Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarification sought...
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Hi Andrew et al, I’ve been trying to keep up with the various threads and debates re: your ‘post-eschatological’ perspective and to relate your ideas to what I’ve already understood care of Tom Wright. When I’ve got through the large pile of books which I still have to read (inc. N T Wright’s, ‘Resurrection of the Son of God’, then I’ll attempt your COSM! This is a fairly recent ‘journey’ for me and I’m still struggling to keep up with the data, but I am very convinced by the whole ‘2nd temple Jewish context’ which has come out of a lot of the NPP work (inc. Dunn, Sanders etc..) and how Jesus’ Jewish context allows us to hear ‘afresh’ the nationalistic/political/historical dimension of Israel within the wider Roman Empire which is evidenced within the Jesus tradition/NT texts. However, I do have one specific question which the debate has left me puzzled over… This is, how do we reconcile the post-70AD church’s self-understanding in the light of our ‘recovered’ NPP understanding? I mean, if terms like ‘gehenna’, ‘parousia’, ‘vindication’, ‘resurrection’ had - during the pre-70AD period - a very Jewish/Jerusalem point of reference (and I am one who prefers to cast the ‘harlot’ in Revelation in terms of apostate-Israel as juxtaposed with the ‘faithful bride’ as renewed-Israel in Christ….) then following the fall of the Jewish/Jerusalem ‘system’ why aren’t the church writings awash with comments like, ‘There, see, I told you so….!’? I’m not a specialist in 1st/2nd century church history (in fact I’m a medical doctor!) but from the reading I have done one starts to see in the early/mid 2nd century the embryonic development of what I feel is ‘classic Christianity’ as it was subsequently expressed in the various councils. It wasn’t just with the enlightenment/modernity (against which the ‘emerging church’ finds its voice) that terms like ‘gehenna’ were understood to mean ‘hell’, and certainly the Nicene Creed contains mention of Christs ‘2nd coming’ and of the ‘Resurrection from the dead of the saints…etc’. This is a cause for confusion for me. Since I can entirely accept the NT political/historical context but am trying to reconcile this view point with the actual shape of emerging Christianity within the post-apostolic period. Can you shed any light on this ‘paradox’? Richard |
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Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica
Richard, this is a difficult question and not one that I am really in a position to answer. My view has always been that we are under no obligation to agree with the early church over these matters - if they were mistaken, that’s too bad. As a matter of exegetical method, that’s probably OK, but if we make historical relevance a touchstone for biblical interpretation, then I suppose we should also take seriously the continuation of the narrative into the early church period.
The problem, however, is precisely that for the most part we have not learned to maintain critical consistency as we move from the New Testament to post-biblical history. I suspect that to do this properly we would have to start asking some more sophisticated questions about the theology of the early church - or at least start listening to people who have done this work. We would have to consider, for example, how aspects of the Jewish apocalyptic imagination might have got lost in translation as the church moved into the Gentile world; to what extent changes of geographical perspective would have diminished the focus on Jerusalem; and so on. We might also need to ask ourselves whether our reading of the fathers has been coloured by dogmatic tradition in the same way that our reading of Scripture appears to have been. I have just glanced through The Martyrdom of Polycarp, and it seems to me that it fits the Son of man narrative rather well - it’s just that we have been accustomed to reading these texts in a somewhat different interpretive framework.
There has been a lot of discussion of this question on preterist websites. An article by Gary DeMar entitled ‘“Shreds of Preterism” Among First-Century Writers’ doesn’t get us very far, but it cites Eusebius’ account of the death of James the Just, which I think is interesting.
Eusebius quotes Hegisippus’ account (mid 2nd century) of the martyrdom (Eccl. Hist. 2.23). The Scribes and Pharisees persuaded James to address the crowds from the pinnacle of the temple, expecting him to discourage them from believing that Jesus is the Christ. They challenged him, ‘Thou just one, in whom we ought all to have confidence, forasmuch as the people are led astray after Jesus, the crucified one, declare to us, what is the gate of Jesus.’ James replied, ‘Why do ye ask me concerning Jesus, the Son of Man? He himself sitteth in heaven at the right hand of the great Power, and is about to come upon the clouds of heaven.’
Realizing that they had miscalculated, the Scribes and Pharisees threw James down from the pinnacle, and he was finished off with clubs. What’s significant is that Hegisippus connects this event with the immediate beseiging of Jerusalem by Vespasian. Eusebius underlines the point by saying that Hegisippus is in agreement with Clement about this, and also quotes Josephus: ‘These things happened to the Jews to avenge James the Just, who was a brother of Jesus, that is called the Christ.’
This at least suggests the possibility that the post New Testament church saw in the destruction of Jerusalem some sort of fulfilment of the vision of the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven and a vindication of one who suffered as Jesus suffered. It makes a lot of sense to think that James was saying in effect, ‘It doesn’t matter much what I say. Soon you will experience an event that will demonstrate that Jesus was right in his announcement that God is acting decisively in history to judge Israel and reign over his people.’
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Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Richard, with regard to your previous comment: ‘From what you say (and being more "theologically trained" than I you would be a better position to know!) it seems that this is the next "big" question in Christian historical enquiry!’
Yes, I think that’s probably right (or do I mean Wright?), but I doubt that I’m in a better position to know than you are. I have only really just started reading the Apostolic Fathers properly - though I have already reached the conclusion that they should be published along with the New Testament documents and read by churches. If I had my way, I would publish the Old Testament, Intertestamental literature and Gospels as one volume, the rest of the New Testament and at least the Apostolic Fathers as a second volume. That would give us a much better sense of the historicality of Scripture.
I would suggest that your quotation from Polycarp about ‘the fire of the coming judgment and eternal punishment (aiōniou kolaseōs)’ echoes not the Jerusalem-centred language of ‘gehenna’ but Matt. 25:41, 46: ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…. And these will go away into eternal punishment (kolasin aiōnion)….’ The sheep and goats passage describes not judgment on Jerusalem but a judgment of the nations on the basis of how they treat Jesus’ disciples (COSM 80-82). The proconsul obviously falls into the category of the wicked Gentiles who abuse the ‘brothers’ of Jesus.
The Son of man narrative, in my argument, envisages judgment both on rebellious Israel and on the pagan enemy of the people God - represented in The Martyrdom of Polycarp by the phrase ‘Genius of Caesar’ by which he is ordered to swear (Mart. Pol. 10.1). So as a matter of interpretation I would disagree with the generalized and existentialized reading of the language of judgment after AD 70. My view is that the New Testament barely looks beyond the second eschatological-historical horizon of judgment on Rome, though it wouldn’t be too difficult to draw more universal conclusions from sections of Romans, say; and Revelation 20:12-13 describes a judgment of all the dead according to ‘what they had done’.
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Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Andrew - just to be devil’s advocate, I’d have thought from your point of view you would very definitely not want the church fathers to be included in an expanded biblical corpus. Despite some well meaning attempts to prove the opposite (which rather have the effect of proving the case), there is virtually no suggestion at all in the fathers that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 was seen as a coming of the Son of Man, vindication of the same, and transfer of power and authority to the saints. Since the fathers were close enough to the event to have been the first to espouse such a view, it’s rather striking that they didn’t.
I’m also quite interested in the wider aspects of the historical/contextual/narrative interpretation. If there was little perspective beyond its eschatological/climactic events, and the NT documents as we have them merely fill in instructions and theology leading up to the events, what is left over for the shaping and outworking of God’s purposes for the subsequent millennia? (Assuming that everyone got it wrong, because the theological underpinning was wrong). Are we just left to cobble together any old approach - provided that it is communal, not individualistic; narrative grounded, not resting on a gospel which proclaims the Lordship of Jesus and the equipping of the church through the Spirit?
What really prevents the narrative historical approach from being a massive cul de sac, in which the biblical documents are no more than a history text book with marginal relevance for today’s world? This is a problem not simply for your approach, but for Wright and thorough-going preterism generally, in which everything happened in the 1st century, and there is very little left over for the times beyond that. I’m asking these questions on the basis of believing that there are, in any case, some fundamental flaws in key aspects of the extended interpretive basis of whatever we care to call the historical approach - for all the very useful insights that it has given us, in a somethat more limited understanding of its contributions.
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Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Peter, I have been having a lot of fun (as you’d expect) reading through the Apostolic Fathers. Although you are right in saying that there is not the obvious interpretation of judgment on Jerusalem and Rome in terms of the Son of man motif, I am impressed by how well the pervasive martyrdom theme fits the narrative of imminent judgment on the wicked, the suffering and vindication of the righteous, and the coming of the kingdom of God - in other words, implicitly if not explicitly, the story about the Son of man. I have some way still to go, but the following quotations illustrate the point.
1. The suffering and glorification of an exclusive group in Christ
To these men who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example. (1 Clem. 6:1)
But they who with confidence endured [these things] are now heirs of glory and honour, and have been exalted and made illustrious by God in their memorial for ever and ever. (1 Clem. 45:8)
Let us run in the straight course, the heavenly contest, and let may of us come to enter it and compete, that we may also be crowned. And if we cannot all be crowned, let us at least come close to it. (2 Clem. 7:3)
For even though I am in chains for the sake of the Name, I have not yet been perfect in Jesus Christ. (Ignatius, Eph. 3:1)
In him we will, if we patiently endure all the abuse of the ruler of this age and escape, reach God. (Ignatius, Magn. 1:2)
2. The imminence of the end envisaged
The last times are come upon us. …let us either stand in awe of the wrath to come, or show regard for the grace which is at present displayed – one of two things. (Ignatius, Eph. 11:1)
3. A coming judgment followed by the resurrection of the martyrs
All the generations from Adam even unto this day have passed away; but those who, through the grace of God, have been made perfect in love, now possess a place among the godly, and shall be made manifest at the revelation of the kingdom of Christ. For it is written, “Enter into thy secret chambers for a little time, until my wrath and fury pass away; and I will remember a propitious day, and will raise you up out of your graves.” (1 Clem. 50:3-4)
4. The coming of the kingdom as a future event
Therefore let us all love one another, that we all may enter into the kingdom of God. (2 Clem. 9:6)
Let us wait, therefore, hour by hour for the kingdom of God in love and righteousness, since we do not know the day of God’s appearing. (2 Clem. 12:1)
When you do these things, he says, the kingdom of my father will come. (2 Clem. 12:6)
Do not err, my brethren. Those that corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
I also came across Irenaus, Against Heresies 26.1 (c. 175-185 AD), which understands Rev. 17 to refer to ‘the empire which now rules’ - ie. Rome:
In a still clearer light has John, in the Apocalypse, indicated to the Lord’s disciples what shall happen in the last times, and concerning the ten kings who shall then arise, among whom the empire which now rules [the earth] shall be partitioned.
With regard to your question about the relevance of the New Testament, I simply do not draw the same conclusions. The contextualized, historical reading of New Testament eschatology tells us that the people of God has been redefined in Christ - by which I mean the whole narrative of forgiveness, atonement, restoration, parousia, judgment, vindication, and kingdom. So we have to ask ourselves: what does it mean now to be a people that has been reshaped in this way, that has gone through this drawn out historical transformation? In order to answer this question we need to think big. Why has God chosen a people for his own possession amidst the peoples of the earth? And what does it mean for that people now to find its identity in Christ? This demands reflection on Scripture and constant openness to the Spirit to be led forward responsively and faithfully into an unknown and changing future.
But what is this flip remark about ‘not resting on a gospel which proclaims the Lordship of Jesus and the equipping of the church through the Spirit’? I have never said that. My argument has always been that as a result of this whole narrative we are a people over whom God himself reigns through the one who made himself nothing, and that we live by the Spirit and not by the law.
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Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Andrew - there are a lot of problems relating the kinds of quotations you have selected to the specific view of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 as the transfer of power and authority to the saints and the parousia of the Son of Man into the presence of God as the climactic event of ‘the kingdom’.
With regard to the your first category - there is little difference between these kinds of statements and statements generally about patient endurance under persecution in the NT. (I imagine what Clement means by "if we cannot all be crowned, let us at least come close to it" is that not all will receive the martyrs’ crown by being put to death for their faith.)
In your second point, the imminence of the end, it all depends when Ignatius made that statement. It might refer to the destruction of Jerusalem if it was made pre-AD 70. But Ignatius was born c. AD 50, making the statement before that time a possibility but not a likelihood.
It is possible that Clement refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in your third point, but again it all rests on the dating of the letter, which is uncertain.
Likewise in your fourth point: the dating of the letter is crucial, but even then it does not make an explicit connection with AD 70.
I don’t know if we are tracking the same articles, but in "Shreds of Preterism among First Century Writers" Gary deMar sets out to refute the claim made by Thomas Ice that the 1st century documents do not offer "a shred of evidence that anyone in the 1st century understood these prophecies to have been fulfilled when they said they were" - (‘The History of Preterism,’ End Times Conrtorversy: the Second Coming Under Attack).
I would like to agree with deMar, since the claim he sets out to refute comes from a camp I would also like to oppose! However, his attempted refutation does little more than underline how meagre the arguments are for a preterist (and therefore your own) view of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 - as preceived by those living at the time. In fact, as deMar points out, there are only four 1st century Christian writings available for study today (apart from the NT documents). DeMar’s study is interesting and thorough, and well annotated, but fails to make its point.
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The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome
Sorry, Peter, I should have made this clearer. Ignatius isn’t talking about AD 70. He’s talking about the wrath of God against the wicked society in which he lived. The same is true for the passage from 1 Clement. The context is judgment on the pagan world - ie. Rome, the power that forces people to confess that ‘Caesar is Lord’ (cf. Mart. Pol. 10:1). Those who are ‘made perfect in love’ is virtually a synonym in these writings for the martyrs. God’s anger will fall and then pass away (suggesting a historical event), but the martyrs, the suffering saints of the Most High, will be raised when the ‘kingdom of Christ’ is made manifest. The quotation about the ‘secret chambers’ is from Isaiah 26:20 which speaks of judgment upon the whole earth, not upon Israel.
This is exactly the narrative that I have drawn from the New Testament: judgment on Rome accompanied by the resurrection of those who die because of their testimony to Christ and at that point the establishment of the kingdom. The Apostolic Fathers regarded the coming of, or inheritance of, the kingdom of God as a future event associated not with AD 70 but with judgment on Rome, the fourth beast. For this reason I agree with your comment about the martyrdom statements. I just see their significance differently: as in the New Testament these statements presuppose a particular eschatological-historical narrative about judgment and the renewal of the people of God that cannot be reduced to a universal exhortation to persevere.
The Didache concludes with an account of the ‘last days’ that are clearly imagined to be imminent, culminating in a vision of the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven.
The Epistle of Barnabas (early second century?) applies Daniel’s vision of the fourth beast to the contemporary situation:
We ought, then, to enquire earnestly into the things which now are, and to seek out those which are able to save us. Let us then utterly flee from all the works of lawlessness, lest the works of lawlessness overcome us, and let us hate the error of this present time, that we may be loved in that which is to come. Let us give no freedom to our souls to have power to walk with sinners and wicked men, lest we be made like to them. The final stumbling block is at hand of which it was written, as Enoch says, “For to this end the Lord has cut short the times and the days, that his beloved should make haste and come to his inheritance.” And the Prophet also says thus: “Ten kingdoms shall reign upon the earth and there shall rise up after them a little king, who shall subdue three of the kings under one.” Daniel says likewise concerning the same: “And I beheld the fourth Beast, wicked and powerful and fiercer than all the beasts of the sea, and that ten horns sprang from it, and out of them a little excrescent horn, and that it subdued under one three of the great horns.” (Ep. Barn. 4:1-5)
There is also a later discussion of the destruction of the temple (16:1-5), which is seen as an act of divine judgment ‘in the last days’. But the vision of the Son of man essentially has to do with the defeat of the pagan oppressor of the people of God and the giving of the kingdom to the suffering saints. I don’t agree with the preterist attempt to focus everything on AD 70. Jerusalem is involved in the story in two respects. First, many in Israel are seen to have taken the side of the oppressor and to have forsaken the covenant (this is part of the Daniel narrative). Secondly, Israel becomes subject to God’s wrath executed by means of the political force represented by the fourth beast with its overweening little horn. In historical terms the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple certainly vindicated Jesus’ preaching to Israel, but it is only one act in a larger eschatological drama.
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Re: The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome
Andrew - I’m somewhat confused, but I’m sure you will be able to explain this to me. The ‘coming of the Son of Man’, as deduced from Daniel 7:13, is associated with the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in your thinking - isn’t it? Isn’t this the ‘parousia’ - beloved of preterists? So what is the second ‘imminent end’ which befell Rome?
What is the connection between the fall of Jerusalem, and the fall of Rome? The second can’t be an act of divine retribution brought about by the first, because Israel had already ceased to be the people of God, and the mechanisms of judgement on the pagan oppressors of Israel (consequent to judgement of Israel by her pagan oppressors) which operated under the old covenant were obsolete. Was it judgement on Rome because of her oppression of the new covenant saints? But when did that ‘imminent end’ befall Rome? And when was the ‘first resurrection’? Was it after Jerusalem fell but before Rome fell - or when Rome fell - whenever that was?
I’m sure you have explained this somewhere, but I’m totally confused. I’m now not sure whether we are looking at preterism, futurism, or somewhere-in-betweenism.
I’m probably trying to follow too many conversations at once. I think I need to cut back on the contributions and conversations. I blame it on NinjaHound.
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Give me 15 years, this is the stuff that I hope to do my Doctoral work on.
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