Here is a good example of the sort of tight corner that a historical reading of New Testament eschatology can get us into. The Lord’s prayer is a central element in our formal and informal liturgies. We assume that it is timeless: we imagine that we pray it in the same way and for the same reasons that the first disciples prayed it. For example, I have been reading Scott McKnight’s The Jesus Creed. He regards the prayer as fundamentally an expression of Jesus’ core creed: to love God and to love others. This is an excellent thing to express, but I fear that it really misses the point of the prayer. McKnight recognizes that it is Jesus’ version of the Kaddish but he appears to have nothing to say about the significance of the obvious eschatological orientation of this Jewish prayer. There are numerous other ways in which the prayer is tied to - and potentially confined to - a narrative framework, but these are obscured by the traditional liturgical use of the prayer.
The dilemma, therefore, is this: How should we pray Jesus’ eschatological prayer in a post-eschatological context? Of course, that is my particular dilemma - not everyone will be bothered by it! But the exegetical details are worth considering, and I would argue that there are constructive ways of keeping the prayer central to our worship that do not compromise its narrative integrity.
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