Eschatology

Eschatology

I. The Earliest Christian Eschatology.

1.Sources.

2.The Jewish background of ideas.

3.The new Christian message.

4.The chief doctrines of the Last Things.

5.Extent and importance of the apocalyptic element.

6.Relation to the teaching of our Lord.

7.Decline of the earliest type of Christian eschatology.

II. The Christian Apocalyptic Literature.

1.Revelation of St. John.

2.Non-canonical Christian apocalypses.

III. The Johannine Type of Early Christian Eschatology.

1.Spirituality of the teaching.

2.The place of the sacraments.

3.Later history of this type of eschatology.

IV. The Pauline type of early Christian eschatology.

1.Eschatology of St. Paul.

2.Eschatology of early Gentile-Christian churches.

Scope of the article.-Our subject is the eschatology of the Apostolic Church down to a.d. 100. By eschatology we understand (1) the doctrine of a certain series of events associated with the end of this world-era and the beginning of another; and (2) the destiny of the individual human soul after death. We shall deal first with the earliest type of Christian eschatology, as it was taught by the first disciples of our Lord, in the primitive Judaeo-Christian communities; and then we shall endeavour to trace the various lines along which this primitive teaching was developed and modified.

I. The Earliest Christian eschatology.

1. The sources.-In studying the characteristics of the earliest Christian doctrine of the Last Things, it seems not unreasonable (in view of the trend of recent scholarship) to base our conclusions with some confidence upon the Acts of the Apostles, as a history which in most points, and those essential points, stands the test of reliability (Harnack, The Acts of the Apostles, Eng. translation , 1909, p. 303). The evidence from the speeches must, perhaps, be used with a little more reserve, but even here there appears to be a growing tendency to recognize a real historical value. Evidence supplementing that of Acts may be drawn from the Epistles of the NT, particularly James, Hebrews, and 1 Peter, all of which belong to a Judaeo-Christian type of thought, though somewhat later in date than the earliest preaching recorded in Acts (see articles on James, Ep. of; Hebrews, Ep. to; Peter, Ep. of). From these NT writings it is possible to gain a fairly clear and definite conception of the earliest Christian eschatology.

2. The Jewish background of ideas.-The type of thought reflected in these early Christian writings is thoroughly and distinctively Jewish. Especially is this the case in the earlier chapters of Acts, where the ideas of Jewish apocalyptic form the background of the preaching-a background so familiar that it never needs to be explained or expounded in detail, but yet never allows itself to be altogether forgotten. The men who preached the earliest Christian doctrine of the Last Things had for the most part been brought up in a religious atmosphere impregnated with eschatological ideas. The Judaism in which they were living was the Judaism which produced apocalyptic writings such as the Book of Jubilees, the Assumption of Moses, the Apocalypse of Baruch , 4 Ezra, etc.; and they were accustomed to think and speak of their religious hopes in the terms of Jewish apocalyptic. Now, although the details of apocalyptic eschatology vary from book to book (see e.g. R. H. Charles in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) i. 741-749), yet a few fixed points stand out in every ease, arranged according to a scheme which had become almost stereotyped in the apocalypses, and which is accepted as axiomatic in the apostolic preaching. This scheme is as follows: (1) the signs foreshadowing the end, (2) the Coming of the Messiah, (3) the resurrection of the dead, (4) the Last Judgment, (5) the inauguration of the Kingdom of God, The NT passages in which this eschatological scheme is implied are too numerous to be cited; for typical examples, see Act 2:17-36; Act 3:20 f.; Act 4:2; Act 10:42; Act 15:15-16; Act 17:31, Jam 5:3-9, Hebrews 1, 2, 1Pe 4:5; 1Pe 4:7; 1Pe 4:17, 1 Thessalonians 4, 5, 2Th 2:1-12, etc.

The comparative uniformity with which these fixed points recur in the Jewish apocalyptic eschatology may be traced in part to the Jewish idea of predestination. The events were conceived of as already fixed in the mind of God, and (in a sense) already pre-existent in heaven; so that the progress of history may be regarded as an apocalypse or unveiling of the Divine plan which is even now ready to be revealed in the last times. It is necessary to realize this if we would understand the force of the Judaeo-Christian appeal to the Old Testament. Modern writers generally hold that the value of prophecy consists primarily in its insight into spiritual truths, and only indirectly in its foresight into the future; but to the Jew, a coincidence between a prophetic prediction and a subsequent event was a signal proof of Divine inspiration, for it showed that God had unveiled before the vision of His prophet some detail of that future which was already predestined and lying spread out before His all-seeing eyes (cf. Act 1:16 ff; Act 2:17-34; Act 3:18-22; Act 4:25-28; Act 11:28; Act 13:32-41; Act 17:3; Act 17:11; Act 18:28; Act 26:22 f. etc., Heb 4:3; Heb 9:23, and esp. 1Pe 1:1-5).

But, while emphasizing the background of ideas common to primitive Christianity and Jewish apocalyptic, we must not ignore the distinctiveness of the former; and this now claims our attention.

3. The new Christian message

(1) The Messiah has come, in the Person of Jesus.-The belief that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ, and that His life fulfilled the Scriptural prophecies, is the central truth of the apostolic preaching (Act 2:36; Act 3:22; Act 5:42; Act 17:2 f., Jam 2:1, Hebrews 1, 1Pe 3:22; 1Pe 4:5, etc). In the Jewish apocalypses, two Messianic ideals are manifested. On the one hand, there was the old prophetic expectation of a warrior-king of Davids line, raised up from among Gods people to rule them in righteousness and truth (Pss.-Sol. 17:23-31, etc). On the other hand, there was the purely apocalyptic conception of a heavenly Being descending, like Daniels Son of Man, from the clouds of heaven, endowed with supernatural powers, and presiding as Gods viceroy at the Great Judgment. It is to be noticed that the NT conception of our Lords Messiahship, while higher than any previously set forth, is much more nearly related to the Danielic Son of Man than to the political type of Messiah (Act 3:21, 1Th 4:16, 2Th 1:7, etc.). Now, if Jesus was the Messiah, then, since He had actually come, and had been rejected by His people, several consequences seemed (to Jewish minds) to follow inevitably, viz.:

(2) The Last Days are now in progress.-In Jewish apocalyptic, the coming of the Messiah is invariably associated with the end of this world and the beginning of the New Era. So, when the apostles proclaimed that the Messiah had come, they thereby conveyed to their Jewish hearers the impression that the Last Days had also come-not merely that they were at hand, but that they had actually begun and were in progress. And in fact this belief is implied in many NT passages, the full meaning of which often escapes the notice of the casual reader, who is full of modern ideas. But if once this eschatological outlook is realized, the early narratives of Acts are filled with new meaning. In particular, it will be noticed that the appeals to prophecy, which occur as frequently in Acts, are often connected with the desire to prove that the Last Days have at length come; e.g. the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost is hailed by St. Peter as the fulfilment of Joels prophecy, which expressly referred to the Last Days (Act 2:16-33; cf. Joe 2:28-32). His argument is that, since the prophecy has been fulfilled, it follows that the Last Days foretold therein must have come. Similarly, the charismata, and the gifts of healing and of tongues, which were prevalent in the early Church, lent themselves readily to the view that they were a part of the miraculous signs of the end foretold by prophets and apocalyptists (Act 2:18; Act 2:33; Act 2:43; Act 4:30 ff; Act 5:12-16; Act 16:18; Act 19:6; Act 21:9). Again, the Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord were proclaimed by the apostles, not merely as interesting historical events, but as part of the miraculous portents which were to form the birth-pangs of the Kingdom of God (Act 2:24-36; Act 3:14-26; Act 26:8). All these things combined to deepen in the minds of the first disciples of our Lord the conviction that it was the last hour.

(3) The Messiah is immediately to return as Judge.-Jesus, the Messiah, has been rejected by His people, but there remains yet another act in the great drama of the Last Things. His life on earth has fulfilled some of the Messianic prophecies; but others (e.g. Daniels vision of the Son of Man) are still awaiting fulfilment. So the Messiah is about to come again immediately in glory on the clouds of heaven to judge all mankind (Act 1:11; Act 10:42; Act 17:31; Act 24:25, Jam 5:8-9; 1Pe 4:5) and to destroy the apostate city of Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof (Act 6:14). Thus the apostolic preaching was in part a stern denunciation and a warning of judgment to come. But it did not end here.

(4) God is granting one more opportunity.-Herein lay the good tidings of the apostolic preaching. Although the Jews had incurred the severest penalties of the Divine judgment by crucifying the Messiah (Act 3:14 f.), yet another opportunity is being offered, by which all men may escape the wrath to come, and receive the Divine forgiveness. The only conditions demanded by God are (a) belief in Jesus as Lord and Messiah (Act 16:30 f.; cf. Act 2:37 ff., etc.), and (b) repentance (Act 2:38; Act 3:19; Act 20:21). Those who believe and repent will be saved in the Judgment from the condemnation which is impending over all the world (Act 2:40; Act 3:19; Act 3:23-26), and will be forgiven by the Lord Jesus, who, as Messianic Judge, alone has the authority to grant such pardon (Act 5:31; Act 10:43). Thus it will be seen that salvation and forgiveness, as terms of Christian theology, are in their origin eschatological, though they have been found capable of development along non-eschatological lines (see below). And it was just because of this eschatological background that the apostolic gospel was so intensely fervent and urgent; for there was not a moment to spare; the Judge was standing before the doors (Jam 5:9; cf. 1Pe 4:5; 1Pe 4:7; 1Pe 4:17), and every convert was indeed a brand plucked from the burning (Act 2:38-40; Act 2:47; Act 3:19-26). So the apostolic preaching was transformed from a denunciation and a warning of impending judgment into an evangel of salvation and forgiveness.

(5) The free gifts of God.-To describe the apostolic gospel simply as a promise of escape from the wrath to come would be inadequate; it was a promise rich with new gifts and blessings-e.g. the outflowing of the Divine Spirit (Act 2:33; Act 2:38 f.; Act 5:32), and the seasons of refreshing, which would sustain the elect until the return of the Messiah and the restoration of all things (Act 3:19-21; see below, I. 4 (5)). And these blessings were not to be laboriously earned, but were freely offered to all who would repent and believe.

4. The application of the apostolic message to the chief doctrines of the Last Things.-The ideas underlying the most primitive Christian eschatology, as we have outlined it above, are so unfamiliar to us that their bearing upon the great problems of the future life is not at first sight evident, and requires a brief consideration.

1 The Second Coming of our Lord.-Most early Christians doubtless conceived of this in the traditional dramatic form, in accordance with the teaching of Enoch and other Jewish apocalypses. On the other hand, it should be remembered that (a) the unearthly conception of the Messiah set forth in the Enochic Son of Man would be modified by the recollection of the historical human personality of Jesus the Messiah; and (b) the apocalyptic idea of Messiahship, though one-sided, and therefore inadequate for a satisfactory Christology, was yet a high and transcendent ideal-one which needed to be supplemented and enlarged, rather than corrected. It formed a good foundation, upon which Christian thought and experience were able to build a fuller and truer doctrine of our Lords Person and Second Coming.

2 The Last Judgment.-This also was, in primitive Christian thought, closely linked with the Person of our Lord as Messianic Judge. It was thought of as limited in time to a date in the near future, and probably localized at some place on the earth (perhaps Jerusalem; cf. Act 6:14, 1Pe 4:17). Such ideas, however crude, were capable of being spiritualized in course of time, without any breach in the continuity of Christian teaching. A more serious problem is raised by the difficulty of reconciling the doctrine of a universal Judgment (Act 17:31, 1Pe 4:5) with the doctrine of forgiveness, by which some men are acquitted beforehand in anticipation of the Judgment. This is a hard, perhaps an insoluble, problem; but it is not peculiar to eschatology; for it confronts us wherever the ideas of forgiveness and justice are placed side by side.

3 The Intermediate State.-So long as the Return of the Lord was expected to occur immediately, there was little room for any speculations with regard to the state of those who had fallen asleep in Christ. The waiting-time seemed so brief that it did not invite much consideration. To expect to find in the NT authoritative statements either for or against prayers for the dead, or formal distinctions between an intermediate state of purgation and a final state of bliss, is to forget the peculiar eschatological outlook of primitive Christianity, and to look for an anachronism. The beginnings of Christian speculation concerning the Intermediate State come before us at quite an early stage (e.g. in 1 Thess.); but they do not belong to the earliest stage of all.

The case was somewhat different with regard to the faithful who had died before Christ came. Christians naturally wished to know how these would be enabled to hear the good tidings, and share in the forgiveness and salvation now offered by Christ. Two well-known passages in 1 Peter bear upon this point: the preaching to the spirits in prison (1Pe 3:19), and the preaching to the dead (1Pe 4:5). A detailed discussion is impossible here; see the Commentaries ad loc. In the present writers Primitive Christian Eschatology, p. 254ff., it is contended that the passages should be interpreted in accordance with the methods of Jewish apocalyptic; and that their main purpose is to teach that the good tidings have been proclaimed by Christ to those who had died before His Coming, so that at His Return they may have the same opportunities of repentance as those who are alive at the time. Broadly, too, we may see in these passages Scriptural warrant for the view that there may be opportunities for repentance after death.

4 The Resurrection.-Questionings with regard to the nature and manner of the resurrection are scarcely seen at all in the earliest eschatology as reflected in Acts and the Judaeo-Christian Epistles (see Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 91f.). Generally the references apply to our Lords Resurrection, and even where the general resurrection is implied (Act 23:6-8; Act 24:15; Act 26:6-8) no details as to the manner thereof are forthcoming. In Act 24:15 its universal scope (both of the just and unjust) is asserted; and in Heb 6:1-2 is included among the principles of Christ which are too well known to need a detailed exposition. But we find nothing corresponding to the Pauline discussion as to the nature of the resurrection-body. In the Jewish apocalypses, the doctrine fluctuates from an extremely material conception to one which is purely spiritual; and probably the early Christians inherited various views on this point. The idea that our Lords Resurrection was a first-fruits of the general resurrection is implied in Act 26:23, and this was destined in time to influence the Christian doctrine of the resurrection.

5 Final destinies.-Here again, no detailed scheme of doctrine is yet put forward. Broadly, it is implied that supreme joy will be the reward of the believers, and that a dreadful fate awaits unbelievers (Act 3:23). The phrase restoration of all things (Act 3:21) might be taken to imply a universalistic view of future destinies, or even some idea of world-cycles by which the eras that are past are brought back in course of time; but a similar phrase is found in Mal 4:5 (Septuagint ), and may be no more than a general term for the perfection of the Messianic Kingdom.

5. The extent and importance of the apocalyptic element in the earliest Christian eschatology.-Until recent years, the apocalyptic element in the NT received but scant notice; but of late a new theory as to the teaching and tone of apostolic Christianity has been put forward (see e.g. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, or Schweitzer, Paul and his Interpreters). It is contended that the gospel of primitive Christianity was exclusively an eschatological message, foretelling, in terms of current Jewish apocalyptic, the approaching end of this world-era and the beginning of the next. If the interpretation given above be correct, there is a measure of truth in this Consistent Eschatological view of apostolic eschatology; for the new faith did not at once sweep away the old methods of thought, and we should miss the force and full significance of NT eschatology unless we interpreted it in the light of Jewish apocalyptic.

On the other hand, the Consistent Eschatologists do not appear to give sufficient place to other factors: e.g. (1) the political type of Jewish thought, in which the Messiah is conceived of as an earthly Monarch, and the Kingdom of God as an extensive Jewish Empire. Some such political ideas were clearly in the minds of the apostles at the first (Act 1:6), and they may well have existed in the primitive Church side by side with the purely apocalyptic eschatology. And (2) the Consistent Eschatologists under-rate the importance of the new and distinctively Christian element in the apostolic eschatology. Also (3) a study of the NT shows that, from the very first, moral teaching held a place second to none in the apostolic preaching. In view of these facts, it would appear to be an exaggeration to speak of the primitive apostolic gospel as though it were exclusively, or even predominantly, an eschatological message.

6. The relation of the primitive apostolic eschatology to the teaching of our Lord.-It was from the teaching and work of our Lord that the apostolic preaching derived its primary inspiration, and hence it is evident that the apostolic doctrine of the Last Things was intended to be founded upon His. And since recent study of the NT seems to have shown that eschatology held an important place in our Lords teaching, we may not regard the eschatological tone of the primitive apostolic message as an element foreign to the mind of Christ, or one invented by the apostles merely to satisfy their own predilections. It does not follow, however, that the apostolic teaching coincided precisely with that of our Lord. It was only natural that the apostles should tend to emphasize those aspects of His teaching which were most full of meaning to themselves, and to lay but little stress upon whatever appeared to them unfamiliar or incomprehensible. And so the proportions of the message undergo some modification: for instance, in the apostolic preaching, the expectation of the Second Coming is set forth more definitely than in the words of the Master Himself.

But in one point the community of spirit between the eschatology of Christ and His followers is most noteworthy: the close link between the eschatology and practical morality. From the first, the call to repentance always accompanies the eschatological message (Act 2:38, etc.); and the repentance of the primitive Christians involved a very real change of life. Herein, from the very first, lay a difference between Jewish and Christian eschatology: the former was often only a comfortable theory, to give encouragement in times of trouble; the latter was always an inspiring call to a new life of faith and love. This was an essential element of the apostolic eschatology, destined to survive when the forms and phrases of Jewish apocalyptic gave way under the trials of the long delay in the Masters Return.

7. The decline of the earliest type of Christian eschatology.-The form of the earliest Christian doctrine of the Last Things, as we have estimated it above, was congenial only to Jewish surroundings, and it soon began to undergo some modification. Some of these lines of development may be traced to the influence of Gentile thought, as reflected, e.g., in St. Pauls Epistles; to the deepening of the spiritual ideas underlying the dramatic eschatology, as we see in the Johannine writings; and to the rise of the Christian apocalyptic literature, with its close resemblance to Jewish apocalyptic. For the present, our consideration of these may best be deferred. But in certain quarters the primitive Judaeo-Christian eschatology appears to have been but little modified by external influences; only it shows a steady decline and a gradual loss of its original vitality and power. The beginnings of this decline may be seen even in the NT writings which we have already been considering, viz. Acts, James, Hebrews, 1 Peter; its later stages are reflected chiefly in Jude, 2 Peter, the Didache (if the early date be accepted), and some of the Apostolic Fathers. The Johannine and Pauline writings also indirectly throw light upon this subject.

(1) Causes of the decline

(a) The recollection of our Lards teaching.-If, as we have contended, the eschatology of our Lord was wider and deeper than the apostolic interpretation of it, it was natural that some of the half-understood sayings of the Master-particularly the parting commissions, Mat 28:20, Act 1:7-8, which are so notably non-eschatological-should remain in the memory of the apostles, and that in course of time a fuller meaning should dawn upon their minds. So it would come to pass that the moral and spiritual aspects of the gospel, and the world-wide scope of its mission, would claim an increasing pre-eminence in the apostolic preaching. (For the influence of our Lords teaching on St. Paul, see Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, pp. 96-101.)

(b) A keen sense of moral values.-Practical morality was from the first held in the highest esteem in the Judaeo-Christian communities (see, e.g., the Epistle of James), and this tended to draw the centre of Christian interest away from eschatology to morality. It is difficult to illustrate this by detailed quotations; perhaps the best proof may be obtained by a rapid perusal of Acts, by means of which the steady diminution of the eschatological expectation as the narrative proceeds is readily noticed. In the later speeches of St. Paul, at Miletus (Act 20:18-35) or at Jerusalem (Acts 22), eschatology is almost ignored; and St. Paul before Felix reasons of righteousness and temperance as well as of judgment to come (Act 24:25). Also the teaching of 1 Peter, and most of all of James, suggests that moral and spiritual values are far more esteemed than eschatological problems.

(c) The charismata.-The spiritual gifts, e.g. of healing or of tongues, while originally regarded by Jewish Christians as signs of the end (see above, I. 3 (2)), soon began to acquire an intrinsic value of their own in the eyes of the Christian community. Men knew, as a fact of Christian experience, that they had been freed from the power of sin and from the sense of guilt before God; and so they began to use the terms salvation, justification, etc., to describe their own spiritual experiences rather than purely eschatological hopes. (In Act 16:31, e.g., salvation scarcely seems eschatological; and in Act 10:38 our Lord is described simply as one who went about doing good and healing.)

It will be noticed that the influences we have been considering tended to alter the proportions of Christian teaching by emphasizing non-eschatological factors at the expense of eschatology. But there were also other influences at work, directly tending to break up the primitive doctrine of the Last Things.

(d) The delay in the Return.-This was the most potent of all the factors which changed the tone of Christian eschatology. As the days and months passed, and the Son of Man did not appear on the clouds of heaven, it was impossible to repeat with the same assurance the old message: The time is at hand. Yet the old hope persisted long in Judaeo-Christian circles, not only in the earlier writings, e.g. Jam 5:9; 1Pe 4:7, but until the close of the 1st cent., e.g. 1Jn 2:18, Didache 16, and even in the Apology of Aristides.

But we see the change of tone in St. Pauls charge to the Ephesian elders (Act 20:28-32), which, so far from anticipating an immediate Return of the Lord, looks forward to a period of apostasy, and to an extended ministry in the Church. We see it even more plainly in 2Pe 3:4 ff., where the mocking question, Where is the promise of His coming? is met by the old answer of Jewish apocalyptists: One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2Pe 3:8; cf. Slavonic Enoch, 32). Such an argument virtually implies that the primitive confidence in an immediate Return had been surrendered. The gradual weakening of that confidence will come before us again in St. Pauls Epistles [see below]. In Didache, 16, the Return, though near, is to be preceded by the rule of Antichrist; and the rise of Chiliasm in the 2nd cent. thrust the final consummation still further into the future.

(e) The problem of sin in the Christian community.-This, though not at first sight an eschatological question, indirectly helped to modify the primitive doctrine of the Last Things. The early Christian conception of final destinies was simple and consistent: those who believed and repented would be saved; those who believed not would be condemned. This view assumed that Christian practice would always be in complete accord with Christian profession; and, so long as this was the case, it was not open to objection. But in practice it was soon found that professing Christians were not always consistent in their lives (Jam 3:1; Jam 4:1-2; cf. Act 20:30). So the simple two-fold division of mankind into saved and not-saved became unsatisfactory to mans sense of justice, for it did not correspond to the facts of experience; and similarly the two-fold division of final destinies into eternal bliss and eternal woe became open to the charge that it imputed to God a line of action not wholly just.

This difficulty was met in two ways. () The stricter minds insisted that post-baptismal sin forfeited the right to salvation, and incurred condemnation (Heb 6:4-6). By this means all Christians guilty of sin were classed among the not-saved, and the two-fold division of retribution could logically be maintained. () A more lenient view admitted the possibility of a second repentance after post-baptismal sin, at least if the sin were atoned for by penance. Soon after the year a.d. 100 we find this view prevalent (2 Clem. 7; Shepherd of Hermas: Vis. iii., Sim. vi., etc.). This view, while rich in charity, surrendered the ideal of a consistent Christian life, and is far removed from the logical simplicity of primitive Christian eschatology. A further application of the idea of penance to the future life resulted in the doctrine purgatory, whereby the primitive two-fold division of the other world becomes three-fold. (For the beginnings of the doctrine of purgatory, see Shepherd of Hermas: Vis. iii. 7; Clem. Alex. Strom. vi. 14; and some of the Christian apocalypses.)

(f) The influence of Jewish apocalyptic.-We have already referred in general terms to this influence under the Jewish background of ideas (see above, I. 2), and its full results will come before us at a later stage, under II. At this point, however, it is worth noting that a deliberate imitation of the Jewish apocalypses in writings not themselves apocalyptic marks the decline of the Judaeo-Christian type of eschatology. Jude and 2 Peter are the most notable instances in the NT. Although the language is at first sight that of primitive Christianity, there is a real difference. Instead of the bold outlines of the good tidings concerning Jesus the Messiah, we find a mass of detailed revelations about angels, and fallen stars, and cosmic convulsions (Jud 1:6-16, 2Pe 2:4-11; 2Pe 3:5-13), such as the Jewish apocalyptists delighted to describe, but which had ceased to attract the first generation of Christians, because of the all-absorbing interest of the good tidings. The general tone of these Epistles is also far more pessimistic than that of the earliest Christian preaching, and reflects the position of men conscious of a reaction after a great spiritual revival (Jud 1:3 f, Jud 1:7 f., 2Pe 2:1 f.; 2Pe 3:1-3). This again agrees with the normal characteristics of Jewish apocalyptic. It should be noted also that Jud 1:14 f. is a direct quotation from Enoch i. 9.

A still later stage in the decline of the primitive Judaeo-Christian eschatology under apocalyptic influence is seen in Papias, where the apocalyptic details have become simply puerile, and the old virility and strong moral associations of eschatology have practically vanished (see, e.g., the quotation from Papias in Iren. adv. Hr, v. xxxiii. 3f.).

(2) Results of the decline.-A number of causes, some of which we have briefly considered above, slowly but surely modified the primitive doctrine of the Last Things, as preached in Judaeo-Christian circles. The expectation of an immediate Return of the Messiah, which had been its main inspiration, died away; and nothing replaced it. The result was that this type of eschatology ceased to be a living force in the Christian Church. Where it was elaborated by apocalyptic details, it continued for a time (as we shall see in the case of the Christian apocalypses) to enjoy some measure of popular favour; or again, where it was interpreted and re-stated by master-minds, such as St. Paul and St. John, its abiding value was revealed, and has never ceased to be recognized by thoughtful minds. But in its original form it was not fitted to survive, and so, unless it was transformed, it slowly expired.

II. The Christian Apocalyptic Literature

So far, we have been considering what appears to have been the normal type of early Christian eschatology; and we have seen that the ideas and phraseology of the Jewish apocalypses often occur in Christian literature which is not properly apocalyptic in its literary form (e.g. Acts, 2 Peter, etc.). In these cases the apocalyptic influence may be called indirect or incidental. But there are other Christian writings in which the literary form of Jewish apocalyptic is deliberately imitated in detail; and in these writings-especially those of later date-we see a distinct modification of the earliest type of Christian eschatology, such as we have considered above.

1. The Revelation of St. John

(1) General scheme of the book.-This, the greatest, and perhaps the earliest, of the Christian apocalypses, contains such a wealth of material bearing upon eschatology that a detailed treatment is here impossible. If (as the majority of scholars hold) the book belongs to the times of Nero, Vespasian, or Domitian (circa, about a.d. 65-70, or 95), it is an extremely important witness to the history of early Christian eschatology, whatever be the final decision with regard to its authorship.

Various attempts have been made to dissect the book into strata of different dates; but, viewed as a whole, the book conveys a strong impression of literary unity. In particular, with regard to the eschatology, the various parts resemble each other in tone far more nearly than they resemble any other known apocalypse. Also, the book, if regarded as a whole, offers an intelligible scheme: (a) the Introduction (Joh 1:1-8); (b) the letters to the Seven Churches (Joh 1:9 to Joh 3:22), which show the immediate purpose for which the author wrote the book; (c) the vision of the opening of the Sealed Book (Joh 4:1 to Joh 11:19), which enforces the general message that the end is at hand (see below); (d) the vision of the Fall of Rome (Joh 12:1 to Joh 18:24), which sets forth in detail the particular element of the last great crisis which for the moment seemed the most important; (e) the vision of the Last Judgment (Joh 19:1 to Joh 20:15); and (f) the vision of the new City of God. These may be regarded as component parts of one great apocalypse. It will be seen that they form, broadly, an intelligible and progressive narrative, on the lines of normal Jewish apocalyptic; and though it may be that in parts the visions are concurrent rather than successive (Mac-Culloch in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics v. 387), there seems no sufficient reason to postulate a literary patchwork.

2 The book as a type of apocalyptic literature-The writer is steeped in apocalyptic thought and language, to a greater extent than any other NT writer. To the average modern reader the book appears strange and unintelligible; but to those familiar with Jewish apocalyptic there is scarcely a phrase altogether new or without parallel. From this, two important consequences follow. (a) The interpretation of the details should accord with the methods of interpretation applied to apocalyptic literature in general. It should be remembered, e.g., that the apocalyptists were in the habit of heaping up details in their description of the Messianic woes and the last catastrophe, rather with a view to creating a vivid picture of chaos and terror than with the intention of depicting some definite event by each separate illustration. So it is probable that many of the details of the NT Apocalypse are not intended to bear a too careful analysis or interpretation. (b) If the author of the Apocalypse be identified with the author of the Fourth Gospel and the Johannine Epistles, it is clear that the primitive Christians were able to put aside their apocalyptic language and ideas at will, and to see behind the dramatic imagery to the underlying spiritual truths thus symbolized. And, conversely, in early Christian writings which are apparently non-apocalyptic, it is likely that eschatological ideas are never far absent from the mind of the writer, and may appear incidentally at any point.

(3) The writers hope of an immediate Return of the Lord.-The writer begins by claiming to reveal the things which shall shortly come to pass (Rev 1:1), and closes with the Divine promise: I come quickly (Rev 22:20). Clearly, then, the hope of the Second Coming in the near future had not yet faded from his mind. Indeed, the main purpose of the book is similar to that of all apocalypses-viz. to encourage the faithful in times of trouble with the assurance that the hour of deliverance is at hand. In particular, this may be seen in the vision of the opening of the Sealed Book (chs. 4-11). We read that the opening of the first five seals is followed by victory (Rev 6:1-2), war (Rev 6:3-4), famine (Rev 6:5-6), death (Rev 6:7-8), and the cry of martyred saints (Rev 6:9-11). So far, the vision may well be taken as describing the position of the Church at the close of the 1st cent. a.d., when Romes victories had brought famine, war, death, and persecution in their train. But when we pass to the opening of the sixth and seventh seals, we are at once confronted with cosmic convulsions and miraculous portents, which form the birth-pangs of the New Era (Rev 6:12-17; Revelation 8, 9). If we interpret this vision as we interpret other apocalypses, we shall conclude that the writer was living in the times of the breaking of the fifth seal, so that the vision up to that point is an apocalyptic retrospect of history, and after that point is an apocalyptic prediction of the Messianic woes, which were about to begin immediately. This leads on to the vision of the two witnesses, their destruction by the Beast, their resurrection (Rev 11:1-13; probably a picture of the last great struggle with Antichrist), and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God (Rev 11:15-19). In other words, the gist of these chapters is a message of encouragement, assuring the persecuted Christians that the time of their redemption has come.

(4) The political element in the eschatology.-The Roman Empire was, to the mind of the writer, the greatest enemy of Christ-almost, indeed, the Antichrist himself. So he devotes seven chapters (12-18) to a vision of the Fall of Rome, which forms a kind of supplement to the vision of the opening of the Sealed Book, and deals with the political aspect of the Last Things. The details offer many difficult problems for solution; we find a medley of ideas, mainly from Jewish apocalyptic, blended perhaps with the popular expectation that Nero would return once more as a great world-ruler (Rev 13:11-18; see Swetes Apocalypse, Introduction, ch. vii.). The political outlook of these chapters, with their intense hostility to the Roman Empire, is widely different from that of most NT writers (e.g. St. Paul in 2Th 2:6 f. or Rom 13:1-2). In so far as the spirit of opposition to Christ was at that time bound up with the policy of the Empire, the vision is true to deep principles of Christian eschatology; but some of the passages have lent themselves to political or ecclesiastical bias and party-spirit.

5 The doctrine of the Millennium.-The vision of the Last Judgment in chs. 19 and 20 contains a doctrine of the Millennium. There is to be a first resurrection of the faithful dead, who will reign with Christ a thousand years, during which time the rest of the dead live not till the thousand years are finished (Rev 20:4-5). Then follows a second resurrection, and a second judgment of all mankind, when the assignment of final destinies is made to each soul (Rev 20:11-15).

The idea of a Millennial reign of the Messiah on earth is found in Jewish apocalypses (e.g. cf. 4 Ezr 7:28-28; Slav. Enoch, 33); but there is no authority for it in the teaching of our Lord. It seems difficult to attach to it any meaning of permanent spiritual value; moreover, in its materialistic forms it has been a source of weakness rather than of strength to Christian eschatology. For the later history of Chiliasm, see Didache, 16 (closely based on Revelation 19, 20); Papias (quoted Iren. adv. Hr. v. xxxiii.); Ap. Bar. xxxix. 5; Ep. Barnabas, 15; Justin, c. Tryph, 80; Iren. adv. Hr. v. xxxiv. f., etc. Justin, while holding strongly to a belief in the Millennium on earth, admits that the belief was not held ubique et ab omnibus in the Church.

6 The distinctiveness of the Johannine Apocalypse.-The resemblance between the NT Apocalypse and other apocalypses is, as we have seen, striking; but not less striking are the distinctive features of the former.

(a) Alone of all the apocalypses, Jewish or Christian, it is given under the name of the writer, and not under an assumed name of some great hero of the past. This is most significant; for it shows the prophetic character of apostolic eschatology. Unlike apocalyptists in general, the writer did not shelter himself under the authority of the past; but he dared to speak boldly in his own name, under a strong conviction that he had a new message from God to deliver.

(b) The central position given to the Person of Jesus the Messiah is also of importance. The writer seems to feel that no language is too lofty to describe the Person of our Lord. At the very outset, the Danielic vision of the Almighty is applied to our Lord without the least hesitancy; and throughout the book the Chtistology, though apocalyptic in form, implies the most exalted conception of Messiahship (Rev 1:5-7; Rev 1:17 f.; Rev 5:5; Rev 5:9-14; Rev 19:11-16, etc.). This is the more noteworthy when we remember that in many of the Jewish apocalypses, especially those contemporary with primitive Christianity (e.g. 4 Ezra and Apocalypse of Baruch), the figure of the Messiah plays but an insignificant part.

(c) The lofty spirituality of the book is another distinctive feature. No book of the NT has given more noble expression to the highest aspirations of man for the future life than the Apocalypse of St. John. Certainly no other apocalypse offers anything to rival its masterly word-pictures of the Kingdom of God (see, e.g., Revelation 7; Rev 21:1-7; Rev 21:22 to Rev 22:7). Such passages show us the heights to which the apocalyptic type of Christian eschatology could attain in the mind of an inspired master-thinker.

2. The non-canonical Christian apocalypses

1 The chief writings of this type.-The Apocalypse of St. John stands as the only representative of Christian apocalyptic in the NT; but one or two other Christian apocalypses appear to belong-at least in part-to the 1st cent. a.d. The determination of their dates is, however, a difficult matter, and by no means established beyond doubt. Such are:

(a) Parts of the Sibylline Oracles (e.g. the Promium, bk. iv. and bk. viii. 217-429; see Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) v. 68).

(b) Parts of the Ascension of Isaiah. Charles (Introd. to Asc. Is.) assigns chs. iii-v. and vi-xi. to the close of the 1st. cent. a.d.; but Armitage Robinson (Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) ii. 500b) assigns the Christian element in Asc. Is. to the middle of the 2nd cant. a.d.

(c) The Epistle of Barnabas, though not strictly an apocalypse in form, is apocalyptic in tone, and has been assigned to the times of Vespasian (so Lightfoot), Nerva, or Hadrian. There are also several Christian apocalypses which probably contain elements belonging to the 2nd. cent. a.d.-e.g. the Apocalypse of peter, the Testament of Abraham, the Testament of Isaac, the Vision of Paul, etc. These help us to realize more clearly the distinctive features of the Christian apocalyptic literature, as developed in later times.

2 The eschatology of these writings.-The Christian apocalypses, like most of the Jewish apocalypses, were probably designed for circulation among the less educated sections of the community. The average tone is puerile and petty; we find a mass of trivial details and crude dramatic colouring, but an entire absence of deep or illuminating thoughts. Nearly all these books bear the marks of Egyptian or Alexandrian origin; and it would seem that the religious atmosphere of these parts was favourable to the growth of apocalyptic (cf. many of the Jewish apocalypses-Slav. Enoch, parts of Sib. Or., etc.). The most noteworthy features of the eschatology are:

(a) The profusion of detailed revelations.-While the normal Jewish scheme of eschatology is retained, the broad outlines are almost obscured by the mass of detailed description and prophecy; and the result is a type of eschatology very far removed from that of our Lord, or of the majority of NT books. In Asc. Is. we find graphic descriptions of the Seven Heavens (Asc. Is. iii. and iv.) and of the manner of the resurrection, which is apparently to be bodiless (iv. 14f.). In the later apocalypses these details become more and more profuse: the conditions of the Intermediate State, the punishments of the wicked, the geography of the other world, are expounded with minute precision. But a full discussion of these does not properly belong to apostolic eschatology.

(b) The prevalence of foreign ideas.-In these apocalypses Babylonian, Egyptian, and Zoroastrian legends are found strangely mingled with Christian ideas, just as they were doubtless mingled in the minds of the cosmopolitan populace of Alexandria.

(c) The coming of Antichrist.-This is a feature far more prominent in these apocalypses than in any other known group of writings. The idea seems derived from various sources: e.g. the Jewish expectation of a last leader of the hosts of evil (Ezekiel 38, 39, Dan 11:36, Apoc. Bar. xxxix., 4 Ezr 5:6, Pss. -Sol. 2:33, etc.); the Zoroastrian Satan, chief of the evil spirits (of. Asc. Is. ii.); the Babylonian Dragon-myth (see Bousset, Antichrist Legend, 1896); and, in particular, the expectation of Neros return to resume the sovereignty of the world (see Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, p. 78ff.). This dread of Neros return seems to have been an outstanding feature of Christian eschatology as reflected in these apocalypses-see, e.g., Asc. Is. iii. and iv., Sib. Or. iv. 117-122, 137ff., v. 138-141, 413-422, viii. 88-90, 169-213, etc. For other early Christian conceptions of Antichrist cf. 2Th 2:3-4 (see below, and article Man of Sin), 1Jn 4:3; 2Jn 1:7 (see below); Didache, 16 (where he is to appear as Son of God, i.e. as a pseudo-Messiah); Ep. Barn. 4. The conception (like the corresponding one of the Messiah) varies from that of a human monarch to that of a supernatural being, sometimes closely akin to Satan. Various titles are used-e.g. Beliar (Asc. Is.), the Worlds Deceiver (Didache), the Black One (Ep. Barn.), the Man of Sin (2 Thess.); but in all cases the destruction of Antichrist is set forth as one of the last and greatest acts of the true Messiah. The idea of a coming reign of Antichrist tended to throw back the Second Coming of the true Messiah into a somewhat less immediate future than it occupies in the earliest Christian message.

(d) The allegorical interpretation of Scripture.-By allegorizing the narratives of Scripture, some of the Christian apocalyptists were able to find prophecies of the Last Things in unpromising fields of study. In Ep. Barn. 15, e.g., we find Genesis 1 interpreted as an apocalypse of the worlds history, in a manner that reminds us of both the Alexandrian-Jewish apocalypses (e.g. Slav. Enoch) and the Christian Fathers of Alexandria.

3 Value of the Christian apocalypses.-These Christian writings are valuable, because they show us one of the lines along which the primitive Judaeo-Christian eschatology developed and decayed. The primitive enthusiasm for the few great truths of the gospel faded away, and it was replaced by a dilettante curiosity about the things of the other world, which ran riot in extravagant superstition, and eventually died-as it deserved to die. In these writings we may also see the beginnings of doctrines absent from primitive Christian eschatology, but prevalent in later ages of the Church, e.g. purgatory (Vis. Pauli, 22), or prayers for the dead (Test. Abr. 14). But these, again, scarcely fall within our present scope.

III. The Johannine Type Of Early Christian Eschatology.-The Gospel and Epistles traditionally ascribed to St. John so far resemble each other in their eschatological outlook that for our purpose it seems best to consider them together, as expressing a distinctive type of eschatology (see A. E. Brooke, The Johannine Epistles [International Critical Commentary , 1912], Introd., p. xxi). As illustrations of the history of Christian doctrine, the Johannine Epistles are easier to interpret than the Gospel, because in the latter it is often exceedingly difficult to differentiate between the purely historical element, based upon the teaching of our Lord Himself, and the Johannine element, due to the Evangelist. But since the eschatology in both Gospel and Epistles partakes of the same tone, which is not found (to the same extent) elsewhere in the NT, it seems reasonable to attribute this distinctive element to the writer in both cases, although not therefore denying the likelihood that it may be indirectly due to our Lords own teaching and influence. The chief points to note are:

1. The spirituality of the teaching.-Spirituality is perhaps the best word to describe the distinctive characteristic of the Johannine eschatology. It bears the impress of a mind retentive of traditional forms of belief, but not content with the surface-meaning of current teaching. The old phraseology is not rejected; but it is regarded as a parable, half concealing and half revealing the deep spiritual truths over which the writer had pondered in the hours of meditation. The signs of foreign influence in the Johannine writings are very slight; the signs of the inner working of the writers mind are very marked indeed. Hence we find the following characteristics:

(a) The Jewish phraseology retained.-The dramatic setting of Jewish eschatology is as vividly displayed in the Johannine writings as in any part of the NT. Our Lord is portrayed as the Messianic Son of Man, who has descended out of heaven (Joh 3:13; Joh 6:38; Joh 6:42; Joh 8:23; Joh 8:58); who is the Messianic Judge (Joh 5:22; Joh 5:27); who has returned to heaven (Joh 6:62; Joh 20:17), and thence as glorified Messiah pours out the Spirit on His disciples (Joh 7:39); and who will one day come again (Joh 21:22). His Return will be preceded by the Messianic woes (Joh 15:20; Joh 16:2; Joh 16:33, etc.), by the Coming of Antichrist (1Jn 2:22; 1Jn 4:3, 2Jn 1:7), and by the general Resurrection (Joh 5:28); and will be followed by the Last Judgment (Joh 12:48). The writer of the Epistles believes he is living in the last hour-i.e. the interim between the First and Second Comings of the Lord (1Jn 2:18). In the Gospel the time of the Return seems more distant; e.g. in John 14, 15 the instructions given do not suggest a very brief interim on earth.

(b) The inner meaning of eschatology emphasized.-Although the Johannine eschatology so far agrees with the normal Jewish doctrine, there is a difference. The writer does not seem to regard this dramatic eschatology merely as a prediction of coming events, but rather as a parable or illustration of great spiritual principles, which are continuously at work in all history, albeit specially manifest in the spiritual experiences of Christians. In this sense, the Johannine eschatology may be called timeless; the Resurrection, the Judgment, the Coming, are always taking place, though they will attain their consummation at the Last Crisis (cf. Brooke, The Johannine Epistles, p. 37). Speculations regarding the time of the Second Coming are discouraged (Joh 21:22). The gift of eternal life in the present (Joh 3:36; Joh 11:25 f.; cf. 1Jn 3:24; 1Jn 4:13) tends to displace the dramatic picture of entering into the Kingdom at the Last Day, while spiritual union with Christ at once endows the believer potentially with the resurrection-privilege, which, to the Jew, was as yet in the unexperienced future (Joh 6:39-54; Joh 7:37 f.; Joh 11:25; Joh 17:3).

Again, while the word Antichrist (1Jn 2:22, etc.) is taken from Jewish apocalyptic, the idea is completely spiritualized-so much so that commentators have found it most difficult to be certain what the writer himself intended to signify by the term. Broadly, it appears hero to designate the spirit of evil in its most dangerous form, and, in particular, the danger which came from perverted ideas concerning the Person of our Lord (1Jn 2:22; 1Jn 4:2 f., 2Jn 1:7). Throughout, the writer makes us feel that, while he uses Jewish phraseology, he is not enslaved to it. He realizes the folly of idle speculations regarding the future (cf. Joh 21:22); he feels the need for reverence and restraint; yet he is sure that Heaven will not fall short of our deepest spiritual experiences, nor of the highest ideals we have known-Beloved, it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.

(c) Apparent paradoxes.-Hence the paradoxical nature of the Johannine eschatology; the writer feels that the whole truth is beyond the grasp of the human mind, and he sets forth first one aspect, then another, prepared to appear inconsistent rather than one-sided. Our Lords First Coming, e.g., was not for the Judgment (Joh 3:17), yet it was a judgment (Joh 3:18; Joh 9:39; Joh 12:31); the hour of the general resurrection is still to come (Joh 5:28 f.; Joh 6:40), yet the resurrection is a fact of Christian experience in the past (Joh 5:21; Joh 5:24), and this latter is the more important of the two truths (Joh 11:23-26).

2. The place of the sacraments in the Johannine doctrine of salvation.-Schweitzer has recently maintained that in the Fourth Gospel the sacraments are regarded as the normal channel by which eternal life is bestowed on the believer (Paul and his Interpreters, pp. 200-203). The elements of the Lords Supper, being the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, possess the capacity of being vehicles of the Spirit. As a combination of matter and Spirit which can be communicated to the corporeity of men, they execute judgment. The elect can in the sacrament become partakers of that spiritual substance, and can thus be prepared for the resurrection (p. 200). And Christ, we are told, taught that in the future, water, in association with the Spirit, would be necessary to life and blessedness. Jesus came into the world to introduce the era of effectual sacraments (p. 202f.). This theory, if true, would introduce into the scheme of Johannine eschatology a factor which has commonly been supposed to be of later origin in the history of the Church.

Certain passages may seem to lend themselves conveniently to this theory: e.g. Joh 3:5; Joh 6:41-59, 1Jn 5:8, and the use in the Johannine Epistles of phraseology suggestive of the Mysteries (e.g. in 1Jn 2:20; 1Jn 2:27; in 1Jn 3:3); but they are far from conclusive. On the other hand, we find many passages where the gift of eternal life is described simply as a free gift received by faith, without any mention of a sacramental medium (Joh 1:12 f.; Joh 3:36; Joh 6:47); and the idea that eternal life is normally bestowed by sacraments seems distinctly contrary to such passages as Joh 3:8 : The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit; or Joh 6:63 : the words that I speak unto you are spirit and are life (cf. 1Jn 1:1 the word of life). In these passages the gift of eternal life is conveyed through the influence of Christs personality upon the human mind, either by the spoken word or by some unseen method, not through a visible ceremonial act. And in the Johannine Epistles eternal life has a strong ethical content (1Jn 3:14); it is in Christ (1Jn 5:11; 1Jn 5:20; cf. 1Jn 2:25), but no reference is made in this connexion to the sacraments.

Under the circumstances, it seems that Schweitzers theory of eschatological sacraments in the Fourth Gospel is not supported by the evidence.

3. The later history of the Johannine type of early Christian eschatology.-Just as there is no real parallel in the sub-apostolic literature to the Johannine books of the NT, so there is no real parallel to the Johannine eschatology-at least, none worthy to be compared with it for width of outlook and depth of feeling. Generally, the traditional eschatology is interpreted very literally, even prosaically. But the emphasis on the spiritual significance of eschatology recurs wherever the writers show signs of deep meditation on the problems of life. In the Pauline Epistles we shall meet with a similar tendency in places. In the Odes of Solomon it is very noticeable (see e.g. Odes iii. and xv.), and in the Alexandrian Fathers an allegorical interpretation of eschatology is found (e.g. Clement, Exhort. ad Gentes, 9), which, though widely different from the Johannine doctrine, resembles it in so far as it seeks to go behind the purely chronological aspect of eschatology.

IV. The Pauline type of Early Christian Eschatology, and the Eschatology of the Gentile-Christian Churches.

1. The eschatology of St. Paul.-In view of the trend of recent criticism, it seems reasonable to accept as a working hypothesis the view that all the Pauline Epistles of the NT are genuine letters of the Apostle, though in the case of the Pastoral Epistles the verdict can hardly be regarded as decisive. This long series of letters is of unique value as an illustration of the history of early Christian doctrine, as taught by one of its greatest exponents. Several problems of considerable importance demand consideration in connexion with St. Pauls eschatology.

(1) The development of thought in St. Pauls Epistles.-Several recent writers, approaching the subject from widely different standpoints, have urged that the supposed change in St. Pauls outlook as time went on is mainly a phantom of the critical imagination (e.g. Schweitzer, Paul and his Interpreters, p. 75f.; S. N. Rostron, The Christology of St. Paul, 1912, pp. 23-28). To the present writer, however, the signs of a real development of doctrine are unmistakable, if the Epistles are studied broadly in their generally accepted chronological order. The divergence of opinion regarding the date of Galatians-before or after the Thessalonian Epistles-does not seriously affect the problem, because Gal. is dominated by one problem of immediate urgency, and does not deal at length with other topics, such as eschatology. In Gal. the supreme emphasis is laid on moral virtues, faith and love (5:6; cf. 2:10; 3:2, 26); neither dramatic eschatology nor eschatological sacraments receive any detailed notice. But if we study the rest of the Pauline Epistles under the four main groups-(a) 1 and 2 Thess.; (b) 1 and 2 Cor., Rom.; (c) Col., Eph., Phil.; (d) 1 and 2 Tim., Tit.-the outlines of St. Pauls change of standpoint seem clear beyond doubt.

(a) 1 and 2 Thessalonians.-In these Epistles the outlook is as purely and consistently Judaeo-Christian as in the earlier chapters of Acts. The hope of an immediate Second Coming of the Lord holds the front place in the interests of both St. Paul and his readers. The wrath of the Last Crisis is impending (1Th 1:10; 1Th 2:16); the Christians are waiting for the Son of Man to descend on the clouds of heaven, while they are yet alive on earth (1Th 1:10; 1Th 4:13-18; 1Th 5:1-11; 1Th 5:23, 2Th 1:5-10; 2Th 2:1-11). The language which St. Paul uses in these Epistles to describe the Second Coming is such as any Jewish apocalyptist who accepted the Messiahship of Jesus might have used; there is no trace of Gentile influence, and he himself expects to be in the body at the time of the Return (1Th 4:17; cf. 1Th 5:23). Again, the eschatological problems discussed in these Epistles are such as would present themselves to Jewish minds; and St. Paul answers the difficulties as a Jew speaking to Jews. The problem of the faithful departed (1Th 4:13-18) was one that inevitably arose as soon as some of the brethren had died before the Lord returned. How would they be enabled to share in the joy of the Parousia? St. Pauls answer is that they will be raised in time to join in the Lords Coming (1Th 4:16). That such a question should have already come to the front is significant, because it marks perhaps the earliest of the many perplexities which arose in the minds of the faithful when the Lord did not return at once, and when consequently the simple scheme of the primitive Christian eschatology no longer sufficed to solve every difficulty. The gradual change of doctrinal outlook which resulted from this affected the whole Church, and there is no reason to doubt that St. Paul himself was influenced by it.

In 2 Thess. the perplexity caused by the delay has become much graver, and St. Paul counsels patience. Again he adopts a thoroughly Jewish line of argument: his language still implies that the Return will be comparatively soon; but he reminds his readers that certain of the signs of the end have not yet been fulfilled; and these must precede the final consummation. The signs which he mentions are: () the falling away ( , 2Th 2:3), () the revealing of the Man of Sin (2Th 2:3 f.; 7-9), () the taking away of the Restrainer ( , or , 2Th 2:6). St. Paul implies that he is speaking of ideas familiar to his readers (2Th 2:5 f.), and similar phrases are found in the descriptions of the signs of the end in the Jewish apocalypses; e.g. an apostasy is part of the Messianic woes in Jubilees, 23; Test. XII. Patr. (Levi 10, Daniel 5), etc. Again, the description of the Man of Sin offers close parallels to the figure of Antichrist (alias Beliar or Satan) in many of the apocalypses (e.g. in the contemporary writings of the Ap. Bar. xxxix. and 4 Ezr 5:6, and also in the later Christian apocalypses, notably Asc. Is. iii. and iv., and Sib. Oracles [see above]). (For fuller details, see article Man of Sin, and Kennedy, St. Pauls Conceptions of the Last Things, pp. 207-221.) For the taking away of the Restrainer it is not easy to find an exact parallel in Jewish apocalyptic; but from Daniel onwards we find that the close of a dynasty is often regarded as one of the signs of the end; and so the use of might well suggest to St. Pauls readers the idea of Imperial Rome, whose downfall would surely mark the close of a world-epoch. The important point to realize is that in this passage, so obscure to us, St. Paul is not inventing a new doctrine of the Last Things, but is taking familiar phrases and ideas and applying them to the problems which were then confronting the Christian community.

Thus the characteristic of 1 and 2 Thess. is that the eschatology is the central theme, and is completely Judaeo-Christian in form. At the same time, it is closely linked with moral teaching (1Th 3:13; 1Th 4:3-8, etc.); and this practical aspect of St. Pauls eschatology (which in this respect is in complete accord with that of our Lord) remains unchanged throughout all his writings.

(b) 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans (and perhaps Galatians).-In these Epistles, which form the second group of Pauline writings, the Jewish form of eschatology is still prominent, especially in 1 Corinthians. The Christians addressed are waiting for the apocalypse of our Lord (1Co 1:7), which is near at hand (Rom 13:11, 1Co 7:29; 1Co 7:31), and will be associated with the Resurrection (Rom 8:23) and the Judgment (1Co 4:5; 1Co 6:2, Rom 2:16). All this resembles 1 and 2 Thess.; yet the eschatology no longer occupies the centre of interest in these Epistles; other themes receive a larger share of attention. The spiritual gifts which the Christians possessed, and the spiritual power which had transformed their lives, begin to claim a pre-eminent place; and phrases originally eschatological are adopted to describe spiritual experiences in the past and present; e.g. 2Co 1:10, , (cf. 2Co 3:18; 2Co 4:18 ff.; 2Co 5:17). And in Romans we see how justification, which is properly an eschatological term (signifying the act by which the Messianic Judge pronounces the believer not guilty at the Great Judgment [Rom 2:13-16]), is becoming weaned from its old associations. For St. Paul teaches that the believer who has faith is pronounced not guilty here and now, in anticipation of the final verdict; and so justification becomes severed from eschatology, and linked with the spiritual experience known to Christians as the sense of forgiveness or assurance (cf. Rom 5:1, etc.).

In this group of Epistles we also see signs of Gentile influence, modifying the Jewish methods of thought. In dealing with the Resurrection, St. Paul uses a distinctly non-Jewish line of argument (see below), and his vision of the final consummation (Rom 11:25 f., etc.) is far wider than that current in Jewish circles. Moreover, in 1Co 15:22-28 St. Paul teaches that a kingdom of Christ on earth must precede the final consummation when he shall deliver the kingdom to God, even the Father (1Co 15:24; cf. the Parable of the Tares, Mat 13:41-43). Such a conception implies that the certainty of an immediate coming of the end is being abandoned.

(c) Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians.-In this group of St. Pauls letters we find the modifying tendencies noted above still further developed. The dramatic eschatology, though still present (Col 1:5; Col 3:4, Php 1:8; Php 1:10; Php 3:20, Eph 4:30), has receded still further from the central position it held in 1 and 2 Thess., and the use of eschatological terms in a non-eschatological sense becomes more and more frequent (Col 1:13, Php 3:10, Eph 1:3; Eph 2:5 f., etc.). There is no distinct assertion that the Return is near at hand (it may he implied, Php 3:20); and some passages suggest that a prolonged future lies before the Church on earth (e.g. the building up of the body of Christ, Eph 4:11-15, and the ingathering of the Gentiles, Ephesians 2, 3). In such passages St. Pauls thoughts seem to be far from the normal tone of Jewish apocalyptic.

(d) The Pastoral Epistles.-Here eschatology appears to rise once more into greater prominence; but it is not quite the same as before. The earlier Christian eschatology had sprung from enthusiastic hopes; The Last Days have come, because Messiah has appeared. But in the Pastoral Epistles the message is sadder, and more like that of the Jewish apocalyptists; The Last Days are at hand, because the times are evil (1Ti 4:1, 2Ti 3:1-5; 2Ti 4:1-8). There is a note of disappointment, as the Apostle speaks of prevalent apostasy (2Ti 2:18), which accords well with the supposition that these Epistles were written in a period of spiritual reaction, when the early hopes were being strained by the prolonged delay. Under such circumstances, it was necessary to guard against one-sided doctrines of the resurrection (2Ti 2:18) and to emphasize the objectivity of the Last Things (1Ti 6:14, 2Ti 4:1-8, Tit 1:2).

A broad purvey of the Pauline Epistles thus shows that the Apostles eschatological teaching underwent considerable modification in the course of time, from the somewhat conventional Jewish outlook of 1 and 2 Thess. to the broad and deep spiritual teaching of Eph.; and finally, in the Pastoral Epistles, we see signs of a renewed emphasis upon old truths which were in danger of being obscured.

(2) St. Pauls doctrine of Judgment, Intermediate State, Resurrection, Final Destinies

(a) Judgment.-The dramatic conception of the Judgment recurs frequently in the Pauline Epistles (2Th 1:7 ff., Rom 2:5; Rom 2:9-16, 1Co 4:5), but there are very few signs of the Johannine idea of a continuous judgment-process being worked out in history. The Judgment is to be universal (1Co 6:2, 2Co 5:10); but the Christian is free from condemnation (Rom 8:1-33), and indeed has already been justified (see above).

(b) The Intermediate State.-As long as St. Paul expected the Return in the immediate future, there was no logical place for any thought of the Intermediate State of the dead in Christ. Probably St. Paul, like many Jews, believed in a waiting-place for the faithful souls of former generations, who had been evangelized by the Descent into Hell (Eph 4:9; cf. 1Pe 3:19; 1Pe 4:6). But the Christian, when he departs, will be with Christ (Php 1:23)-a phrase scarcely applicable to an Intermediate State (cf. 2Co 5:1-10). If (as seems most probable) Onesiphorus was dead when 2Ti 1:18 was written, St. Paul did not scruple to pray for the dead. Yet such a prayer is but the instinctive act of a spiritually-minded man, to whom friendship is a bond too strong to be severed by death; and it would be unwise to deduce from it that St. Paul held a reasoned-out theory concerning the possibility of moral change in the life to come, to say nothing of a clear-cut doctrine of purgatory.

(c) The Resurrection.-To the Jews a doctrine of the resurrection did not appear strange, though the question In what shape shall the dead rise? is found, e.g. in Apoc. Baruch, xlix. 2. But among the Gentiles, even where a belief in immortality was present, a resurrection was incredible (Act 26:8). So, as long as St. Paul spake as a Jew, he simply affirmed the resurrection without comment (e.g. 1Th 4:18 f.): but, when he had to commend the gospel to educated Gentiles, a new line of argument became necessary, such as we find in 1 and 2 Corinthians. A brief outline of the famous passages 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 4, 5 is all that can be attempted here. The chief points to note are: () he bases the Christian hope on the historical fact of Christs Resurrection (1Co 15:4-11); () he argues from the analogy of the seed (1Co 15:36 ff.)-an argument which would appeal to the Gentile no less than to the Jew; () he teaches an upward movement in history (1Co 15:46), implying that the resurrection-life will be no mere replica of this life, but something higher and greater; () the resurrection-body will not be flesh and blood (1Co 15:50), but a spiritual body (1Co 15:44). Herein St. Paul differs alike from the materialistic conception of the resurrection and from the Gentile idea that the soul at death is freed from the encumbrance of a body. In some passages St. Paul does indeed seem to disparage the body (2Co 5:6); but he clearly teaches that the highest ideal is not to be stripped of the body, and lead a bodiless existence (which would render self-expression unthinkable), but rather to be clothed upon with a higher type of body, adapted to be the organ through which the ego may fully express itself in the spiritual sphere of existence (2Co 5:2-4; cf. 1Co 3:21). This transformation of our mode of life is to take place at the Last Day (1Co 15:51 f.); yet the spiritual transformation of the believer in this present life is described in similar language (2Co 3:18); and indeed the two are not irreconcilable, for the last-named is an earnest of the future resurrection (cf. Php 3:10-11, 2Ti 2:18).

The Chiliastic doctrine of a reign of Christ on earth, in an intervening period between a first and second Resurrection (cf. Rev 20:5-15), does not appear in St. Paul; the reign of Christ in 1Co 15:25 is far more applicable to the working of Christ through the Church, which was in progress when St. Paul wrote.

Whether St. Paul believed in a general resurrection of all men seems doubtful; some passages (e.g. Rom 8:11) suggest that the resurrection is conditional upon the possession of the Spirit of Christ; but since he taught that the judgment is to be universal, we may perhaps infer that the scope of the resurrection will be co-extensive.

(d) Final destinies.-Normally St. Paul adopts the usual view that the wicked go to eternal destruction and the believers to eternal life (2Co 2:15 f., etc.); but the latter aspect receives much greater emphasis than the former. The thought of the unendingness of final destinies is not prominent in the Pauline Epistles; sometimes the word seems used to express intensity rather than interminable duration (e.g. eternal destruction, 2Th 1:9, or an eternal weight of glory, 2Co 4:17). There are some passages where St. Pauls words suggest the hope of the final salvation of all men (1Co 15:28; cf. Rom 11:36). Such a conclusion seems naturally to follow from the infinite love of God; but it is hard to reconcile with the fact of human sin.

(3) The influence of Gentile thought upon St. Pauls eschatology

(a) Greek influence.-On this subject various views are held: some contend that the eschatological views of Paul mark a transition from purely Jewish to Hellenistic notions (P. Gardner, The Religions Experience of St. Paul, 1911, p. 126); others will scarcely admit the possibility of any Gentile influence, and maintain that St. Paul, from first to last, lived and spoke and wrote as a Jew (Schweitzer, Paul and his Interpreters, pp. 94, 227, 240, etc.). On the whole, the change which came over St. Pauls theology seems explicable simply as the natural development of an active mind constantly reconsidering the problems of Christian experience. On the other hand, St. Pauls avowed championship of the rights of Gentile Christianity may well have led him to be favourably inclined to Gentile ideas, and to loosen his affection for purely Jewish methods of thought. But the actual proofs of non-Jewish ideas are to be seen in the gradual modification of his teaching to which we have referred above, rather than in the presence of distinctively Hellenic language. The latter may perhaps be seen in the depreciation of the body (2Co 5:2-6), in the description of transformation (2Co 3:18; 2Co 5:4; cf. Seneca, Ep. vii. 1, non emendari tantum, sed transfigurari), in the comparison of the body to an earthen vessel (2Co 4:7; 2Co 5:1), and in the distinction between the and the (2Co 4:16; see Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, p. 68ff.). But, in so far as Greek influence is visible in these passages, it is rather due to unconscious than to conscious borrowing (ib. p. 204),

(b) Influence of the Oriental cults.-Apart from the Mysteries (see below), these exercised very little influence on St. Pauls eschatology. The idea of being clothed upon (2Co 5:1 ff.) is perhaps derived from Parsiism (Clemen, op. cit. p. 174), and other parallels have been traced; but they may be mere coincidences (ib. pp. 171-198).

(c) The influence of the Mysteries upon St. Pauls eschatology.-The Mysteries claimed to make men partakers of immortality, by means of initiatory rites and ceremonies, through which a sacramental grace was conveyed to the worshippers (see Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, pp. 91f., 151). It has recently been maintained (e.g. in Lakes Earlier Epistles of St. Paul) that Christianity was commonly regarded among the Gentiles as a superior kind of Mystery-Religion, and that, to them, its central message was the promise of eternal life given through the Christian Sacraments. Thus the Sacraments were intimately connected with eschatology, and the Gentile-Christian gospel, like the Jewish-Christian gospel, was essentially eschatological. But there was this distinction between the two types of Christianity: to the average Gentile Christian in, for instance, Corinth the centre of Christianity was the Sacraments. On the other hand, for a Jewish Christian, the expectation of the Parousia was probably quite central (Lake, op. cit. p. 437). Of St. Pauls own view Lake says: Baptism is, for St. Paul and his readers, universally and unquestioningly accepted as a mystery or sacrament which works ex opere operato (op. cit. p. 385).

Schweitzer, in Paul and his Interpreters, adopts a line of argument which is somewhat different; but his conclusions as to the substance of St. Pauls teaching show some notable points of resemblance to Lakes view. Though he utterly denies the possibility that St. Paul was influenced by Greek thought or by the Mysteries (op. cit. pp. 208, 240, etc.), yet be affirms that the Apostle held a doctrine of eschatological sacraments which, after all, would make the sacraments not unlike the rites of a Mastery. In Paul we find the most prosaic conception imaginable of the opus operatum (p. 213). Everywhere in the Pauline sacraments the eschatological interest breaks through. Their power is derived from the events of the last times. They put believers in the same position as the Lord, in that they cause them to experience a resurrection a few world-moments before the time, even though this does not in any way become manifest. It is a precursory phenomenon of the approaching end of the world. The sacraments are confined to the time between the resurrection of Jesus and His parousia, when the dead shall arise (p. 216f.). During this interim period, the present world-era and the world to come are in contact, and only while this contact lasts can men pass by means of the sacraments from one world to the other (p. 224). Similarly, of St. Pauls doctrine of baptism he says: The dying and rising again of Christ takes place in him without any co-operation, or exercise of will or thought, on his part. It is like a mechanical process (p. 225f.). This doctrine of eschatological sacraments can be understood, according to Schweitzer, entirely on the basis of Jewish primitive Christianity (p. 240). On the other hand, Clemen (Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, p. 266) affirms that it is simply false to say that baptism as well as the Lords Supper already within the books of the NT underwent the fateful transformation from symbolic act to sacramentum efficax. But, if St. Pauls teaching is rightly interpreted either by Lake or by Schweitzer, it would follow that the doctrine of the sacraments was a more important factor in early Christian eschatology-and indeed, in early Christianity at large-than has commonly been supposed.

An adequate discussion of the problem thus raised is impossible here; but one or two points may be noted:

() St. Paul certainly associates baptism with death and resurrection (Rom 6:3, Col 2:12), and with the reception of the Spirit (1Co 12:13). But, white these passage, and certain others regarding the Eucharist (1Co 10:16; 1Co 11:27; 1Co 11:30), may be consistent with Schweitzers theory of effectual sacraments, they are also explicable on the view that St. Paul is regarding the rite as the Symbol of grace conferred-a symbol normally linked with the spiritual gift, but not so necessary that without the rite the gift cannot be conveyed, nor yet mechanically conveying the gift ex opera operato. In one of the above passages (Col 2:12) the context (Col 2:14 f.) is full of highly metaphorical language. From these passages we are driven to conclude that the theory of a Pauline doc brine of effectual sacraments is Not proven.

() But, further, there are other passages where St. Pauls arguments are definitely against the view that sacraments Convey the new life ex opere operato. In 1Co 8:8-13; 1Co 10:14-32 he clearly teaches that the effect of partaking in a communion-feast is dependent on the state of mind of the recipient. The partaking becomes serious if it arouses uneasy doubt in the mind of the weaker brother who witnesses his act; but, apart from this possibility, and if the recipient is clear in his own conscience, the partaking will have no effect ex opera operato. The argument here refers to non-Christian sacraments, but it is consistent with the Apostles general attitude towards external rites and ceremonies: In Christ Jesus neither circumcision: availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love (Gal 5:6; cf. Gal 6:15; Gal 3:2, etc.). The omission of any reference to the Christian sacraments in such passages would be strange indeed, if the future salvation of the Christian was normally conveyed to him only through baptism and the Eucharist.

() The references to the sacraments in St. Pauls Epistles, viewed as a whole, are hardly sufficient to warrant the theory that the sacraments held a central place in his theology. Lake contends that this silence shows that the importance of the sacraments was universally accepted in the Church, and needed no further emphasis (op. cit. p. 233 n. [Note: . note.] ). But we may reasonably ask for some positive evidence that the sacraments had already sprung into a position of central importance in the Church, before we set aside the argument from silence. 1Co 1:14, I thank God that I baptized none of you, does not suggest that St. Paul put baptism in the place of central importance in the gospel.

() When Schweitzer tells us that St. Paul found already existing a baptism and a Lords Supper which guaranteed salvation (op. cit. p. 215; cf. p. 242), and that his doctrine of the sacraments is integrally, simply, and exclusively eschatological (p. 244), we may reasonably ask what evidence is forthcoming from the Jewish apocalypses to justify such assertions. Schweitzer adduces no such evidence; nor is the present writer acquainted with any.

We conclude, then, that the evidence does not support the theory that the primitive Church as a whole believed that eternal lift was conveyed normally by the sacraments, but rather that it was a free gift received immediately by faith. At the same time, it is likely enough that the less educated Christiana did regard Christianity as a kind of Mystery-Religion, with sacraments of a magical character. The obscure custom of baptism for the dead may have been associated with some such ideas (1Co 15:29), but it does not appear that they were shared by St. Paul, or by any of the NT writers. (For a careful discussion of this subject, see Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, pp. 223-250.)

2. The eschatology of the early Gentile-Christian churches

(1) The fruit of St. Pauls teaching.-St. Paul may fairly be regarded as the precursor of a Gentile type of Christian eschatology; for, although the instances of definitely Greet ideas in his writings are but few, he was in sympathy with non-Jewish ways of approaching the problems of life, and he was the champion of Gentile claims within the Church of Christ. Without his efforts Gentile thought would have been debarred from having free scope in the Church. But in the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic Ages, as we trace the doctrine of the Last Things through Clement of Rome, Ignatius, 2 Clement, Aristides, and Justin, down to Irenaeus at the close of the 2nd cent., there is but little evidence of a distinctively Gentile type of Christian eschatology. Jewish ideas and phraseology show no signs of disappearing entirely; and indeed Christian eschatology is never likely to lose all traces of its Jewish antecedents.

(2) Distinctive features of Gentile-Christian eschatology.-Yet the following changes may be attributed in great measure to the influence of Gentile thought, (a) The technical Jewish terms are replaced by others of a more prosaic character: e.g. in Clem. ad Cor. we rind the Return described as an (17) rather than as a or an . And in Ignatius the term Parousia is applied to the First Coming of our Lord at His Nativity (ad Phil. 9). Such changes show that the traditional Jewish scheme is undergoing a measure of re-statement at the hands of men who were unaccustomed to the apocalyptic scheme of the Last Things.

(b) Occasionally we meet with clear signs of Greek thought, e.g. Ign. ad Romans 3, Nothing visible is good. And some thirty years later we find the Epistle to Diognetus reflecting a thoroughly Greek theory of the relation of the soul to the body (7, 10).

(c) The conception of the Eucharist as a Mystery, through which immortality is conveyed to the believer, though (as we have contended above) not sanctioned by St. Paul himself, seems to be implied in some of the sub-apostolic writings: e.g. Ign. ad Eph. 20, Breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote that we should not die, but live for ever; cf. Iren. adv. Hr. iv. 8, Our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of resurrection to eternity.

(d) The idea that salvation is a future blessing, to be gained by external acts, or by membership of an organized society, may also be traced to the sub-Apostolic Age: e.g. Ign. ad Philippians 3, If any man followeth one that maketh a schism, he doth not inherit the Kingdom of God.

As a result of these and other modifications, early Christian eschatology in the Gentile churches gradually assumed a form which, though Jewish in phraseology, was sufficiently intelligible to those who were not familiar with the presupposition of Jewish apocalyptic. With the exception of a few doctrinal features, such as Chiliasm, which proved to be but temporary phases of thought, the eschatology of the Church of the 2nd. cent., as seen, e.g., in Irenaeus, had discarded its distinctively primitive characteristics, and was not far from the normal type of Christian eschatology as it has been taught in subsequent ages of the Church.

Literature.-For apostolic eschatology in general, see S. D. F. Salmonds article on Eschatology of the NT in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) , and J. A. MacCullochs article on Eschatology in the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics ; also R. H. Charles, Eschatology: Hebrew, Jewish, and Christian2, 1913; E. C. Dewick, Primitive Christian Eschatology, 1912; S. D. F. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality. 1904; etc.

For the Jewish background of ideas, see Charles, op. cit., and the same writers editions of the Jewish apocalypses, especially his Book of Enoch2, 1912; V. H. Stanton, The Jewish and Christian Messiah, 1886.

For the eschatology of the NT books, see the Comm. and articles ad loc., especially H. B. Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John, 1909, and R. H. Charles, Studies in the Apocalypse. 1913; and for Pauline eschatology, H. A. A. Kennedy, St. Pauls Conception of the Last Things, 1904; the same writers articles on St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions in the Expositor, 8th ser., iv. [1912] 60, 212, 306, 434. 539; K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, 1911; A. Schweitzer, Paul and his Interpreters, Eng. translation , 1912. The two last-named works apply the Consistent Eschatological theory to the apostolic writings.

For the influence of Gentile thought on Christian eschatology, see C. Clemen, Primitive Christianity and its non-Jewish Sources, Eng. translation , 1912; F. Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, 1911; E. Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, 1890 (Hibbert Lecture, 1888).

Of the Christian apocalypses, many are edited in Texts and Studies , vols. ii. and iii.; The Ascension of Isaiah, by R. H. Charles. 1900; The Sibylline Oracles, by Alexandre, 1841-56, and Rzach, 1892.

For particular aspects of apostolic eschatology, sea the articles in this Dictionary on Antichrist, Heaven, Hell, Man of Sin, Spirits in Prison, Resurrection, etc.

E. C. Dewick.

Fuente: Dictionary of the Apostolic Church

eschatology

(Greek: eschatos, uttermost; logos, discourse on)

The branch of systematic theology which treats of the last things. These are, for the individual, death, judgment (particular), heaven or hell (purgatory, as a transitory state), the so- called “four last things,” since they constitute the end of man’s mortal life, and the immediate and final retribution of that life in another world. For the human race the last things embrace the resurrection from the dead and the general judgment. To these must be added the end and fate of the physical world or cosmic eschatology.

Fuente: New Catholic Dictionary

Eschatology

That branch of systematic theology which deals with the doctrines of the last things (ta eschata). The Greek title is of comparatively recent introduction, but in modern usage it has largely supplanted its Latin equivalent De Novissimis. As the numerous doctrinal subjects belonging to this section of theology will be treated ex professo under their several proper titles, it is proposed in this article merely to take such a view of the whole field as will serve to indicate the place of eschatology in the general framework of religion, explain its subject-matter and the outlines of its content in the various religions of mankind, and illustrate by comparison the superiority of Christian eschatological teaching.

As a preliminary indication of the subject-matter, a distinction may be made between the eschatology of the individual and that of the race and the universe at large. The former, setting out from the doctrine of personal immortality, or at least of survival in some form after death, seeks to ascertain the fate or condition, temporary or eternal, of individual souls, and how far the issues of the future depend on the present life. The latter deals with events like the resurrection and the general judgment, in which, according to Christian Revelation, all men will participate, and with the signs and portents in the moral and physical order that are to precede and accompany those events. Both aspects — the individual and the universal — belong to the adequate concept of eschatology; but it is only in Christian teaching that both receive due and proportionate recognition. Jewish eschatology only attained its completion in the teaching of Christ and the Apostles; while in ethnic religion eschatology seldom rose above the individual view, and even then was often so vague, and so little bound up with any adequate notion of Divine justice and of moral retribu- tion, that it barely deserves to be ranked as religious teaching.

I. ETHNIC ESCHATOLOGIES

Uncivilized societies

Even among uncivilized cultures the universality of religious beliefs, including belief in some kind of existence after death, is very generally admitted by modern anthropologists. Some exceptions, it is true, have been claimed to exist; but on closer scrutiny the evidence for this claim has broken down in so many cases that we are justified in presuming against any exception. Among the uncivilized the truth and purity of eschatological beliefs vary, as a rule, with the purity of the idea of God and of the moral standards that prevail. Some savages seem to limit existence after death to the good (with extinction for the wicked), as the Nicaraguas, or to men of rank, as the Tongas; while the Greenlanders, New Guinea negroes, and others seem to hold the possibility of a second death, in the other world or on the way to it. The next world itself is variously located — on the earth, in the skies, in the sun or moon — but most commonly under the earth; while the life led there is conceived either as a dull and shadowy and more or less impotent existence, or as an active continuation in a higher or idealized form of the pursuits and pleasures of earthly life. In most savage religions there is no very high or definite doctrine of moral retribution after death; but it is only in the case of a few of the most degraded cultures, whose condition is admittedly the result of degeneration, that the notion of retribution is claimed to be altogether wanting. Sometimes mere physical prowess, as bravery or skill in the hunt or in war, takes the place of a strictly ethical standard; but, on the other hand, some savage religions contain unexpectedly clear and elevated ideas of many primary moral duties.

Civilized Cultures

Coming to the higher or civilized societies, we shall glance briefly at the eschatology of the Babylonian and Assyrian, Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Greek religions. Confucianism can hardly be said to have an eschatology, except the very indefinite belief involved in the worship of ancestors, whose happiness was held to depend on the conduct of their living descendants. Islamic eschatology contains nothing distinctive except the glorification of barbaric sensuality.

(a) Babylonian and Assyrian

In the ancient Babylonian religion (with which the Assyrian is substantially identical) eschatology never attained, in the historical period, any high degree of development. Retribution is confined almost, if not quite, entirely to the present life, virtue being rewarded by the Divine bestowal of strength, prosperity, long life, numerous offspring, and the like, and wickedness punished by contrary temporal calamities. Yet the existence of an hereafter is believed in. A kind of semi-material ghost, or shade, or double (ekimmu), survives the death of the body, and when the body is buried (or, less commonly, cremated) the ghost descends to the underworld to join the company of the departed. In the “Lay of Ishtar” this underworld, to which she descended in search of her deceased lover and of the “waters of life”, is described in gloomy colours; and the same is true of the other descriptions we possess. It is the “pit”, the “land of no return”, the “house of darkness”, the “place where dust is their bread, and their food is mud”; and it is infested with demons, who, at least in Ishtar’s case, are empowered to inflict various chastisements for sins committed in the upper world.

Though Ishtar’s case is held by some to be typical in this respect, there is otherwise no clear indication of a doctrine of moral penalties for the wicked, and no promise of rewards for the good. Good and bad are involved in a common dismal fate. The location of the region of the dead is a subject of controversy among Assyriologists, while the suggestion of a brighter hope in the form of a resurrection (or rather of a return to earth) from the dead, which some would infer from the belief in the “waters of life” and from references to Marduk, or Merodach, as “one who brings the dead to life”, is an extremely doubtful conjecture. On the whole there is nothing hopeful or satisfying in the eschatology of this ancient religion.

(b) Egyptian

On the other hand, in the Egyptian religion, which for antiquity competes with the Babylonian, we meet with a highly developed and comparatively elevated eschatology. Leaving aside such difficult questions as the relative priority and influence of different, and even conflicting, elements in the Egyptian religion, it will suffice for the present purpose to refer to what is most prominent in Egyptian eschatology taken at its highest and best. In the first place, then, life in its fullness, unending life with 0siris, the sun-god, who journeys daily through the underworld, even identification with the god, with the right to be called by his name, is what the pious Egyptian looked forward to as the ultimate goal after death. The departed are habitually called the “living”; the coffin is the “chest of the living”, and the tomb the “lord of life “. It is not merely the disembodied spirit, the soul as we understand it, that continues to live, but the soul with certain bodily organs and functions suited to the conditions of the new life. In the elaborate anthropology which underlies Egyptian eschatology, and which we find it hard to understand, several constituents of the human person are distinguished, the most important of which is the Ka, a kind of semi-material double; and to the justified who pass the judgment after death the use of these several constituents, separated by death is restored.

This judgment which each undergoes is described in detail in chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead. The examination covers a great variety of personal, social, and religious duties and observances; the deceased must be able to deny his guilt in regard to forty-two great categories of sins, and his heart (the symbol of conscience and morality) must stand the test of being weighed in the balance against the image of Maat, goddess of truth or justice. But the new life that begins after a favourable judgment is not at first any better or more spiritual than life on earth. The justified is still a wayfarer with a long and difficult journey to accomplish before he reaches bliss and security in the fertile fields of Aalu. On this journey he is exposed to a variety of disasters, for the avoidance of which he depends on the use of his revivified powers and on the knowledge he has gained in life of the directions and magical charms recorded in the Book of the Dead, and also, and perhaps most of all, on the aids provided by surviving friends on earth. It is they who secure the preservation of his corpse that he may return and use it, who provide an indestructible tomb as a home or shelter for his Ka, who supply food and drink for his sustenance, offer up prayers and sacrifices for his benefit, and aid his memory by inscribing on the walls of the tomb, or writing on rolls of papyrus enclosed in the wrappings of the mummy, chapters from the Book of the Dead. It does not, indeed, appear that the dead were ever supposed to reach a state in which they were independent of these earthly aids. At any rate they were always considered free to revisit the earthly tomb, and in making the journey to and fro the blessed had the power of transforming themselves at will into various animal-shapes. It was this belief which, at the degenerate stage at which he encountered it, Herodotus mistook for the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. It should be added that the identification of the blessed with Osiris (“Osiris N. N.” is a usual form of inscription) did not, at least in the earlier and higher stage of Egyptian religion, imply pantheistic absorption in the deity or the loss of individual personality. Regarding the fate of those who fail in the judgment after death, or succumb in the second probation, Egyptian eschatology is less definite in its teaching. “Second death” and other expressions applied to them might seem to suggest annihilation; but it is sufficiently clear from the evidence as a whole that continued existence in a condition of darkness and misery was believed to be their portion. And as there were degrees in the happiness of the blessed, so also in the punishment of the lost (Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, London, 1901).

(c) Indian

In the Vedic, the earliest historical form of the Indian religion, eschatological belief is simpler and purer than in the Brahministic and Buddhistic forms that succeeded it. Individual immortality is clearly taught. There is a kingdom of the dead under the rule of Yama, with distinct realms for the good and the wicked. The good dwell in a realm of light and share in the feasts of the gods; the wicked are banished to a place of “nethermost darkness”. Already, however, in the later Vedas, where these beliefs and developed expression, retribution begins to be ruled more by ceremonial observances than by strictly moral tests. On the other hand, there is no trace as yet of the dreary doctrine of transmigration, but critics profess to discover the germs of later pantheism.

In Brahminism (q.v.) retribution gains in prominence and severity, but becomes hopelessly involved in transmigration, and is made more and more dependent either on sacrificial observances or on theosophical knowledge. Though after death there are numerous heavens and hells for the reward and punishment of every degree of merit and demerit, these are not final states, but only so many preludes to further rebirths in higher or lower forms. Pantheistic absorption in Brahma, the world- soul and only reality, with the consequent extinction of individual personalities – this is the only final solution of the problem of existence, the only salvation to which man may ultimately look forward. But it is a salvation which only a few may hope to reach after the present life, the few who have acquired a perfect knowledge of Brahma. The bulk of men who cannot rise to this high philosophic wisdom may succeed, by means of sacrificial observances, in gaining a temporary heaven, but they are destined to further births and deaths.

Buddhist eschatology still further develops and modifies the philosophical side of the Brahministic doctrine of salvation, and culminates in what is, strictly speaking, the negation of eschatology and of all theology — a religion without a God, and a lofty moral code without hope of reward or fear of punishment hereafter. Existence itself, or at least individual existence, is the primary evil; and the craving for existence, with the many forms of desire it begets, is the source of all the misery in which life is inextricably involved. Salvation, or the state of Nirvana, is to be attained by the utter extinction of every kind of desire, and this is possible by knowledge — not the knowledge of God or the soul, as in Brahminism, but the purely philosophical knowledge of the real truth of things. For all who do not reach this state of philosophic enlightenment or who fail to live up to its requirements — that is to say for the vast bulk of mankind — there is nothing in prospect save a dreary cycle of deaths and rebirths with intercalated heavens and hells; and in Buddhism this doctrine takes on a still more dread and inexorable character than pre-Buddhistic Brahminism. (See BUDDHISM)

(d) Persian

In the ancient Persian religion (Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Parseeism) we meet with what is perhaps, in its better elements, the highest type of ethnic eschatology. But as we know it in the Parsee literature, it contains elements that were probably borrowed from other religions; and as some of this literature is certainly post-Christian, the possibility of Jewish and even Christian ideas having influenced the later eschatological developments is not to be lost sight of. The radical defect of the Persian religion was its dualistic conception of deity. The physical and moral world is the theatre of a perpetual conflict between Ahura Mazda (Ormuzd), the good, and Angra-Mainyu (Ahriman), the evil, principle, co-creators of the universe and of man. Yet the evil principle is not eternal ex parte post; he will finally be vanquished and exterminated. A pure monotheistic Providence promises at times to replace dualism, but never quite succeeds — the latest effort in this direction being the belief in Zvran Akarana, or Boundless Time as the supreme deity above both Ahriman and Ormuzd. Morality has its sanction not merely in future retribution, but in the present assurance that every good and pious deed is a victory for the cause of Ahura Mazda; but the call to the individual to be active in this cause, though vigorous and definite enough, is never quite free from ritual and ceremonial conditions, and as time goes on becomes more and more complicated by these observances, especially by the laws of purity. Certain elements are holy (fire, earth, water), certain others unholy or impure (dead bodies, the breath, and all that leaves the body, etc.); and to defile oneself or the holy elements by contact with the impure is one of the deadliest sins. Consequently corpses could not be buried or cremated, and were accordingly exposed on platforms erected for the purpose, so that birds of prey might devour them. When the soul leaves the body it has to cross the bridge of Chinvat (or Kinvad), the bridge of the Gatherer, or Accountant. For three days good and evil spirits contend for the possession of the soul, after which the reckoning is taken and the just men is rejoiced by the apparition, in the form of a fair maiden, of his good deeds, words, and thoughts, and passes over safely to a paradise of bliss, while the wicked man is confronted by a hideous apparition of his evil deeds, and is dragged down to hell. If the judgment is neutral the soul is reserved in an intermediate state (so at least in the Pahlavi books) till the decision at the last day. The developed conception of the last days, as it appears in the later literature, has certain remarkable affinities with Jewish Messianic and millennial expectations. A time during which Ahriman will gain the ascendancy is to be followed by two millennial periods, in each of which a great prophet will appear to herald the coming of Soshyant (or Sosioch), the Conqueror and Judge who will raise the dead to life. The resurrection will occupy fifty-seven years and will be followed by the general judgement, the separation of the good from the wicked, and the passing of both through a purgatorial fire gentle for the just, terrible for sinners, but leading to the restoration of all. Next will follow the final combat between the good and the evil spirits, in which the latter will perish, all except Ahriman and the serpent Azhi, whose destruction is reserved to Ahura Mazda and Scraosha, the priest-god. And last of all hell itself will be purged, and the earth renewed by purifying fire.

(e) Greek

Greek eschatology as reflected in the Homeric poems remains at a low level. It is only very vaguely retributive and is altogether cheerless in its outlook. Life on earth, for all its shortcomings, is the highest good for men, and death the worst of evils. Yet death is not extinction. The psyche survives – not the purely spiritual soul of later Greek and Christian thought, but an attenuated, semi-material ghost, or shade, or image, of the earthly man; and the life of this shade in the underworld is a dull, impoverished, almost functionless existence. Nor is there any distinction of fates either by way of happiness or of misery in Hades. The judicial office of Minos is illusory and has nothing to do with earthly conduct; and there is only one allusion to the Furies suggestive of their activity among the dead (Iliad XIX, 258-60). Tartarus, the lower hell, is reserved for a few special rebels against the gods, and the Elysian Fields for a few special favourites chosen by divine caprice.

In later Greek thought touching the future life there are notable advances beyond the Homeric state, but it is doubtful whether the average popular faith ever reached a much higher level. Among early philosophers Anaxagoras contributes to the notion of a purely spiritual soul; but a more directly religious contribution is made by the Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries, to the influence of which in brightening and moralizing the hope of a future life we have the concurrent witness of philosophers, poets, and historians. In the Eleusinian mysteries there seems to have been no definite doctrinal teaching – merely the promise or assurance for the initiated of the fullness of life hereafter. With the Orphic, on the other hand, the divine origin and pre- existence of the soul, for which the body is but a temporary prison, and the doctrine of a retributive transmigration are more or less closely associated. It is hard to see how far the common belief of the people was influenced by these mysteries, but in poetical and philosophical literature their influence is unmistakable. This is seen especially in Pindar among the poets, and in Plato among the philosophers. Pindar has a definite promise of a future life of bliss for the good or the initiated, and not merely for a few, but for all. Even for the wicked who descend to Hades there is hope; having, purged their wickedness they obtain rebirth on earth, and if, during three successive existences, they prove themselves worthy of the boon, they will finally attain to happiness in the Isles of the Blest. Though Plato’s teaching is vitiated by the doctrine of pre-existence, metempsychosis, and other serious errors it represents the highest achievement of pagan philosophic speculation on the subject of the future life. The divine dignity, spirituality, and essential immortality of the soul being established, the issues of the future for every soul are made clearly dependent on its moral conduct in the present life in the body. There is a divine judgment after death, a heaven, a hell, and an intermediate state for penance and purification; and rewards and punishments are graduated according to the merits and demerits of each. The incurably wicked are condemned to everlasting punishment in Tartarus; the less wicked or indifferent go also to Tartarus or to the Acherusian Lake, but only for a time; those eminent for goodness go to a happy home, the highest reward of all being for those who have purified themselves by philosophy.

From the foregoing sketch we are able to judge both of the merits and defects of ethnic systems of eschatology. Their merits are perhaps enhanced when they are presented, as above, in isolation from the other features of the religions to which they belonged. Yet their defects are obvious enough; and even those of them that were best and most promising turned out, historically, to be failures. The precious elements of eschatological truth contained in the Egyptian religion were associated with error and superstition, and were unable to save the religion from sinking to the state of utter degeneration in which it is found at the approach of the Christian Era. Similarly, the still richer and more profound eschatologies of the Persian religion, vitiated by dualism and other corrupting influences, failed to realize the promise it contained, and has survived only as a ruin in modern Parseeism. Plato’s speculative teaching failed to influence in any notable degree the popular religion of the Greco-Roman world; it failed to convert even the philosophical few; and in the hands of those who did profess to adopt it, Platonism, uncorrected by Christianity ran to seed in Pantheism and other forms of error.

II. OLD-TESTAMENT ESCHATOLOGY

Without going into details either by way of exposition or of criticism, it will be sufficient to point out how Old Testament eschatology compares with ethnic systems, and how notwithstanding its deficiencies in point of clearness and completeness, it was not an unworthy preparation for the fullness of Christian Revelation.

(1) Old Testament eschatology, even in its earliest and most imperfect form, shares in the distinctive character which belongs to Old Testament religion generally. In the first place, as a negative distinction, we note the entire absence of certain erroneous ideas and tendencies that have a large place in ethnic religions. There is no pantheism or dualism no doctrine of pre-existence (Wisdom 8:17-20 does not necessarily imply this doctrine, as has sometimes been contended) or of metempsychosis; nor is there any trace, as might have been expected, of Egyptian ideas or practices. In the next place, on the positive side, the Old Testament stands apart from ethnic religions in its doctrine of God and of man in relation to God. Its doctrine of God is pure and uncompromising monotheism; the universe is ruled by the wisdom, Justice, and omnipotence of the one, true God. And man is created by God in His own image and likeness, and destined to relations of friendship and fellowship with Him. Here we have revealed in clear and definite terms the basal doctrines which are at the root of eschatological truth, and which, once they had taken hold of the life of a people, were bound, even without new additions to the revelation, to safeguard the purity of an inadequate eschatology and to lead in time to richer and higher developments. Such additions and developments occur in Old Testament teaching; but before noticing them it is well to call attention to the two chief defects, or limitations, which attach to the earlier eschatology and continue, by their persistence in popular belief, to hinder more or less the correct understanding and acceptance by the Jewish people as a whole of the highest eschatological utterances of their own inspired teachers.

(2) The first of these defects is the silence of the earlier and of some of the later books on the subject of moral retribution after death, or at least the extreme vagueness of such passages in these books as might be understood to refer to this subject. Death is not extinction; but Sheol, the underworld of the dead, in early Hebrew thought is not very different from the Babylonian Aralu or the Homeric Hades, except that Jahve is God even there. It is a dreary abode in which all that is prized in life, including friendly intercourse with God, comes to an end without any definite promise of renewal. Dishonour incurred in life or in death, clings to a man in Sheol, like the honour he may have won by a virtuous life on earth; but otherwise conditions in Sheol are not represented as retributive, except in the vaguest way. Not that a more definite retribution or the hope of renewal to a life of blessedness is formally denied and excluded; it simply fails to find utterance in earlier Old Testament records. Religion is pre-eminently an affair of this life, and retribution works out here on earth. This idea which to us seems so strange, must, to be fairly appreciated, be taken in conjunction with the national as opposed to the individual viewpoint [see under (3) of this section]; and allowance must also be made for its pedagogic value for a people like the early Hebrews. Christ himself explains why Moses permitted divorce (“by reason of the hardness of your heart”, Matthew 19:8); revelation and legislation had to be tempered to the capacity of a singularly practical and unimaginative people, who were more effectively confirmed in the worship and service of God by a vivid sense of His retributive providence here on earth than they would have been but a higher and fuller doctrine of future immortality with its postponement of moral rewards. Nor must we exaggerate the insufficiency of this early point of view. It gave a deep religious value and significance to every event of the present life, and raised morality above the narrow, utilitarian standpoint. Not worldly prosperity as such was the ideal of the pious Israelite, but prosperity bestowed by God as the gracious reward of fidelity in keeping His Commandments. Yet, when all has been said, the inadequacy of this belief for the satisfaction of individual aspirations must be admitted; and this inadequacy was bound to prove itself sooner or later in experience. Even the substitution of the national for the individual standpoint could not indefinitely hinder this result.

(3) The tendency to sink the individual in the nation and to treat the latter as the religious unit was one of the most marked characteristics of Hebrew faith. And this helped very much to support and prolong the other limitation just noticed, according to which retribution was looked for in this life. Deferred and disappointed personal hopes could be solaced by the thought of their present or future realization in the nation. It was only when the national calamities, culminating in the exile, had shattered for a time the people’s hope of a glorious theocratic kingdom that the eschatology of the individual became prominent; and with the restoration there was a tendency to revert to the national point of view. It is true of the 0.T. as a whole that the eschatology of the people overshadows that of the individual, though it is true at the same time that, in and through the former, the latter advances to a clear and definite assurance of a personal resurrection from the dead, at least for the children of Israel who are to share, if found worthy, in the glories of the Messianic Age.

It is beyond the scope of this article to attempt to trace the growth or describe the several phases of this national eschatology, which centres in the hope of the establishment of a theocratic and Messianic kingdom on earth (see MESSIAS). However spiritually this idea may be found expressed in Old Testament prophecies, as we read them now in the light of their progressive fulfillment in the New Testament Dispensation, the Jewish people as a whole clung to a material and political interpretation of the kingdom, coupling their own domination as a people with the triumph of God and the worldwide establishment of His rule. There is much, indeed, to account for this in the obscurity of the prophecies themselves. The Messias as a distinct person is not always mentioned in connexion with the inauguration of the kingdom, which leaves room for the expectation of a theophany of Jahve in the character of judge and ruler. But even when the person and place of the Messias are distinctly foreshadowed, the fusion together in prophecy of what we have learned to distinguish as His first and His second coming tends to give to the whole picture of the Messianic kingdom an eschatological character that belongs in reality only to its final stage. It is thus the resurrection of the dead in Isaias, xxvi, 19, and Daniel, xii, 2, is introduced; and many of the descriptions foretelling “the day of the Lord”, the judgment on Jews and Gentiles, the renovation of the earth and other phenomena that usher in that day while applicable in a limited sense to contemporary events and to the inauguration of the Christian Era, are much more appropriately understood of the end of the world. It is not, therefore, surprising that the religious hopes of the Jewish nation should have be come so predominantly eschatological, and that the popular imagination, foreshortening the perspective of Divine Revelation, should have learned to look for the establishment on earth of the glorious Kingdom of God, which Christians are assured will be realized only in heaven at the close of the present dispensation.

(4) Passing from these general observations which seem necessary for the true understanding of Old Testament eschatology, a brief reference will be made to the passages which exhibit the growth of a higher and fuller doctrine of immortality. The recognition of individual as opposed to mere corporate responsibility and retribution may be reckoned, at least remotely, as a gain to eschatology, even when retribution is confined chiefly to this life; and this principle is repeatedly recognized in the earliest books. (See Genesis 18:25; Exodus 32:33; Numbers 16:22; Deuteronomy 7:10; 24:16; 2 Kings 24:17; 2 Kings 14:6; Isaiah 3:10 sq.; 33:15 sqq.; Jeremiah 12:1 sq.; 17:5-10; 32:18 sq.; Ezekiel 14:12-20; 18:4, 18 sqq.; Psalms, passim; Proverbs 2:21 sq.; 10:2; 11:19, 31; etc.) It is recognized also in the very terms of the problem dealt with in the Book of Job.

But, coming to higher things, we find in the Psalms and in Job the clear expression of a hope or assurance for the just of a life of blessedness after death. Here is voiced, under Divine inspiration, the innate craving of the righteous soul for everlasting fellowship with God, the protest of a strong and vivid faith against the popular conception of Sheol. Omitting doubtful passages, it is enough to refer to Psalms xv (A.V. xvi), xvi (A.V. xvii), xlviii (A.V. xlix ), and lxxii (A.V. lxxiii). Of these it is not impossible to explain the first two as prayers for deliverance from some imminent danger of death, but the assurance they express is too absolute and universal to admit this interpretation as the most natural. And this assurance becomes still more definite in the other two psalms, by reason of the contrast which death is asserted to introduce between the fates of the just and the impious. The same faith emerges in the Book of Job, first as a hope somewhat questionably expressed, and then as an assured conviction. Despairing of vindication in this life and rebelling against the thought that righteousness should remain finally unrewarded, the sufferer seeks consolation in the hope of a renewal of God’s friendship beyond the grave: “O that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my warfare would I wait, till my release should come” (xiv, 13 sq.). In xvii, 18 – xvii, 9, the expression of this hope is more absolute; and in xix, 23-27, it takes the form of a definite certainty that he will see God, his Redeemer: “But I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth [dust]; and after this my skin has been destroyed, yet from [al. without] my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (25 – 27). In his risen body he will see God, according to the Vulgate (LXX) reading: “and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skill, and in my flesh I shall see my God” (25 – 26).

The doctrine of the resurrection finds definite expression in the Prophets; and in Isaiah 26:19: “thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall rise again. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust” etc.; and Daniel 12:2: “and many of those that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake: some unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting shame and contempt” etc., it is clearly a personal resurrection that is taught — in Isaias a resurrection of righteous Israelites; in Daniel, of both the righteous and the wicked. The judgment, which in Daniel is connected with the resurrection, is also personal; and the same is true of the judgment of the living (Jews and Gentiles) which in various forms the prophecies connect with the “day of the Lord”. Some of the Psalms (e.g. 48) seem to imply a judgment of individuals, good and bad, after death; and the certainty of a future judgment of “every work, whether it be good or evil”, is the final solution of the moral enigmas of earthly life offered by Ecclesiastes (xii, 13-14; cf. iii, 17). Coming to the later (deuterocanonical) books of the 0. T. we have clear evidence in II Mach. of Jewish faith not only in the resurrection of the body (vii, 9-14), but in the efficacy of prayers and sacrifices for the dead who have died in godliness (xi, 43 sqq.). And in the second and first centuries B.C., in the Jewish apocryphal literature, new eschatological developments appear, chiefly in the direction of a more definite doctrine of retribution after death. The word Sheol is still most commonly understood of the general abode of the departed awaiting the resurrection, this abode having different divisions for the reward of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked; in reference to the latter, Sheol is sometimes simply equivalent to hell. Gehenna is the name usually applied to the final place of punishment of the wicked after the last judgment, or even immediately after death; while paradise is often used to designate the intermediate abode of the souls of the just and heaven their home of final blessedness. Christ’s use of these terms shows that the Jews of His day were sufficiently familiar with their New Testament meanings.

III. CATHOLIC ESCHATOLOGY

In this article there is no critical discussion of New Testament eschatology nor any attempt to trace the historical developments of Catholic teaching from Scriptural and traditional data; only a brief conspectus is given of the developed Catholic system. For critical and historical details and for the refutation of opposing views the reader is referred to the special articles dealing with the various doctrines. The eschatological summary which speaks of the “four last things” (death, judgment, heaven, and hell) is popular rather than scientific. For systematic treatment it is best to distinguish between (A) individual and (B) universal and cosmic eschatology, including under (A): death; the particular judgment; heaven, or eternal happiness; purgatory, or the intermediate state; hell, or eternal punishment; and under (B): the approach of the end of the world; the resurrection of the body; the general judgment; and the final consummation of all things. The superiority of Catholic eschatology consists in the fact that, without professing to answer every question that idle curiosity may suggest, it gives a clear, consistent, satisfying statement of all that need at present be known, or can profitably be understood, regarding the eternal issues of life and death for each of us personally, and the final consummation of the cosmos of which we are a part.

(A) Individual Eschatology

Death

Death, which consists in the separation of soul and body, is presented under many aspects in Catholic teaching, but chiefly as being actually and historically, in the present order of supernatural Providence, the consequence and penalty of Adam’s sin (Genesis 2:17; Romans 5:12, etc.); as being the end of man’s period of probation, the event which decides his eternal destiny (2 Corinthians 5:10; John 9:4; Luke 12:40; 16:19 sqq.; etc.), though it does not exclude an intermediate state of purification for the imperfect who die in God’s grace; and as being universal, though as to its absolute universality (for those living at the end of the world) there is some room for doubt because of I Thess., iv, 14 sqq.; I Cor., xv, 51; II Tim., iv, 1.

Particular Judgment

That a particular judgment of each soul takes place at death is implied in many passages of the New Testament (Luke 16:22 sqq.; 23:43; Acts 1:25; etc.), and in the teaching of the Council of Florence (Denzinger, Enchiridion, no. 588) regarding the speedy entry of each soul into heaven, purgatory, or hell.

Heaven

Heaven is the abode of the blessed, where (after the resurrection with glorified bodies) they enjoy, in the company of Christ and the angels, the immediate vision of God face to face, being supernaturally elevated by the light of glory so as to be capable of such a vision. There are infinite degrees of glory corresponding to degrees of merit, but all are unspeakably happy in the eternal possession of God. Only the perfectly pure and holy can enter heaven; but for those who have attained that state, either at death or after a course of purification in purgatory, entry into heaven is not deferred, as has sometimes been erroneously held, till after the General Judgment.

Purgatory

Purgatory is the intermediate state of unknown duration in which those who die imperfect, but not in unrepented mortal sin, undergo a course of penal purification, to qualify for admission into heaven. They share in the communion of saints (q. v.) and are benefited by our prayers and good works (see DEAD, PRAYERS FOR THE). The denial of purgatory by the Reformers introduced a dismal blank in their eschatology and, after the manner of extremes, has led to extreme reactions.

Hell

Hell, in Catholic teaching, designates the place or state of men (and angels) who, because of sin, are excluded forever from the Beatific Vision. In this wide sense it applies to the state of those who die with only original sin on their souls (Council of Florence, Denzinger, no. 588), although this is not a state of misery or of subjective punishment of any kind, but merely implies the objective privation of supernatural bliss, which is compatible with a condition of perfect natural happiness. But in the narrower sense in which the name is ordinarily used, hell is the state of those who are punished eternally for unrepented personal mortal sin. Beyond affirming the existence of such a state, with varying degrees of punishment corresponding to degrees of guilt and its eternal or unending duration, Catholic doctrine does not go. It is a terrible and mysterious truth, but it is clearly and emphatically taught by Christ and the Apostles. Rationalists may deny the eternity of hell in spite of the authority of Christ, and professing Christians, who are unwilling to admit it, may try to explain away Christ’s words; but it remains as the Divinely revealed solution of the problem of moral evil. (See HELL.) Rival solutions have been sought for in some form of the theory of restitution or, less commonly, in the theory of annihilation or conditional immortality. The restitutionist view, which in its Origenist form was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 543, and later at the Fifth General Council (see APOCATASTASIS), is the cardinal dogma of modern Universalism (q. v.), and is favoured more or less by liberal Protestants and Anglicans. Based on an exaggerated optimism for which present experience offers no guarantee, this view assumes the all-conquering efficacy of the ministry of grace in a life of probation after death, and looks forward to the ultimate conversion of all sinners and the voluntary disappearance of moral evil from the universe. Annihilationists, on the other hand, failing to find either in reason or Revelation any grounds for such optimism, and considering immortality itself to be a grace and not the natural attribute of the soul, believe that the finally impenitent will be annihilated or cease to exist — that God will thus ultimately be compelled to confess the failure of His purpose and power.

(B) Universal and Cosmic Eschatology

The Approach of the End of the World

Notwithstanding Christ’s express refusal to specify the time of the end (Mark 13:32; Acts 1:6 sq.), it was a common belief among early Christians that the end of the world was near. This seemed to have some support in certain sayings of Christ in reference to the destruction of Jerusalem, which are set down in the Gospels side by side with prophecies relating to the end (Matthew 24; Luke 21), and in certain passages of the Apostolic writings, which might, not unnaturally, have been so understood (but see 2 Thessalonians 2:2 sqq., where St. Paul corrects this impression). On the other hand, Christ had clearly stated that the Gospel was to be preached to all nations before the end (Matthew 24:14), and St. Paul looked forward to the ultimate conversion of the Jewish people as a remote event to be preceded by the conversion of the Gentiles (Romans 11:25 sqq.). Various others are spoken of as preceding or ushering in the end, as a great apostasy (2 Thessalonians 2:3 sqq.), or falling away from faith or charity (Luke 18:8; 17:26; Matthew 24:12), the reign of Antichrist, and great social calamities and terrifying physical convulsions. Yet the end will come unexpectedly and take the living by surprise.

The Resurrection of the Body

The visible coming (parousia) of Christ in power and glory will be the signal for the rising of the dead (see RESURRECTION). It is Catholic teaching that all the dead who are to be judged will rise, the wicked as well as the Just, and that they will rise with the bodies they had in this life. But nothing is defined as to what is required to constitute this identity of the risen and transformed with the present body. Though not formally defined, it is sufficiently certain that there is to be only one general resurrection, simultaneous for the good and the bad. (See MILLENNIUM.) Regarding the qualities of the risen bodies in the case of the just we have St. Paul’s description in I Cor., xv (cf. Matthew 13:43; Philippians 3:21) as a basis for theological speculation; but in the case of the damned we can only affirm that their bodies will be incorruptible.

The General Judgment

Regarding the general judgment there is nothing of importance to be added here to the graphic description of the event by Christ Himself, who is to be Judge (Matthew 25, etc.). (See JUDGMENT, GENERAL.)

The Consummation of All Things

There is mention also of the physical universe sharing in the general consummation (2 Peter 3:13; Romans 8:19 sqq.; Revelation 21:1 sqq.). The present heaven and earth will be destroyed, and a new heaven and earth take their place. But what, precisely, this process will involve, or what purpose the renovated world will serve is not revealed. It may possibly be part of the glorious Kingdom of Christ of which “there shall be no end”. Christ’s militant reign is to cease with the accomplishment of His office as Judge (1 Corinthians 15:24 sqq.), but as King of the elect whom He has saved He will reign with them in glory forever.

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P. J. TONER Transcribed by Michael C. Tinkler

The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia

Eschatology

(a discussion of the last things, ), a branch of theology which treats of the doctrines concerning death, the condition of man after death, the end of this world period, resurrection, final judgment, and the final destiny of the good and the wicked. We treat it here,

I. In its Biblical aspects, especially as to the doctrine of the Bible concerning the end of the world, denoted by the use of the phrase “last days,” which is applied in the O.T. to the consummation of the Jewish economy by the introduction of the Messianic (Isa 2:2; Mic 4:1; comp. Act 3:1; Heb 1:2), and in the N.T. is extended to the still expected developments of the divine purposes respecting the Church (2Ti 3:1; 2Pe 3:3). SEE LAST DAY.

1. The Maccabcean Age. In the O.T. prophets the return from Babylon is often made a type of the incoming of the more glorious dispensation of the Gospel. This is the first, more obvious, and most literal eschatological symbol, and much of the language (especially of Isaiah) bearing upon it has therefore a double sense (q.v.) or twofold application. SEE RESTORATION (OF THE JEWS).

2. The Chiliastic Period. This is the Christian, as the preceding was the Jewish view of the consummation of the existing divine economy, so far as relates to the administration of this world. It will be treated under MILLENNIUM SEE MILLENNIUM .

3. The final Denouement of all terrestrial Affairs. This whole branch of the subject is particularly exhibited in our Lord’s discourse to his disciples upon the Mount of Olives (Mat 24:1-51; Mat 25:1-46), in which the two scenes of the retribution impending over Jerusalem, and the final judgment, are intimately associated together, in accordance with that almost constant practice in the Hebrew prophets by which one event is made the type and illustration of another much farther in the future. SEE HYPONOIA.

This is emphatically exemplified in the vaticinations of ISAIAH SEE ISAIAH (q.v.), who perpetually refers to the coming glory of Christ under the figure of the nearer deliverance from Babylon, both these denouements being projected upon the same plane of prophecy, without any note of the interval of time between; likewise in the visions of John in the Revelation (q.v.), where the dramatis personae are generic representations of certain principles constantly reappearing in the history of the Church rather than confined to particular characters at one time only. Such often repeated developments of divine providence are the “coming of the Son of Man” and its attendant phenomena, in the sketches or rather glimpses afforded us by the Scriptures into the future. SEE SIGN (OF THE SON OF MAN).

As to the passage in Matthew, which forms the leading proof-text of eschatological treatises, the following expository hints will serve to clear up much of the obscurity and ambiguity which has been thrown around the text by the confused manner in which many interpreters have treated its predictions (see Strong’s Harmony and Exposition of the Gospels,:123; Stier, Words of Jesus, in loc.; Whedon, Commentary, in loc.; Nast, Commentary, in loc.).

(1.) The question of the apostles (Mat 24:3) relates to two distinct subjects, namely, the “coming of the ‘Son of man’ to do these things,” and the “end, of the world;” these two topics; therefore, are discussed by Christ in his reply. (More strictly, there are two questions concerning the first event, namely, “when,” and “the sign.” Mark and Luke evidently mean to confine their reports of this discourse to this former catastrophe, and therefore they do not mention the second inquiry as to the “end of the world” at all.) Yet, as the questioners apparently supposed that these two events would be simultaneous, or at least intimately connected (as the constant tenor of all former prophecies had naturally made them think), the answer also uses very similar language in treating them both, a style which their analogous nature peculiarly required. Still, the Great Teacher could not fail to give them true criteria by which to separate these two catastrophes, and for these we are to look in his language. That all the events predicted in Matthew’s account as far as Mat 24:34 are connected with the former of these themes, namely, the demolition of Jerusalem and abolition of the Jewish polity, is certain from the declaration at that verse, that they should ALL occur within the then living generation; and the following verses are so intimately connected with these, both by continuity of idea and notes of simultaneousness, that a disruption anywhere before chapter Mat 25:31 would be very harsh and arbitrary. At this point, however, we discover clear intimations of a transition (easy indeed, as the typical correspondence of the two catastrophes would lead us to expect, yet a real and marked one) to the second subject, the general judgment. The change is introduced by the notes of time, “But unwarrantably omitted in our translation] when …. then,” and by the loftier tone of the style, besides the distinctive mention of ” all nations” as the subjects of that adjudication (Mat 25:32). In the latter portion of Christ’s discourse alone is employed the briefer and more general mode of prediction usual with the prophets in prefiguring far-distant events, and here only is the language all exclusively applicable to the final judgment. The expressions deemed by some to point out such a transition at other points than those assumed above (Mat 24:35, and especially Mat 25:31) will be noticed presently; it is sufficient here to say in general that, as the passages embraced within the medial portion (Mat 24:27, Mat 25:30) are designed to be a link of connection between two judicial events so correlative in character, they naturally assume a style that might be applied to either, borrowing some expressions in describing the former which otherwise would belong exclusively to the latter. See a similarly blended style in describing the former of these two events in 2Th 1:7-9; comp. with 2Th 2:2; and comp. Mat 16:27-28.

Many place at the end of Mat 24:28 the transition to the final judgment; but it is difficult to extend ‘the intimations of consecutiveness that follow (“[But] immediately after,” “But in those days”) over such a chasm. It is true, the description ensuing in Mat 24:29-31 is unusually allegorical for a prose discourse, but this is explained by the fact that it is evidently borrowed almost wholly from familiar poetic predictions of similar events. Many of these particulars, moreover, may refer, partially at least, in a literal sense, to the concurrent natural phenomena intimated in Luk 21:11; and in their utmost stretch of meaning they also hint at the collapse of nature in the general judgment. The objection of anachronism in this application of the “tribulation” of Luk 21:29 as a subsequent event, is obviated by considering that this term here ‘refers to the incipient stages of the “tribulation” of Luk 21:21, where the previous context shows that the distress of the first siege and preliminary campaign are “specially intended; Luke (Luk 21:24) there gives the personal incidents of the catastrophe itself as succeeding, with an allusion to the long desolation of the land that should follow; so that Christ here resumes the thread of prophetic history (which had been somewhat interrupted by the caution against the impostors who were so rife in the brief interim of the suspension of actual hostilities) by returning to the national consequences of the second and decisive onset of the Romans. The assignment of these events contained in the ensuing verses, as to take place “after the tribulation” (presumed to be that of the acme of the Jewish struggle), is the strongest argument of those who apply this whole following passage to the final judgment. But they overlook the equally explicit limit “immediately after,” and, moreover, fail to discriminate the precise date indicated by “that tribulation.” This latter is made (in Mat 24:21) simultaneous with the flight of the Christians, which could not have been practicable in the extremity of the siege, but is directed (in Mat 24:15) to be made on the approach of the besiegers. The consummation intimated here, therefore, refers to the close of the siege (i.e., the sack itself), and the preceding rigors are those of its progress. It ought, moreover, to be considered that the fall of the capital was but the precursor of the extinction of the Jewish nationality (here typified by celestial prodigies); the utter subjugation of the country at large of course following that event. Another interpretation is, that the following passage refers to a second overthrow (the final extermination of the Jewish metropolis under the emperor Adrian in a subsequent war), as distinguished from the first under Titus; this is ingenious, but would hardly justify the strong language here employed, and would, moreover, require the limit ”immediately” to be extended half a century farther, when the living “generation” must have entirely passed away. Nor at this later event could the “redemption” of the Christians properly be said to “draw nigh” (Luk 21:28), the Jews having then long ceased to have any considerable power to persecute; compare the deliverance prophetically celebrated in Rev 11:1-19, especially Rev 11:8; Rev 11:13.

(2.) In the highly-wrought description of Mat 24:29; Luk 21:25-26 (which constitutes the transition point or intermediate part of our Savior’s discourse), the political convulsions during the acme of the Jewish struggle with the Romans are compared with a contest among the elements, in which the sun, moon, stars, earth, and waves join in one horrible war to aggravate human misery and desperation (comp. Jdg 5:20); the individual terms are therefore to be understood as merely heightening the general idea. To those who suppose the final judgment referred to in the expressions of this and the following verses, it may here be remarked that these symbolical phenomena of nature are all said to take place “immediately after [Mark, ‘in’] … those days,” while the subsequent “coming” is made simultaneous by the word “then” used by all the evangelists; and all these events are specially noted as signals of a “deliverance” (Luk 21:28), evidently the same with that of the Christians from Jerusalem’s ruin and power to oppress be. fore alluded to; the whole being limited by all the evangelists in distinct terms to the present generation. In order to understand many of the phrases of this representation (as especially those of Luk 21:30-31), the induction (so to speak) of a style of language usually appropriated to the second catastrophe (as intimated at the close of paragraph 1 above), must be borne in mind.

The first element of this “tribulation” (that affecting the celestial luminaries, a statement common to all the evangelists here) is cited from Isa 13:10, a passage spoken with reference to the fall of Babylon; comp. Joe 3:15, and many similar passages, in which the prophets represent great national disasters by celestial phenomena of an astounding character. All the following quotations, as they appear in the evangelists, are cited by our Savior with considerable latitude and irregularity of order, as his object was merely to afford’ brief specimens of this style; but the general resemblance to the original pictures is too strong to be mistaken. See Isa 34:4; Isa 13:13; Eze 32:7, and especially Joe 2:30, a prediction expressly quoted by the apostle Peter (Act 2:19) as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem.

In illustration of the angels spoken of in connection with these incidents (Mat 24:31; Mar 13:27), it should be borne in mind that the Jew naturally associated a retinue of angelic servants with the advent of the Messiah in his triumphant career, and this idea Christ here accommodates, in order to assimilate this first with his final judicial appearance, and thus impress it more deeply upon his volatile disciples’ mind (comp. Dan 7:10). The “angels” in this case are the providential means (including particularly the Roman invaders), by which the Christians’ rescue from siege, sack, and especially persecution, was effected; and the “trumpet sound” refers to the warning intimations which the belligerent preparations afforded them, thus giving them at once an assurance and a signal of deliverance. In the similar language of Mat 13:41; Mat 13:49, the primary reference is to the general judgment. But in the passage before us it is to be specially noted that the “trumpet” is to “gather together his elect” only, in distinction from the “all nations” of Mat 25:32. At Mat 24:44 (comp. Luk 12:41), the discourse, which previously had been slightly tinged with allusions to the second judicial coming of Christ (Luk 12:29-31), now begins to verge more distinctly to that final stage, as the reply to Peter that follows indicates. Still, there is no mark that the transition to the last judgment is effected till Mat 25:31.

In the conclusion of the first topic of Christ’s discourse (Mat 25:1-13; comp. Luk 12:35-38 : the parable in Mat 25:14-30 is parallel with an earlier one of our Lord, Luk 19:11 sq.), the near anticipation of the second topic produces almost a double sense in this (and to a degree, in the preceding) parable, which is not so much the effect of direct design as the natural moulding of the ‘language while on a kindred subject, by the vivid presence to the mind of a sublime one which is soon to be introduced; and, indeed, scarcely any phraseology (especially in the far- reaching style of allegory) could have been’ consistently adopted which would not have been almost equally applicable to both events … Still, a comparison of Luk 19:13 with Mat 24:36; Mat 24:42 shows that the same occurrences (Jerusalem’s siege and fall) are here chiefly referred to.

(3.) The imaginative style of the representation of the judgment day (Mat 25:31-36), which is especially betrayed in the comparison with the shepherd, shows that many of its descriptive particulars are designed only for poetic “drapery,” needed to portray the actualness of that scene of the invisible world; the body of reality couched under it consists in the fact of a universal discrimination of mankind at a future set timely Christ in the capacity of judge, according to their religious character, followed by the assignment of a corresponding destiny of happiness or misery Comp. Rom 14:10; Rom 14:12; 2Co 5:10; 1Th 4:16.

See Cremer, Eschatologische Rede Christi (Stuttg. 1860); Dorner, De oratione Chisti eschatologica (Stuttg. 1844); Lippold, De Christo venturo oracula (Dresd. 1776); also the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1836, 2:269; 1846, 4:965; 1861-3; Jour. Sac. Lit. January 1857; Stowe, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 7:452. There are special exegetical treatises on Mat 24:1-51; Mat 25:1-46, in Latin, by Jachmann (Lips. 1749), Brandes (Abose, 1792), Rintsch (Neost. ad Oril. 1827), Kenon (Abo, 1798), Schmid (Jen. 1777), Masch (Nov. Bibl. Lubec. 2:69), Anon. (Lips. 1809); in German, by Crome (Brem. u. Verd. Bibl. 2:349), Ammon (N. theol. Journ. 1:365), Jahn (in Bengel’s Archiv. 2:79), Anon. (in Eichhorn’s Biblioth. 3:669; Beitriage z. Beford. 11:118; Tollner’s Kurze verm. Aufsitze, II, 1:221-50): on Christ’s coming (rapovaia, SEE ADVENT ), in Latin, by Tychsen (Gott. 1785), Schott (Jen. 1819); in German, by Baumeister (in Klaiber’s Stud. I, 2:219-41; 3:1- 59; II, 1:1-104; 2:3-48), Schulthess (Neueste theol. Nachtr. 1829, p. 1848): on the phrase , in Latin, by Osiander (Tub. 1754): on the parallel passage of Luke, in German, by Goze (Sendschr. Hamb. 1783, 1784), Moldenhauer (ib. 1784, bis). See Kahle, Biblische Eschatologie (Gotha, 1870).

II. Theological Eschatology is a subdivision of systematic, and more particularly of dogmatic theology. It generally constitutes the concluding part of dogmatic theology, as it treats of what constitutes both for the individual Christian and for the Christian Church, as a whole, the completion of their destiny. As eschatology presupposes a belief in the immortality of the soul, some writers on dogmatic theology (as Hase) treat of it in connection with the doctrine of man, and before they treat of the Church. Others connect the doctrine of death with the doctrine of sin. On some points of eschatology, different views were held at an early period of the Church. Origen understood a passage in the Epistle to the Romans on the Apocatastasis (q.v.) as meaning a final reconciliation and salvation of the wicked, and this view has found some adherents at all times. SEE RESTORATIONISTS. In modern times, some go so far as to deny all punishment after the present life, and asserting the immediate salvation of all men, SEE UNIVERSALISTS; while others teach that immortality will be the lot of only the good, and that the wicked, after their death, will be annihilated. SEE ANNIHILATIONISTS. See also the articles SEE DEATH, SEE INTERMEDIATE STATE, SEE JUDGMENT, SEE HEAVEN, SEE HELL, SEE RESURRECTION, SEE IMMORTALITY. The Church of Rome developed the theory of a future state, different from heaven and hell, for which see the article PURGATORY SEE PURGATORY.

No point connected with eschatology has from the earliest period of the Church been more productive of excited controversy than the doctrine of the second advent of Christ and of the Millennium. For the history of this doctrine; see the article MILLENNIUM SEE MILLENNIUM . In German there are separate treatises on eschatology, e.g. Richter, die Lehre von den letzten Dinzgen (Bresl. 1833, 8vo); Lau, Paulus Lehre v. d. letzt. Dingen (Brandenbl. 1837, 8vo); Valenti, Eschatologie (Basel, 1840, 8vo); Karsten, Lehre von d. letzten Dingen (Rostock, 3d ed. 1861); Schultz, Voraussetzungen der christl. Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit (Gettingen, 1861); Wilmarshof, Das Jenseits (Leipz. 3 parts, 1863-1866); Noldechen, Grade der Seligkeit (Berlin, 1863); Splittgerber, Tod, Fortleben u. Aferstehung (Halle, 1863); Rink, Vom Zustande nach dem Tode (Ludwigsburg, 2d ed. 1865); Oswald, Eschatologie (Paderborn, 1868). Hagenbach, Encycl. 89; Herzog, Real-Encykl. 4:155.

Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

ESCHATOLOGY

The word eschatology comes from the Greek eschatos, meaning last, and commonly refers to the study of the last things. This is a vast subject, and the following outline refers the reader to articles in this Directory that deal with its many topics.

In its broader aspects, eschatology is concerned with all matters relating to death and the afterlife (Psa 16:11; Dan 12:2; Luk 16:22-23; Heb 9:27-28; see DEATH; HADES; PARADISE; SHEOL). More specifically it is concerned with issues relating to the return of Jesus Christ and the new age that will follow (see JESUS CHRIST, sub-heading Christs return and final triumph).

Human history is tied up with the mission of Jesus Christ. At his first coming Jesus brought Gods plan of salvation to its fulfilment through his life and work, and particularly through his death and resurrection. God intervened in human history, and the last days began (Heb 1:1-2; 1Pe 1:20; see PROPHECY; QUOTATIONS). Those last days have continued through the present age and will reach their climax at Christs return. The coming day of the Lord will be that final intervention of God that brings human history to its destiny (Mat 24:29-31; 2Pe 3:3-4; 2Pe 3:10; see ANTICHRIST; DAY OF THE LORD).

To have a proper understanding of matters concerning Christs return, a person should consider them in relation to matters concerning Christs earthly ministry as recorded in the Gospels. Christs victory at his second coming will represent the triumphant climax of the kingdom that he brought at his first coming. The kingly Messiah and heavenly Son of man, having died for sin, will return to reign (Mat 25:31-34; see KINGDOM OF GOD; MESSIAH; MILLENNIUM; SON OF MAN). The return of Christ will bring about the victorious resurrection of believers, but that resurrection is possible only because of the victorious resurrection of Christ (1Co 15:20-23; see RESURRECTION).

Christs return will also lead to final judgment, which means judgment not just for believers, but for all people. The one who died to save people from condemnation and give them new life is the one who will finally declare whether they suffer eternal condemnation or enjoy the heavenly blessings of the new age (Joh 5:22; 2Co 5:10; see JUDGMENT; HEAVEN; HELL).

At his first coming Christ dealt with sin and showed his power over it. When he returns he will remove sin and all its evil consequences finally and completely. His victory will include the healing of the physical world, the destruction of death and the punishment of Satan (1Co 15:25-26; Rev 20:10; see NATURE; DEATH; SATAN). Christ and his people together will enter into the full enjoyment of the eternal life that he has made possible for them. The new heavens and new earth will be a new order of existence where God is supreme and all people find their full satisfaction in him (1Co 15:28; Rev 21:1-4; Rev 22:1-6; see ETERNITY; LIFE).

Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary

Eschatology

ESCHATOLOGY

I.Eschatology in the Synoptic Gospels.

A.Current Jewish eschatological conceptions.

1.The coming Kingdom.

2.The Jewish supremacy.

3.The Messiah.

4.Various forms of the conception of the Messiah.

5.The preliminaries of the coming Kingdom.

(a)The heirs of the Kingdom.

(b)The Resurrection.

(c)Hades, Gehenna, Paradise.

(d)The Final Judgment.

B.The main features of our Lords eschatological teaching.

1.His conception of the Kingdom of God.

2.His Messianic consciousness.

3.His view of the time of the Consummation.

II.Eschatology in the Gospel of John.

1.The idealizing style of the Gospel.

2.Its conception of Eternal Life.

3.Its attitude to Eschatology proper.

Literature.

The design of this article is indicated particularly under the letter B in the above Table of Contents. It is to set forth the main features of the teaching of our Lord regarding the Last Things. His doctrine is presumably discoverable from the Four Gospels, and is capable of being exhibited in a self-consistent form. Yet in view of the facts of the case and the present state of critical opinion, it will be necessary to keep certain distinctions steadily in mind.

We must distinguish between (I.) the Synoptic Gospels and (II.) the Gospel of John; and we must distinguish between (A) current Jewish conceptions and (B) the conceptions of Jesus. In proportion to our feeling of the real unity of our subject, it will be impossible to maintain these distinctions with rigidity; yet a total disregard of them is impossible to any one who would keep on terms with the criticism of the Gospels in our own day, or, what is more important, would appreciate in any just degree the holy originality of Jesus. The bearing, however, of what is called the Synoptic Problem upon any matter important to our purpose is so slight that we may safely ignore it, mentioning only that we assume as a good working hypothesis the prevailing critical theory, which gives precedence in point of time, and even, in certain aspects, of importance, to the Gospel of Mark.

I. Eschatology in the Synoptic Gospels.

A. Current Jewish eschatological conceptions as Witnessed to by the Gospels.So far as these are concerned, it does not seem necessary to make any distinction between the Synoptics among themselves or between them and John. It may be generally postulated, moreover, that the fundamental conceptions are those of the OT, although it will be found that some of these have undergone modification since the time of the latest canonical books. Our principal witnesses are naturally the Synoptics. In them we have the most accurate reports accessible to us of the words actually used by Jesus; and where His sayings, as there recorded, employ the language of eschatology, apart from explanations which give it a turn peculiar to Himself, we may assume that the language in its natural implications represents current Jewish belief.

1. The coming Kingdom.It is clear that Jesus addressed people who had a perfectly distinct, though not accurately defined, idea of an age or kingdom to come, which should follow on the consummation (, Mat 13:39 f.) of the present age. He speaks, e.g., of rewards to the faithful in this time (), and of eternal life in the world () to come (Mar 10:30); and the phrase Kingdom of God, which was constantly on His lips, while doubtless subjected to expositions which charged it with new meanings for His followers, yet rested on a view of things common to Him and to even irresponsive hearers. It meant the perfect form of the Theocracy of which all the prophets had spoken.

2. The Jewish supremacy.It was generally believed that the Kingdom would come through an act of power, in which God would visit His people,the Jews,delivering them from all their enemies, so that they might serve Him without fear in holiness and righteousness for ever (Luk 1:74). Men of the type of Simeon, Zacharias, and Joseph of Arimathaea waited for the consolation of Israel. Such persons doubtless believed with the prophets (e.g. Isa 11:1 ff; Isa 9:4 ff., Zec 9:9) that the supremacy of Gods people would be maintained, if not actually accomplished, by methods of peace, and even in the spirit of brotherly alliance among the nations (see esp. Isa 19:24 f.), who would receive the law from Mount Zion (Isa 2:2-4). Yet obviously both they and the general populace, and even the disciples after the Resurrection (Act 1:6), thought of a state of things in which the position of Gods ancient people would be central and supreme.

3. The Messiah.Beyond the general belief that the Kingdom would come through an act or series of acts of Divine power, there is abundant evidence that in the time represented by the Gospels there was among the Jewish people, though not confined to them,* [Note: On this cf. Tacitus, Hist. v. 3; Suetonius, Vesp. 4; Josephus, BJ vi. v. 4.] the definite expectation that the Kingdom would come through the advent of a personal Rulercalled by the Jews the Messiah or, in Greek, the Christ = the Anointedon whom God would pour forth His Spirit in extraordinary measure. This belief, so far as the Jews were concerned, goes back to the testimony of the earlier prophets (esp. Isaiah and Micah), but its history within the OT period shows that it sometimes either disappeared altogether or retired into the background, its place being taken by such a view as that expressed in Jer 31:31 ff.of a reign of Jahweh Himself through His law written on the hearts of His people. [Note: On this fluctuation see esp. Riehms Messianic Prophecy, T. & T. Clark, 1900.] We need not here inquire into the causes of this fluctuation. It is enough to remark that for about a century before the time of Christ the belief that the Kingdom would be established through an individual worldwide Ruler, who would exercise practically Divine powers, had been current in larger or smaller circles among the Jews. Sufficient proof of this lies in the circumstance that in the time of our Lord passages in the Prophets (e.g. Deutero-Isaiah) or in the Apocalypse of Daniel, which had originally no reference to an individual Messiah, [Note: In the case of Daniel this is disputed by such competent scholars as Hilgenfeld and Riehm.] had come to be so interpreted. The interpretation is current. No other is even thought of. In some cases, no doubtas notably in the fulfilments of prophecy marked by the First Evangelistit may be difficult to decide whether the exegesis of a passage cited from a prophet is not of purely Christian origin; but there are unquestionably some cases (notably Dan 7:13) in which the importation of a reference to an individual Messiah into passages which really contain no such reference, is of pre-Christian date.

4. Various forms of the conception of the Messiah.It is difficult to determine with any minuteness how the Messiah was conceived, as regarded either His Person or His work. In regard to the former, e.g., it would be unwarrantable to infer from Mat 1:23 (cf. Isa 7:14) that it was generally believed that He would be born of a virgin, and perhaps equally so to infer from the fact that the disciples (Mat 16:16|| [Note: | Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi., Berlin, 1899.] ), and perhaps others also (Mat 14:33), expressed their belief in the Messiahship of Jesus by calling Him the Son of God, the prevalence of a belief among Jewish theologians of the 1st cent. that the Messiah was of one metaphysical being with Jahweh. The utmost perhaps which we can affirm is that it was largely believed that the origin of the Messiah would be mysterious (Joh 7:27), and that this belief rested in all probability directly on the Messianic interpretation of Dan 7:13 ff. [Note: On the antiquity of the Danielic conception itself see the interesting work of H. Gressmann, Der Crsprung der isr.-jd. Eschatologie, p. 334 ff., Gottingen, 1905.] It seems possible, however, to distinguish two general types of belief regarding the Messiah and His work. The one may be called the Prophetic, the other the Apocalyptic type. The former type, which was the more popular and held its ground even with the scholars of the time (Mar 12:35 ff.|| [Note: | Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi., Berlin, 1899.] ), rested on the early Prophetic testimony that the Messiah would spring from the house of David,a belief of whose persistence and of whose correspondence with the actual fact the circumstance that Jesus is confidently affirmed or assumed by five of the NT writers (Matthew, Luke, Paul, author of Hebrews, author of Apocalypse* [Note: Mat 1:1, Luk 3:31, Rom 1:3, Heb 7:14, Rev 5:5.] ) to have been of the seed of David may be considered the most striking proof. According to this type, so far as purely Jewish belief is concerned, the work of the Messiah, while superhuman, was conceived on comparatively secular lines. He would destroy his persistent enemies and establish a reign of lasting righteousness and peace over obedient and contented subjects. This type, taken by itself, hardly possesses for us eschatological interest. It belongs to a mode of conception in which the problems of death and immortality, if realized at all, cannot be solved. The sphere offered for solving them is too mundane. It is otherwise with the apocalyptic type of view, which rested mainly on the Book of Daniel, esp. Dan 7:13 ff; Dan 12:2 f. Whether or not the author of Daniel in the latter of these passages conceived of a resurrection from the dead available for all past generations of faithful Israelites, it seems certain that in the time of our Lord this sense was assigned to his words by those who, like the Pharisees, held the doctrine. According to Josephus, [Note: xviii. i. 3; BJ ii. viii. 4.] the Pharisees held a fatalistic doctrine of the present lifebut not of human conductwhich seems to have resembled that of the Stoics, and which made them for the most part averse to schemes of political revolution. Their participation, therefore, in the popular view of the Son of David was more theoretical than real. Their tendency was to conceive the final Kingdom on strictly supernatural lines. It was a wonder that would not spring from earth, but would descend from heaven. The Messiah was the Man of Daniels vision, the Man of the Clouds. [Note: Gressmann, l.c., p. 336.]

Two points have recently been much in dispute: (a) Whether in view of the grammatical possibilities of Aramaic, as used in the time of Jesus, He could have applied to Himself the phrase Son of Man or Man as a title, basing on Dan 7:13; and (b) Whether He could have done this so habitually as our Gospels represent. Even those who, like Lietzmann [Note: Der Menschensohn, ein Beitrag zur neutest. Theol. 1896.] and Wellhausen,|| [Note: | Skizzen u. Vorarbeiten, Heft vi., Berlin, 1899.] have reached on these points the most negative conclusions, do not doubt that in the fatter part of His career, and perhaps habitually, Jesus held the apocalyptic view of the final Kingdom and of the glorious advent of the Messiah; and, even if we exclude the title Son of Man from those passages in the Gospels which have no eschatological reference, there remains a sufficient number (about a third of the entire number, exclusive of John) where the eschatological reference is distinct. Thus, e.g., out of 32 instances of Son of Man in Matthews Gospel, 14 are apocalyptic. [Note: Muirhead, Eschatology of Jesus, p. 218, London, 1904.]

It is indubitable that in the time of our Lord the Book of Daniel and other Apocalypses modelled on it were much read by a considerable portion of the Jewish people. Many of those whose views were influenced by this literature saw no inconsistency in combining with these views others derived from literature of the prophetic type, e.g. The Psalter of Solomon,** [Note: * Psalms of the Pharisees, commonly called The Psalms of Solomon, Ryle and James, Cambridge, 1891.] embodying the ancient and still popular conception of the Son of David. Yet, as this veneration for ancient prophecy was combined for the most part with political quiescence, it may perhaps be said that in the more reflective minds Son of David and Son of Man represented one heavenly ideal. Jesus Himself expressly repudiated the implications of Son of David (Mar 12:35 ff. ||); but it is remarkable that this did not hinder the prevalence in Christian circles of the Apostolic age of the belief that He was of the seed of David according to the flesh, and the Evangelists Matthew and Luke risked publishing pedigrees, whose apparent mutual inconsistencies constitute the chief difficulty of the modern mind in accepting the fact they were designed to establish.

Instructive in this connexion is the phrase Kingdom of the heavens in Matthews Gospel. The phrase is, of course, equivalent in meaning to Kingdom of God which the other Evangelists employ. It need not, however, be questioned that Jesus, occasionally at least, used Kingdom of the heavens, and it seems certain that He did not invent the phrase. It was current, and it pointed to the apocalyptic construction of the Messianic hope. The Kingdom belonged to the heavens, and would come thence to earth. It was the unlikeness of Jesus to the altogether wonderful Personage of the apocalyptic Messiah that offended the Pharisees. If He were the Messiah, why should He refuse a sign from heaven? (Mat 16:1 ff.).

5. The preliminaries of the coming Kingdom.Assuming this leading idea of a Kingdom to come, heavenly in its origin and nature, we must now ask how the various matters preliminary to or accompanying its advent were conceived.

(a) Who were the heirs of the Kingdom? There were people just and devout (Luk 2:25) who waited for the consolation of Israel, the still surviving type of Jahwehs poor ones who cried unto him and he heard them (Psa 34:6). Such persons, however, did not advertise themselves, nor did they as a rule sit in the seat of the learned. The prevailing teachers were the scribes and Pharisees, whose yoke, practically intolerable, was yet theoretically imperative. It has been questioned how far readers of the Gospels get from them a fair impression of the moral and religious influence exercised by the teachers of the Law, and it has been contended, with perhaps some justice, that the impression so derived is as one-sided as the impression of the Roman Church one naturally gathers from histories of the Protestant Reformation. Still, the good type of scribe or Catholic is not due to the tendency against which the Evangelic text or the Reformation is a protest. It cannot be doubted that in the time of our Lord it was authoritatively taught by the Pharisees that the title to inheritance of the heavenly kingdom was a punctilious observance of the Law after the manner of their own practice. Their doctrine, indeed, on this point is not explicitly stated in the Gospels or in any contemporary documents. But the impression we gather from the situation depicted in the Gospels and from the record regarding the Apostle Paul favours the supposition that the view of the Pharisees in the time of Jesus is that represented by the Rabbinism of the 2nd cent., viz. that the Messiah would come when Jahwehs people, the Jews, were found generally and carefully observing the Law.* [Note: The Jerusalem Talmud (Taan. 64a) remarks on Exo 16:25 that if Israel only kept one Sabbath according to the commandment, the Messiah would immediately come. See Edersheims Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, vol. ii. p. 713.] And the Law meant not simply the legal precepts of the Pentateuch (in particular the Priestly Code), it meant the tradition of the elders. While the average man inevitably shook off the punctilios of obedience, and the Pharisees themselves took refuge from their own rigour in an elaborate casuistry, we cannot doubt that the generally accepted view was that the passport to the Kingdom was the righteousness of the law.

(b) The Resurrection. But generations of faithful Israelites passed, and the Messiah did not come. Would they miss the glory when it came? At least since the time of the Syrian persecution (b.c. 168165)the time of the Apocalypse of Danielit was taught that death formed no insuperable barrier to the inheritance of the Kingdom. Probably the author of Daniel (Dan 12:2 f.) had in view mainly (we cannot say exclusively) those Israelites who had sealed their fidelity to the law of Jahweh with their blood, but it may be taken for certain that, long before the time represented by the Gospels, all idea of the blessings of the Kingdom being restricted to members of the holy nation who had suffered death for their fidelity (if such an idea was ever entertained), had completely disappeared. It was taught that there would be a resurrection of the righteous (Luk 14:14), i.e. of those who kept the Law and the Tradition.

(c) Hades, Gehenna, Paradise. There is nowhere in the Gospels an explicit statement of what was held regarding the state of the dead; but four times (Mat 11:23; Mat 16:18, Luk 10:15; Luk 16:23) the word Hades () occurs. In the LXX Septuagint this word is the almost invariable equivalent of ; and when Jesus used it without comment, it must be held to have conveyed to His hearers the associations proper to that word. The NT as well as the OT* [Note: On this whole subject of the conception of Sheol, etc., cf. esp. A. B. Davidson, Theol. of the OT, p. 425 ff., T. & T. Clark, 1904] is dominated by a view of things in which the modern idea that annihilation may be the fate of some men has no place. The dead are in a land of darkness and forgetfulness, cut off from knowledge of affairs human and Divine. Still, in this conditionat most the pale reflexion of full-blooded lifethey exist. Two things, however, must be observed: (i.) There is in the OT itself a marked, if not systematized, protest against the idea that permanent detention in Sheol or Hades can be the fate of the righteous, who had found their portion in the living God (see esp. Psalms 16, 73 and Job 14, 19). Historically, doubtless, the experience of suffering under the various oppressors of the nation (Assyrian, Chaldaean, Graeco-Syrian) had much to do with the development of this protest; but it is probably a mistake to suppose that it was when they were actually suffering under the yoke of the world-powers that the people of Jahweh adopted from foreign sources much or anything that bore on the problem of what lay beyond death. This caution applies specially to the relation of Hebrew thought to the mythological ideas of Babylon or Egypt. The impregnation of the Hebrew spirit with ideas coming from these sources dates in all probability from a much earlier period than the 6th cent. b.c. All we can say for certain, perhaps, is that the experience of national humiliation quickened in a special degree the peculiar Hebrew genius, leading it at this time (say from the 6th cent. onwards) to place the peculiar stamp of the Jahweh faith on mythical ideas or pictures, which in some cases it had carried with it since the days of its infancy in Mesopotamia. (ii.) Although there is no hint in the OT itself of effect being given to moral distinctions between the wicked and the godly in Hades itself, yet the suggestion of a possible escape for the godly from the gloom of the underworld could not but raise, and ultimately decide, another question, viz. whether the distinction between the godly and the wicked was not observed from the moment of death. For perhaps about 100 years before Christ the idea of separate compartments in Hades, for the godly and the wicked respectively, had more or less prevailed (see Apocalyptic Literature, esp. the part dealing with the Book of Enoch). Obviously our Lord could not have uttered the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luk 16:19 ff.), or said to the penitent malefactor (Luk 23:43), To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise, had He not been addressing people accustomed to the idea that in the intermediate state, previous to the resurrection and the final judgment, moral distinctions were accorded a real, if incomplete, recognition. It is obvious from the entire tenor of our Lords references (see esp. the instructive passage Mat 5:21 f.) to Gehenna that He spoke to those to whom this term represented the utmost condemnation and punishment. It represented the fate of those who should still be enemies of Jahweh in that day when Jerusalem should be renewed by righteousness, and all flesh (i.e. all living) should go out and behold the car-cases of those who had transgressed, for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched (Isa 66:23 f.). See artt. Gehenna and Paradise.

(d) The Final Judgment. In our Christian minds, as with the NT writers, the idea of the Resurrection is inseparably associated with that of the Judgment which follows it. In the main track of OT thought, indeed, this association did not exist. The habit of conceiving the subject of the Divine favour or punishment rather as a nation than as a number of individuals, made it possible, or even natural, practically to ignore the individual side of the problem of life and death, and the distinction, natural to us, between this world and that which is to come is represented in the OT mainly by the distinction between this life with God and this life without Him. Under this view of things the prevailing conception of judgment in OT times is that of a manifestation of Jahwehs righteousness (whether it be through His messenger [Mal 3:1] or through the Messianic Son of David [Isa 11:1 ff.]), in which He effectually visits His people with His mercy, and breaks the arm of the unrighteous peoples, who forget God and oppress them. These heathen return to Sheol (Psa 9:17); but the covenant of Jahweh with His faithful people is established for ever. The history seems to show that it was possible for pious Israelites to rest in this view, merging individual hopes in hopes for the nation, until the actual disaster of the Exile shook their faith in the permanence of the collective unit of the Jewish State. From this time, however, as we see clearly from the writings of Jeremiah and Ezekiel (cf. esp. Ezekiel 18), the claims of the individual come into prominence. It was felt that in the righteousness of God one generation ought not to suffer for the sins of its predecessors. Each generation, even each unit of a generation, had its own rights. Yet, in fact, it seemed as though these rights were ignored. It is with the problem raised by this conflict between the prophetic conscience and the facts, that the apocalyptic literature from Daniel onwards is concerned. The solution obtained springs from the despair that lies on the border of hope. The mundane element in the old idea of a Prince of the house of David tends to disappear. The blessing, which could not spring from earth, was expected from heaven, and at the touch of the new power, coming thence, even the dust of the earth (i.e. esp. dead Israelites who had kept the covenant) should awake (Isa 26:19). While, doubtless, the adumbrations of the conception of immortality which we find scattered throughout the OT had their origin in the sentiment that it must be well with the righteous for ever, this positive aspect of the matter was inseparable from a negative. The righteous could hardly be vindicated unless punishment fell on the rebels and transgressors. Hence even in Dan 12:2, which cannot be said to teach a universal resurrection, among the many who awake from the dust of the earth there are some who arise to shame and everlasting contempt. It was inevitable that these conceptions should be universalized. If, as even the former Prophets and Psalmists in their own fashion had taught, there was to be a universal judgment (i.e. a vengeance of Jahweh exercised upon all rebel Gentiles and upon the transgressors of the covenant in Israel), and if the collective unit of the nation was practically displaced by the individual, it is clear that the idea of universal judgment must have come to have for its counterpart the idea of universal resurrection. No doubt the conception was held vaguely, and was as little effective for practical consolation as it is to this day (cf. Marthas attitude, Joh 11:24)still it was there. When Jesus spoke of the resurrection of the dead, or even of the Messianic Son of Man as executing judgment, He was using language whose general implications were either entirely or (as in the case of Son of Man) at least partially understood by His hearers.

B. The main features of our Lords eschatological teaching,Turning now to the subject of our Lords eschatological teaching, and looking to the present condition of critical opinion, we may make a distinction, which has in most respects only a theoretical value, between the eschatological views of the early Church as reflected in the Gospels and those held and taught by Jesus Himself. The Gospels are as a whole too entirely dominated by the spirit of truth as it was in Jesus to make it possible, without arbitrariness, to vindicate this distinction in detail. Yet the investigation in which we are engaged seems to reveal problems arising out of portions of even the Synoptic Gospels, in connexion with which it may be well to remember that the Master must not be measured even by His best reporters. The distinction may seem a priori to have even more warrant in reference to the Fourth Gospel, whose representation both of the Person and the words of Jesus stands in such obvious contrast to that of the Synoptics as to justify our dealing with it in a separate section. We may do this even though in the end we may find ourselves to agree with Haupt* [Note: Haupt, Die Eschatol. Aussagen Jesu in den Synopt. Evangelien, Berlin, 1895.] that the Johannine presentation of the eschatology of Jesus supplies just the kind of supplement to that of the Synoptics which a critical study of the latter led us to think necessary. We therefore consider at present only the eschatology of Jesus as presented in the Synoptic Gospels.

1. His conception of the Kingdom of God.Both John the Baptist and Jesus preached, saying, Repent: for the Kingdom of God (in Mt. most frequently the Kingdom of the heavens) is at hand. There seems no reason to doubt that in general Jesus thought of the Kingdom just as John did. Modern writers on the Gospels, like Johannes Weiss [Note: Johannes Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, Gottingen, 1900.] and Titius, [Note: Titius, Die neutest. Lehre von der Seligkeit, pt. i. 1895.] warn us with considerable justice against reading our own philosophical thoughts into the simple realism of the Bible. The Kingdom of God meant the perfect rule of God over all things in earth and heaven for the benefit of His people. It was eternal, it was universal in the sense of embracing people of all nations, though, of course, only those in each nation who did righteousness; and it embraced not earth only, but also heaven, whence it should come, and to whose type, as regarded at least the character of its subjects, it should be conformed. It may be postulated perhaps, further, that the Kingdom was conceived by Jesus, in at least its external features, on the closest possible analogy to an earthly kingdom. In two important respects, however, it differed from the latter. (a) It was not promoted by the weapons of flesh and blood. It was a Kingdom where rankeven that of the King Himselfwas determined by the measure of service. The spirit of service was the spirit of lowly love. (b) It was a Kingdom which, while coming ultimately from God and heaven, came through a Mediator, by whom it would be administered. Since His baptism Jesus had the witness within Himself that He was the Mediator. He was the Messianic King who was truly the Son of God (Psalms 2). To Him the whole trust of the Kingdom was given, even all power in heaven and earth. Barring the mystery revealed at His baptism, which concerned primarily Himself only, we must admit that such a view of things was inevitable to One who found the form and substance of His faith in the OT, and at the same time believed, in harmony with the earlier Prophets and the prevailing tendency of His own time, in a personal Messiah. We seem therefore warranted in assuming that such was the view of Jesus at the commencement of His ministry. The Kingdom was coming from heaven. He Himself was the Person appointed to establish it on earth. Beyond this, however, the witness of the OT and His own special experience previous to and at the time of His baptism would not necessarily carry Him. It is perhaps permissible to find in the story of the Temptation (Mat 4:1 ff., Luk 4:1 ff.) the record of a period when, not without a struggle with the prince of this evil world, He renounced the idea that the Kingdom was to come immediately through some dramatic catastrophic exercise of the heavenly power with which He felt Himself to be charged. It is more to our purpose at present to note that while He renounced this catastrophic ideal (if we may call it so) to the extent of refusing to allow it to deflect Him from obedience to the Divine word, He did not, according to the Synoptics, renounce it so far as His general view of the mode of the Kingdoms advent was concerned. To the last He spoke in apocalyptic fashion of the Son of Man coming on the clouds. The glorious Parousia would illuminate simultaneously all quarters of heaven like the lightning (Luk 17:24). It would happen within that generation although He could not tell the day nor the hour, and it would be preceded by disasters on a great scale, affecting not simply the human world, but the cosmical system. How far it is true to the mind of Jesus, as He spoke on earth, to take the language of the so-called great eschatological discourse (Mark 13, cf. Matthew 24) with strict literalness, has been of late keenly debated, and some have been disposed to see in this discourse and matter harmonizing with it in the Gospels, an example of the way in which our Lord found it necessary to accommodate His language to conceptions which were inevitable for the hearers if not for Himself. Others may perhaps incline to a view which has been advocated by the present writer,* [Note: cit., Lect. i.] that the phenomena of this peculiarly apocalyptic discourse offer an occasion on which it is profitable to remember that the thoughts of Jesus far transcended those of even the most forward of His disciples. But, while we may well acknowledge a certain elusiveness in the language of Jesus in which He deals with the future, we cannot without violence to the Synoptic record refuse to admit that in His habitual view the Kingdom of God was not something that had already come with Himself, but was rather something that still lay in the future. Everyone sees that when Jesus said, The kingdom of God is at hand (cf. = has come near), or bade the disciples pray, Thy kingdom come, He must have thought of the Kingdom as being still in the future.

But what of the passages in which it seems to be implied that the Kingdom is already present? For instance Mat 11:11 (cf. Luk 7:28), in which John the Baptist is declared less than the least in the Kingdom of God, or Mat 12:28 (cf. Luk 11:20), in which the expelling of demons in the name of God is offered as proof that the Kingdom of God has come, or the parables (Mat 13:31 ff., Mar 4:30 ff.) in which the Kingdom of God is represented as actually in process of coming to its proper magnitude in the world, and therefore already rooted there? It is the crux of the student of eschatology in the Gospels to show how these two modes of conception, presential and futuristic (sometimes distinguished as ethical and eschatological), can be reconciled. Perhaps the most satisfactory recent treatment of the subject is to be found in a brief but brilliant essay of Professor Wernle.* [Note: Die Reichsgotteshoffnung in den ltesten christlichen Dokumenten und bei Jesus, 1903.] Wernle lays probably excessive stress on what he considers the ecclesiastical element in the construction of even the Synoptic Gospels (esp. Matthew). But his book, read in the light of the contributions of predecessors to the same discussion (esp. Haupt, Titius, and Joh. Weiss), shows very convincingly that we must, in fairness to our authorities the Synoptics, and in view of the entire historical situation reflected in these writings, start from the fact that our Lord habitually thought and spoke of the Kingdomhowever much He might identify it with Himselfas, so to speak, an objective wonder of the future. It does not, indeed, follow that this was the sole or even the most important aspect of it present to His mind; but it seems right that we should accommodate to it, if possible, those passages in which the Kingdom seems to be spoken of as if it were already present, and that this accommodation should be made apart from the intrusion of distinctively modern thoughts. This Wernle has done with great plausibility in the case of the passages above referred to, pointing out that when regard is had to the context, literal or circumstantial, the difficulty disappears. Thus in the passage Mat 11:11 (Luk 7:28) a main element in the situation is a certain rivalry between the circle of John the Baptist and the circle of Jesus. The former approach the latter in an attitude of aggressive doubt. If Jesus is the Messiah, where is the Kingdom that should come with Him? In what respect are those who have attached themselves to Jesus better than those who hold to their old master, John? To such aggressive questioning the answer is: The Kingdom has come already. Its powers are seen working among us (Mat 11:5 f.). Those who keep apart from the sphere of these wonders, however truly they may fulfil otherwise the conditions of membership in the Kingdom, are yet actually standing on the outside. On this reading, the passage, so far from being antagonistic to the eschatological view of the Kingdom, in reality strongly supports that view. For a main point of the argument is the assumption that, while a high ethical standard in practice may be expected of the children of the Kingdom or may be a condition of entrance into it, the Kingdom itself is something more than this. It is the product of a power altogether supernatural and apart from the will of men. Not righteousness, but the working of this power, is the criterion of the Kingdom. Else surely the Kingdom would be with the greatest of men born of women, and not (as it actually is) with men of even much less stature than his.

The same line of solution seems available in the case of the other passages. Thus in the passage Mat 12:22 ff., esp. Mat 12:28 (cf. Luk 11:14 ff., esp. Luk 11:20), a main element in the situation is again the element of attack. The Pharisees insinuate that the demons may be subdued by the power of Beelzebub, their prince. Jesus answers that such a state of the case is inconceivable. Satan cannot wish to overthrow his own work. If, on the other hand, the power be the power of God, then the Kingdom of God has come in effect. The strong man armed (the prince of this world and author of all evil in it) has been conquered and bound. Again, obviously, the criterion of the Kingdom is not simply the presence of the good, but the presence of the good in power. Finally, there are the parables in which the Kingdom is spoken of as something growing in the earth and therefore already planted. Note especially the parables of the Mustard-seed and the Leaven. Here, indeed, we are left to imagine the context in which the parables were uttered, as even Mark (Luk 4:36 ff.) in this instance follows the topical method of Matthew, and relates the parables only as specimens of the didactic method of Jesus (cf. Luk 4:33). But may we not reasonably suppose, as in the other cases, the context of a certain antagonism? Timid followers come to Him with a difficulty born of vision and reflexion: If Thus art He with whom the Kingdom comes, why is the word of the Kingdom really received by so few who hear it, or how shall even the wonders of God done in one little land affect the whole world? To which Jesus replies in effect: Have patience, and you shall see. The greatest things of the world are not always those that give promise of greatness. They are often those whose beginnings are remarkably small, and yet connecting beginning and end is the one power. If this was the occasion of the utterance of the parables under discussion (and it seems difficult even to imagine another), it is obvious that both the question of the doubters and the answer of Jesus assume that the constituent of the Kingdom is the supernatural Divine power before which no opposition can stand. The question is, Can the power really be present when there is so little to show for it? And the answer is, Yes, it can. The same power that begins with little ends with much. We read our own thoughts into the simple intention of these parables, when we speak as if Jesus intended to teach that the manifestation of the Kingdom would not be catastrophic, but would be a matter of growth and development. Doubtless the parables, taken by themselves, are capable of bearing this meaning; but just this isolation of them from the general context of the situation reflected in the Gospel history is that of which we must beware. But there remains still what is, apparently, the most important passage, Luk 17:20 ff. Whether we translate in you or among you ( , Luk 17:21), Jesus seems to say very emphatically that the Kingdom is present. On a nearer view of the passage, however, and a more careful articulation of its sentences, this appearance vanishes. Luk 17:21 must be understood in harmony with Luk 17:23 ff. (cf. the lo, here and the lo, there of Luk 17:21; Luk 17:23). The leading thought of the passage is the suddenness (in the special aspect of simultaneousness) of the manifestation of the Kingdom. The advent of the great day shall be like the lightning flash, of which you cannot say, here or there, for it is everywhere and all at once.

It thus appears that there is nothing in the Synoptics really antagonistic to the eschatological view of the Kingdom. The Kingdom is not present in any sense not reconcilable with the fact that it is also and mainly future. No one may understand the Gospels who cannot accept the fact that in a perfectly distinct sense the teaching of Jesus was not modern. It was in the highest degree sane and authoritative, yet it remained true to the traditional view that the Kingdom would come by miracle and catastrophe. The unmistakable indications of this are the facts that the references to the Kingdom in the Synoptics are prevailingly of futuristic implication (on this see Wernle, op. cit.), and that even in the Fourth Gospel there are numerous passages to show that Jesus never thought of the Consummation apart from the transcendent wonders of the Resurrection and the Judgment.

There was, however, one important modification of the traditional view. The Consummation and all that accompanied it were to be mediated and, indeed, effected by Himself. Prophecy, it is true, contained the promise of a Messiah. But the correspondences of fulfilment to prophecy are largely contrasts, and the impressiveness of history is perhaps mainly due to these contrasts. The efforts of the Evangelist Matthew to showsometimes in strangely far-fetched waysthat Jesus fulfilled the prophecies, are an instructive index of the difficulties felt by even the most spiritually minded Jews in reconciling the Messiahship of Jesus with the testimony of prophecy. It becomes important to inquire how in an eschatological aspect Jesus conceived His own Messiahship.

2. His Messianic consciousness.Of great significance in this connexion is the Temptation. The record of this cannot rest on other testimony than His own, and the key to the juxtaposition of the narratives of the Baptism and the Temptation must be sought in His Messianic consciousness. The latter, therefore, we must try reverently to conceive. It seems true to say that the Temptation represents a contrast or conflict of faith that pervades our Lords entire ministry on earth. In general it is the contrast between God and man, between what is omnipotent and what is humanly possible; in particular, it is the contrast between a measureless gift and the definite responsibility of using it aright. Jesus had received a practically limitless endowment. He was in the world as God, for He was the Son of God accredited to His own consciousness by His Father. Yet He was flesh and blood, a genuine Brother of men. Each term of this contrast had its own place in the will of God. It was the task of the Messiah to reconcile them. Thus He would do the will of God. An unrestrained use of this gift would remove Him from the brotherhood of men; a refusal to use it meant the failure of His mission. How was a superhuman task to be done by One who should yet remain a man? The key to this problem was grasped in the victorious experience of the Temptation. What the solution meant in detail we learn from the subsequent history. Reading that history in the light of the Temptation-narrative, we seem to discern in it two principles: (a) the one is the principle of faith; (b) the other is the principle of self-sacrifice. These two principles have, of course, a common root in the one Messianic life; but it is useful to view them apart. The principle of faith covers the strictly supernatural side of the work of consummating the Kingdom. It is the hope of what God will do through His Messianic Son in bringing the promised Kingdom from heaven to earth. We cannot do justice to the consciousness of our Lord reflected in the Gospels if we fail to note the supremacy of this principle. If we may make for the moment the distinction between faith and duty, we must find what is at once deepest and loftiest in the consciousness of Jesusnot in the thought of what He Himself is to do in the fulfilment of the Messianic career butin what God is to do in Him and through Him. He never loses sight of the one like unto a son of man who is to come with the clouds and receive a dominion universal and everlasting. The Messiahship is not simply His present task. It is His hope for Himself and for the world. The eschatology of Jesus is mainly His hope of the accomplishment of an act of omnipotence, in which God will finally constitute the Messianic Person and functions. This hope was necessarily shadowy in circumstantial outline, but it rested on an absolutely substantial foundation. Its foundation was the presence of the Spirit that fell to Him as the Son of God. The gift of the Spirit, moreover, was not simply the ground of a hope that related primarily only to Himself. It was a leading of duty and a power of benefit in relation to others. He could give to others helps that were not permissible to Himself. Hence there is a miraculous element in the Messianic ministry even on earth. The miracles are the premonitory signs of the final Messianic glory. They are the pledge that the Power which will be manifested in that glory is not far away. While these and abound in the earthly ministry, they are always under the control of the principle of faith. No one is suffered to experience the extraordinary helps who does not believe.

The other principle, resting equally in the depths of our Lords filial consciousness, is the principle of self-sacrifice. It is in the practical dominance of this principle that we may discern at once the originality of Jesus and the difference between His eschatology and that of contemporary Jewish faith. While He retains the traditional view that the Consummation will be effected in transcendent catastrophic fashion,collapse of the present world, appearance of the Son of Man, resurrection, judgment,He reaches the conviction, possibly as early as the time of His baptism, that this Consummation will not be attained previous to His own death and resurrection. How entirely this conviction, once attained, dominated His conception of the Divine purpose and His teaching of His disciples, may be seen in the facts not only that in the Fourth Gospel the sacrificial death of the Messiah is prophesied by the Baptist, and is a matter of our Lords consciousness from the very beginning of His ministry (Joh 2:19 ff.), but also that (as regards the latter point) there is little if anything in the Synoptic Gospels opposed to the Johannine view. This may not decide the comparatively unimportant question as to when our Lord attained the conviction that He must as the Messiah submit to a violent death, but taken along with the testimony of the rest of the NT (say, especially, the Pauline and Petrine Epp.) it shows conclusively the practically predominant importance of this eventor rather signal servicein the mind and faith of the Christian Church. For every one text in the Epistles that calls attention to the glory of the Kingdom that is to come in the incomprehensible power of God, there are probably at least two in which the emphasis rests not on the power of God the Father, but on the love of the Son of God. Indeed, it may be questioned whether there is a single reference to the Consummation in the Epistles or the Apocalypse of the NT which does not in its immediate context suggest that the centre of the coming glory is the Person of Him who was delivered for the offences of His people, but raised for their justification. Even in the Epp. to the Thessalonians, which are commonly supposed to represent the most primitive type of Pauline doctrine, it is not the Kingdom of God, but His Son from heaven, that is to believers the object of waiting (1Th 1:10).

This indissoluble connexion between the sufferings of the Christ and the glory that should follow (1Pe 1:11) could not have been fixed so securely in the mind of the first believers had it not been first in the mind of Jesus Himself. The Synoptics bear witness to the importance of the connexion for Jesus not only by reporting the profoundly significant but isolated sayings, Mat 20:28; Mat 26:28 f. ||, but by the very distinct way in which they connect the critical incident of the disciples confessing their Masters Messiahship with the institution of a new order of lessons, the theme of which is the necessity and the near prospect of the Messiahs sufferings (Mat 16:21 ff. ||). This representation rests on a sure basis of reminiscence, and it seems to have a special guarantee in the fact that the teaching does not contain an articulated doctrine of atonement like that which is expressed in the Epp. (esp. Romans), but aims rather at expressing the necessity of the Masters sufferings in terms that apply equally to the disciple. Admitting the distinctiveness of the two sayings, Mat 20:28; Mat 26:28 f. ||, we seem warranted in saying that, according to the Synoptics, the view of things that practically determined the career of Jesus was that the good of which He possessed the pledge in His unique filial consciousness would not come during the period of His own life on earth. The spirit that brought help and healing to others was, as regarded Himself, a spirit of self-sacrifice. The sacrifice would culminate in His death. But the death would be momentary. In two or three days (cf. Hos 6:2) He would rise again. Yet the momentary death would not be in vain. The death and resurrection of the Messiah meant a conquest of death for a new believing Israel. The death would be the ransom price (, Mat 20:28) which neither man nor angel could pay for the soul of a brother man. It would be the institution and support of the true and abiding temple of the Divine presence (Exo 30:11 ff., Job 33:18-24, Psa 49:6-9. See on this A. B. Bruces Kingdom of God: T. & T. Clark, 1889). The thought of the redemptive value of the sufferings of Jesus as the Christ dominates the Fourth Gospel, most of the Epistles, and the Apocalypse of the NT. If it is not prominent, it is certainly present, in the Synoptic Gospels. The lack of prominence finds its explanation in the reserve that naturally characterized the utterance of Jesus regarding His own death. The presence of frequent or elaborate references to the matter in these Gospels would have taken from our estimate of their objective character. Jesus may well have felt that the work of the Messiah was to die, not to explain the consequences or power of that death. Of this there would be another Witness. He who sacrifices himself commits his case to God and to posterity. This brings us to another matter.

3. His view of the time of the Consummation.We have seen that Jesus did not dissociate Himself from the traditional view that the end would come in the form of a catastrophic transformation, culminating in the advent of the Messiah Himself, who would come from heaven. He seems rather everywhere, both by the assumptions and by the direct references of His language, to set His seal to this view. When we consider how widely His consciousness of personal concern in the accomplishing of the Kingdom must have caused His view of things to differ from all views that were by comparison tentative and theoretical, and reflect how much there is in the ethical quality of His teaching, particularly in the parables which conceive the Kingdom under the analogy of natural growth, to suggest an openness of His mind to all that may be of abiding worth in the modern idea of evolution, the tenacity with which He adhered to the catastrophic view of the final event cannot but profoundly impress us. Reverent investigators will pause before accepting the conclusion that He was in this matter under some kind of delusion. They will strive rather to see in the attitude of One who was conscious of being not simply the herald but also the bearer of the Kingdom of God, a model for the attitude of all who would turn serious thoughts to the last things. Whatever else we bring to a study where there is room for all knowledge and all thought, we must give a final as well as a supreme and pervasive place to the wonder-working power of the living God. We have sure ground in the Synoptics for saying that, while Jesus regarded the work of His Father in heaven, even in what we call nature and ordinary providence, as wonderful (Mat 6:25 ff. etc.), this did not prevent Him from steadfastly contemplating a final wonder of destruction and reconstruction which should be the consummation of the Kingdom or its perfect establishment on earth. While so much is clear, there is very great difficulty involved in the question whether He predicted, so definitely and unmistakably as the Synoptics lead us to suppose, that the final wonder would be accomplished within the term of the generation then living. The problem is not to be solved either by the quantitative method of counting heads (whether Gospel texts or modern authorities), or by the alternative method of saying, Either He was mistaken, or such texts as Mar 9:1; Mar 13:30 || are false reports. It can hardly be doubted that Jesus uttered words which were naturally understood, by those who heard them and by others to whom they were reported, to mean that the final wonderthe Parousia of the Man of Daniels vision and of age-long expectationwould happen within their own generation. It is inconceivable that an expectation so confident and definite could have rested on anything but a definite reminiscence of words used by Jesus which seemed capable of only one interpretation.

Is it, then, possible to justify such sayings as Mar 9:1; Mar 13:30 || apart from the blunt avowal that Jesus laboured under an illusion, and that He transmitted the illusion to His immediate followers not only before but after His death and resurrection? This has been felt to be among the most difficult questions of historical Christology, and various types of solution of the problem are still represented by leading authorities. These may be roughly classified under the heads: (a) prophetic, (b) pictorial, (c) realistic. Under (a) would be included all theories, such as that of Beyschlag, which emphasize the fact that in this instance at least Jesus spoke in the manner of an OT prophet, and that His utterance kept within the limitation common to all the prophets. This limitation required Him to see and announce the final salvation of Jehovah as about to happen within a measurable interval after the judgment (in this case the fall of Jerusalem) impending over the nation. Under (b) would be included theories of the type of Haupts, which emphasize the necessarily pictorial character of language, which must express extra-mundane realities in mundane forms. Might not the assertion that the Son of Man would come on the clouds within their own generation be the most effective way of leading persons familiar with the apocalyptic style of language to the perfectly confident but also essentially spiritual type of faith represented in the NT literature? (c) The term realistic, finally, might describe all theories whose tendency is to insist on what has been called the biblical realism, and to require us to put upon the language of Jesus the most literal or natural construction possible. The most distinguished representative of this type in its bearing on the present problem is perhaps Titius. Titius thinks that Jesus must be considered to have held in a bon fide sense the view which His words naturally express, viz. that His own generation would see the end of the present wicked world and the establishment on earth of the perfect heavenly Kingdom. But His confession of ignorance as to the day and the hour of the Consummation (Mar 13:32) shows that He held His own conviction in an attitude of reverent submission to His Fathers will, which must have made the transition to acceptance of the differing reality easy and natural.

It is possible to incline to any one of the above types consistently with a reverential appreciation of the unique mental and spiritual equipment of Jesus; and valuable elements of truth may be found in them all. The opinion of English-speaking students of the Gospels has perhaps till recently inclined most to the pictorial type (b). For some time, however, this has been undergoing modifications from the increasing attention paid to the apocalyptic writings. This has fostered the belief that more regard than has been given is due to the realistic character of our Lords mode of thought and utterance. On the whole, the variety and vacillation of opinion suggest the likelihood that we are not yet in a position to offer a solution of the problem that shall possess demonstrable certainty. Our information about Jesus, while adequate for spiritual and practical purposes, is insufficient for the purposes, or at least for the appetite, of biographical science. To a great extent we do not know, or are only slowly learning, either the exact occasions of His utterances or the amount of meaning they may have conveyed or failed to convey to those to whom they were delivered. Greater than the limitation arising from defective information, because more intimate to ourselves, is that connected with the inability of even the modern mind to find within itself a measure for the words of eternal life. To those to whom Jesus was and is the unique bearer of the Kingdom of God both to themselves and to the world, it must seem pertinent to ask whether those who can never stand in the centre of such responsibilities can properly estimate the things falling within the vision of the one Person, bearing our nature, who did and does so stand?

Without presuming to offer a key that fits the lock of all the critical difficulties, the present writer ventures to call attention to the view of the whole matter expressed in his Eschatology of Jesus (Melrose, 1904). While it does not meet the difficulties of those whose view of the Person of Jesus is frankly naturalistic, it has some claim upon the attention of those to whom the historical Jesus was the unique manifestation in the flesh of the Power that is directing human history to its goal. To those for whom this conviction is fixed, the two following considerations may perhaps appear of paramount importance. The one is that many of the sayings of Jesus must have had a certain elusiveness. The mere fact that they were so habitually aphoristic and pictorial is itself almost a proof of this. Besides the meaning which immediately strikes us, there is a reserve of possible meaning which lies along the line of our vision, yet goes beyond what we actually see. There is a measure of this elusiveness in the language of all genuine seers. Must there not have been an extraordinary measure of it in the language of Jesus?

The other is that the elusive language of the seer is not delusive. Jesus does not set Himself to utter dark sayings; but His practical instinct keeps Him from dazzling His hearers with an excess of light. He gives them all the light they can take; but it does not follow either that this is all that fills the recesses of His own spirit, or, on the other hand, that in His utterance He is consciously keeping anything back. We must conceive the seer to deliver the truth in the form in which it holds his mind. But the form in this case is not the particular word or image. It is not even so impressive an image as that of the Son of Man coming with the clouds (Dan 7:13, cf. Mar 13:26; Mar 14:62 ||). The form concerns rather what may be called spiritual emphasis. It is the exact poise of the spiritual mind at the point of self-surrendering trust in the goodwill and immediate action of the good God. For such a mind the employment of definite words and images in relation to the secrets of the future may mean no more than a definite certainty of new and immediate manifestations of the Divine power and love. They do not necessarily mean a definite realization of the precise form in which the manifestation will be made. It is the definite certainty, not the indefinite form, which the words are calculated to convey. If they convey even to His most susceptible hearers something that is in one aspect more and in another less than this, this is due to the fact that their spiritual poise is inferior to His. The poise in their case is rectified by the subsequent teaching of the Spirit in the light of events.

Those who are able to accept this view will probably do so mainly for two reasons: (a) Because it explains the desire of Jesus to assure His faithful followers that they would live to see the manifestation of the Kingdom in power (Mar 9:1; Mar 13:30, Mat 10:23). (b) Because it explains the ability of the Apostles and Apostolic writers to accept apparently without any great travail of mind the disappointment of first hopes, or even to regard the disappointment as part-fulfilment (see, e.g., Joh 16:12 ff. and 2Pe 3:8 ff.). To these may perhaps he added: (c) That this view has no necessary connexion with the idea that Jesus in this matter accommodated His expressions to the limitations of the disciples. The idea of accommodation is no doubt suggested by Joh 16:12 ff.; but even if we suppose that the words of this passage are a literal reminiscence of what the Master said, we must observe that one who professes to be accommodating his words to the limitations of his hearers takes thereby all sting from the charge that he has compromised the truth. Many reverent students of the Gospels will probably, however, prefer to regard the words of Joh 16:12 ff. not as a literal utterance of the Master, but rather as a devout recognition proceeding from the inner circle of disciples of an element or quality in their Master which, in spite of all the simplicity of His utterance and His impressive veracity, had eluded and mystified them. They thought they had understood, yet how much they had misunderstood! On this view Jesus did not accommodate. He spoke as the word was given Him, in the style that is most faithfully reflected in the Synoptics. Whatever may be the truth about Joh 16:12 ff., we seem warranted in saying that Jesus had but one way of speaking of the Consummation. During all His ministry, and up to the end of it, He spoke of it as imminent. It was something for the generation then living. Act 1:6 and the other books of the NT outside the Gospels may be taken as proof that He spoke of it in the same way after His resurrection. If in this regard He was limited in the days of His flesh, He was limited also when He wore the body that was from heaven: if He accommodated in the one sphere, He accommodated in the other also.

The NT as a whole is filled with an expectation, which in the form in which it was entertained was not fulfilled; and yet faith in Jesus and belief in the still coming Consummation lived on and live still. Our conclusion is, then, briefly as follows:As a protest to His own people, Jesus predicted the downfall of the Jewish nation within a measurable period (see esp. Matthew 23, 24). While in all probability He depicted this catastrophe in colours that closely matched those of the event itself, the very intensity of His concentration upon a vision that might seem to concern only the Jewish nation serves to show that through the telescope of Jewish particularity He was looking out upon the whole human world. His vision was that of One uniquely alive to the purpose of God, of which He, the Messianic Son of Man, was the supreme executor. It was the vision of a prophet, seeing all things in relation to the Divine purpose, not the vision of a mere politician or patriot. The Jewish nation was chosen to bless the world with the knowledge of God. Failure to fulfil this vocation brought on it the destructive wrath of God; and the condemnation of the chosen people involved in an obvious sense the doom of the world. That ignorance of God and hostility, of which the Jewish obduracy was the signal example, would reach a climax in the murderous death of the Son of God. From that moment the forces of final reconstruction would set in. When the Consummation would be attained, when the Son of Man should come in His glory, and all evil and evil-doers be put away, no man or angel knew. Not even the Son, only the Father. But this much was certain. The power of the Prince of this worldthe Prince whose power was manifest in sin, disease, and deathwas broken. The proofs of that victory could not be long delayed. Some would live to see signs of which they had not dreamt, that the Kingdom had come in power.

This covers in brief probably as much as we are able to report of the unique eschatological consciousness of Jesus. The account, however, would not be complete without a fresh reference to the blank space of our ignorance. This space we shall enlarge or diminish according to our estimate of the difference between the area of our knowledge, and that not merely of the general purpose of God, but of the consciousness of Jesus, the Son of God. All men are agnostics in the sense of admitting that they have not been made privy to the counsels of Creation and Providence; but besides this common agnosticism there is a kind peculiar to Christians, which breathes the spirit of faith and reverence. Christians believe that all things, including especially human destiny, have been committed to the hands of Jesus Christ. In that faith they can anticipate with calmness the worst tragedies of personal or social history. They believe that there is no terror of the kingdom of darkness which the Son of God has not overcome with the armour of His holy light; but, because they believe this, they do not presume to possess, even in the measure of His Spirit to which they have attained, a key that will open every secret that was stored in the depths of His personality, even while He was on earth. The last mystery to Christians is no longer the mystery of death, judgment, and the hereafter. It is rather the mysterywhich is also the factof Jesus Christ, the mystery of the relation of these things to Him, or rather, perhaps, of His relation to them.

II. Eschatology in the Gospel of John.We pass by questions as to the date or authorship of this Gospel. The writing may be placed with confidence near the border dividing the 1James , 2 nd centuries. It does not matter for our purpose on which side of the border it is placed. To the eyes of most Anglo-Saxon critics the Gospel reveals still the marks of an intimate of Jesus, and with them we assume that, even in the form in which we read the Gospel, it proceeded from the circle of a disciple whom Jesus loved. We assume alsowhat probably no one deniesthat there is but one mind between the author of the Gospel and the author of the Epistles that bear the name of John. Whoever was its author, the Gospel could not have reached so soon the position of authority it has held in the Christian Church since the 2nd cent., had it not been considered to express the living and profound belief of Christendom regarding what was most essential in the Person and History of Jesus. This is the matter of importance to our present inquiry. If we find that the view of our Lords eschatological consciousness, which has seemed to us to be most reasonably deducible from the Synoptic Gospels, agrees on the whole with what is presented here, that view may be considered to have behind it a weight of authority that could not well be greater. For the authority is not simply the consciousness of an inspired Apostle or Apostolic man; it is that of the consciousness of the Church as a whole at the critical period of the close of the Apostolic age. We may fix attention on three matters: (1) the idealizing style of the Gospel; (2) its conception of Eternal Life; (3) its attitude to Eschatology proper.

1. The idealizing style of the Fourth Gospel.From the first it has been admitted that, as compared with the Synoptics, this Gospel is one rather of the mind than of the external actions of Jesus. Even the most remarkable external actions, the miracles, are but signs of the mystery that is really important to usthat, viz., of the Person of the Son of God. The signs are recorded that we may believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and may have life through His name (Joh 20:30 f.). The Logos that was towards God ( ) and was God (Joh 1:1), was made flesh, and the writer and his companions beheld His glory, and reported the vision, not so much from literal reminiscence of the acts and words done and spoken by Jesus on earth, as under the inspiration of the Spirit that came according to promise from the presence of the Father and the Risen Ascended Son. The author is concerned rather with the discourses of Jesus than with His actions, and the discourses are, we believe, not so much reported as interpreted. They are the words of an eternal life in which the writer and his fellow-believers share (1Jn 1:1 ff.). Jesus is Himself the Word, the Truth, the Life. What is told of Him represents but a few out of many instances of His self-manifestation. They are like the sparks that witness to a hidden, mighty, and continuous electric stream. One consequence of this mode of treatment is that there is little in this Gospel to indicate that Jesus experienced anything of the sinless infirmity of flesh and blood. There is, e.g., no suggestion that He grew in knowledge of the path He had to tread as the Saviour of the world. There is no temptation, no agony in Gethsemane, no ignorance or doubt as to the times and seasons of the Consummation. The author does not, perhaps, consciously ignore these things, but to mention them is no part of his purpose to manifest the eternal life that was in the Son of God.

If such a view of the Person of Jesus were carried out with rigorous abstract logic, we should reach a result that would not only be glaringly at variance with the picture presented by the Synoptists, but would be indistinguishable from the heresy against which, at least in its germinal form, the author himself protests (1Jn 2:22; 1Jn 5:8), viz. that the incarnation of the Logos was mere appearance. The point to be observed is that the view is not carried out rigorously. The reason is that the author combines a sense of history with a sense of spiritual fact. But what mainly concerns him is the spiritual fact: what Jesus, who rose and ascended, is now to His Church, that in deep reality He has always been. No doubt He was truly human, and, because He was so, there was during His earthly sojourn real limitation, but the limitation was free because self-imposed (see, e.g., Joh 10:18), and behind it there was always the Divine reality. He was never other than the Logos, the eternal and only-begotten Son of God.

Even though it be conceded, as we think it must be, that neither as regards incidents nor discourses is the Johannine picture of Jesus so strictly historical as that of the Synoptists, it does not follow that it is not, in another than the literally historical sense, a deeply true picture. The guarantee of its truth is the fact that the Christian Church has accepted it, and in doing so has conquered both its own feeling of disappointment in the delayed Parousia and the unbelief of the world. The Church discovered, that is to say, the presence in the mind and utterances of Jesus of a quality of which it had not at first grasped the significance. His words were spirit and life (Joh 6:63). They could be interpreted only by His own perpetual teaching through the Spirit of truth (Joh 16:13 ff.).

We may call this, if we choose, the idealism of the Johannine Gospel and of the early Church; but the question is worth pondering whether anything less than an idealism which rested on a sure, if profound, basis of truth, could have held the Church to its loyalty to the unseen Jesus in face of the disappointment of hopes which the Synoptic testimony, taken in its natural sense, had encouraged. In any case, the Johannine picture of Jesus may be considered to supply a striking confirmation of the opinion, already partly expressed in this article, that no amount of fragmentary sentences of Jesus, however accurately reported, and however definite their meaning may be when they are taken by themselves, can be a perfect index of a mind like His.

2. Its conception of Eternal Life.Every reader of John notices the prominence of the words life, or eternal life, or spirit. The phrase Kingdom of God has practically disappeared, and life or eternal life takes its place. The fact is of importance to us in our present study, because it is the index of Johns way of conceiving what in the Synoptic mode of speech might be called the present aspect of the Kingdom. Jesus appears as the possessor and even the direct dispenser of the Divine life. It is given to the Son to have life in Himself even as the Father (Joh 3:26), and no one can come to Him except it be given him from the Father (Joh 6:65). Yet neither the Father nor the Son dispenses life in its fulness till the Son is glorified through death, or returns to the glory which He had from the first with the Father (Joh 7:39). But once the life is imparted it is a new birth which carries its own promise. It is, in a proper sense, sufficient for itself. If a man is born of God, the Divine seed remains in him. Its product is righteousness, and its perfect fruition is likeness to the only-begotten Son Himself (Joh 3:5, Joh 9:2; Joh 9:4, 1Jn 3:2; 1Jn 3:9 etc.). It is clear that this mode of view brings the Divine boon nearer to the individual heart, and necessarily alters, at least for the individual, the perspective of the eschatology.

Not simply the great event itself,the glorious Parousia of the Christ,but the events of resurrection and judgment that accompany it, are regarded from within rather than from without. Those whose hope is set on Jesus do not lift to the heavens faces sick with deferred hope. They look within and behold Him with the vision of the pure in heart. For them Jesus has come already and keeps coming. The supreme matter is to abide in Him or in His love by keeping His words. Let a man thus live and believe in Him, and he shall never die. Nothing, that is, not even what we call death, will break the continuity of his life (Joh 11:25 f.). The water of life that Jesus gives shall be in him a well of water springing up unto everlasting life (Joh 4:14). The Judgment similarly is, or tends to be, withdrawn from futurity. He who believes does not come to judgment; he has passed already from death to life (Joh 5:24, 1Jn 3:14). On the other hand, he who disbelieves is condemned already. Life has come to him, but he chooses death; light, but he chooses darkness. In turning from the only begotten Son of God he puts from him his chance of being saved from a Divine wrath already present (Joh 3:18 ff., Joh 3:36) Until he seeks the Father through Him who is the Way, the wrath of God abideth on him. Every thoughtful reader of Jn. perceives that such are the main ideas both of the Gospel and of the Epistles. He will hardly fail to reflect also that these are, and have remained ever since the time of these writings or earlier, the vital ideas of the Christian Church in its cultivation of individual and social life, both on its practical and its meditative side.Comparing the Johannine testimony with the utterances in the Synoptic Gospelsfew, it may be, but importantwhich reveal a consciousness in Jesus of a Kingdom of God that is present and not simply future, and considering especially the fact that in spite of their testimony to Jesus sense of the imminence of a Kingdom yet to come, there is not in the Synoptic Gospels the slightest indication that this tremendous prospect at all diminished His appreciation of the worth of those ethical precepts (e.g. those relating to marriage and the parental relation (Mar 10:2 ff; Mar 7:9 ff.) that have to do with the secular order, we shall hesitate before accepting the idea suggested by Joh. Weiss (op. cit.), that the precise meaning of the ethical utterances of Jesus is to be determined by our knowledge (?) of His eschatology, and that Jesus would not have spoken as He does, e.g., in Luk 14:26, had He not believed that within a generation the institutions of marriage and the family would cease, and that those who should survive this end of the world, being sons of the resurrection (Luk 20:36), should be thenceforward as the angels (ib.). In this reference also the Johannine Gospel confirms our sense of an element in the equipment and outlook of Jesus to which justice can hardly be done by those who lay unqualified stress on the distinctively eschatological portions of the Synoptic Gospels.

3. Its attitude to Eschatology proper.Yet it has to be observed, finally, that, while the futuristic element is not prominent in the Johannine Gospel, it is by no means eliminated. It may be felt, indeed, that the terms in which it is expressed involve a departure from (or, at any rate, a transformation of) the objective standpoint of the Synoptics. The last three words of the phrase, the hour cometh and now is (Joh 5:23 ff.), suggest a state of mind in which the thought of a future radically or incalculably different from that which is already present to the vision of faith, is no longer keenly operative. The same is still more obvious in the Supper discourse (chs. 1416), in reading which one feels that the line of distinction between the Lords final coming to receive the disciples to Himself, and His continuous abiding with them or visitation of them through the comforting Spirit, tends to be a vanishing one.

Yet it does not follow that the distinctively eschatological utterances or references contained in the Johannine Gospel (e.g. Joh 5:28 f., Joh 21:22 f.) are of the nature of a formally dutiful acknowledgment of an earlier mode of speech and a still lingering form of popular Christian expectation corresponding to it. Such a view, at least, is not an exhaustive description of the state of the case. It seems true rather to say that the futuristic outlook, while it lost, even within the time covered by the NT writings, its first aspect of keen expectation, was yet to the last of that period felt to bewhat it is stillan indispensable element of Christian faith. That the matter is looked at from within, and attention fastened not on what is to come to us, but rather on what we are to become (1Jn 3:2), does not alter the fact that the total on which we are looking belongs to the future as well as to the present, and that that future is in the wonderworking power of the Conqueror of death. It is never possible to neglect the aspect of futurity, and it is sometimes imperative to emphasize it. Such a passage as 1Jn 2:18 compared with Mar 13:5 f. shows significantly how much the Fourth Evangelist, in spite of the depth of his insight into the Masters mind (or, shall we say, because of that insight), was to the last influenced by the eschatological utterances of the Synoptic testimony. He recognizes the antichrists of his own day, and is confident that it is the last time. The 21st chapter of the Gospel speaks similarly for the attitude of the Evangelists circle. The chapter is an appendix, and Joh 21:22 f. show what is probably its main motive. The aged Apostle has passed away, and the question is raised, Did not the Master say that this disciple should not see death till He should come in glory? The expectation implied in the question connected itself in all likelihood with the utterance in Mar 9:1 ||. There was a general impression throughout the Churches of Asia that John was the person mainly intended, and a story was current to the effect that in predicting Peters mode of death the Master had told that disciple of the survival of John. The author of the appendix claims to be in a position to tell the readers of the Gospel what the Master had really said. It was far from being a definite promise. It was only the hint of a possibility. The apology would hardly have been deemed necessary if the tendency to insist on a literalistic interpretation of the Synoptic testimony, placing the glorious final advent within this generation, had not still been prevalent at the close of the 1st cent., i.e. at the time when John died.

Neither the author of the Gospel and the Epistles nor the author of the appendix to the Gospel has anything to object to the probability of an immediate Parousia of Jesus in glory; but the impression which their utterances leave upon our minds, and which from the first they were fitted to convey to the Church, is that the contrast important to the authors is no longer that between present and future, but rather that between God and the world, between the love of the Father and the love of this present evil world. The matter of absorbing interest is not that the Son of God will come again, but that He has come. Life is not movement towards a point on a straight line: it is expansion from a centre, and because the centre is living he who is at the centre is also implicitly at the goal of the moving circumference.

The Evangelist has expressed this in very characteristic fashion in the closing words of his principal Epistle: We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life (1Jn 5:19 f.).

Those who find their own consciousness expressed in such words, and feel impelled to trace that consciousness to its historical source, will not readily suppose that they have found the source anywhere nearer than the consciousness of Jesus Himself. Who but He could have been the first either to possess eternal life or to know that He possessed it?

Literature.For the literature on Eschatology in general or on Scriptural Eschatology see the art. Eschatology in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible and in Encyc. Biblica. It is indispensable for the student of the Gospels to understand the genesis and scope of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and for this purpose the Introductions in Drivers Daniel (in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges) and Scotts Revelation (in the Century Bible) will be found sufficient by most English readers. Of German works there may be mentioned, in this connexion, Hilgenfeld, Jdische Apokalyptik, 1857 (still a standard work); Gunkel, Schopfung u. Chaos, and his Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verstdndniss des NT, 1895 and 1903; Bousset, Der Antichrist, etc., 1895, and his Die jd, Apokalyptik, 1903; to which must now be added Gressmann, Der Ursprung der isr.-jd. Eschatologie, 1905. On OT Eschatology see very specially A. B. Davidsons Theology of the Old Testament (T. & T. Clark, 1904), xi. and xii.

In regard to the Eschatology of the Gospels a good list of books will be found in Moffatts Historical New Testament (T. & T. Clark), p. 639 f., bearing especially on the theory of the Little Apocalypse, which many scholars, following Colani and Weiffenbach, suppose to be incorporated in Mark 13, Matthew 24. Beyond the works of Haupt, Titius, Joh. Weiss, etc., mentioned in this article, the most comprehensive work, strictly ad rem, is probably Baldenspergers Das Selbstbewusstsein Jesu, of which only the First Part of the 3rd vllig umgearbeitete edition, entitled Die Messianisch-Apok. Hoffnungen des Judenthums (Strassburg, 1903), has as yet (1906) been published. A discussion of the matters specially emphasized by Joh. Weiss and Baldensperger will be found in a volume of the Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, entitled The Messianic Hope in the NT, by Professor Shailer Mathews, Chicago, 1905. See also Porters Messages of the Apocalypses, and his art. Revelation in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible . For illustrations of Rabbinical views and interpretations, current more or less in the time of our Lord, see very specially the latest edition of Edersheims Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (London, 1900), vol. ii., Appendixes 5, 8, 9, 13, 14, 17, 19; also Webers Jd. Theologie2 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] , Leipzig, 1897. In P. W. Schmidts Die Geschichte Jesu (Tb. and Leipz. 1900), there is a section entitled Zukunftspruche, the views of which are defended in vol. ii. of the same work (1904), pp. 354360. Of older works the following may be mentioned: I. A. Dorner, de Oratione Christi Eschatologica, Mtth. 24:136, Stuttgart, 1844; Herm. Cremer, Die eschat. Rede Jesu Christi, Mtth. 24 and 25, Stuttgart, 1860; E. J. Mayer, Krit. Com. zu der eschat. Rede, Mtth. 24 and 25, 1 Theil Die Einleitung, Frankfurt-a-O. 1857: Rud. Hofmann, Die Wiederkunft Christi u. das Zeichen des Menschensohns am Himmel (Mtth. 24:30), gekronte Preisschrift, Leipzig, 1849; Wilh. Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunftsgedanke Jesu, Leipzig, 1873 (424 pp.), also his Die Frage der Wiederkunft Jesu in Denkschrift des evangel. Predigerseminars, Friedberg, 1901. Of pamphlets and magazine articles, in addition to the last named, may be mentioned Tholuck, Die Consequenzen der Reden Christi ber seine Wiederkunft u. sein Gericht in Programm der Universitt Halle, 1871; C. Bruston, Lenseignement de Jsus sur son Retour in Revue de Thol. et de Philosoph. 1890 (pp. 421452, see also some earlier articles in the same Review); Kingmans art. in Biblical World, 1897, i. pp. 167178; Pfleiderer, Composition der eschat. Rede, Mtth. 24:4ff. in JDTh [Note: DTh Jahrbcher fur deutsche Theologie.] , 1868, pp. 134149; Kienlen, Die eschat. Rede Jesu, Mtth. 24, ib. 1869, pp. 706709; Joh. Weiss, Die Composition der Synop. Wiederkunftsrede in SK [Note: K Studien und Kritiken.] , 1892, pp. 246270.

In regard to the Jewish Apocalypses, it would be ungrateful not to mention the invaluable editions of Enoch, Baruch, etc., published by Professor R. H. Charles, Oxford, Clarendon Press, since 1893, when his Book of Enoch, translated from Professor Dillmanns Ethiopic Text, appeared. See in this the discussion on Son of Man as at Enoch 46:2, pp. 127129, and The Son of Man: Its Origin and Meaning (Appendix B), pp. 212317. Since the publication of Charles Enoch the philological question regarding Son of Man has been keenly discussed by Lietzmann, Wellhausen, Schmiedel, Dalman, Fiebig, and others.See Muirheads Eschatology of Jesus (Melrose, 1904), Lecture iv., and Riebovs Messianic Prophecy, 2nd English ed. (T. & T. Clark, 1900) pp. 354356.

Lewis A. Muirhead.

Fuente: A Dictionary Of Christ And The Gospels

Eschatology

ESCHATOLOGY is that department of theology which is concerned with the last things, that is, with the state of individuals after death, and with the course of human history when the present order of things has been brought to a close. It includes such matters as the consummation of the age, the day of judgment, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection, the millennium, and the fixing of the conditions of eternity.

1. Eschatology of the OT.In the OT the future life is not greatly emphasized. In fact, so silent is the Hebrew literature on the subject, that some have held that personal immortality was not included among the beliefs of the Hebrews. Such an opinion, however, is hardly based on all the facts at our disposal. It is true that future rewards and punishments after death do not play any particular rle in either the codes or the prophetic thought. Punishment was generally considered as being meted out in the present age in the shape of loss or misfortune or sickness, while righteousness was expected to bring the corresponding temporal blessings. At the same time, however, it is to be borne in mind that the Hebrews, together with other Semitic people, had a belief in the existence of souls after death. Such beliefs were unquestionably the survivals of that primitive Animism which was the first representative of both psychology and a developed belief in personal immortality. Man was to the Hebrew a dichotomy composed of body and soul, or a trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit. In either case the body perished at death, and the other element, whether soul or spirit, went to the abode of disembodied personalities. The precise relation of the soul to the spirit was not set forth by the Hebrew writers, but it is likely that, as their empirical psychology developed, the spirit rather than the soul was regarded as surviving death. In any case, the disembodied dead were not believed to be immaterial, but of the nature of ghosts or shades (rephaim).

The universe was so constructed that the earth lay between heaven above, where Jehovah was, and the great pit or cavern beneath, Sheol, to which the shades of the dead departed. The Hebrew Scriptures do not give us any considerable material for elaborating a theory as to life in Sheol, but from the warnings against necromancers, as well as from the story of Saul and the witch of Endor (1Sa 28:3-18), it is clear that, alongside of the Jehovistic religion as found in the literature of the Hebrews, there was a popular belief in continued existence and conscious life of the spirits of men after death, as well as in the possibility of recalling such spirits from Sheol by some form of incantation. The legislation against necromancy is a further testimony to the same fact (Deu 18:11). Early Hebrew thought also dealt but indistinctly with the occupations and conditions of the dead in Sheol. Apparently they were regarded as in a state resembling sleep.

There is no thought of resurrection of the body in the OT, the clause in Job 19:26 generally used to prove such a point being more properly translated apart from my flesh. The resurrection expected was not individual, but national. The nation, or at least its pious remnant, was to be restored. This was the great evangel of the prophets. In the midst of this prophetic thought there was occasionally a reference to individual immortality, but such a belief was not utilized for the purpose of inculcating right conduct. Yet the new and higher conception of the worth of the individual and his relation with Jehovah paved the way to a clearer estimate of his immortality.

The later books of the Canon (Psa 49:1-20; Psa 73:18-25) refer more frequently to immortality, both of good and of evil men, but continue to deny activity to the dead in Sheol (Job 14:21; Job 26:6, Psa 88:12; Psa 94:17; Psa 115:17, Ecc 9:10), and less distinctly (Isa 26:19) refer to a resurrection, although with just what content it is not possible to state. It can hardly have been much more than the emergence of shades from Sheol into the light and life of the upper heavens. It would be unwarranted to say that this new life included anything like the reconstruction of the body, which was conceived of as having returned to dust. In these passages there are possibly references to post-mortem retribution and rewards, but if so they are exceptional. OT ethics was not concerned with immortality.

In the Hebrew period, however, there were elements which were subsequently to be utilized in the development of the eschatology of the Pharisees and of Christianity. Chief among these was the Day of Jehovah. At the first this was conceived of as the day in which Jehovah should punish the enemies of His nation Israel. In the course of time, however, and with the enlarged moral horizon of prophecy, the import of this day with its punishments was extended to the Hebrews as well. At its coming the Hebrew nation was to be given all sorts of political and social blessings by Jehovah, but certain of its members were to share in the punishment reserved for the enemies of Jehovah. Such an expectation as this was the natural outcome of the monarchical concept of religion. Jehovah as a great king had given His laws to His chosen people, and would establish a great assize at which all men, including the Hebrews, would be judged. Except in the Hagiographa, however, the punishments and rewards of this great judgment are not elaborated, and even in Daniel the treatment is but rudimentary.

A second element of importance was the belief in the rehabilitation of the Hebrew nation, i.e. in a national resurrection. This carried within it the germs of many of the eschatological expectations of later days. In fact, without the prophetic insistence upon the distinction between the period of national suffering and that of national glory, it is hard to see how the later doctrine of the two ages, mentioned below, could have gained its importance.

2. Eschatology of Judaism.A new period is to be seen in the OT Apocrypha and the pseudepigraphic apocalypses of Judaism. Doubtless much of this new phase in the development of the thought was due to the influence of the Captivity. The Jews came under the influence of the great Babylonian myth-cycles, in which the struggle between right and wrong was expressed as one between God and various supernatural enemies such as dragons and giants. To this period must be attributed also the development of the idea of Sheol, until it included places for the punishment of evil spirits and evil men.

This development was accelerated by the rise of the new type of literature, the apocalypse, the beginnings of which are already to be seen in Isaiah and Zechariah. The various influences which helped to develop this type of literature, with its emphasis upon eschatology, are hard to locate. The influence of the Babylonian mythcycles was great, but there is also to be seen the influence of the Greek impulse to pictorial expression. No nation ever came into close contact with Greek thought and life without sharing in their incentive to sthetic expression. In the case of the Hebrews this was limited by religion. The Hebrew could not make graven images, but he could utilize art in literary pictures. The method particularly suited the presentation of the Day of Jehovah, with its punishment of Israels enemies. As a result we have the very extensive apocalyptic literature which, beginning with the Book of Daniel, was the prevailing mode of expression of a sort of bastard prophecy during the two centuries preceding and the century following Christ. Here, however, the central motif of the Day of Jehovah is greatly expanded. Rewards and punishments become largely transcendental, or show a tendency towards transcendental representation. In this representation we see the Day of Judgment, the Jewish equivalent of the Day of Jehovah, closing one era and opening another. The first was the present age, which is full of wickedness and under the control of Satan, and the second is the coming age, when Gods Kingdom is to be supreme and all enemies of the Law are to be punished. It was these elements that were embodied in the Messianic programme of Judaism, and passed over into Christianity (see Messiah).

The idea of individual immortality is also highly developed in the apocalypses. The condition of men after death is made a motive for right conduct in the present age, though this ethical use of the doctrine is less prominent than the unsystematized portrayal of the various states of good and evil men. The Pharisees believed in immortality and the entrance of the souls of the righteous into new bodies (Jos. [Note: Josephus.] Ant. XVIII. i. 3), a view that appears in the later apocalypses as well (Eth. Enoch 3760, cf. 2Ma 7:11; 2Ma 14:46). This body was not necessarily to be physical, but like the angels (Apoc. [Note: Apocalypse, Apocalyptic.] of Baruch and 2 Esdras, though these writings undoubtedly show the influence of Christian thought). There is also a tendency to regard the resurrection as wholly of the spirit (Eth. Enoch 91:18, 92:3, 103:3f.). Sheol is sometimes treated as an intermediate abode from which the righteous go to heaven. There is no clear expectation of either the resurrection or the annihilation of the wicked. Resurrection was limited to the righteous, or sometimes to Israel. At the same time there is a strongly marked tendency to regard the expected Messianic kingdom which begins with the Day of Judgment as super-mundane and temporary, and personal immortality in heaven becomes the highest good. It should be remembered, however, that each writer has his own peculiar beliefs, and that there was no authoritative eschatological dogma among the Jews. The Sadducees disbelieved in any immortality whatsoever.

3. Eschatology of the NT.This is the development of the eschatology of Judaism, modified by the fact of Jesus resurrection.

(a) In the teaching of Jesus we find eschatology prominently represented. The Kingdom of God, as He conceived of it, is formally eschatological. Its members were being gathered by Jesus, but it was to come suddenly with the return of the Christ, and would be ushered in by a general judgment. Jesus, however, does not elaborate the idea of the Kingdom in itself, but rather makes it a point of contact with the Jews for His exposition of eternal life,that is to say, the life that characterizes the coming age and may be begun in the present evil age. The supreme good in Jesus teaching is this eternal life which characterizes membership in the Kingdom. Nothing but a highly subjective criticism can eliminate from His teaching this eschatological element, which appears as strongly in the Fourth Gospel as in the Synoptic writings, and furnishes material for the appeal of His Apostles. It should be added, however, that the eschatology of Jesus, once it is viewed from His own point of view, carries with it no crude theory of rewards and punishments, but rather serves as a vehicle for expressing His fundamental moral and religious concepts. To all intents and purposes it is in form and vocabulary like that of current Judaism. It includes the two ages, the non-physical resurrection of the dead, the Judgment with its sentences, and the establishment of eternal states.

(b) In the teaching of primitive Christians eschatology is a ruling concept, and is thoroughly embedded in the Messianic evangel. Our lack of literary sources, however, forbids any detailed presentation of the content of their expectation beyond a reference to the central position given to the coming day of the Christs Judgment.

(c) Eschatology was also a controlling element in the teaching of St. Paul. Under its influence the Apostle held himself aloof from social reform and revolution. In his opinion Christians were living in the last days of the present evil age. The Christ was soon to appear to establish His Judgment, and to usher in the new period when the wicked were to suffer and the righteous were to share in the joys of the resurrection and the Messianic Kingdom. Eschatology alone forms the proper point of approach to the Pauline doctrines of justification and salvation, as well as his teachings as to the resurrection. But here again eschatology, though a controlling factor in the Apostles thought, was, as in the case of Jesus, a medium for the exposition of a genuine spiritual life, which did not rise and fall with any particular forecast as to the future. The elements of the Pauline eschatology are those of Judaism, but corrected and to a considerable extent given distinctiveness by his knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. He gives no apocalyptic description of the coming age beyond his teaching as to the body of the resurrection, which is doubtless based upon his belief as to that of the risen Jesus. His description of the Judgment is couched in the conventional language of Pharisaic eschatology; but, hasing his teaching upon the word of the Lord (1Th 4:15), he develops the doctrine that the Judgment extends both over the living, who are to be caught up into the air, and also over the dead. His teaching is lacking in the specific elements of the apocalypses, and there is no reference to the establishment of a millennium. Opinions differ as to whether St. Paul held that the believer received the resurrection body at death or at the Parousia of Christ. On the whole the former view seems possibly more in accord with his general position as to the work of the Spirit in the believer. The appearance (Parousia) of the Christ to inaugurate the new era St. Paul believed to be close at hand (1Th 4:15; 1Th 4:17), but that it would be preceded by the appearance of an Antichrist (2Th 2:1 f.). The doctrine of the Antichrist, however, does not play any large rle in Paulinism. While St. Pauls point of view is eschatological, his fundamental thought is really the new life of the believer, through the Spirit, which is made possible by the acceptance of Jesus as the Christ. With St. Paul, as with Jesus, this new life with its God-like love and its certainty of still larger self-realization through the resurrection is the supreme good.

(d) The tendencies of later canonical thought are obviously eschatological. The Johannine Apocalypse discloses a complete eschatological programme. In the latter work we see all the elements of Jewish apocalyptic eschatology utilized in the interest of Christian faith. The two ages, the Judgment and the Resurrection, and the final conquest of God are distinctively described, and the programme of the future is elaborated by the addition of the promise of a first resurrection of the saints; by a millennium (probably derived from Judaism; cf. Slav. Enoch 32, 33) in which Satan is bound; by a great period of conflict in which Satan and his hosts are finally defeated and cast into the lake of fire; and by a general resurrection including the wicked for the purpose of judgment. It is not clear that in this general resurrection there is intended anything more than the summoning of souls from Sheol, for a distinction should probably be made between the resurrection and the giving of the body of the resurrection. This resurrection of the wicked seems inconsistent with the general doctrine of the Pauline literature (cf. 1Co 15:1-58), but appears in St. Pauls address before Felix (Act 24:15), and in a single Johannine formula (Joh 5:29). The doctrine of the sleep of the dead finds no justification in the Apocalypse or the NT as a whole.

4. Eschatology and Modern Theology.The history of Christian theology until within the last few years has been dominated by eschatological concepts, and, though not in the sense alleged by its detractors, has been otherworldly. The rewards and punishments of immortality have been utilized as motives for morality. This tendency has always met with severe criticism at the hands of philosophy, and of late years has to a considerable extent been minimized or neglected by theologians. The doctrine of the eternity of punishment has been denied in the interest of so-called second or continued probation, restorationism, and conditional immortality. The tendency, however, has resulted in a disposition to reduce Christian theology to general morality based upon religion, and has been to a large extent buttressed by that scepticism or agnosticism regarding individual immortality which marks modern thought. Such a situation has proved injurious to the spread of Christianity as more than a general ethical or religious system, and it is to be hoped that the new interest which is now felt in the historical study of the NT will reinstate eschatology in its true place.

Such a reinstatement will include two fundamental doctrines: (1) that of individual immortality as a new phase in the great process of development of the Individual which is to be observed in life and guaranteed by the resurrection of Jesus. Distinctions can easily be drawn between the figurative media of NT thought and the great reality of eternal life taught and exemplified by Jesus. (2) The doctrine of a Kingdom of God. This expectation, since it involves the elements of a loving personality like that of a God of love, involves a belief in a new humanity that will live a genuinely social life on the earth, although the conditions of such a life must be left undefined. In a word, therefore, the modern equivalent of Jewish eschatology for practical purposes is that of personal (though truly social) immortality and a completion of the development of society. Utterly to ignore the essential elements of NT eschatology is in so far to re-establish the non-Christian concept of material goods as a supreme motive, and to destroy all confidence in the ultimate triumph of social righteousness.

Shailer Mathews.

Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible

Eschatology

(Gr. ta eschata, death) That part of systematic or dogmatic theology dealing with the last things, namely, death, judgment, heaven and hell, and also with the end of the world. Also applied by philosophers to the complexus of theories relating to the ultimate end of mankind and the final stages of the physical cosmos. — J.J.R.

Fuente: The Dictionary of Philosophy