lv. 3 is so obviously irrelevant that one can scarcely conceive how the

passage could be brought into special connexion with the resurrection of Jesus. Isa. liii. refers decidedly to a collective subject perpetually restored to life in new members. Hosea vi. has a figurative reference, not to be mistaken, to the people and state of Israel. Lastly, the principal passage, Ps. xvi. can only be interpreted of a pious man, who by the help of Jehovah hopes to escape from the danger of death, not in the sense that he, like Jesus, would rise again from the grave, but that he would not be laid there—that is, obviously, not for the present, and with the understanding, that when his time should come, he must pay the tribute of nature: [1667] which, again, will not apply to Jesus. Thus if a supernatural principle in Jesus—a prophetic spirit—caused him to discover a pre-intimation of his resurrection in these Old Testament histories and passages; then, as no one of them really contained such a pre-intimation, the spirit in him cannot have been the spirit of truth, but must have been a lying spirit, the supernatural principle in him, not a divine, but a demoniacal principle. If, in order to avoid this consequence, supranaturalists who are accessible to a rational interpretation of the Old Testament, resort to their only remaining expedient, of regarding the foreknowledge of Jesus concerning his resurrection as purely natural and human: we must reply, that the resurrection, conceived as a miracle, was a secret of the divine counsels, to penetrate into which, prior to the issue, was an impossibility to a human intelligence; while viewed as a natural result, it was a chance the last to be calculated upon, apart from the supposition of an apparent death planned by Jesus and his colleagues.

Thus the foreknowledge, as well as the prediction of the resurrection, was attributed to Jesus only after the issue; and in fact, it was an easy matter, with the groundless arbitrariness of Jewish exegesis, for the disciples and the authors of the New Testament to discover in the Old, types and prophecies of the resurrection. Not that they did this with crafty design, according to the accusation of the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist, and others of his class: but as he who has looked at the sun, long sees its image wherever he may turn his gaze; so they, blinded by their enthusiasm for the new Messiah, saw him on every page of the only book they read, the Old Testament, and in the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, founded in the genuine feeling that he had satisfied their deepest need—a conviction and a feeling which we also still honour—they laid hold on supports which have long been broken, and which can no longer be made tenable by the most zealous efforts of an exegesis which is behind the age.

§ 115.

THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS ON HIS SECOND ADVENT. CRITICISM OF THE DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS.

Not only did Jesus, according to the evangelical accounts, predict that he should return to life three days after his death; but also that at a later period, in the midst of the calamities which would issue in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, he should come in the clouds of heaven, to close the present period of the world, and by a general judgment, open the future age (Matt. xxiv. and xxv.; Mark. xiii.; Luke xvii. 22–37, xxi. 5–36).

As Jesus for the last time went out of the temple (Luke has not this circumstance), and his disciples (Luke says indefinitely, some) admiringly drew his attention to the magnificent building, he assured them that all which they then looked on, would be destroyed from its foundations (Matt. xxiv. 1, 2, parall.). On the question of the disciples, when this would happen, and what would be the sign of the Messiah’s coming, which in their idea was associated with such a crisis (v. 3), Jesus warns them not to be deceived by persons falsely giving themselves out to be the Messiah, and by the notion that the expected catastrophe must follow immediately on the first prognostics; for wars and rumours of war, risings of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in divers places, would be only the beginning of the sorrows which were to precede the advent of the Messiah (v. 4–8). They themselves, his adherents, must first suffer hatred, persecution, and the sword; perfidy, treachery, deception by false prophets, lukewarmness and general corruption of morals, would prevail among men; but at the same time the news of the Messiah’s kingdom must be promulgated through the whole world. Only after all this, could the end of the present period of the world arrive, until when, he who would partake of the blessedness of the future must endure with constancy (v. 9–14). A nearer presage of this catastrophe would be the fulfilment of the oracle of Daniel (ix. 27), the standing of the abomination of desolation in the holy place (according to Luke xxi. 20, the encompassing of Jerusalem with armies). When this should take place, it would be high time for the most precipitate flight (according to Luke, because the devastation of Jerusalem would be at hand, an event which he more nearly particularizes in the address of Jesus to the city, xix. 43 f.: thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another). At this juncture, all who should have hindrances to rapid departure would be deserving of compassion, and it would be in the highest degree desirable that the recommended flight should not fall in an unfavourable season; for then would commence unexampled tribulation (according to Luke, v. 24, consisting chiefly in many of the people of Israel perishing by the sword, in others being carried away captive, and in Jerusalem being trodden down of the Gentiles for a predetermined period): a tribulation which only the merciful abridgment of its duration by God, for the sake of the elect, could render supportable (v. 15–22). At this time would arise false prophets and Messiahs, seeking to delude by miracles and signs, and promising to show the Messiah in this or that place: whereas a Messiah who was concealed anywhere, and must be sought out, could not be the true one; for his advent would be like the lightning, a sudden and universal revelation, of which the central point would be Jerusalem, the object of punishment on account of its sin (v. 23–28). Immediately after this time of tribulation, the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of all the powers of heaven would usher in the appearance of the Messiah, who, to the dismay of the dwellers on the earth, would come with great glory in the clouds of heaven, and immediately send forth his angels to gather together his elect from all the corners of the earth (v. 29–31). By the fore-named signs the approach of the described catastrophe would be as certainly discernible as the approach of summer by the budding of the fig-tree; the existing generation would, by all that was true, live to witness it, though its more precise period was known to God only (v. 32–36). But, after the usual manner of mankind (what follows, Mark and Luke partly have not at all, partly not in this connexion), they would allow the advent of the Messiah, as formerly the deluge, to overtake them in thoughtless security (v. 37–39): and yet it would be an extremely critical period, in which those who stood in the closest relation to each other, would be delivered over to entirely opposite destinies (v. 40, 41). Hence watchfulness would be requisite, as in all cases where the period of a decisive issue is uncertain: an admonition which is then illustrated by the image of the master of the house and the thief (v. 43, 44); of the servant to whom his lord, when about to travel, entrusted the rule of his house (v. 45–51); of the wise and foolish virgins (xxv. 1–13): and lastly, of the talents (v. 14–30). Hereupon follows a description of the solemn judgment, which the Messiah would hold over all nations, and in which, according as the duties of humanity were observed or neglected, he would award blessedness or misery (v. 31–46). [1668]

Thus in these discourses Jesus announces that shortly (εὐθέως, xxiv. 29), after that calamity, which (especially according to the representation in Luke’s gospel) we must identify with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and within the term of the cotemporary generation (ἡ γενεὰ αὕτη, v. 34), he would visibly make his second advent in the clouds, and terminate the existing dispensation. Now as it will soon be eighteen centuries since the destruction of Jerusalem, and an equally long period since the generation cotemporary with Jesus disappeared from the earth, while his visible return and the end of the world which he associated with it, have not taken place: the announcement of Jesus appears so far to have been erroneous. Already in the first age of Christianity, when the return of Christ was delayed longer than had been anticipated, there arose, according to 2 Peter iii. 3 f., scoffers, asking: where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. In modern times, the inference which may apparently be drawn from the above consideration, to the disadvantage of Jesus and the apostles, has been by no one more pointedly expressed than by the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist. No promise throughout the whole scriptures, he thinks, is on the one hand more definitely expressed, and on the other, has turned out more flagrantly false, than this, which yet forms one of the main pillars of Christianity. And he does not see in this a mere error, but a premeditated deception on the part of the apostles (to whom, and not to Jesus himself, he attributes that promise, and the discourses in which it is contained); a deception induced by the necessity of alluring the people on whose contributions they wished to subsist, by the promise of a speedy reward: and discernible by the boldness of their attempts to evade the doubts springing from the protracted delay of the return of Christ: Paul, for example, in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, sheltering himself in obscure phrases; and Peter, in his second epistle, resorting to the preposterous expedient of appealing to the divine mode of reckoning time, in which a thousand years are equal to one day. [1669]

Such inferences from the discourse before us would inflict a fatal wound on Christianity; hence it is natural that exegetists should endeavour by all means to obviate them. And as the whole difficulty consists in Jesus having apparently placed an event now long past, in immediate chronological connexion with one still future, three expedients are possible: either to deny that Jesus in part spoke of something now past, and to allege that he spoke solely of what is still future; or to deny that a part of his discourse relates to something still future, and thus to refer the entire prediction to what is already lying in the past; or lastly, to admit that the discourse of Jesus does indeed partly refer to something which is still future to us, but either to deny that he places the two series of events in immediate chronological succession, or to maintain that he has also noticed what is intermediate.

Some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenæus and Hilary—yet living in the primitive expectation of the return of Christ, and at the same time not so practised in regular exegesis, as to be incapable of overlooking certain difficulties attendant on a desirable interpretation—referred the entire prediction, from its commencement in Matt. xxiv. to its end in Matt. xxv., to the still future return of Christ to judgment. [1670] But as this interpretation admits that Jesus in the commencement of his discourse uses the destruction of Jerusalem as a type of the final catastrophe, it virtually nullifies itself. For what does that admission signify, but that the discourse of Jesus, in the first instance, produces the impression that he spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem, i.e. of something now past, and that only more extended reflection and combination can give it a relation to something still lying in futurity?

To modern rationalism, based as it was on naturalistic principles, the hope of the second advent of Christ was in every form annihilated. Hence, not scrupling at any exegetical violence for the sake of removing from scripture what was discordant with its preconceived system, it threw itself on the opposite side, and hazarded the attempt to refer the discourses in question, in their entire tenor, solely to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the events which immediately preceded and followed it. [1671] According to this interpretation, the end spoken of is only the cessation of the Judeo-Gentile economy of the world; what is said of the advent of Christ in the clouds, is only a figurative description of the promulgation and triumph of his doctrine; the assembling of the nations to judgment, and the sending of some into blessedness, and others into condemnation, is an image of the happy consequences which would result from embracing the doctrine and cause of Jesus, and the evil consequences attendant on indifference or hostility to them. But in this explanation there is a want of similarity between the symbols and the ideas represented, which is not only unprecedented in itself, but particularly inconceivable in this case; since Jesus is here addressing minds of Jewish culture, and must therefore be aware that what he said of the Messiah’s advent in the clouds, of the judgment, and the end of the existing period of the world, would be understood in the most literal sense.

It thus appears that the discourse of Jesus will not as a whole, admit of being referred either to the destruction of the Jewish state, or to the events at the end of the world; it would therefore be necessarily referred to something distinct from both, if this twofold impossibility adhered alike to all its parts. But the case is not so; for while, on the one hand, what is said Matt. xxiv. 2, 3, 15 ff. of the devastation of the temple, cannot be referred to the end of the world: on the other hand, what is predicted xxv. 31 ff. of the judgment to be held by the Son of Man, will not suit the destruction of Jerusalem. As, according to this, in the earlier part of the discourse of Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem is the predominant subject, but in the subsequent part, the end of all things: it is possible to make a division, so as to refer the former to the more proximate event, the latter to the more remote one. This is the middle path which has been taken by the majority of modern exegetists, and here the only question is: where is the partition to be made? As it must present a space of time within which the whole period from the destruction of Jerusalem to the last day may be supposed to fall, and which therefore would include many centuries, it must, one would think, be plainly indicated, so as to be easily and unanimously found. It is no good augury for the plan, that this unanimity does not exist,—that, on the contrary, the required division is made in widely different parts of the discourse of Jesus.

Thus much on the one hand appeared to be decided: that at least the close of the 25th chapter, from v. 31, with its description of the solemn tribunal which the Messiah, surrounded by his angels, would hold over all nations, cannot be referred to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Hence many theologians believed that they could fix the boundary here, retaining the relation to the end of the Jewish state until xxv. 30, and at this point making the transition to the end of the world. [1672] On the very first glance at this explanation, it must appear strange that the great chasm which it supposes to exist between v. 30 and 31, is marked simply by a δὲ. Moreover, not only are the darkening of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and falling of the stars, understood as a mere image of the subversion of the Jewish state and worship; but when xxiv. 31, it is said of the Messiah, that he will come in the clouds, this is supposed to mean, invisibly; with power—only observable by the effects he produces; with great glory—with such as consists in the conclusions which may be drawn from those effects; while the angels who gather together the nations by the sound of the trumpet, are supposed to represent the apostles preaching the gospel. [1673] Quite erroneously, appeal is made, in support of this merely figurative meaning, to the prophetic pictures of the divine day of judgment, Isa. xiii. 9 ff., xxiv. 18 ff.; Jer. iv. 23 f.; Ezek. xxxii. 7 ff.; Joel iii. 3 ff.; Amos viii. 9; farther, to descriptions [1674] such as Judges v. 20; Acts ii., xvii. ff. In those prophetic passages, real eclipses of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and the like, are intended, and are described as prodigies which will accompany the predicted catastrophe; the song of Deborah, again, celebrates a real participation of heaven in the battle against Sisera, a participation which in the narrative, iv. 15, is ascribed to God himself, in the song, to his heavenly hosts; lastly, Peter expects, that the outpouring of the spirit will be succeeded by the appearances in the heavens, promised among the signs of the great day of the Lord.

The attempt to effect a division near the end of the discourse, at xxv. 30, failing, from its rendering much that goes before incapable of explanation; the next expedient is to retreat as far towards the commencement as possible, by considering how far it is inevitable to recognise a relation to the immediate future. The first resting place is after xxiv. 28; for what is said, up to this point, of war and other calamities, of the abomination in the temple, of the necessity for speedy flight, in order to escape unprecedented misery, cannot be divested of a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem without the greatest violence: while what follows concerning the appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, etc., just as imperatively demands an application to the last day. [1675] But in the first place, it appears incomprehensible how the enormous interval, which on this explanation also is supposed to fall between the one portion of the discourse and the other, can be introduced between two verses, of all others, which Matthew connects by an adverb expressive of the shortest possible time (εὐθέως). It has been sought to remove this inconvenience by the assertion that εὐθέως does not here signify the quick succession of the one incident on the other, but only the unexpected occurrence of an event, and that consequently, what is here said amounts merely to this: suddenly, at some period (how distant is undetermined) after the calamities attendant on the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah will visibly appear. Such an interpretation of εὐθέως is, as Olshausen correctly perceives, merely a desperate resource: but even were it otherwise, it would afford no real aid, since not only does Mark in his parallel passage, v. 24, by the words, in those days, after that tribulation, ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις μετὰ τὴν θλίψιν ἐκείνην, place the events which he proceeds to mention in uninterrupted chronological succession with those which he had before detailed; but also, shortly after this point in each of the narratives (Matt. v. 34 parall.), we find the assurance that all this will be witnessed by the existing generation. As thus the opinion, that from v. 29, everything relates to the return of Christ to judge the world, was threatened with annihilation by v. 34; the word γενεὰ, as the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist [1676] complains, was put to the torture, that it might cease to bear witness against this mode of division. At one time it is made to signify the Jewish nation; [1677] at another the adherents of Jesus; [1678] and of both the one and the other Jesus is supposed to say that it will (how many generations hence being left uncertain) be still in existence on the arrival of that catastrophe. So to explain the verse in question, that it may not contain a determination of time, is even maintained to be necessary on a consideration of the context, v. 35: for as in this Jesus declares it impossible to determine the period of that catastrophe, he cannot immediately before have given such a determination, in the assurance that his cotemporaries would yet live to see all of which he had been speaking. But this alleged necessity so to interpret the word γενεὰ, has long been dissipated by the distinction between an inexact indication of the space of time, beyond which the event will not be deferred (γενεὰ), and the precise determination of the epoch (ἡμέρα καὶ ὥρα) at which it will occur; the former Jesus gives, the latter he declares himself unable to give. [1679] But the very possibility of interpreting γενεὰ in the above manner vanishes, when it is considered, that in connexion with a verb of time, and without anything to imply a special application, γενεὰ cannot have any other than its original sense: i.e. generation, age; that in a passage aiming to determine the signs of the Messiah’s advent, it would be very unsuitable to introduce a declaration which, instead of giving any information concerning the arrival of that catastrophe, should rather treat of the duration of the Jewish nation, or of the Christian community, of which nothing had previously been said; that, moreover, already at v. 33, in the words ὑμεῖς ὅταν ἴδητε πάντα ταῦτα, γινώσκετε κ.τ.λ., Ye, when ye shall SEE all these things, know, etc., it is presupposed that the parties addressed would witness the approach of the event in question; and lastly, that in another passage (Matt. xvi. 28 parall.) the certainty of living to see the coming of the Son of man is asserted not simply of this generation, γενεὰ αὕτη, but of some standing here, τινες τῶν ὧδε ἑστηκότων, whereby it is shown in the most decisive manner, that in the present passage also, Jesus intended by the above expression the race of his cotemporaries, who were not to have become extinct before that catastrophe should occur. [1680] Unable to deny this, and yet anxious to separate as widely as possible the end of the world here announced, and the age of Jesus, others would find in the declaration before us nothing more than this: the events hitherto described will begin to be fulfilled in the present age, though their complete fulfilment may yet be deferred many centuries. [1681] But when already at v. 8 the subject is said to be the beginning of the tribulation, while from v. 14 we have a description of the end of the present period of the world, which that tribulation would introduce, and it is here (v. 34) said, the existing generation shall not pass away, ἕως ἂν πάντα ταῦτα γένηται, until all these things be fulfilled: we must inevitably understand by πάντα ταῦτα, all these things, not merely the beginning, but also the last-mentioned events at the end of the world.

Thus there is still at v. 34 something which must be referred to an event very near to the time of Jesus: hence the discourse of Jesus cannot from so early a point as v. 29, refer to the end of the world, an epoch so far distant; and the division must be made somewhat farther on, after v. 35 or 42. [1682] But on this plan, expressions are thrown into the first part of the discourse, which resist the assigned application to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem;—the glorious advent of Christ in the clouds, and the assembling of all nations by angels (v. 30 f.) must be regarded as the same extravagant figures, which formerly forbade our acceptance of another mode of division.

Thus the declaration v. 34 which, together with the preceding symbolical discourse on the fig tree (v. 32 f.), and the appended asseveration (v. 35), must refer to a very near event, has, both before and after it, expressions which can only relate to the more distant catastrophe: hence it has appeared to some as a sort of oasis in the discourse, having a sense isolated from the immediate context. Schott, for instance, supposes that, up to v. 26, Jesus had been speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem; that at v. 27 he does indeed make a transition to the events at the end of the present period of the world; but that at v. 32, he reverts to the original subject, the destruction of Jerusalem; and only at v. 36 proceeds again to speak of the end of the world. [1683] But this is to hew the text in pieces, out of desperation. Jesus cannot possibly have spoken with so little order and coherence; still less can he have so linked his sentences together as to give no intimation of such abrupt transitions.

Nor is this imputed to him by the most recent critics. According to them, it is the Evangelist who has joined together, not in the best order, distinct and heterogeneous declarations of Jesus. Matthew, indeed, admits Schulz, imagined that these discourses were spoken without intermission, and only arbitrariness and violence can in this respect sever them from each other; but hardly did Jesus himself deliver them in this consecutive manner, and with this imprint of unity. [1684] The various phases of his coming, thinks Sieffert, his figurative appearance at the destruction of Jerusalem, and his literal appearance at the last day, though they may not have been expressly discriminated, were certainly not positively connected by Jesus; but subjects which he spoke of in succession were, from their obscurity, confused together by the Evangelist. [1685] And as in this instance there recurs the difference between Matthew and Luke, that what Matthew represents as being spoken on a single occasion, Luke distributes into separate discourses; to which it is also to be added, that much of what Matthew gives, Luke either has not, or has it in a different form: therefore Schleiermacher [1686] believed himself warranted to rectify the composition of Matthew by that of Luke, and to maintain that while in Luke the two separate discourses, xvii. 22 ff. and xxi. 5 ff., have each their appropriate connexion and their indubitable application, in Matthew (chap. xxiv. and xxv.), by the blending of those two discourses, and the introduction of portions of other discourses, the connexion is destroyed, and the application obscured. According to this, the discourse, Luke xxi., taken alone, contains nothing which outsteps the reference to the capture of Jerusalem and the accompanying events. Yet here also (v. 27) we find the declaration, Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, τότε ὄψονται τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐρχόμενον ἐν νεφέλη; and when Schleiermacher explains this as a mere image representing the revelation of the religious significance of the political and natural events before described, he falls into a violence of interpretation which overturns his entire opinion as to the mutual relation of these accounts. If, then, in the connexion of the end of all things with the destruction of Jerusalem, Matthew by no means stands alone, but is countenanced by Luke—to say nothing of Mark, whose account in this instance is an extract from Matthew: we may, it is true, conclude, that as in other discourses of Jesus, so perhaps in this also, many things which were uttered at different times are associated; but there is nothing to warrant the supposition, that precisely what relates to the two events, which in our idea are so remote from each other, is the foreign matter, especially since we see, from the unanimous representation of the remaining New Testament writings, that the primitive church expected, as a speedy issue, the return of Christ, together with the end of the present period of the world (1 Cor. x. 11, xv. 51; Phil. iv. 5; 1 Thess. iv. 15 ff.; James v. 8; 1 Pet. iv. 7; 1 John ii. 18; Rev. i. 1, 3, iii. 11, xxii. 7, 10, 12, 20).

Thus it is impossible to evade the acknowledgment, that in this discourse, if we do not mutilate it to suit our own views, Jesus at first speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem, and farther on and until the close, of his return at the end of all things, and that he places the two events in immediate connexion. There remains, therefore, but one expedient for vindicating the correctness of his announcement, namely, on the one hand, to assign the coming of which he speaks to the future, but, on the other hand, to bring it at the same time into the present—instead of a merely future, to make it a perpetual coming. The whole history of the world, it is said, since the first appearance of Christ, is an invisible return on his part, a spiritual judgment which he holds over mankind. Of this, the destruction of Jerusalem (in our passage until v. 28) is only the first act; in immediate succession (εὐθέως, v. 29 ff.) comes the revolution effected among mankind by the publication of the gospel; a revolution which is to be carried on in a series of acts and epochs, until the end of all things, when the judgment gradually effected in the history of the world, will be made known by an all-comprehending, final revelation. [1687] But the famous utterance of the poet, [1688] spoken from the inmost depth of modern conviction, is ill-adapted to become the key of a discourse, which more than any other has its root in the point of view proper to the ancient world. To regard the judgment of the world, the coming of Christ, as something successive, is a mode of conception in the most direct opposition to that of the New Testament. The very expressions by which it designates that catastrophe, as that day or the last day, ἐκείνη or ἐσχάτη ἡμέρα, show that it is to be thought of as momentary; the συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος, end of the age (v. 3), concerning the signs of which the apostles inquire, and which Jesus elsewhere (Matt. xiii. 39) represents under the image of the harvest, can only be the final close of the course of the world, not something which is gradually effected during this course; when Jesus compares his coming to lightning (xxiv. 27), and to the entrance of the thief in the night (v. 43), he represents it as one sudden event, and not as a series of events. [1689] If we consider in addition to this the extravagant figures, which it is not less necessary to suppose on this interpretation, than on the above-mentioned reference of the 24th chapter to the destruction of Jerusalem, [1690] it will appear necessary to abstain from this expedient, as from all the previous ones.

Thus the last attempt to discover in the discourse before us the immense interval which, looking from our position in the present day, is fixed between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of all things, having failed; we are taught practically that that interval lies only in our own conception, which we are not justified in introducing into the text. And when we consider that we owe our idea of that interval only to the experience of many centuries, which have elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem: it cannot be difficult to us to imagine how the author of this discourse, who had not had this experience, might entertain the belief that shortly after the fall of the Jewish sanctuary, the world itself, of which, in the Jewish idea, that sanctuary was the centre, would also come to an end, and the Messiah appear in judgment.

§ 116.

ORIGIN OF THE DISCOURSES ON THE SECOND ADVENT.

The result just obtained involves a consequence, to avoid which has been the object of all the futile attempts at explanation hitherto examined: if, namely, Jesus conceived and declared that the fall of the Jewish sanctuary would be shortly followed by his visible return and the end of the world, while it is now nearly 1800 years since the one catastrophe, and yet the other has not arrived; it follows that in this particular he was mistaken. Hence expositors, who so far yield to exegetical evidence, as to agree with us in the above conclusion concerning the meaning of the discourse before us, seek from dogmatical considerations to evade this legitimate consequence.

Hengstenberg, as is well known, has advanced, in relation to the history of the Hebrew prophets, the following theory, which has met with approval from other expositors. To the spiritual vision of these men, he says, future things presented themselves not so much through the medium of time as of space—as it were, in great pictures; and thus, as is the case in paintings or perspective views, the most distant object often appeared to them to stand immediately behind the nearest, foreground and background being intermingled with each other: and this theory of a perspective vision we are to apply to Jesus, especially in regard to the discourse in question. [1691] But we may here cite the appropriate remark of Paulus, [1692] that as one, who in a perspective externally presented, does not know how to distinguish distances, labours under an optical delusion, i.e. errs: so likewise in an internal perspective of ideas, if such there be, the disregard of distances must be pronounced an error; consequently this theory does not show that the above men did not err, but rather explains how they easily might err.

Even Olshausen considers this theory, which he elsewhere adopts, insufficient in the present case to remove all appearance of error on the part of Jesus; and he therefore seeks to derive special grounds of justification, from the particular nature of the event predicted. [1693] In the first place he regards it as indispensable to the full moral influence of the doctrine of Christ’s return, that this catastrophe should be regarded as possible, nay probable, at any moment. This consideration may indeed justify such enunciations as Matt. xxiv. 37 ff., where Jesus admonishes to watchfulness, because no one can know how soon the decisive moment may arrive; but by no means such as xxiv. 34, where he declares that within the term of the existing generation, all will be fulfilled. For one whose mind is in a healthy state, conceives the possible as possible, the probable as probable; and if he wishes to abide by the truth, he so exhibits them to others: he, on the contrary, by whom the merely possible or probable is conceived as the real, is under a mistake; and he who, without so conceiving it himself, yet for a moral or religious object, so represents it to others, permits himself to use a pious fraud. Olshausen further avails himself of a position already noticed, namely, that the opinion that the advent of Christ is at hand, is a true one, inasmuch as the entire history of the world is a coming of Christ; though not so as to exclude his final coming at the end of all things. But if it is proved that Jesus represented his literal, final coming as near at hand, while, in fact, only his figurative perpetual coming occurred in the period indicated: he has confused these two modes of his coming. The last argument which Olshausen adduces—that because the acceleration or delay of the return of Christ depends on the conduct of men, consequently on their free-will, his prophecy is only to be understood conditionally—stands or falls with the first; for to represent something conditional as unconditional is to create a false impression.

Sieffert, likewise, regards the grounds on which Olshausen seeks to free the assertions of Jesus concerning his return from the imputation of error, as inadequate; nevertheless he holds it an impossibility to the Christian consciousness, to ascribe an erroneous expectation to Jesus. [1694] In no case would this furnish a warrant, arbitrarily to sever from each other those elements in the discourse of Jesus which refer to the nearer event, from those which in our view refer to the more remote one: rather, if we had reasons for holding such an error on the part of Jesus inconceivable, we must deny in general that the discourses on the second advent, in which those two sets of materials are so inextricably interwoven, originated with him. But, looking from the orthodox point of view, the question is not: what will it satisfy the Christian consciousness of the present day to believe or not to believe concerning Christ? but, what stands written concerning Christ? and to this the above consciousness must accommodate itself as it best may. Considering the subject rationally, however, a feeling resting on presuppositions, such as the so-called Christian consciousness, has no voice in matters of science; and as often as it seeks to intermeddle with them, is to be reduced to order by the simple reprimand: mulier taceat in ecclesiâ! [1695]

But have we no other grounds for questioning that Jesus really uttered the predictions contained in Matt xxiv. and xxv. parall.? In pursuing this inquiry, we may first take our stand on the assertion of supranaturalistic theologians, that what Jesus here predicts, he could not know in the natural way of reasonable calculation, but only in a supernatural manner. [1696] Even the main fact, that the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, could not, according to this opinion, be so certainly foreknown. Who could conjecture, it is asked, that the Jews would carry their frantic obstinacy so far as to render such an issue inevitable? Who could calculate, that precisely such emperors, would send such procurators, as would provoke insurrection by their baseness and pusillanimity? Still more remarkable is it, that many particular incidents which Jesus foretold actually occurred. The wars, pestilence, earthquakes, famines, which he prophesied, may be shown in the history of the succeeding times; the persecution of his followers really took place; the prediction that there would be false prophets, and even such as would, by promises of miracles, allure the people into the wilderness (Matt. xxiv. 11, 24 ff. parall.), may be compared with a strikingly similar passage from Josephus, describing the last times of the Jewish state; [1697] the encompassing of Jerusalem with armies, mentioned by Luke, with the trench, χάραξ, which he elsewhere (xix. 43 f.) speaks of as being cast about the city, may be recognized in the circumstance recorded by Josephus, that Titus caused Jerusalem to be enclosed by a wall; [1698] lastly it may also excite astonishment that the declarations, there shall not be left one stone upon another, οὐκ ἀφεθήσεται λίθος ἐπὶ λίθῳ, in relation to the temple, and they shall lay thee even with the ground, ἐδαφιοῦσί σε, (Luke xix. 44), in relation to the city, were fulfilled to the letter. [1699]

When on the orthodox point of view, from the impossibility of foreseeing such particulars in a natural manner, it is concluded that Jesus had a supernatural insight into the future; this conclusion is here attended not only with the same difficulty as above, in connection with the announcement of his death and resurrection, but with another also. In the first place, according to Matthew (xxiv. 15), and Mark (xiii. 14), Jesus represented the first stage of the catastrophe as a fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning an abomination of desolation, and consequently referred Dan. ix. 27 (comp. xi. 31, xii. 11) to an event at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. For what Paulus maintains,—namely, that Jesus here only borrows an expression from Daniel, without regarding that declaration of the prophet as a prophecy concerning something which in his time (the time of Jesus) was still future—is here rendered especially inconceivable by the addition: let him that readeth understand. Now it may be regarded as an established point in the modern criticism and explanation of the Old Testament, that the above passages in Daniel have reference to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes; [1700] consequently, the interpretation of them which the Evangelists here lend to Jesus is a false one. But to proceed to the difficulty which is peculiar to the prophecy in Matt. xxiv., xxv.: only one side of it, that relating to Jerusalem, has been fulfilled; the other, that relating to the return of Jesus and the end of the world, remains unfulfilled. Such a half-true prophecy as this cannot have been drawn by Jesus from his higher nature, and he must have been left in this matter to his human faculties. But that he should be able, by means of these, to foresee a result, dependent on so many fortuities as was the destruction of Jerusalem, with its particular circumstances, appears inconceivable; and hence the conjecture arises, that these discourses, in the definiteness which they now possess, were not uttered prior to the issue, consequently not by Jesus, but that they may have been put into his mouth as prophecies after the issue. Thus Kaiser, for example, is of opinion that Jesus threatened a terrible fate to the temple and the nation by means of the Romans, conditionally, in case the nation did not accept salvation from the Messiah, and described this fate in prophetic types; but that the unconditional form and the more precise delineations were given to his discourse post eventum. Credner also infers, from the circumstances, that incidents accompanying the destruction of Jerusalem are put into the mouth of Jesus as prophecies, that the three first gospels cannot have been composed before this event. [1701] It must certainly be supposed that the prophecy, as we have it in the two first gospels, was formed immediately after or even during the issue, since here the appearance of the Messiah is predicted as an event that would immediately succeed the fall of Jerusalem, which in later years could no longer be the expectation. As this immediate chronological connexion of the two catastrophes is not so expressly made by Luke, it has been supposed that this Evangelist gives the prophecy as it was modified by experience, that the Messiah’s advent and the end of the world had in nowise followed close on the destruction of Jerusalem. [1702]

In opposition to these two opinions, that the prophecy in question had a supernatural source, and that it was only made after the issue; it is sought, in a third quarter, to show that what is here predicted, Jesus might really have known in a natural way. [1703] While, on the one hand, it is held in the highest degree astonishing that the result should have so closely corresponded with the most minute features of the prophecy of Jesus; on the other hand, there are expositors by whom this correspondence is called in question. The encompassing of Jerusalem with armies, say they, is precisely what Titus, according to Josephus, pronounces impossible to be effected; [1704] it is predicted that a trench χάραξ would be cast about the city, while Josephus informs us, that after the first attempt at forming an embankment χῶμα had been rendered useless, by an act of incendiarism on the part of the besieged, [1705] Titus desisted from his scheme; of false Messiahs, arising in the interval between the death of Jesus and the destruction of Jerusalem, history says nothing; the commotions among nations, and the natural phenomena, in that period, are far from being so important as they are here represented; but above all, in these prophecies, especially as they are given in Matthew and Mark, it is not the destruction of Jerusalem which is predicted, but solely that of the temple: plain divergencies of the prophecy from the result, which would not exist, if either a supernatural glance into the future, or a vaticinium post eventum were concerned.

According to these theologians, we are on the wrong track in seeking the counterpart of these prophecies forwards, in the result; since it was backwards, on types presented in the past, that the authors looked. A mass of such types was furnished by the Jewish conception of the circumstances which would precede the advent of the Messiah. False prophets and Messiahs, war, famine and pestilence, earthquakes and commotions in the heavens, prevalent corruption of manners, persecution of the faithful servants of Jehovah, were held to be the immediate harbingers of the messianic kingdom. Moreover, in the prophets there are descriptions of the tribulation which would presage and accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah (Isa. xiii. 9 ff.; Joel i. 15, ii. 1 ff., 10 ff., iii. 3 ff., iv. 15 f.; Zeph. i. 14 ff.; Hagg. ii. 7; Zech. xiv. 1 ff.; Mal. iii. 1 ff.), or which would precede the messianic kingdom of the saints (Dan. vii.–xii.), as also expressions in later Jewish writings, [1706] so analogous with our evangelical prediction, as to put it beyond question, that the description which it gives of the time of the Messiah’s advent is drawn from a circle of ideas which had long been current among the Jews.

Another question is, whether the principal feature in the picture before us, the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem, as introductory to the coming of the Messiah, may also be shown to have made part of the popular conception in the time of Jesus. In Jewish writings we find the notion, that the birth of the Messiah would coincide with the destruction of the sanctuary: [1707] but this idea was obviously first formed after the fall of the temple, in order that a fountain of consolation might spring out of the lowest depth of misery. Josephus finds in Daniel, together with what relates to Antiochus, a prophecy of the annihilation of the Jewish state by the Romans: [1708] but as this is not the primary object in any of the visions in Daniel, Josephus might first make this interpretation after the issue, in which case it would prove nothing as to the time of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is conceivable, that already in the time of Jesus, the Jews might attribute to the prophecies of Daniel a reference to events yet future, although these prophecies in fact related to a far earlier period; and they might do so on the same grounds as those on which the Christians of the present age still look forward to the full realization of Matt. xxiv. and xxv. As immediately after the fall of the kingdom made of iron mixed with clay, and of the horn that speaks blasphemies and makes war against the saints, the coming of the Son of man in the clouds, and the commencement of the everlasting kingdom of the saints, is prophesied, while this result had not by any means succeeded the defeat of Antiochus: there was an inducement still to look to the future, not only for the heavenly kingdom, but also, since they were made immediately to precede it, for the calamities caused by the kingdom of iron and clay; among which calamities, by analogy with what was predicted of the horn, the desecration of the temple was conspicuous. But while the prophecy in Daniel includes only the desecration of the temple and the interruption of the worship, together with (the partial [1709]) destruction of the city: in the discourse before us complete destruction is predicted to the temple—and likewise to the city, not merely in Luke, where the expressions are very marked, but undoubtedly in the two other Evangelists also, as appears to be indicated by the exhortation to hasty flight from the city;—which prediction of total destruction, as it is not contained in the type, can apparently have been gathered only from the result. But in the first place, the description in Daniel with the expressions ‏שָׁמֵם‎ and ‏הִשְׁחִית‎ (ix. 26 f., xii. 11), which the LXX. translates by ἐρήμωσις, desolation, and διαφθείρω, I destroy, may easily be also understood of a total destruction; and secondly, if once, in connexion with the sins of the nation, the temple and city had been destroyed and the people carried away captive, every enthusiastic Israelite, to whom the religious and moral condition of his fellow-countrymen appeared corrupt and irremediable, might thenceforth expect and predict a repetition of that former judgment. According to this, even those particulars in which, as we have seen in the foregoing section, Luke surpasses his fellow-narrators in definiteness, are not of a kind to oblige us to suppose, either a supernatural foreknowledge, or a vaticinium post eventum: on the contrary, all may be explained by a close consideration of what is narrated concerning the first destruction of Jerusalem in 2 Kings xxv.; 2 Chron. xxxvi.; and Jer. xxxix. 52.

There is only one point which Jesus, as the author of this discourse, could not have gathered from any types, but must have drawn entirely from himself: namely, the declaration that the catastrophe which he described would arrive within the present generation. This prediction we must hesitate to derive from a supernatural knowledge, for the reason, already noticed, that it is only half fulfilled: while the other side of the fact, the striking fulfilment of at least the one half of the prophecy, might incline us to distrust the supposition of a merely natural calculation, and to regard this determination of time as a feature introduced into the discourse of Jesus after the issue. Meanwhile, it is clear from the passages cited at the conclusion of the last section, that the apostles themselves expected the return of Christ to take place within their lifetime; and it is not improbable that Jesus also believed that this event, together with the ruin of the city and temple, which according to Daniel was to precede it, was very near at hand. The more general part of the expectation, namely, the appearing at some future time in the clouds of heaven, to awake the dead, to sit in judgment, and to found an everlasting kingdom, would necessarily, from a consideration of Daniel, where such a coming is ascribed to the Son of man, be contemplated by Jesus as a part of his own destiny, so soon as he held himself to be the Messiah; while, with regard to the time, it was natural that he should not conceive a very long interval as destined to elapse between his first messianic coming in humiliation, and his second, in glory.

One objection to the genuineness of the synoptical discourses on the second advent, is yet in reserve; it has, however, less weight in our point of view than in that of the prevalent criticism of the gospels. This objection is derived from the absence of any detailed description of the second advent of Jesus in the Gospel of John. [1710] It is true that the fundamental elements of the doctrine of Christ’s return are plainly discoverable in the fourth gospel also. [1711] Jesus therein ascribes to himself the offices of the future judgment, and the awaking of the dead (John v. 21–30); which last is not indeed numbered among the concomitants of the advent of Christ in the synoptical gospels, but not seldom appears in that connexion elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 23; 1 Thess. iv. 16). When Jesus, in the fourth gospel, sometimes denies that he is come into the world for judgment (iii. 17, viii. 15, xii. 47), this refers only to his first presence on earth, and is limited by opposite declarations, in which he asserts that he is come into the world for judgment (ix. 39, comp. viii. 16), to the sense that the object of his mission is not to condemn but to save, and that his judgment is not individual or partial; that it consists, not in an authoritative sentence proceeding subjectively from himself, but in an objective act proceeding from the intrinsic tendency of things, a doctrine which is significantly expressed in the declaration, that him who hears his word without believing he judges not, but the word, which he has spoken, shall judge him in the last day (ὁ λόγος, ὂν ἐλάλησα, κρινεῖ αὐτὸν ἐν τῇ ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, xii. 48). Further, when the Jesus of John’s gospel says of the believer: οὐ κρίνεται, he is not judged, εἰς κρίσιν οὐκ ἔρχεται, he shall not come into judgment (iii. 18, v. 24), this is to be understood of a judgment with a condemnatory issue; when on the contrary, it is said of the unbeliever: ἤδη κέκριται, he is judged already (iii. 18), this only means that the assigning of the merited lot to each is not reserved until the future judgment at the end of all things, since each one in his inward disposition bears within himself the fate which is his due. This does not exclude a future solemn act of judgment, wherein that which has at present only a latent existence will be made matter of awful revelation; for in the very passage last quoted we find the consignment to condemnation, and elsewhere the awarding of future blessedness (v. 28 f., vi. 39 f., 54), associated with the last day and the resurrection. In like manner, Jesus says in Luke also, in the same connexion in which he describes his return as a still future, external catastrophe, xvii. 20 f.: The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you. A certain interpretation of the words uttered by the Jesus of John’s gospel, supposes him even to intimate that his return was not far distant. The expressions already mentioned in the farewell discourses, in which Jesus promises his disciples not to leave them comfortless, but, after having gone to the Father, shortly (xvi. 16) to come again to them (xiv. 3, 18), are not seldom understood of the return of Christ at the last day; [1712] but when we hear Jesus say of this same return, that he will therein reveal himself only to his disciples, and not to the world (xiv. 19, comp. 22), it is impossible to think of it as the return to judgment, in which Jesus conceived that he should reveal himself to good and bad without distinction. There is a particularly enigmatical allusion to the coming of Christ in the appendix to the fourth gospel, chap. xxi.. On the question of Peter as to what will become of the apostle John, Jesus here replies, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? (v. 22) whence, as it is added, the Christians inferred that John would not die, since they supposed the coming (ἔρχεσθαι) here spoken of, to be the final return of Christ, in which those who witnessed it were to be changed, without tasting death (1 Cor. xv. 51 f.). But, adds the author correctively, Jesus did not say, the disciple would not die, but only, if he willed that he should tarry till he came, what was that to Peter? Hereby the Evangelist may have intended to rectify the inference in two ways. Either it appeared to him erroneous to identify the remaining until Jesus came, with not dying, i.e. to take the coming of which Jesus here spoke for the last, which would put an end to death; and in that case he must have understood by it an invisible coming of Christ, possibly in the destruction of Jerusalem: [1713] or, he held it erroneous that what Jesus had only said hypothetically—even if he willed the given case, that was no concern of Peter’s—should be understood categorically, as if such had really been the will of Jesus; in which case the ἔρχομαι would retain its customary sense. [1714]

If, according to this, all the main features of the doctrine of the second advent are put into the mouth of Jesus in the fourth gospel also, still we nowhere find anything of the detailed, graphic description of the external event, which we read in the synoptical gospels. This relation between the two representations, creates no slight difficulty on the ordinary view of the origin of the gospels, and especially that of the fourth. If Jesus really spoke of his return so fully and solemnly as the synoptists represent him to have done, and treated of the right knowledge and observation of the signs as something of the highest importance; it is inconceivable that the author of the fourth gospel could pass over all this, if he were an immediate disciple of Jesus. The usual mode of accounting for such an omission, by the supposition that he believed this part of the teaching of Jesus to be sufficiently known from the synoptical gospels, or from oral tradition, is the more inadequate here in proportion as all which bears a prophetic character, especially when relating to events at once so much longed for and dreaded, is exposed to misinterpretation; as we may see from the rectification just noticed, which the author of John xxi. found it necessary to apply to the opinion of his contemporaries concerning the promise given by Jesus to John. Thus, in the present case, an explanatory word would have been highly seasonable and useful, especially as the representation of the first gospel, which made the end of all things follow immediately on the destruction of Jerusalem, must be the more an occasion of doubt and offence the nearer the latter event came, and in a still greater degree when it was past. And who was more capable of affording such enlightenment than the favourite disciple, particularly if, according to Mark xiii. 3, he was the only Evangelist who had been present at the discourse of Jesus on this subject? Hence, here again, a special reason for his silence is sought in the alleged destination of his gospel for non-judaical, idealizing Gnostics, whose point of view those descriptions would not have suited, and were therefore omitted. [1715] But precisely in relation to such readers, it would have been a culpable compliance, a confirmation in their idealizing tendency, had John, out of deference to them, suppressed the real side of the return of Christ. The apostle must rather have withstood the propensity of these people to evaporate the external, historical part of Christianity, by giving due prominence to it; as, in his epistle, in opposition to their Docetism, he lays stress on the corporeality of Jesus: so, in opposition ta their idealism, he must have been especially assiduous to exhibit in the return of Christ the external facts by which it would be signalized. Instead of this, he himself speaks nearly like a Gnostic, and constantly aims, in relation to the return of Christ, to resolve the external and the future into the internal and the present. Hence there is not so much exaggeration, as Olshausen supposes, in the opinion of Fleck, that the representation of the doctrine of Jesus concerning his return in the synoptical gospels, and that given in the fourth, exclude each other; [1716] for if the author of the fourth gospel be an apostle, the discourses on the second advent which the three first Evangelists attribute to Jesus, cannot have been so delivered by him, and vice versâ. We, however, as we have said, cannot avail ourselves of this argument, having long renounced the pre-supposition that the fourth gospel had an apostolic origin. But, on our point of view, we can fully explain the relation which the representation of the fourth gospel bears to that of the synoptists. In Palestine, where the tradition recorded by the three first gospels was formed, the doctrine of a solemn advent of the Messiah which was there prevalent, and which Jesus embraced, was received in its whole breadth into the Christian belief: whereas in the Hellenistic-theosophic circle in which the fourth gospel arose, this idea was divested of its material envelopment, and the return of Christ became the ambiguous medium between a real and an ideal, a present and a future event, which it appears in the fourth gospel.