Thank you for this excellent essay. If I dare say so, there is a solution to this dilemma -- but a solution that opens up a host of other challenges. Nonetheless, it is a solution.
There are two main issues at play: the timing of Jesus' second coming and the nature of Jesus second coming.
First: As you have pointed out, there can be no honest dispute about the timing: it was expected, indeed promised, within the lifetime of Jesus's contemporaries. Unless one is willing to distort the plain meaning of words like "soon" and "this generation, all of the time references point to a first-generation fulfillment of the promise of his return. The failure of that promise is a deal breaker. If Jesus didn't return then I believe the entirety of the Christian enterprise is bogus. Others have (easily) recognized this. A major pillar in Bertrand Russell's (in)famous essay, Why I An Not a Christian, is Jesus' failure to return. Russell is not wrong.
Second: A thoughtful person must interrogate the NATURE of Jesus' coming. A proper understanding of the nature of the Christ's return that is rooted in Old Testament prophesies is the interpretive key that unlocks the box of understanding while, admitted, opening up other challenges. Nonetheless, those challenge are more surmountable than an outright failure of Jesus' promise. If one believes the nature of Christ's return is literally "in the clouds" -- i.e., a visible physical return of the embodied Jesus -- the, obviously, he failed. But if the nature of Jesus' return is consistent with God's other "comings" in judgment recorded in the Old Testament prophets, notably against Egypt and Babylon, then the problem gets easier to solve. Was there some kind of catastrophic judgment against Jerusalem within the lifetime of the disciples, a judgement that left not one stone of the temple standing upon the other? Yes, of course. The Jewish Civil War and the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in the seven-ish years encompassing the period around AD70 fits the bill in every respect that I have been able to find in my decades of study on this topic. Read J. Stuart Russell's The Parousia, R.C. Sproul's The Last Days According to Jesus, and many other books and websites now easily available. Just google: full preterist. (In fairness, Sproul, at the end of his life, thisclose to full preterism. He backed away and adopted partial preterism: Jesus would still return at some point and there were a few prophecies yet to be fulfilled) because of conflict with the creeds, all of which, of course, point to a return in OUR future. I say: the Creeds aren't infallible. Reform them if necessary.
In sum, believing that Jesus' promised return was fulfilled in the events around the fall of Jerusalem definitvely solves the timing problem. I can easily accept the nature of the coming as being one of judgment foretold in typical Old Testament apocalyptic language. Not a big leap at all. The questions that arise are legion:
A. Where are we now on God's historical, linear timeline? Feels like there's no end point to history.
B. You mean the resurrection of the dead, which is inseparable from Christ's return, ALREADY HAPPENED? Yep. It did. Then what about us?
C. If this is true how did the church miss it for 2,000 years? I dunno. How did the Jews miss their Messiah's arrival in Palestine 2,000 year ago? Large numbers of people have been wrong about all sorts of things over extended periods of time. Entire nations, civilizations! So, sure, the church could have "missed" Jesus' return.
I could go on, but here's where I've landed. If Jesus didn't return in AD70 as promised, his failure negates the entire enterprise. I believe he did return. Thus we can trust what he is recorded to have said about other matters, although his ministry was so tightly focused on his generation of Jews that much that he and the Apostles said and wrote ("don't get married!") are not applicable to us.
Perhaps this will stimulate thinking on the part of your readers. Adopting this perspective on the NATURE and TIMING of Jesus' return has certainly been lifechanging for me but has won me few friends in fundamentalist or evangelical circles when/if they discover that I'm a heretic. Generally I say nothing because most folks' minds are made up.
The Preterist position (both full and partial) is certainly an interesting solution to the whole thing. Like you say though, it opens up a whole host of other problems, not least of which being that most of the Church throughout history would've missed it and, like you say, where does that leave those of us now? If Preterism is correct, are we to also be resurrected? If so when? If not why not, and so on.
Thanks Yoshi. The host of others "problems" are only problems if one wishes to stay tightly within the bounds of small-o orthodoxy (and presumably big O Orthodoxy, too! :-) ). However, if you let scripture speak and take the time passages literally and the figurative language speak figuratively then you'll end up outside the bounds of the creeds and historic teachings. To which I say, not flippantly or disrespectfully, "So what?" Are the creeds and church tradition infallible? They aren't. Thus, I decided years ago to go where the texts led me. Others have done the same -- growing numbers of us, actually. Does this mean the resurrection is a past event, applicable only to Jews? As far as I can tell, yes. It had unique meaning and significance to them within their teachings, world view, etc. Rather than try to make the resurrection "fit" in my future, I conclude: well, I guess when I die I go immediately to whatever is next, without the benefit (is there a benefit?) of a resurrection. I have become comfortable with these unanswered questions that don't square with established teachings. Fact is, the Bible doesn't answer every question we have about the future. Shocking, I know, but true. We aren't supposed to know; we don't need to know. Rather, the just shall live by faith. That's enough.
I’m really glad I came to the comments here today. I had always been puzzled by the tribulations passages in the gospels and had never come across preterism. It seems to fit very well - Jesus was not speaking of a total apocalypse to come in the next generation but of a local calamity, which he warned his followers of, and which did take place. And then giving some more general warnings as to what Christians can expect in the future in terms of persecutions and rifts within the church, false prophets, etc which have been borne out. Very interesting to consider further. As for Revelations, I read it in a more esoteric way than as a world event to be expected.
Thanks, Peter. It's important to strive to read these New Testament texts within the context and perspective of those to whom they were first written (or uttered via oral tradition) -- i.e., people of the First Century. What matters is NOT what passages mean to us but what they meant to them, the original, intended audience. When viewed that way, the Bible, including prophetic passages, begins to make a lot more sense. After all, Paul's Epistles were written to the church at Rome, Ephesus, etc, not to 21st Century Christians even though those passages may be interesting, informative, and helpful to us in some ways. Contra to "conservative" critics of the preterist view, I believe this interpretative approach is more true to the Bible as written than a futurist perspective, which is either speculative (and always wrong!) in the case of prophetic passages or inappropriate in the case of other passages such as the "don't marry" or meat-sacrificed-to-idols passage and so forth, including the entire book of Galatians, which is largely irrelevant to us because the Law was finally and fully abolished with the fall of Jerusalem in AD70 because it was "obsolete" per Hebrews 8:13 and was to "soon" disappear. Modern day interpretive wrangling over Galatians is pointless. The law is 2,000 years behind us in our rear view mirror. Onward!
So, take heart. The "Great Tribulation" is over and done with. Christ came in judgment. We are living fully in the New Covenant. Might there be more tribulation in our future? Sure. Of course. But not THAT tribulation mentioned in the Gospels or Revelation. Might there be more judgments poured out on the earth? Yes, of course. God works in history; humans and nations bear the consequences of their evil and suffer. But specific events that are future to us are not foretold anywhere in the Bible.
Living with this perspective simply means we live by faith, as we should, with no illusions, without clinging to a false hope of Jesus coming back to snatch us out of here and leave others to suffer.
There's more I could say, but I'll end here with the hope that this perspective, while unsettling at first when one grasps the implications, is helpful.
Preterists (partial or full) believe Jesus did “come back” in judgement on Israel in 70 A.D. within the lifetimes of his hearers and would say that he was employing apocalyptic language in the Olivet Discourse. Partial preterists affirm a final return of Christ at the end of history, but nevertheless believe that A.D. 70 was “a return”.
Yoshi, please do! I think a full explication of the preterist position would be super-helpful to your readers. As you point out in your original post that has generated these comments, Jesus' alleged failure to return as promised is in my view THE #1 fatal flaw in Christian doctrine as it is widely taught. What if Jesus DID in fact return exactly on time, as promised? Doesn't that actually strengthen belief in who Jesus was and what he taught and promised? It does for me. Futurists still waiting for his return have no defense, only convoluted theologies and eschatologies that fail on every count to solve the problem of his supposed non-return.
Alas, while partial preterists affirm a final return of Christ at the end of history their biblical support for such a position is extraordinarily weak, requiring a splitting of passages mid-verse: "Oh, the first part of the verse refers to the coming in AD70 and the second half of the verse refers to Jesus' coming at the end of history." Or, they believe there is a double meaning or double fulfillment: the same passages speaks to both AD70 and end of history, which can only be inferred without any proof whatsoever. Why do this? Some do so out of a conviction that we need to stay within the "guardrails" of the creeds. Others do it because they simply can't countenance an alternative interpretation that is so at odds with the dominant futurist eschatology and the implications of accepting such an interpretation. At bottom is FEAR -- of being wrong, of being a heretic, of not fitting in, of being cast out of otherwise polite futurist churches, etc. I say: dare to be a Daniel; dare to stand alone for the sake of truth.
These are interesting points and certainly have kept Christians wondering for two millennia, and may for two more. The more important question, and the one we avoid at all costs, is do you believe He is coming back? Do you believe He will judge the living and the dead? Do you believe it is the lot of men to die once, and then judgement? The answer to those questions may well determine your eternity.
Do I believe the Bible and Jesus himself said he was coming back? Absolutely!
Do I believe Jesus is coming back in my future? No. I believe he came back in AD70.
Which is worse? Explaining away his alleged delay or believing that he kept his promise?
So, a question for you: on what scriptural basis (chapter and verse please) might you conclude that my answers above determine my eternity? Am I damned because I believe Jesus kept his word?
You put words in my mouth, never a good thing to do. I believe your understanding of Jesus' words and the teaching of Scripture is incorrect but your destiny is not in my hands nor is it given to me to judge your heart.
I'm not a preterist, but I find it helpful to bring the paradox front and center and let it be. All has been fulfilled, and none of if has. Already-but-not-yet. Doesn't make it intellectually easier, but helps me situate myself.
I can live with a lot of ambiguity in the face of life's mysteries. But I can't do so in the face of something so unambiguously clear cut as Jesus' and the New Testament writers' statements about his soon coming. The chasm of credibility is too great to live in the limbo of already-but-not-yet. Either Jesus failed or he didn't. If he failed, then game over. There's no getting around it. But he didn't fail. The failure is ours if we don't recognize that once we accept the inviolability of the time statements regarding his coming we "simply" (a word I used advisedly) must adjust our expectation as to the nature of his coming, which is different from what we've been taught by the false prophets of futurism like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.
I don't really see the already-but-not-yet paradigm that way, I guess. I mean, Jesus did return in the form of the Spirit at Pentecost. I don't see that as a failure, although it is certainly one from a worldly perspective. Isn't that the nature of true faith though?
Maybe his mistake was the same God made in the garden. He trusted us too much. God has a history of doing that with us. He might have thought the proper changes would come about sooner. Changes didn’t come as he expected, so 70 AD happened and the exile grew into what it is now.
Wow, it's like you read my mind or something. This has actually been a really difficult doubt for me to overcome recently, on my path to conversion to Christ. The hardest one in fact, especially since the Orthodox Study Bible outright admits over and over that Paul thinks the end is coming soon.
I have taken comfort in the fact that Christ Himself said that no man shall know the hour, which Lewis quoted up there. And that he often spoke in parables. But yeah, the fact that the early church was convinced the apocalypse was right around the corner is pretty tough.
Orthodoxy often argues that salvation actually has come, that the apocalypse did happen with the resurrection, and the entire character of creation was changed with the Incarnation. I don't know enough to know whether this is true of all Orthodoxy, but it's one I've heard repeated a couple of times. I should probably look into it.
Anyway, I'm right there with you on struggling with this one brother. At this point though, as you admit, I'm too far in and I believe too much in Christ to get out now. I'll be totally honest. And I'm sick of the legalistic, rational, logical worldview anyway. Trying to build any serious life or moral practice without some inconsistencies is building on sand. Just look at the utilitarians.
EDIT: Talked to some Orthodox folks, this is the reply I got. Curious if you have encountered this before Yoshi:
"This question seems to have some heavy baptist overtones which we find alot of in our culture. Especially the idea of a “coming apocalypse”. The word apocalypse simply means to reveal. The Orthodox church as far as I know does not hold to the belief that there will be some world ending event but instead interprets texts like the book of Revelation as an explanation of events that have happened, are happening and will continue to happen until Christ returns on the last day. This is why Saint John sent this letter to all of the churches urgently, it would not make sense to send them a letter during a time of Christian persecution about some end times events that would happen thousands of years in the future."
The Orthodox have a pretty good answer. Why, indeed, would the churches of Revelation receive a letter about events to happen thousands of years in the future? Ridiculous. Revelation was written for Christians and churches then -- pre-AD70 -- not to us about our future. (Several very good books take a thorough look at the dating of the writing of Revelation [by Ken Gentry] and the writing of the New Testament [by John A.T. Robinson]). Those books argue persuasively for early dating -- pre-AD70 -- of the NT and Revelation, which most scholars today, but not necessarily 100 years ago, peg at around AD96 or later.
I've long thought that Italo Calvino might have an inadvertent explanation:
"Marozia consists of two cities, the rat's and the swallow's; both change with time, but their relationship does not change; the second is the one about to free itself from the first."
The way I think of it is that the Kingdom is eternity's irruption into the temporal world—kairos into chronos—so from the standpoint of time, there's a structural relationship of permanent anticipation, the sense of something that is "almost" here. Time is surrounded but can't tell what's all around it. But if Christ lives in your heart, then in a sense you already are in eternity even as you live in time, and death itself might mark a rather minor transition, subjectively speaking.
I also suspect that the Second Coming, as a universal event, might involve Christ's simultaneous return from the caverns of *every* human heart (which in the microcosmos of the person is the same as Him macrocosmically descending from the Emyprean). But at the same time, He has already returned for those who know Him, so in that sense His statement seems accurate. In my view, that's not about twisting the words to say whatever we want; it's more about understanding them in a poetic rather than historical register.
As for the Apostles, the New Testament makes it clear that they routinely had no idea what Jesus was talking about, so I figure their misunderstanding here would sort of be par for the course. It's like Jesus saying we must be born again, and Nicodemus responding, "But I can't crawl back into my mama's womb."
2,000 years isn't soon to a creature who lives for only 100 at the outside, fair enough. But it's soon enough for the species as a whole, and very soon indeed to an eternal God who measures both a day and a thousand years alike. Overthinking is a good way to find oneself leaning to one's own understanding, rather than trusting in the Lord with all one's heart. The world will certainly call that naïf, but I've never been much for what the world thinks of eternal matters and mysteries, or even of what it considers naïf. Just my two cents.
Reminds me of the Talking Heads album Stop Making Sense - if Christianity “made sense” I wouldn’t be inclined to believe it! It only has to make more sense than the madness humans create for ourselves and it certainly meets that test easily.
Thanks for not "wimping out" and taking it head on. I feel like when I read Jesus' words of the future I see things playing out in our own lifetime. But the Apostles clearly believed that was true as well. Perhaps its a cyclical thing like so many events throughout history. I've had dreams of end times scenarios, but maybe that's all from too much Left Behind/pop-apocalyptic talk. So many people now seem to wish it were the end. You've written about that before. And then there is the wild theory that maybe most of history/modern history is a lie and we have no idea how much time could have really passed. Either way there's no easy answer, just moving the goal posts perhaps.
Thank you for this excellent essay. If I dare say so, there is a solution to this dilemma -- but a solution that opens up a host of other challenges. Nonetheless, it is a solution.
There are two main issues at play: the timing of Jesus' second coming and the nature of Jesus second coming.
First: As you have pointed out, there can be no honest dispute about the timing: it was expected, indeed promised, within the lifetime of Jesus's contemporaries. Unless one is willing to distort the plain meaning of words like "soon" and "this generation, all of the time references point to a first-generation fulfillment of the promise of his return. The failure of that promise is a deal breaker. If Jesus didn't return then I believe the entirety of the Christian enterprise is bogus. Others have (easily) recognized this. A major pillar in Bertrand Russell's (in)famous essay, Why I An Not a Christian, is Jesus' failure to return. Russell is not wrong.
Second: A thoughtful person must interrogate the NATURE of Jesus' coming. A proper understanding of the nature of the Christ's return that is rooted in Old Testament prophesies is the interpretive key that unlocks the box of understanding while, admitted, opening up other challenges. Nonetheless, those challenge are more surmountable than an outright failure of Jesus' promise. If one believes the nature of Christ's return is literally "in the clouds" -- i.e., a visible physical return of the embodied Jesus -- the, obviously, he failed. But if the nature of Jesus' return is consistent with God's other "comings" in judgment recorded in the Old Testament prophets, notably against Egypt and Babylon, then the problem gets easier to solve. Was there some kind of catastrophic judgment against Jerusalem within the lifetime of the disciples, a judgement that left not one stone of the temple standing upon the other? Yes, of course. The Jewish Civil War and the Roman conquest of Jerusalem in the seven-ish years encompassing the period around AD70 fits the bill in every respect that I have been able to find in my decades of study on this topic. Read J. Stuart Russell's The Parousia, R.C. Sproul's The Last Days According to Jesus, and many other books and websites now easily available. Just google: full preterist. (In fairness, Sproul, at the end of his life, thisclose to full preterism. He backed away and adopted partial preterism: Jesus would still return at some point and there were a few prophecies yet to be fulfilled) because of conflict with the creeds, all of which, of course, point to a return in OUR future. I say: the Creeds aren't infallible. Reform them if necessary.
In sum, believing that Jesus' promised return was fulfilled in the events around the fall of Jerusalem definitvely solves the timing problem. I can easily accept the nature of the coming as being one of judgment foretold in typical Old Testament apocalyptic language. Not a big leap at all. The questions that arise are legion:
A. Where are we now on God's historical, linear timeline? Feels like there's no end point to history.
B. You mean the resurrection of the dead, which is inseparable from Christ's return, ALREADY HAPPENED? Yep. It did. Then what about us?
C. If this is true how did the church miss it for 2,000 years? I dunno. How did the Jews miss their Messiah's arrival in Palestine 2,000 year ago? Large numbers of people have been wrong about all sorts of things over extended periods of time. Entire nations, civilizations! So, sure, the church could have "missed" Jesus' return.
I could go on, but here's where I've landed. If Jesus didn't return in AD70 as promised, his failure negates the entire enterprise. I believe he did return. Thus we can trust what he is recorded to have said about other matters, although his ministry was so tightly focused on his generation of Jews that much that he and the Apostles said and wrote ("don't get married!") are not applicable to us.
Perhaps this will stimulate thinking on the part of your readers. Adopting this perspective on the NATURE and TIMING of Jesus' return has certainly been lifechanging for me but has won me few friends in fundamentalist or evangelical circles when/if they discover that I'm a heretic. Generally I say nothing because most folks' minds are made up.
The Preterist position (both full and partial) is certainly an interesting solution to the whole thing. Like you say though, it opens up a whole host of other problems, not least of which being that most of the Church throughout history would've missed it and, like you say, where does that leave those of us now? If Preterism is correct, are we to also be resurrected? If so when? If not why not, and so on.
Thank you for your engaging comment.
Thanks Yoshi. The host of others "problems" are only problems if one wishes to stay tightly within the bounds of small-o orthodoxy (and presumably big O Orthodoxy, too! :-) ). However, if you let scripture speak and take the time passages literally and the figurative language speak figuratively then you'll end up outside the bounds of the creeds and historic teachings. To which I say, not flippantly or disrespectfully, "So what?" Are the creeds and church tradition infallible? They aren't. Thus, I decided years ago to go where the texts led me. Others have done the same -- growing numbers of us, actually. Does this mean the resurrection is a past event, applicable only to Jews? As far as I can tell, yes. It had unique meaning and significance to them within their teachings, world view, etc. Rather than try to make the resurrection "fit" in my future, I conclude: well, I guess when I die I go immediately to whatever is next, without the benefit (is there a benefit?) of a resurrection. I have become comfortable with these unanswered questions that don't square with established teachings. Fact is, the Bible doesn't answer every question we have about the future. Shocking, I know, but true. We aren't supposed to know; we don't need to know. Rather, the just shall live by faith. That's enough.
I’m really glad I came to the comments here today. I had always been puzzled by the tribulations passages in the gospels and had never come across preterism. It seems to fit very well - Jesus was not speaking of a total apocalypse to come in the next generation but of a local calamity, which he warned his followers of, and which did take place. And then giving some more general warnings as to what Christians can expect in the future in terms of persecutions and rifts within the church, false prophets, etc which have been borne out. Very interesting to consider further. As for Revelations, I read it in a more esoteric way than as a world event to be expected.
Thanks, Peter. It's important to strive to read these New Testament texts within the context and perspective of those to whom they were first written (or uttered via oral tradition) -- i.e., people of the First Century. What matters is NOT what passages mean to us but what they meant to them, the original, intended audience. When viewed that way, the Bible, including prophetic passages, begins to make a lot more sense. After all, Paul's Epistles were written to the church at Rome, Ephesus, etc, not to 21st Century Christians even though those passages may be interesting, informative, and helpful to us in some ways. Contra to "conservative" critics of the preterist view, I believe this interpretative approach is more true to the Bible as written than a futurist perspective, which is either speculative (and always wrong!) in the case of prophetic passages or inappropriate in the case of other passages such as the "don't marry" or meat-sacrificed-to-idols passage and so forth, including the entire book of Galatians, which is largely irrelevant to us because the Law was finally and fully abolished with the fall of Jerusalem in AD70 because it was "obsolete" per Hebrews 8:13 and was to "soon" disappear. Modern day interpretive wrangling over Galatians is pointless. The law is 2,000 years behind us in our rear view mirror. Onward!
So, take heart. The "Great Tribulation" is over and done with. Christ came in judgment. We are living fully in the New Covenant. Might there be more tribulation in our future? Sure. Of course. But not THAT tribulation mentioned in the Gospels or Revelation. Might there be more judgments poured out on the earth? Yes, of course. God works in history; humans and nations bear the consequences of their evil and suffer. But specific events that are future to us are not foretold anywhere in the Bible.
Living with this perspective simply means we live by faith, as we should, with no illusions, without clinging to a false hope of Jesus coming back to snatch us out of here and leave others to suffer.
There's more I could say, but I'll end here with the hope that this perspective, while unsettling at first when one grasps the implications, is helpful.
Preterists (partial or full) believe Jesus did “come back” in judgement on Israel in 70 A.D. within the lifetimes of his hearers and would say that he was employing apocalyptic language in the Olivet Discourse. Partial preterists affirm a final return of Christ at the end of history, but nevertheless believe that A.D. 70 was “a return”.
Yes I should perhaps do a full right up on the preterist position on these matters. Right or wrong, their position is at least coherent.
Yoshi, please do! I think a full explication of the preterist position would be super-helpful to your readers. As you point out in your original post that has generated these comments, Jesus' alleged failure to return as promised is in my view THE #1 fatal flaw in Christian doctrine as it is widely taught. What if Jesus DID in fact return exactly on time, as promised? Doesn't that actually strengthen belief in who Jesus was and what he taught and promised? It does for me. Futurists still waiting for his return have no defense, only convoluted theologies and eschatologies that fail on every count to solve the problem of his supposed non-return.
Yes I should perhaps do a full right up on the preterist position on these matters. Right or wrong, their position is at least coherent.
Jon,
Alas, while partial preterists affirm a final return of Christ at the end of history their biblical support for such a position is extraordinarily weak, requiring a splitting of passages mid-verse: "Oh, the first part of the verse refers to the coming in AD70 and the second half of the verse refers to Jesus' coming at the end of history." Or, they believe there is a double meaning or double fulfillment: the same passages speaks to both AD70 and end of history, which can only be inferred without any proof whatsoever. Why do this? Some do so out of a conviction that we need to stay within the "guardrails" of the creeds. Others do it because they simply can't countenance an alternative interpretation that is so at odds with the dominant futurist eschatology and the implications of accepting such an interpretation. At bottom is FEAR -- of being wrong, of being a heretic, of not fitting in, of being cast out of otherwise polite futurist churches, etc. I say: dare to be a Daniel; dare to stand alone for the sake of truth.
These are interesting points and certainly have kept Christians wondering for two millennia, and may for two more. The more important question, and the one we avoid at all costs, is do you believe He is coming back? Do you believe He will judge the living and the dead? Do you believe it is the lot of men to die once, and then judgement? The answer to those questions may well determine your eternity.
Do I believe the Bible and Jesus himself said he was coming back? Absolutely!
Do I believe Jesus is coming back in my future? No. I believe he came back in AD70.
Which is worse? Explaining away his alleged delay or believing that he kept his promise?
So, a question for you: on what scriptural basis (chapter and verse please) might you conclude that my answers above determine my eternity? Am I damned because I believe Jesus kept his word?
You put words in my mouth, never a good thing to do. I believe your understanding of Jesus' words and the teaching of Scripture is incorrect but your destiny is not in my hands nor is it given to me to judge your heart.
As someone reading the Bible for the first time, might I say I really enjoy your work for how elucidating it is.
Thanks for writing this. Wish I could contribute to the discourse more than that, but I’m just happy to learn.
I'm not a preterist, but I find it helpful to bring the paradox front and center and let it be. All has been fulfilled, and none of if has. Already-but-not-yet. Doesn't make it intellectually easier, but helps me situate myself.
I can live with a lot of ambiguity in the face of life's mysteries. But I can't do so in the face of something so unambiguously clear cut as Jesus' and the New Testament writers' statements about his soon coming. The chasm of credibility is too great to live in the limbo of already-but-not-yet. Either Jesus failed or he didn't. If he failed, then game over. There's no getting around it. But he didn't fail. The failure is ours if we don't recognize that once we accept the inviolability of the time statements regarding his coming we "simply" (a word I used advisedly) must adjust our expectation as to the nature of his coming, which is different from what we've been taught by the false prophets of futurism like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.
I don't really see the already-but-not-yet paradigm that way, I guess. I mean, Jesus did return in the form of the Spirit at Pentecost. I don't see that as a failure, although it is certainly one from a worldly perspective. Isn't that the nature of true faith though?
Maybe his mistake was the same God made in the garden. He trusted us too much. God has a history of doing that with us. He might have thought the proper changes would come about sooner. Changes didn’t come as he expected, so 70 AD happened and the exile grew into what it is now.
Maybe he regretted coming back as soon as he meant to the same way he regretted creating man before the flood, idk.
Wow, it's like you read my mind or something. This has actually been a really difficult doubt for me to overcome recently, on my path to conversion to Christ. The hardest one in fact, especially since the Orthodox Study Bible outright admits over and over that Paul thinks the end is coming soon.
I have taken comfort in the fact that Christ Himself said that no man shall know the hour, which Lewis quoted up there. And that he often spoke in parables. But yeah, the fact that the early church was convinced the apocalypse was right around the corner is pretty tough.
Orthodoxy often argues that salvation actually has come, that the apocalypse did happen with the resurrection, and the entire character of creation was changed with the Incarnation. I don't know enough to know whether this is true of all Orthodoxy, but it's one I've heard repeated a couple of times. I should probably look into it.
Anyway, I'm right there with you on struggling with this one brother. At this point though, as you admit, I'm too far in and I believe too much in Christ to get out now. I'll be totally honest. And I'm sick of the legalistic, rational, logical worldview anyway. Trying to build any serious life or moral practice without some inconsistencies is building on sand. Just look at the utilitarians.
EDIT: Talked to some Orthodox folks, this is the reply I got. Curious if you have encountered this before Yoshi:
"This question seems to have some heavy baptist overtones which we find alot of in our culture. Especially the idea of a “coming apocalypse”. The word apocalypse simply means to reveal. The Orthodox church as far as I know does not hold to the belief that there will be some world ending event but instead interprets texts like the book of Revelation as an explanation of events that have happened, are happening and will continue to happen until Christ returns on the last day. This is why Saint John sent this letter to all of the churches urgently, it would not make sense to send them a letter during a time of Christian persecution about some end times events that would happen thousands of years in the future."
The Orthodox have a pretty good answer. Why, indeed, would the churches of Revelation receive a letter about events to happen thousands of years in the future? Ridiculous. Revelation was written for Christians and churches then -- pre-AD70 -- not to us about our future. (Several very good books take a thorough look at the dating of the writing of Revelation [by Ken Gentry] and the writing of the New Testament [by John A.T. Robinson]). Those books argue persuasively for early dating -- pre-AD70 -- of the NT and Revelation, which most scholars today, but not necessarily 100 years ago, peg at around AD96 or later.
I've long thought that Italo Calvino might have an inadvertent explanation:
"Marozia consists of two cities, the rat's and the swallow's; both change with time, but their relationship does not change; the second is the one about to free itself from the first."
Interesting, please explain further
The way I think of it is that the Kingdom is eternity's irruption into the temporal world—kairos into chronos—so from the standpoint of time, there's a structural relationship of permanent anticipation, the sense of something that is "almost" here. Time is surrounded but can't tell what's all around it. But if Christ lives in your heart, then in a sense you already are in eternity even as you live in time, and death itself might mark a rather minor transition, subjectively speaking.
I also suspect that the Second Coming, as a universal event, might involve Christ's simultaneous return from the caverns of *every* human heart (which in the microcosmos of the person is the same as Him macrocosmically descending from the Emyprean). But at the same time, He has already returned for those who know Him, so in that sense His statement seems accurate. In my view, that's not about twisting the words to say whatever we want; it's more about understanding them in a poetic rather than historical register.
As for the Apostles, the New Testament makes it clear that they routinely had no idea what Jesus was talking about, so I figure their misunderstanding here would sort of be par for the course. It's like Jesus saying we must be born again, and Nicodemus responding, "But I can't crawl back into my mama's womb."
Interesting, thank you
2,000 years isn't soon to a creature who lives for only 100 at the outside, fair enough. But it's soon enough for the species as a whole, and very soon indeed to an eternal God who measures both a day and a thousand years alike. Overthinking is a good way to find oneself leaning to one's own understanding, rather than trusting in the Lord with all one's heart. The world will certainly call that naïf, but I've never been much for what the world thinks of eternal matters and mysteries, or even of what it considers naïf. Just my two cents.
Yes, and Matt 28:20 . . .
Reminds me of the Talking Heads album Stop Making Sense - if Christianity “made sense” I wouldn’t be inclined to believe it! It only has to make more sense than the madness humans create for ourselves and it certainly meets that test easily.
Thanks for not "wimping out" and taking it head on. I feel like when I read Jesus' words of the future I see things playing out in our own lifetime. But the Apostles clearly believed that was true as well. Perhaps its a cyclical thing like so many events throughout history. I've had dreams of end times scenarios, but maybe that's all from too much Left Behind/pop-apocalyptic talk. So many people now seem to wish it were the end. You've written about that before. And then there is the wild theory that maybe most of history/modern history is a lie and we have no idea how much time could have really passed. Either way there's no easy answer, just moving the goal posts perhaps.