context, Riches, J & Sim, DC (eds.), London, 128–142.

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Riebl, M 1978 Auferstehung Jesu in der Stunde seines Todes? Zur Botschaft von Mt 27, 51b–53. Stuttgart. Saldarini, AJ 1991 The Gospel of Matthew and Jewish-Christian conflict, in Social history of the Matthean community: Cross-disciplinary approaches, Balch, DL (ed.), Minneapolis, 38–61. – 1994 Matthew’s Christian-Jewish community. Chicago. Saler, B 1977 Supernatural as a Western category. Ethos 5, 31–53. Sand, A 1972–1973 Zur Frage nach dem ‘Sitz in Leben’ der apokalyptischen Texte des neuen Testaments. NTS 18, 167–177. Sanders, JT 1975 Ethics in the New Testament: Change and development. Philadelphia. Schaberg, J 1982 The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Chico. Schlatter, A 1963 Der Evangelist des Matthäus. Seine Sprache, seine Ziel, seine Selbbeständigkeit: Eine Kommentar zum ersten Evangelium. Stuttgart. Schmithals, W 1973 Die Apokalyptik: Einführung und Deutung. Göttingen. – 1975 Jesus und die Apokalyptik, in Jesus Christus in Historie und Theologie: Festschrift für Hans Conzelmann, Strecker, G (ed.), Tübingen, 59–85. – 1994 Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums: Eine problemgeschichtliche Darstellung. Stuttgart. Senior, DP 1974 The death of Jesus and the resurrection of the holy ones (Mt 27:51–53). CBQ 38, 312–329. – 1976 The ministry of continuity: Matthew’s gospel and the interpretation of history. BiTod 82, 670–676. – 2001 Directions in Matthean Studies, in The Gospel of Matthew in current study: Studies in memory of William G Thompson, Aune, DE (ed.), Grand Rapids, 5–21. Sim, DC 1996 Apocalyptic eschatology in the Gospel of Matthew. Cambridge. – 1998 The Gospel of Matthew and Christian Judaism: The history and social setting of the Matthean community. Edinburgh. Stanton, GN 1992 A Gospel for a New People: Studies in Matthew. Edinburgh. Sterling, GE 2000 Historians: Greco-Roman, in Dictionary of New Testament background, Evans CA & Porter SE (eds.). Downers Grove. Stewart, RB (ed.) 2006 The resurrection of Jesus: John Dominic Crossan and NT Wright in dialogue. Minneapolis. Strecker, G 1971 Der Weg der Gerechtigkeit: Untersuchung zur Theologie des Matthäus. Göttingen. Theissen, G 1999 A theory of primitive Christian religion. London. Treese, RL 1958 The eschatology of the compiler of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Boston University Graduate School. Trilling, W 1969a Die Tod Jesu: Ende der alten Weltzeit (Mk 15, 33–41), in Christusverkündigung in den synoptischen Evangelien: Beispiele gattungsgemässer Auslegung, Trilling, W (ed.), München, 191–211. – 1969b Die Auferstehung Jesu: Anfang der neuen Weltzeit (Mt 28:1–8), in Christusverkündigung in den synoptischen Evangelien: Beispiele gattungsgemässer Auslegung, Trilling, W (ed.), München, 212–243. Van Aarde, AG 1994 God-with-us: The dominant perspective in Matthew’s story, and other essays. Pretoria. – 2005 ‘,+628&, the Davidic Messiah, as political saviour in Matthew’s history, in Salvation in the New Testament: Perspectives on soteriology. Van der Watt, JG (ed.), Leiden, 7–32. – 2007a Jesus’ mission to all of Israel emplotted in Matthew’s story. Neotestamentica 41, 416–436.

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– 2009 Narrative criticism of the New Testament, in Guide to the New Testament, Volume III, Du Toit, AB (ed.), Pretoria. Waetjen, HC 1976 The origin and destiny of humanness: An interpretation of the Gospel according to Matthew. San Rafael. Walker, R 1967 Die Heilsgeschichte im ersten Evangelium. Göttingen. Walsh, RN 1998 Der Geist des Schamanismus. Schuhmacher, S (ed.). Frankfurt a M. Weren, WJC 1979 De broeders van de Mensenzoon: Mt 25, 31–46 als toegang tot de eschatologie van Matteüs. Amsterdam. Witherup, RD 1987 The death of Jesus and the rising of the saints: Matthew 27:51–53 in context. SBLSP 26, 547–585. Yueh-Han Yieh, J 2004 One teacher: Jesus’ teaching role in Matthew’s gospel. Berlin.

Eschatology and Kingdom in Mark Ernest van Eck 1. Introduction The traditional understanding of the eschatology of Mark can more or less be described as follows: During his earthly ministry Jesus proclaimed a futuristic and transcendental kingdom to be inaugurated when He, after his death and exaltation as the heavenly ‘Son of man’ (e.g., Bousset), would return as the ‘Son of man’ (according to Daniel) to judge the world (Mk 8:38; 13:26; 14:62; e.g. Weiss 1971 and Perrin 1966). This parousia of Jesus as the exalted ‘Son of man’ will be a cataclysmic apocalyptic1 event, a sudden intervention of God into the affairs of the world to put all things right and to bring history to an end. To describe this event (and the events that will take place before the parousia) Mark, in Mark 13, uses a Jewish ‘little Apocalypse’ as source.2 This brief and broad description of the traditional understanding of Mark’s eschatology implies inter alia the following: eschatology is understood, time wise, from a linear perspective. Second, Mark 13 is understood as being apocalyptic in character. Third, Son of man is understood in a titular way (as a Christological title). In the fourth place, the concept kingdom of God in Mark is to be understood as a futuristic and transcendental entity. In what follows, Mark’s eschatology will be studied by taking the narratological character of Mark seriously. Attention will be given to the narrative structure of Mark; Mark’s use of time in his narrative; the narrative function of Mark 13 (in terms of Mark’s overall narrative structure3); and

1 2

This term was first introduced by Bretschneider in 1804. Colani was first to argue that Mark used and expanded on an existing apocalypse in compiling Mk 13. 3 In Markan scholarship the analysis of Mk 13 has concentrated in most instances on the origin and literary history of Mk 13, its possible extra-textual references and the question whether Mk 13 was written from an apocalyptic perspective. There is no reason, however, ‘why the interpretation of this chapter should be restricted to this limited perspective’ (Vorster 1987, 204).

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the narrative function of the Son of man-sayings4 in the Gospel. Based on this analysis, the thesis is presented that Mark uses the Son of man-sayings – without exception – in a non-titular way to describe Jesus’ activity of replacing the temple with a new inclusive household; and that Mark 13 functions as an apocalyptical discourse to legitimate the transcendent authorization of his eschatological message, that is, the parousia of Jesus as Jesus’ vindication by God after his resurrection. It will also be indicated that in Mark the concept kingdom of God and eschatology are linked in such a way that kingdom can be regarded as eschatology, and eschatology as kingdom. Finally, a possible socio-historical setting will be postulated in which this reading of Mark would have made sense.

2. Eschatology and Son of Man in Mark 2.1. Eschatology Modern New Testament scholarship, broadly speaking, understands eschatology as ‘the expectation of an imminent end’, something that will happen in future (see e.g., Langkammer, Witherington, Taylor & Keener in Malina 2002, 52). This expected ‘imminent end’ is mostly also understood as something that will happen in a cataclysmic way, thus the well-known term ‘apocalyptical eschatology’ often used to describe our modern understanding of eschatology – with almost all previous interpretations of Mark 13 as example. Underlying this understanding of ‘eschatology’ is our modern conception of time as being linear. Because of this, our template to understand the eschatology in the New Testament is not only that of linear development; we also expect – when we study the ‘eschatology’ of the New Testament – to find a progressive waning of the expectation of the ‘imminent end’5 4 There are 14 ‘Son of man’-sayings in Mark. Bultmann (1931; 1948; and most probably earlier Jackson & Lake 1920, 368) has classified these ‘Son of man’ sayings in Mark in three categories: those that relate to the earthly activity of Jesus (Mk 2:10, 28); those that relate to Jesus’ passion (Mk 8:31; 9:9, 12, 31; 10:33, 45; 14:21a, 21b, 41); and those that relate to Jesus’ eschatological return (Mk 8:38; 13:26; 14:62). Below it will be argued that this categorization of Bultmann, when Mark is read as a narrative, cannot be applied to Mark. 5 The Wirkungsgeschichte of this understanding of eschatology in the New Testament is well-known, and is aptly described by Balabanski (1997, 4–10) as follows: Weiss (1971) argues that the kingdom that Jesus expected was not present and future, but exclusively futuristic. Weiss’ thesis, combined with Reimarus’ and Strauss’ challenge to the historicity of Jesus, presented (German) scholarship with a fundamental problem: if Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom indeed was an exclusively future entity which was to be established at the latest within a generation, how could Jesus have been so mistaken?

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(Balabanski 1997, 2). Our modern understanding of New Testament eschatology therefore normally focuses on the delay of Christ’s return and the presumed disappointment it engendered in the early Christian communities.6 According to Balabanski (1997, 4-10) and Malina (2002a, 50-53) this understanding of eschatology is a modern construct.7 Malina (2002a, 50) Schweitzer’s (1954) reaction to the work of Weiss is included in his programme of konsequente Eschatologie. This has been followed by the works of Conzelmann (1959; 1960) and Grässer (1977), understanding the eschatological kingdom of Jesus as both present and future, concentrating on the delay of the parousia as the basis on which the early church was shaped. Dodd’s (1936) answer to the implied question posed by Weiss pertains to realized eschatology: Jesus understood the kingdom as a present reality, and used symbolic language (parables) to indicate that the kingdom already was present in his time. Jesus’ symbolic (apocalyptic eschatological) language describing the kingdom, however, was not understood by the early church, interpreting Jesus’ ‘apocalyptic’ language in terms of their own developing eschatology. Bornkamm’s (1951) reaction to the work of those scholars that concentrated on the delay of the parousia (assuming that the early church was shaped by the disappointment it experienced in its eschatological expectation) is worth noting: ‘[T]he New Testament documents do not reflect the bitter disappointment in expectation which one might have expected; the fact that the early church survived the non-occurrence of the parousia without a significant break and without relinquishing its eschatological hope … [is] … a puzzle which had not yet been fully solved’ (Balabanski 1997, 8). 6‘In modern scholarship the delay of Christ’s return and the presumed disappointment it engendered has been seen as a primary factor, and in some cases as the primary factor, in the development of Christian eschatology’ (Balabanski 1997, 4; emphasis in the original). According to Balabanski the eschatology in the New Testament shows more fluctuation than that of a simple linear development: ‘[T]he historical contexts of the various communities seem to have led to a greater variation in Naherwartung than our modern theories would suggest’ (Balabanski 1997, 2). Eschatological development in the New Testament is therefore not primarily grounded in a ‘history of ideas’, but rather grounded in historical particularities (Balabanski 1997, 3). 7 It must be noted that Balabanski (1997, 4–10) and Malina (2002a, 50–53) base their opinion on our understanding of eschatology as a modern concept on different arguments. Balabanski (1997, 3), although accepting that the early Christian movement was characterized by an imminent expectation of the parousia, argues that our understanding of eschatology is a modern construct in the sense that New Testament scholarship uses a ‘blanket theory’ (i.e., the delay of the parousia) to describe the development in eschatology in first century Christianity. Drawing on the work of Aune (1975) and Bauckham (1980) to analyze Mt 24:1–13, Mk 13, Mt 24 and Did 16, she concludes that the widely accepted model of progressive de-eschatolization (due to the passing of time and the disappointment in the delay of the parousia) cannot be traced in these documents. Matthew, for example, has a more imminent eschatological expectation than Mark. What shaped these early communities’ eschatological expectation was not the passing of time, but rather the historical particularities of each specific community (e.g., the experience of sporadic persecution that provoked periodic intensifications of the expectation of the parousia; the death of community members; and stresses from within and without). Ma-

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argues that our modern concepts of ‘eschatology’ and ‘delay of eschatology’ used to describe the temporal (linear) dimension of New Testament theology are ‘inaccurate and misleading when applied to biblical documents or any documents of the first century Mediterranean world’. The reason for this, Malina argues, is that the term ‘eschatology’ or ‘eschatological’ used by modern scholars implies a temporal (linear) dimension.8 Cross cultural studies, however, have shown that the (first century Mediterranean) person’s attitude towards time was not linear and futureorientated; but rather markedly present-orientated; past is considered second and future third. According to Malina (2002a, 51; so 1989, 1–319): An event that was about to happen was forthcoming, a sort of expanded present rooted in a process launched in the present. If some “end” were coming soon that is only because of what was under way in the present.

To this can be added the importance of the fact that our biblical texts are the product of a high-context society (see Malina 2002b, 5), wherein ‘people have been socialized into widely shared ways of perceiving and acting’ (Malina 1991, 20); a society in which few things are spelled out because a high-context society believes few things have to be spelled out. Because of this, the first century Mediterranean person’s understanding of time as present-orientated (and not future-orientated) is ‘mystified’10 (Malina 1991, lina’s notion (2002a, 51) of our understanding of eschatology as a modern concept, on the other hand, is based on his conviction that ‘meanings in language invariably derive from the social system of those using the language’, and, in the case of eschatology, the ‘social value of time’. 8 According to Malina (2002a, 50–51) the origin of this understanding of eschatology is to be found in eighteenth and nineteenth century Northern European ideology and categorization. The eighteenth century gave us salvation history, and the nineteenth century gave us eschatology, eschatological delay and delay of the parousia. Eschatology is thus a Northern European word used to label the temporal dimensions of New Testament theology. In New Testament scholarship, Malina argues, this has become the ‘Received View’, and a good interpretation is believed to be one in continuation with and fitting in with this ‘Received View’. 9 Herzog (2000) and Bolt (1995, 14-15) also understand the time-orientation of the Biblical documents as not future-orientated. According to Herzog the prophets in Israel (and therefore also Jesus) ‘were not so much driven by a vision of the future as by a confidence in the past, the past that antecedently shaped their present and could continue to influence its forthcoming course’ (Herzog 2000, 58, in Malina 2002a, 51). Bolt (1995, 14–15) argues in the same vein: ‘[T]he future did not have a two-stage structure. The eschatology that Jesus and Israel shared was that of the Old Testament which appears to have looked forward to the one great event at the end of history, namely the arrival of the kingdom of God’. 10 ‘High context societies produce sketchy and impressionistic documents, leaving much to the readers’ or hearers’ imagination and common knowledge. Since people living in these societies believe that few things have to be spelled out, few things in fact are

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20). In short: to interpret the ‘eschatology’ in the New Testament as referring to something that will happen sometime in the future, and especially in terms of ‘the delay of the parousia’, is an ethnocentristic and anachronistic reading of the text. 2.2. Son of Man in Mark The interpretation of the Son of man sayings in Markan scholarship goes in two directions. Some scholars understand these sayings (especially the socalled ‘eschatological’ Son of man logia – i.e., Mk 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62) as deriving from Daniel 7:13 (referring to an individual messianic figure) and as titular; and interpret these sayings as referring to the second coming (parousia) of Jesus. In short, ‘Son of man’ in Mark is used by the Markan Jesus as a messianic title taken from scripture, referring especially to his parousia/second coming (see, e.g., Montgomery 1927, 317–320; Casey 1979; 1987, 27–28; 1991, 17–43; 1994, 87–118; Bauckham 1980, 3–36; 1983, 97; Marshall 1992, 195-198; Ehrman 1999; Burkett 1999; Carrol 2000, 11; Schröter 2001; Hurtado 2005, 293; Adams 2005, 39–61;11 and Shepherd 2006, 111). Other scholars, however, understand the eschatological Son of man sayings in Mark as not deriving from Daniel 7:13 and thus as non-titular. In this regard the viewpoint of Vermes (1967, 316-317) is well known:12 the ‘Son of man’ in the Gospels is unrelated to Daniel 7:13 – its antecedent rather lies in the Aramaic use of bar nasha. Based on his study of Aramaic sources, he concludes that ‘Son of man’ is simply a synonym for man (and a substitute for the indefinite pronoun ‘one’); and should be translated, based on the context, as someone, anyone or I. Accordingly, he argued that ‘Son of man’ could not be understood in a titular way (see also Perrin 1966, 28; Cullmann 1971, 155–164; Svendlund 1974, 21–22; Bietenhard 1982, 272; Kümmel 1984, 160; Lindars 1983, 194; Crossan 1991, 238– 255; Collins 1996, 139–158; Van Aarde 2002, 1625–1653; 2004, 426; and Loba-Mkole 2003, 838–83913). spelled out …. [T]he typical communication problem in high context societies is not giving people enough information, thus “mystifying” them’ (Malina 2001; own emphasis). 11 Adams (2005, 43–48), for example, argues that Mk 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62 link Dan 7:13 not only with other Old Testament texts (e.g., Zech 14:5; Is 59:19; 66:18; Hab 3:3), but also with certain motifs of God’s coming to earth in 1 Enoch 37–71 and 4 Ezra 13 in such a way that these sayings in Mark generate the essential concept of Jesus’ parousia as future event (see also Schröter 2001, 61). 12 Lietzmann was first to consider all the son of man-sayings as simply referring to ‘humankind’, although he later withdrew his opinion (see Van Aarde 2004, 425). 13 For an apt description of the linguistic forms used for the expression Son of man in Aramaic antiquity, Middle Aramaic and Galilean Aramaic; as well as state (absolute,

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There are also scholars that argue that the Son of man sayings in Mark do not refer to Jesus’ parousia, but to his vindication by God (resurrection). France (1971; 1990; 2002, 341–343.500–503.530–537) and Wright (1996, 360–367.510–519; 2001, 111–112.183–184), though accepting Daniel 7:9–14 as antecedent for the Son of man sayings in Mark 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62, argue that these sayings do not have Jesus’ second coming in view, but his vindication after death. France’s opinion (see France 1971, 139; 2002, 343.533.612) that the eschatological Son of Man sayings in Mark refer to Jesus’ vindication after his resurrection, and not his parousia, is based on the following interpretation of Mark 8:38, 13:26 and 14:62: Mark’s reference in Mark 8:38 to the angels that accompany Jesus, as well as his glory, clearly connects Mark 8:38 to respectively Daniel 7:9–10 and 7:14. In Mark 8:38 Jesus looks forward to the power and glory he will receive after his resurrection. Mark 13:26, as is the case in Mark 8:38, also calls into mind Daniel’s enthronement vision, explicitly referring to Jesus’ glory. The same can be said for Mark 14:62. Although Mark 14:62 refers to the sitting (NDTKYPHQRQ) and (NDLY) coming (HMUFRYPHQRQ) of the Son of Man (which can be understood as first exaltation and then second coming), France argues that Mark here uses a mixture of metaphors (sitting and coming) to refer to one and the same event; that is, Jesus’ vindication after his resurrection. When the NDLY of Mark 14:62 is interpreted as linking two metaphors to one concept (Jesus’ exaltation after resurrection), and not as sitting and then coming; Mark 14:62 (like Mk 8:38 and 13:26) thus also refers to Jesus resurrection as vindication. Moreover, these three allusions to Daniel 7:13 all carry with them explicit time-limitations, focusing on what will be visible within the current generation (France 1990, 82). Wright’s (2001, 184) analysis of the above-mentioned eschatological Son of man sayings concurs with that of France. For Wright, Jesus’ eschatological Son of man sayings in Mark ‘concerns the vindication of his entire programme and mission God will bring to pass, after his own death, with the destruction of the Temple that has come to symbolize all that his gospel opposes’. Although Wright places more emphasis than France on the destruction of the temple as part of the vindication of Jesus, his basic understanding of Mark 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62 underscores that of France. As in the case of France, Wright opines that only this interpretation of Mark 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62 can account for Mark 8:38; 9:1; 13:26 and indefinite and emphatic); see Loba-Mkole (2003, 838-839). He concludes this description as follows: ‘Notwithstanding the different forms and states, the central meaning of the Aramaic expression seems to have remained the same, namely a male human person. In other words, in Aramaic the expression “Son of man” refers to a human being in generic, indefinite and circumlocutional sense’ (Loba-Mkole 2003, 839).

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13:30; that is, that the event of the coming (resurrection and vindication) of the Son of man will take place within the hearers’ own generation.

3. Narrative Structure of Mark 3.1. The Fabric of Mark’s Structure: Galilee (household) and Jerusalem (temple) In Markan scholarship the structure of the gospel of Mark; the structure of certain blocks of material in the gospel (e.g., Mk 2:1–3:6;14 Mk 4:1–8:26;15 Mk 8:22–10:5216); as well as the structural devices characteristic of the gospel;17 have received much attention (e.g., Vorster 1983, 122–124; Achtemeier 1986, 30–40; Duling 1994, 303–305). Although Markan scholars differ on some minor points (finer detail) on Mark’s structure, there is a broad consensus about three aspects of Mark’s structure and narrative technique that are of importance to the description of Mark’s narrative structure regarding Mark’s eschatology and his understanding of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed. First, Mark’s structure shows an overall movement from Galilee to Jerusalem.18 Second, Mark’s narrative consists of three intertwining story lines (that of Jesus, the disciples and the religious authorities; see e.g., Tannehill 1980; 1983; Kingsbury 1989; Van Eck & Van Aarde 1989) that are developed in the gospel in a very specific way. Third, many Markan scholars agree about Mark’s tendency to insert localizations in some of his linking introductions, conclusions and transitional verses 14 15 16 17

See for example Dewey (1980). See for example Petersen (1980, 185-217), Fowler (1981) and Duling (1994, 302). See for example Best (1970; 1983) and Van Iersel (1988). Structural devices characteristic of Mark are the following: putting things in a series of three (brother, sister and mother [3:35]; Peter, John and James [5:37; 9:2; 14:33]; priests, scribes and elders [8:31; 11:27; 14:43; 15:1]); the disciples fall asleep three times [14:32–42]; three passion predictions [8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34]; and Peter denies Jesus three times [14:66-72]); ‘sandwich’ or ‘intercalation’ (the story of the cleansing of the temple [11:15–19] inserted in the story of the cursing of the fig tree and its meaning [11:12-14; 11:20-25]; the story of the women with haemorrhage [5:25–34] sandwiched into the healing of Jaïrus’ daughter [5:21–24 and 5:35–43]); the large ‘sandwich’ in the middle of the gospel [Mk 8:22–10:52]; and Jesus’ three passion predictions [8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34] intercalated between two stories about people being given their sight [8:22– 26; 10:46–52]); the pattern of public teaching to the crowd and private explanation to the disciples (4:1-12; 7:14–23; 9:14–29; 10:1–10; 13:1–8); and the linking of episodes with introductions (1:1–13; 13:1–5a; 14:1–12), conclusions (1:14–15; 3:7–12; 6:6b) and transitional verses (8:22-26; 10:46–52). 18 This overall movement in Mark from Galilee to Jerusalem is structured as follows: Jesus in Galilee (1:14–6:13); Jesus beyond Galilee (6:14–8:26); Jesus on the way from Caesarea-Philippi to Jerusalem (8:27–10:52); and Jesus in Jerusalem (11:1–16:8).

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(see again n. 17). These localizations often have symbolic (theological) meaning in his story (e.g., the Sea of Galilee, Galilee, desert, mountain, the way, Jerusalem; see especially Malbon 1982; 1986). With regard to the last aspect mentioned above, some elaboration is necessary, especially since it is paramount for the way in which eschatology and kingdom (and the relation between these two) in Mark is understood in this essay.19 Lohmeyer (1936; 1942) was the first Markan scholar to identify the importance of, and opposition between, Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark. According to Lohmeyer, early Christianity in Palestine had two centres: Galilee and Jerusalem. Galilee was the place of the gospel (the new kommende Gotteshaus) and focused on eschatology; and Jerusalem was the place of the cult (the traditional Gottestadt) and focused on messianic nationalistic hope. Through his activity in Galilee (forgiving of sins, eating with sinners, disobeying the laws on the Sabbath and fasting) Jesus created a conflict aimed at the cult in Jerusalem; postulated a neue Heiligkeit und neues Heil; and as such replaced the traditional Gottestadt with the new kommenden Gotteshaus. Galilee also was the centre of the eschatological (fulfilled) kingdom that Jesus promised (Mk 14:28; 16:7). This insight of Lohmeyer (1936; 1942) was taken up by Lightfoot (1938), Marxsen (1959) and Kelber (1974). Lightfoot (1938), concentrating on the end of Mark’s gospel, agreed with Lohmeyer that the opposition between Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark was one of eschatology: because Jerusalem rejected Jesus, Galilee was to be the sphere of divine revelation. The insights of Lohmeyer and Lightfoot were further developed by Marxsen (1959, 94) in his Redaktionsgeschichtliche analysis of Mark. Marxsen argues that at the time of the composition of Mark eschatological expectations in Galilee were so strong that Mark, by way of his redactional activity, made Galilee the home of Jesus’ present and future activity. By inserting Galilee as place of Jesus’ activity in all his redactional remarks (e.g., Mk 1:7; 3:7–8), Mark made Galilee ‘the place where Jesus worked…is now working, and will work at his Parousia’. Finally Kelber (1974), in concentrating on the kingdom passages in Mark (Mk 1:15; 3:31-35; 4:10– 34; 8:34-9:1), agrees with Lohmeyer, Lightfoot and Marxsen that the opposition between Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark is essentially different understandings of eschatology. For Mark, the place of the parousia and the kingdom is Galilee, not Jerusalem. The time of the occurrence of the parousia, however, was not in Jesus’ generation, but in Mark’s own time. The historical-critical analysis of Galilee and Jerusalem thus resulted in the following: The opposition between Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark pre19 For the summary that follows on the study of Galilee and Jerusalem in Markan scholarship, I am indebted to the work of Malbon (1982, 242–255). For a summary of Malbon’s contribution, see Van Eck (1995, 12–16).

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sents different understandings of eschatology and kingdom. The place of the kingdom is Galilee, as will be the place of the parousia (second coming), with time of occurrence in that of the Markan community. The above insights served as stimuli for several literary-critical studies of the structure of Mark. When considering the literary structure of Mark, Van Iersel (1989) argues that Galilee and Jerusalem are indeed opposed in Mark, but that this opposition is not the only opposition of importance in Mark. In Mark there are two oppositions: Galilee and Jerusalem, and the desert and the tomb. These two binary oppositions serve to highlight the main spatial reference in the Gospel, ‘the way’ of Jesus (Mk 8:22–10:52). The way of Jesus is a way from desert to tomb (in which life and death plays an important role); and a way from Galilee to Jerusalem (a way of conflict between Jesus’ activity in Galilee and the opposition thereof by the religious authorities in Jerusalem). Understood as such, Jesus’ way in Mark is a way of suffering. Rhoads & Michie (1982, 63–72), in their narratological analysis of the Gospel, came to the same conclusion: In Mark the activity of Jesus in Galilee (‘ruling for God’) stands in conflict with the activity of the religious authorities in Jerusalem (‘ruling for themselves’), with the way of Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem serving as a funnelling effect for the plot of Mark. Recently Van Eck (1995), building on the results of the above mentioned scholars, and using a narratological and social scientific reading focusing on space (topos) in Mark, has taken the opposition between Galilee and Jerusalem a step further. In short, his narratological and social scientific reading of Mark (approaching the text of Mark as a cohesive narrative) yields the following: The opposition between Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark can be more precisely delineated to the opposition between the inclusive household created by Jesus on Galilean soil and the exclusive household (temple) of the religious authorities in Jerusalem. Mark uses the concept kingdom of God as a symbol for the actual sphere of access to the saving presence of God, a sphere which is that of the household. In Mark, kingdom and household go together: the household is the kingdom and the kingdom is the household. On Galilean soil Jesus restored the household of God by means of his exorcisms and other healings (restoring unclean people back to their proper functions in the context of household and kinship relationships). The exorcisms and other healings of Jesus in Mark further function to depict Jesus as the one (and not the religious authorities in Jerusalem) who has the authority to make people part of the kingdom, the inclusive household of God. As a consequence, Jesus is also the one who has authority over the temple (and society as a whole). The way in which Jesus understood the organization and inner structure of this ‘new kingdom’ (being open [also to Gentiles], egalitarian and non-sexist, with the

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presence of God available to everyone) became clear in the way Jesus ‘ate’; and the new household’s relation to the outside world became clear in the way Jesus interpreted the purity rules as advocated by the (exclusive) temple in Jerusalem. Jesus’ negative interpretation of the exclusive purity rules of the temple, combined with his forgiving of sins in Galilee, thus declared the temple in Jerusalem obsolete. Understood from this perspective, Jesus’ action in the temple in Jerusalem was not something ‘new’ or unexpected: as the religious leaders (especially the Pharisees) replicated the temple to the bed and board of the Jew in Galilee; Jesus, by means of his action in the temple (declaring it to be a ‘house of prayer for all nations’), replicated the house[hold] of Galilee in the temple in Jerusalem. 3.2. Plotted Time and Story Time in Mark In short, story time refers to the what of a narrative (inter alia time [chronology of events], characters, and setting); and plotted time refers to the how of a narrative, the way in which the story is told (e.g., how the story time is emplotted in the narrative). Prolepsis (prospection) and analepsis (retrospection) are important features in discerning between story time and plotted time (see e.g., Chatman 1978, 17–41). In what follows, Mark’s use of narrative (plotted) time will be analyzed in terms of the story line of Jesus, the disciples and the religious authorities in Mark. The description of Mark’s overall structure presented above will be taken into consideration. Thereafter attention will be given to Mark’s (emplotted) proleptic story time; focusing on the Son of mansayings in Mark, and the sayings of Jesus that refer to the destruction of the temple; Mark 13; 14:28; and 16:7. 3.3. Plotted Time in Mark 3.3.1. The Narrative Line of Jesus: The Restoring of God’s Household (kingdom) as Replacement of the Temple Jesus’ restoration of the household of God starts in Mark 1:15 when he declares that the time for the kingdom of God has come. Since the kingdom (used in Mark as a metaphor for the household of God) is to be established by Jesus in what follows in the narrative; it is only at hand, thus not yet a reality. Jesus immediately starts out to make his new household a reality by calling its first four participants in Galilee (Mk 1:16–20). In Mark 1:21–31, this calling is followed with what will be the three main activities of Jesus’ establishing of God’s new household in the rest of the Gospel: teaching (Mk 1:21), an exorcism (Mk 1:23–26) and a healing (Mk 1:29–31). This first teaching, exorcism and healing of Jesus has four results that are recurrent themes in the rest of the Galilean-section of Mark’s

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narrative (Mk 1:15–8:21): Jesus acts with authority (Mk 1:22, 27); what He is doing is perceived as something new (Mk 1:27); the person healed (Stephens’ mother-in-law) is enabled to take up a serving role in the (new) household (Mk 1:31); and finally, Jesus’ replacement of the temple with the household of God (Mk 1:22). In the rest of the Galilean-section of the Gospel (Mk 1:32–8:21) Jesus’ establishing of the new household is centred on the same four activities: He calls Levi, a tax collector (‘sinner’; Mk 2:14); teaches (Mk 1:38-39; 2:2,17,18–22; 4:2–32; 6:2,6); heals (Mk 1:32-33,40–43; 2:3–11; 3:11; 5:22–42; 6:53–56; 7:31–36); and commits exorcisms (Mk 1:32–33,39; 3:12; 5:1-18; 7:34–30). As was the case in Mark 1:16–31; Jesus’ teaching, healings and exorcisms are perceived as something new (Mk 2:12,21–22) and as acts of authority (Mk 1:40; 4:41; 5:20; 6:2; 7:37). This authority is highlighted by the large crowds that follow Jesus (Mk 1:37,45; 2:1; 3:7– 9,20; 4:1,34; 5:21), emphasizing Jesus’ success in establishing God’s new household. Jesus’ replacing of the temple with the new household, only implicit in Mark 1:22, becomes increasingly explicit in Mark 1:32-8:21. In Mark 1:43–44 Jesus heals a leaper and sends him to the temple to show that Jesus, and not only the temple priests, can heal (Mk 1:44). In Mark 2:5 and 2:15–16 Jesus’ replacing of the temple is even more explicit: by forgiving sins and eating with tax collectors and sinners he declares that the temple system and the temple’s purity rules are obsolete. In Mark 2:18–22 Jesus goes even further by stating what he is busy doing: the old must be replaced by the new. Following this incident, not even the Sabbath (Mk 2:23–27) is spared, and in Mark 3:1–7 Jesus commits a ‘double transgression’ by healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. Finally, in Mark 7:5–23, the temple purity system again comes under attack when Jesus declares all food clean (Mk 7:19). The boundaries of the new household are clear: it is inclusive in character, and those that are willing to ‘repent’ (Mk 1:15) and do ‘the will of God’ (Mk 3:34) have become brothers and sisters of this new household. In Mark 1:32–8:21 only two actions of Jesus are added when compared with Mark 1:16–31: Jesus does miracles (Mk 4:35–40; 6:35–44,45-52, 8:1–10) that show that he even has authority over nature; and his healings are extended to Gentiles (Mk 7:24–30,31–37). The reaction to these miracles and healings is the same as was the case in Mark 1:16–31 (see Mk 4:41; 7:37). Thus, with the exception of Mark 6:3–6, Jesus’ establishing of the household in the Galilean-section of the narrative is depicted as a success; being received by the crowd in a positive way. In short: in Galilee Jesus ‘wins’.

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Jesus then sets of on his way to Jerusalem (Mk 8:22–10:52). While underway, Jesus teaches his disciples about the content of God’s new kingdom: being part of this new household means self-denial, taking up one’s cross, losing one’s life and not being ashamed to be part of this household (Mk 8:34–36); to be first in the kingdom means to be least of all and servant of all (Mk 9:35); and to be great in the kingdom means to be the servant and slave of all (Mk 10:44). Moreover, to become part of this new household even entails the willingness to leave one’s family (Mk 10:24, 29–30). In the Jerusalem-section of the Gospel (Mk 11:1–16:8); Jesus’ success story, however, turns into ‘failure’. Initially the crowd (that followed Jesus on his way from Galilee to Jerusalem; see Mk 9:15; 10:1, 13, 32, 46) is supportive towards Jesus when he enters Jerusalem (Mk 11:8–10). This is still the case (Mk 11:18, 32; 12:12, 37) even after Jesus had declared the end of the temple (Mk 11:12–14, 20–25), criticizing its exclusiveness (Mk 11:17); and told a parable in which He stated that the temple will be taken away from the religious leaders and be given to others – thus explicitly declaring that the new inclusive household created on Galilean soil has replaced and brought an end to the exclusive temple and temple system. However, after Jesus’ arrest (Mk 14:43–49); and his trial before the high priest, chief priests, elders and scribes (Mk 15:53–65), the crowd assists Pilate and the religious leaders of Jerusalem in the decision to kill Jesus (Mk 15:6-14). Jesus is then crucified (Mk 15:21–32), and dies (Mk 15:33– 38). In short: in Jerusalem Jesus ‘loses’. 3.3.2. The Narrative Line of the Disciples: From Success to Failure On the level of Mark’s plotted time the disciples’ ability to understand who Jesus is and their ability to be part of God’s new household also seem to end in failure. Initially the disciples of Jesus are depicted in a most positive manner: they immediately follow Jesus when they are called (Mk 1:16–20); and react without hesitation when Jesus appoints them (Mk 3:13–19) and sends them forth (Mk 6:7) to also call for repentance, teach and commit healings and exorcisms (Mk 6:12) – a mission in which they succeed (Mk 6:30). A negative image of the disciples is, however, created in the three boat scenes in the Galilean section of the Gospel (Mk 4:35-41; 6:45-52; 8:14–21): they are depicted as members of the new household that have no faith; that are lost without Jesus; and do not understand what Jesus’ multiplication of the loaves and fish meant. Thus, the new household is inclusive and implies a life of abundance. Also, when Jesus gives them the opportunity to feed the crowd, they stand disconsolate and don’t know what to do.

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In the middle section of the Gospel (Mk 8:22–10:52) Jesus therefore teaches them what it means to be part of his new household. Jesus’ teaching of the disciples in this middle section of the Gospel is structured around two healings (at the beginning and the end of this section); three series of Jesus prophesizing his death; misunderstanding by the disciples; and a teaching of Jesus on discipleship. In the first healing of a blind (unknown) person (Mk 8:22–26), Mark metaphorically compares the healing with that of the understanding of the disciples up to this point of the narrative: as the man has to be healed more than once to see, the disciples have to be taught repeatedly to comprehend what it means to be part of the new household. When Peter (as primus inter pares of the disciples) then confesses Jesus as the Christ (Mk 8:29), it appears that he understands who Jesus is. However, when Jesus tells them for the first time that being part of the new household entails suffering, even death (Mk 8:31); it becomes clear that the disciples do not understand who Jesus is and what he has come to do (Mk 8:32–33). Jesus then (again) teaches them what it means to be part of the new household (see Mk 8:22–26). In the second series of prophesizing – misunderstanding – teaching, Jesus once more predicts his death (Mk 9:31). Again the disciples do not understand what Jesus means (Mk 9:32), and argue about who is the most important among them (Mk 9:34); after which Jesus teaches them to be the least and be prepared to disavow themselves (Mk 9:33–37). Jesus then, in Mark 10:33–34, prophesizes his death for the third time. Again the disciples show that they do not understand Jesus by arguing on who will be sitting where alongside Jesus when he reigns as king (Mk 10:35–37), a misunderstanding of the disciples that is yet again followed by a teaching of Jesus explaining that being part of the new household means becoming a servant to all (Mk 10:42–45). The middle section of Mark then ends with another healing of a blind person, also used metaphorically by Mark: Bartimaeus (known), after being healed only once, is immediately able to see and immediately follows Jesus on his way – a reaction that Jesus expects of his disciples. In the Jerusalem-section of the Gospel the threatening conflict between Jesus and the disciples reaches a climax. Just before Jesus’ arrest the disciples are found asleep three times (Mk 14:32–42); when Jesus is arrested they forsake him (Mk 14:50); and Peter ultimately renounces Jesus (Mk 14:66–73). When Jesus is crucified, he dies alone. In short: the disciples fail. 3.3.3. The narrative Line of the Religious Authorities: Increasing Conflict and Final ‘Success’ Only the narrative line of the religious authorities in Mark ends in a seeming success. The scribes (most probably of the Pharisee-group; see Mk

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2:16) are introduced in the narrative in an implicit way in Mark 1:22, when the crowd is astonished with Jesus’ teaching (being unlike that of the scribes) in the synagogue (an extension of the temple’s ‘place’) on the Sabbath (in terms of the purity rules, the temple’s ‘time’). The priests are also indirectly introduced in the narrative when Jesus, after healing the leper in Mark 1:40–42, orders him to go and show himself to the priests. The scribes are again indirectly referred to in Mark 2:6 after several healings and exorcisms of Jesus (Mk 1:21–26, 30-31, 34, 40–41); and several occurrences of Jesus teaching in synagogues (Mk 1:21, 39), which resulted in people from Galilee (Mk 1:28) and beyond Galilee coming to Jesus (Mk 1:45). The scribes and priests are thus introduced into the narrative where Jesus’ activities concerning the new household clashes with the interests of the ‘old household’/temple (purity rules, Sabbath and the authority to forgive sins). Their appearance in the narrative thus spells potential conflict. From Mark 2:15 the conflict between Jesus and the religious authorities is gradually introduced into the narrative. When in Mark 2:15 Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners (thus transgressing the temple purity system) the scribes from the Pharisees do not question Jesus directly, but direct their questions at his disciples. The same indirect conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees occurs in Mark 2:18, when some unidentified people ask Jesus why he and his disciples were not fasting while the Pharisees did. The first direct contact between Jesus and the Pharisees occurs when Jesus and his disciples transgress the Sabbath laws (Mk 2:24). Because of Jesus’ answer (that he has authority over the Sabbath), the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees increases sharply: the Pharisees start observing Jesus to see whether he heals on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him (Mk 3:2). After Jesus does heal on the Sabbath (the man with the withered hand), the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees intensifies: they depart immediately and seek counsel with the Herodians to kill him (Mk 3:6). From this moment on the Pharisees (now depicted as being from Jerusalem, thus representing the temple) attack Jesus directly whenever he gives them reason to do so. Not even Jesus’ disciples are spared: when they eat with unwashed hands (Mk 7:2) the Pharisees’ questions are directed at Jesus, and not at his disciples (a direct opposite to the behaviour in Mark 2:15 where Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners and the Pharisees questions are addressed to the disciples). At the end of the Galilean-section of Mark’s narrative the Pharisees’ conflict with Jesus increases further. Where their conflict with Jesus thus far was reactive, it now becomes proactive: they come to Jesus to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. However, Jesus again ‘wins’ the battle of words. In short: in his conflict with the Pharisees in the Galilean-

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section of the Gospel Jesus ‘wins’; as was the case with Jesus’ replacing of the temple with the new household. In the Jerusalem-section of the narrative (Mk 11:1–16:7) the religious authorities, however, get the better of the conflict. When Jesus purges the temple, declaring it a house of prayer for all nations, the scribes and the chief priests seek a way to kill him (Mk 11:18). This plan, already looming since Mark 3:6, is now set in motion. The chief priest, scribes and elders (note the growing number of Jesus adversaries) therefore came to Jesus the next day while he was walking in the temple asking him by whose authority he was doing these things (Mk 11:28). Jesus answers them in a counter question (Mk 11:29); and then tells a parable (Mk 12:1–12) implying that, because of the way in which the religious leaders have attended to God’s vineyard (excluding people from God’s household through their purity system), the vineyard (temple) will be taken away from them. Because they understand that Jesus is telling the parable against them, they try to arrest him. However, fearing the crowd, they refrain from doing so, and rather send some Pharisees and Herodians (see again Mk 3:6) to see if they couldn’t entrap him (Mk 12:13). They, however, do not succeed. The ensuing questions by the Sadducees (on the resurrection; Mk 12:18–27) and the scribe (on the commandment that is first of all; Mk 12:28–34) are also unsuccessful. Jesus thus is still winning the ‘battle of words’. From Mark 14, however, this situation changes dramatically. The chief priests and scribes, still looking for a way to arrest and kill Jesus, coerce Judas into betraying him (Mk 14:10–11). With Judas’ help, Jesus is arrested (Mk 14:43–46); and brought before the high priest, chief priests, scribes and elders (Mk 14:53). After Jesus is found guilty of blasphemy (Mk 14:64), he is brought before Pilate (Mk 15:1–15); and with the help of the crowd, he is handed over to be crucified. Thus, finally, the religious authorities ‘win’, and Jesus ‘loses’. 3.3.4. Summary: The Three Narrative Lines in Mark From the perspective of plotted time the promise of the kingdom that is near, a kingdom that will become a reality by Jesus replacing the temple with God’s new household, seems to be a failure. Only in Galilee does Jesus (and in a certain sense the disciples) seem to be successful in bringing about God’s new kingdom. At the end of the narrative, however, the kingdom of the temple is still intact. The religious leaders have won; Jesus is dead (and gone); the disciples have disappeared; and the so-called new household is forgotten. Jesus (and his disciples) has failed, and the religious authorities have won.

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3.4. Story Time in Mark An analysis of Mark’s story, employing the distinction between narrative time and story time, was first suggested by Petersen (1980b) in an analysis of Mark 13 and 16:7 (a contribution that, according to my opinion, has since its publication not received its due attention in Markan scholarship). Petersen’s premise is that in Mark ‘the storyteller’s principal plot device is one of prediction and fulfilment’ (Petersen 1980b, 155), and argues that all the predictions in Mark are fulfilled in the story itself, except for Mark 16:7 (and Mk 14:28 – EvE). In trying to unravel this peculiarity in Mark, Petersen proposes two points of departure: First, it is impossible for this prediction (Mk 16:7) not to be fulfilled in the text since it would assault the narrator’s own credibility. Second, a solution for the ‘problem’ of Mark 16:7–8 may possibly lie in a reading of the text that distinguishes between story time and plotted time in Mark’s narrative. Taking this distinction as cue, Petersen (1980b, 158–160) concludes that Mark 13:9–11 can be seen as the fulfilment of the prediction in Mark 16:7–8. Because the setting of Mark 13 is at Galilee; the end in Mark is not the end, only its beginning. As the Gospel started in Galilee, so it ends in Galilee. In Mark, therefore, Jerusalem is ‘conquered’ by Galilee. As stated above, the contention of this essay is that when Mark’s narrative (in terms of plotted time and story time) is taken into consideration, Mark’s understanding of eschatology, his concept of the kingdom and the Son of man sayings can be interpreted from a different perspective. In Markan scholarship Mark 13 is usually interpreted as referring to events that will take place before (or just before) the parousia (second coming) of Jesus, thus events that are not emplotted (fulfilled) within the narrative (see, e.g., Vorster 1987). However, when Mark’s narrative structure is taken into consideration, and Mark 13 is read in terms of Mark’s use of story time, it becomes possible to interpret the ‘predictions’ in Mark 13 (and other predictions in the narrative, e.g., those implied in the Son of Man-sayings), anew. In Mark we find the following proleptic sayings (predictions) of Jesus that can be linked to Mark’s understanding of kingdom and eschatology: – – – – –

Jesus’ eschatological Son of man sayings (Mk 8:38; 13:26 and 14:62); Sayings of Jesus in which he predicts his death and resurrection (Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34 and 14:21); Jesus’ saying on the destruction of the temple (Mk 13:2, also implied in Mk 14:58 and 15:29); Sayings of Jesus that state that the current generation will experience (see) the coming of the Son of man (Mk 8:38; 9:1; 13:26 and 13:30); Mark 13;

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Mark 14:28 and Mark 16:7, the prediction of Jesus that he will see his disciples in Galilee after his resurrection.

Which of these predictions of Jesus are fulfilled in the Gospel? Jesus’ sayings that predict his death and resurrection are clearly fulfilled in Mark’s narrative. Although we find these sayings, in terms of Mark’s narrative time, in Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34 and 14:21; they relate, in terms of Mark’s story time, to Mark 15:37 and Mark 16:6. To answer this question with regard to the rest of the above sayings, however, we have to turn to Mark 13.20

4. The Narrative Function of Mark 13 Mark 13 starts with a prophecy of Jesus on the destruction of the temple (Mk 13:2), which prompts a question from the disciples on when this destruction will take place (Mk 13:4). With Mark’s use of ‘time markers’ as 20

It has been customary in Markan scholarship to study Mk 13 in terms of its origin and growth (see Vorster 1987, 204). Colani, for example, was first to suggest the thesis that Mk 13 was an existing apocalypse that was used and expanded by Mark. The thesis of Pesch (1968) on the origin of Mk 13 is also well known: because of its popularity, Mark took an apocalyptic ‘pamphlet’ that was circulating among the addressees of his Gospel and added it (forcibly) to his narrative after it was completed (although it contained material different from the traditions he was interested in and disturbed its order). Other Markan scholars argue that Mark worked these traditions into his narrative to correct erroneous views on future events which were current in the Christian community of which he was a member. Recently Balabanski (1997, 92–97) has argued that Mark, in Mk 13, made use of a Judean oracle to include Judean Christians that arrived in Mark’s congregation in Syria after fleeing from Jerusalem just before the Jewish War. Concerning the genre of Mk 13, proposals range from an apocalyptic Flugblatt or little apocalypse; an example of literary evocatio (Kloppenborg 2005); a narrated speech of Jesus (Vorster 1987; see also Marcus 1992); to a final discourse before death (an ultimate farewell discourse; Malina 2002a, 54). Literary studies on Mk 13 also differ about its function in Mark’s overall structure: some scholars argue that Mk 13 interrupts the flow of Mark’s narrative (moving from Mk 12:44 to Mk 14:1 seems to have been the original sequence of Mark’s narrative); while others see Mk 13 as the key of Mark’s narrative and perennial to the plot of the Gospel (see e.g., Achtemeier 1986, 116). My interest in this article is to analyze Mk 13 in its narrative context as story time, taking the final form of the Gospel into consideration. I also reason that Mk 13 is consistent with the overall plot of Mark’s narrative: Mk 13 flows automatically from Mk 11–12 (with Jesus and the temple as one of its main themes), and is essential for understanding the denouement of Mark’s plot (for a discussion on Mk 13 as integral part of Mark’s narrative, see Balabanski 1997, 58– 69; Geddert 1989; Bolt 1995, 12–13). In the analysis of Mk 13 that follows, I am indebted to previous insights of Lightfoot (1950), Farrer (1951), Smith (1981), Radcliff (1987), Geddert (1989), and, especially, Bolt (1995).

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keys, 21 Jesus’ answer consists of four successive proleptic sayings; followed by a ‘time statement’; and ends with a short parable in which the time sequence referred to in the four proleptic sayings is reflected upon. The four proleptic sayings are as follows: First, there will be a time of great distress (Mk 13:5–23); then the sky will darken (Mk 13:24–25); then the Son of man will appear (Mk 13:26); where after all the elect will be gathered (Mk 13:27). In the following ‘time statement’ and short parable, Jesus states that all these things will happen within the current generation (Mk 13:30); and, because the precise time of when it will happen is unknown (evening, midnight, at cock crow or early morning; Mk 13:35), the disciples must be on their guard to watch for the precise hour in which these things will happen (Mk 13:32) – an hour that will encompass all four proleptic sayings of Jesus, ‘culminating in the coming of the Son of Man’ (see Bolt 1995, 21). When the predictions of Jesus that can be linked to kingdom and eschatology in Mark (see § 2.3) are compared with the four proleptic sayings of Jesus listed above, it is clear that Mark 13:5–27 refers to all these predictions. Mark 14:28 and 16:7 can be viewed as exceptions. Mark 13:26 refers to the eschatological coming of the Son of man (and therefore also to Mk 8:38 and 14:62). Jesus’ saying on the destruction of the temple is found in Mark 13:2. In Mark 13:26 and 13:30 we find Jesus’ statement that the current generation will experience (see) the coming of the Son of man (Mk 8:38 and 9:1). It will now be suggested that all these predictions of Jesus (that refer to kingdom and eschatology) – when the difference between Mark’s narrative time and story time is taken as cue and Mark 13 is read as story time22 – are intra-textually fulfilled in Mark’s narrative. It will also be indicated that Mark 14:28 and 16:7 relate to the same event that Jesus refers to in Mark 13:27. The four references of time in Mark 13:35 (evening; midnight; when the cock crows; and dawn) have a twofold function in Mark. First, they guide the reader to understand the passion narrative in Mark; since the four references of time in Mark 13:35 concur with references to the passion narrative (see Lightfoot 1950, 48–59). Second, they guide the reader to understand the four proleptic sayings in Mark 13:5–27; by juxtaposing the events referred to in these four proleptic sayings with the events that take place in Mark’s passion narrative. With this as orientation, an analysis of the passion narrative in Mark and the four proleptic sayings in Mark 13:5– 21 The time markers in Mk 13:5–37 are as follows: ¨$OOD HMQ  HMNHLYQ DLa WDLCa K-P HYUDLa (Mk 13:24), PHWD WKQ TOLC\LQ (Mk 13:24), NDL WRYWH (Mk 13:26), and NDL WRYWH(Mk 13:27). 22 In other words, Mk 13 refers to events that occur after Mark’s narrative finishes, but are emplotted in the narrative itself.

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27 – with the four time references in Mark 13:35 as key – results in the following: The first time reference of Mark 13:35 is evening (RM\HY), and relates to the events of the last supper (Mk 14:17-31) which, according to Mark 14:17, also took place in the evening (RM\LYDa). The event of the last supper, however, is not the hour Jesus refers to in Mark 13:32. The death of the Son of man (Mk 14:21) is still to happen (Mk 15:37), and in Mark 14:25 Jesus refers to the kingdom as a future entity. Also, Peter’s denial of Jesus (Mk 14:66-72) – which will happen when the cock crows (Mk 14:30) – relates to only the third time reference in Mark 13:35, and is also still to happen. Finally, Mark 14:17–31 does not relate to any of the events described in the four proleptic events in Mark 13:5–27. Mark’s second time reference in Mark 13:35 is midnight (PHVRQXYNWLRQ), and relates to the events described in Mark 14:32–65: Gethsemane, Jesus’ arrest and his trial before the Sanhedrin. Although no specific time reference is given in Mark for the Gethsemane scene, it clearly takes place between the last supper (evening – the first time reference in Mk 13:35) and Peter’s denial of Jesus (at cock crow – the third time reference in Mk 13:35). Important to note is that Mark’s second time reference in Mark 13:35 also relates to the first proleptic saying of Jesus in Mark 13:5–27 (the time of great distress). This becomes clear when Mark 14:32–65 and Mark 13:5–23 (Jesus’ first proleptic saying) are compared with one another. The following parallels can be indicated: –

–

–

Mark 14:34, 38, 41 and Mark 13:5, 9, 23: In the Gethsemane scene (Mk 14:32-42) Jesus tells his disciples to keep watch, and leaves them to go and pray. On three occasions, however, he finds them sleeping, not keeping watch as he asked. This is paralleled in Mark 13:5–23 where Jesus admonishes the disciples three times to keep watch (EOHYSHWH; Mk 13:5, 9, 23).23 Mark 14:43 and Mark 13:12: In Mark 14:43 Jesus is betrayed by Judas, one of the Twelve (i.e., one of Jesus’ new household, a brother of Jesus in the sense of Mk 3:33–35), a clear reference to Mark 13:12 where it is stated that one brother will betray another brother to death. Mark 14:43–44 and Mark 13:8: According to Mark 14:43–44 the people that come to arrest Jesus are sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders; or, put differently, by the temple. The confrontation between Jesus and those who came to arrest him is therefore a clash between the ‘kingdom of the new household’ and the ‘kingdom of the temple’. This

23 This relationship between Mk 14:34, 38, 41 and Mk 13:5, 9, 23 is reiterated by the three exhortations of Jesus in Mk 13:33–37 to his disciples to keep watch; emphasizing Mark’s tendency to name things in a series of three.

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clash between kingdom and kingdom is paralleled in Mark 13:8 (kingdom against kingdom). Mark 14:53–65 and Mark 13:9, 11: In Mark 13:9, 11, Jesus states that local councils (VXQHYGULD) will arrest their opponents and bring them to trial, even abuse them physically. In Mark 14:53–65 this happens to Jesus: he is arrested; brought before the Jewish Council (R^ORQ WR VXQHYGULRQ); put on trial; and physically abused. Mark 14:60–62 and Mark 13:11: When Jesus is questioned by the high priest, the (rhetorical) question of the high priest (Mk 14:61) is put to Jesus in such a way that Jesus’ answer is in a sense already given – paralleled by Mark 13:11. Mark 14:56–57 and Mark 13:22: The false testimonies of some (Mk 14:56–57) are compared with the false prophets in Mark 13:22. Mark 14:45 and Mark 13:14a: Judas standing before Jesus betraying him with a kiss (Mk 14:45), is compared with Mark 13:14a – the abomination that causes desolation.24 Mark 14:50–52 and Mark 13:14b: The flight of the disciples and the naked young man after Judas’s betrayal and Jesus’ arrest is compared in Mark 13:14b with the flight of those who have seen the abomination that causes desolation.

24 This possible interpretation of Mk 13:14a is indeed not conventional in Markan scholarship. Markan scholars normally link the ‘sacrilege of desolation’ referred to in Mk 13:14a to an extra-textual (historical) referent (e.g., Titus, Caligula, Nero, Phanias or the high priest; see Balabanski 1997 and Kloppenborg 2005 for a discussion of these possibilities). There are, however, two reasons why this reading should be seen as a possibility: First, this reading is the result of taking the narrative text, which creates its own textual or narrative world, into consideration. When the narrative of Mark is considered, the narrator’s exhortation aimed at his readers in Mk 13:14b (‘let him that reads understand’), could be understood as an appeal to the reader to understand ‘the sacrilege of desolation’ as he wants the reader to understand it. Put differently: the readers of Mark most probably had their own understanding of what this ‘sacrilege of desolation’ was. The narrator, however, asks his readers to put their understanding thereof aside for a moment, and to understand the ‘sacrilege’ in the same way he does. If the narrator did not want his readers to understand the ‘sacrilege’ differently than they previously did, why then this appeal? The fact that the readers are called upon to understand what they read, is therefore an indication that the narrator wants them to understand the ‘sacrilege’ differently. In this regard it must be noted that in Marcan scholarship thus far no widely accepted link between Mk 13:14a and an extra-textual referent has been made. A final remark: the choice made above for Judas as referent for the ‘sacrilege of desolation’ does not mean that the narrative is read from an a-historical perspective. A possible sociohistorical setting for Mark’s community, in which the above understanding of Mark 13:14a would have made sense, will be postulated below.

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In Mark 14:32 the time of distress, referred to in Jesus’ first proleptic saying in Mark 13:5–23, thus has begun. The ‘hour’ of Mark 13:32 has arrived: a conclusion reiterated by Jesus, praying in the midst of this time of distress that the hour might pass him over (Mk 14:36), and warns his disciples that the hour has arrived (Mk 14:41). The Son of Man, however, still has not come (Mk 14:62). This brings us to the third time reference in Mark 13:35, the cock’s crow (DMOHNWRURIZQLYDa , which clearly relates to Mark 14:66–71. But still there is no coming of the Son of man, which leaves us with only one time reference, dawn (SUZLY). In the rest of the passion narrative in Mark, two references are made to dawn; Mark 15:1 and 16:2. Since Mark 15:1–16:1 has as focus the death of the Son of man (Mk 15:44–45; as has been proleptically stated by Jesus in Mk 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34), and the death of Jesus only occurs in the ninth hour (HMQDYWK Z^UD); the reference to dawn in Mark 15:1 cannot be seen as the referent for the fourth time reference in Mark 13:35. Also, in Mark 15:1–16:1 no reference is made to the coming of the Son of man. Only Mark 16:2 could therefore be understood to be relating to the last time reference of Mark 13:35. What, according to Mark, happened that morning? The young man at the tomb reports that Jesus, who has been crucified, has risen. As has been predicted in Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33–34, the Son of man has come – the third proleptic saying of Jesus in Mark 13:26 has been fulfilled (as well as Mk 8:38 and 14:62). Jesus has risen, He has been exalted by God, and his death has been vindicated. Also, as predicted, the kingdom has come within this generation (Mk 8:38; 9:1; 13:26 and 13:30). But what about the second proleptic saying of Jesus in Mark 13:24–25? Clearly it relates to Mark 15:33, the three hours of darkness between the sixth and ninth hour. And the fourth proleptic saying in Mark 13:27? Here the keys are Mark 14:28 and 16:7. After his resurrection Jesus and his disciples meet in Galilee. At this meeting Peter, for the first time, understands who Jesus is (contra Mk 8:29). He will therefore be able to defend Jesus against other false christs; and, on account of Jesus and his message, will be brought before councils, governors and kings (Mk 13:9–11). The story time in Mark is thus intratextually fulfilled in Mark’s narrative – story time has become plotted time.

5. Concluding Remarks For Mark’s narrative the kingdom of God and its arrival are of crucial importance. Jesus begins his public ministry by announcing the nearness of the kingdom (Mk 1:15), and states that that it will arrive in the life-time of

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his hearers when the Son of man will come. In Mark, therefore, eschatology, kingdom and the eschatological Son of man sayings of Jesus are closely linked. For the Markan Jesus the kingdom is a new inclusive household. This new household is opposed by the temple. In Galilee it seems that the new household, and those being part thereof (the disciples), succeed in replacing the kingdom of the temple with God’s new kingdom. In Jerusalem, however, it seems that the temple wins. God’s kingdom, which was announced as being near, has drifted from the horizon. The above reading of Mark from the perspective of story time and plotted time (focusing on Mark 13 and its narrative role) has thus shown that, when the story time of the narrative is taken into consideration, the opposite emerges. With Jesus’ death the temple is destroyed, and the Son of Man is vindicated by being resurrected. The eschatological kingdom (the new household) has triumphed, and is now a reality through the disciples who are willing to walk on the way that Jesus tread; starting in Galilee as Jesus did. The kingdom has come full circle: witnesses of the kingdom have become followers. In Mark the eschatological event is the new household; an event that is repeated every time this new household is made visible. As such, in Mark eschatology is the kingdom, and the kingdom is eschatology. Four final remarks will suffice. The above understanding of the Son of man sayings in Mark from a narrative perspective supports those scholars who understand the Son of man sayings in Mark from a non-titular perspective; as well as those scholars that see Jesus’ parousia in Mark as Jesus’ vindication after his resurrection. It also underscores what was most probably the first-century Mediterranean’s understanding of time, namely that an event that was about to happen was experienced as a sort of expanded present rooted in a process launched in the present. ‘If some “end” were coming soon that is only because of what was under way in the present’ (see again Malina 2002b, 5). With regard to the Son of man sayings in Mark, the above reading seems to indicate that the Son of man sayings all relate to Jesus’ activity of replacing the temple with the new household. Only two Son of man sayings in Mark have not been discussed; those in Mark 2:10 and Mark 2:28. These two Son of man sayings, however, are also related to Jesus’ activity of replacing the temple. In Mark 2:10 the forgiving of sins by Jesus is in question; and in Mark 2:28 Jesus’ transgression of the Sabbath laws – both clearly linked to Jesus’ replacing of the temple with the new household. It can therefore be argued that in Mark’s narrative the use of the designation Son of man is most probably linked first and foremost to Jesus’ replacement of the temple with the kingdom of God (the new inclusive household). This link between Son of man and new household is further empha-

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sized by Mark in the linking of his first and last references to Son of man (Mk 2:7 and Mk 14:62) with Jesus’ first and last interaction of conflict with the religious authorities (the temple), both occurring in the context of blasphemy (see Schröter 2001, 57). The third remark relates to the question of methodology. The above analysis of Mark’s eschatology builds on my previous work in which the same line of methodological approach was taken (see Van Eck 1995). This approach has received support in a recent contribution of Schröter (2001). The similarities between my methodological points of departure and those of Schröter are supported by Schröter. After stating that the methodological deficiencies of the form- and redactional-critical approach are that they do not take ‘into account sufficiently the insight that the Gospel of Mark must be seen as a coherent literary work with a narrative structure’, Schröter (2001, 46; own emphasis) states the following: The activity of Jesus is mainly located in Galilee, whereas Jerusalem appears as a hostile place. The narrative world is comprised further of a circle of persons, who are either in a friendly or an unfriendly relationship with the main character of Jesus. It is obvious, therefore, that in both concepts (the concepts kingdom of God and Son of Man – E.v.E) the activity of a concrete person within a particular narrative world is designated. This must be kept in view, because it leads to the consequence that the designations applied to the main character have to be interpreted in connection with the narrated events.

In analyzing the concepts of the kingdom of God and Son of man in Mark Schröter, however, arrives at a different conclusion to that reached above. According to Schröter (2001, 61), although our methodological points of departure are the same, the Son of man in Mark is used as a title of honour ‘to depict Jesus a representative of God’s final judgment at the end of time’. This conclusion of Schröter is based on two contentions. First, Mark 13:26-27 explicitly links the coming of the Son of Man with Daniel 7:13– 14; that uses the expression Son of man to designate a figure at the end of time – an interpretation of Daniel 7:13–14 that is supported by 1 Enoch 46, 48, 69, 71 and 4 Ezra 13. Second, since other ‘Christian texts themselves are evidence for the use of this expression as a description of God’s final envoy’ (Schröter 2001, 61), the coming of the Son of man can only refer to God’s final judgment at the end of time. In the above narratological analysis the question has not been whether Mark 13:26–27 made use of Daniel 7 or not (Mark most probably did), but the way in which Mark 13:26–27 fits into the narrative structure of Mark – thus emphasising the narrative structure of Mark (a point on which Schröter agrees). Therefore, it can be argued that Mark, through Mark 13:35, parallels Mark 13:5–27 with his passion narrative. This reading of Mark 13:5–27 makes it possible to conclude that in Mark the destruction of the temple (Mk 13:2) will take place when the Son of man arrives (Mk

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13:26); an arrival that is depicted by Mark as Jesus’ vindication by God after his death and resurrection – an arrival of the Son of man that finally replaces the temple with the new household, emphasizing the presence of the kingdom of God as an eschatological event. As such, the kingdom in Mark is presented as a present eschatological reality, and not as an eschatological reality only to be consummated in future with the return of the Son of man – an interpretation of the kingdom of God and eschatology in Mark that is substantiated by the above analysis that reads Mark as a coherent literary work with a specific narrative structure. The fourth and final remark relates to a plausible socio-historical setting in which the above reading would have made sense. Previously I have argued for a northern Galilee (or southern Syrian) location for Mark’s congregation, with a date of writing circa 72 CE25 (see Van Eck 1995, 376– 402; 2000, 974–1008). For the Markan congregation the outcome of the Jewish War (66–70 CE) and the fall of the temple were most probably traumatic events that left many questions unanswered. The Jewish War heightened their (apocalyptic) eschatological hopes for and end to foreign domination (cf. Mk 8:29) and the coming of the kingdom. The outcome of the war, however, was not what they expected. Moreover, the temple was demolished, and no kingdom of God was visible. Mark wrote his Gospel in order to address these questions and fears. First, the fall of the temple was no problem, since Jesus had already replaced the temple with the new inclusive household during his ministry. Second, the eschatological event they hoped for that was to inaugurate the new kingdom of God was not the Jewish War, but the ‘Jesus event’: the new household; Jesus’ passion; his death (as the final destruction of the temple); and his resurrection (the coming of the Son of man). The eschatological kingdom of God was now a present reality, and being part of this new eschatological household meant the willingness to suffer as Jesus did. To legitimate this message, the author of Mark (in Mk 13) employs an existing apocalyptic tradition (apocalyptic Flugblatt/little apocalypse) most probably known by his readers in one form or another, reinterpreting it in terms of the eschatological kingdom inaugurated by Jesus’ ministry, passion and resurrection.26 The Son of 25

For a discussion on the possible social locations and date of writing of Mark’s Gospel, see Van Eck (2000, 973–1008). For an extensive and recent study on Mark’s date of writing that is worth taking note of, see Kloppenborg (2005, 419-450). 26 This understanding of the function of Mk 13 concurs with what Aune (1986, 87) describes as the function of an apocalypse (as genre): “(a) to legitimate the transcendent authorization of the message, (b) by mediating a new actualization of the original revelatory experience through literary devices, structures and imagery, which function to “conceal” the message which the text “reveals”, so that (c) the recipients of the message will be encouraged to modify their cognitive and behavioral stance in conformity with transcendent perspectives’.

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man has arrived, so has the kingdom. This is what the reader (Mark’s community) should understand (Mk 13:14). Works Consulted Achtemeier, PJ 1986 Mark. Philadelphia. Adams, E 2005 The coming Son of Man in Mark’s gospel. Tyndale Bulletin 56(2), 39– 61. Aune, DE 1975 The significance of the delay of the parousia for early Christianity, in Current issues in Biblical and patristic interpretation: Studies in honor of Merrill C Tenney, Hawthorne, GF (ed.), Grand Rapids, 87–109. – 1986 The apocalypse of John and the problem of genre in Early Christian apocalyptism: Genre and social setting, Collins, AY (ed.), Decatur, 65–96. Balabanski, V 1997 Eschatology in the making: Mark, Matthew and the Didache. Cambridge. Bauckham, RJ 1980 The delay of the parousia. Tyndale Bulletin 31, 3–36. – 1983 Jude, 2 Peter. Waco. Best, E 1970 Discipleship in Mark: Mark 8:22–10:52. Scottish Journal of Theology 23, 323–337. – 1983 Mark: The gospel as story. Edinburgh. Bietenhard, H 1982 Der Menschensohn – ho huios to anthropoi: Sprachliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zun einem Begriff der synoptichen Evangelien I, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, II.25.1, 265–350. Bolt, PG 1995 Mark 13: An apocalyptic precursor to the passion narrative. The Reformed Theological Review 54, 10–33. Bornkamm, G 1951 Die verzögerung der parusie, in Exegetische bemerkungen zu zwei synoptischen texten in In memoriam E Lohmeyer, Schmauch, W (ed.), Stuttgart, 116– 126. Bultmann, R 1931 Die geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Göttingen. – 1948 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Tübingen. Burkett, D 1999 The Son of Man debate: A history and evaluation. Cambridge. Carrol, JT 2000 The parousia of Jesus in the synoptic Gospels and Acts, in The return of Jesus in early Christianity, Carrol, JT et al., Peabody, 5–45. Casey, M 1979 Son of Man: The interpretation and influence of Daniel 7. London. – 1987 General, generic and indefinite: The use of the term ‘Son of man’ in Aramaic sources and in the teaching of Jesus. JSNT 29, 17–43. – 1991 Method in our madness, and madness in our methods: Some approaches to the Son of man problem in recent scholarship. JSNT 42, 17–43. – 1994 The use of the term bar (e)nash(a) in the Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible. JSNT 54, 87–118. Chatman, S 1978 Story and discourse: Narrative structure in fiction and film. Ithaca. Collins, AY 1996 Cosmology and eschatology in Jewish and Christian apocalypticism. Leiden. Conzelmann, H 1959 Geschichte und Eschaton in Mark 13. ZNW 50, 210–221. – 1960 The theology of St. Luke. London. Crossan, JD 1991 The historical Jesus: The life of a Jewish Mediterranean Jewish peasant. San Francisco. Cullmann, O 1971 The Christology of the New Testament. London.

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Dewey, J 1980 Marcan public debate: Literary technique, concentric structure, and theology in Mark 2:1–3:6. Chicago. Dodd, CH 1936 The parables of the kingdom. London. Duling, DC 1994 The Gospel of Mark: A mysterious apocalyptic drama, in The New Testament: Proclamation and paranesis, myth and history, Duling, DC & Perrin, N (eds.), Orlando, 295–327. Ehrman, BD 1999 Jesus: apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium. New York. Farrer, A 1951 A study in Mark. London. Fitzmeyer, JA 1984 Another view of the ‘Son of man’ debate. JSNT 4, 58–68. Fowler, RM 1981 Loaves and fishes: The function of the feeding stories in the gospel of Mark. Chicago. France, RT 1971 Jesus and the Old Testament: His application of Old Testament passages to Himself and his mission. London. – 1990 Divine government: God’s kinship in the Gospel of Mark. London. – 2002 The gospel of Mark: A commentary on the Greek text. Grand Rapids. Geddert, TJ 1989 Watchwords: Mark 13 and Markan eschatology. Sheffield. Grässer, E 1977 Das problem der Parusieverzögerung in der synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte. New York. Herzog, WR 2000 Jesus, justice and the reign of God: A ministry of liberation. Louisville. Hurtado, LW 2005 Lord Jesus Christ:Devotion to Jesus in earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids. Kelber, WH 1974 The kingdom of Mark. A new place and a new time. Philadelphia. Kingsbury, JD 1989 Conflict in Mark: Jesus, authorities, disciples. Minneapolis. Kloppenborg, JS 2005 Evocatio deorum and the date of Mark. JBL 124(3), 419–450. Lightfoot, RH 1950 The gospel message of St Mark. Oxford. Lindars, B 1983 Jesus Son of man: A fresh examination of the Son of Man sayings in the gospels in light of recent research. London. Loba-Mkole, JC 2003 ‘Son of man’ and exegetical myths. HTS 59(3), 837–858. Lohmeyer, E 1936 Galilaä und Jerusalem. Göttiingen. – 1942 Kultus und Evangelium. Göttiingen. Malbon, ES 1982 Galilee and Jerusalem: History and literature in Marcan interpretation. CBQ 44, 242–255. – 1986 Narrative space and mythic meaning in Mark: New voices in biblical studies. San Francisco. Malina, BJ 1989 Christ and time: Swiss or Mediterranean? CBQ 51, 1–31. – 1991 Reading theory perspective: Reading Luke-Acts, in The social world of LukeActs: Models for interpretation, Neyrey, J H (ed.), Peabody, 1–23. – 2001 The social gospel of Jesus: The kingdom of God in Mediterranean perspective. Minneapolis. – 2002a Exegetical eschatology, the peasant present and the final discourse genre: The case of Mark 13. BTB 32(2), 49–59. – 2002b Social-scientific models on historical Jesus research, in The social setting of Jesus and the Gospels, Stegemann, W, Malina, BJ & Theissen, G (eds.), Minneapolis, 3–26. Marcus, J 1992 The Jewish War and the Sitz im Leben of Mark. JBL 111(3), 441–462. Marshall, IH 1992 The parousia in the New Testament and today, in Worship, theology and ministry in the early church, Wilkins, MJ & Paige, T (eds.), Sheffield, 194–211. Marxsen, W 1959 Der Evangelist Markus: Studien zur Redaktionsgeschichte des Evangeliums. Göttiingen.

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Montgomery, JA 1927 A critical and exegetical commentary on the book of Daniel. Edinburgh. Perrin, N 1966 The Son of Man in ancient Judaism and primitive Christianity: A suggestion. Biblical Research 11, 17–28. Pesch, R 1968 Naherwartungen: Tradition und Redaktion in Mk 13. Düsseldorf. Petersen, NR 1980a The composition of Mark 4:1–8:26. HThR 73, 185–217. – 1980b When is the end not the end? Literary reflections on the ending of Mark’s narrative. Interpretation 34, 151–166. Radcliffe, T 1987 The coming of the Son of Man: Mark’s gospel and the subversion of ‘the apocalyptic imagination’, in Language, meaning and God: Essays in honor of Herbert McCabe, Davies, B (ed.), London, 176–189. Rhoads, D & Michie, D 1982 Mark as story: An introduction to the narrative of a gospel. Philadelphia. Schröter, J 2001 The Son of Man as the representative of God’s kingdom: On the interpretation of Jesus in Mark and Q, in Jesus, Mark and Q: The teaching of Jesus and its earliest records, Labahn, M & Schmidt, A (eds.), Sheffield, 34–68. Schweitzer, A 1954 The quest of the historical Jesus: A critical study of its progress from Reimarus to Wrede. London. Shepherd, MB 2006 Daniel 7:13 and the New Testament Son of Man. WTJ 68, 99–111. Smith, M 1981 The composition of Mark 11–16. HeyJ 22(4), 364–375. Svendlund, G 1974 Aramaic portions of the Pesiqta de Rab Kahana. Uppsala. Tannehill, RC 1980 The gospel of Mark as narrative Christology. Semeia 16, 57–95. – 1983 The disciples in Mark: The function of narrative role. JR 75, 386–405. Van Aarde, AG 2002 Die uitdrukking ‘seun van die mens’ in die Jesus-tradisie: ‘n Ontwikkeling vanaf ‘n landbou-omgewing na die wêreld van skrifgeleerdes. HTS 58(4), 1625–1653. – 2004 Jesus and the Son of Man: A shift from the ‘Little Tradition’ to the ‘Great Tradition’. ETL 80(4), 423–438. Van Eck, E & Van Aarde, AG 1989 A narratological analysis of Mark 12:1–12: The plot of the Gospel of Mark in a nutshell. HTS 45(4), 778–800. Van Eck, E 2000 A Sitz for the gospel of Mark? A critical reaction to Bauckham’s theory on the universality of the Gospels. HTS 56(4), 973–1008. – 1995 Galilee and Jerusalem in Mark’s story of Jesus: A narratological and socialscientific reading. Pretoria. Van Iersel, B 1988 Reading Mark. Collegeville. Vermes, G 1967 The use of bar nash/bar nasha in Jewish Aramaic, in An Aramaic approach to the Gospels and Acts, Black, M (ed.), Oxford, 310–328. Vorster, WS 1983 Die evangelie volgens Markus, in Handleiding by die Nuwe Testament. Band IV. Die Sinoptiese evangelies en Handelinge: Inleiding en teologi, Du Toit, AB (red.), Pretoria, 109–155. – 1987 Literary reflection on Mark 13:5–37: A narrated speech of Jesus. Neotestamentica 21, 203–224. Weiss, J 1971 Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. London. Wright, NT 1996 Jesus and the victory of God: Christian origins and the question of God. Vol. II. London. – 2001 Mark for everyone. London.

Eschatology in the Gospel According to Luke Michael Wolter 1. Eschatology The term ‘eschatology’ was coined in the seventeenth century. 1 From then through to Dialectical Theology its meaning was clear and without ambiguity: it referred to the doctrinal teaching ‘about the final things’ (de novissimis) and the conceptions of the final fate of the individual (‘individual eschatology’); of mankind (‘collective/universal eschatology’); and of the world (‘cosmic eschatology’).2 In the Jewish-Christian tradition these conceptions include, among others: the post mortem fate of the individual; the restitution of God’s chosen people; resurrection of the dead; final judgment; the coming of the messiah – the parousia of the exalted Lord; the renewal of heaven and earth; and – as Niebuhr once caricatured it – ‘the furniture of heaven and the temperature of hell’.3 In this context the meanings of the terms ‘final ending’ and ‘final things’ are rather ambiguous; as time will not come to a final ending, but continue further on. For this reason it would be more appropriate to understand ‘eschatology’ as referring to ‘completion’ or ‘consummation’:4 the term designates a cluster of concepts referring to the completed / consummated state of the individual / mankind / the world; and to the events which will bring this state about. The terms ‘consummation’ and ‘completion’ denote a status which will never be changed but will last forever; and the events bringing it about. ‘Eternity’ in this respect does not mean that ‘time’ has come to an end, but that a certain status which will have been established will change nevermore. Only in this respect can the final events be called ‘final’; when ‘eschatology’ is not determined by time but by quality. 1 2 3

A history of this idea has been written by Hjelde (1987). This distinction follows that of Filoramo (1999, 1542). The origin of this bonmot is unknown. Its exact wording is: ‘It is unwise for Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of hell’. Although it is often quoted as originating from Niebuhr, a reference is never given (cf. e.g., Sauter 1995, 4; Dixon 2003, 25). 4 Cf. e.g., Härle (1995, 600): ‘Die Eschatologie als die Lehre der – von Gott her – vollendeten Welt’.

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It is this very aspect to which the Dialectic Theology ties up: under the presupposition that eschatology is the conceptualization of a consummated quality, i.e. of a finalized reality that can nevermore be changed; it is postulated that a Christian eschatology must claim that this final ending has already come, namely in the coming of Jesus Christ (with respect to universal and cosmic eschatology) and in the encounter with him (with respect to individual eschatology). As to the former, this new determination of what ‘eschatology’ is; can be illustrated by Barth’s (1933, 500) famous words: The End of which the New Testament speaks is no temporal event, no legendary ‘destruction’ of the world; it has nothing to do with any historical, or ‘telluric’, or cosmic catastrophe. The end of which the New Testaments speaks is really the End; so utterly the End, that in the measuring of nearness or distance our nineteen hundred years are not merely of little, but of no importance; so utterly the End that Abraham already saw the Day – and was glad.

And: ‘If Christianity be not altogether restless eschatology, there remains in it no relationship whatever with Christ’.5 As to the latter – individual eschatology – Bultmann and his adherents coined the term ‘presentic eschatology’: in the encounter with the Christian message (the kerygma), the final decision about your eschatological fate is made. From this follows that, for the believer, history has been divested of any theological significance; since it has been completely absorbed by eschatology: Christ is the eschatological event not as a figure of the past … but as the Christus praesens … The paradox of history and eschatology is that the eschatological event has happened within history and happens everywhere in preaching. That means: eschatology in a true Christian understanding of it is not the future end of history, but history is swallowed up by eschatology. Henceforth history must no longer be understood as saving history, but as profane history. But the dialectic of human life as historical existence is brought to light, and in consequence the history of man as person can no longer be understood as a function of world-history, but is set beyond world-history. 6

In this respect Ebeling (1979, 399) understood ‘Christology’ as ‘perfective eschatology’ (perfektische Eschatologie). For Klein (1982, 270) the dying and rising of Christ is ‘a final event, qualifying time and history’, and he defines eschatology as ‘expression of an attitude, namely of an understanding of time and history which constitutes early Christian faith’.7 This means that the person who believes in Christ already has, here and now, 5 Härle (1995, 314). The German original sounds much sharper: ‘Christentum, das nicht ganz und gar und restlos Eschatologie ist, hat mit Christus ganz und gar und restlos nichts zu tun’ (Barth 1922, 299). 6 Bultmann (1954/1955, 15–16). 7 Bultmann (1954/1955, 271).

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eschatological salvation8 – albeit he or she is still bound within his or her bodily existence to an unsaved, uncompleted and unconsummated world. This situation creates a tension which is dealt with especially in the Pauline epistles: in John, in Colossians and in Ephesians. This understanding of the eschatological character of God’s self-revelation (Selbsterschließung) in Jesus Christ, and of the encounter with the kerygma, divests time and history of any theological importance. The believer’s faith in Jesus Christ, and his certainty that nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8:39), makes him exist ‘eschatologically’; although his/her body and the world around him/her are still waiting for their eschatological transformation. This leads us to a further aspect which has to be addressed in these introductory remarks: although eschatological consummation always effectuates an everlasting situation, this does not mean that from this very moment on everything will remain in one and the same state and nothing will change evermore. In fact, we have to define meticulously what is said in given eschatological statements that it will last for ever; and we have to admit that below this level there is always room for change and alteration. Let me illustrate this by using an example: according to Revelation 22:5 the servants of God ‘will reign for ever and ever’; i.e. ‘that they participate as worshiping servants in the eternal rule of God’.9 This has to be taken literally in the sense that it is this very situation – the everlasting reign of the servants of God – that will nevermore change and that this reign will nevermore be taken away from them. The expectation which is stated here does not claim that everything will be frozen or that life in the New Jerusalem will be turned into an endless repetition of always the same. Even though the everlasting reign of God’s servants will never be abrogated, the expectation which is stated here leaves ample room for diversification and alteration for the existence of the inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem.

2. Eschatological Expectations in Luke’s Gospel At the beginning of this section a brief overview of Luke’s eschatological expectations is given. Thereafter a text will be focused on where a specific and interesting detail of Luke’s eschatological conceptions is traceable. With respect to the future consummation of mankind and the world’s fate and the events bringing it about, Luke shares more or less the expectations that can be found in other New Testament writings. 8 9

Cf. Härle (1995, 605). Aune (1998, 1181).

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According to Luke 17:22–37,10 a text Luke adopted from Q, he expects the coming of the Son of man ‘as the lightning flashes that light up the sky from one side to the other’ (v. 24). That means that Jesus’ coming will be observable everywhere and will affect the entire world. Therefore there is no need to follow people who claim to know the individual place of the appearance of the Son of man. It is especially the linguistic plerophory and the spatial universalism of HMN WKCa X-SR WRQ RXMUDQRQ HLMa WKQ X-S¨ RXMU DQRYQ11 which mark the opposition to the local adverbs ‘there’ and ‘here’. The comparison of this coming with the coming of the flood in the days of Noah; and with the coming of fire and sulphur in Sodom in the days of Lot (vv. 26–30); has both a comforting and a parenetic function in equal measure: the followers of Jesus – be they the historical disciples or the intended readers – are comforted, because the description of the future destruction of those who rejected Jesus’ message confirms their decision to accept the message. Simultaneously, and this is valid especially for the intended readers, they are warned against not being prepared for the coming of the Son of man.12 The distinction between ‘being taken’ (SDUDODPEDYQHVTDL) and ‘being left’ (DMIHYVTDL) in verses 34–35 probably means that those who will be saved from the destruction of the world, will be caught up before the destruction begins.13 This concept is not far removed from the expectation that is presupposed in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17: this text expects that at the parousia, when ‘the Lord will descend from heaven’, the Christians ‘will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air’. In Luke 17:34–35 the Lucan Jesus announces a radically individualized distribution of salvation and condemnation: even two persons who at the moment of the parousia are so close to each other as two men lying in one bed or two women grinding a meal together will have a different fate. The parousia of the Son of man will be preceded by cosmic signs: There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be 10 Cf. Schnackenburg (1970, 213–234); Rigaux (1970, 407–438); Zmijewski (1972, 326–540); Geiger (1973, 53–149); Friedl (1996). 11 The expression X-SRWRQRXMUDQRQHLMaWKQX-S¨RXMUDQRYQ refers to the totality of the world ; cf. Ex 17:14; Dt 25:19; 29:19; Prov 8:26; Job 2:2; 5:10; 9:6; 18:4; 34:13; 38:18, 24; 42:5; Bar 5:3 (‘God will show your splendor everywhere under heaven>WKC X-SM RXMU DQRQSDYVK]’); T. Levi 18:4 (about the messianic high priest: ‘He shall shine forth as the sun on the earth, and shall remove all darkness from under heaven [HMN WKCa X-SR M RXMU DQRYQ]’). 12 Cf. also Nielsen (2000, 205f.). 13 For SDUDODPEDY Q HLQ designating translation into heaven cf. 2 Enoch 17:1; T. Levi 17:4, 6; T. Abr A 15:1; 16:5; cf. also Friedl (1996, 184ff.).

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shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near (Luke 21:25–28).

Common eschatological expectations are also present in the juxtaposition of the beatitudes and the woes in Luke 6:20–26: the coming kingdom of God will bring about a reversal of bad and good fortunes. The poor, hungry and suppressed will become rich and full and powerful; and vice versa. An individualistic counterpart of this expectation is developed in the story of the rich man and poor Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31; and the same concept is expressed in 18:30: ‘There is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not get back very much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life’. According to Luke 12:8–9, 42–46 and 47–48 a final judgment will be held where everybody will be judged according to his or her deeds in the broadest sense; i.e. whether or not he or she has acknowledged the Son of man before others; and whether or not he or she has heard and done what was expected of him or her. Below this level the judgment scene in Luke 19:16–26 indicates that Luke was still expecting a judgment according to deeds even for believers. However, it is evident that in this judgment it is not the alternatives of salvation or condemnation which are at stake; but ‘only’ honour and shame respectively – to put it into the words of 1 Corinthians 3:14–15; the alternative of PLVTRQ ODPEDYQHVTDL on the one hand and ]KPLRXCVTDL on the other. In this respect the Lucan concept of judgment is not far from 1 Corinthians 3:13–15;14 whereas it differs characteristically from Matthew 25:30, where the ‘useless’ slave is punished with eternal condemnation. Luke 20:27–36 deserves a more thorough discussion; as in this pronouncement story we find a surprisingly reasonable and widely unknown detail of Luke’s eschatological expectations. Luke has adopted the story from Mark 12:18–27. The story is about the expectation of an eschatological resurrection of the dead; and the Sadducees create a fictitious case to lead this expectation ad absurdum. Their question presupposes an expectation which even today is rather widespread in Christian popular belief: many people expect that the resurrection of the dead will lead to a reestablishment of pre-mortem circumstances. In Luke, Jesus’ response runs as follows:

14

Cf. Konradt (2003, 258ff.).

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RL- XL-RL WRXC DLMZCQRaWRXYWRXJDPRXCVLQNDL 34 Those who belong to this age JDPLYVNRQWDL ‘marry’ and are ‘married’, 35 RL- GH NDWD[LZTHYQWHaWRXC DLMZCQRaHMNHLYQRX 35 but those who are considered worthy WXFHLCQNDL WKCaDMQDVWDYVHZaWKCaHMNQHNUZCQ of sharing in that age and in the resurRX>WHJDPRXCVLQRX>WHJDPLY]RQWDL rection from the dead neither marry nor are married. 36 36 RXMGHJDUDMSRTDQHLCQH>WLGXYQDQWDL Indeed they cannot die anymore, LMVDYJJHORLJDYUHLMVLQ because they are like angels, NDL XL-RLY HLMVLQ THRXC WKCa DMQDVWDYV HZa XL-RL and they are children of God, being R>QWHa children of the resurrection. 34

Luke’s additions to his Vorlage are in cursive. This clearly indicates the distinctive profile of Luke’s eschatological concept: he makes it clear that it is the question of the Sadducees that is absurd; as after the resurrection of the dead there will be no sexual intercourse at all. To this – and not to weddings – JDPRXCVLQ NDL JDPLYVNRQWDL refers.15 The reason for this change in the relations between men and women is evident: the resurrected will nevermore die but live forever. Therefore there is no further need to secure the ongoing existence of the human race by procreation. Therefore not the expectation of resurrection is absurd but the question of the Sadducees, because it is based on the assumption that the resurrected still need sexual intercourse. They are in that sense ‘like angels’ (LMVDYJJHORL), since the same is the case with angels: because angels never die but live forever and because their number is limited, they need not have sex. It is rather interesting to recognize that this eschatological concept has an underlying theological connection to Genesis 3 and the story of the fall, which has a hidden sexual meaning. The plot of the narrative is determined by the fact that Adam and Eve have discovered sexuality: from 2 Samuel 19:32–3516 it is obvious that ‘knowing good and evil’ (Gn 3:5) is a euphemism for the ability to practise sexual intercourse.17 The serpent’s promise to Eve, ‘you (sc. you and Adam) will be like God’ refers to their ability to 15 The meaning of JDPHLCQ as designating sexual intercourse is attested by Lk 17:27 and 1 Tim 4:3; Antho. Graeca 5: 94; Ps Lukian, Asin. 32 (about an attempted rape: ‘he threw the woman on the street and JDPHLCQ ͈ķ̓DžĿ̈́Ņ̓ó  Callimachus, Hymn. Del 240f.; Xanthus, FGH 3c, 765; Frgm. 31 (R^WDQ THYOKL JKCPDL R- H^WHURa WKQ WRXC H-WHYU RX); Philo, Cher 92 mentions within a catalogue of vices PHTKPHULQRL JDYPRL(‘sex at noon’). See also Liddell, Scott & Jones (1992), s v JDPHYZ I.2: ‘of mere sexual intercourse’; van Tilborg (2002, 802–810). 16 Here, David said to the 80 year old Barzillai: ‘Come over with me, and I will provide for you in Jerusalem at my side’. Barzillai answered: ‘How many years have I still to live, that I should go up with the king to Jerusalem? Today I am eighty years old; can I discern between good and evil? Can your servant taste what he eats or what he drinks? Can I still listen to the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king?’ 17 Cf. also Engnell (1955, 115); Michel (1968, 114ff.); Westermann (1984, 243f.).

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produce human beings. Correspondingly Adam and Eve, after having eaten the fruit, ‘realized that they were naked’ and felt shame before each other (3:7; cf. 2:25). In 3:22 God justifies their expulsion from the garden by saying to himself: ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever’. After all that it is no surprise that the first thing Adam and Eve did after their expulsion from the garden was to reproduce themselves (Gn 4:1–2). Genesis 3:1–4:2 and Luke 20:27–36 are bound together by the fundamental human knowledge that H>UZa and TDY QDWRa are inseparably interconnected. Let me now move to those aspects of eschatology which are distinctive for Luke’s gospel, and therefore the focus of our interest.

3. The Eschatological Character of Jesus’ Ministry The quest for Luke’s eschatology has been shaped for decades by Conzelmann’s seminal study on The Theology of St Luke,18 published in 1960. According to him Luke replaced early Christian eschatology with the theological concept Heilsgeschichte/salvation history. 19 He – Luke – had divided salvation history into three epochs: the era of Israel, which ranges up to and including John the Baptist; the era of Jesus; and the era of the church. The era of Jesus (‘the middle of the time’ in the original German title), which is in the focus of this paper, was in Conzelmann’s view characterized by Luke as free from the influence of Satan; as he pointed out by referring to Luke 4:13 and 22:3. To this understanding of the story of Jesus corresponds ‘a greater awareness that the events of Jesus lie in the past’.20 From the perspective of the writer and the readers of Luke’s gospel who live in the era of the church, the story of Jesus is not eschatology but history. The quest for eschatology in the Gospel according to Luke has thus been transferred to the quest for time and the delay of the parousia. I do not want to enter into a discussion on whether or not, or to what extent, Conzelmann is right; but merely contrast my own view to his. My interpretation is built upon two basic assumptions: For Luke, salvation history; i.e. history which is interpreted as being guided by God; is neither to be divided into three parts (as Conzelmann assumes), nor into two parts (as many of Conzelmann’s critics claim).21 Against these views it has to be maintained that the Lucan narrative is part 18 19 20 21

London 1960 = 1982; German original (1977). For a brief outline of Conzelmann’s view cf. Tuckett (1996, 33f.). Tuckett (1996, 34f.). Cf. e.g., Kümmel (1972, 158); Schneider (1980, 136f.); Korn (1993, 272).

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of one single overall history; which starts from Israel’s fathers (cf. Acts 7:2; 13:17); continues through Jesus (Acts 13:23) to the readers of LukeActs; and is still going on: the history of Israel as the history of God’s chosen people. It is this history from which a cut-out is narrated in Luke’s two volume work, with the intention of explaining how Israel has acquired that odd shape which it presently has: some believe in Jesus Christ and some do not.22 Only below this level can we observe within the Lucan concept of history two major movements from announcement to fulfilment: from the scriptures to Jesus (cf. Lk 4:21; 24:25–27:44); and from Jesus to the period of the witnesses (cf. Lk 2:34; 24:47–49).23 The first part of this cut-out from the history of Israel, the story of Jesus, is narrated by Luke as a story of a bygone past. Luke’s story of Jesus is not an inclusive story like the gospels of Matthew and John. However, Luke’s interpretation of this story clearly shows that he claims to narrate eschatological events. In his gospel Luke presents narrated eschatology, and it is this thesis I want to prove with the following exposition. In the beginning of his narrative, the infancy narrative in Luke 1–2, Luke mobilises the reliable characters of Gabriel, Mary, Zechariah, Simeon, and Hanna to interpret God’s initiatives of raising John and Jesus as ‘prophet of the Most High’ (1:76) and as a ‘horn of salvation’ (1:69) as the fulfilment of Israel’s eschatological hopes. John’s ministry is placed in the interpretative light of Malachi 3:1 and 4:5; since he is said to ‘go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah’ (1:17, 76). With respect to Jesus, the eschatological character of God’s initiative is expressed especially in 1:54, where Mary interprets Gabriel’s announcement by using the wording of Isaiah 41:8–9 as fulfilment of God’s promise to Israel’s fathers – extending HLMaWRQDLMZCQD. The same is the case in Zechariah’s Benedictus: God’s raising of Jesus as ‘a horn of salvation in the house of David’ (1:69) is an eschatological event, because it brings about rescue ‘from the hands of our enemies … to serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days (SDYVDLa WDLCa K-PHYUDLa K-PZCQ)’ (1:74– 75). In 2:10–11 the newly born child Jesus is identified to the shepherds as the long-expected eschatological saviour of Israel, the messianic king. Luke depicts the entire scene by using motives from, and allusions to the Golden-age-eschatology of the Roman Bucolic tradition.24 Particularly close are the connections to the first Eclogue of Calpurnius; which comments on the beginning of the reign of Nero: two shepherds find an in22 23

Cf. (Wolter 2008, 26ff.). I.e. from Lk 24:48 to Acts 26:29. I see these texts limiting the period of witnesses, because Lk 24:48 is the first, and Acts 26:22 the last, occurrence of the term PDYWUXa in Luke-Acts (cf. Wolter 2008, 791). 24 Cf. Wolter (2000, 501–517).

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scription by Faunus, the god of the shepherds and peasants. It reveals that the reign of Nero will bring about the Golden age (v. 42). The shepherds and every nation are prompted to joy (gaudete: v. 36; ‘exsultet quaecumque...gens’: v. 74) and ‘secure peace’ (secura pax) is announced (v. 42). In addition it should not be forgotten that Luke 2:9 (‘the glory of the Lord shone around them’) lets the readers recall that God’s eschatological promises in Isaiah 35:2; 40:5; and 60:1, 19 include the revelation of his glory on earth. In the corpus of Luke’s narrative this understanding is continued in Jesus’ own interpretation of his ministry by quoting prophetic promises or alluding to them. In his inaugural address, given at the synagogue of Nazareth, the Lucan Jesus not only quotes Isaiah 61:1–2 and 58:6 (Lk 4:18– 19); but by his comment in verse 21 (‘today this text has been fulfilled in your ears’) he also indicates that the purpose of his ministry consists of nothing else but to bring about the eschatological transformation from misery to salvation which God has promised to his people. In 7:22 the Lucan Jesus alludes to a series of Isaianic texts, where God’s eschatological intervention for the benefit of Israel is announced; and claims that it is his, Jesus’, ministry which realizes these announcements; and makes his presence the presence of God’s eschatological visitation to his people, as it was announced by Zechariah in 1:78 and as it is stated by the public in 7:16. Luke 11:20 points in the same direction (‘when I cast out the demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you’); and especially 17:21, where Jesus responds to the pharisean question about when the kingdom of God would come, i.e. to the question for the time of the kingdom – by referring to its quality: ‘It is not by observation that the kingdom of God comes; one will not even say, “Look, here it is, or there!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you’.25 This is – as we have to interpret the statement – in the presence and ministry of Jesus. To these texts we can add Luke 10:1, 9; where Jesus sends his disciples ‘into every town and place to where he himself was about to come’ and instructs them to say: ‘the kingdom of God has come near’. It is nothing but Jesus’ own presence through which the kingdom of God will be present among the people. This eschatological concept of Luke is shaped and given a foundation by a distinctive Christology: although Luke does not simply identify God and Jesus – God always remains the father, and Jesus the son – he creates a blurring nearness between them. According to 1:76 John the Baptist will ‘go before the NXYULRa, to prepare his way’; and there is no doubt that it is God of whom the Lucan Zechariah is speaking here. In fact it will be Jesus 25

For further details cf. Wolter (2008, 553ff.).

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whose way will be prepared by John. The same blurring picture, where it is impossible for the reader to distinguish between God and Jesus, is the quotation of Isaiah 40:3–5 in Luke 3:4–6; and the allusion to Malachi 3:1; and 4:5 in 1:17. Into the same drawer we have to place a fact peculiar to Luke among the synoptic Gospels: that Jesus is called NXYULRa not only by characters within the narrative; but also by the narrator himself.26 Certainly not by chance Luke introduces this usage in 7:13, on the occasion of the raising of the widow’s son from the dead by Jesus. From the eschatological quality of Jesus’ ministry it follows that the encounter with him has eschatological consequences. Salvation and condemnation in the final judgment, which is still to come, depend on how people have reacted to Jesus’ message and implicit Christological claim. The most instructive text is by no doubt 13:23–28: the Lucan Jesus depicts a future situation when ‘many’ (SROORLY) knock at the door behind which the eschatological feast is about to begin, because they want to take part in this meal. However, they are not able (RXMNLMVFXYVRXVLQ) to enter, because the door is locked and the owner of the house refuses entry to them. The reason is expressed in the call DMJQZQLY]HVTH HLMVHOTHLCQ at the beginning of verse 24: they have not strived to enter through the narrow door behind which the eschatological feast is taking place. The imperative DMJQ ZQLY]HVTHmakes sure that it is already in Jesus’ presence that the decision is made on who will enter through the narrow door into the house where the eschatological meal will be held, and who will be rejected. I cannot see any difference between the inner structure of this eschatological thinking and that of John 5:24. This metaphorical line of eschatological conceptualization finds its unmetaphorical parallel in a set of other texts: the woes against Chorazin and Bethzaida in 10:13, because of their refusal to sit in sackcloth and ashes and to repent, is semantically equivalent to the refusal of a DMJQZQLY]HVTH HLMVHOTHLCQ in 13:24. The same is due for ‘this generation’ in 11:29–32, or according to 13:1–5 for those who refuse to repent. However, the climax of Jesus’ ministry and the key to the proper understanding of its eschatological impact is another event: his resurrection.

26

This peculiarity occurs only in the Lucan special material (7:13; 10:39, 41; 13:15; 16:8; 18:6; 19:8) and as a redactional addition to Q material (7:19; 10:1; 11:39; 12:42; 17:5, 6) and to Mark (22:61; 24:3); cf. de la Potterie (1970, 117–146); George (1978, 237ff.); Rowe (2006, 119f.).

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4. The Climax of Jesus’ Ministry: His Eschatological Enthronement and Everlasting Reign That Luke interpretes Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and his exaltation into heaven as eschatological events is already made clear by Gabriel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth and future fate in Luke 1:32–33: RX_WRa H>VWDL PHYJDa NDL XL-Ra X-\LYVWRX NOKTKYVHWDLNDL GZYVHLDXMWZC NXYULRaR-THRa WRQ TURYQRQ 'DXLG WRXC SDWURa DXMWRXC  NDL EDVLOHXYVHL HMSL WRQ RL?NRQ ¨,DNZE HLMa WRXa DLMZCNDL WKCa EDVLOHLYDa  DXMWRXC RXMN H>VWDLWHYORa 

32

32

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

The eschatological character of Jesus’ resurrection, and heavenly enthronement as Davidic king, is clearly shown by the facts that his reign will last forever and his kingdom will have no end. This announcement had already been fulfilled when Luke wrote his gospel, and the specific character of Jesus’ eschatological reign surpasses every messianic expectation in ancient Judaism. Here, two lines of Jewish eschatological hope are merging: One of the lines is the expectation which is based on Nathan’s promise (cf. 2 Sam 7:13, 16; Ps 89:3–5; 132: 11f.; Is 9:6; Ezek 37:25; PsSal 17:4; 1 Macc 2:57): the Davidic dynasty will exist forever, and the chain of Davidic kings ruling over Israel shall never break. In Gabriel’s announcement this expectation is condensed to the reign of one individual Davidic king, whereby simultaneously the implication is given that he will have no successor. It is not only the Davidic dynasty which will reign forever, but one and the same messianic king. Through this announcement Luke stresses that the scriptural promises have found their conclusive and final – that is to say eschatological – fulfilment in Jesus, who surpasses even the founder of the Davidic dynasty. No need to say that it is only by resurrection that a never ending reign of one and the same person can be brought about, and that it is only in heaven where such a throne could be found, whilst on earth only mortal kings reign. Here we have a good example of the two levels of reality to which eschatological conceptions relate. The other line is of similar importance: inasmuch it is said in verse 33b that to Jesus’ EDVLOHLYD there will be no end, a traditional predicate of God is transferred to him; since everlasting continuity has been hitherto attributed exclusively to the kingdom of God (cf. e.g., Ps 145:13; 146:10; Mi 4:7; Dan 2:44; 3:33; 4:31; 6:27; PsSal 17:1, 3, 46; Jub 1:28; 1 Enoch 84:2; OrSib 3.49f). It is only the Son of man and ‘the people of the holy ones of the Most High’ of whom similar expectations were expressed in Daniel

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7:14 and 27. The crucial importance of Jesus’ resurrection and heavenly enthronement for Luke’s – and I dare say for every Christian – eschatology can be explained by two further consequences. Since Jesus’ resurrection forms an integral part of his entire ministry as an eschatological event, Conzelmann’s encapsulation of the story of Jesus to a bygone past represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Luke’s theology. Jesus’ earthly ministry in Israel, and his present reign over the house of Jacob, belong inextricably together. As the past of Jesus’ earthly ministry had eschatological significance, so does the present of Jesus’ heavenly reign. It was the resurrection of Jesus that brought about the presuppositions to extend the eschatological character of his ministry beyond his death into the present of Israel’s history. And it is this spirit, which is not merely a substitute for the Eschaton, but the earthly representative of Jesus’ eschatological reign among the community of his disciples.27 Secondly the key function of the resurrection for the understanding of the whole of Jesus’ ministry prevents him and his ministry from being understood in terms of the traditional Jewish messianic hope; i.e. as a national liberation movement. It is possible to describe this aspect from two different points of view: with regard to the ‘context of discovery’ (Entdeckungszusammenhang) Luke had to cope with the tension of maintaining the theological claim that Jesus is Israel’s messianic saviour on the one hand, and on the other, the historical fact that he evidently has not rescued Jerusalem and Israel from foreign rule during his earthly ministry. With regard to the ‘context of explanation (Begründungszusammenhang), according to which it is a misunderstanding to expect the fulfilment of Israel’s hopes merely from the earthly ministry of Jesus; and not to include his resurrection into his eschatological determination. Luke briefly indicates this aspect in the introduction to the parable of the throne claimant in 19:11, which is told to correct some people’s misconception that – as Jesus was ‘near Jerusalem the kingdom of God was to appear immediately’ – and he develops this aspect explicitly in the dialogue on the way to Emmaus (24:17–24). In verses 19c–21a the two disciples initially describe Jesus as a prophet who has distinguished himself by his words and deeds. With this characterization they fall far short of who Jesus actually is. By using this opinion Luke demonstrates what is left over of Jesus’ ministry after his death (v. 20); if he is merely expected – as the two disciples in the beginning did – to bring about Israel’s political redemption (v. 21); the memory of a highly esteemed prophet with an admittedly impressive result to his life – but nothing more. If Israel’s eschatological hopes were directed only to the earthly ministry of Jesus, they are 27

Cf. the contribution by Busse in this volume.

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radically disproved by his suffering and death – the traditional fate of Israel’s prophets. In contrast verse 26 makes clear that without Jesus’ resurrection from the dead there is no fulfilment of Israel’s eschatological expectations. As long as this crucial connection is not kept in mind, Jesus’ suffering and death degrade him to no more than ‘a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people’. In summation: yes, Jesus is the messianic king to whom Israel directed her eschatological hopes; and he definitely will redeem Jerusalem and rescue God’s people from foreign rule and restore the kingdom to Israel. However, he will do this in a completely different manner than was originally expected by his fellow Jews and the Emmaus disciples. It will happen, when he as the Son of man ‘comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and the holy angels’ (9:26; cf. also 21:26). And – what is more – Israel will have a completely different shape than it has in the times of Jesus: it will consist of all those who believe and have believed in Jesus as the eschatological saviour whom God has brought to Israel (Acts 13:23; cf. also 3:23). By this we have reached that question which has been the main field of activity in the Lucan department for several decades in the ‘eschatological office’ (Troeltsch): the quest for the when of the parousia and its delay.

5. The Quest for Time This section can be short because this problem has been hotly debated for more than three decades since the above mentioned study of Conzelmann;28 and can nowadays be regarded as having been settled. The parousia of the exalted Lord, as it is promised in Acts 1:11, is still to come; but Luke does not know when it will happen. Luke is not sure that it will not come for a long time, as he considers it not to be impossible that the Son of man will come within the very next days. On the other hand, it cannot be said for sure that he expected this coming for his own day; as he

28

N. 18. Dedicated to this debate are the books and articles by Conzelmann (1977); Flender (1968); Wilson (1969/1970, 330–347); Ellis (1972); Dupont (1973, 37–47); Hiers (1974, 145–155); Schneider (1975); Ernst (1978); George (1978, 285ff.); Mattill (1979); Grässer (1979, 99–127); Schnackenburg (1985, 249–265); Erlemann (1995, 157–174); Onuki (2004, 186–198); cf. also the extensive report by Plümacher (1983, 1–56, here 35ff.).

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considers it possible that the parousia could be delayed for an incalculable range of time.29 Even Luke 18:7–8, where the Lucan Jesus promises that God ‘will take vengeance (SRLKYVK HMNGLYNKVLQ) for his chosen ones…speedily (HMQ WDYFHL)’; does not indicate that Luke thought the parousia was around the corner, since this announcement refers to the destruction of Jerusalem: the likeliness of this interpretation is given by the fact that in 21:22 Luke characterizes this event in addition to his Vorlage (Mk 13:16–17) and by quoting Hosea 9:7 as ‘days of vindication’ (K-PHYUDLHMNGLNKYVHZa). On the other hand, the warning in Luke 21:8 (‘Beware that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name, saying, “I am he” and “The time has come near [R- NDLURa K>JJLNHQ]”. Do not go after them’)30 does not rule out that Luke thought it possible that the time of the parousia was not far away: the Lucan Jesus warns his hearers – and possibly also the readers of Luke’s gospel – against being impressed by the message of some messianic prophets31 and following them. If this warning has a reference to Luke’s readers, the warning is directed against Christian parousia alarmists like those who are mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:2 and in Hippolyt, Comm. in Daniel 4:19. The two slogans function primarily as a characterization of those prophets and do not argue that the time of the parousia is still far away. Luke simply leaves this question open, and one day it will definitely be near. The solution for the problem is provided by 21:25–31. According to verse 31 the final redemption can be recognized as being ‘near’, when the events which are described in verses 25–28 will take place. The question for the when of the parousia is simply displaced, because nothing is said about the temporal distance of these events: it may be that they are just around the corner; but it may also be they are not. Even the apostles were not allowed to know ‘the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority’ (Ac 1:7); and Luke is certainly not above the apostles – nor are the readers of his gospel.32 A special problem in this context is raised by verse 32, where the Lucan Jesus states, that ‘... K- JHQHD DX^WKwill not pass away until all things will 29

Against, e.g., Mattill (1979, 111): ‘He still believes in the return and does not expect it to be long delayed’, and: ‘That Luke’s imminent hope could be denied is one of the marvels of modern criticism’ (112); Erlemann (1995, 167). 30 The crucial point is that R- NDLURa K>JJLNHQ is missing in Luke’s Vorlage (Mk 13:5), and that Luke on his part has omitted Mk 1:15, where Jesus declares that ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near (SHSOKYUZWDLR-NDLURaNDLK>JJLNHQ K-EDVLOHLYDWRXCTHRXC). 31 Cf. Acts 5:36; 21:38; Josephus, Bell. 2:258–262; 6:285, 288; 7:437–440; Ant. 18:85–87; 20:97f., 167f., 170, 188. 32 Cf. also Wolter (1999, 307–324).

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have taken place (H^Za D@Q SDYQWD JHYQKWDL)’. The crucial question is undoubtedly the meaning and reference of K- JHQHD DX^WK:33 it is rather improbable that Jesus’ contemporaries are meant because in Lucan times they had all passed away; and neither have the signs of verse 25 taken place; nor has the Son of man come. Some assume that Luke thinks of mankind in general,34 or the then living human generation,35 but this would be by far too trivial: the assurance that mankind still exists when the Son of man is coming is certainly not in need of such a solemn introduction as DMPKQ OHYJZX-PLCQ in fact is. Therefore it is highly probable not to take JHQHDY as a temporal designation, but to understand it as designating a ‘species’ or ‘the persons in a family’,36 and as denoting the disciples of Jesus in the broadest sense.37 In this case the Lucan Jesus guarantees his disciples – and the readers as well – that until the coming of the Son of man the ‘Christian species’ will not die out. On the other hand this guarantee puts an obligation upon the Christians in Luke 21:34–36: Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap … Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man.

Especially 12:35–48 clearly shows that Luke has transformed the question about the time of the eschatological consummation of the world, and the problem of the delay of the parousia, into a question of the proper conduct of life for the Christians: they are liable to be always prepared like servants who await the return of their absent master at every moment. This necessity results from the fact that they ultimately do not know the date of their master’s return.

33 Cf. the survey of the interpretations by Maddox (1982, 111ff.) and Bock (1996, 1688ff.). 34 Cf., amongst others, Conzelmann (1977, 281f.). 35 Cf., amongst others, Schneider (1980, 60); Fitzmyer (1985, 1353); Bock (1996, 1691f.). 36 Liddell, Scott & Jones (1992, 342 s.v. JHQHDY I); see also Büchsel (1953, 660, 41f.). 37 Cf. also Lk 9:41, where JHQHDY has the same reference (see Wolter 2008, 358).

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6. Concluding Remarks The preceding sections enable us to summarize the distinct profile of Luke’s eschatological concept in a few sentences: Luke’s eschatological thinking is partly related to the fact that, since the time of Jesus, the final fate of mankind and the world has not come about; and because Christians are still waiting for the parousia of the Son of man. In reaction to this situation Luke develops a concept that allows him to conceptualize eschatology – as it is postulated at the beginning of this essay – as being determined essentially by quality; and only secondarily by time. To exist ‘eschatologically’ in this sense means that Christians always have to conduct their lives as if the Son of man is behind the door. From this follows: in terms of time, eschatology has been swallowed up by ethics; i.e. by the quest for the proper conduct in life. The theological importance of eschatology is developed only as part of Luke’s Christological thinking. Works Consulted Aune, DE 1998 Revelation 17–22. Nashville. Barth, K 1922 Der Römerbrief. München. – 1933 The Epistle to the Romans. Oxford & London. Bock, DL 1996 Luke II. Grand Rapids. Büchsel, F 1953 Geschlecht, als die durch gemeinsame Abkunft Verbundenen. ThWNT I, 660,41–42. Bultmann, R 1954/1955 History and Eschatology in the New Testament. NTS 1, 5–16. Conzemann, H 1977 Die Mitte der Zeit: Studien zur Theologie des Lukas. Tübingen. – 1982 The Theology of Luke. London. de la Potterie, I 1970 Le titre KYRIOS appliqué à Jésus dans l’évangile de Luc, in Mélanges bibliques en hommage au R.P. Béda Rigaux, Descamps, A & de Halleux, A (ed.), Gembloux, 117–146. Dixon, L 2003 The Other Side of the Good News. Ross-shire. Dupont, J 1973 Die individuelle Eschatologie im Lukasevangelium und in der Apostelgeschichte, in Orientierung an Jesus: zur Theologie der Synoptiker, FS. J Schmid, Hoffmann, P & Brox, N (Hg.), Freiburg, 37–47. Ebeling, G 1979 Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens III. Tübingen. Ellis, EE 1972 Eschatology in Luke. Philadelphia. Engnell, I 1955 “Knowledge” and “Life”, in the Creation Story, in Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East, Fs. HH Rowley, Noth, M & Thomas, DW (ed.), Leiden, 103– 119. Erlemann, K 1955 Naherwartung und Parusieverzögerung im Neuen Testament. Tübingen & Basel. Ernst, J 1978 Herr der Geschichte. Perspektiven der lukanischen Eschatologie. Stuttgart. Filoramo, G 1999 Eschatologie. I. Religionswissenschaftlich. RGG4 2 1542–1546. Fitzmyer, JA 1985 The Gospel according to Luke II. Garden City. Flender, H 1968 Heil und Geschichte in der Theologie des Lukas. München. Friedl, A 1996 Das eschatologische Gericht in Bildern aus dem Alltag. Frankfurt a.M. Geiger, R Die Lukanischen Endzeitreden. Bern & Frankfurt a.M.

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George, A 1978 Études sur l’œuvre de Luc. Paris. Gräßer, E 1977 Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte. Berlin & New York. – 1979 Die Parusieerwartung in der Apostelgeschichte, in Les Actes des Apôtres. Traditions, rédaction, théologie, Kremer, J (ed.), Gembloux & Leuven, 99–127. Härle, W 1995 Dogmatik. Berlin & New York. Hiers, RH 1974 The Problem of the Delay of the Parousia in Luke-Acts. NTS 20, 145– 155. Hjelde, S 1987 Das Eschaton und die Eschata. Eine Studie über Sprachgebrauch und Sprachverwirrung in protestantischer Theologie von der Orthodoxie bis in die Gegenwart. München. Klein, G 1982 Eschatologie. IV. Neues Testament. TRE 10, 270–299. Konradt, M 2003 Gericht und Gemeinde. Eine Studie zur Bedeutung und Funktion von Gerichtsaussagen im Rahmen der paulinischen Ekklesiologie und Ethik im 1 Thess und 1 Kor. Berlin & New York. Korn, M 1993 Die Geschichte Jesu in veränderter Zeit. Tübingen. Kümmel, WG 1972 Lukas in der Anklage der heutigen Theologie. ZNW 63, 149–165. Liddell, HG, Scott, R & Jones, HS 1992 A Greek English Lexicon. Oxford. Maddox, R 1982 The Purpose of Luke-Acts. Göttingen. Mattill, AJ 1979 Luke and the Last Things. A Perspective for the Understanding of Lukan Thought. Dillsboro. Michel, D 1968 Die Schöpfungsgeschichten, in Israels Glaube im Wandel, Michel, D (ed.), Berlin, 101–148. Nielsen, AE 2000 Until it is Fulfilled. Lukan Eschatology According to Luke 22 and Acts 20. Tübingen. Onuki, T 2004 Christologie und Eschatologie in der lukanischen Theologie, in Heil und Erlösung. Studien zum Neuen Testament und zur Gnosis, Onuki, T (ed.), Tübingen, 186–198. Plümacher, E 1983 Acta-Forschung 1974–1982. ThR 48,1–56. Rigaux, B 1970 La petite apocalypse de Luc XVII,22–37, in Ecclesia a Spiritu Sancto edocta, Fs. G Philips, Coppens, J (ed.), Gembloux, 407–438. Rowe, CK 2006 Early Narrative Christology: The Lord in the Gospel of Luke. Berlin & New York. Sauter, G 1995 Einführung in die Eschatologie. Darmstadt. Schnackenburg, R 1970 Der eschatologische Abschnitt Lk 17,20–37, in Mélanges bibliques en hommage au R.P. Béda Rigaux, Descamps, A & de Halleux, A (ed.), Gembloux, 213–234. – 1985 Die lukanische Eschatologie im Lichte von Aussagen der Apostelgeschichte, in Glaube und Eschatologie, Fs. WG Kümmel, Grässer, E & Merk, O (ed.),Tübingen, 249–265. Schneider, G 1975 Parusiegleichnisse im Lukasevangelium. Stuttgart. – 1980 Die Apostelgeschichte I. Freiburg. Tuckett, CM 1996 Luke. Sheffield. van Tilborg, S 2002 The Meaning of the Word JDPHYZin Lk 14:20; 17:27; Mk 12:25 and in a Number of Early Jewish and Christian Authors. HTS 58, 802–810. Westermann, C 1984 Genesis 1–11. A Commentary. London. Wilson, SG 1969–1970 Lukan Eschatology. NTS 16, 330–347. Wolter, M 1999 Israel’s Future and the Delay of the Parousia, according to Luke, in Jesus and the Heritage of Israel, Moessner, DP (ed.), Harrisburg, 307–324.

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– 2000 Die Hirten in der Weihnachtsgeschichte (Lk 2,8–20), in Religionsgeschichte des Neuen Testaments, Fs. K Berger, von Dobbeler, A (Hg.), Tübingen & Basel, 501–517. – 2008 Das Lukasevangelium. Tübingen. Zmijewski, J 1972 Die Eschatologiereden des Lukas-Evangeliums. Bonn.

Eschatology in John A Continuous Process of Realizing Events

Jan van der Watt 1. Introduction The eschatology of the Gospel of John (from here onwards, John) is one of the most discussed theological issues in Johannine scholarship. This is inter alia evident from the magisterial three-volume work of Jörg Frey (1997,1 1998,2 20003)4 on the eschatology of John, as well as numerous publications on eschatologically related themes,5 such as life6 and judgment.7 Several scholars are participating in a debate on the perceived differences between the nature of John’s eschatology and the other documents of the New Testament, especially the main letters of Paul. The nature of John’s eschatology is also studied in the question on the traditions that underlie the different Johannine perspectives.8 For example, eternal life is perceived to be realized in John, while in Paul and the Synoptic Gospels it refers to a future reality (cf. for instance, Romans 6:23; Mark 10:17 par., though in some of the deutero-Pauline letters the realized aspect is indeed drawn into focus, like Colossians 3:1–4). I even have the impression that most of the discussions on the eschatology of John take their point of departure from perspectives found in other New Testament documents, like 1

This essay deals with the history of research of Johannine eschatology since Reima-

rus. 2 3 4

This essay deals with the understanding of time in John. In this essay particular Johannine texts dealing with eschatology are analyzed. See also Stählin (1934); Van Hartingsveld (1962); Blank (1964); Bultmann (1965); Ricca (1966); Brown (1971); Richter (1977); Kysar (1979); Becker (1979); Schnackenburg (1980); Hainz (1994); Neugebauer (1994); Kammler (2000); Frey (2005). 5 See also Schaefer (1933); Blauert (1953); Gundry (1967); De Jonge (1972–1973); Hengel (1983); Watson (1983); Suggit (1984); Hasitschka (1989, 1996); Ng (1997). 6 See, for instance, Hort (1893); Lindblom (1914); Hogg (1926); Pribnow (1934); Smilde (1943); Mussner (1952); Wind (1956); Simon (1957); Aune (1972); Moule (1975); Trudinger (1976); Vellanickal (1978, 1979); Wenham (1980); Winstanley (1982); Van der Watt (1986, 1989); McHugh (1992); Painter (1997). 7 See, for instance, Blank (1964); Kühschelm (1990). 8 These are issues Frey (2000, 464ff.) deals with first in his concluding summary. The question of underlying traditions is an important issue to him (2000, 13).

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the Pauline letters. These perspectives are then used as backdrop in the discussions on John’s eschatology. Analytical categories like the ‘kingdom of God’ and ‘the “now-not yet” pattern’ are often used as matrixes to interpret John. In this way we get what I would like to call a reactive reading – not reading John for what he would like to communicate, rather reading the Gospel in reaction to the other views. By way of speaking, it is a ‘reading against others’ rather than a ‘reading for the sake of John’. The cue for defining the concept of ‘eschatology’ is usually taken from the Greek word H>VFDWRQ referring to the ‘last’ or ‘final’ things that will occur ‘at the end’.9 The term consequently covers a wide variety of possible themes and topics.10 Broadly speaking it could be said that the term implies: (a) that there is a period or situation in history in which things are not ideal, this is normally experienced as a crisis; (b) the hope exists that this crisis or even the dispensation (situation) within which the crisis exists, will be replaced (in future) by a new changed period in history that will be ideal; (c) the changed situation will bring a final and lasting end to the crisis.11 Eschatology as a discipline is seen to deal with the tense relationship between the present and the future and how these relate to each other (Hahn 2002a, 738). Hahn (2002a, 740) remarks: Das Spezificum der urchristlichen Eschatologie ist die Spannung zwischen gegenwärtiger Heilsverwirklichung und einer noch ausstehenden Zukunft, für die die apokalyptische Vorstellungsweise grundlegend ist.

It is a matter of the present experience of people being interconnected with an expectation about the (eternal) future in the light of experiences and prophecies from the past. In this regard, different aspects are relevant, namely: time (i.e. periods, the question of when, etc.); action (i.e. judgment, regeneration, restoration, etc.); and space (i.e. situation, status, place, etc.). Viewed in terms of time it implies that there will be a situation in time where these changes will start taking place, at which point one can 9 Hahn (2002a, 738); 10 At the conference,

see also Smalley (1998, 265) on the eschatological process. of which this book is a result, the delegates could not come to a satisfactory common definition of ‘eschatology’ that would cover the evidence in all the books of the New Testament. Often the nature of eschatology is determined by the structure of the book and the situation of the people to whom that particular book was addressed. This problematized a general definition. The variety of issues pertaining to the future also complicates defining the concept. See also Frey (2000, 3) who speaks of ‘Sprachverwirrung’ when it comes to the term ‘eschatology’. Cf. also Brown (1971, CXV). 11 Cf. Frey (2000, 3): ‘Als “eschatologisch” sollen zunächts all jene Motive in den johanneischen Testen gelten, die in der alttestamentlich-frühjüdischen oder urchristlichen Tradition im Zusammenhang mit den Enderreignissen gesehen wurden’. The term ‘Enderreignissen’ is however not defined.

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speak of the start or presence of eschatological events. It is of course important to note that certain eschatological events can take place at a specific point, putting a range of events into motion that can unfold over a period of time, extending the timeframe within which the eschatological events take place. It will therefore make a significant difference whether one sees eschatological events as a point in time or as events unfolding over time. A complicating factor is that the Biblical documents were written at least 1900 years ago and what was future for them is no longer the future, but the past for the present day reader. To go even further, what was eschatology for the people of the Old Testament was partly fulfilled in the New Testament and counted as fulfilled eschatology by some, for instance, Jesus, the Messiah, came; the kingdom of God dawned, etc. It was not a complete consummation – some eschatological events were still (and still are) awaiting fulfilment. When considering issues related to eschatology, the focus cannot be restricted to events that lie in the future (from the position of the current reader), but the situations in the present as well as in the past should be considered.12 Identifying, categorizing, and relating these different eschatological events become important tasks in the study on eschatology. This implies sensitivity to notions like time, time frames, time periods, and the like, in the analysis.

2. Patterns to Follow … the Old Testament Unfolding13 Broadly speaking (and a generalization should suffice in this instance) eschatological events in the Biblical tradition unfold within the framework of the past, present and future relationship between God and humans, often determined by covenant-like agreements. However, throughout the history of Israel certain things went wrong and this relationship was disturbed. Consequently, hardships were often experienced by disobedient humans; especially at the hands of their enemies or even through natural disasters (such as droughts and bad harvests). These are usually interpreted as punishment for, or as the consequence of, the disturbed relationship between 12

See also Frey (1998; 2000, 482); Brown (1971, CXVIII), for instance, mentions that in terms of Jesus’ life the coming of the Spirit lies in the future. The same applies to his death. For him those are eschatological events. Cf. also Kysar (1979, 87–89) and Smalley (1998, 265). 13 In the following discussion I make intensive use of the research results of Herrmann (1977). Cf. also the systematic presentation of Tabor (s.a.). Obviously, the matter is far more nuanced and complicated than what can be offered here by way of overview.

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God and his people. While the people of God were in this less than ideal situation, promises were made by God, inter alia in the form of prophecies, that the situation would be restored at a point in the future to such an extent that the hardships would be dealt with and that the situation of the people of God would change to an ideal situation in the presence of their God. The qualitative change that will take place is important – everything will change for the better and the old situation with its negative characteristics will indeed become new (whether through restoration or a new creation). This ideal situation of the people of God is expressed in prophecies inter alia by means of several symbolic imageries like living in glorious Jerusalem and enjoying the fullness of their land, experiencing peace and harmony, governing themselves, and even governing their enemies, to name but a few. These types of prophecies created expectations among God’s people who lived in the hope that their situation would change in accordance with the promises of God. Their situation was constantly viewed and experienced in the light of these prophecies. The consummation, or eschatological fulfilment, is experienced at that moment when people experience the fulfilment of the promises of God, based on the pattern and content of his promises. These promises have remained the criteria for evaluating the present and the future. At the foundation of all of this lies the belief in God who will keep his promises and agreements. In the Old Testament the presence of God, who is also perceived as being present in the form of promises and prophesies, in conjunction with the covenantal agreements, forms the basis for interpreting the present as well as the ‘future’. This interpretive framework allows the people of God to face the future through their hope or expectation. The future is experienced as a future with and because of God.14 Understanding the present reality in light of this presence of God also makes current crises more bearable. God, for instance, promises Abraham land and that he will have as many children as there are stars in heaven (Genesis 12:1–3, 7, 15). The potential of future generations (dorot ‘olam) gives meaning to the future as well as a fixed point of orientation. In his person, Abraham, and after him his children carry the future potential of the generations to come based on the covenantal promises of God. This remains possible because of God’s presence with his people. This way of genealogical thinking establishes a pattern where ‘in der Gestalt eines einzelnen den Angelpunkt eines künftiger Entwicklungen anzulegen (ist)’ (Herrmann 1977, 101). In the unfolding lives of each successive generation the conviction of promise 14 This idea finds its apex in the Wisdom of Solomon where eternal life is formulated in terms of, and in relation to, the eternity of God and his qualities like righteousness and wisdom. The future and eternity are qualified in terms of God.

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and fulfilment is firmly grounded, confirming the truthfulness of God and cementing the covenantal relationship. The fulfilment of God’s promises are experienced in concrete human events, willed and executed by an ever-present God, unfolding within the tension between divine promise and human existence. The future of the people of God is continually confirmed through God’s salvific acts when his people are in dire straits. Whether in slavery in Egypt, or in need of help against their neighbours (after moving into the Promised Land when God sent the judges) or even in exile, God’s salvific actions reconfirm his truthful presence among his people and open up the future again and again. It is all about ‘die durch Erfahrung “gefüllte” Zeit, das Geschehen als Maßstab geschichtlicher Erfassung von Leben’ (Herrmann 1977, 103). Because of God, categories like hope, faith, trust or obedience therefore become part and parcel of the relationship that people have with the future. Time was not really the focus, rather the divine presence is. In God their future is present. Time unfolds within the framework of a relationship with God, which is confirmed through the active presence of God in the history of his people. Prophecy and the unfolding of actual history are related, although prophecy normally relates to the immediate, or at least the close future, in many cases its fulfilment was experienced repeatedly in concrete situations throughout history. It served to interpret present reality in light of the reality of God and his promises.15 God’s promises to Abraham are, for instance, reconfirmed in the lives of Isaac (Gn 26:2–5,24), Jacob (Gn 28:13) and even Moses (Ex 3:8). In 2 Samuel 716 David is promised kingship in Jerusalem. The continuing and future existence of the people of God is therefore directly linked to the existence of Jerusalem and Zion17 – a promise that became a central driving force in the view of history of the people of God. The covenantal promises made at Sinai created definite tensions in relation to their concrete fulfilment; these are systematically unfolded in the history from Moses and the Judges, and even further into the history of the people of God. Throughout history expectations were fulfilled, or partly fulfilled, thus serving as fixed and concrete points of historical orientation. These concrete events offered a fixed theological framework within which the present experiences of the people of God could be considered in light of the promises and their continuity.

15 Cf., for instance, how 1QpHab reinterprets the prophet in the light of the Roman situation. 16 V. 16: ‘Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever’. 17 Cf. Isa 2:2–4; 28:16–17; Mic 4:1–3.

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It should be noted that the unfolding of these promises is not entirely fixed or moulded (as if a fixed prescribed script of history existed). Rather, the unfolding of the promises is a dynamic process, as Herrmann puts it: ‘Denn Zusage und Verheißung haben im Laufe der Geschichte Israels und in der Tradition seiner ĥberlieferungen jeweils neue und spezifische Gestalt angenommen’ (Herrmann 1977, 103). The experience of promises being fulfilled paired with the conviction that God will keep his promises, created dynamic possibilities for new or reformulated promises and possibilities which inter alia formed the basis for the development of the eschatological expectations of the people of God. Promises were not always fulfilled in expected ways – there could also be partial or no fulfilment, as is, for instance, clear from the relationship between the promises of the return to Jerusalem after the exile and the resulting concrete situation. The prophecy of the return was fulfilled, but not as it was expected. In such cases the prophecies were often not rejected, rather through a dynamic process of theological reinterpretation new or adapted prophecies resulted that were integrated into the horizon of expectations of the people of Israel.18 These new prophesies created new points of future orientation. Ausschlaggebend war dabei die ĥberzeugung von der Gegenwart der Gottheit, die die Ordnungen in Kraft gesetzt hatte und die darum ungebrochen in Geltung blieben, Verpflichtung und Garantie für Isreal zugleich (Herrmann 1977, 107).

This is apparent in the prophetic literature of the Old Testament. For instance, when Jerusalem became endangered, or when it was destroyed after 587/586 BCE previous promises were called into question. This paved the way for prophetic explanations for the destruction, but at the same time the future return to Jerusalem became a prophetic theme. Thus prophecy helped to make sense of reality. The conviction of the loving and gracious presence of God with his people refocused prophetic attention on the glorious future that awaited the people of God in the holy city Jerusalem. In this way concrete events generated new expectations, based on the conviction of the presence of God with his people. Again, during the exile the rebuilding of the temple was prophesied; when it was rebuilt the kingly rule of David was not established in the person of Zerubbabel as it was expected (Hag 2:23). This was not seen as the end of the promise to David; rather it was interpreted within the framework of newer prophecies (Jer 31:31–34). In this way the covenant with David became the basis for messianic expectations. Thus new prophetic themes and traditions grew parallel to the old themes. By integrating the old traditions with new expectations, Israel constantly created a future with expectations that determined and guided their expectation and experience of the future. Where specific 18

Cf. the post-exilic prophets’ treatment of unfulfilled promises.

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expectations were not fully realized or were called into question, they were understood anew ‘als weiterhin gültige Verheißung’, and ‘seine Verwirklichung für eine fernere Zukunft in Aussicht gestellt’ (Herrmann 1977, 107). In this way older prophecies were, in some sense, overlapped by new prophecies that moved history to the point of an ideal relationship with God. Through eschatology these people constantly made renewed sense of their reality – if prophecies were not fulfilled, the future offered new possibilities for their fulfilment, even if this fulfilment came in new or different ways.19 The way the older prophecies became true, gave birth to further prophetic perspectives that were not seen as opposing the fulfilment but rather expanding and reshaping them, thus pressing into the future. Thus prophecy had the function and potential to ‘draw people into the future’. This prophetic cycle provided a theological mechanism to deal with everyday crises and disappointments: The future is always there as a remedy, because God is in the future. The person of God was the determining factor in this whole process rather than concepts of time. Because God is who he is, he will keep his covenantal agreements and guarantee the full fulfilment and consummation of these promises. He has the right to determine how the events will unfold and therefore there is little or no tension in new prophecies addressing different problems and situations. In light of this perspective there is little wonder that there is a movement towards more cosmic and universal actions and events, as becomes apparent in the apocalyptic literature or at least literature displaying apocalyptic characteristics. The major thrust behind apocalyptic literature does not seem to be time or time frames, but the presence and activity of God, especially in relation to the fulfilment of the promises of his ideal presence with his people. The unfolding of the eschatological events lie in God’s hands and he guarantees their truth and reliability. Although the experience of the exile, for instance, brought the Jewish people to their knees, it did not signify the end of their involvement with God. Jetzt schraubte es seine Erwartungen hoch zu der Gewißheit unmittelbarer göttlicher Eingriffe, die mit einem ewigen Gottesreich enden müßten (Herrmann 1977, 66).

The development of apocalyptic literature was based on the promise – fulfilment scheme. The emphasis shifted to a larger perspective of history with the world powers confronting God, who nevertheless remained in 19 A strong impetus for integrating the past with the present in the expectation of the future became apparent in the cultic life of Israel. Their focus on cultic feasts, special days, obedience to cultic and moral laws constantly recalled the significant points in their history where God had proven himself to be in charge of their history. They are constantly reminded that they are in the hands of this God who is true to his promises. Their cultic activities not only celebrate the past, but also the future. The focus of these celebrations is of course the presence of and relationship with God.

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power as ruler. The different crises are usually ‘bundled’ together (hardships on all levels of life become typical of an era or aeon) and the eschatological salvation becomes expected when the totality is turned around through the salvific actions of God and a new aeon or period is realized. The range of these changes is more cosmic. This enables the final eschatological event to be focused on one point in time (for instance, the day of the Lord). Since these changes take place in the lives of people, eschatological events are always expressed as historical phenomena, changing the history of people, positively or negatively. Within such an eschatological framework Jesus came to announce the new order of existence with the coming of the kingdom of God. However, the coming of Jesus as the Messiah contained elements of fulfilment but also of non-fulfilment. Certain prophecies were fulfilled in him, others were partly fulfilled. This is in line with what we find in the Old Testament, new promises based on the Christ events opened up the future for more developed, as well as new, prophecies. The coming of the kingdom of God through the Messiah did not bring the final presence of God, but opened up the future for the final consummation – this is promised: A new Jerusalem filled with peace where people would live eternally with God and his Son was promised. Within this framework the Johannine message represents a particular perspective on the presence of God with his people and the future he promises. Let us now turn to the dynamics of the eschatology of John.

3. Eschatology in John The next question that requires attention asks whether this eschatological framework is reflected upon, and if so, how is it treated and developed in John? What is the situation as we have it in John and what are ‘the last things’ that are expected within this situation that need to change? Are there signs of potential prophecies that could be seen creating eschatological expectations that are then fulfilled in Jesus? Some important pointers locate the events narrated in John squarely within the Jewish pattern of eschatological expectations:20 There seems to be a clear expectation among the Jews in this Gospel that something was about to happen, as is evident from the following: ‘The people in Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to John (the Baptist) to inquire

20 Becker (1979, 246) also illustrates that John has much in common with contemporary Christian views, but also has elements that are typically Johannine. So also Smith (1986, 87).

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whether he was Elijah, a prophet or perhaps the Messiah’ (1:20–21).21 This is also the question posed by the Samaritan woman in chapter 4, to which Jesus reacts positively (4:25f.).22 A divinely inspired person was indeed expected to inaugurate the eschatological change. Later on, when Jesus enters Jerusalem, the behaviour of the crowds, welcoming Jesus into Jerusalem, should also be seen in the light of current eschatological expectations (12:12ff.), especially since they welcome him with palm branches and greet him with quotations from the Psalms (118:25–26) and the prophets (Zec 9:9). As it is argued above, eschatological expectations were based on promises and prophecies that progress towards fulfilment. John (the Baptist) was asked by priests and Levites whether he was the expected Prophet,23 or perhaps Elijah (see Mal 4:5; Sir 48:10 – Schnackenburg 1968, 288–290; Keener 2005, 434–436) – John (the Baptist) interprets their words as a question about his messiahship (1:20–21). He answers them in the negative by quoting the prophet Isaiah (1:23 – Isa 40:3): he is preparing the way for the Messiah, the expected one, to come (see also Mal 3:1). ‘John’s reply (1:26–27) indicates that his baptism is a preparation for the appearance of the hidden Messiah, who already stands in Israel’s midst and is about to fulfil his Messianic task’.24 Thus these events are clearly placed in an eschatological framework, since, for instance, Elijah was expected to arise before the day of the Lord would come (Mal 4:5 – Beasley-Murray 1999, 24). The excitement continues when Simon announces that they have found the Messiah (1:41) and Philip tells Nathanael that they have found the one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote (1:45 – Keener 2005, 482–485; Smith 1999, 75). Nathanael’s proclamation that Jesus is King of Israel (1:49) also clearly outlines the expectations, based on prophecy and Scripture, that the Messiah, the new King will come to change their fate. He is seen as the one who will inaugurate and start the new era. In other words, he will be the inaugurator of the eschatological events, the last things in line with prophecy. The description of these expectations goes even further. Abraham is said to have seen the day of Jesus (8:56), merging the times of Abraham and Jesus (cf. Schnackenburg 1980, 222), while the words of the prophet Isaiah, who saw the glory of the Lord (12:41), are 21

Cf. Schnackenburg (1968, 288–290); Brown (1971, 846ff.); Barrett (1978, 173); Keener (2005, 433–434). Haenchen (1980, 156) calls the references to Elijah and the prophet ‘Gestalten der messianischen Zeit’. 22 Cf. Schnackenburg (1968, 441) on messianic expectations. Bultmann (1984, 389). 23 This most probably refers to Deuteronomy 18:15, 18, although the expectation of a prophet was also part of the eschatological views of the Qumran community, although he should be distinguished from the messiahs (1QS 9:11). Cf. Keener (2005, 436–437). 24 Beasley-Murray (2002, 25); Brown (1971, 48–54); Haenchen (1980, 156).

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fulfilled in the actions of Jesus (12:37ff.). Indeed, the scriptures testify on behalf of Jesus (5:39). Even the words of Moses are aimed at Jesus and these times (5:46). The vocabulary of the Gospel also reflects eschatological language. The semantic network formed by words like eternal life,25 judgment (for instance, 3:19; 5:22; 9:39; 12:31, etc.), the last day (for instance, 6:39, 40, 44, 54), the kingdom of God (for instance, 3:3, 5), certain Christological titles like messiah and Son of man (Cadman 1969, 43), etc. form a narrative world based on eschatological realities and expectations. Furthermore, the employment of eschatological imageries like the fields that are white with harvest (4:34–38), or the eschatological wedding feast (2:1–11; 3:29– 30; and perhaps the story at the well in John 4) drenches the actions and words of Jesus in eschatological flavour. Another major imagery that has eschatological undertones is the imagery of light and darkness. This imagery is also used in John 1:4–5 and then throughout the rest of the Gospel (for instance, 8:12; 12:36) as a sign of the major change that took place with the coming of Jesus, the light of this world.26 Then there is also the temple imagery that shows Jesus restoring the temple (Coloe 2001), not forgetting the imagery of Jesus as king (Busse 2006), a theme that is especially developed in the latter chapters of John (18–20).27 These examples suffice to show that from the perspective of the author of this Gospel, Jesus and his actions were promised in the scriptures and in prophecy. Expectations created therein are fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus is indeed the inaugurator of God’s eschatological future. From this point and these events all eschatological events should be accessed and considered. 3.1 A Crisis and Eschatological Solution The narrative plot of John unfolds around a conflict between Jesus (and his followers) and the opponents of Jesus (Culpepper 1983, 9–11). This conflict is developed around one question: where and with whom is God?28 25 26

For instance, 3:15–16; 4:10; 5:39; 6:39ff.; 8:12; 11:25–26; 17:3, etc. Due to space restrictions this imagery of light and darkness will not be discussed any further. 27 Due to restrictions of space, these imageries cannot be discussed in greater detail. This should not be misinterpreted as a reflection on their importance or lack thereof. Imageries of light (cf. Swankl 1995; Popkes 2005, 229–239; Petersen 2006, 121–138), temple (Coloe 2001), and kingship (Busse 2006, 279–318) are especially important eschatological notions in John and should most certainly receive detailed attention in a more extensive account of the eschatology of John. 28 The concrete situation within which the Gospel was written may help to explain why the focus falls so strongly on the relationship with God. The Gospel was most probably written in a context of conflict with the Jews. It seems that the Johannine group was tolerated by the synagogue Judaism up to a point where their ways separated in a

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The negative side of John’s anthropology is central to this question. The state of the people in the cosmos (especially before the arrival of Jesus) is indeed described in various ways. For example, the people are described as being ‘in sin’, as ‘slaves of sin’ (8:34), or being (spiritually) ‘dead’ (5:24), and being children of the devil (8:44),29 the ruler of this world (12:31; 14:30 – Barrett 1978, 426–427; Smith 1999, 240). They are without knowledge of God (8:19, 55), and have never seen or heard him; the essence is alienation from God (8:47) that results in behaviour that does not befit children of God (8:31ff.). The crisis is that God is not with them, and they are also not with God. Eschatologically they have no positive future – they will die in their sins (8:21, 24). This of course forms the backdrop of the presented theology of salvation in John – people are in need of salvation that Jesus brings. Jesus is presented as the eschatological solution to the crisis. He is the light and life of this world – God sent him as his Agent and Son to bring salvation to this world (3:16), confirming the Scriptures that God will not disappoint his people. By receiving Jesus as the eschatological Messiah, the one who is promised according to the Scriptures and sent by God, a new eschatological era dawns where God will be with his people and they will be with Him for ever (Frey 2000, 472). Within this Christological framework, eschatological fulfilment is reinterpreted and reformulated according to the reality of the presence of the physical as well as the resurrected, glorified Jesus in the midst of his people (cf. for instance, chapters 14–17). The crisis between Jesus and his opponents in John is developed from this perspective, namely, that people who do not accept Jesus are in darkness, i.e. without God, not recognizing or knowing him any more (5:37; 7:28; 8:19, 47, 55; 15:21).30 They are in need of the light and life (1:4–5) which has become available in Jesus (1:12–13; 3:15–16; 8:12). This has resulted in a conflict about the presence of God. The Jewish opponents are still loyal to their cultic activities (the temple) and laws, and think of themvery emotional manner resulting in a serious conflict. Elsewhere I have argued that the heart of this conflict gave rise to the question ‘where is God?’ (Van der Watt 2005). The Christians offered the solution that God was present in Jesus, while the Jews rejected that solution in favour of their tradition and Law. The judgment of the Johannine group was then that the Jews sin by not accepting Jesus and will die in their sin. The issue of the presence of God among his people is therefore the catalyst for this conflict. No wonder the essence of God’s eschatological actions focus on Jesus, the one who brings God close (1:17). 29 Brown (1971, 357–358); Schnackenburg (1980, 213ff.); Smith (1999, 186–187); Keener (2005, 752–765). 30 Frey (2000, 472); Blank (1980, 146–156); Schnelle (1991); Schnackeburg (1980, 422–424).

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selves as serving God (16:2). Yet they are seen by Jesus and his followers as being without God. God is only present with those who believe in Jesus and belong to him, as can be seen from the debates in, for example, 8:14– 59 and 10:31–39. In the process of salvation, the opponents of Jesus will have to change their view of God – He is now the God that can be discovered, seen, and met in Jesus. Although Jesus and his opponents have the same God in mind, their views of him differ, especially about Jesus and his behaviour towards cultic aspects like the Sabbath. The disciples of Jesus claim that if somebody does not accept the image and reality of God as it is revealed in Jesus, he or she is without God – this defines the essence of the conflict. The refusal of the opponents to accept Jesus (8:31ff.), as well as their hatred and persecution of the Son of God and his people (15:18ff. – Popkes 2005, 316ff.), obviously excludes them from participation in the positive effects of the eschatological events (Schnackenburg 1980, 422– 424). The Jesus-events inaugurated a dynamic and radical change to the crisis situation of God’s people, based on the existing promises and prophecies. This is the turning point in history. Jesus is the expected Messiah (1:45; 4:25f.; 6:31f. – Barrett 1978, 67; Schnackenburg 1980, 422–424). The coming of Jesus as the Word, the one who will make the Father known, because he saw him and knows him so well (1:18 – Tolmie 1995, 57–75; Thompson 2001, 57–100), inaugurates the new presence of God among his people. The new era has dawned; the eschatological presence of God has become imminent (1:18; 14:6 – Bultmann 1984, 389). Let us take a closer look at some of the crucial elements that play a part in the eschatological coming and presence of Jesus. Eschatology implies a point in time where the current crisis situation is changed or at least starts changing for the good.31 In John this point in time is marked by the presence of Jesus through his mission.32 The eschatological inauguration from which the eschatological present and future unfold is clearly announced in 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’.33 The glory of God, full of grace and truth, became flesh and dwelt among us so that we could get to know God (1:14–18; 3:34; 8:42; 17:3). This presence of Jesus not only introduces eschatological salvation 31 32

In the Old Testament concepts like ‘the day of the Lord’ imply such a point in time. The notion of the mission of Jesus in John is well-discussed in research and need not be discussed in full again; cf. Schnackenburg (1980, 431); Smalley (1998, 266–267); Wilckens (1998, 338); Frey (2000, 289, 481); Van der Watt (2000, ad loc). 33 Cf. 3:16, 34; 6:28–29 in the context of the eschatological repetition of the giving of the manna; 6:57. Cf. also Beutler (1998, 263–274); Smith (1986, 88); Popkes (2005, 197ff.).

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(Schnackenburg 1980, 437; Wilckens 1998, 342), it also introduces eschatological judgment (3:17; 5:24; 8:16). Faith and birth from above are key concepts in John’s eschatological process. These eschatological events have a decisive impact on the world: in Jesus people are confronted with the eschatological reality – they can either accept or reject this reality (1:9–13).34 This is already spelled out in the Prologue. Jesus, as the light, came to his people, but they did not accept him. But to those who accepted him, he gave life that resulted from their birth from God (1:9–13). This new possibility of being with God, being born and consequently being able to stand in a relationship with him, is the gift that Jesus brought (1:12; 20:31 – Frey 2000, 472). Indeed, through faith in Jesus35 people participate in these eschatological events and receive eternal life through birth from above (Schnackenburg 1968, 261–263; Hofius 1996, 33–80). Together faith36 and birth represent the eschatological meeting point between humans and God: through their faith people are born of God and receive life. Looking at these Johannine expressions, namely, birth, life, faith, etc. the common denominator is a living relationship with God who is revealed and is made present among his people through Jesus. In 17:3 life, for instance, is directly linked to knowledge of God (see also 1:18; 14:6ff. – Barrett 1978, 458–459). This confirms the idea once more that the eschatological purpose of Jesus is to restore the relationship with God. The divine truth, glory and grace may be experienced by believers within this relationship with Jesus and God (1:14–17). Formulated differently, the Father and the Son will make their home with the believers (14:23), and they will eventually be where Jesus is to see his glory with the Father (17:24). John expresses this relationship in different terms, like the kingdom or temple of God, but in my view the most central means of expressing the dynamics of this eschatological relationship is by using the imagery of a family, the most closely knit social structure in ancient times (cf. Van der Watt 2000, ad loc). The notion of the kingdom of God (a political metaphor) is a central eschatological concept in the synoptic Gospels. This theme is not absent from John (3:3, 5; 6:15; 12:15; 18:36–37; 19:19–21), however it is substituted by another dominant eschatological metaphor, namely, eternal life

34 Schnackenburg (1968, 258ff.); Goppelt (1978, 643); Becker (1979, 246); Blank (1980, 146–156); Popkes (2005, 222–225). 35 Cadman (1969, 54–555); Goppelt (1978, 642–643); Gnilka (1989, 142); Davies (1992, 159); Frey (2000, 472–473). 36 Cf. Goppelt (1978, 642–643), Gnilka (1989, 142) on the nature of faith.

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(filial metaphor).37 This is evident from the Nicodemus discussion in Chapter 3 where Jesus refers to the kingdom (3:3, 5) and its relationship to the Spirit (cf. Schnackenburg 1968, 366ff.; Hofius 1996, 33–80), but then switches to the metaphor of eternal life in the subsequent discussion (monologue? – 3:15, 16; see also 3:34 in connection with the Spirit).38 Thus the notions of birth and life become part of the dominant (familial) imagery, expressing the eschatological reality in John. It is exactly with this purpose in mind that the Son is sent to this world – to bring eternal life (3:16; 5:18ff.; 6:26ff.; 14:6ff.; 20:31, etc.). In summary: the crisis is not knowing and being with God; the solution is: the Son is sent to restore the relationship through the gift of eternal life in the family of God. This basic structure dominates the eschatology in John. ‘Eternal life’,39 with its associations, serves as a key expression in communicating this eschatological gift Jesus brings – whoever believes in him will have eternal life and will never die, because he or she passes from death to life (3:36; 5:24; 6:40, 47, 54).40 Where life is, eschatology is realized. It is therefore important to ask what ‘eternal life’ means. ‘The concept eternal life may be described as to be or receive a state of being (existence) which allows actions and relations associated with God (for instance, 5:40) … having life functions as a constitutive element for being a part of the family of God’.41 Eternal life is not a biological concept, rather it is a spiritual-religious one, describing a living relationship with God (Frey 2000, 473 points out that it involves a movement from the power of death to life). 37 For detailed discussions on the kingdom and life, see Frey (2000, 248–261); Becker (1979, 246); Schnackenburg (1980, 352ff.). Cf. also Busse (2006) for a discussion on the kingdom. 38 Although pushed somewhat into the background, the theme of kingship re-occurs in the Gospel (Frey 2000, 271–282). Jesus is first called king in 1:49. This remark occurs in an eschatologically loaded context where Jesus is identified according to scriptures as the Messiah, the one about whom the Moses and the prophets spoke (1:43–51). This is echoed when he enters Jerusalem (12:12–15), apart from the fact that the people wanted to make him king after perceiving his glorious signs (6:15). These are also contexts where the eschatological undertones are undeniable, although it seems as if the crowds expect a physical king to take the place of the Roman oppressors. That is why the Jewish council fear retaliation from the Romans if the events that were taking place would continue (11:45–52). In the narrative relating the events of the cross (chapters 18–20) the theme of the kingship and kingdom are prominent again and they are re-interpreted in terms of Jesus and what he represents. Jesus acknowledges that he is a king, though his kingdom is not of this world (18:33–38). Jesus is even crucified as a king (19:14, 19). 39 Cf. Kysar (1979, 89); Becker (1979, 246); Van der Watt (2000, ad loc). 40 Frey (2000, 261ff.); Van der Watt (1986); Gnilka (1989, 139). 41 Van der Watt (2000, ad loc). Life terminology is often contextually linked to family terminology like father (3:35–36; 5:21 etc.) or son (3:16, 35–36; 5:21 etc.).

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This is an important point for our purpose: Life is not stagnant; it unfolds along with the unfolding relationship (Van der Watt 2000, ad loc). Life should not be seen as something that is given like an object so that you can say you have everything here and now, i.e. once a person has it, he or she has everything. Rather, it is a state of being that starts, continues and lasts. It is the dynamic process of existing and continuing to exist forever in the presence of God and his people. New experiences lie ahead, new situations will confront a person, new actions will have to be taken… because one lives in time, and time is gradually unfolding. This is the very nature of life. All these experiences and events however take place within the framework of a developing relationship between the believer and God.42 With new insight, loyalty, and obedience the believer faces everything that lies ahead of him or her. The believer becomes part of a progressively unfolding reality that leads him or her into the future. More needs to be said at this point about the use of the familial imagery in John (cf. Van der Watt 2000, 161ff.; Thompson 2008, 205–214). The eschatological life is metaphorically expressed in terms of a rich imagery based on familial conventions. What happens when receiving eternal life, is developed in an analogous reference to what happens when a person is born into an earthly family, as has been argued extensively elsewhere (Van der Watt 2000). Being part of the family implies that there is a personal and living relationship of believers with the Father and the Son. This relationship is expressed in metaphorical imageries like the vine and its branches (15:1–8), the Good Shepherd that knows his sheep, and vice versa – Jesus even lays down his life for them because of his intimate relationship with them (10:1ff.), or in terms of friendship (15:13ff.). The numerous expressions displaying the love of Father and Son for believers also emphasize the existence of a relationship between God and believers. Yes, believers are cared for (6:24ff.) and protected by the Father and the Son (10:28–30; 17:12–15). This is expressed in a variety of ways. People are sanctified by him (17:17), share in the mission of Jesus (17:18; 20:21), have part in a loving community (15:1–10), etc. In his person Jesus brings salvation, life, light, sustenance, protection, etc. to them. Of course this means that believers should live in obedience to their Father (8:38ff), pursue his mission (17:18; 20:21–23), i.e. be responsive in their relations with the Father and the Son, which are all typical activities within the life of a family (Van der Watt 2000). This implies a continuous process of existence in the presence of God and his people. Eschatological life is here and 42

Richter (1977, 382) does not interpret the eschatology in familial terms, but emphasizes – by referring to Faulhaber – the central position of God: ‘Am Ende steht Gott, der auch am Anfang gewesen ist. Auch der Mensch ist am Ende noch dar, aber doch nur in seiner Bezogenheit auf Gott’.

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now and stretches into the future – it is the continuous life in the family of God. This of course constitutes a different but qualitatively superior reality than the ordinary earthly reality. What lies ahead after receiving eternal life by believing in Jesus? What does the future hold?43 Jesus, for instance, promises to go and prepare a place for believers in the house of his Father (14:2ff.),44 an image linked to the metaphorical network of familial relations. This forms a fixed point in the future. Moreover there is a strong resonance in the words in 17:24 where Jesus prays to his Father that all believers should be with him one day in his glory – L^QDR^SRXHLMPL HMJZ NDMNHLCQRLZ?VLQPHW¨HMPRXC But see also14:3 – L^QDR^SRXHLMPL HMJZ NDL X-PHLCaK?WH.45 The family is not yet in the house of the Father, but will be in future (cf. Keener 2005, 323). Both these expressions are made in the context of the departure of Jesus to the ‘above’ where his Father is. Real union with him in his Father’s house is awaiting believers in future. These words point to what lies ahead for those who already have eternal life now. If it is understood that life is not stagnant, but a state of ongoing existence, the future is opened up for new and different events, like going to the Father’s house or being with Christ one day. This does not degrade having life now, just as our ordinary earthly life is not degraded because a person has not yet experienced everything that the future holds for him or her. Because life is an ongoing state of existence, this is plausible and possible. John indeed emphasizes the (traditional) coming of the last day (6:39, 40, 44, 54; 12:47–48), signifying the final judgment (12:47–48), but this does not exclude having eternal life here and now already. If adopted, this perspective holds several implications for the terminology used to describe the eschatology of John. John’s eschatology is neither exclusively futurist nor realized.46 This debate became prominent with Bultmann’s (1965) insistence that John has a realized eschatology47 and

43 Schnackenburg (1980, 427) acknowledges that the following passages refer to the future: 5:28–29; 6:39, 40, 44, 57; 12:48. Brown (1971, CXVIII) mentions basically the same. Kysar (1979, 87) lists the following passages: 5:28; 6:39–40, 54; 12:25, 48; 14:2, 3, 18, 28; 17:23. 44 For a detailed discussion on 14:1–2 see Frey (2000, 134–153); Gnilka (1989, 141). 45 Frey (2000, 223–231); Smith (1999, 318). Schnackenburg (1982, 194–196), however, does not see 17:24 referring to the future. 46 Scholars like Dodd (1936, 75), Glasson (1963, 222–225), Robinson (1979, 163) are positive about a realized understanding of the eschatology of John. Schnackenburg (1980, 426) puts it in this way: ‘It is an eschatology of the present or, better, an eschatological outlook dominated by the presence of Christ’. 47 Smalley (1998, 265) and Kysar (1979, 88) use the term ‘present eschatology’.

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that futuristic references were later additions.48 This is also evident from Frey’s frequent discussions of and opposition to Bultmann.49 After a detailed analysis and description of the relationship between realized and futurist eschatology, Frey remarks that these two aspects – which for example are used in the same context in 5:24–2950 – can no longer be divided into two ‘religionsgeschichtliche Milieus’ but co-exist in John.51 Traditional material is ‘bereits terminologisch und theologisch adaptiert’ (Frey 2000, 465). As such the different remarks about eschatology in this Gospel cannot be constructed separately. The eschatological perspective in John includes aspects of both. The question is how they mutually relate to one another? I suggest that the eschatological events are a constantly realizing process,52 which perhaps makes the phrase ‘realizing eschatology’ a better choice?53 48

See also Käsemann (1978, 15ff.) who argues that in John the emphasis falls on the abiding of Jesus in believers based on his docetic Christology, rather than on the end. Richter (1977, 355ff) also treats the eschatology of the Gospel according to the different layers of growth of the Gospel as he has identified it. 49 Frey (1997, 12ff., 36ff.; 2000, 465); Brown (1971, CXVIII); Goppelt (1978, 640); Van Hartingsveld (1962, ad loc) perhaps goes too far. 50 Cf. Kammler (2000), Stimpfle (1990, ad loc) for a detailed discussion of these verses. Kammler prefers to interpret 5:28–29 as ‘präsentisch-eschatologisch’, although he acknowledges the possibility that they might refer to the future, in which case he sees them as interpolations by a redactor. He treats the other possible futurist uses in the same way (cf. p. 234). 51 Frey (2000, 465), Keener (2005, 322); Barrett (1978, 68–69). Schnackenburg (1980, 426) acknowledges the futurist aspect of the Johannine eschatology, but downplays it: ‘John shifts focus from the future to the present, and even where the Johannine Jesus is apparently talking about the future … in reality what is being talked about is the life of the community in the present, the presence of the Paraclete’. On page 431 he says that those texts that seem to refer to the future seem suspect as secondary additions, and if they are not taken as such, they should not be given ‘great weight’. He explains this difference from other New Testament writings in terms of a reorientation in terms of different intellectual categories (Schnackenburg 1980, 434). The Christological emphasis, of the coming of Christ, forms the basis of the realized eschatology in this Gospel (Schnackenburg 1980, 437). This position taken by Schnackenburg currently does not carry much weight. Cf. further Käsemann (1968, 70); Brown (1971, CXXI); Richter (1977, 346ff.); Kysar (1979, 86); Frey (2000, ad loc); Köstenberger (2004, 212). 52 Cf. also Davies (1992, 160). Smalley (1998, 265) remarks: ‘...“what will happen” seems for John to be the continuation of “what has happened”, rather than its consummation’. That there will be consummation of certain ‘new’ prophecies is a point missed by him. 53 Cf. Richter (1977, 348–354). Kysar (1979, 90–91) mentions several options like the ‘both and … option’ which corresponds with the traditional views, the ‘spoiler option’ with the traditional views, the ‘spoiler option’ – Bultmann – where a later redactor introduced futurist material and this ‘spoiled’ the consistent ‘present eschatology’ or the ‘preserver option’ where the author simply preserved the tradition.

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A few remarks should be made here: References to future events (i.e. the last day, going to the house of the Father, being where Jesus is) are maintained next to remarks that Jesus will return in the Spirit to his disciples in their present earthly situation and that the Father will be with them while they are still on this earth. This is expressed explicitly in, for instance, John 14–16. This new eschatological presence of Jesus with the family of God, also expressed in terms of the dwelling of the Father and Son in and with believers (14:19ff.)54 is expressed in different ways, some of which are listed here:55 –

Jesus words will be with them, determining their lives (14:10 – cf. Keener 2005, 971–972). If people love him, they will keep his commandments (14:15). – Jesus’ works56 should be seen as part of his presence with his people (14:11). Here one witnesses a vivid remembrance of Jesus. His commandments are indeed fulfilled in love (14:21, 23; see also 13:34–35 – Popkes 2005, 257ff.). – The presence of the Spirit is also related to the presence of Jesus (14:15–18).57 Eschatological expectations, based on, inter alia, Ezekiel 37 were fulfilled with the baptism of Christ with the Spirit (1:33; 20:21–22) and consequently by Jesus baptizing his disciples with the Spirit (20:22). The presence of the Spirit is thus eschatologically established and redefined by Jesus (cf. Schnackenburg 1982, 75f.). The eschatological presence and activities of the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete, are expounded upon in John 14–16. The Spirit will be with them for ever, but in the present time the Spirit fulfils certain tasks as the Paraclete, which guarantees the presence of Jesus among his people as the way, the truth and the life (14:6ff.). – Through his death and resurrection a cultic understanding of Jesus’ presence with his people became possible. In John 6:39ff. and especially 6:51ff. people are encouraged to drink the blood and eat the flesh of Jesus, by way of metaphorical expression. In doing this, they will

54 55

Frey (2000, 168ff.). For more detailed discussions, see Brown (1971, CXVIII); Smith (1999, 267); Frey (2000, 153ff.); Hwang (2006). Keener (2005, 932, 937–939) sees both realized and futurist references in these verses. Schnackenburg (1982, 58ff.) denies that this verse needs to refer to future events bases on the figurative nature of this passage. 56 Schnackenburg (1982, 69–70); Frey (2000, 156–158); Keener (2005, 945–946). 57 Frey (2000, 159–168), Brown (1971, CXVIII); Smith (1999, 274–275); Hofius (1999, 131–134); Johnsten (1970), Kammler (1996); Schnelle (1998, 17–31); Gnilka (1989, 146f.).

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share in the eschatological gifts of life that will never end. In this way Jesus will be with his people and they will be with him forever.58 The events of the cross also determine the nature of the behaviour of the people of God as part of the eschatological process. Their status changed to being children of God which impacts upon their behaviour – love, peace, joy, and a clear mission now typifies the way they act. This distinguishes them from their opponents. In John 13 Jesus washes their feet as an unconditional expression of his love and service to them. Thus Jesus offers as example to them (13:15) – they should love one another equally as a token of their discipleship, in other words, of their eschatological existence within the family of God (13:34–35). They should be friends that are willing to die for one another (15:11ff. Keener 2005, 1013–1015). Even Jesus’ action on the cross when he gave his mother to his beloved disciple to care for and vice versa, should be seen as the establishing of an eschatological community within which his mother also has a place (19:26–27).

The intensive union between Jesus and his people is expressed in the imagery of the vine (John 15) – his people will remain in him and he will remain in them.59 They will consequently bear fruit because of this union, which will be to the glory of the Father, i.e. it will make God present in this world (15:16–17 – Schnackenburg 1982, 112–113; Keener 2005, 1015–1016). This typifies their new eschatological situation and life, with a particular emphasis on still being in this world. With the coming of Christ the eschatological events have started and believers now live within this new era where eschatological time is unfolding. This is especially the case among his followers. Future events are not excluded, as 14:2–3 indicates. In 17:23 the presence with Jesus in his glory also implies that something more is install for believers. Although his disciples still need protection (17:12–15), are hated and even physically killed (15:18–16:4) in this world, and might have worries about the future possibilities of people who have already died in the congregation (see Stimpfle 1990, ad loc and Esler and Piper 2006, ad loc), Jesus’ words to Martha that he is the resurrection and life (11:25–26) confirm Jesus’ ability to bodily raise people who already have eternal life. This is attested to in the remarks in 6:39, 40, 44, 54 where there are references to Jesus who will raise believers on the ‘last day’. It should be recognized that a future lies ahead with specific events 58

Scholtissek (2004, 413–439). Schneiders (2008, 153ff.) also argues that Jesus’ presence should be linked directly to his community. See also Bieringer (2008, 209ff). Schnackenburg (1980, ad loc); Brown (1971, 281ff.). 59 Gnilka (1989, 138) uses the term ‘präsentischen Eschatologie’.

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that must still take place, even though eschatological events are already being realized in the lives of the believers. It is not a matter of the one eschatological possibility against the other, rather both express realities that are part of the life and existence of people who have eternal life (cf. Frey 2000, ad loc; Van der Watt 2000, ad loc). Is there an example for the latter pattern of partial fulfilment? Jesus’ eschatological actions were expected according to the Scriptures. Yet, within the fulfilment of these eschatological expectations of bringing eternal life and restoring a true relationship with God, Jesus utters prophetic words again: people will be raised on the last day (6:39ff.); he will be preparing a place for believers in the house of his Father (14:2–4); moreover he asks his Father to allow believers to be where he is (17:23). In other words, within the process of the fulfilment of the Scriptures, Jesus generates new prophetic words,60 pointing to the future. Even the High Priest forms part of the ‘generating of prophecy’ when he prophesises that Jesus will die for his people (11:50; 18:14 – Schnackenburg 1980, 349–350). Within the process of Jesus bringing eternal life from above the need for him to die becomes part of the prophetic tradition. A sort of cyclical movement of new prophecy born out of the fulfilment of previous prophecy becomes apparent in John in a similar manner to what is seen in the Old Testament. The Old Testament pattern – of new prophecies generated on the basis of the (partial) fulfilment of the older ones – to my mind, forms the framework for the eschatological developments and relationships we find in John. Jesus fulfils the promise of eternal life; from that other prophecies are generated that are still to be fulfilled, thus opening up the eschatological future. In the familial framework of the nature of what life is, such a progression is possible and no tension exists, because life is a constantly unfolding process. Another question deserves our attention: What is meant when life is called eternal? The use of the term DLMZYQLRain John seems to include aspects of time (eternal as without end), space in time (one aeon versus another) and quality (divine and not earthly). –

John links the lives of Jesus and the believers to a form of existence that will never end, since it is linked to the existence of God that is without end.61 Believers will never see death62 (8:51: HMDYQ WLa WRQ HMPRQORYJRQWKUKYVKTDYQDWRQRXMPKTHZUKYVKHLMaWRQDLMZCQD).63

60 It should be noted that the author of John equates the status of the words of Jesus with those of prophecy and scriptures. 61 John does not express himself in terms of heaven and earth that will be destroyed as in other early Christian traditions (see 2 Pet 3:7, 10–13; Rev 21:1; cf. also Isa 65:17; 66:22). One could therefore not speak of a post-existence. Cosmologically the fate of this

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–

Eternal life suggests a form of existence that defies and indeed supersedes natural earthly categories – there is a qualitative difference. Jesus’ remark that ‘whoever keeps my word will never see death’ (8:51) is immediately challenged by the Jews. They refer to Abraham and the prophets who died (8:53), clearly illustrating that if one argues with an earthly notion of time, when what Jesus is saying would be wrong. Jesus in reply then refers to his existence before Abraham (8:58) in glory with the Father (8:54–56). The argument is thus shifted to a qualitative level – Jesus’ life should not be bound to earthly time categories, but to his qualitative relationship with the Father. This suggests a form (category) of existence that supersedes the normal earthly restrictions of existence. In light of the remarks about pre–existence and the creative activities of Jesus (1:1–3) existence apart from creation is suggested. The first words of the Gospel (1:1 – In the beginning – HMQDMUFKC) indicate a decisive point where the perception of creational time starts. Time and creation are bound together and should be understood in terms of one another. From that point onwards time could be measured in terms of past, present and future, as becomes clear in the Prologue where the historical development up to the presence of Jesus is described (Van der Watt 1996). A time before creation is implied and that is usually called pre-existent time. Obviously, it is a question whether one should talk concepts of time at all with reference to existence before creation, since our point of orientation for time and space is creation. John simply refers to God as being there and the Word being with him (1:1) before creation. These are not categories of time, but categories of divine existence. In other assumed references to pre-existence, for instance, 8:58 (SULQ¨$EUDDPJHQHYVTDLHMJZ HLMPLY) the being of Jesus (‘I am’) is the focus and not time. Time is expressed in the word ‘before’ (SULYQ) and that suggests pre-existence, since Jesus lives now, while Abraham lived hundreds of years ago. To be able to be before him therefore suggests another state of being (life) than the one presently referred to. – In a recent study (Ramelli and Konstan 2007) the uses of DLMZYQLRaand DML"GLRathroughout ancient Greek documents are analyzed and the conclusion is drawn that the latter is usually used for eternity (i.e. without end), while DLMZYQLRais not usually used to refer to eternity. Rather it is used to indicate a substantial length of time or alternately an aeon or era/time period, except in cases where the sense of the adjective is determined by the subject it qualifies, when used for example, with God

earth is not reflected on, although Jesus’ words in, for example, John 14:1–2; 17:24 might imply that the end will not necessarily be on this earth as we know it. 62 Death is used as a theological term here in the sense of not being with God. 63 Schnackenburg (1980, 219) refers to PsLXX 88:49.

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where it can take the meaning of eternity. 64 In John this seems to be true (Ramelli and Konstan 2007, 61–64; cf. also Brown 1971, CXXI), in the sense that God’s new aeon arrived with the coming of Christ, but it should not be restricted to that period alone as can be seen above. This aeon is bound to God himself and will therefore also be eternal – it will be qualitatively and spatially different. In the concept of eternal life the above mentioned categories intertwine. People will live through Jesus who lives through the Father, who again is the source of life (6:57). This life cannot be terminated, just as God cannot be terminated. It bears the quality and permanence of God himself. Because life is qualitatively linked to God, it runs into eternity (time category), as God’s existence cannot be terminated, underlining the difference in nature from the captured existence and chronologically limited earthly life of earthly people.65 Eternal life excludes any idea or possibility of termination anywhere in future. It forms part of the aeon of God, his eschatological future. Eschatology in John is thus basically expressed in categories of existence, although the unfolding of time marks the development of eschatological events. 3.2 The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus as Eschatological Events The coming of Jesus inaugurates the eschatological events and in these inaugurating eschatological events the cross and resurrection form a decisive focal point (Frey 2000, 472). The cross is the place where Jesus’ identity is revealed (8:28), the ‘ruler of the world’ is cast out (12:31), and where those who belong to Jesus will be drawn to him (12:32).66 John underlines the centrality of the events of the cross through his use of ‘the hour’ (Z^UD– 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 13:1. In 7:6 NDLURYa is used – cf. Frey 2000, 472; Schnackenburg 1980, 426). His hour has not come until the cross is immanent (12:23; 13:1; 17:1), since the focal point towards which the timetable of God moves consists of the events of the cross. Frey points out that the author of John embedded the events firmly in time and space 64

There are some serious shortcomings in this study. Not all cases of the use of these words were considered and often the results seem to be based more on a gut feeling than on proper semantic analysis. John was not considered properly in this study. One should therefore use the results with care. 65 This same motif is used in the first chapters of the Wisdom of Solomon to describe eternity or immortality. The contrast between life that originates with God – and which is eternal – and death that implies alienation from God seems to have been a common worldview in Jewish circles in those times. 66 See also the well known implicit link between the cross and the eschatological feast in Chapter 2. Cf. Schnackenburg (1980, 401); Becker (1979, 247).

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which gives it an indeterminate historical and anti-docetic character (Frey 2000, 483). That is why Jesus can indeed say on the cross ‘it is finished’ (19:30; see also John 17); – his initial eschatological mission is fulfilled, opening up the future. The coming of the hour does not mean that time is completely fulfilled, but it marks a key event in the unfolding of the eschatological events: the presence of Jesus.67 This key event motivates and indeed generates the possibilities and prophetic words (see John 14–17) about future eschatological events. The tension between partial fulfilment and movement into the future through new prophecy becomes more than apparent with the events of the cross. For instance, Jesus came as the Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets wrote (1:41, 45). The prophecies were fulfilled, but not as expected. Ordinary expectations were that the messiah should be a king who saves his people from oppression (1:19–28; 12:12–19), not somebody who dies on a cross. This ‘change’ is explained through prophecy, which paves the way for the development of a future eschatology. Without realizing it the high priest prophesises that one man would die for the advantage of his people (11:50–51), thus giving a prophetic quality to Jesus’ death, but also confirming the positive effects of Jesus’ death. In 12:24ff. Jesus then remarks, in imagery, that the seed that falls into the earth and dies will bear much fruit. The fruit that the death of Jesus bear are the salvific gifts of an obedient life (12:25) in light of being drawn to him (12:31, 35–36). Through the events of the cross new life and new potential will flow, as the high priest had said. In 10:17–18 Jesus explains and indeed prophesises that he should lay down his life and take it up again, based on the will and love of his Father.68 These words are fulfilled through his death and resurrection. This goes even further. This activity of giving life and taking it back substantiates his claims that he is from God, as Thomas acknowledges in his confession (Frey 2000, 341ff.). Where else would he get the power to do that? Only from God, as was stated in 5:17ff. By taking up his life again, Jesus gives the historical proof (for the narrator) that substantiates his claims. Within the confines of this narrative, this confession of Jesus’ divine identity would not have been possible without the reality of the cross events (Stibbe 1994, 69; cf. Frey 2000, 430ff.). Within and through the events of the cross the eschatological presence of Jesus and also those of God are established and confirmed. The events of the cross serve as a revelation of the eschatological presence of God (Bultmann 1965, 134ff.). There is a 67

Cf. Schnackenburg (1980, 429) who remarks: ‘The “how” which “has come” and will continue in existence means Jesus’ presence as eschatological time’. 68 See also Zimmermann (2004, 267–268; 392ff.); Schnackenburg (1980, 300–303); Wilckens (1998, 339).

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circular movement – through prophecy the events of the cross are expected and through the events of the cross the prophecy of Jesus is confirmed and substantiated.69 That is why Jesus can claim to have opened the eschatological future70 – whoever believes in him will never die, since he is the resurrection and life (11:25–26): ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die’71 (note the subtle play between life and death). There is indeed the prospect of life in the future. Living (eternal life – ]DYZ) amidst (physical) death is also attested to in these verses.72 Physical death does not terminate eternal life and in this way the eschatological future within the family of God becomes possible and is ensured. The ironic fulfilment of prophecies in and through the cross events, prepare the way for prophecies about the future to emerge. Because Jesus is in the future and part of the future, believers have an eschatological future. He is the one who promises to prepare their rooms in the house of the Father (14:1–2) and will remain their way to truth and life (14:6 – cf. Fischer 1975, ad loc; Koester 2005, 117–133). He will come back to them and stay with them (14:15ff.; 16:22ff. – see Frey 2000, 217–222). As people who will have life through Jesus in the family of God (14:19), they will enjoy a new existence according to the new ‘eschatological presence’ of Jesus. He is also the one who will raise them on the last day and with whom they will be in glory one day (17:24 – Frey 2000, 474). He confirmed this as a Prophet with new prophecies. The discussion between Jesus and Martha (11:25–26) is often seen as a confirmation by Jesus of realized eschatology in favour of the futuristic eschatology to which Martha refers.73 This need not be the case. Jesus affirms that in him eschatological resurrection and life became possible. 69

We cannot go into detail here, but the other deeds of Jesus also carry the same message. See the argument of the blind man (9:32–33). Nicodemus concludes that Jesus must be from God, since ‘no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him’. (3:2). The sickness and death of Lazarus is to glorify the Son (11:4, see also 15). 70 Schnackenburg (1980, 426ff.), Smith (1999, 223); Barrett (1978, 376–377). 71 HMJZY HLMPLK- DMQDYV WDVLaNDL K- ]ZKY R- SLVWHXYZQHLMa HMPH ND@Q DMSRTDYQ K ]KY V HWDL 26 NDL SDCa R- ]ZCQ NDL SLVWHXYZQ HLMa HMPH RXM PK DMSRTDYQK HLMa WRQ DLZCQD Cf. Schnackenburg (1980, 330–333). 72 The context in Chapter 11 and especially in 11:21–27 is eschatologically dense. A thorough discussion of these verses in relation to their eschatological significance can be found in Frey (vol. 3) and will not be repeated here. Cf. Smith (1999, 223); Schnackenburg (1980, 428–429). 73 Frey (2000, 474) emphasises that John is fully aware of the end time expectation of the raising of the dead. Cf. Schnackenburg (1980, 330–333).

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Martha then confesses him as Lord and Messiah to highlight the Christological dynamics of the text. Eschatological events are Christologized. What does this mean? It means that the eschatological events, including the action of resurrection, time, etc. are determined by the Person and his presence. It is not time that is driving the process, but the presence and decisions of the Person. This could be called personalized time or personalized eschatology. Where Jesus is, and whenever he is, there the reality of resurrection and life is present. This is illustrated when Lazarus is raised back to ordinary life (because he died again – see also 12:9–11). If people, who are physically dead, hear the voice of Jesus, they will be raised (5:25– 29). Eschatological power is Christological power and Jesus can spend that wherever he wants to and is present.74 Many of the discussions about the eschatological nature of John focus on time (realized or future).75 The question is whether the focus really falls on the right place. If John favours personalized time, as is argued earlier, then the focus should shift. The concept of personalized time and events, that binds time and events to a person, draws the focus to the presence and activity of the person and not so much to the time frame.76 Wherever the person is present and acts in accordance with what is eschatologically expected, eschatology is realized. However, the person can continue to fulfil the promises or even make other (new) prophecies or promises which he could also fulfil. The ‘when’ then disappears behind the ‘that’ and the singularity/punctuality of events (eschatology happens now and is fulfilled) is replaced by the continuing presence of the person. This results in an eschatology constantly being realized in time (realizing eschatology = neither exclusively realized and nor exclusively futuristic, but both in the sense of a continuing process of events that keeps on realizing eschatological time). Obviously, the person can concentrate certain of his actions and perform them at a single point in time, like the ‘last day’, but in essence, the presence of the person determines the essence of eschatological events. Frey also mentions that history is encapsulated in the person of Christ.77 The glorious point where Jesus illustrates his power over death as the one who lives, showing that the Father is with him, becomes the focus point for eschatological fulfilment.

74

Cf. Kammler (2000, 235) who emphasize the Christological side of the eschatol-

ogy. 75 76

Zumstein (2006, 139–156). See Schnackenburg (1980, 429). Ricca (1966, 152) remarks that John’s personalized eschatology provides the framework within which the fullness of time may be expressed, since the person of Jesus dominates. 77 Frey (2000, 487); Smalley (1998, 267); Wilckens (1998, 338).

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It is therefore not unexpected that events that are eschatological in nature, like the coming of the Spirit, or the identification of the disciples as children of the Father (20:17 – here Jesus for the first time directly links the disciples to their Father, thus indicating that the divine family is indeed established) are directly related to the events of the cross. The glorious point where Jesus illustrates his power over death as the One who lives, showing that the Father is with him, becomes the focal point for eschatological fulfilment. Eschatology does not end with the events of the cross. It should be noted that these pivotal events generate other prophetic words that generate new eschatological expectations, for example, about the Paraclete (Chapters 14–16), that the believers will be consecrated (17:19) and will be with the Father in his house (14:1–2), sharing the glory of Jesus (17:24), or that they will be raised on the last day (6:39, 40). The realised eschatological event of Jesus’ death generates eschatological events that focus believers not only on the present, but on the future too. In the person of Jesus, the realised eschatology and futuristic eschatology are entwined in a process that realizes itself through time. These things are completely bound to Jesus’ presence and promises. He is the guarantee of the eschatological presence and future. In the combination of present and future eschatology, the present is motivated from the future and the future is guaranteed in the present. Through the promise that motivates the people in their present situation, the future becomes a reality that creates a hope in the participation in the glory of Christ (Frey 2000, 470–471). 3.3 The Other Side of the Coin: Jesus and Eschatological Judgment Eschatological judgment78 is as real as eternal life in John, but it does not receive equal focus as something that Jesus aims to do. In 3:17ff. the mission of Jesus is specifically linked to life and not to judgment. Frey calls it the unevenness of the eschatological picture in John (Frey 2000, 469; cf. Schnackenburg 1980, 423ff.). The Father has given Jesus the authority to judge (5:27–30 – Frey 2000, 354–369), although he only judges according to the will of the Father (8:15–16). The picture goes even further – on the last day, it will be the words of Jesus that judge those who did not believe (12:47–48 – Frey 2000, 309–318). Lack of faith, leading to a negative attitude towards Jesus is the criterion for judgment and the experience of God’s wrath (3:36 – Frey 2000, 305–309). Although judgment will take full effect on the last 78 See Blank (1964); Cadman (1969, 43–44); Bergmeier (1980, 232–233); Bultmann (1984, 390); Hainz (1994, 149–163); Zumstein (2004, 242ff.).

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day (12:47–48), the knowledge of what the outcome will be, is already evident in the present (see 12:31).79 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.80 Frey correctly points out that references to the eschatological judgment are restricted to the public ministry of Jesus (Frey 2000, 468). ‘In ihm effüllt sich die endgültige gegenwart Gottes unter den Menschen und vollzieht sich das eschatologishe Gericht’ (Zumstein 2004, 252). It should also be noted that this description and the expectation of judgment are based on the words of Jesus and should be regarded as prophetic, since he is a prophet. The prophecy of the enemy that will be destroyed by the messiah is not fully fulfilled, but through the prophetic words of Jesus the issue is prophetically reformulated in 12:47–48. According to general expectations eschatological judgment should have taken place with the coming of the kingly messiah – indeed, it arrives with Jesus and will finally be experienced on the last day by those who do not believe. This judgment takes place ‘in der Begegnung mit dem Wort Christi bzw. mit Christus, der ja selbst der Richter ist’ (Frey 2000, 475; cf. Bultmann 1984, 391).

4. Some Concluding Remarks Eschatology in John is related to and interpreted in terms of persons, with the focus on Jesus. This colours the way in which the whole process unfolds. Events, decisions, and even time are all bundled into a Person. This Person, Jesus, working with the Father, decides when and how things take place. Time becomes linked to and determined by a person – prophetic words and promises are fulfilled and guaranteed by him. This leads us to a second important insight. Prophecy should not be seen as a singular event. In the Old Testament we see the occurrence of a constantly overlapping pattern. Major ‘eschatological events’ took place, yet while they were unfolding new prophecies were re-interpreting the events and created new expectations for the future, thus overlapping current events, but also opening the future in this way. The prophetic solution to a crisis (that was given in the past) goes into fulfilment (present), often only

79

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partly, generating new promises and prophecy for the future. This remains a continuing process until the final consummation (solution to the crisis). There is indeed a final point, a final situation, after which we will not be able to speak of eschatological events any more. According to John this point is reached when we share the glory of Jesus where he is now, taking our place in the house of the Father with its many rooms as people who were resurrected (on the last day). We will be with God in the full sense of the word, living eternally with him. Those who do not believe in Jesus will be judged – they will be without God. This is the final point towards which the eschatological events are moving, and until we reach it we are still in a process where eschatological events are constantly realizing themselves. This constantly realizing aspect is based on the fact that certain eschatological events have already taken place, but that through new prophecies the process is still continuing. Every believer is part of this process. The author of John has also chosen a perfect metaphor for accommodating such a continuous process – believers are children of God, part of his family. A family, living with their Father and brothers and sisters, is not stagnant. It is a living entity that constantly experiences things. Loving one another day by day is, for instance, a mark of the eschatological process that has started. The Father of the family – in this case through his unique Son, Jesus – can decide when what should take place. And he has promised us a future that is still awaiting us – the eschatological process continues. Although John places significant emphasis on the presence of God with the community (which has a lot to do with the conflict situation where the major questions was: ‘Where and with whom is God?’) the prophet, Jesus, generated a new prophecy to focus them on their final destination. Until then, we will be travellers on the eschatological road. Works Consulted Aune, D 1972 The cultic setting of realized eschatology in Early Christianity. Leiden. Barrett, CK 1978 The Gospel according to St John. London. Beasley-Murray, GR 1999 John. Dallas. Becker, J 1979 Das Evangelium nach Johannes. Kapitel 1–10. Gütersloh. Bergmeier, R 1980 Glaube as Gabe nach Johannes. Stuttgart. Beutler, J 1998 So sehr hat Gott die Welt geliebt (Joh 3,16). Zum Heilsuniversalismus im Johannesevangelium, in Studien zu den johanneischen Schriften, Beutler, J (ed.), Stuttgart, 263–274. Bieringer, R 2008 ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ (John 20:17). Resurrection and ascension in the Gospel of John, in The resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of John, Koester, CR & Bieringer, R (eds.), Tübingen, 209– 235. Blauert, H 1953 Die Bedeutung der Zeit in der johanneischen Theologie. Tübingen. Blank, J 1964 Krisis. Untersuchung zur johanneischen Christologie und Eschatologie. Freiburg.

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– 1980 Der Mensch vor der radikalen alternative. Versuch zum Grundsatz der ‘johanneishcen Antropologie’. Kairos, 146–156. Brown, R 1971 The Gospel according to St John (i–xii). London. Bultmann, R 1965 Die Eschatologie des Johannesevangeliums, in Glabe und Verstehen, Bd. 1, Bultmann, R (ed.), Tübingen, 134–152. – 1984 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Tübingen. Busse, U 2006 Metaphorik und Rhetorik im Johannesevangelium: Das Bildfeld vom König, in Imagery in the Gospel of John, Frey, J, Van der Watt, JG, Zimmermann, R (eds.), Tübingen, 279–318. Cadman, WH 1969 The open heaven. The revelation of God in the Johannine sayings of Jesus. Oxford. Coloe, ML 2001 God dwells with us. Temple symbolism in the Fourth Gospel. Collegeville. Culpepper, RA 1983 Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel. Philadelphia. Davies, M 1992 Rhetoric and reference in the Fourth Gospel. Sheffield. De Jonge, M 1972–1973 Jewish expectations about the Messiah according to the Fourth Gospel. NTS 19, 246–270. Dodd, CH 1936 The apostolic preaching and its developments. London. Esler, P & Piper, R 2006 Lazarus, Mary and Martha. Social-Scientific approaches to the Gospel of John. Minneapolis. Fischer, G 1975 Die himmlischen Wohnungen: Untersuchungen zu Joh 14,2f. Bern & Frankfurt. Frey, J 1997 Die johanneische Eschatologie I. Tübingen. – 1998 Die johanneische Eschatologie II. Tübingen. – 2000 Die johanneische Eschatologie III. Tübingen. – 2005 Eschatology in the Johannine circle, in Imagery in the Gospel of John, Frey, J, Van der Watt, J.G, Zimmermann, R (eds.), Tübingen, 47–82. Glasson, TF 1963 The second advent. The origin of the New Testament doctrine. London. Gnilka, J 1989 Neutestamentliche Theologie. Ein Überblick. Würzburg. Goppelt, L 1978 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Göttingen. Gundry, R 1967 ‘In my Father’s house are many 0RQDLY’ (John 14:2). ZNW 58, 68–72. Haenchen, E 1980 Das Johannesevangelium. Ein Kommentar. Tübingen. Hahn, F 2002a Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Vol 1. Tübingen. – 2002b Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Vol 2. Tübingen. Hainz, J. 1994 ‘Zur Krisis kam ich in die Welt’(Joh 9,39). Zur Eschatologie des Johannesevangeliums, in Weltgericht und Weltvollendung. Zukunftsbilder im Neuen Testament, Klauck, H-J (ed.), Freiburg i. Br., 149–163. Hasitschka, M 1989 Befreiung von Sünde nach dem Johannesevangelium. Innsbruck. – 1996 Befreiung von Sünde nach dem Johannesevangelium, in Sünde und Erlösung im Neuen Testament, Frankemölle, H (ed.), Freiburg, 92–107. Hengel, M 1983 Reich Christi, Reich Gottes und Weltreich im 4. Evangelium. Theologische Beiträge 14, 201–216. Herrmann, S 1977 Zeit und Geschichte. Stutgart. Hofius, O 1996 Das Wunder der Wiedergeburt. Jesu Gespräch mit Nikodemus Joh 3,1– 21, in Johannesstudien: Untersuchungen zur Theologie des vierten Evangeliums, Hofius, O & Kammler, H-C (ed.), Tübingen, 33–80. – 1999 ‘Er gibt den Geist ohne Maß’ Joh 3,34b. ZNW 90, 131–134. Hogg, JE 1926 ‘Living water’ – ‘water of life’. AJSL 42, 131–133. Hort, FJA 1893 The way the truth the life. Cambridge.

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Hwang, W-H 2006 The presence of the risen Jesus in and among his followers with special reference to the first farewell discourse in John 13:31–14:31. Pretoria. Johnsten, G 1970 The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John. Cambridge. Kammler, H-C 1996 Jesus Christus und der Geist-paraklet. Eine Studie zur johanneischen Verhältnisbestimmung von Pneumatologie und Christologie, in Johannesstudien: Untersuchungen zur Theologie des vierten Evangeliums, Hofius, O and Kammler, H-C (ed.), Tübingen, 87–190. – 2000 Christologie und Eschatologie. Joh 5,17–30 als Schlüsseltext johanneischer Theologie. Tübingen. Käsemann, E 1968 The testament of Jesus. A study of the Gospel of John in the light of Chapter 17. London. Keener, CS 2005 The Gospel of John. A Commentary. Vol 1+2. Peabody. Koester, CS 2005 Jesus as the way to the Father in Johannine theology (John 14,6), in Imagery in the Gospel of John, Frey, J, Van der Watt, JG, Zimmermann, R (eds.), Tübingen, 117–133. Köstenberger, AJ 2004 John. Grand Rapids. Kühschelm, R 1990 Verstockung, Gericht und Heil. Frankfurt. Kysar, R 1979 John, the maverick Gospel. Atlanta. Lindblom, J 1914 Das ewige Leben; eine Studie über die Entstehung der religiösen Lebensidee im Neuen Testament. Uppsala. McHugh, J 1992 ‘In Him was life’: John’s Gospel and the parting of the ways, in Jews and Christians, Dunn, JDG (ed.), Tübingen, 123–158. Moule, CFD 1975 The meaning of ‘life’ in the gospel and epistles of St John. A study in the story of Lazarus John 11:1–44. Theology 78, 114–125. Mussner, F 1952 =:+. Die Anschaung vom “Leben” im Vierten Evangelium unter Berücksichtigung der Johannesbriefe. München. Neugebauer, J 1994 Die eschatologischen Aussagen in den johanneischen Abschiedsreden. Stuttgart. Ng, WY 1997 Johannine water symbolism and its eschatological significance with special reference to John 4. Philadelphia. Painter, J 1997 Jesus and the quest for eternal life, in Critical readings of John 6, Culpepper, RA (ed.), Leiden, 61–94. Petersen, S 2006 Die Ich-bin-Worte als Metaphern am Beispiel der Licht Metaphorik, in Imagery in the Gospel of John, Frey, J, Van der Watt, JG, Zimmermann, R (eds.), Tübingen, 121–138. Popkes, EE 2005 Die Theologie der Liebe Gottes in den johanneischen Schriften. Tübingen. Pribnow, H 1934 Die johanneische Anschauung vom ‘Leben’. Greifswald. Ramelli, I & Konstan, D 2007 Terms for eternity. Aiǀnios and aïdios in classical and Christian texts. Piscataway. Ricca, P 1966 Die eschatologie des vierten Evangeliums. Zürich. Richter, G 1977 Studien zim Johannesevangelium. Regensburg. Robinson, JAT 1979 Jesus and his coming. Philadelphia. Schaefer, O 1933 Der Sinn der Rede Jesu von den vielen Wohnungen in seines Vaters Hause und von dem Weg zu ihm (Joh 14:1–7). ZNW 32, 210–217. Schneiders, S 2008 Touching the risen Jesus. Mary Magdalene and Thomas the Twin in John 20, in The resurrection of Jesus in the Gospel of John, Koester, CR & Bieringer, R (eds.), Tübingen, 153–176. Schnelle, U 1991 Neutestamentliche Antropologie. Jesus-Paulus-Johannes. NeukirchenVluyn.

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– 1998 Johannes als Geisttheologie. NT 40, 17–31. Schnackenburg, R 1968 The Gospel according to St. John. Vol 1. London. – 1980 The Gospel according to St. John. Vol 2. London. – 1982 The Gospel according to St. John. Vol 3. London. Scholtissek, K 2004 ‘Eine größere Liebe als diese hat niemand, als wenn einer sein Leben hingibt für seine Freunde’ (Joh 15,13). Die hellenistische Freundschaftsethik und das Johannesevangelium, in Kontexte des Johannesevangeliums, Frey, J & Schnelle, U (eds.), Tübingen, 413–439. Schwankl, O 1995 Licht und Finsternis. Ein metaphorische Paradigma in den johanneischen Schriften. Freiburg. Simon, UE 1957 Eternal life in the Fourth Gospel, in Studies in the Fourth Gospel, Cross, FL (ed.), London, 97–109. Smalley, SS 1998 John: Evangelist and interpreter. Exeter. Smilde, E 1943 Leven in de Johanneische Geschriften. Kampen. Smith, DM 1986 John. Philadelphia. Stählin, G 1934 Zum Problem der johanneischen Eschatologie. ZNW 33, 225–259. Stibbe, MWG 1994 John as storyteller. Narrative criticism and the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge. Stimpfle, A 1990 Blinde sehen. Die Eschatologie im traditionsgeschicht-lichen Prozess des Johannesevangeliums. Berlin. Suggit, JN 1984 The raising of Lazarus. ET 95, 106–108. Tabor, JD s.a. online:http://www.religiousstudies.uncc.edu/jdtabor/indexb.html Thompson, MM 2001 The God of the Gospel of John. Grand Rapids. – 2008 Children in the Gospel of John, in The child in the Bible, Bunge, MJ (ed.), Grand Rapids, 195–214. Tolmie, DF 1995 The characterization of God in the Fourth Gospel. JSNT 69, 57–75. Trudinger, LP 1976 The meaning of ‘life’ in St. John. Some further reflections. BTB 6, 258–263. Van der Watt, JG 1986 Ewige lewe in die Evangelie volgens Johannes. Pretoria. – 1989 The use of DLMZYQLRain the concept ]ZYKDLMZYQLRain John’s Gospel. Novum Testamentum 31(3), 217–228. – 2000 Family of the King. Dynamics of metaphor in the Gospel according to John. Leiden. – 2005 Salvation in the Gospel according to John, in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on soteriology. Van der Watt, JG (ed.), Leiden,101–131. Van Hartingsveld, L 1962 Die Eschatologie des Johannesevangeliums. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Rudolf Bultmann. Assen. Vellanickal, M 1978 Jesus: the bread of life. Biblebhashyam 4, 30–48. – 1979 Drink from the source of the Living Water. Biblebhashyam 5, 309–318. Watson, NM 1983 Risen Christ and Spirit/Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel. AncBR 31, 81– 85. Wenham, D 1980 Spirit and life: some reflections on Johannine theology. Themelios 6, 4–8. Wilckens, U 1998 Das Evangelium nach Johannes. Göttingen. Wind, A 1956 Leven en dood in het Evangelie van Johannes en in de Serat Dewarutji. Franeker. Winstanley, MT 1982 The eucharist as light and life: a johannine reflection. Review for Religions 41, 882–888. Zimmermann, R 2004 Christologie der Bilder im Johannesevangelium. Tübingen.

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Zumstein, J 2004 Kreative Erinnerung. Relecture und Auslegung im Johannesevangelium. Zürich. – 2006 Bildersprache und Relektüre am Beispiel von John 15,1–7, in Imagery in the Gospel of John, Frey, J, Van der Watt, JG, Zimmermann, R (eds.), Tübingen, 139–156.

Eschatologie in der Apostelgeschichte Ulrich Busse English Abstract Most of the modern German expositions of Luke-Acts follow the hypothesis of Hans Conzelmann, namely, that Luke had given up expecting the immanent return of Jesus. This resulted in a three-part division of salvation history: (1) the period of the Old Testament up to John the Baptist; (2) the midst of time, i.e. the saving epoch of Jesus; (3) and the current ongoing period of the church. In its essence this hypothesis is based on the early Christian eschatological views considered by Johannes Weiss (1863–1914). He uses Mark 1:14f. and 9:1 as a point of departure – these verses seem to presuppose an urgent expectation among the disciples of the immanent return of Jesus. However, Weiss pays no attention to contradictory statements (e.g. Mk 2:10 and especially the traditions reflected in the parables and miracles) that reflect a differentiation between a present, and a more or less urgent, future eschatology. More recent studies showed that working with the former textual basis (mentioned above) is too restrictive to serve as an acceptable basis for formulating a proper early Christian worldview. Furthermore, Q research draws attention to the fact that Luke has not only read the Gospel of Mark but also Q, and has integrated both sources into his ‘gospel’, which is then continued in the Acts of the Apostles, which offers a description of the early history of the expansion of the church. Currently Mark 13 is preferred over Mark 1:14f. and 9:1 as a starting point to offer an adequate understanding Luke’s eschatological thought. Mark 13 offers an insightful overview of Mark’s particular eschatological point of view: the disciples – despite experiencing hostility in the synagogues, in the courts of law, before powerful dignitaries and royals (Mk 13:9f.; cf. 14:9f.) – have to justify and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ before the apocalyptic catastrophe of the end comes, at which time the justification of the believers will be made manifest. Mark clearly reflects on this intensive post-Eastern proclamation, which takes place before the absolute end of time.

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Because of the open-ended nature of Mark’s gospel (Mk 16:7f.), the reader is required to figure out how the message of the resurrection could have reached the author, since the women did not share their experiences of Jesus’ resurrection with the disciples. The enigma of the gospel’s conclusion could be explained if the open-endedness is read in tandem with the Markan ‘messianic secret’. Mark’s Gospel not only offers a description of Jesus’ work during his lifetime, it also reflects a movement of interpretative development through the preaching and ministry of the post-Eastern disciples. From this perspective, Mark’s way of describing the life of Jesus should constantly be evaluated as a post-Eastern description of the ‘gospel’ (Mk 1:1). In essence, the historic process of salvation was not completed in Jesus` lifetime, thus inviting and encouraging eschatological perspectives to develop (cf. Mk 1:14f.). However, the hope for an immanent end to the current era was implausible, although understandable in light of the dynamic effect the resurrection of Jesus had on the disciples since it influenced their post-Easter perspectives on the life of Jesus. Mark 13 reminds the reader of the requirement to proclaim the gospel, even in adverse situations, yet to do so with eschatological expectations of the immanent coming of the kingdom. Luke, ‘the historian’, however, corrects this eschatological misapprehension early in Acts (1:6f.), where Jesus points out that it is not for people to know the times and seasons the Father has determined. He thus relativizes their future expectations. Mark, with his post-Easter point of view, does mention the fast approaching kingdom of God (Mk 1:14f.), but he also displays an awareness of another eschatological tradition that stresses the presence of the kingdom of God (Mk 2:10). The parable of the mustard seed (Mk 4:30–32) illustrates that he is aware of the original dialectical position of Jesus, who spoke both of the ‘now-already’ (present), as well as the ‘still-not’ (future) presence of the kingdom of God. Luke, however, wrote a diegese (Lk 1:1), a historically orientated narrative, by inter alia incorporating Mark’s kerygmatic gospel into his account. His decisive shift in interest and form facilitates the correction of the eschatological emphasis on the immanent consummation in narrated historic time. He also combines the eschatological concepts of Mark with Q by reproducing Q’s eschatological statements in an unabridged form. This emphasizes the present fulfilment and augmenting the parable and miracle traditions (Sondergut) in the same manner. Moreover, by transferring Jesus’ power, through the Holy Spirit (Lk 4:18f.; 5:17; Acts 10:36ff.), to the first disciples (Acts 2; 10) the eschatological focus on the present remains equally important for the ongoing epochs of the mission to the Jews and gentiles. In addition, Acts also closes in an open-ended manner similar to that found in Mark’s gospel. This has the effect of transferring

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the unsolved missionary tasks of the first generation of Christians to the first readers, indirectly encouraging them to continue the missionary process. The Lukan evangelist emphasized another basic component beyond what is found in Mark’s gospel, namely he refers to, and quotes from, the Old Testament. He emphasizes prophetic statements (Lk 4:18f.; Acts 2:17– 21) in order to underline the will of God, who will succeed through the progression of history up to the end. This victorious will is proclaimed and predicted by Moses and the prophets. He and his Spirit are active wherever the apostles engage themselves in preaching the Baptist’s message of repentance (Lk 3:4–6, 10–14; 24:47; Acts 2:37–39) as well as Jesus’ raising from the dead. By doing this they will overcome all human obstacles set by Jews and gentiles alike (cf. Acts 17:32; 19:23ff.), with Jesus establishing the kingdom of God on earth at the end. This overall view becomes apparent not only in the Lukan introduction (Lk 1:5–2:52) but also in Peter’s first speech in Acts 2:14–36. Luke’s eschatological approach in Acts may thus be described on this basis. The historical narrative signalled and presented at the beginning of Acts creates the literary framework for the risen Jesus to correct his disciples’ false expectations. Within the framework of the narrative each person is permitted to act as a character within the plot and to make known his or her motives, views and expectations. These could then be approved or corrected by others in the narrative; for instance, the disciple’s expectation of the Lord’s immanent return is thus dismissed (Acts 1:6–11). Because of the delayed consummation the disciples are commissioned to take the message of the coming kingdom of God to ‘all nations’ (Lk 24:47) up to ‘the end of the world’ (Acts 1:8); it is ‘for you and your children, and for all who are far off’ (Acts 2:39). This task, however, remains uncompleted at the conclusion of the book: Paul only reaches Rome (Acts 28). Apart from this, we read that ‘leading men’ (Acts 28:17) declined the message in certain places (cf. Acts 13:41), necessitating further missionary efforts by the first readers of Acts. This thrilling, and at the same time dramatically narrated, history of the early missionary efforts is steered by God and his Spirit (cf. Acts 16:6), who not only initiated it, but also provided it with dynamic momentum. God, in the meantime, also grants Christians, like Stephen, refuge in heaven after their violent deaths (Acts 6–7; cf. Lk 16:19ff.; 23:39–43), or provides a heavenly home to deceased believers, who have lived according to his or Jesus’ will (individual eschatology). There, too, the final coming of his kingdom is still postponed as it will only be announced by God. Jesus, as God’s elected clientele king, shall finally establish the kingdom at the end of the day. The eschatological process is dependent on the will of

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God; this will is unpredictable and incalculable for humans. Nobody knows when the final consummation will take place since it will happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Therefore the flow of the church’s future mission could be subdivided into periods like the periods in the preceding biblical history (cf. Acts 7 and 13), but with a definite goal according to God’s plan for his creation as it is recorded in the Old Testament. Accordingly, it will be fulfilled (Acts 3:19–24). The mission to the Jews and gentiles is indivisibly interwoven; both are presented as not yet completed. The Lord’s brother, James, indicates a further step in the eschatological development when quoting Amos: ‘I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen, and I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it’ (Acts 15:16). This quote affirms that from the beginning God invested infinite sympathy in Israel just as Paul placed his ‘hope’ on it (Acts 23:6; 24:15; 26:6f.; 28:20). In short: Luke played down the urgency of the present eschatology. He brought it in line with his approach of individual eschatology. He never gave up that perspective, because he thought like most early Christians that all history has a divine aim. His insights became fundamental for all further Christian generations. Significantly a later Jewish commentator, who once wrote a comment on Exodus 3:14 on the side of the Targum Neofiti, suitably described the historical and eschatological outline of Luke-Acts as follows: I [God] have existed before the World has been created and have existed after the World has been created. I am He who has been your aid in the Egyptian exiles, and I am who will be your aid in every generation.

Luke would have completed this comment with an eschatological reference: Until through my Messiah I integrate the World into my endless kingdom, which I intended from the beginning.

Eschatologie in der Apostelgeschichte Das Thema ‘Eschatologie in der Apostelgeschichte’ beschäftigt sich hauptsächlich mit zwei zentralen Gesichtspunkten: mit einem theologischen und mit einem literarischen Aspekt. Bereits Max Weber hat in seinem posthum erschienenen Hauptwerk ‘Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’ (Weber 1980, 314) den theologischen Ort der jüdisch-christlichen wie islamischen Eschatologie als einen Bestandteil der Theodizeefrage bestimmt, der ‘der monotheistischen Gottesidee’ innewohne und sich dem Problem der ‘Unvollkommenheit der Welt’ stelle. Diese neuzeitliche Sichtweise vers-

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pricht eine Bereicherung der klassischen Abhandlungen über die ‘Lehre von den letzten Dingen’, seien sie nun anthropologisch oder kosmologisch gedacht. Neben dem theologischen rangiert in dem hier zu erörternden Spezialfall – fast auf Augenhöhe – auch der literarische Aspekt. Denn 1993 unternahmen Mikeal C. Parsons und Richard I. Pervo (1993) den Versuch, die von Henry Joel Cadbury1 seit 1920 und 30 Jahre später, von ca. 1950 an, von der redaktionsgeschichtlichen Forschung2 favorisierte These von der auktorialen, narrativen und theologischen Einheitlichkeit des Lukasevangeliums und der Apostelgeschichte wieder in Frage zu stellen. Sie haben zwar für ihre Thesen kein allzu großes positives Echo gefunden, aber sichtbar ein Problem auch für diesen Überblicksbeitrag markiert: Inwieweit ist der eschatologische Entwurf in Acta, wenn denn ein solcher überhaupt bestehen sollte, kongruent mit dem des Lukasevangeliums? Der dieser Frage unterlegte skeptische Unterton wird besonders durch einen Blick in die deutschsprachige Auslegungsgeschichte des lukanischen Doppelwerkes befördert. Beginnend mit Franz Overbeck3 über Rudolf Bultmann4 wird von Hans Conzelmann (1964) und Ernst Haenchen (1958; 1977, u. a. 105–114) bis Erich Gräßer (1977; 1978, 99–127) und weit darüber hinaus die Meinung vertreten, dass Lukas die urchristliche Eschatologie zugunsten der Historie abgeschwächt oder gänzlich aufgegeben habe. Denn ausgehend von der in der religionsgeschichtlichen Schule (Weiss 1964, 1892, 1990), insbesondere von dem Begründer der eschatologischen Ausrichtung der neutestamentlichen Exegese Johannes 1 Cadbury (1969). Mit dieser Arbeit eröffnete er ein Forschungsprojekt, das über viele Jahre die lukanischen Schriften erforschte und bahnbrechend bis heute fortwirkt. 2 Die Frühphase dieser weiterführenden Fragestellung wird mit den Namen M. Dibelius, H. Conzelmann und E. Haenchen verbunden bleiben. 3 Overbeck (1965, 15f.). Dort bezweifelt er den eschatologischen Charakter der Apg mit den Worten: ‘In ihnen waltet der urchristliche Gedanke an die Parusie nicht mehr in ursprünglicher Energie,…’. 4 Bultmann (1965, 467), verschärft diese Einschätzung: ‘Aber daneben zeigen die Past und Act, daß man sich weithin auf eine längere Dauer dieser Welt einrichtet, und daß der Glaube, seine eschatologische Spannung verlierend, zu einer christlichbürgerlichen Frömmigkeit wird’. An die Stelle der Eschatologie tritt die Historie: ‘Die Auffassung vom Christentum als einer weltgeschichtlichen Größe leitet die Darstellung des Verf. von Luk und Act. In seinem Evg. bemüht er sich im Unterschied von den anderen Evangelien das Leben Jesu als Historiker zu beschreiben … Daß er die Act seinem Evg folgen ließ, bestätigt vollends, daß er den ursprünglichen kerygmatischen Sinn der Jesus-Überlieferung (...) preisgegeben und sie historisiert hat’ (469). Diese Auffassung deckt sich mit der These seines Schülers P. Vielhauer (1950/1951, 1–15) der kurz und bündig im 4. Kapitel für die Acta dekretierte: ‘Die Eschatologie fällt aus … Die Zeit zwischen Pfingsten und Parusie ist die Zeit des Geistes und der progressiven Missionierung der Welt, also sich steigende Heilsgeschichte’.

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Weiß, vertretenen These, Jesus wie das Urchristentum wären von der naheschatologischen Erwartung vom baldigen krisenhaften Einbruch des transzendenten Reiches Gottes in die von Korruption des Gotteswillens und abgrundtiefer Bosheit qualifizierte Welt bestimmt gewesen, vertraten sie die These, die aus dem vermeintlichen Befund konsequenterweise folgt, dass nämlich mit verstreichender Zeit, wo sich diese Erwartung nicht erfüllte, das Problem der Parusieverzögerung im Urchristentum immer drängender geworden sei. Denn zugleich mit dem Ausbleiben des Einbruches der Basileia Gottes sei ein zentraler Inhalt der Verkündigung Jesu falsifiziert worden. Nach J. Weiß (1990,100f.) sei diese, die Glaubwürdigkeit der Botschaft gefährdende Möglichkeit bereits Jesus selbst im Verlauf seiner mit trüben Erfahrungen belasteten Mission an Israel gekommen. Er habe darauf hin schon an ‘eine Hinausschiebung des Termins’ gedacht. Auf alle Fälle mussten aber danach die neutestamentlichen Autoren auf unterschiedliche Weise zwingend darauf reagieren und Erklärungen präparieren. Dabei hätte nach H. Conzelmann (1961, 131) die radikalste Position Lukas eingenommen, indem er sich grundsätzlich von der Naherwartung ‘zugunsten einer heilsgeschichtlichen Epochengliederung’ verabschiedet habe. Diese radikale Position rief Widerspruch besonders5 in der englischsprachigen Exegese hervor, die bekanntlich schon immer eine theologisch positivere Einschätzung der Theologie des Lukas gegenüber teilt.6 Sie steht insgesamt gesehen auch dem lukanischen Geschichtswerk aufgeschlossener gegenüber und merkt grundsätzlich an, dass Geschichte und Eschatologie sich nicht gegenseitig theologisch ausschlössen, sondern gerade die Eschatologie als deren bleibender Impetus zu betrachten sei, die textübergreifend auch die Hoffnung Israels einschlösse (vgl. Lk 1–2 mit Apg 23– 26). Sie spricht deshalb zumeist von einer immanenten Eschatologie, die auch mit der Textlage und -inhalt besser harmoniere als die radikale 5 Aus dem deutschsprachigem Raum soll u. a. die Kritik von Zmijewski (1972) und Braumann (1963, 117–145), nicht unerwähnt bleiben. Der Erstere akzentuiert besonders die Kontinuität zwischen der markinischen und lukanischen Eschatologie und kommt darüber zu dem Schluss, dass Lukas zwar historisiere, aber dies nur zu dem Zweck, um den eschatologischen, d.h. zielgerichteten Charakter der Geschichte herauszufiltern und so eine Handhabung für ihre Aktualisierung in einem ethisch-pragmatischen Sinn zu finden. Letzterer gibt zwar zu, dass bei Lukas die Parusie sich in ihrem Eintreffen verlangsame, aber der Grund sei nicht das Problem der Parusieverzögerung, sondern die Verfolgungssituation der Urchristen. Die Identifikation mit dem leidenden Christus ermögliche es ihnen standzuhalten. Das Doppelwerk sei nicht eschatologisch, sondern paränetisch orientiert. 6 Nicht ohne Grund konnte nur in Deutschland ein Aufsatz von Kümmel überschrieben werden mit ‘Lukas in der Anklage der heutigen Theologie’ (1972, 149– 165); vorher französisch publiziert in 1970.

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Position.7 Daneben entwickelt sich dort eine weitere Theorie, die zuerst von S. G. Wilson8 vorgetragen wurde, und Wasser auf die Mühlen von M. C. Parsons und R. I. Pervo lenkte. Er merkte an, dass im Evangelium und in der Apostelgeschichte offensichtlich zwei unterschiedliche eschatologische Konzepte vorlägen, die darauf hinwiesen, dass diese beiden Schriften zu unterschiedlichen Zeiten und unter anderen sozialgeschichtlichen Umständen von ein und demselben Autor geschrieben seien. Earle E. Ellis modifizierte dieses Denkmodell, indem er die bekannte Unterscheidung von ‘jetzt schon’, aber ‘noch nicht’ einführte: In Jesus habe sich schon die biblische Verheißung erfüllt, aber sie werde am Ende aller Tage für alle erst voll in Kraft gesetzt. Schon zuvor hatte sich noch einmal der Altmeister der Lukasforschung, H. J. Cadbury (1956, 300–321, bes. 315), zu Wort gemeldet und bereits auf die biblische Erfüllungsthematik aufmerksam gemacht, die doch auch einen präsentischen Aspekt nahelegen würde. Dieser Ansatz, einen (geschichtlich schon) immer gegenwärtigen Erfüllungsprozess biblischer Hoffnung mit dessen Abschluss und vollen Realisierung bei der Parusie zu verknüpfen, wird in den folgenden Jahren weiterentwickelt (siehe z. Maddox 1982) und führt letztlich auch zu einer weiteren Erkenntnis, nämlich zu der von J. Dupont (1973, 37–47) meisterhaft beschriebenen ‘individuellen Eschatologie’. Er konnte darauf verweisen, dass bei Lukas nicht nur der eine Schächer am Kreuz und Lazarus, sondern auch Stephanus in der Apostelgeschichte als Armer von vornherein oder bereits im Tod als in ihr Recht gesetzte Blutzeugen Gottes himmlische Herrschaft ‘betreten’. In der letzten Zeit hat sich Michael Wolter9 in drei Beiträgen10 speziell mit unserer Problematik beschäftigt. Es geht ihm vorrangig um eine inhaltliche Neubestimmung des Leitbegriffs ‘Reich Gottes’ im lukanischen Doppelwerk. Er beobachtet dort speziell drei Phänomene: a. Das Reich ist bei Lukas im Unterschied zu seiner Tradition, obwohl es ebenso wie dort eingebunden ist in ein zeitlich wie räumlich bestimmtes eschatologisches Koordinatensystem, ein zentraler Bestandteil der christologisch orientierten Verkündigung der Jünger, denen zugleich auch Anteil an dessen Endherrschaft übertragen wird. Damit ist b. die Reich-Gottes-Vorstellung eng an Jesus Christus gebunden. Diese beiden Punkte, in denen Lukas sich 7

Siehe u. a. Francis (1969, 49–63); Mattill (1972, 276–293); Smith (1958, 641– 463.881–901; und Hiers (1974, 145–155). 8 Wilson (1969/1970, 330–370). Dieser Position stehen Ellis (1969, 387–402): Schneider (1980, 1, 336), und Ernst (1978), mit unterschiedlichen Nuance nahe. 9 Siehe seinen Beitrag in diesem Band. 10 Wolter (1995a, 5–19; 1995b, 541–563; 1997, 405–426). Wichtige Vorarbeiten sind: Völkel (1974, 57–70); Merk (1975, 201–220); Carroll (1988). Reaktionen finden sich bei Weiser (1991, 127–135); Prieur (1996).

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von den anderen unterscheidet, zeigen in ihrem Kontext auf, dass es ihm c. nicht mehr um die Bewältigung einer sich dehnenden Zeit (Parusieverzögerung) geht, die jede konkrete Naherwartung ständig in Frage stellt, sondern in der Jüngerverkündigung in der Apostelgeschichte ist das Reich eine zukünftige und vor allem himmlische Größe. Die Verkündigung ist zudem nicht mehr auf das exklusive Heil Israels aus-gerichtet, sondern an die universalen Botschaft bis an das Ende der Welt gebunden. Eine lukanische Eschatologie wird also auf der einen Seite bis heute radikal in Frage gestellt, wie sie auf der anderen Seite in ihren vielen Facetten ebenso heftig verteidigt wird. – Aus diesem sehr knappen Überblick über die aktuelle Forschungssituation ergeben sich folgende Konsequenzen für diesen Beitrag: –

–

– –

Es ist zu prüfen, ob beim gegenwärtigen Stand der Forschung die Voraussetzungen für eine alles bestimmende, aber korrekturbedürftige naheschatologische Erwartung im Urchristentum weiterhin Bestand haben. Es ist zu prüfen, ob sich die literarische Konzeption eines Doppelwerkes nicht zwingend aus den Lukas literarisch übermittelten eschatologischen Traditionen ergeben konnte. Es ist weiterhin ggf. zu prüfen, welche Determinanten seinen eschatologischen Horizont bestimmt haben. Letztlich ist zu prüfen, ob die von M. Weber aufgeworfene, grundlegende theologische Frage der Theodizee in der Apostelgeschichte einen Rückhalt findet.

1. Traditionskritische Standortsbestimmung Als Johannes Weiß in der oben bereits erwähnten zweiten, stark vermehrten Auflage seines berühmten Buchs ‘Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes’ 1900 schrieb: ‘Das Wesentliche an der Verkündigung Jesu ist nicht die größere oder geringere Nähe der Krisis, sondern der Gedanke, dass das Reich Gottes jetzt ganz gewiss kommt’ (Weiss 1990, 69), untermauerte er diese These – aus heutiger Sicht mit ihren Kenntnissen aus der QForschung eher unpräzise – mit entsprechenden Texten aus den Synoptikern. Vor allem wurde Mk (1:14f.; 4:11 und 9:1) herangezogen. Für das Jesus nachfolgende Urchristentum postulierte er: ‘Die Religion des Urchristentums hat ihren Schwerpunkt in der messianischen Krise, die noch bevorsteht. Zwar glaubte man den Messias schon zu kennen und Beweise seiner Kraft erhalten zu haben, man besaß schon den Geist, dies erste und wichtigste Stück der Verheißung und darum glaubte man fest und

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sicher an die Wirklichkeit des Heils, das dem Gläubigen nicht mehr entgehen kann’ (Weiss 1990, 60f.). Wenn jedoch das vom Himmel her fest erwartete Heil ausbleibe, führe diese Verzögerung unweigerlich zum Fanatismus und arte in Schwärmerei aus. Paulus habe als Erster diese Gefahren erkannt und sie theologisch-christologisch zu bewältigen versucht (Weiss 1990, 61). Danach hätten sich auch die anderen neutestamentlichen Autoren dem Problem der Parusieverzögerung auf unterschiedliche Weise angenommen. Diese in sich geschlossene und deshalb vielen zwingend erscheinende Argumentationsweise hat bis heute in der Diskussion tiefe Spuren hinterlassen. Die naheschatologischen Aussagen, besonders Markus 1:14f., als die vorrangig bestimmenden Elemente in der Reich-Gottes-Lehre Jesu haben sich im Kollektivgedächtnis der Exegese so stabil festgesetzt, dass sie einer möglichen anderen Deutung der Entstehungsgeschichte der eschatologischen Vorstellungen wenig Raum zu bieten scheinen.11 Denn die vielfach bezeugten gegenwartsbezogenen Aussagen, die sich zumeist in der Logienquelle und im ältesten Gleichnismaterial finden (Q 6:20f.; 11:20; 14:16–23; 17:21; Mk 2:19; 4:3–8; etc.)12 wurden in ihrer Bedeutung zurückgedrängt, psychologisierend abgeschwächt oder in eine frühe Phase des Auftretens und der Lehre Jesu – unter dem Stichwort: ‘galiläischer Frühling’13 – vorverlegt, die von Jesus später zu Lebzeiten noch selbst korrigiert worden seien. Hier tritt aber ein mit dem traditionellen naheschatologischen Konzept konkurrierendes Modell einer jesuanischen Gegenwartseschatologie in den Vordergrund. Doch auch ihm haftet ein Mangel an. Es ist mit der Frage belastet, wie die Jünger das Scheitern des Lebenswerks Jesu mit seiner Gegenwartseschatologie vereinigen konnten. Kann der Hinweis auf ihre Osterwiderfahrnis die Beweislast tragen? Oder haben sie etwa den gegenwartsbezogenen Enthusiasmus Jesu nach seinem gewaltsamen Geschick einfach mit dem Risiko des abermaligen Scheiterns weiter kolportiert? Zwar hat Jesus unbezweifelbar über das kommende Reich Gottes (Q 6:21; 11:2, 39–46; 12:33f.; 13:28–29) gesprochen. Diese Vorstellung teilten nämlich beide Parteien, der Redner wie seine Zuhörer. Sie bildete die gemeinsame Basis für eine Verständigung, da beiden die

11

Vgl. zuletzt u. a. die Ausführungen bei Fredriksen (1988, 126–130), und Schenke (2004, 108–147). 12 Vgl. u. a. Hoffmann (1981, 117–152; 1994, 15–40; 1979, 450–463, bes. 450); Ebner (2002, 9–14). 13 So hat sich bereits gegenüber dieser Hypothese: Hilgenfeld (1871, 576–587; 1872, 88–112.247–264.594–596), kritisch geäußert.

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apokalyptische Erwartung in schwierigen Zeiten14 gemeinsam war. Aber zugleich thematisierte er auch ihre Gegenwartsqualität, die in seinem Wirken wenigstens punktuell15 sichtbar werden würde (bes. Q 11:20). Wie passen seine so divergierenden Aussagen zusammen? Dass ihm eine dialektisch anmutende Zusammenschau gelang, dafür gibt es zumindest einen wichtigen Beleg. Jesus baut nämlich mit dem Bildwort vom Senfkorn seine Argumentationskette gegen den gerechtfertigten Einwand und Zweifel seiner Landsleute auf, sie könnten in ihrer Lebenswelt die Herrschaft Gottes nicht erkennen. In seiner ältesten, literarisch rekonstruierbaren Q-Form 13:18f. (vgl. Q 13:20f.) fallen gegenüber der markinischen Version, Markus 4:30–32, zwei Aspekte besonders auf. Zum einen ist das Säen des Samens noch individualisiert16 und zum anderen wird aus dem Korn nach einem längeren Wachstumsprozess, aber botanisch wirklichkeitsfern17, d. h. hyperbolisch, ein ‘Baum’. Auch muss beachtet werden, dass Markus und Matthäus trotz ihrer Korrekturen den ursprünglichen ‘Sitz im Leben’18 dieses Gleichnisses immer noch exakt markieren, weil sie an entscheidender Stelle aus dem Bild springen und kommentierend eine botanische Sachinformation einschieben. Ihrer Meinung nach hat Jesus den Schwerpunkt seiner Argumentation gerade auf die anfängliche Kleinheit des Samenkorns und nicht auf dessen abschließende – nun erfahrungsgemäß korrigierte – Strauchgröße gelegt.19 Auf diese Weise versuchte Jesus – eine agrarischen Grunderfahrung aufgreifend – den berechtigten Zweifel seiner Zuhörer an seiner Verkündigung von der Präsenz der Basileia zu zerstreuen. Mit seiner mit der Kraft eines Bildes überzeugenden Argumentation weist er ihre Kritik als Missverständnis zurück. Seine Gegenwartsaussagen bestreiten ausdrücklich der damals weit unter seinen Gesprächspartnern verbreiteten Meinung von der Abwesenheit Gottes im Weltgeschehen ihre Berechtigung. Wenn auch 14 Judäa war eine römische Kolonie, die politischen Leitungseliten (Herodianer und Sadduzäer) waren untereinander zerstritten, die Steuerlast hoch und die Gefahr der kulturellen Disintegration wurde bedrohend gefühlt. 15 Seine Exorzismen z. B. trieben nicht alle im Land befindlichen Dämonen aus, sondern nur die, deren er gewahr wurde. Dies könnte theoretisch als ungerecht empfunden worden sein. 16 Die Wendung ‘die ein Mann nahm’ findet sich nicht bei Mk. Jener hat das Bild insgesamt abstrahiert und realitätsnäher versachlicht. Dieser Topos wie die Hyperbel erinnern an die schulmäßige Form einer Parabel. 17 Orchideensamen hat den bislang bekannten, kleinsten Umfang. 18 Ebner (2003, 174), schränkt den Adressatenkreis auf ‘Leute im Jesuskreis’ ein. Eine offenere Lösung liegt näher. 19 Ob die orientalisch anmutende doppelte Vergleichseinleitung wie der Abschlussvers mit seinen biblischen Anspielungen, die die zukünftige Basileia mit dem eschatologischen Qualitätssiegel ‘Ruheort’ und ‘Heimat’ auszeichnen, zum ursprünglichen Bildwort gehören, ist zweifelhaft.

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unscheinbar und zudem zuweilen wegen der auferlegten Lasten subjektiv übersehbar, ist seine Kraft und sein Heilswillen doch gegenwärtig. Aber dem Moment, an dem Gott seine universale Herrschaft aufrichten wird, ist ein für Menschen unbekannter und auch unbeeinflussbarer Termin gesetzt (Q 12:39f.), an dem zugleich der danielitische Menschensohn20 (Q 3:16f.; 17:23f. 26–30) – von Gott beauftragt – seinen Gerichtstag über die Weltmächte halten wird. Man könnte jedoch aus der eschatologischen Rede Q 17:23–37 schließen wollen, Jesus selbst habe eine klare terminliche Vorstellung von einer baldigen Herrschaftsübernahme Gottes gehabt. Aber deren aus der Gattung ‘historische Apokalypse’ (vgl. Collins 1979, 21–60) abgeleitete Form weist sie als eine nachösterliche Redekomposition aus, deren Verfasser bereits den Menschensohntitel aus Daniel 7 auf den Erweckten (vgl. Sanders 1993, 246f.) anzuwenden gelernt hat und nun Jesus als Menschensohn und eben keinen Patriarchen (wie z. B. Henoch) aus der Vorzeit Israels sprechen lässt. Die Übertragung des Menschensohntitels auf Jesus hängt mit dessen eschatologischen Funktion als Richter zusammen, die auf den Wiederkommenden vor allem übertragen wird. Damit ist zugleich ein Zeitfaktor impliziert gewesen sein, dass man nämlich hoffte, Jesus wäre nur vor allen Toten auferweckt worden, um die Funktion des Parusie-Richters baldmöglichst zu übernehmen. Dies ist die eigentliche Geburtsstunde der Naherwartung. Ähnlich ist auch die Aussage Markus 1:15 gelagert. Es bleibt unverständlich, dass dieser Vers als Summar21 der Lehre des historischen Jesus gewertet und zum Hauptargument für sein angeblich nah-eschatologisches Gesamtkonzept herangezogen werden konnte. Er verweist schon formal eher auf ein spätes, redaktionelles Abfassungsdatum.22 Denn er setzt schon die Erwartung der baldigen Wiederkunft des Erweckten voraus. Denn dessen irdische Zeit hat sich bereits erfüllt und die Zwischenzeit der 20 Dieser muss noch nicht mit Jesus identisch sein, worauf das Wort des Täufers hinweisen könnte. Dieses Szenarium könnte Jesus von seinem Lehrer übernommen haben. Vgl. Müller (1977, 427 Anm. 29), schreibt in seinem klassisch gewordenen Aufsatz: ‘Die Annahme der Johannestaufe [durch Jesus] bedeutete die Zustimmung zur Eschatologie des Täufers. Als »Taufe der Umkehr zur Vergebung der Sünden« (Mk 1:4) war sie die letzte Möglichkeit, die Sünden loszuwerden und so dem kommenden Zorn zu entgehen (Luk 3:7f. par). Die Johannestaufe als einmalige Rettungsmöglichkeit vor dem Vernichtungsgericht ist untrennbar mit der Naheschatologie des Täufers verknüpft. Wenn nun Jesus im Zusammenhang der Vision vom Satanssturz (Luk 10:17) zu seiner neuen Eschatologie von der sich schon in der Gegenwart durchsetzenden Gottesherrschaft gelangte und dies die Ablösung vom Täufer markierte, dann gehört die Taufe durch Johannes in die Zeit davor’. 21 Vgl. nur die Meinung von Knopf, (1907, 6f.), mit denen aktuelleren, die beispielhaft in Anm. 21 genannt sind. Aber auch Sanders (1993, 169). Es hat sich nicht viel geändert. 22 So auch Lührmann (1987, 41f.); vgl. auch insgesamt Brandenburger (1984).

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Evangeliumsverkündigung mit dem erneuten Angebot der Umkehr steht im Mittelpunkt des Interesses (vgl. Mk 13:10; 14:9 mit 1:1). Darauf weist zentral der zweimal erwähnte Begriff des Evangeliums hin. Die Jesusgeschichte ist zusammen mit seiner Auferweckung zu dessen Bestandteil geworden. Dieses redaktionelle Verfahren hat Willi Marxsen (1978) zutreffend beschrieben, indem er formulierte, Jesus sei bei Markus ‘ins Kerygma auferstanden’. Deshalb stehen real nur noch zwei eschatologische Punkte aus der Verkündigung Jesu aus: der Anbruch der Basileia und die Wiederkunft des Menschensohns, der im Markustext mit Jesus bereits identifiziert worden war. Seine nachösterliche Situation hat den Evangelisten veranlasst, die Aussagen über die Gegenwartseschatologie (vgl. Mk 2:19) zugunsten einer alles, auch die Nachstellungen der Boten endlich beschließenden Naherwartung zurückzudrängen. Dies veranlasste ihn also, nur den zweiten Aspekt der jesuanischen eschatologischen Dialektik zu akzentuieren und für eine knapp bemessene Zwischenzeit zwischen der Auferweckung Jesu und seiner Wiederkunft zu votieren.23 Von der dialektisch angelegten eschatologischen Botschaft Jesu bleib nur der Teil erhalten, der für die urchristliche Situation relevant war: die eschatologische Zuversicht, die Basileia stände vor der Tür. Aus heutiger Sicht ist eine exakte Unterscheidung und dialektische Zuordnung der beiden konkurrierenden eschatologischen Konzeptionen zwingend geboten. Denn der irdische Jesus, der expressis verbis auch eine ausgesprochen prophetische Gegenwartseschatologie vertrat und mit Hinweisen auf das in seiner Anwesenheit sich manifestierende Wirken Gottes im Kleinen und Unscheinbaren die durch Kolonisierung hervorgerufenen, mentalen und ökonomischen Depressionen der Mehrheit der galiläischen Landbevölkerung beheben und so neue Hoffnung und damit Werte wecken wollte, verblieb aber im Rahmen der apokalyptischen Reich-Gottes-Erwartung seiner Landsleute und verband beides auf kreative Art und Weise. Die ersten nachösterlichen Gemeinden votierten andererseits theologisch entschieden und überwiegend einseitig für das Modell der Naherwartung, um paränetisch die in der Erweckung exzeptionelle Relevanz Jesu in Gottes Heilsplänen bald bestätigt zu sehen und zugleich den persönlich verständlichen Wunsch verspürten, die negativen Missionserfahrungen bald abschütteln zu können. Deshalb setzten sie all ihre nun Literatur gewordene Hoffnung auf den Auferweckten, dass er baldigst in Kraft wiederkommen und sein ihm von Gott übertragenes Richteramt über die aus den Fugen geratene Schöpfung Gottes (vgl. Apg 7:48f.; 14:15; 17:24) ausüben und sie selbst erretten werde. Damit ist zugleich auch das Datum der Entstehung dieser spezifischen Naheschatologie bestimmt: Sie 23

Paulus hat schon vor ihm so votiert.

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ist ein Nebenprodukt einer eschatologisch orientierten Christologie von nachösterlichen Gemeinden, die in apokalyptischen Kategorien zu denken gelernt hatten. Aber mit ihm kam das Problem der Parusieverzögerung24 auf, das eigentlich Jesus mit seinem dialektischen Modell bereits überwunden hatte. Die ebenfalls notwendige chronologische Differenzierung der beiden grundlegenden, aber in sich widersprüchlichen Denkmodelle, Gegenwartsoder Naheschatologie, erleichtert im Folgenden die Verständigung über die Weiterentwicklung des bindenden Kerygmas zur formenreichen Evangeliumsgattung, die insbesondere zwischen der Logienquelle, Markus und Lukas stattgefunden zu haben scheint. Deshalb soll nun dieser Problemkreis angegangen werden.

2. Das lukanische Diegese-Projekt Lukas hat bekanntlich implizit sein Gesamtwerk in die hellenistische Literaturform der Diegese, des gut recherchierten Geschichtsromans (Lk 1:1–4), gekleidet. Als Quellen hat er zuvorderst die Logienquelle und das Markusevangelium benutzt und von dort in Umrissen den markinischen Aufbau und aus beiden Schriften Texte für den ersten Band seines Doppelwerks übernommen. Zudem hat er auch aus ihnen einige theologische Grundüberzeugungen für seine Schriften gewonnen. Für den zweiten Teil seines Doppelwerkes ist die Quellenlage bekanntlich äußerst undurchschaubar und deshalb verständlicherweise in der Forschung stark umstritten. Dennoch hat auch dieser Band einen klaren Aufbau. Es wird der nach Westen orientierte Ausschnitt aus der Missionsgeschichte von Jerusalem aus in die hellenistisch-römische Welt bis nach Rom geschildert. Insgesamt traten noch eigene Recherchen im Überlieferungsgut des Urchristentums und eigene literarische Verdeutlichungen seiner theologischen Position hinzu. Dabei entsprach der vordergründig geschichtliche Aufriss des Markuswerkes am ehesten seinem geschichtlichen Interesse. Indem er aber auch die Logienquelle exzerpierte und sie sogar größtenteils besser als Matthäus in der Ursprungsform und Erzählfolge beließ, sodass das IQP die QPerikopen nach der Lukasakoluthie zählt, hatte er auch zwei unterschiedliche Eschatologiekonzeptionen in sein Werk zu integrieren. Denn in der Logienquelle ist die spezifische Tradition von der Gegenwartseschatologie des historischen Jesus neben seiner Zukunftseschatologie besser als 24 Siehe auch Sanders (1993, 180) der meint: ‘In the decades after Jesus’ death, then, the Christians had to revise their first expectation again and again’. Der Täufer lebte nicht so lange, um dieser Problematik seiner Botschaft begegnen zu müssen.

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anderenorts erhalten geblieben. Jesus schon hat sein Wirken spannungsvoll als aktuelles Angeld auf die absolute Zukunft der Herrschaft Gottes empfunden. Markus hingegen eröffnet die Jesusgeschichte 1:14f. – wie erwähnt – dezidiert aus einer nachösterlichen Perspektive. Für ihn steht die ersehnte Gottesherrschaft in ihrer Endgestalt aufgrund der noch frischen Erfahrung der Auferweckung Jesu kurz bevor. Deshalb nennt er nämlich die zu verkündigende Glaubensgewissheit von Gottes Nähe doppeldeutig ‘Evangelium’. Dieses aus einer nachösterlichen Perspektive gesteuerte, kerygmatische Konzept, das William Wrede (1963; siehe auch 1907, 84–126) ganz nach dem Geschmack von J. Weiß als ein Messiasgeheimnisdogma beschrieb, hatte jedoch eine problematische Seite. Wie sollte die Berechtigung des nachösterlichen christologischen Kerygmas in einer ihm vorgelagerten Jesusgeschichte als Gottesgeschichte nachzuweisen sein? Markus gelang dieses Unterfangen nur unter Mühen, indem er nicht nur im Kleinen, sondern auch im Großen die Erzähltechnik des sogenannten ‘sandwich-agreement’ verwendete. Einerseits wurden – heute noch erkennbar – einige ursprüngliche Ostergeschichten (vgl. Mk 6:45–56; 9:2–8) in die Darstellung des öffentlichen Wirkens Jesu integriert, sodass er sich auf einen knappen, auf das nachösterliche Kerygma zielenden, somit offenen österlichen Schlussteil (Mk 16:1–8; siehe bes. V. 7f.) beschränken konnte. Andererseits wurde die aus der urgemeindlichen Mission erwachsene kerygmatische Wunderüberlieferung ausgiebiger benutzt, um auf diese Weise den beabsichtigten Botschaftscharakter des Gesamtwerks insgesamt zu festigen. Denn die weitere Verwendung des Evangeliumsbegriffes im Markusevangelium (vgl. 13:10; 14:9) offenbart – wie gesagt – die Absicht eines Autors, sein Werk solle als ‘anfängliches’ schriftliches Zeugnis (vgl. Mk 1:1) das nachösterliche Kerygma und darin eingeschlossen die Naherwartung in der Gestalt einer nun fiktiven Jesusgeschichte dokumentieren. Diese sollte eben nicht als Biographie im modernen Sinn, sondern als kerygmatische Geschichte verstanden werden. Lukas jedenfalls – einer der ersten Leser des Markusevangeliums – hat dieses noch als einen Geschichtsentwurf des urgemeindlichen Kerygmas verstanden. Er sah sich gefordert, diese – selbst für heutige Leser – rätselvoll verkapselte und ineinander geschachtelte Geschichte der Botschaft vom Heilswillen Gottes wieder neu zu entfalten und aufgrund der verstrichenen Zeit missionsgeschichtlich zu verlängern, um die zwischenzeitlich für Christen weiterhin tragfähige Botschaft, ihre Erfolge, Misserfolge und Gefahren zu dokumentieren. Auf diese Weise ist eine akkurate geschichtliche Entwicklung des göttlichen Evangeliums im Munde der ersten christlichen Missionare in der Nachfolge Jesu zur Auferbauung der Leserschaft entstanden.

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Indem er nun eine in sich geschlossene historische Rahmenhandlung – mit klassisch mythologischem Beginn als intendierte Leseanweisung für das Gesamtwerk (Lk 1–2), danach eine Jesusgeschichte (Lk 3–24) und abschließend eine Apostelgeschichte unter Beibehaltung des offenen markinischen Erzählschlusses (Apg 28:30f.) – entwirft, ist er fähig, auch widersprüchliche Tendenzen in der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der urchristlichen Theologie in seinem Doppelwerk zu integrieren, ihnen ihren gerechten geschichtlichen Platz zuzuweisen und gegebenenfalls auch die bereits in der Vergangenheit gefundenen theologischen Problemlösungen dem Leser mit der nötigen Autorität Jesu oder des Geistes zu präsentieren. Denn alle handelnden Personen können im Rahmen eines Geschichtswerkes an ihrem Ort und zu ihrer Zeit alles sagen und tun, wie es möglicherweise wirklich historisch war oder wie es Lukas für richtig gehalten hat. Der Autor eines Geschichtswerkes bleibt es unbenommen, diese Entwicklung in der Rahmenhandlung zu kommentieren, richtig zu stellen oder gegebenenfalls auch aus seiner Sicht zu korrigieren. Dass Lukas durchgängig genuin historisch zu denken und gegebenenfalls die geschichtlichen Fakten zu korrigieren vermag, das zeigt Lukas 22:35f. besonders klar. Denn dort – im Rahmen der Passionsgeschichte – lässt er Jesus noch einmal auf seine Aussendungsrede (Lk 9:1–6 par Mk 6:6b–13; 10:1–12 = Q) zurückkommen und lässt sie nun von ihm selbst als zeitgebundene und situativ verstandene Äußerung relativieren. Entsprechend seiner historiografischen Absicht redet Lukas auch nicht mehr wie Markus vom ‘Evangelium’, sondern – durchgängig historisiert – vom ‘Wort Gottes’, das von dessen Boten im Rahmen der Geschichte tatkräftig ‘verkündigt’ wurde. Noch deutlicher lässt sich auch seine eschatologische Erzählabsicht in einem historischen Rahmen an der Verwendung des Umkehrmotivs aus der zentralen Zusammenfassung der Botschaft Jesu Markus 1:14f. aufzeigen. Das Motiv fehlt Lukas 4:14–30, im sogenannten ‘Nazareth-Manifest’ (siehe Busse 1978, 52–62), in dem der lukanische Jesus das Programm für seine Aktivitäten in der Öffentlichkeit entwirft. Dafür hatte Lukas es zuvor als einen charakteristischen, göttlich verordneten Programmpunkt der Täuferpredigt, nun um die Ansage (Lk 1:76f.; 3:3 par Mk 1:4) der ‘Vergebung der Sünden’ (vgl. Q 3:8 mit Apg 13:24; 19:4) erweitert, um so mehr verstärkt. Aber nachher wird der Auferweckte diesen Inhalt gezielt seinen Jüngern für ihre nachösterliche Predigt mit auf den Weg geben (Lk 24:47; vgl. Apg 2:38; 3:19; 5:31; 8:22; 26:20). Doch nun erscheint das Motiv – geschichtlich wie auch erzählerisch konsequent – um das in der Gestalt Jesu vorher offenbar gewordene göttliche Heilsgeschehen umfassend angereichert, da die Botschaft von der Umkehr ‘in seinem Namen’ nun allen gilt (vgl. Lk 3:6 diff. Mt 3:3). Sie setzt zugleich einen christologischen Karrieresprung des

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Erweckten voraus, der zu seinen Lebzeiten so noch nicht voraussehbar war, weil niemand versucht oder recht verstanden hatte, die Schrift nach ihm zu befragen (vgl. Lk 24:44f.). Dies werden seine Apostel im zweiten Teil um so mehr tun (u. a. Apg 2:16–36). Diese Darstellungsweise spricht eher gegen eine Enteschatologisierung25 der Überlieferung, sondern vielmehr für eine Periodisierung der Geschichte, in der aber eine göttlich gewollte Kontinuität (vom Täufer zu den Jüngern)26 mit einem Endziel waltet. Deshalb stellt die Diegese den lukanischen Versuch dar, seinen von unterschiedlichen Interessen gesteuerten literarischen Vorgängern gerecht zu werden, indem er ihre Thesen in einen geschichtlichen Rahmen stellt und darüber hinaus geschichtlich gewordene Aporien auflöst, indem er zumeist diplomatisch Kompromisse (vgl. Apg 15:28f.) vorschlägt. Sein Geschichtswerk dient also der Integration unterschiedlicher urchristlicher Strömungen und Denkmodellen in eine alles umgreifende neue Textgattung. Sie öffnet auf diesem Wege der urchristlichen Verkündigung das Tor zu einer weiteren Phase ihrer Mission über Paulus weit hinaus. Man darf gespannt sein, auf welche Weise ihm dieses Kunststück auch für die beiden konkurrierenden Eschatologieentwürfe aus Markus und Q gelingt.

3. Die Eschatologiekonzeption in der Apostelgeschichte Im Vorfeld zu diesem Kapitel sei zuerst an die beiden, bislang nur teilweise gelösten Aufgaben erinnert: 1. Es muss ein für beide Teile des Doppelwerkes geltendes kohärentes Eschatologieverständnis nachgewiesen werden; und 2. Es muss geprüft werden, ob eine literarische Reaktion des Verfassers auf eine zu seiner Zeit aktuelle Problematik der Parusieverzögerung vorliege, indem er sie durch das Modell der Heilsgeschichte zu überwinden versuche. Der zweite Punkt wurde bereits traditionskritisch problematisiert und als ein literarisch-diegetisch lösbares, aber nachrangiges Problem erkannt, das nicht auf Jesus selbst zurückgeführt werden kann. Die erste Aufgabe lässt sich zufriedenstellend lösen, wenn man die Vorbereitung von eschatologischen Aussagen der Acta im Evangelium nachweisen kann.

25 26

So Conzelmann (1964, 25–32). Auch der lukanische Jesus spricht von ‘Umkehr’, u. z. vorzugsweise in Kontexten, die eine Zukunftsperspekive implizieren: vgl. Luk 10:13; 11:32; 13:3, 5; 15:7, 10; 16:30; 17:3f., d. h. im sogenannten ‘Reisebericht’.

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3.1. Die Erwartung der Apostel und ihre Korrektur: Apostelgeschichte 1:2–11 Bereits in der Eröffnung der Acta, wo die in Lukas 24 berichteten nachösterlichen Ereignisse mit den zukünftigen geistgeleiteten Aufgaben (vgl. Lk 24:49 mit Apg 1:5) der Jünger auch zeitlich miteinander verschränkt werden, wird von diesen eine erste eschatologische Erwartung ausgesprochen, die für den Leser mit einer negativen Vorgeschichte im ersten Band (vgl. Lk 24:21; 19:11; 2:38; 1:68) belastet ist. Wenn die Jünger Jesus fragen, ob er seine – hoffentlich nur kurze – Abwesenheit nutzen wolle, um besser gerüstet27 das Reich in Israel und näherhin in Jerusalem, der Zionsstadt, zu errichten, dann wurde diese nicht erst Apostelgeschichte 1:3, sondern bereits – aber ausführlicher wiedergegeben – Lukas 24:44–49 und 24:25–27 ausgesprochen. Mithin wiederholen die Jünger Apostelgeschichte 1:3 nur mit anderen Worten die Erwartung der beiden Emmausjünger Lukas 24:21, sie hätten intensiv gehofft, ‘er würde Israel erlösen’. Ein Fingerzeig, wie lange im Jüngerkreis und darüber hinaus diese Hoffnung gehegt worden sein könnten, wird Lukas 19:11 gegeben. Dort muss man sie nur unter die dortige anonyme Menge subsummieren, die mit Jesus nach Jerusalem hinaufzieht, um zu wissen, dass sie bereits dort jene Reise mit einer solchen Erwartung verknüpft hatten. Sie schien sich auch schon bei seinem königlichen Einzug in Jerusalem zu bestätigen. Aber anstelle der Inthronisation stand das Kreuz. Danach werden die Jünger allein in einen schmerzhaften, aber biblisch begründeten Lernprozess eingespannt, der sie mit ihren zukünftigen Aufgaben als Zeugen und Umkehrprediger von Jerusalem aus unter allen Völkern (Lk 24:47) ‘bis an die Grenzen der Erde’ (Apg 1:8; 13:47 [= JesLXX 49:6a+b]; vgl. 17:26; 26:20) vertraut machen soll. Damit wird zum einen die Missions- als Zeugengeschichte angekündigt; zum anderen aber wird den Erstzeugen – von ihnen immer noch unerwartet –, obwohl bereits LukasR 21:35 angesagt, nun eine universale und keine partikuläre, auf Israel beschränkte Aufgabe übertragen. Der lukanische Jesus verbietet sich in diesem Zusammenhang auch jede Frage nach der Bekanntgabe eines Termins (vgl. Lk 12:35–46) für die Errichtung des Gottesreiches auf Erden. Der Hinweis auf das Privilegrecht des zukünftigen Herrschers, das Datum seines Herrschaftsantrittes selbst zu bestimmen und ggf. einen KlienteLukasönig (vgl. Lk 19:12–27), zuständig für das Herrschaftsteilgebiet ‘Kosmos’, mit Richterfunktionen einzusetzen, hat auszureichen. Bis zu diesem menschlichen Wissen verschlossenen Zeitpunkt wird Jesus in dessen himmlisches Reich ‘aufgenommen’ (Apg 1:2).

27

Vgl. Luk 19:12–27 mit der Auslegung bei Busse (1998, 423–441).

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Dabei ist wohl an einen jenseits der kosmischen Wirklichkeit liegender Herrschaftsbereich gedacht, der gleichzeitig neben Raum und Geschichte, aber beides immer schon umfassend, existiert. Mit dieser Darstellung wird von Lukas ein Weltbild postuliert, in dem sich der Kosmos in den Grenzen von Raum und Zeit (vgl. LkR 17:20 mit 37) erstreckt und vom transzendenten, aber räumlich gedachten Reich Gottes umspannt ist. Denn man kann u. a. in es jederzeit ‘hineingehen’ (Apg 14:22), ‘zu Tische liegen’ (Lk 13:29) kann oder ‘aufgenommen’ (Apg 1:2), ‘empfangen’ (Apg 7:59), aber auch ‘hinausgeworfen’ (Lk 13:28) werden kann.28 Der Schlüssel zum Verständnis dieses raumzeitlich gedachten Kosmos und dessen – hier implizit eingeschlossen – begrenzten Zukunft liegt in der Schrift, die die dazu notwendigen Erkenntnisse (Lk 11:52 diff. Q 11:52)29 bereit hält. Die Bibel auf den ihn und sie betreffenden Willen Gottes hin korrekt auszulegen, damit hatte der Auferweckte (Lk 24:25–27, 44–47) bereits begonnen und dies wird demnächst der Heilige Geist (Apg 2:4) fortsetzen. 3.2. Die Pfingstrede und ihr endzeitlicher Horizont Die Pfingstrede Petri hebt in der Tat diesen zentralen Aspekt exakt hervor, indem Petrus mit ausführlichen Schriftbeweisen nicht nur begründet, dass Jesus mit seiner Aufnahme in den Himmel den ihm vom Engel Gabriel Lukas 1:32f. zugesprochenen Thron Davids bestiegen, sondern auch sein Wort gehalten und den Geist wie Feuer (vgl. Lk 12:49f.) nach seiner Passion von ‘oben’ über sie, seine Zeugen, ausgegossen habe und damit die Gottesrede30 JoelLXX 3:1–5 bestätigt sei, dass die Jünger in allen Weltsprachen geistgerüstet prophetisch reden und ‘Zeichen auf der Erde unten’ setzen könnten. Gegenüber dem Originaltext (‘danach’) eröffnet nämlich Lukas das Joelzitat bezeichnenderweise mit seiner Formulierung ‘in diesen letzten Tagen’31 und bezeichnet es in einer Parenthese ausdrücklich als Gotteswort. Die Zeitangabe lässt sich zwar zum Teil auf die Terminangabe 1:8 zurückbeziehen, aber hier soll vor allem der Zeitpunkt festgelegt werden, ab dem alles als eschatologisch qualifizierte Endzeit betrachtet werden soll: ab der Geistausrüstung der Apostel. Da bald darauf vom ersten ‘Zeichen’ Apostelgeschichte 3:1–10 (vgl. 4:16) Petri und Johannes berichtet wird, soll wohl die gesamte Periode, in der Geistausstattungen und Machttaten im Namen Jesu möglich sind, als 28 29

So zuerst beobachtet von Hoffmann (1988, 58f.). Alle Q-Stellen werden nach der Rekonstruktion von Hoffmann & Heil (2008, 70) zitiert. 30 Siehe neuerdings Marshall (2007, 533–536). 31 Rusam (2003, 292) argumentiert mit Recht für eine lukanische Wendung, durch die ‘das Geschehen ausdrücklich in die Endzeit gestellt’ werde.

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göttlich gesetzte Endzeit betrachtet werden. Denn diese Beobachtung wird von einer weiteren, nun aber traditionellen Aussage im Joelzitat unterstützt, wo Gott ‘von [DMSRY] meinem Geist’ spricht, d. h. der gespendete Geist bleibt letztlich sein Eigentum (Haenchen 1977, 181), sodass die Geistausstattung früherer biblischer Gestalten davon unberührt ist und auch im weiteren Erzählverlauf von Geistausstattungen geredet werden kann, die nicht – wie gewöhnlich von Lukas angenommen (vgl. Apg 2:33) – nur von Jesus allein vermittelt sind. Die pneumatische Ausrüstung ist zudem keine einmalige Pfingstangelegenheit, sondern erstreckt sich dynamisch nach der Taufe als Umkehrzeichen zur Sündenvergebung gemäß Apostelgeschichte 2:39 (vgl. u. a. Apg 20:21; 22:16) temporär weiter ‘auf eure Kinder und auf alle noch fernen Geschlechter, die Gott berufen hat’. Diese Ansage wird Apostelgeschichte 10:44–46 im Konsens mit Apostelgeschichte 1:8 weiter präzisiert: Auch die Umkehrwilligen und Gläubigen aus den Völkern empfangen den Geist.32 Gleichzeitig wird im folgenden Vers 40 ausdrücklich auch die Raumdimension angesprochen, wenn Petrus die Zuhörer bittet, ‘sich aus diesem verkehrten Geschlecht heraus retten zu lassen’. Die hier beginnende, durch eine fortwährende Geistausgießung charakterisierte Endzeit wird noch mit zwei weiteren redaktionellen Zutaten näher hin charakterisiert: Die Überarbeitung spricht nämlich ‘von Machtzeichen am Himmel “oben”’ und ‘Zeichen auf Erden “unten”’ (vgl. Weiss 1995, 80–85). Die Zeichen ‘unten’ kündigen im lukanischen Sprachgebrauch weitere Wundertaten durch die Apostel33 an. Sie werden zusammen mit dem zunächst pfingstlichen Himmelszeichen ‘oben’ (Apg 2:43; 4:16, 22, 30; 5:12; 14:3; 15:12) diese Epoche begleiten. Sie künden zugleich alle mit der Lebensgeschichte Jesu (Apg 2:22) zusammen von der ungebrochenen wohltätigen Majestät Gottes (vgl. Lk 9:43 mit Apg 2:11). Doch die so qualifizierte Endzeit selbst ist keine problemlose Etappe im Leben der Glaubenden, sondern findet in einer weiterhin schuldig werdenden Weltzeit und unter deren Konditionen statt. Darum wird logischerweise über den irgendwann möglichen Abbruch dieses göttlichen Experiments von Lukas nachzudenken sein. In der Tat wird am Zitatschluss über den durch Umkehrpredigt, Glaube und Geistausstattung eschatologisch qualifizierten Zeitraum gesagt, dass er mit Bestimmtheit durch den Jom JHWE, den Tag des Herrn, beendet werden wird.

32 Die Heidenmission wird bereits im Gotteswort indirekt thematisiert, indem der Evangelist Joel 3:5b, wo allein von Zion und Jerusalem die Rede war, übergeht. Vgl. Wasserberg (1998, 219). 33 Dafür spricht auch die auffällige Parallelität der Wundergeschichten in der Apg mit denen im Evangelium.

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Diese letztlich traditionelle, eschatologische Sicht einer allseits vom göttlichen Willen begrenzten Weltzeit hatte bereits der lukanische Jesus zu Lebzeiten vertreten, wenn Lukas Q 17:24 (?), 26f., 30, wo Jesus ‘die Tage Noachs’ von ‘dem Tag des Menschensohnes’ abgesetzt hatte,34 dieses biblische Beispiel noch unterstreicht, indem er es um ‘die Tage Lots’ dupliziert35. Das biblische Vergleichspaar mahnt an, dass der Alltag (vgl. auch Lk 20:34–36) der Endzeit von ‘dem Tag’ der Offenbarung des Menschensohnes abrupt und unvorhersehbar beendet würde. ‘Diese Tage’ werden ebenso wie in Acta (u. a. 24:25) als Routine der Lebenswelt mit ihren alltäglichen Sorgen und Geschäften beschrieben. Das Motiv der tagtäglichen Sorge (siehe Hoffmann 1988; 1989, 116–141) ist zwar eine spezifische Thematik der Logienquelle (Q 12:22b–31), das Lukas aber weiter ausbaut (vgl. Lk 8:13f.; 10:38–42; 12:45f.; 21:34; Apg 3:6; 20:33). Sie wird bei ihm sogar als reale Gefährdung des zukünftigen Leitungspersonals der Urgemeinden speziell markiert (vgl. LkR 12:41 mit Apg 20:29f.). In all diesen Texten wird der Jom JHWH mit der Wiederkunft des Menschensohn-Richters (Lk 12:37–40; Apg 10:42; 17:31) gleichgesetzt. Seine zukünftige Epiphanie wurde in Acta bereits von den beiden Engeln Apostelgeschichte 1:11 angekündigt, die damit zugleich die jesuanische Ansage Lukas 21:27 von Gott her damit als korrekt bestätigen. Sein Kommen wird anschließend (Lk 21:31) mit der Ankunft des Reiches Gottes gleichgesetzt. Dort werden für den Jom JHWH zwar andere Vorzeichen am Himmel und auf Erden als im Joelzitat Apostelgeschichte 2:20 genannt, aber dies ist wohl den unterschiedlichen Traditionssträngen geschuldet. Auf diese Weise hat sich das Joelzitat in seiner lukanischen Fassung als ein Schlüsseltext für das lukanische Eschatologieverständnis in der Apostelgeschichte herausgestellt. Seine Programmatik findet in den weiteren lukanischen Aussagen seine Bestätigung. 3.3. Die Zeiten der Erquickung und der Restitution: Apostelgeschichte 3:21f. Die klare bisherige Unterscheidung zwischen dem Plural ‘Tage’ und dem im Singular formulierten endgültigen Parusietag erleichtert ein wenig den Zugang zum Verständnis von Apostelgeschichte 3:20f., einer durch die Jahrhunderte der Auslegung wohl wirkkräftigsten eschatologischen Ansage von der endzeitlichen Erquickung und Restitution. Doch warnt mit Recht 34 Nach Brandenburger (1980, 51 [vgl. 134]), wird die ältere Tradition über den kommenden Menschensohn sowohl von Mt wie Luk markant überarbeitet. Die lukanische Bearbeitung hat Schneider (1974, 42–46) herausgearbeitet. 35 Erzählerische Paarbildungen, Anspielungen auf den Reichtum als Übel und Gender Mainstreaming sind nach Cadbury (1968, 233–235, 260, 265), für ihn typisch.

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Luke Timothy Johnson, die Aussage ‘is deeply problematic and perhaps irresolvable.’ (Johnson 1992, 74) Dennoch soll hier eine argumentativ vertretbare Lösung vorgeschlagen werden. Die Aussage steht in einem Kontext, der von einer Zeichen- und Machthandlung Petri und Johannes ausgeht (3:1–10). Die Heilung des Gelähmten am Tempeltor weist ihrerseits auf den Tod und die Auferweckung Jesu als ihre notwendige Voraussetzung zurück, da nur dieses Geschehen den beiden Jüngern im Namen des Erweckten erlaubt habe, den Lahmen zu heilen. Daraus sollen die Zuhörer den Schluss ziehen, ihre aus Unwissenheit begangene Untat zu bereuen und sich zu ihrem Bundesgott (Apg 3:13, 25), dem Gott Abrahams, Isaaks und Jakobs, zu bekehren. Denn dieser habe durch den Mund aller Propheten, das Leiden seines Messias vorhergesagt. Wenn sie nun ihrer Aufforderung nachkämen, hätte dies zur Folge, dass ‘Zeiten (NDLURLY; Plural!) der Erquickung vom Herrn her kämen’ und der in den Himmel bis zu den Zeiten (FURYQZQ; Plural!) der Apokatastasis aufgenommene, aber ihnen doch vorherbestimmte Messias gesendet würde. D. h., es solle sich am Ende alles, was ‘Gott durch den Mund seiner Propheten von Uranfang an gesprochen habe’, erfüllen. Anschließend fährt Petrus fort, seine bislang eher generellen, biblischeschatologischen Aussagen mit einem Zitat von Mose christologisch zu präzisieren und zum Abschluss seiner Rede seinen Zuhörern zu drohen, dass jeder Umkehrunwillige aus dem Volk getilgt werden würde. Diese Meinung hätten seiner Meinung nach schon alle Propheten nach Samuel vertreten und ‘diese Tage’ (Plural!; vgl. Apg 2,17) der Umkehrentscheidung angesagt und immer schon mit positiven wie negativen Konsequenzen verknüpft. Dieser Kontext bettet die Wunderhandlung wie die Rede eindeutig in eine als endzeitlich und ethisch qualifizierte Zeitepoche ein, die mit der Auferweckung Jesu begonnen hat, sich über das Pfingstgeschehen hinaus erstrecken wird und deren Geschichte von Anfang an unter biblischen Vorhersagen (vgl. SURNDWDJJHYOOHLQ Apg 3:18 mit SURNHFHLULVPHYQRQ Apg 3:20) steht. Epochen überschneidend wird erneut zur Umkehr aufgefordert, wie es bereits der Täufer (Lk 3:3–6) getan und Jesus seinen Jüngern als einen Inhalts ihrer Verkündigung (Lk 24:44–49) aufgetragen hatte. Zudem bestätigt der nun geistgerüstete Petrus ausdrücklich noch einmal die Schrift gelehrte Beweisführung des Auferweckten gegenüber den beiden Emmausjüngern (Lk 24:25–27). Dort hatte Jesus erklärt: ‘O ihr Unverständigen, deren Herz zu träge ist, um auf all das hin zu glauben, was die Propheten gesagt haben! Musste denn der Messias nicht dies leiden und in seine Herrlichkeit eingehen?’ Außerdem entscheidet aus seiner Sicht die gerade begonnene, vom Geist und von der Umkehrpredigt bestimmte, nachösterliche Periode endgültig über das zukünftige Geschick

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des einzelnen Zuhörers. Wer sich nun bekehrt, hat ‘Zeiten der Erquickung’ zu gewärtigen, wer sich verweigert, wird aus dem Volk ausgerottet werden. Dies erinnert an das Wort Jesu Q 12:10, was auch Markus 3:28f. in einer um das Lästerungsmotiv erweiterte Fassung bietet, die von Lukas mit adaptiert wurde: ‘Und jedem, der ein Wort gegen den Menschensohn sagen wird, wird vergeben werden; dem aber, der gegen den Heiligen Geist lästert, wird nicht vergeben werden’, d. h. im Sinne von Apostelgeschichte 3:23 (vgl. Lk 19:27) wohl ‘ausgerottet werden’. Die Konsequenzen dieser Aussage werden exemplarisch zuerst in der harschen Szene demonstriert, die unter dem Motto ‘den Heiligen Geist belügen’ (Apg 5:3f.), steht. Dort werden im Rahmen einer innerchristlichen Situation (!) zwei Mitglieder der Jerusalemer Gemeinde, Ananias und seine Gattin, von Petrus des Betruges Gottes überführt und angeklagt. Sie verfallen direkt dem Gottesurteil und sterben umgehend. Diese krasse Episode symbolisiert eindringlich den Ernst der Lage. Dieselbe Tendenz wird von Apostelgeschichte 13:45 bestätigt36, wonach sich die Umkehrunwilligen und Lästerer des Wortes Gottes ‘selbst des ewigen Lebens unwürdig erachten’. Mehr Licht in die rätselhaften Aussage Apostelgeschichte 3:20f. hat bereits G. Lohfink mit seinen Erwägungen (Lohfink 1969, 223–241, spez. 239) gebracht, die von den meisten neueren Auslegern37 übernommen wurde, dass nämlich SDYQWZQ Apostelgeschichte 3:21, nicht zu DMSR NDWDVWDYVLa gezogen und folglich nicht im Sinn einer Kosmologie mit ‘Wiederherstellung des Alls’ übersetzt werden dürfe, sondern nach der sprachlichen Vorgabe des Lukas in seinem Doppelwerk Lukas 18:31; 21:22; 24:25.44; Apostelgeschichte 13:29; 24:14 zum abschließenden Relativsatz gehöre. D. h. die den eschatologisch qualifizierenden Prozess der Umkehr abschließende ‘Wiederherstellung’ hängt mit dem zusammen, was Gott in der Schrift durch alle Propheten über den Messias und über das Enddrama in der Schrift gesagt habe. Unter die Propheten zählt er auch den lukanischen Jesus, dessen Worte ja ihre Gültigkeit behalten, wenn auch Himmel und Erde vergehen (Lk 21:33 par. Mk 13:31). Damit steht die Endzeit wie auch das Ende aller Zeiten unter der Treue Gottes zu seinem Wort, an das er sich gebunden hat, und entzieht sich so konsequenterweise jeder menschlichen Terminberechnung. Was aber nun die umkehrwilligen Menschen in der Endzeit von der Restitution inhaltlich erwarten dürfen, wird in dem mit ihm sprachlich verwandten Wort DMNDWDVWDVLYD das voraussichtlich das Gegenteil von ‘Restitution’ bedeutet und von Lukas 21:9 in seine Vorlage Markus 13:7 par. Matteus 24:6 eingebracht wurde, abklärbar. Dieses Substantiv erfasst semiotisch das ‘Ungeordnete’, ‘Chaotische’ und bedeutet situations36 37

Vgl. noch Apg 18:6f.; siehe dagegen Apg 19:37; 26:11 mit positivem Ausgang. Siehe Hagene (2003, 125); Rusam (2003, 347–349); Wasserberg (1998, 227–231).

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bezogen an der Stelle soviel wie ‘Aufstände, Unruhen’, mit der der Evangelist die Wiederholung des Wortes ‘Krieg’ innerhalb eines Satzes stilistisch vermeidet (So schon Cadbury (1969, 188). Positiv gewendet spricht hier der lukanische Petrus also die Erwartung aus, dass sich der in der Schrift geäußerte Willen Gottes nun endgültig durchsetzen wird. Es bleibt dessen unverbrüchliches Ziel, eine friedliche, gerechte und humane Lebensordnung (vgl. Apg 2:43–47; 4:32–35) in Verbindung mit ihm und seinem Messias zu garantieren, worauf schon die Einleitung mit ihrer Schilderung der Machttat der beiden Apostel hinwies. Um die durch Menschenhand gestörte Schöpfung endgültig wieder in Ordnung zu bringen, hat sich nach Petri Worten Gott neben dem Umkehrverlangen ausbedungen, den Gekreuzigten und nun von ihm durch die Auferweckung zum Messiaskönig erhobenen Jesus (Apg 2:22–24) im Himmel ‘zu empfangen’ (vgl. Apg 3:21 mit 7:59), ihn in seiner Nähe zu haben (vgl. Apg 7:55f.) und ihm unverzüglich die Verfügungsgewalt über den Heiligen Geist für Raum und Zeit zu übereignen (Apg 1:2; 2:39f.; 5:35). Diese Darstellung entspricht exakt der Situation, die im Gleichnis von den Minen (Lk 19:12–27) vorausgesetzt wird. Dort wird erzählt, dass sich ein Adeliger in ein fernes Land aufmacht, um dort die Königswürde in Empfang zu nehmen (vgl. Apg 17:7). Nach seiner Rückkehr wird er seine Anhänger nach der von ihren erbrachten Leistung in der Zeit seiner Abwesenheit angemessen entlohnen, seine Gegner hingegen werden seinem Gericht verfallen. Da die Rückkehr Jesu bereits Apostelgeschichte 1:8 den Aposteln angekündigt worden ist, muss auch Apostelgeschichte 3:21 vorausgesetzt sein, dass dieser eine zentrale Rolle bei der endgültigen Restitution übernehmen wird: Er hat als Richter seine Anhänger nach ihren Verdiensten zu entlohnen und alle Verweigerer des Wortes vom Reich zu verurteilen. Erst nach diesem Akt (vgl. Apg 17:31; 24:25) ist die Schöpfung endgültig in Ordnung und das Reich Gottes unter dem Klientelkönig Jesus Christus exklusiv errichtet. 3.4. Die lukanische Individualeschatologie Bislang konnten die eschatologischen Vorstellungen hinter Apostelgeschichte 3:20f. annäherungsweise, was die Apokatastasisvorstellung betrifft, entschlüsselt werden. Auch hier wird zwischen der Endzeit (Plural) und dem Ende aller Zeiten (Singular) unterschieden. Aber auf beide treffen die in der Schrift festgelegten Konditionen zu. Es steht jedoch noch die Dechiffrierung der Bedeutung dessen, was unter ‘der Erquickung vom Herrn her’ gemeint sein könnte, aus. Man könnte beide Vorstellungsbereiche als Synonyme betrachten und ‘Erfrischung’ ebenfalls auf die Endphase der Weltzeit beziehen. Dem widerspricht aber die gegenläufige Bewegung im Text. Einerseits kommt ‘die Erfrischung vom

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Angesicht des Herrn’ auf den Bekehrungswilligen zu, andererseits wird ein absolutes Endziel definiert, bis zu dem Jesus im Himmel verborgen bleiben wird. Außerdem ist zwischen den beiden strittigen Begriffen eine längere höchst belangreiche, christologische Aussage eingeblendet, die deutlich nur auf das Endziel ausgerichtet ist. Beides macht die Vorstellung, es handele sich um Synonyme, schwierig oder fast unmöglich. Der Dechiffrierschlüssel könnte bei zwei bislang schon gemachten Beobachtungen liegen. Die ‘Erquickung’ ist eine konsequente Folge der aktuellen Umkehr und diese hat an sich wiederum etwas mit dem Geschenk des ewigen Lebens für jene zu tun, welche sich mit der Umkehr ‘des ewigen Lebens würdig erweisen’ (Apg 13:47). Da nun aber im lukanischen Doppelwerk räumlich und zeitlich in größeren Distanzen (‘bis an das Ende der Welt’: Apg 1:8) und über viele Generationen (‘alle noch fernen Geschlechter’: Apg 2:39) hinweg gedacht wird, würde sich der attraktive Vorschlag von Dietrich Rusam (2003, 347) nahelegen, der ‘die Erquickung’ mit der Auferstehung der Gerechten nach ihrem jeweiligen individuellen Tod verbunden wissen will. Diese Zuordnung befindet sich im Einklang mit der Beispielgeschichte des Reichen und des armen Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31; vgl. Lk 12:16–21). In ihr wird die Erquickung des armen Lazarus im Schoße Abrahams – u. a. Lukas 6:20b–25 und 12:5 illustrierend – ausgemalt, mit der Marter des Reichen kontrastiert sowie mit dem Wert einer Auferstehung problematisiert, die an Beweiskraft für die Notwendigkeit der Umkehr einbüße, solange man der Schrift keinen Glauben schenken wolle. Ähnlich verhält es sich mit dem bekehrungswilligen Schächer, dem Jesus zwar noch nicht expressis verbis den Eintritt in sein Reich, aber schon in das Paradies – aus jüdischer Sicht die himmlische Heimat der Gerechten – verspricht (Lk 23:32, 39–43). Jedesmal geht die Individualität und Integrität des Armen, des Mitgekreuzigten und Umkehrwilligen nicht mit deren Tod verloren, sondern beide gelangen mit Leib und Seele an den Ort ‘der Erquickung’, der ihnen bestimmt ist. Sie müssen ‘die nicht fürchten, die den Leib töten, aber danach nichts Weiteres tun können’ (LkR 12:4f.), sondern sie haben den gefunden, der die Vollmacht besitzt, sie an den Ort der Erquickung zu bringen. Denn sie gehören zu der Gruppe, die sich nicht vor den Weltmächten gefürchtet, ihren Besitz zugunsten aller verkauft,38 Almosen gegeben und sich dadurch einen unerschöpflichen Schatz in den Himmeln erworben (Lk 12:33) haben. Wiederum haben beide Szenen ihre individualgeschichtlichen Parallelen in Acta. Nach Apostelgeschichte 2:31 konnte Jesus, der doch begraben wurde (Lk 23:55; 24:3, 23), nicht im Hades (Apg 2:27; 13:35), d. h. im 38 Das Gegenteil wird im lukanischen Gleichnis vom reichen Kornbauer (Luk 12:16– 21) berichtet.

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Tod, verbleiben, da die Todesmacht keine Gewalt mehr über ihn ausüben konnte (Apg 2:24), so dass auch sein ‘Körper’ (contra PsLXX 16) auferweckt wurde (vgl. Lk 24:30f., 39f. mit Apg 2:31).39 Wie Jesus in Lukas 23:34 verzeiht auch Stephanus – sogar mit dessen eigenen Worten – seinen Lynchmördern und hofft zugleich inständig, dass Jesus ‘seinen Geist’ (vgl. Lk 23:46) im milieu divine ‘empfängt’, damit sie dort seine Heimstatt fände. Am deutlichsten wird der hier vorliegenden Individualeschatologie40, die in dieser Form den anderen Synoptiker bekanntlich noch fremd ist, Apostelgeschichte 14:2241 Ausdruck verliehen. Dort ermuntern Paulus und Barnabas, von denen Paulus kurz zuvor in Lystra knapp einem Mordanschlag entgangen war, die Gemeinden mit den Worten: ‘Wir müssen (d. h. gottgewollt) durch viele Drangsale in das Reich Gottes eingehen’. Mit diesen Worten greifen sie ein Wort des Auferweckten Lukas 24:26 wieder auf. Diese eschatologische Heilsnotwendigkeit war bereits dort aus der Schrift abgeleitet worden. Letzteres bestätigt wiederum Paulus ausdrücklich in seiner miletischen Abschiedsrede Apostelgeschichte 20:32: ‘Jetzt aber empfehle ich euch Gott und dem Wort seiner Gnade, das die Kraft besitzt, zu erbauen und allen den Erbbesitz unter den Geheiligten zu verleihen’. Nur unter der Bedingung von Erfahrungen einer länger sich erstreckenden Weltzeit, die den Autor auch vom ‘Weg’ (u. a. Apg 9:2; 18:25f.; 19:9)42 reden lässt, kann diese spezifische Ausprägung der urchristlichen Eschatologie gedacht worden sein. Sie entfaltet ihre auf erbauende Kraft für Glaubende, ihre begrenzte Lebensspanne an dem Wort Gottes auszurichten und es öffentlich auch unter dem Risiko zu bezeugen, selbst ein Blutmärtyrer wie Stephanus und Paulus zu werden. Auf diese Weise wird nach Lukas die tiefste Hoffnung der Gerechten bereits mit ihrem Lebensende in Erfüllung gehen. Sie werden als Gerechtfertigte umfassend vom Schalom Gottes umfangen sein. Hier offenbart sich die ethisch-paränetische Potenz der lukanischen Eschatologie ausdrücklich. Sie hat Lukas vor allen Evangelisten am profundesten individualethisch vorbereitet, wenn er z. B. von unterschiedlichen Personen auffällig zahlreich die Frage nach dem rechten Handeln aufwerfen und beantworten

39 Beachte die religionsgeschichtlichen Hinweise bei Hoffmann (1979, 461f.) und Lehtipuu (2002, 133–146). 40 Die Botschaft von der Auferstehung der Toten ist ein zentraler Inhalt der apostolischen Predigt: Apg 4:2; 10:42; 17:18, 31; 23:6; 24:14f., 25. 41 Apg 14:22 wird vorbereitet und ausgebaut Apg 5:41; 9:15f.; vgl. 20:19; 21:11; 26:17; 28:20. 42 Die Weg-Metapher wurde immer wieder gern untersucht: Siehe u. a. Porsch (1979, 133–136); Robinson (1964); Busse (1989, 68–81); Müller (1991, 81–83); Löning (1997/2006).

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lässt.43 Das rechte gegenwärtige Handeln sichert die Heilszukunft auf Erden wie im Himmel (vgl. Lk 18:28–30). Doch verdrängt die Konzeption einer privilegiert Einzelne herausnehmenden ethisch konzipierte Individualeschatologie nicht das Enddrama des von Gott in nur ihm zustehender Souveränität terminlich festzusetzenden ‘Tag des Herrn’ mit der Auferweckung der Toten zum abschließenden Gericht und endgültigen Befreiung der traditionellen urchristlichen eschatologischen Erwartung (vgl. LkR 21:26). Dies ist auch unangebracht, weil Lukas im zweiten Teil seines Werkes eine Missionsgeschichte des Wortes vom kommenden Reich zu schreiben beabsichtigt, die über Israel (Apg 26:7) hinaus auch die Heiden (u. a. Apg 11:18; 14:27; 15:8f.; 26:20) bis an die Grenzen der Erde umfassen soll. Zum Abschluss dieses universalen Prozesses wird die Wiederkehr des Auferweckten als Menschensohn-Richter erwartet (Lk 21:27; Apg 1:11), um nach der Auferweckung aller Toten auch wirklich alle Handlungsträger in der chaotisch verlaufenden Schöpfungsgeschichte nach ihren Taten juristisch beurteilen, ggf. verurteilen oder ‘hinrichten’ zu lassen. Wer ‘das Wort der Rettung’ (Apg 13:26) angenommen und bei seiner Umkehr sich ‘gewaschen und gereinigt’ hat, braucht am letzten Tag keine Befürchtungen zu hegen. Er ist mit allen Gottgläubigen endgültig im Reich Gottes angekommen, das Jesus als Klientelkönig und Christus Gottes nun auch auf Erden restituiert hat (Apg 3:21). Die Geschichte in Raum und Zeit ist beendet, die Leiden der Verkünder des kommenden Reiches und der für das Heil erforderlichen Umkehr ist vorbei, ihr Auftrag erfüllt und der in der Schrift bis auf Jesu Worte niedergelegte Wille Gottes hat sich durchgesetzt.

4. Gerechtigkeit und vollkommenes Heil Lukas war kein an Max Weber geschulter Systematiker von sozialen Menschheitsproblemen, sondern ein begnadeter Geschichts- und Geschichtenerzähler, der die unter den Nägeln brennende Frage nach dem desaströsen Zustand der Welt nicht abstrakt unter der Kategorie ‘Theodizee’ abhandeln will und auch voraussichtlich nicht kann, sondern der das mit diesem Begriff bezeichnete und erkannte Problem in quasi historische Einzelerzählungen auflöst und es in diesem Rahmen auf eine eschatologische Lösung für den Rezipienten zusteuern lässt. Denn der endgültige Schadensausgleich und Gerechtigkeit widerfährt den Opfern der Welt-Geschichte im Eschaton. 43

Luk 3:10–14; 12:17f.; 16:3f.; 19:8; Apg 2:37f.; 16:27–31; 26:20.

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Innerhalb dieser umfassenden geschichtlichen Konzeption deuten seine zentralen Handlungsträger ein Bild von einem idealen, zukünftigen und gestuften Geschichtsverlauf an, der auf dem in der Schrift grundgelegten Gotteswillen basiert. Damit versuchen sie diese Menschheitsfrage im Text zu beantworten. Aus ihrer Sicht ist nämlich die Problemlösung nur durch eine Verlängerung des geschichtlichen Horizonts in die Zukunft hinein erreichbar. Dass dieses Hoffnungsbild von der Funktion einer absoluten Zukunft traditionell weisheitlich-apokalpyptisch bestimmt ist, ist jedoch in diesem Zusammenhang weniger bedeutsam als der Umstand, dass sich die schriftgemäße geschichtliche Dynamik in der Endzeit aus der Botschaft des Täufers, Jesu und dessen Zeugen ableitet. Die Umkehrbotschaft unter der Kondition der eschatologischen Zukunft legt die Verantwortung für den zu kritisierenden Zustand der geschichtlichen Welt in die Hände, die Verantwortung und in die Gesinnung jedes Menschen zurück. Zuerst nehmen die Apostel mit ihrer Geistbegabung den Schlüssel zur Lösung der Frage in die Hand, indem sie bezeugen und es öffentlich aussprechen: Die Menschen müssen sich nur auf den Willen Gottes, wie er sich in den Schriften äußert, einlassen, dann ist ihnen seine Sympathie gewiss. Deshalb kann später auch Paulus vor Felix diese Einschätzung der menschlichen Lage beredt in Worte kleiden: ‘Das allerdings gestehe ich dir [Prokurator Felix] gerne zu, dass ich nach Art “des Weges”, die die Juden eine Partei nennen, dem Gott unserer Väter diene, doch so, dass ich allem Glauben schenke, was in der Tora und was in den Propheten geschrieben steht, sodass ich vor Gott die Hoffnung habe, die auch die Leute hier selber hegen, nämlich dass es eine Auferstehung der Gerechten wie der Ungerechten geben wird. Im Blick hierauf bemühe ich mich auch selber immerfort, vor Gott und den Menschen ein unversehrtes Gewissen zu bewahren.’ (Apg 24:14–16) Die göttliche Sympathie kann sich bereits schon darin äußern, dass in der Sterbestunde des vor Gott Gerechten, wie es Paulus sicherlich ist, diesem die Aufnahme in himmlische Gefilde gewährt wird. Dieser neue Akzent profiliert und aktualisiert deutlich die traditionelle Vorstellung von der allgemeinen Auferstehung der Toten am Ende aller Tage. Beide möglichen Denkmodelle werden bereits implizit Apostelgeschichte 4:2 (vgl. 26:8f.) aus der das gewaltsame Geschick Jesu heilenden Auferweckung abgeleitet und umgehend dem Volk und bald darauf den Gläubigen aus den Völkern (Apg 10:42) bezeugt. Dass diese Ableitung aus dem Jesusgeschick den Missionaren auch Schwierigkeiten einhandeln wird, wird nicht schon Apostelgeschichte 4:1ff. evident, sondern noch deutlicher in der geschickten Apologie Pauli Apostelgeschichte 23:6 (vgl. 24:21), der den Dissens in der Auferstehungsfrage zwischen Sadduzäern und Pharisäern nützt, um seine Position im Verhör

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zu verbessern, dies ihm aber letztlich doch nichts nützt. Sein Heil liegt eben nicht in dieser, sondern in der kommenden Welt. Außerdem verfolgt der Schöpfergott – aus lukanischer Perspektive logisch und konsequent – ein über Israel44 hinausreichendes, mondiales Programm. Das hatte schon der lukanische Täufer (Lk 3:6 [vgl. Apg 13:10] diff. Mt 3:3) aus dem Propheten Jesaja abgeleitet. Denn dieser beendete das Zitat Jes 40:3 – gegen seine Q-Vorlage – programmatisch mit den Worten ‘und alles Fleisch wird die Rettung Gottes sehen’. Aufgrund dieser erweiterten Schriftzitation war der Evangelisten auch gezwungen, seinen Geschichtsaufriss umfassend um die Geschichte der Anfänge der Heidenmission zu erweitern. Wenn diese exterritoriale Mission auch ausführlich Apostelgeschichte 10:1–11:18 für den innergemeindlichen Gebrauch vorbereitet wird, so bleibt es Paulus Apostelgeschichte 13:46 vorbehalten, die Periodisierung der Geschichte in ein ‘Zuerst’ und ein ‘Danach’ auf Gottes Geheiß (V. 47) hin voranzutreiben.45 Doch darf die hier konkret anvisierte neue Epoche der Völkermission nicht triumphalistisch zugunsten der Gläubigen aus den Heiden zum Nachteil Israels interpretiert werden. Denn Paulus richtet sich nur gegen jene Landsleute46, die sich dem in der Schrift angesagten Auftrag, der schon in der Vorgeschichte Lukas 1:72f.; 2:32 thematisiert wurde, nämlich dass Barnabas und er endzeitlich ‘Licht der Völker’ zu deren Rettung zu sein hätten, widersetzen. Zugleich hatte Jesus zum Abschluss seiner zweiten ‘eschatologischen Rede’ LkR 21:24 bereits – der gesamten zweistufigen Entwicklung47 vorgreifend – von der Erfüllung auch ‘der Epoche der Völker’ gesprochen. Die Gleichbehandlung dieser Periode in Bezug auf die Reaktion gegenüber dem Kerygma ist auch für Acta indirekt gefordert. Nicht nur den Landsleuten Jesu wird Apostelgeschichte 3:17 Unwissenheit gegenüber dem göttlichen Willen bescheinigt und ihnen eine neue Umkehrchance 44

Diese Programm schließt Israel ausdrücklich nicht aus, sondern alle ein, die sich dem Gotteswillen unterwerfen. 45 Siehe zum Problem insgesamt: Koet (1989, 97–118); Tannehill (1990, 164–175). Den Ansatz der letzteren, die Geschichte zwischen Juden und Christen wäre tragisch, muss nicht geteilt werden. 46 Apg 13:42f. hatte von einer positiven Aufnahme der paulinischen Predigt berichtet! Nach Apg 14:1ff. predigt er auch weiterhin in den Synagogen. Es kann also keine generelle Abwendung vom Judentum gemeint sein, sondern nur eine Periode neigt sich dem Ende zu. 47 Marshall (2007, 514), sieht ebenfalls eine von der Schrift vorgegebene, zweistufige Periodisierung. Aber er verkürzt sie m. E. um die nachösterlich wiederholte Judenmission und beschränkt sie deshalb auf die Jesusgeschichte und die Heidenmission. Die Apg kennt wenigstens noch drei weitere Perioden (nachösterliche Judenmission, Heidenmission und vager eschatologischer Ausblick), die Jesusgeschichte insgesamt umfasst den ersten Teil des Doppelwerks.

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eingeräumt. Dasselbe wird auch den Heiden von Paulus auf dem Areopag, Apostelgeschichte 17:30, zugestanden. In beiden Gruppen (Israel und den Völkern) überwiegt die Ablehnung der christlichen Botschaft bei Mitgliedern der politischen und ökonomischen Leitungseliten und nicht beim einfachen Volk. Es wird in einem solchen Fall zumeist als gedankenlose Mitläufer charakterisiert. In der Tat hat Petrus mit seiner Rede auf dem Apostelkonzil Recht, wenn er keinen Unterschied zwischen gläubigen Juden und Heiden findet (Apg 15:9; vgl. 10:46). Sie haben alle den Geist empfangen und reden in Zungen, d. h. als Zeugen des Wortes. Analog wird auch bei den anderen, also unter den Heiden die heilvolle Botschaft von der Auferstehung der Toten, die bei Lukas die Theodizeefrage mit lösen hilft, auf Ablehnung stoßen (vgl. Apg 24:25). Diese Verweigerung schildert der Evangelist ebenfalls uno sono wie vorher bei Jesu Landsleuten. Der Auferweckte verspricht Paulus in einer Vision sogar ausdrücklich, er werde ihn gleichermaßen vor dem ‘Volk’ wie vor den Völkern retten (Apg 26:17). Deshalb hört sich der Bericht über die Reaktion der gelehrten Zuhörer auf dem Areopag (Apg 17:32f.) für den Leser bereits bekannt an: ‘Als sie aber das Wort von der Auferweckung der Toten hörten, spotteten die einen, die anderen aber sagten: Wir möchten dich hierüber noch ein anderes Mal (vgl. Apg 14:42) hören. So ging Paulus aus ihrem Kreis hinweg’. Deutlicher kann es nicht mehr gesagt werden, dass das christliche Programm zur Verbesserung der Lebenschancen aller durch das Einwirken des Geistes zu allen Zeiten nicht von allen Heiden in dem von der Apostelgeschichte berichteten Zeitraum angenommen worden ist. Deshalb verfallen nicht nur die sogenannten ‘Juden’, die hier wie dort zumeist die jeweiligen politischen wie ökonomischen Leitungseliten (vgl. Apg 19:23–40) meinen (vgl. zuletzt noch Apg 28:17), sondern voraussichtlich auch die sogenannten ‘Heiden’ mit einem ähnlichen Sozialstatus dem Endgericht. ‘Den Zeiten der Heiden’ ist also ebenfalls eine Grenze gesetzt. Aber das, was im idealen Geschichtsentwurf möglicherweise noch folgt, ist nur schemenhaft auszumachen. Doch lässt es sich aus der Anlage des Gesamtwerkes ableiten. In der lukanischen Vorgeschichte wird nicht umsonst die jüdische Hoffnungsgeschichte besonders ausführlich thema-tisiert. Der Engel Gabriel schlägt den Grundton an, wenn er die verheißene Inthronisation des Messias auf dem Thron Davids für den neugeborenen Jesus ansagt. Dieser werde über das Haus Jakob in Ewigkeit herrschen und sein Reich werde kein Ende kennen (Lk 1:31–33). Zacharias, Channa und Simon ihrerseits reagieren entsprechend darauf, indem sie diese Hoffnung inhaltlich weiter füllen: Israel hoffe besonders auf die Befreiung aus der Hand seiner Feinde (Lk 1:68–79), speziell von der Jerusalems (Lk 2:29– 38), und zumal auf die Restauration seines Ansehens ‘im Angesicht aller

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Völker’. Zu Lebzeiten Jesu werden alle diese Erwartungen enttäuscht. Er hat zwar mit seiner Auferweckung den Thron Davids in Besitz genommen (Apg 2:24–33), aber er übt seine Klientelherrschaft im Himmel und mithilfe des Heiligen Geistes von dort her aus. Vor allem die fortwährenden Geistsendungen lassen seinen beständigen Heils- und Herrscherwillen aufleuchten. Der Geist scheint folglich das Angeld auf Jesu Endherrschaft über alle Gerechten durch die Weltzeit hinweg zu sein. D. h., Lukas hält an der dialektischen eschatologischen Position Jesu des ‘Schon – aber noch Nicht’, wie sie noch in der Logienquelle erkennbar ist, fest und korrigiert zugleich seinen Vorgänger Markus in diesem Punkt, da er nicht vollkommen korrekt die Geschichte niedergeschrieben, sondern sie kerygmatisch verkürzt habe. Darüber hinaus erinnert Jakobus Apostelgeschichte 15:13–21 an die in den Worten des Propheten Amos48 grundgelegte Verheißung, dass erst ‘nach’ der Heidenmission Israel restituiert werden soll.49 Deren Mission sei folglich aus diesem Grund für die Heilshoffnung Israels konstitutiv. Deshalb solle man den Völkern auch keine unnötigen Lasten auflegen, sondern sich bei ihnen mit den Vorschriften des Noachbundes (Gen 9:4) begnügen. Charakteristischerweise kommt Paulus, vor allem in seiner letzten Verteidigungsrede vor Agrippa II., Apostelgeschichte 26:6f. auf diesen entscheidenden Punkt zurück: ‘Und jetzt stehe ich vor Gericht wegen der Hoffnung auf die Erfüllung der unseren Vätern von Gott gegebenen Verheißung, die unser Zwölfstämmevolk zu erleben hofft, wenn es Tag und Nacht (vgl. Lk 2:37) voller Sehnsucht Gott dient. Wegen eben dieser Hoffnung werde ich von den Juden angeklagt, König’. Aus lukanischer Sicht werden die in der Vorgeschichte zuerst genannten Hoffnungen zuletzt erfüllt. Danach erst wird der Menschensohn-Richter seinen himmlischen Ort verlassen und nun auch über das Haus Jakob, den Glaubenden aus allen Völkern, in Ewigkeit herrschen. Denn bekanntlich werden die ersten die letzten, und die letzten die ersten sein. Aber der letzte aller Tage schließt für Lukas die Auferweckung aller Menschen, Gerechten wie Ungerechten, ein. Der Unterschied ist nur, dass den Gerechten das Gottesreich schon zugesagt und notfalls bereits zugewiesen ist. Denn sie haben die heilende Kraft des Pneumas im Namen 48

Dieses Zitat ist kein von einer anonymen urchristlichen Tradition vorgeprägter Schriftbeweis, sondern seine Bearbeitungsspuren weisen auf Lukas hin. Es darf auch nicht auf die Urgemeinde, als sei dieses das neue Israel, bezogen werden. Dagegen sprechen schon eindeutig die beiden partizipialen Adjektive ‘verfallen’ und ‘zertrümmert’. 49 In einer ausführlichen und stimmigen Auslegung belegt Hoffmann (1988, 142– 192), auch die These, dass mit der Wiederaufrichtung Israels die Herrschaft des Messias verbunden ist.

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Jesu (Apg 1:5, 8; 2:38–40; 4:18f., 30; 5:8, 32) in der Stunde der Umkehr erfahren. Mit dieser Ausrüstung nur konnten die Aposteln zum zeichenhaften Zeugnis über die durch Passion und Auferweckung einzigartige Position Jesu Christi Kranke heilen und Bedürftigen helfen. Somit schließt sich der lukanische Gedankenkreis: Jesus wie seine Zeugen durch mehrere Epochen stehen – ausgestattet mit dem Geist und von diesem geleitet (Apg 16:7) – im Dienst der alles umfassenden Sache Gottes. Deren geschichtliche Entwicklung war von alters her durch die Tora und die Propheten für die Endzeit und das absolute Ende der Geschichte angesagt und wurde bereits teilweise vollzogen. Das Heilsangebot wurde bei individueller Umkehr und Glaubensannahme bei allen, ob aus dem Judentum oder aus den Völkern, anfangshaft und in besonderen Wunderzeichen realisiert. Am Ende aller Tage wird diese Glaubenshaltung generell, wie schon zuvor individuell, von Gottes Richter, Jesus Christus, positiv bewertet. Die Leugner aber werden gerichtet werden. Damit ist jedem Gerechtigkeit widerfahren. Wenn man dieser Interpretation der lukanischen Eschatologiekonzeption zustimmt, dann ist aber die These von der lukanischen Aufgabe der Naherwartung und deren negative Bewertung durch H. Conzelmann (1961, 131) obsolet, weil im Rahmen der Diegese exakt das vorgefunden wurde, was dieser selbst schlechterdings als die Sachfrage der Eschatologie in der RGG3 herausgestellt hatte: Die Sachfrage ist keine andere als die der E.[schatologie] überhaupt, nämlich ob diese als Explikation des Heilshandelns Gottes in Christus und also als die Bestimmung der Gegenwart durch das verkündigte Heil verstanden werden kann.

5. Fazit Die vielen Vor- und Rückverweise, die – wie hier herausgearbeitet – beide Teile des Doppelwerkes miteinander verbinden und sich wechselseitig erhellen, haben eine einheitliche eschatologische Konzeption erkennbar werden lassen. Der allumfassende geschichtliche Diegese-Rahmen ermöglicht allen Handlungsträgern in der Erzählung, ihre Hoffnungen und Erwartungen zu formulieren. Denn die geschichtliche Darstellung lässt auch eine Naherwartung ohne die häufig beschriebenen Defizite einer kerygmatischen Theologie wie die des Markus oder Paulus zu. Die dort vorgetragene Naheschatologie muss nicht in der kirchlichen Praxis nach jeder Generation korrigiert oder neu formuliert werden. Der Autor kann vielmehr Fehlerwartungen und Terminspekulationen in Einzelepisoden erzählerisch entlarven und gegebenenfalls mit der Autorität der Schrift oder die des Jesus korrigieren. Gleichzeitig wird sich ein gewöhnlicher

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Rezipient im Leseprozess mit den vorgetragenen eschatologischen, aber situationsgebundenen Ansichten der geistgeleiteten Hauptakteure, in diesem Fall die Apostel Petrus und Paulus, stärker identifizieren, als es eine eschatologische Hypothese vermag. Klar und deutlich korrigiert Lukas gleich zu Beginn eine politisch begründete Naherwartung, die aus seiner Sicht letztlich egoistischnationalen Zielen dient und der Schrift – wie er meint – widerspricht. Sie wird mit der Autorität des auferweckten Jesus erneut strikt zurückgewiesen. Dieser hat immer das letzte Wort. Deshalb taucht danach diese Erwartungshaltung bei Lukas auch nicht wieder auf. Sie ist zudem zeitlich an die letzten Ereignisse im Geschick Jesu in Jerusalem gebunden. Diese Terminierung entspricht aus heutiger Sicht in etwa der frühen theologiegeschichtlichen Entwicklung. Diese Erkenntnis offenbart also die Tendenz des Evangelisten, eine theologisch vermessene Naherwartung aufzugeben, sie an ihren geschichtlich angemessenen Ursprungsort zu belassen und dort ad acta zu legen. Es geht dem Auferweckten in diesem Anfangskapitel um viel mehr; es geht ihm um das geschichtlich weiterhin gültige Heilsangebot Gottes, dessen eschatologischer Repräsentant er nun ist. Dieser teleologische Rahmen gibt Gott seine eschatologische Initiativkraft zurück, so dass er trotz einer allgemein gültigen menschlichen Erwartungshaltung den Geist jederzeit ausgießen, aber auch die Parusie umgehend eintreten lassen kann. Deshalb wird er trotz der strikten Abweisung einer nationalen Naheschatologie an der terminlich gebundenen Parusie, dem Herrschafts-antritt des davidischen Messias, festgehalten. Doch dieser unterliegt allein dem souveränen Willen Gottes, der ihn in den Schriften von alters her zwar zugesagt, aber von einer exakten Terminangabe geschwiegen hat. Zwar steht die Herrschaft des Messias in seinem ihm zugewiesenen Reich für die Zukunft fest, aber wird zugleich mit geschichtlich umzusetzenden Bedingungen verknüpft: Zuerst muss die Kenntnis vom jederzeit kommenden Reich von den Jüngern weltweit verbreitet werden. Danach erfährt in einem schmerzhaften Prozess die judenchristliche Gemeinde, dass das Heil auch die Gläubigen aus den Völkern miteinschließen wird. Die Apostel sind in diesen schrittweisen Erkenntnisprozess besonders einbezogen. Denn ihnen muss diese Einsicht sogar aufgezwungen werden (vgl. Apg 10), da sie Joel 3:1–5 zuerst nur teilweise umsetzen, nämlich mit dem Angebot zur Umkehr bei den eigenen Landsleuten. Die Berufung Pauli (vgl. Apg 9) fällt mit der für die kommende Entwicklung der Heidenmission zentralen Erfahrung Petri zusammen, dass nicht nur Juden, sondern auch Heiden den Geist der Endzeit empfangen und in Zungen wie er selbst reden können.

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Da die Ablehnung der Botschaft vom kommenden Reich bei einigen Landsleuten aus der Oberschicht nicht überwunden werden kann, wendet sich die Mission den Völkern zu, ohne die andere zu vernachlässigen. Auch dort werden einige überzeugt und kommen zum Glauben, andere aber auch nicht. Diese aufgezeigte geschichtliche Entwicklung von der Heimat- zur Völkermission lässt sich mit dem eingebürgerten Begriff ‘Heilsgeschichte’ nur annäherungsweise und letztlich unbefriedigend umschreiben, da sich die Heilsannahme im Glauben mit pneumatischer Ausstattung mit der aggressive Ablehnung (vgl. Apg 19:23ff.) in beiden Gruppen die Waage halten. Diese zwiespältige Erfahrung weckt wiederum die Hoffnung, dass sich mit der Parusie des Messias auch die Geschicke Israels zum Besseren wenden und so die prophetischen Ansagen letztlich doch noch in Erfüllung gehen. Lukas sieht bezogen auf Israel das Wort Jesu von den Ersten, die die Letzten sein werden, sich in seinem Geschichtsentwurf erfüllen. Der Parusiechristus wird die Widerstände brechen, indem er Gericht hält, und so den Opfern der Welt-Geschichte Gerechtigkeit widerfahren lassen. Dann wird er als Klientelkönig Gottes auf dem Thron Jakobs in Ewigkeit herrschen. Er wird ‘an seinem Tag’ wegen ‘des herzlichen Erbarmens unseres Gottes, in welchem der Aufgang aus der Höhe uns heimsucht’, offenbar, ‘um denen zu erscheinen, die in Finsternis und Todesschatten sitzen, um unsere Füße auf den Weg des Friedens zu richten’ (Lk 1:78f.). Dieses Wort und die darin zum Ausdruck kommende Hoffnung des geistbegabten Zacharias erfüllt sich nicht nur am Ende aller Zeiten, wenn sich die Botschaft vom kommenden Reich mit dem Wiederkommenden als immer schon von Gott legitimierte Wahrheit und eschatologisches Faktum realisiert haben wird. Schon zuvor werden die Armen, Reuigen und Gerechten, die für ihre Überzeugung verfolgt, gelitten und gestorben sind, aufgenommen in die [noch] himmlische Herrschaft, und dort bewahrt bis zum Tag der Auferstehung der Toten. Bis dahin wird aber ‘der Weg’ vom Pneuma heil voll bis an die Grenzen der Erde gelenkt worden sein. Doch es wird eben nicht verschwiegen, dass in der Erzählzeit auch Verfolgung und Ermordung von Zeugen vorgefallen sind. Diese Möglichkeit droht weiterhin bis in die Lesezeit, was das unausgesprochen bleibende gewaltsame Schicksal des Paulus (Apg 28) andeutet. Eine mögliche Demotivierungsgefahr wird aber mit dem Rekurs auf seine für ihn typische Individualeschatologie aufgefangen und der Leser aufgefordert sich stets bereit an der unfertigen Weltmission nach Kräften zu beteiligen. Gerade die Aufspaltung und Periodisierung der geschichtlichen Entwicklung in mehrere Phasen spricht für die These, dass Lukas, obwohl sein idealer Geschichtsentwurf die Zukunft zu ihrem Ende hin immer unpräziser und nebulöser beschreibt, gerade deshalb ein apokalyptisch

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geprägtes Denkmodell, wie es die Mehrzahl der neutestamentlichen Autoren haben, vertritt.50 Sein Entwurf ist an die Gattung der ‘historischen Apokalypse’ angelehnt, die bereits zutreffend analysiert und beschrieben worden ist.51 Trotzdem darf ein wichtiger Unterschied nicht verschwiegen werden: Der göttliche Plan wird nicht von einem Patriarchen, sondern vom lukanischen Jesus auftragsgemäß vertreten und von ihm auch in Gang gesetzt. Er in seinem Lebenswerk und mit seiner Auferweckung gemäß der Schrift ist das fundamentum in re des gesamten geschichtlichen Prozesses. Die erste Phase, die erneute Mission Israels, wird historisch klarer abgesteckt als die darauf folgende Heidenmission, da das Apostelgeschichte 1:8 angekündigte Ziel der Völkermission ‘die Säulen des Herakles’ nicht mehr berichtet wird. Eine dritte nur noch in Umrissen skizzierbare Phase, die Wiedererrichtung von Zion und die Völkerwallfahrt aller Gläubigen aus Israel und den Heiden, liegt in einer noch dunklerer Ferne, weil der gesamte Geschichtsprozess der souveränen Entscheidung Gottes unterliegt. Von den nun durch den zweiten Band tiefer eingeweihten Glaubenden wird jedoch Stetsbereitschaft und missionarische Initiative und Arbeitskraft verlangt. Denn der göttliche Rechtsentscheid über diese verdorbene und den Gerechten bedrohende Weltzeit kann jederzeit fallen. Die Gewissheit über diesen letztlich eschatologischen Prozess wird von Lukas insgesamt aus der Schrift abgeleitet. Denn alles, was die Propheten gesagt haben, wird erfüllt werden (Apg 3:21). Infolgedessen schreibt Lukas in seinem Doppelwerk generell das kerygmatische, aber ebenso eschatologische Evangelium des Markus (vgl. Mk 13), aber korrigiert weiter fort, indem er dessen MessiasgeheimnisTheorie historisch auflöst und teilweise des Rätsels endgültige Lösung bis an das Ende aller Geschichte verschiebt. Die dialektische Eschatologie Jesu, wie sie in Q erhalten geblieben ist, wird in dem von ihm ausgearbeiteten Geschichtsrahmen beibehalten, aber anstelle von dem, aber nun historisch überholten Gegenwartsaspekt ‘in seiner Person’ durch die potentiell überall wirksame Dynamik des Heiligen Geistes ersetzt und so geschichtlich prolongiert. Auf diese Weise wird ‘das Evangelium’ des Markus zu einem in einen geschichtlich-missionarischen Entwicklungsprozess eingebettetes ‘Wort Gottes’, das sich gemäß biblischer Vorgaben, die durch den Geist christologisch-eschatologisch deutbar werden, schrittweise bis zu der von Gott allein festgesetzten Parusie hin erfüllt. Dabei wird Israels Geschichte mit seiner Annahme wie Ablehnung Gottes (vgl. Apg 7 und 13) zum Vorbild für den geschichtlichen Erfolg wie 50

Vgl. nur die Vorliebe der Apokalyptik für historische Epochalisierung, zuletzt beobachtet von Rajak (2002, 164–188). 51 Siehe das bereits zitierte 14. Heft der Zeitschrift Semeia [siehe Anm. 35] und Müller (1978, 202–251) in korrigierter und erweiterter Form in Müller (1991, 35–173).

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Misserfolg der weiteren Missionsbemühungen in einer noch ausstehenden Erfüllungsgeschichte bis zum endgültigen Herrschaftsantritt des Christkönigs in der Schöpfung Gottes.52 Deshalb endet auch der zweite Band konsequent in einem literarisch wie geschichtlich offenen Schluss. Der christliche Leser als angesprochener gegenwärtiger Zeuge wird auf diese Weise vorbereitet auf die auch auf ihn möglicherweise wartende persönliche Verfolgung bei der Verkündigung des Wortes Gottes. Er wird zugleich dagegen im Leseprozess immunisiert. Seine geschichtlichen Vorgänger im öffentlich bezeugten Glauben sind nämlich zu ihren Lebzeiten auf dem für sie persönlich beschwerlichen ‘Weg’ Gottes ein Stück bzw. eine Lebensspanne weit mitgewandert. Sie haben seine befreiende Wirkung schon an sich selbst, an anderen und literarisch in ihrem Tod das ersehnte Heil erfahren. Dies alles werde auch ihm, dem Leser, gleichermaßen geschenkt. Das alles suggeriert der Lesestoff bis auf den heutigen Tag. Ähnlich hat ein jüdischer Kommentator gedacht, der an den Rand der Auslegung von Ex 3:24 im Targum Neofiti schrieb: ‘Ich [Gott] war bevor die Welt geschaffen wurde, und Ich bin es nach der Erschaffung der Welt, Ich habe geholfen, euch aus Ägypten zu befreien, Ich werde bei euch sein durch alle Generationen’. Lukas hätte diese Aussage sicherlich nur um einen Teilsatz erweitert: ‘Und Ich werde am Geschichtsende durch meinen Messias den Kosmos in mein zeitloses Reich integrieren, wie Ich es von Anfang an beabsichtigt habe’.

52

Die weitverbreitete These von der Bewältigung der Parusieverzögerung, die Lukas mit der Konzeption einer dreigeteilten Heilsgeschichte (Zeit Israels, Mitte der Zeit und Zeit der Kirche) erreichen wolle, ist, wenn es nicht bereits geschehen ist, zu revidieren. In der Tat gliedert der Evangelist seine Geschichtserzählung. Dies war aber schon von Baer (1926, 180ff.), aufgefallen. Die Periodisierung ist ein Gestaltungsmittel seiner Geschichtserzählung, in deren Rahmen eine Verkündigungstheologie entwickelt wird, in der Lukas wiederum seine Eschatologie in einem geschichtlichen Rahmen entfaltet, die er als eine Art creatio continua (Weiss 1990, 17–25) versteht. Sie wurde von Gott in der Schrift angekündigt. Dann wurde die Endzeit mit den wunderbaren Geburten von Johannes und Jesus eingeläutet, wo anfangs in Jesus das Reich Gottes präsent war, es in der Verkündigung der Jünger erkennbar an der Geistverleihung und -lenkung blieb und es am Ende einer mondialen Mission in der Völkerwallfahrt aller Gläubigen aus Juden und aus den Völkern nach dem Zion sein Ziel erreichen wird, wenn der im Himmel von Gott verwahrte Christus Jesus als Menschensohn-Richter, d. h. als Klientel-könig, es überraschend, aber endgültig errichten wird, um dem Gotteswillen gemäß vom Thron Jakobs aus immerdar zu herrschen. Damit ist erkennbar die Eschatologie nicht aufgegeben, sondern die kerygmatischen Konzeptionen des Urchristentums sind nur neuen Umständen angepasst worden. In diesem Sinn ist Lukas ein zukunftsweisender Theologe.

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Hinzugezogene Literatur Baer, H von 1926 Der Heilige Geist in den Lukasschriften. Stuttgart. Brandenburger, E 1980 Das Recht des Weltenrichters. Untersuchungen zu Mt 25,31–46. Stuttgart. – 1984 Markus 13 und die Apokalyptik. Göttingen. Braumann, G 1963 Das Mittel der Zeit. Erwägungen zur Theologie des Lukasevangeliums. ZNW 54, 117–145. Bultmann, R 1965 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Tübingen. Busse, U 1978 Das Nazareth-Manifest Jesu. Eine Einführung in das lukanische Jesusbild nach Lk 4,16–30. Stuttgart. – 1989 Nachfolge auf dem Weg Jesu. Ursprung und Verhältnis von Nachfolge und Berufung im Neuen Testament, in Vom Urchristentum zu Jesus, FS. J Gnilka, Frankemölle, Kertelge, H & Kertelge, K (ed.), Freiburg, 68–81. – 1998 Dechiffrierung eines lukanischen Schlüsseltextes (Lk 19,11–27), in Von Jesus zum Christus, FS. P Hoffmann, Busse, U & Hoppe, R (ed.), Berlin 1998, 423–441. Cadbury, HJ 1956 Acts and Eschatology, in The Background of the NT and its Eschatology, FS. CH Dodd, Davies, WD & Daube, D (eds.), Cambridge, 300–321. – 1968 The Making of Luke – Acts. London 1968. – 1969 The Style and Literary Method of Luke. New York. Carroll, JT 1988 Response to the End of History. Eschatology and Situation in Luke-Acts. Atlanta. Collins, JJ 1979 The Jewish Apocalypses. Semeia 14, 21–60. Conzelmann, H 1961 Eschatologie (NT). RGG V, 131. – 1964 Die Mitte der Zeit. Studien zur Theologie des Lukas. Tübingen. Dupont, J 1973 Individuelle Eschatologie, in Orientierung an Jesus, FS. J Schmid, Hoffmann, P (ed.), Freiburg, 37–47. Ebner, M 2002 Die Mähler Jesu im Kontext der Gleichnisse vom Säen und Ernten, Brotbacken und -schenken, Einladen und Feiern. BiKi 57, 9–14. – 2003 Jesus von Nazaret in seiner Zeit. Sozialgeschichtliche Zugänge. Stuttgart. Ellis, EE 1969 Die Funktion der Eschatologie im Lukasevangelium. ZThK 66, 387–402. Ernst, J 1978 Herr der Geschichte. Perspektiven der lukanischen Eschatologie. Stuttgart. Francis, FO 1969 Eschatology and History in Luke-Acts. JAAR 37, 49–63. Fredriksen, P 1988 From Jesus to Christ. The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus. New Haven & London. Grässer, E 1977 Das Problem der Parusieverzögerung in den synoptischen Evangelien und in der Apostelgeschichte. Berlin. – 1978 Die Parusieerwartung in der Apostelgeschichte, in: Les Actes des Apôtres. Traditions, rédaction, théologie, Kremer J (ed.), Leuven, 99– 127. Haenchen, E 1977 Die Apostelgeschichte. Göttingen. Hagene, S 2003 Zeiten der Wiederherstellung. Studien zur lukanischen Geschichtstheologie als Soteriologie. Münster. Hiers, RH 1974 The Problem of the Delay of the Parousia in Luke-Acts. NTS 20, 145– 155. Hilgenfeld, A 1871–1872 Theodor Keim’s galiläischer Frühling beleuchtet. ZWTh 14, 576–587; 15, 88–112, 247–264, 594–596. Hoffmann, M 1988 Das eschatologische Heil Israels nach den lukanischen Schriften, masch. Heidelberg. Hoffmann, P 1979 Auferstehung I/3: Auferstehung der Toten. TRE IV, 450–463. – 1981 Eschatologie und Friedenshandeln in der Jesusüberlieferung. Stuttgart.

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– 1988 Der Q-Text der Sprüche vom Sorgen. Mt 6:25–33/Lk 12:22–31: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch, in Studien zum Matthäusevangelium, FS. W Pesch, Schenke, L (ed.), Stuttgart, 127–156. – 1989 Jesu „Verbot des Sorgen’ und seine Nachgeschichte in der synoptischen Überlieferung, in Jesu Rede von Gott und ihre Nachgeschichte im frühen Christentum: Beiträge zur Verkündigung Jesu und zum Kerygma der Kirche, FS. W Marxsen, Koch, D-A, Sellin, G & Lindemann, A (Hg.), Gütersloh, 116–141. – 1994 Jesu einfache und konkrete Rede von Gott. SBA 17, 15–40. Hoffmann, P & Heil, Chr (ed.), 2008 Die Spruchquelle Q. Studienausgabe: Griechisch – Deutsch, Darmstadt & Leuven. Johnson, LT 1992 The Acts of the Apostles. Collegeville. Koet, B-J 1989 Paul and Barnabas in Pisidian Antioch: A Disagreement over the Interpretation of the Scriptures (Acts 13:42–52), in: Five Studies on Interpretation of Scripture in Luke-Acts, Koet, B-J (ed.), Leuven, 97–118. Knopf, R 1907 Die Zukunftshoffnungen des Urchristentums. Tübingen. Kümmel, WG 1972 Lukas in der Anklage der heutigen Theologie. ZNW 63, 149–165. Lehtipuu, O 2002 The Imagery of the Lukan Afterworld in the Light of Some Roman and Greek Parallels. TANZ 36, 133–146. Lohfink, G 1969 Christologie und Geschichtsbild in Apg 3,19–21. BZ 13, 223–241. Löning, K 1997 Das Geschichtswerk des Lukas, Bd. I: Israels Hoffnung und Gottes Geheimnisse. Stuttgart. – 2006 Das Geschichtswerk des Lukas, Bd. 2: Der Weg Jesu. Stuttgart. Lührmann, D 1987 Das Markusevangelium. Tübingen. Maddox, BR 1982 The Purpose of Luke-Acts. Edinburgh. Marshall, IH 2007 Acts, in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, G. K. Beale, GK & Carson, DA (ed.), Grand Rapids 2007, 533–536. Marxsen, W 1978 Die Auferstehung Jesu von Nazareth. Gütersloh. Mattill, AJ 1972 Naherwartung, Fernerwartung, and the Purpose of Luke-Acts: Weymouth Reconsidered. CBQ 34, 276–293. Merk, O 1975 Das Reich Gottes in den lukanischen Schriften, in Jesus und Paulus, Earle EE & Grässer E (ed.), Göttingen, 201–220. Müller, Kh 1978 Die jüdische Apokalyptik, Anfänge und Merkmale. TRE III, 202–251. – 1991 Studien zur frühjüdischen Apokalyptik. Stuttgart. Müller, UB 1977 Vision und Botschaft. Erwägungen zur prophetischen Struktur der Verkündigung Jesu. ZThK 74, 416–448. Müller, W 1991 „Am gleichen Tag waren zwei von den Jüngern auf dem Wege...’ Überlegungen zur Wegmetapher. GuL 64, 81–83. Overbeck, F 1965 Über die Anfänge der Kirchengeschichtsschreibung. Damstadt. Parsons, MC & Pervo, RI 1993 Rethinking the Unity of Luke and Acts. Minneapolis. Porsch, F 1979 Kirche auf dem Weg durch die Zeit. Zur Verkündigung im Lukas-Jahr. BiKi 34, 133–136. Prieur, A 1996 Die Verkündigung der Gottesherrschaft. Exegetische Studien zum lukanischen Verständnis von EDVLOHLYDWRXCTHRXC. Tübingen. Rajak, T 2002 Jewish Millenarian Expectation, in: The First Jewish Revolt. Archaeology, History, and Ideology, Berlin, A & Overman, JA (eds.), London, 164–188. Robinson, WC 1964 Der Weg des Herrn. Studien zur Geschichte und Eschatologie im Lukas-Evangelium – Ein Gespräch mit H. Conzelmann. Hamburg. Rusam, D 2003 Das Alte Testament bei Lukas. Berlin. Sanders, EP 1993 The Historical Figure of Jesus. London.

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Schenke, L 2004 Die Botschaft vom kommenden „Reich Gottes’, in Jesus von Nazareth – Spuren und Konturen, Schenke, L u.a. (ed.), Stuttgart, 108–147. Schneider, G 1974 Parusiegleichnisse im Lukas – Evangelium. Stuttgart. – 1980 Die Apostelgeschichte. Freiburg. Smith, RH 1958 The Eschatology of Acts and Contemporary Exegesis. CThMi 29 641– 463, 881–901. Tannehill, RC 1990 The Narrative Unity of Luke-Acts. A Literary Interpretation, vol. 2: The Acts of the Apostles. Philadelphia. Vielhauer, P 1950/1951 Zum „Paulinismus’ der Apostelgeschichte. EvTh 10. Völkel, M 1974 Zur Deutung des Reiches Gottes bei Lukas. ZNW 65, 57–70. Wasserberg, G 1998 Aus Israels Mitte – Heil für die Welt: eine narrativ-exegetische Studie zur Theologie des Lukas. Berlin. Weber, M 1980 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. II, Winckelmann, J (ed.), Tübingen. Weiser, A 1991 „Reich Gottes’ in der Apostelgeschichte, in Der Treue Gottes trauen. Beiträge zum Werk des Lukas, Bussmann, C & Radl, W (eds.), Freiburg, 127–135. Weiss, J 1990 Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes. Hahn F (ed.) mit einem Geleitwort von R. Bultmann, Göttingen. Weiss, W 1995 „Zeichen und Wunder’. Eine Studie zu der Sprachtradition und ihrer Verwendung im Neuen Testament. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Wrede, W 1907 Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, in Vorträge und Studien, Wrede, W (ed.), Tübingen, 84–126. – 1963 Das Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien. Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Verständnis des Markusevangeliums. Göttingen. Wilson, SG 1969/1970 Lukan Eschatology. NTS 15, 330–370. Wolter, M 1995a „Was heisset nu Gottes reich?’. ZNW 86, 5–19. – 1995b‚ ‘Reich Gottes’ bei Lukas. NTS 41, 541–563. – 1997 Israels Zukunft und die Parusieverzögerung bei Lukas, in Eschatologie und Schöpfung, Evang, M (ed.), Berlin, 405–426. Zmijewski, J 1972 Die Eschatologiereden des Lukas-Evangeliums. Bonn.

Eschatology: The Letters of Paul (Pauline and Deutero-Pauline)

‘For in Hope We Were Saved’ Discerning Time in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Cilliers Breytenbach 1. Introduction Paul’s utterance ‘for in hope we were saved’ juxtaposes hope, which relates to the future, with salvation of those in Christ. Salvation in Rom 8:24a is taken as a whole, from the beginning to the end. Initially the complicated relationship between past, presence and future is treated as part of Paul’s ‘eschatology’ or ‘apocalyptic’ theology. It is notable however, that whilst J. Christiaan Beker (1980) still followed Ernst Käsemann (1964) and depicted Paul’s Gospel as ‘Apocalyptic Theology’, most major presenters of Paul’s Gospel refrained from subsuming his utterances on future expectations under the term ‘eschatology’ as Schweitzer did.1 Neither Lutheran scholars – even as far apart as Rudolf Bultmann (1958/1984) and Leonhard Goppelt (1976) –, nor Catholics like Joachim Gnilka (1996) chose to present ‘eschatology’ or an aspect thereof as a central part of the Pauline message.2 Those who wrote a section on Paul’s expectation for the future avoid the notion ‘eschatology’. Hans Conzelmann (1967/1992) explains the relation between the future, the present and the past in Paul’s thoughts under the heading ‘Hoffnung’. Ed P. Sanders (1991) starts his presentation of Paul’s thoughts with a chapter on ‘The return of the Lord and the resurrection of the death’, whereas Jürgen Becker (1989/1992) ends his sketch of Paul’s thought with ‘Die Zukunft des Glaubens als Hoffnung auf den Herrn’, Ian Howard Marshall does so with ‘The future of God and his people’ (2004, 459–460). Ferdinand Hahn (2002) concludes his exposition of the Pauline Gospel as ‘Zeugnis der Hoffnung’.

1

Cf. Schweitzer (1930): ‘IV. Die eschatologische Lehre von der Erlösung’ ‘V. Die Probleme der Eschatologie Pauli’. Bornkamm (1983) added ‘eschatology and ethics’ in brackets to his depiction of ‘future and present’ in Paul’s message and theology. There has been a tendency to conclude more dogmatic treatments of Paul’s theology with a chapter on his ‘eschatology’; cf. Whiteley (1964); Ladd (1974). For recent treatments of Paul’s ‘eschatology’ cf. Dunn (1998, 461–498) – ‘The eschatological tension’; Schnelle (2003, 667–691) – ‘Eschatologie: Erwartung und Erinnerung’; Holtz (2007, passim). 2 This also applies to Schlier (1978).

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Due to lack of clarification on the extension of both expressions,3 we will refrain from using the umbrella terms ‘apocalyptic’4 and ‘eschatology’5 in this essay. We rather ask, which are the leading assumptions, beliefs and opinions Paul expresses on the past, present and future in his letter to the Romans?6 Keeping in mind the line of thought Paul himself develops in the letter the reader is asked to follow our (re-)construction of its utterances regarding time. Keeping to Paul’s expressions, we refrain from presenting the diversity of traditions behind his terminology, conceptions and metaphors. This would have required a monograph. The aim of this essay is thus limited, and it is not intended to sketch Paul’s worldview7 or alleged conception of history.8 It merely asks how Paul defines the future including its relation to the past and present situation of mankind with special focus on those who trust, believe in the Gospel. We could apprehend Paul’s conception of time as progressing through stages: (1) His present proclamation of the gospel as message of salvation and condemnation; (2) the future of humanity in the light of the gospel; (3) baptism as the defining moment for those who had put their trust in the gospel and the hope of those believers who were baptised into Christ. In the letter to the Romans, the present is determined in a twofold way (2.): The proclamation of God’s good news positively qualifies the present as time of salvation (2.1.), the revelation of his expected ‘wrath’ and ‘righteous verdict’ qualifies the present human action negatively (2.2.). Human future is divided (3.) between condemnation of the sinners (3.1.) and the redemption of the believers (3.2.). For Paul, future salvation is ir3 4

Cf. the discussion in Delling (1970, 57–68) and Esler (2003, 249–252). Since DMSRNDOXYSWZ and DMSRNDYOX\La are Greek expressions used by Paul in Romans (Rom 1:17–18; 2:5; 8:18–19; 16:25), I will refrain from using it in any other sense than the sense it has when used by Paul; i.e.: ‘reveal, disclose, bring to light, make fully known’. Both terms are part of the same semantic field (see Louw & Nida 1989, 28.28ff.). The modern term ‘apocalypse’ should be reserved to refer to a document belonging to a corpus of literature and ‘apocalyptic’ to the conceptual content of such apocalypses (as it was in fact introduced in German by Lücke from 1829 onwards). We refrain from using both notions in this essay although, until recently (cf. Wolter 2005) ‘apocalyptic’ was extremely popular in Pauline studies (cf. Käsemann 1964, Baumgarten 1975 and Schade 1981). 5 This meta-term is a neologism, which originated as a descriptive in seventeenth century protestant dogmatic theology, summarising doctrine on the last things. The term goes back to Philipp Heinrich Friedlieb (cf. Hielde, 2007, 37). Paul’s use of H>VFDWRais confined to 1 Corinthians, whereby the adjective itself does not entail a temporal sense (cf. 1 Cor 4:9). It is only the context which allows the reader to perceive death as the ‘last’ enemy (e.g. 1 Cor 15:26) and the trumpet as the ‘final’ one (cf. 1 Cor 15:52). 6 On the addressees of the letter to the Romans cf. Du Toit (2007, 203–218). 7 For a discussion on this cf. Baumgarten (1975). 8 On this see Luz (1968), who extensively treats the future of Israel (Rom 9–11).

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revocably tied up with the death and resurrection of Christ, who determines the past, present and future of believers. An explication of the relationship between the past, present and future of those ‘in Christ’ viz. ‘the believers’ (4.) opens the possibility to explore the relationship between views about the end and baptism (4.1.), hope (4.2.), Israel (4.3.) and finally the ethos (4.4.) the letter propagates.

2. The Present Determined by Revelation If we resort to a division of time into past, present and future it is important to realise that the way in which these three fundamental categories are related to each other is rooted in individual experience9 within a specific culture. There is no general ancient Mediterranean or New Testament conception of time which can serve as grid to structure Paul’s thought.10 But since in Greek the future tense does indicate time and there are Greek adverbs and other expressions denoting time, a scrutiny of Paul’s expressions might lead us the way to trace the manner in which he portrays the present experience in the light of firstly those past events which still mark, and secondly those forthcoming events which will determine human life.11 The central role of Christ’s death and resurrection in our sketch of Paul’s perception of what is to come will become apparent. 2.1. The Present as Time of God’s Favour As a Hellenized Jew, Paul shares the Greek view that God’s power is everlasting (DML"GLRa – Rom 1:20)12 and from the LXX he learnt that God is eternal (DLMZYQLRa – 16:25).13 Accordingly, Paul praises God without end (1:25; 9:5; 11:36). The question arises however, how God, eternal and everlasting, acts in time. Paul clearly regards the proclamation of God’s good news as a decisive event, seen in his structuring time in ‘before’ and ‘after’. In the past, God promised his Gospel beforehand (SURHSKJJHLYODWR) ‘through his prophets in the holy scriptures’ (Rom 1:3). What is written in the law and the prophets was not only for that time, put for the present (cf. 4:23–24). 9 Cf. Conzelmann (1967/1992, 207). 10 This seems to be the danger in the

approach of Strecker (1999, 220), who extends Malina’s theory on ‘ancient Mediterranean time’ (1989) by utilising V. Turner’s ritual theory. 11 Cf. the seminal work of Delling (1970). 12 Cf. to DM L " GLRaPhilo, Ios. 265; Spec. 1:20, 28; 2:166; 4:73; Decal. 41, 60, 64; Plant. 89; Virt. 205; and Sib. Or. 3:17; 5:66, 427. 13 Cf. Sasse (1933, 200–201 and 208).

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Whatever was written in former days was written for present instruction. The scriptures encourage Paul and his readers, give them hope (cf. 15:4). Presently, Paul is proud to proclaim this promised good news (1:16). Through the Gospel the action through which God justifies humans, his righteousness is revealed (DMSRNDOXYSWHWDL – 1:17). In the past, the righteousness of God was attested by the law and the prophets, ‘now’ (QXQLY) it has been disclosed (SHIDQHYUZWDL – 3:21). What has become known? In the present time (HMQ WZC QXCQ NDLUZ ) God proves that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus (3:26). The proclamation of the good news thus marks a decisive shift in time, between ‘previously’ and ‘now’. To put it in the words of 2 Cor 6:2, ‘now’, that the Gospel is proclaimed ‘is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.’ This good news is about God’s Son. Paul uses traditional formulaic language to introduce the Son in a very specific way. He, Jesus Christ, the Lord of Paul and the Romans, has been installed as the Son of God since14 the resurrection from the dead (1:4). As we will see, the resurrection of the Son determines the future decisively. After this fundamentally positive qualification of the present as time of salvation and the prospect of future salvation, Paul turns to the negative qualification of time in the first part of the body of the letter to the Romans. 2.2. The Coming Day of Wrath and the Revelation of God’s Righteous Verdict For the present context, it will suffice to trace Paul’s view on God’s future judgement in the letter to the Romans.15 In Rom 1:18 the revelation of God’s wrath16 as a punitive action is introduced parallel to the revelation 14

The HMN can be understood either temporally as ‘since the resurrection’ or as stating the reason for, ‘due to the resurrection’; cf. the discussion in Cranfield (1975, 62). 15 Initial studies take for granted that Paul shared a common and unitary Jewish conception of judgment in his letters. They approach his view on the final judgment presupposing its interrelatedness with his views on justification. Whoever is justified in Christ and endures in faith, escapes final judgement (cf. Mattern 1966). Studies of Paul’s utterances on judgement and retribution illustrate that justification does not occur in the same literary context (cf. Roetzel 1972, 177–178; Synofzik 1977; Konradt 2003). The utterances’ literary and argumentative contexts are important (cf. Kuck 1992, 5–6). For the debate on Paul’s overall conception of God’s judgement cf. Roetzel (1972, 1–9), Kuck (1992, 1–16) and Konradt (2003, 1–10). Recent studies on judgement in early Judaism (cf. Roetzel 1972, 14–67; Reiser 1990; Brandenburger 1991; Kuck 1992, 38–95; Müller 1994) prove the obvious: It is misleading to presuppose a unitary view on final judgement. (For a review of the debate on early Jewish conceptions, cf. Müller 1994, 34–40). 16 The Jewish background of this topos remains undisputed (cf. As. Mos. 10:1–10; Apc. Ab. 29:12–18; 1 En. 99:15–16; Sib. Or. 3:762–766; 4:135–136. More references in Konradt 2003, 60–65), but Paul’s readers could have taken the phrase RXMFZ-aTHRQHMGRY [DVDQ(Rom 1:21), the opposition between the RMUJK THRXC and DMVHYEHLDNDL DMGLNLYD(cf. 1:18) or DMOKYTHLDNDL DMGLNLYD(cf. 2:8) and the connexion of RMUJKY with GLNDLRVXYQK(cf.

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of his justification in verse 17. Unlike the GLNDLRVXYQKTHRXCwhich is revealed through the Gospel, the RMUJK THRXC is revealed from heaven, no one can escape his punishment. From 1:18 on Paul introduces the notions of the wrath of God and the day of his judgement as a backdrop for the exposition of the liberating, ransoming effect of the death of Christ developed from 3:21 onwards (cf. Konradt 2003, 497–498 and 514). Albeit that in 1:18–32 Paul focuses on the effect of God’s wrath within current human experience, in 2:1–16 he moves to final judgement at the end of time, expressing it in Jewish metaphors. With the expression ‘day of wrath’ (K-PHYUD RMUJKCa) in 2:5 Paul resounds prophetic tradition (cf. Zech 1:15, 18; 2:1; Isa 13:9), focusing on the fact that the verdict will be from God himself (Wendebourg 2004, 199–200). The day of his wrath will reveal his GLNDLRNULVLYD, that he will judge Jews and gentiles alike, but fairly (cf HosLXX 6:5; T.Levi 3:2; 15:2), and according to the same criteria. Paul also takes up the common early Jewish notion (cf. the RL>GDPHQ in 2:2) that in future God will judge all humans according to their deeds (cf. Froitzheim 1979, 9–14; Reiser 1990, 1–152). God’s judgment will be universal: ‘For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God’ (14:10). Paul explains the notion of the universal judgement in 2:1–16 in forensic terms (cf. du Toit 2007, 259–263). It is not that God is unjust and inflicts wrath upon humankind (3:5), his verdict corresponds to the actions of men and women. God’s verdict will also be impartial according to the law (2:12–29; 3:19–20). It is thus different from celestial wrath and rage. His verdict corresponds with the truth (2:2) and is based upon discerning the deeds (2:5) and inner motives (2:16) of all humans. This judgement of God will be individual, according to the deeds of each single person. His righteousness and his verdict being intertwined (cf. Käsemann 1974, 52–54), his verdict will fall rightly upon those who were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness; upon those who are gossipers, slanderers, God–haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, foolish, faithless, heartless and ruthless (cf. Rom 1:29–31; 2:2). It will not be possible for them to escape condemnation by God (2:3). Paul is of the opinion that sinners, Jews and gentiles alike, will all be subjected to God’s wrath and fury (2:8), who will inflict wrath upon them (3:5). God’s verdict will be impartial (2:11), just (cf. 3:8c), according to the deeds of each individual. It will thus annul any difference between Jew and gentile and will have universal effect. Without exception, all humans will be subjected to God’s verdict on the day of his wrath (cf. Lohse 2003, 102). Since everyone will receive his/her just due, circumcision will be of 3:5) or HMNGLYNKVLa (12:19) to understand his argument in the light of the discussion de ira in imperial times, as von Bendemann (2006, 209–210) has argued.

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no advantage to the Jews (2:26–27). As is in the case of God’s wrath and fury, Paul does not develop the notions of judgment and retribution independently. Nor does he have a coherent conception of final judgment. Though the belief that God will impartially judge all humans fairly according to their inner motives and actions is one of Paul’s basic theological presuppositions, it is utilized with considerable variety in a supportive role in his letters (cf. Synofzik 1977, 105). How does God’s judgment relate to the future?

3. Human Future Divided between Condemnation and Salvation From Paul’s letter to the Romans it is clear that all people will be judged according to their behaviour. According to Paul’s Gospel the day of God’s judgement (2:16) lies in the future. In his kindness, clemency and patience God has postponed his verdict (2:4), giving humankind the opportunity for repentance. What will God’s verdict be? Since God judges according to works, there could be a double outcome. God judges the world (3:6), giving eternal life, glory and honour and peace to everyone, Jew and gentile, who does good; to those who in selfishness disobey truthfulness and follow injustice, Jew and gentile, he will give ‘wrath and rage’ (RMUJK NDL TXPRYaґ – 2:7–8). But Paul’s argument on the all-inclusiveness of human sin in Rom 1:18–3:20 boils down to the thesis that there is only one likely outcome. 3.1. The Imminent Death of all Sinners Those who act against the law, and for Paul this is all humanity, and those approving of such behaviour, are worthy of death (1:31). They will not only be under oppression, having no way out (TOLC\LaNDL VWHQRFZULYD – 2:9), they will perish (DMSRORXCQWDL – 2:12), die. When Paul explains the origin of death through sin, he draws on Adam’s fall: Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned (5:12). In explaining the effect of Adam’s ‘transgression’ (SDUDYEDVLa – 5:14), ‘trespass’ (SDUDYSWZPD – 5:15, 17– 18) or ‘disobedience’ (SDUDNRKY – 5:19), Paul recaps judicial terminology. Many died through the one man’s trespass, for the ‘verdict’ (NULYPD), following the one trespass of Adam, brought ‘condemnation’ (NDWDYNULPD – 5:16, 18). In military language Paul can metaphorically say that the ‘wages’ (RM\ZYQLD) of sin, that what is due to the soldier at the end of his service, is death (6:23).17 In Rom 8:13 it is restated, that in future, those 17

For the source of this metaphor cf. Gerber (2001, 140–142).

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who live according to the flesh (NDWD VDYUND), i.e. according to human nature determined by sin, will die. The mindset viz. intention (IURYQKPD) of the flesh ends in death (8:6) because it is enmity towards God, not subjecting itself to God’s law (8:7). The judicial language at the close of chapter 8 makes it clear that death, which is the deserved wages of sin, will come with the final judgment. 3.2. The Timely Salvation of the Believers Through Christ’s Death and Resurrection Initially, Paul states that the Gospel is the power of God to save everyone who believes (1:16). The salvation will take place in the future, but in 8:1 Paul says that already ‘now’ (QXCQ) there is no ‘condemnation’ (NDWDYN ULPD) for those who are in Christ Jesus. How is this possible? Paul develops the theme of the future salvation of those in Christ from 3:21 onwards, stating that God is at present (HMQ WZC QXCQ NDLUZC – 3:26) demonstrating, giving proof18 that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. This proof of God’s justifying power can presently be given, because, still at the right point in time (H>WL NDWD NDLURYQ – 5:6), Christ died for those who were weak and impious.19 The wrath of God was revealed upon them (1:18), but timely, before they perished, died, Christ died ‘for’ them (5:6). The effect of his death is to save them from this pending peril.20 They are ‘redeemed’ (3:24). Their future salvation is elaborated upon in 5:9–10. God is the agent of the verb in the passive (VZTKVRYPHTD), he will save those who are already justified from the ‘wrath’. His saving act, however, is done through (GLDY)Christ (5:9). Those who are already reconciled to God will be saved ‘by the life’ of his Son (5:10). It is the resurrected Son through whom God will save. It is however the former ‘impious’ (DMVHEHLCa) who have been justified, the reconciled ‘enemies’ (HMFTURLY) who will be saved. A close look at Rom 5:9–10 reveals that the future salvation by God through Christ the Son presupposes the well-timed death of the Son. The wider context confirms that those who believe are already justified (5:1), they already have accepted the recon-

18

Although, as with the verb HMQGHLYNQXPL (cf. GELS, s.v.), H>QGHL[La means ‘to demonstrate’, the legal connotations of the noun are well attested; cf. LSJM, s.v.; BDAG, s.v. 19 On the function of the phrase H>WLJDU&ULVWRa R>Q WZQK-P ZCQ DMV THQZCQ H>WLNDWD NDLURQX-SHUDMVHEZCQDMSHYTDQHQ cf. Eschner (2009). 20 It lies beyond the scope of this essay to explain the specific metaphors Paul uses to interpret the crucifixion of Christ when saying that Christ ‘died for us’ (5:6–8) or the Son of God ‘was delivered for all of us’ (8:32; 4:25) and that this leads to justification (4:25b; 5:9); cf. Breytenbach (2003; 2009); Eschner (2009).

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ciliation, already have peace with God through their resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ (5:1, 11).21 Paul understands the death of Christ within a time frame set by a broader judicial context. When Paul develops the theme of salvation further in 5:18–19, he chooses the antonyms of the legal terminology he has used in 5:16 for the transgression of Adam and the condemning verdict it evoked: death. He states that Jesus Christ’s ‘righteous deed’ (GLNDLYZPD) leads to ‘acquittal that brings life’ (HLMa GLNDLYZVLQ ]ZKCa) for all and that by the one man’s obedience many will be put into the legal status (NDTLYVWKPL) of ‘righteous’ (GLYNDLRL). The reign of sin which leads to death was replaced by the dominium of God’s favour which leads to everlasting life (5:21). From here it is a small step to 8:1–3, where the legal terminology from 5:16 is taken up again. But this time it is negated. According to Paul there is no condemnation (NDWDYNULPD) for those who are in Christ Jesus. God ‘condemned’ (NDWHYNULQHQ) sin in the flesh. According to Paul, sin has already been condemned in the death of the Son of God who was sent ‘for the sake of sin’ (NDL SHUL D-PDUWLYDa) i.e. to take away the effect of sin (8:3).22 The condemnation of sin in Christ who was sent into human life determined by sin brought an end to the dominion of sin introduced by Adam. This text illustrates, as does 2 Corinthians 5:21, that Paul interprets an event of the past, the death of the righteous Christ (cf. 5:18), as a prolepsis of the future universal judgment (cf. Froitzheim 1979, 39–44). Sin has already been condemned. Christ’s death has already established justice which will lead to future life (5:18, 21). There will be no one to bring charges against the elect of God (8:33). The death of Christ thus structures time, ending the dominion of sin. Similarly Christ’s resurrection inaugurates a new epoch. Paul introduced his Gospel by telling the Romans that it is about Jesus Christ the Lord, who has been installed as the Son of God in power since the resurrection from the dead (1:3). The Spirit, according to which Jesus, who was resurrected from the dead, was installed as Son of God (1:4), is the Spirit of life, i.e. the Spirit that gives life (8:2). According to Paul, the mindset (IURYQKPD) of the weak human nature leads to death, but the mindset determined by the Spirit leads to peace and life (8:6). Since (HL>SHU)23 the ‘Spirit of God’ lives in the Romans, they are ‘in the Spirit’ (8:9a). It is the Spirit of him who resurrected Christ from the dead (8:11a). In future, God who resurrected Christ from the dead will give life to those whose mortal 21 22

Cf. Breytenbach (2005). For this interpretation of this phrase in Rom 8:3 cf. Breytenbach (1989, 159–165); Cranfield (1975, 382); Lohse (2003, 232). 23 Paul refers with HL>SHU to a causal condition: cf. BDR § 454.

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bodies are now inhabited by his Spirit (8:11b). The present dwelling of the Spirit within the believer is thus the basis for future expectation of life. Keeping Galatians 3:26–29 in mind when reading Rom 8:15, one can infer that during baptism, the Romans received a Spirit who turned them into sons of God. Being children of God they are heirs, due to share in Christ’s inheritance and glorification (8:17). The expectations Paul has on basis of the indwelling Spirit presuppose trust and belief in the resurrection of Christ. Whoever confesses to Jesus as the Lord and trusts that God resurrected him from the dead, will be saved in the future (10:9–10). Paul thus connects the faith in the past resurrection of Jesus and the future salvation of believers: ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved’ (10:13).24 The way in which the believer gains access to Christ’s death and resurrection deserves more attention.

4. Discerning Time: Living Towards the Future In the letter to the Romans the death and the resurrection of Christ, which determines time, are related to an individual’s experience. Present life is affected by the death of Christ and determined by his resurrection. For Paul it is important that Roman Christians are aware of the meaning of their baptism, since participation in the ritual of baptism inaugurates the possibility to discern the time. 4.1. Looking Back on Baptism According to Paul’s understanding, baptism is a ritual during which the believer is symbolically immersed25 into the death of the crucified Christ. The ‘old’ being of the immersed is, as Paul puts it, ‘crucified with Christ’ with the final consequence that the body, as far as it had been determined by sin, was ‘released’, ‘set aside’ (NDWDUJHYZ). Baptism connects the individual believer to the death of Christ, as is evident from Rom 6:3–5. Modelling his exposition on basis of the credo of 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, Paul says that those who were baptized into Christ, were baptized into his death (&ULVWRa DMSHYTDQHQ). They were buried with him (HMWDYIK). In baptism, they grew together with the likeness of his death. As a ritual, baptism is a ‘likeness’ (R-PRLYZPD) of Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Betz 1994, 115). Paul expects that those who are baptised will also grow together with Christ’s resurrection (HMJKYJHUWDL). In 6:6–8 Paul further develops the no24 25

Although this is a citation from JoelLXX 3:5, in Paul’s text NXULYRX refers to Jesus. Immersion into fluid is already implied by the meaning of EDSWLY]Z. Cf. LSJM, s.v., ‘to dip in or under water …’; BDAG, s.v., ‘plunge, dip, wash’.

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tion introduced with VXQHWDYIKPHQ (6:4) and VXYPIXWRL JHJRYQDPHQ in 6:5, using a metaphor. Drawing on imagery well known from the many military campaigns in his times, Paul expresses that in baptism the Romans ‘died with Christ’, but unlike the soldier who vowed to live and to die with his commander, those who were baptised into the death of Christ, died with him in order to live with him.26 The believer looks back to the death of Christ and on the basis of Christ’s past resurrection, ahead to his/her own resurrection. Since in baptism they already became ingrained in the likeness of his death, they will also experience the likeness of his resurrection (6:5). ‘If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him’ (6:8). Immersion into the death of Christ ends the old life of the believer. Christ’s resurrection inaugurates his/her future life. It frees him from sin and sets her free to live for God. ‘You are not under the reign of the Law but under the reign of (God’s) favour’.27 In Romans 6:15–23 Paul fiercely opposes those who infer from this that sinful actions do not matter any more (cf. Cranfield 1975, 321), drawing on the difference between ‘then’ (WRYWH) and ‘now’ (QXCQ) in the life of the believers (6:21). They had been rescued from the possessive power of sin and were released into the service of God. Unlike in Romans 8:15, in 6:15–23 Paul does not speak of liberation in order to be free sons, but of liberation onto slavery. Previously, before they died to sin in baptism, the Romans were slaves of sin (6:17), they then presented their limbs ‘as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity’ (6:19). ‘Now’ (QXCQ) they have been set free from sin (6:18a, 22a), but they were freed for a purpose, to be enslaved to justice (6:18b). This past change in ownership bears on present conduct.28 Again Paul draws on military imagery: ‘Now’ (QXCQ) that they are enslaved to God (6:22b), they have to present themselves to God, their bodily parts as weapons serving God’s righteousness (6:13), subservient to the justice which leads to sanctification (6:19b). The fundamental change in the life of those who were baptized into Christ is that they were set free from sin to live a life for God. They were liberated to serve their liberator. This present life in the service of God, under his favour, has its completion29 in eternal life (6:22c), which is a free gift given by God (6:23b). Present conduct is thus made possible by past experience and directed by future expectation.

26 On the background of Paul’s use of VXQDSRTQKYV NZ cf. Spicq (1994, s.v.); Olivier (1929). 27 On the background of Paul’s use of FDYULa cf. Breytenbach (2009b). 28 Cf. similarly Rom 7:4–6. 29 This is the normal meaning of WHYO Racf. LSJM, s.v.; BDAG, s.v.; LN, s.v..

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4.2. Hope Sustained by the Spirit The believers who are already justified on the basis of faith (5:1), pride themselves on the basis of the hope (HMOSLYGL) they have that they will share in the future revelation of the glory of God (5:2). Even amidst present suffering, the believers are said to adhere to this hope, which Paul is sure, will not disappoint. The reason for this is that the love of God was poured out in the hearts of Paul and the Romans through the Holy Spirit that was given to them (5:5). The love which has already been poured out is thus the basis for the hope to share in the future glory of God. Later in the letter Paul takes up the notion of hope and the Spirit again. He thinks (ORJLY]RPDL) that the current sufferings are not to be compared with the future glory that will be fully disclosed to30 the believers (8:18). The future glory will not only turn the present suffering into its opposite, in intensity the glory will surpass the present suffering (cf. Baumgarten 1975, 174). Paul also places the future salvation of the believers within the wider context of God’s creation.31 As Adam’s fall had dire consequences for the whole of God’s creation (cf. 4 Ezra 7:11–12), the revelation of the true status of the sons of God will benefit the entire world. The eager expectation of the creation awaits32 the disclosure of the sons of God. According to Paul, it is a well known fact, that until ‘now’, the whole of creation is groaning and suffering severe pain (8:22). In 8:20 Paul expresses hope for creation. Against the creation’s will, God33 has subjected it to a state of futility (PDWDLRYWKa) but on the basis of hope (HMI¨HMOSLYGL). What is entailed in the hope is explained in 8:21. When the sons of God will be revealed, creation itself will be liberated from the servility of decay unto34 the glorious freedom35 of the children of God (8:19 and 21). The creation will participate in the freedom of the children of God. It is not only the creation that is suffering with the believers. The believers also sigh to themselves. Having a first portion (DMSDUFKY) of the Spirit (8:23a), which makes them into sons of God (8:15), they sigh to themselves whilst they are eagerly awaiting their adoption. Their adoption 30 31

(LMahere instead of a dative; cf. BDR § 207. In Rom 8:18–23 NWLYVLa refers to the whole of creation, including humanity (cf. Käsemann (1974, 224); see the discussion in Holtz 2007, 37–40). The believers are mentioned extra. For a summary of newer research on Rom 8:14–30 cf. Meißner (2003, 11– 17, 169–192). 32 On the basis of a lexicographical inquiry, Meißner (2003) argues that DMSRGHYFRPDL should be taken as ‘receive’. 33 The GLDY with the acc. participle WRQ X-SRWDY[ DQWD marks the constituting cause (cf. BDR § 2223), the divine agent; cf. BDAG, s.v.. 34 For this use of HLMa cf. BDAG, s.v. 10d. 35 7KCaGRY[ Ka is a genitivus qualitatis; cf. BDR § 165 and Zerwick § 40.

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entails the liberation from36 their bodies (8:23b). What this means, Paul explains in 8:29. Those who are called according to his purpose, those whom he foreknew, he ‘predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son’. They will bear the image of the resurrected Christ (1 Cor 15:49; Phil 3:21). Paul understands the condemnation of sin in the body of God’s Son, as a prolepsis of the final judgment (8:3). Similarly, the Son of God’s past resurrection is related to the expected resurrection and future transformation of the believers. As resurrected from the dead, he is the ‘firstborn’ (SUZWRYWRNRa)37 amongst many brothers (8:29). In the hope to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, to be glorified with Christ (8:17), the Romans were saved (8:24a). The Spirit guarantees the validity of the hope (5:5; 8:23). The Spirit is of God who resurrected Christ from the dead. In Rom 10:9 Paul quotes an early Christian confession of faith: ‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is the Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved’. Faith is connected to the hope that God is – as he was in the case of Abraham – able to do what he has promised (cf. 4:21);38 to him who has the power to give life to the dead, to call that, that is not, into being (4:17–18). He, who has delivered his Son for ‘us all’, will in future freely grant (FDULYVHWDL) ‘us’ everything with his Son (8:32). God is the God of hope (15:13), for creation (8:20c) because of those who have been saved (8:24), and for Israel (9–11).39 4.3. Hope for the Hardened Part of Israel40 Exactly because God’s word towards Israel has not lost its validity (9:6; 11:29), there is hope even for those who are now disobedient towards the Gospel. From the outset of his argument, Paul redefines Israel from its origins as a spiritual entity. Isaac was the child of the sustained promise (9:8) and Jacob mercifully elected by God (9:11). God has not rejected his people; Jewish believers like Paul give proof of this (11:1). Presently there is thus a remnant of the true Israel, which, according to God’s election, came into being through God’s favour (11:5). This is in accordance with the

36 Considering the meaning and use of DM S ROXY WUZVLa, the genitive is best taken as a separationis; cf. Lietzmann (1928, 84–85). 37 Cf. Habermann (1990, 245–246). 38 Cf. Hahn (2002, 307–309). 39 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under the feet of the Roman believers (16:20), relieving them from false teaching. With the manuscript tradition and Lohse (2003) we take 16:17–20 as part of the letter. For an alternative view, cf. Jewett (2007). 40 Led by the use of the future tense and time words, this exposition of Paul’s views on the future in the letter to the Romans is confined to Rom 11:23–31.

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prophecy of Isaiah (quoted in Rom 9:27). Those who had been elected,41 obtained what they have strived for, but in future there will be an inclusion of the others, who presently are hardened (11:7).42 The hardening that has come upon a part of Israel is terminated until the full numbers of gentiles come in. In this way43 God44 will save ‘all Israel’ (11:26a). The expression SDCa¨,VUDKYO is best taken to refer to the elected remnant (11:15) brought to fullness (11:12c). It is thus the totality of Israel, including those who were hardened, but have not remained in their disbelief. They will be grafted back into the olive tree by God’s power (11:23). Paul expects this because the free gifts and election by God are irrevocable (11:29). When and through whom does Paul think this will happen? Paul expresses his expectation by citing IsaLXX 59:20. According to Isaiah it is written: ‘The one who delivers will come from Zion’. For Paul this liberator is the returning Lord, the resurrected Son of God (1 Thess 1:10; cf. Rom 1:3): ‘He he will turn ungodliness away from Jacob’. Through him God will save Israel in its entirety, without including all individual members. And how will they be saved? IsaLXX 59:21 is retained as introduction for the statement explaining the modus: ‘And this is the covenant to them from me’. The content of covenant itself is given in the altered words of IsaLXX 27:9 God ‘will remove their sins’ (11:26), primarily the sin of not trusting the Gospel (cf. Holtz 2007, 60). He will graft them back into the olive tree, because he can (11:23). In future, God will have mercy upon all (11:32): Israel and the nations. This does not mean that all the gentiles, every member of the people of Israel or even all believers will be saved. Even those for whom Christ died can be destroyed (Rom 14:15). The mindset of the flesh leads to death (8:6a) and is enmity towards God (8:7a). The right conduct is thus important. 4.4. Living Towards Daybreak Although the ‘old’ being has died with Christ, the believers are still captured in their mortal bodies (8:23). Through God’s Spirit living in them they have to kill the deeds of the body (8:13). Paul introduces the paraenetic section (Rom 12:1 et seq.) of his letter with a positive and a negative exhortation. Those in Rome, ‘beloved by God, called and sanctified by 41 42

For the passive meaning of HMNORJKY cf. BDAG, s.v. 2. Note that ORLSRLY in 11:7 is taken up by plural masculine forms of the personal pronoun (DXMWRLCa, DXMWRXYa and DXMWZCQ) and the 3rd person plural in verses 8–12. Paul is not writing about ‘Israel’ as many translate, but about the hardened rest. 43 As usual RX^WZa correlates and should not be taken temporally as ‘and then’. 44 In line with the use of the future passive of VZY] HLQ elsewhere in Romans, God has to be taken as the logical subject of the passive VZTKYVHWDL.

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him’ (Rom 1:7), should not be modelled according to this world (Rom 12:2). This world is qualified negatively. In Rom 13:11–14 he recaps his exhortation. He initially (13:11–12a) prepares his hortatory statements by making three fundamental statements about the time that the Romans should recognise. In the first instance they should realise that it is already time for them to get up out of sleep. He motivates this statement by a second assertion that the final salvation is now closer to them45 than at the time when they began to believe. Paul thus reminds his audience of their baptism, when they made their decision for Christ. Since then their final salvation has come closer (cf. Lohse 2003, 364). Thirdly, Paul uses the traditional imagery (cf. Zech 14:7; cf. Wendebourg 2003, 169) of the day of the Lord overwhelming the night’s darkness and stresses the change in time: ‘The night has moved forward to a final stage, it is advanced, almost over’.46 The Romans have to discern the decisive moment in time, and recognize that the salvation is eminent. This has consequences (cf. RXCQ) for their ethical conduct, which Paul expresses in hortatory and imperatival utterances (13:12b–14). When he exhorts the Romans to act according to the time in which they live, Paul initially utilizes military imagery. The focus is clearly on the change required from the Romans. The Romans have to ‘take off’ the works of darkness and have to begin47 to ‘put on the armour of light’ (13:12c). Discerning the time in which they live, metaphorically spoken, as the last stage of the night, they should – in the second instance – already in this period before dawn, begin to live honourably as if it were day. 48 They are finally instructed to make no provision for the desires of human nature. Instead, they are commanded to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, to live under the reign of the Lord whom the have put on during baptism (cf. Vögtle 1979, 183).

5. Conclusion Everything is directed towards God (11:36). Under the reign of Christ to whom they confess as Lord (10:9), the believers are reinstated in a life for God (6:11). For Paul, ‘the hallmark of being a Christian is to exist between Christ’s being sent inaugurating the final event and the completion of this event with the advent of the Lord’.49 Neither death nor life (8:38), nothing 45 46

Cf. BDR § 184 1 and 185. Cf. Dautzenberg (1974, 363–364) for the Jewish background of the notion on advanced time. 47 The subjunctive aorist is ingressive; cf. BDR § 377. 48 Cf. BDR § 425. 49 Delling 1970, 83 (my translation).

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can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus the Lord. For Paul, hope in Christ: ‘We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Rom 14:7–9, NRSV). Works Consulted Baumgarten, J 1975 Paulus und die Apokalyptik. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Becker, J 1992 Paulus: Der Apostel der Völker. Tübingen. Beker, JC 1980 Paul the Apostle. Philadelphia. Bendemann, R von 2006 ‘Zorn’ und ‘Zorn Gottes’, in Römerbrief in Paulus und Johannes, Sänger, D & Mell, U (eds.), Tübingen, 179–215. Betz, H-D 1994 Transferring a Ritual: Paul’s Interpretation of Baptism in Romans 6, in Paul in his Hellenistic Context, Engberg-Petersen, T (ed.), Edinburgh, 84–118. Bornkamm, G 1966 Das Ende des Gesetzes. München. – 1983 Paulus. Stuttgart. Brandenburger, E 1991 Gerichtskonzeptionen im Urchristentum und ihre Voraussetzungen. Eine Problemstudie. SNTU.A 16, 5–54. Breytenbach, C 1989 Versöhnung. Eine Studie zur paulinischen Soteriologie. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 2003 ‘Christus starb für uns’. Zur Tradition und paulinischen Rezeption der sogenannten ‘Sterbeformeln’. NTS 49, 463–464. – 2005 Salvation of the Reconciled (With a Note on the Background of Paul’s Metaphor of Reconciliation), in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on Soteriology, Van der Watt, JG (ed.), Leiden, 271–286. – 2009a The Septuagint Version of Isaiah 53 and the Early Christian Formula ‘He was delivered for our trespasses’. NovT 51, 339–351. – 2009b ‘Charis’ and ‘Eleos’ in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, in The Letter to the Romans, Schnelle, U (ed.), Leuven, 247–277. Bultmann, R 1984 Theologie des Neuen Testamentes. Tübingen. Calov, A 1677 Systema locorum theologicorum 12. Eschatologia sacra. Wittenberg. Conzelmann, H 1992 Grundriß der Theologie des Neuen Testamentes. Tübingen. Cranfield, CEB 1975 The Epistle to the Romans. Volume I. Edinburgh. Dautzenberg, G 1974 Was bleibt von der Naherwartung? Zu Röm 13,11–14, in Biblische Randbemerkungen, Schülerfestschrift für Rudolf Schnackenburg zum 60. Geburtstag, Merklein, H & Lange, J (eds.), Würzburg, 361–374. Delling, G 1970 Zur eschatologischen Bestimmtheit der Paulinischen Theologie, in Zeit und Endzeit. Zwei Vorlesungen zur Theologie des Neuen Testaments, Neukirchen, 57– 101. Dunn, JDG 1998 The Theology of Paul the Apostle. Edinburgh. Du Toit, A 2007 The Ecclesiastical Situation of the First Generation Roman Christians, in Focusing on Paul. Persuasion and Theological Design in Romans and Galatians. Berlin. Eschner, C 2009 Gestorben und hingegeben ‚für’ die Sünder. Die griechische Konzeption des Unheil abwendenden Sterbens und deren paulinische Aufnahme für die Deutung des Todes Jesu Christi. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Esler, P 2003 Conflict and Identity in Romans. Minneapolis.

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Froitzheim, FJ 1979 Christologie und Eschatologie bei Paulus. Würzburg. Gerber, G 2001 Vom Waffendienst des Christenmenschen, in ‘…was ihr auf dem Weg verhandelt habt’, Müller, P et al (ed.), Neukirchen-Vluyn, 129–142. Gnilka, J 1994 Theologie des Neuen Testamentes. Freiburg. – 1996 Paulus von Tarsus. Apostel und Zeuge. Freiburg. Goppelt, L 1976 Theologie des Neuen Testamentes. Zweiter Teil: Vielfalt und Einheit des apostolischen Christuszeugnisses. Göttingen. Habermann, J 1990 Präexistenzaussagen im Neuen Testament. Frankfurt a.M. Hahn, F 2002 Theologie des Neuen Testamentes. Band I: Die Vielfalt des Neuen Testamentes – Theologiegeschichte des Urchristentums. Tübingen. Hjelde, S 1987 Das Eschaton und die Eschata. München. Holtz, G 2007 Damit Gott alles sei in allem. Berlin. Jewett, R 2007 Romans. Minneapolis. Käsemann, E 1964 Zum Thema der urchristlichen Apokalyptik, in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen, Göttingen, 105–130. – 1974 An die Römer. Tübingen. Konradt, M 2003 Gericht und Gemeinde. Berlin. Kuck, DW 1992 Judgement and Community Conflict. Leiden. Ladd, GE 1974 A Theology of the New Testament. Grand Rapids. Lietzmann, H 1928 An die Römer. Tübingen. Lohse, E 2003 Der Brief an die Römer. Göttingen. Lücke, F 1829 Apokalyptische Studien und Kritiken. ThStKr 2, 285–320 Luz, U 1968 Das Geschichtsverständnis des Paulus. München. Malina, B 1989 Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean. CBQ 51, 1–31. Marshall, IH 2004 New Testament Theology. London. Mattern, L 1966 Das Verständnis des Gerichts bei Paulus. Zürich. Meißner, J 2003 Das Kommen der Herrlichkeit. Würzburg. Müller, K 1994 Gott als Richter und die Erscheinungsweisen seiner Gerichte in den Schriften des Frühjudentums, in Weltgericht und Weltvollendung, Klauck, H-J (ed.), Freiburg, 23–53. Olivier, F 1929 681$3241+6.: RThP 17, 103–133. Reiser, M 1990 Die Gerichtspredigt Jesu. Münster. Roetzel, CJ 1972 Judgement in the Community. Leiden. Sanders, EP 1991 Paul. Oxford. Sasse, H 1933 DLMZYQDLMZYQLRa. TWNT I, 197–209. Schade, H-H 1981 Apokalyptische Christologie bei Paulus. Göttingen. Schlier, H 1978 Grundzüge einer paulinischen Theologie. Freiburg. Schnelle, U 2003 Paulus. Leben und Denken. Berlin. Schweitzer, A 1930 Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus. Tübingen. Spicq, C 1994 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol 3. Peabody. Strecker, C 1999 Die liminale Theologie des Paulus. Göttingen. Synofzik, E 1977 Die Gerichts- und Vergeltungsaussagen bei Paulus. Göttingen. Vögtle, A 1979 Paraklese und Eschatologie nach Röm 13,11–14, in Dimensions de la vie Chrétienne. de Lorenzi, L (ed.), Rome, 179–194. Wendebourg, N 2003 Der Tag des Herrn. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Whiteley, DEH 1964 The Theology of St. Paul. Oxford. Wolter, M 2005 Apokalyptik als Redeform im Neuen Testament. NTS 51, 171–191.

On Eschatology in Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians Wolfgang Kraus in collaboration with Martin Kraus1 1. Introduction Discussing eschatology in 1 Corinthians is not entering unexplored territory.2 Not many passages in the New Testament have received more attention than 1 Corinthians 15, and only a few other passages in the New Testament have had a greater impact on the scholarly discussion. In what follows, only a few of the problems can be touched upon.3 The content of the essay will be limited to four issues:4 (part 2) The expectation of the imminent parousia in 1 Corinthians; (part 3) The reason for writing 1 Corinthians 15; (part 4) The order of the final events according to 1 Corinthians 15; (part 5) Peculiarities of the eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 in the context of Pauline theology.

1 The present article, and especially in its part 3 on 1 Cor 15, comes as the result of a weeklong conversation between Martin and Wolfgang Kraus held in autumn 2006 and again in spring 2007. Martin Kraus had to prepare a paper on 1 Cor 15 for a NT-seminar held by Richard Hays, Duke University (N.C.), while I was occupied with a paper on Eschatology in 1 Cor for the conference in Achterberg (SA). Several drafts were exchanged and discussed. Without these conversations the present article would have looked totally different. I could use the material verbatim in this article. It is thus appropriate to name Martin Kraus a co-author. 2 It is not the aim to provide comprehensive bibliographical data on all the texts refered to in the essay. Almost comprehensive bibliographies are provided in the commentaries of Schrage (1991; 1995; 1999; 2001), Merklein (1992b; 2000), and Merklein & Gielen (2005). 3 Not only has the term ‘eschatology’, but also Pauline eschatology itself, been highly disputed for a long time. I use the term in the sense of the final and definite goal of God’s saving action. The aspect of the time of God’s saving action can not be negated. Hereby present and future aspects can be distinguished, but must not be separated. At the same time the content of Paul’s future expectations must not be overlooked. It is not only futurity, but a certain future that Paul expects. Cf. on this Schrage (2007, 151–154). 4 For all the basic issues related to Pauline eschatology in recent discussion cf. Schrage (2007, 151–162).

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2. The Expectation of the Imminent Parousia in 1 Corinthians5 1 Corinthians is the second extant pauline epistle to an early Christian community preserved in the New Testament. It was probably written from Ephesus in 54 CE, meaning four years after the composition of 1 Thessalonians. In accordance with others, I hold the view that there are not enough reasons for dividing 1 Corinthians into several parts from different letters.6 Apart from 1 Corinthians 14:33b–36, which seems to be a postPauline interpolation,7 other points that might suggest inconsistency can be explained by the special character of the letter: Unlike for example in Romans, Paul firstly reacts to news he learnt from Corinth and secondly discusses singular problems. A reduction in the expectation of Christ’s immediate parousia cannot be discerned. On the contrary, the awaiting of Christ’s immediate parousia can be found throughout the whole letter. This claim needs to be substantiated. 2.1. 1 Corinthians 1:4–9 Within the context of the opening of the letter, the eschatological horizon already plays a dominant role, namely in 1 Corinthians 1:7 (cf. Schrage 2007, 165–168). The word DMSRNDYOX\La is used nowhere else in Paul’s letters in connection with the parousia. Here it denotes the parousia. According to Merklein (1987, 91), this could be due to Paul’s usage of traditional material. He argues that the phrase DMSRNDYOX\LaWRXC NXULYRXK-PZCQ ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC could be understood as an explication of the prayer Maranatha in 1 Corinthians 16:22, and thus forms an inclusio within the whole letter. In the context of 1:4–9, Paul speaks of the confirmation of the congregation H^Za WHYORa, until the day of Christ (1:8). The wording H^Za WHYORa can be interpreted in two ways: until the end, or until the fulfilment. The latter understanding was emphasized by von der Osten-Sacken (1977, 179.193). It can also be found in verse l of Papyrus 46. But the temporal meaning ‘until the end’ must not be underscored. By the day of Christ – 5 For the discussion, raised by Bultmann, on whether or not the apocalyptic aspects are relevant in Pauline eschatology, cf. Schrage (2007, 163–164). 6 Cf. on this issue Sellin (1987, 2965–2968); Schnelle (2007b, 79–82); Pokorný & Heckel (2007, 237–238). The unity of 1 Cor is advocated e.g. by Lührmann (1986, 308); Merklein (1987, 345–375); Schnelle (1989, 25); Becker (1989, 198–208); Merklein (1992b, 46–48); Schrage (1991, 63–71); Schnelle (2007b, 81f.); Pokorný & Heckel (2007, 238). 7 Cf. Heckel & Pokorný (2007, 238); Schnelle (2007b, 82). 1 Cor 14:33b–36 is in accordance with the tendency of 1Tim 2:11–15; cf. Roloff (1988, 128ff.).

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and some manuscripts do not read ‘day’ but ‘parousia’ – the final day of judgement is meant (Merklein 1987, 92). According to Merklein, Paul starts his letter already emphasizing that the end will come immediately (Merklein & Gielen 2005, 243). 2.2. 1 Corinthians 7:26–31 In chapter 7 Paul talks about marriage and celibacy. His arguments can only be understood correctly if one takes into account the context of his eschatological expectations. The end will come soon. Therefore, marriage is not the best option. In light of the eschatological tribulations to come, it is better to stay without a husband or a wife. Paul writes: GLD WKCQHMQHYVW ZVDQDMQDYJNKQ In our case HMQHYVWZVDQ refers to the uproars which are to be expected.8 This world will come to an end very soon. The final stages are near. This is typical apocalyptic thinking (Merklein 2000, 138). When Paul goes on to say everybody should have all things as though he or she had not (Z-a PKY, 7:29b–31), he introduces his argument with the words R- NDLURa VXQHVWDOPHYQRa HMVWLYQ (7:29a). And he closes his argument by saying: SDUDYJHLJDUWR VFKCPDWRXC NRYVPRXWRXYWRX (7:31). Paul is not generally against marriage. He has no ascetic or spiritualistic opinions. His attitude is that, in view of time running short until the final step, it is better not to marry and to be wholeheartedly devoted to the mission of Christ (7:32–35). Schrage (1995, 167f.) rightly says: ‘to be wholeheartedly devoted to the NXYULRa has eschatological implications’. There is little time left until the parousia (Schrage 1995, 171). Therefore, Christian life is characterized by different priorities. The earthly life of Christians receives a new signature: ‘Weil Welt und Geschichte im Vergehen begriffen und in bestimmter Weise schon an ihr Ende gekommen sind, [darum soll das Verhalten der Christen sich nicht mehr] vom Zeitlichen beherrschen und einschnüren lassen’ (Schrage 1995, 173). 2.3. 1 Corinthians 10:11 In 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul talks about the example of the wilderness generation, we have another instance where he explicitly refers to the end of the world. The example of the wilderness generation was written down WXSLNZCa for us. We, that is the generation HLMaRX`aWD WHYOKWZCQDLMZYQZQ NDWKYQWKNHQ The Christian community is already existing in a time after the eschatological turn of the times. The turn of the ages has already taken place (Schrage 1995, 404). The formulation with the double plural, WD WHYOK WZCQ DLMZYQZQ attracts our attention. This is a typical apocalyptic 8

Merklein (2000, 138), in agreement with Conzelmann (1969, 157).

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mode of speaking.9 We can compare it to Daniel 2 and 7 where, according to Merklein (2000, 252), “‘am Ende der Tage” [2:28] noch einmal alle Weltzeiten und Weltreiche versammelt werden, bevor sie vom Reich Gottes abgelöst werden’. This is also comparable with Hebrews 9:26 and 1 Peter 1:20. In Paul’s formulation his expectation of the near end breaks through (Merklein 2000, 252). So, 1 Corinthians 10:11 fits perfectly with 7:31. In anticipation of 1 Corinthians 15:24ff., we can conclude that in the resurrection of Christ the turn of the aeons has already taken place. The church is now in the time of the SHLUDVPRYa. It is still under pressure. But it is the time when Christ finally defeats the powers and principalities. Thus – as in 7:31 – Paul speaks about the ‘the end of the world’ or ‘ends of the ages’ (10:11). Once again I cite Schrage (1995, 408): ‘Dieses Ende hat die Gegenwart bereits erreicht, ist schon auf das eschatologische Gottesvolk gekommen’. 2.4. 1 Corinthians 11:26 Following the line of argumentation in 1 Corinthians, the next important passage for us is 1 Corinthians 11:26, the eschatological preview in communion. The discussion of this passage is postponed for a moment, as it is best seen in the context of 16:22. 2.5. 1 Corinthians 15:51 The expectation of the imminent end is also explicitly testified to in 1 Corinthians 15, namely in verse 51. The wording of verse 51 presupposes that – like in 1 Thessalonians 4 – Paul assumes that a certain part of his generation will remain alive: ‘We will not all die but we will all be altered’. Whether Paul is included in the number of those who will not die before the parousia is not as clear as in 1 Thessalonians 4, but it is probable. According to Schrage (2001, 375), Paul himself expects ‘noch zu denen zu zählen, die die Parusie bei Leibesleben erleben werden, d.h. hier liegt dieselbe von der Naherwartung bestimmte Hoffnung vor wie in 1 Thess 4:15, 17’. 2.6. 1 Corinthians 16:22 The last example is 1 Corinthians 16:22. In 16:21–24 we find Paul’s own greetings (cf. Gl 6:11ff.). In this context the formula maranatha, which comes from Aramaic, is cited.10 Maranatha can grammatically be understood to be an indicative (‘Our Lord has come’) or an imperative (‘Our 9 Schrage (1995, 408); Merklein (2000, 10 Cf. on this Kraus (1997, 688–689).

252).

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Lord, come!’). According to Kuhn, three ways of interpretation are possible. It can be: – – –

a prayer or plea for the parousia (imperative); a confession that Jesus has come (indicative); and a statement saying that Jesus is present in the church service (indicative).11

A decision for one particular option cannot be made on the basis of grammatical reasons alone, as both moods are possible.12 The context is the decisive factor. Linguistically impossible is the form maran(a) tha, since then we would have to presuppose the shortened Aramaic infinitive tha, which was used in Palestinian Aramaic only in the sense of ‘Well then!’ and not in the sense of ‘Come!’13 If we opt for the imperative form (see below), the Greek spelling can only be PDUDQDMTDY14 To find the right understanding, the context is crucial. Besides 1 Corinthians 16:22, two further texts are important: Revelation 22:20 and Didache 10:6. In Didache 10:6 the formulation maranatha is linked with amen and finishes the regulation for the participation in, and exclusion from, the Lord’s Supper. Here we can assume a dialogue between the liturgist and the congregation.15 So, in Didache 10:6 the meaning of maranatha is likely to be perfectic, ‘Our Lord has come’. Here maranatha is used to confirm the formula of exclusion. Before this confirmation are the pleas for the coming of the FDYULa and the passing away of the world, which points to the close connection between the Lord’s Supper and the expectation of the parousia (Klauck 1986, 360). The perfectic understanding is also assumed in the texts of the church fathers (cf. Schrage 2001, 481). In Revelation 22:20, we find, according to the majority of interpreters, the Greek translation of maranatha: H>UFRXNXYULH¨,KVRXC, which evidences an imperative. In addition to the texts already mentioned, we also have to take into account Philippians 4:5, ‘The Lord is near’; and 1 Corinthians 11:26, D>FUL RX_ H>OTK (until he comes). From these texts it becomes clear that the Lord’s Supper and the expectation of the parousia belong closely together.16

11 12 13 14 15 16

Kuhn (1942, 473); cf. Schrage (2001, 472). Proof for both variants can be found in Rüger (1978, 607). Beyer (1984, 124); Rüger (1978, 607). Hofius (1989a, 237); cf. Hofius (1989b, 241–243). Lietzmann (1955, 236f.); Klauck (1986, 360). Hofius (1989b, 241–243), Klauck (1986, 322.361).

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According to Hofius and Klauck (1986, 361; cf. 323), the D>FULRX_H>OTK can be considered a reminiscence of maranatha and a ‘Schwundstufe des eschatologischen Ausblicks Mk 14,25’. When considering the epistolographic function of 1 Corinthians 16:23f., the maranatha in this context reminds of the parousia, it is a ‘nachdrückliche Erinnerung an die nahe Wiederkunft des Herrn (vgl. Röm 16,20; Phil 4,5; 1Thess 5,23)’, as Schrage (2001, 473) puts it. Thus, in analogy of Revelation 22:20, the maranatha in 1 Corinthians 16:22 is best understood in an imperative sense. Therefore we can conclude: maranatha is to be interpreted as a call to the exalted NXYULRa, which gives a prospect of his future coming in the parousia, but at the same time he is begged to come to his people in the present communion of the Supper.17 To summarise, we can say that the expectation of the imminent parousia is found throughout the letter in different contexts. 1:7–9 and 16:22 form an inclusio for the whole letter.

3. The Reason for Writing 1 Corinthians 15 Or: What did the deniers of the resurrection believe and what about those who have ‘fallen asleep’? (1 Cor 15:20). 3.1. 1 Corinthians 15 in the Context of the Letter Many topics being dealt with in 1 Corinthians are responses to questions Paul had been asked in a letter from the Corinthians. Paul’s answers are usually introduced by SHUL GHY (7:1 celibacy; 7:25 virgins; 8:1 meat from offerings to idols; 12:1 gifts of the spirit; 16:1 church offering; 16:12 Apollos). This is not the case with the subject of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. The way Paul argues does not point to a question raised by the community in Corinth, but by Paul himself. As verses 33f. show, the Corinthian community as a whole had no idea that the position of the deniers of the resurrection could be a problem of such relevance. 17 Cf. Roloff (1984, 212). According to Schrage (2007, 175), the Lord’s Supper has to be characterized by two dimensions: retrospective and prospective: ‘So eignet dem Herrenmahl eschatologischer Charakter in der vergegenwärtigenden memoria Jesu Christi (“Das tut zu meinem Gedächtnis” 11,24f.) und in der Verkündigung seines Heilstodes (11,26). Mit dieser Erinnerung an das Christusgeschehen...verbindet sich aber unlöslich der eschatologische Ausblick auf die Zukunft (11,26: “bis dass er kommt” oder “damit er kommt”). ...Die Feier des Herrenmahls ist also in einem die in der Geschichte Jesu Christi verankerte Verheißung seiner Gegenwart und Zukunft’. This structure of thought can also be deduced in Pauline ethics (Schrage 2007, 176f.).

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Although we cannot gain certainty about whether or not the question was raised by Paul, the reason why he wrote 1 Corinthians 15 was probably the thesis of the WLQHYa that there was no resurrection (v. 12). The background of this thesis is heavily debated. The chapter can be divided into three major sections (plus an ending):18 (1) verses 1–11: the resurrection of Jesus and how it is believed in the church; (2) verses 12–34: how the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead belong together; (3) verses 35–57: how the resurrection of the dead takes place and the aspect of the VZCPD; (4) verse 58: parenetic ending. As Schrage (2001, 7f.) has emphasized, 1 Corinthians 15 is of central importance for the whole letter: it is not a section added de novissimis, but forms an integral part of Pauline theology. Paul comes back to the topic of the promise for the future mentioned already in the prooemium and talks about basic issues – ‘was allem anderen als Voraussetzung und Basis zugrunde liegt’. Let us now look at the different sections of the chapter individually. 3.2. The Basis of Paul’s Argumentation, Verses 1–11 Verses 1–11 talk about the resurrection as a central aspect of the HXMDJJHY OLRQ. Verses 1–3a and verse 11 function as a frame. They show that the resurrection of Jesus himself was not questioned in Corinth, not even by those who denied the resurrection of the dead. Verses 1–11 have the function of laying a common ground for the argumentation which is valid for all – for Paul as well as for the Corinthians.19 Verses 1–11 do not intend to prove the resurrection but only to lay a foundation. They are evidence for what is dealt with starting from verse 12. Verses 3b–10 can be subdivided into four parts: –

Verses 3b–5 contain a four partite formula of faith. Its structure is for the most part parallel. Most exegetes are convinced that it dates back to the earliest phase of primitive Christianity. 20 The question whether it was originally devised in Aramaic or Greek from the outset, need not be touched on in our present discussion. – In verse 6, with H>SHLWD Z>ITK, a new textual unit begins: afterwards Christ had appeared to 500 brothers simultaneously and Paul adds at once: ‘most of them are still alive, however, some of them have already passed away’. 18 19 20

For a discussion of the different sections cf. Merklein & Gielen (2005, 244–248). Conzelmann (1969, 295); Sellin (1986, 234). We need not go into detail, cf. the commentaries ad loc.

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In verse 7, we have a new unit once again, also starting with H>SHLWD Z>ITK: ‘Christ appeared to James and to all the apostles’. Verses 8–10 form a last section. Starting with H>VFDWRQ GH SDYQWZQ Paul talks about how Christ appeared to him. Verses 9–10 explain verse 8. They are not directly related to the experience of the resurrection, but they are necessary in order to understand the phrase Z-VSHUHL WZCHMNWUZYPDWLZ>ITKNDMPRLYin verse 8.

In verse 11, Paul returns to his initial statement in verses 1–3a: the kerygma of the raising of Christ is preached by all and believed by all – also by the Corinthians. 3.3. The Denial of the Resurrection (v. 12) Let us now look at verse 12, the denial of the resurrection by some people: WLQHYa. On the basis of the common ground laid in verses 1–11, Paul now asks the decisive question: ‘If it is preached that Christ has been raised from (the) dead, how can some of you say DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ RXMN H>VWLQ?’ A literal translation of this is: ‘There is no resurrection / raising of dead (people)’. Concerning the question of what the WLQHYa in Corinth believed there is still great controversy in New Testament scholarship. But since the answer to this question is dependent on how the whole chapter and Paul’s argumentation is understood, we have to discuss the present exegetic positions regarding verse 12. Nevertheless, I can only refer to some basic ideas. It is not possible to enter into much detail. The discussion about the Corinthian deniers of the resurrection, which has been continuing for several decades, has so far not lead to a generally accepted result. There are four basic positions – with a few variations and combinations – proposed in the exegesis over almost one century. Even the position of Albert Schweitzer (1930), saying that the problem dealt with in 1 Corinthians 15 is comparable with the one in 1 Thessalonians 4, is still being discussed; although Schrage (2001, 113) claims that this thesis is not advocated any more. It was supported in a monograph by Bernhard Spörlein in 1971, and newly by Winfried Verburg (1996), and thus has reentered the scholarly discussion. Only the theory of a misunderstanding, which assumes Gnosticism in Corinth and has been supported for example by Schmithals (1969), is no longer tenable due to the present knowledge about Gnosticism. It is quite clear that this essay will also not provide a final solution. But it seems to be evident to me that any decision about the position to be preferred has to meet two basic criteria:

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Does it fit verse 12 philologically or are there additional arguments that have to be put forward e silentio? Does a particular interpretation of verse 12 allow a coherent understanding of the whole argumentation of Paul in 1 Corinthians 15? That is to say, do the sections of the chapter fit together? As a result, not a certain part of chapter 15 (e.g., vv. 35ff.) may be decisive for the interpretation of verse 12, but the whole line of argumentation.

So our aim must be to ask, with these two criteria in mind – the philological understanding of verse 12 and the coherent understanding of the whole chapter – how do the different positions in the current scholarly discussion answer to these problems.21 We propose the thesis that the problem 1 Cor 15 is concerned with has to be understood from the crucial verse 51: ‘Not all of us shall die, but we all shall be changed’. 3.3.1. The Denial of a Future Resurrection because of Enthusiasm Bultmann, Schniewind, Käsemann, and Barrett – to name only a few – have tried to explain the ideas of the WLQHYa by referring to 2 Timothy 2:18: DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ K>GK JHJRQHYQDL.22 This idea could have been understood either sacramentally or in terms of a mystery religion or Gnosticism. Advocates of this position, such as Lindemann or Fee, think that the deniers were enthusiastic and denied a future resurrection.23 Resurrection has already taken place through baptism. The positive aspect of this interpretation is the fact that the thesis DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ K>GK JHJRQHYQDL indeed became a problem in early Christianity and was opposed by the Pauline school. Also, the connection to one of the groups Paul refers to in the first chapters of 1 Corinthians could be mentioned, as done by Merklein and Gielen. However, in my opinion, this suggestion is not convincing.24 –

In fact, preliminary stages of a concept of a renewal of life in the present are to be found in the Jewish-Hellenistic sphere (JosAs); but the

21 An overview of the different ways of understanding is provided by Spörlein (1971, 1–29); Sellin (1986, 11–37). Also helpful for a summary of the different positions is Wolff (1996, 421–426). 22 This idea can be traced back to Thomas Aquinas and John Chrysostom (cf. Spörlein 1971, 16f.). It was broadly advocated by Schniewind (1952, 110–139); for details cf. Sellin (1986, 24). 23 Lindemann (2000, ad loc); Fee (1987, ad loc). 24 Merklein & Gielen (2005, 241–244.302). Cf. on the refutation of this thesis: Spörlein (1971, 176–181); Sellin (1986, 23–30); as well as Schneider (2005, 15–17).

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term DMQDYVWDVLa is not used there – instead we find DMQDNDLYQ]Z and DMQD]ZRSRLHYZ(e.g. JosAs 8:9; 15:5, 7; 27:10; TestAbr 18:11). – If Paul really addressed the same group as in the first chapters, one could ask why he does this at such a late point, in chapter 15. – Also, the distinction between ‘already now’ and ‘not yet’ is not relevant in chapter 15, as Spörlein (1971, 176) rightly insists: ‘Wenn V.12 nur eine Verkürzung der Behauptung ist: wir verneinen eine Totenauferstehung, aber eine schon geschehene Auferstehung geistiger Art behaupten wir, dann vermißt man in ganz 1Kor 15 den Gegensatz zwischen schon geschehen und zukünftig’.25 – If it were an enthusiastic group, one could ask whether the AdamChrist typology would have to be expressed differently. As it is presented, one could say that it includes the following thesis: in the same way as death constitutes a reality as a result of sin, the resurrection has become a reality through Christ. This could be understood as a confirmation of the enthusiasts’ attitude. – The most convincing argument, however, is that, if the deniers opposed a future resurrection, Paul would have to phrase their thesis differently: DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ RXMN H>VWDL, as Schneider (2005, 15) argues. Instead Paul says, referring to their thesis: DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ RXMN H>VWLQ, or in verse 29 (as a variation): HLM R>OZa QHNURL RXMN HMJHLYUZQWDL. 3.3.2. The Denial of a Bodily Resurrection This explanation was very popular during a certain period of research. It has been supported by many exegetes, such as Wedderburn (1981, 229– 241), Sellin (1986, passim), De Boer (1988, 97ff.), Martin (1995, 104– 136), Holleman (1995, 39f.), Wolff (1996, 424) and Hays (1997, ad loc).26 According to this way of explaining the denial, the deniers believed in a resurrection of the soul (\XFKY or SQHXCPD), but not of the body (VZCPD). According to Wolff (1996, 422ff.), the body was not appreciated in Corinth, as can be seen in 1 Corinthians several times. The body is understood to be a prison for the soul. This view of the soul had been connected with a particular concept of the SQHXCPD: Through baptism (or the baptism on behalf of the dead, v. 29) the Holy Spirit is received. Therefore there is no need for a bodily resurrection. ‘Mit dem Tode geht also die vom göttlichen Pneuma erfüllte Seele endgültig in die himmlische Welt ein. Die für eine dualistische Anthropologie ohnehin abwegige Vorstellung von einer 25 26

In a similar way Zeller (2001, 179); and Verburg (1996, 128). Until the discussion mentioned above in footnote 1, I myself have also voted for this understanding.

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Totenauferstehung ist somit überflüssig’ (Wolff 1996, 423). Martin (1995, 107) additionally refers to social differences in the congregation: ‘The strong, influenced by popular philosophy to deprecate the body, opposed the idea of a resurrected body’. 27 For Paul, this idea was not acceptable because of his Jewish background. ‘Entsprechend jüdischem Denken [konnte er] sich die Existenz der Menschen nur als somatische vorstellen’ (Verburg 1996, 275). Sellin (1986, 72f.) considers the deniers of the resurrection pneumatics of Alexandrian-Jewish provenience who have to be understood from a Hellenistic-Jewish context of wisdom theology.28 Following Pearson (Sellin 1986, 35), he assumes that the Corinthians supported an exegetical tradition of Genesis 2:7, which can be seen as the background of verses 45f. Wedderburn (1981, 240) refers to 1 Corinthians 4:8 and 6:13. He also advocates the thesis of an anthropological dualism, but supposes a misunderstanding by Paul: ‘So does Paul then misunderstand the Corinthians or misrepresent them? The most likely answer seems to be, in a sense, both. It seems plausible to argue that Paul, with his Pharisaic background reinforced by the Christian tradition of Jesus’ resurrection, found it difficult to see how salvation could be adequately conceived of if only a “part” of the person was redeemed’. A similar opinion was held by De Boer (1988, 103): ‘Presumably, the Corinthian pneumatics embraced Christ as the one who had made “known” to them their true pneumatic nature … he would be, or represent, what they themselves were, the first or heavenly human being ... For the Corinthian deniers Christ’s death probably signified, as theirs would, the moment of pneumatic liberation from the “natural”, bodily world’. However, in the end this thesis is nonetheless unconvincing: –

De Boer himself concedes that there is no religion-historical parallel where SQHXCPD and \XFKY constitute a contradiction. Here in 1 Corinthians, \XFKY has negative connotations. In Greek philosophy \XFKY represents an element connotated with everlasting or eternal life. So de Boer (1988, 101) writes: ‘The only difficulty with this view is that, while the points of contact with Philo’s exegesis of Genesis 2:7 are evident in 1 Corinthians 15:45–49, Philo does not use the terms SQHX PDWLNRYa or \XFLNRYa in the sense suggested by Pearson nor in the sense of the Corinthian pneumatics … he [Philo] seems to use the terms “soul” and “spirit” interchangeably’. Sellin (1986, 30f.) also admits that \XFKY does not play the role one would usually expect and is 27 28

In a similar way as Martin: Hays (1997, 259). See also Sellin (1986, 30–37); and Wolff (1996, 424). Furthermore, Sellin (1986, 32) points to parallels with Justin. Cf. on this also Hays (1997, 259).

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surprisingly used as a negative opposition of SQHXCPD.29 This is a contradiction to every classical Greek philosophy. Consequently, the argumentation of verses 12–19 and 29–34 is not directed against a dualistic anthropology. – According to Paul, the thesis of the WLQHYa is DMQDYVWDVLaQHNUZCQRXMN H>VWLQand not ‘there is no bodily resurrection’. Hübner (1993, 199) has proposed to paraphrase verse 12 as DMQDYVWDVLaVZPDWLNKQHNUZCQRXMN H>VWLQ. But that is not what Paul wrote. Hays (1997, 259) argues that DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ means there is no ‘rising of corpses’. But, again, this is not what Paul, citing the deniers, says. Paul can speak of the rising of corpses, this is true, but then he uses other wordings: in Romans 8:11 he speaks of WD TQKWD VZYPDWD. Furthermore, one has to assume various usages of QHNURYa in 1 Corinthians 15: with regard to Jesus, Paul would talk about the resurrection of the dead, but with regard to humans he would refer to the resurrection of dead bodies. – If this were the thesis of the WLQHYa, what then would be the function of verses 12–19 and 20–34? – Finally, the wrong position of the deniers would not be refuted but rather confirmed in verse 44, and especially verse 50.30 Not the deprecation of the body is the subject of verses 35–57, but ‘die Tatsache, daß dieser Leib, mit dem die Auferstehung geschehen soll, ja zerfällt’ (Spörlein 1971, 189).31 3.3.3. Principal Scepticism of the/any/an Afterlife A third group of scholars claims that the WLQHYa in Corinth principally denied every kind of life after death. On the basis of the wording DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQRXMNH>VWLQin verse 12, it is argued that the deniers of the resurrection in Corinth were principal sceptics of the/any/an afterlife, and therefore denied any kind of post-mortem forms of life. This view is substantiated by its supporters in different ways. Some say the deniers were sceptics and nihilists (Strobel 1989, 241) who formed their opinion because of the influence of Greek philosophy, or were adherents of Greek mystery cults. Zeller (2001, 188) puts it like this: ‘Wie die Korinther sonst von ihrer paganen Herkunft beeinflusst sind, werden wir es auch bei den WLQHYa mit der “Skepsis gewöhnlicher, halbwegs gebildeter Griechen” zu tun haben’. The resurrection of Jesus himself was considered an ‘apotheosis’ of a single person. But the concept of a general resurrec29

On the common features and differences between Philo and Paul regarding their terminology cf. also Verburg (1996, 276). 30 Lindemann (2000, 338); Zeller (2001, 184). 31 On the complete refutation of the thesis see Spörlein (1971, 189f.).

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tion of the dead was not accessible to them. According to Zeller, nothing in 1 Corinthians 15 hints at spiritualistic or enthusiastic opinions in Corinth – but the possibility of life after death in general was denied. This thesis is also supported by Barth (1992, 199), who adds that the deniers probably came from higher social classes. According to Wolter (2005, 185) the deniers rejected any afterlife, due to their concept of body: ‘Problematisch an der Erwartung einer Auferstehung der Toten war demnach die mit ihr verbundene Vorstellung von der Leiblichkeit der Auferstehung. Was Paulus an der Position der Gegner für falsch hält, sagt er in VV.36–42: Die Leugner der Auferstehung können sich als „Leib“ nur das vorstellen, was ihnen empirisch zugänglich ist’. In their anthropological concept the body was not built for salvation (Wolter, 2005, 184: ‘erlösungsunfähig’). What makes this scholarly approach attractive is the fact that verse 12 can be read correctly without additional elements: DMQDYVWDVLaQHNUZCQRXMN H>VWLQ: there is no resurrection of the dead / dead people.32 But the problems with this interpretation should not be overlooked either. (1) Is it possible that members of the Corinthian congregation denied any kind of resurrection? Paul writes SZCaOHYJRXVLQHMQX-PLCQWLQHa. How did they come to be members of the church? (2) If their problem were that of a bodily resurrection, why then is Paul talking about the body of the resurrection not earlier than from verse 36 on? Furthermore: The beginning of verse 35 with DMOODHMUHLCWLa seems to indicate a new stage of argumentation. In the case that the bodily resurrection was questioned by the deniers, verse 50 would be in line with their argument. But Paul begins verse 50 with WRXCWR GHYIKPL, which signals an opposition (against Merklein, 1992a, 418 n. 45). So with this interpretation our first criterion – that verse 12 must be understood philologically in the right way – is fulfilled. Also, it is possible to read verses 12–19 and 29–34 in a coherent way within Paul’s argumentation. However, the problem is the question whether it is imaginable that some members of the Corinthian church denied any form of post-mortem salvation. Another question is how the sections from verse 35 onwards fit into Paul’s argumentation. 3.4. Salvation for Those who Experience the Parousia The fourth scholarly approach to interpreting 1 Corinthians 15, which is still advocated today, can already be found in Schweitzer’s Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus, published in 1930. Schweitzer (1930, 94) wrote: ‘Diese 32 There is no definite article in the Greek wording. In German we have the possibility of translating the genitive plural QHNUZCQ without the definite article too: ‘Es gibt keine Auferstehung Toter’.

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Auferstehungsleugner sind also keine Skeptiker, sondern sie vertreten die ultra-konservative eschatologische Meinung, daß es keine Auferstehung gebe. Ihnen zufolge haben nur diejenigen etwas zu hoffen, die bei der Wiederkunft Jesu am Leben sind’. In Schweitzer’s book this opinion was combined with the thesis of a double resurrection in Pauline eschatology, one before the Messianic era and one after it. The expectation of the WLQHYa in Corinth was not directed at the ultimate reign of God, instead they wanted to take part in the Messianic era. According to Schweitzer, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 wanted to argue that those who had died before the Messianic era would nevertheless partake in the Messianic era because of their resurrection. Conzelmann (1969, 310) took over this thesis with a slight modification. ‘Paulus meint, diese Lehre sei in Korinth eingedrungen. Ohne die Annahme eines gewissen Mißverständnisses seitens des Paulus kommt man kaum aus’. In his dissertation, Spörlein (1971) tried to argue for Schweitzer’s thesis without taking up the idea of a double resurrection. Orr and Walther, in their commentary on 1 Corinthians in the Anchor Bible Series (1976, 319.340), also support this thesis. Finally Verburg (1996, 285; cf. 283), who wrote a dissertation published in 1996, argues in the same direction on the basis of a syntactic-sigmatic, semantic and pragmatic analysis of 1 Corinthians 15: ‘Als wahrscheinlichste These erscheint mir, daß Paulus die Auffassung argumentativ zu widerlegen sucht, daß nur bei der Parusie Lebende Anteil am endzeitlichen Heil haben, bis dahin Verstorbene hingegen verloren sind. ... Besonders wird diese Annahme gestützt durch die Argumentation des Paulus in den Versen 30–32. Die Zeitangaben SDCVDQ Z^UDQ NDT¨ K-PHYUDQ DX>ULRQ weisen auf den möglichen Verlust der Heilsteilhabe durch den Tod nur in nächster Zukunft hin’. The advantage of this approach is that – which was also true for the approach mentioned before – it makes a philologically correct reading of verse 12 possible. But its problems may not be overlooked either. Schrage (2001, 113) argues against this approach because of the lack of expectation of an imminent parousia. And the baptism for the dead would not fit such an opinion of the Corinthians at all. He claims: ‘Wenn die Korinther tatsächlich alles Heil von der Parusie erwartet hätten, wäre ihr Enthusiasmus (vgl. 4:8) nicht zu erklären’ (Schrage 2001, 113). Furthermore, he argues that 1 Thessalonians was written in Corinth, and concludes from this that the Corinthians must have known Paul’s answers in 1 Thessalonians 4 addressed to those who did not believe in the resurrection (Schrage 2001, 113). Though these arguments have to be considered earnestly, they do not hold water. The reasons are: (1) We do not know anything about a lacking expectation of an imminent parousia in Corinth (cf. part 2 of this essay).

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(2) Whether the deniers did also baptise on behalf of the dead cannot be proven by Paul’s reference in 1 Corinthians 15:29. (3) Furthermore, we do not know if the WLQHYa were enthusiasts or not. (4) Whether Paul’s argumentation in 1 Thessalonians 4 was known to the entire Corinthian congregation, or the WLQHYa, is hard to verify. Besides, there is a span of four years between the composition of 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians. Meanwhile, others may have joined the Corinthian congregation. As noted above, with this fourth approach the first criterion of a philologically clear understanding of verse 12 can be met. So we have to examine the second criterion with regard to the question if a coherent reading of the chapter is possible. But before doing so, two variants of the four main lines of interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15 should be mentioned. 3.5. Variations and Combinations Schrage (2001, 113) has proposed a variation on position 3.3.1. The denial includes the negation of a future and somatic dimension of eschatology.33 The basis of the deniers’ concept is not 2 Timothy 2:18. The WLQHYa do not claim that they have already risen. They say they do not need a resurrection, due to their enthusiastic pathos of perfection (Schrage 2001, 115). So the point here is not a realization of the resurrection in the present, but the necessity to resurrect is simply ‘skipped’ due to enthusiasm. According to Schrage (2001, 115), we are concerned with spiritualists who are simultaneously enthusiasts. Schrage attempts to take verse 12 seriously into consideration: DMQDYVWDVLaQHNUZCQRXMNH>VWLQ. Therefore, he disclaims a connection with 2 Timothy 2:18. The position of the WLQHYa can be reconstructed only from the tendency of the text. What makes Schrage’s thesis problematic is: firstly, the fact that an anti-enthusiastic character of Paul’s argumentation in 1 Corinthians 15 cannot be found throughout the whole chapter. Schrage himself (2001, 116) acknowledges that this poses a problem: in verses 1–19 and 29–34 we find little evidence for polemics against a realized eschatology. Secondly, we have to ask the question – in analogy to the criticism of the position under 3.3.1 – why Paul addresses this problem at such a late point in the chapter and in the letter as a whole. Why does he not talk about it earlier, for instance when he addresses the divisions, criticizing this situation? Thirdly, if we presuppose Schrage’s thesis, we have to ask if – on the basis of Schrage’s thesis – Paul would not have had to word the thesis of the WLQHYa differently: DMQDYVWDVLaQHNUZCQRXMNH>VWDLor DMQDYVWDVLaQHNUZCQ

33 Seen yet again differently in Schrage (1991, 58f.). Cf. Schrage (2007, 168–170; especially n. 40). Similarly to Schrage, Schnelle (2007a, 206f.).

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RXMNDMQDJNDLYDH>VWLQ. But according to Paul they just say: RXMNH>VWLQ. In verse 29, Paul even adds a R^OZa. Schneider (2005, 105) has recently presented a thesis in which he reverses the concept that the deniers doubted the futurity of the resurrection. Instead, he suggests that the Christians in Corinth had no doubts concerning the future resurrection on the day of judgement. They rather doubted that the resurrection life was already effective now. It is this attitude that Paul opposes. According to Schneider, it is Paul’s intention in 1 Corinthians to bring the present resurrection home to them. This interpretation is not convincing. Firstly, DMQDYVWDVLaonly refers to the resurrection of dead people (Sellin 1986, 25–29). Lindemann (2000, 357) correctly states that it is not the DMQDYVWDVLathat is being discussed, but the DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ. Secondly, the intention ascribed to Paul can be proven to be typical of deutero-Pauline writers (cf. Col 2:12; 3:1), but not of Paul himself. Paul’s thinking refers to the future: see for example Romans 6:5, 8; 8:11, 24f. The forms HMVRYPHTD VX]KYVRPHQ as well as ]ZRSRLKYVHLare future! We can see this tendency of futurity in the phrase ‘pledge (DMUUDEZYQ) of the spirit’ (cf. 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5).34 Looking at all the approaches we find in the current debate, we cannot reach final certainty about which of them is right. But as it seems after a long debate only the third (3.3.3.) and fourth (3.3.4.) approaches are basically possible. Only from here, can verse 12 be philologically understood correctly. Only from here can it become clear why verses 12–19 and 20–35 follow verses 1–11. If the WLQHYawere enthusiastic or thought of the resurrection on the basis of 2 Timothy 2:18, what then is the function of verses 12–19 and 20–24? Only from verse 35 onwards Paul would argue against the deniers. Thus, only approaches 3.3.3 and 3.3.4 remain plausible. Our third (3.3.3.) approach, the denial of any kind of resurrection and life after death, is not a probable position for members of the Christian community. The fourth approach (3.3.4.) that only those who live when the parousia takes place allows a philologically correct understanding of verse 12. But does it also allow a coherent reading of the whole chapter? Let us examine this question.

34 Wischmeyer (2001, 193) argues that the Corinthian deniers considered themselves to be members of an enthusiastic group, analogous to members of mystery cults. They did not need a future resurrection because they were sure of the coming pneumatic salvation of their group. This stands in contradistinction to the fact that Paul from verse 20 onwards emphasizes how the resurrection of Christ and that of the dead belong together. He introduces the idea of Christ as DMSDUFK WZCQNHNRLPKPHYQZQ This connection seems to have been unclear to the deniers.

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3.6. The Line of Argumentation in 1 Corinthians 15 Verses 1–11: The death and resurrection of Jesus is of crucial importance for the gospel. It is not questioned by any of the believers. In this way Paul has delivered the gospel to the Corinthians – and they will be saved if they stick to it. Verse 2 foreshadows what Paul is going to say in verse 58: ‘Stick to it!’ The word DMGHOIRLY implies that Paul is speaking to the whole community. The fact of Christ’s resurrection is testified to by trustworthy witnesses. In verse 6, when Paul is naming witnesses of the resurrection besides Peter, he adds that some have already died. This can also be read as a hint to what he points out later. It seems as if Paul would foreshadow the question: Should it be possible that not only members of the congregation who have died, but also witnesses of the resurrection, do not partake in eternal salvation because they have died before Jesus’ parousia? Verses 12–19: If there is no doubt about Jesus’ resurrection, and if it is believed by all, how can the WLQHYa say DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ RXMN H>VWLQ? Paul names the problem very sharply. He speaks of HMQX-PLCQWLQHa, which means he separates them from the other members of the community; but he also says that their position can have an impact on the whole community. He will refer to this argument again in verses 33–34. In a first line of argument, Paul states that if there were no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus could not have been resurrected either (cf. Spörlein 1971, 67; OrrWalther 1976, 325f.; Vos 1999; Bachmann 2001). The presupposition here is that Jesus had been resurrected, and that his resurrection and the resurrection of the dead must be understood to be analogous. It is WLQHYa who have claimed that there was no resurrection of the dead. Whether they are an influential or marginal group cannot be decided. What is clear is that they are a group within the church: HMQ X-PLCQ WLQHa. In verse 18, Paul comes to the hypothetical conclusion that, if Christ has not risen, the dead will also be lost. This would include the witnesses to the resurrection mentioned in verse 6. In verse 19, Paul comes to another hypothetical conclusion. If there was no resurrection of the dead, an early death would mean the loss of eternal life. Verses 20–28: This is the second argument of Paul’s line of thought. Christ has indeed risen from death, and is to be understood as DMSDUFKWZCQ NHNRLPKPHYQZQ. Whereas in the first line of argumentation the analogy between Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection of the dead was the implicit presupposition, now in verse 20 the concept of the DMSDUFKY comes into play.35 In verse 21 the concept of the corporate personality becomes relevant too. According to Leviticus 23:23 and Deuteronomy 26:1–11 the

35

Cf. on vv. 20–23 esp. Holleman (1995).

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DMSDUFKY sanctifies the whole harvest.36 When Jesus Christ is to be understood as DMSDUFKY, then he cannot be alone. Those who belong to him must follow. Without being mentioned explicitly, the analogy between Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection of the dead is the basic background. If the WLQHYa from Corinth believe in Christ’s resurrection and deny the resurrection of the dead, they understand Christ’s resurrection not in analogy to the resurrection of the dead. This idea is refuted by Paul’s argument of the DMSDUFKY. The ideational background of verses 21–22 is the concept of corporate personality. Here too, the belonging together of Christ and his believers is central: In Adam all die – present; in Christ all will live – future. This eschatological process has a certain order: WDYJPD (vv. 24–26). At first Christ resurrects; then those belonging to Christ at the parousia; at last death will be annihilated.37 Verses 27–28 give an explanation of Christ’s current reign on the basis of Psalm 8 and Psalm 109 (110). The aim of Paul’s argument in verses 24–28 is to state that, in the end, God will be sovereign and even death will be defeated.38 This second line of argumentation comes to an end in verse 28. Verses 29–34 are two argumenta ad hominem and a paranesis. We need not go into detail with regard to verse 29a, this would require an essay of its own.39 The two argumenta ad hominem refer to facts from the life of the church and of Paul himself. If there was no resurrection, the practice of Christian faith is to be questioned. The baptism for the dead would not make sense if one adopts the attitude of the WLQHYa. The same is true for Paul’s life of permanent exposure to dangers. If the WLQHYa were right, Paul would have to change his life. The inalienable basis of the Christians’ life is the expectation of a resurrection of the dead.40 We do not have to discuss, in this context, whether or not Paul approves the baptism for the dead 36

For the meaning of DMSDUFKY, see Schrage (2007, 188f.; especially n. 82); cf. already 1 Cor 6:14. 37 For the understanding of WDYJPD and WHYO Ra see below. 38 Schrage (2007, 192f.) emphasises the fact that the defeat of death is about God’s being God. Whether or not the SDYQWDpoints to a salvation of ‘all’ (Allversöhnung) can be disputed but cannot be verified (cf. Schrage 2007, 193f.; especially n. 99). 39 The problem of verse 29 was recently discussed by Reaume (1995, 457–475); DeMaris (1995, 661–682); Hull (2005, 22). According to Zeller (2007, 68–76) there is no real parallel in the ancient religionsgeschichte for 1 Corinthians 15:29. 40 Schrage (2007, 174) is right when he argues that without resurrection of the dead the whole Pauline theologia crucis would be obsolete: ‘Denn ohne das Licht der Verheißung, dass Gottes befreiende Macht alle Ohnmacht und Schwachheit überwindet, wie er sie am Gekreuzigten durch die Auferweckung von den Toten erwiesen und proleptisch in Rechtfertigung und Freiheit begonnen hat, würde die paulinische Kreuzestheologie im Dunkel verharren’. Cf. Schrage (2007, 183f.).

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and what EDEWLY]HVTDL X-SHU WZCQ QHNUZCQ means. What can be stated clearly is that EDEWLY]HVTDLX-SHUWZCQQHNUZCQ is not practised by the WL QHYa, but by other members of the congregation. Verse 29b attracts our special attention. We have to recognize that verse 29b is a variation of the thesis presented in verse 12. If verse 12 is a citation of the thesis of the WLQHYa, which can be seen from the R^WL – recitativum, then verse 29b could be a Pauline variation: HLM R^OZa QHNURL RXMN HMJHLYURQWDL. The denial of the resurrection has nothing to do with spiritualism and enthusiasm or with a non-bodily resurrection, but means a denial of every kind of resurrection. The same can be deduced from verse 32b. In verse 34, Paul takes up the keyword WLQHYa again and declares: they do not have knowledge of God.41 The fatal consequences of verse 32 could only be summarized in the motto for life: carpe diem!42 From verse 35 onwards, the main subject matter is the question of how the resurrection will take place. The focus of the Pauline argumentation shifts with DMOOD HMUHLC WLa. But this does not mean that the reason for Paul’s argumentation has changed, too. Now the subject is how the resurrection takes place and, to be more precise, what the resurrected body is like. The second question SRLYZ GH VZYPDWLH>UFRQWDL(v. 35) is a specification of the first SZCaHMJHLYURQWDLRL- QHNURLY. However, this does not mean that the trigger of Paul’s explanation has altered in comparison to the previous two lines of argumentation. By contrast, from the following it becomes clear why the WLQHYadid not believe in resurrection. On the basis of the differences between 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 several scholars have argued for a development in pauline eschatological thought. According to them Paul did not speak about resurrection before he wrote 1 Thessalonians. Up to this point he had talked only about the parousia of Christ. Therefore the problem could arise what will happen to those that have died before the coming of the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 would then be the first occasions on which Paul had introduced the idea of a resurrection of the dead. While in 1 Thessalonians 4 the emphasis lies on verse 17, which tells us that there will be no difference between those who died and those who are left, because both will be caught up in the clouds together to meet the Lord, 1 Corinthians 15 emphasises the bodily resurrection.This position has been advocated by Wiefel (1974), Schnelle (1989, 39) and others. Is this argumentation probable and could it be an explanation for the differences in the line of thought between 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corintians 15? Indeed, in 41 The phrase DM JQZVLYDQ THRXC does not denote only an intellectual deficiency, but also ignorance of God’s life-giving power (cf. Schrage 2007, 183). 42 Schrage (2007, 184).

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1 Thessalonians 1:9–10, as a summary of the kerygma to the gentiles,43 the emphasis lies on the parousia. But this does not mean that Paul did not talk about the resurrection when he preached in Thessalonich or Corinth. There are basically two reasons, why it is unlikely that Paul talked about resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4 for the first time: (1) The question as to what will happen to those of the community who have died before the parousia was a question raised as early as the 30’s (Stephen, cf. Act 7:54–60) or 40’s (James, cf. Acts 12:1–2) of the first century, and not only later. (2) As Merklein (1992a, 405f.) has pointed out, the wording in 1 Thessalonians 4:14b implies that the resurrection was already known by the community, the problem was instead how the dead will be involved in the parousia of Christ. Verses 35–57 can be divided into several sections: –

Verses 35–41: Paul takes up an example from ancient botany. Dying is the precondition of new life (vv. 36–38). Corporealness is always connected to the actions of a creator. The decay of corpses is no problem for the creator. In creation we already find creatures differing in their flesh as well as in their body or splendour (vv. 39–41). – Verses 42–49: Now this concept is applied to the question of the resurrection. As there are differences in the earthly existence, there is also different corporealness in the new existence; based on the resurrection. This passage is characterized by opposites. It is important for Paul to point out that God himself will act as creator in the resurrection and that the corporealness will be heavenly. When we look at verse 49, where we find HLMNZYQ and not VZCPD; it becomes clear that the idea of VZCPD does not cover all Paul wants to express. We find VZCPD for the last time in verse 44. In verse 45 he speaks of D>QTUZSRa, in verse 49 he uses HLMNZYQ. This variation in expressions also shows that it was not the resurrection of the body (VZCPD) which was questioned by the deniers.44 – Verses 50–57, and verse 58: Paul starts with WRXCWRGH IKPLDMGHOIRLY. This shows that Paul begins his final line of argumentation. The introduction resembles 1 Corinthians 7:29. Before Paul gives his final statement, he summarizes what he has said before: Flesh and blood, 43 44

This view is widely accepted in the scholarly discussion. Insofar the argumentation of Orr-Walther (1976, 319) presents only half the truth: ‘Against the idea that the dead are raised they objected that the decomposed body cannot be restored, that in many instances there is no body to be raised, and that the material body is not suitable for a resurrected existence’. The reason for the deniers’ concept DMQDYVWDVLa QHNUZCQ RXMN H>VWLQ was not simply the decay of corpses, but the different expectation they had: they waited for the parousia when they were still alive.

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that is to say also those who are alive when the parousia comes, will not inherit the kingdom of God without any change; as the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable. In verse 51, Paul speaks of a PXV WKYULRQwhen he starts to give his final answer to the problem.45 If we see verses 50–57 as an integral part of Paul’s argumentation, and not as an appendix, then nowhere else but here do we find the answer to the problem which stands in the background of the whole chapter: Not all will die, but all will be changed. From a structural point of view this becomes quite clear: When we look at the line of Paul’s argumentation, the PXVWKYULRQof verse 51 stands at the same position as the ‘word of the Lord’ in 1 Thessalonians 4 (cf. Merklein 1992a, 418; Wolter 2005, 185). And compared to the structure of argumentation in Romans 9–11, the recourse to PXVWKYULRQhas the same function. In Romans 9–11, the final answer to the problem raised in Romans 9:1–5 is given in 11:25–27, by referring to a PXVWKYULRQ. So also here the verses introduced by PXVWKYULRQ in 1 Corinthians 15 give Paul’s definitive answer to the problem behind the whole chapter. But if this is true, then we can look back from the given answer to the underlying problem: Not all of us shall die, but we shall all be changed. The problem was about staying alive or dying before the parousia takes place. The thesis of the deniers of the resurrection – if it is the case that they anticipated the participation in salvation only for those who would be alive at the parousia – is retorted by Paul, who points out that even those who are still alive at the parousia need to be changed. All will be changed, be they alive or dead. Looking at the structural parallels in the argumentation of 1 Thessalonians 4 and Romans 9–11, confirmation can be found of what has been said about the thesis of the WLQHYa in Corinth. Furthermore, this interpretation makes a coherent understanding of the whole chapter possible. As far as the ideas regarding the final events are concerned, there are – apart from the concept of rapture – many close parallels between verses 52ff. and 1 Thessalonians 4:15–17. The most important ones are: – –

It is emphasized that the same happens to the living and the dead at the parousia; The apocalyptic events are introduced by a trumpet;

45 For the meaning of the word PXVWKYULRQand its function in Pauline theology, see besides the commentaries also Kraus (1996, 319f.) and Wolter (2005, 183).

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What will happen to the dead is mentioned before what will be with the living.46

The concept of being changed in verses 51–52 is varied in verses 53–54, where Paul speaks of being clothed. This will also be the central idea of 2 Corinthians 5. In verse 58 a citation of Isaiah 25:8LXX closes Paul’s argumentation: the defeat and annihilation of death. Paul exhorts the Corinthians to be steadfast in this belief. From all this we can summarize: a fully coherent understanding of 1 Corinthians 15 is possible when we assume that the assumption of the WL QHYawas: there is no resurrection of the dead, but only salvation for those who are alive at the parousia.

4. The Order of the Final Events According to 1 Corinthians 15 In the context of his Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus, Schweitzer (1930, 90) argues for a double resurrection in Pauline eschatology. The deniers in Corinth rejected the concept of a resurrection, because, on the basis of Jewish eschatological concepts, they only expected the reign of the Messiah. Their standpoint can be compared with the views of the eschatology of the prophets (Schweitzer 1930, 94). Schweitzer claims that Paul, on his part, tries to correct this attitude by combining Old Testament Pharisaic concepts of the Messianic reign and apocalyptic ideas of the future aeon, as done by syrBar and 4 Esr. This process leads to his concept of the double resurrection. According to Schweitzer (1930, 93) 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, and Romans 8 deal with the coming Messianic reign. Only those who died in Christ and those who are alive at the parousia participate in the Messianic reign. Those who died in Christ will become part of the Messianic reign by a ‘special resurrection’, those still alive will be changed (Schweitzer 1930, 67). Only after this Messianic reign, of whose duration Paul does not talk about, will there be a general resurrection for the final judgement and eternal life. Death will be overcome at the end of the Messianic reign when the parousia will take place.

46

For the whole list of agreements see Holtz (1986, 184f.) who, however, comes to the opposite conclusion: ‘Es legt sich daher die Vermutung nahe, daß das Herrenwort nicht in dem 1Kor 15,52 parallelen apokalyptischen Text enthalten ist, sondern in [1Thess 4] V. 15b, zu dem 1Kor keine Paralleltradition bietet’. The wording of Paul’s phrase could possibly be explained by a rejection of theses as they occur in 4 Esr 13:13b–24.

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It is not the aim of this article to re-establish Schweitzer’s thesis, but it has to be admitted that he correctly sees the Pauline texts in their context of early Jewish concepts. Schweitzer’s views force us to deal with 1 Corinthians 15 very carefully, especially verses 23–28 and 52–57; and the order of the final events described there. But these two passages stand in clear contradiction to Schweitzer’s concept. 1 Corinthians 15:23–28 forms part of Paul’s second line of argumentation. After having introduced the concept of the corporate personality, in order to emphasize that Jesus’ and the Christians’ resurrection belong together, he talks about the chronological order of the eschatological events. We find three stages in the final process: (1) Jesus and his resurrection as DMSDUFKY; (2) the resurrection of those who belong to Jesus Christ; and (3) the WHYORa. Exegetes have tried understanding WHYORa in different ways: ‘end’ or ‘rest’,47 and combining it with an understanding of WDYJPD as ‘group’. If ‘rest’ were correct, then it could be possible that Paul wanted to speak of three groups coming one after another.48 But to understand WHYORahere in the meaning of ‘rest’ is not convincing. There is – pace Bauer/Aland – no real evidence in literature supporting this translation. And WDYJPD can indeed mean ‘group’, but also ‘order’. Therefore it is preferable to understand Paul’s argumentation in the sense of an order set out by God.49 The first and second steps are not difficult to understand, but what is meant by the third? In the end, Christ will give back the EDVLOHLYDto his Father. That presupposes that he currently possesses the EDVLOHLYD. He will hand over the EDVLOHLYD to the Father when all enemies have been defeated. This is expressed in verse 25: he has to rule until the enemies are under his feet. EDVLOHXYHLQ is used in the present tense here. That is to say that Jesus is fighting down the enemies now. The last enemy to be overwhelmed is death itself. This event will coincide with the resurrection of the dead. In verses 27–28, on the one hand, we find proof from Scripture (Ps 8); on the other, it is stated that Jesus will submit himself to the Father so that God is all in all. Schrage (2007, 194f.) rightly points to the theocentric theology of Paul. With regard to the context, there is a close relation to 47 48 49

Cf. Schrage (2001, 167f.). So especially Bauer (1988, 1601.1619). Schrage (2001, 168) says: ‘Gemeint ist damit auch hier eine gottgewollte, dem unterschiedlichen Rang entsprechende zeitliche Ordnung und Reihenfolge. Für diese Deutung sprechen zudem die von Paulus geteilten apokalyptischen Denkvoraussetzungen, wonach es eine feste Ordnung der endzeitlichen Geschehnisse gibt, die von Gott vorhergeplant ist’.

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Zechariah 14:9.50 However, we need not go into further detail as to the Christological implications.51 1 Corinthians 15:50–57 forms part of the last line of Pauline argumentation. New images are provided, whereas no new chronological concept is given. In verse 51, Paul does not speak of a future Messianic reign, but of the EDVLOHLYD WRXC THRXC. Paul expects the final establishment of the EDVLOHLYD WRXC THRXC when Jesus returns his EDVLOHLYD to the Father.52 He uses traditional motifs and draws on the prophetic expectation from Isaiah 25 to explain how this will happen. On the basis of these texts, we can reconstruct Paul’s opinion of what will happen in the course of the final events, and their chronological order: The decisive change has already happened through Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus has taken over the EDVLOHLYD now. It will last until his parousia. Then he will have fought down all enemies. When the parousia takes place, there will be the resurrection of the dead, and simultaneously the final fulfilment. This will be identical with living in the presence of Jesus/God.

5. Peculiarities of the Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 in the Context of Pauline Theology This final topic can be dealt with briefly. Basically there is no difference between what Paul had said in 1 Thessalonians, and what he is going to say in 2 Corinthians (5), Romans (8) and Philippians (1:23; 3:20f.): On the one hand, the final goal for Paul is always the being with Christ in the presence of God, although the images and the words he uses vary. Inasmuch no real ‘development’ in Pauline eschatological thought can be detected, as e.g. Wiefel (1974, 37–48), Schnelle (2007a, 320–323) and others have tried to find.53 On the other hand, one has to notice a real difference between Paul’s views on the fate of Israel between 1 Thessalonians 2:14– 16 and Romans 9–11; 15:7–13 (cf. Kraus 1996, 154f.324ff.). But one has to ask whether this difference also has an impact on the centre of Paul’s expectation for the resurrection – and this seems not to be the case (cf. Schrage 2007, 152f.). The central term in 1 Thessalonians 4 is D-U 50

Zech 14:9 is of crucial importance in Jewish eschatological thought. Nowadays it is the final statement at the end of the synagogue service. 51 Cf. on this question Schrage (2002, 48). 52 That implies that the EDVLOHLYD WRXC THRXC is not fulfilled yet. The Christians do not live in the EDVLOHLYDWRXC THRXC yet, but in the reign of Christ Jesus. There are close structural parallels to the concept we find in the Gospel of Matthew, who speaks of the ‘reign of the Son of Man’. Cf. on this Roloff (1997, 275–292). 53 Against this position see e.g. Lindemann (1991, 373–399); Meyer (1986, 363–387).

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SDJKVRYPHTD, DMOODJKVRYPHTD is used in 1 Corinthians 15, and HMSHQ GXYHVTDL in 2 Corinthians 5. This latter image occurs already in 1 Corinthians 15:53f., but is elaborated on in 2 Corinthians 5. In Romans 8:11, Paul says that the dead bodies will be revived by the Spirit. Philippians 1:23 suggests that Paul wants to be with Christ immediately. In Philippians 3:21, Paul speaks of PHWDVFKPDWLY]HLQ: the body of lowliness is changed into a body of glory. But this will happen together with the parousia of the Lord (Philippians 3:20). So there is no change in the expectation of the parousia of the Lord even in Philippians. Philippians 3:20 cannot be ruled out with Philippians 1:23, because the latter instance does not allow any consequences in terms of the chronology of the final events.54 – What is specific in 1 Corinthians, compared to other Pauline elaborations? Three points should be noticed: –

The close relation between Jesus’ resurrection and the resurrection of the dead, by using the motif DMSDUFKY, and the Adam-Christ-analogy (vv. 20–22). – The discussion of the various stages of how the EDVLOHLYD WRXC THRXC will come to the final end and be completed (vv. 23–28). – The discussion of the specifics of the body of the resurrected ones (vv. 35–57). This implies that Paul is not able to think of any other kind of existence after the resurrection apart from a VZCPD. The consequences of this view for the whole world are not elaborated on by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. But Paul’s view implies a cosmic relevance to the resurrection of people.55

54 One of the presuppositions concerning the idea of a development in the eschatology of Paul is that the letter to the Philippians was written in Rome (around 58 CE), after the Corinthian correspondence and the letter to the Romans. This was also advocated in Kraus (1996, 335f.). It has to be admitted that in the meantime fundamental doubts about this chronological order of the letters have developed. Cf. recently Omerzu (2007). If Heike Omerzu is right, then Philippians was written around 54 CE, that means before Romans and probably also before 2 Corinthians. This would coincide with a striking terminological fact: only in 2 Corinthians 5:21, and then in Romans, Paul uses the term GLNDLRVXYQKQ 4HRXC . Why should he again alter the terminology in Philippians 3:9 (HMN THRXC GLNDLRVXYQKQ)? Also the polemical passage in Philippians 3 could be explained more convincingly if it was written before Romans 9–11 (cf. Müller 1993, 157.170). 55 Rightly Schrage (2007, 195–208, esp. 198 n. 107): ‘Der Gottheit Gottes entspricht eine neue Welt’, and Schrage (2007, 207f.): ‘Ein Verzicht auf diese eschatologische Hoffnung inklusive ihrer apokalyptischen Struktur wäre sachlich für den christlichen Wahrheitsanspruch wie existentiell für das christliche Selbstverständnis m.E. desaströs und durch nichts zu kompensieren. Ein hermeneutischer Transfer... wird aber trotz aller Schwierigkeiten angesichts der Dehnung des Geschichtsprozesses und der Realität einer unerlösten Welt kaum an dem Versuch vorbeikommen, an “the concrete occurence of

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These three points do not stand in contradiction to Paul’s argumentation in 1 Thessalonians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians or Romans; but are motivated by the specific questions he deals with in his argumentation against the position of the WLQHYa in Corinth. To summarise, Paul changes the words and images, but in his eyes there is always only one and the same goal for those who will be resurrected, namely being with Christ in the presence of God.56 Consulted Works Bachmann, M 2001 1Kor 15,12f: ‘resurrection of the dead (= Christians)’? ZNW 92, 295–299. Barth, G 1992 Die Frage nach der in 1. Korinther 15 bekämpften Auferstehungsleugnung. ZNW 83, 187–201. Bauer, W 1988 Griechisch-deutsches Wörterbuch. 6, Aland, K & Aland, B (eds.), Berlin. Becker, J 1989 Paulus. Tübingen. Beyer, K 1984 Die aramäischen Texte vom Toten Meer. Göttingen. Chester, A 2001 Resurrection and Transformation, in Auferstehung – Resurrection, Avemarie, F & Lichtenberger, H (eds.), Tübingen, 47–77. Conzelmann, H 1969 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Göttingen. De Boer, M 1988 The Defeat of Death. Sheffield. DeMaris, RE 1995 Corinthian Religion and the Baptism for the Dead (1Corinthians 15:29): Insights from Archaeology and Anthropology. JBL 114, 661–682. Fee, G 1987 The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids. Frankemölle, H 1998 Auferweckung Jesu – (nur) ein Zeichen apokalyptischer Endzeit?, in Von Jesus zum Christus, Fs. P Hoffmann, Hoppe R & Busse U (eds.), Berlin, 45–69. Hays, R 1997 First Corinthians. Louisville. Hofius, O 1989a Herrenmahl und Herrenmahlsparadosis, in Paulusstudien, Hofius, O (ed.), Tübingen, 203–240. – 1989b 'Bis daß er kommt' 1Kor 11,26, in Paulusstudien, Hofius, O (ed.), Tübingen, 241–243. Holleman, J 1995 Resurrection and Parousia. A Traditio-Historical Study of Paul’s Eschatology in 1 Cor. 15:20–23. Leiden. Holtz, T 1986 Der erste Brief an die Thessalonicher. Neukirchen-Vluyn. Hübner, H 1993 Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments II. Göttingen. Hull, MF 2005 Baptism on Account of the Dead. Atlanta. Janssen, C 2005 Anders ist die Schönheit der Körper. Paulus und die Auferstehung in 1Kor 15. Gütersloh. Klauck, H-J 1986 Herrenmahl und hellenistischer Kult. Münster. Kraus, W 1996 Das Volk Gottes. Tübingen. – 1997 Maranatha, in Theologisches Begriffslexikon zum Neuen Testament I, Wuppertal & Neukirchen-Vluyn, 688–689.

God’s final incursion into history” und “the coming transformation of the world” festzuhalten’. 56 For help with the translation into English I thank Christoph Aschoff, Saarbrücken.

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Kuhn, KG 1942 PDUDQDTDY. TWNT 4, 470–475. Lietzmann, H 1955 Messe und Herrenmahl. Berlin. Lindemann, A 1991 Paulus und die korinthische Eschatologie. NTS 37, 373–399. – 2000 Der Erste Korintherbrief. Tübingen. Lührmann, D 1986 Freundschaftsbrief trotz Spannungen, in Studien zum Text und zur Ethik des Neuen Testaments, Schrage W (ed.), Berlin, 289–314. Martin, D 1995 The Corinthian Body. New Haven. Mayordomo, M 2005 Argumentiert Paulus logisch? Eine Analyse vor dem Hintergrund antiker Logik. Tübingen. Merklein, H 1987 Die Einheitlichkeit des 1. Korintherbriefes, in Studien zu Jesus und Paulus, Merklein, H (ed.), Tübingen, 345–375. – 1992a, Der Theologe als Prophet. NTS 38, 402–429. – 1992b, Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 1. Gütersloh. – 2000 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 2. Gütersloh. Merklein, H & Gielen, M (from 1Cor 15:12) 2005 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 3. Gütersloh. Meyer, BF 1986 Did Paul’s View of the Resurrection of Dead Undergo Development?. TS 47, 363–387. Müller, UB 1993 Der Brief des Paulus an die Philipper. Berlin. Omerzu, H 2007 Spurensuche. Apostelgeschichte und Paulusbriefe als Zeugen einer ephesinischen Gefangenschaft des Paulus, Paper delivered at the General Meeting of the Society of New Testament Studies, Hermannstadt & Sibiu. Orr, WF, Walther, JA 1976 1 Corinthians. New York. Pokorný, P & Heckel, U 2007 Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Tübingen. Reaume, JD 1995 Another Look at 1 Corinthians 15:29 ‘Baptized for the Dead’. Bibliotheca Sacra 152, 457–475. Roloff , J 1984 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Zürich. – 1988 Der erste Brief an Timotheus. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 1997 Das Reich des Menschensohnes, in Eschatologie und Schöpfung, Evang, M, Merklein, H & Wolter, M (eds.), Berlin, 275–292. Rüger, HP 1978 Aramäisch II. NT. TRE 3, 602–610. Schmithals, W 1969 Die Gnosis in Korinth. Göttingen. Schneider, S 2005 Auferstehen. Eine neue Deutung von 1 Kor 15. Würzburg. Schnelle, U 1989 Wandlungen im paulinischen Denken. Stuttgart. – 2007a Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Göttingen. – 2007b Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Göttingen. Schniewind, J 1952 Die Leugner der Auferstehung in Korinth, in Nachgelassene Reden und Aufsätze, Kähler, E (ed.), Berlin, 110–139. Schrage, W 1991 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 1. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 1995 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 2. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 1999 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 3. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 2001 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Vol 4. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 2002 Unterwegs zur Einzigkeit und Einheit Gottes. Zum ‚Monotheismus’ des Paulus und seiner alttestamentlich-jüdischen Tradition. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 2007 Paulinische Eschatologie im 1. Korintherbrief, in Studien zur Theologie im 1. Korintherbrief, Schrage, W (ed.), Neukirchen-Vluyn, 151–208. Schweitzer, A 1930 Die Mystik des Apostels Paulus. Tübingen. Sellin, G 1986 Der Streit um die Auferstehung der Toten. Göttingen. – 1987 Hauptprobleme des Ersten Korintherbriefes. ANRW II.25.4, 2965–2968. Spörlein, B 1971 Die Leugnung der Auferstehung. Regensburg.

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Strobel, A 1989 Der erste Brief an die Korinther. Zürich. Thiselton, AT 2000 The First Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids & Carlisle. Verburg ,W 1996 Endzeit und Entschlafene. Würzburg. Von der Osten-Sacken, P 1977 Gottes Treue bis zur Parusie. Formgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu 1Kor 1,7b–9. ZNW 68, 176–199. Vos, JA 1999 Argumentation und Situation in 1Kor15. NovT 41, 313–333. Wedderburn, AJM 1981 The Problem of the Denial of the Resurrection in 1Cor 15. NovT 23, 229–241. Wiefel, W 1974 Die Hauptrichtung des Wandels im eschatologischen Denken des Paulus. ThZ 30, 65–82. Wischmeyer, O 2001 1 Korinther 15. Der Traktat des Paulus über die Auferstehung der Toten, in Was ist ein Text?, Wischmeyer, O & Becker, EM (eds.), Tübingen 2001, 171– 209. Wolff, C 1996 Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther. Berlin. Wolter, M 2005 Apokalyptik als Redeform im Neuen Testament. NTS 51, 171–191. Zeller, D 2001 Die angebliche enthusiastische oder spiritualistische Front in 1Kor 15. Studia Philonica Annual 13, 176–189. – 2007 Gibt es eine religionsgeschichtliche Parallele zur Taufe für die Toten (1Kor 15,29)? ZNW 98, 68–76.

Paul’s Apocalyptic Eschatology in 2 Corinthians Stephan Joubert 1. Language and Reality Language is not a neutral set of signs. It is imbedded in, and the verbalization of, the meaning systems of the communities and individuals who use it. People internalize specific interpretations of reality through language. More to the point, particular meanings are attached to objects, events and experiences, which, in turn, are conveyed through verbal signs to individuals by significant others who are involved in their socialization. From this perspective language functions as the ‘storehouse’ for a group or community’s acquired knowledge. In order to come to terms with objective realities, individuals constantly subscribe meaning to the objects and experiences they encounter. At the same time, as part of the process of ordering these perceived realities, various social systems, institutions and relations are formed and utilized to actualize the meanings which are associated with ‘value objects’ such as God, nature, space and people. Within these social frameworks, as the general boundaries which delineate and define these ‘value objects’, the meanings that become attached to perceived realities are institutionalized and accepted as part and parcel of a community’s world view, language and social stock of knowledge. Put differently, the basic values that serve as the interpretative framework for communities’ perceptions of reality are imbedded in their language structures, as well as in the social systems that define their ideologies.

2. The ‘Apocalyptic’ Language of Paul Within the early Christian movement(s) the basic knowledge which helped them to shape their new identities and develop a corresponding pattern of behaviour, was the macro-narrative of Jesus and God’s involvement in the world through him. At the same time, the various social locations of these communities impacted on this formative story and also helped to assimilate their own knowledge and experience of the ‘Christ-event’ to the diverse exigencies of their own contexts. The apostle Paul, in particular, under-

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stood reality from the assumption that a new era had dawned with the Christ-event (cf. 2 Cor 5:17). The central building block of his symbolic universe and the basic content of his new verbal repertoire is that Jesus is the Messiah, the eschatological agent of God’s salvation and judgment. The symbolic framework within which Paul’s understanding of the Christ-event took shape is the apocalyptic world of early Judaism(s). I still concur with the remark of Conzelmann (cf. Schade 1981, 15–16): ‘dass sein eschatologisches Weltbild das der jüdischen Apokalyptik ist; aus dieser stammt auch bei ihm die Begrifflichkeit’. From this ideological perspective Paul relates his own situation and that of his churches to different aspects of God’s involvement in history. The term ‘apocalyptic’ remains somewhat of a semantic minefield in New Testament research. Ever since Käsemann’s provocative remark (cf. Käsemann 1964, 105–31.181–93) that apocalyptic is the mother of all Christian theology, this debate still rages on. Paul’s theology, in particular, has been interpreted from various ‘apocalyptic’ angles of incidence. Some scholars view apocalyptic as a hermeneutical key to come to terms with the function of the cross in Paul’s thought (Martyn 1985); while, for others, apocalyptic serves as the master symbolism of the apostle’s thought. From this perspective apocalyptic is not used by Paul as a literary genre, or as a literary Vorlagen. The imminent triumph of God at the parousia is seen as the main focus which brings coherence to Paul’s apocalyptic theology (Beker 1980; 1991). As indicated above, it is my contention that Paul’s own symbolic universe was influenced by an apocalyptic substratum. More to the point, Jewish apocalyptic ideas permeated his thought world and language, although these motifs were reinterpreted by the apostle’s new understanding of the Christ event (cf. Joubert 2005). In this regard ‘Paul understood himself as a Jew, sent by the God of Israel to the world of Gentile “outsiders” for the purpose of declaring to them the message of eschatological salvation promised in Israel’s Scriptures – pre-eminently Isaiah – to the whole world’ (Hays 2005, 4). From this theoretical angle 2 Corinthians is approached in this essay. But firstly, some introductory remarks regarding the literary unity of the letter need to be made.

3. Literary Integrity of 2 Corinthians Before engaging in Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology in 2 Corinthians, problems related to the literary integrity of this letter, as well as the Teilungshypothesen proposed by some researchers, must be addressed briefly (cf. the overviews in Matera 2003, 24ff.; Harris 2005, 5ff.). In a nutshell, I am

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still convinced, with Furnish (1984, 35ff.), that the present 2 Corinthians is a composite of two originally distinct letters: Chapters 1–9, and Chapters 10–13 (cf., however, Lang 2004, 1–17). Furnish (1984, 36) correctly notes that, although there exists no manuscript nor patristic support for partitioning 2 Corinthians into two different letters, this fact at the most implies that 2 Corinthians never circulated ‘… except in its canonical form, and that any redactional combination of originally separate letters must have taken place before the circulation of any one of them’. The discrepancies in terms of content between these two sections warrant viewing them as two separate letters. The well-known psychological explanation of Kümmel (1969, 10): ‘… mir genügt z.B. die Annahme einer schlaflos durchwachten Nacht zwischen c. 9 und c. 10 zur Erklärung’, does not solve the obvious discrepancies in terms of content and style between these sections. As to the order in which these letters were written, I share the view of Klauck (1986, 9) that ‘… der Tränenbrief ist im wesentlichen in Kap. 10– 13 aufbewahrt. Der Versöhnungsbrief umfaßt Kap. 1–9, enthält also auch die Apologie und beide Kollektenkapitel’. Hausrath (1870) first popularized this idea that 2 Corinthians 10–13 constitutes a separate letter, which was written before 2 Corinthians 1–9. Probably 2 Corinthians 10–13, as part of the so-called ‘Letter of Tears’, was written from Ephesus around 55 CE; whilst 2 Corinthians 1–9, as part of the so-called ‘Letter of Reconciliation’, was written some time later from Macedonia (around c. 56 CE). The focus in this essay will be on the material that deals with eschatology throughout the present 2 Corinthians as we have it at our disposal today, but particularly on passages in 2 Corinthians 3–5. The reverse sequence of material in the present 2 Corinthians does not make a substantial difference to the approach to Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology that will be followed in this essay.

4. The Basic Building Blocks of Paul’s Apocalyptic Symbolic Universe as Reflected in 2 Corinthians Paul’s apocalyptic understanding of reality is reflected, amongst others, in the following aspects of his thought throughout the present 2 Corinthians: (1) God is in total control over the heavenly realm and the earthly sphere. The suffering of the righteous at the hands of the wicked, including Paul’s own trials and tribulations for the sake of the gospel (2 Cor 1) does not in any way diminish, or bring into question God’s absolute control over all facets of reality. To the contrary, in a paradoxical way his divine power is actually revealed in the weakness of Jesus on the cross (13:4), but also now in the ministry of his apostle (12:1–10). Therefore, suffering

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serves a divine purpose, it is part of a big cosmic drama. In an ironic way present hardships, such as that of Paul, point to the presence of God’s power amongst believers. On the last day when God will visibly triumph over all powers of evil, and when his universal rule will be finally established, all the pieces of this divine plan will fall into place. On that day the scales will finally be overturned. God will then bring a final end to the suffering of the faithful. (2) The final stage of history has dawned on earth. The ‘Messianic era’ commenced when Jesus Christ brought salvation to his people. Hence, Paul’s programmatic statement in 2 Corinthians 5:17 that the old aeon has passed away, the new has come! As an apocalyptic visionary (cf. Heininger 1996), Paul is now in the privileged position to decipher ‘history’. He has an ‘insider’s insight’ into the great cosmic drama that is presently being played out on the stage of history, and also in the midst of the believers’ lives in Corinth! (3) The present world is rapidly passing away, soon to be replaced by a new cosmic order (4:16–5:10). History is swiftly moving towards that fateful day when evil will be finally destroyed and the righteous vindicated. This will happen on the Day of the Lord when all people will appear before the judgment seat of Christ (5:10). The world as people know and experience it will then be transcended. From this triumphant perspective on the imminent parousia, Paul knows that the present with all its problems and crises work for the future glory of the Lord (6:1–13). (4) Israel’s history serves as the pre-figuration of the new ‘time’ of the Spirit and Christ (3:1–18). However, the ‘time’ of Christ, which inaugurated God’s eschatological time of salvation, also overlaps with that of the false teachers in the midst of the Corinthians (2 Cor 10–13), as well as with the works of the Evil One. However, the god of this world, who has blinded the minds of unbelievers (4:4), as well as those evil powers who masquerade as God’s angels (11:14), are no real threat to his power. The works of the enemy in the spiritual realm will not derail the inauguration of God’s ultimate era of salvation. History has continued to run its predetermined course, in spite of various forms of evil and catastrophes, and will continue to do so until the final return of Christ.

5. The Hermeneutical Movement of Time in 2 Corinthians Paul’s apocalyptic understanding of God’s involvement in the world provides the interpretative framework to provide verbal expression to, but also to reframe the Corinthians’ understanding of, the Christ-event and the last things. Since they all share the notion that there is continuity in God’s in-

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volvement throughout history in terms of salvation and judgment, Paul makes a number of explicit links between the present and the past in order that his readers may ‘see’ how God has acted throughout history (cf. 2 Cor 3:1–18). In this regard Christ’s death and resurrection signify the ultimate turning point in history. It is the watershed, the rubicon, between the old era and the new. Put differently, Paul now understands the past and present in view of the present future of God. This epoch making event changed the texture of time per se. However, from the perspective of God’s final revelation of his grace and judgment at the parousia, Paul now re-frames and re-contextualizes both the present and the past. Since the Christ event opened up a whole new understanding of time, Paul, on the basis of this new knowledge, is at liberty to simultaneously understand reality also from the other side of the time-pendulum; that is, from the imminent future of God’s return. The hermeneutical movement in 2 Corinthians is therefore backwards from the future to the present to the past, but concurrently also forward again from the past to the present to the future. Put differently, Paul presents the Corinthians with a new view of a present future based on a present past! Since all believers’ histories have been decisively altered by the Christ event, and since the outcome of the Day of the Lord is already known by Paul and his readers, the here and the now is the main stage where the drama of faith is being played out every day. The present is the eschatological battleground where the believers’ new knowledge regarding the past and the future must be implemented and actualized time and again. In Paul’s own words in 2 Corinthians 6:2, quoting from Isaiah 49:8: LMGRXQX Q NDLURHXMSURYVGHNWRLMGRX QX QK-PHYUDVZWKULYDEschatology always overflows into ethics! This new understanding of time leads to new behaviour. Because the ultimate divine mysteries in the future and the past have already been unravelled, the problems of the present must be addressed through the right way of life in the presence of God. In this regard, the imminent return of Christ, based on his death on the cross and his resurrection in the not too distant past, holds the hermeneutical key to addressing present questions and problems in the midst of the Corinthian community.

6. Radical Eschatology … From the Right Perspective Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology puts Christ on the centre stage of history. The shadow of Christ falls over the past, present and future. Time is no longer an abstract concept, or a set of events that fatalistically run along the predetermined lines of cause and effect. Yes, there is causality in history, but it is to be found in the Christ-event. The death and resurrection of

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Christ set in motion a completely new movement of time. Christ forms the arms of the divine timepiece. Actually, he is heaven’s time-clock per se. He determines the nature of time, since he embodies the true content of time, as well as the ultimate destiny towards which time, as people know and experience it, is rapidly moving. He alone determines when the present era will be replaced by the eternal era of God. Paul’s eschatological views are probably not as revolutionary or provocative today as when they were conceptualized in the early fifties of the first century CE. As a matter of fact, modern philosophers, such as Heidegger, have developed thoroughly ‘secular’ approaches to the concept of time in reaction to eschatological approaches that have eventually become synonymous with ‘thé Christian view of the last things’. Heidegger’s (1979, 325) understanding of time in terms of ‘der Datierbarkeit, der Gespanntheit und der ėffentlichkeit der Zeit’, is well-known; even more so his views of the future, ‘die Zukunf, … als der “Kunft“ in der das Dasein in seinem eigensten Seinkönnen auf sich zukommt’. At the same time Heidegger (1989, 23) explains the present, ‘Gegenwartszei’, as: ‘Ablaubsfolge, die standig durch das Jetzt rollt; ein Nacheinander, von dem gesagt wird: der Richtungssinn ist ein einziger und nicht umkehrbar. Alles Geschehende rollt aus endloser Zukunft in die unwiederbringliche Vergangenheit’. Rorty (1991, 34) therefore has the opinion that ‘Heidegger would like to recapture a sense of what time was like before it fell under the spell of eternity, what we were before we became obsessed by the need for an overarching context which would subsume and explain us…’. Intellectual reactions such as these to eschatological understandings of time, is part and parcel of a modern debate in the light (shadow?) of two thousand years of ‘Christendom’ (cf. Murray 2004). However, Paul himself did not have the luxury to reflect on such issues from the vantage point of a highly developed philosophical system. Nor did he take refuge in the ivory towers of a sterile theological institution when he conceptualized his eschatology. To the contrary, Paul was a foot soldier of the risen Christ. He was a religious provocateur, a prophetic figure and a charismatic (Ashton 2000, 179–213). He was also a student of the different contexts across the Roman Empire in which he constantly found himself and where he organized the various Christian communities that took shape as a result of his preaching. Therefore, it would be wise to steer away from anachronistic and ethnocentric readings of Paul’s eschatology. Within the sociocultural parameters of the First Century Mediterranean world (cf. Malina & Pilch 2006), Paul endeavours to make sense of the death and resurrection of Christ and the consequences thereof in terms of his own understanding of time.

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7. The Present Past 7.1. 2 Corinthians 3:7–18: All that Glitters is not Gold An integral part of the ‘social stock of knowledge’ of early Christianity is their belief that the religious texts of Israel serve as authoritative expressions of the divine will and his various actions in history – it need only be discovered and applied properly. On the basis of Paul’s eschatological understanding of this continuity in God’s actions from the days of Israel’s past up to the present, in 2 Corinthians 3:7–18, he correlates the believers’ present situation to a relevant narrative from the Torah.1 More to the point, Paul focuses on Exodus 34:27–35, the well-known story that deals with Moses’ second visit to Mt Sinai after the incident of the Golden Calf. After receiving the ‘Ten Words’ again, Moses descends down the mountain with his face aglow after his interaction with JHWH. However, in order to interact with the Israelites he now has to put a veil over his head to cover up the temporary GRY[D radiating from his face. In verses 7–11 Paul contrasts his own ministry with that of Moses by using the concept ‘glory’ (GRY[D). He also finds a striking contrast between the Israelites of old and the followers of Christ (vv. 12–18), which is expressed in the veil of unbelief (NDYOXPPD  removed only through Christ. This contrast does not indicate ideological dissimilarity, but rather a Steigerung in terms of the old covenant of Moses and the Israelites on the one hand; to the new covenant of Paul and the followers of Christ as the eschatologically restored Israel on the other. Put differently, in view of the new era of the Spirit inaugurated by Christ, the old era, in spite of its splendour, is temporary, but it is also insufficient to facilitate lasting salvation. The new has usurped and superseded the old.2 The structure of verses 7–18 (cf. the a minori ad maius, or qal ZDK̙omer argumentation in verses 7–8, 9, 11), as well as the numerous explicit antitheses: ‘death/stone/letter/condemnation/vanishing and life/heart/Spirit/ righteousness/enduring’ (Lambrecht 1999, 57), underscore the inherent shortcomings of the old covenant. The GLDNRQLYD of Moses faded away and eventually led to condemnation, because of the absence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, as the GLDNRYQR NDLQK GLDTKYNK (v. 6), actively partaking in 1 In this section, which forms part of Paul’s so-called Apologia (2 Cor 2:14–7:4), he most probably defends his apostolic ministry against other missionaries and intruders (cf. the apologetic and polemic undertones in 2:14–3:6, and also in 4:1–6). 2 In the words of Wright (2004, 33): ‘Paul’s point, then, is that even this glorious revelation of God is nothing compared with the glory which is revealed in the gospel, the message about Jesus, through which God’s spirit is powerfully at work to bring life and vindication in place of death and condemnation’.

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the GLDNRQLYDÈ WRX  SQHXYPDWR (v. 8), Paul knows that Israel’s glorious past did not deliver enduring GRY[D (vv. 7–11), nor did it remove the NDY OXPPDof disbelief from their hearts and minds (vv. 12–18). Over against the failure of the splendid ministry of Moses to open up the veiled minds of the sons of Israel, Paul’s eschatological hope (v. 12) now overflows in SDUUKVLYD (‘boldness’). This boldness is based upon the knowledge of the permanence (WR PHYQRQ – v. 11) of the glory of Christ. The new era of salvation surpasses the old in every aspect, but also because it is everlasting. However, this new glory is also a current eschatological process. According to Stegman (2005, 239), Paul in verse 18 refers to ‘…a present, ongoing transformation of human existence, a transformation that reflects more and more the prototype of humanity embodied by Jesus, the HLMNZQWRX  THRX ’. While believers behold the glory of the Lord with unveiled faces, they are being changed DMSRGRY[KHLMGRY[DQ (v. 18). The focus of this transformation is to share the likeness of Christ (WKQ DXWKQHLMNRYQD). This progressive attainment of God’s glory is already attainable in this life, as the existential realization of the coming era (Thrall 1994, 286). It is a growth in eschatological freedom to obey the will of God (Hafemann 2000, 161). For Paul the most glorious ministry in Israel, that of Moses (including the most glorious moment of his life when he received the Ten Commandments), is insufficient to facilitate enduring new life in the sight of God. At best, this narrative about Israel’s most famous son at the pinnacle of his earthly glory reveals the need for God’s revelation in Christ. The story in Exodus 34 only enhances the insufficiency of Israel’s previous routes to secure permanent salvation. However, as a servant of the new covenant who reinterprets Israel’s Scriptures from an apocalyptic perspective, Paul finds hope in God’s new revelation to Israel in the Christ event, which inaugurated the new eschatological era of permanent salvation. But the apostle is not promulgating a Heilsgeschichte here ‘into which Gentiles were simply absorbed into a Torah-observant Jewish Christianity. Rather the “Israel” into which Paul’s Corinthian converts were embraced was an Israel whose story had been hermeneutically reconfigured by the cross and the resurrection’ (Hays 2005, 5). 7.2. 2 Corinthians 4:1–6: From a Bad Exodus to a New Genesis According to Paul, the contours of Israel’s history up to the Christ event are inadequate to secure righteousness in the sight of God. To slavishly follow the religious routes mapped out in the Torah or other authoritative religious documents from Israel’s past, would be to hermeneutically reenact a deficient history. In 2 Corinthians 4:1–6 Paul then explains God’s new eschatological route for Israel, and non-Jewish believers, in autobio-

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graphical terms. Although ‘we’ language is used here in verses 1–2 and 5– 6, the apostle is clearly alluding to his own conversion experience also, as is indicated by the reference to the physical face of Christ in verse 5. After briefly referring to the apostolic way of life in verses 1–4, Paul in verse 5 states that Jesus Christ as Lord is the only content of his preaching. He freely borrows terminology from the creation account in Genesis 1 to give verbal expression to his own participation in God’s new route of salvation. Paul states that the Creator God who, in the beginning, created heaven and earth, initiated a new Genesis in his own life when he saw the face of the resurrected Christ (HMQSURVZYSZÈ ¨,KVRX  FULVWRX  – 4:6). There and then death was irrevocably replaced by life, darkness by light, and a bad Exodus by a second Genesis. A new history, carved out by the revelation of Christ, instantly created the contours of a new worldview and a totally new concept of time. However, ‘whereas God’s outward revelation of his glory to Paul was unique, his inner enlightenment of the heart also describes the illumination of all who receive the gospel message’ (Barnett 1997, 24). For Paul the Christ event inaugurated a new eschatological era of the Spirit and a new covenant (3:6), but also a new Genesis (4:5–6). Anyone who believes this message of salvation is now ‘in Christ’. S/he is a new creation (NDLQK NWLYVL – 5:17).3 Since Christ died on behalf of sinners, and since God vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, people who believe this eschatological message are not part of the old era of VDYU[any longer (cf. Brondos 2006, 103ff.) 7hey are one with Christ, who is also the new Adam (5:14–15; cf. Matera 2003, 137). Believers share in his new era of grace, reconciliation and righteousness, since faith is nothing less than the active participation in the life of Christ, both in his earthly fate and in his exalted heavenly position. God’s eternal salvation in Christ is now a present reality. Although the final judgment still awaits all in the near future (5:10), Paul knows that believers need not fear this day of eschatological reckoning any longer, since they partake in God’s justification in Christ. Because sinners are jus-

3

Wolff (1989, 127) is right when he states: ‘NDLQK NWLYVL ist eine in der jüdischen Apokalyptik und bei den Rabbinen (hier vor allem in Zusammenhang von Vergebung und Bekehrung) begegnende Vorstellung und Wendung’. Here, as part of the most famous pericope in his letters on reconciliation (2 Cor 5:16–21), Paul stresses that God took the initiative to effect reconciliation between him and the world through the death of Christ on the cross. Christ participated in the most severe form of alienation from God by becoming a curse on behalf of sinners, thus experiencing the power of sin in its entirety (v. 20). Because of God’s judgment of sin in this manner, believers know that no condemnation awaits them in future. Christ permanently reconciled them to God. He paid the ransom in full.

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tified through the sacrificial death of Jesus, they will be saved by him from God’s wrath on the Day of Judgment. Over against the glorious, but insufficient religious ‘present past’ of Israel (3:7–18), the Christ event, as God’s ultimate eschatological intervention in history, is thé historical event that must be actualized in the lives of the Corinthians. According to Paul: ‘…the same God that “has shone in our hearts for the enlightenment of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (4:6), now, through the Spirit “…endows its recipients with the gift of the QRX  FULVWRX  (cf. 1 Cor 2:16)”...’ (Stegman 2005, 243). In turn, this gift of the mind of Christ inside believers empowers them to also embody his ethos. The cross and resurrection of Christ is the divine prism that concentrates God’s grace and projects it across all time – past, present and future. Whenever and wherever the Christ event is internalized by faith, the narrative of Jesus’ suffering becomes the new eschatological presence that offers life and a completely new future. At the same time, it also eradicates all deficient collective and personal histories! 7.3. 2 Corinthians 4:7–15: Paul’s Apostolic Ministry as a Paradigm of Jesus’ Presence Both in the Present and Future According to 4:7 Paul’s new identity, and that of believers, is based on God’s treasure (TKVDXURY), his eschatological gifts mentioned in 4:6. Although the apostle’s ministry involves such lofty tasks as the imparting of the fragrance of new life in Christ (2:16), he is still a fragile human jar of clay (4:7). The glory of this new era belongs to God alone, not to his apostle or to anybody else. Thus life and death, glory and suffering, power and weakness, all stand in juxtaposition in verses 7–15 to emphasize that God alone is the source of all salvation and power. His apostle is merely the vulnerable carrier of this eschatological treasure. In spite of the presence of God’s life-transforming power, Paul’s apostolic ministry is filled with suffering for the sake of Christ (1:5–6; 6:4–10; 11:23–29; 12:10). He is subject to afflictions of various sorts (vv. 8–9). But, antithetically, in this new eschatological era, God’s glory does not reside on the face of Moses any longer. It is now seen in Paul’s suffering on behalf of Christ. Paul clearly understands his own suffering as a continuation of that of Jesus. Hence he remarks in verse 10 that the death of Jesus is carried around in his own fragility. ‘God’s apostolic “slave” models himself upon God’s ultimate slave, Christ Jesus himself’ (Barnett 1997, 228). More specifically: Paul’s own ministry is the re-enactment and the authentic representation of the story of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection here and now. While Paul’s own present hardships align with the suffering of Jesus, his resurrection from the dead in the future aligns with the resurrection of

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Jesus. Since Jesus’ faithfulness throughout his earthly suffering is the paradigm for Paul’s apostolic ministry, he can now boldly express his eschatological hope that: ‘he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence’ (4:14). But the apostle’s hope is not only for himself to participate in the resurrection of Jesus. His aim is to present all believers in the eschatological presence of the risen Lord. This is the main purpose of his selfless service on their behalf. Therefore, Paul knows that the death of Jesus is constantly at work in himself so that new life might be revealed in others (v. 12). The essence of this new life is to be found in ‘…incarnating Jesus’ self-emptying mode of existence, a manner of life that brings life to others’ (Stegman 2005, 252).4 Put differently, God’s response to Jesus’ sacrifice must not only be duplicated in the life of Paul, but also in the lives of all the faithful.5 The Christ event from the past impacts forward into the present in terms of Jesus’ exemplary suffering, and backwards again from the future in terms of Christ’s eternal rule and the future resurrection of believers. Paul’s apostolic ministry is part and parcel of this new eschatological era, albeit in a paradoxical way by revealing the nature of Christ’s presence in his own weakness and suffering (12:1–8). The present reveals God’s salvation, glory and grace, but this glory now resides inside fragile clay jars. On the other hand, the present is filled with abundant eschatological hope because Paul and the Corinthians already know the victorious outcome of their own journey towards eternity, based on their new knowledge of the narrative of Jesus. His suffering and death led to his resurrection. In similar manner, the suffering of Paul and the faithful will lead to their eschatological vindication, as so vividly expressed in 4:16–5:10. 7.4. 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10: A Compelling Vision of a Glorious New Future In view of Paul’s eschatological vision, he does not give up hope when his mortal flesh, his body, is gradually wasting away (4:16). His inner man, his true inner self, is being regenerated day by day. However, ‘…the inner self is not the inner side as such, only human. No, it is the inner self of a regenerate human being, a Christian, rescued by God, redeemed by Jesus 4

This is also the reason for Paul’s boldness to speak out in obedience (as expressed in the quotation in 4:13 from the PsLXX 115:1). 5 According to Dunn (1998, 487): ‘The resurrection power of Christ manifests itself, and inseparably so, as also sharing in Christ’s sufferings. The process of salvation is a process of growing conformity to Christ’s death. Only when that is completed (in death) can the final resurrection from the dead be attained (the resurrection of the body). Only when believers are fully one with Christ in his death will it be possible for them to be fully one with Christ in his resurrection’.

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Christ, living in the Spirit’ (Lambrecht 2003, 263). Therefore the apostle’s hope is projected forward in view of his own unshakeable faith in the forthcoming glory of God that is without measure (4:17). Paul knows affliction is transient. Glory, on the other hand, is everlasting, outweighing by far every possible form of suffering. This contrast between present and future realities is highlighted even more in 5:1–10 where Paul refers to the receipt of the resurrection body at the parousia (this section does not refer to the intermediate state between death and resurrection – cf. also Woodbridge 2003, 241–258; Matera 2003, 116–126; Harris 2005, 338ff.; as well as Lindgard 2005).6 Various metaphors are used here to depict the present and future body of the believers – all related to buildings structures, both temporal and permanent. A number of contrasts between the present bodily existence and the future existence of believers after the parousia are very prominent in verses 1–5 in particular (cf. Malina & Pilch 2006, 144f.): 5:1: The present earthly ‘house’ of believers as a temporary tent versus the forthcoming heavenly dwelling as an indestructible, eternal house in heaven. 5:2: The present earthly tent as suffering and mortality versus the forthcoming heavenly dwelling that clothes believers with everlasting life. 5:3: The present life as nakedness versus clothing with future life at the parousia . 5:4: The present life as groaning and longing versus future life as swallowing up believers’ mortal existence. 5:5: The Spirit as first instalment (DMUUDEZ Q) to prepare believers for the transition to this new life. He is God’s pledge that believers will receive their resurrection bodies.

After the contrast between the present and the future eschatological ages in 4:16–5:5, Paul in verse 6–8 addresses the premortem life of believers by emphasizing that, by still being in their mortal bodies, believers are away from the Lord. However, here in verse 6ff there is a clear shift from attitude (‘being of courage’) to reflection (‘knowing’), as Lambrecht (1999, 85) correctly notes. To be in the premortem body (5:6) is to not fully participate in the eschatological fullness of God. Or, as verse 7 puts it, faith is to not yet see God’s presence. ‘Therefore, Paul now says, he would rather go away from the body; that is, die before the parousia, and go home with 6

Apparently we do not have a development of Paul’s thought between 1 Cor 15:51– 52 and 2 Cor 5:1–5 in terms of the apostle’s visualization of an intermediate state between death and parousia. Rather, all we need to note is the possibility that Paul envisaged an intermediate state (‘naked’, ‘unclothed’ – 5:3–4) in which the groaning caused by the already-not yet tension (Rom 8:23) might continue beyond death and up to the parousia (2 Cor 5:2, 4).

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the Lord immediately (v. 8). Fear of death seems to have disappeared. What remains, however, is his profound aspiration to please the Lord since he realizes that he will be ‘manifested’ before the tribunal of Christ and judged according to what he has done through his earthly body (vv. 9–10)’ (Lambrecht 2003, 65).

8. Conclusion Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology in 2 Corinthians is based on his knowledge pertaining to the not yet realized, but already known future events. In view of what is known about the divine cosmic drama that will take place imminently at the parousia, the present with all its challenges and tribulations takes on a completely new meaning. At the same time, the narrative of Jesus’ earthly suffering and his victory over death provides the interpretative paradigm for Paul to reinterpret Israel’s religious history, which is reflected in their authoritative documents. This new meta-narrative also helps the apostle to come to terms with his own past, as well as that of believers. Paul is thus simultaneously walking backward from the future into the present and the past, and forward again from the past into the present and the future. The present is eschatological time; it is the existential convergence point of God’s intervention through the Christ event in the (not too distant) past, and his future rule in the risen Christ. However, the present eschatological era is antithetical and ambiguous, as seen in the apostolic ministry of Paul that is fraught with constant suffering. Thus new life is already here, but it is not yet fully revealed. Salvation is a present reality, yet all must still appear before the tribunal of Christ. But the scales have been decisively turned. The overweight is now on the side of God’s eternal glory! Perhaps 2 Corinthians 4:18, the apostle’s programmatic statement regarding his own eschatological hope, summarizes it best: PKVNRSRXYQWZQK-P Z QWDEOHSRYP HQDDMOODWDPKEOHSRYPHQDWDJDUEOHSRYPHQD SURYVNDLUDWDGHPKEOHSRYPHQDDLMZYQLD

Works Consulted Ashton, J 2000 The religion of Paul the apostle. New Haven. Barnett, P 1997 The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids. Beker, JC 1980 Paul the Apostle. The triumph of God in life and thought. Philadelphia. – 1991 Recasting Pauline theology: The coherence-contingency scheme as interpretative model, in Pauline Theology. Volume 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, Bassler, JM (ed.), Minneapolis, 15–24.

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Brondos, DA 2006 Paul on the Cross: Reconstructing the Apostle's Story of Redemption. Minneapolis. Dunn, JDG 1998 The theology of Paul the apostle. Grand Rapids. Furnish, VP 1984 2 Corinthians. London. Hafemann, SJ 2000 2 Corinthians. Grand Rapids. Harris, MJ 2005 Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Grand Rapids. Hays, RB 2005 The conversion of the imagination: Paul as interpreter of Israel's Scripture. Grand Rapids. Heidegger, M 1979 Sein und Zeit. Tübingen. – 1989 Der Begriff der Zeit. Vortrag vor der Marburger Theologenschaft. Tietjen, H (ed.), Tübingen. Heininger, B 1996 Paulus als Visionär. Eine Religionsgeschichtliche Studie. Freiburg. Joubert, SJ 2005 &$5,6 in Paul. An investigation into the apostle’s ‘performative’ application of the language of grace within the framework of his theological reflection on the event/process of salvation, in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on soteriology, Van der Watt, JG (ed.), Leiden, 187–212. Käsemann, E 1964 Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen. Bd. 2. Gottingen. Klauck, H-J 1986 2 Korintherbrief. Würzburg. Lambrecht, SJ 1999 Second Corinthians. Collegeville. – 2003 Brief anthropological reflections on 2 Corinthians 4:6–5:10, in Paul and the Corinthians. Studies on communities in conflict, Burke, TJ & Elliott, JK (eds.), Leiden, 259–266. Lietzmann, H 1969 An die Korinther I, II, with supplements by W. G. Kümmel. Tübingen. Lingard, F 2005 Paul's line of thought in 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10. Tübingen. Long, FJ 2004 Ancient rhetoric and Paul’s apology: The compositional unity of 2 Corinthians. Cambridge. Malina, BJ & Pilch, JJ 2006 Social-Science Commentary on the Letters of Paul. Minneapolis. Martyn, JL 1985 Apocalyptic antinomies in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. NTS 31, 410– 424. Matera, FJ 2003 II Corinthians. Louisville. Murray, S 2004 Post-Christendom. Waynesboro. Rorty, R 1991 Essays on Heidegger and others. Cambridge. Schade, H 1981 Apokalyptische Christologie bei Paulus. Göttingen. Stegman, T 2005 The character of Jesus. The linchpin to Paul’s argument in 2 Corinthians. Rome. Thrall, ME 1994 A critical and exegetical commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. Vol. 1. Edinburgh. Wolff, C 1989 Der zweite Brief des Paulus an die Korinther. Berlin. Woodbridge, P 2003 Time of receipt of the resurrection body – a Pauline inconsistency?, in Paul and the Corinthians. Studies on communities in conflict, Burke, TJ & Elliott, JK (eds.), Leiden, 241–258. Wright, NT 2004 Paul for everyone. 2 Corinthians (for everyone). London.

Living in Hope ‘in the Fullness of Time’ The Eschatology of Galatians

Francois Tolmie 1. Introduction When one wishes to investigate the representation of time in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, there seems to be no better place to begin than Galatians 4:4. Not only is this one of only a few instances in which Paul specifically refers to time in his letter; but the particular expression, the ‘fullness of time’, that he uses here – and only here, in all of his letters – is also one of the most striking descriptions used by him in this regard: R^WH GH K?OTHQ WR SOKYUZPD WRXC FURYQRX HM[DSHYVWHLOHQ R- THR WRQ XL-RQ DXMWRXCThe notion that time could ‘become full’ was a notion not unknown in Judaism;1 but the belief that the ‘fullness of time’ was irrevocably linked to Jesus Christ was not shared by many others in Paul’s generation. However, this is precisely what he claims has happened in Christ. The expression the ‘fullness of time’ serves as a focal point in Galatians 4:1–7. In this pericope, Paul emphasises several fundamental notions about the Christ-event. The most important of these are: (1) it was God himself who had taken the initiative and who had set a specific time in history to ‘send’ Christ to the world; (2) the basic nature of the ‘fullness of time’, set by God, is that of spiritual liberation; (3) and – for our purposes perhaps most important of all – Christ’s coming to the world should be viewed as an eschatological event (Delling 1959, 303–304) – even as an apocalyptic event, i.e. if we use the word ‘apocalyptic’ in the sense in which Christiaan Beker does.2 Paul thus viewed Christ’s coming as the decisive turning point in history; and this, accordingly, gave rise not only to a new perception of God and of Christ, but also of time itself. This is excellently expressed by Louis Martyn (1997, 104): 1

Cf. the detailed analysis of Stuhlmann (1983) in this regard. Mussner (1977, 268– 269) also provides several examples. 2 Beker (1990, 19–20) does not claim that Paul made use of Jewish apocalyptic as a genre or that he drew on Jewish apocalyptic sources, but rather that important Jewish apocalyptic motifs can be identified in Paul’s thought; namely the faithfulness and vindication of God, universalism, dualism and imminence.

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If God’s apocalyptic invasion of the cosmos in Christ creates a radically new perception of God himself, of God’s Christ as the crucified criminal, of Christ’s crucifixion as an incorporative event, of Sin, of the Law, and so on, it also creates a radically new perception of time ... What time is it? It is the time after the apocalypse of the faith of Christ.

Indeed, time is now divided into ‘before Christ’ and ‘anno Domini’! Or, to use Paul’s expression: ‘BFT’ and ‘IFT’ – ‘before the fullness of time’, and ‘in the fullness of time’. Let us now consider the Letter to the Galatians from these two perspectives.

2. Life ‘Before the Fullness of Time’ Paul’s view of the situation ‘before the fullness of time’ is characterised by two emphases: Firstly, it is portrayed as a situation of submission or bondage. To convey this notion, Paul uses the word X-SRY several times in Galatians 3 and 4. In the immediate context in which he uses the expression ‘fullness of time’, X-SRY occurs three times: ‘under’ guardians and trustees (4:2: X-SR HMSLWURYSRX NDL RLMNRQRYPRX); ‘under’ the elements of the world (4:3: X-SR WD VWRLFHLCD WRX NRYVPRX) and ‘under’ the law (4:5: X-SR QRYPRQ  In the first instance, the word is used within the description of a situation well-known to the audience: an heir who is still a minor and whose heritage thus has to be managed by HMSLWURYSRL and RLMNRQRYPRL. Being ‘under’ them, according to Paul, entails being in a position similar to that of a slave. This analogy is then applied to the situation that prevailed ‘before the fullness of time’. It was a time of being ‘under’ the elements of the world (WD VWRLFHLCD WRX NRYVPRX  Paul uses the concept VWRLFHLCD WRX NRYVPRX in a figurative sense to denote elementary and restrictive religious practices ‘under’ which humanity found itself before the coming of Christ.3 The metaphor that he chooses is broad enough to cover both Judaism and other forms of religion (Hartman 1993, 146). Here he is alluding particularly to the situation of the Jewish people, since he refers to those who were redeemed as people ‘under’ the law (4:5) – a situation from which they had to be redeemed by God. The implication that their situation was no different, in principle, to that of the Gentiles, can be inferred from the next section. Here Paul refers to the envisaged action of the Galatians, who earlier had been ‘in bondage to beings that were by nature no gods at all’, and who were now considering moving into a situation of bondage to the Jewish law as a ‘return’ (HMSLVWUHYIZ to the elements of the world. 3 The word VWRLFHLCD was normally used in antiquity to refer to the basic elements that were assumed to form the cosmos (namely fire, water, earth and air). See e.g., Schweizer (1988, 455–468). However, Paul uses it in a figurative sense in Galatians.

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Earlier on, in chapter 3, Paul also uses X-SRY several times to characterise the situation ‘before the fullness of time’ in a negative way. In 3:23–25 the situation ‘under’ the law is depicted vividly through the personification of the law as a SDLGDJZJRY (3:23–25). Although the figure of a SDLGDJZJRY is not in itself necessarily negative, the way in which Paul uses it here is decidedly negative, as it depicts the situation of those under the law as a (temporary) situation of captivity. 4 In the same context the situation under the law (X-SRY5 is used again) is also described as a situation of ‘confinement’ and of ‘being restrained’ (3:23: X-SR QRYPRQ HMIURXURXYPHTD VXJNOHLRYPHQRL). The verb he uses in this instance means ‘to hold in custody/confine’ (see BDAG IURXUHYZ); and thus metaphorically depicts the situation under the law as being similar to being to that of in prison/custody. In the previous verse, Paul uses the same metaphor to depict the situation of humanity in general6 ‘before the fullness of time’, in similar negative terms: Scripture confined everything ‘under sin’. As Bruce (1982, 180) puts it: ‘The written law is the official who locks the law-breaker up in the prison-house of which sin is the jailor’. Attention should also be drawn to another ‘under’ expression that Paul uses in Galatians 3:10, when he refers to his opponents in Galatia as people who still rely on the law, and who are therefore ‘under a curse’.7 Although he has in mind the current situation in Galatia (i.e. ‘in the fullness of time’), it is nevertheless clear from 3:13 that the same is true of the situation ‘before the fullness of time’, since he claims that Christ ‘redeemed us from the curse of the law’. Being ‘under’ the law ‘before the fullness of time’ was thus equal to being ‘under’ God’s curse.8 Fortunately this situation of bondage is not the whole story. Secondly, according to Paul, the situation ‘before the fullness of time’ was also characterised by the promise of a future blessing. According to Galatians 3:8, the gospel was proclaimed in advance (i.e. long before the fullness of time) to Abraham: Because9 Scripture had foreseen that one day those who believed would be justified through faith, it already proclaimed the gospel to Abraham in advance, namely that all the nations would be 4 5

For a detailed discussion, see Tolmie (2005, 139–143). X-SRY and the accusative are used to indicate a situation ‘[u]nter der Gewalt und Herrschaft des Gesetzes’ (Eckstein 1996, 214). 6 This is implied by WD SDYQ WD See Longenecker (1990, 144). 7 The expression R^V RL HM[ H>UJZQ QRY P RX HLMV LYQ refers to ‘die Menschen, die das Prinzip ihrer Existenz in den Gebotserfüllungen haben’ (Schlier 1971, 132). 8 To my mind, it is wrong to distinguish between the curse of the law and the curse of God as if the curse of the law were not the curse of God (as is maintained by Burton 1962, 164 and Martyn 1997, 321). See Becker (1981, 38). 9 The participle SURL!GRXCVD should be understood in a causal sense. See Burton (1962, 160).

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blessed in him (3:8). In 3:14 this blessing to Abraham is interpreted as the promise of the Spirit,10 and thereafter ‘promise’ becomes one of the key words in the rest of Paul’s argument (3:16–19, 21–22, 29; 4:23, 28). What Paul is actually doing here, is reading the promise made to Abraham retrospectively through the fulfilment in Christ (Hays 1989, 107); thus, he is depicting the whole era ‘before the fullness of time’ as a situation characterised by the promise of the future blessing in Christ. Furthermore, owing to the pressing rhetorical situation, Paul finds it necessary to dissociate promise and law.11 This is achieved, for example, by the a minori ad maius argument in 3:15–18, in which a particular characteristic of a human GLDTKYNK is highlighted and then applied to the divine GLDTKYNK: once a human GLDTKYNK is ratified, no one can set it aside or add to it. In the case of the divine GLDTKYNK, it was ratified by God beforehand and thus the law, which came 430 years later, could not annul it, and could not make the promise ineffective. To summarise: the situation ‘before the fullness of time’ is characterised in Galatians in two ways: For humankind it was a situation of subjugation or bondage. They found themselves ‘under’ the ‘elements of the world’, i.e. under elementary and restrictive religious practices. On the one hand, the Jews were confined under the law which meant that they were under God’s curse. On the other hand, the Gentiles were confined under gods which were actually no gods at all. Indeed, ‘everything’ was confined under sin. However, there was also the promise of a blessing given to Abraham: Because Scripture had foreseen that God would justify the Gentiles through faith; Abraham received the gospel beforehand, in that it was promised to him that humanity would be blessed through/in him.

3. Life ‘in the Fullness of Time’ When the ‘fullness of time’ came, things changed dramatically. Paul describes the change brought about by the coming of Christ in various ways in Galatians; but, to my mind, the most important description in terms of his overall argument in the letter is found in the metaphor ‘redemption’. In other words, this implies the exact opposite of the notion of subjugation or bondage that he uses to characterise the situation ‘before the fullness of time’. In 4:4–7, which is probably based partially on tradition,12 he de10 11 12

The genitive indicates content. See Tolmie (2005, 124ff.) for a detailed discussion of this aspect. Although it is not possible to reconstruct the underlying tradition with certainty, scholars generally accept that 4:4–5 reflects pre-Pauline tradition. See e.g., Seeberg (1903, 59–60) and Hahn (1963, 314–315).

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scribes what happened when Christ was sent as follows: God sent his Son; he redeemed those who were under the law; they received adoption as children; and, finally, because they were God’s children, they received the Spirit. In other words, what was promised by God, according to Galatians 3, happened when Christ came ‘in the fullness of time’. In 3:13, which also probably reflects pre-Pauline tradition,13 one finds two of the elements that I have identified above in 4:4–7: firstly, redemption – here described as redemption from the curse of the law; and, secondly, receiving the Spirit. Thus, according to Galatians, the main difference between the situation ‘before the fullness of time’, and the situation ‘in the fullness of time’, can be summarised in terms of two basic concepts: spiritual liberty, and the Spirit. When the ‘fullness of time’ came, people were liberated by God and received the Spirit from him. However, this is not the only way in which Paul describes the change that was brought about by the ‘sending’ of the Son. In 3:23, he refers to the situation before Christ came as a situation ‘before the faith came’/‘until faith should be revealed’ (3UR WRXC GH HMOTHLCQ WKQ SLYVWLQ  HLM WKQ PHYOORXVDQ SLYVWLQ DMSRNDOXITKCQDL). As is wellknown, ‘faith’ is one of the other important key words in Galatians. Paul’s argument in this regard is that humankind is justified by faith; i.e. through faith humankind is put in the right relationship to God, by God. When Paul refers to ‘the faith’ in 3:23, he is not thinking of faith in general, but of a particular kind of faith, namely ‘the faith in Christ’14 to which he has just referred in the previous verse (Dunn 1995, 197). It is also important to take note of the eschatological emphasis. The coming of ‘the faith’ is depicted as an eschatological event. The expression that Paul uses here, the ‘apocalypse of the faith,’ is thus another way of expressing the eschatological emphasis that was already discussed earlier in this article. There are two other important images that Paul uses in Galatians that I wish to point out, both of which have Jewish eschatological thinking as background. In 1:4 he refers to the ‘present evil age’ from which Christ’s death has delivered believers:15 R^SZ HM[HYOKWDL K-PDC HMN WRXC DLMZCQR WRXC HMQHVWZCWR SRQKURXC This is reminiscent of Jewish views,16 according to which time was divided into two ‘ages’: the current inferior, evil, age; and the coming age. Once again it is clear that Christ’s coming is viewed in eschatological terms. In 1:4 Paul only mentions the ‘current evil age’ from 13 14

See e.g., Becker (1981, 381) and Longenecker (1990, 122). I interpret the expression HMN SLYVWHZ ¨,KVRX &ULVWRX as faith in Jesus Christ. For details, see Tolmie (2005, 90). 15 Most scholars accept that this also probably reflects pre-Pauline tradition. See, for example, Lührmann (1988, 16) and Mussner (1977, 46–50). 16 See Dunn (1995, 36) for a discussion of the Jewish background.

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which Christ has delivered believers. He does not explicitly state here that the ‘new age’ has already dawned; but one can deduce it from what he says in this passage. Towards the end of the letter Paul introduces a concept which focuses on that which opposes the ‘present evil age’, namely ‘new creation’: RX>WH JDU SHULWRPKY WLY HMVWLQ RX>WH DMNUREXVWLYD DMOOD NDLQK NWLYVL (6:15). Once again the background is Jewish.17 By means of this expression he refers to the ‘radical, uncompromising newness’ (Martyn 1997, 565) that has been brought about by Jesus’ death. To my mind, the ‘newness’ that Paul has in mind here should not be restricted to a mere individual anthropological newness that believers experience individually.18 Paul is thinking in broader terms: the ‘old evil age’ has been replaced by the ‘new age’; the old creation by the new creation19 (Martyn 1997, 98). As Tom Wright (2005, 114) puts it: [T]he crucifixion of the Messiah means that everything has been turned inside out, not simply his own self, not simply Israel, but the entire cosmos ... Paul is not just speaking of the individual Christian as new creation, though of course that is true as well, but of the entire renewal of the cosmos in which the Christian is invited to be a participant, in the sense both of beneficiary and of agent.

However, the problem is that not much of this eschatological ‘newness’ was actually seen and experienced in Paul’s day. Most people did not believe in Christ and thus still remained ‘under’ the elements of the world. Even amongst those in Galatia who did believe, those who had been delivered from the ‘present evil age’ (1:4), not much of the ‘newness’ was seen. As Paul points out in his letter, they were deserting God who had called them in the grace of Christ (1:6); they had received the Spirit and had begun with the Spirit, but they were ending with the flesh (3:3); they who had been liberated from the elements of the world were actually considering a return to exactly those enslaving elements (4:9); they were even ‘biting’ and ‘devouring’ one another (5:15) – behaviour typical of the ‘evil age’. In a nutshell, the eschatological ‘fullness of time’ has arrived, but the evil age has not disappeared. 17

For a good discussion of the diversity of new-creation imagery, see Hubbard (2002, 11–77). 18 See e.g., Hubbard (2002, 224): ‘It is less accurate to speak of the believer entering the new age than it is to speak of the new age entering the believer’ (author’s own emphasis); and: ‘Paul’s new creation expresses a reality intra nos, not a reality extra nos’ (Hubbard 2002, 232). 19 I agree with Mell (1989, 317), who summarises it as follows: ‘eine Aussage des Glaubens über den “erwählungsgeschichtlichen Grundsatz”, der seit dem geschichtlichen Datum des Christusereignisses die neue eschatologische und universale Verfassung der Welt bestimmt’.

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According to Jewish eschatology there was a clean break, a straight line, between the ‘present evil age’ and the ‘coming age’ (Dunn 1998, 462); but this scheme was not useful any more. The ‘fullness of time’ came; Christ died and was resurrected; the line was crossed; but the evil age was not left behind. The future arrived, but the past did not disappear. How does one make sense of this? One possibility was, of course, to deny that the ‘fullness of time’ had indeed come; to deny that anything significant had happened in Christ. For Paul this was impossible, and instead the typical Jewish scheme was altered, and both present and future were ‘reimagined’ (Wright 2005, 130) in the light of what had already happened in Christ.20 Instead of a clean break between the two ages, the two ages were viewed as simultaneously present – a situation which has often been described as an overlapping of the ages (e.g. Dunn 1998, 464). Martyn (1997, 104) suggests another useful metaphor, namely that of an ‘unbalanced bifocal vision’; according to which both ages are present at the same time, yet in such a way that the new age is more real than the old age. However, according to Paul, this situation of overlapping would not continue indefinitely. One day the overlapping of the ages would stop; bi-focal vision would be replaced by mono-focal vision. Let us now move beyond the time before, and in, the ‘fullness of time’ to consider a third issue, i.e. what was still to come.

4. What Was Still to Come? To what was still to come, one finds surprisingly few references in Galatians. Owing to the rhetorical situation, the immediate future, i.e. the reaction of the congregations in Galatia to Paul’s letter, is the focal point: Will the Galatians allow themselves to be circumcised and fall away from grace (5:3–4); or will Paul’s confidence in the Lord be proven right and will they take the same view as he holds (5:10)? Will they get rid of the opponents (4:30)? All of these questions, however, still lie within the framework of the overlapping of the ages. To that which was still to come at the end of time, Paul does not refer to often in this letter; only in a few passages. The first one is found in Galatians 1:4. In the brief doxology to God in this verse one finds the expression HLM WRX DLMZCQD WZCQ DLMZYQZQ; literally, ‘the ages of ages’. This expression, a more emphatic form of the Septuagintal HLM WRQ DLMZCQD WZCQ DLMZYQZQ which probably reflects the liturgical worship of Jewish Christianity, stresses the unlimited extent of what was 20 As Schnelle (2003, 462) puts it: ‘Die Christologie begründet und prägt die Eschatologie’.

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still to come (Longenecker 1990, 9). It also reflects the typical Jewish sequence of ages discussed in the previous section; but, as is clear from the rest of the letter, this sequence of ages was understood by Paul in a different way – in the light of Christ’s coming. In 4:19 one finds another reference to the future: WHYNQD PRX RX` SDYOLQ ZMGLYQZ PHYFUL RX_ PRUIZTKC &ULVWR HMQ X-PLCQ This forms part of a series of emotional arguments in 4:12–20; in which pleading, rebuke, vilification and, finally in 4:19–20, a compassionate expression of care and affection for the Christians in Galatia follow one another in quick succession.21 The feminine metaphor that Paul applies to himself here (‘I am in the pain of childbirth’) expresses his concern for the Galatians in a striking way. On the one hand, the phrase ‘until Christ is formed among you’ characterises salvation as a life-long process of transformation, which has the overlapping of the ages as background. It thus reflects the predicament in which Christians find themselves, because they live in two ages at the same time. On the other hand, it also reflects, at least implicitly, that which is eschatologically still outstanding; the final goal which is striven for.22 In the light of the struggle between flesh and Spirit depicted in Galatians 5, it is clear that the goal of Christ being completely formed in the Galatians will never be achieved as long as the two ages overlap. The two references to eschatological events in Galatia that we have investigated thus far do not form an integral part of Paul’s argumentation in this letter. The first instance in 1:4 is a mere passing reference – almost an aside in a brief doxology – to the unlimited extent of what was still to come. In the second instance (4:19), eschatology functions only implicitly and is not presented as the central issue in the pericope. However, when we turn to the next instance – the reference to ‘the Jerusalem above’ in 4:26 – the situation changes. In this case it forms an integral part of the pericope (4:21–5:1) – a pericope in which Paul employs an allegorical argument based on the authority of Scripture to urge the Galatians not to yield to the opponents’ version of the gospel; since, according to him, it only leads to spiritual bondage. In verses 22–23, Paul summarises the story of Abraham’s two sons as it is found in Scripture. He then provides an allegorical exposition of this story in verses 24–27, in which the two mothers are interpreted as repre21 22

See Tolmie (2005, 156–164) for more details. Thus, correctly, Dunn (1995, 240). In this regard, see also the discussion of Gaventa (1990, 189–201), who interprets 4:19 as indicating that ‘the formation of Christ continues until the fulfilment of the Christ event in God’s final triumph’ (Gaventa 1990, 196). According to her, the birth pangs Paul refers to here are not the birth pangs of an individual apostle, but the (eschatological) ‘birth pangs of the cosmos itself’ (Gaventa 1990, 196).

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senting two covenants. He first focuses on Hagar, who represents the covenant from Mount Sinai, still giving birth to spiritual slavery. He also associates her with the present Jerusalem. Spiritual liberty, on the other hand, is associated with the ‘Jerusalem above’, which is free and which is also ‘our’ mother. This allegorical interpretation is then under-girded by means of a quotation from Isaiah 54:1. The application follows in 4:28– 5:1. The notion of a ‘Jerusalem above’ or a ‘heavenly Jerusalem’ was known in Judaism, and usually focused on how Jerusalem would be at the end of time, in contrast to its present state. The same concept is also found in early Christianity (Heb 11:10, 14–16; 12:22; 13:14 and Rev 3:12; 21), where it was used as a metaphor for describing the final realisation of God’s kingdom at the end of time.23 –The fact that Paul uses the same metaphor indicates that he shared this expectation. The importance of this reference to ‘the Jerusalem above’ for a proper understanding of Paul’s eschatology has already been demonstrated convincingly by Lincoln (1981, 29–31). I will briefly summarise the three aspects highlighted by him in this regard: –

–

For Paul ‘the Jerusalem above’ was a reality which functioned as a ‘transcendent point of reference’ for the church, a reality which had a ‘dynamic effect’ on the church in the sense that it made spiritual liberation possible (Lincoln 1981, 29). The contrast between the present Jerusalem and ‘the Jerusalem above’ shows that, for Paul, Christ’s coming made a critical difference; which implied both continuity and discontinuity. Owing to the particular rhetorical situation in which Paul finds himself, he emphasises the discontinuity in this letter. As Lincoln (1981, 30) puts it: [T]hrough the resurrection and exaltation of Christ, the focus of salvation history has moved from the earthly to the heavenly realm … The old category has been reinterpreted so that no longer in view is a restored national capital which will be the geographical centre for the ingathering of the nations in the Messianic era but Jerusalem can now designate instead the focal point of the heavenly existence of the new age.

–

The relationship between the church and ‘the Jerusalem above’ is ‘not one of identification’. Instead, ‘the Jerusalem above’ is viewed as the source of the church’s spiritual life and its spiritual freedom (Lincoln 1981, 30).

23 See Longenecker (1990, 213–215) and Lincoln (1981, 18–22) for a more detailed discussion of this issue.

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A further important aspect that needs to be pointed out is the fact that ‘the Jerusalem above’ basically functions, as it were, spatially and not temporally in Galatians. If we consider this use of the metaphor against the overlapping of ages pointed out above, it is clear that he does not use it to refer to a future situation at the end of time, but rather to interpret a particular situation (in Galatia) that has arisen while the overlapping of the ages is still a reality. In this sense, the metaphor does not function temporally, but spatially. Thus, although Paul here uses a typical Jewish/Christian eschatological motif, it does not tell us much about his views on what was still to come at the end of time. For this, we have to wait until we reach Galatians 5 – the part of the letter in which he tries to persuade the audience to act as he wants them to, i.e. to resist the pressure to be circumcised; to avoid the opponents; and to live according to the Spirit (5:2–6:10).24 In this section we find several references indicating what Paul expected to happen at the end of time: Galatians 5:5; 5:10; 5:21; (possibly) 6:5; and 6:7–10. Let us begin with the dark side of the picture: from Galatians 5:10, it is clear that Paul shared the contemporary Christian expectation of a final judgement at the end of time. After expressing his confidence, in 5:10a, that the Galatians will agree with his views, he refers to the opponents25 as follows: R- GH WDUDYVVZQ X-PDC EDVWDYVHL WR NULYPD R^VWL HMDQ K? The expression WR NULYPD refers to the expectation of an eschatological judgement (Arzt 1992, 179). Paul’s rhetorical purpose in this verse can be easily determined: he vilifies the opponents by portraying them as people who will be punished by God in the final judgement; and, furthermore, he uses the expression as an indirect warning to the Galatians that they will share in the same fate if they follow the opponents. For our investigation, the important issue is Paul’s anticipation of the final judgement and the way in which he relates it to his gospel. In 5:21 Paul does not refer to the final judgement, but to a closely related matter; namely one’s eternal fate (which, of course, presupposes the notion of judgement). After the list of the works of the flesh, he reminds the Galatians of his earlier (catechismal?) instruction, warning them: RL- WD WRLDXCWD SUDYVVRQWH EDVLOHLYDQ THRXC RXM NOKURQRPKYVRXVLQ As is often pointed out by commentators,26 the language that is used here is un24 25

For more details on this rhetorical objective, see Tolmie (2005, 177ff.). R- WDUDYVVZQ should be understood as a generic singular. See Mussner (1977, 358) and Becker (1981, 79). 26 See, for example, Longenecker (1990, 258), who points out the following: (1) The term EDVLOHLYD THRX is only rarely used by Paul; (2) One would expect SRLHYZ instead of SUDYVVZ; and (3) The use of NOKURQRPHYZ in this instance is somewhat different from the way in which it is used in Galatians 3 and 4.

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Pauline. It corresponds more closely to Synoptic sayings about ‘entering the Kingdom of God’ in the sense of sharing eternal life with God; for example as seen in Mark 9:47, where ‘entering the Kingdom of God’ is contrasted with being cast into Gehenna. In this instance, Paul warns the Galatians that they will not receive eternal life if they practise works of the flesh. For our purposes, it is important to note that Paul thus shared Christian notions on the eternal destiny of humankind. In the case of 6:5 (H^NDVWR JDU WR L>GLRQ IRUWLYRQ EDVWDYVHL), it seems as if Paul is again referring to the notion of a final judgement. However, this is not absolutely certain, since this verse is quite vague. WR IRUWLYRQ can be interpreted in diverse ways. If one interprets it in a generic sense, it could be a very general reference to ‘the weakness and sin’ (Burton 1962, 334) that all Christians have to bear; or even to ‘any adverse circumstance and tribulation, but also … personal shortcomings, sin and shame’ (Lambrecht 1997, 50) that they have to contend with. Scholars who try to link it closely to the immediate context also come up with quite different interpretations. For example, Harnisch (1987, 295) interprets it as an ironic reference to WR NDXYFKPD mentioned in verse 4; while Witherington (1998, 429) is of the opinion that it refers to the financial burden that each person should carry (cf. v. 6). However, many scholars27 still prefer to interpret it as a reference to the last judgement. To my mind, the latter seems to be the best option, in particular because the same verb (EDVWDYVHL) is also used in 5:10 (also in the future tense) where it is clear that Paul does have the final judgement in mind. Furthermore, as Kuck (1994, 294) indicates, if one interprets it as a reference to the final judgement it fits in with the context very well in that it functions as the climax of 6:1–5. If this interpretation is correct and verse 5 does, indeed, refer to the eschatological judgement; Paul’s purpose is to encourage positive forms of behaviour among the Galatians by reminding them that all people will be held accountable for their deeds before God at the final judgement. The same idea is expressed in verses 7–9, but in this instance it is presented in such a clear way that there can be no doubt in one’s mind as to the fact that Paul is thinking in eschatological terms – he uses the concepts ITRUDY and ]ZK DLMZYQLR The notion that he wishes to convey is that one’s conduct during the overlapping of the ages determines one’s eternal fate. His point of departure is a maxim (R` JDU HMDQ VSHLYUK D>QTUZSR WRXCWR NDL THULYVHL), which is then used as a basis for both a warning R- VSHLYUZQ HLM WKQ VDYUND H-DXWRXC HMN WKC VDUNR THULYVHL ITRUDYQ and a promise RGH VSHLYUZQ HLM WR SQHXCPD HMN WRXC SQHXYPDWR THULYVHL ]ZKQ DLMZYQLRQ  The distinction between ‘sowing in the flesh’ and ‘sowing in the Spirit’ 27 See, for example, Mussner (1977, 401), Synofzik (1977, 44), Bruce (1982, 263), Betz (1979, 267), Longenecker (1990, 232), Arzt (1992, 181) and Vouga (1998, 148).

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recalls the ideas that dominate Galatians 5:16ff., and also the distinction between flesh and Spirit that is made earlier on in the letter (for example in Gal 3:1–5). For our purposes, it can thus be noted again that Paul shared Christian notions of an eschatological judgement and an eternal fate, and that the nature of this fate was determined by one’s response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus far, the eschatological references that we have considered focus on the dark side of the picture, in the sense that they are used by Paul to warn the Galatians.28 The last case that we have to investigate is characterised by a quite different tone. In Galatians 5:5 Paul declares confidently: K-PHLC JDU SQHXYPDWL HMN SLYVWHZ HMOSLYGD GLNDLRVXYQK DMSHNGHFRYPHTD In this concise sentence Paul draws together several concepts that have played a crucial role in his argumentation in the letter thus far; namely Spirit, righteousness and faith – the only difference being that he now places these concepts in the context of what is still to come: by the Spirit and through faith, we eagerly await the hope of righteousness. GLNDLRVXYQK is here best understood as an objective genitive (‘righteousness that we hope for’), or even as a genitive of apposition (‘hope, that is righteousness’), and not as a subjective genitive (Woschitz 1979, 547; Silva 1996, 182). Where Paul referred to righteousness earlier on in Galatians as something believers already have in the present (for example in 2:16), he now refers to it as a future reality. This should not be interpreted as an indication that he believes in a double justification.29 Neither should one attempt to interpret all references to righteousness in Galatians as referring only to a future reality, as Yon-Gyong Kwon (2004, 51–77) does. Rather, the way in which Paul refers to righteousness in this letter reflects the existential situation of Christians living in the overlapping of ages, during which being put in the right position with God is simultaneously a present reality and a future reality – both something which one receives in the present through faith, and something which is constantly under the attack of the flesh (Käsemann 1970, 183) – with the result that its final attainment is postponed to the future. What should be noted, however, is Paul’s confidence regarding what is to happen in the future. This is reflected in his use of the two words HMOSLY and DMSHNGHYFRPDL30 in this sentence. With regard to HMOSLY it 28

Even though verse 6:8b is a promise, the broader context can be called a warning. Cf. v. 7. 29 Cf. in this regard Stuhlmacher’s (1966, 229 n. 223), rejection of ‘double justification’ as advocated by Jeremias (1954, 370). 30 Both words are placed in the same semantic domain by Louw & Nida (1988, §25.59.64), namely ‘Attitudes and emotions’; as well as in the same sub-domain, ‘Hope, look forward to’. According to them, this sub-domain is characterised by three features of meaning: ‘[A] future orientation, a desire and a benefit’ (Louw & Nida 1988, 296 n.

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is important that we should bear in mind that Paul does not share the Greek view of HMOSLY as a possibility based on what is realistically available and possible in a particular situation. Instead, he understands it as basically denoting trust in God, thus giving it a different nuance (Woschitz 1979, 440ff., 764–765). This explains the note of confidence in Galatians 5:5. Indeed, ‘Hoffnung ist ein Strukturmoment des Glaubens’ (Stuhlmacher 1997, 347). The other word that he uses here, DMSHNGHYFRPDL adds a note of eagerness to this confidence. As Dunn (1995, 270) puts it, ‘The word expresses the character of Christian existence as one of suppressed excitement, as of an adolescent awaiting her/his coming-of-age birthday…’. To summarise, Galatians 5:5 does not focus primarily on what will happen at the end of time, for example, final judgement and eternal destiny. Instead, it mainly expresses Paul’s attitude towards that which is still outstanding; an attitude of eager confidence concerning what God will do at the end of time.

5. The Representation of Time in the Letter to the Galatians How is time represented in the Letter to the Galatians? Our investigation has shown that all three of the eras normally distinguished in the New Testament are reflected in this letter: the past – the time before Christ’s coming; the present – the time since Christ’s coming; and the future – the end of time. The nature of each era is also characterised clearly in the letter. The past is viewed exclusively from the perspective of the present, in particular from the perspective of the ‘sending’ of Christ to the world. Accordingly, the time before Christ’s coming is primarily depicted negatively as a time of subjugation and bondage to the elements of the world. All that can be said positively of this era is that it was also a time of looking forward to Christ’s coming, a time during which God’s promise of a future blessing was given. The present is viewed predominantly positively: it is viewed as the ‘fullness of time’, inaugurated by an eschatological event determined by God, which radically changed everything for humanity. This idea is conveyed through the use of various metaphors in the letter, with that of spiritual liberation being one of the most important of these. However, as we have seen, the present also has a dark side – in spite of Christ’s coming the ‘evil age’ has not yet come to an end. Therefore, the present is also characterised by an overlapping of the ages, or bi-focal vision. With regard 8). HMOSLY is defined as ‘to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial’ and DMSHNGHYFRPDL as ‘to wait eagerly or expectantly for some future event’.

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to the future it has been demonstrated that the Letter to the Galatians reflects several of the common Christian views, such as the notion of a last judgement and an eternal life or damnation. It has also become clear that Paul was convinced that what happens to one at the last judgement, and one’s eternal destiny, are determined by one’s response to the gospel of Jesus Christ. For example, those who opposed his gospel would endure the judgement (5:10); and those who lived according to the flesh would not inherit the Kingdom (5:21); or they would reap corruption (6:8). From the above, the interrelatedness of the three eras becomes obvious. The past is depicted in terms of its relation, and its inferiority, to the present; and the nature of the future that will be experienced is determined by one’s response to the gospel in the present. Furthermore we should note that, of the three eras, the one in the centre – the ‘fullness of time’ – is the focal point. In this sense, Christ is indeed ‘die Mitte der Zeit’ (Cullmann 1962, 117ff.). There can be no doubt about the fact that this era receives the most attention in Galatians, not only in terms of the amount of time that Paul devotes to it in the letter, but also in the sense that the basic argument that he uses to convince the Galatians is based on what happened ‘in the fullness of time’; i.e. the radical change brought about by Christ’s coming, and the dreadful possibility that the Galatians might lose all of this by defecting to the ‘gospel’ of the opponents. What about the future? Is it less important to Paul than the present? It seems possible to make a good case for such a view. For example, one could argue that Paul’s references to the future do not play a significant role in his argumentation. In fact, one could remove all the references to what would happen at the end of time that have been identified (Galatians 5:5; 5:10; 5:21; 6:5; and 6:7–10), without their actually being missed. If they were not there, we probably would not have been looking for them; and the overall argument would not really have changed much. One could also argue that the fact that these references all occur in the last (paraenetic) part of the letter indicates that they were of less importance to Paul. Of course, he could have written the letter in another way. The underlying notion that we have identified in the letter in respect of the reference to the final judgement or to one’s eternal destiny – namely that one’s response to the gospel determines what will happen at the end of time – could easily have been used as the principal argument in the letter. However, that would inevitably imply that Christ’s coming to the world ‘in the fullness of time’ could no longer be the focal point of Paul’s argument, and it could easily happen that the focus might shift from God’s grace in Christ to the responsibility of the believers. The fact that the future receives so little emphasis in this letter thus reflects a basic conviction, a theological preference, for what God has already achieved in Christ.

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Can we now infer from the above that the future is in fact unimportant to Paul? To my mind, this would be a wrong conclusion, because it would be based on a wrong point of departure. If we merely consider the number of references to the future in this letter, we may think that we have proven our case; but, in fact, we will have missed the point. Theologically, the nature of the ‘fullness of time’ implies that something still has to happen in the future. I have referred above to the ‘dark side’ of the ‘fullness of time’, i.e. the overlapping of the ages or the bi-focal vision that is characteristic of the ‘fullness of time’. This situation creates a theological tension, more precisely an eschatological tension, which makes one long for the future – for the day that this tension will be resolved. When we merely count the number of references to the future, we are thus on the wrong track. We should rather take note of the eschatological tension which is manifested in various ways throughout the letter, but most conspicuously in the contrast between flesh and Spirit. If we grasp the importance of this tension, the few references to the future will assume their rightful place in terms of the theology of the letter. They are brief reminders of the era when the eschatological tension will be resolved; they are theologically part and parcel of what has already happened and what happens ‘in the fullness of time’. Not only do they reflect the eschatological tension which characterises living ‘in the fullness of time’, they also reflect the yearning for the future when this tension will be resolved. One of these references, in particular, will accordingly assume prime place in this regard, namely Galatians 5:5: K-PHLC JDU SQHXYPDWL HMN SLYVWHZ HMOSLYGD GLNDLRVXYQK DMSHNGHFRYPHTD. This is so, not only because this concise statement is such a remarkable summary of some of the most important central ideas in the letter, but also because it looks forward with such confidence to the day when the tension will be resolved – a confidence which only makes sense to those who grasp what has already occurred ‘in the fullness of time’, and who therefore can actually live in hope ‘in the fullness of time’. Works Consulted Arzt, P 1992 Bedrohtes Christsein. Zu Eigenart und Funktion eschatologisch bedrohlicher Propositionen in den echten Paulusbriefen. Frankfurt. Becker, J 1981 Der Brief an die Galater. Göttingen. Beker, JC 1990 The triumph of God. The essence of Paul's thought. Minneapolis. Betz, HD 1979 Galatians. A commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Philadelphia. Bruce, FF 1982 The Epistle to Galatians. A commentary on the Greek text. Exeter. Burton, E de W 1962 A critical and exegetical commentary on the Epistle of the Galatians. Edinburgh. Cullmann, O 1962 Christus und die Zeit. Die urchristliche Zeit- und Geschichtsauffassung. Zürich. Delling, G 1959 SOKYUZPD. TWNT 6, 297–309.

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Dunn, JDG 1995 The Epistle to the Galatians. Peabody. – 1998 The theology of Paul the apostle. Edinburgh. Eckstein, H-J 1996 Verheißung und Gesetz. Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu Galater 2,15–4,7. Tübingen. Fortna, RT & Gaventa, BR (eds.) 1990 The conversation continues. Studies in Paul & John. In honor of J. Louis Martyn. Nashville. Gaventa, BR 1990 The maternity of Paul: An exegetical study of Galatians 4:19, in The conversation continues. Studies in Paul & John. In honor of J. Louis Martyn, Fortna, RT & Gaventa, BR (eds.). Nashville, 189–201. Hahn, F 1963 Christologische Hoheitstitel. Ihre Geschichte im frühen Christentum. Göttingen. Harnisch, W 1987 Einübung des neuen Seins. Paulinische Paränese am Beispiel des Galaterbriefs. ZThK 84(3), 279–296. Hartman, L 1993 Galatians 3:15–4:11 as part of a theological argument on a practical issue, in The truth of the Gospel (Galatians 1:1–4:11), Lambrecht, J (ed.), Rome, 127– 158. Hays, RB 1989 Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul. New Haven. Hubbard, MV 2002 New Creation in Paul’s letters and thoughts. Cambridge. Jeremias, J 1954 Paul and James. ET 66, 368–371. Käsemann, E 1970 Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen. Zweiter Band. Göttingen. Kuck, DW 1994 ‘Each will bear his own burden.’ Paul’s creative use of an apocalyptic motif. NTS 40(2), 289–297. Kwon, Y-G 2004 Eschatology in Galatians. Rethinking Paul’s response to the crisis in Galatia. Tübingen. Lambrecht, J 1997 Paul’s coherent admonition in Galatians 6,1–6: Mutual help and individual attentiveness. Bib 78(1), 33–56. Lincoln, AT 1981 Paradise now and not yet. Studies in the role of the heavenly dimension in Paul’s thought with special reference to his eschatology. Cambridge. Longenecker, RN 1990 Galatians. Dallas. Louw, JP & Nida, EA 1988 Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains. Volume 1. Introduction and domains. New York. Lührmann, D 1988 Der Brief an die Galater. Zürich. Martyn, JL 1997 Galatians. A new translation with introduction and commentary. New York & London. Mell, U 1989 Neue Schöpfung. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche und exegetische Studie zu einem soteriologischen Grundsatz paulinischer Theologie. Berlin & New York. Mussner, F 1977 Der Galaterbrief. Freiburg, Basel & Wien. Schlier, H 1971 Der Brief an die Galater. Göttingen. Schnelle, U 2003 Paulus. Leben und Denken. Berlin & New York. Schweizer, E 1988 Slaves of the elements and worshipers of angels: Gal 4:3, 9 and Col 2:8, 18, 20. JBL 107(3), 455–468. Seeberg, DA 1903 Der Katechismus der Urchristenheit. Leipzig. Silva, M 1996 Explorations in exegetical method. Galatians as a test case. Grand Rapids. Stuhlmacher, P 1966 Gerechtigkeit Gottes bei Paulus. Göttingen. – 1997 Biblische Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Band 1. Grundlegung. Von Jesu zu Paulus. Göttingen. Stuhlmann, R 1983 Das eschatologische Mass im Neuen Testament. Göttingen. Synofzik, E 1977 Die Gerichts- und Vergeltungsaussagen bei Paulus. Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung. Göttingen.

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Tolmie, DF 2005 Persuading the Galatians. A text-centred rhetorical analysis of a Pauline letter. Tübingen. Vouga, F 1998 An die Galater. Tübingen. Witherington, B 1998 Grace in Galatia. A commentary on St Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. Edinburgh. Woschitz, KM 1979 Elpis. Hoffnung. Geschichte, Philosophie, Exegese, Theologie eines Schlüsselbegriffes. Wien, Freiburg & Basel. Wright, NT 2005 Paul. In fresh perspective. Minneapolis.

‘And he made known to us the mystery of his will …’ Reflections on the Eschatology of the Letter to the Ephesians

Petrus J Gräbe 1. Introduction Harold Hoehner introduces his 2002 commentary by pointing out how influential the Letter to the Ephesians has been in Christian thought: The Letter to the Ephesians is one of the most influential documents in the Christian church. In [the] last decade of the fourth century … Chrysostom of Constantinople states … that this letter is full of Paul’s sublime thoughts and doctrines … John Calvin considered Ephesians as his favorite letter … Days before his death on November 24, 1572, John Knox’s wife read to him daily Calvin’s sermons on Ephesians (Hoehner 2002, 1–2).

After his greeting, Paul1 normally proceeds by thanking God for his recipients. In Ephesians, however, the thanksgiving for the recipients follows in 1:15–23, preceded by praise to God for his spiritual blessings in verses 3 to 14, which is one long sentence of 202 words in the original Greek text. Scholars have pointed to similarities between this passage and the Qumran literature; verses 3 to 10 are often described as a Jewish berakah (‘praise’ or ‘blessing’).2 Paul stands in awe as he reflects on God’s eschatological plan ‘to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment’. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ (Eph 1:9–10).3

The passage Ephesians 1:3 to 10, with its clear eschatological scope, sets the tone for the whole ensuing letter – almost summarizing the epistle.4 Our quest for understanding the eschatology of Ephesians promises to be 1

The issue of the authorship of this epistle falls beyond the scope of this essay. For arguments in favour of Pauline authorship, see e.g. Hoehner (2002, 2-6). The case for authorship by a later follower of the apostle is made, e.g., by Merklein (1981). 2 Hoehner (2002, 160-61) gives an account of the contributions of different scholars. 3 Unless stated, all biblical translations are from the NIV. 4 Dahl, Maurer, Schlier, Barth, Caragounis, and O’Brien consider verses 3 to 10 as ‘some sort of prologue that summarizes the whole epistle’ (Hoehner 2002, 157).

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exciting and rewarding! The eschatology of Ephesians will be investigated from the following perspectives: – – – – –

Eschatology and time; A mystery revealed in the fullness of time; The Church as an eschatological entity; Bridging the times: the Holy Spirit as eschatological reality; and Victorious in a position of authority.

2. Eschatology and Time Eschatology deals with ‘final’ things, ‘when the times will have reached their fulfilment’ (Eph 1:10). It deals with the consummation of time from God’s perspective. The concept of time often occurs in Ephesians: Paul describes in 2:3 that ‘[a]ll of us also lived among them at one time …’ and reminds his readers that ‘at that time [WZC NDLUZC HMNHLYQZ] you were separate from Christ … But now [QXQL GHY] in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ … Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household’ (2:12–13, 19). In Ephesians 1:19–23 Paul adores the greatness of God’s power ‘which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come’ [RXMPRYQRQHMQWZCDLMZCQLWRXYWZDMOOD NDL HMQ WZC PHYOORQWL] (verses 20–21). The ‘coming ages’ is also mentioned in 2:6–7. Even when we were dead through our trespasses, God made us alive together with Christ, raised us up with him, ‘and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages [HMQWRLCaDLMZCVLQWRLCaHMSHUFRPHYQRLa] he might show the incomparable riches of his grace’. Paul’s description of the new corporate unity of Jews and Gentiles in the church (2:11–22) can only be understood when we pay due attention to the indicators of time in this passage: ‘remember that formerly … at that time you were … But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ’ (vv. 11–13). From this contrast between ‘formerly’ and ‘now’ Paul draws in verse 19 the conclusion, which is one of the central themes of this letter: ‘Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people…’.

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These temporal indications – especially the contrast between past and present – have profound ethical consequences, clearly illustrated in Ephesians 4 and 5: Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life … and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (4:22–24, RSV). For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light … Look carefully then how you walk … making the most of the time (WRQ NDLURYQ), because the days (DL-K-PHYUDL) are evil (5:8, 15–16).5

3. A Mystery Revealed in the Fullness of Time Our study of the concept of time leads us to another important eschatological motif, namely that of a ‘mystery’, made known to Paul by revelation (Eph 3:3). The mystery was not made known to earlier generations (for ages past the mystery was kept hidden in God, 3:9), but has now been revealed ‘by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets’ (3:5). This mystery, which has now become the content of Paul’s message to the Gentiles is defined in Ephesians 3:6: ‘This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus’. The mystery, however, also has cosmological consequences, the bringing together of ‘all things in heaven and on earth … under one head, even Christ’ (1:10). Passages like Isaiah 11:6–96 and for example also Ezekiel 34:25–277 reflect the cosmic nature of Old Testament thought. These cosmic dimensions of the Old Testament message reach their climax with the

5 6

5:15-16 are from the RSV. ‘The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea’ (Isa 11:6-9). 7 ‘I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of wild beasts so that they may live in the desert and sleep in the forests in safety. I will bless them and the places surrounding my hill. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing. The trees of the field will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the LORD, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them’ (Ezek 34:25-27).

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reference to the new heaven and new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22) .8 It is against this background that the early Christians connect Christ to both creation as well as the end times.9 Ephesians 1:10 emphasizes that everything comes together in Christ. In him everything that is divided becomes unified and the significance of the cosmos is revealed in him. The aorist infinitive DMQDNHIDODLZYVDVTDL has no reference to a specific time and may have a future reference. In Ephesians, though, the future is often considered as already present.10 According to 1:20–23 Christ has been placed ‘far above all rule and authority, power and dominion’ both in the present age and in the one to come and in 2:6 is stated that believers have already been seated with God in the heavenlies. In keeping with this line of thought, 1:10 states that the universe is summed up in Christ. ‘The consummation of the All is as much an event outside the normal parameters of time as are the choice and foreordination of believers (vv. 4f.)’ (Best 2001, 143). The richness of the statement that ‘the Gentiles should be fellow heirs’ is explained by Thomas Aquinas as follows: The Jews enjoyed three prerogatives with respect to the Gentiles: a. They had the promised inheritance (Rom 4: 13; Ps 15:5). b. They experienced God’s special election and were set apart from the Gentiles (Deut 7:6; Ps 99:3; Cant 6:8). c. They had the promise of a Christ (Gn 12:3).

The Gentiles did not enjoy these three, as clearly stated in Ephesians 2:12: ‘at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world’. By faith the Gentiles have, however, now received these privileges. a. They share in the inheritance. Thomas Aquinas quotes Matthew 8:11: ‘I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven’. b. They become part of the one body, the chosen community of believers. ‘I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen’, identified by Aquinas as the Gentiles. ‘I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd’ (Joh 10:16).

8

‘Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind…’ (Isa 65:17). ‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me’, declares the LORD, ‘so will your name and descendants endure…’ (Isa 66:22). 9 For extensive references, see Best (2001, 142). 10 In this sense one can talk of a realized eschatology in Ephesians. Ephesians does, however, also allow for a future consummation, see section 4 below.

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c. The Gentiles can now participate in the promised grace and are copartners of the promises made to Abraham. Thomas Aquinas refers to Romans 15:8–9: ‘For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy …’.

Thomas Aquinas concludes his commentary on this passage by affirming that the Gentiles have acquired all this not through Moses, but in Christ. He expounds this statement by quoting John 1:17, 2 Peter 1:4, Acts 15:10, Romans 1:16, and 1 Corinthians 15:1–2.11

4. The Church as an Eschatological Entity And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Eph 1:22–23).

The ecclesiology of Ephesians has a prominent eschatological dimension.12 God’s eschatological salvation becomes a reality within the Church. ‘The Church is both an example of God’s plan to unite all things in Christ and at the same time the instrument of Christ by which he accomplished this end’ (Crenshaw 1959, 181; see Eph 1:10, 22–23; 3:19; 4:13–16). The Church as the one new humanity reminds the ‘powers’ that their authority no longer exists unchallenged: ‘through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places’ (Eph 3:10). The word, HMNNOKVLYD, occurs nine times in Ephesians and always refers to the universal Church. Several images are used to describe the Church: – – – –

The household or family of God (2:19); A holy temple as a dwelling place for God (2:20–22); The fullness of Christ (1:23; 4:13); and The bride of Christ (5:23–33).

The universal Church is primarily portrayed in Ephesians as the body of Christ, an image that occurs 10 times in this epistle. The image of the Church as the body of Christ is used differently in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians the emphasis is on the interdependence of the different parts of 11 Lamb (1966). The way in which every assertion made by Thomas Aquinas breathes Scripture is truly remarkable. 12 See Hahn (2002, 362): ‘Die Eschatologie ist hier allerdings zu einer Dimension der Ekklesiologie geworden’.

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the organism of the Church. The background to this image in 1 Corinthians is the Eucharist tradition focusing on the crucified body of Christ. The letter to the Ephesians, however, emphasizes the exalted Christ and in this sense the Church as the body is related to Christ as its head (Lincoln 1990, xciv). Ephesians 4:1–16 points to the function of individual members – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers – in contributing to the unity and maturity of the Church. The Church as an eschatological entity has been sanctified by God in the midst of a broken earthly existence: ‘he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love’ (1:4). As a dwelling place for God the church is depicted as a holy temple (2:21– 22). Believers are admonished to be renewed in the attitudes of their minds ‘and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness’ (4:24). Impurity belongs to their lives before they put their faith in God (cf. 4:17–19). Among the believers there should not even be a hint of any form of behaviour improper for God’s holy people (5:3–14).

5. Bridging the Times: The Holy Spirit as Eschatological Reality Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession (Eph 1:13b–14).

5.1. Marked in Him with a Seal who is a Deposit Guaranteeing our Inheritance The images of ‘being marked with a seal’ (HMVIUDJLYVTKWH) and a ‘down payment’ / ‘deposit guaranteeing our inheritance’ (DMUUDEZQWKCaNOKURQR PLYDaK-PZCQ) have their origin in the commercial language of the time. The imagery of being sealed derives from the practice where the owner would provide a stamped imprint in wax on an object belonging to him. This seal denoted not only ownership, but also authenticity and guaranteed the protection by the owner (cf. Rev 7:2–8). The eschatological dimension of this guarantee clearly comes to the fore in Ephesians 4:30: ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption’ (Fee 1994, 292–293; Sellin 2008, 116–117). The metaphor of a down payment13 is used in the New Testament only in relation with the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:14). DMUUDEZYQis a Semitic loanword, derived from 0#1:3. In Genesis 38:17–20, for example, it 13

Or ‘first instalment’.

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is translated as a ‘pledge’. In Koine Greek it became the ordinary commercial term for a down payment or first instalment. The first instalment commits both giver and recipient to the completion of a deal under penalty. In Pauline theology the down payment is the Holy Spirit in his fullness, not a portion of the Spirit (Best 2001, 151–152). ‘The Spirit then is the first instalment and guarantee of the salvation of the age to come with its mode of existence totally determined by the Spirit’ (Lincoln 1990, 40). This metaphor reinforces the ‘already/not yet’ eschatological tension in Pauline theology. It reminds us of several aspects of the work of the Spirit: He comforts and encourages believers, he reminds them of the eschatological future awaiting all believers, and he is an interim gift, a prelude and foretaste of the glory that is to come. As the Spirit works in the lives of believers, he is active ‘in the present to “realize” the future in a provisional but real now’ (Lemmer 1987, 160). The phrase, the promised Holy Spirit (Eph 1:13),14 places us within the context of the new covenant – ‘the coming of the Spirit in the new covenant of Ezekiel 36:26–27 and 37:14, understood eschatologically by way of Joel 2:28–30’ (Fee 1994, 671; see also Gräbe 2006, 51–57). In Galatians 3:14 the Spirit is portrayed as the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham.15 The Spirit is explicitly mentioned for the first time in Ephesians 1:13. Paul exhorts the believers to praise God for marking them with the seal of the Holy Spirit. All the blessings mentioned in the eulogy starting in verse 3 can be attributed to the Spirit, as they are ‘spiritual’ blessings (HXMORJLYD SQHXPDWLNKC, Lincoln 1990, 40). 5.2. Be Filled with the Spirit! Ephesians 5:17–21 brings to a close the section of the epistle starting with 4:17 in which Paul exhorts his readers not to live longer as Gentiles do, but ‘to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness’ (4:24). ‘Therefore’ (GLD WRXCWR) Paul concludes in 5:17 by reminding the believers to live wisely (see 5:15) as people who know the will of God. He urges his readers to be filled with the Spirit, which is necessary for a meaningful corporate worship (vv. 19–20), as well as for the relationships in a believing household (v. 21). The primary imperative ‘be filled with the Spirit’ (SOKURXCVTHHMQSQHXYPDWL) is modified by a series of 14

The genitive construction here (the Holy Spirit of the promise) is to be understood as an adjectival construction and can, therefore, correctly be translated as ‘the promised Holy Spirit’ (Fee 1994, 671). Lincoln (1990, 40) considers this phrase a Semitism, describing the Spirit as the Spirit promised in the Scriptures. 15 Gal 3:14: ‘He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit’.

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participles: ‘speaking to each other’ (ODORXCQWHaH-DXWRLCa, v. 19), ‘singing and making music to the Lord’ (D>GRQWHaNDL\DYOORQWHaWZCNXULYZv. 19), ‘giving thanks to God’ (HXMFDULVWRXCQWHa  WZC THZC, v. 20), and ‘submitting yourselves to one another’ (X-SRWDVVRYPHQRLDMOOKYORLa, v. 21). The relationships in a believing household (v. 21) are then explained in detail in 5:22–6:9.16 Throughout this letter Paul emphasizes that the lives of those who came to Christ have changed fundamentally. At one time they were ‘separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ … you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household’ (2:12–13,19). Within this context Paul calls upon his readers to put off their old nature which belongs to their former manner of life and to be renewed in the spirit of their minds, and to put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God (4:22–24). This is only possible through the Holy Spirit. Paul’s appeal in Ephesians 5:18 to be continuously filled by the Spirit17 is ‘merely another way, a more powerfully metaphorical way … of repeating Paul’s basic imperative found in Gal 5:16: ‘Walk in/by the Spirit’. All truly Christian behaviour is the result of being Spirit people, people filled with the Spirit of God will live by the Spirit and walk by the Spirit’ (Fee 1994, 721).

6. Victorious in a Position of Authority Clinton Arnold (1989, 14) reminds us that magical practices were prevalent throughout the entire Hellenistic world in the first century CE. Ephesus, the third largest city in the Roman Empire, was a centre for magical practices. The ‘Ephesia Grammata’, first mentioned in a Cretan tablet from the fourth century BC, contained written magical spells and could be used

16 These participles are often translated as imperatives (cf. for example the NIV). Fee (1994, 719) points out that the imperatival use of the participle is not as certain as asserted by some and distorts the meaning in this passage, as it fails to see that the participles are dependent on v. 18. 17 The present tense of the imperative ‘be filled’ (SOKURXCV TH), points to the continuous aspect of the verb. To be filled with/in the Spirit has the meaning of being full of the presence of the Spirit (see Eph 3:19: ‘…that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God’). The Spirit is, indeed, the real subject of the verb: ‘Let the Spirit fill you’ (Fee 1994, 721 n. 196; Best 2001, 508).

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as written amulets or spoken charms (Arnold 1989, 15).18 The temple of Artemis at Ephesus was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Unsurpassed cosmic power was attributed to her. The signs of the zodiac displayed around her neck signified her divine superiority over astrological fate. The following prayer reveals something of the mindset of her worshipers: O Great Artemis of the Ephesians, help! Display your power (GXYQDPLQ) upon this young man who has died. For all the Ephesians know, both men and women, that all things (WD SDYQWD) are governed by you, and that great powers (GXQDP HLa PHJDYODL) come to us through you. Give now to your servant what you are able to do in this regard. Raise up your servant Domnos (Arnold 1989, 22).

Against this background the emphasis in the letter to the Ephesians on the reality of salvation in the lives of believers gains new meaning. Those who have put their faith in Christ are not weak and vulnerable with respect to the ‘powers’ any more – they have been made alive together with Christ, they have been raised up with him, they have been seated with him in the heavenly places (2:5–6).19 Ephesians 1:20 states that God raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. Because of his great love all believers now participate in this position of authority (Schnackenburg 1982, 95). The author of the letter to the Ephesians emphasizes ‘that this position at the right hand of God “in the heavenly places” is infinitely greater than the power and authority of all the cosmic “powers” (1:20–21; cf. 4:10)’ (Arnold 1989, 155). It is significant that in both prayers recorded in Ephesians Paul prays that the believers may know and appropriate the fullness of God’s power (1:19; 3:16). Ephesians 1:19 ‘…attempts to exhaust the resources of the Greek language by piling up four synonyms for power in order to convey an impression of something of the divine might’ (Lincoln 1990, 60). This divine power is the power which raised Christ from the dead and is available for the people of God in the continuing communication of God’s grace (Gräbe 2008, 220). In Ephesians 3:16 Paul prays for the strengthening of the believers with power through God’s Spirit in their inner being. In Pauline theology the Spirit and power are closely associated (see 1 Thess 1:5; 1 Cor 2:4; 15:43– 44; 2 Cor 6:6–7; Rom 1:4; 15:13). This association is also present in Ephesians. Through the Spirit believers experience something of the power of the age to come already in the present. The strengthening takes place in the 18

The magical papyri are accessible in an English translation edited by Hans Dieter Betz, The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation Including the Demotic Spells (Betz 1992). 19 Note the three expressions combined with VXQ: VXQH]ZRSRLYKVHQ (made alive with); VXQKYJHLUHQ(raised with); VXQHNDYTLVHQ(seated with).

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‘inner person’ (WRQH>VZD>QTUZSRQ), the ‘centre of a person’s being where the Spirit does his work of renewal and strengthening’ (Gräbe 2008, 221). The power available to believers is Christ’s resurrection power (1:19). Paul’s ministry was energized by this power (3:7), and in 6:10 Paul exhorts his readers to be strong in their battle against evil. 6.1. Overcoming in Conflict Despite the reality that believers have been seated with Christ (2:6), Paul admonishes his readers in Ephesians 6:10–18 to be strong in the Lord and his mighty power, and to put on the full armour of God so that they can take their stand against the devil’s schemes. There is still a battle to be won: ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms’ (6:12). The conflict facing believers is emphasized by the following three apocalyptic concepts: a. Darkness: Ephesians 5:8 states that the readers were once darkness, but now they are light in the Lord. Consequently they are advised to live as children of light and to have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather to expose them (5:11). b. The day of evil: Believers are encouraged to put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, they may be able to stand their ground (6:13). c. Being alert (‘watching’, KJV): After the readers have been instructed to pray in the Spirit on all occasions, they are admonished to be alert and to always keep on praying for all the saints (6:18; Arnold 1989, 156–57).

The emphasis on spiritual warfare was especially relevant to those in western Asia Minor who had put their faith in Christ, a region where the influence of hostile ‘powers’ were feared (Arnold 1989, 156–157). 6.2. The Fulfilment of Times The letter to the Ephesians clearly speaks about an eschatological day of fulfilment. When the times have reached their fulfilment, all things in heaven and on earth will be brought together under one head, namely Christ (cf. 1:10). This will be the day of redemption for which believers have been sealed by the Holy Spirit of God (4:30, cf. 1:13). On this day Christ will present the church to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle (5:27); God’s wrath will, however, come on those who are disobedient (5:6). The hostile ‘powers’ will be defeated and will no longer act against believers (Arnold 1989, 157).

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3. Conclusion Because of the eschatological orientation of the letter to the Ephesians, believers through the centuries have found comfort and encouragement in its pages. The eschatological outlook is basic to the entire thought of this epistle (Crenshaw 1959, 6). The letter looks further than the boundaries of this world and views time from God’s perspective. Those who were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, were formerly without hope and without God in the world. ‘But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace…’ (Eph 2:12–13). A mystery which was hidden to previous generations has now been revealed. ‘This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus’ (Eph 3:6). God has united all things in and through the Church. Eschatology has become a dimension of ecclesiology. Eschatological salvation reaches its goal in the saving and cleansing unity of all things in the body of the exalted Christ (1:10, 22–23; 3:19; 4:13–16; Hahn 2002, 362). The eschatology of the letter to the Ephesians can only be understood in the light of its message about the Holy Spirit.20 The Spirit is both first instalment and guarantee of the salvation of the age to come (Lincoln 1990, 40). The Holy Spirit is actively making the future a present reality. Believers need not fear the cosmic ‘powers’, because they have been raised up with Christ, and have been seated with him in the heavenly places (2:5–6). Although they have been seated with Christ, believers are admonished to be strong in the Lord and his mighty power, and to put on the full armour of God (6:10–18). Despite the prominent dimension of a realized eschatology, there is still a battle to be won. Works Consulted Achtemeier, PJ 1983 An apocalyptic shift in early Christian tradition: Reflections on some canonical evidence. CBQ 45, 231–248. Arnold, CE 1989 Ephesians: Power and magic: The concept of power in Ephesians in light of its historical setting. Cambridge. Barr, J 1969 Studies in biblical theology: Biblical words for time. London. Barth, M 1972 Die Parusie im Epheserbrief, Eph 4,13, in Neues Testament und Geschichte, Zürich & Tübingen, 239–250. Best, E 2001 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians. Edinburgh.

20 Lemmer (1987, 159) writes about the reciprocity between eschatology and pneuma in Eph 1:3-14.

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Betz, HD 1992 The Greek magical papyri in translation: Including the demotic spells. Chicago. Crenshaw, JW 1959 Eschatology in the epistle to the Ephesians. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Fee, GD 1994 God’s empowering presence: The Holy Spirit in the letters of Paul. Peabody. Gräbe, PJ 2006 New Covenant, New Community. The Significance of Biblical and Patristic Covenant Theology for Current Understanding. Carlisle. – 2008 The Power of God in Paul’s Letters. Tübingen. Hahn, F 2002 Theologie des Neuen Testaments. Tübingen. Hoehner, HW 2002 Ephesians: An exegetical commentary. Grand Rapids. Kasper, W 1985 Die Hoffnung auf die endgültige Ankunft Jesu Christi in Herrlichkeit. Internationale Katholische Zeitschrift ‘Communio’ 14(1), 1–14. Kreitzer, L 1997 The Epistle to the Ephesians. Peterborough. Lamb, ML 1966 Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. Albany. Layton, RA 2000 Recovering Origen’s Pauline exegesis: Exegesis and eschatology in the commentary on Ephesians. Journal of Early Christian Studies 8(3), 373–411. Lemmer, HR 1987 Reciprocity between eschatology and pneuma in Ephesians 1:3–14. Neot 21, 159–182. – 1988 Pneumatology and eschatology in Ephesians: The role of the eschatological Spirit in the church. University of South Africa. Lightfoot, JB 1980 Notes on epistles of St. Paul: I and II Thessalonians, I Corinthians 1– 7, Romans 1–7, Ephesians 1:1–4. Grand Rapids. Lincoln, AT 1990 Ephesians. Dallas. – 1983 Ephesians 2:8–10: A summary of Paul’s gospel? CBQ 45, 617–630. – 1973 Re-examination of ‘the heavenlies’ in Ephesians. NTS 19, 468–483. Lindemann, A 1975 Die Aufhebung der Zeit: Geschichtsverständnis u. Eschatologie im Epheserbrief. Gütersloh. Lona, HE 1984 Die Eschatologie im Kolosser- und Epheserbrief. Würzburg. McRay, J 2003 Paul: His life and teaching. Grand Rapids. Melbourne, BL 2005 Ephesians 2:13–16: Are the barriers still broken down? Journal of Religious Thought (57–58), 107–119. Merklein, H 1981 Paulinische Theologie in der Rezeption des Kolosser- und Epheserbriefes, in Paulus in den neutestamentlichen Spätschriften, Freiburg, 25–69. Mitton, CL 1976 New Century Bible: Ephesians, Clements RE & Black M (eds.), London. Munck, J 1977 Paul and the salvation of mankind. Richmond. Mussner, F 1985 Das Reich Christi: Bemerkungen zur Eschatologie des corpus paulinum, in Im Gespräch mit dem dreieinen Gott, Düsseldorf, 141–155. Newman, CC 1996 Election and predestination in Ephesians 1:4–6a: An exegeticaltheological study of the historical, christological realization of God’s purpose. Review & Expositor 93, 237–247. O’Brien, PT 1987 The church as a heavenly and eschatological entity, in Church in the Bible and the World, Exeter, 88–119. Scholla, RW 1997 Into the image of God: Pauline eschatology and the transformation of believers. Gregorianum 78(1), 33–54. Schnackenburg, R 1982 Der Brief and die Epheser. Zürich & Neukirchen-Vluyn. Sellin, G 2008 Der Brief an die Epheser. Göttingen. Smalley, SS 1956 Eschatology of Ephesians. EQ 28, 152–157.

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Stegemann, EW 1977 Alt und neu bei Paulus und in den Deuteropaulinen (Kol-Eph). ET 37(6), 508–536. Steinmetz, FJ 1969 Parusie-erwartung im Epheserbrief: Ein Vergleich. Biblica 50(3), 328–336. Van Kooten, GH 2001 The Pauline debate on the cosmos: Graeco-Roman cosmology and Jewish eschatology in Paul and in the pseudo-Pauline letters to the Colossians and the Ephesians. Leiden. Witulski, T 2005 Gegenwart und Zukunft in den eschatologischen Konzeptionen des Kolosser- und des Epheserbriefes. ZNW, 96(3–4), 211–242. Woodbridge, P 2003 Did Paul change his mind? An examination of some aspects of Pauline eschatology. Them 28, (3), 5–18.

In Search of Hope. Eschatology in Philippians Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte In the Epistle to the Philippians Paul apparently writes from a difficult position.1 He is imprisoned, his hope seems to be fainting, and yet he encourages and exhorts the Philippians on what to do and how to live. Has he lost his hope of an imminent coming of Christ? His words pose profound questions: Has he given up the hope for a general resurrection? Does he hope for the death of a martyr? In this letter, Paul is remarkably silent on the parousia. Does this mean that he has changed his mind? That he has given up the strong eschatological expectations attested elsewhere in his letters? Is this the tone of a disillusioned man whose expectations have been wronged? Or does Paul still expect the parousia to come soon? Given the difficulty of the introductory questions concerning Philippians, the first section of this contribution is devoted to matters concerning the letter’s literary integrity and its provenance. In the main section, a discussion is given of the main motifs of potentially eschatological nature found in Philippians. After this, some brief conclusions will be drawn in which I will argue that the letter to the Philippians reflects a situation in which Paul continues to use eschatological terminology, but has lost the vivid hope that characterized his early ministry. Throughout the epistle the apostle seems to be in search of hope.

1. Literary Integrity, Provenance, and Date Over the course of time many scholars have attempted to explain the sudden transition in 3:2 and the strange repetition shown in a number of passages by proposing to understand Philippians as a composite writing.2 Several options have been defended here, and the main suggestions are to regard the writing as compiled out of two or three documents. In his introduction to early Christian literature, Philipp Vielhauer suggests to under1

A detailed study of Paul’s eschatology in Philippians is given by Heinz Giesen (2006, 217–282). 2 See esp. Schmithals (1984); also Schenk (1984). In his recent commentary, John Reumann (2008, 3–20) takes a similar position.

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stand Philippians as comprising three separate letters: A. 4:10–20; B. 1:1– 3:1; 4:4–9, 21–23; C. 3:2–4:3.3 Eduard Lohse holds the same view, except that he moves 4:8–9 to letter C.4 Bart Ehrman considers the letter to be compiled out of two different epistles, and indicates that Paul sent a second letter after Epaphroditus, whose illness Paul reports in 2:25–26, had become well enough to travel: ‘Most of this letter is now found in Philippians 1–2’.5 Others, however, hold the view that Philippians is to be understood as a single document that was written by Paul in one piece.6 The history of research on this issue is vast, and a survey of this research lies beyond the scope of the current article.7 Nevertheless, the problem is of great interest to the theme of eschatology in Philippians, and a clear position on this matter is needed. As I see it, the combination of a number of remarkable transitions and repetitions in the text seems to indicate that the letter’s literary integrity should be doubted.8 Combined with the fact that Polycarp, in his Philippians 3:2, refers to a plural of ‘letters’ sent by Paul to the Philippians, it would seem that initially there had been at least two letters. These two, or three, letters have been compiled into the document we now know as Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Though we cannot say much with any degree of certainty, it seems that Paul is introducing a quotation from himself in 3:1 (WDDXMWDJUDYIHLQX-PL QHMPRLPHQ RXMN RMNQKURYQ X-PL Q GH DMVIDOHY). These words have often been overlooked in the discussion, but they apparently introduce a new part of the letter in which Paul quotes a document that he had written earlier. This would explain the sudden transition in 3:1–2. Now the earlier letter that Paul quotes from would at least have comprised 3:2–4:3. Since there is no need to consider 4:4–9 as the final episode of yet another letter, the best solution is obviously to regard the section 3:2–4:9 as an insertion of a letter Paul had sent previously to the same congregation. In this case, the present letter consists of 1:1–3:1 and 4:10– 23, and in the section between these two parts it takes up an earlier letter by Paul (3:2–4:9). This ‘quoted letter’ is introduced by the final words of 3:1, which implies that Paul is referring to something he had written before. It may be that these words had been inserted by an unknown redactor 3

Vielhauer (1975). Reumann (2008, 3), offers a similar reconstruction (letter 1: 4:10– 20; letter 2: 1:1–3:1; parts of 4:1–9, 21–23; letter 3: 3:2–21 and parts of 4:1–9). He dates these letters to 53–54 CE. 4 Lohse (1983, 49–52). In his introduction to the New Testament Udo Schnelle (1999, 150–153) mentions Schmithals, Köster, Bornkamm, Marxsen, G. Barth, Schenk, Bormann, and Walter as other adherents to this view. 5 Ehrman (2004, 340–344). 6 E.g. Schnelle (1999, 152) himself. 7 A survey up to 1985 is given by W. Schenk (1987, 3280–3313). 8 Especially the change in tone between 2:30 and 3:1–2 is suspicious.

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who compiled the two letters into the present form some time in the second century. Unfortunately, we cannot be certain of this. Given this difficulty, I will treat the letter in the remainder of this contribution as a single writing compiled out of those two documents. As regards the provenance of Philippians, it is clear that the letter was written in captivity. Paul mentions the fact that he is imprisoned (1:7, 13– 14, 17) and several options have been raised for the time and place of this imprisonment. The main alternatives that circulate in the scholarly world are Caesarea, Ephesus, and Rome.9 The Caesarean hypothesis has the problem that the distance between Caesarea and Philippi was too large to enable a vivid correspondence to be sent back and forth in a relatively short span of time. The Book of Acts reports that Paul was held captive in Caesarea (Acts 23:44–27:1), but also indicates that this was not a very long period. The difficulty with the Ephesian hypothesis is that we have no evidence at all on Paul being held captive there. The Book of Acts does not mention it and neither does Paul himself. For this reason, Rome suggests itself as the best alternative. The argument often heard against Rome (the same as with Caesarea: the distance to Philippi) weighs far less than in the case of Caesarea. According to Acts 28:30, Paul was held in Rome for a period of at least two years, and the trade routes to Philippi enabled a relatively fast communication. Here the problem is that Acts describes Paul’s situation as that of one who lives in a rented house as a relatively free man, while Philippians clearly reflects a situation in which Paul was a prisoner. Later evidence on Paul’s imprisonment in Rome, however, suggests that the picture in Acts is strongly coloured by the wish to depict Paul as posing no threat at all to the Roman authorities. The apologetic tendency of Acts may have downplayed or left out Paul’s imprisonment, while later sources clearly speak of Paul as having been martyred in Rome after he was held captive as a prisoner.10 If Philippians were indeed written in Rome, this would hold certain implications for the date of the letter as well. As a result, the date would fall some time in the final years of Paul’s ministry in the late fifties. One of the questions that will have to be asked below is whether Paul had become disillusioned with his proclamation of the imminent parousia.11 It is not difficult to imagine: held as a prisoner in Rome, Paul may have lost cour9 See Reumann 10 Paul’s death

(2008, 13–15); Schnelle (1999, 146–148). as a martyr might to form the background to the remarks in Col 1:24; Eph 3:13; 2 Tim 4:6–8. Explicit references are found in 1 Clem. 5:5–7; Ignatius Eph. 12:2; Rom. 4:3, and the Acts of Paul (esp. 11:1–7). 11 The disillusioned Paul I encounter in Philippians is a long way removed from the arrogant Paul portrayed by Robert T. Fortna (1990, 220–234). Furthermore, Fortna accepts an early date for Philippians.

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age and have clung to his rhetoric of the parousia without being convinced of its imminence any longer.

2. (Potentially) Eschatological Motifs It is remarkable that Paul uses hardly any explicit references to the parousia in Philippians. The only explicit mention of the end is by the term K-PHYUD M,KVRX  &ULVWRX  that Paul uses in 1:6 or in its abbreviated form (K-PHYUD &ULVWRX ; 1:10; 2:16).12 In the rest of the letter Paul uses numerous expressions that may or may not be understood as eschatological in nature. Thus, the term VZWKULYD (1:19, 28; 2:12) is in itself not an eschatological term, but may be understood in that context. The same is valid for Paul’s remark on his ‘goal, the heavenly price’ in 3:14 (WR EUDEHL RQ WK D>QZNOKYVHZ). Also his remarks in 3:15, 20–21, and 4:5 may or may not be understood as eschatological in nature. The most important question, perhaps, is how to understand the wish Paul expresses in 1:23, ‘to die and be with Christ’ (WR DMQDOX VDL NDL VXQ &ULVWZ  HL?QDL). Does Paul indicate that he wants to die as a martyr, perhaps even by his own hand, in the expectation that he will subsequently be resurrected in heaven? Or does Paul refer to the parousia here, indicating that the break-up of the entire world will bring him to be with Christ? In what follows, I will first deal with the expressions mentioned above, and then Paul’s problematic statement of 1:23 will be looked into (section 3). The mention of the ‘Day of Jesus Christ’ in 1:6 is part of the thanksgiving formula of the first section of the letter (1:3–11).13 Paul here utters the wish that the Philippians will continue to live as they did. In similar fashion as we find elsewhere in his letters, Paul opens his thanksgiving section in traditional terms.14 Also the object of Paul’s thanksgiving (the Philippians’ NRLQZQLYD with the gospel) is a regular Pauline phrase.15 In verse 6 Paul remarks that he is ‘confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the Day of Jesus Christ’ (NRSV). Nothing in this verse indicates that Paul expected that ‘Day’ to 12 13

Philippians is the only pauline letter in which this specific combination is used! As regards the meaning of the ‘work’ mentioned in 1:6, three possibilities are open: 1. It is the work of God; 2. It is the work of God and the Philippians; 3. It is a human activity; cf. Reumann (2008, 113–114). Gordon D. Fee (1995, 86), is clear on this: ‘The “day of Christ Jesus” is the eschatological goal of present life in Christ’. 14 For 1:9–11 see 1 Thess 3:12. The main terms: HXMF DULVWZ WZ  THZ  PRX cf. Rom 1:8; 1 Cor 1:4; Phlm 4; PQHLYD cf. 1 Thess 1:2; Phlm 4; GHKYVL cf. 2 Cor 1:11. 15 See Rom 15:26; 1 Cor 1:9; 10:16; 2 Cor 6:14; 8:4; 9:13; 13:13; Gal 2:9; Phil 2:1; 3:10; Phlm 6.

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come soon. In stead, Paul seems to use traditional terms in order to give thanks over the Philippias’ faith. The use of the expression ‘Day of (Jesus) Christ’ seems to fit very well with a late date for Philippians: in his earliest letter Paul speaks of the ‘Day of the Lord’ (K-PHYUD NXULYRX; 1 Thess 5:2), and by doing so he evidently refers to the KZK\uPZ\Rof the Hebrew Bible which was translated in the exact same Greek words in the Septuagint.16 In a later passage, this Day of the Lord (= YHWH), at which Jesus Christ evidently was expected to play an important role, became identified as the ‘Day of our Lord Jesus Christ’.17 Here, in Philippians, Paul abbreviates the reference even to the expression ‘the Day of Christ’ (1:10; 2:16). This usage of the term should evidently be seen as the final part in the development in which the ‘Day of YHWH’ became identified as the ‘Day of Christ’. The question arises what Paul had in mind by referring to the ‘Day of (Jesus) Christ’. In 1:6 we find no further information, apart from the fact that Paul evidently saw this ‘Day’ as a future event. The judgemental character of that event becomes clear, though, in 1:10 Paul expresses his wish that the Philippians may be ‘pure and blameless’ (NRSV) at the ‘Day of Christ’. The words Paul uses do not belong to his standard terminology. The word HL-OLNULQKY is actually a Pauline hapax, and he uses the other adjective (DMSURYVNRSR) only in 1 Cor 10:32.18 The instruction in 1:10 understands the ‘Day of Christ’ as the moment at which a judgement will be pronounced on the behaviour of the followers of Christ. It is at that moment that it will become clear whether their deeds have been right or wrong. Here, however, Paul does not speak about the nearness of that Day; he just mentions it as the decisive moment for the salvation of humankind. It seems that Paul is using this reference as traditional language, and the fervour of the expectation as attested by a number of passages in Paul’s earlier letters seems not to have played too large a role here. The same observation can be made with regard to the third time Paul refers to this ‘Day’ (2:16).19 In this clause (2:14–18) Paul does not mention the nearness of the ‘Day’ either, but it is clear that he uses apocalyptic language to express his wish over against the Philippians. He wants them to be ‘children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world’ (NRSV). This is the 16 JoelLXX 1:5; 2:1; 4:14; Obad 1:15; Zeph 1:14; Mal 3:19; Isa 13:6, 9; Jer 32:33; Ezek 7:10; 13:5. 17 1 Cor 1:8; cf. 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14. 18 It is also used in Acts 24:16. 19 The translation of HLM as ‘toward’ the day of Christ indicates that the focus is on the present state of the believers, which, however, is defined by the eschatological ‘day’ mentioned.

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kind of language we also find in Qumran texts in which the members of the sect refer to themselves as the ‘Sons of Light’ and to outsiders as the ‘Sons of Darkness’.20 Paul’s remark may reflect the words of Daniel 12:3, where a similar comparison is made, in an apocalyptic context. The words Paul uses to refer to the ‘Day of Christ’ indicate that he expects to be judged himself on that Day, and the focus of his words falls on his own fate rather than on that of the Philippians. Our findings so far indicate that the most explicit eschatological references in Philippians are put in traditional terms. Paul does not speak about the nearness of the Day of Christ, although he evidently upholds this expectation as the decisive marking point in the future. The fact that he refers to this Day in 2:16 in an almost introspective manner, by indicating the fact that it is he who will be judged concerning the faith and behaviour of the Philippians fits well with Paul’s general mood and tone in this letter. The impression one gets, is that Paul did still consider his eschatological hope as highly relevant, but also that he apparently no longer considered the Day of Christ as imminent as he had done before. Several other passages in Philippians contain phrases that may or may not be understood as eschatological in nature. Let us take a look at these verses. In 1:19, 28 and 2:12, Paul uses the term ‘salvation’ to describe his own hope and that of the Philippians.21 The term can be used in a general sense, and in 1:19 this might be the case. Here, Paul might just be speaking of his release from prison, but given his words in verse 20 this is less than likely. In v. 20 Paul expresses the hope that Christ will be ‘glorified’ (PHJDOXQTKYVHWDL) in or by Paul’s body (HMQ WZ  VZYPDWLY PRX), and he adds that this may happen ‘by his death or by his life’ (HL>WH GLD ]ZK  HL>WHGLDTDQDYWRX). Apparently he considers the option of dying as a martyr (HL>WHGLD TDQDYWRX), and he expects this to bring him to his salvation. The eschatological connotation of the word, found elsewhere in Paul, is not very prominent here, but must be considered present. For Paul, the judgement pronounced at the ‘Day of Christ’ is the moment in which God/Christ will decide on his ‘salvation’. This same context is implicitly present in 1:28 as well. Here, Paul calls upon the Philippians to cling to Christ and live accordingly, for this will lead to their ‘salvation’. Also in 2:12 Paul uses the term in this manner, 20

In e.g. the War Scroll, the members of the Qumran community are labeled as ‘Sons of Light’, whereas the outsiders are presented as ‘Sons of Darkness’. The former are protected by Michael, whereas the prince of the latter is Belial (cf. XVI,7; XVIII,1–3). 21 See Fee (1995, 131): ‘Also in light of the Job citation sôtêria probably refers first to Paul’s final eschatological “salvation”, when he appears at the heavenly tribunal’ (on 1:19). But Reumann (2008, 244), interprets VZWKULYD as ‘not being disgraced’.

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without an explicit reference to the nature of the salvation he mentions. Neither does he refer to the ‘Day of Christ’ as the moment at which judgement is pronounced. Nevertheless, his remark on the need to ‘accomplish your salvation’ (PHWD IRYERX NDL WURYPRX WKQ H-DXWZ Q VZWKULYDQ NDWHUJDY]HVTH) should probably be understood in this theological context. In 3:14 Paul speaks of his ‘price for the heavenly call’ (GLZYNZ HLM WR EUDEHL RQWK’D>QZNOKYVHZWRX  THRX  HMQ&ULVWZ  M,KVRX ).22 Paul uses the same metaphor of a ‘prize’ in 1 Corinthians 9:24, where he points out that this is the reward that the followers of Christ will earn when they commit themselves fully to Christ. The image in 1 Corinthians 9:24 is taken from the field of athletics, and it is very likely that this image is eschatological in character: a contest in athletics ends at the finish, and this is where the ‘prize’ is given.23 In similar fashion, the prize of salvation will be given to the followers of Christ at the finish of history, viz. at the ‘Day of Christ’. This semi-eschatological image of a ‘prize’ has the same ring to it in Philippians 3:14. This is underlined by Paul’s remark in the following verse (v. 15). There, Paul states that God ‘will reveal it to us’ if the Philippians have held another opinion than the one he deemed necessary. This may refer to a general moment some time in the future, but given the eschatological undertone we have just uncovered, it is likely that also these verses implicitly refer to the future judgement. For Paul, his exhortations on the here and now were still rooted in his beliefs concerning the future. A remark in which Paul apparently speaks about the here and now rather than about the future is found in 3:20. There, Paul mentions the fact that the followers of Christ have their citizenship in heaven (K-PZ QJDUWR SROLYWHXPDHMQRXMUDQRL X-SDYUFHL). To these words he adds an important remark that places them in an eschatological and apocalyptic context: ‘it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ’ (NRSV). This additional remark indicates that Paul here thinks in apocalyptic terms, and heaven is the place where now already the situation is established that one day will come down to earth. Paul’s use of the term SROLYWHXPD has raised the issue of whether the background should be sought in the fact that the Jewish community in Philippi was known as such a SROLYWHXPD or perhaps the Philippian colony itself was known as a Roman SROLYWHXPD. Evidence shows, however, that the usage of this term as a metaphor was not restricted to Paul. Some dec22

Fee (1995, 346–351), speaks about Paul’s ‘singular and passionate focus on the future consummation’ (350). 23 Reumann (2008, 556): ‘All three of the noun phrases that surround diôkô – kata skopon, eis to brabeion, and the gen. tês anô klêseôs – fit the racecourt metaphor, but can also have meanings in Paul’s apostolic career, particularly “call” (klêsis), where some make the theological side determinative’.

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ades after Paul Clement of Rome used the same metaphor. In various passages in 1 Clement he points out that followers of Christ should follow Christ’s rules just as citizens should follow the law of their SROLY. Just as the law of the SROLY, the SROLWHLYD, results in a community of law-abiding citizens known as a SROLYWHXPD, the Christian community has to obey the heavenly law. The origin of Christian citizenship therefore lies in heaven.24 In this case, however, it might be argued that Clement used the metaphor because he knew it from Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Other evidence indicates that Clement need not have picked the metaphor from Paul, and that Paul certainly did not invent the metaphor. Especially Philo of Alexandria used the semantic field of SROLYWHXPD, SROLWHLYD, and SROLWHXYHVTDL in various ways in his descriptions of the Jews and their history. In De Conf. Ling. 77–78, Philo speaks about the ‘wise’, thus called by Moses, and points out that these are the people whose souls know that they belong to ‘the heavenly region’ (WRQRXMUDYQLRQ FZYURQ HMQ Z_ SROLWHXYRQWDL): ‘To them the heavenly region, where their citizenship lies, is their native land; the earthly region in which they became sojourners is a foreign country’ (trans. LCL).25 Another passage in Philo, De Opificio Mundi 143, deals with the original ‘state’ of creation. Adam, Philo argues, was the first citizen of the world and he entered into a ‘state’ (SRYOL) with a polity (H>FHL SROLWHLYDQ). This state, however, was already present before Adam: This State and polity must have had citizens before man. These might justly be termed people of the Great City, having had allotted to them as their dwelling-place the greatest compass, and having been enrolled in the greatest and most perfect commonwealth. And who should these be but spiritual and divine natures, some incorporeal and visible to mind only, some not without bodies, such as the stars? (LCL): WDXYWK WK  SRYOHZ NDL SROLWHLYD H>GHL WLQD HL?QDL SUR DMQTUZYSRX SROLYWD RL` OHYJRLQW M D@Q HMQGLYNZ PHJDORSROL WDL WRQ PHYJLVWRQ SHULYERORQ RLMNHL Q ODFRYQWH NDLWZ PHJLYVWZNDLWHOHLRWDYWZSROLWHXYPDWLHMJJUDIHYQWH

Men devoted to God are depicted by Philo as citizens of the heavenly SROLWHLYD in De Gig. 61: THRX  GH D>QTUZSRLL-HUHL NDL SURIK WDLRL^WLQHRXMNKM[ LYZVDQSROLWHLYDWK SDUD WZ  NRYVPZ WXFHL QNDL NRVPRSROL WDLJHQHYVTDLWR GH DLMVTKWRQSD QX-SHUNXY\DQWH HLM WRQ QRKWRQ NRYVPRQ PHWDQHYVWKVDQ NDMNHL TL Z>NKVDQ HMJJUDIHYQWH DMIDYUWZQ NDLDMVZPDYWZQLMGHZ QSROLWHLYD

Translation (LCL):

24 25

See e.g. 1 Clem 2:8; 3:4; 21:1; 44:6; 51:2; 54:5. In Conf. 109 Philo uses the metaphor of SROLWHXYHVTDL again, but this time in a very different context. In Agr. 81 Philo speaks of the SROLYWHXPD of virtue.

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But the men of God are priests and prophets who have refused to accept membership in the commonwealth of the world and to become citizens therein, but have risen wholly above the sphere of the sense-perception and have been translated into the world of the intelligible and dwell there registered as freemen of the commonwealth of Ideas, which are imperishable and incorporeal.

Life under the Law of Moses is also described by Philo as life under a certain SROLWHLYD in De Spec. Leg. IV,55: RL>HWDL GHL Q R- QRYPR D^SDQWD PHQ WRX VXPIHURPHYQRX WK  NDWD 0ZXVHYD L-HUD  SROLWHLYD SDQWR DMORYJRX SDYTRX NDL SDYVK NDNLYD DMPHWRYFRX HL?QDL PD OORQ K@ WRXWRL D>OORLQRYPRLFUZPHYQRXNWO

Translation: The law holds that all who conform to the sacred constitution laid down by Moses must be exempt from every unreasoning passion and every vice in a higher degree than those who are governed by other laws (…).

So the situation we find in Philo is that he uses the semantic field of SROLWHLYD SROLYWHXPD and SROLWHXYHVTDL in different ways. It is used to indicate the heavenly constitution according to which humankind has to live from the beginning of creation onward (Opif. 143). It also refers to the divine and heavenly realm that pervades earthly life (Conf. 77–78; Gig. 63). And apart from its general metaphoric usages (see e.g. Conf. 109; Agr. 81), Philo uses this specific metaphor to refer to the Mosaic Law that defines life for the Jews (Spec.Leg. IV,55). In a different context the term SROLYWHXPD is used for the adherence to a specific law by Josephus, (c. Ap. II,257). There, Josephus argues that Plato followed ‘our lawgiver’ in stating that citizens should study the law and by doing that they should keep the state (SROLWHXYPD) clean. Here, too, the Law constitutes a SROLYWHXPD. This brief scrutiny of our evidence shows that Paul used a metaphor that was already known: those who live according to the Mosaic Law are regarded as a SROLYWHXPD that lived out of the heavenly SROLYWHLD. Their actual SROLY was thought to be a heavenly one. The question we are now confronted by with regard to Paul is: Does his use of this metaphor have a specific eschatological ring to it? Judging from the passages we found in Philo and Josephus, it is clear that the metaphor itself is not eschatological in nature. The followers of Christ are citizens of the heavenly SROLY, they live according to the heavenly SROLYWHLD, and their community can thus be regarded as a heavenly SROLYWHXPD. Still, the context in which Paul places this metaphor is indeed eschatological. He specifies his reference to the heavenly SROLYWHXPD by stating HM[ RX_ NDL VZWK UD DMSHNGHFRYPHTD NXYULRQ  M,KVRX Q &ULVWRYQ. Note the singular HM[RX_ here: Paul mentions the Lord Jesus Christ as com-

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ing from that ‘heavenly SROLYWHXPD’. The words in which Paul speaks of the expectation of the coming of the Lord strongly reminds us of 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10. There, Paul summarizes the faith of the followers of Christ as a turn to the one and living God, and adds that it consists of DMQDPHYQHLQ WRQ XL-RQ DXMWRX  HMN WZ Q RXMUDQZ Q R`Q K>JHLUHQ HMN [WZ Q] QHNUZ Q M,KVRX Q WRQ U-XRYPHQRQ K-PD  HMN WK  RMUJK  WK  HMUFRPHYQK. The verb DMSHNGHYFRPDL is synonymous to DMQDPHYQZ, and the advent of Jesus from heaven is crucial to both expressions of faith. From 1 Thessalonians 1:10 it is clear that Paul expected that parousia to bring salvation, in that Jesus would ‘save us from the coming wrath’. Here, the apocalyptic framework of Paul’s eschatology is obvious. In Philippians 3:20 this is less clear, though given the background in 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10 it may be assumed. The assumption of an apocalyptic framework in Philippians 3:20–21 is indeed justified, given Paul’s words in 3:21. There, Paul speaks of the expectation of the transformation of the body of humiliation (semitic genitive: ‘the humiliated body’) into a body of glory (‘glorious body’). He adds that Christ will ‘subject all things to himself’. Again, the language is traditional (see 1 Corinthians 15:27–28). Paul apparently expects an inversion of his current situation to take place at the coming of Christ. In this passage it seems that Paul repeats his own ideas as he put them in words elsewhere in his letters. Yet, as in the rest of the letter, Philippians 3:20–21 does not take away the impression that Paul does not expect the parousia to come any time soon. We will take a closer look at the parallels between Philippians 3:20–21 and other passages in Paul in the third section of this contribution. For now it suffices to see that Paul again appears to repeat traditional language on the coming of Christ, without the enthusiastic ring to these words we find elsewhere in his letters. Here, too, Paul’s tone is careful, maybe even hesitant, but he is still convinced of the coming of Christ. In 4:5, Paul underpins his admonitions by briefly saying ‘the Lord is near!’ These brief words raise the question whether they are meant in an eschatological manner or not. Here, a closer study of Paul’s vocabulary does not really help. Paul uses the word HMJJXYonly three times in his letters, and the current verse is one of these three instances in which he uses it. In Romans 13:11 the meaning seems to be temporal: ‘salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers’ (NRSV).26 But in Romans 10:8 this is clearly not the case. There, Paul quotes from DeuteronomyLXX 30:14 26

Joseph A. Fitzmyer (1993, 681) argues hat Paul here points out that ‘Roman Christians must realize that they are already living in the eschaton’. Ulrich Wilckens (2008, 76) stresses the future eschatological hope expressed here by Paul. Cf. also Dunn (1988, 784–786).

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to point out that the ‘word is near your’. It appears that 4:5 is the only verse in Paul where HMJJXY is used for ‘the Lord’. In no other text within the New Testament do we find such an explicit reference to the ‘Lord’ as being ‘near’. It seems that the closest parallel is found in PsalmLXX 33:19 (HMJJX NXYULR WRL  VXQWHWULPPHYQRL WKQ NDUGLYDQ NDL WRX WDSHL QRXWZ  SQHXYPDWLVZYVHL; ‘the Lord is near the broken-hearted and those who are humble in spirit He saves’) or 144:18 (HMJJX HL? VXY NXYULH NDL SD VDL DL- HMQWRODLY VRX DMOKYTHLD; ‘you are near, o Lord, and all your commandments are true’). In Christian texts the closest parallel is found in Hermas, Vis. II,3: HMJJXNXYULRWRL HMSLVWUHIRPHYQRLZ-JHYJUDSWDL HMQWZ  M(OGDGNDL 0ZGDYWWRL SURIKWHXYVDVLQHMQWK  HMUKYPZ WZ  ODZ  (‘The Lord is near to those who convert, as is written in the Book of Eldad and Modat, who prophesied to the people in the wilderness’). Could it be that Paul’s words in Philippians 4:5 refer to this same tradition, without mentioning Eldad and Modad? Regardless of that, it seems that Paul’s remark here is not specifically eschatological: in the present context, the phrase ‘the Lord is near’ seems to indicate that Jesus Christ is present within the congregation of believers.27 One passage in particular in the Epistle to the Philippians should be looked into at this final stage of this overview. In 1:23–24, Paul states that he is not sure as to what he should wish for: ‘I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you’ (NRSV). The exact meaning of these words is much debated: Does Paul wish for martyrdom here or is he considering taking his own life?28 This last option is discussed by Bart Ehrman in his Introduction to the New Testament, and rightly refuted by him.29 The verb Paul uses in 1:23 (DMQDOX VDL) is clearly a euphemism for dying,30 but the nature of the death Paul may be wishing for here remains unclear. Does this mean that Paul here speaks about an individual afterlife in stead of an eschatological resurrection? Should these words be seen as indication that Paul had changed his mind and no longer expected a general eschatological resurrection? In his monograph on Paul Jürgen Becker has argued that Philippians 1:20–24 does not refer to an individual afterlife, but should be interpreted 27

But see Fee (1995, 407): ‘… one cannot tell whether Paul intends it to conclude what precedes or introduce what follows, and therefore whether it expresses future or realized eschatology’. Reumann (2008, 613), interprets the phrase as referring to the parousia. 28 On the possibility that Paul here thought of taking his own life, see esp. Droge (1998, 263–286). 29 Ehrman (2004, 343, box 20.10): ‘Was Paul contemplating suicide?’. 30 See Liddell, Scott, Jones, s.v. DM QDOXY Z, III.1.

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as Paul’s wish to die as a martyr: ‘Paulus redet ausschließlich nur von sich und speziell von seinem möglichen Märtyrertod’.31 Indeed it is likely that Paul here expresses the hope to be ‘with Christ’ immediately after his death, a view that identifies Paul as a would-be martyr.32 This martyrological interpretation of Paul’s words can be understood against the background of a Jewish tradition on the fate of a martyr. A relatively large number of passages indicate that this view was rather popular: see e.g. 1 Enoch 22:2, 11; 39:3–12; 60:8, 23; 61:12; 70:3–4; 71:16–17; 4 Maccabees 6:29; 9:8; 16:25; Luke 16:22–24; 23:43; 2 Corinthians 5:8; Acts 7:59; 6:9– 11; 7:9–11; Visio Esdrae 7:75–101; 14:9; 2 Baruch 50:1–51:6; 1 Clemens 5:4, 7. The two different views – the expectation of a resurrection after death for martyrs and that of a general, eschatological resurrection – were not incompatible. As Joost Holleman (1996) has argued, Paul combined the same two ideas in his discussion of the meaning of the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15. According to Holleman (1996, 139–157), the tradition of the heavenly vindication of the martyr formed the decisive frame of reference for the early Christian belief in Jesus’ resurrection, and in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul combines this view of Jesus’ resurrection as that of the heavenly vindicated martyr with that of the general, eschatological resurrection (Holleman 1996, 158–164). In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul indeed seems to have combined the two views on resurrection into a new idea – viz. of Jesus’ resurrection as the beginning of the general resurrection. It seems that Paul did not consider it a problem to combine the two different views on resurrection, and for that reason his remarks in Philippians 1:20–24 do not indicate that he no longer expected the general resurrection. They only indicate that at times he wished for his own fate to be that of the martyr who will be resurrected immediately upon his death. This individual hope Paul held for himself, at least at the time when he wrote this section of Philippians, does not contradict his expectation that at the final consummation a general resurrection would take place. At this stage of his ministry, Paul himself, however, expected to die before the parousia, and hoped to be united with Christ immediately after his death. The struggle for the gospel that eventually led Paul into his Roman captivity had taken its toll: here in Philippians, Paul is far removed from his original fervour that he 31 32

Becker (1992, 475). This martyrological interpretation is to be preferred over the one that sees Phil 1:23 as evidence that Paul thought that all followers of Christ will be united with their Lord immediately after their death. This is the view of Paul Hoffmann (1966, 286–320). See the careful summary on 322: ‘Die einzige klare Aussage des Apostels über den “Todeszustand” ist in Phil 1,23 erhalten. Paulus denkt an dieser Stelle allem Anschein nach an eine Gemeinschaft der verstorbenen Christen mit dem erhöhten Christus im Himmel’.

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described in 1 Thessalonians 4. Then Paul expected to be among the living at the parousia of the Lord; now he is longing to be released of his duties.

Conclusion The above survey has shown that Paul’s language in Philippians is thoroughly influenced by the eschatological expectation we also find elsewhere in his letters, but the fervour of the expectation has apparently diminished. It seems that Paul uses eschatological motifs because they are part of his religious vocabulary, but nothing in the letter to the Philippians indicates that he still expected the Day of the Lord to come any time soon. Instead, it seems that the eschatological motifs Paul refers to still defined his theological frame of reference, though now without the immediate expectation of the parousia which we find so strongly present in, for example 1 Thessalonians 4 and 5. As it seems, Paul’s personal situation of incarceration has left its traces here. His occasional wish to share the fate of the martyrs and be vindicated immediately after that in heaven further underlines this point. Works Consulted Becker, J 1992 Paulus. Der Apostel der Völker. Tübingen. Droge, AJ 1988 Mori Lucrum: Paul and Ancient Theories of Suicide. NovT 30, 263–286. Dunn, JDG 1988 Romans, vol. 2. Dallas. Ehrman, BD 2004 The New Testament. A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. Oxford & New York. Fee, GD 1995 Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. Grand Rapids. Fitzmyer, JA 1993 Romans. New York. Fortna, RT 1990 Philippians: Paul’s Most Egocentric Letter, in The Conversation Continues. Studies in John & Paul in Honor of J. Louis Martyn, Fortna, RT & Gaventa BR (eds.), Nashville, 220–234. Giesen, H 2006 ‘Eschatology in Philippians’, in Paul and His Theology, Porter SE (ed.), Leiden & Boston, 217–282. Hoffmann, P 1966 Die Toten in Christus. Eine religionsgeschichtliche und exegetische Untersuchung zur paulinischen Eschatologie. Münster, 286–320. Holleman, J 1996 Resurrection and Parousia. A Traditio-Historical Study of Paul’s Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15. Leiden & New York. Lohse, E 1983 Die Entstehung des Neuen Testaments. Stuttgart & Berlin. Reumann, JHP 2008 Philippians. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New Haven. Schenk, W 1984 Die Philipperbriefe des Paulus. Stuttgart. – 1987 Der Philipperbrief in der neueren Forschung (1945–1985). ANRW 25(4), 3280– 3313. Schnelle, U 1999 Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Göttingen. Schmithals, W 1984 Die Briefe des Paulus in ihrer ursprünglichen Form. Zürich.

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Vielhauer, P 1975 Geschichte der urchristlichen Literatur. Berlin & New York. Wilckens, U 2008 Der Brief an die Römer, vol. 3. Neukirchen-Vluyn.

Eschatology in Colossians ‘At Home in the World’

Jeremy Punt 1. Introduction: Pauline Eschatology Eschatology is the shorthand term, in use since the nineteenth century, for referring to a rather complex and interlinked set of ideas (or even doctrine) about the last (H>VFDWRa) things: including, but not restricted to, the end (or the future) of the world; the parousia or second coming or return of Christ; the coming kingdom of God; the resurrection of/from the dead; the last judgement of humankind; heaven and hell; the transformation of the cosmos; the new heaven and the new earth. Eschatology can, in most basic and widest form, simply entail those convictions pertaining to the destiny of humankind; and therefore openness to the future and preparedness for possible future events.1 But for the focus on an imminent expectation of the end, (cosmic) eschatology is taken by some scholars to be synonymous with apocalypticism. Where distinctions were made, eschatology was taken to be aligned with prophecy, approaching history as the arena of God’s saving activity and thus considering it positively as change or transformation. Apocalypticism,2 however, was understood as being all-absorbent with a cataclysmic conclusion to history through a climactic series of events as God’s way of bringing salvation to people, ruling out any concern for individual events and portraying history in mythical terms. An apocalyptic view preferred replacement and the notion of another, alternative reality to change (cf. also Aune 1992, 594).

1

It goes without saying that concerns about ‘time’, as important facet of eschatological thought in the New Testament, should be evaluated within a first century CE context and not our 21 st century; cf. also Malina (1989, 1–31). Cf. remarks by Witherington (1992, 232–242), who with reference to relativity and quantum theories, almost seems to argue for the reverse. 2 In addition, some scholars argue that there is no great (if any) distinction between apocalypticism and mysticism, except that ‘the latter may well involve interest in the higher wisdom for its own sake rather than the improvement of the religious and moral life which such knowledge may bring’ (Rowland 1983, 79 n. 5). Cf. also Kreitzer (1993, referring to Segal).

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The link between eschatological notions in the New Testament and prophecy in the Old Testament is tangible but cannot be forced. The expectation of imminent interventions of God in history by eighth and seventh BCE Israelite prophets, and the subsequent dissolution of historical salvation history with its historical markers such as the Exodus events, conquest of the Promised Land and the Davidic covenant, would qualify as being eschatological in nature. On the other hand, no complete or full end is expected in prophetic notions of restoration and reconstruction (such as expressed in Isa 9:2–7; 11:1–9; 32:1–8; Am 9:11–12; Hos 2:5), and therefore probably best not described as eschatological. However, the increasing exuberance of prophetic expectation (e.g. Isa 60:1–2; 61:1–7; 66:12–16) and memory loss about the history, entailed a movement towards what would eventually become apocalyptic eschatology in post-exilic Jewish religious thought (Aune 1992, 594–595).3

2. Paul: Theology and Eschatology In what is a rare, virtually unanimous, consensus, scholars accept the allpervasive presence of eschatology and related notions in the Pauline corpus, although the range of different assessments and interpretations of eschatology and its role in Pauline thinking at times virtually undo the consensus. And while Paul does not describe the age to come (e.g. Soards 1987, 183), two major debates have been raging for many decades on how the relationship between eschatology and the apocalyptic should be understood in Pauline documents, and how best to interpret the tensions inherent to Pauline configurations of eschatology. 2.1. Eschatology and Apocalyptic Connected to the term eschatology – which for its reference to what lies ahead is nevertheless focused on present hope, as well as expectations and promises related to what lies in the future – is another term, namely apocalyptic. Apocalyptic is, however, a different genre and is not necessarily concerned with the last things as a temporal frame of reference. It is most often used with a related but different shade of meaning, focusing on the revelation of the hidden aspects related to the end of the world and the last things. The Pauline documents have featured most strongly in the discus-

3 Early Christian eschatology eventually differs from Jewish eschatology in its affirmation of a dying and resurrected Messiah, the idea of a divine agent assuming the role of YHWH on the day of the Lord, and, of course, the parousia (Witherington 1992, 226).

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sion of the relationship between the concepts eschatology and apocalyptic.4 While Paul may not use much of the typical Jewish apocalyptic language, ‘he writes from the perspective and agenda found in such literature’ (Horsley 1995, 1157). Paul’s theology is apocalyptic, not because it adheres to the traits as outlined by Beker and others, but in so far as it displays a ‘perspective of discontinuity’ (Keck 1984, 229–241) with what was current and contemporary. Some scholars are of the opinion that after the destruction of the temple and large parts of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the prominence of the apocalyptic myth among Jews was so seriously impinged that it was never to fully recover. ‘The fall of the city and the utter defeat of the revolutionary powers did much to discredit apocalypticism’ (Roetzel 2003, 8). On the other hand, the early followers of Jesus inherited the apocalyptic traditions prior to the revolt and fall of Jerusalem, and although these traditions as well as their incorporation into the Jesus-communities were not without tensions at that stage – as is evident in the tensions embedded in the apocalyptic thought taken up by Paul – the post-70 CE situation would prove even a greater challenge to the early Christian church, at least for as long as the Jewish heritage was seen as of more than simply symbolic importance. Paul, however, did not reject the apocalyptic myth but made a number of modifications to it, reshaping it in ‘a dramatic, revolutionary way, taking advantage of his marginal situation to explore the possibilities lurking in the myth’ (Roetzel 2003, 8). Pauline eschatology was interrelated with the apostle’s ideas about God’s power, and settled largely in his perception of God as universal creator, which he experienced in his own recent salvation. God showed his final purpose for creation in Jesus’ death and resurrection, which inaugurated the long-awaited age to come.5 God’s power was not only manifested in his created universe and as the life-force who fathered a people in Abraham, but God’s identity was increasingly a creative one. While 1 Thessa4

The finding of apocalyptic elements in Pauline thought dates back to the work of Schweitzer, notably in his attempt to understand Paul in terms of his Jewish background. Some Pauline scholars, e.g. Ridderbos (1975), have argued that Paul’s thought is ‘structured around the topic of eschatology’, but the Pauline emphasis on apocalyptic goes beyond that. Whether one accepts with Beker (1980; 1982) that Jewish apocalyptic is characterized by the four elements of vindication, universalism, dualism and imminence, and whether these elements can all be traced in Paul’s letters, is a matter for another discussion. 5 Paul’s argument about the centrality of the resurrection, rests on the premise of the bodily resurrection of Christ, which for him therefore implies also the resurrection of all believers (1 Cor 15:12–19). This premise makes sense in a Jewish framework, since a Greek emphasis would have stressed the immortality of the soul, ‘a bodily resurrection was never any significant part of Greek thinking’ (Segal 2004, 425).

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lonians and Romans provide the general picture, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians and Philippians underline God’s teleological or eschatological purpose as creator. The authentic Pauline letters provide sufficient evidence for a prominent and thoroughgoing eschatological awareness,6 including the expectation of the imminent end of the world.7 In Jewish apocalyptic literature substantial attention was given to the heavenly court (cf. Rowland 1983, 75). Paul’s concern about the new commonwealth founded by God, in Jesus, was a notion that derived from Jewish apocalyptic but did not suggest an eventual replacement for Jerusalem, nor an eschatological descending of an entity from above. It was rather ‘a radical eschatologising of the heavenly commonwealth to which Christians already belong on earth’ (Ebeling 1985, 235). In Paul’s writings, the identity of God is perceived to consist primarily in him being the founder of a spiritual (‘heavenly’) city and father of the race – since the familial household was the fundamental political unit of the classical citystate, it is important not to separate political and familial spheres.8 Paul twice portrays the church as a civic body or structure, and thus not only as family unit, in his letters. The first reference is to the heavenly Jerusalem in Galatians 4:26 and Christ’s followers as its citizens, people obedient to the constitution of the earthly, inferior Jerusalem, the Jewish law, are ensnared in slavery. In the second reference in Philippians 3:20, the church is described also as a heavenly form of government, WR SROLYWHXPDHMQRXMU DQRLCa. The superior civic character of Paul’s converts are due to them being more truly God’s people than those who place a premium on ostentatious marks of race, such as circumcision, focusing rather on worship in the spirit. Further, civic-like conceptions of community (politeuma) could degenerate into competitive destructive pride (White 1990, 139–172).

6 Various scholars offer what constitutes for them the main elements of Pauline eschatology, e.g. Soards (1987, 184–185): ‘Christians living at the juncture of the ages await Christ’s coming at the absolute end of the present evil age (Phil 3:17–4:1). Second, the time of Christ’s coming is unknown, but it will occur suddenly (Paul probably thinks it will be soon – see 1 Thess 4:15) … Third, because Christ is coming the Christians should live in hope and encourage each other’ (1 Thess 4:18; 5:11; emphasis in original). 7 Already in the eschatological notions of Paul’s arguments its implications for his theology emerge. Hafemann (1993:674, 677) argues for reading Paul within the eschatological context that Paul sees himself in. It is ‘against this backdrop that the question of the exact locus of the “problem” with the Law as it functioned under the old covenant, as well as its role in the new, must be raised’. Whether this would include agreement with Käsemann’s well-known dictum that apocalyptic is the mother of all theology, is another question. 8 A city-state’s survival depended on maintaining and protecting all its family units, and therefore the city-state e.g. regulated the relationship poor/rich to ensure the ongoing independence of each household (White 1999, 95–97).

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2.2. Eschatological Tension: ‘Already’ and ‘Not Yet’ In Paul’s letters, and to varying degree and in any case lesser extent in the ensuing Pauline tradition, the strong expectation of the imminent end of the world stands in relation to an awareness of the eschatological which has been initiated by the death and resurrection of Christ. Amidst the thoroughgoing or consistent eschatology which is characteristic of the Pauline letters, references are made to what Christ achieved as the ‘first fruits’ or ‘guarantee’ of what is to come. Paul’s awareness is one which has often been described as living between the times, or living between two worlds – between the ‘already’ of what Christ has achieved and the ‘not yet’ of the end of the world, including the parousia, the resurrection of all and the final judgement.9 In Paul’s strongly participationist theology, it is the believers’ sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ that marks out the two eschatological aspects that characterise the apostle’s theological thought. Paul’s emphasis on the future does not provide any evidence that he linked up with Jesus’ proclamation of the imminent end of the world, or that he sought to continue Jesus’ understanding of the kingdom of God exploding into the world. The primary reason for Paul’s strong focus on the future was certainly also not because the present value of participating in Christ was denied, but rather because he focused on the resurrection of Christ (cf. White 1999, 204–206). Paul’s conviction about the centrality of the resurrection of Christ was built upon a Jewish frame of reference wherein resurrection was part of the apocalyptic drama which God directed, and which inaugurated what he evidently believed to be an unstoppable sequence of events that would soon unfold (cf. Segal 2004). The resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the end (Keck 1979, 80–81). Paul saw himself and his fellow believers as living between the times, since they already share in Christ and therefore live the impending future out in the present, since the future has become accessible in the present while the present calls forward to the future. It is interesting to read the Colossians letter against this broader background of Pauline eschatology.

9 Bultmann has popularized this tension with his reference to the dynamic tension between the indicative and imperative in Paul’s theology, where the imperative is not simply the result of the former but integral to it (cf. Keck 1979, 81).

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3. Eschatology in Colossians10 Colossians is, of all the New Testament letters, probably better known for its Christ-hymn (Col 1:15–20) and for its cosmic reach in particular, comparable to the emphasis on Christ as Logos as found in John 1:1–18, rather than for an eschatological outlook. Among many interesting passages and themes in Colossians, it is without a doubt the Christological significance of the letter which has consistently stood central and has had the greatest influence in church doctrine, theological and religious discussions, and also popular art.11 The particular but not necessarily idiosyncratic Christological emphases found in Colossians inform and therefore spill over to the area under consideration here, namely eschatology in Colossians. 3.1. The Rhetorical Situation The letter to the Colossians was not written by the apostle Paul, but clearly originates from within, and strongly aligns itself with the Pauline tradition.12 As it stands, the letter is addressed to a community of which both the social context and the involvement of its own members (cf. Col 2:19) are uncertain. It faced a serious challenge from another movement or

10 The question of prepositions is not secondary, since thinking of eschatology ‘of’ or ‘in’ a New Testament document presumes claims about the intention of the document, the understanding of eschatology by both ancient document and modern readers etc. Eschatology ‘in’ Colossians includes awareness of the interpreter’s involvement in the generation of meaning, and does not intend to signal any aspiration towards an allencompassing, exhaustive description 11 A brief example of each will suffice. In the first instance, the patristic interest in Colossians 1:15–17 and its reference to Christ being the ‘image of God’ and ‘the beginning’ who existed ‘before all things’, allowed the portrayal of Christ in contemporary philosophical terms, but later also became the decisive reference in the Arian controversy which led to the two natures of Christ-doctrine. Secondly, in the twentieth century it has been the cosmic claims about Christ in Colossians 1:15–20 that has inspired new possibilities of understanding the relationship between Christianity and other religions. And, finally, the description of Christ as world-ruler (cosmocrator) has influenced Christian art and is characteristic of Christian iconography (Barclay 1997, 11). 12 Without rehearsing the arguments for and against Pauline authorship, suffice it to mention that the consensus opinion is that Colossians is deutero-Pauline based primarily on considerations of historical plausibility, vocabulary and style, and congruity in theology (cf. the summary in e.g. Soards 1987, 139–142, for arguments from both sides, cf. Barclay 1997, 18–35). Arguing for the date of Colossians to be prior to 61 CE, when an earthquake destroyed large parts of the Lycus River Valley (Soards 1987, 139), is circumstantial and unnecessarily strains a supposed link between the historical people of Colossae and the recipients of the letter.

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‘philosophy’, 13 of which the originating religious or cultural framework is not clear, but which was evidently intent on the assimilation of the Christian message into its own religious thought and practices. This influence, which is experienced as a threat by the author of Colossians, includes the notions of a distant and unapproachable divine figure, as well as the material confinement of people to their bodily existence and accompanying desires, and therefore the need for angelic mediators between God and people. The central concern of Colossians is both to reaffirm Christ as key to, and being sufficient for salvation, and that other rites (circumcision, 2:11; observance of Jewish festivals, 2:16; beliefs regarding angels, 2:18) are therefore unnecessary. Visionary experiences in addition to worship – which may have included the worship of angels and the veneration of other powers – were claimed by members of the community (Col 2:18; cf. 1:15– 20; 2:9–10,15). By rigid legal observances,14 along the lines required by Jewish calendrical arrangements and dietary laws (Col 2:16), and through rigorous asceticism, these angelic mediators, who also gave the law, had to be placated. Other regulations governed physical activities related to touch and eating and drinking, without clear indication of motive or range (Col 2:20–23), and claims to wisdom (Col 2:8, 23) were made. Indications are that Jesus was seen by the followers of this group, who considered them13

The vexing question in New Testament scholarship has been the identity of the opponents, and five options are generally debated: Jewish-Christian Gnosticism (connecting Jewish issues such as circumcision, Sabbaths and new moons and dietary regulations with other matters such as the concern with wisdom, knowledge and mystery, angels and other intermediary powers, and, the interest in asceticism and humiliation of the body, promoted by Lightfoot and Bornkamm), a Christianised Mystery cult (focussing on D^ H-RYUDNHQHMPEDWHXYZQ Col 2:18 and possible links with Isis-initiation described in Metamorphoses 11, by Apuleius; Dibelius’ proposal), mystical Jewish ascent (taking HMQ  TUKVNHLYD WZCQ DMJJHYOZQ as a subjective genitive, Colossians 2:18 can be explained within a completely Jewish setting, according to Francis), Hellenistic philosophy (building on GLD WKCa ILORVRILYDa as a direct reference, and then interpreting WD VWRLFHLCD (Col 2:8) along neo-Pythagorean lines of Diogenes Laertius, or finding a syncretistic philosophy incorporating elements of Middle-Platonic demonology with a JewishChristian emphasis on humility, food and calendrical requirements, or understanding the criticism to be directed towards ascetic Cynics, different versions of this theory (found in Schweizer; DeMaris and Martin), and, syncretistic folk religion (investigating local popular religion including magic) can explain references to the worship of angels and other practices mentioned in Colossians in the syncretistic first century CE (Barclay 1997, 39–48). In the end, however, the prominence of apocalyptic and related mystical ideas in the Jewish spirituality of Asia Minor (cf. Rowland 1983, 74) which is probably the social location of the addressees, have probably influenced both the opponents as well as the author of the letter. 14 It seems likely that the opponents’ teaching in Colossians contained two elements: detailed preparations for the visions, and the visions themselves (Rowland 1983, 77).

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selves spiritually elite, as another angelic power (cf. Barclay 1997, 48–54; Verhey 1984, 121–122). A number of other important concerns emerge in Colossians, some of which also have a direct bearing on trying to form a reliable picture of eschatology in Colossians. For example, on the one hand the strong Christological focus contests an apparently popular idea present in the community addressed in the letter namely that mediators, particularly in the form of angels, are required to secure the believers’ relationship with Christ (Col 2). However, on the other hand, a Christological deficit is mentioned, which the ascribed or epistolary Paul needs to supplement (Col 1:24). What is clear though is that Colossians re-appropriated several concepts that were in vogue in the ancient world, refurbishing them for use in an explicitly Christian framework. Notions such as ‘mystery’, ‘fullness of experience’, ‘higher forms of knowledge’, and ‘special initiations’ are used to argue that all such things were realised ‘in Christ’.15 Christ is the ground of all reality, and people who transfer (through baptism) into the Christian community with Christ as head, have access to everything in its fullness (Johnson 1999, 395–402).16 Christ becomes the all-important centripetal and centrifugal force for eschatology in Colossians, by first appropriating all matters eschatological through and in him, and also acting as the operational point of departure from where all end-time matters proceed. 3.2. Eschatological Notions in Colossians Unless one operates with a rather categorised and truncated notion of theology, it is of course not possible to completely separate out any particular aspect of the theological focus of any document without attending to its other interlocking and mutually informing aspects. This essay is therefore a dangerous undertaking since, although in dealing with eschatological notions in Colossians other apposite theological concerns will also be noted, the focus remains rather sharply and even exclusively on eschatology. At least one other theological concern cannot be avoided since eschatology ties in so neatly with Colossians: the broader Christological train of thought of the letter which moreover anticipates belief in Christ as a ‘burgeoning international religion’17 (Barclay 1997, 77–79).

15 These terms all express in various ways the present reality of salvation (Bultmann 1955, 178). 16 Johnson (1999, 395–402) is of the opinion that it was precisely because of ‘Paul’s appropriation of Greco-Roman mystery language’ that many scholars have misunderstood his real argument, ‘which rests not in language itself, but in its use’. 17 The old formula that stressed the remaking and reunification of all people through baptism, becoming one in Christ (Gal 3:28), baptized into one body of Christ (1 Cor

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3.3. Realised Eschatology in Colossians The discussion of eschatology at times features as a secondary concern in studies on Colossians when it is cited as one of the (more important) considerations in evaluating the possible Pauline authorship of this document.18 In the face of an expectation of the imminent end of the world or a consistent eschatological expectation in the authentic Pauline letters, Colossians’ emphasis falls on realised eschatology (cf. Barclay 1997, 26). While the argument is not that (elements of) realised eschatology do not occur in other letters of the Pauline tradition, or that consistent and realised eschatologies are either hard and fast categories (admitting that they are of theological design and of a later era) or infallible adjudicators (or criteria) for authentic or deutero-Pauline letters, it is the emphasis on realised eschatology and the virtual absence of an imminent expectation of the end in Colossians that draws the attention. Realised eschatology is one of the defining characteristics of Colossians and is discernible throughout the letter – with even ethical instructions lacking the typical Pauline eschatological edge, of which the code of household duties, commonly known as a ‘household code’ (in 3:18–4:6), is a good illustration.19 But the purview of a realised eschatology, so untypical of the authentic Pauline letters, reaches further and earlier in the letter where Colossians 1:13 (‘He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son’) is already a clear indication of eschatology which has become a present reality for the letter’s author. And regardless really of how the ‘word of God’ (Col 1:25), which is also described as a ‘mystery’ (Col 1:26), is understood in the end, the 12:12–13), is now broadened, expanding the horizons of Christianity and thinking of Christ in the most universal of terms (Col 3:11; Barclay 1997, 78–79). 18 Bultmann has suggested that Colossians exhibits a much less radical faith and eschatology than the authentic Pauline letters, describing them as examples of ‘doctrinairianism and moralization’ (Bultmann 1955, 180). Even a well-intentioned attempt to maintain Pauline authorship flounders on its own argument: ‘It must be granted that Colossians has little concern with the imminence of the end, but then Paul’s “concern” with imminence has been greatly exaggerated’ (Verhey 1984, 226 n. 158). Introducing arguments about the latitude of authors which should not be taken as self-inconsistency, or reference to what is seen as shifts in eschatological emphasis in the undisputed letters, are generally unconvincing. 19 Proponents of Pauline authorship quickly counter that the use of such stereotypical teaching has less to do with the passage of time and the ‘routinization of charism’ than it does with Paul’s audience, and that the Colossaean community did not know Paul personally. Rom 12:1–13:7 and Eph 5:21–6:9 are appealed to as other instances where moral exhortations fall into general framework of household ethics, while it is claimed that other ethical admonitions depended to a large extent on baptismal traditions shared by gentile churches (3:1–17; cf. Rom 6:1–14; 1 Cor 6:9–11; Johnson 1999, 395–402).

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claim is that it has been revealed now (QXCQ) without any indication of this having to be brought to (further) finality at some later stage. For in Christ, Colossians (2:9–10) claims, ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness of life in him, who is the head of every rule and authority’. They need only to realize their new identity and translate it into appropriate behaviour within the community. Towards the end of Colossians 2 the emphasis seems to shift towards the role of baptism in uniting believers with Christ – or at least the author uses baptismal language to make his point! – followed in the first part of the next chapter by the consequences of having been resurrected with Christ. In Colossians 2:12 (‘when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead’)20 and Colossians 2:13 (‘God made you alive together with him’), the emphasis falls on the changes brought about for believers by participating in Christ through the baptism, and which means, in short, a new existence or a new life. This focus is maintained in Colossians 3:1 (‘So if you have been raised with Christ’) where the implications and ethics of the changed existential position of the believers are worked out in some more detail.21 And although Colossians 3:4 (‘When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory’, R^WDQ R- &ULVWRa TDQHUZTKC K- ]ZK X-PZCQ WRYWH NDL X-PHLCa VXQ DXMWZC TDQHUZTKYVHVTHHMQGRY[K can include a future reference, its more urgent sense is present and immediate, underlining that every revelation of Christ is equally a revealing of the identity and nature of the believers. In Colossians it seems safe to say that the bulk of individual passages, as well as the aggregated tone of the letter, specifically suggest a realised eschatology, and where the delicate tension between the well-known ‘already’- and ‘not yet’- statements so typical of the (authentic) Pauline let-

20

Rowland explains the notion of baptism as opening heaven’s door to the believer (Col 2:12) from a Jewish apocalyptic perspective (Rowland 1983, 78). Others warn against seeing the use of baptismal language as necessarily suggesting a baptismal formula, liturgy or setting (esp. since Col 2:12 is the only direct reference to it), because it is also symbolic language which sometimes took on a life of its own (Wedderburn 1993, 49). The claim of Colossians 2:12 that believers have risen in Christ through baptism sounds very much like what is condemned in 2 Timothy 2:18 (cf. Wedderburn 1993, 63). 21 It should be noted that the imagery in Colossians shifts away from death as way to salvation, to death as a state requiring salvation. Believers are not raised because they die with Christ in baptism, but God delivered them from their prior sinfulness which amounted to a state of death. The notion of a sequence of events of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection as in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4 is exchanged for a contemporary commonplace image of the human predicament (Wedderburn 1993, 51).

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ters,22 are generally not left intact and in other instances sacrificed on behalf of a ‘not yet’- focus. 3.4. The Wide Range of Realised Eschatology in Colossians But the reach of realised eschatology in Colossians is more widespread, and in fact is not contained in references dealing with temporal categories concerned with the immediate or the present. As with other New Testament documents it would be a mistake to consider eschatology in Colossians simply as – or through references to – (relatively final) temporal categories. However, two other passages in this letter that have traditionally probably received the bulk of scholars’ attention – the Christ hymn and the household code – are also indicative of the main eschatological strain in the letter as focused on realised eschatology.23 An important text in the history and current appreciation of Colossians, Colossians 1:13, (15)–20 is often referred to as a Christ hymn,24 and although it is most often – and quite rightly so – studied for its own sake, it also makes an important contribution towards understanding the eschatological notions operative in the letter. The Christ hymn reinforces the focus on realised eschatology in its cosmic appreciation of Christ, but particularly in its claims for the present. The hymn is characterised by the full role it claims for Christ in the creation and redemption of the whole cosmos (cf. Barclay 1997, 56–68). Leaving aside for the moment other debates about the origin, form and style of the hymn, the universalistic focus on Christ as ruler of the whole world is clearly evident and is presented as a reality. The Christ hymn does not suggest in any way that Christ would either need to return or that he would need to exercise judgement; in fact, 22

Caution is at any rate required for the theological categories of ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ which may at times amount to a (well-intentioned) attempt to gather up and consolidate Pauline thinking into a coherent theological framework, complete with all the danger accompanying such grand schemes. Given the use of such categories, cf. however e.g. in 1 Cor 4:8–10 and 13:8–13 where Paul was very careful to emphasize the ‘not yet’ at least as much as the ‘already’, in Rom 6 Paul also emphasized both ‘newness of life’ (6:4) and that being united with Christ in a resurrection like his lies in the future (6:6; cf. Barclay 1997, 26). 23 This focus on the Christ hymn and the household code’s significance for eschatology in Colossians means that other important questions are not dealt with here. These include: the influence of Jewish or Hellenistic concerns in early Christology; the level of the community’s alignment with – if not adoption of – Hellenistic morality; its possible mediation through Judaism; and many other theological, literary and socio-historical questions and concerns. Cf. however Barclay (1997). 24 Comparable in form to other Christological passages in the New Testament, such as Phil 2:5–11 and 1 Tim 3:16, and more broadly also to passages in Philo on the theology of the Logos and on Wisdom in the Wisdom of Solomon (cf. Sir 1, 24; Barclay 1997, 67).

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that he needs to do anything else in order to rule. Christ’s reign is described in a superlative way, taking its departure in the protology of Christ, ‘the first-born of all creation’ and through which every other living entity was created (Col 1:15b–16), and emphasises Christ as the one who holds the whole word together (Col 1:17). There is no notion of ‘first fruits’ or ‘down-payments’ (e.g. 2 Cor 5:5) requiring further elaboration or finalisation, since God has situated all fulfilment (SDCQ WR SOKYUZPD) in Christ (Col 1:19b). God has also through and in him (Christ) (GL¨DXMWRXC and HLMa DXMWRYQ) already reconciled and made peace in a way that spans the whole world, all authority and powers, the whole of creation (Col 1:19–20).25 Although the household code (Col 3:18–4:1) has over many centuries evoked keen interest among scholars and readers of the Bible alike, the peculiar way in which it attempts to organise and regulate human life, and relationships in particular,26 has an important bearing on the eschatology in Colossians. Besides betraying the wide-ranging influence of Hellenism in thought and practice, the household code provides eminent proof of the attempts made by a community of faith to structure and regulate daily life in the longer term. Although other concerns, such as the community’s sense of fitting in with the rest of society or even an apologetic concern to show itself as not being a threat to communal values or ‘weird’ superstition, could have played a role in the author’s decision to include the household code in his letter,27 when investigating the eschatology in the letter our attention is drawn to the code’s function of preparing the community for the long haul ahead. ‘In part, the code may simply represent the need for early Christianity to come to terms with the daily realities of its continued existence in the world, for the household and continuities of family life were of crucial importance’ (Barclay 1997, 72). The household code, complete with its assumptions of hierarchy and expectations of subjection,28 provided the community addressed in the let25 The resurrection, which is often seen as the primary connection between eschatology and Christology in the Pauline tradition (cf. Kreitzer 1993, 254.265) is not the central aspect in the Christ hymn in Colossians (Col 1:18). 26 In the New Testament a similar code is found in Eph 5:21–6:9, which may even be an elaboration of Col 3:18–4:1, outside the New Testament similar codes were found, especially in Stoic circles, in Hellenistic Judaism (Josephus, Philo and PseudoPhocylides), and among philosophers debating the proper management of the household (cf. Barclay 1997, 69; Balch 2003, 258–292). 27 Reasons for including the household code include the counteracting of the revolutionary spirit of women and slaves (Crouch), counteracting suspicions that the Christian community was sonically radical (Balch). Cf. also in Balch (2003) and Barclay (1997, 68–73). 28 Apologetic interpretations of the household code refer to the direct addressing of the subjugated (wives, children, slaves), the reciprocal nature of the instructions, and, the

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ter with both structure and regulations that indicate little awareness of – or in any case, concern about – either imminent or even more distant changes in the world as they knew it. The hope for an immediate parousia that was so vibrant in Paul’s authentic letters has waned,29 or is simply absent, and its place has been taken by the belief that Christ has already inaugurated a new dispensation. Through their baptism into the faith in Christ, the community in Colossae is presented as living in the new dispensation. The inclusion of the household code in Colossians amounted ‘to a crucial process of social adjustment for the early Christian movement’ and represented ‘a watershed in early Christian ethics, the beginning of a diverse and expanding tradition in which the Christian faith became embedded in social structures’. So also the Christ hymn was ‘a watershed for the development of Christian theology, portraying Christ and the church on a cosmic stage and in the framework of universal reconciliation’ (Barclay 1997, 72). 3.5. Future Eschatological Elements in Colossians Such an overwhelming stress on God achieving his goals in Christ’s death and resurrection does not imply the absence of elements of future expectation or at least awareness of the future in Colossians. These are sometimes used to argue against realised eschatology as the primary concern in the letter. References are made to Colossians 3:4 about being revealed with Christ in glory,30 to Colossians 3:6 regarding the coming wrath (cf. Reiser 1997, 171 n. 23), and to Colossians 3:24 on receiving one’s reward at the judgement as all three being instances of forward-looking or future references (e.g. Barclay 1997, 26.89). Although the ‘reference to the future which belongs to Christian experience’ is not absent from Colossians (Bultmann 1955, 175), such references neither interrupt the effectiveness of what has already been achieved in Christ nor requires such events to complete or bring to finalisation the dis‘balanced’ issuing of duties to the powerful also, those who were used to having privileges only (cf. e.g. Verhey 1984, 123). Such claims are largely offset by the lack of any sustained dislodging of the relations based on authority and power, and each of the above claims can be countered in a number of ways, since equal or even special rights to the subordinated are not contemplated, and the duties on both sides of each binary were commonly assumed in the 1 st century CE for maintaining a practicable if not affable household. ‘[F]or better or for worse, the code represents a Christianisation of traditional rulings on household relationships’ (cf. e.g. Barclay 1997, 71). 29 This has already been proposed by Dibelius, and does not exclude other explanations, such as that the household code could function to stabilise the community (MacDonald; cf. Barclay 1997, 72). 30 But Barclay cautions: ‘When Christ is “revealed” (3:4), his disclosure is not said to effect any change beyond the revelation also of believers’ (Barclay 1997, 89).

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pensation established in Christ’s resurrection and believers’ participation in it. So when Christ is described as ‘the hope of glory’ (K- HMOSLa WKCa GRY[Ka Col 1:27) the focus is not the future as a new state of affairs or a further redemption (as e.g. in Phil 3:20–21; Rom 8:18–25), but rather on Christ which is hope incarnated.31 The future will reveal no more than what is already the status and identity of believers as the ‘holy ones’ or ‘saints’ (Col 1:12; 3:4).32 So also to argue that Colossians 3:4 unreservedly anticipates the future revelation of what is at present still hidden (Wedderburn 1993, 52),33 unduly downplays the emphasis on the immediate presence; the future manifestation will serve to confirm what has all along been present. The future judgement themes of Colossians 3:6,24–25 are not suggestive of an additional or new eschatological event. They are rather general claims aimed at exhorting the believers towards steadfastness and faithfulness. It is especially among authors insisting on Pauline authorship in Colossians that the realised eschatology of, and effective absence of, a futurefocused eschatology in Colossians becomes a sore point. Defending Colossians as authentically Pauline, some scholars insist that Colossians 2:20 and 3:1–4 do not suggest that ‘death’ to sin in baptism leads to a ‘resurrection life’ of glory, but rather that a life of faith and the conversion of behaviour as such is contemplated (Johnson 1999, 397–402). However, reading Colossians 3:4 about the appearance of Christ and the believers finding them in a state of glory as a reference to the end of time rather than the affirmation of the more immediate setting, is probably induced by other considerations and does not seem to be warranted when the whole of the letter is considered. And the claim that the language of Colossians ‘is slightly different’ but otherwise ‘virtually identical to that found in Romans 6:1–14’ seems to lose focus of other texts, as well as the general tenor of the letters (Johnson 1999, 392–393).34 Finally, severing the link between the transformations of human characters brought about through 31

Bultmann agrees that ‘hope is not seldom used’ and refers to Colossians: 1:5 (Salvation prepared in heaven); 1:22 (Colossians one day standing as saints); 3:3 (the life with Christ which will be revealed); and, 3:4 (prospective ‘revealing’ of Christ), but concludes that ‘more emphasis falls upon salvation as a present state than upon an anticipation of future salvation’ (Bultmann 1955, 176). 32 Insisting that Colossians’ emphasis on the ‘already’ as confirmation of the futility of submitting to other powers, and that ‘the “not yet” character of our [sic] existence’ is never denied (Verhey 1984, 122), is too simplistic and eventually contradictory. 33 Wedderburn later does a turnabout and claims that ‘...“Hope”, too, is not so much directed towards the future, but is directed towards that which already exists in heaven and has but to be manifested in the future (3:3–4; cf. 1:5)’ (Wedderburn 1993, 60). 34 The assurance of resurrection-life as the outcome of baptism (Col 2:11; 3:1) goes beyond Rom 3:5 (cf. Rowland 1983, 81 n. 31).

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faith and baptism, and eschatology – as though the former cannot be related to the latter – cedes too much to issues about the authorship, and does not serve understanding the logic of letter’s argument, also regarding a particular eschatological sentiment. It is once again the Christ hymn and its emphasis on the universality of the reconciliation wrought by Christ (Col 1:20) that effectively rules out any further significant action required for the future. In the end then, ‘there is no sense of immediate expectation in such references [to the future, JP], nor do they indicate that a fundamental change of world conditions is expected’ (Barclay 1997, 89). Even admitting to the inevitable awareness of the future, as well as the blurring of temporal concepts and the porous boundaries of eschatological-theological concepts, the focus in Colossians accommodates such ambiguous if not divergent notions neatly within its realised eschatology. The future is captured into the present, and this is for some part accomplished by linking temporal to spatial categories. 3.6. Eschatology in Colossians as Spatial Concept Apart from the warning not to restrict discussions on eschatology in the New Testament to rigid and final (as in end-time) temporal categories, another warning should be sounded not to limit eschatology to temporal matters exclusively. A good example is the realised eschatology in Colossians that crosses temporal boundaries, with forays into spatial categories. So for example is Jesus Christ not only hope incarnated, but hope itself is located spatially since it is ‘put away’ for the Colossians in heaven (GLD WKQ HMOSLYGD WKQ DMSRNHLPHYQKQ X-PLCQ HMQ WRLCa RXMUDQRLCa, Col 1:5), signalling Colossians’ interest in spatial categories already at an early stage in the letter.35 Spatial and temporal categories were combined in Jewish apocalyptic and Colossians seems to share this worldview of apocalyptic and mysticism, acknowledging ‘a hidden upper world that already exists now, into which the faithful may penetrate in some fashion or another’ (Wedderburn 1993, 52–53). The eschatological terminology in Colossians is accordingly not restricted to temporal concepts, but also includes spatial notions36 (cf. Col 3:1–4): below and above; earthly and heavenly. Rather than a waiting for 35

Spatial concerns are important in the Jewish apocalyptic which had probably influenced Colossians, where heaven – also as divine abode – is identified as the seat of Christ. In Colossians the heavenly world is the place where hope has its origin, and moreover, since the faithful should aspire towards Christ, they should seek the things above (cf. Col 1:5; 3:1; Rowland 1983, 78). 36 The use of spatial eschatological concepts are also found in other (even authentic) Pauline letters, cf. Gal 4:26 (Jerusalem above) and Phil 3:20 (heavenly commonwealth; cf. Barclay 1997, 26).

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certain events, for eyes trained on the future as temporal notion, the focus in Colossians is on another place, on heaven as a spatial concept. This emphasis on the spatial is brought about by, and links up with, the realised eschatology in Colossians, as made evident in the author’s exhortations in Colossians 3:1 ‘seek the things above’ (WDD>QZ]KWHLCWH) and 3:2 ‘set your minds on the things above’ (WD D>QZ IURQHLCWH). Based on the claim that they are already resurrected with Christ, the believers in the community are told that they find themselves on, or live on, a different plane of existence. Temporally speaking, this leaves a paradoxical situation, where present is also future, and future is also present (Bultmann 1955, 176).37 The realised eschatology in the letter diverts attention away from the temporal as expressed in waiting for the future or looking from now to then, to the spatial as expressed in being raised or looking from below to above.38 The strong focus on having already been resurrected with Christ (Col 2:12–13; 3:1) diverts attention away from a longing for the future and notions of unfulfilled expectations.39 The focus has shifted towards ‘the “up” in space’ rather than ‘the “forward” in time’, since this is where the already resurrected Christ is to be found and where the believers’ lives are claimed to be ‘hidden in Christ with God’ (Col 3:2–3). The new spatial understanding expressed in the letter, ties in with the author’s spatial understanding of Christ’s cosmic reign in Colossians 1:15– 20 which re-conceptualises space and place.40 The present reality of people who have died and were resurrected with Christ entails a new life, which means both the release from worldliness, including concerns about ascetic

37

Referring to Col 3:5, Bultmann (1955, 176–177.180) emphasizes this paradox and its influence on ethics in particular. 38 These emphases on space rather than time are also present in the metaphors for salvation in Colossians; cf. e.g. Rom 8:11, 18–25 where the resurrection of the body is still awaited since salvation may be ‘celebrated but [is] still crucially incomplete’ (Barclay 1997, 90). 39 But not from daily life and its concerns, since although the orientation is to ‘the things above’ the Colossians were very much living in the contemporary material world as is evident from at least the household code of Col 3:18–4:1, which sought to structure and regulate everyday physical and social life. 40 Salvation, too, is portrayed spatially and bodily as metaphorical circumcision, as a shedding of the body of flesh (Col 2:11). Even though body is not first and foremost a physiological substance here, salvation is nevertheless portrayed as an inner reality. Barclay (1997, 90) hastens to add that there is no full-blooded body-soul distinction present here (e.g. Col 2:19 refers quite positively to the bodily), but admits that the first rumblings of such notions are indeed present: the focus on wisdom, knowledge and mystery are beginning to challenge concerns about the body’s destiny and its material environment. The importance of knowledge as the distinguishing trait of Christianity is characteristic of Colossians (along with Ephesians; Bultmann 1955, 179).

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and ritualistic regulations.41 The Colossians can shift their orientation towards ‘things that are above’ (Col 3:2), rather than ‘the things that are on earth’ (cf. Bultmann 1955, 180). This did not, as is evident form the presence of the household code, imply a detachment from this world or a fixation on another (Wedderburn 1993, 52), but the spatial categories both reinforced how the end of time has become present through Christ and deemphasised the need for a future finality.

4. Conclusion Eschatology is an invented and (not ‘but’!) helpful category, and speaking of realised eschatology as an encompassing description of the eschatology found in Colossians is appropriate. However, describing the eschatology in Colossians as realised emphasises the broad tenor of concern with things related to the end of time which is presented as contemporary. It does not mean eschatology in Colossians should be understood as having absolutely no concern for the future or even that temporal categories alone are applicable when thinking about it42 – however, the gist of eschatology in Colossians is rightly emphasised as the end of times having become present, if (at least at times) at a different level.43 As much as we need to caution ourselves today, given that different understandings of ‘eschatology’ are determined by different social locations (cf. Cosgrove et al 2005, 259–261), the assumption of different eschatological positions and their varied developments should not be discounted in favour of a comprehensive but artificial one-size-fits-all framework for the

41 Colossians’ emphasis on the believers already participating in the heavenly is underlined in using the same terminology (Col 2:18, 23) to speak of the angels in heaven and the believers in the community: copying ‘the servile attitudes of the angels in their lives as a true reflection on earth of the will of God’ (Rowland 1983, 77). 42 But the picture is more complicated than claiming ‘[The] fundamental motifs of Paul’s theology remain alive in [Colossians], particularly in their understanding of the believer’s paradoxical situation “between the ages”, [and] in their understanding of the present’s reference to the future’ (Bultmann 1955, 180). Cf. Still (2004, 125–138), who also argues that the realized eschatology of Colossians should not be over-emphasized against future elements in it. 43 Although the consideration of the consequences of Colossians’ realized eschatology probably lies beyond the brief of this contribution, the following should nevertheless be mentioned: while admitting to the link between the strong Christological focus and Colossians’ privileging of universalism (Barclay 1997, 92–93), the letter’s realized eschatology also sits well with a universalism where Christ is Lord of all since he reconciled all in himself (Col 1:20).

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eschatologies found in the New Testament.44 The Pauline tradition’s relentless focus on eschatology is not necessarily disconnected from this tradition’s equally forceful concern with daily matters of the communities from which it had been derived. However, where the eschatological focus reverts from future to present, as happens in deutero-Pauline letters such as Colossians, such documents betray themselves as instances of social conservatism which increasingly started setting in towards the end of the firstcentury CE. Colossians was born from the Pauline tradition but is evidence of having lost the apocalyptic edge which characterised Paul’s authentic letters. Works Consulted Aune, DE 1992 Early Christian Eschatology, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol. 2 (DG), Freedman, DN (ed.), New York, 594–609. Balch, DL 2003 Paul, Families, and Households, in Paul in the Greco-Roman World. A Handbook, Sampley, JP (ed.), Harrisburg, 258–292. Barclay, JMG 1997 Colossians and Philemon. Sheffield. Beker, JC 1980 Paul, the Apostle. The Triumph of God in Life and Thought. Edinburgh. – 1982 Paul's Apocalyptic Gospel. The Coming Triumph of God. Philadelphia. Bultmann, R 1955 Theology of the New Testament, Vol. 2. London. Cosgrove, CH, Weiss, H & Yeo, K 2005 Cross-Cultural Paul. Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves. Grand Rapids. Ebeling, G 1985 The Truth of the Gospel. An Exposition of Galatians. Philadelphia. Hafemann, SJ 1993 Paul and his Interpreters in Dictionary of Paul and his Letters, Hawthorne, GF; Martin, RP & Reid, DG (eds.), Downers Grove, 666–679. Horsley, RA 1995 Innovation in Search of Reorientation. New Testament Studies Rediscovering its Subject Matter. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62(4), 1127– 1166. Johnson, LT 1999 The Writings of the New Testament. An Interpretation. Minneapolis. Keck, LE 1979 Paul and his Letters. Philadelphia. – 1984 Paul and Apocalyptic Theology. Interpretation 38(3), 229–241. Kreitzer, LJ 1993 Eschatology, in Dictionary of Paul and his letters, Hawthorne, GF; Martin, RP & Reid, DG (eds.), Downers Grove, 253–269. Malina, BJ 1989 Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean? CBQ 51(1), 1–31. Reiser, M 1997 Jesus and Judgment. The Eschatological Proclamation in Its Jewish Context. Minneapolis. Ridderbos, H 1975 Paul: An Outline of His Theology. London. Roetzel, CJ 2003 Paul. A Jew on the Margins. Louisville. Rowland, C 1983 Apocalyptic Visions and the Exaltation of Christ in the Letter to the Colossians. JSNT 19, 73–83. 44

‘Paul, who expected the present world to pass away in his time, offers only limited help to communities that must make everyday, practical sense of the present world, which is still around after twenty centuries. At the same time, Paul offers a source of critique of the present world from the standpoint of God’s new creation. He also preaches a hope that sustains faithful living when even the best wisdom of this world fails and love’s labors seem futile’ (Cosgrove et al 2005, 261).

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Soards, ML 1987 The Apostle Paul. An Introduction to his Writings and Teaching. New York. Still, TD 2004 Eschatology in Colossians: How Realized Is It? NTS 50(2), 125–138. Verhey, A 1984 The Great Reversal. Ethics and the New Testament. Grand Rapids. Wedderburn, A 1993 The Theology of Colossians, in The Theology of the Later Pauline Letters, Lincoln, AT and A Wedderburn (eds.). Cambridge. White, JL 1999 The Apostle of God. Paul and the Promise of Abraham. Peabody. Witherington III, B 1992 Jesus, Paul and the End of the World. A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology. Downers Grove.

In the Presence of God The Eschatology of 1 Thessalonians

Pieter G R de Villiers 1. Introduction One of the striking features of 1 Thessalonians is its eschatology. Scholars often comment on its prominence and special nature. ‘Nowhere in the later Pauline letters does one encounter so thorough a concentration on the apocalyptic future as the centre of faith’, remarks Jewett (1986, 168). Malherbe (2000, 279) writes that the letter contains ‘the most extensive discussion of the parousia’ in any of Paul’s letters,1 whilst Richard (1991, 44) notes a ‘stark’ feature of the letter in its focus on the future, its heightened eschatological tone and its apocalyptic imagery. Individual passages about the future in the letter also have drawn special attention. Wright (2003, 215) thus has spoken of the eschatological passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11 as a ‘spectacular’ text which exhibits several of Paul’s key beliefs about the resurrection. The eschatology of the letter has been regarded as important for other reasons as well. In New Testament scholarship its eschatology has at times been used as an argument against the authenticity of 1 Thessalonians.2 Baur (1845, 485) contrasts the letter’s eschatology with the letters to the Corinthians, Romans, and Galatians, which he thought do not refer to a parousia of Jesus. Finally, bizarre theories in populist religious circles on the future of the world and particularly about a so-called ‘rapture’ of saints often make use of 1 Thessalonians (cf. e.g. 1 Thess 4:17).3 In the light of 1 The general role of eschatology in the Pauline letters has been well characterized by Dunn (1998, 180). He remarks: ‘it is of major importance to appreciate the sense of eschatological newness which transformed and continued to sustain Paul’s theology and not to let it be wholly discounted in favour of theological convictions easier to translate into modern terms. For it was clearly this “revelation” which formed the new perspective from which Paul would henceforth read the holy scriptures’ (cf. also Selby 1999, 387). 2 On the often inconsistent arguments about the authenticity of Pauline texts (cf. Johnson 1999, 273). Malherbe (2000, 13) writes that ‘the universal opinion’ today is that Paul wrote 1 Thessalonians. 3 ‘The apostle Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is the favourite proof-text for dispensationalists who pursue a rapture reading’ (Rossing 2004, 175; also Howard 1988,

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this situation, an essay on the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians will have much material to cover, as needs to be explained now.

2. Past and Present from an Eschatological Perspective Paul’s eschatology complements his pronouncements on the past and is determined by the way in which he regarded the present. It is therefore necessary to consider how he wrote about past events and how he regarded the situation the Thessalonians found themselves in when he was writing his letter. This deserves more attention now. 2.1. Past Events within an Eschatological Framework In 1 Thessalonians, there are no systematic reflections on or attempts to order past events in a pattern, as found, for example, in Luke 1:3 (cf. Ac 1:1–3) or in texts like 4 Ezra 3:4–27 (cf. De Villiers 1981). In some seminal cases, however, historical events are integrated in an eschatological framework. The two references to the death and resurrection of Jesus, for example, are explicitly linked with and fundamentally determine the future. The Thessalonians are now waiting for Jesus to come from heaven as the one whom God raised from the dead. The resurrected Jesus is also the one who rescues ‘from the coming wrath’ (1 Thess 1:10). It is the resurrection of Jesus that forms the basis for future expectations of the resurrection of the dead (Wolter 2005, 185–186). Paul links past events to the eschatological existence of believers in another way. The Thessalonians’ opponents rejected God’s work like many before them and many after them will.4 Followers of Christ must expect to experience rejection like Jesus who was killed, like churches that have suffered in Judea and like Paul in his ministry (1 Thess 2:14–15; cf. also 1 Thess 1:6; 2:1–2; 3:3–4). What has happened to Christ and believers in the past thus becomes a model for the ongoing spiritual journey of believers in the end time. Past events illuminate the existence of saints in the end. 2). They teach that Jesus will snatch Christians off the earth before the emergence of an Antichrist. Then follows a seven-year period of tribulation on earth during which the temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem and after which Christ will return with a touch down on the Mount of Olives. Wright (2003, 215) refers to the ‘astonishing literalness in popular fundamentalism’ with which the eschatological material is used to depict Christians ‘flying around in mid-air on clouds’. Cf. Gundry (1987) for an example of rapture exegesis in contemporary scholarship. 4 Baarda (1984, 39–41) points out how the past history is used here analogically: Just as Jews in Judea suffered under other Jews because of the gospel, so the Thessalonians suffered under other pagans because of the gospel.

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Not only the existence of believers, but also their witness is illuminated by the past. Paul refers to the past to point out the Thessalonians’ strikingly positive response to his message of God’s eschatological renewal in Christ. They had been radically transformed through the divinely inspired Pauline proclamation of the gospel. They welcomed Paul’s message of the end time as divine (1 Thess 1:6; 2:13). They gave up idols, (1 Thess 1:9), suffered (1 Thess 1:6; 2:14), loved each other (1 Thess 4:9) and witnessed actively to others in an exemplary manner (1 Thess 1:7–8; 2:14). Their mission is part of God’s eschatological outreach beyond the traditional boundaries of Judaism to the gentile world (1 Thess 2:14–16).5 The transformation from their pagan past reflects their conformity to Christ’s suffering and reveals their imitation of Paul’s example. With this description of their past, Paul wants to encourage them in their suffering, but he also wishes to gently spur them on to continue to witness the gospel as God’s eschatological action. Their powerful conversion and dedication in the past are indications of God’s powerful actions in the end. The perspective on the end time therefore determines Paul’s view of the past. What happened in the history of God’s people, in Christ and in the life of Paul and the Thessalonians, must be understood in the light of their eschatological existence. The past is important in so far as it speaks about God’s final actions in this world. Jesus who was raised from the dead through God’s eschatological intervention is the Jesus who saves them from the coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10) and about whom they witness to others until the Lord’s return. In the past, therefore, God has acted in Christ and Paul to transform the Thessalonian believers to a new life as believers. But their response to the divine actions has made them part of a spiritual journey that is focused on their final, glorious transformation. The past set in motion a process that would only end with the consummation. 2.2. The Present from an Eschatological Perspective For Paul, the present is also characterized by both divine and human actions that speak of the inauguration of the end. The present is a time in which God acts salvifically. God (and Jesus) clears the way for a further visit by Paul to the Thessalonians to continue his ministry (1 Thess 3:11). God empowers believers to a moral lifestyle in the present that determines their future (1 Thess 3:13; 4:1, 8; 5:23). God gives the Holy Spirit for them to do so (1 Thess 4:8). Paul thus speaks of the present first and foremost as a time in which God is acting to restore humanity to a meaningful relation-

5 The notion of family is seminal for an interpretation of the letter. On this, cf. De Villiers (2003a; 2003b), also Richard (1991, 44); Lambrecht (1994, 321–341).

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ship with God. The Thessalonians can recognize in their radically transformed lifestyle (1 Thess 1:10) the work of God (1 Thess 2:13). The actions of God in the present require a human response. The Thessalonians’ encounter with Christ through Paul’s gospel has transformed them so that they, in an ongoing process, obey God’s will for a proper lifestyle (1 Thess 5:17). There is, therefore, a dynamic interaction between God and the believers in the present. It is especially in the second part of the letter that the present comes under scrutiny. In this section there is a close link between eschatology and ethics, especially eschatology as future events. Paul’s consistent use of eschatological material serves to call the Thessalonians to a holy lifestyle in the present (1 Thess 4:1–12).6 This call follows immediately after 1 Thessalonians 3:13 in which Paul expresses the hope that they may be strengthened to be blameless and holy in the presence of God when the Lord Jesus comes with the holy ones. The same motif is present in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 where Paul summarizes and concludes the theme of sanctification with the prayer, ‘May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ’. Believers have to live holy in order to reflect God’s holiness.7 This is even more evident in the light of the parousia. Jesus saves believers from the future wrath of God. They must wait for his return (1 Thess 1:10), but in the meantime they must please God (1 Thess 4:1) who is the judge of evil (1 Thess 4:6). Their sanctification in the present, which is God’s will, contrasts with the immoral and harmful life for which some will be held accountable at the end. ‘The Lord will punish men for all such sins. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life’ (1 Thess 4:7). Here futurist eschatology motivates a present moral lifestyle. The nature of the present is steered and determined by outstanding events in the future. Paul’s reports about his work among the Thessalonians and their ongoing spiritual journey are thus seen from an eschatological perspective. Since God’s decisive actions in Christ, believers reveal the powerful work of God. They respond to God’s actions in their ongoing transformation in holiness to become what they one day will be in God’s future dispensation. Like in the case of the past, Paul is consistently eschatological in his presentation of the present.

6 Cf. for this thesis the extensive arguments of Selby (1999). Also Kaye (1975) and Howard (1988). 7 Thus correctly Neyrey (1980, 224). Cf. also further below.

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3. The Future In 1 Thessalonians there are two perspectives on the future. As the previous discussion indicates, Paul argues that God had inaugurated the end in the Christ events. The ongoing mission with the conversion of the nations witnesses about this powerful new dispensation (1 Thess 2:16). The Thessalonians, for example, have turned to God away from their idols in response to the proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection (1 Thess 1:9– 10). But the letter also reflects the traditional motifs associated with a future time when the Lord will return, meet the believers and judge those who rejected the gospel. God will let the believers meet with the resurrected Christ again and their present oppressors will be punished for their wrongdoing (1 Thess 4:6; 5:5; cf. Wright 2003, 216–217). Before these motifs of divine judgment and salvation are explained in more detail, the prominent place of eschatology in 1 Thessalonians needs attention. 3.1. The Prominent Place of Eschatology in 1 Thessalonians Scholarly attention for eschatological material normally focuses on 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11, resulting in eschatological remarks elsewhere in the letter not always being adequately recognised. Though the passage is important, comprising the largest part of the second half of the book, other parts of the letter also contain significant references to eschatological events.8 The formal presentation of the letter, and especially the three thanksgivings in its first half, reveal its focus on eschatology. 9 The three thanksgivings in 1 Thessalonians (1:2–10; 2:13–16; 3:9– 10/1310) have frustrated scholars for a long time, because they contradict epistolary conventions that allow only one thanksgiving in a letter. Because of this form, many scholars argue that some of the thanksgivings are interpolations.11 The three thanksgivings do, however, make sense from a material point of view since they reflect Paul’s exuberant joy and relief 8 Selby (1999, 396–398) also argues that the eschatological pronouncements are not randomly scattered in the letter, but function as structural markers. 9 Cf. Wannamaker (1990, 88) for the importance of a formal analysis when he remarks how the exordium prepares for the only significant doctrinal issue in the letter, namely, the problem of the return of Jesus from heaven in 4:13–5:11. 10 The concluding prayer is a natural extension of the preceding thanksgiving. 11 Lambrecht (1994, 328) writes that the form of the three thanksgivings in no way pleads against the letter’s integrity. Later on (1994, 335) he cautions against reading the thanksgivings in terms of ‘a compulsory obedience to given genres’ and prefers to follow ‘a more natural procedure’ in his own analysis. His footnote 62 gives useful examples of other similar views on Paul’s creative and free use of traditional letter forms.

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after the news from Timothy that the church in Thessalonica is doing well (1 Thess 3:6–10). He overflows with gratitude that his mission was not in vain and that their witness to the gospel continues unabatedly. And this exuberant joy is expressed in repetitive thanksgivings. More important, though, is that from a formal point of view, these thanksgivings are carefully composed and mutually related. They share basic motifs (cf. such words as ‘thank’, ‘word’, ‘word of God’, ‘our word’, ‘not human’, ‘imitators’, ‘persecution’). All three end with an eschatological pronouncement, as is clear from 1 Thessalonians 1:2, 10; 2:13, 16c; (Baarda 1984; cf. also further below). Whilst the first speaks in a positive sense of the return of Christ who rescues believers from the coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10), the second ends with the contrapunctual reference to the wrath of God that comes upon those who oppose his salvific work (1 Thess 2:16). In this way two aspects of the final return of Christ are highlighted – salvation and judgment (cf. further below). The third thanksgiving is also closely linked with an eschatological remark (1 Thess 3:9–10). When Paul speaks in it about his prayer that they may be found blameless and holy with the return of Christ, he prepares the way for the following section with its focus on a holy lifestyle (1 Thess 4:1–11) and, at the same time, integrates his instructions on holiness in an eschatological framework.12 The thanksgivings that dominate the opening parts of the letter, thus have an important eschatological focus. Paul expresses in them his gratefulness for the faith of the Thessalonians and relates it to the ultimate ground of existence, that is, to a full experience of God’s presence in the end. Paul wishes to indicate from the very beginning of his letter that the deepest sense of the ministry among the Thessalonians has to do with its final outcome at the great reversal. Though Paul’s discussion of eschatological material is more extensive than is often appreciated, it is presented in sober language. In general Paul does not speculate about the nature of the future events at the parousia and uses the minimum of apocalyptic motifs to express his thoughts on it. In this short letter there is little room for extensive discussion. The discussion is focused on particular problems. Out of the sober references, the following portrait of eschatology in 1 Thessalonians can be drawn.

12

Lambrecht (1994, 337) notes that past, present and future are integrally linked in the thanksgivings, although he regards the future element as not that prominent. But he does remark about the future growth in virtue and more abundant love, concluding that ‘above all’ there is the eschatological outlook in all three. Cf. also Neyrey (1980, 223) for a discussion on the eschatological character of the call to be blameless in 1 Thess 3:11–13.

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3.2. The Divine Initiative In 1 Thessalonians the end time is intricately linked with divine actions, as was already suggested above. In line with the theocentric nature of this letter,13 God is the one who acted salvifically in Christ’s resurrection and its powerful, Spirit-driven proclamation (1 Thess 1:4), but God will also and especially complete these actions in Christ’s return.14 The divine perspective is evident, amongst others, in 1 Thessalonians 5:9 where God is said to have appointed us to receive salvation through Jesus and in 1 Thessalonians 4:14 where God is the One who initiates the parousia. God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.15 The divine initiative in eschatological events is also underlined by the image of Christ as descending ‘from heaven’ (1 Thess 1:10). The simple reference to the parousia in 1 Thessalonians 4:15 is expanded in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 by the explicit formulation, R^WL DXMWRa R- NXYULRa R- NDWD EKYVHWDLDMS¨RXMUDQRXC What happens on earth, therefore finds its origins in heavenly spheres. As a result of this material, Neyrey (1980, 220) correctly notes the theological character of the eschatology in 1 Thessalonians. God raises the dead and judges them according to their deeds. ‘It belongs to the one God, who created the world, to exercise comparable providence in dispensing justice, which justice, since it is not always apparent in this world, will be rendered in the next world’. But there is more to the eschatological events than mere judgement of humanity: God initiates the return of Christ. The coming of Jesus represents the revelation of God’s presence (1 Thess 3:13). This divine initiative is both striking and powerful in 1 Thessalonians. Its notion of God reflects the characteristics of the understanding of God in Hebrew Scriptures. The theophanic elements associated with the Day of the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 thus speaks of ‘Yahweh’s massive intrusion into life in a way that exhibits Yahweh’s awesome, ferocious power’ (Brueggemann 1997, 568). When the divine action is initiated from heaven, it disrupts earthly life in a cataclysmic manner (cf. e.g. 1 Thess 5:1–3). Those who stand in the way of God are being destroyed (1 Thess 2:16; 5:3) and God’s wrath strikes down those who follow idols (1 Thess

13

Cf. the remarks in Lambrecht (1994, 341) with references to literature. On the God’s prominence in the letter’s eschatology, cf. Neyrey (1980, 219) who draws attention to the neglect of this aspect in contemporary scholarship. 14 Cf. also Richard (1991, 43): ‘God’s apocalyptic role is stressed throughout the document and defined through concepts that Paul and his audience have inherited from Jewish and Christian apocalyptic discourse and now presuppose in their dialogue’. 15 In contrast to this, Jesus is not mentioned as often as God. He is, however, exalted, divine figure (cf. below).

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1:10). God is the avenger who punishes sin (1 Thess 4:6). With this divine intrusion the human condition and situation are changed irreversibly. Furthermore, the divine action ‘is an enactment of sovereignty ... that is completely originary. It has no antecedent and is not extrapolated from anything else, but is decisively generative of that which follows from it’ (Brueggemann 1997, 569). It is God who determines the destination of humanity and brings about its fulfilment (1 Thess 5:9). God even seeks out those who should proclaim the eschatological witnesses (1 Thess 2:4). The sovereign power of the divine initiative is underlined by the intermediary, but strong figure of Christ, the powerful proclamation of the word in the apostolic ministry and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification of the community of believers (cf. e.g. 1 Thess 5:19, 23; 1:4). Wherever Paul refers to them in this letter, God is said to be at work in a powerful manner as the God who calls, purifies and sanctifies. In them the ‘living and true’ God is present in a sovereign, overpowering way (1 Thess 1:9). 3.3. The Return of Christ The divine initiative is linked with the parousia of Christ in several places (1 Thess 2:19; 3:13; 4:15 and 5:23).16 Not only God, but also Christ plays an important role in the future events. Together they represent the divine initiative. As a non-technical term the parousia refers to the presence of gods, people or things (Joh 11:28; Heb 13:5) or their appearing / coming (e.g. Acts 10:21; 17:6; 1 Cor 16:17; Phil 1:26; 2 Thess 2:1,8,9; cf. also Jud 10:18; 2 Macc 8:12; 5:21). The parousia motif is expressed in special language through which its divine nature is emphasized.17 Paul combines it with honorary titles of Jesus in phrases that have a formulaic nature, indicating that Paul drew the motif of Christ’s return from his tradition. He speaks of the parousia of ‘our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones’ (1 Thess 3:13), of ‘the Lord’ (1 Thess 4:16) and, climactically, of ‘our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Thess 5:23; cf. Collins 1984, 254). The term parousia therefore should be read in the first place in terms of early Christian tradition with its focus on the return of Christ.18 Paul takes over established traditions and uses them to portray God’s divine actions in Christ’s glorious and 16

For parousia cf. a.o. Oepke (1968), Horsley (1987, 167–169). On the differences regarding future expectation in the New Testament, cf. Oepke (1968). 17 Cf. Selby (1999, 403) for this striking language, a.o. in 1 Thess 4:15–16 which he describes as a ‘dramatic, poetically structured, image filled vision’. 18 Cf. the extensive discussion of Paul’s eschatological traditions that are being suggested in this letter in Howard (1988, 15.18–19) and Selby (1999, 397–399). Neyrey (1980, 229) finds that 1 Thessalonians reflects pre-Pauline missionary preaching. Cf. also his remarks on page 229.

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overpowering return. There is thus a close relationship between God and Christ. Whilst 1 Thessalonians 4:14 speaks of God’s presence at the return of Jesus, 1 Thessalonians 3:13 describes the future coming only in terms of Christ. At the same time the parousia in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 overlaps with the Day of the Lord as described in 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11 (cf. further below). How consistently Paul develops this return of Christ, is revealed by a formal analysis. The parousia motif appears at focal points in the letter, each time at the end of a text part (e.g. 1 Thess 1:10; 2:16; 3:13; 4:17–18; 5:10–11.23). Each section thus culminates in a reference to the return of Christ, stressing the strong eschatological perspective of the letter and its focus on Christ’s return – and also confirming the formal analysis of the thanksgiving that was made above. What is striking is how especially two aspects of the parousia determine the form of the letter, as will be illustrated now. A formal analysis also points out the implications of the parousia (cf. further below). 3.4. Eschatological Judgment and Salvation Eschatological pronouncements in 1 Thessalonians are materially related to the motifs of judgment and salvation. The end events bring new life to humanity and will consummate the human relationship with the divine, whilst it will also bring about the removal of evil. 3.4.1. Salvation and Judgment in the Thanksgivings There is an intriguing combination of salvation and judgment in 1 Thessalonians in the first two thanksgivings, which illustrates how closely Paul connected the end time specifically with these two perspectives. The thanksgivings share similar motifs, as was pointed out above (1:2–10; 2:13–16) and they also have a similar, twofold structure. In them Paul firstly thanks God continuously for the way in which the word of God came to the Thessalonians and then concludes, in a second part, by describing the Thessalonians as imitators. Within this structure, the two thanksgivings provide contrasting, but complementary pictures. In the first thanksgiving Paul describes how his gospel came to them with power, illustrating God’s election and divine initiative. In the second thanksgiving Paul describes how the Thessalonians have accepted his proclamation as the word of God. Here the human response is in focus. In the first thanksgiving he then elaborates on the special witness that went out from the Thessalonians despite their tribulation and severe suffering. In doing so, they had imitated Paul and the Lord in his witnessing task. This is an extensive part of the thanksgiving that illustrates the outgo-

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ing faith of the Thessalonians. In the second thanksgiving Paul once again speaks of them as imitators because they have suffered like the churches in Judea who opposed Jesus, the prophets and Paul’s proclamation. With this, Paul elaborates on their suffering mentioned briefly in the first thanksgiving (1:6) in order to point out how they have followed in the footsteps of other Christians. To Paul it is important that all this should be seen from the (right) eschatological perspective: The first thanksgiving ends with an eschatological point: the Thessalonians have turned to God and are waiting for the Son of the Father who was resurrected from the dead and who will rescue them from the coming wrath. The eschatological end of the second thanksgiving ends with the announcement that the wrath of God has come over those who stand in the way of the Gentiles’ salvation and those who had killed Jesus. They turned away from God in doing so. By preventing the witnesses to preach the gospel, they sin (Baarda 1984, 32–34). In the first case, the wrath of God is averted; in the second case it is executed. In these two thanksgivings the positive and negative reaction to the word of God is portrayed. The one speaks of salvation and the other of judgment that will take place in the future. It is telling that these passages in the first half of the letter set the tone for the rest of the letter and its contents. This now requires a more detailed analysis. 3.4.2. Eschatological Judgment In 1 Thessalonians the future comprises God’s wrath as the divine judgment on sin, but also with the well-known motif of the Day of the Lord as the time of judgment.19 The motif of God’s wrath appears 36 times in the New Testament (e.g. Mt 3:7; Lk 3:7; Joh 3:36; Heb 3:11; Jam 1:19.20 and extensively in Rev 6:16–17; 11:18; 14:10; 16:19 and 19:15) where it reflects God’s judgment.20 This divine judgment is to be seen from two perspectives – judgment in the future and in the present. 3.4.2.1. Future Judgment The motif of wrath appears three times in 1 Thessalonians.21 It is used in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 (HMNWKCaRMUJKCaWKCa22HMUFRPHYQKa) simply for the com19 The traditional Jewish understanding of God as Deliverer is ascribed to Jesus. Cf. further Collins (1984, 259). On the parousia and the Day of the Lord as the same event from the perspectives of salvation and judgment, cf. Howard (1988). 20 For a full description, cf. Pesch (1990), but also Neyrey (1980, 227). 21 Cf. further Stählin (1968, 422–447) on wrath in the New Testament. 22 The repetition of the article is an indication that wrath is certainly coming (Malherbe 2000, 122).

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ing wrath at the end of time and in 1 Thessalonians 5:9 (RMXNH>>THWRK-PDCa R- THRaHLMaRMUJKQ to explain God’s salvific will.23 In the latter case, Paul once again explicitly contrasts salvation and wrath (like in the first two thanksgivings) when he notes that God appoints believers for salvation and not wrath. This is confirmed elsewhere in the letter. The Gospel is proclaimed to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Those who oppose God will experience how God’s wrath comes over them (1 Thess 2:16). What this wrath entails, is suggested by 1 Thessalonians 5:3 where it is said that the Day of the Lord will bring ‘destruction’ or ruin to unbelievers (5:3: WRYWH DLMIQLYGLRa DXMWRLCa HMILYVWDWDL R>OHTURa . The close link between wrath and ruin is confirmed by the fact that the word R>OHTURa is used by Paul only in an eschatological context (1 Cor 5:524 and 2 Thess 1:9). The ‘ruin’ that will overcome those who err in 1 Thessalonians 5:3 stands in contrast with the claims of ‘peace and safety’.25 God’s wrath is not arbitrary and indiscriminate, but is executed against those who wrong others. They will be punished for their ‘sins’ and lack of a holy lifestyle (1 Thess 4:3–8). God ‘avenges’ those who act in an evil manner against others (1 Thess 4:6; H>NGLNRa26). Bauer et al (1979, 238) defines the term as ‘the avenger, the one who punishes’, referring to this verse and Romans 13:4. This punishment is meted out against those who act in an evil manner against others. Sins, however, are not only about immoral behaviour, but are also visible as opposition to the proclamation of the gospel (1 Thess 2:15–16), that is, resisting the work of the Holy Spirit. Despite the strong language, the description of God’s judgment and anger remains sober. 1 Thessalonians contains no elaborate scenes of judgment like in Matthew 24 and Revelation 21, or like the more gruesome pictures in some Jewish and Christian apocalypses. Anger should also not be regarded as an angry outburst, as if God cannot control God’s feelings or emotions. Baarda, in an intriguing footnote, mentions how difficult the notion of God’s anger must have been received among some groups in

23 Anger is thus used in the sense of punishment. Cf. Louw & Nida (1988, 490). They note, ‘Though the focal semantic element inRMUJKY is punishment, at the same time there is an implication of God’s anger because of evil’. 24 In this verse it is also contrasted with salvation. 25 Cf. the discussion of this hendiadys by Malherbe (2000, 304–305) who suggests that it may represent a stinging criticism of Epicurean terminology and beliefs that misled the local Christians ‘to finding a security in their newfound community and relations with each other that did not sufficiently take into consideration the eschatological dimension of their existence’. 26 Louw & Nida (1988, 490) also place this work in the same semantic domain (punish, reward). Note in this regard 2 Thess 1:9. The word is a common description of God in the LXX (Frame 1946, 154; Malherbe 2000, 233).

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Paul’s Hellenistic context.27 He refers, for example, to the so-called Letter to Aristeas 254 where it is said that people can overcome anger (TXPRYa by following God who reigns over the world with gentleness and without any wrath (RMUJKY).28 Such a negative pathos of anger thus would have been regarded with surprise among some groups29 in a Hellenistic context. They would have thought of anger as ill-will and an act of aggression against others.30 There is, however, another side to the picture. As is clear from the writings of philosophers since Aristotle, anger is not always regarded negatively in a Hellenistic context. Aristotle’s thoughts on this issue were widely shared by later thinkers. He is known for his criticism of extreme emotional reactions which reflect irrational behaviour, but he was not completely negative about anger. Where people deliberately undermine truth, he argues, only a slavish person will refrain from becoming angry. ‘The mild person is not especially given to revenge, as Aristotle said. But in the case of the deepest commitments, not to take some action seems to show a lack of “perception”; and if one has those practical perceptions, then one seems bound to be angry. Anger, in these cases, is a recognition of the truth’ (Nussbaum 1994, 95–96; cf. also 243ff.). Anger also had another function. In his De Ira, Philodemus distinguishes between, on the one hand, ugly, unrestrained anger (TXPRYa) that nurtures revenge and has damaging effects with, on the other hand, anger (RMUJKY) which is justified if it rights a wrong. Natural and good anger is characterized by pain, is short in duration, and is accompanied by little or no pleasure. The wise man does not accept it with pleasure – as he accepts a foul-tasting medicine or the surgeon’s knife. In other contexts, even the Stoics who rejected anger, also accepted the need to avenge in order to protect oneself against bad behaviour and to promote correct action (cf. Seneca’s De Ira; Nussbaum 1994, 391–392). Expressing anger is even necessary to bring someone to correct behaviour and improvement.31 Anger therefore would therefore not necessarily have evoked negative conno27 Cf. for similar remarks, Cook (2006, 514–532); Malherbe (2000, 122 with qualifications) and on a particular example, Nussbaum (1994, 255–256). 28 Human anger as a perverted emotion that falls under judgement, is mentioned in the New Testament in the case of the older son in Lk 15:28, of the nations against God in Rev 11:18 and in Mt 5:22 of one person toward another and Eph 4:26. Cf. Pesch (1990, 530) for more information about anger as sin. 29 That one should not generalize, but think about this matter in a nuanced manner, is clear from Nussbaum (1994). Her volume provides intriguing insights in the often directly conflicting differences between Aristotle and Epicurus on anger. 30 Paul does not use TXPRYa in 1 Thessalonians, but in Rom 2:8 he links it with RMUJKY 31 In the case of Horace anger is seen as a virtue, as long as it remains brief and moderate (cf. his Ep. 1.20.25). Cf. further Armstrong et al (2004).

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tations in a Hellenistic context, but fits well into this letter with its strong focus on holiness.32 One should also consider early Christian traditions to understand the wrath of God in this letter. The remarks on wrath are in line with synoptic traditions that speak about Jesus’ wrath and closely identify Jesus with the execution of divine anger as a response to lack of repentance and as a judgment on a lifestyle which is not pleasing to God.33 All this information reaffirms the sovereign actions of God with which humanity will be confronted in future and will be held accountable for their life in obedience to the divine character and requirements. In their communal practice this future action of God plays a regulative role. God and the believing community in Thessalonica are part of a committed, exclusive relationship. The believers are required to worship God only, reject all other gods and seek sanctification. In doing so, they will reflect God’s holy character and presence in their lives and be prepared for the sphere of holiness that they will enter with the return of Christ. Where this does not happen, they will be excluded from God’s holy presence and face destruction (cf. further below). 3.4.2.2. Realized Judgment Though it has predominantly a future character, in some cases the wrath of God is already felt in the present. The Thessalonians are described as having suffered the same opposition that the Judean churches had suffered from their countrymen that had killed Jesus and the prophets and violently opposed Paul. Paul depicts these Jewish groups as having displeased God, being hostile to all men and opposing the Pauline proclamation. This is followed by the remark H>ITDVHQGHYHMS¨DXMWRXaK-RMUJKHLMaWHYORa, literally34 meaning the wrath came (aorist) over them until [the] end (1 Thess 2:14–16). Frame (1946, 113–114) understands that the key problem here is the interpretation of the aorist H>ITDVHQ. Like most exegetes he reads it as a proleptic aorist in a prophetic context (‘has come upon’).35 The phrase 32 33

He, e.g., uses it often in Romans (1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 5:9; 9:22). Pesch (1990, 529), for example, notes Jesus wrath against the demons (Mk 1:25; Lk 4:41), diabolical people (Joh 8:44) and the Pharisees (Mk 3:5 – because of their lack of repentance). He also notes the prominent place of God’s wrath in Revelation (e.g. Rev 6:16 and 19:15). 34 For a discussion of the different versions and translations, cf. Baarda (1984, 19– 20). 35 Cf. further e.g. Van Leeuwen (1926, 336); Malherbe (2000, 171.178–179) who concludes, ‘But Paul now affirms, God’s wrath is not deferred; it has already come upon them’. Many attempts are made to point towards some historical event that represents the execution of judgment, but little consensus exists on it.

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HLMaWHYORa placed in the sentence’s final position, indicates either a concluding event that follows previous activity (in the sense of ‘finally’ or ‘at last’) or a decisive event with ongoing future consequences. The aorist would then be a prophetic, proleptic (future) aorist (e.g. Frame 1946, 114) or ingressive – having begun but still going on. Both meanings indicate, as Baarda observes (1984, 56) something definite that will continue for ever. This is confirmed by the similar use of the motif of wrath in apocalyptic literature.36 The opposition of the Jewish groups to Paul’s universal gospel is, in his eyes, therefore deeply sinful. Because of their obstruction of the Gentile mission they heap up (DMQDSOKUZCVDL their sins to the limit (SDYQWRWH; 1 Thess 2:16), or fill the measure of their sins. ‘They heap up their sins to the limit’ theoretically can refer to the preceding list of the Jews’ negative actions, but in this context it relates specifically to their hostility against the Gentile mission. By obstructing the apostles to speak to the nations that they may be saved, the wrath of God has come over them. Those who persecuted God’s people in the past and in the present and who did so in opposition to God’s outreaching love to all people, are being held accountable for their actions and come under the judgment of God. This judgment happens already in the present. The very act of their persecution is an indication of God’s judgment that is being executed now (Baarda 1984, 53). Inflicting suffering on others is an indication of living under the wrath of God (cf. 4QpPs 37; 1 En 5:6f.; 91:9ff. etc. Baarda 1984, 53.72). Paradoxically, the success of the persecutors is an indication of the divine wrath (Baarda 1984, 54). Their violent rejection of the Gospel shows God’s wrath is being executed. This pronouncement on a present judgment of God is not unique in Paul’s letters. The Pauline understanding of a realized judgment is expressed clearest in Romans 1:18 where he writes about the wrath of God that is being revealed from heaven against sinners (cf. also Rom 4:14–15; Col 3:6; Pesch 1990; Ridderbos 1966, 117). 3.4.3. Salvation and the End Time One of the striking aspects of the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians is that it is seen from a soteriological perspective. Believers expect salvation in the future as is so clearly stated in 1 Thessalonians 5:8 with its reference to the hope of salvation (Van Houwelingen 2005, 148). Believers will be liber36 Cf. also 2 Thess 1:9 which speaks of everlasting destruction; also Rom 1:18; 2:5,8 and, e.g., 1 En 84:4. There is no indication that Paul speaks of the Jewish people as an ethnic or religious group here, but only of those who hinder the Pauline proclamation. In this sense it does not contradict his position in Rom 9–11. For a discussion of Rom 9–11 and more literature, cf. Lambrecht (1994, 35–54).

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ated in future from their present oppression (1 Thess 4:13; 5:8.10; cf. 1:3). Christ will return and share a future existence with them (1 Thess 4:16.17; cf. De Villiers 2005; Jewett 1986, 168–169). 1 Thessalonians repeatedly assures the believers that they have become part of God’s new family (1 Thess 1:4) that is on a spiritual journey towards God’s kingdom and glory (1 Thess 2:12; HLMaWR SHULSDWHLCQX-PDa DM[LYZaWRXCTHRXC WRXC NDORXCQWRa37X-PDCaHLMaWKQH-DXWRXCEDVLOHLYDQNDL GRY[DQ). They live in anticipation of a future existence which Paul expects for the family of God and which has a special nature, spelled out through the description of it as ‘glory’ and through its link with the motif of the kingdom (cf. also Malherbe 2000, 153). Their present existence is focussed on that future bliss. The glorious future functions to empower the Thessalonians for their spiritual journey amidst difficult circumstances. The expectation of the parousia has a transformative effect on the present lifestyle of believers. They are eagerly ‘waiting’ (1 Thess 1:10),38 ‘walking’ (1 Thess 2:12), or ‘living’ with Christ (1 Thess 5:10) in expectation of the coming of the Lord as saviour and judge (1 Thess 5:23). Transformed and inspired by the death and resurrection of Jesus that inaugurated the time of the end, their life in the present is now focused on the consummation at the parousia. It energizes them to live a life pleasing to the Lord (1 Thess 4:1; cf. Beker 1980, 154–155). They must be holy and blameless at the parousia (1 Thess 4:13). Here again, salvation is not only a matter of fervent expectation. Whilst believers have the hope of salvation as helmet (1 Thess 5:9) and should not be like those who have no hope (1 Thess 4:13), salvation is also a present reality. The future resurrection and coming salvation are the results of God’s salvific acts in the resurrection (1 Thess 4:13) of Jesus who saves from the coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10). The salvific relationship is most pregnantly expressed in the terms ‘in Christ’ or ‘with Christ’ (e.g. 1 Thess 4:13; 5:9–10). The dead, for example, still participate in the community of God the Father through their death ‘in Christ’ (1 Thess 4:16). Their mysti37 Note how eschatology is linked with sanctification. Cf. Van Leeuwen (1926, 329), but also Malherbe (2000, 153), who remarks that the present participle (a better reading than the aorist version of D A lat sy co) describes a God ‘who is active, requiring a life of a particular quality in view of the eschaton’. He also note in a following remark how the Day of the Lord (5:1–8), ‘while still future, determines existence now’ as does the kingdom. 38 Malherbe (2000, 121) notes that this is a hapax which relates to the eagerly awaited end mentioned in Rom 8:19, 23, 25; 1 Cor 1:7; Phil 3:20. ‘The tradition from which he derived the words appears to have been influenced by the LXX, where it is used of waiting with faith and full assurance for God’s righteous judgment, mercy and salvation (Jer 13:16; Isa 59:11; Jud 8:17; Sir 2:6–8).

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cal relationship with Christ transcends death. Their existence is essentially affected long before the final return of Christ. In fact, in a unique way, Paul now emphasizes that those who died in Christ will rise first (1 Thess 4:16). This extraordinary perspective of Paul that the dead have preferential status at history’s climactic moment is new to traditional apocalyptic thought.39 Through this insight, their tragic deaths are transformed into a good death (Roetzel 1997, 103). In this sense the future with its blessings is complementary to what has already been granted in the resurrection.

4. Entering the Presence of God and Christ It has been pointed out above how sober Paul’s expectation of the future is. This deserves further attention, because Paul fills in the contents of the future in a special manner through subtle phrases and motifs. One such phrase is the ‘presence of God’ (H>PSURVTHQ WRXC THRXC) which has indirectly been alluded to in the preceding discussions. Paul writes, for example, that believers will be ‘in the presence’ of God and that this will last ‘forever’ (1 Thess 4:17). In 1 Thessalonians 1:3 Paul observes how he keeps the Thessalonians in remembrance ‘in the presence of God and our Father’ and in 1 Thessalonians 3:9 he speaks of his joy over the Thessalonians ‘in the presence’ of our God (cf. also 1 Thess 2:19). The Greek word H>PSURVTHQ is a translation of the Hebrew \QSO,40 which can simply mean ‘before’. In this letter, though, several pronouncements imply that this expression indicates the presence of God or Christ, and refers in a special manner to being face to face before the divine.41 The future is first and foremost about the revelation of God’s presence at the parousia. In 1 Thessalonians 3:13, Paul refers to being blameless in 39

Cf. the examples in Howard (1988, 6). She mentions 4 Ezra 13:22–24 where it is said that those who are alive at the return of the Messiah are more blessed than those who died earlier. 40 Cf. also elsewhere in, e.g., Gal 2:14, 2 Cor 5:10 and Phil 3:13 and frequently in the rest of the New Testament. 41 Louw and Nida (1988, 83.33) places the word under the heading ‘In front of, face to face’ and describe it as a noun that indicates ‘a position in front of an object, whether animate or inanimate, which is regarded as having a special orientation of front and back – “in front of, before”’. Bauer et al (1958, 257) defines it as ‘in the presence of God’ and refers to 1 Thess 2:19 and 3:13, whilst Balz and Schneider (1990, 446) writes that Paul uses H>PSURVTHQ in the local and temporal senses to describe the direct imminence and presence of God in the expectation of the parousia (1 Thess 1:3; 2:19; 3:13). The translation of this word is often done inconsistently. Malherbe (2000, 185) translates it as ‘before’ in 1 Thess 2:19, but in 1 Thess 3:9, 13 he renders it (2000, 204.213) as ‘in the presence of God’.

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the presence of ‘our God and Father’ when ‘our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones’. He talks in similar formulaic language in 1 Thessalonians 2:19 about being with the Thessalonians in the presence of God when he comes. Here the divine presence is linked with a phase that will be experienced from the moment of the Lord’s coming and that will continue from there on.42 The experience of the divine presence is also expressed by references to being or living together with Christ. This relates first of all to the dead. Twice Paul reassures the Thessalonians that those who have died will also be reunited with the Lord. In 1 Thessalonians 4:14 it is said that ‘Jesus’ will bring them ‘with him’. This simple phrase reflects the special, intimate relationship with believers. Van Houwelingen (2005, 130) draws attention to the striking fact that other than in 1 Thessalonians 1:9 with its reference to the believers who ‘wait for God’s son, this verse refers to the name Jesus and not the title Christ, stressing the personal bond with the dead believers. This special bond of believers with Jesus is also indicated in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, where Paul writes that the living will be caught up with the dead who will be resurrected D^PDVXQDXMWRLCaThis expression is a more intense formulation than the simpler VXQDXMWRLCa in 1 Thessalonians 4:14. At the same time he places this phrase before the verb, underlying its importance further.43 The best comparable use is found in 2 Corinthians 4:14, ‘God who raised Jesus, will also raise us and bring us with you into his presence’ (cf. also Plevnik 1999, 439.543). In this way the theological thrust of the remark is spelled out and the close relationship between God and humanity is illuminated (Richard 1991, 50). Paul underlines this by the form in which he presents his material in this passage. The focus in the sentence in 1 Thessalonians 4:14 and in the first part (1 Thess 4:13–14) falls on the last phrase – God will bring them to be VXYQ DXMWZC44 Malherbe (2000, 267) suggests that VXYQ DXMWZC should be understood as HLMaWR HLMQDLYDXMWRXaVXYQDXMWZC. 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which speaks of the living and the dead who will ultimately forever be ‘with the Lord’ appears again at the end of the second part of this passage, forming its climax. Thus both parts which discuss the issue of those who have fallen asleep end with a climactic pronouncement about believ42 That Paul exults in the Thessalonians expresses the communion that believers will enjoy in God’s presence (cf. further below). 43 Malherbe (2000, 275) also finds that the D^P D strengthens the VXYQ and concludes that this strengthening is ‘at the heart of Paul’s consolation’. 44 Malherbe (2000, 267) speaks about the association with Christ ‘which is further intensified by placing it at the end of the sentence’. Frame (1946, 170) allows for a better explanation of the fact that it is VXYQ DXMWZC that is placed at the very end, so that it is Paul’s ‘central contention’ in this passage. He quotes Deissmann that VXYQ DXMWZ is the goal ofHMQ&ULVWZC

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ers who will remain in God’s presence from the moment the coming of Christ takes place. This being in the divine presence integrates the section and thus becomes a focal point in it. This is even more striking in light of the fact that the issue in this passage is the dead believers. Paul argues that they will be resurrected, but he goes further. 1 Thessalonians 4:17b is not merely an afterthought of a discussion on the resurrection, but the real point Paul wants to make: the future fate of the believing community is to be ‘with the Lord forever’. The believers need not fear death and be discouraged by it. They will enter into God’s kingdom, but also, powerfully, experience God’s glory in an ongoing union with God (1 Thess 2:12). Union with God is to experience God’s rule and God’s fulfilling, overpowering presence. In this way, the future expectation has a mystical quality. The intimate relationship with the divine and the experience of the divine presence are qualified in 1 Thessalonians 5:9–10 where it is said that Jesus died so that believers may live together with him (VXYQ DXMWZC ]KYVZPHQ). This further interprets the ‘being with’ the Lord in 1 Thessalonians 4:14 and 17. The community who were mourning the deaths of their loved ones hear from Paul that they will be resurrected, be with God and live together in the divine presence. ‘It is a very precious thought, especially to those who have been bereaved, as had some of the Thessalonians’ (Morris 1984, 144–145).45 There is a further subtle indication in this letter of what the divine presence implies. In the passage about the fate of those who died (1 Thess 4:13–18), Paul consistently uses only the title R- NXYULRa (except for the formulaic HMQ &ULVWZC in 4:16). Lord is a well-known apocalyptic title46 and denotes Christ in his powerful eschatological presence. The parousia marks the beginning of the eternal, direct presence of Christ and of God in power and glory (Collins 1984, 268–269).47 Elsewhere the divine presence 45 Merklein (1998, 380) also stresses the importance of the phrase ‘together with him’ in verse 14 and notes that Paul does not generally refer to the resurrection here, but ‘um einen spezifischen Vorgang: um die Gemeinschaft der Verstorbenen am Parusiezug’. 46 For a discussion of the term, cf. Malherbe (2000, 291) who observes that it is used in 1 Thess 5:2 as if the readers were familiar with it, ‘probably because the subject had been part of his (Paul’s) original eschatological instruction to them and was a topic under discussion’. 47 That is why Paul commends the believers at the beginning of the letter in 1 Thessalonians 1:3 for their ‘steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ’ and why hope, linked with the parousia, is a recurring motif in the letter (cf. 1 Thess 2:19; 4:13; 5:8). At the end of the letter, in 1 Thess 5:23, the title Lord is once again combined in a climactic manner with ‘Jesus Christ,’ emphasizing the use of the title and also the theme of the parousia here. Paul thus, on a macro level, frames the letter with references to the future and to Jesus as powerful Lord.

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is fore-grounded in a special way when Paul places the phrase ‘the Lord himself’ will come down from heaven in the sentence’s initial position (1 Thess 4:16). Finally, the presence of God is also given more content in 1 Thessalonians 3:13 where Paul wishes that the Thessalonians will be blameless HMQ D-JLZVXYQK. Though this is often read as a prayer that they may become holy, it has been suggested that it is rather a prayer that they may be blameless in the holy presence of God. The phrase ‘in holiness’ would then be the equivalent of ‘in the presence of God’ (cf. Van Houwelingen 2005, 112; cf. e.g. Ps 96:6). This would be in line with the close link between holiness and eschatology in the letter. Elsewhere in Pauline literature, the future as time when believers will be in the presence of God is stated clearly in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 where it is said that those who do not obey the gospel will be punished with everlasting destruction48 and shut out from the presence of the Lord and the majesty of his power. Paul’s expectation of the future sharing of the divine presence in 1 Thessalonians and his other letters reflects his Jewish traditions. Being with God in the future is a leading motif in major Jewish apocalypses (4 Ez 14:9; 1 En 39:6–7; 62:13–14; cf. Malherbe 2000, 277). But it also reflects early Christian traditions (e.g. Mt 28:20; Lk 23:43; Joh 17:24). Paul applies the traditional imagery from his Jewish and Christian source to portray the glory of the God’s holy and life-giving presence that believers will experience with the consummation.

5. The End Time Events Whilst the first half of Thessalonians (1–3) provides only incidental insights into future events, as is clear in the discussion above, the second half of the epistle contains explicit eschatological themes (1 Thess 4:13– 5:11). He addresses two issues of the fate of those who have died before the parousia (4:13–18) and the Day of the Lord (5:1–11). This part is structured with certain formal markers and motifs.49 Neither of the eschatological issues are dogmatic discussions of theological themes, but are directly related to the situation in Thessalonica, as will be indicated below. Before this is done, a short overview of the two parts of this passage will be provided.

48

Frame (1946, 182) thinks that 1 Thess 5:3 about the destruction of those who claim peace and safety reflects a ‘separation from the presence of Christ’. 49 It has similar introductions, the vocative ‘brothers,’ the thematic indicator SHULY, the motif of the Lord’s presence and an exhortation (cf. Malherbe 2000, 260–261).

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5.1. The Dead and Living Believers at the Parousia Paul focuses in this passage (1 Thess 4:13–18) on the fate of believers who died before the parousia (SHULY WZCQNRLPZPHYQZQ; 1 Thess 4:1550). Except for those who have fallen asleep, Paul mentions the living/remaining ones (RL- ]ZCQWHa / RL- SHULOHLSRYPHQRL; 1 Thess 4:15–17) as a second group. The passage is neatly framed at its opening with a paraenetical remark about those who are sleeping (v. 13) and at its end with a remark encouraging the believers that are still remaining (v. 18). In verses 14 to 16 the issue regarding those who are asleep is under discussion. Then, in a final reflection, the reunion of those who are still alive with them is described (v. 17). Paul emphasizes that he is writing about the ‘dead in Christ’ (1 Thess 4:16). They were fellow believers who died before Christ’s promised return and about whose fate the remaining believers were uncertain (1 Thess 4:15).51 They appear to have believed that the dead saints were excluded from ever experiencing God’s presence. Paul, wanting to comfort them, carefully chooses fitting linguistic descriptions through which he identifies the dead as merely ‘sleeping’.52 In antiquity the dead were often described as asleep (cf. Malherbe 2000, 280–281) in an attempt to console the bereaved. In Paul’s case his language reminds of a similar phrase in Daniel 12:2 which became a key passage in reflections about the resurrection of the dead (Wright 2003, 216). Paul’s reflection on the dead was primarily influenced by his Christological convictions. According to 1 Thessalonians 4:14, God will bring with Jesus those ‘who have fallen asleep in him’.53 It is the salvific relationship with the crucified and resurrected Jesus that determines the fate of saints in the end time. Those who are ‘in Christ’ have a relationship with him that cannot be destroyed by death. Paul thus describes in this passage the future of two groups – the dead and living believers. Paul makes three statements about both these groups. 50 The SHULY indicates the topos of the passage. Note the present tense in the phrase, though these ‘sleepers’ are described with an aorist participle in verse 15. 51 The meaning of the reference to the Thessalonians’ ignorance is much debated. Cf. Malherbe (2000, 262) who draws attention to the stock nature of such remarks in ancient epistolography and then finds that it may be ‘too rigid’ a view that Paul is mainly introducing doctrinal teaching here. 52 The SHULY indicates the topos of the passage. Note the present tense in the phrase, though these ‘sleepers’ are described with an aorist participle in verse 15. Taken together, the reference is to a particular group of believers in Thessalonica who died. 53 For various interpretations, cf. Frame (1946, 170–171); Malherbe (2000, 266). Kim (2002, 87) writes about the possible traditional material in this passage, citing as evidence the use of Jesus instead of Christ and DMQHYV WKinstead of HMJKYJHUWDL

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First of all, as has been mentioned above, Paul reassures the living, remaining believers that the dead will not be disadvantaged in any way. The key phrase is RXM PK ITDYVZPHQ in verse 15. The dead will not only, not be forgotten, but they will enjoy special priority. They will rise ‘first’ (1 Thess 4:16). He reiterates this by adding that ‘then’ the living will join them to be with the Lord forever (1 Thess 4:17). This is a new, unique insight that, in terms of their future fate, gives the dead a special status. Paul further points out that all believers, dead or alive, will be resurrected and transformed. They leave their earthly existence behind for a new life with God. This is described as a snatching up in the clouds to meet with the Lord in the air (1 Thess 4:17). This snatching up in the air has become a much debated issue among those who defend or reject dispensationalist readings of the New Testament (cf. Cosby 1994; Gundry 1996). These readings argue that the snatching away implies that some Christians will experience a rapture from earth to enjoy a heavenly sojourn whilst the war between those believers left behind and evil forces continues on earth.54 Opponents of this interpretation sometimes argue that the text assumes the apantesis, the Greek word for meeting, which had a particular meaning in antiquity.55 In Hellenistic times it was used in a technical sense in the East for the visit of a ruler to a particular city. Such a visit was accompanied by frenzied preparations by the locals. They awaited the ruler outside the city gates, presented him with many presents and then accompanied him into their city. They even minted coins for such occasions since they regarded it as an indication of an important phase in the history of their communities (cf. Deissmann 1927, 368.371). The problem with the apantesis motif as background for this text is that the text says nothing about believers who meet Christ in the air and then return, like the citizens of a city with the ruler, to earth.56 The fact that Paul did not have the apantesis in mind does not in any way favour the theory of the rapture. This does not in any way mean that Paul had in mind a rapture in the dispensationalist sense. The snatching up in verse 17 is accompanied by audible and visible signs and events (1 Thess 4:16) which 54 55

Cf. Rossing (2004) for a full discussion. E.g. already Frame (1946, 177 quoting Moulton); Morris (1982, 144–145) and many others. 56 Bruce (1982, 102–103), for example, notes that nothing in the text indicates that the Lord continues his journey to earth or returns to heaven’. Cf. on the issue of the apantesis and its role in this passage, Deissmann (1927, 372ff.); Gundry (1987); Plevnik (1999); Cosby (1994) and Gundry (1996). Other differences between the apantesis and 1 Thess 4:17 are that the believers are passive – which is further confirmed by 1 Thess 1:10 which portrays the believers as waiting for the Lord. They do not ‘fetch’ the Lord on his arrival. Malherbe (2000, 277) also points out several other differences.

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cannot be associated with any quiet, secret rapture of some believers (cf. Morris 1982, 144–145). The sober language in this letter should not be literalized. Through the remarks in the second section Paul emphasizes that the reunion takes place above the earth for a special reason. Christ will ‘come down from heaven’ (1 Thess 4:16) and the believers will be caught up ‘in the clouds’ to meet the Lord ‘in the air’ (1 Thess 4:17). These remarks indicate that future life cannot be understood as a mere continuation of earthly existence. Those who find peace and safety on earth are going to be disillusioned. In his rejection of misconceptions in the community, Paul uses metaphorical language that implies that believers will have a different mode of existence than the one that some claim as the final destiny of believers. The implications are that it will be different in mode also in the sense that it will be a glorious, heavenly existence that transcends all the restrictions of the present dispensation. The close parallel between 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51–52 suggests that ‘being snatched up on the clouds to meet the Lord in the air is functionally equivalent, in Paul’s mind, to being “changed” so that one’s body is no longer corruptible, but now of the same type as the Lord’s own risen body’ (Wright 2003, 215).57 5.2. The Day of the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:1–11) At the beginning of the second major passage on eschatology Paul explicitly spells out that it is ‘about times and seasons’ (SHUL58 FURYQZQNDL WZCQ NDLUZCQ; 1 Thess 5:1). The two terms, ‘times’ and ‘seasons’, refer to a specific aspect of Christ’s second coming (1 Thess 5:1). Different meanings are sometimes ascribed to the two words, with FURYQRa seen by some as referring to time in its extension and NDLURYa to a definite moment in time. Here, however, the apocalyptic context and nature of the text suggest a more direct link with Daniel. As in Daniel 2:21, the two terms form an hendiadys and therefore express the same idea (Malherbe 2000, 288). They point to a conviction that there is a divine order of future events that can be recognized by those with wisdom and insight. It is about this ordained future that Paul wishes to speak to his readers. They have been mislead by perceptions that there will be no future return of Christ and that the fulfilment of future expectations has already taken place. Some false prophets in Thessalonica have deceived the believers to give up their eschatological vigilance (Malherbe 2000, 302). Paul draws on traditional apocalyptic dis57 On this, cf. especially Plevnik (1999, 545) who interprets this passage in terms of an assumption-exaltation model. According to him the clouds in this passage do not transport Jesus from heaven or shroud God as in theophanies, but take living human beings from the earth as was the case in pagan and Jewish assumptions. 58 Once again, like in the previous part, the SHULY introduces the topos.

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course and motifs like the Day of the Lord to correct such views and to warn that they may have disastrous consequences.59 There are two subsections in this unique passage. The first one (vv. 1–3) focuses on the Day of the Lord and its sudden appearance. Here Paul uses terminology also found in Luke 21:34–36, but which does not appear in other Pauline letters to stress that the Day has not yet come.60 It will appear like a thief in the night (1 Thess 5:2, 4), namely unexpectedly and will bring destruction with it to those who are not prepared for it. In the second subsection (vv. 4–11) Paul develops the motif of watchfulness as the proper response to the coming Day of the Lord.61 The second and first person personal pronouns that dominate this part (cf. e.g. vv. 2 and 4) and the shared motifs of NDTHXYGZPHQJUKJRUZCPHQand QKYIZPHQ are the most important formal indicators of the passage’s coherence, but also of preparedness as its main point. Through various contrasts Paul emphasizes the need to be ready for what will happen. Those who live in the presence without regard for the consequences of their behaviour will experience divine judgment. Paul stresses the need to live responsibly or fittingly. 62 There is an enlightened or an evil lifestyle. The ‘sons of light’ are, other than ‘those who belong to the darkness’, watchful and sober. They put on the breastplate of faith, love and the helmet of hope of salvation. Those who are falsely reassured and claim peace, will face destruction, but the believers who do not share their views, will escape ruin.63 Once again it needs to be underlined that the passage does not merely speak about preparedness. The watchfulness has a particular function. It will enable the saints to experience the presence of Christ. This passage peaks in verse 10 with the observation that ‘Christ died for us so that, whether we are awake or sleep, we may live together with him’. Frame (1946, 182) observes that this indicates that the point of the passage and 59

Mearns (1981) argued that Paul’s eschatology in 1 Thessalonians represents a rebuke of enthusiasts who distorted his initial proclamation about the imminent end and who argued that the resurrection had already taken place. 60 For a full discussion, cf. Frame (1946, 183), also Malherbe (2000, 291). 61 The section has a neat composition. The two sub-sections are antithetically related: Verses 5b–7 defines, mostly in a negative form, their Christian identity (5b), spells out the consequences (6 – to be prepared) and then a reason (7 – the unprepared belong to the night). Verses 8–10 forms the antithesis of 5b–7. It also spells out their Christian identity (8), the consequences (8b) and a self-evident tradition (9). Verse 10b is a conclusion of this section and the entire eschatological passage (4:13–5:10; Malherbe 2000, 287). 62 Cf. e.g. believers / unbelievers, peace / security and ruin, darkness / day, darkness / light, night / day; verse 5; cf. Lk 17:26–28. 63 With this contrast, Paul continues what is found elsewhere in the Pauline material. He contrasts salvation with motifs like destruction (most explicitly in Phil 1:28), foolishness and death (e.g. 2 Thess 2:10; 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15–16).

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the call for watchfulness is not so much a warning about annihilation of existence but a warning about separation from the presence of Christ. Those who are prepared and ready for the unexpected arrival of the end, will receive salvation and experience the divine presence. In contrast the unprepared will experience destruction because they will be excluded from salvation and the presence of Christ (cf. 2 Thess 1:9). All this is confirmed by the presentation of the return of Christ as part of the great reversal in the future and that will take place in the end. It fulfils eschatological expectations of a new, transformed existence that is especially associated with this Day and with the powerful coming of the Lord.64 The visible and powerful theophanic signs herald the radical new dispensation that God will bring about. The Lord will return from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God.65 On that day the resurrection of the dead and the renewal of all things will take place, but, most importantly, the glory of God finally will be revealed to all. It is the glory and majesty of God that characterize God’s kingdom (1 Thess 2:12, 20; 2 Thess 1:9–10; 2:14).

6. Eschatology in light of the Local Situation All these eschatological pronouncements in 1 Thessalonians are closely linked with the particular situation of the church in Thessalonica, one of the more important cities in Roman Asia.66 As was the case in many such cities, different cults and religions existed and were tolerated. The letter was written to a predominantly Gentile audience in 50/51 after Paul visited the city on a missionary journey to proclaim his gospel of the resurrected Christ (48–52 CE; cf. Acts 16–1867 and 1 Thess 1:9). During this visit some of the local people responded positively to his message and joined a group of his followers.

64 65

Cf. 1 Thess 5:2; 2 Thess 2:2 and the discussion in Malherbe (2000, 291). The phrases, all with the same preposition and dative (of attendant circumstances), express the powerful glory of the Lord’s return. Frame (1946, 174) notes that the last two phrases, joined by an epexegetical NDLY, explain the first one, meaning, ‘At a command, namely, at an archangel’s voice and at a trumpet of God’. 66 Cf. Lindemann (1991) for a similar position on the contextual nature of the eschatology of Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. 67 On the relationship between Acts and 1 Thessalonians and the interpretive problems created by it, cf. e.g. Selby (1999, 389).

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6.1. External Pressures From the beginning Paul’s message of Christ met with violent opposition from the local Jews (Acts 17:5). They were so hostile that they even followed Paul to the neighbouring Berea where they succeeded to undo the more sympathetic reception he had received from the local Jews there (Acts 17:10–14). The young converts in Thessalonica, who held onto Paul’s proclamation of the resurrected Christ who will return at the end of time, were under attack from those Jewish groups who rejected Paul’s messianic gospel.68 From the beginning of their spiritual journey as the new family of God they were exposed to bitter enmity from those who were supposed to be closest to them in faith. What is more, they had to face the hostility without Paul, their founding father, who brought them the gospel, but had to leave them in haste. In addition, the believers could no longer rely on their traditional social, cultural and religious support structures because of Paul’s expectation that they should turn away from the gods and cults that they had previously worshipped. Paul’s proclamation of the one true and living God (1 Thess 1:9) and his eschatological message about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead (Acts 17:3), which required that they should be holy in anticipation of God’s coming kingdom (1 Thess 3:13; 4:4), stood in direct contrast to the multi-religious and multicultural identity of this thriving and prosperous city. In a city with a spirit of openness to religious diversity because of the constant inflow of migrants and commercial traffic, their exclusivity must have evoked suspicion and alienation (cf. Acts 17:6). They were part of a new religious movement that demanded that its members ‘turn away’ from idols, that, as ‘man-made gods’ were no gods at all (Acts 19:26). Though there is no evidence in the letter of an official persecution because of the tensions with the local authorities, the exclusivity of the new movement ‘could have brought savage reprisals from families, friends, civic leaders and even Roman officials’ (Roetzel 1997, 104; cf. also De Villiers 2003a; 2004; 2005, 306).69 The rejection may not have been official, but its nature was not less intense (1 Thess 1:6; 2:14–16; 3:3–4). 68

Paul’s non-Jewish converts in Thessalonica would have been less acquainted with traditional Jewish material, including eschatological views (Baarda 1984, 31). The hostility of Jewish groups to these converts could further help explain why they were relatively uninformed about eschatological expectations. This may explain their uncertainty about aspects of Paul’s eschatological message. 69 The report on Paul’s ministry in Acts 17 reflects a combination of possible sources of persecution, such as the civic authorities, pagan priesthoods, Jewish fanatics, financial interests and superstitious masses. Though the nature of the oppression is unclear and proposals about persecution remain hypothetical, Neil (1950, 64) is correct that social pressure and mob law could have been more dangerous weapons against the believers

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The believers therefore paid a high price for embracing the message about the one God of Judaism and Paul, but they did so with the firm conviction that because of the resurrection of God’s Son, there would be a general resurrection in the end when God and God’s Son would return to fetch them and judge the idolatrous nations. Their whole existence in the present must be conceived, therefore, in terms of a spiritual journey towards the glorious return of God. In this context, Paul’s message about the ‘living and true’ God is foundational for the understanding of his eschatology in this letter. The living God is the God with whom the believers will eventually share life in the fullest sense of the word. And this message had to be defended against the many other religious discourses that were on offer to the believers in Thessalonica. It was in the Pauline discourse the only ‘true’ message for them in their city. The ongoing spiritual journey of the saints consisted of a continuous confrontation with the symbolic universe that they abandoned for the gospel. The idols that they worshipped before, were still being worshipped (1 Thess 1:9) and their previous lifestyle was still prevalent among their compatriots. It was a situation in which they were constantly reminded of their previous religious discourses. In the light of this ongoing tension, all the basic features of the gospel message needed repetition. Thus they had to be reminded again that they had turned to the living God who destined them for salvation as eternal life (1 Thess 4:7 and 5:9). Through this letter Paul wants to underline his proclamation of God’s salvation in Christ that will bring them into God’s kingdom. And this implied that they should pursue a lifestyle that will bring them to be blameless with the future return of Christ. 6.2. Internal Factors Other more internal matters also contributed to Paul’s eschatological pronouncements in 1 Thessalonians. The tense situation of the community was not only determined by external factors. They also faced serious challenges regarding their faith after they had gone through some traumatic experiences. The letter speaks of the death of their loved ones before the parousia, which confronted them with the question whether those believers had missed out on being reunited with the returning Lord. In a context where they had been ostracized by their natural families, the additional loss of fellow believers must have been a major blow, if only because of their small numbers and their often dire situation. They must have felt this than official action. Suffering could have been severe also because authorities who were distrustful of the political implications of cultic activities, would have showed little tolerance for those who were involved in them and offered them no protection.

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even more because of Paul’s eschatological message about the imminent return of Christ. Paul’s eschatology is, finally, a response to specific interpretations. In the letter he speaks of some views which he regards as destructive and dangerous. In response to these views, he points out their implications and consequences. But he also uses these views to reiterate his own understanding of the future return of the Lord (cf. the discussion above). In his response his language develops certain fundamental insights of the gospel that have to do with the intimate nature of the divine-human relationship, the radical transformation of believers through the gospel and the ongoing spiritual journey that will eventually end in the full union with God and with others. His eschatology therefore also transcends the local situation as he takes over sacred traditions and enables his readers to recognize the enduring values that bring fulfilment in life.

7. Conclusion In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul paints a picture of a community under threat. They were shunned by the Jews, ostracized by their families, under suspicion from their compatriots, tested in their new faith and without the support of their leaders who had to flee their city.70 One could thus describe their situation as that of ‘social, intellectual, and religious dislocation with attendant confusion, bewilderment, dejection and even despair’ (Malherbe 2000, 128; cf. also De Villiers 2005, 308–311). All this placed pressure on the way in which the community experienced their relationship with God. In their spiritual journey, their close unity with the divine was constantly in question. Other than in letters like Galatians, where certain views also seriously threatened the gospel, Paul responded to this dire situation in a special way. He does not focus in a polemical manner on exposing falsehoods or teaching ‘truths’. He is the spiritual director of believers who need to be supported in their ongoing spiritual journey. He therefore praises the community for their holding on to faith, love and hope (1 Thess 1:3), but also spurs them on to hold on to a future reunion with God and Christ. He underlines that they are not alone in their difficult struggle. They go through suffering which also others have experienced through the ages. In this sense they live in ‘community’ with those who remained faithful to the living and true God. 70 Cf. Selby (1999, 391ff.) on the possibility that the Thessalonians felt themselves abandoned by Paul. It is a question though, whether this is a major issue in the letter.

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Paul himself reaches out to them with an exceptional affection and thus expresses his feelings of community with them. When compared with his other letters, the first letter to the Thessalonians stands out because of its paraenetic form and affectionate tone (Malherbe 2000, 81–82.222–223).71 He stresses the fulfilling character of their spiritual journey despite the affliction they are experiencing when he expresses his admiration for their dedication. Their journey is already meaningful in that it brings fulfilment to Paul and others. Their active witness brings joy to Paul. He now really ‘lives’ when he observes their faithfulness to God (1 Thess 3:8). Ultimately, though, they had to understand that their present relationship with God will be consummated at the end when they will be reunited with their loved ones, but even more so, with God and Christ. For Paul the future represents everything that they missed in the presence. If they were mourning the deaths and absence of their loved ones, they could look forward to following them into God’s kingdom. If they experienced alienation and enmity from their families and neighbours from day to day, they could look forward to being eternally with God and with God’s new family. Over against the absence of supporting structures and loss of their beloved believers, stands the glory of the kingdom where they will be forever ‘in the presence of God’ together with those who had died and those who will meet the Lord with them. They could thus look forward to a future intimate relationship with God as Lord despite the hardships and losses in the present. Paul therefore relates to them in their luminal situation in an intimate, warm manner. He reassures them that only in God’s new world will there be peace and an end to suffering (1 Thess 3:4). To enter this kingdom and live in the presence of the Lord, they had to prepare and be ready for the future. His letter is therefore not so much about “teaching” eschatological insights, but about experiencing a life beyond and deeper than the present dispensation, a life that is found in the divine, everlasting presence. In such a situation of luminality and in the light of the existing religious discourse that surrounded them, Paul stresses their identity as a new family

71 On Paul’s affectionate language and the hierarchical nature of his paternal relations with the Thessalonians, cf. the article of Burke (2000) and its reference to Graeco-Roman perspectives on paternity. Though it can hardly be doubted that Paul’s thought was informed by the patriarchal and hierarchical character of his society, he incorporates motifs that in principle question and challenge the status quo. The strong presence of the brother motif in 1 Thessalonians is an example in question since it assumes equality among a church which would have included members of various social ranks. Paul also does not name himself as a father figure in terms of the Thessalonians. He repeatedly places God in that role (cf. e.g. 1 Thess 1:1,3).

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of God who remains accountable for their actions and life.72 He underlines to his community that their faith in a living God encompasses their life in holiness and is a matter of vital importance. God’s return requires preparation and watchfulness, especially to be holy in order to meet with and live in the presence of the holy God. The time between Christ’s resurrection and return is a vital phase in their spiritual journey in which they have to hold onto their faith, continue with their active ministry and live a lifestyle worthy of God. By doing so they are not only preparing to enter God’s holy presence, but they bring joy in the present in the presence of God (1 Thess 3:9). Works Consulted Armstrong, D, Fish, J, Johnston, PA & Skinne, MB 2004 Vergil, Philodemus, and the Augustans. Austin. Baarda, T 1984 ‘Maar de toorn is over hen gekomen...’ (1 Thess 2:16c), in Paulus en de andere Joden. Exegetische bijdragen en discussie, Baarda,T, Jansen, H, Noorda, SJ, en Vos, JS (eds.), Delft. Balz, HR & Schneider, G 1990–1993 Exegetical dictionary of the New Testament. Grand Rapids. Baur, FC 1845 Paulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi. Stuttgart. Baur, W, Arndt, WF, Gingrich, FW & Danker, FW (eds.) 1958 A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament. Chicago & London. Becker, J 1989 Paulus. Der Apostel der Völker. Tübingen. Beker, JC 1980 Paul the apostle. The triumph of God in life and thought. Philadelphia. – 1991 Recasting Pauline theology. The coherence-contingency scheme as interpretive Model, in Pauline theology. Vol. 1. Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, Bassler JM (ed.), Minneapolis, 15–24. Bornkamm, G 1935 Die Offenbarung des Zornen Gottes. ZNW 34, 239–262. Bruce, FF 1982 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Waco. Brueggemann, W 1997 Theology of the Old Testament. Testimony, dispute, advocacy. Minneapolis. Burke, TJ 2000 Pauline paternity in 1 Thessalonians. Tyndale Bulletin 51, 59–80. Collins, RF 1984 Studies on the first letter to the Thessalonians. Leuven. Cook, JG 2006 Pagan philosophers and 1 Thessalonians. NTS 52, 514–532. 72 Paul uses the address DMGHOIRLY at least 17 times in this short letter to confirm to his readers their new identity. Having suffered the loss of their old social and familial support systems, they formed a new family, with God as loving Father (e.g. 1 Thess 1:1; 1:9–10; 3:13) who called and supported them, with Christ as Son of God whose death and resurrection inspired them to intimate, loving relationships with the ‘brothers’ in faith. Meeks (1983, 164) refers to the social cohesion that such language promotes among new converts who had to experience the rupture of their trusted and familiar social structures as a result of their conversion. He observes, ‘Within the immediate task of Paul and his associates … confession of the one God had as its primary implication the consciousness of unity and singularity of the Christian groups themselves’. Such cohesive dynamics are equally valid for the language about the one God as Father and Jesus as the Son, with believers as family.

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Cosby, MR 1994 Hellenistic formal receptions and Paul’s use of $3$17+6,6 in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. BBR 4, 15–34. Deissmann, A 1927 Light from the Ancient East. London. De Villiers, PGR 1981 Understanding the way of God. Form, function and message of the historical review in 4 Ezra 4–27. SBLSP 20, 357–375. – 2003a Faith, hope and love – A missionary perspective on three seminal motifs in 1 Thessalonians 1:3. Acta Theologica 23(1), 36–53. – 2003b Proclaiming the Gospel in Macedonia, Achaia and in every place. Missions and 1 Thessalonians 1:6–8. Acta Theologica 23(2), 43–57. – 2005 Safe in the family of God. Soteriological perspectives in 1 Thessalonians, in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on Soteriology, Van der Watt JG (ed.), Leiden, 305–330. Donfried, KP 1993 The theology of the shorter Pauline letters. Cambridge. Dunn, JDG 1995 The Theology of Paul. The issue of covenantal nomism, in Pauline theology. Volume 3. Romans, Hay, DM & Johnson, EE (eds.), Minneapolis, 125–146. – 1997 In quest of Paul’s theology, in Pauline theology. Volume 4. Looking back, pressing on, Hay, DM & Johnson, EE (eds.), Atlanta, 95–115. – 1998 The theology of Paul the apostle. London. Gaventa, BR 1998 First and Second Thessalonians. Louisville. Gundry, RH 1987 The Hellenization of dominical tradition and Christianization of Jewish tradition in the eschatology of 1 Thessalonians. NTS 33, 161–178. – 1996 A brief note on ‘Hellenistic formal receptions and Paul's use of $3$17+6,6 in 1 Thessalonians 4:17’. BRB 6, 39–41. Harnisch, W 1973 Eschatologische Existenz. Ein exegetischer Beitrag zum Sachanliegen von 1.Thessalonicher 4,3–5,11. Göttingen. Hays, RB 1991 Crucified with Christ. A synthesis of the theology of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, Philemon, Philippians, and Galatians, in Pauline theology. Volume 1. Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, Bassler JM (ed.), Minneapolis, 227–246. – 1997 First Corinthians. Louisville. Henneken, B 1969 Verkündigung und Prophetie im 1.Thessalonicherbrief. Stuttgart. Holtz, T 1986 Der erste Brief an die Thessalonicher. Neukirchen. Horsley, GHR 1987 New documents illustrating Early Christianity. North Ryde. Howard, TL 1988 The literary unity of 1 Thessalonians 4:13–5:11. Grace Theological Journal 9(2), 163–190. Hughes, FW 1980 The rhetoric of 1 Thessalonians, in The Thessalonian correspondence, Collins RF (ed.), Leuven, 94–116. Jewett, R 1986 The Thessalonian correspondence. Pauline rhetoric and millenarian piety. Philadelphia. Johnson, EE & Hay, DM 1997 Pauline Theology. Volume 1V. Looking back, pressing on. Atlanta. Johnson, LT 1999 The Writings of the New Testament. London. Kaye, BN 1975 Eschatology and ethics in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. NT (1), 47–57. Kim, S 2002 Paul and the new perspective. Second thoughts on the origin of Paul’s gospel. Grand Rapids. Laub, F 1985 1. und 2. Thessalonicherbrief. Würzburg. Lindemann, A 1991 Paulus und die Korinthische Eschatologie. Zur These von einer ‘Entwicklung’ im Paulinischen Denken. NTS 3, 373–399. Louw J & Nida, EA. 1988 Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains. New York.

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Malherbe, A J 2000 The letter to the Thessalonians. A new translation with introduction and commentary. New York. Mearns, CL 1981 Early eschatological development in Paul: The evidence of I and II Thessalonians. NTS 27, 137–157. Meeks, W 1978 The first urban Christians. New Haven. Merklein, H 1998 Studien zu Jesus und Paulus. Tübingen. Neyrey, JH 1980 Eschatology in 1 Thessalonians; The theological factor in 1:9–10; 2:4– 5; 3:11–13; 4:6 and 4:13–18. SBLSP 19, 219–231. Nicholl, CR 2004 From hope to despair in Thessalonica: Situating 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Cambridge. Nussbaum, N 1994 The therapy of desire. Theory and practice in Hellenistic ethics. Princeton. Pesch, W 1990 Anger, in Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, Balz, HR & Schneider, G (eds.), Grand Rapids. Peterson, E 1929 Die Einholung des Kyrios. ZST, 628–702. Plevnik, J 1999 1 Thessalonians 4:17: The bringing in of the Lord or the bringing in of the faithful. Biblica 60, 537–546. Richard, E 1991 Early Pauline thought: An analysis of 1 Thessalonians, in Pauline theology. Volume 1. Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians. Philemon, Bassler, JM (ed.), Minneapolis, 39–52. Ridderbos, H 1966 Paulus. Ontwerp van zijn theologie. Kampen. Roetzel, C 1999 Paul. The man and the myth. Edinburgh. Rossing, BR 2004 The rapture exposed. The message of hope in the Book of Revelation. Boulder. Selby, GS 1999 ‘Blameless at his coming’: The discursive construction of eschatological reality in 1 Thessalonians. Rhetorica 17(4), 385–410. Stählin, G 1968 RMUJKYNWOTDNT 5, 442–447. Stirewalt, ML 2003 Paul, the letter writer. Grand Rapids. Van Houwelingen, PHR 2005 Tessalonicenzen. Kampen. Wanamaker, CA 1990 The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A commentary on the Greek text. Grand Rapids. Wolter, M 2005 Apokalyptik als Redeform im Neuen Testament. NTS 51, 171–191. Wright, NT 1995 Romans and the theology of Paul, in Pauline theology. Vol 3. Romans, Hay, DM & Johnson, EE (eds.), Minneapolis, 30–66. – 2003 The resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis.

The Glorious Presence of the Lord The Eschatology of 2 Thessalonians

Pieter G R de Villiers 1. Introduction The eschatology of 2 Thessalonians has contributed in no small manner to its controversial position in modern scholarship. Some critics argue that the negative readings of the letter can often be attributed to its extensive eschatological contents and to certain scholars’ aversion for eschatology.1 Others question its authenticity as a Pauline letter by pointing out that the letter with its expectation of Christ’s return only after the appearance of a man of lawlessness (2 Thess 2:3) contrasts with a supposedly imminent expectation of the parousia in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, 17.2 The eschatological pronouncements in 2 Thessalonians are also considered unusual because of, for example, the unique figure of the man of lawlessness that appears only in 2 Thessalonians, the intriguing reference to the lawless man’s blasphemous actions in the Jerusalem temple (2 Thess 2:4) and the strong, vindictive language3 in 2 Thessalonians 1. While it is true that there are clear differences between 2 and 1 Thessalonians, and, for that matter, other Pauline texts, there are also many similarities between the two letters.4 In addition, reasonable arguments have 1 Brown (1997, 597) who places the letter in the DeuteroPauline section of his introduction because of the majority position, has some interesting notes about the implications of the letter’s eschatology: ‘Are believers still to expect an apostasy, a man of lawlessness, and a restrainer? ... May the symbolism of II Thess be accepted simply as meaning that there is always opposition to the kingdom of God, and that before the final coming of that kingdom in and through Christ there will be supreme opposition? Some have claimed that II Thess makes eschatology irrelevant. More simply does it make irrelevant the seeking of precision about exactly what will happen, as if that were a major religious issue?’. 2 Cf. the arguments in Trilling (1972, 124–128); Müller (1988, 41–67). Extensive discussions are to be found in Jewett (1986, 3–18); Wanamaker (1990, 17–28); Malherbe (2000, 364–374) and Van Houwelingen (2005, 28–29). 3 Cf. Dunn (2006, 304) who speaks of the ‘harsh note of vengefulness’ and ascribes it to the crisis situation in Thessalonica. 4 In some cases the similarities in structure and language between the two have been used as arguments against the authenticity of 2 Thessalonians. But this is no compelling

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been provided why the unique contents do not exclude Pauline authorship. This has, for example, resulted in a rethink of the letter’s authenticity in recent times as, for example, in the commentary of Malherbe (2000) and the theology of Dunn (1998), both of whom regard the letter as Pauline.5 In this essay it is assumed that the second letter to the Thessalonians was written in the same period as and by the same authors of the first letter in 50–51 CE. By this time Paul and his group of co-workers had established an intimate and warm relationship with the Thessalonians – as is reflected in 1 Thessalonians. The Thessalonians accepted the Pauline gospel and were instructed by the apostle, with further visits of support (2 Thess 2:5; 2:15; 3:10; cf. 1 Thess 3:4; 4:2). In light of this special relationship between the author and addressees, a second letter within a short time span is not difficult to fit into the Pauline ministry. The second letter provides material that supports the information that was given in Paul’s first letter, but at the same time it reflects a situation that had suddenly changed for the worse.6 Both letters speak warmly of the faith of the believers and of their difficult circumstances. Like in 1 Thessalonians, Paul again comforts and encourages them in their persecution in the second letter (2 Thess 1:3–12), though his language in this regard is much stronger when compared with passages in 1 Thessalonians. He also addresses some practical matters and topics, some of which appear in both letters, some of which are new to the second letter. He counters false beliefs that the Day of the Lord had already taken place (2 Thess 2:2), instructs them about specific matters (e.g. the idlers in 2 Thess 3:6–15) and asks for prayerful involvement in his ministry (2 Thess 3:1–2). These examples indicate that there were some developments in Thessalonica of which Paul became aware after his first letter was dispatched and about which he found that a response in a second letter was needed. The structure of this short letter indicates the important place of eschatology in it. After the customary letter greeting (2 Thess 1:1–2), 2 Thessalonians 1:3–12 contains a thanksgiving for the special faith, love and perseverance of the Thessalonians in their difficult situation. Paul reassures them that the future will bring a reversal in their fate and ends his remarks with a prayer for their well-being. This passage with its eschatological perspective sets the tone for what is to follow. The main body of the letter (2 reason against its authenticity, especially if it is the same person writing to the same community within a short period of time. 5 Cf. also the insightful remarks by Giblin (1967, 259). 6 Jewett (1986, 60) writes, ‘The extraordinary similarity in argument and vocabulary, the continuance of the persecution in Thessalonica (2 Thess 1:4) and the fact that Timothy and Silas were still with Paul in Corinth – all of these factors demand as short a lapse of time as possible between the two letters’.

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Thess 2:1–3:15) contains a substantial discussion of eschatological matters like the signs of the end (2 Thess 2:1–12), before Paul notes some practical matters in the final part of the letter (2 Thess 2:13–3:18), and ends the letter with the final greeting (2 Thess 3:16–18).

2. Past and Present Paul’s perspective on the past and present is determined by his eschatological outlook. In general he allocates little space to discussions about past events. Little is thus said in 2 Thessalonians about historical events known from Hebrew Scriptures and even about the earthly life, death and resurrection of Jesus (cf. e.g., in contrast, 1 Thess 4:14 and 5:10). The letter focuses almost entirely on past events after his ministry in Thessalonica. Though these events are in terms of the narrative world in the letter, set in the past, they form, for Paul, part of the end time. They reflect the eschatological dispensation of salvation that God inaugurated in Jesus and which the Thessalonian believers came to share since their conversion. The eschatological perspective on past events is characterized by repeated references to the divine initiative. As in 1 Thessalonians, Paul links the conversion of the Thessalonians with God’s elective purposes. God chose them to be saved (2 Thess 1:11; 2:13; cf. 1 Thess 1:4; 5:9)7 and this happens through Paul’s eschatological proclamation of the gospel about God’s actions in the Jesus’ events (2 Thess 2:1; 2:14; cf. 1 Thess 2:12; cf. Rom 8:30). The present is further characterized as the end time through the bestowal of divine blessings to them as a believing community. Their present relationship with God is characterized as loving and caring. It is a time of divine gifts of love, grace, consolation and hope (2 Thess 2:13–16). God gives these eschatological blessings to reassure them that they are ‘at the center of God’s saving purpose’ (Malherbe 2000, 438). The present should, however, be seen in terms of the future consummation. The believers are being given divine consolation which is eternal (DLM ZQLYDQ) and which is paired with hope (2 Thess 2:16). God thus is involved in the present in a loving, faithful and powerful way with an eye on the future. God also strengthens the believers and protects them from the eschatological evildoer (2 Thess 1:11; 2:7, 13; 3:3). The secret power of lawlessness is operating in and permeating the present dispensation. It is a time in which the end time struggle between good and evil has already be7 The divine election of believers is mentioned elsewhere in Paul’s letters. It regularly functions in an eschatological context (cf. e.g. Rom 8:28–39; 1 Cor 1:27–28).

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gun, but believers are assured that they are being protected by the Lord until the end. Not only the divine actions, but also the human response is integrated in an eschatological framework. The repeated references to the positive response of the Thessalonians to the gospel in 2 Thessalonians have eschatological overtones. Their suffering is embedded in the context of an eschatological struggle between good and evil. They suffer for the kingdom (2 Thess 1:5) as ‘the space where God really exerts his royal power’ and as an ‘encompassing indication of eschatological salvation’ (Menken 1994, 86). At the same time they are being transformed into a new community of the end time. They are being saved through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit (2 Thess 2:13) and need to live a holy life in the present to prepare and be ready for the consummation. God called them to sanctification now so that they might one day obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess 2:14). They are part of a process of which the goal is obtaining eschatological glory (Frame 1946, 283; Malherbe 2000, 438). They will one day share in the day that the Lord will be glorified in his ‘holy’ people (cf. esp. 2 Thess 1:10).

3. The Future as Time of Judgment Though 2 Thessalonians approaches the present from an eschatological perspective, its eschatology is also about events that are still outstanding. Paul discusses these eschatological events in two specific passages (2 Thess 1:3–12; 2:1–12), though other passages also speak about these future events. In his call to the believers to stand firm (2 Thess 2:14), for example, Paul refers to their future sharing in the glory of the Lord and that the Lord will protect them from the evil one (2 Thess 3:3). These future events, like in 1 Thessalonians, focus to a large extent on the return of Christ. And, once again like in 1 Thessalonians, the parousia has a double function. Except for the judgment on those who persecute believers, it brings salvation to the saints (2 Thess 1:5). 3.1. The Prominence of Judgment Judgment plays a seminal role from the beginning of 2 Thessalonians. The judgment of God is mentioned repeatedly in the thanksgiving, setting the tone for other pronouncements on judgment in the main body of the letter. With the motif of judgment, Paul repeats prominent material from 1 Thessalonians (cf. the previous essay) and holds on to a conviction about God’s future that is also significant in his other letters. He takes over this basic conviction of a final, divine judgment at the end of time from his pro-

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phetic, Christian and apocalyptic traditions (Menken 1994, 85–86; Van Houwelingen 2005, 179). Paul begins his second letter to the Thessalonians like the first one with a positive portrayal of the Thessalonians, mentioning their growing faith and love for all amidst severe suffering (cf. 1 Thess 1:2–3, 6; 3:2). In 2 Thessalonians, however, Paul speaks in more detail about their faith,8 specifically as it exhibits itself in their endurance in persecution and trials (2 Thess 1:4, 7). In 2 Thessalonians 1:4–6, for example, he refers to their endurance amidst their persecution and suffering several times through the words GLZJPRLCa, TOLY\HVLQ and their cognates. The larger number of motifs and their presence at the beginning of the letter suggest how predominant the theme is. Thus 2 Thessalonians reveals that their situation had become more difficult and their faith was being tested more severely. This positive picture of the believers’ perseverance amidst persecution, in turn, brings Paul to the future when their suffering will come to an end. Faith as endurance will bear fruits at the consummation. He thus addresses the difficult situation of the believers first and foremost from an eschatological perspective. Their situation will be transformed by divine intervention which will bring judgment on those who oppress them. Divine judgment will bring punishment to believers’ tormentors (2 Thess 1:5, 6, 8, 9). The motif of eschatological judgment which is prominent in the introductory chapter needs further explanation. 3.2. God as Judge The eschatological judgment is viewed from the perspective of divine intervention. For Paul judgment is first and foremost a vital feature of God’s character. He notes early in the letter that it is just in God’s sight (SDUD THZC; 2 Thess 1:6) to repay those who afflict the faithful with affliction. The believers’ faith in the living and true God (1 Thess 1:9) will not be in vain. The living, true God is also just and God’s judgment is right. It is in the very nature of God not to tolerate evil (2 Thess 3:3). The judgment is integrated in the wider framework of divine preordination when Paul links suffering with the divine purpose (Frame 1946, 227; Malherbe 2000, 395, esp. 396.423). The Thessalonians have been made worthy of the kingdom of God, he writes in 1 Thessalonians 1:5.9 For him suffering is part of God’s eschatological plan. Suffering is thus perceived as having a positive function. The suffering of the Thessalonians 8 Cf. the important study of Giblin (1967) in which he explains the decisive role of faith in 2 Thessalonians. 9 This would be the translation if the phrase expresses purpose. The alternative is that it indicates result (with the result that you are made worthy). Malherbe (2000, 395) points out that it is notoriously difficult to distinguish between the two.

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is an indication that they are deemed and are being judged worthy of the Kingdom of God (2 Thess 1:5; cf. 1 Thess 2:12). God’s judgment is, therefore, not only about a future action against evil, but it is also about divine judgment that believers are being made worthy of the kingdom. 3.3. Christ as Judge Paul links the eschatological judgment with Christ. In 2 Thessalonians Christ is seen as judge and thus takes on the role traditionally ascribed to God. The opening thanksgiving in 1 Thessalonians 1:1–10 has a striking focus on God, but it ends climactically with the reference to the believers who wait on the return of Jesus. In comparison with this short reference to Christ in the first letter, the thanksgiving in the second letter (2 Thess 1:3– 8) pays more attention to Christ’s eschatological return and judgment. Though Paul describes the response of the believers specifically in terms of their perseverance in persecution and then mentions that God will punish their opponents (2 Thess 1:5–7a), the heart of this thanksgiving is about the judgment through Christ at his parousia (2 Thess 1:7b–10; cf. also Van Houwelingen 2005, 177).10 According to the clear pronouncement in 2 Thessalonians 1:8, it is the Lord Jesus who will punish with everlasting destruction. This portrait of the judgment by Jesus is intensified by the apocalyptic detail about his ‘revelation ... from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels’.11 Theophanic motifs, traditionally associated with God, are here ascribed to Christ. The phrase ‘in flaming fire’ reflects theophanic language (Ex 19:18; Deut 5:4; Dn 7:9–10, but cf. esp. Isa 66:15–16). It is often a mystical indication of the divine presence.12 This is strikingly expressed in Acts 7:30 when Stephen retells the story of the flames of the

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Cf. Malherbe (2000, 407) for a discussion of the problems some scholars have with the role of Christ as judge. 11 Dunn (2006, 305–306) writes that the vivid visionary character of this passage reflects the genre of apocalypse with its notions of crisis, persecution, hope and fear expressed in ‘inflated symbolism and assurance of God’s vindication and vengeance’. He regards the reference to ‘revelation’ (2 Thess 1:7; 2:3, 6), ‘mystery’ (2 Thess 2:7), the return (2 Thess 1:7) and the man of lawlessness as examples of such apocalyptic language. This, he notes, explains its exaggerated character with an ‘element of the grotesque’. He thinks that the lack of such language elsewhere in Pauline letters means that Paul did not regard it ‘as a constant feature of his gospel and theology’. It must be noted, though, how toned down Paul’s language is when compared with the much more vengeful portrayal of judgment in Revelation (cf. further below). 12 On the apocalyptic and mystical context of light (used together with glory), cf. Chibici-Revneanu (2007, 407–408); but cf. further Van Houwelingen (2005, 182); Malherbe (2000, 400).

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burning bush that amazed Moses and represent the presence of God (Acts 7:31–32). Equally powerful is the remark that the Lord will be accompanied by his angels (2 Thess 1:7). This heavenly entourage, different from 1 Thessalonians 4:16 (where only the voice of an archangel at the Lord’s coming is present), intensifies the description of the parousia. These motifs emphasise the special role of Jesus as Lord in the execution of judgment. It is a remarkable status that is allocated to Jesus. This status further explains how great the disaster is that will overcome the perpetrators of evil. They will be excluded from the Lord’s awesome presence and from the majesty of his power (2 Thess 1:9). This portrait of Jesus as judge is striking also because it is one of the few places in the Pauline letters where it is presented so explicitly. Dunn (2006, 309–310) notes how ‘bitty’ and ‘fragmented’ the main bodies of Paul’s letters are about the role of Christ in the events of the end time. Even though the hope of the parousia and the future glory appear often in Pauline texts, and thus the figure of Christ is placed at the centre of the eschatological events, Christ exercises final judgment only in 1 Corinthians 4:4–5 and 2 Corinthians 5:10. In this sense the picture of Christ in the Thessalonian letters is relatively unique, though not unusual in the light of Paul’s exalted descriptions of Christ elsewhere. Paul’s picture of Christ as judge in 2 Thessalonians 1, however, reflects a high Christology. As the ‘Lord’ who appears ‘from heaven’ with exceptional glory and majesty, he is an exalted figure. This is in line with how Christ is portrayed elsewhere in Pauline letters (cf. Dunn 2006, 314). These remarks are also of special relevance for Paul’s soteriology and anthropology. The exalted Christ shares his glorious existence with the faithful in a way that reminds one of Paul’s mystical soteriology. It reflects on Paul’s understanding of Christ as the second Adam ‘where Christ is envisaged as a corporate person “in” whom believers can find themselves’ (Dunn 2006, 314). They are saved to be with and to become like the exalted Christ (cf. further below). 3.4. The Nature of the Judgment The divine judgment is a response to the hostility or evil lifestyle of God’s opponents. They are being judged for their evil nature, deeds and deceit of others.13 That is why it is described as a ‘righteous’ judgment in 2 Thessalonians 1:5. The nature of judgment is illustrated by the various descrip13 In contrast to this stands the lifestyle of believers that prepares them to share the divine existence at the parousia. Paul requires ‘kindness’ from them and expects them not to harm others (1 Thess 4:6; 5:15).

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tions of groups that will be or are being judged. There is the judgment of the oppressors who were responsible for the persecution and distress of the Thessalonians and are referred to as ‘those who afflict you with affliction’ (2 Thess 1:5–6). Under judgment, secondly, are those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel (2 Thess 1:10). Also being judged are those ‘who had not believed the truth but delighted in wickedness (2 Thess 2:12). Christ will punish the unbelievers and the disobedient14 (2:7–8, 10). More dramatic is the judgment of the man of lawlessness. Because he claims for himself divine honours he will be slain by the ‘breath’ of the Lord’s mouth (2 Thess 2:4, 8). A special feature of the judgment is that it is done according to works. Those who are judged, suffer the consequences of their actions in so far as they receive back what they did to others. As they troubled the saints, God will repay them with trouble (2 Thess 1:6). In the Pauline context, this was a special way of pointing out God’s righteousness (Rom 12:19; cf. also Van Houwelingen 2005, 180; Dunn 2008, 60–69), but, more importantly it reflects the responsibility that accompanies the relationship with the divine. The future gift of God to the faithful is linked elsewhere in Pauline thought to the divine judgment according to works (Rom 2:1–16). Especially striking in this regard is 2 Corinthians 5:10 where Paul notes that believers will all have to appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due to him or her.15 The divine judgment is being executed with intensity, as is clear in 1 Thessalonians 1:10 and 5:9 where Paul links judgment with the motif of God’s wrath. In 2 Thessalonians the tone is sharper. The guilty will be punished with eternal destruction or ruin (2 Thess 2:9; R>OHTURQ DLMZYQLRYQ), and they will be shut out from the divine presence (cf. further below and, similarly, 1 Pet 2:14). Paul uses apocalyptic language to express the severity of this judgment, although he is more 14 An intense debate is being conducted over the identity of these groups, with many commentators interpreting them as gentiles (who do not know God) and Jews (who reject the Gospel). But Jews are also described as not knowing God (Joh 8:55), whilst both Gentiles and Jews are seen as disobedient (Rom 10:16). The phrase is, rather, a synonymous parallelism (cf. Jer 10:25a; Ps 36:10) in which the second part explains the first part (Malherbe 2000, 401). 15 Cf. the nuanced discussion on this issue by Ridderbos (1966, 192–196). Dunn, in a more recent discussion, places the issue within contemporary scholarly discourse when he finds that the Pauline pronouncements on judgment according to works do not question the covenantal nomism as developed by Sanders, ‘even if the initial statement of it by Sanders may have underemphasised the nomism side of the formula and overemphasised the unanimity of Second Temple Judaism on the subject, and despite attempts of Sanders’ critics either to treat it as a rigid rule or to question its basically integrated character’ (Dunn 2008, 69). Nomism implies an obedience that comes to the fore in works, as e.g., in the case of 2 Thess 2:17 with its reference to good works. It is the disobedience to the gospel that brings people under judgment (e.g. 2 Thess 1:8).

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restrained than in other apocalyptic texts, and even in a New Testament text like Revelation. He does not elaborate it with gruesome detail. Even in the case of the man of lawlessness (2 Thess 2:1–13), the strong description of the punishment for his blasphemous behaviour is cryptic. He is doomed to destruction (2 Thess 2:3). He will be overthrown and destroyed (2 Thess 2:8), but different to Revelation there is, for example, no fiery lake of burning sulphur in which evil is thrown alive (Rev 19:20), or vengeful language (Rev 18:4–8). Worthy of special note is that the divine judgment is powerfully at work in the present. In 1 Thessalonians 5:5,8 Paul remarks that the day of the Lord is already proleptically present,16 though he is mostly speaking of the future judgment that will suddenly fall upon the unprepared (1 Thess 5:3). The proleptic presence of judgment is also clear from 2 Thessalonians 2:7 where Paul notes that the secret power of lawlessness is already at work (K>GK HMQHUJHLCWDL). But it is also evident in 2 Thessalonians 1:4–12. Paul discusses the divine judgment as an action which will be first and foremost revealed at the future return of Christ (2 Thess 1:7). He then adds that it is already at work in the present, as is clear from the remarks in verses 5–6 where it is suggested that their strong faith is an indication that God has judged them worthy of the kingdom17 (Malherbe 2000, 407; also 394–395). Paul reassures the Thessalonians that they need not worry about their future salvation. They are not ‘made’ worthy through their suffering, but are regarded as worthy (Frame 1946, 226–22718; cf. also 1 Pet 4:17–19). Through this pronouncement Paul uses suffering to affirm God’s election of the believers and his judgment of their faith as genuine (Malherbe 2000, 408). The proleptic presence of eschatological judgment is confirmed by a similar thought in 1 Thessalonians 2:16 where Paul writes that the Jewish opponents are being judged in their violent rejection of the Pauline mission to the gentiles. In their rejection of the gospel, they show that they are not worthy of the kingdom (cf. the previous essay). Philippians 1:28 also ex16

Cf. also 1 Thess 2:16; Malherbe (2000, 428); Giblin (1967, 259–268) and the remarks in the previous essay. 17 Contrast with such a position the well-known arguments of Marxsen that in 2 Thessalonians the future does not break into the present, but that the present merely holds consequences for the future. For a full discussion, cf. Malherbe (2000, 406–408). 18 He notes that the Greek words NDWD[LRYZand DM [LRY Zare consistently translated as ‘deem’ worthy and refers to a common rabbinical expression that speaks of ‘to be worthy of a future aeon’. Menken (1994, 86) refers to passages like Ps.Sal 13:10–12 to argue that the believers are being punished now so that they will not have to be punished with the wicked at the final judgment. According to him Paul is taking over an established conviction that God punishes in the present so that no future punishment will take place. Cf. also Malherbe (2000, 395). The text does not say as much as this interpretation wants it to say.

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presses this position, where Paul refers to those who do not fear their opponents, which is a sign of their salvation, whilst the opposition is also a sign to the opponents of their destruction. This Pauline pronouncement of a present judgment was risky, especially in light of the disruption in Thessalonica when some claimed that the Day of the Lord had already happened. Paul was resisting a group of believers who spiritualized the future expectation and argued that they were already saved and in the presence of the Lord since what they regarded as a spiritual parousia of Jesus (Malherbe 2000, 429). Despite this problem, Paul continues to hold on to his conviction that the end is already proleptically present. For him it was an essential part of the gospel message (1 Thess 1:9–10). It is a conviction that reflects early Christian traditions which he takes over because it inspires hope and perseverance.

4. The Future as Reunion with the Lord In 2 Thessalonians Paul offers comfort to a community under pressure by pointing towards the future as a time of without suffering and distress. Paul for example underlines that the future will bring ‘relief’ (D>QHVLQ19) from their present affliction (2 Thess 1:6–7). Even if they suffer now, they can live in the expectation that there will be a time that they will no longer be persecuted. Relief thus should be understood here in an apocalyptic sense, referring to the general expectation of eschatological peace and rest that suffering believers will experience. This relief has a special significance in the dire situation of the Thessalonians (Malherbe 2000, 398). It fits in well with Paul’s emphasis in 1 Thessalonians on peace (1 Thess 5:23; cf. also the previous essay), but it is also closely connected with Paul’s expectation of “glory” as a future reward for the faithful, which he shares with his Jewish traditions (cf. Chibici-Revneanu 2007, 453) and which deserves more attention now. It is the nature of the future fate of the believers that draws attention in this letter. The future is namely more than a mere cessation of present distress or even of peace. The future is described in powerful, deeper language in 2 Thessalonians 2:8–10, using both negative and positive termi19 Baur-Arndt-Gingrich-Danker (1979, 65) translates this word as rest, relaxation, relief. Paul uses it as the opposite of TOLY\Lain 2 Cor 2:13; 7:5; 8:13. Louw & Nida (1988, 246) place it in the domain of trouble, hardship, relief and favourable circumstances and describe it as cessation of suspension of trouble and difficulty. Other words in this domain are DMQDYSDXVLaand DMQDY\X[La. The first of these two also appear in Rev 4:8; 14:11 and fits the apocalyptic context well. The word represents a radical reversal of a situation of distress and suffering.

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nology. In this passage Paul moves on to describe in more general terms the human existence which the parousia inaugurates. The following analysis indicates the way in which important motifs coalesce to spell out the special nature of the future: $RL^WLQHaGLYNKQWLYVRXVLQR>OHTURQDLMZYQLRQ   DMSRSURVZYSRXWRXCNXULYRX   NDLDMSRWKCaGRY[ KaWKCaLMVFXYRXaDXMWRXC  %  R^WDQH>OTKHMQGR[DVTKCQDLHMQWRLCaD-JLRLaDXMWRXC   NDLTDXPDVTKCQDLHMQSDCVLQWRLCaSLVWHXYVDVLQ R^WLHMSLVWHXYTKWRPDUWXYULRQK-PZCQHMItX-PDaHMQWKCK-P HUDHMNHLYQK

In this passage Paul describes the destruction that unbelievers face (A), and refers to the parousia as inaugurating a special time for believers (B). Verse 9 (A) describes the nature of the punishment that will be meted out to opponents of God. They will face eternal ruin. The eternal ruin is then qualified further through a synonymous parallelism (Frame 1946, 236) which explains the ruin in a negative manner as not being with the Lord and his glorious power. In verse 10 (B) the attention shifts to the faithful and their salvation, which consists of their sharing the powerful presence of the Lord. The parousia will be characterized by the glorification of the Lord and astonishment at his coming. The future salvation will comprise a special relationship of the Lord with the ‘saints’ and the ‘faithful’. It comprises eternal fellowship with the Lord, which is also an important topic in 1 Thessalonians (cf. the previous essay20). The passage ends with a positive pronouncement about the saints’ response to the Pauline witness and with a climactic reference to ‘that day’.21 This passage about the return of the Lord contains certain motifs which appear also in the following section on the Day of the Lord (2 Thess 2:1– 12). For Paul the future is decisively determined by the ‘revelation’ or ‘appearance’ of the Lord (2 Thess 1:8; 2:8) at a specific point in time. The ‘revelation’ (HMQWKCDMSRNDOXY\HL) of Christ furthermore indicates a special,

20

Cf. also the discussion in Lüdemann (1984, 205–238). He discusses 1 Thess 4:13– 18 and points out (1984, 233) that ‘the point of argument is reached in v. 17, where the focus falls on the future, lasting fellowship with Christ. In 2 Thessalonians (which Lüdemann does not discuss at all), the same motif is again worked out, but then in terms of its glorious nature. The complexities of Lüdemann’s careful analysis cannot be discussed in this essay because of restricted space. 21 The decisive role of faith in the Thessalonian correspondence has been worked out well by Giblin (1967). But cf. also Ridderbos (1966, 253–260), especially his remarks on the new creation as faith and the close connection between faith, the proclamation of the gospel and the divine election in Pauline literature.

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extraordinary experience of the divine presence in all its glory. The heavenly secret, the divine presence, becomes a reality in the parousia.22 Several motifs reflect the powerful nature of the revelation. It takes place from heaven, Christ appears in blazing fire and he is accompanied by powerful angels (2 Thess 1:7; cf. also Isa 66; Frame 1946, 229). These motifs stem from prophetic and apocalyptic traditions that are often linked in theophanic passages on divine judgment.23 Such theophanic elements characterize the expectation of the Day of the Lord which is also under discussion in 2 Thessalonians 2:8–9. They explain the motif of the ‘day’ which is an apocalyptic topos for the future coming (Menken 1994, 91; cf. e.g. Zech 9:9, 16; Mal 3:1–12; Mk 13:26, 32). Here it is especially striking that the Day of the Lord is linked with the parousia of Christ. The special nature of this future appearance is further expressed through the repeated use of the motifs of ‘presence’ and ‘glory’ in 2 Thessalonians 1:9b (A). These motifs explain the powerful nature of the judgment, but they also underline the special character of the believers’ new existence in the future. The believers will, then, be in the presence of the Lord. Paul’s description of the parousia underlines the impressive nature of the divine presence. This presence will bring about the destruction of evil (2 Thess 2:8).24 Unbelievers will experience everlasting destruction (R>OHTURQDLMZYQLRQ; cf. also e.g. 1 Thess 5:3; 1 Cor 5:5), which means exclusion from the divine presence (2 Thess 1:9; ‘from the face of the Lord;’ DMSR25 SURVZYSRX NX ULYRX). They will be denied the extraordinary glory of the Lord (Van Hou-

22

Cf. Segal (1999, 261) for the apocalyptic nature of the term ‘revelation’. ‘Paul’s references to apocalypses and visions, as well as heavenly ascent, put him squarely within apocalyptic tradition’. Note especially how Segal (1999, 262) links this with Jewish mysticism. 23 Cf. for these elements Ex 3:2; Dan 7:9; Ps 50:3; Zech 14:5; 1 Enoch 1:9; Mk 8:38; 13:27; 1 Cor 3:13,15; Jude 14; Ridderbos (1966, 594); Menken (1994, 86). 24 Chibici-Revneanu (2007, 459) indicates a fitting context for 2 Thessalonians when she writes about the glory motif from a tradition historical point of view. She comments that the future revelation of the divine glory (cf. for this 2 Thess 1:9–10) will bring a reversal in history. ‘Die Gotteszugehörigkeit der Herrlichkeit soll in diesem Ereignis letztgültig bestätigt warden, was auch bedeutet, dass dieses Erscheinen der GRY[D diejenigen ins Recht setzen wird, die sich dieser Zuordnung nicht verschlossen hatten, hingegen für alle jene, die GRY[ D statt dessen für sich selbst beanspruchen, Gericht und Überführung meint’. Paul’s remarks about the glory of the Lord in 2 Thess 1:9 thus reverberates and confirms what he said in 2 Thess 2:4 about the man of lawlessness who claims divine glory. 25 For different interpretations of the preposition, cf. Malherbe (2000, 402). But cf. Frame (1946, 236) who takes the preposition as separation. He refers to Acts 5:41; 7:45; Rev 6:16; 12:14; 20:11, which would favour the spatial interpretation of this phrase.

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welingen 2005, 184).26 The faithful, in direct contrast and by implication, will experience what unbelievers will not have: they will be face to face with the Lord in his glorious, powerful presence (cf. also 1 Thess 4:14, 17; 5:10; Frame 1946, 235). In a parallelism he connects the phrase about the presence of the Lord with ‘the glory of his strength’ (2 Thess 1:9b). The phrase DMSR WKCa GRY[Ka27 is supplemented by and intensified in meaning with WKCaLMVFXRYaDXMWRXC. In this phrase the ‘strength’ is a genitive of origin. The glory derives from the Lord’s power.28 In this sober but intense language,29 Paul expresses the intimate community with the divine in the future.30 He thus continues what he has being doing in 1 Thessalonians where the parousia is seen as an entry into the divine presence (cf. the previous essay), but here he does so in more powerful language. The motif of glory is then developed in more detail and as a further addition to the notion of the divine presence in B (2 Thess 1:10). Glory is a seminal motif in Pauline theology, as Newman (1992) has pointed out, 26 The solemn and formulaic language about entering and sharing the glorious divine presence should be read intertextually in light of the motif of seeing God’s face – which alludes to Ps 11:7; 18:10; Heb 12:14; 1 Joh 3:2; Rev 22:4 (Malherbe 2000, 400). But this passage is also influenced by Isaianic passages about the divine presence, e.g. in Isaiah 2:10, 19, 21 in which the flight of the unrighteous on the Day of the Lord is mentioned. Paul changes the original sentence in Isaiah that speaks about a flight ‘from the presence of the fear of the Lord and from the glory of his might’ by omitting the phrase ‘of the fear’. He thus makes the appearance more personal (cf. Frame 1946, 234–235; Malherbe 2000, 403). 27 For a discussion of the traditions, cf. Frame (1946, 229–230), but also Newman (1992, esp. 242) where he points out that glory signified God’s judgment in the prophets. For them the Lord will through glory ‘reconfigure his people. Judgment and suffering will be replaced by a revelation of Glory, a manifestation which will effect a second exodus, a restoration and recreation’. The glory of the Lord thus always has consequences for the faithful. It restores them to community and makes them into a new people of God. For the implications of the glory for the faithful, cf. also Chibici-Revneanu (2007, 459). 28 Glory has the connotation of brightness (Lk 9:29–32; 1 Cor 15:41) and is a further manifestation of the divine presence (Lk 2:8; Malherbe 2000, 400). In 2 Corinthians 4:4– 5 there is a reference to the light of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God and himself has glory (cf. also 2 Cor 3:18). 29 Frame (1946, 231, cf. 236) notes correctly that the character of the ‘future felicity is not dwelt upon; in fact, the reward is only intimated – in virtue of what the believers are, Christ receives glory and admiration’. 30 Cf. also Chibici-Revneanu (2007, 460) who links this with the resurrection. The resurrection and the Christ events are both the beginning and end events – ‘als endgültige Heilswende ebenso wie als Ausgangspunkt einer neue Gemeinschaft’. In this way Christ brings about the intimate relationship between the divine and those who accept the gospel. This is clearly spelled out in the Thessalonian letters in 1 Thess 1:10 where the waiting on the Son from heaven is linked with his resurrection. The community with the faithful, grounded in the resurrection, thus finds it consummation in the parousia.

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reflecting a cardinal tradition in Hebrew Scriptures and Jewish traditions.31 After having mentioned the glory in combination with the divine presence (through which unbelievers will be punished), Paul mentions the Lord’s glorification. The results of the Lord’s coming are expressed in two infinitives which form a parallelism. The first infinitive repeats the motif of glory that was mentioned in the previous verse. In the parallelism, ‘to be glorified (HMQGR[DVTKCQDL) in his saints’ and ‘to be admired (TDXPDVTKCQDL) in all who have believed’ should be read together. The parousia represents Christ’s own glorification32 (2 Thess 1:10). But Christ’s glory transforms the faithful as well, as will be clear from 2 Thessalonians 2:14 which explicitly states that God has called Christians to share in the glory of Christ (cf, also Rom 8:17–18; Phil 3:21; Newman 1992, 60–61;33 Malherbe 2000, 404). This motif is found in 1 Thessalonians 2:12 where Paul also says that God calls believers to the kingdom and glory. That motif reappears here in 2 Thessalonians 1:9–10 where it is developed in somewhat more detail. Paul wishes to explain through this motif how the believing community will enjoy the divine presence and will be transformed by and in it (1 Thess 4:17). The Lord is glorified in and admired by the believers who participate in the divine glory. The glory of the Lord will be visible in them (cf. Isa 49:3; Menken 1994, 92).34 The glorious future is therefore not only about peace and rest (2 Thess 1:7), but it is also about divine sharing and community.35 As in 1 Thessalonians, the end time will be characterized by sharing the divine presence with each other (cf. the VXYQ DXMWRLCa in 1 Thess 4:17). The remark about future relief for those who have been persecuted is concluded in 2 Thessalonians 1:6–7 by the significant phrase PHT¨ X-PZCQ. Paul foresees how his and the believers’ future will be a time of sharing together with each other God’s blessings and the divine presence. Paul and the Thessalonians have shared their suffering with a long list of believers – from the prophets, Je31 Cf. also the study of Chibici-Revneanu (2007) for the glory motif in John’s Gospel, although the publication contains insightful perspectives on glory in other Biblical texts. 32 The meaning of HMQ  is unclear. It could be instrumental (the Lord is glorified through the saints), spatial (among the saints) or causal (the Lord’s glorification is grounded in the saints; cf. 1 Thess 2:20). 33 One should read this remark in the light of the Old Testament which regards the glory of Jahwe as renewing and transforming existence. 34 For the way in which Paul considers the post-resurrection body of Christ as the same body that the believer will use to travel to heaven, cf. Segal (1999, 267). He notes that this body ‘is a spiritual presence that is identical with the end of time’ as it is portrayed in 1 Thess 4:13–18. 35 Cf. also Lüdemann (1984, 235) who notes that an exegesis of 1 Thess 4:13–18 reveals an emphasis on future fellowship which finds its cause in Christ’s death and resurrection. This is also valid for 2 Thessalonians.

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sus, Judean Christians to later groups. They will experience ‘a future fellowship in “rest” or “relief” from this suffering’, but they will also be glorified in power when they all together experience the Lord’s presence (Chibici-Revneanu 2007, 460). With these remarks, the tone is set for the discussion of the future in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12 where Paul offers similar insights. At the beginning of this passage (cf. 2 Thess 2:2), Paul announces as its topos, X-SHU36WKCa SDURXVLYDa WRXC NXULYRX K-PZCQ ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC NDLY K-PZCQ HMSLVX QDJZJKCa HMS¨DXMWRQ, though he also writes that the problem is about the Day of the Lord which some say has already come.37 He repeats the reference to the parousia in the latter part of this discussion (2 Thess 2:8), but there expands it to read ‘the appearance / splendor of his coming’ (WKC HMSLIDQHLYD WKCa SDURXVLYDa). The Greek word HMSLIDQHLYD can be synonymous to SDURXVLYD, but it is mostly used in Hellenistic contexts for divine appearances (Frame 1946, 266; Malherbe 2000, 424; Van Houwelingen 2005, 203). This description of a splendid parousia together with the consistent use of the title ‘Lord’, already points to the special nature of this future event (cf. the similar solemn language in 1 Thess 4–5).38 Of special interest, though, is another qualification that Paul adds to the theme. The indicator X-SHU in 2 Thessalonians 2:1 governs two issues that Paul wishes to address. He refers not only to the parousia (WKCa SDURXVLYDa , but, secondly also ‘our being gathered to him’39 (K-PZCQ HMSLVXQDJZJKCaHMS¨DXMWRYQ . The word HMSLVXQDJZJKY is used in the New Testament elsewhere only in Hebrews 10:25 where it indicates the assembly of the church. It means an assembling with someone. Here the word has an eschatological meaning because of its combination with the parousia motif. In many Jewish texts the word traditionally refers to ‘the constant hope of the Jews that their scattered brethren would be gathered together in Palestine’ (Frame 1946, 245; Van Houwelingen 2005, 190; cf. Isa 27:13; Sir 36:13; 2 Macc 2:7,18) and is taken over in Christian apocalypses (cf. also Mk 13:27). In the case of 2 Thessalonians 2:1, however, there is no such geographical location for the gathering, but, in line with Paul’s Christological interest, rather a gathering with a person. The faithful will be gathered to the Lord and will be restored in full community with

36 37

This Greek word is used in the sense of SHULY(regarding). Nicholl (2004, 119ff.) points out several arguments to prove the co-referentiality of the parousia and the Day of the Lord. Cf. further below. 38 It is striking that Paul refers more often to the word parousia in 2 Thessalonians than in 1 Thessalonians. Cf. also Van Houwelingen (2005, 190). 39 Malherbe (2000, 415) notes how the article WKCa  combines both the parousia and the gathering, ‘showing that they are closely related in his thinking’.

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him. It reminds one of 1 Thessalonians 4:14, God will bring believers with Jesus, and 1 Thessalonians 5:10, believers will live with Him. Paul qualifies the great reversal, therefore, also from a human perspective, pointing out that it consists of ‘our’, that is his and the believers’ reunion with the Lord. Paul is referring to the meeting of the Lord and the subsequent being with him (Malherbe 2000, 415). The parousia implies the inauguration of the full community of believers with each other and the divine in the future and especially their mystical unity with Christ. Once again the Thessalonian correspondence underlines the relationship between the divine and the human from an eschatological perspective. The parousia and the apocalyptic Day of the Lord are about an intimate relationship with the Lord which will find fulfilment in the Lord’s return and in the gathering of believers to be with the Lord. Lastly, the powerful nature of the Lord’s future return is illustrated by Paul’s remarks about how the lawless one will be destroyed with the parousia (2 Thessalonians 8–9). Once again the rhetorical effect is that the readers will understand that the real power is with the Lord and that they will be in the presence of the Lord who has overthrown the extreme power of evil. The downfall of the evil one is described in quite strong terms through a synonymous parallelism. The Lord Jesus will slay the lawless one with the ‘breath of his mouth’ and destroy him by the ‘appearance of his coming’. The powerful evil one may have a parousia, mimicking Christ’ parousia (cf. 2 Thess 2:1). He may be in cahoots with Satan who works in the parousia of the Lawless one (2 Thess 1:9), his works may comprise miracles, signs and wonders and he may deceive many, but ultimately he will face destruction. The lawless man is, in fact, doomed to destruction (v. 3). The Lord is more powerful than the strong Lawless one. And the eternal destiny of the faithful is with the Lord in his glory and power. There is a special dimension of Paul’s description of the future mystical union with the Lord. Compared to apocalyptic literature where mystical knowledge is revealed to the visionary, this revelation is not about secrets of the heavenly world. In Revelation, for example, many secret revelations about future events are revealed to John (cf. e.g. Rev 1; 5; 10; 17:1). But in 2 Thessalonians heavenly secrets are not being revealed. The revelation is the ‘appearance’ of the Saviour with whom the saints will experience eternal community (Menken 1994, 88). The saints in Thessalonica are being consoled that they will be in the presence of the Lord when he finally comes and brings their suffering to an end. In the scarcest of formulations, Paul suggests eternal community with a Lord who is powerfully sovereign. Before his appearance the demonic cannot remain standing, whilst the faithful will be with him and share in his glory.

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The future as mystical reunion with Christ in his glory in 2 Thessalonians can be related to other Pauline texts. Segal (1999, 263–264), writing about Paul’s transformation mysticism, observes that Paul uses mystical language to described the resurrected Jesus and the future state of believers. For Paul the risen Christ is a body of glory that he received at the resurrection (Phil 3:20–21) and this is the type of body which God will also give the faithful (2 Cor 3:18–4:6). He further argues that Paul reports that believers are already experiencing a transformation, but will only experience it fully with the final consummation.40 In this Paul reflects the fulfilment of Daniel 12:1–3 which is about the transformation of the righteous and their leaders, as well as Ezekiel 1:28, which identifies the Glory of the Lord, the human-shaped figure on the throne or the angel of Jahwe with Christ, ‘in whom the Christian faithful dwell’.41 Newman (1992, 245), too, notes how Paul invokes the narrative horizon of Jewish scriptures about the divine visitations in the past and the present. Jesus becomes for him the one who mediates the divine glory of the future. Parallel to and in the sequence of God’s past revelation of Glory, the coming, life, death and resurrection of Jesus mediated Glory. In heaving and believing the message of Jesus, the resurrection power of God, his Glory, engages the believer and enacts the process of eschatological transformation, a process which ultimately resolves when the believer is finally transformed into the very image of the Son.

The future glory continues the glory of the resurrection. The transformation that began with the resurrection is finally completed in the final transformation with the Lord’s return (Eph 3:16; Phil 4:19; Col 1:11; Newman 1992, 227–228). In Philippians 3:21 the indwelling of the exalted Jesus confirms future glorification: the Christian lives in the certain hope of glory (Rom 5:21; Col 1:27b; Rom 8:19) and present suffering, ironically produces future glory (Rom 8:17). The portrait of the mystical union of the faithful with Christ and their future glorious existence in the divine presence in 2 Thessalonians, are, therefore, early indications of what Paul would present elsewhere in his letters in more detail.

40 41

Cf. in this regard also Malherbe (2000, 412–413). Cf. also Newman (1992, 180) and the discussion of Segal’s interpretation of the important role Ezekiel 1 played in Paul’s conversion. Segal argues that Paul expressed his mystical experience through mystical-apocalyptic language with motifs like form, image, light/darkness, glory and being in Christ. ‘Paul through mystical ecstasy was transformed into the image of the resurrected Christ. Paul now offers this process of transformation for all who believe in Christ’. This insight is particularly important for the interpretation of the Thessalonian letters.

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5. The Day of the Lord Though Paul approaches the dire situation of the Thessalonians especially from an eschatological perspective, he focuses on a specific eschatological issue only in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12 where he questions reports that the Day of the Lord has already come (2 Thess 2:2; K- K-PHYUD WRXC NXULYRX HMQHYVWHNHQ). Paul previously wrote about the sudden arrival of this Day in 1 Thessalonians in reaction against some believers who were proclaiming peace and security (1 Thess 5:3) and who were not preparing for the future return of the Lord. For some reason or other,42 Paul expresses his concern in 2 Thessalonians more specifically in terms of a false report in Paul’s name that the Day has already taken place (2 Thess 2:1–2) and then argues against such misunderstandings. Though Paul once again holds on to a future coming of the Day of the Lord, he does not stress its unexpected arrival as in 1 Thessalonians 5:3. Despite the different perspectives on the Day of the Lord in these two letters, Paul emphasizes that the Day of the Lord has not yet come and cannot be viewed merely from the perspective of the present. It is clearly for him in the first instance a matter of the future. At the same time, he does not shift the coming of the Day exclusively to the future, as if one could isolate and separate it from the present. For him the Day of the Lord is already making itself felt. The judgment it brings, is already being executed. In the words of Giblin (1967, 130): Paul wants to bring the Thessalonians to a realization that the Day of the Lord … is in the making. That is, he wants them to realize that the coming of the Day of the Lord (whatever its date or its imminence) is neither simply present nor simply future – in the sense of its having no real continuity with the present.

Having said this, it is clear, though, that Paul emphasises in 2 Thessalonians that the actual coming of the Day of the Lord has not taken place yet. Though Paul does not speculate about a future date for the Day of the Lord, he argues that some events still have to happen ‘first’ (cf. the SUZCWRQin 2 Thess 2:3). These events include an apostasy and the deceit of the man of lawlessness (2 Thess 2:3–8a). In this regard it is necessary to take cognisance of the way in which Paul’s theological understanding precludes speculation about future dates. 42 Since the Day of the Lord is a major motif in the eschatological discussion of 1 Thessalonians 5:1–11, it is argued that this passage could explain what Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12. The rather obscure discussion in 1 Thessalonians about the Christian believers as sons of the light and of the day may have been wrongly interpreted by some Thessalonian believers as implying that the Day of the Lord has already arrived. Malherbe (2000, 417) thinks the misunderstanding was the result of a radical reinterpretation of 1 Thessalonians 5:5, 8 (cf. also Van Houwelingen 2005, 193).

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That Paul could not have accommodated calculations of the end is clear from this emphasis on the divine initiative and the thoughts on preordination in the letter (cf. esp. Giblin 1967, 292). God is the one who knows and brings about the Day of the Lord and humanity can only wait on it. This does not mean that Paul did not eagerly await the parousia, but if he were proclaiming its certain coming, this did not necessarily imply that he thought in terms of dates.43 5.1. The Apostasy The first pre-parousia event that Paul mentions is the apostasy or rebellion (2 Thess 2:3). Paul finds it important to remind his readers that he had already instructed his readers previously about this issue (cf. 2 Thess 2:5). His observation that they know of ‘the’ apostasy further assumes that his audience was informed about the matter and that he need not explain it to them. The apostasy (K- DMSRVWDVLYD), a well-known apocalyptic motif, in its classical use indicates political rebellion, but it also refers to a general time of religious and moral decay that would affect the whole world before the end. It represents an act of defiance against God (cf. e.g. 1 En 91:5–10; Jub 23:14–21; 4 Ez 5; 14:16–18; 1QpHab 2:1–10).44 In New Testament texts it sometimes indicates an apostasy which takes place among believers (cf. Wanamaker 1990, 248). False prophets will mislead believers with their teachings and Christians will be deceived by claims of false Messiahs (Mt 24:24; 1 Joh 2:18; Eph 6:13).45 Revelation 13:3 speaks more generally of a universal rebellion against God. Given the eschatological context and the other apocalyptic motifs in this passage, Paul used the term to indicate a future, general act of defiance against God which supersedes the present time of unbelief and rejection of the gospel. This rebellion comprises religious opposition to God, characterised by arrogance and deceit (2 Thess 2:4). The rebellion will reach its 43

Cf. Dunn (2006, 313) for a discussion of Paul’s imminent expectation of the end. He rejects the delay of the parousia as a major motif that explains a development in Paul’s theology. The expectation of the future was ‘a firm part of Paul’s theology, maintained consistently from first to last in our written sources’. He adds (2006, 314), though, that Paul does not fill in the hope of the parousia in a particular way or within a specified time frame. Giblin (1967, 292), with his awareness of the pre-ordination gives a good reason why Paul does not fill in the particulars of the eschatological expectation. 44 Meeks (1983:188) argues that this is the only example in the Pauline letters which hints ‘of political opposition to the divine order’. Frame (1946, 251) names examples indicating that it is not a political apostasy or a heresy. 45 Cf. further Malherbe (2000, 431); Frame (1946, 251); Neil (1950:160); Morris (1959:219); Lietaert Peerbolte (1990, 87) and Nicholl (2004, 120) for various other arguments which cannot be discussed here because of limited space.

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climax with the appearance of the man of lawlessness, but encompasses more than his appearance and work.46 5.2. The Lawless One Though Paul writes more extensively about the lawless one than about the apostasy, the information is still limited, with no indication of his name and identity. Several aspects of the description indicate that the lawless one should not be read as a symbolic indication of an existing historical figure.47 He is a figure of the future who is described in apocalyptic language. He is, first of all, being ‘revealed’ and has a ‘parousia’ (2 Thess 2:3, 8, 9; cf. Jenks 1991, 217), comparing him with the future return of Christ at the end of time. The man of lawlessness as future figure is, however, depicted in Christlike language as an adversary of God who stands and acts in sharp contrast with Christ.48 He will claim divine honours and will attempt to usurp the place of God. As the lawless one, he represents the opposite of the God of righteousness. Whilst God is just, he is devious and deceives people. He is, furthermore, the epitome of evil, representing the climax of manifestations of evil in the past. This is already clear from his names. The Semitic descriptions R- D>QTUZSRaWKCaD>QRPRa and R- XL-RaWKCaDMSZOHLYDa expresses the fullness of lawlessness and destruction that will be found in him. He represents the complete resistance against and defiance of the will of God (Malherbe 2000, 419; cf. also Mt 24:12), whilst he is at the same time also named ‘the son of destruction’, which means that he represents the opposite of salvation (1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15; Phil 1:28). Paul explicitly develops his blasphemous nature (Malherbe 2000, 419) and delineates his coming in accordance with the work of Satan (2 Thess 2:9). The lawless one exalts himself over any divine figure or object of worship. He arrogantly

46 47

Cf. also Ridderbos (1966, 588–589). For a full discussion, cf. Ridderbos (1966, 580–582). He cautions that the apocalyptic nature of the language should not be forgotten. Paul attempts to describe inexpressible future events in restricted language. 48 Cf. Wanamaker (1990, 244) and Lietaert Peerbolte (1990, 86). They note that the ungodly one in 2 Thessalonians is not an antichrist figure, but opposes God. On the difference between the lawless one and the Antichrist, cf. Frame (1946, 273). He writes that though Paul does not use the term Antichrist, the term has a long history with some relevance to the lawless one. There are some reminiscences in this passage of the figure of Antichrist in texts like 1 Joh 2:18–23; 4:3; Mt 24:24; Lk 21:8 and the beast in Revelation 13:5–6, but especially in Rev 13:14. Jenks (1991, 216) offers the plausible insight that the parallels reflect the later authors’ use of 2 Thessalonians. For a balanced and insightful discussion, cf. Ridderbos (1966, 574–575). Compare also Brown (1997, 597) who sees him as an Antichrist.

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claims absolute honours for himself. He goes as far as setting himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself God.49 The remark that the lawless one will set himself up in the temple (2 Thess 2:4) was also used to find a historical referent. This temple has been identified in various ways as the temple in Jerusalem, as the heavenly temple or as the church (cf. Frame 1946, 256–257; Wanamaker 1990, 246– 247; Malherbe 2000, 420), but the information here is so limited that not one of these proposals can be proven beyond doubt. The motif of the temple should rather be seen as contributing to the mythological nature of the lawless one and as the result of the sacred traditions about blasphemous figures of the past. The lawless one as a figure of the future is without doubt greatly influenced by the similar figure in Daniel 11. As in that passage, the lawless one is an example of blasphemy and sacrilege, also against the temple. There is an escalation in the portrayal of the lawless one in 2 Thessalonians. He does not hesitate to enter the temple – the most holy of sites inhabited by the glory of God – to set himself up as God. He wants people to believe in him. In this sense, his actions not only equals those of evil figures like the infamous Antiochus IV Epiphanes and Pompey50 (cf. Ps.Sal; Frame 1946, 273) who were represented in Judaism as examples of antidivine hubris, but he actually surpasses them. The lawless one is the embodiment, but also the climax of the traditional expectation of the eschatological adversary of God.51 Whatever traditional motifs are used as building blocks to reconstruct his image, they are reassembled in this passage to depict him as an eschatological figure that will act in the final stages of the world’s history. 49 In the light of the important place of glory in 2 Thessalonians and the cultic meaning of glory, it is intriguing to connect the reference to the temple indirectly to this theme as well. The man of lawlessness exalts himself over everything that is God or is worshipped (VHYEDVPD). Ultimately his sin is that he glorifies himself (cf. also Rev 18:7). Cf. Ridderbos (1966, 573). He refers to the lawless one’s desire for glory and worship. 50 Note also Lietaert Peerbolte’s excursus on the exegetical tradition of an eschatological tyrant (Dan 7 and 11) which 2 Thessalonians share with Justin’s Dialogue 32 and 110. Jenks (1991, 44) also finds that 2 Thess 2 does not reflect anti-Christ traditions, but traditions about an end tyrant which were originally modelled on the historical figure of Antiochus IV. Ridderbos (1966, 573) discussed the notion of an eschatological tyrant, referring to Ass.Mos 8 and 4 Ez 5–6. He notes that the man of lawlessness is a deceitful figure who does not persecute people but as false prophet performs miracles and signs to deceive them. This would mean that the passage cannot be read in light of the eschatological tyrant. Cf., similarly, Bauckham (2003, 419) who describes the eschatological adversaries in terms of a false prophet. 51 Cf. on this Bauckham (2003, 419.427–429). Except for Daniel 11, the apocalyptic motif of the adversary reflects intertextual links with passages in Hebrew Scriptures like Deuteronomy 13:1–5 and Daniel 9:27; 12:11.

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The lawless one therefore reflects and completes a pattern of hostility against God that has been mooted in 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16, where Paul delineates the pattern of human opposition to God. Humanity throughout history has rejected God’s salvific action. Here Paul expands the picture by describing an apocalyptic figure of the end time as the last of these hostile opponents of God. The figure, like many before him, but only more extreme, claims divine honours and deceives people to worship him through his counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders (2 Thess 2:9). Though human as man of lawlessness, he has satanic powers, capable to mislead humanity. Most of all, he is a false prophet who deceives and performs miracles and signs. In this sense he reminds one of a similar false prophet in the end time reported in Revelation 13:11–18. For Paul this man accentuates the total resistance to the divine initiative. He represents the climax of the hostile rejection of God’s new creation in Christ.52 Through this portrait, Paul wishes to console his readers. They can be comforted, first of all by the knowledge that the man of lawlessness is doomed to destruction. Suffering, they must know, will ultimately come to an end. Paul accentuates this certainty by placing this remark about the fate of the lawless one at the beginning of his discussion (2 Thess 2:3). He speaks of the lawless one with the perspective that he is a figure that has no chance of victory. Even though he is so powerful and glorifies himself, he will be destroyed by the more glorious parousia of Jesus (2 Thess 2:8). The readers are further also reassured that the end events are completely in God’s hands and that they will happen when their time, set by God, is ripe. The lawless one will be ‘revealed at the right moment’ (DMSR NDOXITKCQDL HMQ WZC H-DXWRXC NDLUZC; 2 Thess 2:6). With this remark the divine initiative is retained. God determines the time that future events will take place. Paul is at pains to observe that even Satan and his peculiar instrument, the Anomos, are under the control of the divine purpose; that those “destined to destruction” destroy themselves by refusing to welcome the heavenly influence which makes for their salvation; and that therefore it is really God himself who on the ground of their refusal sends to the doomed an HMQHYUJHLDSODYQKa(Frame 1946, 275).

Lastly, the believers can rest assured that those who are destroyed are bearing the consequences of their own actions. They rejected the knowledge of salvation. They refused to love the truth and be saved and they delight in wickedness (2 Thess 2:10). The believers who hold on to the truth as ex52 Cf. the still relevant observations of Ridderbos (1966, 575–579). He argues, that the man of lawlessness is more than merely a person who acts individually at the end of time. He is an anti-divine figure because of the complete lawlessness that represents the concentration of evil which existed in the past, is still at work in the present and will be revealed in the future as the final resistance against the gospel.

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plained by Paul will not be deceived by his trickery and can face the future with confidence about their salvation. They can, most importantly, view their own situation in the light of a just God who protects against evil. 5.3. The Restrainer For Paul the future is more complex than the coming of the lawless one that will precede the parousia. He uses two terms (WR NDWHYFRQ; R- NDW HYFZQ) to indicate that at present the lawless one is being held back from his destructive activities by a restrainer or restraining power and that, consequently, the Day of the Lord is yet to come. Not much can be determined about the identity of the restrainer. Paul confusingly uses both the neuter participle WR NDWHYFRQ and the masculine participle R- NDWHYFZQ to refer to what is holding back and to the one who holds back (2 Thess 2:6, 7). Many attempts have been made to identify the restrainer or restraining force, mostly without success. Historical interpretations, for example, identify him as the Roman Empire which provided some judicial space for Christianity to exist, but this identification is not supported by apocalyptic texts (Lietaert Peerbolte 1990, 82), and would mean that Rome will have to be eliminated before the Lawless one comes (2 Thess 2:7b). It also creates the problem that a political entity functions to restrain the lawless one who is in fact a religious figure (Ridderbos 1966, 584). Others see the restraining force as the apostolic preaching or as God who restricts demonic activities. This would be in line with some Old Testament and apocalyptic texts about God’s control and purpose which delay end events (Malherbe 2000, 432–433; cf. 1QpHab 7:5–14; Is 13:22; Ezek 12:21–25; Heb 10:35–39; 2 Pet 3:8–9). The problem with this solution is that it implies that God will be removed and that Paul would then be writing about God in the neutral (Lietaert Peerbolte 1990, 83). It is also difficult to understand why Paul would use such a mysterious term for the proclamation of the gospel (Ridderbos 1966, 585). Other scholars identify the restrainer as an apocalyptic or future figure (Wanamaker 1990, 256–257; Frame 1946, 259–262; Neil 1950, 166–173; Best 1972, 295–301; Van Houwelingen 2005, 198–200). A recent example of this approach is Nicholl (2004, 228–246) who in his discussion of the figure of the restrainer suggests that he should be understood in terms of Daniel 10–12 as the archangel Michael who, as often in Jewish literature, will withdraw before tribulation against God’s people will break out. The problem with this interpretation, as Lietaert Peerbolte (1990, 83) has indi-

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cated, is that Paul speaks rather mysteriously about the restrainer and tries to conceal his identity.53 Paul’s remarks about the restrainer reflect at least two competing discourses.54 On the one hand there is a discourse of evil which will end in the future work of the lawless one and his destruction together with those whom he has deceived. The alternative discourse is the one which accommodates the divine providence and initiative for the proclamation of the gospel, the perseverance of the saints and the future coming of the Lord to be with them forever. The two discourses will not only end with the final eschatological struggle, but is already in conflict in the present (cf. 2 Thess 2:7 which uses terms like K>GK QXCQ and D>UWL . The lawless one, who already exists, is not yet revealed because he is being restrained by a divine power. Though the language about the restrainer is cryptic and mysterious, Paul’s readers know from previous discussions that the restrainer is in some way or other a powerful, supernatural instrument in God’s hands to hold back evil. God has a plan for the end times and events will take place according to this plan (cf. further also 1 Thess 2:16). The cryptic language does not allow for more than this to be said.55

6. Conclusion In conclusion, some remarks should be made about the various eschatological contents in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. It is often said that Paul seems to suggest in 1 Thessalonians that he may still be alive at the time of the parousia (1 Thess 4:15), presupposing an imminent return of the Lord, whilst he remarks in 2 Thessalonians 2:7–12 that some events will have to take place first before the parousia (cf. also the remarks above). To some extent differences between the two letters are the result of the contingent nature of Pauline letters (Beker 1980; 1991). Paul furthermore states that he had previously explained eschatological matters extensively56

53 Lietaert Peerbolte (1990, 84; cf. also Roosen 2006), who regards the letter as inauthentic, argues that the pseudonymous author of 2 Thessalonians wants to create the illusion that his readers had some knowledge in common with Paul. He speaks in vague terms, ‘implying that the original readers would know what Paul meant’. 54 Giblin (1967, 175) has drawn attention to several elements which should be taken into account when the anti-God figure is discussed. This includes Paul’s apocalyptic, Jewish and Christian traditions, his theological outlook, the situation of the letter, and his eschatological outlook on the present. 55 Cf. also the discussion in Ridderbos (1966, 586–587). 56 Thus already Frame (1946, 258), who detects some impatience in Paul’s remark, ‘Do you not remember that when I was yet with you, I was repeatedly telling you these

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in his oral communications with the believers (cf. 2 Thess 2:5). In his letters he is focussing in a selective manner on aspects of that communication in order to address particular needs of the community. In 1 Thessalonians Paul thus stresses the unexpected arrival of the parousia for people who do not heed the times rather than wanting to inform his readers that the parousia is imminent and spelling out an eschatological timetable (Giblin 1967, 292; cf. the discussion above). For the unprepared the coming of the Lord will take place ‘suddenly’ (1 Thess 5:3). For those who are alert (1 Thess 5:7), the parousia will bring community with each other and the Lord. The function of these remarks is pastoral rather than speculative. It serves to remind them to encourage one another and build each other up (1 Thess 5:11). But his remarks have another pastoral motive. It is especially the future life of God’s family with their Lord that he wishes to emphasise. They, whether awake or asleep, will be prepared so that they ‘may live together’ with the Lord (1 Thess 5:10). With this remark Paul brings together the two issues of the dead believers in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 and the lack of watchfulness in 1 Thessalonians 5:1–9. Paul comforts believers that the deaths of their loved ones have nothing to do with God’s wrath. A key verse here is 1 Thessalonians 5:9: ‘God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ’. They will experience God’s faithfulness and presence through a resurrection and exaltation at the parousia and thereafter. They will then be reunited with their loved ones and be with the Lord ‘forever’ (1 Thess 4:17). For Paul the future is about living in the presence of God, both for the dead and those who remain behind. In 2 Thessalonians Paul once again recalls their dire situation, but suggests that he is concerned about its increasing intensity and about some unclarities. Like in 1 Thessalonians, Paul wishes to reassure them that their present situation must be viewed in the light of the future. This comes out strongest in 2 Thessalonians 1, which, when compared with 1 Thessalonians, pays more attention to oppression and presents a more acute portrait of a group of believers under persecution (cf. e.g. 2 Thess 1:4). Paul then also rejects false reports in his name that the Day of the Lord has already come (2 Thess 2:2) and explicitly addresses the deep alarm that such reports caused among them. He reassuringly argues that this is not the case, since the rebellion and the man of lawlessness will precede the Day of the Lord (cf. e.g. 1 Thess 2:7; Giblin 1967, 84). Their emotions should not let them forget what he had shared with them previously in this regard. For believers, he adds, the Day need not be terrifying, even if the power of evil things?’ Cf. further Jenks (1991, 214), who comments that Paul was not interested in details because the teaching was familiar to his readers.

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is overwhelming (2 Thess 2:10–11). They can rest assured that those who do not accept the truth and refuse to be saved, will once again, as already indicated in 1 Thessalonians 5:3, bear the consequences of their actions. Even if they may be exposed to the final apostasy and the lawless one, they can remain hopeful. Their opponents and unbelievers will experience the destruction of the lawless one and will be destroyed with him at the glorious return of the Lord. In contrast to their ‘everlasting’ destruction and their being shut out from the presence of the Lord (2 Thess 1:9), believers will ultimately marvel at and share the powerful and glorious return of the Lord (2 Thess 1:9–10). It is at this point that Paul develops his pronouncements of 1 Thessalonians on the eternal presence of the Lord further. The believers, together with Paul, will find ‘relief’ from their persecution with the parousia (2 Thess 1:7). In addition, they can rest assured that they who have been chosen for salvation (2 Thess 2:13) and who have responded positively to Paul’s proclamation, have been called to ‘share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thess 2:14). In 2 Thessalonians, then, Paul stresses with more detail and intensity the future glory in which the believers will share. Ultimately, Paul finds it important that the parousia is all about the future union with God – the being gathered with the Lord in glory (2 Thess 2:1). In the short time that had lapsed since he wrote the first letter, the situation in Thessalonica had deteriorated to such an extent that Paul thought it necessary to follow up his first letter with a further one in which he addressed the increasingly emotional situation in Thessalonica. Paul reaches out to a community under growing pressure and tension. He supports them in this dire situation by using eschatological motifs to clear up misunderstandings that have unsettled them. Most of all, though, he has written to a community that has suffered severe setbacks. Intimate bonds with their families and fellow citizens were severed when they accepted Paul’s gospel. They lost some of the members of their communities. They lost their founder when Paul had to flee the city. In the persecution and their confusion about the fate of their loved ones and the coming of the Lord, they were faced with feelings of loss and abandonment. In speaking of the future, Paul promotes his solidarity with them in their struggle when he reassures them of the future reunion with their loved ones and with him. At the same time he consoles them with the message that the future will bring the ultimate fulfilment of community: being together with the community in the glorious presence of the Lord with nothing to stand in their way of worshipping God. It is a message about the Day when the Lord will come to be glorified in his holy people and to be marvelled at among all those who have believed (2 Thess 1:10).

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Paul’s view of the future is mostly agonistic. It reflects conflict and tension between God and Satan, between those who know God and those who do not know God, between those who reject and those who accept the gospel. For Paul this conflict finds a focal point in Christ’s death and resurrection which is inextricably linked with his parousia (e.g. 1 Thess 1:10–11). Those who obey the gospel will share the divine glory forever, whilst those who reject the eschatological proclamation of the gospel, will be punished and destroyed. History moves to the climactic consummation when evil will reveal itself in ever increasing intensity – intensifying its repeated opposition and hostility to God. But history will be ultimately consummated in the glorious return of Christ and eternal community with him after the eternal destruction of evil. This understanding of the future is proclaimed in apocalyptic language which speaks about the future in a tentative way, suggesting rather than informing and providing detail. But apocalyptic language also provides much needed support to communities in extreme distress.57 Developments in the Thessalonian community had negative consequences and caused desperation among them.58 Paul urges the Thessalonians ‘not to be easily unsettled and not to be in a constant state59 of nervous excitement’ (2 Thess 2:2). He therefore presents them with a portrait of future bliss in the presence of God. They can find consolation in what is happening and will happen to them in future. They can look forward to the glorious return of Christ which will inaugurate their eternal life in the glorious presence of God and Christ and which will bring an end to their losses and suffering in the present. Works Consulted Bauckham, R 2003 The climax of prophecy. Studies on the book of Revelation. London.

57 ‘There is much to commend the suggestion that Paul does not have in mind conceptual or speculative knowledge but experiential knowledge ‘in which some form of immediate personal awareness, realization, recognition and the like is stressed’ (Malherbe 2000, 422). 58 Hope is not mentioned at the beginning of 2 Thessalonians together with faith and love as in 1 Thessalonians. The letter thus reflects the context in which the Thessalonians were in doubt about eschatological events. Paul knows some think that the Day of the Lord has come (2:2) which means that some did not have hope and he could not commend them on it (Malherbe 2000, 392). Hope is used only once in 2 Thessalonians (2:16). This change in tone is even more striking when it is noted how hope is emphasized in 1 Thessalonians 1:3 through its final position in the triad. 59 Malherbe (2000, 415). The Greek phrase in 2 Thess 2:2 VDOHXTKCQ DL X-P DCa  DMS R WRXC QRRa express ‘the action without reference to its progress or completion’ and TURHLCVZDL‘defines the action as going on’ (Frame 1946, 244). They were unsettled (aorist) and are now agitated (present), and, in addition, this happened quickly, that is, in the short time since he previously wrote to them.

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Baur, W, Arndt WF, Gingrich, FW & Danker FW (eds.) 1958 A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament. Chicago & London. Becker, J 1989 Paulus. Der Apostel der Völker. Tübingen. Beker, JC 1980 Paul the apostle. The triumph of God in life and thought. Philadelphia. – Recasting Pauline theology. The coherence-contingency scheme as interpretive Model, in Pauline theology. Vol. 1. Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, Philemon, Bassler JM (ed.), Minneapolis, 15–24. Brown, R 1997 An introduction to the New Testament. New York. Bruce, FF 1982 1 & 2 Thessalonians. Waco. Chibici-Revneanu, C 2007 Die Herrlichkeit des Verherrlichten: das Verständnis der doxa im Johannesevangelium. Tübingen. Collins, RF 1984 Studies on the first letter to the Thessalonians. Leuven. De Villiers, PGR 2005 Safe in the family of God. Soteriological perspectives in 1 Thessalonians, in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on Soteriology, Van der Watt JG (ed.), Leiden, 305–330. Donfried, KP 1993 The theology of the shorter Pauline letters. Cambridge. Dunn, JDG 1995 The theology of Paul. The issue of covenantal nomism, in Pauline theology. Vol. 3. Romans, Hay, DM & Johnson, EE (eds.), Minneapolis, 125–146. – 1997 In quest of Paul’s theology in Pauline theology. Vol. 4. Looking back, pressing on, Hay, DM & Johnson, EE (eds.), Atlanta, 95–115. – 2006 The theology of Paul the apostle. London. – 2008 The new perspective on Paul. Grand Rapids. Gaventa, BR 1998 First and second Thessalonians. Louisville. Giblin, CH 1967 The threat to faith: An exegetical and theological re-examination of 2 Thessalonians. Rome. Holtz, T 1986 Der erste Brief an die Thessalonicher. Neukirchen. Hughes, FW 1980 The rhetoric of 1 Thessalonians, in The Thessalonian correspondence, Collins RF (ed.), Leuven, 94–116. – 1984 Second Thessalonians as a document of early Christian rhetoric. Northwestern University. Jenks, GC 1991 The origins and early development of the Antichrist myth. Berlin. Jewett, R 1986 The Thessalonian correspondence. Pauline rhetoric and millenarian piety. Philadelphia. Johnson, EE & Hay, DM 1997 Pauline Theology. Vol.4. Looking back, pressing on. Atlanta. Kaye, BN 1975 Eschatology and ethics in 1 and 2 Thessalonians. NT 1975, 47–57. Laub, F 1985 1. und 2. Thessalonicherbrief. Würzburg. Lietaert Peerbolte, LJ 1996 The antecedents of Antichrist:a tradition-historical study of the earliest Christian views on eschatological opponents. Leiden. Louw J & Nida, EA 1988 Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic domains. New York. Lüdemann, P 1984 Paul. Apostle to the gentiles. Studies in chronology. London. Malherbe, AJ 2000 The letter to the Thessalonians. A new translation with introduction and commentary. New York. Mearns, CL 1981 Early eschatological development in Paul: The evidence of I and II Thessalonians. NTS 27, 137–157. Meeks, W 1983 The first urban Christians. New Haven. Menken, MJJ 1994 2 Thessalonians. London, New York. Merklein, H 1998 Studien zu Jesus und Paulus. Tübingen.

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Muller, P 1988 Anfänge der Paulusschule. Dargestellt am zweiten Thessalonicherbrief un am Kolosserbrief. Zürich. Newman, CC 1992 Paul's glory-Christology: tradition and rhetoric. Leiden. Nicholl, CR 2004 From hope to despair in Thessalonica: Situating 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Cambridge. Ridderbos, H 1966 Paulus. Ontwerp van zijn theologie. Kampen. Roetzel, C 1999 Paul. The man and the myth. Edinburgh. Segal, AF 1999 ‘Paul’s “Soma Pneumatikon” and the worship of Jesus’, in Newman, CC, Davila, JR, Lewis, CS, The Jewish roots of Christological monotheism, Leiden. Stowers, SK 1994 A rereading of Romans: justice, Jews, and gentiles. New Haven. Trilling, W 1972 Untersuchungen zum Zweiten Thessalonicherbrief. Leipzig. Van Houwelingen, PHR 2005 Tessalonicenzen. Kampen. Wanamaker, CA 1990 The Epistles to the Thessalonians: A commentary on the Greek text. Grand Rapids. Wright, NT 1995 Romans and the theology of Paul, in Pauline theology. Vol 3. Romans, Hay DM, & Johnson, EE (eds.), Minneapolis, 30–66.

Eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles Bernhard Mutschler 1. Introduction and Survey To a large extent the Pastoral Epistles are shaped by the memory of the apostle Paul. Based on his memory consequences are drawn for the present. However, future and eschatological accents also play a role at various points in the narrative. 1 Timothy 1:16; 2:15; 3:6, 15; 4:1–3, 6, 8, 10, 16; 5:6, 12, 24f.; 6:7, 9, 12, 14f., 19; 2 Timothy 1:12, 18; 2:5, 10, 11–13; 3:1– 9; 4:1, 3f., 8, 18 as well as Titus 1:2; 2:13; 3:71 all fit into this future oriented context. The diversity of these texts could lead one to presume the Pastoral Epistles do not present a comprehensive and systematic theological eschatology. Instead it would appear that eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles is framed through the use of subtler border, or background, statements in the texts. The section that follows will search for evidence of eschatological traces by means of selected texts and terms (2). Approximately 30 texts will be arranged according to points of view with regard to substance and language. They will be examined separately in brief. In conclusion a summary of the eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles will be presented as a result of the textual and thematic overview that was conducted in section (3).

2. In search of Eschatological Traces On the basis of texts and terms The following terms or topics will be examined consecutively in searching for eschatological traces: (1) future statements without an explicit eschatological background, (2) PHYOOHLQ, (3) future ‘saving’ (VZY]HLQ), (4) conformity with Christ, (5) hope, (6) eternal life, (7) the eschatological wreath, (8) last times – last days, (9) the saying of ‘that day’, (10) court/to judge, (11) the coming kingdom (‘Reich’) of Christ and finally (12) the coming ‘appearance’ of Christ. At the beginning of each section the texts that will 1 The texts quoted in this article are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV).

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be considered will be listed and briefly discussed. Texts that fit into various sections are examined only once, yet they are mentioned in the different sections. 2.1. Future Statements Without an Explicit Eschatological Background Several texts contain future statements without an explicit eschatological background: 1 Timothy 3:15; 4:6; 6:7, 9. 2.1.1. 1 Timothy 3:15 From the perspective of the imagined correspondent, Paul, 1 Timothy 3:15 looks into the future as follows: If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

‘To behave’ (DMQDVWUHYIHVTDL) is a broad term that denotes ‘conduct in a general sense’.2 In doing so the church is understood, from one perspective, as a firm bulwark of truth,3 which excludes all possibility of doubt with regard to behaviour. 2.1.2. 1 Timothy 4:6 Similarly, in 1 Timothy 4:6, the correspondent looks to the future: If you put these instructions before the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound teaching that you have followed.

The addressee, Timothy, is referred to not only as a ‘real disciple of Paul’, but also as ‘a good servant (…) of Christ Jesus’4 (GLDYNRQRa &ULVWRXC M,KVRXC). While ‘sound teaching (NDOK GLGDVNDOLYD refers back to 1 Timothy 4:3b–5 in context, the ‘words of the faith’ (WRLCa ORYJRLa WKCa SLYVWHZa) have a much broader dimension, namely: 5 nicht nur Lehrworte, sondern auch Trostworte, Erinnerungsworte, Worte persönlicher Erfahrung oder persönlichen Bekenntnisses, Gebetsworte des Einzelnen und der gottesdienstlichen Gemeinschaft, Vergebungsworte, Worte der geschwisterlichen Zurechtweisung, Vertrauensworte, Doxologien, Ermutigungsworte oder Hoffnungsworte. 2 Marshall & Towner (2004, 507). It encompasses ‘all aspects of normal life within the life-style proper to God’s people’. See also HMQDQDVWURIKC, 1 Tim 4:12. 3 Detailed Roloff (1988, 198–201): ‘Festigkeit und Unerschütterlichkeit des heiligen Baues der Kirche’ (200). ‘Church’ (HMNNOKVLYD) is only documented further in 1 Tim 3:5 and 5:16. 4 Collins (2002, 120). 5 Mutschler (2010, 256).

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The fundamental dependency of the addressee on ‘faith’ and ‘teaching’ is expressed by the verbum compositum HMQWUHYIHVTDL (‘to be nourished’) a form that does not occur in the Septuagint, the New Testament or the Apostolic Fathers.6 2.1.3. 1 Timothy 6:7, 9 Both of the texts referred to above look into the future from the perspective of the correspondent. Grammatically they are in the future tense (H>VK, 1 Tim 4:6), however they engage the addressee in the present tense and have no explicit eschatological background. This is also the case in respect of the exhortations to the rich in 1 Timothy 6:7 (to this maxim cf. Ps 49:18) and 6:9 RL- ERXORYPHQRLSORXWHLCQ). In their outlook on the funeral (1 Tim 6:7) and on ‘ruin and destruction’ (o>OHTURaNDL DMSZYOHLD, 6:9) there is a clear future orientation, but no explicit eschatological dimension. 2.2. 0HYOOHLQ 0HYOOHLQ appears three times in the first Letter to Timothy: 1:16; 4:8, and 6:19. The first and last texts form an inclusio. All three texts speak about ‘life’ in relation to salvation: mentioning the ‘eternal’ (1:16), the ‘future’ (4:8), and the ‘true’ (6:19). A fourth and last record for PHYOOHLQ in the Pastoral Epistles is found in 2 Timothy 4:1.7 2.2.1. 1 Timothy 1:16 At the beginning of the first Letter to Timothy eternal life is presented to the reader in the future tense. In 1 Timothy 1:16 we read: But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.

Paul’s powerful display of the patience of Jesus Christ in his life makes him an example (X-SRWXYSZVLa8) to ‘those who would come to believe’ WZCQ PHOORYQWZQ SLVWHXYHLQ). Faith, in accordance with the example of (the fictitious) Paul is determined in two ways: christologically and soteriologically. The commitment to Christ is constitutive of salvation and it results in eternal life: SLVWHXYHLQHMSLM DXMWZC HLMa]ZKQDLMZYQLRQ.9 This has 6

The Verbum simplex (WUHYIHLQ) is found in the NT Letters only in Jas 5:5; see also HMNWUHYIHLQ, Eph 5:29; 6:4; WURIKY, Heb 5:12, 14; Jas 2:15; WURYIRa, 1 Thess 2:7. 7 Please see section 10.4 which considers this in detail. 8 Similarly 2 Tim 1:13; X-SRWXYS ZVLa is only recorded twice in the New Testament. 9 To understand faith in 1 Tim 1:16 please refer to the detailed discussion in Mutschler (2010, 259–261).

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to be conceived eschatologically. 0HYOOHLQ when coupled with the infinitive is grammatically understood to be a ‘periphrasis for the future participle’.10 2.2.2. 1 Timothy 4:8 Two kinds of life, a present one and a future one, are distinguished in 1 Timothy 4:8: While physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

A maxim-like comparison between sports (K- VZPDWLNK JXPQDVLYD) and godliness (HXMVHYEHLD) shows the superiority of the latter: Godliness bears the promise of ‘the present life and the life to come’,11 while sports have only an impact on the present life, which ultimately ends with death. The life to come exceeds the present life both in a quantitative and in a qualitative manner, in the same way as ‘in every way’ (SURaSDYQWD, plural) exceeds the indication ‘of some value’ (SURaRMOLYJRQ, singular) in a quantitative and in a qualitative manner. The distinction between a ‘present life’ and a ‘life to come’ is not only confirmed by 1 Timothy 5:6,12 but also brings to mind the double promise of Jesus in Mark 10:29f. (parr. Mt 19:29; Lk 18:29f.). In this instance it is separated into ‘this’ and ‘the coming era’ according to the apocalyptical scheme. 2.2.3. 1 Timothy 6:19 In the final exhortation is to the rich (6:17–19). They are reminded to place their hope in God instead of the ‘uncertainty of money’ and to be ‘rich in good works’ and ‘ready to share’:13 … thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold on the life that really is life.

A ‘good foundation’14 for the future is expressed using concise language (THPHYOLRQ NDORQ HLMa WR PHYOORQ). This foundation wins ‘real life’ (K- R>QWZa]ZKYY).15 The contrast between a future foundation and present fleetingness16 reminds the reader of a similar expression in the Sermon on the Mount: to store ‘treasures in heaven’ instead of ‘on earth’ (Mt 6:19f.; Lk 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Marshall & Towner (2004, 402); the same in 2 Tim 4:1. Life is also promised in 2 Tim 1:1 and Tit 1:2. For further detail on this point please consult section 2.6.3. 1 Tim 6:19. Cf. also VWHUHRaTHPHYOLRa, 2 Tim 2:19. Also see the references to the ‘true widow’ (K-R>QWZaFKYUD) in 1 Tim 5:3, 5, 16. See DMGKORYWKa, 1 Tim 6:17, hapaxlegomenon in the New Testament.

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12:33; also Lk 16:917). In 1 Timothy 6:19 the contrast is set out by means of time instead of place. Furthermore a linguistic tie goes from DMSRTKVDXULY]RQWDa (1 Tim 6:19) to TKVDXULY]HWH GH X-PLCQ TKVDXURXYa (Mt 6:20).18 4HPHYOLRa may have the significance ‘a fund and a fundament’.19 In both cases the word stands for ‘etwas Festes und Bleibendes’.20 However this does raise an interesting question about the proper use of money. Responsible and ethical behaviour, i.e. prosocial handling of one’s money is done not only in the present (HMQWZC QXCQDLMZCQL, 1 Tim 6:17), it also has implications for the future, which must also be taken into account. (LMaWR PHYOORQ is a Greek idiom (‘griechisches Idiom’) which can also be found in Luke 13:9.21 There it means the time starting from the following year. In 1 Timothy 6:19 it refers not only to an otherworldly life but also to a current reality. The real life can already ‘be taken’ (HMSLODPEDYQHVTDL) by setting aside an amount of money for other people (6:18) and placing one’s hope and faith in God (6:17), ‘who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment’. This can also be understood to mean that God gives, and lends, all wealth to us (cf. 6:7). ‘Rich people’ (6:17) deal responsibly with their wealth by ‘being rich in good works’ (SORXWHLCQHMQH>UJRLaNDORLCa, 6:18). An intrinsic motivation to share one’s wealth is thus strengthened by the emphasis upon ‘real life’. If ‘the real life’ is not exclusively understood as a future reality it lends to a more meaningful understanding of the current text: Godliness in 1 Timothy 4:8 bears the promise of future life as well as of the present (HMSDJJHOLYDQH>FRXVD]ZKCaWKCaQXCQNDL WKCaPHO ORXYVKa). A purely future-oriented interpretation of ‘real life’ (6:19) would degrade the present life to an ‘unreal’ (RXMN R>QWZa) and pretended life (GRNHLCQ). But the author of the Pastoral Epistles clearly has a high regard for the present life as well as the future life. 2.3. Future ‘Saving’ (VZY]HLQ) Three records contain VZY]HLQ in a future form in the Pastoral Epistles: 1 Timothy 2:15; 4:16, and 2 Timothy 4:18.

17 Cf. the antithetic word of God and wealth (Mammon), Mt 6:24 par Lk 16:13; in addition Gos. Thom. 47:1. 18 Respectively PK TKVDXULY]HWHX-P LCQ TKVDXURXYa, Mt 6:19. M$SRTKVDXULY] HLQis a NT hapaxlegomenon; the only record in the Septuagint that connects DMSRTKVDXULY]HLQ with the commandment concerning parents (Sir 3:4). 19 Quinn & Wacker (2000, 555). Cf. ‘foundation’ and ‘fund’, ‘fondation’ and ‘fonds’ (French), ‘fondazione’ and ‘fondo’ (Italian), ‘Grundlage’ and ‘Grundstock’ (German). 20 Roloff (1988, 369). 21 For some records see Wolter (2008, 479).

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2.3.1. 1 Timothy 2:15 1 Timothy 2:15 is a well known and somewhat controversial text. The correspondent addresses women (JXQDL[LYQ, 2:10), firstly in the singular: Yet she will be saved through [the time of22] childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.

Just as rich people cannot win ‘real life’ through their prosocial behaviour (1 Tim 6:19), but rather need to do so through placing their hope in the grace of God (6:17), so too women cannot be saved ‘through childbearing’. A theological and technical understanding of GLD WKCaWHNQRJRQLYDa could mean, ‘through the difficulties and dangers of childbearing’. Despite all medical progress in obstetrics and gynaecology childbirth is still a dangerous event, even today. Thus ‘through’ is to be read in a temporal sense. In this way 1 Timothy 2:15 intends to decouple soteriology from childbirth, rather than combining with it (for theological reasons: hardly tolerable).23 The preceding passivum divinum (VZTKYVHWDL) only makes sense within such an interpretive framework. An eschatological salvation, by God, will take place ‘through [the time of] childbearing’ – no matter what the outcome of the act of childbearing brings, whether dangers, survival, or death. This premise is not different from what is spelled out elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles: ‘provided they (= the women) continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty’ they will be saved. The future salvation (VZTKYVHVTDL) is bound to remaining in the faith (remaining faithful to God). ‘Faith’ (SLYVWLa) and ‘love’ (DMJDYSK) are very often affiliated with each other elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles,24 while to ‘stay’ (PHYQHLQ) is a hapaxlegomenon in the first Letter to Timothy25 and ‘holiness’ is only used in this instance in the Pastoral Epistles. The eschatological salvation is effected by God (passivum divinum), and is substantially connected with trust in him (faith), which also has a future oriented aspect (because of other terms that are used in the Epistles). 2.3.2. 1 Timothy 4:16 1 Timothy 4:16 is directed towards Timothy as the addressee: Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.

22 23

This is a logical, but necessary addendum, for reasons see below. For detailed reasons see Mutschler (2010, 274–277; 274): ‘eine Entkoppelung von Soteriologie und Gebären’. 24 See Mutschler (2010, 233). 25 However see 2 Tim 2:13; 3:14; 4:20; in addition HMSLPHYQHLQ, 1 Tim 4:16.

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Within the Pastoral Epistles to ‘save’ (VZY]HLQ), particularly as it is used in this instance, denotes the future tense. The correspondent thinks of the future from the present and as a result salvation obtains both a present and a future aspect. Salvation (i.e., ‘to save’) is eschatologically qualified, as the relationship between VZWKYU and VZWKULYD shows.26 Is Timothy really able to save? In the protopauline Letters ‘to save’ is repeatedly said by human subjects.27 It could be because of their shorter length, that there is only one record of this usage in the Pastoral Epistles.28 By paying attention to his own life and to his teaching, Timothy saves himself as well as those who listen to him. ‘To listen’ (DMNRXYHLQ) to what is said can lead on to salvation on the one hand ( DMNRXYVZVLQSDYQWDWD H>TQK, 2 Tim 4:17), and to confusion on the other (HMSL NDWDVWURIKC WZCQ DMNRXRYQWZQ, 2 Tim 2:14). The word here denotes an oral transfer from Paul to Timothy.29 By carefully keeping with Paul’s transmitted ‘teaching’ (GLGDVNDOLYD30), a leading elder stays a ‘servant of Christ Jesus’ according to 1 Timothy 4:6. 2.3.3. 2 Timothy 4:18 At the end of the three letters a clearly future oriented ‘saving’ is finally presented (2 Tim 4:18): The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Earthly survival and heavenly salvation are combined in a synthetic parallelism. The language used takes on the form of a prayer. 31 The author does not place his focus upon the Lord’s imminent return, rather he focuses on the hope ‘of spiritual deliverance, so that nothing prevents him from attaining his heavenly reward’.32 The description of the kingdom as ‘heavenly’ (HMSRXUDYQLRa) shows, ‘that it is thought of as future, or as presently existing in heaven and to be revealed openly in the parousia’.33 The fact, that self-reassurance and comfort are highlighted shows their pragmatic meaning with regard to the potential readers of the letter: The letter serves to 26 6ZWKYU: 1 Tim 1:1; 2:3; 4:10; 2 Tim 1:10; Tit 1:3f.; 2:10, 13; 3:4, 6; VZWKULYD: 2 Tim 2:10; 3:15. 27 Rom 11:14; 1 Cor 7:16 (bis); 9:22. It is as little a synergism as it is in 1 Tim 2:15. 28 The subject of the other records of VZY ] HLQ is Christ (1 Tim 1:15), God (2:4, 15; 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 3:5) or NXYULRa (2 Tim 4:18). Collins (2002, 132) explains: ‘God is the Savior of all people, but he has co-opted Timothy’. 29 1 Tim 4:16; 2 Tim 1:13; 2:2. 30 Cf. 1 Tim 1:10; 4:1, 6, 13; 5:17; 6:1, 3; 2 Tim 3:10, 16; 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1, 7, 10. 31 See further detail on this in Collins (2002, 286f.); for the singular H>UJRQSRQKURYQ please consult Mutschler (2010, 233f.). 32 Marshall & Towner (2004, 826). 33 Marshall & Towner (2004, 826).

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encourage and comfort the reader regarding Paul and – much more – regarding themselves. Earthly conservation and heavenly salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ are thus applied to the reader in the same manner as they are applied to Paul. 2.4. Conformity with Christ According to 2 Timothy 2:11–13 In 2 Timothy 2:11–13 an emphasis-formula (SLVWRa R- ORYJRa34) is introduced into a four-line piece of a hymn, 35 which is enriched through a oneline explanation in each instance: 11

The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; 12 if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; 13 if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.

Future forms of ‘to live with’ and ‘to reign with’ are used in a synthetic parallelism36 and in imitation of Romans 6:837 and Mark 13:13b parr. (Mt 24:13 = 10:22b; Lk 21:19: X-SRPHYQHLQ). Having ‘died with’ (v. 11a) could refer to ‘spiritual identification with Christ in baptism and the Christian life, i.e. to dying to sin or to self and safety’.38 ‘To live with’ thus also denotes a Christological connectivity in the sense of Romans 6:11: being alive for God in Jesus Christ. Verse 12a is interpreted from the perspective of 2 Timothy 2:10 because of a connecting catchword (X-SRPHYQHLQ): The correspondent endures these things ‘for the sake of the elect’, ‘so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory’. ‘To reign with’ (VXPEDVLOHXY HLQ39) is therefore determined by its context as participation in the eschatological salvation. This corresponds to a connection with Mark 13:13b (Mt 24:13 = 10:22b: VZTKYVHWDL) and other contexts, which talk about ‘reigning’.40 On the redactional level this portion of the hymn refers to leading elders (2 Tim 2:1–13); however there is no necessity to restrict the promise of ‘living with’ and ‘reigning with’ 34 Concerning 1 Tim 1:15; 3:1; 4:9; 2 Tim 2:11 and Titus 3:8 see now Mutschler (2010, 243f.336–342.381f.). 35 For a piece of the hymn see Roose (2004, 210f.219f.230). 36 In contrast Collins (2002, 226) views these as a ‘synonymous parallelism’. 37 Merz (2004, 237): ‘regelrechtes Selbstzitat (aus Rom 6:8)’; ferner WR VXQDSR TDQHLCQNDLVX]KCQ, 2 Cor 7:3; furthermore 2 Cor 4:14; 1 Thess 4:14(–17). 38 Marshall & Towner (2004, 739). 39 The only other record is 1 Cor 4:8. For a better understanding of the contents refer to Luke 22:28, 30b (see Mutschler 2008b, 43) which is more decisive; see also Rev 3:21; 20:4–6 (5:10; 22:5). 40 Rom 5:17; 1 Cor 4:8; 6:2.

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exclusively to them.41 Correspondingly ‘to deny’ (1 Tim 2:12b; cf. Lk 12:8f. par. Mt 10:33) also has christological-soteriological and eschatological accents. The first three lines of the hymn have an encouraging character:42 identification with Christ, enduring in challenges and fidelity culminating in a readiness for martyrdom43 all hold an eschatological promise. The fourth line of this portion of the hymn has a rather consoling character in contrast to the rest. It contains the final explanatory statement.44 In his Letter to the Philippians Polycarp of Smyrna refers to 2 Timothy 2:11f.: If we please him in this present world, we will receive the world to come as well, inasmuch as he promised that he will raise us from the dead and that if we prove to be citizens worthy of him, we will also reign with him – if, that is, we continue to believe.45

Here the eschatological aspect is made clearer through an apocalyptic assignment to two eras. The ethical orientation (HXMDUHVWHLCQ DM[LYZa SROLWHXYHVTDL) is consolidated as well as realigned – perhaps even slightly corrected – by the weight-of-the-stern addendum ‘if we continue to believe’ (HL>JHSLVWHXYRPHQ46). 2.5. Hope Two texts the in the Letter to Titus speak about the ‘hope of eternal life’ (HMOSLa]ZKCaDLMZQLYRX): 1:2, and 3:7. After examining these two texts, and 1 Timothy 4:10, an overview over the remaining records of the word ‘hope’ in the Pastoral Epistles47 will take place. 2.5.1. Titus 1:2 In the long prescript of the Letter to Titus (1:1–4) one reads the following in 1:2: (…) in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began (…)

41 42 43

Unlike Roose (2004, 230f.). Marshall & Towner (2004, 739): ‘exhortatory force for the reader”. See also Mark 14:31 (par. Mt 26:35): M(DQGHYK PHVXQDSRTDQHLCQVRLRXM PKY VH DMSDUQKYVRPDL. 44 For an interpretation please refer to the recent work by Mutschler (2010, 372–375). 45 Pol. Phil 5:2 (286f. Holmes). 46 Cf. also SLVWHXYRPHQR^WL in Rom 6:8. 47 For K- PDNDULYD HMO SLYa , Tit 2:13, see below in section 2.12.2.

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The expression HMSLMHMOSLYGL is totally Pauline.48 God has promised ‘eternal life’ since ‘before the ages’ (SUR FURYQZQDLMZYQZQ49), even before creation and history; the writer now places his hope in that promise. Thereby a maximum of certainty and the final responsibility of God for the promise of life is reached.50 The ‘hope on eternal life’ is thus indestructible and fully authorized, since God alone warrants it. The hope is secured through his promise of eternal life.51 2.5.2. Titus 3:7 The ‘hope of eternal life’ also comes across towards the end of the letter in Titus 3:7. The writer uses this term ‘as a kind of literary inclusion framing his epistle’:52 (…) so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

This is the last part of the very long and theologically dense sentence (Tit 3:4–7). After mentioning ‘time’ (R^WH GH NWO), ‘basis’ (RXMN HM[ H>UJZQ NWO), ‘main action’ (H>VZVHQ K-PDCa) and ‘means’ (GLD ORXYWURX NWO) there follows a description of the ‘purpose/result’ (Tit 3:7).53 Instead of HMSLM HMOSLYGL(Tit 1:2) the author varies it with the use NDWM HMOSLYGD54 The ‘hope of eternal life’ ties in with Titus 1:2 and ‘had already become a formula’.55 Therefore ]ZKCa DLMZQLYRX is not to be connected with ‘heirs’, but with ‘hope’.56 It is a prospective hope and not something that has already been reached, as in 2 Timothy where some misguided persons operated under a false pretence (DMQDYVWDVLQK>GKJHJRQHYQDL). In short, true hope is to be found in the following: ‘the content of the eschatological hope of believers, a hope of an eternal life that involves bodily resurrection’.57 The traditional Pauline term ‘heirs’, which is a hapaxlegomenon in the Pastoral Epistles, is also future oriented: ‘An inheritance is something that a person will receive in the future. (…) This inheritance is ‘eternal life’, a cipher for eschatological salvation’.58 48 49 50

Rom 4:18; 5:2; 8:20; 1 Cor 9:10 (bis); in addition Acts 26:6. See also 2 Tim 1:9. See Mutschler (2010, 154): ‘größtmögliche Gewissheit und die letztgültige Verantwortung Gottes für die Lebensverheißung’. 51 Cf. also ‘promise of life’ (HMSDJJHOLYD]ZKCa ) in 1 Tim 4:8 and 2 Tim 1:1. 52 Collins (2002, 305). 53 Cf. the analysis of this sentence by Marshall & Towner (2004, 307). 54 The same in Phil 1:20. 55 Marshall & Towner (2004, 325). 56 With N. Brox (1969, 309f.) against H.J. Holtzmann (1880, 499). 57 Jerome D. Quinn (1990, 229). 58 Collins (2002, 366).

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2.5.3. 1 Timothy 4:10 Finally, one can read about hope in an eschatological perspective in 1 Timothy 4:10: For to this end we toil and struggle, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.

The toiling (NRSLDCQ59) of the leading elder(s) in the daily ‘struggle’ (DMJ ZQL]RYPHTD) has its grounds in the ‘hope on the living God’. The reference to God seems to highlight an apparently contradictory statement: ‘Savior of all people, especially of those who believe’. The universal term ‘all people’ is recorded five times in the Pastoral Epistles, in most cases with soteriological content.60 Like in Galatians 6:10 believers are highlighted through PDYOLVWD, ‘(and) especially’. This happens in a non-exclusive sense: ‘The particle, in a non-exclusive sense, singles out those to whom something applies pre-eminently, superlatively, par excellence – the believers’.61 The hope for the future is: God is indeed (potentially) ‘Savior of all people’, but in a special way (actually) the saviour of ‘the believers’.62 The latter form the ‘church of the living God’ (HMNNOKVLYDTHRXC ]ZCQWRa, 1 Tim 3:15), and for them it is worthwhile to ‘toil and struggle’ (1 Tim 4:10, hendiadys). This double conviction – God the Savior for all people and Christians toiling and struggling in the present (according to 5:17: in word and in teaching) – is ‘sure and worthy of full acceptance’, as the preceding sentence in 4:9 emphasizes.63 2.5.4. Further Records for Hope Hope, by its very nature, is always future-oriented and in the Pastoral Epistles it has mostly an eschatological determination. Therefore a ‘real widow’ sets her hope on God (1 Tim 5:5), rich people shouldn’t set their hope on uncertain richness (6:17), ‘Jesus Christ our hope’ (1:1), and Christians expect the manifestation of Jesus Christ as their ‘blessed hope’ (K- PDNDULYDHMOSLYa, Tit 2:13).64 The only member of the word-cluster, which is not eschatologically determined, is ‘to hope’ which is found in 1 Timothy 3:14: Paul hopes, ‘to come to you soon’ (HMOSLY]ZQHMOTHLCQSURaVHY HMQ 59 .RSLDC Q is otherwise recorded in the Pastoral Epistles only in 1 Tim 5:17, with regard to the ‘word and teaching’: RL-NRSLZCQWHaHMQORYJZNDLGLGDVNDOLYD. 60 1 Tim 2:4; 2:1; 4:10; Tit 2:11; 3:2; see in detail Mutschler (2010, 292f.). 61 Quinn & Wacker (2000, 381). 62 Mutschler (2010, 293): ‘(potentiell) Retter aller Menschen, in besonderer Weise (aktuell) aber der Gläubigen’. Similar Marshall & Towner (2004, 557): ‘all people are potentially believers’. 63 Please refer to Mutschler (2010, 339f.) for a further discussion on this point. 64 See more below in section 2.12.2.

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WDYFHL). Here it is in the present tense with an infinitive; but all the other records of the verb ‘to hope’ have the perfect tense with HMSLY (and dative: 1 Tim 4:10; 6:17; accusative: 5:5): Hope is set on God (4:10; 5:5) rather than on uncertain richness (6:17). 2.6. Eternal Life Except for the three texts that have already been examined (1 Tim 1:16; Tit 1:2; 3:765) ‘eternal life’ also plays a role in 1 Timothy 6:12 and indirectly in 2 Timothy 2:10 and 1 Timothy 5:6. This section will be concluded with a succinct overview of the remaining records for ‘eternal’ and ‘hope’. 2.6.1. 1 Timothy 6:12 Towards the end of the first Letter to Timothy the fictitious Paul admonishes the reader (1 Tim 6:12) to: Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

The final exhortation to the addressee is shaped through some imperatives: IHXCJH GLYZNH DMJZQLY]RX HMSLODYERX, 1 Timothy 6:11f.66 ‘Eternal life’ forms a motivic inclusio with 1:16,67 and ‘take hold of life’ is repeated with the same verb in 6:19 (L^QD HMSLODYEZQWDL WKCa R>QWZa ]ZKCa68). Like in Titus 1:2 and 1 Timothy 4:10, a statement about God’s activity, respectively his being theologically and pastorally safeguards the statement about human acting. God’s promise (Tit 1:2), his Saviour-being for all people (1 Tim 4:8) and his call (6:12) constitute and enable human hope (Tit 1:2), godliness (1 Tim 4:8) and activity (6:12). Starting from here there is a potential for comfort in the present and the future: Turning to the eternal life is inevitable, since it follows upon an earlier call from God.69 Turning to the eternal life also corresponds to the confession ‘in the presence of many witnesses’. In respect of 2 Timothy 2:2 the addressee stands in a chain of witnesses70 – and at the same time he stretches out towards the ‘eternal life’, which he is taking hold of (HMSLODYERX WKCa DLMZQLYRX ]ZKCa, 1 Tim

65 66 67 68 69

See above in sections 2.2.1., 2.5.1., and 2.5.2. For an interpretation of the first three imperatives see Mutschler (2010, 286–289). Collins (2002, 305 n. 9). To ‘take’ the prize belongs to the imagery of a competition, see more below in 2.7. Apart from 1 Tim 6:12, NDOHLCQ is only found in 2 Tim 1:9: WRXC VZYVDQWRaK-PDCa NDLNDOHYVDQWRaNOKYVHLD-JLYD. See also HMNOHNWRYa: 1 Tim 5:21; 2 Tim 2:10. 70 0DYUWXa is otherwise only recorded in the Pastoral Epistles in an indirect quotation of Deut 19:15 in 1 Tim 5:19.

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6:12b) after the fight (cf. DMJZQLY]RX WRQ NDORQ DMJZCQD WKCa SLYVWHZa, 6:12a). 2.6.2. 2 Timothy 1:20 2 Timothy 2:10 is comparable with 1 Timothy 6:12, although the term ‘eternal life’ is not explicitly found in 2 Timothy 2:10: Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

In a similar manner to how 1 Timothy 6:12 assures the addressee, the correspondent assures himself in 2 Timothy 2:10 about eternal life. Furthermore, both texts look to other people: to ‘the elect’ and to the ‘many witnesses’ (1 Tim 6:12) respectively. One can thus compare them in detail as follows: participation in salvation:

reason for salvation:  good of salvation:  leading elder: 

1 Timothy 6:12 take hold (of life) HMSLODPEDYQHVTDL (sc. ]ZKCa) call HMNOKYTKa eternal life K-DLMZYQLRQ]ZKY fight the good fight of the faith DMJZQLY]HVTDLWRQNDORQ DMJZCQDWKCaSLYVWHZa

2 Timothy 2:10 obtain the salvation VZWKULYDaWXJFDYQHLQ election GLDWRXaHMNOHNWRYa Jesus Christ, eternal glory VZWKULYDHMQ&ULVWZC M,KVRXCPHWDGRY[ KDLMZQLYRX endure everything SDYQWDX-SRPHYQHLQ

The comparison shows, that ‘eternal life’ in the sense of the Pastoral Epistles can be understood as ‘salvation in Jesus Christ with eternal glory’. ‘Eternal life’ is therefore found theologically as well as soteriologically, christologically and eschatologically. Moreover it highlights ethical consequences as a result of actions and choices in the present. 2.6.3. 1 Timothy 5:6 In an indirect way one can also discern a reference to ‘eternal life’ in 1 Timothy 5:6. The following sentence offers an introduction to the life of a widow: But the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives.

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The ‘real widow’ (K-GHR>QWZaFKYUD, 5:5) presents a contrasting picture. A ‘wallowing’ widow (VSDWDODCQ71) is ‘dead even while she lives’ (]ZCVD WHYTQKNHQ72). In her daily existence the ‘present life’ and in the ‘life to come’ (1 Tim 4:873) contradict each other in a dramatic manner. Though she is alive (]ZCVD) in her earthly life,74 she is already dead with regard to her future or ‘eternal life’.75 7HYTQKNHQ shows the result, namely that her spiritual dying really came to an end.76 Even now a wallowing widow does not have any entitlement on the future and eternal life. The same dialectic between life and death is expressed in the letter of John to the community of Sardes in the book of Revelation.77 In both instances a conclusion is drawn from one’s ethical behaviour (]ZCVD respectively H>UJD) in the present life which is then related the spiritual life, with the same result: one ends up ‘dead’. It is an absence or negation of ‘eternal life’.78 The rhetorically elaborated way of engaging both the present and the future life (also phonetically elaborated: VSDWDOZCVD ]ZCVD WHYTQKNHQ) has a motivational, paraenetic function for the present:79 Who on earth would not like do everything in this life – here and now – in order to escape from a future (eternal) death? Thus the correspondent uses this literary mechanism as a deterrent in the present life, causing the reader to carefully consider his choices and actions.

71 The same word is used for rich people in Jas 5:5, in Barn. 10:3 (410f. Holmes) for pigs, who behave in a figuratively in a godless manner. To further understand the embedded context please see Mutschler (2010, 303–305); for VSDWDODCQ see in addition Ezek 16:49; Sir LXX 21:15 (= 21:18); Am 6:4 (NDWDVSDWDOZCQWHa). 72 In a turnaround of 2 Cor 6:9: Z-a DMSRTQKYV NRQWHaNDLLMGRX]ZCP HQ. 73 For details see above in section 2.2.2. 74 For an illustration see 1 Tim 2:9f.; 6:6–10. Marshall & Towner (2004, 588) interpret: ‘to live a life of luxury’; similar to Johnson (2001, 262): ‘self-indulgent luxury’; Collins (2002, 138) formulates it too dramatically: ‘run amok’. 75 ‘A vigorous oxymoron’, as Marshall & Towner (2004, 588) say. 76 4QKYV NHLQ is hapaxlegomenon in the Pastoral Epistles and in the whole Corpus Paulinum; DMSRTQKYVNHLQ is often recorded in the older Pauline Letters, but not in the Corpus Pastorale. 77 2L?GDY VRXWD H>UJDR^WL>Q RPDH>F HLaR^WL]KCa NDL QHNURa HL?, Rev 3:1. 1HNURY a is recorded in the Pastoral Epistles only in the context of the resurrection of Jesus respectively of all people, 2 Tim 2:8; 4:1. 78 Roloff (1988, 291): ‘Existenz innerer Unwahrhaftigkeit’. Marshall & Towner (2004, 588) remark critically: ‘The question of well-off widows who are free from any accusation of misusing wealth or the like is not raised’. 79 This is also shown by the further context: .DL  WDXC WD SDUDY J JHOOH L^Q D DM Q H SLYOKPSWRLZ?VLQ, 1 Tim 5:7.

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2.6.4. Further Records for ‘Eternal’ and ‘Life’ The remaining three (out of eight) records for ‘eternal’ (DLMZYQLRa) denote either self-determinations of God ‘before the ages began’ (2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2: SUR FURYQZQ DLMZQLYZQ) or qualities God expressed as praise (Z_ WLPK NDL NUDYWRa DLMZYQLRQ, 1 Tim 6:16). The eight records for DLMZYQ display something similar: They have a doxologic character in most instances (1 Tim 1:17, ter; 2 Tim 4:18, bis) or denote the present in their form R- QXCQ DLMZYQ (1 Tim 6:17; 2 Tim 4:10; Tit 2:12). Next to the discussed records for ‘life’ in the form of ]ZKY80 stands NDWMHMSDJJHOLYDQ]ZKCaWKCaHMQ&ULVWZC M,KVRXC in 2 Tim 1:1 as well as IZWLYVDQWRaGH ]ZKQNDL DMITDUVLYDQGLD WRXC HXMDJJHOLYRX in 1:10. They fit well with the eschatological contexts that have been highlighted so far through the words ‘promise’, ‘immortality’,81 ‘Christ Jesus’, ‘gospel’ and ‘illuminate’. Finally the two records of ELYRa in 1 Tim 2:2 and 2 Tim 2:4 are totally different with regard to their language and content; they do not have any eschatological orientation. 2.7. The Eschatological Wreath The metaphor of a ‘wreath’ (VWHYIDQRa) and of ‘being-garlanded’ (VWH IDQRXCVTDL) is used in 2 Timothy 2:5 and 4:8. 2.7.1. 2 Timothy 2:5 In 2 Timothy 2:5 the leading elder is admonished: … in the case of an athlete, no one is crowned without competing according to the rules.

Competing in accordance with the rules (QRPLYPZa DMTOHLCQ82) in order to win the wreath is the image that is presented to the elder so that he can cope with his duties. The Pauline image of fighting in a contest83 or in a battle is seen in this context as well as in other texts of the Pastoral Epistles.84 In order to be ‘compliant to rules’ one has keep ‘sound teaching’ in one’s mind, conduct of life and in instructing the faith.85 The wreath of

80 81

Eternal life: 1 Tim 1:16; 6:12; Tit 1:2; 3:7; future life: 1 Tim 4:8; real life: 6:19. Cf. Quinn (1990, 301): ‘What from the human viewpoint is called aphtharsia is from God’s viewpoint zǀƝ aiǀnios’. 82 1RPLYP Za is recorded in the New Testament only here and in 1 Tim 1:8, and DMTOHLCQ only in 2 Tim 2:5 (bis). 83 1 Cor 9:24–27; Phil 3:14; 4:1; 1 Thess 2:19; in addition Heb 10:32; 1 Pet 5:4. 84 1 Tim 1:18; 4:7f.; 6:12; 2 Tim 2:3f.; 4:7f. 85 Weiser (2003, 162): ‘die gesunde Lehre in Lebensführung und Glaubensunterweisung’.

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victory represents ‘the crown of (eschatological) salvation’86 i.e. it is granted by God.87 2.7.2. 2 Timothy 4:8 Towards the end of the same letter the wreath beckons the (fictive apostle Paul) author of the letter who is waiting for it, 2 Timothy 4:8: From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also so all who have longed for his appearing.

The letter moves towards a concluding climax (adverbial ORLSRYQ88), and its intention as a farewell letter becomes clearer. The bestowal of the wreath stands ahead of Paul as his life moves towards its end. The image of a floral wreath is transformed into a heavenly ‘wreath of righteousness’.89 The wreath ‘connotes righteousness but is granted to those who are righteous’.90 ‘That day’ means the day of judgment.91 The Lord Christ (1 Tim 4:1) will grant the ‘wreath of righteousness’ as a ‘righteous judge’.92 It is quite clear from whom the ‘righteousness’ emanates, although the addressee is to be seen before the preceding verse (with the illuminative statement: WKQ SLYVWLQ WHWKYUKND93). The wreath94 ‘is reserved for me’ (DMSRYNHLWDLY PRL95). That shows sureness, comfort, and confidence in the face of death insofar as the promise that illustrates the full of expectation of the author.96 In contrast to the image of a contest there is not only one prize to be given, but many prizes: The ‘wreath of righteousness’ ‘is promised not only to Paul but also to all who look forward eagerly to the Lord’s coming’.97 The ‘appearance’ of Jesus (HMSLIDYQHLD) denotes his Parousia:98 86 87

Collins (2002, 221). 6WHIDQRXCVTDL is a New Testament hapaxlegomenon. Insofar as VWHIDQRXCQ in Heb 2:7, 9 (both as a quotation of Ps 8:6) is said of God with regard to Jesus by reason of his suffering, one can see an eschatological conformity with Christ. 88 Cf. 2 Cor 13:11; 1 Thess 4:1; with the article: Phil 3:1; Eph 6:10; 2 Thess 3:1. 89 Marshall & Towner (2004, 807): ‘The award is a heavenly one’. ‘Wreath’ is more precise than ‘crown’. An opposite transformation into a wreath of mockery is shown in Mutschler (2008a, 87–104.113–116). 90 Marshall & Towner (2004, 808). 91 See below in section 2.9. 92 .ULWKYa is hapaxlegomenon in the Pauline Letters; other than this instance please see only Heb 12:23. 93 See in detail Mutschler (2010, 375–378). 94 6WHYIDQRa is a hapaxlegomenon in the New Testament. 95 Quinn & Wacker (2000, 787) translate ‘there lies in store for me’. 96 Cf. the analog use of NXYULRa and &ULVWRYa in Rom 14:7–9. 97 Marshall & Towner (2004, 809). 98 For future ‘appearance’ see below in section 2.12.

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‘His appearance is the fulfilment of Christian hope and the realization of salvation, the manifestation of God’s ultimate beneficence”.99 Remarkably, the phrase ‘to love’ (DMJDSDCQ), in a positive sense, only occurs in 2 Timothy 4:8 in the Pastoral Epistles.100 The perfect tense (with a resultative aspect) can only be explained from a retrospective position, expressed in the use of the phrase ‘that day’.101 The retrospective view could be an exhortation to long for the Parousia of Jesus and to love it, as well as to live one’s life as Paul lived it: fight the good fight, run in the race, ‘keep the faith’ (2 Tim 4:7). 2.8. Last Times – Last Days Both Letters to Timothy contain warning prophecies about the last days or end times: 1 Timothy 4:1–3a, 2 Timothy 3:1–9, and 4:3f. After examining these texts hermeneutical considerations will follow about exhortations in the form of end time prophecies. 2.8.1. 1 Timothy 4:1–3a In 1 Timothy 4:1–3a one can read: 1

Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teaching of demons, 2through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. 3They forbid marriage and demand abstinence from foods (…).

The Holy Spirit, who dwells ‘in us’ according to 2 Timothy 1:14,102 prophecies103 ‘expressly’ (U-KWZCa is a hapaxlegomenon in New Testament) the renunciation of faith,104 deceitful spirits and teaching, as well as an overdrawn ascetic ethic, which declines certain food and sexual intercourse105 during the ‘latter times’. The term HMQ X-VWHYURLa NDLURLCa is a 99 Collins (2002, 275). 100 For a negative sense

see 2 Tim 4:10. In contrast the noun DMJDYSK is recorded ten

times. 101 102

Weiser (2003, 309). 2 Tim 1:14. See in addition 1 Tim 3:16; 2 Tim 4:22; Tit 3:5. Only in 2 Tim 1:7 does ‘spirit’ appear in a negative sense; 1 Tim 4:1 is the only plural form. According to 1 Cor 7:40 Paul also has ‘the Spirit of God’, although not exclusively, see Rom 8:9–11; 1 Cor 14:4–16; Gal 3:5; 1 Thess 5:19. The Spirit’s activity in a community is restricted in the Pastoral Epistles to Tit 3:5, where Spirit and baptism are connected. 103 Irenaeus of Lyons argues similarly in Adv. Haer. III 16:2: providens Spiritus sanctus, thereto Mutschler (2006, 302–306). For the Jewish background of dualistic end time prophecies see Collins (2002, 113); Weiser (2003, 240f.). 104 For a detailed interpretation see Mutschler (2010, 319–321). 105 The identification of the renouncing people stays open, the subject of the heretics ‘geradezu demonstrativ allgemein’ (Roloff 1988, 220): for WLQHa see in summary

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hapaxlegomenon in the New Testament, although the idea of an ‘end time’ is recorded several times, e.g. through HMQHMVFDYWDLaK-PHYUDLa in 2 Timothy 3:1.106 In this context the ‘latter times’ have begun.107 Therefore the description of the substituting faith with wrong beliefs and behaviour is quite clear (‘expressly’, U-KWZCa), and the admonition against apostasy is repeated in the Letters to Timothy.108 It is thus more clearly understood why the leading elder is expected to strive on numerous occasions, even to the point of ‘struggle’.109 The community finds itself in the midst of the ‘apostasy’ (DMSRVWKYVRQWDLY WLQHa, 1 Tim 4:1) that is characteristic of the ‘latter times’: ‘what was prophesied as a fearsome future evil is now taking place”.110 It is therefore wise to respond quickly and clearly to these challenges, as they are outlined in 1 Timothy 4:3b–5. 2.8.2. 2 Timothy 3:1–9 The second Letter to Timothy (3:1–9) also prophesies ‘distressing times’ for the ‘latter day’: 1 You must understand this, that in the last days distressing times will come. 2For people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, brutes, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5holding to the outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid them! 6For among them are those who make their way into households and captivate silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, 7who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth. 8As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these people, of corrupt mind and counterfeit faith, also oppose the truth. 9But they will not make much progress, because, as in the case of those two men, their folly will become plain to everyone.

This end time prophecy also begins with a future orientation (HMQVWKYVRQ WDL, 2 Tim 3:1; H>VRQWDL, 3:2),111 similar to 1 Timothy 4:1 (DMSRVWKYVRQ WDL), although it focuses on problems and exhortations for the present. Mutschler (2010, 310f.). For the concrete ethical debate on Marriage and Food see Collins, (2002, 114–117) (Excursus 6). 106 See HMQ NDLUZC HMVFDYWZC, 1 Pet 1:5; regarding H>V FDWDLK-P HYUDL also see Acts 2:17; Heb 1:2; Jas 5:3; HMSL M HMVFDYWZQ WZCQ K-PHUZCQ, 2 Pet 3:3. The adjective X^V WHURa is recorded only in a varia lectio of Matt 21:31. 107 Similar to Marshall & Towner (2004, 538): ‘the present period is understood as belonging to the last days before the End’. 108 1 Tim 1:6, 19; 5:8; 6:(4f.), 10, 21; 2 Tim 2:18; 3:4–9; thereto Mutschler (2010, 265–270.307–318.365–371.385.392). 109 See more above in section 2.7. 110 Marshall & Towner (2004, 538). 111 The same fact for the next text to examine, 2 Tim 4:3f.: H>V WDL DMQ HY[ RQWDL HMSLVZUHXYVRXVLQDMSRVWUHY\RXVLQHMNWUDSKYVRQWDL.

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Formally it is introduced as a knowledge of revelation (WRXCWR GH JLYQZVNH), in analogy to the Spirit, who speaks ‘expressly’ according to 1 Timothy 4:1. ‘Distressing times’ (FDOHSRL NDLURLY) are predicted for the ‘latter days’, after which the longest of all vice catalogues follows.112 The intention of the catalogue is to strengthen the leading elder in his defensive attitude towards the present challenges (DMSRWUHYSRX is present tense113), rather than to analyze and predict future challenges.114 The Sinnspitze is clearly to ‘avoid them!’ (NDL WRXYWRXa DMSRWUHYSRX, 2 Tim 3:5c). When this is directed at the leading elder, DMSRWUHYSHLQ (hapaxlegomenon in NT) has a socially disciplining aspect: ‘the verb may simply mean that one should avoid contact with such people, but the force is surely stronger: they must be kept out of the congregation where they can exercise a bad influence on the others. Some kind of excommunication may be in mind. Indeed, it is difficult to see what else can be meant other than exclusion from fellowship’.115 Referring to Moses’ opponents (2 Tim 3:8) the text explains clearly, what one’s response should be to these people who oppose of the truth – it is ‘plain to everyone’ (H>NGKORa116 H>VWDL SDCVLQ): They ‘oppose the truth’, have a ‘corrupt mind’ and ‘counterfeit faith’ (3:8).117 But ‘they will not make much progress, because their folly118 will become plain to everyone’ (3:9). With H>VWDL (3:9), which implies sureness, the circle of future oriented forms, starting at the beginning (3:1f.), closes at the end. Thus, the inconsistency of all the opposing positions (and persons) will become plain ‘to everyone’. 2.8.3. 2 Timothy 4:3f. Finally in 2 Timothy 4:3f. a particular ‘time’ is prophesised: 3

For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, 4and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.

A motif of knowledge or revelation is absent here; no less than five grammatical future forms show that this is really a matter of prophecy. ‘For the

112 113

See in detail Weiser (2003, 241–246). Quinn & Wacker (2000, 710): ‘The present tense may have a durative aspect here, ‘Keep on repulsing such persons’. 114 Weiser (2003, 247): ‘Die Sinnspitze ist vielmehr ganz paränetisch ausgerichtet’. 115 Marshall & Towner (2004, 776). 116 2 Tim 3:9, Hapaxlegomenon in the New Testament; see also SURYGKORa, which is recorded twice in the New Testament: 1 Tim 5:24f. and Heb 7:14. 117 For an interpretation see Mutschler (2010, 365–368). 118 Marshall & Towner (2004, 780): ‘D> Q QRLD is generally used of human ignorance and linked with SRQKULYD’.

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time is coming’ (NDLURaR^WH119) – as a description of time, this reference is even more vague than in the two previous texts. Nevertheless it becomes quite clear as one reads further, that people will turn away from ‘sound teaching’ and the ‘truth’ in order to turn towards myths and false teaching.120 The motivation through low and different emotional needs (NDWD WDa LMGLYDa HMSLTXPLYDa NQKYTHLQ HMSLVZUHXYHLQ) discredits the prevention a priori. There is no clear explanation of the content of the rival teaching (‘myth’): ‘Nothing is said about the content of the teaching; it is stigmatised as being incredible’.121 This is a variation in comparison to the previous polemics in end time prophecies in the Pastoral Epistles. The consequences for the leading elder are outlined in the following verse (4:5). Preaching and a fulfilment of the mission or ministry follow sobriety in the first place. 2.8.4. Exhortations in the Form of End Time Prophecies Some hermeneutical considerations are reasonable in view of the fact that instructions for the present which are presented as end time prophecies are an appropriate way of dealing with controversial issues.122 The fact that exhortation for the present is presented in the form of end time prophecies has some pragmatic effect. However, what is the effect? What is provoked by the ‘Schreckbild einer bevorstehenden schlimmen Zeit’?123 For answering this question we use the headwords certainty, motivation, and sense. (1) The literary concept of a prophecy enables certainty and sureness about developments that are to come. Even though a revelation seems to be future oriented, it often has an interpretation and meaning for the present situation. With regard to the future the certainty of victory, with a ‘good’ outcome, grows despite present challenges. (2) The literary concept of a prophecy creates motivation to act. It raises a willingness to sustain (i.e., a willingness to be tolerant, despite frustrations) and welds together all the available strengths of a community (akin to the formation of forming a laager of protection). Thus, one could find the will to deflect or avoid even authoritative challenges if one’s perspective on the future and the present is shaped by a belief in an end time prophecy. (3) The literary concept of a 119 .DLURY a in the singular expresses a certain point of time, as 2 Tim 4:6 shows. For the plural use see 1 Tim 2:6; 4:1; 6:15; 2 Tim 3:1; Tit 1:3. 120 For ‘sound’ see Mutschler (2010, 219); for GLGDVNDOLYD (Mutschler 2010, 241 n. 120); for DMOKYTHLD (Mutschler 2010, 142f.); for the comprehension of PXCTRa see Weiser (2003, 303f.). 121 Marshall & Towner (2004, 803). 122 For instance the church father of the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons, uses this stylistic device almost forty times, see Mutschler (2004, 123–125). 123 Weiser (2003, 302) (italic in the original).

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prophecy enables one to make sense of the present. The present gains greater meaning and insight as part of an end time ‘drama’. Thereby the present takes on the character of a prelude before the coming of God as king.124 All three the perspectives support each other. Resisting and holding out produces motivation. This increases one’s resolve in dealing with a actual challenges in the present context etc. 2.9. The Saying of ‘That Day’ The second Letter of Timothy talks about ‘that day’ in three verses: 1:12, 1:18 and 4:8.125 These three records form a kind of an eschatological inclusio, which is placed around the farewell letter. 2.9.1. 2 Timothy 1:12 At the beginning the fictitious Paul writes about his appointment as ‘a herald and an apostle and a teacher’ (2 Tim 1:11). He goes on (1:12):126 (…) and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what is entrusted to me.

At the end of his self-declaration the writer alludes indirectly to Romans 1:16: He is not ashamed127 (of his suffering128 or of the gospel which was mentioned in 2 Tim 1:10129) and he knows in whom he has put his personal trust, it is placed in God.130 God will guard the entrusted good (SDUDTKYNK), which signifies ‘the totality of Paul’s teaching’131 ‘until that day’. 7KQ SDUDTKYNKQ IXODYWWHLQ in this instance, belongs to the power of God, while shortly later Timothy is requested to do exactly the same (WKQNDOKQSDUDTKYNKQIXYOD[RQ)132 ‘with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us’. The deposited good which is placed within ‘faithful people’ (2 124 125 126 127

Collins (2002, 244): ‘the times just prior to the appearance of God as king’. For further discussion of this point please refer to section 2.7.2. Better than: ‘what I have entrusted to him’ (NRSV). Marshall & Towner (2004, 709 n. 69): ‘The verb can be used absolutely as here’. The allusion to Rom 1:16 is continued through GXQDWRYaHMVWLQ in the further course of 2 Tim 1:12, cf. GXYQDPLa JDU THRXC HMV WLQ, Rom 1:16b; cf. in addition SDQWL WZC SLVW HXYRQWL, ibid., with Z_ SHSLYVWHXND, 2 Tim 1:12. Cf. also PK RX?QHMSDLVFXQTKCaWR PDU WXYULRQWRXCNXULYRXK-PZCQ, 2 Tim 1:8. 128 See also in the context WK Q D^ O XVLYQPRXRXM N HM SDLVFXY QTK, 2 Tim 1:16. 129 For the reasons of this reference see Mutschler (2010, 354 n. 62). With regard to suffering and testimony see in the context PKRX?QHMSDLVFXQTKCaNWO, 2 Tim 1:8. 130 For interpretation of SHSLYVWHXND see Mutschler (2010, 356f.). 131 Marshall & Towner (2004, 711). 132 2 Tim 1:14; similar WK Q  SDUDTKY NKQ IXYO D[RQ, 1 Tim 6:20; furthermore L^ QD WDXCWDIXODY[ Ka, 1 Tim 5:21.

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Tim 2:2), with Timothy being one of them, is ultimately protected by God133 ‘until that day’. ‘That day’ is ‘the all-embracing day of God’s final judgment’134 and not the day of Paul’s death. ‘That day’ is a global event, which is combined with the end of the present order of the world: ‘the final day of the present world order’.135 Up to that day the entrusted good is guarded and therefore the gospel will be announced. This is a comfort not only for the correspondent in difficult times, or in anticipated times of suffering, but also for all in the community, i.e. leading elders and members. 2.9.2. 2 Timothy 1:18 In 2 Timothy 1:18a the correspondent writes with regard to Onesiphoros, who is mentioned in 1:16 and 4:19: May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day!

The exemplary attitude of Onesiphoros, his willingness to help the writer in Rome and Ephesus, is reciprocated and rewarded by the writer with good wishes.136 In that wish the ‘Lord’ (NXYULRa) is mentioned twice. This linguistic equivocation of ‘Lord’ is only at first glance ‘curious’137 or ‘strange’.138 It is documented several times in the Bible139 and can be understood as follows: ‘May the Lord Jesus Christ allow him to find mercy from God our Lord in eternity’.140 Even before that the writer wishes ‘mercy’ (H>OHRa) upon the whole ‘house of Onesiphoros’.141 Therefore the 133 134

Cf. Mutschler (2010, 355); for SDUDTKYNK see also Weiser (2003, 125–128). G.W. Knight (1992, 379). See HMQHMNHLYQK WKC K-PHYUD, 2 Tim 1:18 and 4:8; K-PHYUD in 1 Tim 5:5; 2 Tim 1:3; 3:1; HMQWKC K-PHYUD HMNHLYQK, 2 Thess 1:10. For the Pauline background of ‘that day, the ‘day’, the ‘day of the Lord’, ‘day of Christ’ etc. see Rom 2:16; 1 Cor 5:5; 2 Cor 1:14; Phil 1:6; 1:10 (HLMa!); 2:16; 1 Thess 5:2, 4f., 8; 2 Thess 1:10; 2:2; Rom 2:5 (K-PHYUD RMUJKCa = dies irae); see in addition 2 Pet 1:19; Mt 7:22; 24:36; Lk 21:34; for the OT background see already Isa 2:11–17; Hos 1:4f.; Joel 2:1, 11; 3:4; Amos 2:16; 5:18–20; 8:3, 9; Zeph 1:7, 14; Zech 14:1. 135 Collins (2002, 211). 136 According to J.A. Bengel (1860, 547) HX-UHLCQ (2 Tim 1:18) ‘answers’ (respondet) the preceding HX_UHQ, 1:17. Similar Quinn & Wacker (2000, 616). 137 Marshall & Towner (2004, 720). Quinn & Wacker (2000, 616) call it ‘certain harsh awkwardness’ and ‘roughness’. 138 See Weiser (2003, 141): ‘befremdlich’. 139 The best-known parallel should be Ps 110:1. In Adv. Haer. III 6:1 Irenaeus of Lyons, the theologian from Minor Asia, takes such texts (Gen 19:24; Ps 45:7f.; 50:1; 82:1, 6; 110:1, see in addition Adv. Haer. III 10:6; 12:2; Epid. 85) as a starting point for explanations about theology, especially Christology. For Ps 110:1 see already Mk 12:36 parr. Mt 22:44 and Lk 20:42; Acts 2:34. 140 Cf. Weiser (2003, 141): ‘Der Herr Jesus Christus lasse ihn Erbarmen finden vor Gott dem Herrn in Ewigkeit’. 141 'Z Y K H> O HRaR-  NXYU LRaWZC  M2 QKVLIRY U RXRL> NZ, 2 Tim 1:16.

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assumption that Onesiphoros is already dead142 is neither necessary nor probable.143 Thus the topic of this wish should not be misconstrued as an intercession for the dead.144 In fact such a wish is even more timely and blessed for the living than it is for the dead, and certainly it is the best wish one can actually have for someone.145 Correspondingly the addressee (who is thought to be alive) is wished mercy (H>OHRa) at the beginning of both Letters to Timothy (1 Tim 1:2; 2 Tim 1:2146). The eschatological culmination ‘on that day’ (2 Tim 1:12) is repeated in a slightly varied form insofar as the correspondent wishes blessing upon the addressee, only what he (the fictitious) Paul was sure of himself. By adding this into his letters he implicitly encourages ‘a spirit of receptivity among his correspondents’.147 2.10. Court/to Judge Forensic language referring to a court or judgment is found in the Pastoral Epistles in 1 Timothy 3:6; 5:12; 5:24f., and 2 Timothy 4:1. Moreover NULY QHLQ occurs in Titus 3:12 (NHYNULND, resultative perfect), but with the meaning of ‘decide’ without being eschatologically connoted. 2.10.1. 1 Timothy 3:6 Within the bischofsspiegel of 1 Timothy 3:2–7 the following requirement is made to the office bearer (1 Tim 3:6): He must not be a recent convert, or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation (NULYPD) of the devil.

A bishop shall explicitly not be a ‘newly-planted’ (QHRYIXWRa). Although this term is a hapaxlegomenon in the New Testament, it seems to be easily understandable and in common parlance for the recipients of the Pastoral Epistles. A metaphorical understanding of plants (IXWHXYHLQ) is already found in 1 Corinthians 3:6–9.148 If ‘newly-planted’ is interpreted with regard to the endurance of membership in the community, 149 then this dis142 143 144 145

Brox (1969, 239). Oberlinner (1995, 59f.). Against Holtz (1966, 163): ‘Fürbitte für Tote’. Cf. Weiser (2003, 140): ‘der Gebetswunsch für Lebende ebenso aktuell wie für Verstorbene’, ‘den besten Wunsch (…), den man überhaupt für einen Menschen hegen kann’. 146 Aside H>O HRa is only recorded in Tit 3:5. 147 Collins (2002, 218). 148 See also Col 2:7: ‘rooted’ in Christ (HMUUL]ZPHYQRL); furthermore Isa 5:1–7 (v. 7 maybe metaphorical); Jer 2:21; Ps 1:3. In LXX Ps 127:3 and 143:7 children are called QHRYIXWD; cf. in addition Job 14:9f. 149 Roloff (1988, 160): ‘die Dauer der Zugehörigkeit zur Gemeinde’.

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plays evidence of a religion based upon tradition and not of a religion based upon conversion.150 This fact gives some insight into the dating of the Epistle: If this is the case then the Pastoral Epistles were not written in the first decades of Christianity, when the faith only consisted of ‘newlyplanted’ believers. The ‘planting’ may be identified either (internally – spiritually) with conversion or (externally – symbolically) with christening. In any case a bishop should not be a recent convert. What is the danger that threatens in this instance? 7XIRXCVTDL is also recorded in 1 Timothy 6:4 and 2 Timothy 3:4 in the New Testament. In both cases it relates to false teachers. Therefore the meaning of ‘being deceived and blinded through heresy’ is plausible.151 A complementary supplement to 1 Timothy 3:6 is found in 4:12–16, where the example of the leading elder is displayed: Youthfulness is less important a qualification for the office of an elder than the ability to conserve and cultivate sound Christian teaching and church life. ‘To fall into the condemnation of the devil’ ( HLMa NULYPD HMPSLYSWHLQ WRXC GLDERYORX, 3:6) is a condensed expression in terms of both language and content. It can be understood in relation to its proximity to the following verse (HLMa RMQHLGLVPRQ HMPSLYSWHLQ NDL SDJLYGD WRXC GLDERYORX, 3:9).152 The ‘snare of the devil’ (SDJLa WRXC GLDERYORX, 1 Tim 3:9) is recorded in the New Testament only in 2 Timothy 2:26.153 Here it designates ‘lively catching’ (]ZJUHLCQ154) of somebody and subjugation of his will under the devil. One can escape from the diabolic snare and the subjugation under the devil’s will through a sobering, or awakening (DMQDQKYIHLQ) and turning back to an understanding of the truth (PHWDYQRLD HLMa HMSLJQ ZVLQ DMOKTHLYDa). Both of which come from God. In 1 Timothy 6:9 the ‘snare’ (SDJLYa155) is mentioned in the same breath as ‘temptation’ (SHL UDVPRYa) and ‘many senseless and harmful desires’, which ‘plunge people into ruin and destruction’. If the outcome of the ‘snare’, and the ‘snare of the devil’ (1 Tim 3:7), are sufficiently and clearly described with the help of 2 Timothy 2:26 and 1 Timothy 6:9, then it is quite clear; the ‘devil’ can only stand for what one reads in 1 Timothy 3:6:156 for a fate which is diffi150 151 152 153 154

Wolter (2010, 16–18): ‘Traditionsreligion’, ‘Bekehrungsreligion’. Roloff (1988, 161): ‘durch Irrlehre getäuscht und verblendet (…) werden’. In the same sense as Collins (2002, 85). For an interpretation also see Mutschler (2010, 136f.). It is only recorded in Luke 5:10 elsewhere in the New Testament; the context is the calling of the first disciples and Peter’s symbolic fishing. 155 Or: ‘trap’, see Lk 21:34f.; Rom 11:9 (quotation of Ps 69:23). 156 Also Marshall & Towner (2004, 482) see the sense of 1 Tim 3:6 ‘probably determined by v. 7 and 2 Tim 2:26 where the reference is clearly to the devil’; Marshall & Towner (2004, 483): ‘the two references to the devil bring together the complementary ideas of coming under his sway and sharing in his condemnation’.

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cult to escape (SDJLYa SHLUDVPRYa HMSLTXPLYD), for obfuscation of the mind and intellect (cf. WXIRXCVTDL) and for apostasy from the ‘cognition of truth’.157 In summary, it leads one to negate the faith in the sense of denying a personal and holistic confidence in Christ and God. Thus the ‘devil’ (GLDYERORa) designates the personification of intense confusion and disarrangement,158 which is a danger for a ‘newly-planted’ believer, if he rises to a leadership position within the church. The ‘condemnation of the devil’ (or by the devil) (1 Tim 3:6) is not mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament. In fact, and in principle, it is usually only God who is able to condemn; to judge, and the last judgment is exclusively reserved for God. Therefore the ‘condemnation of the devil’ (NULYPD WRXC GLDERYORX) should be understood as a linguistic abbreviation: It is only God who can judge, but in this special case one has to fear a negative outcome, a condemnation.159 Therefore the outcome of the eschatological court is foreseeable if a bishop falls away. For this reason the term ‘condemnation of the devil’160 is an abbreviation. For the protection of the bishop and the church no recently christened or converted, no ‘newly-planted’ believer should become a bishop.161 Apart from GLGDNWLNRYa (‘an apt teacher’), this is the first specifically Christian demand for a bishop in the whole bischofsspiegel of 1 Timothy 3:2–7.162 1 Timothy 3:6f. and 2 Timothy 2:26 are the only records for the use of GLDYERORa as a substantive in the Pastoral Epistles. An adjectival use in the sense of ‘slanderous’ is recorded in 1 Timothy 3:11, 2 Timothy 3:3, and Titus 2:3. The remarkable fact, that GLDYERORa is not mentioned in the older (Proto-) Pauline letters, and the fact of the frequency of GLDYERORa in the Pastoral Epistles can also be read as a hint of their authorship and dating.163 With regards to eschatology the author of the Pastoral Epistles shows through his frequent use of GLDYERORa ‘that he considers the times in

157 158 159

For this typical term in the Pastoral Epistles see Mutschler (2010, 133–145). Cf. GLDEDYOOHLQ, ‘disarrange’, ‘infamize’. Marshall & Towner (2004, 482): ‘judicial verdict (…) with the accompanying condemnation and subsequent punishment’. 160 Cf. Mt 25:41. In my opinion the genitive is a genitive of purpose or effect, see F. Blass & A. Debrunner (1984, 137, § 166:1). Quinn & Wacker (2000, 265) vote for ‘a subjective genitive, insofar as Satan has at his disposal and administers all the evils which afflict humankind, even death’. 161 Quinn & Wacker (2000, 267–271) indicate ‘a striking structural parallel between the Qumran mebaqqer and the bishop of the PE’ (269). 162 Cf. Collins (2002, 84f.): ‘the fifteen other qualities are found in many different lists of virtues in Hellenistic literature’. 163 'LDY E RORa is recorded only in Eph 4:27; 6:11, and Heb 2:14 in the remaining letters of the Corpus Paulinum day of.

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which he was living as the final times, times in which the age long opposition between God and the devil was coming to a decisive end’.164 2.10.2. 1 Timothy 5:12 The second – and last – record for NULYPD in the Pastoral Epistles is found in the fifth chapter, in 1 Timothy 5:12: 11

But refuse to put younger widows on the list; for when their sensual desires alienate them from Christ, they want to marry, 12and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge.

Younger widows are defined in context as those who are younger than sixty years (5:9). If younger widows decide to remarry as a result of their desire they incur judgment (H>FRXVDL NULYPD). This is not a matter of a positive judicial confirmation (i.e., a positive judgment), yet at the same time it does not construe damage to the individual’s public reputation,165 rather it is a condemnation,166 as the ending of the sentence shows: Because they ‘have violated their first pledge’ (R^WL WKQ SUZYWKQ SLYVWLQ KMTHYWKVDQ167). In interpreting this phrase several questions remain; these questions are posed elsewhere and to some extent (even tentatively) answered.168 The image of condemnation and judgment serves as a credible threat of force in order to refuse the acceptance of ‘younger widows’ into the rank of widows. It is difficult to estimate whether this condemnation has an eschatological character in the strictest sense. But if somebody gets earnestly alienated from Christ,169 the consequence of condemnation is not unavoidable.170 The associated interpretation of NULYPD in 1 Timothy 3:6 demonstrates the possibility of condemnation as well.171 2.10.3. 1 Timothy 5:24f. 1 Timothy 5:24f. deals with the relationship between actions, the person, and court or judgment (NULYVLa): 164 165

Collins (2002, 85). Cf. Johnson (2001, 266): ‘In this case, it appears as the court of public reputation. Thus the phrase might fairly be rendered as they earn disapproval’. Quinn & Wacker (2000, 442) plead for an interpretation as divine and human condemnation. 166 Roloff (1988, 297 n. 378): ‘göttliches Strafurteil’. 167 For SLYV WLa in the sense of ‘faithfulness’ see already Gal 5:22. 168 Mutschler (2010, 329–332). 169 Cf. Collins (2002, 141): ‘Were a Christian widow to marry a non-Christian and succumb to the social pressure to follow the gods of her husband, she would have abandoned her faith in Christ. Thus, she would deserve condemnation’. 170 J. Calvin, (66): ‘Urteil des ewigen Todes’. 171 Cf. also the divine court in 1 Cor 11:29–34: NULYP D, 11:29; HLMa NULYP D, 11:34.

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24

The sins of some people are conspicuous and precede them to judgment, while the sins of others follow them there. 25So also good works are conspicuous; and even when they are not, they cannot remain hidden.

The passage presents an image of a judicial proceeding,172 some sins (D-PDUWLYDL173) are so obvious, that they are visible as one moves into the courtroom,174 while others are initially hidden175 and only become known at a later stage: ‘The point is that all sins, overt and secret, will be judged by God”.176 7LQZCQ DMQTUZSZCQ respectively WLZVLYQ refers in an indefinite way to persons, so that on the one hand one feels separated from these persons and on the other hand some form of connection takes place for the reader that leads to a self-critical identification one’s self.177 The same scene is subsequently transferred in the style of wisdom to ‘good works’ (WD H>UJD WD NDODY178): Some precede the person,179 others are made known at a future date;180 they cannot remain hidden permanently. The terms ‘sins’, ‘good works’, and ‘judgment’ show that it is not a human proceeding but the divine, eschatological forum.181 Thereby nothing is hidden, everything is revealed.182 The eschatological correlation between a person and his or her deeds are also portrayed to both sides in the early Christian Letter of Barnabas:183 The Lord will judge the world without partiality. All will receive according to what they have done: if they are good, their righteousness will precede them; if they are evil, the wages of doing evil will go before them.

172 173 174

Roloff (1988, 316). Recorded elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles only in 1 Tim 5:22 and 2 Tim 3:6. Johnson (2001, 282): ‘the people’s sins march before them into the courtroom – as witnesses’. .ULYVLa is hapaxlegomenon in the Pastoral Epistles; for Pauline Letters see only 2 Thess 1:5, Heb 9:27, and 10:27. 175 .UXYS WHLQ in the Pauline Letters: Col 3:3; 1 Tim 5:25; Heb 11:23. 176 Marshall & Towner (2004, 625). 177 Mutschler (2010, 311): ‘eine Konkretisierung durch den Leser aus seinem eigenen Umfeld (bis hin zur selbstkritischen Feststellung mit dem eigenen Spiegelbild) ermöglicht’. Ibid.: ‘Das Indefinitpronomen WLQHa ist in dieser Form geradezu ein Synonym für Apostaten’. 178 Cf. 1 Tim 5:10; 6:18; Tit 2:7, 14; 3:8, 14; in singular: 1 Tim 3:1; with DM JDTRYQ: 2:10; 5:10. 179 .DL  SURVSRUHXY V HWDLH> P SURVTHY Q VRXK-  GLNDLRVXY Q KVRX, Isa 58:8. 180 Similar WD JDU H>UJD DXMWZCQ  DMNRORXTHLC PHW M DXMWZCQ , Rev 14:13. Except for 1 Tim 5:24f. 3URYGKORa is only recorded in Heb 7:14 in the New Testament; cf. in addition the NT hapaxlegomenon H>NGKORa, 2 Tim 3:9. 181 Roloff (1988, 316). 182 Cf. 1 Cor 4:5; Mk 4:22 parr. Mt 10:26; Lk 8:17; 12:2. 183 Barn. 4:12 (390f. Holmes).

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2.10.4. 2 Timothy 4:1 In 2 Timothy 4:1 the final instruction of (the fictitious) Paul to the leading elder Timothy begins: In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you.

The main clause which appears at the beginning of the verse in the Greek (GLDPDUWXYURPDLHMQZYSLRQWRXCTHRXCNDL&ULVWRXCM,KVRXC184), is a solemn formula, which is only found elsewhere towards the end of the letter in 1 Timothy 5:21.185 This solemn invocation186 emphasizes the particular charge before God187 and gives special weight to the injunction that follows. Three eschatological accents enforce this. The catchwords are in the sequence of the text: (1) PHYOOHLQ, (2) NULYQHLQ and (3) HMSLIDYQHLD. How are they to be understood? (1) ‘Who is to judge’ (WRXC PHYOORQWRa NULYQHLQ) is a periphrastic paraphrase for the future participle, as is found in 1 Timothy 1:16 (WZCQ PHOORYQWZQ SLVWHXYHLQ).188 The paraphrase ‘may convey the thought of purpose and certain fulfilment more strongly than a plain fut.’.189 (2) .ULYQHLQ in the sense of ‘final, divine judgment by Christ’ only occurs here in the Pastoral Epistles.190 That Christ will come ‘to judge the living and the dead’ (NULYQHLQ]ZCQWDaNDL QHNURYa) became part of the credo of the church. This is evidenced by the consensus between several authors of the New Testament.191 Before the judgment itself takes place there will be a resurrection of the dead. Hence Jesus Christ is portrayed as judge of the living and the dead in the future. 184

Concerning the sequence &ULVWRYaM,KVRXC in the Pastoral Epistles see Mutschler (2010, 124f.). 185 See further GLDPDUWXY U RPDLHM Q ZY S LRQWRXC  THRXC, 2 Tim 2:14; GLDPDUWXURXC V TDL is recorded in the Corpus Paulinum only in 1 Thess 4:6 and Heb 2:6, in both cases absolutely used. See in addition HMQZYSLRQ SDYQWZQ, 1 Tim 5:20; HMQZYSLRQ SROOZCQ, 6:12; HMQZYSLRQWRXCTHRXCNWO, 6:13. Cf. KZK\\QSO, 1 Sam 7:6 and often in the Psalms. 186 Marshall & Towner (2004, 798): ‘a remarkably solemn adjuration’. This reminds Collins (2002, 266) of a ‘solemn oath’. 187 Weiser (2003, 298): ‘die besondere Verantwortlichkeit vor Gott’. 188 For the remaining records of PHYO OHLQ (1 Tim 1:16; 4:8 and 6:19) see above in section 2.2. 189 Marshall & Towner (2004, 798): ‘A sort of auxiliary fut.’. 190 Marshall & Towner (2004, 798). See otherwise only Tit 3:12 (NHYNULND) in the sense of ‘decide’. 191 .ULWK a  ]ZY Q WZQ NDL  QHNUZC Q, Act 10:42; NDL QHNUZCQ NDL ]ZYQ WZQ, Rom 14:9; NULCQDL ]ZYQWZQ NDL QHNUZCQ, 1 Pet 4:5 and Nicene Creed (Symbolum Nicaenum, cf. H. Denzinger & A. Schönmetzer (1976, 52 [= Nr 125]).

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(3) TKQ HMSLIDYQHLDQ is attached by a Greek accusative (Accusativus graecus). The possessive pronoun DXMWRXC can only refer back to &ULVWRXC M,KVRXC. Three statements are thus combined with Christ in 2 Timothy 4:1: He is the future judge over the living and the dead, he will appear, and he will erect his kingdom.192 Although all of the three point into the future, they produce a strong motivation for the present through making one aware of the future. Thus eschatological moments achieve a paraenetic impetus and a paraenetic character. One realizes that the present is lived in relation to the future, and thus one cannot simply live in accordance with the demands of the present context. In sketching a picture of the future the writer impacts the present. Not only God and Christ, but also the final judge, the parousia, and the kingdom of God are invoked as witnesses (GLDPDUWXYUR PDL) for the admonitions that will follow (2 Tim 4:2–5).193 Finally the coming ‘kingdom’ of Christ will be examined once we have considered the records of his future ‘appearance’. 2.11. The Coming Kingdom of Christ %DVLOHLYD is found in two texts in the Pastoral Epistles. Both are in the last chapter of the second Letter to Timothy (4:1.18), the final chapter of the Corpus Pastorale. 2.11.1. 2 Timothy 4:1 In 2 Timothy 4:1,194 the future appearance of Christ and his judgment offer further insight into the eschatology of the Pastoral Epistles. If ‘appearance’ and ‘kingdom’ are presented in relation to each other, then they should be interpreted in that manner as well: NDL WKQ HSLIDQHLYDQ DXMWRXC NDL WKQ EDVLOHLYDQ DXMWRXC.195 Hence not only Christ’s ‘appearance’ has to be thought of as future, but also his ‘kingdom’ (EDVLOHLYDQ DXMWRXC). This means that in order to understand EDVLOHLYD one needs to consider that it is

192

For unfolding EDVLOHLYD and HMSLIDYQHLD with regard to content see below in sections 2.11., and 2.12. 193 Cf. the rule of two or three witnesses in Deut 17:6; 19:15. Johnson (2001, 428): ‘After the verb diamartyromai the accusative stands for the thing sworn by’. 194 See above in the preceding section 2.10.4. 195 In contrast to Collins (2002, 268), who sees ‘a kind of chiasm’: ‘To God corresponds the Judeo-Christian notion of kingdom’. Again Johnson (2001, 428) interprets it in another way: ‘by the appearance of his kingdom’; similar Quinn & Wacker (2000, 769): ‘manifest kingdom or royal epiphany’. But the double conjunction NDLYNDLY indicates a parallel construction.

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a EDVLOHLYD Christi instead of a EDVLOHLYD WRXC THRXC,196 and at the same time that EDVLOHLYD is not a present but a future kingdom. According to 2 Timothy 4:1 the EDVLOHLYD begins in with the future appearance of Christ, i.e. with the parousia.197 The author ties in with the Pauline usage of EDVLOHLYD and transcends it at the same time. According to 1 Corinthians 15:24 Christ hands over the kingdom to the father ‘in the end’: HL?WD WR WHYORa R^WDQ SDUDGLGZC WKQ EDVLOHLYDQ WZC THZC NDL SDWULY. On the one hand it is similar to 2 Timothy 4:1 (a kingdom of Christ),198 on the other hand the kingdom already exists before that end. If Christ hands it over to the father, then the EDVLOHLYD is already in the present. However in 2 Timothy 4:1 the EDVLOHLYD of Christ has a clear future orientation: At his appearing Christ will visibly establish his ‘kingdom’ (his Reich). 2.11.2. 2 Timothy 4:18 A similar understanding of EDVLOHLYD is found in 2 Timothy 4:18.199 The Kyrios will save the writer of the letter ‘in his heavenly kingdom’ (VZYVHL HLMaWKQEDLOHLYDQDXMWRXC WKQHMSRXUDYQLRQ). Both the future form and the attribute ‘heavenly’ indicate that the kingdom will be a future one, here again it is understood to be the kingdom of Christ and not of God.200 It remains open for consideration whether the ‘kingdom’ and the rule of Christ should be thought of simultaneously as a present and future sphere of salvation in the sense of EDVLOHLYDDXMWRXC K- HMSLYJHLRa201 In this regard the texts are silent. But the expectation of a heavenly ‘kingdom’ motivates on to live an appropriate and consistent life in the present (2 Tim 4:2,5: eight imperatives!), particularly in light of the anticipated challenges (4:3f.).202

196 Thus in the synoptic gospels, see alone in Mk 1:15; 4:11, 26, 30; 9:1, 47; 10:14f., 23–25; 12:34; 14:25; 15:43. 197 Marshall & Towner (2004, 799): ‘the Lord’s heavenly kingdom, the full manifestation of which is associated with the parousia’. 198 Just as in Mt 16:28; Col 1:13; a medial position in Eph 5:5 (kingdom of Christ and of God); the evolution proceeded farthest in 2 Pet 1:11: K- HL>VRGRa HLMa WKQ DLMZYQLRQ EDVLOHLYDQWRXC (…) &ULVWRXC. 199 See in detail already above in section 2.3.3. 200 Summarily Weiser (2003, 300): ‘Dass also Christi Herrschaft und Reich auf seine endzeitliche Epiphanie folgen und von da an ewigen Bestand haben werden, geht aus den Texten deutlich hervor’. 201 M( SLYJHLRa is not recorded in the Pastoral Epistles, while HMSRXUDYQ LRa is a hapaxlegomenon and the only word of its word cluster. 202 Oberlinner (1995, 154f.), goes further when he sees a ‘Verschiebung des Stellenwertes der Eschatologie mit der Verlagerung der Aufgaben und des Interesses in die Gegenwart der Gemeinden’.

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2.12. The Coming ‘Appearance’ of Christ The word cluster ‘appearance’ (HMSLIDYQHLD) is recorded in various texts in the Pastoral Epistles.203 Only one of eleven records is not christological, but concerns the leading elder.204 The majority of the records refer to the past appearance and revelation of Jesus Christ.205 In all three letters the impending parousia Christi is called an ‘appearance’: 1 Timothy 6:14, 2 Timothy 4:1,8,206 and Titus 2:13. In all four cases the substantive HMSLIDY QHLD is used.207 2.12.1. 1 Timothy 6:14 The last exhortation in the first Letter to Timothy concerning the addressee is found in 6:14f.: 14

Keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15which he will bring about at the right time – he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

To ‘keep the commandment’ (WKUHLCQWKQHMQWROKYQ) doesn’t refer back to an ethical commandment, instead it refers to the mandate to preach.208 This is valid until the parousia of Jesus. The responsibility for leading the community, which was temporarily transferred to Timothy according to the fictivity of the letter until Paul’s return,209 is thus eschatologically extended and has a Christological instead of an apostolic foundation. Roloff explains: ‘Nicht Paulus, sondern Jesus Christus selbst ist der, der in letzter Instanz dem Amtsauftrag sein Maß und sein Ziel gibt. Der eigentliche 203 204 205

In addition to HMSLIDYQHLD also HMSLIDLYQHLQ, IDQHURYa, and IDQHURXCQ. 1 Tim 4:15: L^QDVRXK-SURNRSKIDQHUDK?SDCVLQ. All of them are verbal with one exception: R^aHMIDQHUZYTKHMQVDUNLY, 1 Tim 3:16; (scilicet FDYULQ) IDQHUZTHLCVDQ GH QXCQ GLD WKCa HMSLIDQHLDa WRXC 6ZWKCURa K-PZCQ M,KVRXC &ULVWRXC, 2 Tim 1:10 (bis); HMIDQHYUZVHQGH NDLURLCaLMGLYRLaWRQORYJRQDXMWRXC, Tit 1:3; HMSHIDYQK JDU K- FDYULa WRXC THRXC VZWKYULRa, Tit 2:11; R^WH GH K- FUKVWRYWKa NDL K- ILODQTUZSLYDHMSHIDYQKWRXC VZWKCURaK-PZCQTHRXC, 3:4. In each case (except of 1 Tim 3:16) the context is soteriological. 206 For these two texts see sections 2.10.4 above. (2 Tim 4:1), and 2.7.2. (2 Tim 4:8). 207 Elsewhere the substantive HMSLIDYQ HLD is recorded only in 2 Tim 1:10, in traditional wording and in a non-future sense. Except for the five records in the Pastoral Epistles HMSLIDYQHLD is only found 2 Thess 2:8 in the remainder of the New Testament only, where it also denotes the parousia of Christ: WKC HMSLIDQHLYD WKCaSDURXVLYDaDXMWRXC. For the background of HMSLIDYQHLD with regard to traditions in Hellenism and the Jewish Hellenism see Marshall & Towner (2004, 293–295); Collins (2002, 202f.). 208 Roloff (1988, 352): ‘Amtsauftrag’; Marshall & Towner (2004, 665): ‘commission’. For the charism of a minister see 1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6. Ngayihembako (1994, 293) understands HMQWROKY in a more general sense: ‘la foi chrétienne dont la substance essentielle est la confession de la messianité et de la Seigneurie de Jésus’. 209 See 1 Tim 1:3; 3:14f.

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terminus ad quem dieses Amtsauftrags ist nicht die Wiederkehr des Apostels, sondern die Erscheinung Jesu Christi’.210 The word of the gospel was entrusted to the apostle and his disciples during Christ’s past first appearance; the same word is to be proclaimed until Christ’s future and second appearance, concretely: far beyond Timothy. The second ‘manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ’211 will be revealed at a time defined solely by God (NDLURCa LMGLYRLa GHLY[HL212). Because the appearance is connected with the court (2 Tim 4:1) as well as with the granting of the ‘wreath of righteousness’ (2 Tim 4:8), this outlook motivates to a faithful fulfilment of the mandate ‘without spot or blame’.213 In other words, it motivates everyone who is given the mandate in the same manner throughout the history of the church. It is a promise and a comfort to know that God determines the time of the future appearance of Christ. Through changing the style of the text into a hymn the certainty, reliability, and weight of the future appearance of Christ are stressed. Thus the current context is influenced by the consciousness that arises from reporting the mandate (‘without spot or blame’, hendiadys) as well as through the confidence (NDLURCa LMGLYRLa GHLY[HL), that ‘he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords’214 will bring the parousia. 2.12.2. Titus 2:13 In a theologically dense section of Titus, 2:11–14, the future hope of the Pastoral Epistles is formulated in the form of a creed, 2:13: We wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Expectation (SURVGHFRYPHQRL, 2:13) is mentioned as a third effect of the ‘salvation bringing grace of God’ (K- FDYULaWRXC THRXCVZWKYULRa, Tit 2:11) after education (SDLGHXYRXVD, 2:12) and change of life (DMUQKVDYPHQRL

210 211

Roloff (1988, 353). See in detail Collins (2002, 202–209): ‘The Appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ’ (Excursus). The long form of the title is common in eschatological contexts: Tit 2:13; 2 Thess 2:1.14; 3:18; 1 Thess 5:9, 23. 212 Cf. NDLURLCa LMGLYRLa, 1 Tim 2:6; Tit 1:3. For Irenaeus’ doctrine of ‘adapted time’ (apto in tempore) see Mutschler (2006, 284 n. 28). 213 While D> V SLORa is a hapaxlegomenon here, DM Q HSLY O KPSWRa is recorded only in the first Letter to Timothy: 3:2; 5:7; 6:14. A bishop of the church, widows in their widow rank and the mandate to herald the gospel should ever be ‘irreproachable’. 214 1 Tim 6:15f. is a ‘remarkable description of God’, thus see Marshall & Towner (2004, 666). Collins (2002, 166): ‘The multiplication of epithets creates a degree of difference between Christ Jesus and God’.

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]KYVZPHQ).215 3URVGHYFHVTDL is hapaxlegomenon in the Pastoral Epistles, however it ties in with regular Pauline patterns.216 The verb is consecutively connected with ‘hope’217 and with ‘appearance’. ‘The blessed hope’ (K- PDNDULYD HMOSLYa) denotes the value of hope (Hoffnungsgut).218 0DNDYULRa is normally listed as an aspect of God’s nature in the Pastoral Epistles.219 In the rest of the New Testament, however, it is used to speak of persons who are in his favour. Through the connection with hope, the value of hope is considered as a divine attribute which thus makes it secure and indestructible. ‘Appearance’ (or: manifestation) is bound to ‘hope’ with an epexegetic NDLY: ‘a hope that consists in the revelation of the glory’. 220 ‘Glory’ (GRY[D, GZEN) refers to God as does ‘appearance’. 0DNDYULRa THRYa VZWKULYD , and Jesus Christ together with GRY[D form a semantic reference field.221 The several genitives WRXC PHJDYORXTHRXC NDL VZWKCURaK-PZCQM,KVRXC &ULVWRXC which are dependent on ‘glory’ and can be referring to one person as well as to two.222 Beyond a doubt this question is philologically interesting, but not theologically, because the possible interpretations point in the same direction: ‘In any case, the doctrinal implications (…) are much the same; if Christ is not explicitly declared to be in some sense ‘God’, his equality with God is expressed in no uncertain terms’.223 For different reasons and due to the fact that ‘the epiphany of God would be unique in a NT context’224 it is probable, that Christ is termed here as ‘God and Savior’.225 Throughout the New Testament,ҏ Titus 215 Cf. the drawing of the sentence (Satzbild) Tit 2:11–14: Marshall & Towner (2004, 262); similar A.J. Malherbe (2005, 334). 216 Cf. DM S HNGHYF HVTDL in Rom 8:23, 25; 1 Cor 1:7; Phil 3:20; Gal 5:5. 3URV GHYFHVTDL is recorded in Rom 16:2 and Phil 2:29 and means ‘to house’ or ‘to welcome’. 217 Parallel use of language in Job 2:9 LXX : SURVGHFRYP HQRaWKQ HMO SLYGD. For ‘hope’ see above in section 2.5. 218 According to Marshall & Towner (2004, 273) HMO SLYa is a ‘metonymy for the content of hope, its fulfillment’; cf. also Rom 8:24; Gal 5:5; in addition Col 1:5; Acts 24:15. 219 1 Tim 1:11; 6:15. 220 Marshall & Towner (2004, 274); similar Collins (2002, 352): ‘NDLY being epexegetical’. In contrast Quinn (1990, 170) interprets ‘Hoffnung’ and ‘Erscheinen’ as hendiadys and translates ‘hope revealed’. 221 See WR HXMD JJHYOLRQWKCa GRY[ KaWRXC PDNDULYRXTHRXC, 1 Tim 1:11; L^Q DNDL  DXM WRL VZWKULYDaWXYF ZVLQWK—aHMQ&ULVWZC M,KVRXC PHWD GRY[ KaDLMZQLYRX, 2 Tim 2:10. Also in 1 Tim 3:16 GRY[D stands for the divine sphere, just as in some doxologies: 1 Tim 1:17; 2 Tim 4:18. 222 Marshall & Towner (2004, 277–282) give a good overview; in addition see Collins (2002, 311–314). 223 Marshall & Towner (2004, 277). 224 Marshall & Towner (2004, 276). 225 See Quinn (1990, 155f.); cf. also the beginning of the section: HMSHIDYQ K JDU K- FDYULaWRXCTHRXCVZWKYULRa, Tit 2:11.

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2:13 is the only place in which 0HYJDa and THRYa are combined in this manner.226 With six out of ten records of the use of VZWKYUҏ in the Pastoral Epistles, it is clear that it is a favourite word in the Letter to Titus.227 The order ‘Jesus Christ’ is another characteristic of the Letter to Titus, showing a difference from its use in Timothy.228 In summarizing the eschatological perspectives the impression arises that, ‘The appearance of Jesus Christ as our God and Savior in 2:13 will be a splendid and awesome experience’.229 How is this expectation related to the context? After the ethical maxims of life in Titus 2:12 (VZIURYQZa NDL GLNDLYZa NDL HXMVHEZCa ]KCQ), Titus 2:13 appears like a strong and sure motivation for their implementation. Because the eyes are orientated ahead on the parousia of Christ, which is strongly supported to the highest degree through PDNDYULRa HMSLIDYQHLD GRY[DPHYJDa, and VZWKYU, one’s current orientation is taken already in the here and now (HMQ WZC QXCQ DLMZYQL230) based upon the expected future. The eschatological perspective thus has a paraenetic function; this is reflected in the present tense of ‘wait’ (SURVGHFRYPHQRL, durative character). The same correlation between certainty and ethics is found in Titus 2:14,231 however not with regard to the future, but with regard to Christ’s appearance in the past (inclusio with 2:11). The situation for the community and the church is therefore, viewed as condicio ecclesiae, ‘between the appearances during the present age, when they are to shun impiety, embrace godliness, and be ever eager for good works’.232

3. Summary: Eschatology in the Pastoral Epistles After examining a substantial number of texts, which were arranged in a thematic and linguistic manner, a series of summative conclusions can be drawn. They are geared to the twelve sections of the previous statements.

226

However see PHJDOHLRYWKa, Lk 9:43; 2 Pet 1:16; further PHJDORVXYQK, Heb 1:3; 8:1; Jude 25. In Acts 19:27f., 34f. the goddess >$UWHPLaM(IHVLYZQ (= Diana) is called PHJDYOK. For the history of traditions also see R- THRa R- PHYJDa, Deut 10:17; 2 Ezra 5:8 LXX; 18:6; 19:32 (= Neh 4:14; 8:6; 9:32); Isa 26:4; Dan 2:45; 9:4; in addition Ps 76:14 LXX; 85:10. 227 In detail Mutschler (2010, 182–185). 228 Mutschler (2010, 124f.). 229 Collins (2002, 353); see also Collins (2002, 207f.). 230 Tit 2:12; in a similar context in 1 Tim 6:17(–19), also between ethics and the parousia. 231 =KOZWKQ  NDOZCQ  H>UJZQ has weight of the stern; for H>UJZQ see the overview in Mutschler (2010, 233). 232 Collins (2002, 352).

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1. A series of future propositions are formulated by the author of the letter addressing either directly and concretely the intended recipients within the frame of the fictive letter (1 Tim 3:15; 4:6) or building exhortations for the present, e.g. to the rich (6:7, 9). In doing so eschatological horizons play an indirect role at the most. ‘Big’ catchwords of eschatology – such as last times, life eternal, court or parousia of Christ – cannot be found in these texts. 2. A periphrastic circumscription of future forms with the help of PHYOOHLQ presents a broader eschatological horizon and is connected with terms like ‘eternal’, ‘future’, ‘true life’ (1 Tim 1:16; 4:8; 6:19) or with ‘to judge’, ‘appearance’, and ‘kingdom’ (2 Tim 4:1). To believe in Christ (SLVWHXYHLQ, 1 Timothy 1:16), to practice godliness (HXMVHYEHLD, 4:8), to invest money into the community or into people (SORXWHLCQHMQNDORLCaH>UJRLa, 6:18f.), all have an eschatological promise of life in view of Christ coming back to the eschatological court, and to his kingdom, his Reich (2 Tim 4:1). At this point it already becomes clear: Eschatological statements motivate and reinforce the exhortations. 3. Faith and love (SLYVWLa NDL DMJDYSK PHYQHLQ, 1 Tim 2:15), listening to doctrine and remaining in the truth (GLGDVNDOLYD DMNRXYHLQ HMSLPHYQHLQ, 4:16) plus the segregation from every evil through God (U-XYVHVTDL, 2 Tim 4:18) lead women (1 Tim 2:15233), Timothy and his hearers (4:16), and the correspondent ‘Paul’ (2 Tim 4:18) to the future, eschatological salvation (1 Tim 2:15; 4:16; 2 Tim 4:18) in the heavenly kingdom of God (4:18). Here too the eschatological outlook to salvation by God serves as an intended motivation and consolidation of the present Christian existence (1 Tim 2:15; 4:16) and as a rhetorically stage-managed personal self-assurance in front of other people, with the aim to reassure and to comfort (2 Tim 4:18). 4. In 2 Timothy 2:11f. the prospect of living with (VX]KCQ) and reigning with Christ (VXPEDVLOHXYHLQ) also motivates a readiness to die with Christ (VXQDSRTQKYVNHLQ, = christening, martyrdom?) and to resist persecution (X-SRPHYQHLQ) instead of denying Christ (DMUQHLCVTDL). However as a matter of principle the prospect of eschatological conformity with Christ depends not on human behaviour. Such ‘logic’ is shown to be inconsistent by an emphasis upon ‘otherness’ of God’s being: ‘if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself’ (2:13). The eschatological participation in salvation is exclusively based upon God’s promise and faithfulness,

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Also in the light of specific danger: ‘through [the time of] childbearing’.

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although the anticipation of salvation is able to act a movens christianum in the present situation. 5. The ‘hope of eternal life’ (Tit 1:2; 3:7) is therefore reliable, because God promised it before the ages began (Tit 1:2), and because we ‘have been justified by his grace’ and thus are ‘heirs’ (3:7). The secure basis and indestructible foundation for all human toil and struggle in this life (NRSLDCQDMJZQLY]HVTDL, 4:10) is the fact, that regarding our eschatological salvation everything is thanks to God – in other words – ‘we have our hope set on the living God’ (1 Tim 4:10). He is potentially the ‘savior of all people’, ‘especially of those who believe’ (4:10). Hope in the Pastoral Epistles is almost continuously defined as eschatological, and it is based on God. 6. ‘Eternal life’ is not only a virtue of salvation and hope guaranteed by God, which was promised by God before the ages began (Tit 1:2), and which was apportioned by his grace because of his justice (3:7), it is also connected with a mandate for this life: The addressee shall ‘take hold’ (HMSLODPEDYQHVTDL, 1 Tim 6:12) of the eternal life, while he fights the good fight of faith. Because he is ‘called’ (NDOHLCVTDL) to eternal life and has made ‘the good confession’ in the presence of many (R-PRORJHLCQ, 6:12), the writer has received mercy as an example ‘to those who would come to believe in Christ for eternal life’ (WZCQ PHOORYQWZQ HMS M DXMWZC HLMa ]ZKQ DLMZYQLRQ, 1 Tim 1:16), and he wants to ‘endure everything’ (SDYQWDX-SRP HYQHLQ, 2 Tim 2:10) for the sake of those, who obtain ‘eternal glory’ (GRY[D DLMZYQLRQ) in the form of ‘salvation that is in Christ Jesus’ (K-VZWKULYDK-HMQ &ULVWZC  M,KVRXC). The figure of speech ‘to be dead even while she lives’ (]ZCVDWHYTQKNHQ, 5:6), serves as an example (X-SRWXYSZVLa, 1:16), of ‘enduring’ (2 Tim 2:10) and ‘taking hold’ (1 Tim 6:12) motivating one to a life in accordance with the promise of eternal life. Eschatological statements interpret and motivate paraenetic ones. 7. The image of a contest reminds the leading elder to compete according to the rules (QRPLYPZaDMTOHLCQ, 2 Tim 2:5).234 In the context of the Pastoral Epistles it means instruction in faith (‘sound teaching’) and an appropriate way of life (e.g. HXMVHYEHLD). However the wreath will be granted ‘on that day’ (HMQHMNHLYQK WKC K-PHYUD, 4:8) not only to one or a few as is customary in an ordinary contest, but ‘to all who have longed for his – Christ’s – appearing’ (SDCVLQ WRLCa KMJDSKNRYVLQ). The Lord Christ himself grants the ‘wreath of righteousness’ (R- WKCaGLNDLRVXYQKaVWHYIDQRa) as a ‘righteous 234

In the words of Bonhoeffer: instead of abusing ‘cheap mercy’ (billige Gnade).

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judge’ (GLYNDLRa NULWKYa, 4:8). The anticipation of receiving the eschatological wreath of righteousness empowers and strengthens the competitor to remaining in the fight, competing ‘according to the rules’ (2:5; similar 4:7) as well as remaining in love with Christ (4:8). 8. Both Letters to Timothy contain interpretations of the present and exhortations in the form of end time prophecies for the ‘last day’. It is easy to see that these are instructions for the present context of the addressee(s). Apostasy from faith (1 Tim 4:1f.; 2 Tim 3:1, 7f.; 4:3f.), heresy (1 Tim 4:1f.; 2 Tim 3:1, 6–9; 4:3f.), and false ethical-moral orientations, as well as false attitudes (1 Tim 4:1f.; 2 Tim 3:1, 6–9; 4:3f.) are renounced. An ability to act, readiness for responsibility, and straightforwardness of the leading elder, as well as of the communities, are strengthened for the present and the future through the revealed prophecy given by the Spirit. Through end time prophecies they gain a transcendent perspective allowing for an affirmation of their approach to faith, their motivation to hold out against challenges and struggles, and wise interpretation regarding their lifetime as a part of the eschatological drama. 9. The increase of end time prophecies in the second Letter to Timothy continue through the use of the phrase, ‘that day’: All three records are in the (fictive) Pauline farewell letter. Rhetorically they form an inclusion (1:12, 18; 4:8). The correspondent weighs his suffering against his confidence in God; God will guard what was entrusted to him until ‘that day’ (1:12). Similarly the correspondent wishes ‘mercy on that day’ (1:18) to a certain Onesiphoros (literally meaning: the ‘fruitful’ or ‘benefit-bearer’, cf. Onesimus) who served him many times. Finally the correspondent is looking forward to the ‘wreath of righteousness’, which he will receive from the ‘righteous judge on that day’ like all ‘who have longed for the appearing’ of that righteous judge (4:8). 10. With five records the expectation of the (last) judgment is prominently represented in the Letters to Timothy: 1 Timothy 3:6; 5:12, 24f.; 2 Timothy 4:1, 8. Two texts move the judgment to the present time. A ‘newlyplanted’ bishop (HMSLYVNRSRa) who cannot fulfil the expectations of his role comes under condemnation (i.e., the ‘condemnation of the devil’); therefore an inexperienced Christian should not hold the office of a superintendent (1 Tim 3:6). Similarly, younger widows in the rank of widows, who get remarried, incur ‘condemnation’ (NULYPD), because they ‘have violated their first pledge’ (5:12); therefore they should not be admitted to the churchly rank of widow. In both cases the idea of the court of judgment highlights undesirable developments (wrong decisions in staff matters) in

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the community. Therefore the emphasis lies on the perpetuation of a functional and reasonable community order. The remaining three texts talk about the eschatological final judgment. Two of them are found in the final chapter of the second Letter to Timothy. Like entering the courtroom ‘sins’ as well as ‘good deeds’ partly precede into the heavenly tribunal, and in another part they are revealed step by step (1 Tim 5:24f.) as the proceedings unfold; neither sins nor good deeds can thus be hidden permanently. Both eventually become obvious courting the final judgment. The coming Christ who will judge the living and the dead when he appears is invoked by the correspondent as a witness for his admonitions to the addressee (2 Tim 4:1). Through his invocation the coming Christ becomes the decisive point of orientation for the present lifetime; a stronger and more enduring help and motivation for the whole life of the Christian is simply inconceivable. Finally the ‘wreath of righteousness’ is granted in the last court – on ‘that day’ – by the ‘righteous judge’ to all ‘who have longed for his appearing’ (4:8). Encouragement and comfort for the present and for one’s unpredictable future death are a further climax in this statement which is eschatological in some respects. As a result one can see: The expectation of a tribunal serves to ensure the orderliness of the community and the formation of (an ethical) conscience. The judgment is a target point for individual history and collective history; it offers motivational help, encouragement, and last but not least comfort for the leading elder as well as for church members. 11. The understanding of the ‘kingdom’ (EDVLOHLYD) in the Pastoral Epistles differs from the synoptic gospels in two respects: The Pastoral Epistles speak of the kingdom of Christ and they consider it as future Kingdom. Both records are once again in the final chapter of the second Letter to Timothy. The kingdom coincides with the ‘appearance’ of Christ at the judgment of the living and the dead (2 Tim 4:1). Similarly at the end of the letter (the fictitious) Paul speaks about his salvation into the ‘heavenly kingdom’ (4:18). The statements of the correspondent about himself close with numerous personal convictions about his faith and with confidence in view of his farewell (cf. Rom 14:7–9). His confidence in the parousia of Christ and his salvation into the heavenly kingdom of the Lord are the last points in his self-reflection and at the same time they serve to highlight the intended motivation of the author’s message. Thus EDVLOHLYD is the closest connection with the presence of Christ, and at least this aspect can be recovered in the gospels (e.g. Lk 11:20). 12. All three Letters mention Christ’s future ‘appearance’, mostly toward their end. In a rather creedal manner (‘we’) waiting for the appearance of

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‘our great God and Savior Jesus Christ’ are designated a ‘blessed hope’ (Tit 2:13). The semantic reference field is further condensed through the context; thereby the eschatological perspective receives a paraenetic function: It motivates, ensures and provokes confidence (comfort235). The exhortation to fulfil the mandate conscientiously ‘until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Tim 6:14) is directed to the addressee. At that stage, and only then, the office of a leading elder ends. The exhortation flows into a hymn on the majesty of God, which once again strengthens the confidence, certainty, and motivation of the leading elder. 2 Timothy 4:1,8 are no less rhetorically and theologically impressive in their formulation, partly in the form of an invocation to Christ who appears for the final judgment (4:1), and partly in the form of a comforting outlook towards the eschatological granting of the ‘wreath of righteousness’, which the ‘righteous judge’ gives to ‘all who have longed for his appearing’ (4:8) on ‘that day’. If one bears in mind that the majority of records of the word cluster ‘to appear’ look back to Christ’s past appearance, then a fundamental condicio ecclesiae can be recognized. The community and the church exist and live between the two appearances of Christ. This is far more than a statement of time: It is at the same time a christological-pneumatological statement, an eschatological and ethic position-fixing, a self-statement and also a stabile promise which comes closer to the community and the church day by day. In this sense the eschatological statements of the Pastoral Epistles form the framework for self-understanding and behaviour – personally and ecclesiastically – from the present up to the parousia. Works Consulted Apostolic Fathers 2007 The Apostolic Fathers. Greek Texts and English Translations edited and translated by Michael W. Holmes after the earlier work of J.B. Lightfoot and J.R. Harmer. Grand Rapids. Bengel, JA 1860 Gnomon Novi Testamenti in quo ex nativa verborum VI simplicitas, profunditas, concinnitas, salubritas sensuum coelestium indicatur. Secundum editionem tertiam (1730) denuo recusus. Berlin. Bible 1989 The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. New Revised Standard Version. Glasgow. Blass, F & Debrunner, A 1984 Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch. Bearbeitet von Friedrich Rehkopf. 16., durchgesehende Auflage. Göttingen. Brox, N 1989 Die Pastoralbriefe. 1 Timotheus, 2 Timotheus, Titus. Übersetzt und erklärt von Norbert Brox. Regensburg.

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For the interrelations see the linguistic inquiries of Mutschler (2010, 44, 57–59).

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Calvin, J s.a. Johannes Calvins Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift in deutscher Übersetzung. Unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Theologen herausgegeben von K. Müller. Neukirchen. Collins, RF 2002 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus. A Commentary. Louisville. Denzinger, A & Schönmetzer, H 1976 Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum quod primum edidit Henricus Denzinger et quod funditus retractavit auxit notulis ornavit Adolfus Schönmetzer. Editio XXXVI emendata. Barcelona. Holtz, G 1992 Die Pastoralbriefe. Leipzig. Holtzmann, HJ 1880 Die Pastoralbriefe, kritisch und exegetisch behandelt. Leipzig. Irenaeus of Lyons 1993 Epideixis. Adversus Haereses. Darlegung der Apostolischen Verkündigung. Gegen die Häresien. Übersetzt und eingeleitet von Norbert Brox. Freiburg. Johnson, LT 2001 The First and Second Letters to Timothy. A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York. Knight, GW 1992 The Pastoral Epistles. A Commentary on the Greek Text. Grand Rapids. Malherbe, AJ 2005 ‘Christ Jesus came into the World to save Sinners’: Soteriology in the Pastoral Epistles, in Salvation in the New Testament. Perspectives on Soteriology, Van der Watt, JG (ed), Leiden, 331–358. Marshall, IH 2004 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles. In Collaboration with Philip H. Towner. Edinburgh. Merz, A 2004 Die fiktive Selbstauslegung des Paulus. Intertextuelle Studien zur Intention und Rezeption der Pastoralbriefe. Göttingen. Mutschler, B 2004 Irenäus als johanneischer Theologe. Studien zur Schriftauslegung bei Irenäus von Lyon. Tübingen. – 2006 Das Corpus Johanneum bei Irenäus von Lyon. Studien und Kommentar zum dritten Buch von Adversus Haereses. Tübingen. – 2008a Die Verspottung des Königs der Juden. Jesu Verspottung in Jerusalem unter dem Blickwinkel einer parodierten Königsaudienz. Neukirchen-Vluyn. – 2008b Theologische Antworten aus Lk 22,24–30 (Rangstreit der Jünger) auf die Frage: Was bedeutet ‘Evangelisch – Diakonisch’?, in Evangelisch – Diakonisch, Edtbauer, R & Köhler-Offierski, A (eds), Freiburg im Breisgau, 31–47. – 2010 Glaube in den Pastoralbriefen. Pistis als Mitte christlicher Existenz. Tübingen. Ngayihembako, S 1994 Les temps de la fin. Approche exégétique de l’eschatologie du Nouveau Testament. Préface du François Bovon. Genève. Oberlinner, L 1995 Die Pastoralbriefe. Zweite Folge: Kommentar zum zweiten Timotheusbrief. Freiburg. Quinn, JD & Wacker, WC 2000 The First and Second Letters to Timothy. A New Translation with Notes and Commentary. Grand Rapids. Quinn, JD 1990 The Letter to Titus. A New Translation with Notes and Commentary and An Introduction to Titus, I and II Timothy, The Pastoral Epistles. New York. Roloff, J 1988 Der erste Brief an Timotheus. Zürich. Roose, H 2004 Eschatologische Mitherrschaft. Entwicklungslinien einer urchristlichen Erwartung. Göttingen. Weber, HE 1930 ‘Eschatologie’ und ‘Mystik’ im Neuen Testament. Ein Versuch zum Verständnis des Glaubens. Gütersloh.

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Wolter, M 2008 Das Lukasevangelium. Tübingen. – 2010 Die Entwicklung des paulinischen Christentums von einer Bekehrungsreligion zu einer Traditionsreligion. Early Christianity 1, 15–40.

Eschatology in Philemon ‘Biding the Time’

Jeremy Punt The eschatology in Philemon is not immediately evident, but such sentiment nevertheless has influenced this short letter in important ways. That this public, ‘personal’ letter with its unexpressed yet attendant eschatological perspective primarily focuses on the future can be inferred from the particular way in which the letter’s central issue – the situation of the slave Onesimus – is presented and addressed.

1. Introduction: Paul’s Problematic Eschatology Eschatology has apparently always had the capacity to engender animated differences of opinion and calls for large-scale claims – and, these two may not be unrelated. However, an appropriate starting point is to emphasise that a generalised notion of eschatology1 can neither be assumed to have governed the thoughts and actions of all the authors of the New Testament, nor can it be presupposed that eschatology as a broader concept or narrower definition was either then or now understood in the same, undifferentiated way by all (cf. Brower 2004, 459–464; Greshake 2005, 487– 492; Rowland 1993, 161–164). Nevertheless, and stated simply as a starting point, it goes some way to claim that eschatology is the ‘patterned beliefs, ideas, and expectations concerning the end of the world’ (Carroll 2000, 1). The investigation of eschatology in the Pauline letters is a relatively recent phenomenon, since the late nineteenth century biblical scholarship were the first to move in a consistent way beyond the affirmation of eschatology as point of doctrine and instead to accept it as pervasive to Pauline thought. 1 The terminology, ‘eschatology’, ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘parousia/return’ are of course theologically and otherwise laden terms and need to be unpacked. Eschatology is a category of scholarly invention and pious intention, and certainly useful, but should not be employed as a rigid category. On this matter, cf. also Duling (1996, 183–205, esp. 187– 188), and for the accusation of anachronism regarding these terms, Malina (1989, 1–31).

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[T]he expectation that the world was already in the process of coming to an imminent end and being cosmically transformed stamped the whole fabric of early Christian thinking, giving a distinctive cast to Christian understanding of salvation, the moral life, the church and its place in the world, and so forth (Cosgrove et al 2005, 259–260, with reference to Schweitzer; cf. Frederickson 2000, 21–26).

Paul’s apocalyptic tendencies have since been described as anything but peripheral to his theology, even constituting the coherent centre2 of his theology as apocalyptic matrix and pattern accompanied by a future orientation (Beker 1990, xii).3 Concerns about the end of the world at hand or the transformation of the created order was no longer understood to be subsidiary to other matters considered more spiritual and therefore central to his faith. On the other hand, it has been Paul’s disconcertingly strong expectation of the end of the world during his lifetime that has proved somewhat of an embarrassment to the faithful, especially over the last two centuries.4 Although the centrality of eschatology in Pauline thought is undeniable, subsequent generations of believers have found it increasingly difficult to take up a notion of eschatology that is disproved by its failure to happen: the world did not come to an end in the first century. The delay of the parousia has led to two typical interpretative responses, with on the one hand a denial of a literal understanding and opting for a symbolical reading5 of eschatological and apocalyptic texts, while on the other hand such texts are read ‘realistically or quasi-literally’ rather than literal in the strict sense of the word6 (Cosgrove et al 2005, 260). These moves, considera2 Claiming eschatology as the central feature for Pauline eschatology is not unproblematic, requiring attention to the (authentic) letters where eschatology seems to be hardly on the foreground or in the background, such as Galatians and Philemon. Cf. Martyn on Galatians (1985, 410–424). 3 Certain scholars have pursued the line of Schweitzer and Käsemann in viewing Paul’s eschatological tenor as ‘a theocentric theology of hope rather than as a christocentric salvation history (O Cullmann) or as an existentialist theology of the cross (R Bultmann). A theology of hope views the present as the dawn of the future and the future as the full actualization of the present’ (Beker 1990, xiii). 4 Some disagree that Paul (or Jesus) necessarily or definitely expected the parousia within his lifetime, but that he (or Jesus) held it as a possibility (Witherington 1992, 48). 5 Such a reading resists apocalyptic realism while accepting elements of apocalyptic symbolism such as the universality of love of God for creation and humanity, and for the inseparable connection between the latter two, as in Käsemann’s work in which he builds on Bultmann’s ideas – the latter’s demythologisation program is a good example of a symbolical reading of the apocalyptic texts (cf. Cosgrove et al 2005, 260–61). 6 A realistic appropriation of the eschatological and apocalyptic tenor can provide for rich theological reflection of matters such as suffering and theodicy, as Beker (1980; 1982; 1990) shows in his work. Cf. Cosgrove et al (2005, 260–261) who note that these may be pressing issues for the West whereas other concerns such as social justice dominate elsewhere in the world.

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tions, debates and tensions also inform two letters from the Pauline tradition, Colossians and Philemon, which are generally not highly valued for their contribution to eschatology in the New Testament. Not only are the eschatologies in these letters interesting, their relationships with other aspects and elements within the respective letters, but the contrasts between the two eschatologies are also noteworthy. (See the chapter on Colossians in this volume.)

2. Eschatology in Philemon The letter to Philemon is hardly ever mentioned in discussions on Pauline eschatology. Comprehensive studies on eschatology omit or at best barely mention the letter.7 As a matter of fact, Philemon has often been seen to address a private concern – even if the inclusion of the community in its greetings (Phm 2b) puts it beyond a private letter8 – and even had its inclusion in the canon been begrudged if not out-rightly challenged.9 Philemon has in the past been seen as mostly devoid of theological matters or issues of wider significance in the church. It was only after slavery as an institution became a burning political issue in the nineteenth century in Britain and America, if not so much elsewhere, that the letter has become valued in its own right. The short letter was no longer used only as a moral example (e.g. Paul humbling himself to represent a slave in a law suit; or showing how the law had to be upheld in returning slaves, even if they were converted, to their masters), Philemon was enlisted by both pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists, and to this day has remained central to debates about ‘the emancipatory potential of Christianity’ (Barclay 2007, 14–15). However, in this essay I wish to investigate the possible link between eschatological convictions and the prevalent social concerns that have some bearing on theological assumptions and the making of interpretative choices in reading the letter.

7

So, e.g., Beker’s (1990, 4.40.42) only reference to the letter to Philemon is in the context of tabulating the authentic Pauline letters, and in reference to even personal letters being drawn into a communal (reading) setting. 8 The proposal that the letter is directed to Apphia (so recently e.g. Bieberstein 2000, 115–116) rather than Philemon is difficult to defend on grammatical and other grounds (cf. Barclay 1997, 97). 9 Its canonical position was still not secured in the fourth century. For further discussion, cf. Barclay (1997, 119ff.).

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2.1. Rhetorical Situation Paul’s authorship of the letter to Philemon is not seriously doubted.10 He evidently wrote from his own situation of imprisonment (Caesarea in the late 50’s). During this time he probably encountered Onesimus, whether for the first time, or after being approached to intercede on the slave’s behalf with Philemon, his friend. Written to people well-known to Paul, the tone is friendly and appreciative. The letter is carefully crafted, and characterised by subtle yet strong rhetorical manoeuvres and allusions. Traditionally a situation is postulated in which Onesimus, a slave of Philemon, ran away. Possibly he stole from his master when he fled, and after getting caught met Paul in prison. Paul then penned a letter to Philemon to accept Onesimus back as a spiritual son of the apostle. He asks Philemon not to punish him (too harshly), but to treat him kindly. However, the traditional view fails to explain how it came about that Paul and Onesimus were in prison together, the nature of their contact with one another, or Paul’s authority to sent Onesimus back. Today it is more readily accepted that Onesimus asked Paul to be an intermediary figure or ‘advocate’ to broker an understanding with Philemon. Paul and Philemon were friends. Onesimus was not a runaway slave, but for some reason (ill treatment, or his own wrongdoing?) sought sanctuary with Paul. The slave Onesimus probably offended his master Philemon in some way.11 The letter is an attempt to reconciliate so that Onesimus can be received back without penalty and the relationship can be restored. Paul’s acquaintance with both the master and slave enabled him to claim the authority to make such a request, albeit subtly and eloquently (Marshall 1993, 177–179; cf. Barclay 1997, 100–101).12 2.2. Eschatological Notions in Philemon Eschatology is generally given short thrift in Philemon, if mentioned at all. However, besides some general temporal indicators without (much) es10 The theory held by FC Baur that the letter to Philemon was spurious fiction is not taken seriously (cf. Barclay 1997, 97). So also is the suggestion that the real addressee was Archippus (cf. Knox and more recently Winter) not tenable (cf. Marshall 1993, 177). 11 Alternative interpretations stress Paul’s interest, namely that he wanted to secure Onesimus’ services for his own work and that this explains the remark in Philemon 18– 20 (e.g. Schenk, in Marshall 1993, 179); and that it would probably be after Onesimus was manumitted by Philemon. The traditional opinion that Onesimus was a fugitivus sometimes remains an attractive option in an unexpected situation, cf. Bieberstein (2000, 105–116) writing from an explicit feminist perspective. 12 For a longer discussion of Paul and his use of his (apostolic) power, cf. Polaski (1999, 52–72).

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chatological intent, a broader eschatological agenda becomes evident in Paul’s handling of the relationship between Onesimus and Philemon. 2.2.1. Temporal Considerations in Philemon The temporal indications in this letter all seem to deal with the everyday nitty-gritty matters of first-century life. The indicators are first of all mostly related to the past with some implications for the present, basically concerning the relationship between Paul (and other believers) and Philemon (Phm 5, 7, 17), and between Philemon and Onesimus (Phm 11). As far as the future is concerned, the future is seen in Paul’s expressed expectations on how Onesimus should be treated and directed at Philemon (Phm 12, 14, 16–17), and in Paul’s future itinerary and plans to visit to Philemon (Phm 18, 21–22). The present element in the letter is paradoxically the letter itself, but then not on its own as it was most probably accompanied by Onesimus (Phm 11). The other temporal references are found in Philemon 15 (‘Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back forever’, WDYFD JDU GLD WRXCWR HMFZULYVTK SURa Z^UDQ L^QD DLMZYQLRQDXMWRQDMSHFKa). Paul rationalises what he refers to as the temporary absence of Onesimus, and his clinching argument is that Onesimus is returning to reside permanently in Philemon’s house.13 While it is not immediately clear whether this is part of Paul’s attempt to secure a positive reception for Onesimus, or whether he had in fact reaffirmed the slave in Philemon’s household, or whether he meant it more metaphorically, Philemon 13–14 (along with Phm 20) and Philemon 15–17 are often interpreted according to one of the following two options: 1. Paul hopes to secure the services of Onesimus for himself; or 2. or Paul is simply returning Onesimus as a slave to Philemon. However, neither option alleviates the tension held in the reference to ‘forever’ as seen in the frame of Paul’s expectation of the (imminent) end of time. The important question for the discussion on eschatology is of course to ask what these time frames suggest about Paul’s eschatological awareness and convictions. This situation can be particularly important since he is 13 The word DLMZYQLRQ generally means everlasting or eternal; and ‘(have him back) no longer as a slave’ in Phm 16 does not necessarily rule out reading this verse as Paul condemning Onesimus to be a slave for life (contra Ryan 2005, 245). In fact, the next phrase in Phm 16, ‘more than a slave’ (X-SHU GRXCORQ), could also be meant metaphorically (in the sense of slave of Christ) especially in conjunction with ‘(as) a beloved brother’ (DMGHOIRQ DMJDSKWRYQ, Phm 16). However, and not discounting the ambiguity of the verse, it is more likely that Phm 15–16 forms the core of Paul’s appeal to Philemon to manumit Onesimus – Wire claims that it is ‘almost surely a request for freedom’ (Wire 1998, 289).

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responding to a private rather than a community-focused matter14 – the position of the slave Onesimus – and he is therefore not in the first instance primed to provide a theological argument in the general sense of the word. However, although there are no indications that Paul had intended his letter to achieve anything more than dealing with what would have been a domestic issue (a malcontent slave of a fellow-believer [and possible friend of Paul]), the possible bearing of his letter on (the institutionalised system of) slavery tends to enter the discussion – also because these two issues are of course not unrelated. 2.2.2. Slavery as Eschatological Marker? Two frames of reference are important here. First, Paul was most certainly familiar with slavery from his first century context as well as from the Scriptures which formed his Bible. Not only was slavery an accepted institution in the Scriptures of Israel, it was also perceived as legitimate and divinely approved if not ordained (cf. Gn 9:24–27; Lev 25:44–46; Dt 20:10–18). ‘Slavery is pervasive, brutal and sanctioned by God in Paul’s Bible’ (Stowers 1998, 306).15 While one can argue that Paul’s understanding of Christ changed his perception in many ways, Paul is not on record for repudiating slavery and he may very well have tolerated slavery as another indication of the old age soon to be surpassed by a new heaven and a new earth. Secondly, of all the many and varied ways in which the Roman Empire exerted its power and control over the peoples of the first-century Mediterranean area, institutionalized slavery was the most radical form of displacement, and all forms of slave revolts were brutally suppressed. Firstcentury slavery was wide-spread. The overwhelming majority of slaves were prisoners of war within a slave-based economy. Slavery was linked to revenue and not to race. Owners had exclusively rights over slaves with reports of varying levels of treatment. Since slaves came from various walks of life, the spectrum of their employment spread widely, from high class assignments as estate managers or positions in the fields of law, medicine and teaching, through to domestic slaves, down to the bottom end of slaves working in the mines. Slaves were often stereotypically portrayed 14

The inclusion of the community in Phm 2 (WKC NDW¨ RL>NRYQ VRX HMNNOKVLYD) indicates where the document was probably read, and serves as a rhetorical strategy to pressure complying with the request, rather than presenting the case of Onesimus as prototype for similar situations in the congregation – in short, it is not Paul’s attempt to address slavery as a social system. 15 The significance of slavery in Israel’s thought is undeniable (cf. Wright 1998, 83– 111). Even, biblical legislation on slavery is often utopian with no indication of it actually being put into practice (cf. Stowers 1998, 306).

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as lazy and untrustworthy or even as being criminally inclined. While flight was always one way to secure freedom, the consequences when getting caught were dire, unlike seeking asylum from an abusive owner with a friend of the owner, or being manumitted and becoming a freedman or freedwoman, although the latter still meant retaining a legal bond to the erstwhile owner (Horsley 2004, 12; Ryan 2005, 169–172).16 Even if Paul’s eschatological frame of mind does not feature explicitly in the letter,17 the relationship between what is believed to be his eschatological position and his attitude towards slavery has long been influential (if not decisive) for the interpretation of this letter. To put it differently, the eschatology in the letter to Philemon could therefore go some way towards explaining Paul’s particular approach to the vexing problem the letter is responding to. Indeed, one of the most engaging questions over time has been whether the letter to Philemon should be seen as a reaffirmation of Onesimus’ slave-status albeit then of a gentler, ‘brotherly’ (Phm 16) nature, or a call for the manumission of Onesimus?18 Did Paul suggest in verses 15–17, when exhorting Philemon to accept Onesimus as more than a slave but as a brother, that Philemon should set Onesimus free? Further considerations include Paul’s offer to settle Onesimus’ debt (Phm 18–19) and expressing his confidence that Philemon will do even more than he (Paul) asks (Phm 21). One typical answer has always been: Paul has a peculiar view of that [sc first-century] world: he thought it was passing away and that soon it would be gone. Therefore he did not attempt to reform society – instead he relativized it, advocating that Christians be primarily concerned with the edification of the church, not their social status (Soards 1987, 127).

However, if it is true that the Philemon-letter marks the beginning of a process and therefore forms part of the larger reality in which the differentiated treatment of fellow-believers because of status concerns became increasingly questionable – ‘the recognition of the dignity of humankind in terms of creation’19 (Marshall 1993, 190) – the particular presupposed es16 Cf. Moore (2006, 61–63) on the prevalence of torture in the slave-keeping Roman Empire; Horsley (2004, 12–14) – and his references to other sources on slavery. 17 So e.g. Still (2004, 126) explicitly excludes Philemon from the letters where Paul stressed (future) eschatology. 18 Lightfoot has already remarked long ago that although the idea of manumission is present in Paul’s thoughts throughout the letter, he never uttered the word (Lightfoot 1959, 345). 19 However, in the case of Paul, it was rather the re-creation wrought by Christ that stood central (Stowers 1998, 304). When such sentiments about dignity, together with the claim that slave ownership is incompatible with faith in Christ, is seen by some to be the reason for Philemon’s inclusion in the canon (e.g. Marshall 1993, 191), one may cynically wonder why it took another 1800 years before slavery was abolished? Cf. Barclay

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chatological framework may look quite different. Still, it needs to be acknowledged that the situation in early Christianity should not be romanticised, or understood in modern, individualised terms of the autonomous individual, since even the urge towards unity was also set in hierarchical terms even in the assembly (Stowers 1998, 303–304). How should Paul’s appeals in Philemon then be understood? Is this indicative of accommodation to the world, of settling in, predisposed to realised eschatology? Such acclimatisation to and in the world would then not suggest any fervent hope for an imminent end to the world in its current format. On the other hand, are issues such as tolerating slavery temporary concessions that belonged to the old age (Stowers 1998, 307)?20 And it is also possible to see Paul’s appeal for Onesimus’ freedom to be forthcoming from his emphasis on the ‘already’, and the reason for treating this as a private rather than communal matter to be related to the ‘not yet’. 2.2.3. Philemon, Slavery and Eschatology From the collection of Paul’s (authentic) letters, 1 Corinthians 7:17–40 forms an important inter-text with the letter to Philemon. In the passage in 1 Corinthians Paul appeals to people to remain in their positions or places in society and not attempt to change them. The focus in 1 Corinthians is broader than in the letter to Philemon and is directed towards chattel slavery as such. In Philemon Paul’s concern is for a particular slave and his situation. Moreover, 1 Corinthians 7:21 is somewhat ambiguous about whether slaves should strive to obtain freedom21 or rather use their enslavement to further the interests of Christ (that is, the question about the meaning of PDCOORQFUKCVDL) – in view of the impending end of time (cf. 1 Cor 7:29a, 31). Although Paul’s advice sounds remarkably like the Stoics’ advocacy of distancing themselves from the world and their understanding of inner freedom,22 in Paul the eschatological is determinative. Since ‘the form of the world is passing away’ (1 Cor 7:31), the world and its social structures have no future and its struggle to survive underscores its tempo(1997, 119–126) for a brief reception history of the letter in Christian theological tradition and attempts to claim it as a ‘prelude’ to the emancipation of slaves. 20 The extent of the ambiguity can lead to maintaining both the assertion that Paul did not address slavery as system but nevertheless strove for an egalitarian community (e.g. Bieberstein 2000, 109.112.115) – however, the claim that Onesimus’ flight opened fissures of understanding relationship different in the early Christian community is speculative at best (Bieberstein 2000, 110). 21 Privileging the context for issues related to sex and sexuality, Wire (1998, 289– 290) builds on Glancy’s work and argues in favour of an emancipatory stance, which would have allowed slaves to also take control of their sexuality. 22 Stowers (1998, 298) insists that ‘Paul’s ethical thought unlike most contemporary sources does not center on an immutable fight for self-mastery’.

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rary nature (cf. e.g. Keck 1979, 95–96). Any attempt to reform or change the world is fruitless in the sense of being redundant, and is bound to be interrupted by God’s eschatological action. The basis for Paul’s not calling upon believers to either change their relation to social structures or the social structures themselves rests in his confidence that God will soon change all social structures.23 God’s radical change of the world order was immanently expected. ‘An apocalyptic mythology makes the current order doomed and provides hope for a band of true believers. It does not reform society’ (Stowers 1998, 308). Paul’s seemingly acquiescent attitude about the structures and powers of his day does not imply that he warranted their implicit goodness or rightness, nor does it harbour any implicit claim that God sanctions the contemporary social structures and institutions. On the contrary, with his firm expectation of the end of the world, Paul signals his distrust of the status quo. Since God will bring about the end, Paul further deprives it of any divine sanction, inherent right to be, or sense of permanence.24 On the other hand, and amidst Paul fervently expecting an imminent end of the world with the return of Christ, he refers in detail to his plans to visit Philemon and the associated community of believers (Phm 22; cf. 17), and offers to make restitution for any material losses Philemon might have incurred through Onesimus (Phm 18). There is little sense of urgency in the elaborate outline of his intended visit to Philemon, seen also in his specific request for a prepared room (Phm 22). But, rather than reading these arrangements as evidence of a postponement of the end of time or at least as the loss of immanency in the matter, these probably form part of his rhetorical strategy to persuade Philemon to obey his (Paul’s) requests about Onesimus.25 23

‘Paul’s request of manumission for one man who has helped him is in no way a counter-cultural act’ (Wire 1998, 289). 24 Although the sentiment is understood in the claim that ‘Paul’s ethics is not really conservative at all, but lays the foundation for an ethic of social involvement’ (Keck 1979, 98), it betrays a twentieth century perspective and the unstated acceptance about the continuation of social systems (cf. Horsley 1998a, 198). On the other hand, such terminology is useful, especially when used (as Horsley also employ these terms!) to describe the positions of scholars (cf. Stowers 1998, 295). 25 Paul never encouraged slavery, but in fact urged people not to become anyone’s slave (1 Cor 7:23). However, slavery was on the other hand also used by Paul with a positive ring to it – although not in the letter to Philemon! – when in a metaphorical sense he encourages the followers of Christ to become ‘a slave of Christ’. So for example in 1 Cor 7:22 a slave is described as ‘freedman of the Lord’ and the free as ‘slaves of Christ’ (cf. 1 Cor 9:19; 2 Cor 4:5; cf. 1 Thes 1:10; Rom 6:22; 12:10; 14:18). Balanced with this is the notion of ‘slaves of sin’ (Rom 6:17), a notion that Augustine explores further when slavery became for him the manifestation of the sinfulness into which people had fallen (Perkins 1998, 454). Cf. Martin (1990) and Stowers (1998, 302–303) on

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2.2.4. Other Eschatological Markers and Final Comments The expectation of the imminent end of the current world did not elicit major programmes of social change. On the other hand, the expectation of a new world provided fertile ground to challenge prevailing customs and conventions. Two other brief references seem to indicate that Paul’s eschatological presuppositions in the Philemon-letter can be understood in terms of the latter. The first is Paul’s mention that he ‘gave birth’ (HMJHYQQKVD, Phm 10) to Onesimus, which in anticipation of the dawn of a new era challenged the societal pressures which appeared to have influence later documents such as Colossians (cf. Col 3:22–4:1; cf. 1 Tim 6:1–2;26 Tit 2:9–10) where accommodation to the surrounding world seems to be very important and co-determined by alignment to set binary, hierarchical patterns. Secondly, the use of a military metaphor (VXVWUDWLZYWKa ‘fellow-soldier’, Phm 2) is set against Paul’s counter-imperial rhetoric and probably recalls an apocalyptic mindset, which sees the current world passing away and being replaced by a new world (Ryan 2005, 175–176). And finally, as is often the case with other letters in the Pauline traditions, the eschatological slant of the letter can to some extent be detected in its particular Christological focus. The greetings (Phm 3) includes the complete title for Christ in the New Testament, ‘the Lord Jesus Christ’ (NXULYRX ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC) and is used in addition to ‘God our Father’ (4HRXC SDWURaK-PZCQ). Further references to Christ in Philemon are found in Philemon 5 (Lord Jesus); 6 (Christ); 8 (Christ); 9 (Christ Jesus); 16 (Lord); and 20 (Christ). The preference in the letter for ‘Christ’ as title for the Son of God suggests that the focus falls on the glory of Christ, and the reference to Christ as Lord entails his sovereignty or rule over the world. However, deducing the eschatological emphases indirectly by attending to the particular way in which Paul refers to Christ alone offers little more than to conclude that Christ’s vital role in Paul’s teleological understanding of the world is very visible. The operative Christology in the Philemon-letter underscored Christ’s existing Lordship over the cosmos.27 slavery used metaphorically – however, Wire (1998, 288) stresses that enslavement is never a primary metaphor for Christian faith; Glancy (2006) for a corporeal emphasis on slavery; and MacDonald (2007, 94–113) for the significance of sexuality for slave relationships. 26 To claim that 1 Tim 6:2 (the appeal to slaves to obey their Christian masters since they are brothers) shows how ‘the ethos of mutuality had the potential to disrupt the power-relations that undergird the master-slave relationship’ (Barclay 1997, 117) fails to mention that the hierarchical system is not only reaffirmed but that the appeal to Christian relationships are used to justify it. 27 However, Paul’s emphasis on Christ as Lord probably does not invoke the presentation of Christ as slave-owner of all believers (cf. Horsely 1998a; Wire 1998, 288).

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3. Conclusion Paul’s apocalyptic theology28 probably does more than to ‘challenge us to rethink our traditional conceptions of salvation and ethics’ (Beker 1990, xiv), going beyond individual interest and parochial concerns. Apocalyptic and eschatology has a way of placing the larger society, indeed, the cosmic scenario, in the present. The consistent eschatological awareness in the Pauline letters is often experienced as casting long shadows over their possibilities in assisting in addressing social concerns through the ages.29 The materiality of daily life was subjugated to a higher goal (telos) and, apart from other reasons too, provides one aspect of Paul’s reluctance to account for the implications of his theological convictions for matters related (among others) to slavery. To summarise, the reason that Paul does not challenge slavery as a social institution, although his theological conviction would have made this eminently possible, can probably be ascribed at least to some extent to his strong and consistent end-of-time focus. It is, on the other hand and equally probable, his constant reaffirmation of the ‘already’ achieved by Christ that leads him to appeal and persuade, to push and nudge, but also to manipulate and coerce, that Philemon should manumit Onesimus and welcome him rather as brother and freedman back into his household.30 28 How to deal with lines of development in Pauline thinking, in particular also when the later Pauline tradition is included, remains a question. Already with the seven authentic Pauline letters, it is imperative to move beyond merely assigning categories of ‘incoherency’ (Räisänen) or ‘inconsistency’ (Sanders). Should the notion of development (cf. Hübner) not be explored as the more appropriate category of description? 29 ‘What makes Paul appear “conservative” socially is our loss of his eschatological horizon. Once the sense of the imminent end is gone, Paul comes through as a social conservative who urges that everyone stay in his or her place regardless of how long the history or society continue’ (Keck 1979, 98). From another direction, Witherington (1992, 238–242) offers the following reasons why Christian faith should maintain an eschatological framework: to avoid distortions in other areas (such as either making peace with the world of world-avoidance); to maintain a paranetic incentive in ethics; to protect God’s character (i.e. theodicy); to avoid a fatalist in favour of a realist perspective on the fate of the world; to avoid wrong teaching based on the Bible (e.g. Dispensationalism). ‘[A] church without a proper eschatological framework in which to live and believe is a church at odds not only with the world but with some crucial elements of the gospel’ (Witherington 1992, 242). 30 Since manumission depended on the slave’s ability to survive materially, the possibility of Onesimus becoming at Paul’s insistence a ‘business partner’ of Philemon is reinforced by Phm 20–21 (Bieberstein 2000, 114). If and to what extent Paul can be seen here to be planting the seeds for the eventual destruction of the system of slavery (cf. Ryan 2005, 176ff.) or how Paul’s comments would be received in the early Christian church (Horsley 1998a, 190–194) cannot be discussed here. For the unfolding of slavery

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Works Consulted Barclay, JMG 1997 Colossians and Philemon. Sheffield. Beker, JC 1980 Paul, the Apostle. The Triumph of God in Life and Thought. Edinburgh. – 1982 Paul's Apocalyptic Gospel. The Coming Triumph of God. Philadelphia. – 1990 The Triumph of God: The Essence of Paul's Thought. Minneapolis. Bieberstein, S 2000 Disrupting the Normal Reality of Slavery: A Feminist Reading of the Letter to Philemon. JSNT 79, 105–116. Brower, KE 2004 s.v. Eschatology, in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Alexander, TD and Rosner, BS (eds.), Leicester, 459–464. Carroll, JT 2000 Introduction, in The Return of Jesus in Early Christianity. Carroll, JT, Brown, AR, Setzer, CJ & Siker, JS (eds.), Peabody, 1–4. Cosgrove, CH, Weiss, H and Yeo, K 2005 Cross-Cultural Paul. Journeys to Others, Journeys to Ourselves. Grand Rapids. Duling, DC 1996 Millennialism, in The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation, Rohrbaugh, R (ed.), Peabody, 183–205. Frederickson, DE 2000 Paul Playfully on Time and Eternity. Dialog 39(1), 21–26. Glancy, JA 2006 Slavery in Early Christianity. Minneapolis. Greshake, G 2005 Eschatology, in Encyclopedia of Christian Theology (Vol 1: A-F), Lacoste, J, New York & London, 487–492. Horsley, RA 1998a Paul and Slavery: A Critical Alternative to Recent Readings, in Slavery in Text and Interpretation, Callahan, AD, Horsley, RA & Smith, A (eds.), Atlanta, 153–200. – 1998b The Slave Systems of Classical Antiquity and Their Reluctant Recognition by Modern Scholars, in Slavery in Text and Interpretation, Callahan, AD, Horsley, RA & Smith, A (eds.), Atlanta, 19–66. – 2004 Introduction, in Paul and the Roman Imperial Order, Horsley, RA (ed.), Harrisville, 1–23. Keck, LE 1979 Paul and his Letters. Philadelphia. Lightfoot, JB 1959 Saint Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon. A Revised Text with Introductions, Notes and Dissertations. Grand Rapids. MacDonald, MY 2007 Slavery, Sexuality and House Churches: A Reassessment of Colossians 3.18–4.1 in light of New Research on the Roman Family. NTS 53(2), 94–113. Malina, BJ 1989 Christ and Time: Swiss or Mediterranean? CBQ 51(1), 1–31. Marshall, IH 1993 The Gospel and Slavery, in The Theology of the Shorter Pauline Epistles, Donfried, KP & Marshall, IH (eds.), Cambridge, 171–191. Martin, DB 1990 Slavery as Salvation: The Metaphor of Slavery in Pauline Christianity. New Haven. Martyn, JL 1985 Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul's Letter to the Galatians. NTS 31, 410– 424. Perkins, P 1998 Philemon, in The Women's Bible Commentary, Newsom, CA & Ringe, SH (eds.), Louisville, 453–454. Polaski, SH 1999 Paul and the Discourse of Power. Sheffield. Rowland, C 1983 Apocalyptic Visions and the Exaltation of Christ in the Letter to the Colossians. JSNT 19, 73–83. Ryan, JM 2005 Philemon, in Philippians & Philemon, Collegeville.

in history and the sad role which Christianity played in it, and its influence on the hermeneutics of biblical scholars over many centuries, cf. Horsley (1998b, 19–66).

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Soards, ML 1987 The Apostle Paul. An Introduction to his Writings and Teaching. Mahwah. Still, TD 2004 Eschatology in Colossians: How Realized Is It? NTS 50(2), 125–38. Stowers, SK 1998 Paul and Slavery: a Response, in Slavery in Text and Interpretation, Callahan, AD, Horsley, RA & Smith, A (eds.), Atlanta, 291–293. Wire, AC 1998 Reading Our Heritage: a Response, in Slavery in Text and Interpretation, Callahan, AD, Horsley, RA & Smith, A (eds.), Atlanta, 291–293. Witherington III, B 1992 Jesus, Paul and the End of the World. A Comparative Study in New Testament Eschatology. Downers Grove.

The Distinctiveness of Paul’s Eschatology Michael Wolter When looking upon the range of Paul’s eschatological statements, a clear and distinctive trait in his eschatological thinking comes to the fore, which spreads over the many different eschatological propositions in his different letters. This distinctiveness is found in more than just eschatological concepts and stated expectations for the future events, which are outlined in his letters and which he had shared with most – of his fellow Christians. These common eschatological concepts and expectations are: – –

– –

the exalted Lord will return to earth soon; the dead Christians will be resurrected and they as well as those who are still alive when the Lord comes will be transformed into a new and everlasting corporeality; the parousia of the Lord will be accompanied by a universal destruction (‘wrath’) out of which all that belong to Jesus Christ will be saved; and, finally, a judgement according to a person’s deeds will be held, the results of which are open; everybody that has committed evil will be punished – even by condemnation.

However, the specific distinction of Paul’s eschatology can be recognised in how he interrelates firstly the past, with Christ’s death and resurrection, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the conversion of the believers; secondly, the present situation of the Christian communities; and thirdly, the future, with the aforementioned expectations as parts of one single eschatological narrative. In this overview of eschatology in the Pauline writings, I will proceed by discussing particular texts that function as nodal points in the semantic web of Paul’s eschatology.

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1. Retrospective Eschatology One of the characteristics of Paul’s eschatology is that the temporal dimension in its speech pertains not only to the future but also to the past and the present. Paul supports the idea that there are eschatological events that Christians no longer expect but to which they look back. Paul’s presentation of the current, present reality is different from many apocalyptic texts. The present for Paul is neither void of salvation, nor – for that reason – only eschatologically qualified, because it is already present in the wake of God’s eschatological intervention, which has been awaited as arriving immediately. The present for Paul can be considered as the end time, because God’s eschatological intervention has already taken place. Paul and his communities – and naturally all Christians ever since – experience a characteristic tension, the peculiarity of which is traditionally described through the polar opposites of ‘already and not yet’. We can start with Galatians 4:4-7: The event Paul interprets as God’s act of salvation having already taken place is the ‘arrival’ (Gl 3:19) relating to the fate of Jesus of Nazareth. Christian faith recognises God’s eschatological act of salvation in him. It is an eschatological event because it took place ‘when the time had fully come’ (Gl 4:4). Paul uses the idea of a measure to interpret the Christ event,1 thus seen as an eschatological event that stands at the end of a fixed time span which has been determined by God. The mission of the Son is an eschatological act of God’s salvation, because believers have finally been ‘bought free’ from slavery to the law and have been adopted as God’s children under God’s law (v. 5). Both aspects are closely connected since only children – and not slaves – are entitled to an inheritance (see also Rom 8:17). Simultaneously, Paul expresses his views on the future through the inheritance imagery as he refers to the certainty of the coming eschatological salvation the children of God will inherit, which is still due. The text in Galatians shows the structure of Paul’s eschatology clearly: The Christ event in this sense forms part of God’s eschatological intervention because it allows believers to be adopted as God’s children, and will thus certainly have a share in God’s salvation. This certainty in the future can be made tangible as hope in the present. The state of being God’s children, which believers become because they belong to God’s son Jesus Christ, is a state of experiencing eschatological salvation already in the present. 1

Cf. in this sense e.g. 2 Esdras 4:36-37: ‘When the number of those like yourselves is completed; for he has weighed the age in the balance, and measured the times by measure, and numbered the times by number; and he will not move or arouse them until that measure is fulfilled’.

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Paul also interprets the Christ event as an eschatological event in 1 Corinthians 15:45. He depicts Christ eschatologically in contrast to Adam, and therewith links up with the traditional belief that the ‘primordial time’ matches the ‘end time’. After Christ there will be no further ‘Adam’. His fate is an eschatological event because its outcome will never again be abrogated. Building on the premises set in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, Paul talks about Jesus’ resurrection in 15:45. His argument has an eschatological character, because the resurrection forms a functional correspondent to the significance of the first created man. Jesus’ resurrection is an eschatological event because it carries consequences of anthropological extent – just like Adam’s deed and fate had universal consequences. As ‘first fruit of those who have fallen asleep’ (v. 20), i.e. as ‘prototype’ or ‘progenitor’ of those that will be risen from the death, Christ becomes Adam’s eschatological opposite, since because of his resurrection a new mankind has been created over which death no longer has any power. Paul also attributes an eschatological character to the Christ event in Romans 5:12-21. Here too he uses the Adam analogy to interpret the meaning of the Christ event, though different from 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45, the pericope in Romans does not deal with Jesus’ resurrection but with his death in relation to salvation. However, the eschatological effect is the same, as Paul emphasises in Romans 5:21: ‘... so that [L^QDZ^VSHU] as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’. According to the argument in Romans, death, which had entered the world because of Adam, has been eschatologically deprived of its power by the Christ event (death of Jesus). In fact, here too the ‘already’ is accompanied by a ‘not yet’, because the disempowerment of death that has already taken place does not mean that Christians will be saved principally from physical death (physical mortality continues to determine the lives of Christians in the present).2 This is due to the fact that the Christian’s ‘new life’ (Rom 6:4) – a life ‘not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit’ (Rom 7:6) – is determined by a form of corporeality that is not suited for ‘eternal life’ (cf. also Rom 6:23; Gl 6:8). In this area something is still to happen. Rom 8:23; 2 Corinthians 5:1-8; Philippians 3:21 and especially 1 Corinthians 15:50-54 demonstrate that for Paul the ‘not yet’ of eschatological salvation is caused by the weak and perishable corporeality of the Christian’s present existence. Therefore believers are still waiting to receive a corporeality that will last eternally.

2 We have to say ‘principally’, since – because of his expectation of the imminent parousia – Paul reckoned with the fact that some or even most Christians would not die until then (cf. 1 Thess 4:17; 1 Cor 15:51-53).

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Because of the eschatological character of the Christ event, the question cannot be ‘whether’ but only ‘how’ this will take place. It is therefore not difficult to connect the eschatological structure of the Adam-Christtypologies presented in Romans and 1 Corinthians with its appearance in Galatians 4:4-7: the ‘heritage’ that God’s children may anticipate is the provision of a corporeality that will last as long as eternal life. The absolute certainty and foundation of this anticipation has its substantiation nowhere else but in the eschatological character of the event of Christ’s death and resurrection. Paul uses the same structure of a retrospective eschatology in Romans 6:1-11. Christian baptism is presented as an eschatological event, because it can be compared to ‘a death’ which the baptised undergo when they ‘die to sin’ (vv. 2, 8a, 11a). Their new life (v. 4c; cf. 7:6), which they now lead, carries the mark of ‘already’ in the eschatological salvation, because it is a life beyond their ‘death’ through which the reign of sin had once and for all been broken, a life of inseparable solidarity with God (v. 11b). On the other hand, baptism carries the mark ‘not yet’ at the same time, because the baptised are not yet resurrected with Jesus. In the future, believers still have to expect and experience a ‘growing together’ in Jesus’ resurrection (v. 5, 8b). For this reason we can distinguish between two characteristics of Paul’s eschatology.

2. Between the Times a) The tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, which simultaneously characterises the difference between believers and those baptised, is usually seen in temporal terms. Within the present (now) it is characterised that the ‘present evil age/world’ (Gl 1:4; see also Rom 12:2; 1 Cor 1:20; 2:6, 8; 3:18; 2 Cor 4:4) is surpassed by the anticipated coming aeon. The time of salvation in the new aeon is ‘already’ dawning even though the old aeon is ‘yet’ continuing. However, this applies only partially, because for Paul the eschatological ‘new creation’ in the present-day is not present in the same manner as ‘this aeon’. This difference can be detected when Paul talks about the state of salvation that is accorded already in the present to believers and those that have been baptised: they are ‘children of light’ (1 Thess 5:5) and consequently belong to God’s heavenly world now already. They are already protected under the range of ‘God’s love’ in his salvation, from which no other worldly power will ever be able to remove them (Rom 8:39; cf. also Rom 1:7; 1 Cor 13:8, 13; 1 Thess 1: 4). They are called the ‘glorified’ (Rom 8:30), the ‘elected’ (Rom 8:33; 1 Cor 1:27f; 1 Thess 1:4) and ‘chil-

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dren of God’ (Rom 8:14-17, 21; Gl 3:26; 4:5-7; Phil 2:15), and, will retain this status and assurance. They are no longer God’s ‘enemies’ (Rom 5:10), but have found their ‘peace with God’ (Rom 5:1) and are ‘reconciled’ with him (Rom 5:10, 11; 2 Cor 5:18, 19). Two characteristics of these names depicting the Christians’ present state of salvation can be distinguished. On the one hand, all the declarations are referentially isotopic. For this reason they are interchangeable without limitations. The same thing is said repeatedly with different words. On the other hand, they describe an eschatological reality that already exists in the present. However, this reality – seen to be intangible in terms of the concrete world – is as substantial as faith in Christ, or justification that is granted to believers, being baptised, or having hope. This description of the eschatological salvation in the present is commensurate with Romans 8:24-25 and 2 Corinthians 5:7, where Paul characterizes the ‘not yet’ of eschatological salvation as a ‘not yet’ of (physical) ‘seeing’ or ‘sight’. At this point the similarities between Paul’s eschatology and the eschatology of the Deutero-pauline letter to the Colossians become apparent. If the author of Colossians explains the unattainability of the eschatological salvation that truly exists already in the present as ‘being hid with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3), it is clear that he wants to present his readers with the same concepts as Paul. And as Paul expects the transformation of this salvation in ‘seeing’ and ‘sight’ in the future (Rom 8:24f.; 2 Cor 5:7), the letter to the Colossians says that the Christians will also ‘appear in glory’ (IDQHUZTKYVHVTH HMQ GRY[K) with Christ resurrected (R^WDQ R- &ULVWRa IDQHUZTKC) (Col 3:4). Although the author of Colossians uses a different formula when stating that the baptised are ‘risen with Christ’ (2:12, 13; 3:1), his eschatology is not that much distanced from that of Paul. b) The temporal characteristic of Paul’s eschatology (‘already’ and ‘not yet’) becomes even clearer when texts in which Paul talks about the believers’ eschatological ‘glorification’ (GRY[D, GR[DY]HLQ) are placed alongside each other: Romans 5:2: ‘Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God’. Romans 8:18: ‘I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us’. Romans 8:29-30: ‘For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified’. 1 Thessalonians 2:12: ‘[we encouraged and charged you] ... to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory’.

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These texts are best seen in relation to each other and as a unit providing insight into Paul’s eschatological thought, which is not always evident when the extracts are viewed in isolation. These texts provide information about the temporal characteristic of Paul’s eschatology, where a blending of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of the eschatological salvation is expressed. In this sense, according to Romans 5:2 and 8:18, Paul views the bestowal of the glory of God on the Christians as a gift yet to come, for which all in the present still wait and for which all can only hope. In the present it is a ‘not yet’. On the other hand, Paul is so certain of the fulfilment of this hope in Romans 8:30 that he describes the bestowal of the glory in the present as an ‘already’. It has already been given. God has ‘glorified’ the believers because he has ‘called’ and ‘justified’ them. In this line of thought, as phrased in 8:17-18, he has appointed them as ‘heirs’ of glory. They will be ‘joint heirs’ of Christ their ‘brother’ (8:29) together with whom they not only suffer in the present but also will be ‘glorified’ in the future. The three verbs with which Paul looks back at God’s act of salvation do not describe a temporal succession (first ‘call’, then ‘justify’, then ‘glorify’), rather he uses them to explain the theological meaning of one and the same process: through his ‘calling’ God has already ‘justified’ and ‘glorified’. This is why Romans 5:2 and 8:18 can be connected easily: the ‘glorification’ of the believers and those that have been baptised is naturally an already existing eschatological reality. In fact, it is a reality in the same light as their ‘justification’; or God’s ‘calling’ them; or that he has appointed them as his ‘heirs’ (8:17); or that they are ‘children of light’ (1 Thess 5:5). What remains yet to come is the transformation of the believers into this reality (according to 8:24-25: the ‘visible reality’). Consequently, ‘God’s glorification’ in the present is only perceptible existentially in the mode of hope – and as such it is perceptible. Therefore believers can wait for their transformation into ‘seeing’ patiently. 1 Thessalonians 2:12 is connected to Romans 8:30 through the keyword ‘to call’ (NDOHLCQ). On a textual level, God’s ‘calling’ (present) and the transformation of the believers into his ‘glory’ (future) are set into temporal succession. However, this has already been treated in Romans 8:18, 30, and that is why we can say: God’s ‘calling’ the Christians in Thessalonica into his glory through Paul is only possible because – to say it with the words of Romans 8,30 – ‘He has glorified’ them, meaning ‘He has appointed them to obtain salvation’ (1 Thess 5:9). The ‘calling … into glory’ implies that the dedication and promise of God’s kingdom and glory to believers is already a reality in the present. Therefore, between the ‘calling’ and the entry into God’s glory, the same relation exists as between

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‘hope’ and ‘seeing’ according to Romans 8:24-25, or between the initiation into the state of being ‘heirs’ and the acceptance of the inheritance according to Romans 8:17. The profiling of Paul’s eschatology takes further shape when we ask how he depicts the ‘already’ of the present in the light of the ‘not yet’ of the future.

3. The Reality of Present Salvation in the Light of the Future a) Paul shows a keen interest in providing proof of a surpassing continuity between salvation in the present and salvation in the future. It can be seen clearly where he describes the eschatological state of salvation in the present of the Christian communities. He uses metaphors that help him explain the contemporaneous as forming part of a preliminary stage of experiencing salvation that is yet to come, which will not only necessarily follow the current experience chronologically but will surpass it qualitatively. The ‘already’ of the eschatological salvation relates to the ‘not yet’ in the same way as ‘first fruits’ relate to the entire harvest (Rom 8:23; see also 1 Cor 15:20, 23) or as a ‘down payment’ or deposit relates to the total amount (2 Cor 1:22; 5:5), or as being appointed as an heir relates to the accession to the inheritance (Rom 8:17; Gl 3:29; 4:7), or as an engagement to the marriage (2 Cor 11:2). In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul is admonishing the community, comparing her to a bride that had been promised to Christ in marriage, but that the wedding – salvation – could be called off because members of the community were on the verge of becoming involved with ‘another man’ (being led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ – v. 3). The privilege they experience in the ‘state of being betrothed’ in the present will not continue in the sanctified state of being ‘married’, because they as a community run the risk of becoming defiled by ‘a different man’. He beseeches the community not to turn away from their already achieved state of salvation and threatens them between the lines with the loss of the eschatological salvation.3 This argumentation implies, on the one hand the certainty that there is an elemental continuity between salvation already existing and the reality of salvation that is yet to come. To partake in this salvation the community does not have to fulfil additional conditions – except one: it has to remain what it has become through its founding. Paul has the same argument in 1 Corinthians 15:2 and Philippians 2:16.

3

See also 2 Cor 5:10.

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Paul expresses this certainty of the coming salvation when he emphasises the continuity between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ of the eschatological salvation. According to Philippians 1:6, God will ‘accomplish’ at the parousia what he had ‘begun’ at the genesis of the community. Paul builds the same bridge in 1 Corinthians 1:6-9: Paul’s testimony to Christ was ‘confirmed’ among the community by God (v. 6), and God will ‘sustain [them] to the end’, resulting in them being ‘guiltless’ at the parousia (v. 8). Paul justifies the certainty of this continuity between salvation ‘already’ granted and ‘not yet’ fulfilled in verse 9 by recalling God’s faithfulness. The same thought is prevalent in the benediction in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24: He is certain that they will be ‘saved’ by God and that that they will therefore be ‘blameless’ at the parousia. The same justification is presented in 1 Corinthians 1:9: ‘God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord’. These three texts (Phil 1:6; 1 Cor 1:6-9; 1 Thess 5:23-24) connect the community’s immediate circumstances and situation in the present with the day of parousia. They all have in common that this day is not seen as a day of change and discontinuity but it is seen as a day to which the community can aspire as they have ‘already’ been called. b) From 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 it is clear that Paul can place the emphasis differently. Here, he accentuates the so-called ‘eschatological reserve’ to bring the meaning of the spiritual gifts into perspective, which played a considerable role in the Corinthian community. He depicts the spiritual gifts as something preliminary and momentary, as incomplete and fragmentary, in which the eschatological salvation is only indirectly recognisable (13:12: as if one were looking into a mirror). This experience will end with the coming of the complete salvation. Paul says something very similar in 1:7, the ‘spiritual gifts’ are a form of experiencing the presence of God’s salvation in the time of anticipation before the parousia. Therefore, the contemporary present-day status of spiritual gifts is neither a presumption nor something like the glimpse of the ‘complete’ as ‘when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away’ (13:10). The present-day experience of deliverance does not merely lead into future salvation. Paul wants to demonstrate that the discontinuity existing between the present-day manifestations of the Holy Spirit and the future reality of salvation cannot be bridged by current experiences of the spirit. This discontinuity can only be bridged through God’s own achievement. c) Paul ends 1 Corinthians 13 with the well known trilogy ‘faith, hope, love’ (SLYVWLaHMOSLYaDMJDYSK) in verse 13, which he had probably coined himself. They also occur in 1 Thessalonians 1:3 and 5:8. The point, according to these texts, is that these three virtues mark the Christian’s es-

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chatological life in the present of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. Paul places these three virtues in an eschatological context in 1 Thessalonians 5:8. Within the immediate setting of the verse, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Paul deliberates on the present-day reality of the Christian community’s salvation in the light of the future. In so doing, he shifts the emphasis and treats the relation between the present and the future differently than elsewhere in the corpus of his extant writings. In this text (1 Thess 5:1-11) Paul distinguishes between the salvation of the Christian community and the condemnation of the ‘others’ (v. 6). In 4:13 Paul sees the difference between these two groups ‘the others’ – differently from believers – as not having hope. The reason for this difference is known by the community, ‘the day of the Lord’ will suddenly befall the world; that is, it will come as unexpected as ‘a thief in the night’ (5:1-2). According to verses 4a-5 this knowledge paradoxically contributes to the community’s reality of salvation, as it follows the assertion in verse 4b that the coming of the day will not bring it condemnation. The present reality of the “other’s” condemnation stands in opposition to this, and is expressed ironically in the way they say, ‘peace and safety’ (HLMUKYQK NDL DMVIDYOHLD – v. 3a). They do not expect a ‘day of the Lord’ and its surprising arrival, and that is why it will bring them nothing but condemnation (v. 3b-d). In this way believers are distinguished from non-believers in their eschatological awareness. Believers are different from ‘the others’: they know that the present in which they and all others live has an eschatological character; they know that they stand in the shadow of an eschatological crisis, because the judgement that will come with the ‘day of the Lord’ will put an end to this dispensation. This can happen at any time. On the other hand, the perception prevails of the non-believing ‘others’ who do not share this awareness of a crisis and consider their situation in terms of ‘peace and safety’. As ‘children of light’ and ‘children of the day’ (v. 5a) the members of the Christian community now already belong to God’s heavenly world, and God’s salvation is now already present in their midst. Still, it is a particular characteristic of their reality of salvation that they do not say ‘peace and safety’ like the ‘others’ do. Instead it is the awareness of the tentativeness and finiteness of their everyday reality that forms an inseparable part of their ‘already’ accomplished participation in God’s salvation. Within their present circumstances, a constitutive aspect of their eschatological knowledge is that the ‘day of the Lord’ will bring inevitable condemnation to the ‘others’ (1 Thess 5:3), but to themselves the transformation will result in a state of salvation, which will indeed continue eternally.

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4. ‘Behold, Now is the Day of Salvation’ (2 Cor 6:2) In 2 Corinthians 6:2, Paul introduces a further aspect of his eschatological thought with a dramatic and intense phrase. Paul asks the community in Corinth in the previous verse (2 Cor 6:1) not to gamble away their salvation, which they had been granted through their acceptance of Christ’s message he had proclaimed. In verse 2 he first quotes Isaiah 49:8 (‘At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation’) as justification, and then draws on the quotation and repeats parts of it to make the prophetic proclamation relevant to the present reality which he and his readers share. He highlights the quotation through an intensification with the purpose of characterizing the unique character of the present-day situation. The immediate present is characterised as the time of salvation because the Corinthian believers have accepted (GHYFRPDL – also ‘received’) God’s grace (v. 1). With this expression Paul characterises the same process of ‘coming to faith’, seen for example in Romans 13:11; 1 Corinthians 3:5; 15:2,11, or described as ‘receiving the word’ (1 Thess 1:6), and by implication, ‘receiving the word of men as word of God’ (1 Thess 2:13). In 2 Corinthians 6:1, Paul calls the community’s attention to their turning to faith in Christ. He describes their coming to Christ in verse 2 with the prophetic quote from Isaiah stressing that God’s salvation has occurred in the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection and therefore Isaiah’s words are fulfilled in these events. However, through the retaken address in the second person, he encroaches on all those of whom he has stated in v. 1 that they ‘have accepted God’s grace’. Another aspect of Paul’s eschatology comes into focus when his rendering of Isaiah’s text is considered. This characteristic becomes clearer when we connect the eschatological interpretation of the Christ event and how it is presented by Paul (see the discussion above) with references to Paul’s proclamation of the gospel through which the communities have come to faith. Since according to Paul the content of the Gospel is brought to bear on its proclamation (cf. Rom 1:16-17) and since faith which perceives the event of Jesus’ death and resurrection as God’s act of salvation brings into effect this salvation, both – Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel and Christian faith - become eschatological events. Correspondingly, it is through Christian faith that eschatological reality becomes a true reality already in the present. For example, Paul says in Galatians 1:4: ‘... that [Christ] might deliver us from this present evil world’. Essentially, then, Paul characterises the process of coming to faith as such an eschatological event. In 2 Corinthians 5:16 he describes the turning to Christian faith (‘though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in

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that way’) as a sequence of ‘dying’ and ‘living’, and then in verse 17, he describes the newly gained Christian life as ‘a new creation’. Paul characterises his proclamation and its relation to Christian faith among other things also in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; and 2 Corinthians 2:14-17. The same is true for the ‘new creation’, about which Paul talks in Galatians 6:15, when he describes the perception of reality of Christian faith which recognises God’s act of salvation on the cross. One truth must not be overlooked: proclamation and faith are only eschatological events because they proclaim Jesus Christ and belief in Jesus Christ. In the content and structure (temporal and spatial) of proclamation and faith rest the certainty that God has acted eschatologically in Jesus Christ to the benefit of all men.

Eschatology: General Epistles, Hebrews and Revelation

The Eschatology of Hebrews As Understood within a Cultic Setting

Gert J Steyn 1. Introduction The book of Hebrews is a paradise for an investigation on first century early Christian eschatology. But although Hebrews has a high eschatological expectation,1 it is questionable whether anything new can still be said about it,2 especially after a series of works on the topic during the last few decades,3 including the recent monograph of SD Mackie (2007). With the following contribution, a humble attempt will be made, however, to focus particularly on the cultic setting4 as part of the socio-historical framework within which its eschatology5 operates. This will be achieved by dealing with this matter from two angles. Firstly, an attempt will be made to understand Hebrews’ eschatology as being both spatial and temporal in nature.6 Secondly, the eschatology of Hebrews will be placed within a cultic setting by studying it against the backdrop of the Shirot ‘olat ha-Shabbat (4Q400–407; 11Q17; Mas1k) – better known as the ‘Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice’7 or the ‘Angel Liturgy’. The intention is not at all to claim that 1 Cf. Grässer (1992, 86–90): ‘Die Mehrzahl der Exegeten war darum zu allen Zeiten geneigt, unserm Brief eine besonders lebhafte Naherwartung zuzukennen’. 2 For an overview of the research between 1938 and 1963, see Grässer (1992, 87). 3 Cf., amongst others, Cambier (1949, 62–86); Robinson (1950); Robinson (1961, 37– 51); Barrett (1954, 363–393); Dukes (1956); Carlston (1959, 296–302); Feuillet (1964, 369–387); Klappert (1969); Silva (1976, 60–71); MacRae (1978, 179–199); Toussaint (1982, 67–80); Hurst (1984, 41–74); Oberholtzer (1984). 4 Even in this area, little can be said after the recent monograph of Gäbel (2006). 5 The term has become problematic and is used in several different ways, so that scholarship is faced with a ‘Problematik der Mehrdeutlichkeit von Eschatologie’ (Pöhlmann, 1997, 340–341). For our purposes here, eschatology might be briefly defined with DeConick (2006, 18) as ‘the secret revelation of the imminence of the end’. 6 ‘It is common practice to contrast the linear view of history in the Bible with the ‘circular’ view of Greek philosophy’ (Decock 1988, 6). 7 Similarities between the ideas of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice and Hebrews have been noticed by scholars before. Cf., for instance, Morray-Jones (2006, 178) who states that these themes were ‘taken up and developed in combination by the Christian

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there is any direct connection or any form of interdependence between these documents, but to rather point out similarities between the cultic and Jewish apocalyptic imagery as used by the different communities. Regarding the spatial-temporal nature of Hebrews’ eschatology, clear traces of progression are noticeable as the main argument in the book develops through a series of ring compositional units. It could be cautiously posed that this progression might be of a mystical time-space nature and that it might have been practiced by means of cultic-liturgical rites with which the particular group, to whom the unknown author wrote, were familiar. This progressive trend might have been rooted initially within the Jewish festival rites – as is testified by the closure of the book on the note of the great Hallel when Ps 118 is quoted (see Steyn 2006, 119–134). Regarding its particular cultic setting, Hebrews shows closer similarities with an Essene type of theology, i.e. being more inclined towards a Jewish mystical type of theology,8 than with a Pharisaic9 or Sadducene form of theology (cf. Acts 28:8). Essene theology included elements such as an expected ‘eschatological war, a New Temple, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, a lay Messiah, a conversion of the Gentiles, a final judgement, and a new creation; and the reason why they expected all these was, of course, that the Old Testament prophecies foretold them’ (Beckwith 2001, 252). This does not imply, however, that the author of Hebrews wrote particularly to converted Essene Christians. The same kind of theology was at least also present amongst the group at Qumran (who were probably not Essenes) and amongst the Therapeutae of whom Philo wrote in his De Vita Contemplativa.10 Although it remains unlikely that the author of Hebrews had possible ‘Essene-type Christians or ex-Qumranians’ in mind (Charles 1990, 173), one can picture, nonetheless, converts that were of a similar profile to its readers. Parallels in the theology of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a possible form of ‘himmlische Kultus’ (Dibelius 1956, 160–176) in Hebrews also point in this direction. Any attempt to understand Hebrews’ concept of eschatology – as a modern systematised New Testament theological construct – will also have to take the following two important matters into account: writers, who regarded their Savior-Messiah as ‘a great high priest who has gone through the heavens (Heb 4:14)’; Haraguchi (2006); Gäbel (2006, 60–69). 8 ‘Jewish mystical texts … lack the motif of prophetic call or the claim to have received revelations about the future’ (Nickelsburg-Baltzer 2001, 30). 9 Cf. the restrained angelology in writings such as Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, 1 Maccabees, and 2 Maccabees. 10 See e.g. in this regard, Deutsch (2006, 287–311).

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(a) The Christology (particularly the soteriology) and the eschatology cannot be detached from each other in Hebrews.11 They are closely linked, because the death, resurrection and exaltation of Christ have eschatological significance. It becomes the dividing point between ‘the past’ and ‘these last days’ (Heb 1:1). (b) There is an underlying centrality regarding Scripture – which can be seen in its occurrence, use, application, interpretation and exposition – and which forms the backbone of the structure of Hebrews.

2. Hebrews’ Spatial-Temporal Eschatological Graph For many years scholarship on Hebrews has been divided about whether its eschatology is either vertical-spatial or horizontal-temporal.12 Indeed, it is no easy task to clearly define it.13 Although each of these two dimensions, the vertical and the horizontal, have sometimes been seen dominant one to the other, scholars are lately in agreement that they ought to be seen as an integrated whole. A spatial eschatology that operates within the framework of metaphysical dualism, understands cosmology as a division between a world below and a transcendent heavenly exemplar above. A temporal eschatology, on the other hand, follows a linear approach14 to time, is chronological in nature, and is both realised and futuristically inclined. It will be argued here that Hebrews’ eschatology encompasses both these dimensions and is thus both spatial as well as linear. There is a lineartemporal axis and a spatial imminent-transcendent axis present in the eschatological graph of our unknown author. This is no strange phenomenon, as the book itself displays not only a thorough Greek education, but also a

11 ‘Hebrews proves to be a unique blend of Christology and primitive Christian eschatology within a cultic frame of reference’ (Lane 1998, xviii); similarly, Attridge (1989, 27). 12 Cf. van Zyl (1991, 443–444): ‘Dit word dikwels voorgehou dat ‘n dubbele dualisme voorkom: enersyds ‘n ruimtelike of vertikale waar die wêreld van bo met dié van onder gekontrasteer word – die ware hemelse wêreld teenoor die minderwaardige aardse; andersyds ‘n eskatologiese of horisontale waar die teenwoordige wêreld en die toekomstige teenoor mekaar gestel word’. 13 Cf. Duvekot (1984, 343): ‘Het is niet eenvoudig om de eschatologie van de Hebreëenbrief in strakke, duidelijke lijnen weer te geven’. See also Grässer (1992, 86–90). 14 Cf. van Zyl (1991, 444): ‘Die horisontale denkskema hou verband met die tipies vroeg-Christelike heilshistoriese denke wat horisontaal, in tydskategorieë, dink’. Cf. also De Villiers & Du Toit (1990, 90).

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strong inclination towards Jewish cultic motifs and Jewish apocalyptic thought.15 The eschatological graph might thus be presented as follows: Transcendent Spatial Imminent Eschatology of faith Å

Linear-temporal Æ

Eschatology of hope

2.1. Relation of the Two Axes to Each Other Within the linear and spatial axes, the eschatological line of this graph starts in heaven with the Son sitting16 as royal King at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, quoting seven hymnic texts (Heb 1).17 It then descends in an anthropomorphic manner to earth where he was made lower than the angels for a little while, quoting Psalm 8:5–7 (Heb 2). The readers are identified as ‘brothers’ of the ‘Son’ and an appeal is made not to make the same mistake as their forefathers who have not reached their destination of rest, but to pursue this rest within the urgency of the decisive moment of ‘today’, quoting Psalm 95:7–11 (Heb 3–4). The line then picks up the cultic motif, starting with the earthly (‘mortal’) high priests and then ascends to Christ as High Priest (Heb 5). In its descend, the readers are urged this time to ‘go on toward perfection’ (HMSL WKQWHOHLRYWKWDIHUZYPHTD, Heb 6:1), ‘to show the same diligence in order to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end’ (SURa WKQ SOKURIRULYDQ WKa HMOSLYGRa D>FUL WHY ORXa, Heb 6:11), to ‘become imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises’ (Heb 6:12), and to ‘seize the hope set before them’ (Heb 6:18) – ‘a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain’ (Heb 6:19). Constantly fluctuating between ‘above’ and ‘below’, there is a change from the priesthood below to the priesthood of Christ above (see Gäbel 2006, 131–466) – compared with that of Melchizedek – because ‘perfection (WHOHLYZVLa) is not attainable through the Levitical priesthood below 15 Guthrie (2004, 429) states that ‘Jewish apocalyptic thought has had great influence in Hebrews research of the past few decades’. 16 It is ‘uncertain whether Hebrews’ eschatology requires that Christ should ‘sit’ for ever’ (Ellingworth 2000, 131). 17 This is especially achieved by the quotations from Ps 2:7 at the beginning and Ps 110:1 at the end. This points particularly ‘to the eschatological fulfillment of the Son’s sovereignty’ (Attridge 1989, 62).

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(7:11), and the law below has made nothing perfect (RXMGHQ JDU HMWHOHLYZVHQ R- QRYPRa). But there is the introduction of a better hope through which we approach God above (7:19). The law below is contrasted with a word of oath above that appointed the Son (cf. 1:5; 5:5) ‘who has been made perfect forever’ (HLMa WRQ DLMZCQD WHWHOHLZPHYQRQ, 7:28). He performs the liturgy in the sanctuary of the true tent (WZCQ D-JLYZQ OHL WRXUJRa NDL WKCa VNKQKCa WKCa DMOKTLQKCa, 8:2). The earthly tabernacle below is thus seen as a mere sketch and a shadow (X-SRGHLYJPDWL NDL VNLDC) that was made according to the pattern18 (NDWD WRQWXYSRQ) of the heavenly temple19 above (8:5); the inner sanctuary (‘Holy of Holies’) with all its cultic objects and the priests’ ritual duties below are compared with the heavenly sanctuary above; the cultic rites of sacrifices and blood that were performed by the priests as mediators below are compared with the body and blood of Christ as the Mediator above.20 It is at this point where the author states that ‘the Holy Spirit had at that time not yet disclosed the way into the sanctuary’ (WKQWZCQD-JLYZQR-GRYQ), hence the ‘first tent is a symbol of the present time’ (Heb 9:8–9). When Christ came, he entered through the greater and perfect tent (WKCa PHLY]RQRaNDL WHOHLRWHYUDaVNKQKCa, Heb 9:11), once and for all into the Holy Place (HLMaWDD^JLD, Heb 9:12). Christ is thus presented as that ‘way’ through whom access into the heavenly sanctuary above becomes possible (the earthly temple was a mere DMQWLYWXSRa), Christ who mediated a new covenant to the believers below and who now ‘appears in the presence of God on our behalf’ above. ‘He has appeared once for all at the end of the age (HMSL VXQWHOHLYD WZCQDLMZYQZQ) to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself’. Mortals below will die once and there will be judgement.21 Christ offered to bear the sins of many and will appear a second time (HMNGHXWHY 18 This image should not only be restricted to Plato’s idea of the VNLDY. Cf. for instance, Morray-Jones (2006, 177): ‘According to the Hebrew Bible, the earthly temple is the embodiment of a celestial archetype: the heavenly palace and throne room of the Lord’. 19 See Gäbel (2006, 25–128) on ‘... “Der wahre Tempel”. Frühjüdische Diskurse über irdischen und himmlischen, gegenwärtigen und eschatologischen Tempel und Kult’. DeConick (2006, 14) explains the perception of the heavenly temple as follows: ‘The celestial realm is understood to be a heavenly version of the Jerusalem temple. The various heavens are the hekaloth, shrine rooms or sanctuaries within the temple’. 20 Although somewhat controversial, the similarities between Hebrews and Philo at these points, are striking. Lieber (2006, 324–326), for instance, draws attention to these similarities. 21 Grässer (1990, 94) points out that the eschatological judgement function of the Son remains an undeveloped aspect and although the parousia is a traditional topos (9:28; 10:25, 37), it is not a current theme. ‘Man erwartet das Ende, aber nicht in akuter Naherwartung’.

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URX RMITKYVHVWDL) ‘to save those who are eagerly waiting for him’ below (Heb 9:24–28). Note the chiastic manner in which the topics referred to above in bold print, are discussed here in Hebrews 6–9: priesthood tabernacle sanctuary sacrifices and blood sanctuary tent (appear to save)

The spatial development here is striking. With the contrasts between below and above, there is progression from the priesthood through concentric circles of the tabernacle, into the sanctuary towards the sacrificial centre. Then the movement develops from the centre out of the sanctuary, back through the tabernacle (tent), to the moment where the priest (Christ) appears with the soteriological rite. The liturgical procession of the one is a mirror image of the other. The cultus below is seen as ‘the law that has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities’ (10:1). Christ’s ‘entrance into the world’ below is interpreted in terms of a quotation from Psalm 40 in Hebrews 10. It is being placed in the mouth of Christ, in which he confirms that God did no want sacrifices and that he came to do God’s will. This is achieved by offering his body ‘once and for all’ (HMIDYSD[, Heb 10:10). 2.2. Linear-Temporal Terminology Employed by the Author Ellingworth (2000, 76) is probably correct when saying that ‘no NT writing preserves a better balance than Hebrews between the past, present, and future aspects of God’s work in Christ’ – especially with the author’s statement that Jesus Christ is the same: ‘yesterday, today and forever’ (13:8). The linear-temporal axis of Hebrews’ eschatological graph encompasses two sides, namely eschatology of faith and eschatology of hope. The eschatology of faith connects closer with both the past and with the status quo of a realized eschatology, but does not exclude the future entirely (cf., for instance, Heb 10:38, 11:20, and also the train of thought in Heb 11:1ff.: ‘Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see’). It is impossible to please God without faith, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him (11:6). The characters in Hebrews 11:1–12 were still living by faith when they died (11:13). They were commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised (11:40). The leaders’ faith ought to be imitated (13:7). Hebrews’ eschatology of faith is based on Jesus’ appointment as God’s Son, on his governance and judgement as a just King. He is the exact representation of God, radiates

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the glory of God, and is far better than the angels (Heb 1:3). It is also based on Jesus’ appointment as High Priest22 and on the sacrifice that he brought once and for all by offering himself (he endured the cross, scorning its shame, 12:2), which led to salvation of sins. The cult, with all its rites and symbols, became obsolete when Christ perfected it when he ascended through the heavens. Jesus is thus the author and perfector of our faith (12:2). A summary of temporal terminology and phraseology used with regard to eschatology of faith might be summarised as follows: (a) The state of the believers: The promise of rest (a Sabbath-rest, 4:9) still stands for those who believe and Hebrews’ recipients should be careful not to fall short of it (4:1). ‘Today’ (VKYPHURQ, 1:5; 3:7,15; 4:7bis) is an important keyword and links past and present. The unfaithful shall not/never enter God’s rest (3:11,18,19; 4:3,5,6). However, as long as there is a ‘today’ (3:13) for those who believe, there is still hope. God thus sets a certain day, ‘today’ (4:7), which is such another day (D>OOKaHMODYOHLPHWD WDXCWD K-PHYUDa, 4:8). The day is coming (K-PHYUDL H>UFRQWDL) – when he will make (VXQWHOHYVZ) a new covenant (8:8). The cultus with its rituals and symbols is a mere illustration for the present time (SDUDEROK HLMaWRQ NDLURYQ, 9:9) and the existing law is a mere shadow of the good things that are coming (WZCQPHOORYQWZQ,10:1). After those days (PHWD WDaK-PHYUDa HMNHLYQDa) he will put his laws in their minds and on their hearts (8:10; 10:16). (b) Revelation and salvation through the Son: In the past (SDYODL, 1:1) God’s revelation was through the prophets, but in these last days (HMS¨ HMVFDYWRX WZCQ K-PHUZCQ WRXYWZQ, 1:2) he reveals himself through the Son. The Son has appeared once for all at the end of the ages (VXQWHOHLYD WZCQ DLMZYQZQ) to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself (9:26). He became the source of eternal salvation (for all who obey him) (VZVWKULYDa DL MZQLYRX, 5:9). He sacrificed for their sins once for all (HMIDYSD[, 7:27; 10:10). Day after day … again and again the priests performed their religious duties – but this priest offered for all time (HLMaWRGLKQHNHYa, Heb 10:12) one sacrifice for sins. Since then (WR ORLSRYQ) he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool (10:13). Through that single offering he has perfected forever (HLMaWRGLKQHNHYa) those who are being sanctified (10:13). The eschatology of hope is connected closer to the future and is teleological, apocalyptic,23 and futuristically directed.24 Especially the exordium 22 23

On this topic, see the comprehensive study of Barker (2006). DeConick (2006, 18) draws attention to the fact that ‘early Jewish and Christian mysticism is a major dimension of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought’. He warns against ‘a tendency in academia to equate apocalypticism with eschatology, as if an apocalypse were the last day’. See also Pöhlmann (1997, 343ff.).

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(Heb 1:1–4) could be seen as ‘an early Christian adaptation of Jewish hopes’ (Lincoln 2006, 92). God’s promises remain open and are still valid; ‘rest’ is the final destination (Heb 3–4 ); perseverance in faith and hope is required (Heb 10–12). The eyes should be fixed on Jesus as the race is run. There is an immediateness of Zion, of the heavenly Jerusalem and of the angels that have been reached (Heb 12). A summary of temporal terminology and phraseology used with regard to eschatology of hope might be summarised as follows: (a) The appeal to the believers to persevere: The believers should escape transgression and disobedience (SDUDYEDVLa NDL SDUDNRKY, 2:2–3), hold on to courage and hope (WKQ SDUUKVLYDQ NDL WR NDXYFKPD WKCa HMOSLYGRa, 3:6) and remember those earlier days (WDa SURYWHURQ K-PHYUDa, 10:32) when they also suffered. They should not turn away from the living God (THRXC ]ZCQWRa, 3:12), because there is a future world (WKQ RXMNRXPHYQKQ WKQ PHYOORXVDQ, 2:5) and powers of the coming age (PHYOORQWRa DLMZCQRa, 6:5). Especially striking are the futura used by the author of Hebrews. Particularly the quotations were carefully chosen with many of them being presented using futura (cf. Heb 1:5, 11–12; 2:12–13; 3:11; 6:14; 7:21; 8:8, 10, 12; 10:7, 9, 16, 17, 30, 37, 38; 12:26; 13:5–6). The believers have to persevere and hold firmly till the end (PHYFUL WHY ORXa, 3:14),25 showing this same diligence to the very end (D>FULWHYORXa, 6:11), until the time (PHYFUL NDLURXC, 9:10) comes to set things straight, because in the end (WRWHYORa) the thorns and thistles will burn (6:8). What is obsolete and aging will soon (HMJJXYa) disappear (8:13). Man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgement (9:27). (b) Christ’s second coming: However, God had planned something better for the believers (NUHLCWWRQ WL SUREOH\DPHYQRX, 11:40). Christ will appear a second time (HMNGHXWHYURXRMITKYVHWDL)26 not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are eagerly waiting for him (DMSHNGHFRPHY QRLa, 9:28). The Day is approaching (HMJJLY]RXVDQ WKQ K-PHYUDQ, 10:25) and they should persevere … for in just a very little while, ‘He who is coming will not delay’ (PLNURQ R^VRQ R- HMUFRYPHQRa K^[HL NDL RXM FURQLYVHL, 10:36–37). In the past (at that time) God’s revelation was a frightful experience and his voice shook the earth, and now he has promised (WRYWH QXCQ GHY, 12:26) that he will also even shook the heavens. The believers 24 Lincoln (2006, 95) draws attention to the terminology of ‘to come’: ‘the world to come (2:5), the powers of the age to come (6:5), good things to come (10:1, cf. also 9:11), and the city to come (13:14)’. 25 Marohl (2008, 168): ‘… present faithfulness brings about the desired future rest’. 26 ‘In Christus dem „Ersten“ haben die Eschata begonnen, durch ihn sollen sie vollendet werden’ (Pöhlmann, 1997, 343).

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can be comforted, because God will never leave them, nor forsake them (RXMPKYRXMG¨RXMPKY, 13:5). 2.3. Spatial Images Employed by the Author The intention here is not to claim that the following spatial images exclude the temporal aspect of Hebrews’ eschatology, but it is assumed that the temporal is included in the spatial as well.27 (a) The Son as Divine King on the throne: The Son radiates the glory of God and is the exact representation of God (1:3). God is also a consuming fire (12:29). The Son sits on the right hand of the Majesty, or the throne of God, in the highest heaven (1:3; 8:1–2; 10:12; 12:2).28 A key text in this regard is Ps 110:1, which is connected with Christ’s exaltation.29 The Son rules as a just King (1:8–9). They see Jesus crowned with honour and glory (2:9). He waits for his enemies to be made his footstool (10:13). Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house – and they are his house (3:6). They should thus approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that they may receive mercy and find grace to help them in their time of need (4:16). The angels worship him (1:6) and are spirits in God’s service (1:14), although he was made a little lower than the angels for a little while (2:7, 9). (b) Apocalyptic view on the universe: Earth and heaven will be replaced (1:10–12). The universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what is visible (11:3). It is the Son through whom God created the universe, ‘the worlds’ (WRXCa DLMZCQDa) – a term ‘which had both temporal and spatial connections’ (Lincoln 2006, 93), and which is the eschatological inheritance of the Son. With the words, ‘Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens’ the author explains that the words ‘once more’ indicate the removing of what can be shaken30 – that is, created things – so that what cannot be shaken, i.e. God’s kingdom, not the created universe, may remain (12:26). (c) Sharing in Christ’s achievement: They are holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling (3:1). They share in Christ if they hold firmly till the end the confidence they had at first (3:14). They have been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, and shared in the Holy Spirit (6:4). God is treating them as true sons, who undergo education or they would be illegitimate children (12:7–8). The believers on earth thus ‘already have ac27 28

Similarly also Lincoln (2006, 95). ‘(T)he centre of gravity for believers is where Christ now is in the heavenly realm’ (Lincoln, 2006, 93). 29 See also Marshall (1988, 140–141). 30 Cf. 2 Bar 59:3; 4 Ezra 6:11–17; 10:25–28 for the image of an eschatological shaking.

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cess to the realm of heaven and to God’s presence’ (4:16; 10:19, 20) (Lincoln, 2006, 94), and might justifiably be seen as ‘Himmelsbürger auf Erden’ (cf. Backhaus 2004, 219). (d) A promised Sabbath-rest awaits the elected: God swears that the forefathers would never enter his rest (3:11, 18, 19; 4:3, 5, 6).31 However, the promise of entering his rest still stands (4:1, 6). There remains a Sabbath-rest for the people of God (4:9–11) and now, they who have believed enter that rest (4:3). God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, and he confirmed it with an oath (6:17). Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were heirs of the promise (11:9),32 but the heavenly city that they are looking forward to ‘is still to come (13:14) – and yet believers already have access to it (12:22), the heavenly rest is both still to be realised and yet accessible’ (Lincoln, 2006, 95). (e) Reaching perfection: God brought the Leader of his children through suffering to perfection (2:10; 5:9). Perfection could not be attained through the Levitical priesthood. Another priest and another law were needed (7:11–12, 19). The oath came after the law, appointing the Son who has been made perfect forever (7:28). He went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made (9:11). Christ has made perfect forever those who are being made holy (10:13). The same sacrifices can never make perfect those who draw near to worship (10:1). Only together with us would they (the faith heroes) be made perfect (11:40). (f) The mediating role of the high priest: The Son had to become equal to his brothers in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God (2:17). He became priest with an oath by God (7:20–21). They have a great high priest, Jesus the Son of God, who has gone through the heavens (4:14). When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made (9:11). They have a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord (8:1–2). If he were on earth, he would not be a priest (8:4). The Son of God is high priest forever like Melchizedek (6:20; 7:3, 11, 15–17). Jesus lives forever and he has a permanent priesthood (7:24). Such a high priest meets their need – one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens (7:26). Day after day … again and again the priests per31 Lincoln (2006, 94): ‘This eschatological pattern of an experience of salvation in the present, with a focus on heaven, to be followed by the consummation of salvation at the end is exemplified in Hebrews’ treatment of the concept of rest’. 32 Marohl (2008, 175): ‘(T)he addressees were to look forward by looking back’.

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formed their religious duties – but this priest offered for all time one sacrifice for sins. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool (10:11–12). They have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for them through the curtain, that is, his body, and since they have a great high priest over the house of God, they should draw near to God (10:19–22). They have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all (10:9–10). Their hearts have been sprinkled to cleanse them from a guilty conscience and their bodies have been washed with pure water (10:22). (g) The inner sanctum: Hope enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus has entered on their behalf (6:18–20). The priests serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven. Moses made everything according to the pattern shown to him on the mountain (8:5). (A description is given of its regulations for worship, the items in the sanctuary and the priestly functions). ‘The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing’ (9:1–8). He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption (9:12) … how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse their consciences from acts that lead to death, so that they may serve the living God! (9:14). The law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without blood there is no forgiveness. It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves to be purified with better sacrifices than those. Christ did not enter a manmade sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again… (9:22–25). (h) Judgement: Everything is uncovered and lays bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account (4:13). The resurrection of the dead and eternal judgement (6:2) is to come. In the end it (thorns and thistles = they) will burn (6:8). They are confident that they will be saved (6:9). God is not unjust – he will not forget their work (6:10). Jesus is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he lives to intercede for them (7:25). Disobedience, however, leads to a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God (10:27). A man deserves to be punished more severely than with Moses’ law when he has trampled the Son of God under foot, when he has treated the blood of the covenant that sanctified him as an unholy thing, and when he has insulted the Spirit of grace. For they know him who said: ‘It is mine to avenge, I will repay’, and again, ‘The Lord will judge his people’. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (10:29–31). They

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should not throw away their confidence; it will be richly awarded. They need to persevere so that when they have done the will of God, they will receive what he has promised (10:35–36). His righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, he will not be pleased with him (10:38). By Noah’s faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith (11:7). Moses regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward (11:26). Some were tortured and they refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection (11:35). We are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken (12:28). (i) The guarantee of a better covenant: Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant (7:22). The covenant of which he is the mediator is superior to the old one, and it is founded on better promises (8:6). Food and drink and ceremonial washings were external regulations applying until the time of the new order (9:10). Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance (9:15). The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming – not the realities themselves (10:1). He sets aside the first in order to establish the second (10:9). (j) Taking hold of the hope: They have fled to take hold of the hope offered to them – they who have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus has entered on their behalf (6:18–20). A better hope is introduced, by which they draw near to God (7:19). They should hold unswervingly to the hope that they profess (10:23). (k) The city of God: Abraham was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (11:10).33 They were longing for a better country, a heavenly one, 34 and God has prepared a city for them (11:16). They have come to mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. They have come to God the judge of all, to the spirits of righteous people made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (12:22–24). The recipients are ‘the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven’

33

Similar imagery is to be found in 1QH 6:24–26; Sib V 250f.; Hen 90:29 and Rev 21:10. See Fischer (1978, 117–118). 34 Lincoln (2006, 95) has drawn attention to the ‘heavenly’ terminology: ‘a heavenly call (3:1), the heavenly gift (6:4), the heavenly sanctuary (8:5), the heavenly things (9:23), a heavenly country (11:16) and the heavenly Jerusalem (12:22)’.

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(Heb 12:23).35 They have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat (13:10). Jesus suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood (13:12). Outside the camp they do not have an enduring city, but are looking for the city that is to come (13:14). 2.4. The Present as the Current Point in Time-Space within the Eschatological Graph The present is a decisive time and there is some urgency on ‘today’ and ‘now’ with a closeness regarding Jesus’ second coming. It is the current point in time and space on the ascending line within the eschatological graph. The present holds an appeal to live a righteous life with a view of what is to come. The following requirements for their lifestyle have been woven into the text of Hebrews: They should pay careful attention to what they have heard so that they do not drift away (2:1). They should not refuse him who speaks (12:25). None of them should have a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God (3:12) and they should not harden their hearts (3:15; 4:7); they should draw near to God with a sincere heart (10:22). They should hold unswervingly to the hope they profess (10:23) and should be careful that none of them fall short of entering God’s rest (4:1), but rather make every effort to enter that rest (4:11). They should hold firmly to the faith that they profess (4:14). They ought to be teachers and acquainted with the teaching about righteousness (5:12–13), leaving the elementary teachings about Christ, going on to maturity (6:1) and not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings (13:9). They should consider how they may spur one another on toward love and good deeds (10:24) and should encourage one another daily (3:13). They should not give up meeting together (10:25) and should not throw away their confidence (10:35), but should approach the throne of grace with confidence (4:16). Each one needs to show diligence to the very end in order to make their hope sure (6:11), fleeing to take hold of the hope offered to them (6:18). They should live in peace with all men and be holy (12:14); no one should miss the grace of God and no bitter root should grow up to cause trouble (12:15); neither should anyone be sexually immoral, or godless (12:16). They should keep on loving each other as brothers; not forgetting to entertain strangers; remember those in prison and those who are mistreated. They should honour marriage 35

The similarity with Jub 2:10 might be helpful in understanding this as Jewish Christians who are addressed ‘…worum sie als Angehörige Israels, des “erstgeborenen Sohnes Gottes”…, in besonderer Weise wissen dürfen’ (Stuhlmann 1983, 143).

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and keep the marriage bed pure. They should also keep their lives free from the love of money and be content with what they have (13:1–5). They need to persevere (10:36) and not become lazy (6:12). They need to worship God acceptably with reverence and awe (12:28), going to Jesus outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore (13:12). They need to continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that confess his name. They should not forget to do well and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. They should obey their leaders and submit themselves to authority. They should pray for the writer(s) (13:15–18).

3. The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifices as Cultic Comparison The 1956 work of Martin Dibelius on Hebrews as ‘Himmlische Kultus’ sets the tone for pursuing a cultic direction. The study of the connection between the conceptual background of Hebrews, and that of Jewish Merkabah mysticism, could be traced back to Schenke and Williamson.36 ‘Hebrews, with its interest in the heavenly cultus, seemed to reflect these vital interests (e.g., Heb 1:3, 6; 2:10; 4:16; 8:1; 12:2, 10, 14)’ (Lane 1998, cix). The absence of the key passages in Hebrews from Ezekiel 1; Ps 97; Daniel 7; and Isaiah 6 in Merkabah mysticism has, however, led to scepticism in this regard. Käsemann (1961), Grässer (1965; 1990), Theissen (1969) and Thompson (1981) were thus more inclined to variations of a Gnostic motif. But, there is a strong case to be made against this direction (cf. Lane 1998, cix). Great caution is thus needed when the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice is used as a comparative document in our discussion below. We will pursue the possibility that the author of Hebrews wrote to a group that might have practiced, or at least came from a background similar to that as described in the Angel Liturgy of Qumran and Masada with its Songs for the first 13 Sabbaths of the year. Löhr too, has already pointed in this direction with a comparison between Hebrews and the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifices. He concludes (Löhr 1991, 204–205): …in beiden Texten (ist) eines Motivkomplexes ansichtig, in welchem kultisches und politisches Vorstellungsmaterial zur Aussage der Herrschaft Gottes verbunden sind ... bestätigt unsere Untersuchung die gerade für die Hebräerbriefexegese wichtige Erkenntnis, daß zeitlich-futuristische und räumlich-transzendente Eschatologie einander nicht ausschließen, sondern vielmehr implizieren: Wer eschatologische Hoffnung

36 Schenke (1973, 433–434); Williamson (1975–1976, 232–237). So observed by Lane (1998, cviii–cix), and Guthrie (2004, 425).

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aussagen will, wer Gott als H>V FDWRQ des NRYVPRa bekennen will, wird Raum und Zeit transzendieren müssen.

Let it be stated explicitly and once again that the intention of this comparison is not at all to indicate or assume direct connections between Qumran, or this document, and Hebrews.37 The intention is rather to point to similarities between the cultic and Jewish apocalyptic imagery that were used by those communities – in order to construct aspects of the eschatological worldview against this socio-historical background. There are especially two ways of treating heaven and earth that Hebrews shares with the eschatology of Jewish and early Christian apocalypses: (a) ‘its stress on heaven as the realm of the permanent and eternal, in contrast to earth as the realm of the changing and transient’, and (b) its ‘depiction of earthly phenomena as copies or shadows of heavenly ones’ (Lincoln 1998, 95). A brief summary of the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (4Q400–406)38 would be in order for the purpose of serving as a socio-historical liturgical comparison. Philip Alexander’s exposition39 will form the basis of this description: Song 1: God’s appointment of an angelic priesthood in heaven Some angels were consecrated by God for their task and served as heavenly priests, being called ‘the priests in the highest heights’. ‘They have become for Him priests of [the sanctum in His royal temple], ministers of the presence in his glorious sanctuary’ – just as the priests served in the earthly temple. (a) Their fundamental task was to exalt God’s glory and proclaim his kingship. Their sacrifices are spiritual sacrifices of ‘praise and blessing’. (b) They are also involved in ‘teachings concerning all matters of holiness, together with [His glorious] commandments’. (c) They seem to have been mediators of God’s revelation, including the idea of the mediation of the Torah that was given to Israel at Sinai, an idea that ‘is probably implied here’. (d) They played a judicial role in the punishment of sinners and atonement for those who ‘turn from transgression’. There is ‘might, power and great wrath with fiery flames at the han[d] of all the angels of destruction…’ and they are agents of God’s attributes of mercy and justice. 37 38 39

Cf., for instance, Hurst (1990, 132). For the text and translation, see García Martínez & Tigchelaar (1998, 807–837). I rely heavily on the work of Philip Alexander for the discussion of the 13 Songs that follows here, presenting it as a summary of his exposition: cf. Alexander (2006, 15– 44).

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(e) They had many names, were divided into classes, played different roles and held different positions. Song 2: The Torah, theophany, and the heavenly and earthly communities There is a ‘parallelism between earth and heaven, between Israel and the angels’, and a possible link ‘with Israel in the wilderness where the tribes were organized in camps around the tabernacle’. It is an image of gathering around the central shrine and the geography of heaven is structured in a similar manner. The song stresses ‘the spiritual nature of the angelic liturgy: it consists primarily of the recitation of texts – “wondrous psalms” – in which the angels recount God’s “royal splendour” and “glory”...’. There is a comparison of the ‘terrestrial and celestial priesthoods’ and the ‘heavenly temple is the superior temple’. There is also a ‘sense of unworthiness, even fear, at approaching the heavenly realms’ and the ‘danger of the ascent to God’s throne’. It is ‘a place of surpassing holiness, and impure humans run the risk of destruction if they try to enter it’. ‘The Qumran community apparently regarded the “hidden things” of Deuteronomy 29:29 as referring to a new revelation, a new Torah, that God would make known at the end of days, and they believed that they were the recipients of this revelation’. ‘God established His covenant with Israel forever’. ‘The terrestrial liturgy is based on revelation. The new utterance of God’s mouth, (was) conveyed first to the priestly angels, and then by them to the community’. It realigned the heavenly and earthly liturgies. ‘It is this that gives the community confidence to approach God’. Song 3: The number 7; Melchizedek With virtually no surviving fragments, this Song deals with ‘the angelic hierarchy, in which the number seven played a part’. It also probably refers to ‘[Melchi]zedek, priest in the assemb[ly of God]’. There is almost certainly reference to the high priest. Song 4: ‘Stillness’ as sound of praise of the Cherubim About nothing survived of the fourth Song. There is reference, however, to ‘...“stillness” as the sound of the praise of the Cherubim and of the angels closest to the chariot throne of God’. Song 5: Divine predestination and God’s transcendence This Song deals with the will and plan of God, with divine predestination, and with the fact that the God of knowledge brought into being everything that exists forever. God has foreordained everything that happens. ‘Knowl-

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edge of God’s purposes can be gained only because God chooses to reveal them’. There is also a reference to the war in heaven and there is a sound of tumult. There is, nonetheless, ‘no evidence that Sabbath Songs is a liturgy for the last days’. The inclusion of the idea of an eschatological battle was probably to encourage the earthly community. Song 6: Bridging heaven and earth There is probably ‘a description of seven priestly angels called Chief Princes’ and the Song contains ‘a highly stylized account of the psalms which the Chief Princes offer to God. The psalm of each Prince is distinguished as a particular type of praise, and addresses God as characterized by a particular attribute’. God is glorified seven times with seven words of wondrous thanksgiving, for his blessings, righteousness, kingship, glory, wonders, strength, and holiness. The sixth Prince ‘will bless in the name of the power[s of] the `Elim, … all those whose way is perfect with seven wondrous words, to be for a continual sacrifice for all [ages] to come’. There is a mystical marriage of heaven and earth, communion between God, angels and men, with the function to atone and the ultimate purpose of ‘eternal peace’. It implies some sort of mystical ‘ascent’ to the heavenly temple. There is a concluding act of benediction, and with angels and men blessing God in unison. ‘God will bless the holy ones who bless Him and declare Him righteous in the name of His glory’. The seven Chief Princes recalls the mystical number seven with God’s rest on the seventh day after creation. Song 7: The heavenly temple The typical call of praise from the previous songs is now extended to seven such calls to praise here in the seventh song. These are introduced with the hallelu . Key elements in this song deal with knowledge and with righteousness. Interesting are the parallelisms between the attributes of God and the angels – the latter also being called ‘gods’. A variety of titles are used to address them. The priestly angels perform, on behalf of the other angels, the celestial liturgy. Nonetheless, they remain creatures who came into being at the word of God’s mouth. The image of the heavenly temple surfaces prominently here. The praises of the angels form a shining firmament of his holy sanctuary and they actually create the temple. It is a spiritual and not a material temple, a complex structure and a sevenfold temple, mainly based on the biblical description of the earthly tabernacle and temple, and with allusions to the Sinai theophany. The throne of God is a merkabah, a chariot, of which the wheels are the order of angels.

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Song 8: The high priest The song consists of five sections. The first deals with a call of praise by the seven priesthoods and the second with how these angels praise God in a sevenfold canon. The highest in rank and nearest to God is the priest of the inner sanctum or high priest of the heavenly sanctuary. There is reference to the sixth Prince who blesses with insight and knowledge ‘as a continual sacrifice together with those who exist forever’. This Prince not only served alongside the high priest and even stood in for him on the Day of Atonement. Song 9: Description of the architecture and decoration of the heavenly temple The architectural features of the heavenly temple are spiritualised with engravings of images of angels. There is an outer nave, inner sanctuary and a sanctuary. Song 10: The inner sanctum behind the curtain This song deals with the face, or presence of God. It describes rivers of fire and the veil that divides the holiest from the holy place. The description of God’s throne is based in this Song on the Ark of the Covenant. God’s commonest title in the Sabbath Songs is ‘the King’ and he is depicted as the celestial emperor. The concepts of temple and palace are combined, with the ideas of holiness and royalty. Song 11: Images of heaven The tranquillity of heaven is striking in what has remained from the description of this Song but is paradoxical in terms of the rest of the descriptions. There is a double reference to quietness and a reference to the ‘the spirit of the quietness of the “Elohim”...’. ‘The Glory’ is used here as a title for God and ‘a name for the manifestation of the divine presence in the celestial sanctuary’. The revelation of the Glory takes place in the form of a voice, which reflects the Sinai theophany – ‘thunder’ is literally ‘voices’. The floor and the firmament of heaven are new architectural elements that emerge in this Song. The angels are not sitting, but only God sits in heaven. Song 12: God’s judgement and wrath as supreme King in heaven The description of the merkabah continues in this Song with imagery that is derived from Ezekiel 1 and 10. The celestial liturgy seems to be performed only at certain times with the angels who enter the temple to praise

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and thereafter going out to perform their duties. The angels fear the judgement of God if they should fail to carry out his will. Important is that God remains in control of history and that everything unfolds according to his predetermined plan. This particular vision of the supreme King in heaven is reassuring. Song 13: Four themes – offerings, high priests, atonement and sanctuary The thirteenth Song deals with four themes. The first is a description of the heavenly offerings. They are spiritual offerings that consist of praises and blessings. The second deals with the celestial high priests who are appropriately clothed for their service. Seven such high priests perform their duties in seven such celestial sanctuaries. The third deals with atonement and the fourth with the enumeration of the contents of the celestial sanctuary. In the light of the above-mentioned socio-historical setting, it is clear that there are several points of similarity between this mystical-liturgical text and the book of Hebrews – especially with regard to the spatialtemporal dimension. The themes of the city of God, the royal King, seven hymns, cultic imagery with a sanctuary and priesthood in heaven, the mediating and judicial roles of the angels (Angel Liturgy) and of the Son (Hebrews), Melchizedek and the high priesthood, the Sabbath rest, perfection and ascension through the heavens are spatial images portraying an apocalyptic view. This view, which is situated within a liturgical setting, has similarities in both documents and provides an entry into the eschatological dimensions implied and referred to in Hebrews.

4. Concluding Remarks (a) Hebrews’ eschatological time graph encompasses both a lineartemporal dimension as well as a spatial dimension. There is rhythmic progression on the time scale with a constant relation between eschatology of faith and eschatology of hope, whilst fluctuating between a transcendent ‘above’ and an immanent ‘below’. (b) There is sufficient evidence in the text that supports the lineartemporal dimension by means of technical terms and phrases employed by the author of Hebrews. (c) There are, however, also a number of important spatial images to be found. These are presented by contrasting the world below with the heaven(s) above. The imagery used is situated mainly within a cultic setting: the high priest, tabernacle, inner sanctum, cultic objects, sacrifices

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and blood, as well as the atoning function of these rituals are mere shadows of an existing, perfect, heavenly temple. (d) The promise made to the ancestors is still valid, because they have not yet reached their destination of rest. Jesus opened up this way and provides entry into the heavenly temple, as well as to its sanctuary behind the curtain, where the hope of the believers is now anchored. (e) The present is a decisive point in time. The theme of perseverance is a prominent theme. They need to fix their eyes on Jesus and they need to go to Jesus outside the camp, to carry the disgrace that he bore. (f) The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifices provides us with a useful ancient contemporary text with which we can compare the cultic backdrop of Hebrews. Spatial concepts and imagery used there are very similar to those in Hebrews. It confirms a cultic setting, which in turn, provides us with the possibility of a group who might have had a history of closer ties with mystical rituals. Performance of such rites, whether it is rooted within the Jewish festival tradition, or within Jewish mysticism,40 or both, provides us with a hermeneutical key to understand the temporal-spatial nature of Hebrews’ eschatology. Works Consulted Alexander, P 2006 The mystical texts. Songs of the Sabbath sacrifice and related manuscripts. London. Attridge, HW 1989 The Epistle to the Hebrews: A commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. Philadelphia. Backhaus, K 2004 Gott als Psalmist: Psalm 2 im Hebräerbrief, in Gottessohn und Menschensohn, Sänger, D (ed.), Neukirchen, 198–231. Barker, M 2006 The great high priest. The temple roots of Christian liturgy. New York. Barrett, CK 1954 The eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in The background of the New Testament and its eschatology: CH Dodd Festschrift, Davies WD & Daube D (eds.), Cambridge, 363–393. Beckwith, RT 2001 Calendar and chronology, Jewish and Christian. Leiden. Borgen, P 1996 Philo of Alexandria, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 5. Freedman DN (ed.), New York, 333–342. Cambier, J 1949 Eschatologie ou hellénisme dans l’Épître aux Hébreux: Une étude sur PHYQHLQet l’exhortation finale de l’épître. Salesianum 11, 62–86. Carlston, CE 1959 Eschatology and Repentance in the Epistle to the Hebrews. JBL 78, 296–302.

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Borgen’s (1996, 341) observation is important in this regard: ‘Philo’s own emphasis on heavenly ascent and the complementary roles of ruler (Moses) and law-abiding person suggest that he draws on traditions from early Jewish mysticism. Furthermore, Philo and mystical Judaism share the idea of a heavenly being or angel, Israel, understood by means of a pseudo-etymology to mean “the one who sees God”...’.

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Charles, JD 1990 The Angels, Sonship and Birthright in the Letter to the Hebrews. JETS 33/2, 171–178. Decock, PB 1988 The eclipse and rediscovery of eschatology. Neot 22, 5–16. DeConick, AD 2006 What is Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism? in Paradise Now. Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, DeConick, Atlanta, 1–24. – (ed.) 2006 Paradise Now. Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism. Atlanta. Deutsch, C 2006 The therapeutae, text, work, ritual, and mystical experience, in Paradise Now. Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, DeConick AD (ed.), Atlanta, 287–311. De Villiers, JL & Du Toit, AB 1990 Teologie van Hebreërs, in Handleiding by die Nuwe Testament, Band 5. Du Toit AB (ed.), Pretoria, 89–112. Dibelius, M 1956 Der himmlische Kultus nach dem Hebräerbrief, in Botschaft und Geschichte II: Zum Urchristentum und zur hellenistischen Religionsgeschichte. Gesammelte Aufsätze von Martin Dibelius, Bornkamm G (ed.), Tübingen, 160–176. Duvekot, WS 1984 De laat-apostolische tijd, in Vervulling en Voleinding. De toekomstverwachting in het Nieuwe Testament. Baarlink H, Duvekot, WS & Geense, A (eds.), Kampen, 317–380. Dukes, JG 1956 Eschatology in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Ellingworth, P 2000 The Epistle to the Hebrews. Grand Rapids. Feuillet, A 1964 Les points de vue nouveaux dans l’eschatologie de l’Épître aux Hebreux, in Studia Evangelica II, Cross FL (ed.), Berlin, 369–387. Fischer, U 1978 Eschatologie und Jenseitserwartung im hellenistischen Diasporajudentum. Berlin. Gäbel, G 2006 Die Kulttheologie des Hebräerbriefes. Tübingen. García Martínez, F & Tigchelaar, EJC (eds.) 2000 The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, Volume 2. Leiden. Grässer, E 1965 Der Glaube im Hebräerbrief. Marburg. – 1990 An die Hebräer: 1. Teilband: Hebr 1–6. Neukirchen. – 1992 Die Mehrzahl der Exegeten war darum zu allen Zeiten geneigt, unserm Brief eine besonders lebhafte Naherwartung zuzukennen. Aufbruch und Verheissung. Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Hebräerbrief. Berlin. Guthrie, GH 2004 Hebrews in Its First-Century Contexts, in The Face of New Testament Studies. A Survey of Recent Research, McKnight, S & Osborne, GR (eds.), Grand Rapids, 414–443. Haraguchi, T 2006 Hebrews 1–2 in the Light of Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. Paper read at the August 2006 SNTS conference. St. Andrews. Hurst, LD 1984 Eschatology and ‘Platonism’ in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Chicago & Atlanta. – 1990 The Epistle to the Hebrews. Its background of thought. Cambridge. Käsemann, E 1961 Das wandernde Gottesvolk: Eine Untersuchung zum Hebräerbrief. Göttingen. Klappert, B 1969 Die Eschatologie des Hebräerbriefes. München. Lane, WL 1998 Hebrews 1–8. Dallas. Lincoln, A 2006 Hebrews: A Guide. New York. Löhr, H 1991 Thronversammlung und preisender Tempel. Beobachtungen am himmlischen Heiligtum im Hebräerbrief und in den Sabbatsopferliedern aus Qumran, in Königsherrschaft Gottes und himmlischer Kult im Judentum, Urchristentum und in der hellenistischen Welt, Hengel, M & Schwemer, AM (eds.), Tübingen, 185–205.

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Mackie, SD 2007 Eschatology and the Exhortation in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Tübingen. MacRae, GW 1978 Heavenly Temple and Eschatology in the Letter to the Hebrews. Semeia 12, 179–199. Marohl, MJ 2008 Faithfulness and the Purpose of Hebrews. A Social Identity Approach. Eugene. Marshall, IH 1988 Jesus as Lord: The Development of the Concept, in Eschatology and the New Testament. Essays in Honor of George Raymond Beasley-Murray, Gloer, WH (ed.), Peabody, 129–145. Morray-Jones CRA 2006 The temple within, in Paradise Now. Essays on Early Jewish and Christian Mysticism, DeConick, AD (ed.) Atlanta, 145–178. Nickelsburg GWE & Baltzer, K 2001 1 Enoch. Minneapolis. Oberholtzer, TK 1984 An analysis and exposition of the eschatology of the warning passages in the Book of Hebrews. Dallas. Pöhlmann, W 1997 Bestimmte Zukunft. Die Einheit von ‘Eschaton’ und ‘Eschata’ in neutestamentlicher Sicht, in Evangelium – Schriftauslegung – Kirche. Festschrift für Peter Stuhlmacher zum 65. Geburtstag, Ådna, J Hafemann, SJ & Hofius, O (eds.), Göttingen, 337–346. Robinson, W 1950 The Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Birmingham. – 1961 The Eschatology of the Epistle to the Hebrews: A Study in the Christian Doctrine of Hope. Encounter 22, 37–51. Schenke, H-M 1973 Erwägung zum Rätsel des Hebräerbriefes, in Neues Testament und Christliche Existenz, Betz, HD & Schottroff, L (eds.), Tübingen, 421–437. Silva, M 1976 Perfection and eschatology in Hebrews. WTJ 39, 60–71. Steyn, GJ 2006 The occurrence of Ps 118(117):6 in Hebrews 13:6. Possible liturgical origins? Neot 40(1), 119–134. Stuhlmann, R 1983 Das eschatologische Maß im Neuen Testament. Göttingen. Theissen, G 1969 Untersuchungen zur Hebräerbrief. Gütersloh. Thompson, JW 1981 The beginnings of Christian philosophy: The Epistle to the Hebrews. Washington. Toussaint, SD 1982 Eschatology of the warning passages in the Book of Hebrews. Grace Theological Journal 3, 67–80. Van Zyl, HC 1991 God se volk in transito: ‘n Perspektief uit Hebreërs, in Teologie in Konteks, Roberts, JH et al. (eds.), Johannesburg, 440–467. Williamson, R 1975–1976 The background to the Epistle to the Hebrews. ExpTim 87, 232–237.

James and Eschatology Place and Function of Eschatology within a Letter to the ‘Twelve Tribes in the Dispersion’

Patrick J Hartin 1. Introduction A cursory glance at the Letter of James reveals much language that is rooted in eschatological imagery. The opening phrase, ‘to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (1:1) evokes the eschatological hopes of the people of Israel. There is a patient expectation and belief in the future ‘coming of the Lord’ (5:7). The letter’s ethical teaching is permeated by an expectation of eschatological reward or punishment. The one who perseveres is promised ‘the crown of life’ (1:12). At the same time there is a certainty of future judgment that lies at the basis of many of the ethical admonitions (2:13; 3:1; 4:11, 12; 5:1–7). While the Letter of James uses eschatological images, its language is very reserved from an apocalyptic perspective. A comparison of the Letter of James with the intertestamental apocalyptic literature of that time immediately demonstrates the difference. The imagery of the intertestamental apocalyptic literature is filled with graphic descriptions of sufferings and punishments. By contrast, in the Letter of James the sufferings referred to are the daily trials that one’s faith encounters. This study examines the eschatological vision of the Letter of James in conjunction with its ethical instructions and its development within early Christian thought and traditions. In order to understand this eschatological perspective of the letter and the role and function it occupies within this letter, it is vital to begin with a consideration of its context or situation for that will determine the eschatological voice within this letter.1

1

In a meeting of the Wisdom and Apocalyptic Consultation of the SBL held in November 1996, I presented my research and reflections on the relationship of the Letter of James to the wisdom, apocalyptic, eschatological and prophetic traditions (cf. Hartin 1996, 483– 503). Similarly, Matt Jackson-McCabe (1996, 504–517) presented his understanding of the same traditions and their relationships. I welcome this opportunity to revisit this study and take a fresh look at the relationship of the Letter of James to eschatology.

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2. Situating the Letter of James: Its Religious and Cultural Voice Unlike many of the letters of Paul that contain information related to the background and origin of his letters, the Letter of James is unique is this regard. There is only one letter from James in the New Testament canon. The only information that we have about it must be gleaned from the letter itself. In examining the letter, scholarship over the past century has been evenly divided regarding its origin, date and authorship. There are those who see this letter emerging from the hand of James ‘the brother of the Lord’ who became leader of the church in Jerusalem after Peter left the city (Gl 1:19; 2:9; 1 Cor 15:7; Acts 12:17; 15:13). On the other hand, there are those who see it coming from a time as late as the middle of the second century CE from the hand of a pseudonymous writer. 2.1. The Excellent Quality of the Greek The strongest argument in favour of a date in the late second century CE rests upon the excellent quality of the Greek. The letter speaks in a voice at home in the language of the Greco-Roman world. The Greek of the letter is among the best in the New Testament. However, recent archaeological studies have demonstrated the mastery of Greek acquired by Palestinian Rabbis during the course of the first century CE Josephus himself referred to Sepphoris, a city neighbouring Nazareth, which was a thriving centre of Greek culture. Ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek culture had been spreading throughout the Mediterranean, not least of all in Palestine itself (see Johnson 2004, 25).2

2

In 1968 Sevenster, published his work ‘Do You Know Greek? How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians have Known?’ where he specifically examined the Letter of James and concluded, ‘Even though absolute certainty cannot be attained on this point, in view of all the data made available in the past decades the possibility can no longer be precluded that a Palestinian Jewish Christian of the first century A.D. wrote an epistle in good Greek’ (191). Joseph B. Mayor (1897, lx–lxi) argued: ‘Not many years before, four of the most accomplished literary men of the time were natives of Gadara, Philodemus the Epicurean, a friend of Cicero and one of the poets of the Anthology, whose writings fill the larger part of the Herculanean scrolls; Theodorus the instructor of Tiberius in Rhetoric; Meleager, the famous writer of Epigrams and collector of the first Greek Anthology; and Menippus the Cynic, whose dialogues were imitated by Varro and Lucian…but these considerations may perhaps lead us to the conclusion that it was not more impossible for a peasant of Galilee to learn to write good Greek, than for one who had been brought up as a Welsh peasant to learnt to write good English, or for a Breton to write good French…’.

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Not only is James’3 voice distinguished by the quality of a knowledge and usage of the Greek language, the letter is also steeped in the moral style of argument so characteristic of the wider Greco-Roman world. For example, the author makes conscious usage of the perfect argument that was popular in moral arguments (as is reflected in Jas 2:1–13 and 14–26 [see Hartin 2003, 124–139]). Further, the usage of certain topoi is also to be seen as influencing the style and argument of James, especially the topos of envy. Such a topos is reflected in James 3:13–4:10 (see Johnson 1983, 327–47). 2.2. James and the Septuagint Other characteristic features of the Letter of James are the biblical quality of its Greek. Almost all of James’ vocabulary can be found in the Septuagint. For example, some words only make sense when viewed as deriving from this Greek translation of the Old Testament. One distinctive word, SURVZSROKP\LYD(‘act of favouritism’, ‘discrimination’), is a case in point. Only a Greek speaker sufficiently familiar with the Septuagint would be able to recognize it.4 While James’s language and vocabulary are shaped by the Septuagint, his thought is at home in the world of the Old Testament. The Law (Torah) features prominently in the letter. James returns to this theme on at least three occasions. For him, the Law is the biblical law, the Torah, which is encapsulated in the law of love which James describes as the ‘royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ (Jas 2:8).5 The scriptural passage that James refers to is Leviticus 19:18. Johnson (2004, 391–401) has demonstrated how the instructions of Leviticus 19 act as a driving force for much of James’s admonitions in this letter. The voice of the prophets also echoes through James’s instructions. In 4:13–17 and 5:1–6 James’s voice challenges the merchants and the rich on their way of life. His ‘Come now’ (´$JH QXCQ) echoes the prophetic condemnations expressed in similar terms such as ‘Woe to you’ (see Isa 5:8). Further, James’s concern for those poor (oppressed by the rich and defrauded of a just payment for their wages) reflects a similar theme that is at the heart of the message of prophets, especially Isaiah and Amos. Even the definition that James offers of religion as ‘to care for orphans and widows 3 When referring to ‘James’ in this instance, I am referring to the letter itself without intending to make a statement regarding its authorship. 4 This word does not appear in secular Greek or in the Septuagint. It is probably a word that has been coined in the Christian community to express the Hebrew concept ‘to lift up the face’ which is an expression for ‘to show favoritism’ (see Hartin 2003, 117). 5 All translations from the letter of James are from the translation presented in my commentary on James (see Hartin 2003).

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in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world’ (Jas 1:27) is one that resonates with the prophets who proclaim God as being on the side of the poor. 2.3. James’s Predominantly Wisdom Character James’s connection with the traditions of Israel continues as well in the voice of the predominantly wisdom character of his instructions. Wisdom sayings, arising from experience, offer practical advice on how to lead one’s life: ‘For judgment is merciless to the one who has not shown mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment’ (Jas 2:13). Wisdom admonitions give direction on what to do: ‘But, if any of you is lacking in wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to everyone without hesitation and without reproach, and it will be given him’ (1:5). Other features that bear the characteristic voice of wisdom are seen in the beatitudes: ‘Blessed [PDNDYULRa] is the person who endures testing, because such a person, having stood the test, will receive the crown of life that (God) has promised to those who love him’ (1:12). Woes are another feature that is found in both the prophetic and wisdom traditions. James’s voice has brought the two traditions together in his expression ‘Come now’ (´$JHQXCQ [4:13 and 5:1]). In additon to wisdom forms that James employs throughout the letter, the voice of James also gives expression to numerous wisdom themes such as the duty to help those in need (1:27; 2:14–16); the testing of virtue (1:2) and the use of speech (1:19, 26; 3:1–9). Martin Dibelius (1976, xii and 6) had characterized James as a paraenesis, a ‘book of popular slogans’, whereby individual passages were sown together by means of catchwords’. Further precision has been given to the nature of James by distinguishing between paraenesis and protreptic discourse. John Gammie’s studies (1990, 41–77) on paraenetic literature have given a good direction to this examination. Gammie defines paraenesis in this way: ‘Paraenesis is a form of address which not only commends, but actually enumerates precepts or maxims which pertain to moral aspiration and the regulation of human conduct’ (1990, 51). Protreptic discourse seeks to develop the theme more fully through a ‘demonstration which is stylistically expressed in a clear, logical and syllogistic manner’ (Hartin 1999, 47). It is the charateristic of a protreptic discourse that would fit the Letter of James more appropriately. James has developed sustained arguments throughout his letter, rather than simply presenting random instructions or paraenesis that would characterisize it as a proptreptic discourse. These sustained arguments draw attention to specific values that the readers should embrace so that their identity and direction within the community is enhanced.

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2.4. The voice of James and the voice of Paul Most studies on the relationship between Paul and James focus upon the key verses of James 2:14–26 which are read through Paul’s eyes, especially Galatians 1–4. Such an approach produces a conflict between Paul and James. But, a deeper analysis of both Paul and James shows a very different picture. In the first instance, Paul and James are writing to very different constituents with very different interests and concerns. Thirteen letters are attributed to Paul. Most of Paul’s letters are written to identifiable communities with problems and issues needing to be addressed. The Letter of James is the only writing in the New Testament associated with James. It is difficult to construct a full picture of the theology of James based solely on one particular letter. What James says in 2:14–26 must be read as part of the wider context of 2:1–13. James 2:1 speaks to the whole of chapter 2, presenting the theme that carries on throughout the chapter, namely that faith in our Lord Jesus Christ cannot coexist with actions that discriminate against others on the basis of their wealth. The expression WKQ SLYVWLQ WRXC NXULYRX K-PZCQ ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC is a subjective genitive that speaks to the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to his Father’s will (see Hartin 2003, 117). Jesus Christ’s faithfulness acts as an example for the lives of his followers. Paul expresses the same idea that the faithfulness of Jesus Christ is the foundation for the life of a believer. In Gl 2:15–16 Paul says: ‘We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law’. The expression ‘faith in Jesus Christ’ is identical to James’s usage, namely it is a subjective genitive that expresses the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to the Father’s will (see Hartin 2003, 163–172). What is of concern to Paul is to contrast the accomplishment of Jesus Christ on behalf of humanity (namely, the salvation of humanity through his death on the cross) and the efforts of human beings themselves to earn their salvation. Justification and salvation come through the work of Jesus Christ and not through the efforts of human beings. As Hays (1992, 1131) notes: This interpretation would be consistent with the view of justification articulated in Rom 5:18–19: ‘Then as the trespass of one [Adam] led to condemnation for all, so also the righteous act [diakaioma] of one [Christ] leads to the justification [dikaiosis] of life for all. For just as by the disobedience of one [Adam] many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one [Christ] will many be made righteous [dikaioi].

Both leaders see the foundational importance of the role of faith in the path of salvation. Paul opposes those who still argue that the followers of Jesus

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need to embrace all the stipulations of the Jewish Torah, particularly male circumcision and the various dietary laws. These, they were arguing, continue to be essential for attaining salvation. Such an approach according to Paul denied the role of Jesus Christ in the path to salvation. For Paul, the matter was a simple either/or perspective: either salvation is attained through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, or it is attained through the works of human beings, namely works of the Jewish Torah. With regard to the example of Abraham (to which both Paul and James) have recourse, Paul shows in Galatians 3:6–9 (by quoting Gen 15:6) that Abraham was justified on the basis of his faith in God and in God’s message. James (2:23) also refers to the same text of Genesis 15:6: ‘And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness’. For James, Abraham showed his faith in the action of offering his son on the altar. By quoting Genesis in this context, James argues that God accepted the action of Abraham as an illustration that he had true faith. His faith is shown to be alive through his actions. The concerns of James and Paul are different. Paul’s concern was to uphold that salvation does not come through works of the Law. James’s concern was to maintain that a person is seen to be righteous as a result of a faith that is alive, demonstrating itself in actions. James and Paul are not speaking against each other. Instead, they address issues that were specific to their own communities. They use the same scriptural basis to illustrate their perspectives. Far more agreement exists between Paul and James than has been generally identified. One aspect on which they both agree is the value and importance of the Torah. Paul refers to the Law as holy, just, good: ‘So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good’ (Rom 7:12). James refers to the Law as ‘the perfect law of liberty’: ‘But those who have looked intently into the perfect law of liberty, and have persevered have become not hearers (DMNURDWKYa) who forget but doers (SRLKWKYa) of the deed. They will be blessed in what they do’ (Jas 1:25). Paul gives expression to this same emphasis of being not just a hearer of the Law, but a doer of the Law as well: ‘For it is not the hearers (DMNURDWDLY) of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers (SRLKWDLY) of the law who will be justified’ (Rom 2:13). James also takes this concept a little further when he applies it to the word: ‘But become doers (SRLKWDLY) of the word, and not merely hearers (DMNURDWDLY) who deceive themselves’ (Jas 1:22). The above discussion shows the convergences that exist in the thought of Paul and James. This does not mean there are no differences. But, these differences emanate from the character of the different communities to which they write and the concerns these communities raise.

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James and Paul represent different and diverse streams within the early Christian movement, but this does not mean that their diversity necessarily implies opposition. This is a mistaken conclusion scholars often tend to draw. As Martin says: ‘Those who see James and Paul as being in irreconcilable antagonism look to this passage as part of the diversity of New Testament Christianity’ (Dibelius 1976, 82). But why should diversity necessarily imply antagonism? While James had a theology different from that of Paul, this does not mean that James was against Paul. 2.5. The voice of Jesus through the voice of James Attention was drawn above to James’ use of the cultural text of the Septuagint.6 Without doubt the Torah was the normative text for James’s religious world. An examination of the Letter of James shows that he seldom quotes directly from this normative text.7 Rather, in using the Septuagint, James expreses in his own voice what he found there. In addition to the use of the Septuagint as his normative text, James uses the Jesus traditions in much the same way. James’s instructions are based upon Jesus’ sayings. James does not quote Jesus when giving these instructions. Instead, the voice of Jesus comes through his own voice. Previously, I have offered two very specific examples of James’s usage of the Jesus tradition in this way in order to communicate the message of James.8 See, for example, James 1:9–11 in which James contrasts the lowly and the rich. James goes on to illustrate how the lowly will be raised up, while the rich will be laid low. This is reminiscent of the Jesus saying: ‘All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted’ (Mt 23:12; Lk 14:11; 18:14). James strengthens this argument by using another text from the Septuagint: ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever’ (Isa 40:7). James does not quote this Isaian text directly, but it is clearly behind the images and the argument that he is making throughout James 1:9–11 (see Hartin 2003, 82–83). A further example comes from his argument in James 2:1–13: ‘Listen, my beloved brothers (and sisters).Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs 6

For a further discussion of the usage of the Septuagint as James’s cultural text, see Hartin (2008, 308–309). 7 The exception to this is his quotation from Leviticus 19:18 when he quotes the royal law, ‘If you actually fulfil the royal Law according the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself,’ you do well’ (Jas 2:8). 8 For the two examples that I have given previously of this usage of the Jesus tradition being communicated in the voice of James, see Hartin (2003, 82–83) and Hartin (2009, 57–61).

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of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?’ (Jas 2:5). This again is clearly reminiscent of the Jesus saying: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God’ (Q 6:20//Mt 5:3). In making his argument James is using both the Torah (Lev 19:18) as well as the traditions of Jesus (Q 6:20). In the latter case, James is using the voice of Jesus in his own way in order to continue his message. A further example showing James’s usage of Jesus’ sayings occurs in 4:11: ‘Do not speak evil against another, brothers (and sisters). The person who speaks evil against a brother or sister or judges a brother or sister speaks evil against the Law and judges the Law. If you judge the Law, you are not a doer of the Law but a judge’. This is a reflection of the Jesus saying, ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ (Mt 7:1; see also Lk 6:36). Here James is equating slander with judgment. Further, James sees that slander against another leads to slander against the Law and it becomes a judgment on the Law. In this argument, James has in mind once again Leviticus 19:18. Slander certainly destroys the name of another unjustly. At the same time this slander is openly condemned by the context of the Leviticus 19:18 where the author of Leviticus sees the aspect of judgment being part of the fuller meaning: ‘You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great; with justice you shall judge your neighbor. You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor’ (Lev 19:15–16).9 In making his argument against the evil use of speech in which the believer condemns and judges another person, James has recourse to his two normative cultural texts, namely the Septuagint and the Jesus traditions. In doing so, he brings together the concepts of judgment and slander represented in both texts. The aim of these instructions is to incorporate believers into the continued love of God. This examination has demonstrated that when James wishes to instruct his readers on the urgent issues related to discrimination against others on the basis of their wealth, or to stress the love God has for the poor, or the evils of judgment and slander agaisnt others, James has recourse to both the Septuagint and the traditions of Jesus. In using them, James embraces them in his own voice. Nevertheless, their voices can still be heard behind James’s voice. James uses their voices in performing his own argument. This is what Jan Assmann (2006, 69) has called ‘a will to form that is a will of transmisison, of transmitting a distinctive cultural identity to further generations’.

9 For a detailed discussion of the connection between Jas 4:11 and Lev 19:15–16 see Johnson (2004, 128).

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James’s use both of the Septuagint and of the Jesus traditions conforms to what scholars have recently demonstrated as the rhetorical culture of first century Mediterranean soceity. The writer/speaker used or reproduced existing sources or text in order to perform the text or source in a new way, using the thought of the source/text, rather than simply copying and reproducing the text itself. Vernon Robbins (1991, 167) has drawn attention to this in his studies on the art of rhetorical criticism: In previous research, verbal similarities among written versions of stories and sayings regularly have been discussed in terms of ‘dependence’ on written or oral sources. This terminology emerges from a presupposition that written performance of the material was guided by copying an oral or written antecedent. This language and this perception impose goals and procedures on the writers which are inaccurate, since, even if the writer recently had heard or was looking at a version of the story, the version existed in the eye, ear, and mind of the writer as a ‘recitation’ that should be performed anew rather than a verbal text that should be copied verbatim.

2.6. Implications The above examination helps to situate the Letter of James within a specific religious and cultural milieu within early Christianity. This helps to see the sources for James’s eschatological thought as well as for the content of his teaching. James is intent on providing a specific ethic for his hearers/readers that is at home within the context of the world of Israel of the first century CE as well as within the world of the followers of Jesus. The voice of James speaks in a way that shows it is firmly rooted in both worlds: the rhetorical world of Israel and the rhetorical world of the followers of Jesus. James’s voice emerges alongside that of Paul in the middle half of the first century CE. As indicated, its voice predates that of the written Gospels – its voice would have been very different had it emerged later than the Gospel writings. James’s value lies especially in the fact that it is a testimony to a stage in the development of early Christianity that is still close to the world of its origins with Jesus of Nazareth. It is my contention that a careful examination of the letter itself supports an early date and that there is nothing that would stand in the way of an early origin. This conclusion gives a specific direction to the understanding of the eschatological vision of the Letter of James.

3. The Eschatological Dimension of the Letter of James Having situated the Letter of James within the cultural worlds of the traditions of the people of Israel as well as the traditions of Jesus, one is able to understand more appropriately the eschatological dimension of the

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letter. The letter is firmly situated within the present of the communities to whom James writes. This present has been informed by its past roots within the world of Israel and the world of early Christainity. At the same time it is open to a future in which the coming of the Lord Jesus will be realized and the judgment of God is expected. However, the focus of the letter is with the present in providing ideas, norms and guidelines for leading one’s life and one’s relationship with God, Jesus and with one another. Given the fact that the Letter of James is an early writing also helps to understand its eschatological vision. It clearly belongs to a similar world of Paul, Jesus and first generation Christians whereby they are awaiting the imminent return of the Lord. In James wisdom emerges as a strategy wherein advice is offered to the hearer on how best to lead one’s life. Faithful to this strategy, James uses not just the wisdom tradition, but other types of discourse as well, namely the eschatological and the prophetic. By incorporating the eschatological and the prophetic world views within the wisdom perspective, the call to a specific way of life becomes all the more urgent. The eschatological provides the motivation – judgment in the future depends upon the way one leads one’s life here and now. The use of prophetic imagery and terminology reinforces this urgency: ‘You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened you hearts in a day of slaughter’ (5:5) (Hartin 2005, 154–55).

The structure of the Letter of James demonstrates a uniquely eschatological framework. James opens with a reference to the ‘twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (1:1), which is clearly eschatological terminology and insight. The ending of the letter also bears with it evidence of its eschatological context. Two passages (4:13–17; 5:1–6) that bring the body of the letter to a conclusion are stongly eschatological in their character in that they see that the coming of the Lord will bring about a punishment of those who oppress the weak and vulnerable within society. 3.1. To the Twelve Tribes in the Dispersion (1:1)10 The opening formula of the Letter of James identifies the recipients of this letter clearly. Contrary to the letters of Paul, the community of James is not identified by name but by a phrase ‘the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (WDLCaGZYGHNDIXODLCaWDLCaHMQWKC GLDVSRUDC FDLYUHLQ1:1). By referring to the traditions of the house of Israel and reading these in the context of the world of early Christianity, it is possible to identity to whom this letter is being addressed. In this address, James uses the article in conjunction with the noun ‘Dispersion’ (HMQ WKC GLDVSRUDC). In this way, he intends a 10 For a more detailed examination of this phrase see the previous examinations (Hartin 2003, 53–55; and 2005, 149–68).

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literal understanding of the Diaspora whereby this term refers to those areas outside Israel’s homeland where people of the house of Israel live (see Hartin 2003, 50–51). Some commentators, such as Martin Dibelius (1976, 66–67) have interpreted this reference in a metaphorical or allegorical sense as referrring to Christians whose true homeland is in heaven. If the hearers/readers of this letter were Christians who had come from the world of the Gentiles, it would be a possible interpretation. However, the cultural stamp of the letter, as shown from the above examination of its situation, argues clearly for hearers/readers/ from the house of Israel. The phrase ‘the twelve tribes’ is a term that is characteristic of the people of Israel, who derive their origin from the twelve patriarchs, the sons of Jacob (see Ex 24:4; 28:21; 39:14). When King David established his rule over the land of Israel and wished to build a temple for the Lord, the prophet Nathan spoke the word of the Lord to the king telling him that while it would not be he, King David, who would build a temple, nevertheless, ‘Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me, your throne shall be established forever’ (2 Sam 7:16). When the nation of Israel split into two kingdoms after the death of King Solomon, the hope emerged that in the future God would honor God’s promise by reconstituting God’s twelve tribe kingdom. This hope became much more urgent when the entire nation was destroyed first by the Assyrians and then by the Babylonians. For example, the prophet Ezekiel looked forward to the future return of the people to the land of Israel. He envisaged a restoration of the twelve tribe kingdom whereby the land was once again apportioned among the tribes: ‘Thus says the Lord God: These are the boundaries by which you shall divide the land for the inheritance among the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Ezek 47:13). This hope in the reconstituted twelve-tribe kingdom endured throughout their history and was kept alive especially in the times when their nation fell under the domination of foreign nations. There is evidence outside the biblical writings of how alive this hope was at the time of the origins of the movement around Jesus. For example, the Psalms of Solomon from the first century CE proclaim: ‘He will gather a holy people whom he will lead in righteousness; and he will judge the tribes of the people that have been made holy by the Lord their God’ (Pss Sol 17:26; OTP 2:667). This opening address ‘to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’, understood against the background of the traditions of the people of Israel, clearly situates the Letter of James within an eschatological framework. It envisages the restoration of God’s twelve tribe kingdom. The fulfillment of these hopes of restoration, however, is not envisaged as taking place in the future, whether it be the remote or imminent future. Instead, it has already begun! The eschatological hopes are already being realized. James 1:18

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refers to what God has already accomplished with his hearers/readers: ‘Because he freely decreed it, he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we might be a kind of first fruits of his creatures’. God’s plans are being realized within James’s community. He sees them as ‘the first fruits of God’s creatures’. 3.2. Judgment on the Rich (4:13–5:6) This section concludes the body of the letter which returns to one of the main themes of the letter, namely, friendship with the world versus friendship with God. In fact, this section draws attention to the consequences arising from friendship with the world. The rhetorical function of these verses shows how the choice of the values of the world leads inevitably to evil and destruction. 3.1.1. Judgment on Rich Merchants (Jas 4:13–17) James 4:13–17 issues a condemnation against rich merchants. The condemnation is provoked by two concerns. In the first place, the merchants undertake all their plans without any reference to God: ‘Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will both live and do this or that”...’ (Jas 4:15). James places human life under the plans and rule of God. From an eschatological perspective, no one knows when the end of the world will occur and no one knows when one’s own life will come to an end. To operate one’s plans without any reference to God is a denial of God’s ultimate rule of the world and one’s individual life. The image that life is like ‘a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes’ (Jas 4:14) emphasizes the brevity of human life. 1 Clement (17:6) expresses the same thought in this way: ‘But I am as smoke (DMWPLYa) from a pot’ [Lake, ICL]. The Book of Job also contains a similar thought, ‘Remember that my life is a breath…’ (Job 7:7). The Book of Psalms also states: ‘You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Surely everyone stands as a mere breath’ (Ps 39:5). James’s second concern arises from what the merchants do with their wealth. They have little concern for the needs of others. Instead, they are interested in making a profit. Implicit in this accusation are the thoughts of the Lukan parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13–21 which highlights the futility of storing up riches for oneself. The conclusion to this section is telling: ‘Therefore, for everyone who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, for that person it is a sin’ (Jas 4:17). Eveyone has to bear responsibility for one’s actions. The climax for all the admonitons that James has given throughout the body of this letter rests here with the reminder of the responsibility that comes from one’s actions.

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3.2.2. Judgment on Rich Landowners (Jas 5:1–6) The eschatological language becomes more pronounced in this concluding section to the body of the letter. James opens this section with a cry: ‘Come now, you rich! Weep and wail for the miseries that are coming upon you!’ (5:1). Eschatological judgment will be meted out against the rich soon! James speaks about how their wealth, in which they placed so much trust, will disappear: ‘Your riches have rotted, your clothes have become moth-eathen! Your gold and silver have rusted’ (5:2–3). ‘You have fattened your hearts for a day of slaughter’ (5:5). These descriptions point to judgment and punishment for the rich in the last days. The impression given is that this judgment is imminent. This eschatological vision is one that conforms to the theological thought of the earliest days of Jesus’ followers. These descriptions of the imminent eschatological end show the outcome for these actions of greed and oppression of the poor. While the imagery that James employs points to an imminent eschatological judgment, the letter does not stress or detail the coming eschatological events. They are described only with a view to speak to the present of the hearers/readers. James’s rhetorical function is to use these descriptions to encourage the poor and the oppressed: he wishes to give his hearers/readers the assurance that God hears the cry of the poor. His rhetorical function is not to change the ways of the rich, but like the prophets of old, the rich are a foil for James to encourage the oppressed poor. Throughout the letter, James has shown particular concern for the poor. This final section of the body of the letter has taken up the concern for the poor once again and given them the assurance that God always hears them. As Maynard-Reid (1987, 98) says: (I)t is clear that James equates true religion with social concern and that for him one’s personal religion is not all that counts in the final reckoning. As in Matthew 25:31–46, James reveals that one’s social involvement in the present is as important as one’s personal religious practices and that, in fact, personal religion is meaningless without social commitment. This in essence is the profound meaning of James’s statement ‘faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’ (2:17).

3.3. Call to Patient Endurance (James 5:7–11) This paragraph has the function of connecting the conclusion to the body of the letter. The eschatological theme provides the means for achieving this. James 5:7–11 takes up the same eschatological thought that was central to the preceding section (4:13–5:6). In that section, the focus was on judgment and punishment for those rich merchants and landowners in the future because of their friendship with the world and their treatment of the poor. In James 5:7–11, the eschatological tone is very different – it

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changes from harshness and judgment to hope in the expectation of God’s blessings: ‘You have seen the outcome accomplished by the Lord, because the Lord is compassionate and merciful’ (5:11). In other words, James has changed his tone from that of an invective against the rich to offer hope and assurance in God’s compassion and blessings for those who remain patient. In expressing the call to patience in this secion, James uses two distinct word groups PDNURTXPHLCQ/ PDNURTXPLYD and X-SRPHYQHLQ/ X-SRPRQKY (see Hartin 2003, 241–249). The first word group PDNURTXPHLCQ/ PDNURTXPLYD occurs four times in this section (5:7 [2x], 8, 10). The distinguishing feature of this call to patience is the nuance of actively awaiting the coming of the Lord. It is a key word group that is often used to express the spirit of God’s patience. Johnson (1995, 313) expresses this thought by saying that God actively ‘puts up with’ humanity’s behavior. Mayor (1954, 161) translates it in the sense of ‘long-tempered’. In line with his underlying thought throughout this letter that the hearers/readers should imitate God, James calls on them in their own waiting for the coming of the Lord to imitate God’s active patience in God’s attitude to humanity. In 5:11 James turns to the use of the word group X-SRPHYQHLQ/ X-SRPRQKY to express a different nuance in regard to the concept of patience. This word group is used to express the attitude that believers should adopt when they are faced with situations of suffering and oppression, namely an attitude of passive endurance. Hauck (1967, 588) expresses this concept of X-SRPHYQHLQ/ X-SRPRQKY very well: ‘James is also directed to Christians under affliction, and it has a sharp exhortation to steadfast endurance both at the beginning and at the end … Job is the great example of this perseverance under affliction (5:11; cf. Job 1:21f.)’. Looking back over the Letter of James, one sees how these concepts of active patience versus passive endurance have been woven together. In the beginning of the letter, James calls on his hearers/readers to steadfast endurance when their faith is being tested, ‘because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance produce a perfect work so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing’ (1:3–4). The call to patient endurance acts as an inclusio around the whole Letter of James. A similar call to steadfast endurance reappears in the course of the letter (1:12; as well being implied in 4:6–10). In bringing the letter to a conclusion, James reprises the same thought that he expressed in the beginning by calling on his hearers/readers to continue to embrace an attitude of patient endurance in the sufferings they experience, especially the sufferings that James sees as a prelude to the end time. Futher, in embracing these sufferings with a spirit of patient endurance, James also

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exhorts them to embrace the same sense of God’s patience by actively awaiting and embracing the coming of the Lord that is imminent. On two occasions in this short section, James refers to ‘the coming of the Lord’(H^ZaWKCaSDURXVLYDaWRXC NXULYRX) (5:7 and 8). An examination of the use of the term SDURXVLYD in the Septuagint is interesting. It is used only on five occasions (Neh 2:6 [LXX Codex Alexandrinus, 2 Esdr 12:6]; Jdt 10:18; 2 Macc 8:12; 15:21; 3 Macc 3:17). In all these usages, it never refers to the coming of the Messiah or of God. It is only within the New Testament writings that the term took on the specific reference to the coming of the Messiah to establish God’s kingdom (see Mt 24:3, 27, 39; 1 Cor 15:23; 1 Thess 2:19; 2 Thess 2:8; 2 Pet 3:4; 1 Joh 2:28; see also Hartin 2003, 241). These diverse references are noteworthy in that they show that the phrase ‘coming of the Lord’ is to be found in almost all the traditions related to earliest Christianity (Matthew; Paul; Peter; John and James). Ususally the phrase SDURXVLYDis identified as ‘the SDURXVLYD of the Son of Man’ or ‘the SDURXVLYD of the Lord’ where the term ‘Lord’ refers to the coming of the person of Jesus Christ. In James, the term ‘Lord’ is used either in reference to Jesus or to God, depending on the context. In 5:8 the reference to the ‘coming of the Lord’ refers to the person of Jesus since, as we have noted, ‘Lord’ used in the context of the SDURXVLYD refers always to Jesus. However, the reference to ‘Lord’ in 5:4 (‘And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts’) must refer to God since in that context God is seen to execute judgment and in James the role of judge is reserved to God rather than to Jesus. In 5:8 the hearers/readers are urged: ‘You also be patient! Strengthen your hearts, because the coming of the Lord is near (K>JJLNHQ)’. In the Synoptic traditions, the same expression (K>JJLNHQ) is used to refer to the nearness of God’s kingdom (see Mt 3:2: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near’; see also Mk 1:15). In other New Testament traditions, it refers to the nearness of the SDURXVLYD (see Rom 13:12; Heb 10:25; 1 Pet 4:7). The function of the reference to the nearness of the parousia here in the Letter of James is not to stress the time of the arrival of the parousia (its closeness). Rather, it is to stress the importance of remaining patient and faithful during this waiting period. As Davids (1982, 184) says: The point is not the length of the waiting, but the need to remain firm during the interim period ‘before the harvest’. That James does not expect the period to be long is clear when he says the parousia of the Lord (cf. 5:7) is near (K>JJLNHQ) … The tension of 5:1–6 is taken up again; the day is virtually upon them; the finish line is just ahead; the important point is not to give up now and lose all that for which one has already suffered.

James adds a further eschatological element to his announcement of the ‘coming of the Lord’, namely, ‘The Judge is standing at the doors!’ (5:9).

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It is true that some New Testament traditions speak about Jesus in the capacity of a Judge (see especially the parable of the judgment of the nations where Jesus, the Son of Man, judges the nations of the world and separates the good from the evil [Mt 25:31–46]). Some scholars see Jesus here in James as exercising the role of Judge (see Davids 1982, 185; Martin 1988, 192). However, I agree with Laws (1982, 213) that the role of Judge in James should be reserved for God, in light of James’s reference to God in 4:12 that ‘there is one Lawgiver and Judge…’. From the above examination, it shows that while James does not give a detailed description of his eschatological expectations, there are clearly two elements that are foremost in his vision, namely the coming of Jesus and the judgment of God. Jesus and God each have different roles to exercise in regard to the eschatological unfolding of the future. With regard to James’s position in the development of the Jesus tradition, it seems clear that this careful distinction of roles, which James indicates for God and for Jesus, would belong to the earlier stage of the tradition. Later, with the development of the tradition within the Synoptic traditions of Matthew, Mark and Luke one notices how these roles are then blurred and the role of judgment which initially was restricted to the role of God is now exercised by Jesus. To my mind, this is another insight into the early nature of the Letter of James. 3.4. Eschatology and the Ethical Instruction From the above examination of the place of eschatology within the Letter of James, it is clear that eschatology is not ‘the burden of the book’ (Davids 1982, 39) neither is it the central focus. It provides the worldview in which the Letter of James lives and breathes. In effect, it demonstrates the outcome or the consequences for the ethical instructions. Todd Penner (1996, 212) aptly articulates the eschatological framework of the Letter of James that was indicated above as providing ‘the horizon against which the community instruction is set’. However, Penner overstresses the focus upon the eschatological when he says: ‘Hence, the eschatological focus of the framework pushes the community instruction in a particular direction: the community instruction is for the people living in the ‘last days’, awaiting the imminent return of the Judge, and desiring to be found perfect and complete at the time of judgment’ (1996, 212). The focus in the Letter of James is on the present, not on the future. The future draws attention to the consequences of the life choices that are made in the present. James is interested in the socialization of his community at the present moment. His instructions function as a way of indicating the identity that the community is called to embrace and what type of life they are to carry out if they are to remain true to that identity as members of the

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‘twelve tribes in the Disperson’. The concept of their identity as the twelve tribes is being realized in the present – it is not something that is reserved exclusively for the future, as I have argued above. The function of protreptic discourse (to which James is seen to conform) is that of the formation of the group and the socialization of members into this group. Berger and Luckmann (1966, 120) define this socialization ‘as the comprehensive and consistent induction of an individual into the objective world of a society or a sector of it’. All the instructions of the Letter of James are orientated to the socialization of this community in order for them to appreciate the values that not only identify them but also distinguish them from the wider society. For James, the objective world of its society as ‘the twelve tribes of the Dispersion’ is clearly distinguished from the world around it. This does not mean that James is proposing that his community should separate itself from the wider society as the people of Qumran had done (see Johnson 2004, 212). His community lives in the world, but does not draw its values from the world. What identifies and motivates James’s community are the values that stem from its faith, not from the world. Hence, James sets up a characteristic opposition between his community and the world. Johnson (2004, 35) draws attention to the way in which the ethical instructions are informed by the theological vision and teaching of James. The close link between James’s moral teaching and his theology is demonstrated by the way in which theological propositions serve as warrants and premises for moral exhortation. James does not simply juxtapose the two sorts of statements. Instead, the theological always functions as the motivator of the moral. James grounds moral life in the relationship of creatures, and above all humans, with God.

For the socialization process to be effective, James grounds all his instructions on the theological understanding of God and the way of life required of those who are in relationship to God as members of ‘the twelve tribes of the Dispersion’. It is not the eschatological that provides ‘the motivator of the moral’ rather it is the theological as Johnson (2004, 35) argues above. The eschatological indicates rather the consequences of the choices that the present moral life has made, guided by James’s theological vision. For example, those who withstand temptation are promised ‘the crown of life’ (Jas 1:12) or those who are ‘poor in the world’ will be ‘heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him’ (2:5). 3.5. How Apocalyptic is James’s Eschatology? In the above discussion, I have pointed to the use of a certain eschatological language that is evident within the Letter of James. James looks forward to a future where there will be reward and punishment. He speaks of a reward of ‘the crown of life’ for those who endure trial (1:12);

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the poor who love God are promised to become ‘heirs of the kingdom’ (2:5); those who humble themselves are promised to be exalted (4:10). James also envisages that ‘the coming of the Lord’ (5:7) in reference to Jesus ‘is near’ (5:8); while God is presented as the ‘Judge (who) is standing at the doors!’ (4:12 and 5:9); and finally that punishment awaits the rich because they have oppressed the poor (5:1–7). Despite these eschatological references, one does note that this language is in fact very reserved from an eschatological apocalyptic perspective. In much of the intertestamental apocalyptic literature, the descriptions of suffering are very graphic, harsh and painful. In the Letter of James the sufferings do not resemble these extreme persecutions that God’s people had to endure. Instead, the sufferings are more along the lines of daily trials of one’s faith . For example, James uses the Greek word TOLC\La to refer to the suffering of widows and orphans (1:27). According to the studies of Heinrich Schlier (1965, 142) on the word group TOLYEZTOLC\La, this term had aquired a ‘theological significance from the fact that it predominantly denotes the oppression and affliction of the people of Israel or of the righteous who represent Israel’. Consequently, TOLC\La had become a standard term that would immediately establish a connection with the world of apocalyptic sufferings. Yet, James has employed it in a common daily context as referring to the ordinary trials and sufferings that widows or orphans would experience. Why does he do this? Laws (1980, 90) has offered a very probable reason for this usage in James: ‘Alternatively James may be trying to keep the expectation alive and real in a situation where the traditional ‘signs’ are conspicuously lacking, and in that attempt he carries out a deliberate reinterpretation of the nature of the signs’.

4. Conclusion A study of the eschatological within the Letter of James has shown that the revelation of the future is not the aim or focus of the Letter of James (Hartin 2005, 166). James is concerned with the present instruction of his community as a way of socializing the members into the community of ‘the twelve tribes of the Dispersion’. The present where the eschatological age has already commenced is a flowering of the past. James is also not a writing that is characterized by dreams, visions, angels – all elements that were so central to the apocalyptic worldview and imagination. Yet, not every apocalyptic element is absent from the Letter of James. The letter does know of a world of demons (2:19) as well as a future judgment and

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separation between good and evil (5:1–11) as a consequence of how one has led one’s present life. However, the apocalyptic elements present in the letter should be seen as part of a worldview that James holds in common with all the followers of Jesus. It is not specifically focused upon the apocalyptic doom and destruction that some groups stressed. For James, the focus continued to rest on providing moral guidance and instruction for his hearers/raders. Speculation and reflection on the future end times were not part of his concern. It was the present, not the future, that occupied his attention. The ethical instruction in James is guided not by an eschatological or apocalyptic outlook. Rather, as noted above, it is his theological understanding and beliefs that give direction. James’s theology is informed above all through reflection on the Torah. Centrality is given in his instruction, rooted in the Torah, to the law of love, characterized as ‘the perfect law of liberty’ (1:25; 2:8, 12). This study has demonstrated that the Letter of James is at home in the earliest developments of the Jesus tradition. It holds much in common with the traditions of Jesus found behind the Synoptic Gospels. It is also at home in the wisdom, prophetic, apocalyptic and eschatological traditions found within developing traditions of Christianity. However, it cannot simply be identified by just one of these traditions. ‘Classifications such as apocalyptic, eschatological, wisdom, and prophetic are heuristic tools that remain such – tools that help scholars to enter into the reality of the past’ (Hartin 2005, 168). This examination of the place, function and importance of the eschatological within the Letter of James has helped to understand better the nature of this letter as well as to identify more clearly its own eschatological vision in so far as it can also be situated against the background of the social, religious and cultural worlds of early Christianity. The Letter of James challenges the believer at every age to assess his/her way of life in relationship with God and with the community. Every age can return to the Letter of James to see the heart of the Christan way of life, as it is informed by and witnesses to a fidelity to the traditions of the past, of Israel and of Jesus of Nazareth. Works Consulted Assmann, J 2006 Form as Mnemonic Device: Cultural Texts and Cultural Memory, in Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory and Mark. Essays Dedicated to Werner Kelber, Horsley, RA, Draper, JA, Foley, JM (eds.), Minneapolis. Berger, PL & Luckmann, T 1966 The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City. Chester, A & Martin, RP 1994 The Theology of the Letters of James, Peter, and Jude: New Testament Theology. Cambridge.

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Crouzel, H 1978 L’Imitation et la ‘Suite’ de Dieu et de Christ dans les Premières Siècles Chrétiens, ainsi que Leurs Sources Gréco-Romaines et Hébraïque, in Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum. Jahrgang 21, Münster, 7–41. Davids, P 1982 The Epistle of James: A Commentary on the Greek Text. Exeter. Davies, WD & Alison, DC Jr 1988–1997 A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. Edinburgh. Dibelius, M 1976 James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James. Hermeneia. Koester, H (ed.), Williams MA (tr.), Philadelphia. Dupont, J 1966 L’Appel à imiter Dieu en Matthieu 5,48 et Luc 6,36. RivB 14, 137–158. Elliott, JH 1993 The Epistle of James in Rhetorical and Social Scientific Perspective: Holiness-Wholeness and Patterns of Replication. BTB 23, 71–81. Gammie, JG 1990 Paraenetic Literature: Toward the Morphology of a Secondary Genre. Semeia 50, 41–77. Hartin, PJ 1989 James and the Sermon on the Mount/ Plain. SBLSP 28, 440–457. – 1991 James and the Q Sayings of Jesus. Sheffield. – 1999 A Spirituality of Perfection: Faith in Action in the Letter of James. Collegeville. – 2003 James. Collegeville. – 2005 ‘Who Is Wise and Understanding among You?’ (James 3:13): An Analysis of Wisdom, Eschatology, and Apocalypticism in the Letter of James, in Conflicted Boundaries in Wisdom and Apocalypticism, Wright, BG III & Wills, LM (eds.), Atlanta, 149–168. – 2007 The Religious Context of the Letter of James, in Jewish Christianity Reconsidered; Rethinking Ancient Groups and Texts, Jackson-McCabe, MA (ed.), Minneapolis, 203–231. – 2008 Ethics in the Letter of James, the Gospel of Matthew and the Didache: Their Place in Early Christian Literature, in Matthew, James and Didache: Three Related Documents in Their Jewish and Christian Settings, Van de Sandt, H & Zangenberg JK (eds.), Atlanta, 289–314. – 2009 James and the Jesus Tradition: Some Theological Reflections and Implications, Chapter Four, in The Catholic Epistles and Apostolic Traditions, Niebuhr, K-W & Wall, RW (eds.), Waco, 55–70. Hauck, F 1967 X-SRPHYQZ/ X-SRPRQKY.TDNT 4, 581–588. Hays, RB 1983 The Faith of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11. Chico. – 1985 Have We Found Abraham to be Our Forefather According to the Flesh? NovT 27, 76–98. – 1987 Christology and Ethics in Galatians: the Law of Christ. CBQ 49, 268–290. – 1992 Justification, in ABD. Vol 3, Freedman, DN (ed.), New York, 1129–1133. Hiebert, DE 1979 The Unifying Theme of the Epistle of James. BSac 135, 221–231. Jackson-McCabe, MA 1996 A Letter to the Twelve Tribes in the Diaspora: Wisdom and ‘Apocalyptic’ Eschatology in the Letter of James. SBLSP 35, 504–517. Johnson, LT 1983 James 3:13–4:10 and the Topos SHULITRYQRX. NovT 25, 327–347. – 1995 The Letter of James. New York. – 2004 Brother of Jesus, Friend of God. Studies in the Letter of James. Grand Rapids. Kirk, JA 1970 The Meaning of Wisdom in James: Examination of a Hypothesis. NTS 16, 24–38. Kosmala, H 1978 Nachfolge und Nachahmung Gotes, II. Im Jüdischen Denken, in Studies, Essays and Reviews. Vol. 2, Leiden, 138–231. Laws, S 1980 A Commentary on the Epistle of James. London.

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– 1982 The Doctrinal Basis for the Ethics of James, in Studia Evangelica. Vol. 7, Berlin, 299–305. Maynard-Reid, PU 1987 Poverty and Wealth in James. Maryknoll. Mayor, JB 1954 The Epistle of St. James. The Greek Text with Introduction, Notes and Comments, and Further Studies in the Epistle of St. James. London. McKnight, S 1999 A Parting within the Way: Jesus and James on Israel and Purity, in James the Just and Christian Origins, Chilton, B & Evans, CA (eds.), Leiden, 82–129. Penner, TC 1996 The Epistle of James and Eschatology: Re-reading an Ancient Christian Letter. Sheffield. Porter, S 1990 Is dipsychos (James 1:8; 4:8) a Christian Word? Bib 71, 469–498. Rhoads, D 1998 The Letter of James: Friend of God. CurTM 25, 473–486. Robbins, VK 1991 Writing as a Rhetorical Act in Plutarch and the Gospels, in Persuasive Artistry: Studies in New Testament Rhetoric in Honor of George A. Kennedy, Watson, DF (ed.), Sheffield, 142–168. Robinson, JM, Hoffmann, P & Kloppenborg, JS 2000 The Critical Edition of Q. Minneapolis. Schlier, H 1965 4OLYEZ4OLC\La. TDNT 3, 139–148. Schnackenburg, R 1968 Christian Perfection according to Matthew, in Christian Existence in the New Testament. Vol. 1, Notre Dame, 158–189. Sevenster, JN 1968 Do You Know Greek? How Much Greek Could the First Jewish Christians have Known? Leiden. Verseput, DJ 1997 Reworking the Puzzle of Faith and Deeds in James 2:14–26. NTS 43, 97–115. Wall, RW 1990 James as Apocalyptic Paraenesis. ResQ 32, 11–22. – 1997 Community of the Wise: The Letter of James. Valley Forge. Wright, RB (tr.) 1985 The Psalms of Solomon, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 2, Charlesworth, JH (ed.), London, 639–670.

The Eschatology of 1 Peter Hope and Vindication for Visiting and Resident Strangers

Fika J van Rensburg The addressees of 1 Peter were living in an unfriendly environment. They were aliens and strangers, probably not only because of their Christian faith, but mainly because they were not citizens of the areas they lived in. Their alien status contributed considerably to their special situation, and this is the context within which the eschatology of 1 Peter is constructed.

1. Introduction Aune (1996, 594) argues that the term eschatology is in the present time used ‘to refer to the whole constellation of beliefs and conceptions about the end of history and the transformation of the world which particularly characterized early Judaism, and early Christianity, and Islam, i.e., cosmic eschatology’. He states that the central foci of these beliefs are the judgment of sinners and the salvation of the righteous. He (1996, 594) adds, however, that eschatology is a ‘mode of understanding the complete realization of salvation as a future event or series of events which are, nevertheless, somehow linked to the present’. Gordon J Thomas (1997, 53–60) redefines eschatology as the doctrine of ‘ultimate’ things rather than of ‘last things’. ‘Ultimate reality is not just what will transpire at the end of time, but that which God apparently has always sought to make a present reality’ (Thomas 1997, 55).1 The result of my research on the eschatology of 1 Peter has persuaded me to share aspects of this view of eschatology. It has also become clear from my research that the author understood that he and his addressees were already living in the end-times. He under1

Thomas applies this approach to ‘holiness’, demonstrating that throughout Scripture a holy God has always indicated his wish to dwell among a holy people in a holy place. He then argues that the eschatological call is to mirror God in his holiness. He (1997, 55) argues against a temporal/chronological view of eschatology, in favour of a spatial or cosmological one, referring to D>QZTHQin John 3, as not referring to born again, but born from above.

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stood their present salvation in Christ to be already an end-time reality. The argument of Beale (1997, 17.18) that ‘the apostles understood eschatology not merely as futurology but as a mindset for understanding the present within the climaxing context of redemptive history’ is also valid for 1 Peter. In my approach I have made a conscious effort to use bibliological categories and concepts, as opposed to categories and concepts from Systematic Theology. Towards this end I now construct the life situation of the addressees (2). Then the eschatological utterances are identified and categorized (3); and the argument of 1 Peter briefly constructed (4). The eschatological utterances are then interpreted (5). Finally (6) the eschatology of 1 Peter is concluded and summarized.

2. The Life Situation of the Addressees The goal of this construction of the socio-historic context of the addressees of 1 Peter is to establish an interpretative framework for the eschatological analysis of the letter. This construction has been published in Van Rensburg (2006, 475–481).2 It boils down to the following: The labelling of the addressees3 as SDUHSLGKYPRLaGLDVSRUDCa(resident foreigners of the Diaspora, 1:1; 2:11) and SDYURLNRL (visiting foreigners, 2:11) does not refer to a mere metaphoric figurative state of Christians being strangers in the world because they are citizens of heaven.4 The addressees were, already before there conversion to the Christian faith, ‘visiting and resident foreigners’ in the literal socio-political sense of the words. There is, however, apart from being foreigners in the literal sociopolitical sense of the word, a second level on which they (or at least some of them) are SDUHSLGKYPRL(GLDVSRUDCa) and SDYURLNRL, and that is the fact that they were, before their conversion, proselytes and God fearers5 (the IRERXYPHQRL and the VHERYPHQRL WRYQ THRYQ), as argued convincingly by 2 The method used in this construction, is the socio-historic approach, enriched with facets of the socio-scientific approach, as described by Garrett (1992, 90). Cf. Van Rensburg (2000, 564–582) for a definition of the method. 3 Different scholars have adequately surveyed the scholarship on the identity and circumstances of the addressees of 1 Peter, Goppelt (1978, 161–177) and Achtemeier (1996, 50–58) and especially Feldmeier (1992) being of the most exhaustive. Cf. also the more recent contribution by Seland (2005). 4 Elliott (1981, 32; 1996, 273) argues convincingly against such a spiritualization of SDYURLNRL in 1 Peter as being contra the social consciousness that is obvious from its use in early Christian and apocalyptic Jewish writings. 5 Contra Richard (1986, 123), who is of the opinion that the addressees were simply pagan Christians.

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Van Unnik (1980a, 72–74). Labelling the addressees as SDYURLNRL NDL SDUHSLGKYPRL(GLDVSRUDCa) therefore does not merely describe their social position, it indicates their previous status as ‘God-fearers’ as well. The author of 1 Peter links on to this sense of SDYURLNRL NDL SDUHSLGKYPRL(GLDVSRUDCa), transforming the (in some ways) abusive title to a proud self identification by giving it a deeper and specific theologically positive sense. In a way it is part of the adoption of the honorific titles of the Old Testament people of God, and in another way it has been transformed into a proud self-identification in its own right (cf. Feldmeier 1992, 104). The addressees are identified as ‘resident and visiting foreigners’ (1:1, 17; 2:11), but the letter does not give any explicit cause for this status of the addressees. It is improbable that official persecution was the cause.6 The backdrop rather seems to be the socio-political status of the Christian groups in the Diaspora, their daily relationships with Jews and other nonChristians, and the difficulties that they, as ‘resident and visiting foreigners’ had to face daily. Their suffering, therefore, was most probably not caused by official persecution, but by spontaneous local social ostracism (Balch 1981, 95;7 Elliott 1976, 252; Elliott 1986, 14; Van Unnik 1980a, 79–80;8 Van Unnik 1980b, 113.116; cf. also Moule 1956–1957:1–11). The hardships were, by and large, experienced within the smaller circle of the household. The pater familias had more or less full authority over his wife/wives, children, servants and slaves (cf. 1 Pet 3:1). When the pater familias did not convert to the Christian faith when any member of the household did, it could result in severe discrimination against such converted person(s). The author uses the letter to persuade the addressees of their status before God as saved persons, of the loving care God has for them, and of Christ’s vicarious suffering and subsequent glory and supreme power. He exhorts them to have a ‘good’ lifestyle (WKQDMQDVWURIKQX-PZCQHMQWRLCa 6

Contra Beare (1970, 188). Cf. Elliott (1976, 251.252) and Richard (1986, 126) for a good summary and rejection of the viewpoint that official persecution was the cause. 7 Balch (1981, 95) is very specific in his counter argument: ‘Rather, certain slaves and wives converted to Christianity; therefore, persons in Roman society reacted by accusing them of being immoral, perhaps seditious, and certainly insubordinate’. 8 Van Unnik (1980a, 79.80) says ‘nowhere do we read that they suffered from the pagan authorities. ... We think of the pagan surroundings and the persecution which might have arisen there, but we read nothing about that either. Is it not more obvious to think about persecution by the Synagogue? ... That is why Christ, who Himself underwent betrayal and death at the hands of the Jews, can be an example to them (chapter ii and iii). This too fits perfectly into the picture that we get in Acts of the earliest mission. There, again and again, it is the Jews who resist and slander Paul and his companions (see Acts xiii 50; xiv 19; xvii 5, 13)’.

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H>TQHVLQ H>FRQWHa NDOKYQ, 2:12) and to persevere in doing good (HMQ DMJDTRSRL"D, 4:19), even amidst and in spite of their own suffering. In this way they must live up to their status as persons of whom is said R- THRa DMQDJHQQKYVDaK-PDCa (1:3). This construction of the life situation of the addressees of 1 Peter impacts on the construction of the eschatology of the letter. The eschatological utterances in 1 Peter can now be identified and categorized.

3. The Eschatological Utterances Identified and Categorized The eschatological utterances in 1 Peter can be identified and categorized in different ways. In the identification and categorization that is done here, care has been taken to use bibliological concepts and categories, and to steer away from systematic theological concepts and categories. The identification of eschatological utterances produced 31 occurrences of 17 different words/phrases. A categorization of these eschatological utterances produced the following matrix: 1. A consciousness of a present and a future dispensation: A present (last) dispensation, with an end (HMQNDLUZC HMVFDYWZ, 1:5; HMS¨ HMVFDYWRXWZCQFURYQZQ, 1:20; NDLYURa, 5:6; WRYWHYORa 4:7, 17); – A next dispensation, seemingly without an end (R- DLMZYQ,1:25; 4:11; 5:11; DLMZYQLRa, 5:10).

–

2. A present reality, anticipating complete fulfilment in the future: – The appearance and/or revelation of salvation / Jesus Christ / Christ’s glory (DMSRNDYOX\La, 1:5, 7, 13; 4:13; 5:1; IDQHUZTHLCa, 5:4; – Hope: a certainty of the future fulfilment of a present reality (HMOSLYa, 1:3, 21; 3:15, HMOSLY]Z, 1:13; 3:5); – Salvation as present reality, but to be ‘completed’ (VZWKULYD, 1:5, 9; 2:2); – The heir-imagery (NOKURQRPLYD, 1:4; VXJNOKURQRYPRa, 3:7; NOKURQ RPHYZ, 3:9). 3. God as judge, present and future (NULYQZ, 1:17; 2:23; 4:5; NULYPD, 4:17; HMQK-PHYUDHMSLVNRSKCa 2:12). Before interpreting the eschatological utterances, it is necessary to construct the argument of 1 Peter and to establish how these eschatological utterances function within the constructed argument.

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4. The Argument of 1 Peter I take as frame of reference for the interpretation of the eschatological utterances the argument of 1 Peter that I have proposed in a 2006-article (Van Rensburg 2006, 481–488; cf. Van Rensburg 1992, 26–41). According to this construction of the argument the basic statement in 1 Peter is that the Father has begotten the addressees SDWKU WRXC NXULYRX K-PZCQ ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC DMQDJHQQKYVDaK-PDCa, 1:3) (1:3–12). This statement that God has re-begotten the addressees functions as the basis for four inferences, given as four exhortations: – –

Set your hope fully on the grace, and therefore be holy (1:13–25); The obligation of a ‘new’ child of God to grow individually as well as together with fellow-believers (2:1–10); – Code of conduct for SDYURLNRLand SDUHSLYGKPRL(2:11–4:19);9 – Code of conduct within the church (5:1–11). This construction of the argument of 1 Peter, and specifically the coherence between the letter opening (1:3–12) and the body of the letter can be represented in the following way:

9

This third inference is divided into the following subsections: The basic exhortation (2:11–12), the code of conduct for the relationship with political authorities (2:13–17), with employers (2:18–25), with the marriage partner (3:1–7), with neighbours in general (3:8–12), and for the attitude towards and response to unjust sufferings (3:13–4:19).

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Synopsis of the argument of 1 Peter LETTER HEADING 1:1–2: Author, addressees and greeting LETTER OPENING 1:3–12: Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has begotten us anew FOUR INFERENTIAL EXHORTATIONS (basis: ‘God has begotten us anew’) Exhortation 1: 1:13–25: Set your hope fully on the grace and therefore be holy Exhortation 2: 2:1–10: The obligation of a person having been begotten anew by God and having been given a new birth to grow spiritually, both personally and communally Exhortation 3: 2:11–4:19: Code of conduct for foreigners 2:11–12: The basic exhortation 2:13–17: Relationship with political authorities 2:18–25: Relationship with employers 3:1–7: Relationship with the marriage partner 3: 8–12: Relationship with neighbours in general 3:13–4:19: Attitude towards and response to unjust sufferings Exhortation 4: 5:1–11: Code of conduct within the church LETTER CLOSING 5:12–14: Conclusion: Purpose, salutations, letter closing

Of the 31 eschatological utterances, seven are in the letter opening (1 Pet 1:3–12),10 and six in Exhortation 1 (1 Pet 1:13–25).11 This means that close to 50% of the occurrences are in chapter 1 of the letter. In Exhortation 2 (1 Pet 2:1–10) there is only one occurrence (VZWKULYD, 2:2). Exhortation 3 (1 Pet 2:11–4:19) has twelve occurrences,12 and Exhortation 4 (1 Pet 5:1–11) has five.13 The twelve occurrences in the third exhortation (2:11–4:19) are distributed in the following way between the different subsections: one is in the 10 These seven occurrences in 1 Pet 1:3–12 are: HMO SLYa (1:3), NOKURQRPLYD (1:4), HMQ NDLUZCHMVFDYWZ(1:5), VZWKULYD (1:5), DMSRNDYOX\La (1:5,7), VZWKULYD(1:9). 11 These six occurrences in 1 Pet 1:13–25 are: DM S RNDYO X\La (1:13), HMO SLY] Z (1:13), NULYQZ(1:17), HMS¨HMVFDYWRXWZCQFURYQZQ (1:20), HMSOLYa (1:21), R-DLMZYQ (1:25). 12 These twelve occurrences in 1 Pet 2:11–4:19 are: HMQK-PHYUD HMSLVNRSKCa (2:12), NULYQZ (2:23), HMOSLY]Z (3:5), VXJNOKURQRYPRa (3:7), NOKURQRPHYZ (3:9), HMOSLYa (3:15), WR WHYORa (4:7), NULYQZ (4:5), R-DLMZYQ (4:11), DMSRNDYOX\La (4:13), NULYPD (4:17), WRWHYORa(4:17). 13 These five occurrences in 1 Pet 5:1–11 are: DM S RNDYO X\La (5:1), IDQHUZTHLCa (5:4), NDLYURa (5:6), DLMZYQLRa (5:10), R-DLMZYQ (5:11).

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basic statement (HMQK-PHYUDHMSLVNRSKCa, 2:12), one in the code for the relationship with employers (NULYQZ, 2:23), two in the code for the relationship with the marriage partner (HMOSLY]Z, 3:5; VXJNOKURQRYPRa, 3:7), one in the code for the relationship with neighbours in general (NOKURQRPHYZ, 3:9). My interpretation of the inter-relationship of the subsections of 3:13– 4:19, the code on attitude towards and response to unjust sufferings can be represented in the following way: The third exhortation (2:11–12) applied to attitude towards and response to unjust suffering 3:13–17: Even if you suffer for what is right, you are blessed; in spite of unjust suffering, you must revere only Christ as Lord.14 Reason for revering only Christ as Lord 3:18–22: Christ also suffered for sins. He is, however, now in the position of authority at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities and powers in submission to Him.15 Exhortation as a consequence of Christ’s position of authority 4:1–7a: Arm yourselves with the attitude that he who has suffered in his body – because Christ has suffered – Is done with sin. Christ is also ready to judge the living and the dead, since the end of all things is near. 16 Exhortation as a consequence of the end of all things being near 4:7b–11: Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled. It entails loving each other, offering hospitality to one another and using one’s gifts to serve others.17 Summarizing exhortation: Attitude towards and response to unjust suffering 4:12–19: Attitude: Do not be surprised as though something strange is happening to you as household of God.

14 The starting point of the fifth exhortation within the section 2:11–4:19 is marked by the NDLY in 3:13, which co-ordinates 3:13 in equivalence to the conclusionary WR GH  WHYORain 3:8. This fifth exhortation comprises the whole of 3:13–4:19, and is made up of the five subsections: 3:13–17, 3:18–22, 4:1–7a, 4:7b–11, 4:12–19. 15 In 3:18 R^WL b marks 3:18–22 as ‘Reason’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 3:13–17; cf. Louw & Nida (1988 I, 781). 16 In 4:1 RX?Qa marks 4:1–7a as ‘Result’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 3:18–22, which states that Christ has suffered for sins; cf. Louw & Nida (1988 (I), 783.812. 794). The JDYUmarks this sentence as ‘Reason’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 4:5, where it is stated that even the dead will be judged; cf. Louw & Nida (1988 (I), 780); Denniston (1966, 60) in 4:6. However, 4:6 is not interpreted as the beginning of a new pericope, but as the penultimate section of the pericope 4:1–7a. The same goes for the GHYa in 4:7; cf. Louw & Nida (1988 (I), 790.789.794). It marks 4:7–11 as ‘Reason’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 4:5, which states that Christ is ready to judge. However, 4:7a is not interpreted as the beginning of a new pericope, but as the final section of the pericope 4:1–7a. 17 The RX?Qa in 4:7b marks 4:7b–11 as ‘Result’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 5:6–7a, which states that Christ is ready to judge, since the end of all things is near; cf. Louw & Nida (1988(I), 783.812.794).

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Response: Commit yourselves to the faithful Creator and continue to do good, since the cost for you to be saved was so high.18

Seven of the eschatological utterances occur in the code on attitude towards and response to unjust sufferings (1 Pet 3:13–4:19).19 The concentration of eschatological utterances in certain sections of the letter is conspicuous, and is in itself a pointer to the eschatology of 1 Peter.

5. The Eschatological Utterances Interpreted 5.1. A Consciousness of a Present and a Future Dispensation First Peter exhibits a consciousness of a (final) present and a future (endless) dispensation, with an inauguration and an end to the present dispensation, and a beginning for the future dispensation. 5.1.1. A present (last) dispensation, with an end The author’s consciousness of a present dispensation is evidenced by his use of H>VFDWRa (in combination with NDLURYa and WZCQFURYQZQ), as well as by his use of NDLURYa and WHYORa. 5.1.1.1. ´(VFDWRa in combination with NDLURYa and WZCQFURYQZQ The author uses H>VFDWRa twice: in 1:5 as an adjective in the phrase HMQ NDLUZC HMVFDYWZ (‘in the last time’, NRSV), and in 1:20 as a substantive adjective in the phrase HMS¨ HMVFDYWRX WZCQ FURYQZQ (‘the end of the ages’, NRSV). In 1:20 the reference is to the present dispensation: the phrase HMS¨ HMVFDYWRXWZCQFURYQZQ20 (‘at the end of the ages’, NRSV) clearly indicates a point of time that has already occurred (SURHJQZVPHYQRXPHQIDQHU ZTHYQWRa GH), since the author states that the readers have already benefited from the fact that Christ has been revealed (cf. Parker 1994, 27.28):

18 In 4:12 the asyndeton is interpreted to mark the section 4:12–19 as ‘Result’ in a ‘Reason’ ↔ ‘Result’ relation with 3:13–17. 19 These seven occurrences in 1 Pet 3:13–4:19 are: HMO SLYa (3:15), WR WHYO Ra (4:7), NULYQZ (4:5), R-DLMZYQ (4:11), DMSRNDYOX\La (4:13), NULYPD (4:17), WRWHYORa (4:17). 20 Louw & Nida (1996), Sub-domain 67.78 gives the following definition of this meaning of FURYQRa: ‘an indefinite unit of time (the actual extent of time being determined by the context) – “time, period of time” ’. Sub-domain 67.78 is part of the group of sub-domains 67.65–72, labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘A Point of Time with Reference to Duration of Time: Beginning, End’.

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SURHJQZVPHYQRXPHQSURNDWDEROKCaNRYVPRXIDQHUZTHYQWRaGHHMS¨HMVFDYWRXWZCQ FURYQZQGL¨X-PDCa

1:20

From the very next verse, 1:21, it can be deduced that this point of time is the first coming of Christ, more specifically his resurrection: WRXaGL¨DXMWRXC SLVWRXaHLMaTHRQWRQHJHLYUDQWDDXMWRQHMNQHNUZCQNDL GRY[ DQDXMWZC GRYQWDZ^VWHWKQSLYVWLQX-PZCQNDLHMOSLYGDHL?QDLHLMaTHRYQ (‘Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God’, NRSV).

The reference of HMQNDLUZC21 HMVFDYWZ22 in 1:5 is a point of time in the future, since the VZWKULYD of the readers, although a present reality, is still to be revealed.23 1:5 WRXaHMQGXQDYPHLTHRXC IURXURXPHYQRXaGLD SLYVWHZaHLMaVZWKULYDQH-WRLYPKQDMSR NDOXITKCQDLHMQNDLUZCHMVFDYWZ

5.1.1.2. .DLURYa, unqualified In 5:6 NDLURYa is used without an adjective, and again the reference is to the future: 5:6

WDSHLQZYTKWHRX?QX-SRWKQNUDWDLDQFHLCUDWRXCTHRXCL^QDX-PDCaX-\ ZYVKHMQNDLUZC

There is no indication whether the future NDLURYa is referring to the end of the dispensation, or just indefinitely to the future. In the case of the other two uses of NDLURYa in 1 Peter, in 1:1124 and 4:17,25 the reference is simul-

21 Louw & Nida (1996), Sub-domain 67.1, gives the following definition of this meaning of NDLYURa: ‘points of time consisting of occasions for particular events – “time, occasion”...’. 22 Louw & Nida (1996), Sub-domain 61.13, gives the following definition of this meaning of H>VFDWRa: ‘pertaining to being the last in a series of objects or events – “last, final, finally”...’. 23 Contra Parker (1994, 27.28), who interprets the phrase HMQ NDLUZC HMVFDYWZ as referring to the present. He (1994, 28) argues that it would be inconsistent for their salvation to be awaited in 1:5, but received in 1:9. 24 1 Pet 1:11: HMUDXQZCQ WHaHLMa WLYQ DK@ SRLCR QNDLURQ HMGKYO RXWR HMQ DXMWRLCa SHXCPD &ULVWRXC SURPDUWXURYPHQRQWD HLMa&ULGWRQSDTKYPDWDNDL WDaPHWD WDXCWDGRY[Da (‘inquiring about the person or time that the Spirit of Christ within them indicated when it testified in advance to the sufferings destined for Christ and the subsequent glory’, NRSV  25 1 Pet 4:17: R^ WL [R-]  NDLURa  WRXC D>U[DVTDL WR NULYP D DMSR WRXC THRXC HLM GH SUZCWRQDMI¨K-P ZCQWLY WR WHYORaWZCQDMSHLTRXYQWZQWZC WRXC THRXC HXMDJJHOLYZ ; (‘For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God?’, NRSV).

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taneously to both the beginning and the end of the present dispensation. The same can therefore be deducted concerning 5:6. 5.1.1.3. 7HYORa, etc 7HYORa is used in 1 Peter 1:9, 1:13, 3:8, 4:7, and 4:17. Of these the usages26 of WHYORa27 in 4:7, 17 refer to a point of time in the future, marking the end of the present dispensation: SDYQWZQGHWRWHYORaK>JJLNHQ ‘The end of all things’ is the time when those who malign (EODVIKP RXCQWHa, 4:4) the addressees ‘will have to give an accounting to him who stands ready to judge the living and the dead’ (4:5). It can therefore be deduced that ‘the end of all things’ is when Christ returns. In 4:17 WRWHYORa is used with WZCQDMSHLTRXYQWZQ (‘for those who do not obey, NRSV’): 4:17 R^WL [R-] NDLURa WRXC D>U[DVTDL WR NULYPD DMSR WRXC RL>NRX WRXC THRXCHLM GH SUZCWRQ DMI¨K-PZCQWLYWRWHYORaWZCQDMSHLTRXYQWZQWZCWRXCTHRXCHXMDJJHOLYZ ;

The NRSV is correct in taking the genitive WZCQDMSHLTRXYQWZQ as objective genitive. The sense is: ‘What will “the end”, when the judgment is given, hold in stall for those who do not obey the gospel of God’. 5.1.1.4. Conclusion The present dispensation, therefore, is the H>VFDYWRaWZCQFURYQZQ, the NDL URYa H>VFDYWRa, the NDLURYa It spans the era that has been inaugurated by 26 The usage in 3:8 (WR GH WHYO Ra) is not relevant, since it functions as relation particle (WR GH WHYORa SDYQWHa R-PRYIURQHa VXPSDTHLCa ILODYGHOIRL HX>VSODJFQRL WDSHLQRYIURQHa [‘Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind’, NRSV)]). In 1:13 WHOHLYZa is used as adverb, indicating ‘a degree of completeness, with the possible implication of purpose or result’, to be translated as ‘completely, totally, entirely, wholly’ Louw & Nida (1996) Subdomain 78.47 ('LR DMQD]ZVDYP HQRL WDa RMV IXYDa WKCa GLDQRLYDa X-P ZCQ QKYIURQWHa WHOHLYZa HMSLYVDWH HMSL WKQ IHURPHYQKQ X-PLCQ FDYULQ HMQ DMSRNDOXY\ HL ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC [‘Therefore prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed’, NRSV)]). In 1:9 WHYORa is used to indicate ‘the purpose of an event or state, viewed in terms of its result’, to be translated as ‘purpose, intent, goal’ Louw & Nida (1996) Sub-domain 89.55 (NR PL]RYPHQRLWRWHYORaWKCaSLYVWHZa [X-P ZCQ] VZWKULYDQ\XFZCQ[‘for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls’, NRSV]). Cf. also Martin (1992, 311.312), who translates this phrase as: ‘as you receive the end of your faith to be the salvation of your lives’. 27 Louw & Nida (1996), Sub-domain 67.66, gives the following definition of this meaning of WHYORa: ‘a point of time marking the end of a duration – “end”...’. Subdomain 67.78 is part of sub-domains 67.65–72, labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘A Point of Time with Reference to Duration of Time: Beginning, End’.

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the first coming of Christ,28 and its ad quem is indicated as the WHYORa, when Christ returns. 5.1.2. An unlimited next dispensation The author’s consciousness of a final future dispensation is evidenced by his use of the noun R- DLMZYQ (1:25; 4:11; 5:11) and the etymologically related adjective DLMZYQRa(5:10): In 1:25 the author quotes Isa 40:8: 1:25

WRGHU-KCPDNXULYRXPHYQHLHLMaWRQDLMZCQD

The phrase HLMa WRQ DLMZCQD29 indicates that the word of the Lord endures into the coming dispensation, with no end to that future dispensation suggested. In 5:11 the very same phrase is used, but this time in the plural (HLMa WRXaDLMZCQDa): 5:11

DXMWZCWRNUDYWRaHLMaWRXaDLMZCQDa

In 4:11 the ‘more elaborate expression’ (Louw & Nida 1996, Sub-domain 67.95) HLMa WRXa DLMZCQDa WZCQ DLMZYQZQ is used, signalling that ‘the glory and power’ belongs to Jesus Christ – even into the coming dispensation, which seems to be without end. The phrase utilizes the plural of R- DLMZYQ, adding the genitive of the very same word, thus intensifying the meaning in the final doxology of the letter: 4:11 GLD ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC Z_ HMVWLQ K- GRY[D NDL WR NUDYWRa HLMa WRXa DLMZCQDa WZCQ DLMZYQZQ

In 5:10 the glory (GRY[D) of God is qualified by the adjective DLMZYQLRa, signalling that the glory of God endures into the next dispensation:

28

Concurring with Beale (1997, 14): ‘The New Testament repeatedly uses precisely the same phrase “latter days” as found in the Old Testament prophecies. And the meaning of the phrase is identical, except for one difference: in the New Testament the enddays predicted by the Old Testament are seen as beginning their fulfilment with Christ’s first coming’. Beale (1997, 17.18) later makes it more explicit: ‘Christ’s life, and especially death and resurrection through the Spirit, launched the glorious end-time new creation of God’. 29 Louw & Nida (1996), Sub-domain 67.95 gives the following definition of this meaning of DLMZYQ: ‘unlimited duration of time, with particular focus upon the future’, and gives the following possible English translations: ‘always, forever, forever and ever, eternally’. Sub-domain 67.95 is part of sub-domains 67.78–117, labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘Duration of Time without Reference to Points or Units of Time: Time, Spend Time, Always, Eternal, Old, Immediately, Young’.

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Ñ2GH THRaSDYV KaFDYULVWRaR- NDOHYVDaX-PDCaHLMaWKQDLMZYQLRQDXMWRXC GRY[ DQHMQ &ULVWZC [¨,KVRXC], RMOLYJRQ SDTRYQWDa DXMWRa NDWDUWLYVHL VWKULY[ HL VTHQZYVHL TH PHOLZYVHL 5:10

Conclusion: The author’s use of the noun R-DLMZYQ (1:25; 4:11; 5:11) and the etymologically related adjective DLMZYQRa (5:10) evidences his consciousness of a future dispensation that has no end. 5.2. Salvation as a Present Reality, Anticipating Complete Fulfilment in the Future In different ways the author indicates that his eschatology entails salvation as a present reality, anticipating – complete fulfilment and/or revelation in the future: – – – –

The appearance and/or revelation (IDQHUZTHLCa/ DMSRNDYOX\La) of salvation / Jesus Christ / Christ’s glory; Hope (HMOSLYa HMOSLY]Z) as a certainty about the future fulfilment of a present reality; Salvation (VZWKULYD) as present reality, but to be ‘completed’; The heir-imagery (NOKURQRPLYDVXJNOKURQRYPRaNOKURQRPHYZ);

These four categories are now interpreted. 5.2.1. The appearance and/or revelation of salvation / Jesus Christ / Christ’s glory The author makes it clear that there will be a future revelation (IDQHU ZTHLCa/ DMSRNDYOX\La) of (1) the salvation of the readers, (2) Jesus Christ, and (3) Christ’s glory. In 1:5 the salvation of the addressees is depicted as a present reality, but its revelation is in the future (‘ready to be revealed’): WRXaHMQGXQDYPHLTHRXC IURXURXPHYQRXaGLD SLYVWHZaHLMaVZWKULYDQH-WRLYPKQDMSR NDOXITKCQDLHMQNDLUZCHMVFDYWZ

1:5

The author mentions a time when Christ will be revealed (HMQDMSRNDOXY\HL, 1:7, 13), and when he will appear (IDQHUZTHYQWRa, 5:4): L^QDWR GRNLYPLRQX-PZCQWKCaSLYVWHZaHX-UHTKC HLMaH>SDLQRQNDL GRY[DQNDL WLPKQ HMQDMSRNDOXY\HL¨,KVRXC&ULVWRXC 1:7

1:13

HMOSLYVDWHHMSLWKQIHURPHYQKQX-PLCQFDYULQHMQDMSRNDOXY\ HL¨,KVRXC&ULVWRXC

NDL IDQHUZTHYQWRa WRXC DMUFLSRLYPHQRa NRPLHLCVTH WRQ DMPDUDYQWLQRQ WKCa GRY[Ka VWHYIDQRQ

5:4

In the preceding three Scripture portions the revelation of Christ is future. According to 1:20 Christ has already appeared / been revealed (IDQHU

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ZTHQWRa).30 The content of 1:7, 13 and 5:4, therefore, shows that a ‘second’ revelation will occur. In 4:13 and 5:1 it is stated that this ‘second revelation’ is the time when Christ’s glory will be revealed: DMOOD NDTR NRLQZQHLCWH WRLCa WRXC &ULVWRXC SDTKYPDVLQ FDLYUHWH L^QD NDL HMQ WKC DMSRNDOXY\HLWKCaGRY[KaDXMWRXCFDUKCWHDMJDOOLZYPHQRL 4:13

SUHVEXWHYHURXaRX?QHMQX-PLCQSDUDNDOZC R- VXPSUHVEXYWHURaNDL PDYUWXaWZCQWRXC &ULVWRXCSDTKPDYWZQR-NDLWKCaPHOORXYVKaDMSRNDOXYSWHVTDLGRY[ KaNRLQZQRYa

5:1

This implies that the glory of Christ is a present reality, but ‘covered’ – in need of being ‘uncovered’, revealed. The believers presently experience the reality of Christ’s glory (R-  GRY[Ka NRLQZQRYa), although this glory will only be revealed in the future (5:1). It is only then that they will ‘win the crown of glory’ (WRQ WKCa GRY[Ka VWHYIDQRQ, 5:4). This will cause the addressees to shout for joy (4:13) when Christ’s glory is revealed.31 This ‘already and not yet’32 character of the glory of Christ, is also true of the faith of the addressees and the grace they receive: The ‘genuineness of your faith’ (GRNLYPLRQ X-PZCQ WKCa SLYVWHZa, 1:7) is a present reality. However, the fact that ‘genuineness of your faith’ results in praise and glory and honour will only become evident (HX-UHTKC, 1:7) at a future point in time, viz: when Jesus Christ is revealed. At this very point in time grace will also be brought (WKQIHURPHYQKQX-PLCQFDYULQ, 1:13). Grace is already a present reality (cf. FDYULaX-PLCQ, 1:2), and the addressees are exhorted to set their hope on the ‘full disclosure’ of this grace. 5.2.2. Hope (HMOSLYa): a certainty of the future fulfilment of salvation, a present reality Another word marking the eschatology of 1 Peter is HMOSLYa/ HMOSLY]Z The author uses HMOSLYa/ HMOSLY]Z five times (1:3, 13, 21; 3:5, 15):

30 1 Pet 1:20: SURHJQZVPHYQRX PHQ SUR NDWDEROKCa NRYVRX IDQHUZTHYQWRa GH HMS¨ HMVFDYWRX WZCQ FURYQZQ GL¨ X-PDCa (He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake). 31 Concurring with Elliott (1996, 275): ‘1 Peter regards the suffering of God’s people as a sign of the end time, the day of judgment and salvation (1:6–9; 4:5–7, 17–19)’. Contra Parker (1994, 30), who interprets the revelation of Christ’s glory as something that happens when the Christians suffer. He translates the phrase as: ‘so that you may be glad and shout for joy in the revelation of his glory’. 32 Quite recently Beale (1997) has refined the ‘already and not yet’ eschatology centre earlier espoused by Geerhardus Vos (1979), Oscar Cullmann (1964), Herman Ridderbos (1975) and George Eldon Ladd (1974). Beale (1997, 21) views the ‘new creation’ as the controlling conception of eschatology.

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DMQDJHQQKYVDa K-PDCa HLMa HMOSLYGD ]ZCVDQ GL¨ DMQDVWDYVHZa ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC HMN QHNUZCQ

1:3

3:15 H^WRLPRLDMHL SURaDMSRORJLYDQSDQWL WZC DLMWRXCQWLX-PDCaORYJRQSHUL WKCaHMQX-PLQ HMOSLYGRa

RX^WZaJDYUSRWHNDL DL- D^JLDLJXQDLCNHaDL- HMOSLY]RXVDLHLMaTHRQHMNRYVPRXQH-DX WDYaX-SRWDVVRYP HQDLWRLCaLMGLYRLaDMQGUDYVLQ

3:5

WHOHLYZaHMOSLYVDWHHMSLWKQIHURPHYQKQX-PLCQFDYULQHMQDMSRNDOXY\HL¨,KVRXC &ULV WRXC

1:13

1:21 WRXa GL¨ DXMWRXC SLVWRXa HLMa THRQ WRQ HMJHLYUDQWD DXMWRQ HMN QHNUZCQ NDL GRY[DQ DXMWZCGRYQWDZ^VWHWKQSLYVWLQX-PZCQNDLHMOSLYGDHL?QDLHLMaTHRYQ

In two of these occurrences the ‘hope’ (HMOSLYa) is adjectivally qualified, in 1:3 with ‘living’ (HMOSLYGD]ZCVDQ) and in 3:15 with ‘in you’ (WKCaHMQX-PLCQ HMOSLYGRa). Both these qualifications stress the fact that the hope is a present reality. 33 In 1:3 the hope is also qualified as being ‘through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (GL¨ DMQDVWDYVHZa ¨,KVRXC &ULVWRXC HMN QHNUZCQ). The basis for the hope is therefore the resurrection of Jesus, an event that has happened in the past. In 1:21 and 3:5 the ‘object’ of the hope is HLMaTHRYQ, and in 1:13 it is HMSL WKQFDYULQ. ‘God’ is a present reality, as is ‘grace’. First Peter’s usage of HMOSLYa/ HMOSLY]Znecessitates the following definition of ‘hope’:34 ‘to look forward to the fulfilment of God’s salvific promises with confidence, based on the resurrection of Christ’.35

33 Concurring with Miller (1995, 138): ‘A living hope focuses on a future that has already happened, but is incomplete; something not solely yet to be, but something which is already in existence. … It is a confidence in the future born of an event in the past’. 34 This definition differs is some aspects from the definitions given by Louw & Nida (1996). Their lexicon indicates two meanings for HMOSLY]Z: ‘hope for’ (‘to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial – ‘to hope, to hope for, hope’, Subdomain 25.59) and ‘expect’ (‘to expect, with the implication of some benefit – ‘to expect, to hope’, Sub-domain 30.54). ¨(OSLYa has three related meanings, all of them in the group of sub-domains labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘to expect, with the implication of some benefit – ‘to expect, to hope’ (25.59–25.64)’. The three related meanings are: ‘hope’ (‘to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial – ‘to hope, to hope for, hope’, Sub-domain 25.59), ‘what is hoped for’ (‘that which is hoped for – ‘what is hoped for, hope,’ Sub-domain 25.61), and ‘basis for hope’ (‘that which constitutes the cause or reason for hoping – ‘the basis for hope, the reason for hope’, Sub-domain 25.62). 35 Cullmann (1964, 87) aptly describes Jesus’ first coming as ‘D-day’, and the second coming as ‘V-day’, and adds: ‘The hope of the final victory is so much more vivid because of the unshakeably firm conviction that the battle that decides the victory has already taken place’.

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5.2.3. Salvation (VZWKULYD) as present reality, but still to be ‘completed’ The whole idea of the ‘already and not yet’ has been touched on above in connection with 1:5 (HLMaVZWKULYDQ H-WRLYPKQDMSRNDOXITKCQDL [for a salvation ready to be revealed]) and 1:9 (NRPL]RYPHQRL WR WHYORa WKCa SLYVWHZa [X-PZCQ] VZWKULYDQ \XFZCQ [for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls]). To be added to that discussion is the interpretation of L^QDDXM[KTKCWH HLMaVZWKULYDQ in 2:2: Z-a DMUWLJHYQQKWD EUHYIK WR ORJLNRQ D>GRORQ JDYOD HMSLSRTKYVDWH L^QD HMQ DXMWZC DXM[ KTKCWHHLMaVZWKULYDQ

‘To grow into salvation’ (L^QDHMQDXMWZCDXM[KTKCWHHLMaVZWKULYDQ) does not mean that through the milk the addressees will grow and as a consequence of the growth receive salvation.36 Rather it means that the milk will enable them to live up to their status as children of God. Since their re-begetting and rebirth, they already have been saved and are therefore children of God. They now have the obligation to live up to their status as saved persons, as children of God. The more they take in and digest the undiluted milk of God’s word, the more their lifestyle will evidence their status as persons (re)begotten by God, as children of God. The ‘laying aside all evildoings’ (1 Pet 2:1) gives a sample of this very lifestyle. 5.2.4. The heir-imagery (NOKURQRPLYDVXJNOKURQRYPRaNOKURQRPHYZ) The heir-imagery, which is an expansion of the father/begetting- imagery of 1:3, contributes considerably to the eschatology of 1 Peter. The author of 1 Peter uses the heir-image three times: 1:4 (HLMa NOKURQRPLYDQ), 3:7 (VXJNOKURQRYPRLa), and 3:9 (NOKURQRPKYVKWH): (DMQDJHQQKYVDaK-PDCa) ... 4 HLMaNOKURQRPLYDQD>ITDUWRQNDL DPLYDQWRQNDLDPDYUDQ WRQWHWKUKPHYQKQHMQRXMUDQRLCaHLMaX-PDCa 3:7 Z-a DMVTHQHVWHYUZ VNHXYHL WZC JXQDLNHLYZ DMSRQHYPRQWHa WLPKYQ Z-a NDL VXJ NOKURQRYPRLaFDYULWRa]ZKCa 3:9 PK DMSRGLGRYQWHaNDNRQDMQWL NDNRXC K@ ORLGRULYDQDMQWL ORLGRULYDaWRXMQDQWLYRQGH HXMORJRXCQWHaR^WLHLMaWRXCWRHMNOKYTKWHL^QDHXMORJLYDQNOKURQRPKYVKWH 1:4

36

Contrary to Achtemeier (1996, 147) and Michaels (1988, 89). Achtemeier (1996, 147) argues that ‘it is more likely that VZWKULYDrefers to eschatological deliverance than to Christian maturity’. This would make the growth conditional for one’s deliverance at the time of the final divine judgment, a motif that does not fit in with the macro argument of the letter (which stresses the accomplished status of addressees’ salvation). Michaels (1988, 89) argues along the same lines as does Achtemeier: ‘...HLMaVZWKULYDQin our passage points to a vindication arising inevitably, almost “naturally”, out of the spiritual growth that results from receiving “pure spiritual milk”’.

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The heir-imagery is probably the most unambiguous indication that the eschatology of 1 Peter represents a present reality, anticipating complete fulfilment in the future. A person that is an heir has this status in the present.37 The inheritance itself, however, is future, and the heir can have absolute certainty that he/she will receive this inheritance.38 5.3. God as Judge, Present and Future What the author of 1 Peter writes about the judgment by God is another window into his eschatology. He refers to the judgment by God using the verb NULYQZ (1:17, 2:23, and 4:5) and the noun NULYPD (4:17).39 The phrase HMQ K-PHYUD HMSLVNRSKCa (‘on the day of visitation,’ NRSV, 2:12) most probably refers to the day when God will ‘judge the living and the dead’ (NULCQDL ]ZCQWDa NDL QHNURXYa, 4:5).40 These six utterances are now studied. 37 Hammer (1996, 416) correctly states that ‘the event of Jesus’ resurrection makes the hope of future resurrection a present reality and becomes the basis for the future imperishable inheritance’. 38 This differs is some aspects from the definitions given by Louw & Nida (1996), especially since their definition does not allow for the metaphoric use of the words. The Lexicon indicates two meanings for NOKURQRPHYZ: ‘receive’ (‘to receive something of considerable value which has not been earned – ‘to receive, to be given, to gain possession of’, Sub-domain 57.131); and ‘inherit’ (‘to receive a possession or benefit as a gift from someone who has died, generally a parent – ‘to inherit, to receive from a deceased parent’, Sub-domain 57.138). .OKURQRPLYD has two meanings: ‘possession’ (‘a valuable possession which has been received – ‘possession’, Sub-domain 57.132); and ‘inheritance’ (‘that which is received from a deceased person – ‘inheritance’, Sub-domain 57.140). .OKURQRYPRa has two meanings: ‘receiver’ (‘one who receives something as a gift – ‘one who receives, one who comes into possession of, receiver, heir’, Sub-domain 57.133); and ‘heir’ (‘the person who inherits possessions – ‘heir’, Sub-domain 57.139). All of these meanings are in the group of sub-domains labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘Receive’; the meanings involve a transfer on objects or benefits in which the focus is upon the activity or the experience of the receiver, 57.125–141. 39 Louw & Nida (1996) Sub-domain 56.20 gives the following definition of this meaning of NULYQZ/NULYPD: ‘to decide a question of legal right or wrong, and thus determine the innocence or guilt of the accused and assign appropriate punishment or retribution – ‘to decide a legal question, to act as a judge, making a legal decision, to arrive at a verdict, to try a case’. Sub-domain 56.20 is part of sub-domains 56.20 – 56.34, labelled by Louw & Nida as ‘Judge, Condemn, Acquit’. 40 So also Louw & Nida (1996) Sub-domain 34.51. This lexicon gives the following definition of this meaning of HMSLVNRSKY: ‘the coming of divine power, either for benefit or judgment – ‘coming, visitation’. Sub-domain 34.51 is part of sub-domains 34.50–52, labelled by Louw & Nida (1996) as ‘Visit’. However, Parker (1994, 30) understands the visitation Christologically: ‘1 Peter uses this idea of the Incarnation as visitation to describe Christ’s presence’. To my mind this interpretation of Parker does not do justice to the argument in the pericope.

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It is remarkable that only in one of these cases the subject of the judgment is explicitly indicated, viz in 1:17:41 HLM SDWHYUD HMSLNDOHLCVTH WRQ DMSURVZSROKYP SWZa NULYQRQWD NDWD WR H-NDYVWRX H>UJRQHMQIRYEZWRQWKCaSDURLNLYDaX-PZCQFURYQRQDMQDVWUDYIKWH

1:17

The time when God will start with the judgment, is not here indicated explicitly. However, in the light of 4:5 the reference is most probably to the day when God will ‘judge the living and the dead’. Taken by itself it may sound as if the author is using the impending judgment of the Father to deter his readers/hearers from an immoral life. However, the reference to the immanent judgment of the Father serves as a positive motivation not to take matters in own hand and retaliate against the injustices the readers are suffering. They should not fear the fear that these bad persons install and they should not fear their intimidation (WRQ GH IRYERQ DXMWZCQ PK IREKTKCWHPKGHWDUDFTKCWH, 3:14). This positive use of the coming judgment is clear from 2:12: WKQDMQD VWURIKQ X-PZCQ HMQ WRLCa H>TQHVLQ H>FRQWHa NDOKYQ L^QD HMQ Z_ NDWD ODORXCVLQ X-PZCQ Z-a NDNRSRLZCQ HMN WZCQ NDOZCQ H>UJZQ HMSRSWHXYRQWHa GRY[DYVZVLQWRQTHRQHMQK-PHYUDHMSLVNRSKCa The readers/hearers are motivated in a positive way not to retaliate: those who malign them in the present age as evildoers will change their attitude completely when God sits in judgment. In 4:5 this positive use of the coming judgment of God is even clearer: RL`DMSRGZYVRXVLQORYJRQWZCH-VWRLYPZaH>FRQWLNULCQDL]ZCQWDaNDLQHNURXYa

In the previous verses (4:3–4) the author mentions the maligning (EODV IKPRXCQWHa, 4:4) the readers/hearers had to suffer from the ‘gentiles’, and then in 4:5 he consoles his readers by mentioning that these very persons will have to give an accounting to ‘him who stands ready to judge’. The statement in 4:7a wraps up the argument of this pericope: ‘The end of all things is near’ (SDYQWZQGHWRWHYORaK>JJLNHQ). The theme is, however, picked up again in the next pericope (4:12–19), after 4:7b–11. The readers/hearers are admonished to ‘not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you’ (4:12). The author motivates them – in a positive way – to keep on doing good by reminding his addressees in 4:17 of the terrible experience awaiting those who harass them upon God’s judgment:

41 However, the context makes it quite clear that God is the subject of the judgment in each of the other five occurrences.

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R^WL[R-] NDLURaWRXC D>U[DVTDLWR NULYPDDMSR WRXC RL>NRXWRXC THRXCHLM GH SUZCWRQDMI¨ K-PZCQ WR WHYORa WZCQ DMSHLTRXYQWZQ WZC WRXC THRXC HXMDJJHOLYZ; 18 NDL HLM R- GLYNDLRa PRYOLaVZY]HWDLR-DMV HEKaNDLD-PDUWZORaSRXCIDQHLCWDL;

The message is clear: the readers/hearers must not retaliate when they suffer all kinds of discrimination and ostracization from non-Christians. They must follow in the footsteps of Jesus, and entrust the matter ‘to the one who judges justly’ (2:23):42 SDYVFZQRXMNKMSHLYOHLSDUHGLYGRXGHWZCNULYQRQWLGLNDLYZa

In this analysis of the judgment by God two matters have become clear:43 –

–

The judgment by God will happen in the future, ‘on the day of visitation’ (2:12). In the present he is, however, the one who ‘stands ready to judge’ (4:5), and the ‘time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God’ (4:17). The author uses this impending and coming judgment by God not as negative deterrent for the addressees, but as a positive motivation – on the day of visitation they will be vindicated, and their aggressors will suffer the negative judgment they deserve. This means that the addressees have all the more reason to ‘entrust themselves to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good’ (SLVWZC NWLYVWK SDUDWLTHYVTZVDQWDa\XFDaDXMWZCQHMQDMJDTRSRLL"D) (4:19).

6. Conclusion: Hope and Vindication for Visiting and Resident Strangers The author of 1 Peter presupposes two dispensations: a present dispensation that spans the era that has been inaugurated by the first coming of Christ, and that has as ad quem the return of Christ; and a future dispensation which does not seem to have an end (cf. 5.1. above). 42 Concurring with Elliott (1996, 272): ‘The socially estranged yet divinely elected company of believers was portrayed as the eschatological fulfilment of the covenant people of God. Suffering Christians were provided a rationale for endurance, hope, and God-pleasing conduct through their solidarity with the rejected yet divinely vindicated Lord’. 43 Dalton (1968, 7) is correct in cautioning against simply and without reservations applying human laws and law courts to God. ‘God can never be a judge like a human judge. There is no law above him defining his sphere of action: he is the law. And, in any case, God is primarily a God who loves, a God who saves. Hence any eschatological statement set in the context of future judgment must take into account the inadequacy of this context and must allow for this inadequacy if conclusions unworthy of God are to be avoided’.

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The eschatology of 1 Peter is governed by the image in 1:3 of the rebegetting father, the statement that the Father has re-begotten (DQD JHQQKYVDa) the addressees into a living hope (HLMaHMOSLYGD]ZCVDQ) through the resurrection (GL¨ DMQDVWDYVHZa) of Jesus Christ from the dead (1:3). This image sets the tone for the eschatology of ‘already and not yet’. The salvific status of the addressees is a present reality (the already element); it is, however, in need of complete fulfilment (the not yet element). The most unambiguous indication that the eschatology of 1 Peter represents a present reality anticipating complete fulfilment in the future is the heir-imagery (cf. 5.2.4. above), which is an expansion of the father-image. A person who is an heir obviously has this status already in the present. The inheritance itself, however, lies somewhere in the future. The heir can have absolute certainty that he/she will receive this inheritance. The readers have the obligation to live up to their status as saved persons, as children of God. The more they ‘drink’ and digest the undiluted milk of God’s word, the more their lifestyle will evidence their status as persons (re)begotten by the Father (2:1–3) (cf. 5.2.3. above). The ‘not yet’ of the eschatology becomes evident from the fact that an ‘uncovering’, a revealing is still needed (cf. 5.2.1. above). The glory of Christ is a present reality, but ‘covered’ – in need of being ‘uncovered’, revealed (5:1). When this revealing happens they will ‘win the crown of glory’ (5:4), and will be glad and shout for joy (4:13). The genuineness of their faith will only become evident (1:7) when Jesus Christ returns. At this very point in time grace will also be brought (1:13). Another ‘not yet’ element of the eschatology of 1 Peter becomes evident from what is written about the future judgment by God, ‘on the day of visitation’ (2:12) (cf. 5.3. above). In the present God is the one who ‘stands ready to judge’ (4:5), and the ‘time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God’ (4:17). This impending and coming judgment by God serves as a positive motivation for the addressees to endure in doing good, and to not retaliate: on the day of visitation they will be vindicated, and their ‘aggressors’ will suffer the negative judgment they deserve. The addressees therefore have all the more reason – while following the example of Christ who ‘entrusted himself to the one who judges justly’ (2:23) – to ‘entrust themselves to the faithful Creator while continuing to do good’ (4:19). The eschatology of 1 Peter therefore entails that the addressees have been re-begotten by God into a living hope. This living hope enables them to look forward to the fulfilment of God’s promises with confidence, based on the resurrection of Christ (1:3). In this way the ‘visiting and resident strangers’ are empowered to respond to their difficult circumstances not by retaliating but by continuing to do good, since they know that they will be

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vindicated by the judgment of God when Christ returns. The eschatology of 1 Peter thus provides hope and vindication for the visiting and resident strangers. This eschatology has a powerful message even for the present day, empowering Christians to ethically endure in the present dispensation of the ‘already and not yet’ of their salvific status. Works Consulted Achtemeier, PJ 1996 1 Peter. A commentary on First Peter. Minneapolis. Aune, DE 1996 Early Christian eschatology, in Anchor Bible Dictionary 2, 594–608. Balch, DL 1981 Let wives be submissive: The domestic code in 1 Peter. Chicago. Beale, GK 1997 The eschatological conception of New Testament Theology, in Eschatology in Bible & Theology: evangelical essays at the dawn of a new millennium, Brower, KE & Elliott, MW (eds.), Downers Grove, 11–52. Beare, FW 1970 The First Epistle of Peter. Oxford. Brower, KE & Elliott, MW (eds.) 1997 Eschatology in Bible & Theology: evangelical essays at the dawn of a new millennium. Downers Grove. Cullmann, O 1964 Christ and time. Philadelphia. Dalton, WJ 1968 Aspects of New Testament eschatology. Nedlands. Denniston, JD 1966 The Greek particles. Oxford. Elliott, JH 1976 The rehabilitation of an exegetical step-child: 1 Peter in recent research. Journal of Biblical Literature 95(2), 243–254. – 1981 A home for the homeless. a sociological exegesis of 1 Peter, its situation and strategy. Philadelphia. – 1986 1 Peter, its situation and strategy: a discussion with David Balch, in Perspectives on First Peter, Talbert, CH (ed.), Macon, 61–78. – 1996 Peter, first epistle of. Anchor Bible Dictionary 5, 269–278. Feldmeier, R 1992 Die Christen als Fremde. Die Metapher der Fremde in der antiken Welt, im Urchristentum und im 1.Petrusbrief. Tübingen. Freedman, DN 1996 The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York. Garrett, SR 1992 Sociology of early Christianity. Anchor Bible Dictionary 6, 89–99. Goppelt, L 1978 Der erste Peterbrief. Göttingen. Hammer, PL 1996 Inheritance (NT). Anchor Bible Dictionary 3, 415–416. Ladd, GE 1974 Presence of the future. Grand Rapids. Louw, JP & Nida, EA 1996 Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on semantic domains. Electronic edition of the 2nd edition. New York. Martin, T 1992 The present indicative in the eschatological statements of 1 Peter 1:6, 8. Journal of Biblical Literature 111(2), 307–312. Michaels, JR 1988 1 Peter. Waco. Miller, DG 1995 The resurrection as the source of living hope: an exposition of I Peter 1:3. Horizons in Biblical Theology 17(2), 132–140. Moule, CFD 1956–1957 The nature and purpose of First Peter. New Testament Studies 3, 1–11. Parker, DC 1994 The eschatology of 1 Peter. Biblical Theology Bulletin 24(1), 27–32. Richard, E 1986 The functional Christology of First Peter, in Perspectives on First Peter, Talbert, CH (ed.), Macon, 121–139. Ridderbos, H 1975 Paul: An outline if his theology. Grand Rapids.

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Seland, T 2005 Strangers in the light. Philonic perspectives on Christian identity in 1 Peter. Leiden. Thomas, GJ 1997 A holy God among a holy people in a holy place: the enduring eschatological hope, in Eschatology in Bible & Theology: Evangelical essays at the dawn of a new millennium, Brower, KE & Elliott, MW (eds.), Downers Grove, 53–69. Van Rensburg, FJ 1992 The outline of 1 Peter: A reconsideration. Ekklesiastikos Pharos 74(1), 26–41. – 2000 Dekor of Konteks? Die verdiskontering van sosio-historiese gegewens in die interpretasie vir die prediking en pastoraat van ‘n Nuwe Testamentteks, geïllustreer aan die hand van die 1 Petrus-brief. Skrif en Kerk, 564–582. – 2006 A code of conduct for children of God who suffer unjustly: identity, ethics and ethos in 1 Peter. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche, 141, 473–510. Van Unnik, WC 1980a The redemption in 1 Peter i 18–19 and the problem of the First Epistle of Peter, in Sparsa collecta: The collected essays of W.C. van Unnik (part 2). Barrett, CK (ed.), Leiden, 3–82. – 1980b Christianity according to 1 Peter, in Sparsa collecta: The collected essays of W.C. van Unnik (part 2), Barrett, CK (ed.), Leiden, 111–120. Vos, G 1979 The Pauline eschatology. Grand Rapids.

Judgment on the Ungodly and the Parousia of Christ Eschatology in Jude and 2 Peter*

Jörg Frey In his harsh criticism of 2 Peter, Ernst Käsemann (1964, 169–195) labelled this document ‘An Apologia for Primitive Christian Eschatology’. Yet, according to Käsemann, the epistle is a testimony of so-called ‘early Catholicism’ (Käsemann 1964, 195), and its ‘orthodox’ defence of the expectation of the parousia is all but convincing. In a situation characterized by the experience of the delay of the parousia and the challenge of the Gnostic attack against the church’s eschatology, the author aims at defending the primitive Christian hope for Christ’s second coming. But in Käsemann’s (1964, 181) view, the traditional apocalyptic themes are only used to present ‘a straightforward doctrine of retribution’ in order to reinforce ethical obedience. Such an eschatology ‘lacks any vestige of Christological orientation’ (Käsemann 1964, 178). Moreover, the disturbing delay of the parousia is strongly relativized, so that the primitive Christian expectation of the imminent appearance of Christ becomes totally meaningless (Käsemann 1964, 194). According to the author’s theology, apocalyptic eschatology is no more the point of departure that dominates the whole of theological thought, but simply a final chapter of the doctrine of ‘last things’ which is now being defended in an ‘orthodox’ manner. Not only 2 Peter, but also the shorter epistle attributed to Jude was subject to Käsemann’s severe criticism. As 2 Peter, also Jude was viewed as a document of so-called ‘Early Catholicism’ in which the genuine faith in Jesus was changed towards a kind of ‘orthodoxy’ which is now fiercely defended against heretics (Käsemann 1960, 220f.; 1964). Thus, both epistles were not held in high esteem in (mostly Protestant) critical scholarship. However, the views differed, due to the respective views of their authenticity: Whereas Martin Luther (WA DB VII, 386) had accepted 2 Peter as an apostolic letter, he uttered the criticism that Jude was only an unnecessary extract from 2 Peter. From this time on up to the *

I am grateful to James A. Kelhoffer and Alison D. Sauer for critically reading the English text and to Nadine Kessler and Ann-Sophie Wich for helping with the corrections. For further discussion and more complete references see my commentary on the two epistles: Frey (2010).

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present, Jude has often been viewed as quite marginal in the New Testament, lacking any proclamation of Christ but only practicing a polemical refutation of heretics. But since critical scholarship came to recognize the pseudonymous origin of 2 Peter, the canonical authority of this letter has also been questioned and the pseudonymous testament of Peter seen at the very margins of the canon – or rather beyond. Thus, both letters are criticised as being much too polemical, with little theological substance and – as Käsemann phrases – representing the viewpoint of ‘Early Catholicism’ and an eschatological view that differs strongly from the earliest Christian expectation or from the hope as expressed e.g. in Pauline theology.1 In many respects, the situation has changed. Although the two epistles are still at the margins of the interest of exegetes, scholars have begun to view them as a response to their respective situations, and not merely as examples of the decline of early Christian theology after Paul.2 Owing to their literary relationship, they are usually commented on together. But although 2 Peter obviously draws on Jude, the situation of the addressees, the position of the opponents and the argument of the author are quite different in both epistles. In the present paper, I will start with an analysis of Jude and its eschatology and then pass on to 2 Peter where we will be able to see the differences quite clearly.

1. The Epistle according to Jude: The predetermined Judgement on the Ungodly and the Hope for the Mercy of the Lord The short epistle of Jude is clearly dominated by its eschatological orientation. The predominant perspective of the whole argument against the opponents is the expectation of the judgment of the ungodly. It is already mentioned in verse 4 when the heretics are introduced. There it is said that their condemnation was already written down long ago. This refers to the mention of the final judgment in different biblical and also non-biblical episodes. All these episodes are introduced or alluded to with respect to contemporary opponents, and they serve as witness for the impending judgement against the sinners. The death of the unfaithful generation in the wilderness 1

Cf. the accounts of research by Bauckham (1988a, 3713–3752; 1988b, 3791–3826), and, more recently, Müller (1998, 267–289; 2001, 310–337). 2 Cf. especially the commentaries of Bauckham (1983), Paulsen (1992), and Vögtle (1994).

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(v. 5), the imprisonment of the Watchers who had left their heavenly realm (v. 6) and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (v. 7) serve as examples for the fate of all those who act sinfully in a similar manner. The opponents are also addressed by the ‘woe’ in verse 11, and the image of the wandering stars, which will face the blackest darkness forever (v. 13), is also an image for the heretics who do not know the proper way and will end up in darkness. The most impressive prediction of the judgement, however, is finally expressed in the only quotation in this writing, when 1 Enoch 1:9 is explicitly cited in Jude 14–15. Here, the judgement of the ungodly is linked with the prediction of the parousia of the NXYULRa. His final appearance shall bring the judgement on all sinners, but also mercy for the righteous ones. Yet, this is only stressed in the concluding exhortation (v. 21), not in the argument against the heretics. But it is an important element to be considered if Jude’s eschatology is to be understood correctly. 1.1. The Question of the Opponents In modern scholarship, it is frequently conjectured that the eschatological orientation of Jude points to a certain neglect or even rejection of the eschatological expectation by the opponents. In recent commentaries, it is chiefly Anton Vögtle who describes the opponents as teachers denying the expectation of the parousia (Vögtle 1994, 95–98), due to an enthusiastic claim of the possession of the Spirit. However, this view of the opponents is only conjectured by a kind of ‘mirror-reading’ from Jude 19 where the opponents are called \XFLNRLY SQHXCPD PK H>FRQWHa that is: purely humans who do not possess the Spirit. But such a phrase does not necessarily point to an opposite claim of the heretics, especially when considered that the phrase draws on James 3:15 (Frey 2003, 200–202). Moreover, a denial of the parousia is only expressed in 2 Peter 3:4, not in Jude. Thus, Vögtle underestimates the differences between Jude and 2 Peter and takes his characterization of the heretics from an inadequate mirror-reading of Jude 19. Only from here, he can characterize the opponents as people denying the eschatological expectation due to an elitist claim of the present possession of the Spirit. Other traits such as their ethical libertinism or the blasphemy against the angels of judgement are then interpreted as consequences of their elitist view of the presence of the Spirit. However, the problem of the opponents in Jude is much more difficult due to the fact that many of the accusations might only be polemical stereotypes used to discredit the opponents. According to some recent investigations, the only point which is not topical is the accusation of slandering angelic powers which might be a transgression of the creational borders between humans and angels (see, e.g., Sellin 1986, 206–225;

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Paulsen 1992, 47f.). Such a transgression is also expressed in the example of the Watchers who ‘did not keep their heavenly realm’ (v. 6) but mixed themselves with human wives with the consequence that sin and immorality was spread over the world. A similar transgression (WRQ R^PRLRQ WURYSRQ) is mentioned, then, in v. 7 when the author states that the people of Sodom and the other towns ‘went after foreign flesh’, i.e., they sought sexual intercourse with the angels visiting Lot and his family. Thus, the primary blasphemy of the opponents is their disrespect of angelic powers (vv. 8–10) which might also imply a disrespect of the Lordship (NX ULRYWKa), whereas most of the ‘moral’ accusations remain under the suspicion to be simply polemical stereotypes and a denial of the parousia cannot be demonstrated. The stress on the impending judgement, connected with the parousia, is not only due to the author’s desire to refute his opponents. Rather, it is an integral part of the author’s theological views which are thoroughly shaped from the Enochic tradition. 1.2. The Concept of Time Regarding the concept of time we may start from Jude 17–18 where the author recalls the words of the apostles foretelling that ‘at the end of the time’ there will be ‘scoffers living according to their own ungodly desires’. In this passage, the author directly addresses his readers (X-PHL  GHY) and their situation which is characterized by the appearance of the heretics or scoffers, who live according to their own desires, cause divisions in the communities and do not possess the Spirit (v. 19). By mentioning the words foretold by the ‘apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ’, the author unwillingly hints at his own situation in post-apostolic times. Moreover he suggests that the community of addressees was founded and taught not by a specific missionary or apostle but much more generally by ‘the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ’. Such an image of the apostles acting and teaching collectively, not as individuals, is a very clear sign of the idealizing view of the apostles in post-apostolic times.3 According to verses 17–19, the present situation of the community was addressed not only by the prophecy and the examples from Scriptures (including Enoch) but also by the prophecy of the Apostles. So the main part of the letter (vv. 5–19) is formed by the application of prophetic examples from biblical and post-biblical tradition (vv. 5–7, 9, 11, 14f.) and by the additional reference to the prophecy of the Apostles (v. 17f.). Their words

3 Cf. the parallels in Eph 2:20; 3:5; 1 Clem. 42:1–2; Ignatius Trall. 2:2; 3:1; Magn. 6:1. For further discussion see Frey (2004, 99ff. on 1 Clement and 166ff. on Ephesians).

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on the coming scoffers are seen in correspondence with the words and tales of the Scriptural tradition. Yet, the most important observation is that the pseudonymous author of Jude views his own time as being the last period of history, the end-time. The scoffers mentioned by the Apostles and now present in the community are an indicator of the last period of time, just before the end. Here, the author draws on a broad view of Jewish and early Christian apocalypticism that at the end of days, there will be severe temptation of the community by pseudo-prophets or false teachers or a great tribulation by hostile powers. Such a view is already adopted by Paul who states that schisms must happen (1 Cor 11:18).4 The Lukan Paul predicts in his ‘farewell discourse’ to the Ephesian elders that after his passing away savage wolves will come and false teachers will lead astray the disciples (Acts 20:29–30). According to the eschatological discourse in Mark, the deception by false prophets is foretold by Jesus himself (Mk 13:22–23), and the Pastorals or similarly the Didache announce the seduction by false teachers and the appearance of ungodly people for the ‘latter times’ (1 Tim 4:1; 2 Tim 3:1–3; Did 16:3). 1 John 2:18 draws the consequences from such a tradition and interprets the split in the Johannine school and the success of an erroneous teaching as a sign that the ‘last hour’ has come. In such an apocalyptic world-view, the argument of the author against the heretics and the urgency of defending the true faith against them are confirmed by the mere fact that the opponents have appeared. Their agitation plainly demonstrates that the end of the time has come, and the judgement of the sinners and the parousia of the Lord are not far away. Different from 2 Peter, there is absolutely no hint in Jude that the delay of the parousia caused any problems for the author or his addressees. Rather, the appearance of the ungodly confirms that, according to the Scriptures, the end of the time and the final judgment is at hand. 1.3. The Adoption of the Enochic Tradition and the Judgement on the Sinners Obviously, Jude draws on numerous ideas from early Christian apocalypticism. This is evident in verse 9 where an example from the tradition of the Assumption of Moses is adopted, and, even more, in the quotation from 1 Enoch in verse 14–15. The passage quoted is a combination of different accounts of the coming of God in the Hebrew Bible, e.g. Deuteronomy 33:1–3, Jeremiah 25:31 and Micah 1:3–4 (see Nickelsburg 2001, 149). Thus, it could be read as a kind of ‘summation’ of other biblical accounts,

4

Cf. the saying of Jesus reported in Justin, Dial. 35:3.

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and this may have supported the quotation of the text as a ‘Scriptural’ quotation. Yet, the introduction in Jude 14 clearly shows that Enoch, the ‘seventh after Adam’ (1 En 60:8) was seen as an inspired prophet whose words are a reliable prediction of the coming of ‘the Lord’. In 1 Enoch 1:2 the prophecy is related not to the present generation but to a distant one. Jude, however, who considers his own time as ‘the end of times’, can interpret the prophecy as referring to his own time and to the judgement of his opponents. Although 1 Enoch 1 mentions not only the negative side of ‘the removal of all the ungodly ones’ but also the blessing of the ‘elect’ and the ‘righteous’ (1 En 1:1; cf. also 1:8–9), Jude only focuses on the aspect of the judgement without quoting the words about the salvation of the righteous. For him, the passage serves as the announcement of the final judgement when ‘the Lord’ shall appear. In 1 Enoch, it is obviously God himself who shall appear with his heavenly host, causing great fear and trembling onto the ends of the earth. Mountains shall fall down, and hills shall melt from his flames (1 En 1:6), and all that is on earth shall perish (1 En 1:7), and in the universal judgement the righteous shall be blessed, and the wicked shall be destroyed. Yet, for the author of Jude, the one who appears is the NXYULRa, that is, Jesus Christ. It is uncertain whether Jude had a textual version of the Greek Enoch in which the word NXYULRa had already been inserted, or whether it is added by himself. In any way, it is Christ who is expected to appear in his parousia and enact judgement over the ungodly. The mention of the ‘myriads of holy ones’ accompanying Christ in his parousia might also express an important aspect, because here it is said that the angels slandered by the opponents will actually have an eschatological function in the final judgement. So the arrogant words of the scoffers, especially their blasphemy against the angels, are a sign of their ignorance and will find due recompensation. If the most important accusation against the opponents is their slandering of angelic powers, the belief in angels was one of the predominant elements of the author’s theology. The background of this and the source of many traditions on angels is the Enochic tradition. So, the influence of 1 Enoch and its traditions on angels and on the final judgement is visible throughout the epistle. Apart from the quotation in verses 14–15, it is most obvious in the mention of the Watchers in verse 6. Here we can see a reception of numerous details of the Watcher episode from the Book of Watchers (1 En 1–36) and other parts of the Enochic tradition. In an expansion of the tradition from Genesis 6:1–4 and in adoption of different earlier traditions (cf. Nickelsburg 2001, 165–172) it is said that in the days of Jared (Gn 5:18), 200 angels descended on Mount Hermon (6:6–

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8), took human wives and generated giants who filled the earth with injustice. Furthermore, the Watchers spread cultural knowledge on medicine and magic, weapons and jewellery so that the world became more and more sinful. For these ungodly deeds the Watchers were bound for seventy generations under the earth until the day of judgement (1 En 10:12). The giants, however, killed each other, but their spirits became the demons that cause evil in the world (1 En 15:8–16:1). Basically, the Watcher episode is an early explanation of how the world became as it is. Evil is explained from demonic powers and, more originally from the transgression of the disobedient angels who left their realm in heaven.5 It also provides an early version of the idea of eschatological judgement as destruction of the wicked and the final removal of evil from the world. From here, numerous later variations of the idea of the last judgement were inspired. Jude 6 clearly draws on the Book of Watchers, when it is said that the angels ‘did not keep their realm of authority, but left their proper home’, that is, they descended down to earth and transgressed the borders set to them in a wicked or even sacrilegious manner. Jude shares the idea of angels being entrusted with a heavenly or ‘cosmic’ position of power (DMUFKY 6Such ideas can be found in the Enochic tradition7 and in some of the texts from Qumran.8 Similar views are also mentioned in passing by Paul (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 15:24),9 yet in his thought, angels and powers have only a limited position. It is Christ, through whom the universe was created (1 Cor 8:6), and he is 5 Cf. Collins (1997, 287–300). On the interpretation of the Watcher episode cf. comprehensively Nickelsburg (2001, 37–57.165–275). To explain the evil in the world, the reference to the Watchers’ rebellion was replaced by the reference to Adam’s sin, which became prominent before the 1st century CE. Yet, Enochic traditions were adopted for numerous other aspects (visions of God’s throne, heavenly journeys, images of judgement etc.), not only in early Judaism but also in early Christianity, see VanderKam (1996, 33–101). 6 On this, see Rom 8:38; cf. Col 1:16; 2:15; Eph 1:21; 3:10; 6:12. 7 In the earliest part of this tradition, the Astronomical Book (1 En 72–82), the names of angels are set over the seasons of the year (1 En 80:6; 82:10–20), in Jub. 2:2, phenomena such as winds, clouds, snow and thunder are ascribed to the responsibility of angelic spirits. In the Greek version of 1 En 6:7–8 the term DMUFKY is used for the leaders of ten angels (cf. 1 En 61:10), and 2 En 20:1 and T.Levi 3:8 use the term (or the plural DMUFDLY  for certain ranks within the hierarchy of angels. 8 Cf. 1QM X 12; 1QH a IX 11 (= I 11 Sukenik), and especially the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, a kind of angelic liturgy, where the Hebrew term P\YDU is used for angels (s. 4Q403 1 II 11.20f.; 4Q405 23 II; 4Q405 8–9 5–6; cf. Aune (1999, 77–80, esp. 78). 9 Cf. Weiß (1980, 391). In 1 Thess 3:13 Paul expresses the expectation that Christ in his parousia will come with the heavenly host (in traditional language: ‘the Saints’; cf. Jude 14). According to 1 Thess 4:16 the archangel Michael shall appear. This is well in accordance with Pharisaic expectations (cf. Dan 12:1–2).

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by far superior to all cosmic powers. According to 1 Corinthians 6:2, members of the community shall even judge the angels. Angelic powers will never separate from God’s love in Christ (Rom 8:38). Any kind of consideration or even veneration is, therefore, unnecessary. This is further strengthened in the Deutero-Pauline epistles. Colossians polemicizes against tendencies of veneration or undue consideration of angels and states that they are strictly meaningless for those who believe in Christ. But the argument demonstrates that such a consideration of cosmic powers was practiced in post-Pauline communities – possibly in a combination of Jewish-Christian elements with Pagan popular religion.10 In other early Christian circles less influenced by Paul, the respect for angels might have been even stronger,11 and the author of Jude is an example of the reception of those ideas whereas the opponents who are accused of blaspheming the angels might have argued in some analogy to the author of Colossians or felt being superior to the angels due to their belief in Christ and the possession of the Spirit.12 The phrase that the angels ‘did not keep their realm’ and ‘abandoned their proper home’ clearly adopts the tradition of the Watchers.13 The addressees must have been aware of the context at least from Genesis 6:1–4, so that they could link this with the idea of the sexual relations between angels and human wives, that is the desire for ‘foreign flesh’, as it is phrased in the analogous example of the Sodomites in verse 7. For the author of Jude, however, the crucial point is that the condemnation of those sacrilegious angels is already predetermined by writing: According to 1 Enoch 12:4 and 15:3, Enoch proclaims the judgement of the Watchers ‘that have left the high … heaven’. Jude 6 alludes to this. Regarding those angels it is only said that ‘the Lord’ (kyrios is the subject in v. 5) keeps them ‘for the judgement of the great day in eternal fetters under darkness’. According to this, they are already imprisoned in the netherworld and guarded until their final punishment or destruction. All these aspects can be found in the traditions about the Watchers.

10 11

Cf. Arnold (1995); Wolter (1993, 155–163). Cf., e.g., the angelology of Revelation: See basically Michl (1937; 1962, 55–258); more recently Stuckenbruck (1995). 12 A direct opposition between Jude and Colossians is assumed by Heiligenthal (1992, 120). More appropriate might be the view by Sellin (1986, 221f.): ‘Die kolossische Philosophie hat natürlich kaum mehr etwas mit dem orthodoxen Verfasser des Judasbriefes zu tun. Wohl aber könnte es Verbindungslinien geben zwischen dem Verfasser des Kolosserbriefes, der gegen die Engel-Verehrer poleminiert, und den Häretikern des Judasbriefes’. 13 Cf. 1 En 6:6–8; 86:2–87:1; 106:13f.,17a; Jub 4:15,22; 5:1; 1QGenApoc 2:1; CD 2:17–19; T.Rub. 5:6f.; T.Naph. 3:5; 2 Bar 56:10–14.

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In the Aramaic fragments from Qumran, there was found an exact parallel to the idea of the ‘great day’ of judgement which was previously unattested in the Greek fragments and in the secondary Ethiopic version14 (but cf. 1 En 22:11; 84:4). Fetters or chains are mentioned in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 En 54:3), in the Greek version of 1 Enoch 14:5 and then in Origen (Against Celsus 5:22; cf. Uhlig 1984, 537). ‘Eternal’ fetters could be inspired by 1 Enoch 10:5 (‘he shall be there forever’) and 14:5 (‘to bind you in all eternity’).15 1 Enoch 10:4–5 mentions the binding of Azael and his imprisonment in a desert hole, covered by darkness (VNRYWR). When the author Jude chooses another term, X-SR ]RYIRQ, he adopts a term that was customary for the description of the netherworld in Greek poetry16 and was used, e. g. in Sib. Or. 4:43 (cf. Bauckham 1983, 53). According to 1 Enoch 10:12, the binding of the other chief of the angels, Shemyazah, and his companions shall be ‘for seventy generations under the hills of the earth’ (1 En 10:12), and with regard to all future sinners, it is added ‘if someone will burn and perish, from now on he will be bound together with them until the end of all generations’ (1 En 10:14). In 1 Enoch 10, the fate of the Watchers who are guarded for their final punishment in the netherworld serves as a pattern for the fate of all other sinners. This is the pattern which the author of Jude could adopt when he speaks of the judgement of the ungodly that is already written down (v. 4). From the three biblical examples he quotes in verses 5–7, the episode of the Watchers is the only one in which the idea of the final judgement of the ungodly is mentioned. The wilderness generation (Jude 5) just died before getting to the promised land, and Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed and then considered as a warning example (Jude 7). But the Watchers are imprisoned and guarded for the final judgement in which all sinners will face condemnation and destruction. It is quite obvious, that in his reference to the Watcher episode, the author of Jude adopts this pattern, which demonstrates how strongly he depends on the Enochic tradition, much beyond his quotation from 1 Enoch 1 in verse 14.

14 In the Ethiopic text of 1 En 10:12 it is only said: ‘bind them for seventy generations until the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment and of their consummation’. However, the original Aramaic version as preserved in 4QEn arb IV 11 reads ‘until the great day’, cf. Milik (1976, 175). 15 Cf. also Jub 5:10. ‘eternal’ or ‘for ever’ means the time until the end of the world and until the ‘great day’ of judgment. 16 Homer, Il XXI 56; Od XI 57.155; XX 356; Hesiod, Theog 729.

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1.4. The Parousia of Christ and the Hope for Mercy Judgement, however, is not the only theme in Jude. Although the argument against the heretics dominates the whole main part (vv. 5–19), the addressees are also instructed positively to expect the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ for eternal life (v. 21). Whereas the heretics are definitively subject to condemnation, the author is quite confident that the addressees share ‘our common salvation’ (v. 2). They should be aware of the words of the apostles who foretold the present dangers (v. 17); they should actively fight for the traditional faith (v. 3), stay within the love of God and expect the mercy of Christ for eternal life (v. 21). This shows that the epistle of Jude is more than mere polemics. It is also an exhortation to the addressees to resist the heretics and to become aware that they are not really part of the community and will not see salvation but only destruction. So, their participation in the communal meals is illegitimate (v. 12), and the addressees should be aware of the dangers of making contact with them. As already mentioned, 1 Enoch 1:8–9 prophesies a double outcome of the day of the parousia. The righteous shall be blessed, and the sinners shall be destroyed. Although the quotation in Jude 14–15 only adopts the negative aspect, Jude is also aware that in the parousia of Christ the righteous can expect mercy. But of course, their salvation depends on whether they will be steadfast, keep the traditional faith and remain without blemish until the end. Consequently, the life of the Christians is a salvation on probation. It still depends on good conduct. Although the Christians have already experienced the grace of God (v. 4), although they can be confident to be guarded and kept from stumbling by the power of God (v. 24), their salvation will finally be decided on at the parousia. They will be given ‘eternal life’ only at the day of judgement when they hopefully will be without blemish in the face of Christ. This is an eschatological view which is quite similar to the notion of the last judgement in Matthew, but it strongly differs from the certainty of salvation as expressed in Paul or from the stress on the present possession of eternal life in Johannine thought. 1.5. Summary To some part, the focus in Jude may also be due to the peculiar challenge the author felt. In refuting the heretics, the author develops a strong rhetoric which focuses on the judgement of the ungodly. The pattern of judgement is taken from the Enochic tradition which is also crucial for the author’s view of angels and their cosmological and eschatological function. From there, he takes not only the general prophecy of the judgement at the

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day of the coming of the Lord but also numerous details and the pattern of the imprisonment of the Watchers which gives further certainty about the future judgement of all sinners. The certainty and closeness of the end is not taken from the Enochic tradition but from an early Christian Apocalyptic world-view according to which the apostles foretold the appearance of heretics in the end of times. Therefore, the end of times is close. Differing from the early Christian conviction that the end has begun with the appearance of Jesus or with the Easter event, the closeness of the end is now linked with the appearance of heretics. Thus, it is now dependent on a certain development in the history of the church. This is a characteristic view of later New Testament texts (similarly, e.g., in 1 John) which already presupposes the delay of the parousia. But – contrary to the view of Vögtle and others – there is no hint that the delay of the parousia caused a severe problem for the community or shaped the views of the opponents. Nor is it a predominant problem for the author of Jude, although he seems to be well aware of his post-Apostolic position when he reminds of the word foretold by the apostles of Christ prophesying the appearance of scoffers in ‘the last times’ (v. 17). Eschatology or even time-schemes are not the particular problems to be dealt with by the author. He simply takes these views from the stream of tradition he belongs to: The awareness of an ‘end of the times’, connected with Christ’s parousia and a last judgement, and the conviction that the end and further details were foretold, or rather: written down, in Scripture and also foretold by the apostles of Christ. The author shares common views of a Jewish-Christian apocalyptic tradition. However – and this might be a point of theological criticism – there is hardly any modification of this traditional scheme caused by the Christ event.

2. Second Peter: A Reminder of the Trustworthiness of God’s Promises The observation that the delay of the parousia is not a problem in Jude, can help us to elaborate the particular differences between Jude and 2 Peter which should not be overlooked in view of the striking parallels in parts of the argument and even in the wording of some verses. In the present context I cannot discuss the literary relation between the two letters in detail.17 I can just presuppose the majority view among critics that 2 Peter adopts and uses Jude, especially in the section 2 Peter 2:1– 17

For more details, see the discussion in my forthcoming commentary (Frey 2010).

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3:3.18 But a closer look at this passage can also demonstrate that the author not just adopted the passage, but rephrased it considerably, inserted new passages and omitted others to shape his own argument. Moreover, the polemical refutation of heretics is now inserted into a different literary genre, a testament of the apostle Peter. His vision of Christ transfigurated is mentioned in chapter 1 to strengthen the authority of the exhortations in the later part of the letter. 2.1. The Reception of Jude The polemical main part (2 Pet 2:1–3:13) contains two subsections. In the first (2:1–22), the opponents are introduced as ‘false teachers’ (2:1) following the false prophets from biblical times. From Jude, the author adopts the view that their condemnation is already determined.19 But in the whole passage, the identity and teaching of the opponents remains unclear. The accusations of immorality, greed, arrogant speech etc. do not convey a clear image of their teaching, nor is there any refutation of particular theological arguments. Thus, the polemics in this subsection seems to be totally designed to discredit the opponents whom the readers might have known. For this general attack, the author could draw on the polemical epistle of Jude which is also quite general and topic in numerous points. But all parts of the argument that might reflect the particular profile of Jude’s opponents, especially the topic of ‘slandering’ angels, are either omitted or changed considerably. 2 Peter, however, does not stop here. The author does not confine himself to a general polemics against people whose theological profile is unclear. Thus, after the subsection which aims at discrediting the opponents, follows a second subsection (2 Pet 3:1–13), introducing another argument where the matter of dispute is mentioned more explicitly. Now the ‘scoffers’ (as the author calls them using the term from Jude 17) are quoted with their views: ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, everything remains just as it has been since the beginning of the world’ (2 Pet 3:4). The quotation clearly shows that in the situation of 2 Peter, or by the opponents attacked here, the eschatological expectation of the parousia is questioned. Apparently the opponents point to the fact that the world has been unchanged since the creation. This is the challenge to which the author has to react. Thus, his own eschatological views are phrased in response to the challenge by the denial of the parousia. Here is a marked difference from the author of Jude who expressed his 18 19

In 2 Peter 1 and in 3:4–18, there are only few possible references to Jude. The phrasing differs significantly: ‘Their condemnation pronounced on them long ago is not idle; their destruction is not asleep’ (2:3b).

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eschatological convictions just in the line of a traditional view, but without the need to defend them. One should ask why the author could adopt Jude, if the situation and character of the opponents was quite different from that in Jude. One possible answer has already been mentioned: The polemical refutation of the heretics in Jude is so topical, that it could be easily transferred to a different situation and used to discredit other heretics with a different teaching. The allegations of immorality, arrogance and selfishness could also be used to damage the reputation of the people denying the parousia as it had been used before against the people disrespecting the angels. Only a few phrases had to be changed to generalize the argument and to remove most traces of the precise problem the author of Jude had been concerned with. However, there is a point of agreement between the two authors that may give a better explanation for the intensive use of the ‘Vorlage’ by the author of 2 Peter. He agrees with his predecessor in the idea that the appearance of the scoffers is a sign of the end of days, as foretold by the apostles. He could also take up the point that the condemnation of such false teachers was written long ago in the prophetic Scriptures. Such a conviction could even be used as a confirmation of the author’s position: The present challenge of the teachers denying the reliability of the ‘prophetic word’ (2 Pet 1:21) and mocking the hope for Christ’s parousia is a fulfilment of the prophecy of the apostles and thereby confirms the truth of the early Christian expectation and even the proximity of the last day. And whereas Jude had only reminded his readers about the words of the apostles of Christ (Jude 17), the author’s fiction of 2 Peter allows him to present the prophecy more clearly as the word of the apostle Peter who now predicts the appearance of scoffers ‘in the last days’ in his literary testament. But in its reception of Jude, 2 Peter differs in another important point: Jude obviously focuses on the certainty of the judgement of the ungodly whereas the blessings for the righteous which were also mentioned in 1 Enoch 1 are passed over in silence. For this reason, all the biblical examples in Jude only illustrate the certainty of judgement as written down long ago. Although 2 Peter is equally polemical, it differs in its more balanced use of biblical examples of judgement and salvation. So, the first group of biblical examples combines the episodes of the Watchers and the Sodomites from Jude 6–720 with the positive examples of Noah and Lot in order to support the teaching ‘that the Lord is well able to rescue the godly from trial but to keep the wicked to be punished at the day of judgement’ (2 Pet 2:9). Remarkably, in this summary of the author’s teaching, the positive 20 From the first example in the group of three paradigms of judgment, the example of the desert generation (Jude 5) is omitted.

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aspect of rescuing the godly from trial is mentioned first. This is what the addressees should learn in order to react properly to the ‘trial’, i.e. the challenge provided by the ‘scoffers’. The parousia, therefore, brings about judgement and salvation, the dissolution of the present world and the appearance of a new one shaped by righteousness (2 Pet 3:13). In one word: while Jude focuses on the certainty of the judgement of the ungodly, 2 Peter advocates the reliability of expectation of the parousia or, more generally, the trustworthiness of God and his prophetic word himself. 2.2. The Concept of Time Like the author of Jude, the author of 2 Peter considers his own time to be the last time, but this ‘eschaton’ is qualified as such not by the appearance of Christ nor or by the gift of the Spirit, but by the appearance of the scoffers as foretold by the prophets and by the Lord and saviour.21 In doing so, he equally depends on the apocalyptic tradition which was already adopted by Jude. However, in refuting the argument of the opponents and their reference to the ‘delay’ of the parousia, he chooses to relativize the chronological argument by reference to the idea from Psalm 90, that for the Lord thousand years are like one single day (2 Pet 3:8). So, the author conjectures, one day can also be like thousand years, which means that the parousia once expected in the near future can also be delayed without the consequence that the God’s promise is unreliable. Of course, the consequence drawn by the author goes far beyond what is said in Psalm 90. It is now used to expand the last ‘day’ in order to devaluate the argument of the opponents. Yet, in fact, the argument changes the chronological understanding of the proximity of the end or the parousia considerably. Any calculation is now made impossible, so that the argument of the scoffers becomes meaningless, although the author himself remains convinced of the proximity of the parousia (thus Erlemann 1995, 229f.). The day will come like a thief (2 Pet 3:10), suddenly, so that humans should be prepared. Thus not the proximity as such, but only the possibility to calculate is denied. 2 Peter 3:9 even shows that the author still reckons with a divine timetable. The Lord does not change or delay his promise. But the promise is linked with his forbearance (PDNURTXPLYD) which opens up the possibility that all may come to repentance. If humans think of any delay, it is only their subjective feeling (Erlemann 1995, 230), which is now contrasted with the conviction of the reliability of God’s promise.

21 Notably, Jude’s mention of the apostles (Jude 17) is altered in 2 Pet 3:2f. for the sake of the fictional author speaking with apostolic authority.

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Another element of the author’s concept of time must be mentioned. 2 Peter is the only text in the New Testament with a developed cosmology. Here the idea of the final destruction of the world by fire is inserted (2 Pet 3:12) which was common in Stoic thought and can also be found in other Christian texts of the second century. 22 But the adoption of the idea is limited by the fact that the author does not expect an infinite sequence of worlds but – in agreement with the biblical tradition – only three worlds (3:5–7; cf. 2:5) which are respectively described by the phrase ‘heavens (in the plural!) and earth’. The ‘old’ world, its heavens23 and earth have perished, because they were destroyed by water in the great flood (2 Pet 3:5), the present heavens and earth are guarded for the destruction by fire at the day of judgement, when new heavens and a new earth (2 Pet 3:13) will appear. The idea is close to that of a pulsing universe, but there is no hint that the author expected more than the three worlds which could be conjectured from Scripture. He thought these worlds being kept by the word of God24 which caused the existence of the first creation and its destruction in the great flood and which also keeps the present world for the day of judgement when it will be destroyed in fire. There is no doubt that the ‘new’ world characterized by justice shall be definite and imperishable. In this, the Stoic teaching of the purgatory is linked with the data of the biblical tradition, but it is quite obvious that the imagery used here is much more influenced by Hellenistic thought than any other eschatology in the New Testament. 2.3. The Opponents’ Scepticism and the Argument of the Author To understand these ideas it is important to look again at the opponents. The most obvious hint about their identity is the quotation25 given in 2 Peter 3:4: Their sceptical denial of the parousia or of early Christian eschatology in general was the main point of dispute. But what was the background of this scepticism? And how can the opponents be characterized more precisely? There have been numerous suggestions in scholarship to account for the opponents’ denial of the parousia. Earlier exegetes, beginning with Hugo Grotius,26 thought them to be Gnostics.27 But in earlier research, the opponents of 2 Peter were often

22 23 24 25

Cf. 1 Clem 9:4; 27:4; Justin, Apol 2:7; Tatian, Or 25. Here, the plural is to be noted. Cf. Frey (2006, 204f.). Cf. also Heb 1:3. It might also be a summary formulated by the author. But this does not make any difference. 26 Grotius thought of the school of Carpocrates; cf. Zahn (1899, 110).

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mixed up with those of Jude, and the topic elements of the polemics against heretics were considered not critically enough. And if the author rejects the idea that the apostles had followed fabulous tales (1:16: PXCTRL), this might rather point to a sceptical characterization of the apostolic tradition and of early Christian eschatology. There were indeed proto-Gnostic figures such as Menander who held a strongly presentistic eschatology.28 But there is no clear hint that the opponents held a particular Gnostic world-view, nor is there any trace of the ‘controversy about bodily resurrection which was usually a main focus of anti-gnostic discussion of eschatology’ (Bauckham 1983, 156). Another tempting possibility is to locate the opponents in the Pauline tradition, especially since 2 Peter mentions the Pauline epistles as being easily misunderstood. In the Pastorals we also learn of teachers who thought that ‘the resurrection had already happened’ (2 Tim 2:18), and already Colossians and Ephesians turn the eschatological expectation more strongly to the present accomplishment. But there is no clear hint about any denial of the parousia in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline epistles. Although the opponents might draw on some Pauline elements (as already did the opponents in Jude) and their promise of ‘freedom’ (2:19) could be understood against that background, the denial of the parousia is not easily explained from here. Some authors have also pointed to other early Christian texts in which we find ideas or even quotations parallel with 2 Peter 3:4. Mention should be made especially of 1 Clem 23:3–4 and 2 Clem 11:2–4, where it speaks of the ‘double-minded’ (GLY\XFRL who doubt the prophecy because they have waited but not seen the promised things. But no matter whether there is a textual relation between 2 Peter and these texts,29 the theme of the parousia is not mentioned at all in them. The parallels only demonstrate that scepticism against early Christian prophecy was more common in works of the late first and early second century than in earlier times. But in view of 2 Peter’s strong Hellenistic aspects we might have even more reason to look for an explanation of the views of the opponents from outside the early Christian tradition. Their denial of the parousia could be due to a general scepticism rooted in Greek philosophical ideas (cf. Vögtle 1994, 131f.). One could hint at the Aristotelian ‘scientific’ dogma of the 27

Thus Werdermann (1913); but cf. the argument in Fornberg (1977); Neyrey (1980a,

506). 28 Cf. the assumption by Caulley (1982, 19–42) who thinks of a heresy similar with the Gnostic teaching of the resurrection in baptism. 29 Bauckham argues for a common tradition or 2 Peter’s dependence on the apocryphal work quoted in 1 Clement and 2 Clement (cf. Bauckham 1983, 284). But the differences are considerable; cf. Paulsen (1992, 152f.).

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imperishability of the world (thus Vögtle 1970, 131f.). But the primary objection of the scoffers is not directed against the idea of cosmic dissolution which is, then, adopted by the author, but is focussed on the aspect of God’s judgement (cf. the argument in Bauckham 1983, 294). It is more probable that they held a general ‘scepticism about divine intervention in the world’ (Bauckham 1983, 294). There is one parallel which provides a number of correspondences in ideas and in words: In Plutarch’s writing De sera numinis vindicta, there is a debate with Epicuraeans who deny the idea of divine providence.30 Here, the argument of the slowness and lateness of the divine punishment is inferred, and against this, Plutarch speaks of the divine patience (PHJDORSDYTHLD  that helps many to change their life (PHWDYQRLD). In this context, there is also made use of the argument of the incommensurability of time (Plutarch, De Sera 2.5f., 9). The analogy of the argument is striking. There is no need, however, to suppose that 2 Peter actually refers to Epicuraeans (Paulsen 1992, 157). Real disciples of Epicurus would hardly be members of a Christian community. But the broader influence of those ideas, even on members of the communities in the second century, is quite conceivable. Moreover, the term ‘Epicuraeans’ was also a polemic label which could be used in various ways. Of course it was used in the popular philosophical discussion, but it was also adopted against heretics in early Christianity and in Rabbinic Judaism. Thus, in referring to Epicuraean arguments the author might have polemically shaped his opponents as ‘Epicuraeans’. In any case, there are some elements in the text that might best be explained from a kind of popular philosophical scepticism against God’s intervention or acting in history, including the hope for Christ’s final parousia. They could have simply pointed to the observation that the parousia had not happened as expected and that the world had remained unchanged since the death of the ‘fathers’.31 Whereas Christ’s coming was once expected during the lifetime of the apostles or the first generation, now the first Christian generation had passed away without anything happened. But when, according to 2 Peter 3:9, ‘some’ opponents speak of the ‘delay’ or the slowness of the promise of the parousia, this may also point to the idea that God is not active or his word is not effective and, therefore, not reliable. Such an interpretation is supported by the phrase in 2 Peter 2:3 where it is said that the judgement on the false teachers is ‘not idle’ (RXMNDMUJHL ) and their destruction is ‘not asleep’ (RXM QXVWDY]HL . Should the opponents have said that the judgement which was expected together with the 30 31

Cf. Berger (1986, 121–135); Neyrey (1980, 420). This most probably points to the ‘fathers’ or the first Christian generation, not to any biblical forefathers. Thus, the quotation of the opponents hints at the post-apostolic point of view of the opponents and also the author.

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parousia ‘is asleep’ (and therefore not to fear)? Or should they have questioned more generally God’s activity in the world and his saving power? This would explain the teaching in 2:9 which was drawn from the biblical examples, namely that the Lord has the power to save the righteous and to guard the ungodly for the day of the judgement (Neyrey 1980b, 415f.). The argument against the heretics is prepared already in 2 Peter 1 when the reliability of the prophetic word is stressed (2 Pet 1:19–21). Therefore, 2 Peter not only defends the promise of the parousia. Rather, this point of controversy is embedded into the larger framework of the reliability of the early Christian teaching and, even more, the reliability of God and his prophetic word. In order to confirm God’s reliability, the author hints at the apostles’ vision of Christ transfigurated (2 Pet 1:16–19). This is meant to stress the reality and trustworthiness of the early Christian tradition. Of course, the strength of his argument is considerably diminished by the daring literary form of the epistle, the strong claim of authorship, which could hardly conceal the pseudonymous and late origin. Obviously, this kind of defence of the primitive Christian expectation has moved far away from the earliest origins of the hope for Christ’s second coming. But we should avoid calling this ‘early Catholicism’. There is no reference to the church as an institution, nor to any kind of church offices and authorities. Rather, the author (in the vestiges of Peter) ‘reminds’ his audience to the apostolic tradition and to the experience of the apostles. And, in mentioning the epistles of Paul, he also points to a corpus of writings in which some of the early tradition is laid down. Of course, these writings can easily be misunderstood, and the author is convinced to hold the true interpretation of the tradition over against his opponents. However, in introducing the debate on the interpretation of the early Christian texts, the author points at the way in which the primitive Christian tradition could be remembered in future times. Thus he represents a transition from primitive Christianity to a later stage of the transmission of early Christian thought.

3. Concluding Perspectives The two epistles of Jude and 2 Peter share, not only parts of the argument, especially the polemics against their respective opponents, they also share a number of eschatological traditions and convictions. Both authors are convinced that they live in the last time before the parousia of Christ, and both authors are confirmed in this conviction not by the appearance of Christ or the gift of the Spirit but by the rise of false teachers who seem to fulfil the early apocalyptic prophecy that scoffers and false teachers will gain influence in the last days. From here, it is quite obvious that both au-

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thors write at a considerable distance from the Christian beginnings and belong to the post-apostolic period. For both authors, the parousia of Christ is the most important eschatological event. It is prophesied by the Scriptures and also by Christ and the apostles, and will bring about the judgment of the ungodly and the salvation for the community of believers who remain faithful to the original faith in Christ. The difference in the arguments between the two letters is due to the difference between the opponents of Jude and the opponents of 2 Peter. Scholarship has often overlooked these differences and has interpreted the opponents of Jude within the paradigm of the opponents of 2 Peter. Therefore, a sound analysis of the eschatological argument requires a clear view of the respective opponents. In Jude, they are primarily accused of ‘slandering’ or not sufficiently respecting angelic powers, whereas eschatology as such seems to be not a major problem in their views. The teaching of the ‘scoffers’ of 2 Peter, instead, does not refer to anything related to the angels, although one might assume that they were not too relevant for this group as well. But the author veils all the passages from Jude referring to the problem of the angels, and points out another prominent teaching he tries to refute. He even quotes the opponents, and we can only assume that the quotation and description of their position is basically correct. So the challenge for the author of 2 Peter and possibly also the reason why he felt the need to write this work and shape it pseudonymously as the testament of the apostle Peter is the denial of the parousia, or – more generally – the implications of such scepticism: the denial of the reliability of the prophetic word or possibly of any Divine activity towards the world. Herein, the author recognizes a fundamental threat to the Christian message as a whole, and this is the reason why he reacts so harshly, adopting one of the fiercest polemics available to him and strengthening the authority of his refutation by the fiction of the final words of the most important eyewitness, the apostle Peter. While Jude focuses on the impending judgement and expresses the conviction that their end is very close, the author of 2 Peter, however, does not use the argument of the near end. His refutation of his opponents has to take another direction because they can point to the quite obvious fact of the delay of the parousia. The author’s strategy of de-temporalization (one day = thousand years) already leads on to the interpretation of later fathers such as Augustine and the later Western church. But within this more relaxed time-frame (which is seen to be motivated by the gracious patience of God), the hope for the parousia is not abandoned but firmly retained. Unlike in Jude, the positive aspects of the hope for Christ’s coming are

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stressed: The pious will be rescued from the temptation and the scoffing of the ungodly and finally there shall be justice in a new world (2 Pet 3:13). While Jude draws on the eschatology of the Jewish-Christian apocalyptic tradition, and most explicitly from the Enochic tradition, the author of 2 Peter is far more dependent on Hellenistic cosmological views, especially the notion of the HMNSXYUZVL. On the other hand, he alters these patterns in the light of the biblical tradition in order to prove that even the hope for a new world and the trust in the prophetic word is conceivable in terms of contemporary thought. Regardless whether such an argument could convince contemporaries or not, the attempt to defend the ‘primitive Christian eschatology’ should not only be criticized due to its theological shortcomings but should also be viewed as an important attempt to develop the early Christian teaching within a changing situation. Works Consulted Arnold, CE 1995 The Colossian Syncretism. The Interface Between Christianity and Folk Belief at Colossae. Tübingen. Aune, DE 1999 Archai, in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, van der Toorn, K, Becking, B & van der Horst, PW (eds.), Leiden, 77–80. Bauckham, R 1983 Jude, 2 Peter. Waco. – 1988a 2 Peter: An Account of Research. ANRW 2.25.5, Berlin & New York, 3713– 3752. – 1988b The Letter of Jude. An Account of Research. ANRW 2.25.5, Berlin & New York, 3791–3826. Berger, K 1986 Streit um Gottes Vorsehung. Zur Position der Gegner im 2. Petrusbrief, in Tradition and Re-Interpretation in Jewish and Early Christian Literature, Fs. J Chr Lebram, Leiden, 121–135. Caulley, TS 1982 The Idea of ‘Inspiration’ in 2 Peter i:16–21. Tübingen. Collins, JJ 1997 The Origin of Evil in Apocalyptic Literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls, in Seers, Sibyls and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, Collins JJ (ed.), Leiden, 287– 300. Erlemann, K 1995 Naherwartung und Parusieverzögerung im Neuen Testament. Tübingen & Basel. Fornberg, T 1977 An Early Church in a Pluralistic Society. A Study of 2 Peter. Lund. Frey, J 2003 Der Judasbrief zwischen Judentum und Hellenismus, in Frühjudentum und Neues Testament im Horizont Biblischer Theologie. Mit einem Anhang zum Corpus Judaeo-Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti, Kraus W & Niebuhr, K-W (eds.), Tübingen, 180–210. – 2004 Apostelbegriff, Apostelamt und Apostolizität. Neutestamentliche Perspektiven zur Frage nach der ‘Apostolizität’ der Kirche, in Das kirchliche Amt in apostolischer Nachfolge, vol. 1: Grundlagen und Grundfragen, Schneider, T & Wenz, G (eds.), Freiburg i. Br. & Göttingen, 91–188. – 2006 ‘Himmels-Botschaft.’ Kerygma und Metaphorizität der neutestamentlichen Rede vom ‘Himmel’, in Der Himmel, Ebner, M et al (eds.), Neukirchen-Vluyn, 191–223. – 2009 Der Judasbrief und der zweite Petrusbrief. Leipzig.

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Heiligenthal, R 1992 Zwischen Henoch und Paulus: Studien zum traditionsgeschichtlichen Ort des Judasbriefes. Tübingen. Käsemann, E 1960a Begründet der neutestamentliche Kanon die Einheit der Kirche, in Exegetische Versuche und Besinnungen. Vol. 1, Göttingen, 214–223. – 1964 An Apologia for Primitive Christian Eschatology, in Essays on New Testament Themes, London, 169–195. Luther, M 1931 Vorrede auf die Episteln Sanct Jacobi und Judas, in WA DB VII. Michl, J 1937 Die Engelvorstellung in der Apokalypse des Hl. Johannes: Die Engel um Gott. München. – 1962 Engel. RAC 5, 55–258. Milik, JT 1976 The Books of Enoch, Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4. Oxford. Müller, P 1998 Der Judasbrief. ThR 63, 267–289. – 2001 Der Zweite Petrusbrief. ThR 66, 310–337. Neyrey, JH 1980a The apologetic Use of the Transfiguration in 2 Peter 1,16–21. CBQ 42, 504–519. – 1980b The Form and Background of the Polemic in 2 Peter. JBL 99, 407–431. Nickelsburg, GEW 2001 1 Enoch. Vol 1, Philadelphia. Paulsen, H 1992 Der Zweite Petrusbrief und der Judasbrief. Göttingen. Sellin, G 1986 Die Häretiker des Judasbriefes. ZNW 77, 206–225. Stuckenbruck, LT 1995 Angel Veneration and Christology. A Study in Early Judaism and in the Christology of the Apocalypse of John. Tübingen. Uhlig, S 1984 Das äthiopische Henochbuch. Gütersloh. VanderKam, JC 1996 1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature, in The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, VanderKam, JC & Adler, W (eds.), Assen & Minneapolis, 33–101. Vögtle, A 1970 Das neue Testament und die Zukunft des Kosmos. Düsseldorf. – 1994 Der Judasbrief. Der zweite Petrusbrief. Solothurn & Neukirchen-Vluyn. Wolter, M 1993 Der Brief an die Kolosser. Der Brief an Philemon. Gütersloh & Würzburg. Weiß, K 1980 DMUFKY EWNT 1, 387–392. Werdermann, H 1913 Die Irrlehrer des Judas- und des 2. Petrusbriefes. Gütersloh. Zahn, Th 1899 Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Leipzig.

Remembering the Future Eschatology in the Letters of John

Ruben Zimmermann 1. Introduction No other section of Scripture leads to such a clear perception of the problems of a New Testament eschatology as the Johannine writings. Earlier research claimed to be able to clearly recognize here the difference between ‘apocalypticism’ and ‘eschatology’ by differentiating between a traditionally futuristic apocalypticism and a realized, existential eschatology of John the Evangelist. Within the Bultmann school, these various positions were thus assigned, with methods of literary criticism, onto various sources or stages of development. Furthermore, the research often postulated a difference in the eschatology of the Gospel and of the Epistles of John by identifying the more futuristic-eschatologically-oriented proclamation of the letters (one thinks of the expectation of the parousia in 1 Joh 2:28; or of the day of judgement in 1 Joh 4:17), according to their localization in time, either the views of tradition, surmounted by the Evangelist, or the misinterpretations of the ‘actual’ Evangelist, recorded by the author of the Epistles. Jörg Frey succeeds in exposing, in his trilogy to Johannine eschatology (Frey 1997, 1998, 2000), these leading positions as artificially-introduced ideal concepts or irrelevant research perspectives. The division into present-time and futuristic eschatology does not do justice either to the fourth Gospel or the letters. The letters in particular demonstrate that a connection between futuristic and realized eschatology was fundamental within the Johannine way of thinking and theology (Schnelle 1987, 71; 2005, 479f.; also Frey 1997, 452). This is true regardless of whether one places the Epistles in time before or after the Gospel or attributes them to the same or different authors. I would like to continue on this path in the following essay on the eschatology of the letters of John, and examine concretely the rhetoricalcommunicative function of the eschatological forms of language. My hypothesis is thus: Eschatology is a form of the perception and handling of time. John’s letters consciously revert to the apocalyptic concepts of the end of time from the Judaic tradition. The employment of these futuristic-

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eschatological motifs fulfils however a present-time function in the communicative action of the letters. Before substantiating this hypothesis by examining individual segments of text, it is necessary to look at some basic questions of the term eschatology as well as the localization of the letters of John.

2. Fundamental Orientation: The Letters of John and the Eschatological Concept 2.1. The Letters of John Because the essays in this volume have been arranged according to the canonical structure,1 we are discussing the letters of John after the Gospel of John. However, at least according to an ever-widening trend within Johannine research, the letters should actually be handled before the Gospel, because they are presumably at the beginning of the writings of John that have been passed down to us. The second and third letters of John, in particular, originate in the situation of the moment and reflect a controversy and communication that prevailed at that time within the Johannine community. The Christological debate carried on here finds a temporary conclusion in the Gospel of John. Without being able to justify myself in detail, I would like to assume the following order of origination of the texts: 2 John – 3 John – 1 John and finally the Gospel of John. 2 Regardless of whether one assumes that both the letters and the Gospel of John originate from the same author (as Hengel 1993) or not, the close linguistic and theological connections between the letters and the Gospel cannot be denied. The Gospel and the letters arise out of one and the same Johannine circle or school and demonstrate a considerable closeness in the communication situation between the author and his audience. Looking more closely, however, one must point out that the three letters of John are structured very differently. While the first letter is an anonymous writing, both 2 John and 3 John expressly name one and the same author in the superscriptio: the Presbyter (R- SUHVEXYWHURa – the Elder, 2 Joh 1; 3 Joh 1). On the basis of the textual statements alone one can suppose that 2 John and 3 John were written by the same author. Both letters demonstrate, moreover, a great similarity in length, or better said, brevity (only one 1

The canonical order of the New Testament books was also followed at the Symposium on Eschatology in the New Testament held in Krugersdorp on August 22, 2007. 2 Also according to Schnelle (2005, 484) more recently Schnelle (2010); Hengel (1993, 201–203); Strecker (1989, 19–28); Frey (2000, 46–60); Thyen (1988, 195).

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sheet of papyrus), in the use of the classic letter structure with prescript, main section and conclusion, and in style and idiosyncratic formulations. Both employ distinctive expressions which are found nowhere else, such as ‘to love in truth’ (2 Joh 1; 3 Joh 1) or ‘to live by the truth’ (2 Joh 4; 3 Joh 3f.).3 Further, the conclusions of the letters are very similar to each other. In each, the author first indicates the necessity to write ‘much’ more (2 Joh 12; 3 Joh 13), but then based on the hopes of an upcoming personal meeting and a ‘face to face talk’ (2 Joh 12; 3 Joh 14) decides to close quickly. The main difference between the two short letters is above all the audience. While the second letter of John is addressed to a single community (‘to the Lady chosen by God, and her children’, 2 Joh 1), the third letter is a private letter to an individual (‘to dear Gaius’, 3 Joh 1). Some of the typical elements of a letter are, however, missing from the first letter of John. Instead of an introduction there is a kind of prologue, which shows clear similarity to the prologue of the Gospel of John (i.e. ‘from the beginning’, ‘seen with our eyes’, ‘word of life’). Furthermore there are parallels between the Gospel and the first letter of John in their content and structure,4 which is why the letter continues to be regarded as a manual for reading the Gospel.5 As a methodological consequence of these general considerations, we should bear in mind that while the linguistic and theological similarities of the three letters of John justify dealing with them together, the individualities of each letter must be also taken into account. 2.2. The Eschatological Concept The term ‘eschatology’ has been discussed sufficiently throughout the course of this volume so that at this time I would simply like to indicate the eschatological concept that I am using without entering into a discussion of the concept as a whole. What do I mean by ‘eschatology’ – in which way can one speak of an ‘eschatology’ of the letters of John? The term ‘eschatology’ as well as the term ‘apocalypticism’ have arisen from academic language and are modern constructs.6 The letters of John

3 4 5

See also Wengst (1978, 229). See also the table in Klauck (1998, 258). See in Klauck (1998, 258): ‘In Sprach- und Gedankenführung besteht aber eine enge Verwandtschaft mit dem Johannesevangelium, die bis in den Aufbau hinein reicht’ (There is a close relationship to the Gospel of John in the linguistic and thought process that reaches well into the structure). 6 See Filoramo (1988, 1542); also Wolter (2005, 171–191); Frey (1997, 2f.; 2006, 38– 55); see more general Mühling (2007).

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offer no ‘teaching of the last things’, even if the author at times uses the adjective ‘last’ (DRB@SNI ) (1 Joh 2:18). However, if we in any case intend to speak of an ‘eschatology’ in the letters of John, we must first determine what we can mean by ‘eschatology’. We can go with Jörg Frey, who regards as ‘eschatological’ all those motifs in the Johannine texts which in the Old Testament, early Judaic or early Christian tradition were viewed in connection with the last events.7 According to John J. Collins’ now classic definition of the apocalypse, it is moreover a ‘revelation (…) disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supranatural world’ (Collins 1979, 1–20). We could formulate it more exactly by saying that spatial and especially temporal conceptions were employed in order to talk, in present-day communication situations, about salvation and deliverance. Fundamentally, one can agree with Frey in that not only should motifs and formulations which were regarded as still outstanding (and are for example formulated in the future tense) be included but also those which are considered to be contemporary with the present-day belief in Christ or with Christ himself. However, in the interests of a more precise definition I do not want simply to remove the differentiation between present-time and futuristic. A differentiation between a futuristic-apocalyptic motif and its present-time function certainly makes sense or is even necessary in view of the topic. The present-time eschatology, realized for example in the belief in Christ, implies however a marked tradition which anticipated certain events of salvation as still impending. Only if a consensus arises among those communicating that, for example, a certain event has an apocalyptic character, can a discussion of the current realization – meaning the present-time eschatology – be at all comprehensible. A precise difference between the belief in God or Christ in general and the eschatology as a particular form of language and expression of this belief can only thus be maintained. Therefore, I would like to differentiate between: (a) traditional motifs of a futuristic apocalypticism; and (b) the present-time function of these motifs in the communicative process, which is shown to advantage in the following detailed analysis of individual statements.

7 Frey (2000, 4): ‘(Als “eschatologisch” sollen) all jene Motive in den johanneischen Texten gelten, die in der alttestamentlich-frühjüdischen oder urchristlichen Tradition im Zusammenhang mit den Endereignissen gesehen wurden’.

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3. Analysis of the Eschatological Statements of the Letters of John 3.1. According to Motif: 3.1.1. The ‘Last Hour’ (1 Joh 2:18bis) Let us begin with the ‘eschaton’ in the letters of John – with the Greek root which gave its name to this term in systematic academic language. In 1 John 2:18f., the adjective DRB@SNI last is used twice and both times in the connection with the noun the ‘hour’. The DURB@ SGÉ V:Q@, the last hour, appears (1 Joh 2:18): /@HCH @ÉDURB@ SGÉV:Q@ÉDURSH MÉJ@HÉJ@PVIÉGUJNT R@SDÉN:SHÉ@UMSH BQHRSNIÉDQBDS@HÉJ@HÉMTMÉÉ @UMSH BQHRSNHÉONKKNHÉFDFN M@RHMÉN:PDMÉFHMV RJNLDMÉN:SHÉDURB@ SGÉV:Q@ÉDURSH M} Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.

Let us remain for a moment with the adjective itself. ‘Eschatos’ is not necessarily an apocalyptic term, but in the New Testament rather denotes simply the last member of a group or temporal sequence (see Mk 10:31; 12:6; Mk 12:22; Joh 7:37). However, the use of the term as a terminus technicus for apocalyptic events (for example 1 Cor 15:26) dominates by far. There are numerous references to the ‘end of time’ (with BQN MNIÉ Jud 18, see 1 Thess 5:1; with J@HQN IÉ1 Pet 1:5; Ignatius Eph. 11:1) or, based on Old Testament or early Jewish-Hellenistic formulations (see Isa 2:2; Ezek 38:1; Mic 4:1; Dan 2:28; 10:14; 1QSa 1:1), to the ‘last days’ (see Acts 2:17; 2 Tim 3:1). In the complete works of John, there are two uses of the terminus DRB@SNIÉfrom the Gospel and Revelation which are useful in examining the letters of John. In the Gospel of John, taking up the Old Testament motif of the ‘day of JHWH’ (Amos 5:18–20 etc.), we come upon the stereotypical expression of the ‘last day’ (†DUMˆÉSG[ÉDURB@ SG[ÉG?LD Q@[ Joh 6:39, 40, 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48, see Joh 7:37) to describe still outstanding future events. However, the Johannine use of ‘last’ conjures up not only a linear segment of time but rather gives expression to that which overcomes time – the enclosure of the beginning and the end, as demonstrated particularly in the Revelation of John. In Rev 12:22f. the revealer describes himself as follows: DUFVÉSNÉ@KE@ÉJ@HÉSNÉVÉN?ÉOQVSNIÉJ@HÉN?ÉDRB@SNIÉG?É@UQBGÉJ@HÉSNÉSD KNI}ÉÉ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last (see Rev 1:13).

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The reference in 1 John 2:18 to the ‘last hour’ is singular. It presupposes the conception of a future apocalypse and applies this to current events. In this way, the present-day occurrence of the ‘last hour’ is mentioned twice: it is the last hour – now. The replacement of the more usual unit of time ‘day’ by the shorter ‘hour’ may indicate a greater urgency in the interpretation of time. It is however also possible that, with the motif of the hour, a motif of the Johannine way of thinking is consciously introduced. The ‘hour’ especially the ‘hour of Jesus’ plays a larger role in the Gospel of John, interpreted as Jesus’ hour of death at the cross (Joh 5:28f.; 12:23, 27 et al).8 Finally, one should remember that in the first letter of John, the mention of the ‘last’ in the further context of the letter harks back to the beginning. Thus even in the introduction a reference back to the ‘beginning’ is created (1 Joh 1:1). Further, in emphasizing the announcement, a reference to that which the audience ‘heard at the beginning’ (1 Joh 2:24; 3:11; cf. 1 Joh 2:7; 2 Joh 5f.) is made. If then in 1 John 2:18 the ‘last hour’ is proclaimed in direct speech, the circle of communicative intention has been completed. The coming of the last hour is bound to a particular event. Thus, I arrive at my second point: 3.1.2. The ‘Antichrist’ or the ‘Antichrists’9 (1 Joh 2:18–23; 4:3; 2 Joh 7) In the verses mentioned above – as in other places in the letters of John – the reference is to the coming of ‘the’ or ‘an Antichrist’ or in the plural ‘many Antichrists’. The difference in these linguistic forms marks a variable field in which the anticipation of the antichrist is present but in no way already narrowly established. Thus, in 1 John 2:18 ‘an’ antichrist is mentioned imprecisely.10 In contrast in 1 John 2:22 the definite article ‘the’ antichrist is used, indicating that a definite figure is being thought of. In addition, in 2 John 7 the reference is to the antichrist in the singular although it refers to the plural dimension ‘many deceivers’ in the previous sentence. Thus, 2 John 7: Z.SHÉ ONKKNHÉ OK@ MNHÉ DUWGKPNMÉ DHUI É SNMÉ JN RLNMÉ NH?É LGÉ N?LNKNFNTMSDIÉ 5)GRNTMÉ #QHRSNMÉ DUQBN LDMNMÉDUMÉR@QJH ;ÉÉ NT SN I ÉDURSHMÉN?ÉOK@ MNIÉJ@HÉN?É@UMSH BQHRSNI}É

8 9

See Frey (1998, 211f., 237–241). See also Beutler (1997, 25–27). Bousset (1885; 1983) is still instructive on this; as are Ernst (1967); Lohmeyer (1950, 450–457); Wolter (1992, 23–40); further the overview on DMQWLYFULVWRain Böcher (2005, 51–53). 10 The Codex Alexandrinus and the Byzantine tradition include the definite article, assumedly an adaptation of 1 John 2:22 as well as a theological definition.

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For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.

In 1 John 2:18 also, this incongruence in the number of the noun is tolerated in that an announced individual antichrist is joined with the several antichrists. 1 John 4:3 mediates to a certain extent in this problematic. J@HÉO@MÉOMDTL@ÉN children; lover > one who is loved; the beloved), so can the author blur the borders between the antichrist as a collective and an individual. In this way also, it is clear that the antichrist becomes a code – or should we say a metaphor for the characterization of a basic belief in faith. He who denies that Jesus is Christ can be called the antichrist (1 Joh 2:22). That which, with the refusal of this commitment, is concretely denied is shown in two places – in the relationship between father and son (1 Joh 2:22f.) and in the fact that ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh’ (1 Joh 4:2). The apocalyptic conception of the end of time adversary is thus moulded Christologically and at the same time made concrete in the actual event of communication. 3.1.3. The Parousia of Christ (1 Joh 2:28–29) The term ‘parousia’ is a terminus technicus of the early Christian speech of the apocalypse.13 The noun that is derived from the verb O@ QDHLHÉmeans in its basic form primarily ‘presence, being’; however, as O@ QDHLH is often employed with the meaning ‘coming, approaching’, the noun O@QNTRH @ is often – and most often in the New Testament – used with the meaning ‘Ankunft als Eintritt der Anwesenheit’ (arrival as the beginning of presence) (Bauer, WB 1272). In 16 of the 24 instances of O@QNTRH @ in the New Testament, what is meant is concrete coming-again of Christ at the end of time.14 We find the term O@QNTRH @ also in 1 John 2:28: *@HÉMTMÉSDJMH @ÉLD MDSDÉDUMÉ@TUSV[ÉH:M@ÉDU@ MÉE@MDQVPG[ÉRBVLDMÉO@QQGRH @MÉJ@HÉLGÉÉ @HURBTMPVLDMÉ@UO5É@TUSNTÉDUMÉSG[ÉO@QNTRH @[É@TUSNT}É And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.

The explicit discussion of parousia (DUMÉSG[É O@QNTRH @[É @TUSNT at his Coming) is here set parallel to the discussion of the revelation DU@MÉE@MDQVPG[É (when He appears/is revealed). The ambiguous third person (in Him/His) here, can be interpreted through the context as Christ. Thus, the subject is the arrival or more precisely the return of Christ. The coming of Christ is clearly associated with a judgement, or at least the following verse 29 calls to mind the ethical dimension (to do right), which can grow out of a con13 14

See also Erlemann (1996, 66f.). See also Mk 13:24–27; 1 Cor 15:23; 1 Thess 4:16f.; 2 Thess 1:7–10; 2:8; 2 Pet 1:11; Rev 14:14–16; 19:11–16; 20:2–6 among others. With Radl (1993, 103).

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nectivity with Christ. He who remains with Christ can have commensurate confidence in the parousia and need not be ashamed. The term ‘shame’, in the context of the contrasting couplet ‘deny-profess’ which was introduced in 1 John 2:22f., reminds us of a Logion of Jesus that has been repeatedly handed-down (Q 12:8f.; Mk 8:3815) and that also connects the arrival/return of the son of man with the categories of ‘shame’ – he who is ashamed of the words of Jesus will also be ashamed of the Son of Man when he comes. ‘For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels’ (Mk 8:38). This thought is carried further in 1 John 2:28f. He who maintains his original commitment will pass the parousia of Christ without being shamed (with Klauck 1991, 175). A further reference to the arrival or return of Christ can be found in 2 John 7, at least if one, as Georg Strecker16 does, resolves the present participle DUQBN LDMNMÉDUMÉR@QJH as the futuristic present, which is grammatically plausible. This would indeed indicate that Christ ‘as flesh’, i.e. in bodily form, shall come again. G. Strecker solves the thus obvious problem of the author of the second letter of John holding the anticipation of parousia in that Christ would return for the creation of a messianic intermediate kingdom, i.e. a chiliastic position as is then explicitly presented in Rev 20:4–6 and Barn 15:4ff.17 Even if one must reject this chiliastic conception, which is born out on evidence only from later tradition, for the author of 2 John,18 2 John 7 as well as 1 John 2:28 (and Joh 21:22f.) can still be seen as evidence of the fact that there was an expectation of parousia within the Johannine group. The expectation was either the actual return of Christ in bodily form or the coming of Christ as the body resurrected. Possibly the times are being consciously joined together here such that the ‘coming into flesh’ includes the becoming flesh in the historical person of Jesus, the present-time, for example sacramental, gift or presence of Christ19 as well as the visible return of the resurrected. The formulation ‘to be revealed’, which in 1 John 2:28f. is used parallel to parousia, leads us to the next motif.

15

See also 2 Tim 2:12; Rev 3:5; 2 Clem 3:2; Ignatius Smyrn 10:2, compare to R. Reichardt (2006, 95–113). 16 See Strecker (1992, 36f.; 1989, 335–337). 17 On this see Frey (1999, 10–72). 18 Compare with the individual arguments of Frey (2000, 65ff.). 19 So Thüsing (1970, 193); also Vouga (1990, 84).

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3.1.4. The Apocalyptic ‘Being Revealed’ to the Children of God (1 Joh 3:1–6) The verb E@MDQNTRP@H (to be revealed) is employed a total of five times in the short segment of 1 John 2:28–3:10. In addition to the futuristic discussion of the future appearance of Christ, there is explicit reference here to the revelation of Christ and the Son of God, which has already taken place (1 Joh 3:5b/8d, compare 1a: the life was revealed). In 1 John 3:2 however, the revelation is not restricted to Christ20 but refers to the whole audience: @UF@OGSNH ÉMTMÉSD JM@ÉPDNTÉDURLDMÉJ@HÉNTOVÉDUE@MDQV PGÉSH ÉDURN LDP@}ÉNHC@LDMÉN:SHÉDU@ MÉÉ E@MDQVPG[ÉN:LNHNHÉ@TUSV[ÉDURN LDP@ÉN:SHÉNUXN LDP@É@TUSNMÉJ@PV IÉDURSHM}É Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.

The segment uses the temporal figures of thought ‘already’ and ‘not yet’. Those spoken to are thus put on the same level with the author by way of the integrative ‘we’. They are already the beloved ‘children of God’ but what they will be has not yet been revealed (DURN LDP@, future!). The future tense is explicitly used three times in order to announce the future state of the communication partner. While the family metaphor of the ‘parent-child relationship’ already expresses great proximity between the believer and God, even this intimacy is exceeded. The audience will ‘be similar to God’ and they will see God. Likeness to God and seeing God are not only set next to each other but are also placed in a causal relationship. They will be like God for they will see him. The seeing of God is the cause of the likeness to God.21 Because, in the Judaic tradition, it is clearly impossible to see God (see for example Ex 3:20, 23: ‘You can not see my face for no person remains alive who sees me’; see Joh 1:18), such an event must arise out of the present time. The future transformation of Christians is a phenomenon of the end of time. However, the author of 1 John succeeds here in bringing apocalyptic conceptions to fruition in his present-time situation. Thus we read in 1 John 3:3: J@HÉ O@IÉ N?É DBVMÉ SGMÉ DUKOH C@É S@T SGMÉ DUO5É @TUSV[É @?FMH YDHÉ D?@TSN MÉ J@PVIÉ DUJDHMNIÉ @?FMN IÉ DURSHM}É 20 Compare to the discussion of the possible Christological translation ‘when He will be revealed’ (Klauck 1991, 178ff.). 21 See Klauck (1991, 182); Frey (2000, 87) thinks that the seeing refers to Christ, not to God; with respect to John 14:7 the difference is not so important. But I prefer here the traditional topic of ‘seeing God’.

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And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Even the hope for the apocalyptic event perceptibly changes present-day life. 3.1.5. Further Eschatological Motifs and Metaphors I will quickly outline a few more eschatological motifs and metaphors here. The discussion of death and (eternal) life A classical motif of eschatology, the teaching of the ‘last things’, is the discussion of death and (eternal) life.22 The subject of death and life also appears in the letters of John. At first it is only indirect in the shorter letters – here ‘live in truth’ is referred to as the metaphor of life (2 Joh 4; 3 Joh 4). In the first letter of John, however, ‘life’ is developed as a theological ‘leitmotif’. In the introductory prologue life is introduced as the object of revelation (1 Joh 1:1f.) and it still plays a role in the last verses (1 Joh 5:16), in which the gift of life are discussed. The ‘word of life’, which according to 1 John 1:1 was even experienced sensually with ears, eyes and hands, may be identified with the revealed Christ. This life will then also be described as ‘eternal life’ and is declared to be the central object of proclamation (1 Joh 1:2). Thus a connection characterizing the whole theological discussion of life in 1 John is demonstrated – eternal life is given to us through the Son (1 Joh 5:11f.): *@HÉ@T:SGÉDURSHMÉG?ÉL@QSTQH @ÉN:SHÉYVGMÉ@HUV MHNMÉDCVJDMÉG?LHMÉN?ÉPDN IÉJ@HÉ@T:SGÉG?ÉYVGÉDUMÉ SV[É TH?V [É @TUSNTÉ DURSHM}É N?É DBVMÉ SNMÉ TH?NMÉ DBDHÉ SGMÉ YVG M;É N?É LGÉ DBVMÉ SNMÉ TH?NMÉ SNTÉ PDNT É SGMÉYVGMÉNTUJÉDBDH}É And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

Subsequently, the author, just to be sure that the audience has absolutely no doubt about the presentness of this eternal life, sums up (1 Joh 5:13):ÉÉ 3@TS@ÉDFQ@X@ÉT?LHMÉH:M@ÉDHUCGSDÉN:SHÉYVGMÉDBDSDÉ@HUV MHNMÉSNHI ÉOHRSDT NTRHMÉDHUI ÉSNÉ NMNL@É SNTÉTH?NTÉSNTÉPDNT}É I have written this to you to assure you that you have eternal life, those who believe in the name of the Son of God.

Therefore, the overcoming of death is an event neither at the end of an individual lifetime nor the end of time of history. The change from death to 22

See for example Nocke (2005, 101ff.).

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life is rather a transformation, which has already occurred, in the belief in Christ. Thus we read in 1 John 3:14: G?LDHIÉ NHC@LDMÉ N:SHÉ LDS@ADAG J@LDMÉ DUJÉ SNTÉ P@M@ SNTÉ DHUIÉ SGMÉ YVG MÉ N:SHÉ @UF@OVLDMÉ SNTIÉ @UCDKENT I;ÉN?ÉLGÉ@UF@OVMÉLD MDHÉDUMÉSV[ÉP@M@ SV[}É We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. He who does not love abides in death.

The discussion of light and darkness While an ethical dimension may have been illuminated during the discussion of life and death in the final admonition to the fellow believers, this ethical aspect is brought directly to the forefront in the discussion of light and darkness. The metaphoric of light and darkness belongs to the apocalyptic inventory, which in view of the ‘passing darkness’ in 1 John 2:8 (because the darkness is passing away) particularly comes into effect. However the verse continues with the determination that ‘the true light is already shining’. The believers can and should now also walk in light (1 Joh 2:7), which in 1 John 1:5 is identified with God (N?É PDNIÉ EVIÉ DURSHM). This has concrete ethical consequences in view of their fellow humans (1 Joh 2:9f.): ].É KD FVMÉ DUMÉ SV[É EVSHÉ DHM@HÉ J@HÉ SNMÉ @UCDKENMÉ @TUSNTÉ LHRVMÉ DUMÉ SG[É RJNSH @[É DURSHMÉ D:VIÉ @QSH}É N?É@UF@OVMÉSNMÉ@UCDKENMÉ@TUSNTÉDUMÉSV[ÉEVSHÉLD MDHÉJ@HÉRJ@ MC@KNMÉDUMÉ@TUSV[ÉNTUJÉDRSHM. He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

The discussion of the end of the world and judgement According to 1 John 2:17, not only the darkness but also the whole world passes away. The author in this way finally takes up the apocalyptic idea of a final end of the world or world judgement (1 Joh 4:17: DUMÉSG[É G?LD Q@[É SGIÉJQH RDVIÉin the day of judgement). For the audience though there is no reason for concern and fear. For he who does God’s will stands for evermore (1 Joh 2:17). He who is born of God has not only ‘conquered evil’ (MDMHJG J@SDÉ SNMÉ ONMGQN M,É 1 Joh 2:13; see 5:18) but also, in the end, the whole world (1 Joh 5:4: ‘For whatever is born of God overcomes the world’). He will at the end receive his ‘full reward’ (2 Joh 8: @UKK@É LHRPNMÉ OKG QGÉ@UONK@ AGSD, ‘but that we may receive a full reward’). In this way the author, even with this typical inventory of an ‘apocalyptic scenario’, succeeds in building a bridge to the present. For the victory over the world and evil does not take place in the far-off future, but rather lies in the belief of the present, as is explicitly formulated in 1 John 5:4: J@HÉ@T:SGÉDURSHMÉG?ÉMH JGÉG?ÉMHJG R@R@ÉSNMÉJN RLNMÉG?ÉOH RSHIÉG?LVM}É

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And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.

3.2. The Function of the Eschatological Statements in the Individual Letters The motifs described show up in such numbers in all three letters of John that an ordered approach seems to make sense. As we now change the emphasis of our examination to the functional pragmatics of the eschatological statements, it will be necessary to keep in mind each specific communication situation of each letter as a whole. Let us then begin, according to the chronological order decided upon earlier (see above), with the second letter of John and then proceed to the first letter. In this section we can dispense with the third letter of John. 3.2.1. Eschatological Pragmatic in the Second Letter of John The second letter of John is a community letter which addresses the community as the personified dimension ‘the Lady chosen by God’. The community is simultaneously woman and mother as the individual members of the community are called ‘children’ (2 Joh 1, 4). This form of address at the same time describes the parental-care giving position which the Elder holds in relation to the audience. He is pleased about their living in love and truth but is worried about the correct teaching (Did v. 9), which is clearly endangered by other persons. The letter expressly warns the audience about travelling preachers who want to visit the community but who are named ‘deceivers’ by the Elder because of their missing or false commitment to God. In the description of the conflict, the apocalyptic motif of the ‘antichrist’ is placed upon these adversaries. The incongruence in numbers between the ‘many deceivers’ and the one deceiver or antichrist (2 Joh 7) does not seem to disturb the author here. We can however conclude from this that the idea of an apocalyptic adversary or even explicitly of an antichrist was clearly already familiar to them and is then applied to the ‘deceivers’ in the present-time situation. The communicative function of the eschatological statement is clearly to serve as a warning for the present. The next verse inculcates a critical self-perception (look at yourselves) for obviously two things are endangered – on the one hand it is the current loss of that which has already been accomplished (so that you do not lose…) and on the other hand the (apocalyptic?) reward. The primary interest is however in the present-time. The audience should not run ahead too far (v. 9) but rather stay within the known teachings and live within the commandment of love, which has existed from the beginning. Although the discussion here of the antichrist

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may remain pale and unspecific, in the reciprocal love (v. 5) and truth two basic themes of Johannine theology are dealt with intensively. The eschatological statements in the second letter of John thus serve exclusively present-time exhortation and warning. 3.2.2. Eschatological Pragmatic in the First Letter of John Even if, as mentioned above, the first letter of John strays the most clearly from usual letter structure and has more the character of a ‘letter-like homily’ (in Strecker 1989, 49) or an ‘informal tract’ or ‘pastoral encyclical’,23 one can see most clearly in this letter, because of its length, a particular communication situation. The audience is addressed directly by the author in a very active way. The letter is characterized by strong contrast. On the one hand, close ties and intimacy between the author and the audience are visible. This is expressed through the form of address ‘Beloved’ (1 Joh 2:7; 3:2; 4:1 etc.) or in the family metaphor ‘(my) children/little child’ (1 Joh 2:1, 12, 18, 28 etc.). On the other hand, there are references to adversaries and enemies who are polemically described as ‘those who would mislead’ (1 Joh 2:26; see 3:7), ‘liars’ (1 Joh 2:22; see 2:4; 4:20), ‘false prophets’ (1 Joh 4:1) or ‘antichrists’ (1 Joh 2:18; see 2:22; 4:2). From the segment 1 John 2:19, it can be deduced that the adversaries originally belonged to the community: DUWÉ G?LVMÉ DUWGKP@M (‘They went out from us’). They were, for example, the author’s students (in Frey 2000, 72ff.) who split off and are thus not unjustly characterized as secessionists.24 If the communities of Paul are shaken by foreign adversaries, how much more must this division in his own ranks has led to a crisis in the Johannine community. The Johannine community is in a very critical situation, threatened presumably even in its entire existence. It is characteristic that the author of the first letter of John uses particularly the apocalyptic motifs of tradition in order to interpret the crisis and finally to solve it. The adoption of the apocalyptic inventory thus fulfils – as Michael Wolter (1992, 25) fittingly called it – a ‘diagnostic function in order to demonstrate the present as the end of time’. The current crisis, experienced as problematic and unsettling, can be accepted as part of the Godly plan of salvation with the use of the motifs of the end of time. The current situation does not have to be interpreted as a questioning but rather can be seen as a confirmation of the known order of world and history.25 23 On the discussion of various genre suggestions see Brown (1982, 86ff.); Klauck (1991, 29–31). 24 So e.g. Brown (1982, 363ff.). 25 Rightly in Wolter (1992, 25); Brown (1982, 367). Also Frey (2000, 73): ‘So kann der Autor die durch die „Antichristen“ entstandene Spaltung der johanneischen Ge-

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Accordingly the adversaries are stigmatized as ‘antichrists’, their teachings are described as ‘lies’ and ‘misleading’, the splitting off out of the community even as an ‘apocalyptic revelation’ (1 Joh 2:19: @UKK5ÉH:M@ÉE@M DQVPVRHMÉ‘… that they might be made manifest…’) which brings the true faces of these ‘false members of the community’ to light.26 The current events are brought into association with the devil (CH@ ANKNI). All of those who follow the false teachings can be described as ‘children of the devil’ (1 Joh 3:10) and are in sharpest contrast to the ‘children of God’ (1 Joh 3:10) who are being addressed. The polemic of the discussion and (presumably) exaggerated representation of the conflict leads us to assume that at the time when the first letter of John was written, the danger for the audience had not yet abated at all. Therefore, apocalyptic tradition known to the community is activated on the one hand in order to stigmatize the adversaries in the sharp dualism of the apocalyptic scenario and, on the other hand, to warn and encourage the community members who remain.

4. Attempt at a Conclusion: The Eschatology of the Letters of John I have come to the final part of my essay – an attempt at a closing contemplation on the eschatology of the ‘Epistles of John’. We have seen that classic motifs of the expectation of the end of time or eschatology occur in John’s letters. In this process, events are referred to which are traditionally considered to be happenings in the future, such as the parousia (return) of Christ (1 Joh 2:28f.) alongside the appearance of an apocalyptic adversary (1 Joh 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 Joh 7). Moreover, the ‘day of judgement’ (1 Joh 4:17), the destruction or victory over the world, the ‘hope’ or the final consummation of the believers with the seeing of God and the likening to God (1 Joh 3:1–6) are discussed. Alongside this clear expectation of the future are, however, statements which describe the apocalyptic events as having already occurred. The passage from death to life has been completed (1 Joh 3:14; 5:12); the victory over evil and the

meinde als ein eschatologisch notwendiges Geschehen deuten, in dem sich letztlich nichts anderes als der göttliche Heilsplan vollzieht’ (Thus the author can interpret the division of the Johannine community, which has arisen through the ‘antichrist’, as an eschatologically necessary event in which nothing less than the Godly plan of salvation is carried out). 26 Also 1 Cor 11:19 speaks of the eschatological necessity of the division of the community in the end of time.

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whole world has been achieved (1 Joh 2:13; 1 Joh 5:4); life in light is currently taking place (1 Joh 1:7). The author of the letters of John is clearly talking about the expectations of a future end of time, yet simultaneously these events are being proclaimed as at least partially having already occurred in the present time. However, not simply in such a way that the expectations for the future – adopting G. Kleins dictum – would have been ‘historicized’27 and thus ultimately dismantled in a present-time implementation. Despite and amidst the present-time statements, the futuristic expectations of the author remain constant.28 Thus the Epistles of John demonstrate, on the one hand, a clear futuristic eschatology and, on the other, an equally clear realized or present-time eschatology. R. Bultmann and the tradition following him perceived irreconcilable tensions here that were then separated out from each other with methods of literary criticism.29 W. Vogler or J. Frey, however, advocated that there need be no contradiction between present-time and futuristic statements (see Vogler 1993, 49; Frey 2000, 97). In conclusion, I would now like to follow this path and describe particularly the interrelatedness of the times. That which is specific to the eschatological statements in the letters of John consists in the fact that here the expectation of the future and its present-time application are not simply placed alongside each other but are expressly related to and mediated with each other. I would like to differentiate three forms of this mediation: 4.1. The Christological Mediation: Christ or Antichrist? (The recognitive function of the eschatology) The first letter of John speaks of a future parousia of Christ (1 Joh 2:28f.). Simultaneously the author evokes the revelation of Christ which has already occurred (1 Joh 3:5, 8ÉJ@HÉ NHC@SDÉN:SHÉDUJDHMNIÉDUE@MDQV PG you know that each will be revealed, verb in the aorist!). However Christ is not simply a past story of revelation or a future expectation of the end of time. What is of importance is rather the current relationship to ‘Christ of the present’. He who believes in the Son already has eternal life. In 1 John 5:12 the formulation is even stronger – not he who believes in the Son, but rather ‘he who possesses the Son has life indeed; he who does not possess the Son of God has not that life’ (N?É DBVMÉSNMÉTH?NMÉDBDHÉSGMÉYVG M;ÉN?É LGÉ 27

See the famous dictum of Günter Klein of the ‘Vergeschichtlichung der Eschatologie’ (historicization of eschatology), in Klein (1971, 325, cf. 302). 28 Also Vouga (1990, 41). 29 See Bultmann (1967, 381–393). He suggests separating out 1 John 2:28; 3:2 and 4:17; further the atonement statements in 1 Joh 1:7b; 2:2; 4:10b; see for discussion Klauck (1991, 22f.).

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DBVMÉ SNMÉ TH?NMÉ SNTÉ PDNTÉ SGMÉ YVGMÉ NTUJÉ DBDH). Thus the past, present and future are united in Christ. How strongly Christology has become a focal point in eschatological thinking can be portrayed e contrario with the example of the antichrist or antichrists. That which is true for Christ is equally true for the antichrist. The appearance of a future adversary is happening now – now is the ‘last hour’. 4.2. The ethical mediation: love now! (The action dimension of the eschatology) A further mediation between the times takes place in ethics. The relationship to one’s neighbour thus becomes a focal point of Johannine eschatology. The eschatological passage from death to life occurs through acts of love. In 1 John 3:14 it is formulated such: G?LDHIÉ NHC@LDMÉ N:SHÉ LDS@ADAG J@LDMÉ DUJÉ SNTÉ P@M@ SNTÉ DHUIÉ SGMÉ YVG MÉ N:SHÉ @UF@OVLDMÉ SNTIÉ @UCDKENT I;ÉN?ÉLGÉ@UF@OVMÉLD MDHÉDUMÉSV[ÉP@M@ SV[}É We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers. He who does not love (his brother) abides in death.

To what extent this depends on concrete actions is given in 1 John 2:9: ‘A man may say, “I am in the light”; but if he hates his brother, he is still in the dark’. It is not only the understanding but the action that is important. It is in actions that the eschatological turn toward salvation occurs; the one who loves is and remains in the light (1 Joh 2:10). As seen in the belief in the Son (1 Joh 5:12), the formulations on love are also reciprocally positive and negative (1 Joh 2:9; 3:14). The two paths are mutually exclusive. He who does not have the Son or does not love will not experience the eschatological metamorphosis. This radical alternative fulfils a pragmatic, reader-oriented function, which leads us to the third dimension: 4.3. The communicative mediation: Remembering the Future (The appeal function of the eschatology) The letters of John are evidence of a concrete communicatory event. This can be seen alone in the language as the audience is repeatedly and explicitly addressed as children (3DJMH @É LNTÉ 1 Joh 2:1, 18 etc.) or beloved (1 Joh 2:7; 3:2; 4:1 etc.). They are thus, as knowing, seeing or acting subjects, reminded of their obligations. The explicit reference to earlier traditions is striking here. We repeatedly read ‘as/so that you know.../we know’ (1 Joh 2:29; 3:14; 5:13); ‘as you have heard…’ (J@PVIÉ GUJNT R@SD see 1 Joh 2:7,

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18, 24bis; 3:11; 2 Joh 6), often especially in connection with apocalyptic statements. The author reminds us of traditional apocalyptic expectations that were common within Judaic apocalypticism and apparently particularly in the tradition of the Johannine school and teaching. Not simply by chance does he hark back to the ‘beginning’ – back to that which was there since the beginning (1 Joh 1:1), to that which the audience has heard from the beginning. The expression ‘… from the beginning’ / @UO5É @UQBGI) occurs ten times in the letters of John (1 Joh 1:1; 2:7, 13, 14; 3:8, 11; 2 Joh 5f.). This reminiscent discussion of apocalyptic events has a concrete function of appeal. It serves to encourage and admonish the audience. Encouragement in that they, for example, already have (eternal) life (1 Joh 5:13: ‘These things I have written to you, that you may know that you have eternal life’); admonishment to remain in their faith (see the accumulation of LD MDHMÉabide) and not to sin (1 Joh 2:1: ‘My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin’). Encouragement refers to the present – to life in the now. Admonishment refers more to future actions. Thus, particularly in this dual communication function, futurism and presentness again fall together. In conclusion, I would like to strengthen and make more precise my differentiation, completed within the framework of my definition, between the eschatological end of time statements and their present-time function. A function of recognition occurs in the Christological mediation of the apocalyptic statements. Christ should be recognized as the one in whom time is completed, who breaks through time, in whom the future becomes the present. This insight has changed life and behaviour in a basic, apocalyptic way. Thus the eschatological statements also serve ethics. The possibilities of recognition and action must however be encouraged and admonished. Eschatological statements that connect future occurrences to the present time thus fulfil a function of appeal. The audience should be reminded of that which they have heard from the beginning. With a view to the eschatological statements, it is a ‘remembering of the future’ that fundamentally determines the present. Works Consulted Beutler, J 1997 Die Stunde Jesu im Johannesevangelium. BK 52, 25–27. Böcher, O 2005 DMQWLYFULVWRa, in Theologisches Begriffslexikon zum Neuen Testament, Coenen, L & Haacker, K (eds.), Wuppertal & Neukirchen, 51–53. Bousset, W 1983 Der Antichrist in der Überlieferung des Judentums, des Neuen Testaments und der alten Kirche. Olms. Brown, RE 1982 The Epistles of John. New York. Bultmann, R 1967 Die kirchliche Redaktion des ersten Johannesbriefes, in Exegetica: Aufsätze zur Erforschung des Neuen Testaments, Dinkler, E (ed.), Tübingen, 381–393.

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Collins, JJ 1979 Introduction: Towards the Morphology of a Genre, in Apocalypse: The Morphology of a Genre, Collins, JJ (ed.), Missoula, 1–20. Erlemann, K 1996 Endzeiterwartungen im frühen Christentum. Tübingen & Basel. Ernst, J 1967 Die eschatologischen Gegenspieler in den Schriften des Neuen Testaments. Regensburg. Filoramo, G 1999 Eschatologie. RGG 2, 1542–1546. Frey, J 1997 Die johanneische Eschatologie, vol. 1: Ihre Probleme im Spiegel der Forschung seit Reimarus. Tübingen. – 1998 Die johanneische Eschatologie, vol. 2: Das johanneische Zeitverständnis. Tübingen. – 1999 Das apokalyptische Millenium: Zu Herkunft, Sinn und Wirkung der Milleniumsvorstellung in Offenbarung 20,4–6, in Millenium: Deu-tungen zum christlichen Mythos der Jahrtausendwende. Mit Beiträgen von Chr. Bochinger u. a., Bochinger, C (ed.), Gütersloh, 10–72. – 2000 Die johanneische Eschatologie, vol. 3: Die eschatologische Verkündigung in den johanneischen Texten. Tübingen. – 2006 Die Apokalyptik als Herausforderung der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft: Zum Problem: Jesus und die Apokalyptik, in Apokalyptik als Herausforderung neutestamentlicher Theologie, Becker, M & Öhler, M, Tübingen, 23–94. Hengel, M 1993 Die johanneische Frage: Ein Lösungsversuch. Tübingen. Klauck, H-J 1991 Der erste Johannesbrief. Zürich & Braunschweig. – 1998 Die antike Briefliteratur und das Neue Testament: Ein Lehr- und Arbeitsbuch. Paderborn. Klein, G 1971 ‘Das wahre Licht scheint schon’: Beobachtungen zur Zeit- und Geschichtserfahrung einer urchristlichen Schule. ZTK 68, 261–326. Lohmeyer, E 1950 Antichrist. RAC 1, 450–457. Mühling, M 2007 Grundinformation Eschatologie: Systematische Theologie aus der Perspektive der Hoffnung. Göttingen. Nocke, F-J 2005 Eschatologie. Düsseldorf. Radl, W 1993 SDURXVLYD. EDNT 3, 102–105. Reichardt, MR 2006 ‘Jesus-Tradition’ or ‘Jesus-Memory’, in ‘Für alle Zeiten zur Erinnerung’ (Jos 4,7): Beiträge zu einer biblischen Gedächtniskultur, Theobald, M et al. (eds.), Stuttgart, 95–113. Schnelle, U 1987 Antidoketische Christologie im Johannesevangelium: Eine Untersuchung zur Stellung des vierten Evangeliums in der johanneischen Schule. Göttingen. – 2005 Die Schriften der johanneischen Schule, in Einleitung in das Neue Testament, Göttingen, 479–577. – 2010 Die Johannesbriefe. Leipzig. Strecker, G 1989 Die Johannesbriefe. Göttingen. – 1992 Chiliasmus und Doketismus in der Johanneischen Schule. KD 38, 30–46. Thyen, H 1988 Johannesbriefe. TRE 17, 186–200. Thüsing, W 1970 Die Johannesbriefe. Düsseldorf. Vogler, W 1993 Die Briefe des Johannes. Leipzig. Vouga, F 1990 Die Johannesbriefe. Tübingen. Wengst, K 1978 Der erste, zweite und dritte Brief des Johannes. Gütersloh.

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Wolter, M 1992 Der Gegner als endzeitlicher Widersacher – Die Darstellung des Feindes in der jüdischen und christlichen Apokalyptik, in Feindbilder: Die Darstellung des Gegners in der politischen Publizistik des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, Bosbach, F (ed.), Köln, 23–40. – 2005 Apokalyptik als Redeform im Neuen Testament. NTS 51, 171–191.

Depicting Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John Jan A du Rand 1. Coming to Grips with Terminology The term eschatology, according to the The Dictionary of the Christian Church (1983, 469) describes the ‘doctrine of the last things’, derived from the Greek eschatos (= last). The Apocalypse rarely mentions the ‘end’, unlike 4 Ezra as an example. The term WHYORa (end) is used only three times in the Apocalypse: in 21:6 and 22:13 WHYORa, with DMUFKY, refers to the divine as being the beginning and end and only once in the meaning of inspiring the church to persevere till the end (2:26). And the verbal form WHOHLCQhas the meaning of ‘to finish as the last’ (15:1, 8; 20:3, 5, 7) or as the fulfilment of God’s words (17:17) In 10:7 and 11:7 WHOHLCQ indicates the end of a process or its fulfilment (Barr 2001, 101). In general, to come to an understanding of eschatology in the Apocalypse of John, we have to see the phenomenon of eschatology in its broader framework. The typical biblical understanding of history moves along a linear, in contrast to a cyclical, conception of history. God’s creation moves toward the ultimate fulfilment of his purpose at the end of times. Biblical eschatology is not limited to the destiny of the individual but concerns the consummation of the whole history of the world (Bauckham 2004, 333). Although, the main concern of the Apocalypse is not as such salvation history but eschatology, which depicts the breaking-in of the acknowledgement of God’s kingship on earth as it already exists in heaven, as well as the destruction of the hostile powers. In this sense eschatology in the Apocalypse is simply not only deducible from history, instead, the ‘history’ is completely ordinated to eschatology and receives its full significance from the future (cf. Schüssler Fiorenza 1980, 114). To apply the term eschatology to the Apocalypse of John has brought more than one meaningful and decisive view to the foreground. Frank Cross (1973) concentrates on the origins of apocalyptic in late prophecy, while Klaus Koch’s: Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik (1970; ET. 1972) insists that the term apocalyptic in the family of eschatology be defined in terms of a literary genre and a historical movement.

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The stimulating breakthrough came with Cross’s student Paul D Hanson in 1975 and 1976, when he refined Koch’s call for precision by using the terms: apocalypse as a literary genre; apocalypticism as an ideology of a social movement and apocalyptic eschatology as religious perspective to the future. The differences between the prophetic books and later pseudepigraphal and New Testament writings came to be defined in the distinction between prophetic eschatology and apocalyptic eschatology, denotations which are still legitimately used in recent literature (Collins 1992, 285) as well as in this study. The dominant difference between prophetic and apocalyptic lies, according to Hanson, in the divine activity working through the structures of political, historical and social realms. Prophetic eschatology mainly reflects on God’s acting in and through history and humanity while apocalyptic eschatology in general foresees God to save the elect from the unjust present world order into a new transformed order. Where Old Testament prophecies predominantly focus on the first coming of the Messiah, the prophecies of the Apocalypse calls attention to his second coming. Prophecy not only ‘reveals the future’ as it is interpreted by some, but also encompasses the revelation God has already given. This becomes even clearer with respect to the curse that is placed on anyone who adds to or subtracts from the prophecy of this book (22:18–19). It is prophetically predicted what must come to pass by understanding how God fulfils the establishing of his universal kingdom as well as the response of the hearers by working out God’s purpose in their contemporary world (cf. Kistemaker 2001, 62; Bauckham 1993, 148–149). David Hill has argued that the phrase ‘servants of God’ in 10:7 and 11:18 may even refer to prophets as such. Therefore, according to him, a community of prophets could have been the receivers of the seven messages to the churches (1972, 412). It is more likely that ‘servants’, in general, only refers to ordinary Christians to whom the book is addressed (cf. Yarbro Collins 1984, 39).On the other hand Schüssler Fiorenza emphasizes the prophetic character of the Apocalypse by describing the author as a community prophet, belonging to an early Christian prophetic-apocalyptic school, although she firmly rejects the theory that the author belongs to a so called ‘Johannine school’ (1980, 119). In this regard David Aune has indicated that the author John never refers to himself as a prophet but only that he played such a role in his writing of a ‘prophecy’ (cf. 1:3; 22:7, 10, 18, 19). To Aune John could have been a member of a prophetic circle or guild, particularly in the light of 22:16 (1981, 18–19). The conclusion can only be that the content of John’s writing has to be linked with his own prophetic role. Apocalyptists, in general, do not see salvation being accomplished through the current order. John Collins argues that the essential difference

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between prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology is that the apocalyptic leg involves ‘the transcendence of death by the attainment of a higher, angelic form of life’ (1974, 43). Apocalyptic or apocalypticism is a slippery term which can be used in more than one way: as type of literature, as a type of eschatology and as a type of collective behaviour (cf. Aune 2005, 234) To a large extent the Apocalypse of John comes up to both perspectives and expectations. According to 2:11, ‘The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death’ (ESV), is an expression, uttering the hope for a life beyond death which is characteristic of apocalyptic eschatology. The same can be said about 3:4: ‘…and they will walk with me in white (garments) for they are worthy’ (ESV). In cultural context the white garments symbolise that the human body will be transformed and replaced by a spiritual body: the faithful will be given a heavenly or angelic mode of existence. We also find explicit references about resurrection in 20:4–6 and 11–16. The Sibylline Oracles 1–4 have, for example, remarkable parallels to the Apocalypse in this regard. If John did bring the sibylline traditions from Palestine to Asia Minor, the content of the Oracles were not utterly unknown to the readers because it showed considerable interest in the last things, the dominion of the Hebrews in the final earthly kingdom, the resurrection of the dead, the punishment of the wicked by fire and the transformation of the earth (Collins 1983, 382). In the old prophetic or historic order death will still exist but in the new apocalyptic order ‘…death shall be no more…’ (21:4). In the same way the Apocalypse of Johan narrates the deliverance from the old order within the historical boundaries of this world order and the establishment of a new historical order. According to the fifth seal (6:9– 11) the souls under the altar cried out and asked judgment on those who dwell on the earth. What follows in the sixth seal, tells of the collapse of the cosmos and the dissolution of the old order. Earth and heaven have to flee for ‘no place was found for them’ (20:11). In this sense the description of salvation is worded: ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more’ (21:1). The lack of the sea, expressing the natural and historical forces of disruption, announces the profound discontinuity between the old order and the new. The coming down of the New Jerusalem is not a human accomplishment as the culmination of a historical process but a divine gift, replacing the old human order. The new order does not know grief, distress or death (21:4), or even the sun, the moon or dark nights (21:23; 22:5). The approaches by Koch (1972) and Hanson (1975 and 1976) were further developed in the work of the SBL, published in 1979 in Semeia 14,

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Apocalypse: The Morphology of a genre. According to this research an apocalypse is defined as a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an other worldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality, which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world. Aune describes apocalyptic eschatology as the narrative theology focusing on the belief that ‘… the present world order, regarded as both evil and oppressive, is under the temporary control of Satan and his human accomplices, and that this present evil world order will shortly be destroyed by God and replaced by a new and perfect order corresponding to Eden before the fall’ (2005, 236). The transition between the old and new order will be introduced with a final series of symbolic battles and the outcome is never in question. The wicked will be judged and the righteous will be rewarded while the earth and heavens will be transformed by a re-creation. With the emphasis on form it has become clearer that the term apocalypse applies to literary works of the period 250 BCE and 150 CE (Allen 1990, 15). James Barr has summarised such apocalyptic literature ‘as a kind of conversation, in which over two or three centuries different religious issues are argued out and different points of view are propounded, yet all of them within certain conventions of form and presentation’ (1975, 35). Not only the ‘form and presentation’, but also the function of apocalyptic eschatology is important. David Hellholm has added to the definition that an apocalypse ‘was intended for a group in crisis with the purpose of exhortation and/or consolation by means of divine authority’ (1982, 168). This is a meaningful addition to the original (1979) definition in Leuven. Adela Yarbro Collins elaborated on the definition to state that an apocalypse was intended to interpret present, earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future (1986, 7). Building on the work of Aune (1986) and Hellholm (1986) Yarbro Collins advanced the following definition of the function of apocalypses: ‘Intended to interpret present, earthly circumstances in the light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority’ (1986, 7) This addition has served clarity concerning terminology and was also accepted by John Collins (cf. 1991, 19; 1992, 283). Frederick Murphy links up with John Collins and Yarbro Collins and brings even more clarity by proposing that apocalypses are of two main types: those with an otherworldly journey by the seer and those without. Those of the latter type often contain a review of history ending in an eschatological crisis and resolution: those of the former type often are more

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speculative but still eschatological with historical consequences (1994, 152). Such speculative emphasis often contains cosmogony, meteorology, astronomy, cosmology, astrology, calendar, and angelology that are not exclusively biblical. Revelation is to be seen as an otherworldly journey apocalypse with historical implications (Murphy 1994, 152–153) although Schüssler Fiorenza claims that the journey is not well developed and does not belong to either group (1983, 298). Himmelfarb proposes that the mentioned two types should be seen as two different genres (1983, 298). That does not really help us in determining terminological clarity. To view the Apocalypse as an apocalyptic-prophetic epistle comes the nearest to a conclusion as terminological perspective is concerned. Apocalypticism’s view of otherworldly causality does not justify the view that apocalypses are not interested in history. Earthly history is of great interest, also in most of the otherworldly journey apocalypses like the Apocalypse of John. Earthly history and transcendent causality come to a synthesis in the Apocalypse’s view of history as a whole and judge it from the viewpoint of the end of earthly history as known in the present. The Apocalypse clearly reflects traces of a social movement (cf. Du Rand 1991, 202), like the community of Qumran, despite different views by PR Davies (1990, 132) and Newsom (1990, 139). The apocalyptic character of a community is experienced in an ordinary historical situation. Duling and Perrin (1994, 609–610; cf. Thompson 1990) even go as far to testify that apocalypticism was a prominent ingredient of the early historic church. The typical characterization of the receivers of the apocalypticprophetic epistle of the Apocalypse of John was that they were a historical community that lived from apocalyptic-prophetic perspectives (cf. Rowland 2005, 354). It is fitting to end off this discussion on terminological clarity concerning apocalyptic and prophetic terms by quoting 4 Ezra 14:47, describing apocalypses: ‘For in them is the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom and the river of knowledge’.

2. Relating the ‘already, in time’, and ‘not yet, in future’ in Apocalyptic-Prophetic Eschatology The eschatological focus of the Apocalypse cannot be derived from specific texts but from the underlying eschatological content in the flow of the theological narrative. It is not an eschatological tract satisfying the curiosity of those who want to know what is going to happen in this historical world order. Instead, it is to reveal the hidden, enabling the readers to manage their own situation from a different perspective. Whether we inter-

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pret its message from prophetic or apocalyptic eschatological perspectives, it is a vigorous unmasking of the powerful who legitimize their position by persecution and economic exploitation, and to offer hope and vindication to the powerless. To gain perspective concerning the relationship between prophetic eschatology and the apocalyptic perspective, we have to page back to the roots of these two perspectives in the Judaistic and early Christian comparable writings. We are concentrating only on the main tendencies. Jewish apocalypses, as religious literature, were mainly concerned with the problem of evil and fallenness with the solution projected into the eschatological future where salvation and punishment will be the result of God’s final judgement (Aune 2005, 13). The principle of the end recapitulating the beginning has become the central focus – the well known protology-eschatology pattern. In other words, the imperfect lies between the perfect of the beginning and the perfect of the distant future. The past has become the basis for the future to return to the past. Basically the present urgently needs restoration. The main corpus of Jewish apocalyptic writings originated between 250 BCE and 150 CE, a period when Palestine was dominated by the Greeks and Romans (Aune 2005, 14).We must note the relation of the later Jewish apocalyptic to prophecy. The Jewish apocalyptic can be seen as the pseudonymous imitation of prophecy. One of the reasons is that there was no longer any prophet in Israel (cf. 1 Macc 4:46; 9:27 and 14:41). Apocalyptic has become the related substitute for prophecy (Vawter 1980, 34). From a biblical perspective the major dependence of apocalyptic is on the literature of the Old Testament. If we name some of the characteristics of apocalyptic, we may find remarkable parallels in Old Testament texts and Jewish apocalyptic. Some of the more important characteristics are: fantastic symbols; intervention of angels; symbolic visions; intercommunication between the heavenly and the earthly; a particular conception of history; and the predetermination in heaven of the events on historical earth. The Pentateuch and the Chronicler both have a peculiar conception of history. Both also work with numbers! The book of Tobit and the rabbinic writings have a concern with angels. Dualism in the typical Israelite thinking can be traced in 2 Samuel, for example. Some see in the exile the line of division between the historical prophetic perspectives and the eschatological thinking of the future of Israel. Vawter (1980, 36) proposes this so strongly when he says: ‘The last of the prophets (and the supplementers of the prophetic books) thus become the first apocalyptists, as the eschatological perspective replaces the purely “historical”...’. And when prophecy has flowed into apocalyptic the apocalyptic-prophetic perspective has taken over as act of faith in the di-

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vine promises – the prophetic oracles are now to be fulfilled in the eschaton (cf. Vawter 1980, 36–37). According to the Old Testament prophets sin is the frustration of the divine plan (cf. Amos 9:7). They were also convinced that the creator God can and will bring his plan to a successful conclusion which we may call restoration. The prophets expected God’s intervention in future to restore his rule, not only over Israel but over all. When Amos uses the concept ‘day of Yahweh’ in 5:18 he is not coining a new expression but is invoking an ancient one. It is the same ‘day’ as of 8:9 and 13 in the same sense as the apocalyptists would use it – the day of Yahweh’s vindication and settling of accounts (cf. Isa 2:4; 11:6–8; Mic 4:3 and Ezra 34:25) In the same sense we should see Yahweh’s hand in the exodus, the covenant, the passing of the Red Sea and the conquest of Canaan which were not ‘normal’ divine providence but miracles. Is the fire which Yahweh will unleash against Damascus to devour the palaces of Ben-Hadad (Am 1:4) different from apocalyptic fire according to the Apocalypse? It seems clear that the miraculous of apocalyptic- prophetic eschatology does not depart from traditional prophetic Heilsgeschichte. Isaiah, for example, characterizes the messianic age in terms of universal peace when restoration will take place (11:6–9). And Zephaniah emphasizes that the remnant of Israel will receive salvation after a universal catastrophe (cf. Vawter 1980, 41). It becomes more and more clear that the transition from prophecy to apocalyptic according to the biblical prophets was effortless because the prophets shared the eschatological traditions on which the apocalyptists would elaborate. In that sense we may say that much of Ezekiel is apocalypticprophetic (cf. chapter 38). In the light of the above argumentation the relation between apocalyptic salvation and prophecy can be summarised as follow: The Israelite eschatology of both judgement and salvation is anterior to both prophecy and apocalyptic (Vawter 1980, 43) Postexilic prophecy in general inclines to the apocalyptic-prophetic model. The portrayal of the future has become more and more mysterious, therefore, mythical representation was freely used in apocalyptic. The influence of the gentile world had an effect on the development of apocalyptic from the prophetic roots. With the disappearance of the prophetic voices, apocalyptic was left to become its heir with a literary form of its own. The consequence of this would be to postulate that John acted as a typical prophet but used the apocalyptic-prophetic letter format to communicate his message according to the Apocalypse. Lohmeyer (1953, 199–202) even thinks the Apocalypse marks a return to its prophetic origins. The Old Testament prophecy has found its fulfilment in the apocalyptic-prophetic as a new vision of hope.

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Just by way of mentioning it, we have to name more detail on the crucial issue of restoration according to the Old Testament and Jewish apocalypses. The traumatic effect of the destruction of the temple of Solomon in 586 BCE and the subjugation to the Neo-Babylonian Empire as well as the forced exile caused the growing hope for restoration in early Jewish literature. Aune (2005, 15–36) names the following themes of restoration: restoration of sovereignty over the land of Palestine; the restoration of kingship – the reestablishment of theocratic monarchy in the form of the Davidic messiahship; the regathering of the tribes of Israel; and the final restoration of Jerusalem and the temple. To this should be added the restoration of the Eden conditions and the restoration of creation. It is clear that the new covenant of apocalyptic-prophetic language, the new temple, the new Israel, new Jerusalem, all find their ultimate climax in the new creation (cf. Beale 1999, 173). Certain aspects of the Apocalypse of John have led theologians to identify its format and function as prophetic. This view has to be taken seriously. In the prologue it is called ‘revelation’ (DMSRNDYOX\La) in verse 1 and ‘prophecy’ in verse 3. And according to 1:19 a typical Hellenistic prophetic formula is used: ‘Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this’ (ESV, cf. Van Unnik 1963, 88). However, it seems clear that it is impossible to trace any direct line from the one or other tradition to later apocalyptic. Apocalyptic groups developed according to particular social conditions. The group that produced the book of Daniel seems to have had wisdom and prophetic roots (Wilson 1981, 93) and the group(s) that produced Ezekiel 38–39 and 40–48 could come from priestly and prophetic backgrounds. The typical of the Qumran community may be depicted as predominantly a priestly apocalyptic. It is interesting to note that there is a twofold eschatology at Qumran. The term malkut in the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice indicates the kingdom of God in the future as pronounced by the prophets and a present meaning with cultic emphasis in which the present community is recognizing and confessing the royalty of God. In the Apocalypse we more or less find a similar twofold eschatology, particularly in co-texts with worship and the priesthood. During the millennium, as an example, the era of the church, Christians are the priests of God and of Christ and they reign with him (cf. Prigent 2002, 26–27; Witherington 2003, 32–35). According to Revelation 10:11, John is told by the angel: ‘You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings’ (cf. 22:9). John is by interpretation described as a prophet and the Apocalypse is a book in the context of early Christian prophecy (cf. Yarbro Collins 1984, 34–50). One of the aspects in the eschatology of the Apoca-

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lypse that is remarkably similar to prophetic eschatology is the divine judgment, taking place through the structures of mundane activity through human persons. The dominant act of judgment is the destruction of Rome, sketched as the new ‘Babylon’, taking place during history (cf. Boring 1986). This brings us back to the epoch-making contribution of Hanson on the relationship between prophecy and apocalyptic. In his The Dawn of Apocalyptic Hanson has traced apocalyptic eschatology in its social and literary roots back to earlier prophetic revelation (1975, 427–444). Prophetic eschatology is ‘the prophetic announcement to the nation of the divine plans for Israel and the world, which the prophet has witnessed unfolding in the divine council and which be translated into the terms of plain history real politics and human instrumentality…’ (1975, 11). Hanson proceeds to define apocalyptic eschatology as focusing on ‘…the disclosure (usually esoteric in nature) to the elect of the cosmic vision of Yahweh’s sovereignty – especially as it relates to his acting to deliver his faithful – which disclosure the visionaries have largely ceased to translate into the terms of plain history, real politics and human instrumentality due to a pessimistic view of reality growing out of the bleak postexilic conditions within which those associated with the visionaries found themselves…’ (1975, 12). According to Hanson both views use visionary transcendent imagery, to be traced back to Israel’s ancient traditions and beyond to Canaanite mythology (cf. Allen 1990, 16). The visionary imagery often relates to divine warfare, focusing on the theophany of the divine warrior, the divine council and heavenly army as well as the divine conflict with chaos. The movement from prophetic to apocalyptic eschatology, or as I prefer to call it apocalyptic-prophetic eschatology, has taken place along a ‘sliding scale’. He interprets Second Isaiah as proto-apocalyptic in its eschatology. Hanson calls Isaiah 24–27, 34–35, 60–62 and Zechariah 9–10 early apocalyptic and he labels Zechariah 12–13 as middle apocalyptic. Zechariah 14 together with Isaiah 56:1–8 and 66:17–24 are interpreted as full-blown apocalyptic (1975, 128–129.368–369.388–389). In a later publication, Old Testament Apocalyptic in 1987, Hanson no longer labels Second Isaiah proto-apocalyptic. Only Daniel 8–12 is full-blown apocalyptic in the Old Testament, according to Hanson. This is a meaningful observation when we take the Apocalypse of John into consideration. Another key element of Hanson’s approach to apocalyptic is his emphasis on sociological issues. Apocalyptic tendencies may develop in groups possessing roles of leadership and authority who felt powerless against a foreign world power (Allen 1990, 17). Hanson’s focus on apocalyptic minority groups within post-exilic Judah and his assessment of the role of the

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supernatural over against the historical that gradually changes prophetic eschatology into apocalyptic-prophetic eschatology will be seen as his important contribution to the discussion.

3. What Are We to Expect in a Typical Biblical Eschatology? After depicting the obvious difference between prophetic and apocalypticprophetic eschatology we have to determine what could be taken as typical of biblical eschatology in general. After that being done, we may proceed to investigate the Apocalypse of John as such. 3.1. Selected Old Testament Perspectives in General For the sake of a broader framework typical aspects of a brief characterization of Old Testament eschatology are given. Looking towards a final and permanent goal of God’s purpose in history dates from the call of Abraham (Gen 12), the promise of the land, but is found particularly in the messages of the prophets. God’s decisive action in judgment and salvation is referred to as ‘the day of the Lord’ (cf. Isa 13:6; Ezek 13:5; Amos 5:18). For the prophets God’s decisive action would take place in their present historical context. And from this immanent context developed a final resolution of history when God will establish a permanent age of salvation – a radically transformed world to be characterized as apocalyptic. The nations will come and serve the God of Israel (Isa 2:2; Jer 3:17), international peace and justice will prevail (Isa 2:4) and God’s own people will have peace, prosperity and security (Mi 4:4; Isa 65:21–23). In the end the Davidic king will rule as God’s representative (Isa 9:6; 11:1–10; Ezek 34:23). The son of man (Dan 7:13) will receive universal dominion and the suffering servant (Isa 53) and the eschatological prophet (Isa 61:1–3) will enter history. Judgment and salvation will be accomplished by the personal coming of God (Isa 26:21; Mal 3:1–5). Typical eschatological prophetic voices were heard during the exile. The experiences of the exile and God’s punishment and restoration of Israel from the future set the context for eschatological thinking. The difficult and crisis circumstances of the exile saw the people of Israel stripped of their king, the temple, their beloved Jerusalem and their national identity and land. For the prophets the future will bear God’s restoration of what they had lost. The centre of their hope was focused on the city Jerusalem (Zion). The city would be restored and perfected by God. This apocalyptic restoration (the new Jerusalem coming from God, from above) was kept alive by the prophets. The punishment of Israel’s enemies (Isa 62:1– 3) and the restoration of Israel (Ezek 37:24–25) are definite markers in Old

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Testament eschatology. Indeed, Isaiah 65:17–25 and 66:22–23 envision the re-creation of the cosmos – a new heaven and a new earth. Second Isaiah saw the exile as Israel’s atonement from pre-exilic sin. It is obvious that the typical Old Testament eschatological perspectives have contributed to the general eschatological and apocalyptic eschatological framework of the Apocalypse of John. 3.2. Selected New Testament Perspectives in General God’s decisive eschatological act has already taken place in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, although the final consummation remains still in the future. We find a ‘realized’ (‘already’) and a ‘future’ (‘not yet’) aspect to New Testament eschatology. On the one hand it is ‘the last hour’ (1 Joh 2:18) and on the other hand the final fulfilment of the consummation of God’s kingdom is not completed. The ‘last things’ (eschatology) began with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The church lives between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’ as part of the ongoing process of eschatological fulfilment. Jesus adjusts the future expectation of Jewish apocalyptic-prophetic eschatology by his words that the eschatological rule of God has already drawn near (Mt 4:17). In Jesus own work and person the kingdom of God is already present (Lk 17:20f.). Jesus’ resurrection convinced the believers that the end had already begun (Bauckham 2004, 334). He is the last Adam (1 Cor 15:45), the eschatological man. Eschatological salvation means sharing his resurrection life. To the New Testament writers, Jesus’ death and resurrection are the decisive eschatological events that determine the Christian perspective on the future (cf. Rom 8:11, 2 Cor 4:14; 1 Thess 4:14). We may describe New Testament eschatology distinctively as being Christ-centred, determining man’s eschatological destiny. In the words of the Apocalypse of John, the Lamb, Jesus Christ, is the saviour and judge, the conqueror of evil and the agent of God’s eschatological fulfilment of the Old Testament expectations (cf. Mal 3:1 and Lk 1:76; 7:27). He is also the eschatological man because He has achieved and He defines in his own risen humanity the eschatological destiny of men. Such an inaugurated and Christ-centred eschatological perspective characterizes New Testament eschatology. It has the effect that the believers live between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, as well as in hope, guided by the eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 2:16–18), already participating in the eternal life of the age to come. The new age and the old age overlap when the new humanity in Christ (the new Adam) co-exists with the old humanity of the first Adam. It is a living in the eschatological tension of the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, guided by the Spirit as the in-

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stalment (2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:14) of the eschatological inheritance. The church is still in this world, vulnerable under Satan’s influence. Therefore, persecution will be her share. She is waiting in solidarity together with the whole creation (Rom 8:18– 25; 1 Cor 1:7) with patient endurance until Christ will finally present them perfect before his Father (1 Cor 1:8; 1 Thess 3:13). The kingdom of God, the perfect realization of God’s will for human society, is not to be built by human effort but is God’s own eschatological act. 3.3. Obvious Aspects in New Testament Eschatology Other prominent aspects of New Testament eschatology, only by way of mentioning (cf. Bauckham 2004, 333–339) are: The Signs of the Times. Certain events must happen first (Mt 24:14; 2 Thess 2:2–8). Future fulfilment will accomplish the past history of Christ and the believers. The appearance of the Antichrist, representing the principle of satanic opposition to God and Christ, and a period of unparalleled tribulation will characterize the end period (cf. Mt 24:21f.; Rev 3:10; 7:14). The New Testament finds the Antichrist already present in false prophets and heretical teachers (1 Joh 2:18f., 22; 4:3), as well as in the persecuting Roman Empire (Rev 13). The Coming of Christ. His parousia or ‘second coming’ is Christ’s apokalupsis (revelation) and his epiphaneia (appearing). He will come to destroy the Antichrist and evil (2 Thess 2:8) and gather his own people, living and dead (Mt 24:31; 1 Cor 15:23; 1 Thess 4:14–17), as well as to judge the world (cf. Mt 25:31; Isa 4:9). Christ’s reign will be made visible to all. The Resurrection. At Christ’s second coming the Christian dead will be raised (1 Cor 15:23; 1 Thess 4:16) and those who are still alive will be transformed (1 Cor 15:52) into the resurrection existence without dying. Jesus’ resurrection was the beginning of the eschatological resurrection (1 Cor 15:23) and guarantees the future resurrection of Christians at his coming (cf. 1 Cor 6:14; 15:20–23; 2 Cor 4:14; 1 Thess 4:14). We have to keep in mind that eschatological life is already given to Christians in this age by the Holy Spirit (cf. John 5:24; Rom 8:11; Col 2:12; 3:1). Forgiveness of sin is a reality and proven by resurrection as man’s final attainment of eschatological salvation. The Life Beyond Death. Through Adam all people are naturally mortal and immortality is the gift of God through the resurrection of the whole person. Death, the final enemy to be destroyed (1 Cor 15:26) is ‘abolished’ at Christ’s resurrection (2 Tim 1:10) and will no longer exist at the final end (Rev 20:14). Prosecution may kill the physical body but not the soul of the believer. Between the bodily death and resurrection someone may have a bodiless existence in Christ’s presence (2 Cor 5:2–8; cf. Rom 8:38f.).

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The Judgment. God will judge through his eschatological agent Christ – through his death and resurrection and at the final pronouncement according to Revelation 20:4. Judgment expresses the holiness of God, therefore his impartial righteousness is the standard of judgment (cf. Rom 2:6.11; 2 Tim 4:14). Those who have faith in Christ are free from all condemnation (cf. Joh 5:24; Rom 8:33f.) – that is the meaning of the book of life, the Lamb’s book of life (cf. Rev 13:8; 20:12, 15). The Hell. The final destiny of the unbelievers is hell – from Gehenna, the symbol of judgment (cf. Jer 7:31–33; 19:6f.) and according to the intertestamental literature the term for the eschatological hell of fire (Bauckham 2004, 338). According to the Gospels, hell is pictured as a place of unquenchable fire (cf. Mk 9:43; Mt 18:8; 25:30). And Revelation calls hell the ‘second death’ (2:11; 20:14; 21:8), the situation of eternal destruction (2 Thess 1:9) or punishment (Mt 25:46). Hell is the destiny of Satan (Rev 20:10), the demons (Mt 8:29), the monster from the sea and the false prophet (Rev 19:20), Hades and death (Rev 20:14) and those who have identified themselves with evil in rebellion against God. The eschatological position of the hell is within the gospel’s framework of a call to repentance and faith in Christ. The New Creation. God’s final purpose for his world consists – negatively interpreted – of the destruction of his enemies, Satan and death and the elimination of suffering (cf. Rev 20:10, 14–15; 1 Cor 15:26, 54). From a positive perspective, God’s rule and kingship will prevail (cf. 1 Cor 15:24–28) and the whole material creation will be renewed (Rom 8:19– 23). The redeemed will be like Christ (Rom 8:29) and will know Him face to face (1 Cor 13:12). The life of the redeemed with God is sketched in a number of metaphors: the eschatological banquet (Mt 8:11; Lk 14:15–24); a wedding feast (Mt 25:10; Rev 19:9); paradise restored (Lk 23:43; Rev 2:7); and the new Jerusalem (Hebrews 12; Revelations 21). The final outcome for the redeemed will be having a perfect relationship with God and the Lamb in the new Jerusalem. The millennium according to the Apocalypse (Rev 20) has the role of a demonstration of the victory of Christ and his followers over evil (Rev 20:1–10). The object of Christian hope and fulfilment is not the millennium but the new creation of Revelation 21–22. John was probably influenced by some Jewish apocalyptic writings concerning a preliminary kingdom of the Messiah during this era on earth, prior to the age to come. The theological meaning of the millennium, despite numerous interpretations, is that it expresses the final triumph of Christ over evil and the vindication of his own that have suffered in the present age.

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4. Eschatological Moments according to the Apocalypse 4.1. A Story Behind the Story A dominant strength of the Apocalypse lies in the evocative power of its story, inviting imaginative participation. In the language of symbol and myth the readers are invited to participate according to the core of its narrative, namely the eschatological alignment. The presupposed story behind the story has to be kept in mind in order to become fully part of the eschatological story. This presupposed story begins with the pre-existent God, the Father who was the creator, the Son Jesus Christ, who became man and was slaughtered and the Spirit who guided the believers. The Alpha en Omega motif, applied to Father and Son, reminds the readers of the pre-temporal existence of God (cf. Witherington 2003, 203). To John the story behind the story comes to fulfilment in his narrative. He presupposes the prophecies of the prophets and alludes to the original story. The seven angels with the seven plagues (chapters 15–16) form a typology. The readers are reassured that God will rescue his own as in the past. The pivotal moment in John’s story is the birth of the male child according to chapter 12. It is this male child who has become God’s change agent to bring salvation to humankind. Mainly three moments in the life of Jesus are accentuated: He came from above; He died for our sins; and God exalted Him by resurrection/ascension/exaltation (cf. Witherington 2003, 203–204). The story behind the story (cf. Du Rand 1997, 64) contains the fulcrum of history and eschatology: the death and exaltation of Christ. That is the moment when evil was conquered and Satan caste out of heaven for good. This decisive moment can only result in persecution and martyrdom for the believers. Even more suffering and persecution is coming. The believers will not be immune against suffering but will be spiritually protected within the eschatological perspective that the evil empire of Satan and his followers will be demised while the believers will receive full redemption when the end arrives. This outcome is just the eschatological result of Christ’s death and exaltation. After a spiritual battle, being won by Christ and his followers, the prophesised new earth and new heaven will break through. The preliminary story feeds the Johannine eschatological story according to the Apocalypse. John sees in his own story the fulfilment of the story behind the story. Therefore he draws from the basic story and prophecies to narrate its eschatological fulfilment. He cites from the basic story and uses illustrations and metaphors to present his own story. For example, the present evil and oppressive powers are told in the images of

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Israel’s oppressors like Pharaoh, Babylon and the four empires of Daniel’s vision (cf. Rev 13:2; 14:8; 16:19; 17:5; 18:1–24). The plagues of the exodus have become the illustration of God’ eschatological acts at the end. And the agents of God’s salvation of his own Israel are sketched as prototypes of the recent eschatological deliverance (Moses, Elijah and David; cf. Rev 3:7; 5:5; 11:5–8; 15:1–5; 22:16). The seducers Balaam (Rev 2:14) and Jezebel (Rev 2:20) have become the models of present day false prophets. John reinterprets his apocalyptic symbolism and prophetic tradition in light of the fact that the Christ has already appeared in history. The same Christ confronted the kingdom of this world and was crucified by the same Roman power that now threatens the followers of the Christ. The story of the Apocalypse mentions the death of the historical Jesus as the only act of Christ’s earthly life. His death is not a victimization but the key of God’s power and love. Just as the history of Jesus is related in continuity with the story of Israel, so the readers’ of the Apocalypse story is to be understood in relation to Jesus. The story of the Apocalypse is transparently making use of the story behind the story, focusing on the following possible scheme: creation  Israel  Jesus  church  eschaton.

4.2. The Already, In Time and Not Yet, in Future Eschatology – Providing the Apocalyptic-Prophetic Perspective as a Viewpoint From an eschatological viewpoint – the following hermeneutical considerations have to be kept in mind before describing the typical prophetic and typical apocalyptic perspectives according to the Apocalypse. –

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The Apocalypse’s eschatological moments are to a large extent determined by the situation and the function of the Apocalypse in such a situation. The oppressed will probably be more inclined to an apocalyptic framework of thought. An exegetical view from the preterist point of departure will differ from the futuristic, idealistic and historic views. The Apocalypse contains a synthesis of prophetic and apocalyptic perspectives. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two perspectives. It seems clear that in the Apocalypse the prophetic perspective is subordinated to the apocalyptic perspective where they do not overlap in a apocalyptic-prophetic perspective. In the hermeneutical process of understanding the Apocalypse recent world views can contaminate the story world views.

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Premillennialist dispensationalists tend to focus prominently on prophetic perspectives. Amillennialist understandings tend to focus on apocalyptic symbolism. Allegoric hermeneutical views are problematic and unverifiable. The Apocalypse is read and interpreted as a dramatic narrative with a particular plot and unfolding of the story, keeping in mind the story behind the story. The core of the overall message of the Apocalypse is determined by eschatology whether it flows from prophetic or apocalyptic perspectives.

4.2.1. Typical Characteristics in General to be taken into Consideration The already, in time perspective Typical (in general) of so called prophetic perspective

The not yet, in future perspective Typical (in general) of so called apocalyptic perspective

Emphasis on earthly history Prophetic formulas Judgement takes place in earthly history Seals, trumpets and bowls are part of earthly history Judgement on Rome in this old world order Churches’ story part of this world order God’s story unfolds in earthly history Conversions of nations and forgiveness of sin part of earthly history Martyrdom typical of earthly existence

Greater focus on transcendency Outworldly journey emphasized The role of seer and his visions Dialogues with transcendent figures Breaking of new world order Focusing on future and supernatural Crisis of receivers typical Determined outcome foreseen Heavenly mysteries revealed Unveiling of secrets Transcendence of death Consoling function in crisis situation Emphasis on spiritual body (white garments) Emphasis on resurrection Directed towards new heaven and earth New Jerusalem the climax of salvation Spiritual battle at the end Announcement of judgement in heaven Adventus Christus the climax

4.2.2. Survey of the Already, In Time (Prophetic) and Not Yet, In Future (Apocalyptic) Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John The following survey functionally focuses on the text of the Apocalypse itself. It is only an effort to put the text itself on the table and does not claim or pretend to be absolute. The ‘already, in time’ perspective is compared to the ‘not yet, in future’ perspective.

Eschatology in the Apocalypse of John The already, in time Perspective 1:3 The words of this prophecy 1:7 Adventus Christus 1:19 Hellenistic prophetic formula 2:1ff. Letters of prophetic messages 2:10 Earthly suffering 2:22 Judgement on earth 2:25 Perseverance in history 3:3 Adventus Christus 3:10 Judgement on earth 3:11 Perseverance in history 4:11 God as creator of this earth 5:12 Lamb stained (Golgotha) Scroll of the Unfolding of History 6:1–17 Seals of judgement on earth (8:1–2) 6:10 Judgement on earth 6:11 Until full number on earth 7:1–8 Sealing on earth 8:6–9:21 Trumpets judgment on earth 10:1–11 Little scroll of prophecy 11:1–12 Witnesses on earth 12:5–6 Messianic mother gives birth 12:11 Death of the Lamb 12:14–17 War on earth 13:1–10 Beast from sea 13:11–18 Beast from earth 14:14–20 Harvest judgement 15:7–16:17 Bowls judgement 17:1 Prostitute Rome judged 18:9–21 Lamentations: kings, merchants, shipmasters 19:9–10 The angel en John 22:6.8–11 Prophetic message 22:7 Adventus Christus 22:12–21 Adventus Christus

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The not yet, in future Perspective 1:3.4.7.8 References to future 1:9–18 communication with heavenly figure 2:7 Paradise in future 2:11 Spiritual second death 2:17 Apocalyptic metaphor of hidden manna 2:26–28 Authority over nations at the end 3:4,5 Spiritual body in white garments; Book of Life 3:12 Heavenly reward at the end 3:12b New heaven and new earth 3:21 Heavenly remuneration 4:1–11 Heavenly vision of God as creator 5:1–14 Heavenly vision of God as saviour 6:10–11 Martyrs given white garments – spiritual body 7:9–17 Vision of heavenly multitude 8:3 Prayers of saints at heavenly altar 11:1 Measuring of temple 11:13 An earthquake 11:16–19 Elders in heavenly worship 11:19 Heavenly temple opened 12:1 Messianic mother’s origin 12:3 Red dragon in heaven 12:4 War in heaven 12:7–10 War in heaven 14:1–5 Vision of 1444 000 14:6 Messages of three heavenly angels 14:14–20 Harvest as apocalyptic judgement 15:2–4 Conquerors song of Moses 15:5–6 Seven angels in heaven 16:18–21 An earthquake 18:1 Communication of heavenly angel 18:21–24 Angel with symbolic stone 19:1–5 Heavenly multitude’s hallelujah chorus 19:6–8 Heavenly announcement of marriage of Lamb 19:11–16 Heavenly vision: Christ on white horse 19:17–21 communication by angel – judgement on beasts 20:1–6 Satan bound for 1000 years 20:7–10 Defeat of Satan

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4.2.3. Systemising Selected Moments of Already, In Time (Prophetic) Eschatology The prologue of the Apocalypse designates its content as ‘revelation’ (DMSRNDYOX\La) in verse 1 and as ‘prophecy’ (SURIKWHLYD) in verse 3. The story is situated in the context of early Christian prophecy. John was probably a member of a travelling circle of preachers in the prophetic tradition, visiting the churches of the province of Asia (22:6) (cf. Bauckham 1993, 3). We may assume that the reading of the Apocalypse in the context of Christian worship meetings could have been a substitute for John himself prophesying in person. In such a way a Christian preacher in the prophetic tradition conveyed his visionary revelations in the form of a report to the church (cf. Acts 10:9–11, 18 and Hermas, Vis 1–4). The Christian prophetic preacher could also have delivered oracles that were given by God. In the Apocalypse mainly prophetic reports of visions are found, though oracular prophetic visions also occur (cf. 1:8 and 22:12–13). The seven messages in the letters to the churches (2:1–3:22) are oracles delivered as Christ’s words to the churches. We should also see 13:9–10; 14:13b and 16:15 as typical prophetic oracles, interrupting the accounts of the visions. The first of the seven beatitudes in the Apocalypse (1:3) can be understood in a already, in time (prophetic) way, exhorting the readers to listen to and to obey the message (cf. 16:15; 22:7). The other four beatitudes (14:13; 19:9; 20:6 and 22:14) promise the readers future rewards. The parousia pronouncement in 1:7 conflate two Old Testament texts (Dan 7:13 and Zech 12:10). The Danielic passage tells of the ‘one like a son of man’ coming ‘with the clouds of heaven’. The ‘one like a son of man’ is to establish an ‘everlasting dominion’. The adventus Christus, as interpreted according to Daniel 7, is a prominent already, in time (prophetic) theme in the Apocalypse (cf. 22:7–21). Zechariah 12:10–14 foretells the repentance of Israel while 12:1–9 narrates the truth that God will give to his own victory over the nations. John may be insinuating the conversion of the nations through this. The eschatological war of Zechariah 12 and 14 can be connected with the cosmic war in the Apocalypse. The eschatological victory of God over his enemies (Zech 14:1–5) has led to the repentance of the nation (Zech 12:10) and of the nations (Zech 14:16 = Rev 1:7) (Osborne 2002, 69).

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According to a prophetic oracle in 1:19 the risen Christ gives to John the commission: ‘Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place’. This is a common Hellenistic formula used to describe a typical prophecy utterance (Van Unnik 1963, 88; cf. Yarbro Collins 1990, 64). The prophetic messenger formula WDYGH OHYJHL (‘This is what … says’) in 2:1b to introduce Christ’s description in each of the seven letter messages is a prophetic formula, deriving from Old Testament patterns. This formula was used by Persian kings as well as Old Testament prophets in authoritative decrees (Osborne 2002, 111). Muse means that this formula shows that the seven letter messages are primarily prophetic (already, in time) in nature (1986, 147–161). To emphasise the prophetic oracular character of this formula it occurs 21 times of Yahweh in the Minor Prophets (cf. Muse 1986, 153) The conclusion can be drawn that Christ functions in the prophetic (already, in time) oracular role of Yahweh. The world view and eschatology of the Apocalypse remarkably fits into already, in time (prophetic) eschatology according to the acts of divine judging and redemption. The unfolding of God’s judgment takes place in the structures of the earthly and historical reality and through the agency of human persons. The three septets of judgment, the seals, trumpets and bowls are already, in time unfolding on earth (chs 6–16). The seventh seal encompasses the trumpets and the seventh trumpet encompasses the bowls. The seventh of each ends at the eschaton. The sixth seal is at the threshold of the parousia and the seventh trumpet shows the impact of the parousia. The cycles of septets are proceeding via a progressive intensification. The thematic parallels with the eschatological discourse of Mark 13 are obvious: war; strife; famine; death; persecution; earthquakes; and cosmic disturbances. Against Beasley Murray (1978), Court (1979) and Giesen (1997), I am not convinced that John shows direct literary dependence exclusively on the Oliviet discourse. The typical idea of the persecution of God’s people, divine judgment of the wicked and evil, and comic signs preceding the eschaton is well known from Daniel and Zechariah via the inter-testamental apocalypse. Thus the expectation of judgment at the end has always been part of eschatological expectations. Not even to speak of the urgency and necessity of balancing God’s scale at the end which is part of the already, in time perspective. To a large extent the narrative of the Apocalypse is dominated by the issue of judgment. The epic of the exodus story is, for example, an anthology of judgment. The judgment story begins with the plagues upon Pharaoh for his stubbornness, then the murmuring of the Israelites result in scenes of judgment, to reach its climax in Numbers 15 when God sentences the nation to forty years of wondering in the wilderness. We ob-

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serve a particular rhythm: apostasy; judgment; repentance; and deliverance. In such a way the Old Testament prophetic books contain stories of national judgment. In the same way, as a parallel, the story of the Apocalypse has become in some sense a judgment story with a progressive intensification towards the end of this world order. The coming of God’s great expose in the parousia of Christ functions in the story of the Apocalypse of John as the final judgment. The wicked will seek to hide (6:15–17) and the righteous are waiting with great anticipation (6:9, 10). The result will be the unveiling of the great divide: the wicked are shut out of God’s presence forever (21:27; 22:15) and the righteous will experience God’s presence forever (21:3–4; 22:14). The Apocalypse portrays an already, in time and immanent as well as a final execution of judgment as punishment or as reward. The false prophetess Jezebel and her followers will experience a sickbed and great and great tribulation and even death unless they repent (2:20–23). On the other hand, the righteous or ‘the one who conquers’ will be rewarded in this order and in the new order (cf. 2:7, 11, 17, 25–27; 3:5, 12, 21). The seals of judgment (6:1–8:1) of the evil are interrupted to mention the reward to the righteous when they are sealed on their foreheads (7:1–8). The righteous martyrs are already, in time given white garments and have ‘to rest a little longer’ (6:10–11) on earth ‘until the number of their fellow servants … should be complete’. The judgments are part of God’s eschatological progression with his world toward the final end. The replacement of the world order unfolds as a progressive dismantling of creation, first it is shaken in the seals (6:12–14) then in the trumpets and bowls one-third and then the whole are overthrown. And in the final consummation this world order will be destroyed (20:11; 21:1). The trumpet plagues replicate the Egyptian plagues, unfolding God’s already and in time judgment on earth (8:6–9:21). The seventh trumpet symbolizes the eschaton. The trumpet judgments intensify the seals. The judgment alluded to in 14:8 and 10–11: ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon, the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of her passion…’ is spelled out in the imagery of a harvest judgment as the fulfilling of Joel 3:13: ‘Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread for the winepress is full’. This follows after the prophetic eschatological insinuation in 3:12, where we read: ‘Let the nations stir themselves up and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat for there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations’. To ‘drink the wine of God’s wrath’ is a poignant image of God’s already and in time earthly judgement in the prophetic eschatological framework (cf. 14:10). Those who drink the TXPRYa of immorality (14:8b) will drink the cup of God’s TXPRYa in 14:10. This harsh picture illustrates God’s earthly judgment of the wicked in the language of the prophets (cf.

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Jer 25:15–18, 27–28; Isa 51:17; Zech 12:2). We see a shift from the already, in time (prophetical) to the not yet, in future (apocalyptic) when the enemies of God will experience eternal torment, on earth and also in front of the Lamb and the holy angels (14:10–11). In God’s judgmental advance up to the final end, the images of the grain harvest (14:14–16) and grape harvest (14:17–20) are meaningful. Some exegetes see in both two synonyms for the judgment of the wicked (cf. Roloff 1984; Giesen 1997; Aune 1998; and Beale 1999); others interpret the grain harvest as the judgement of the righteous and the grape harvest as the judgment of the sinners (cf. Lohmeyer 1953; Prigent 2002; Bauckham 1993, 35–39). The latter interpretation is more probable because it is the ‘son of man’ that executes the grain harvest and the angel of judgment that reaps the grape harvest. In the process of the unfolding of God’s judgment the lex talionis has played a vital role in the harvest imagery. The bowl plagues (15:1–16:21) form the introduction to the climax of God’s judgment when He will accomplish the final destruction of evil by demolishing Babylon (Rome). From a preterist hermeneutical viewpoint the fall of Rome defines the final moment in God’s eschatological judgment process (17:1–19:5). The sixth bowl evokes the expectation of a great battle between East and West (cf. 16:12–14): ‘The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east … to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty’. Again, from a preterist view, this image suggests that the battle of Parthia against Rome is a new exodus. The judgment on Rome is also equivalent to salvation of the righteous people of God (cf. Yarbro Collins 1990, 65). The war language is in the hyperbolic idiom, speaking of ‘the kings of the whole world to assemble for battle’ (16:14). This universal war is envisioned as part of history because it is followed by the announcement and the destruction of the historical city of Rome in chapters 17 and 18. Chapter 17 concentrates on Rome as the great prostitute that is drunk with the blood of the saints and chapter 18 looks at Rome as the great city to be destroyed. Like the destruction of the beast, Rome can be seen as an historical event. In die description of the battle we find a mix of the earthly and heavenly in such a way that some would say it is more not yet, in future (apocalyptic) than already, in time (prophetic) (cf. Hansen 1976, 31). The hatred of the vassal kings against Rome and the role played by the Parthians convince me, from a preterist perspective, that the destruction of Rome as climax of God’s judgment should be seen as historical and therefore part of the already, in time (prophetic) eschatological perspective.

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On the other hand, God’s judgment of the righteous brings reward for those whose names are written in the book of life. The rewards are to be understood as imminent and/or transcendent. The righteous will not escape ‘the hour of trial’ (3:11) but will be protected by God. Although they are experiencing earthly suffering, they have to persevere (cf. 2:10, 25; 3:11). The sealing of the 144 000 on earth is the answer to 6:17: ‘Who can stand?’. The sealing as symbolic act is emphasizing that the righteous will ‘stand’ in the midst of the judgments poured out on this world because they bear the ‘seal’ of God. God will protect his own during the end period on earth. To the church in Philadelphia (3:10) the promise is given: ‘…I will keep you from the hour of trial …’. The sealing of the righteous in 7:1–8 details the way this ‘protection’ is carried out. It is further illustrated in 9:4 where the locusts are told to harm only ‘those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads’. And in 16:6, after the third angel poured out his bowl, the angel in charge says: ‘For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!’ The believers are spared because they have been sealed by God. 4.2.4. Systemising of Selected Moments of Not Yet, In Future (Apocalyptic) Eschatology The Apocalypse also belongs to the not yet, in future (apocalyptic) tradition of visionary disclosure. As a seer in a vision, John is taken to God’s throne room in heaven to learn the secrets of the divine (cf. 1 En 14–16; 2 En 20–21). John’s story discloses a transcendent perspective of this world – seeing the present order from the perspective of God’s ultimate purpose for human history. The visions are opening the readers’ world to divine transcendence. John’s readers’ everyday-world, seen in heavenly perspective, is to counter the Roman imperial world (Thompson 1990, 36; cf. Yarbro Collins 1996). The opening vision (1:9–20) describes the exalted Christ ‘like a son of man’ among the ‘golden lamp stands’, symbolising the churches. From Christ’s’ mouth ‘came a sharp two-edged sword’, indicating control and judgment (1:16; cf. Isa 11:4). Christ is depicted as the fulfilment of Old Testament imagery and apocalyptic hope (cf. Osborne 2002, 100). Whatever the circumstances of the readers are, the world of the not yet, in future and divine transcendence has encouraged them to persevere (cf. Boring 1986, 259–261). The second vision of God in his heavenly throne-room (4:1–5:14) provides the typical apocalyptic answer to the question: Who is in control? The throne dominates chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 celebrates God as creator and chapter 5 as the God of redemption. The throne room vision does

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not only disclose the transcendent perspective but is also a response to the ‘glory’ of Caesar’s throne which is part of the imperial cult (Osborne 2002, 218; cf. Aune 1983, 12). God and the Lamb are worshipped in the throneroom in contrast with the beast who is worshipped by his followers (cf. 13:4, 8, 12, 14–15). The victory of the Lamb and his exaltation to God’s throne-room does not occur at the final end but has been achieved at the cross (cf. 5:6). The scroll (5:1), representing God’s plan and idealized history, has to be unfolded in world history. According to the apocalypticprophetic divine transcendence, God, sitting on his throne, is in control of his creation and salvation. The deliverance from the old order and the establishment of a radically new order is insinuated by the vision of the souls under the altar (6:9–11). They ask how long it will be until God will avenge their blood on ‘those who dwell on earth’. Their cry reflects a crisis situation which underlies much of the subsequent text of the Apocalypse. The resolution of this crisis is in the judgement on Babylon and its associated kings and nations. On the positive side, the cry is indirectly answered in the restoration of Jerusalem. It is remarkable that it is a bowl angel, carrying the wrath of God in response to the martyrs’ cry (cf. 16:1; 21:9) who shows John both the fall of Babylon (Rome) and the descent of the New Jerusalem. From the sphere of the divine transcendence the martyrs on earth are encouraged by the dead martyrs to persevere and be patient ‘until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been’. We must keep in mind that the righteous are protected from the wrath of God but not from the wrath of the beast, who may physically harm them but not spiritually (cf. 11:7). The vision of the great multitude before the throne of God and before the Lamb (7:9–17) is another typical not yet, in future apocalyptic message from the sphere of divine transcendence. They are probably the same as the 144 000 sealed according to 7:1–8 (with Roloff 1984; Giesen 1997; Beale 1999; and Aune 1998; and against Walvoord 1966 and Kraft 1974). The purpose of this interlude is to give a heavenly transcendent view of the 144 000. They are in heaven worshipping God after the number of martyrs has been competed (cf. 6:11). The multitude is dressed in white garments, symbolizing the state of eschatological salvation. In the cultural context the white garments express the idea that the human body will be transformed into or replaced by an eschatological spiritual body. In other words, the faithful human beings will be granted a heavenly mode of existence. This multitude martyrs have ‘come out of the great tribulation’ (7:14), probably referring to the ‘three and a half’ years of final persecution. The white colour indicates the end-time joy and also the immaculate purity of a conqueror (cf. Roloff 1984, 90).

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The twenty-four elders are celestial beings (cf. 4:4). Who with the four living creatures often lead heavenly worship (cf. 4:10–11; 5:8–10, 14; 7:11; 19:4). According to 11:16, 17 they are sitting on thrones to add to their reigning capacity. They emphasise the sovereignty and majesty of God in his divine transcendence. Contrary to this apocalyptic eschatological picture, the Roman emperor had vassal kings subservient to him (cf. 16:13–14; 17:12–14). The God who was sovereign in the past will also be in control in the present and future (11:17). According to 11:1–2 the earthly temple (= church) is reassured, emphasising God’s ownership and protection. And in 11:19 the heavenly temple was opened. The ark, symbol of Yahweh’s presence with Israel in the heart of the holy of holies, has become visible. The eschaton has arrived; the covenant has become an apocalyptic-prophetic reality (cf. Koester 2001, 78). The war in heaven (12:7–9) elaborates on 12:4 where we read that the tail of the red dragon ‘swept down a third of the stars of heaven’. It is true that the Old Testament never mentions the fall of Satan but Jewish tradition contains stories of a primordial fall (cf. 1 En 6–11; 2 En 29:4–5). This primordial fall is the thrust of 12:7–9 (Osborne 2002, 469). We have to keep in mind the three ‘bindings’ of Satan: in the primordial past, at the ministry and the death of Jesus and at the eschaton. The function of 12:7–9 as an eschatological event focuses on the defeat of Leviathan the dragon at creation (cf. Ps 73:13–14). In the same framework Jesus’ statement in Luke 10:18: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven’ is to be understood as a vision of Satan’s original fall. Through the fall of Satan from heaven the apocalyptic-prophetic judgment of Satan is proclaimed to give perspective to everyday life on earth. It places the war on earth (12:13–17) in perspective. The sounds of the totally new order are heard in a glimpse of the not yet, in future apocalyptic eschatological future in 14:1–5. John sees the Lamb and 144 000 saints on mount Zion accompanied by the heavenly communication of a choir. The result of an earthly decision will become visible at the final and ‘on Mount Zion’: The choice was between the mark of God (7:3–4) and the mark of the beast (13:16–18). The vision of the Lamb and 144 000 saints on Mount Zion provides a glimpse of the divine transcendence and the futuristic apocalyptic heavenly destination of the righteous. This heavenly vision (14:1–5) is in deliberate contrast to 13:16– 18, describing the marking of the followers of the beast on their right hands or foreheads. The earth dwellers go through the final period of this order stamped with the Antichrist’s mark of identity in contrast with the 144 000 who are rejoicing, already stamped with the heavenly identity. Schüssler Fiorenza (1985, 124–125) defines 14:1–5 as a ‘timeless truth about discipleship, victory and sacrifice’ on the part of the saints.

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Over against the mournful laments of the three groups affected by Babylon’s demise (18:9–19), we take notice of the joyful heavenly hallelujah chorus in 19:1–5. It is joy in contrast to the cry of the martyrs in 6:9– 11 as well as the appeal in 18:20: ‘Rejoice over her (= Babylon), o heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!’ Again and again God’s acts of salvation and judgment on earth are met by a reminder of the divine transcendence involved in the process. The final judgment and destruction of the sinners takes place in three stages: first, Christ returns as judge on the white horse with the armies of heaven to destroy the nations – an apocalyptic heavenly moment in the story (19:11–16); second, the carrion birds are invited to the ‘great banquet of God’ (in contrast to the ‘wedding feast of the Lamb’) to feast on those of the nations about to die in battle (19:17–18); third, the battle occurs and the armies of the beast are slaughtered (19:19–21). It becomes clearer that the nearer the final end comes, the more the not yet, in future apocalyptic eschatological perspective is engaged. The role of Christ is dominant in the final stages of the narrative and it is powerfully portrayed in the story of the Apocalypse. According to 5:5–6 Christ is sketched as the Lamb who is the conquering figure, and now as the conqueror He is also the bridegroom (19:6–8). As conqueror He rides a white warhorse to judge but is described as faithful (19:11). His name is in a sense unknown (19:12), but, in another sense He is ‘the Word of God’ (19:16). He destroys with the sword of judgment (19:15a), wielding the shepherd’s club (19:15), and at the same time treads God’s winepress of wrath (19:15). The surprising and shocking apocalyptic truth is revealed: the armies gather to fight (19:19), but no battle takes place (cf. Osborne 2002, 670). Only the beast and the false prophet are cast into the lake of fire (19:20; 20:10, 14) and the armies are killed (19:21), awaiting the final announcement of judgment (20:11–14). The last series of visions speaks explicitly about the eschatological resurrection (cf. 20:4–6, 11–16). The most prominent announcement indicating the difference between the old and the new order, between the already, in time and the not yet, in future, is noticeable in 21:4: ‘…death shall be no more … for the former things have passed away’. The binding of Satan (20:1–6) is narrated as a divine intervention from heaven, to be interpreted as part of apocalyptic eschatology. It is not my intention to get involved in the debate about amillennialistic, premillennialistic or postmillennialistic interpretative viewpoints, but we may ask: How does 20:1–6 fit into the story of the final end, and what is the theological contribution? Revelation 20:1–6 forms part of the larger section 17:1–20:15, dealing with God’s final judgment over evil and the arrival of the eschaton. Chap-

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ters 17 and 18 sketch the final judgment on Babylon (Rome) and the reign of the beast. The reaction of the believers in heaven is heard in the hallelujah chorus, praising God for his righteous judgment and indication of the suffering ‘servants’ (19:1–5). The latter part of 19:6–10 tells of the parousia and praises God for establishing the marriage of the Lamb. The indication of the righteous comes full circle because they have become the bride of Christ and are also invited to the wedding (cf. Osborne 2002, 697). The mentioned themes coalesce in 19:1–6, describing the defeat of the dragon through divine intervention as well as the final indication of the saints. The apocalyptic eschatological function of 20:1–6 is to emphasise that through divine intervention, instigated in transcendence by God Himself, Satan is bound in the abyss (20:1–3) and cast into the lake of fire for eternity (20:10). It is summarizing two crucial themes in the Apocalypse: the elimination of Satan and the indication of the righteous (cf. 6:11). Rossing (1998, 264) even goes as far as to say that 20:1–6 functions to encounter the ‘realized eschatology’ of Rome’s golden period that had a millennial triumphalism about it. John’s answer to the claims of the Rome Empire and the emperors is apocalyptic-prophetic eschatological in its function as a bridge from Rome (Babylon) to the new Jerusalem. The arrival of the new heaven and new earth (21:1) concludes a series of events and functions as the climax result of the judgment of the righteous. The series of events are introduced by NDL HL?GRQ (cf. 19:11, 17, 19; 20:1, 4, 11, 12; 21:1): the parousia, Armageddon, millennium, the final announcement of judgment and then, the arrival of the new heaven and earth. This eternal state is the contact moment between prophetic and apocalyptic in an apocalyptic-prophetical eschatology – the descent of the new Jerusalem (21:1–2). The loud voice from the throne explains to the readers that the significance of this is the fulfilment of all the Old Testament hopes (prophetic) and the divine intervention, the removal of all suffering of God’s people (21:3–4). The divine transcendence has finished its work (21:6a) with a climax, the new Jerusalem. The apocalyptic perspective has the last say. The new order is totally without death, grief, crying, distress or even the sun and moon and never again will night fall. Although the form of 21:9–22:5, and even the content, are very similar to Ezekiel 40–48, fitting the already, in time (prophetic) perspective, the new Jerusalem ‘comes down out of heaven from God’ (21:10). Even the issues of ‘creating new heavens and a new earth’ may be traced back to Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 and the passing away of the things of the old order echoes Isaiah. The remarkable of the new Jerusalem as final apocalypticprophetic event is that God, the Lamb and the holy city come down to earth, rather than the faithful being taken up into heaven. The emphasis

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falls on a total new order which insinuates the universal conversion of the nations.

5. Conclusion The question posed at the beginning asked whether the already, in time (prophetic) perspective along the lines of the earthly history is reconcilable with the apocalyptic eschatological perspective. The story of the Apocalypse is a canonical example, in my opinion, of a synthesis of the two views: therefore, the combination in the term apocalyptic-prophetic. The last series of visions shows that both the already, in time (prophetic) and the not yet, in future (apocalyptic) views of the final end seeing into a new order are incorporated to make God’s plan understandable. Some see prophetic promises fulfilled in a literally ‘thousand year’ reign on earth (20:4– 6). The apocalyptic-prophetic hopes are fulfilled in the general resurrection (20:11–15), the new creation and the descent of the new Jerusalem. In the whole, the not yet, in future (apocalyptic) eschatological perspective subordinates the already, in time (prophetic) eschatological perspective. For interpreters advocating the not yet, futuristic perspective with emphasis on a heavenly world, visions and a personal afterlife the receivers will be those who believe in the objective reality of heaven, the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. And the already, in time perspective may appeal more to Christians with a realistic and perhaps materialistic perspective for which this world counts. Both the perspectives, coming together in the apocalyptic-prophetic view, exegetically enrich an appropriate eschatological understanding of the Apocalypse of John. Works Consulted Allen, LC 1990 Ezekiel 20–48. Dallas. Aune, DE 1981 The social matrix of the Apocalypse of John. Biblical Research 26, 16– 32. – 1983 Prophecy in early Christianity and the ancient Mediterranean world. Grand Rapids. – 1986 The Apocalypse of John and the problem of genre. Semeia 36, 65–69. – 1997–1998 Revelation. 3 Vols. Dallas. – 2005 Understanding Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic. Word and World 25, 3, 233– 245. Barr, DL 2001 Waiting for the end that never comes: The narrative logic of John’s story, in Studies in the Book of Revelation, Moyise, S (ed.), Edinburgh. Barr, J 1975 Jewish Apocalyptic in recent scholarly study. BJRL 58, 9–35. Bauckham, R 1993 The theology of the Book of Revelation. Edinburgh.

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– 2004 Eschatology, in The New Bible Dictionary, Marshall, IH, Millard, AR, Packer, JI & Wiseman, DJ (eds.), Leicester & Downers Grove, 333–339. Beale, Gk 1999 The Book of Revelation. Grand Rapids. Beasley-Murray, GR 1978 The Book of Revelation. London. Boring, ME 1986 The Theology of Revelation. ‘The Lord our God Almighty reigns’. Interp 40, 3, 257–269. Collins, JJ 1974 Apocalyptic eschatology as the transcendence of death. CBQ 36(1), 21– 43. – 1979 Apocalypse: The Morphology of a genre. Missoula. – 1983 The Apocalyptic imagination: An introduction to the Jewish matrix of Christianity. New York. – 1991 Genre, ideology and social movements in Jewish Apocalypticism, in Mysteries and Revelations: Apocalyptic Studies since the Uppsala Colloquium, Collins, JJ & Charlesworth, JH (eds.), Sheffield, 11–32. – 1992 Apocalypses and Apocalypticism: Early Jewish Apocalypticism. ABD I, 282–288. Court, JM 1979 Myth and history in the Book of Revelation. Atlanta. Cross, FM 1973 Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the history of the Religion of Israel. Cambridge. Cross, FL & Livingstone, EA (eds.) 1983 Eschatology, in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, New York, 469. Davies, PR 1990 Qumran and Apocalyptic or Obscurum per Obscurius. JNES 49, 127– 134. Duling, D & Perrin, N 1994 The New Testament. Fort Worth. Du Rand, JA 1991 Johannine Perspectives, Part 1: Introduction to the Johannine writings. Midrand. – 1997 ‘Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven’. The theological motif of the Apocalypse of John. Neot 31(1), 59–75. Frey, J 2005 Eschatology in the Johannine circle, in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel, Van Belle, G, Van der Watt, JG & Maritz, P (eds.), Leuven, 47–82. Giesen, H 1997 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Regensburg. Hanson, PD 1975 The dawn of Apocalyptic: The historical and sociological roots of Jewish Apocalyptic eschatology. Philadelphia. – 1976 Apocalypticism. IBD Sup., 231–242. – 1987 Old Testament Apocalyptic. Nashville. Hellholm, D 1982 Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean world and the Near East. Tübingen. – (ed.) 1983 Apocalypticism in the Mediterranean world and the Near East. Tübingen. – 1986 The problem of Apocalyptic genre and the Apocalypse of John, in Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and social setting, Yarbro Collins, A (ed.), Decatur, 13–64. Hill, D 1972 Prophecy and prophets in the Revelation of St John. NTS 18, 402–418. Himmelfarb, M 1983 Tours of hell: An Apocalyptic form in Jewish and Christian literature. Philadelphia. Kistemaker, SJ 2001 New Testament commentary: Exposition of the Book of Revelation. Grand Rapids. Koch, K 1972 The rediscovery of apocalyptic: A polemical work on a neglected area of biblical Studies and its damaging effects on theology and Philosophy. Naperville. Koester, C 2001 Revelation and the end of all things. Grand Rapids. Kraft, H 1974 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Tübingen. Lohmeyer, E 1953 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Tübingen. Mounce, RH 1998 The Book of Revelation. Grand Rapids.

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Murphy, FJ 1994 Apocalypse and Apocalypticism: The state of the question. Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 2, 147–179. Muse, RL 1986 Revelation 2–3: A critical analysis of seven prophetic messages. JETS 29, 147–161. Newsom, C 1990 Apocalyptic and the discourse of the Qumran community. JNES 49, 135–144. Osborne, GR 2002 Revelation. Grand Rapids. Prigent, P 2002 Commentary on the Apocalypse of John. Tübingen. Roloff, J 1984 Die Offenbarung des Johannes. Zürich. Rossing, BR 1998 The choice between two cities: Whore, bride and empire in the Apocalypse. Harrisburg. Rowland, CC 2005 The Book of Revelation, in The New Interpreter’s Bible: New Testament Survey, Kock, LE (ed.), Nashville, 339–386. Schüssler Fiorenza, E 1980 Apokalypsis and Propheteia. The book of Revelation in the context of early Christian prophecy, in L’Apocalypse johannique et l’Apocalyptique dans le Nouveau Testament, Lambrecht, J (ed.), Leuven, 105–128. – 1985 The Book of Revelation. Justice and judgment. Philadelphia. Thompson, LL 1990 The Book of Revelation: Apocalypse and empire. New York. Van Unnik, WC 1963 A formula describing prophecy. NTS 9, 86–94. Vawter, B 1980 Apocalyptic. Its relation to prophecy. CBQ 22, 33–46. Walvoord, JF 1966 The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Chicago. Wilson, RR 1981 From prophecy to apocalyptic. Semeia 21, 79–95. Witherington III, B 2003 Revelation. Cambridge. Yarbro Collins, A 1984 Crisis and catharsis: The power of the Apocalypse. Philadelphia. – (ed.) 1986 Early Christian Apocalypticism: Genre and social setting. Decatur. – 1990 Eschatology in the Book of Revelation. Ex Auditu 6, 63–72. – 1996 Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian apocalypticism. Leiden, New York & Köln.

Eschatology: Some Explorations into its Immediate Influence and Development

Eschatology in the Didache Jonathan A Draper 1. Introduction Oronzo Giordano writing in Italian in 1964 (123) argues that ‘the eschatological aims ... pervade the whole work’ from the opening Two Ways until the eschatological conclusion. He finds a fervent spirit of expectation which stands parallel to the earliest Christian traditions expressed in Paul and the Synoptics. On the other hand, writing in a monograph comparing Mark, Matthew and the Didache, Vicky Balabanski writes in 1997 (208): Unlike Matthew, the author of Didache 16 does not seem to consider the present as part of the ‘last days’. This seems to confirm a tendency towards decline in the imminence of eschatological expectation within communities which are not experiencing a period of external or severe internal stress. ... The expectation of the parousia is maintained in Didache 16, but its imminence is no longer prominent, and the function of the reiteration of the parousia-hope is primarily in the interests of paraenesis.

It is hard to see how two such different conclusions could come from the study of the same text. However, this kind of fundamental disagreement over the nature of the Didache, its date and its orientation, has dogged research from its first publication in 1883 until the present. With regard to the study of any aspect of this rather enigmatic text, which has occasioned so much study and so many contradictory theories, it is important to note that it is a composite work, which draws on multiple sources – though even this is disputed: Milavec (2003) has recently argued for a purposive unity in the work from beginning to end. I would agree with Milavec that there is a certain unity in the text as the expression of the rule and life of one community or group of communities, but would nevertheless leave open the question of sources. One of these is the Two Ways, which has deep roots in Jewish tradition, attested in the Qumran Scrolls (e.g. 1QS 3:13–4:26), the Testament of the Twelve Patriarch (e.g. TAsh) and Derekh Eretz Zutah among others, as well as the Epistle of Barnabas, the Doctrina apostolorum and various Church Orders. This is not the place to examine the complex development of this tradition (see Audet 1996; Rordorf 1996), only to note that Didache 1–6 draws on traditional material as a source. Then 1:3–6 and 8 contain material found in ‘Q’. The Eucharistic prayers in 9–10 may also draw on traditional liturgical material which

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predates the final redaction of the Didache around 100 CE. The hospitality rules of 11–13 may reflect early material current in the liturgical praxis of the community. The Apocalypse of chapter 16 may also have been incorporated from an independent source or tradition, although it has been suggested that it formed the original ending of the Two Ways tradition, since Jewish forms of the Two Ways usually end with an eschatological warning and the Epistle of Barnabas seems to follow the same pattern (Bammel 1996). A further problem relating to any analysis of this text is its relationship with Matthew’s Gospel. It contains material from ‘Q’ which is usually closest to the form of the material in Matthew, but sometimes to the form found in Luke. The wording, however, is never verbatim the same as either. It is likely to represent independent use of the same material, as a majority of Didache scholars maintain (e.g. Glover 1958; Audet 1958; Rordorf 1991; Draper 1996; Jefford 1989; van de Sandt & Flusser 2002; Milavec 2003), particularly since the work of Helmut Koester in his influential early work, Synoptische Überlieferung bei den apostolischen Väter (1957), but there is still no consensus on this issue, particularly since the Didache refers beyond itself to the ‘gospel’. New Testament scholars working on the ‘Synoptic Problem’ tend to assume the priority of the gospels and view other material as ‘sub apostolic’ or ‘post apostolic’, whatever that means (e.g. Massaux 1990–1993; Tuckett 1996). Balabanski points out the difference of opinion between ‘Didachists’ and ‘New Testament scholars’, but himself simply falls back into the mould of New Testament scholar. What if the Didache were written before Matthew who uses and redacts it as a source alongside Mark, for instance, as Alan Garrow (2004) has argued in a recent monograph? Again it is not clear whether the ‘gospel’ refers to oral tradition or to a written source. One of the perspectives which this essay will attempt to obtain from its examination of eschatology in the Didache will be an overview of the consistency of its eschatological perspective between the various sections, in particular between the eucharistic prayers and the Apocalypse. Another will be the extent to which the Didache does represent a derivative and attenuated eschatology. The orientation of the essay will be towards the concept(s) of time in the Didache and the nature of the fulfilment events on which it is based, how the community envisaged its contemporary position, and the promised fulfilment of promise in the end time events.

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2. Eschatology in the Eucharistic Prayers The first important expression of the eschatological consciousness of the Didache community occurs in the Eucharistic Prayers. Since these are thanksgiving prayers, in the form of Jewish berakoth, they are oriented towards recall of the great deeds of God in the past for which thanksgiving is made and which serve as the basis of future expectations of God’s saving acts. It is striking that there is no mention of the death of Jesus on the Cross in these prayers, no Words of Institution or mention of the New Covenant in his blood. The Eucharist is not a remembrance of the Atonement. The anamnesis thanksgiving before the meal is given for what is ‘made known’ to those who join the community ‘through your pais Jesus’. What is made known is the ‘holy vine of David your pais’ (thanksgiving over the cup) and ‘life and knowledge’ (thanksgiving over the bread). After the meal the anamnesis is for ‘your holy Name which you have made to tabernacle in our hearts and for the knowledge and faith and immortality which you made known to us through Jesus your pais’. God has ‘gifted us with spiritual food and drink and eternal life through Jesus your pais’. What is at issue is not sacrifice or atonement but the restoration of Israel, the kingdom of David, through Jesus the new David: the king of eschatological Israel. The fact that pais brings Jesus and David into parallel shows that it has in mind not the ebed Yahweh of Isaiah, but the royal sonship of Psalm 2:7, ‘I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you”...’. Didache 9:2 is striking and intentional parallelism: T?ODQÉSGIÉ@?FH @IÉ@ULOD KNTÉ$@TDHCÉSNTÉO@HCN IÉRNTÉÉ G IÉDUFMV QHR@IÉG?LHMÉCH@É5)GRNTÉSNTÉO@HCN IÉRNT. The vine of David is probably equivalent to the ‘shoot of David’ (see Draper 2000) and is thus a reference both to the royal lineage of David, as in Isaiah 11:1–12 (and as in the Shemonah Esreh) and to the kingdom and people of Israel as in Jeremiah 2:21. This is a Davidic Christology, which is reaffirmed in the acclamation after the meal, which probably originally read what is found in the Coptic version: ‘Hosanna to the house of David’ (the Jerusalem manuscript, H54, has ‘the God of David’, the Apostolic Constitutions has ‘the son of David’). After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE and the Bar Kochba revolt of 120 CE, an acclamation of the ‘house of David’ would clearly be embarrassing and potentially dangerous, so that it constitutes the lectio difficilior. In any case, all three versions reflect the Davidic orientation. Jesus is the successor of David, who has restored the line and kingdom of David in accordance with two important Old Testament prophecies, which could be supplemented with many more: ‘On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches,

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and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old’ (Amos 9:11): ‘When the oppressor is no more, and destruction has ceased, and marauders have vanished from the land, then a throne shall be established in steadfast love in the tent of David, and on it shall sit in faithfulness a ruler who seeks justice and is swift to do what is right’ (Isa 16:5). The prophecy from Amos is found also in Qumran in a collection of messianic Davidic texts and commentaries (1QFlor 1:11–13): ‘I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me’. This (refers to the) ‘branch of David’, who will arise with the Interpreter of the law who [will rise up] in Zi[on in] the last days, as it is written: Amos 9:11 ‘I will raise up the hut of David which has fallen’, This (refers to) ‘the hut of David which has fallen’, who will arise to save Israel (Martinez 1994, 1285).

Interestingly, the Davidic material in the Qumran text is found in the context of the spiritualization of the Temple in the community, just as in the prayer after the meal in Didache 10:1, where the berakah thanks God for making ‘his name to tabernacle in our hearts’, clearly following the same route. Small surprise then that the piyyutim which follow the berakoth in each case and express the future hope of the community based on what God has done, also relate to the restoration of the kingdom and to the return of the Davidic messiah. In the extended prayer after the breaking of the bread, the scattered grain on the mountain, united into one loaf, becomes symbolic of the gathering of the church as eschatological Israel from the four corners of the earth into God’s kingdom1 (cf. 1 Cor 10:17; IgEph 20:2 use the idea of the one bread, but do not present particularly close parallels): V:RODQÉGMÉSNTSNÉJK@ RL@ÉCHDRJNQOHRLD MNMÉÉ É É DUO@ MVÉSVMÉNUQD V MÉÉ É É É J@HÉRTM@BPDMÉDUFD MDSNÉD:MÉ É NT:SVÉRTM@BPG SVÉRNTÉG?ÉDUJJKGRH @ÉÉ É É @UONÉSVMÉODQ@ SVMÉSGIÉFGIÉDHUIÉSGMÉRGMÉA@RHKDH @MÉ N:SHÉRNTÉDURSHMÉG?ÉCN W@ÉJ@HÉG?ÉCT M@LHIÉCH@É5)GRNTÉ#QHRSNTÉ É DHUIÉSNTIÉ@HUV M@IÉ

The idea of the eschatological ingathering of Israel is a common theme in the Old Testament prophets, such as Isa 11:1–12 already cited above as a parallel to the ‘vine of David’. It is important to note that the ingathering is understood as a this-worldly event rather than an ingathering into a heav1 I do not see here any evidence of “supersessionism” and therefore virulent antiSemitism as argued by van de Sandt and Flusser (2003, 327–329). Qumran texts also pray for an eschatological gathering of the qahal YHWH and are conscious of themselves as the righteous remnant. I see no reason to assume that Christian Jewish use of the same concept should be understood as ‘anti-Semitic’.

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enly kingdom. The idea has already been raised in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, which is close but not identical to the form in Matthew, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done as in heaven so also on earth’. In the same way, the prayer after the meal continues in 10:5 with the theme of gathering the church from the four winds into God’s kingdom which he has prepared for it: ,MG RPGSHÉJT QHDÉSGI ÉDUJJKGRH @IÉRNTÉÉ É SNTÉQ?T R@RP@HÉ@TUSGMÉ@UONÉO@MSNI ÉONMGQNTÉ É J@HÉSDKDHVR@HÉ@TUSGMÉDUMÉSG[É@UF@ OG[ÉRNTÉÉ É J@HÉRT M@WNMÉ@TUSGMÉ@UONÉSVMÉSDRR@ QVMÉ@UMD LVMÉ É É DHUIÉSGMÉRGMÉA@RHKDH @MÉ É É É G