Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or final judgement?
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This contribution arose out of the thread on ‘Reading Romans eschatologically’ - which itself is part of a broader scheme introduced by Andrew to locate the events of the life and death of Jesus within a strictly 1st century historical context, and hence, by corollary, day of wrath in Romans 2:5 within a historically contextualised interpretation of Romans as a whole. The challenge to me was to ask whether day of wrath and day of the Lord as used in the OT (and therefore, it is said, by Paul, and elsewhere in the NT) simply refer to localised, historical acts of God’s judgement, and not to some climactic, future event. A brief response to a comment ended up in an exploration of a rabbit hole which proved much longer and more difficult to extricate myself from than I had expected. Oh well! As far as I can see, there are very few uses of the phrase day of wrath in the OT. In Ezekiel (7:19), it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem - c. 586 BC. In Zephaniah, day of the Lord (1:14) and day of wrath (1:15, 18) seem to be synonymous, and using imagery which naturally transfers to the same destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. In the NT, Paul describes the wrath of God (Rom. 1:18) as something demonstrated by God throughout history, and day of God’s wrath (Rom. 2:5) as a culminating, climactic event - which it would have been in history when it occurred, or at the end of time, to which it could equally apply (given that there is no evidence of a climactic judgement in history on the Graeco-Roman world, but its representatives would stand before God at the end of time, as if time had never elapsed). In Revelation 6:17 (the great day of their wrath), the picture is of a more general, worldwide judgement - even allowing for metaphoric hyperbole. Day of the Lord occurs more frequently in the OT, with the same effect as day of wrath, sometimes referring to events which were imminent in history, and sometimes referring to judgement which would come on the whole earth, eg Isaiah 2:12; Ezekiel 30:3; Joel 3:14; Obadiah 15. In the NT, Day of the Lord in Acts 2:20 quotes Joel 2:31; in 2 Thessalonians 2:2 it suggests a climactic gathering of the entire Christian community worldwide to a returning Jesus; 2 Peter 3:10 has the same day as Thessalonians in mind, since it repeats the coming of this day as being like a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:3), which also echoes Matthew 24:43. At this point, we are into a debating ground as to whether these passages have an end-of-time focus, or refer simply to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Most commentators take the overall reference to be to the end of time, especially since the circumstances surrounding the siege of Jerusalem do not correspond to the description in the passages - it did not come like a thief in the night, nor at a time when people were engaging in the normal activities of life (Matthew 24:38) saying "Peace and safety" (1 Thessalonians 5:3). In the OT, Israel’s expectation of an intervention of YHWH to defeat her enemies and vindicate her before the world provides the broader context in which day of wrath and day of the Lord must be understood. This was to be a climactic occasion, greatly modified by, but the essential background to, the NT understanding of a day of judgement which would mark the end of time. Amos’s warnings to Israel in the face of defeat by Assyria (5:18-27) could have held good for Israel in AD 70. The coming of Jesus changed the eschatological landscape. The future was not to be a continuation of the world as it had been, with Israel victorious and vindicated. A final judgment of this earth was to be followed by a recreated earth, with that judgement beginning with Jesus’s (first) coming: Matthew 3:11-12. It is in this sense that the end has already come with Jesus, even though there must be delay in its completion. The end is also understood with the outpouring of the Spirit, in which mercy and judgement are two sides of the same coin - Acts 2:17-21. With the coming of Jesus, it is no longer possible to see God’s judgements in the same historical paradigm as before. Creation will be renewed; the end of the old was signified in the death of Jesus; the coming (and necessity) of the new was signified in his resurrection - hence 2 Corinthians 5:17. Judgements that take place in history are now always a sign of final judgement to come - hence the collapsing of the two - judgement in history and judgement to come - in the synoptic prophecies of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. With Jesus, the true nature of judgement (the day of the Lord, the day of wrath), was finally revealed. In his coming, everything changed. He was the omega; the last Adam - 1 Corinthians 15:45; the second man from heaven - 1 Corinthians 15:47; a life-giving spirit as opposed simply to a living being -1 Corinthians 15:45; spiritual as opposed to natural - 1 Corinthians 15:46 - but only in the sense that Jesus’s resurrection body was matter renewed by and infused with the Spirit - not spiritual as opposed to material. With Jesus, ultimate judgement came in a person - his person - as well as ultimate life. Both came as the future invading the present. Jesus’s coming as judgement meant that whatever subsequent historical judgements were to come, they were simply instalments or aspects of ultimate judgement. In that sense, they would echo the judgements of the OT (as depicted by the prophets in their apocalyptic language), but with shocking adjustments as to what that final judgement would entail in terms of Israel’s nationalistic expectations, the identity of the righteous, and the means of their vindication before God. This is beginning to sound like an ideologically vetted contribution to the IVP Bible Dictionary. Oh dear. My conclusion? It is not really valid to limit day of wrath or day of the Lord to localised, historical occurrences, on the grounds of their useage in OT and NT, the background context of Jewish hopes and expectations, and the decisive effect of the coming of Jesus, in which the end was drawn into history ahead of time. |
Comments
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
No, the possibility cannot be discounted that the OT imagery of judgment on Jerusalem that is used consistently in the visions of the seals and trumpets is directed against something other than historical Jerusalem in the first century. But I find it very difficult to see why, in a Jewish Christian prophetic book crammed with visions of divine judgment drawn from the Jewish scriptures, written in the second half of the first century, quite possibly before AD 70, texts from the Old Testament that speak about historical judgment on Jerusalem would not be used to refer to an analogous event that was so catastrophic for the Jewish people.
Isaiah 2:12: it’s not a problem in principle to think that Isaiah switches between literal and metaphorical language. Did the mountains and hills really start singing, did the trees really clap their hands, when Israel literally returned to Zion from exile in Babylon? In any case, this verse is part of a judgment on Jerusalem, not the nations: God will judge Jerusalem by the hand of the Babylonians but he will also restore Zion so that it becomes a light to the nations. I don’t see any problem with saying that the ‘day of the Lord’ refers to an impending historical event.
Ezekiel 30:3: OK, it includes Ethiopia, Put, Lud, Arabia and Libya, because they supported Egypt (30:6). Peter, it couldn’t be clearer: ‘Thus says the Lord GOD: "I will put an end to the wealth of Egypt, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon."’ This ‘day of the Lord’ is a Babylonian offensive against Egypt. Hardly the end of the world!
Joel 3:14: ‘nations’ plural because the prophet is thinking of the peoples who exploited the judgment on Israel by stealing the temple treasures and selling Jews into slavery (Joel 3:4-6). He mentions Tyre, Sidon, and Philistia, Egypt and Edom. Enough to justify ‘all the nations’. The historical context is quite clear and there is no need at all to look beyond it to a judgment that is yet to come.
Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote about Obadiah 15: "Again, the day of the Lord is ‘near’, judgment on the nations ‘round about’ Israel (verse 16), which gloated over Jerusalem’s ruin." He is talking about Israel’s neighbours, Edom in particular. Their punishment for siding with the Babylonians will be that their lands are possessed by returning Jews. You can’t get much more historically contingent than that.
Well, yes, we can say that everything was fulfilled in Jesus, but the story of Jesus is not just his death and resurrection. He has far more to say about the eventual vindication of the Son of man and the whole narrative around that than he does about his resurrection. For Jesus the climax to his own story is not his resurrection but the coming to receive kingdom and glory from the throne of God. This is not less true for the rest of the New Testament. The question is, How does this story play itself out historically? My argument is that the story of Jesus that you want to confine to his death and resurrection as the hinge between the old creation and the new is actually longer and more complex than that - because he includes in it the story of the community that will suffer and be vindicated in him in the early centuries. Jesus is only significant as ‘new creation’ because he stands for the renewal of the people of God. You can’t separate him from the community.
If Jesus was "the end" - which I think is quite clear from very many angles - we may also need to ask: why so much history between then and now?
Well, that’s very candid! I would be very suspicious of any theology that cannot give a good reason for all this history! That’s why I think that the focus has to be much more on the historical existence of the family of Abraham over which Christ reigns as king and much less on the personal salvation experience of the individual, both for the sake of exegetical clarity and for the sake of mission. He died, was raised from the dead, and was eventually vindicated for the sake of the future of this people so that it could be God’s ‘new creation’ in the midst of the nations; and I think we would honour Christ more highly if we felt our history more.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
For those of us following along at home, can the two debaters clarify a point of contention? Peter and Andrew, you both envision a future state of the world populated only by the redeemed who confess Christ as Lord. But neither of you expects the world’s population to turn to Christ en masse. At some point the unredeemed portion of the world’s population will need to be eliminated — which, if it were to occur today, would mean at least those 4.5 billion people who don’t claim to be Christians. Peter, you contend that the unbelievers will be removed as a final act of God’s judgment. Andrew, you argue that it’s not a matter of judgment on the unredeemed, but rather a way of "clearing the stage" so that the redeemed microcosm is able to become the macrocosm in its pure form. Is that the idea?
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
…you both envision a future state of the world populated only by the redeemed who confess Christ as Lord.
Can’t speak for Peter, but for me this depends on what you mean by ‘a future state of the world’. I don’t think the New Testament expects that this world in which we now live to be transformed in that way, that the world will all become Christian, whether by conversion or by elimination! As you know, I don’t think the Bible for the most part looks that far ahead - it mostly works with the assumption that the people of God exists in the midst of the nations and cultures of the earth.
However, in Revelation 20-22 it seems to me that John depicts an ultimate hope for creation that genuinely transcends what we currently know. In this vision the old heavens and earth flee away and a new creation appears in which there is no more suffering and death - in other words, there is fundamental ontological transformation. Only at that point are we told that those whose names are not written in the book of life are thrown into the lake of fire which is the second death. Curiously we are not explicitly told what happens to those whose names are written in the book of life. But notice that it is the dead who are judged on the basis of what they have done - there is no elimination of anyone specifically for the purpose of ridding the world of unbelievers. Death is seen as the normal and inescapable fate of all humanity, which is reinforced by the symbolism of the lake of fire as a second death.
Whether it’s correct to say that the microcosm becomes this new macrocosm I’m not sure. The book of life motif seems to indicate that there must be some sort of continuity, and presumably Revelation 21:3 means that in this new creation God comes to be with his people, that is with the descendants of Abraham. But, as I say, this is all at the extreme end of the biblical vision. The main narrative has to do with the ongoing existence of a people as a creational microcosm in this world, in the midst of the nations, for the sake of the glory of the creator God.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
Thanks, Andrew and Peter, for your responses to my question.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
To be honest, Andrew, the somewhat contemptuous way in which you speak of the death and resurrection of Jesus, (“the story of Jesus that you want to confine to his death and resurrection”) is a worrying reflection on the course you have embarked on. In these exchanges, you ignore the central issue of the uniqueness of Jesus…
Contemptuous? Do you really mean that? The whole of COSM is about the significance of the death of Jesus for the story of Israel. But I think it’s a mistake both to reduce the significance of Jesus to his death and resurrection (what about his life and ministry? what about his highly developed prediction of the fulfilment of a narrative like Daniel 7?) and to exclude from that narrative the community that he so lovingly and painstakingly gathered around himself. If Jesus didn’t reduce everything to his death and resurrection, I don’t see why we should.
But that is not to say that he is not unique. As Peter said to the Jewish authorities, there is no other name given among men by which Israel would be saved from destruction.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
But is that the only context in which the verses are intended to be read? I don’t think so; any more than Matthew 24 is intended to be read solely in the context of the destruction of the temple in AD 70 (though of course that is there).
But what is the specific basis for this assumption? What are your reasons for thinking that a passage which you admit would have been interpreted by its readers with reference to the Jewish war had further levels of application beyond that historical context? You can’t just say ‘we are encouraged to find meaning in symbols which take us beyond the literal and historical’. How are we encouraged? What is the evidence for that? Just because language is symbolic doesn’t mean that it has multiple layers of reference.
I argued in COSM (208-209) that the two witnesses represent ‘the church, or that outspoken part of the church, that testifies against the sinfulness of Israel and remains faithful to the point of death’. The exegetical grounds for that judgment are reasonably coherent but not incontrovertible. But there is still no reason to think that the symbolism cannot be interpreted comprehensively within a narrative about the confrontation between the early church and Judaism or Roman imperialismm. Indeed, the very fact that we call this ‘symbolism’ should warn us to expect a surfeit or imprecision of meaning.
I can’t believe we are being limited to 1st century events here, or anywhere in Revelation…
Why can’t you believe that? That’s a very subjective basis for exegesis.
My view of Isaiah 2:2-4 is (roughly) that it speaks of the restoration of Jerusalem in the light of an underlying belief that God will ultimately transform the whole of creation - and that between this historical event and the final renewal the people of God repeatedly find the need and the opportunity to restate that hope. So we can probably agree that in some sense Isaiah 2:2-4 remains unfulfilled. But this does not alter the fact, in my view, that the ‘day of the Lord’ mentioned in Isaiah 2:12 points to foreseeable historical events associated with historical judgment on Israel. It refers to an event within history; Isaiah assumed that history would continue after it.
Look at Isaiah 13:9: ‘Behold, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the land a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it.’ It is explicitly a day when the Medes will invade Chaldea (13:17-19). And life carries on after it: the land will become a wilderness, a ‘desolation’, a dwelling place for wild beasts. Again, I repeat my point. The phrase ‘day of the Lord’ always refers to a historically circumscribed act of divine judgment or deliverance, even if that judgment or deliverance is described in language that draws on a deeper expectation of a final judgment and renewal of creation.
Obadiah again. No, it doesn’t ‘move into a more general warning of judgment’ after verse 15. It is talking about exactly the same situation. The nations are those that have exploited Israel’s misfortune, ‘have drunk upon my holy mountain’; they shall in turn drink the cup of God’s wrath - in particular, their lands will be occupied by Jews. Of course, this language may be reused in the New Testament to speak of a new judgment and salvation, but the question we are dealing with has to do with the scope of the thought ‘day of the Lord’. Nothing in Obadiah leads to the conclusion that it refers to anything beyond the anticipated historical judgment on the nations immediately surrounding Israel which profited from the Babylonian invasion. You are reading into the passage a universal significance that simply isn’t there.
I have looked very carefully at every passage you have cited from the Old Testament as evidence that ‘day of Lord’ refers to something other than an act of divine judgment or deliverance within history, and I have found nothing that supports your argument. So when in Romans Paul speaks of a ‘day’ of God’s wrath that is close at hand, I think it most likely that he has in mind a similar act of judgment within history.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
But it also has relevance to any situation where war, economic disturbance, death through war, famine and plague, the martyrs waiting for vindication, earthquakes and meteorological phenomena, are seen as God’s judgments.
I agree the passage may in some sense ‘have relevance’ in subsequent situations - that’s why people have been able to locate the fulfilment of these prophecies in all manner of historical events throughout the ages right up to the Arab-Israeli war, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, 9/11, the American presidential elections, the death of Bobby Fischer (perhaps), and so on…. But that is not the same is saying that the author of Revelation used this imagery to refer to an indefinite set of events.
I still think we need to take much more seriously the interpretive context provided by Revelation itself, which consists, I would say, broadly of:
i) the actual historical situation in which the letter was written, the immediate fears and hopes of the early church, which would have undoubtedly centred on the fate of Israel and the power of Rome;
ii) the consistent use of the Old Testament, which in the case of the seals strongly suggests that it is the judgment on Israel that is in view;
iii) the narrative structure of Revelation which culminates in chapter 18 in judgment on Rome.
I think we are being unfaithful to the intention of John if we insist that he somehow also had in mind a repeat of this judgment following the defeat of Roman pagan imperialism, particularly since he is quite careful to sketch a continuation of history following the vindication of the church over Rome that concludes not with these garish visions of judgment but with a final battle against Satan and the nations and a final judgment of all the dead (Rev. 20:7-15).
We’ll have to agree to disagree on Revelation 6:17: ‘for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’ Verse 16 recalls Hosea 10:8 - a prophecy of judgment on Israel. This verse echoes Joel 2:11 - a prophecy of judgment on Israel by military invasion. The language here is entirely consistent with the view that John is also describing historical judgment on Israel by military invasion, and the fact that he does not say so explicitly does not give us permission to apply it to whatever subsequent events may pop into our minds. That is a very irresponsible approach to biblical interpretation. If the Old Testament prophets could use extravagant, apocalyptic, visionary language to refer to historical events, there’s no reason why John should not have done so.
Much of this dispute, of course, depends on how we read apocalyptic language - and whether we take seriously Jesus’ unequivocal statement that ‘this generation will not pass away till all these things take place’ (Matt. 24:34). The discourse draws on prophetic and apocalyptic language that describes judgment on Israel and the vindication of a faithful community as part of that event. Jesus says that this will happen - all of this will happen - within a generation. How do you escape the conclusion that he is speaking about the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the temple (that is the question that he is explicitly answering!), and the vindication of those who took the risk of following him on this narrow path?
The two witnesses - I assume from the final sentence of your comment that you allow the passage could refer to different contexts - not just the early church…
No, that wasn’t what I meant. I wrote: ‘there is still no reason to think that the symbolism cannot be interpreted comprehensively within a narrative about the confrontation between the early church and Judaism or Roman imperialism.’ My point had to do with details such as ‘they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague’ (Rev. 11:6). We are not supposed to believe that the church as it testified faithfully against sinful Israel literally had these powers but that the symbolism invokes a cloud of meaning from the Exodus narratives that cannot necessarily be precisely applied to the contemporary context. That does not mean that we must find later circumstances to which we might apply the overflow of symbolic detail.
The book of Obadiah describes a day of historical judgment against Edom because when the Chaldeans destroyed Jerusalem, the Edomites exploited Israel’s misery and gloated over its misfortune. On that day of judgment Edom, along with Israel’s other neighbours, will be punished for this - they will drink the cup of God’s wrath. They will be punished militarily by Jews who have survived the Babylonian invasion and exile and their lands will be possessed by the returning exiles (17-20). That action will be seen as the re-establishment of God’s rule in this particular context (21). This is a coherent and realistic historical scenario. Nothing in this suggests that Obadiah was also thinking of a ‘day of the Lord’ that transcends the historical framework.
Joel 2:32 is no different. It speaks of people who will survive an act of historical judgment against Israel. The phrase ‘day of the Lord’ always refers to an event within history, whether that’s judgment on Jerusalem by means of the Babylonians, judgment on Jerusalem by means of the Romans, or judgment on Rome by means of the Visigoths.
But you have already contradicted this above!
Oh no I haven’t! My argument with reference to Isaiah 2:12 was that sometimes the ‘day of the Lord’ is spoken of in a way that draws on an ultimate hope of the renewal of creation and defeat of the last enemies of YHWH. But that does not mean that this ‘day of the Lord’ is itself an event that ends or transcends history. So Paul’s argument in Romans that a day of wrath is coming on the Greek-Roman world certainly presupposes the ultimate fact of judgment on all humanity because of sin. But the argument is still the historical one. He is not talking about a final judgment here; he is talking about what the church faced historically, and I think we miss something very important about how the New Testament develops its theology if we translate all these contingent, contextual arguments into absolute, universal ones.
When we get into the NT however, we are overwhelmed with evidence for a "day" or "day of the Lord" being the final day of judgment.
Not in my view we’re not. What we are overwhelmed with is the failure of the church to think historically. As Tom Wright has pointed out (I forget where) with reference to 2 Thessalonians 2:2 that if news that the ‘day of the Lord’ had already come could be sent by letter in the ancient world, they are clearly not thinking about the end of history as we know it. Paul’s response highlights a historical and presumably geographically limited narrative. He does not say to them, Of course, it hasn’t come, you idiots, we’re all still here!
Obadiah and Joel
On Obadiah - I didn’t miss your reference to Joel 2:32. In fact, I expressly addressed that point:
Joel 2:32 is no different. It speaks of people who will survive an act of
historical judgment against Israel. The phrase ‘day of the Lord’ always
refers to an event within history, whether that’s judgment on Jerusalem by means
of the Babylonians, judgment on Jerusalem by means of the Romans, or judgment on
Rome by means of the Visigoths
The fact that Peter finds a fulfilment of Joel 2 in the events of the day of Pentecost does not affect the basic contention, which is that the phrase ‘day of Lord’ in biblical usage is always applied to events within history. Peter understands Joel to be predicting a time when military judgment on Jerusalem will be accompanied by the outpouring of the Spirit of prophecy on many in Israel.
I still cannot for the life of me see why you have to read into Obadiah’s very straightfoward prophecy about what would happen to Israel’s hostile neighbours following the exile a universal significance that it simply doesn’t have. What’s the problem? Scripture’s not going to fall apart because we read it historically.
Re: Obadiah and Joel
I think the sticking point of the discussion is that you want to defend, ultimately, the idea that most, if not all, the time, whenever the bible talks about judgment, it is doing so within on-going history, especially history up to (and possibly ending with) the 1st century, and not beyond.
I have made the point on a number of occasions, not least in discussion with you, that the Bible is very realistic about how it talks about judgment and salvation - in other words, it treats these things as matters of real, historical, and I would say political, experience. In that respect, I would say that the Bible is much more ‘worldly’ than is suggested by much of our theology. I made the point above that phrases such as ‘day of the Lord’ and ‘day of wrath’ refer in scripture to foreseen historical events: ‘judgment on Jerusalem by means of the Babylonians, judgment on Jerusalem by means of the Romans, or judgment on Rome by means of the Visigoths’. That takes us beyond the first century, by the way. I also said several times that these contingent acts of divine judgment draw on the belief that all humanity is accountable to God - which may take the form ‘the wages of sin is death’ or the more elaborate apocalyptic motif of a final judgment. But this final judgment, as far as I can see, is never spoken of as a ‘day of the Lord’.
So please hear this. I am not arguing that the Bible only speaks of judgment in historical terms. What I think we need to grasp - and find so difficult to grasp because of our particular historical and ‘modern’ perspective on this - is that the theme of judgment as it emerges in scripture is historically contextualized - to the extent that it is a mistake to read every statement or argument as in principle being universal in its meaning or application. So we come back to where I think this all started, which is my contention that when Paul speaks in Romans of a ‘day of wrath’ against Israel or against the Greek-Roman world, he has in mind an ‘event’ of some sort within history, not a universal final judgment. I am not saying that Paul did not believe in a final judgment, only that this is not what he is talking about here.
My main contention is that Jesus brought a previously unheard of understanding of the way judgment operates, because it split the "end of the age" (itself always understood as an "end" within on-going history, of course) between "now" (this evil age invaded by "the powers of the age to come") and the future (a final ending of this evil age, to be replaced entirely by the age to come).
And I would argue that this is a schema that has been imposed retrospectively on the Gospels by theologians trying to make systematic sense of a narrative that actually resists that sort of reductionism. What does Jesus say about judgment that suggests this? Where does this notion of two overlapping ages come from? Jesus nowhere speaks of an ‘age to come’ that would ‘sit alongside’ the present evil age. We have this age, which is the age of the ‘corrupt generation’ of Israel; and we have an age to come.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
The phrase ‘day of the Lord’ always refers to a historically circumscribed act of divine judgment or deliverance, even if that judgment or deliverance is described in language that draws on a deeper expectation of a final judgment and renewal of creation.
My argument with reference to Isaiah 2:12 was that sometimes the ‘day of the Lord’ is spoken of in a way that draws on an ultimate hope of the renewal of creation and defeat of the last enemies of YHWH.
Well, yes, the wording is different, but where’s the problem? The phrase ‘day of the Lord’ always refers to an event within history when God judges or saves. That act of judgment or salvation, however, is sometimes, but not always and not necessarily, depicted in terms that draw on a deeper expectation or ultimate hope of a final judgment and renewal of the whole of creation.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
Peter, that’s a pretty comprehensive and on the whole fair summary of the discussion. I certainly don’t intend to respond in detail; and as you point out, my reading of the New Testament passages would presuppose the general argument of The Coming of the Son of Man, which is that most of New Testament eschatology should be interpreted within a narrative about the vindication of the early community of disciples of Jesus, which is most clearly, but not exclusively or exhaustively, captured in Daniel’s vision of one like a Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom from God. This narrative includes very naturally the prospect of judgment, first, on rebellious and apostate Israel and, secondly, on the beast-like enemy of YHWH, which is Rome. My argument is that the texts which you cite belong to the parousia hope, which is precisely the hope that Christ and those who suffer in him would be vindicated, first against Israel, secondly against Rome.
One statement did stand out, however, as needing a bit of clarification:
The effect of this eschatological proposal is to reverse the tendency of eschatology to provide a forward and future expectation for the people of God, and to encourage them to find a this-worldly accommodation and focus on the basis of eschatology already fulfilled.
I wouldn’t put it quite like that. The hope of new creation, the reintegration of heaven and earth, remains of central importance for the church, not merely as a matter of future destiny but also of present self-understanding and mission. The story of the Son of man has become for us a ‘realized eschatology’, though I think that is a very misleading way of stating it. We have moved beyond the crisis of the early centuries. But that past story has simply enabled us (saved us!) as God’s people to embrace the bigger eschatological hope of a new heaven and a new earth, and to live, as Tom Wright says, in the light of that.
Re: Day of the Lord - Day of Wrath: Judgement in history or fina
Seconds away, round two…
Notice that Paul in Romans 2:9 describes the effect of God’s wrath on the Greek world in terms of ‘tribulation and distress’. The two terms are used in Deuteronomy 28:53, 55, 57 to describe the effects of military invasion. Why shouldn’t Paul be thinking along similar lines?
Revelation 6:17 makes use of imagery from the Old Testament that describes judgment on Jerusalem and the horror that that will create in the world. See The Coming of the Son of Man, 190-191. The seals all have judgment on Jerusalem as their focus.
The ‘day of the Lord’ texts…
Isaiah 2:12 is part of an oracle of judgment against Jerusalem. Whatever the impact may be on the nations, it is essentially a day of judgment against Israel that is described.
In Ezekiel 30:3 it is a day of judgment against Egypt, not the whole earth.
Joel 3:14 describes a ‘day of the Lord’ coming near when the enemies of Israel will be judged by God. Again not a universal judgment but historically contingent.
And if I could only find Obadiah… ah, there it is. Again, the day of the Lord is ‘near’, judgment on the nations ‘round about’ Israel (verse 16), which gloated over Jerusalem’s ruin. Also historically contingent.
There is a strong argument for the view that the phrase ‘There is peace and security’ in 1 Thessalonians 5:3 alludes to the Roman pax et securitas theme, in which case we may suppose that Paul has in mind specifically judgment on the pretensions of Roman imperialism.
Completely disagree. That makes a nonsense of Jesus’ pervasive use of the Son of man story (not to mention the letters to the seven churches in Revelation). The question is not whether Israel will be victorious and vindicated but how.
Things didn’t completely change with Jesus. The Jews still went to war against Rome. They got hammered. The early church had to deal with persecution and a blasphemous antagonist in the emperor. Aggressive Roman pagan imperialism eventually collapsed, which is exactly what is prefigured in the Son of man narrative. These were events of enormous significance for the early church (read Augustine’s City of God). It constitutes a very short-sighted, hubristic, modern, post-enlightenment perspective to pretend (nothing personal you understand) that these things weren’t worth speaking about. The language of the New Testament, like the language of Old Testament prophecy, describes concrete historical events that mattered to the community. They weren’t writing for comfortable middle class churches in Guidford or The Hague.