Imminent Eschatology and Its Influence on Second Century Christianity Ethics
Year Delivered or Published: 2005
Author: Samuel M Frost
Author's Faith: Christianity
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: November 28, 2006
Topic: Theology
The Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas (EpPs-Barn), and Shepherd of Hermas (ShHerm) represent two ethical treatises for Christians of the second century in light of an imminent expectation of the Second Coming. These duties range from doing business with “the world” to marriage. The “two ways” between light and darkness determine the outcome of the soul of a person at “the judgment.” In short, it was an ethics of retreat from the world and its carnal affairs so that the Christian would be “pure and spotless” on the Day of Visitation.
How does a theology of imminence live in what is now perceived as by many, two millennia later, an ever-increasingly prolonged Visitation? Did the second century Christians have a correct grasp on the theology of the Lord’s Return? Though they certainly did not envision the conquering of Rome in 312 C.E., how do we, as heirs of their tradition, view our place in time in light of the so called “delay of the parousia”? I will propose brief alternatives to EpPs-Barn and ShHerm in light of the fact that Church history was not meant to end in the second century as was imagined, but was meant to continue and flourish “through the ages” (Eph 2.7). It is important that we compare and contrast their view on this issue and how it relates to living for God with our own place in time to see if they have anything within that comparison and contrast that would give us fresh answers. In this way, we do not adhere to all that they said, but, at the same time, allow them to serve us in developing a better solution.
First, it can be relatively agreed upon that the second century church was largely dominated by the idea of an imminent coming of the Lord. Tertullian (circa 200 C.E.) wrote that the Second Coming of Christ was “concluding the world” and is “now near” (secundo, qui concludendo saeculo imminet – Tertullian, ch.21). Historians are generally in agreement with Chadwick when he wrote that the early Christians believed the last judgement “to be in the near future” (Chadwick, 33). Muilenburg, commenting on EpPs-Barn, stated, ““The imminence of the end is felt everywhere. The constant expectation of the day of judgment is largely responsible for Barnabas’ intensity and enthusiasm” (Muilenburg, 132). The same can be said of ShHerm. Keith Mathison summed up this work by writing, “This work expresses the belief that the last day is very near” (Mathison, 24).
Having briefly established this historical point, I will now explore these two epistles relative to my thesis. In the EpBarn (70-79 C.E.?) we find an explicit reference to the imminent coming of the Lord:
2 I beseech those who are in high positions, if you will receive any counsel of my goodwill, have among yourselves those to whom you may do good; fail not. 3 The day is at hand when all things shall perish with the Evil one; "The Lord and his reward is at hand." 4 I beseech you again and again be good lawgivers to each other, remain faithful counsellors of each other, remove from yourselves all hypocrisy. 5 Now may God, who is the Lord over all the world, give you wisdom, understanding, prudence, knowledge of his ordinances, patience. 6 And be taught of God, seeking out what the Lord requires from you, and see that ye be found faithful in the day of Judgment (21.2-6, Lake).
We can see here that an ethical exhortation is directly connected to the imminent coming of the Lord. Indeed, the entire moral basis for “being good” is rooted in the final judgement of the Lord for Barnabas. Lake, in his introduction, wrote, “Barnabas, like I Clement and Hermas, became canonical in some circles: it is quoted by Clement of Alexandria as Scripture, and is referred to by Origen as a Catholic Epistle, while it is included in the Codex Sinaiticus among the books of the New Testament, not, as is sometimes said, as an appendix, but following immediately after the Apocalypse, without any suggestion that it belonged to a different category of books” (Lake). This shows the tremendous influence it had in the second century and the influence of the idea of the imminent coming connected with it.
Barnabas’ epistle has to do mainly with persuading fellow Christians not to follow after the way of evil, which for him is Judaism. Judaism is now to be understood “spiritually”. He employs allegory to the OT, sometimes even to the point of absurdity, in my opinion. The appeal to the destruction of the Second Temple (Herod’s) in 70 C.E. forms a concrete proof for the author that the coming of the Lord is very near, and those that continue to cling to Judaism in light of this fact will be utterly doomed (all of ch. 16).
Unlike Marcion, Barnabas appeals and applies the OT via allegory, and this shows us that this hermeneutic was popular at that time (as seen in Hebrews, too). There was a spiritual, or covenantal break from Judaism registered in the fact that the temple now lies in ruins. Now is not the time to involve one’s self with the world:
“It behooves us therefore to investigate deeply concerning the present, and to search out the things which have power to save us. Let us therefore flee altogether from all the works of lawlessness, lest the works of lawlessness overpower us; and let us loathe the error of the present time, that we may be loved for that which is to come. Let us give no relaxation to our soul that it should have liberty to consort with sinners and wicked men, lest haply we be made like unto them. The last offence is at hand” (4.1-3a – Lighfoot).
Here again we find the ethical imperative closely tied to the imminent coming of the Lord. It is obvious that if one knew that the Lord’s coming was near to their generation, one’s life style would be dramatically influenced by such knowledge, and this is exactly what we find in EpPs -Barn.
Moving on to the Shepherd (150 C.E.) we find the same ethical tie to the soon coming Messiah. The author has a series of visions concerning the building of the church. This building is nearing its completion, and with that, the coming of the Lord. Imminence is found throughout the book as a whole (Vis 1.1.8; 1.2.3; 4.3.5; Sim 3.4.2). The “age” is about to come (Sim 3.4.2) and the “great tribulation” (Vis 4.2.5). In light of this “revelation” given to the author (the author makes no pretensions of speaking any other way than as a Prophet – which lent to its acceptance as canonical among many in the second century), the readers are implored to abstain from many things of which we, today, partake. Hermas wrote:
Before all is desire for the wife or husband of another, and for extravagance of wealth, and for many needless dainties, and for drinks and other luxuries, many and foolish. For even luxury is foolish and vain for the servants of God (Man 12.2.1 – Lightfoot).
This idea is found throughout the epistle and echoes the letter of James in the NT. It also echoes the entreaty of Jesus to the rich, young ruler: “Go and sell all that you have and give it to the poor” (Mark 10.21). In light of the eschatological judgment and its imminence, this is not a bad piece of advice. Hermas condemns running after the business of the world and the cares of this world (Sim 4.4.5), and here he possibly draws upon Paul’s statements to the Corinthians:
I suppose, therefore, this to be good because of the present necessity, that it is good for a man that the matter be thus: - - 27 Hast thou been bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed; hast thou been loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. 28 But and if thou mayest marry, thou didst not sin; and if the virgin may marry, she did not sin; and such shall have tribulation in the flesh: and I spare you. 29 And this I say, brethren, the time henceforth is having been shortened - - that both those having wives may be as not having; 30 and those weeping, as not weeping; and those rejoicing, as not rejoicing; and those buying, as not possessing; 31 and those using this world, as not using it up; for passing away is the fashion of this world (Young’s Literal Translation – I Cor 7.26-3 1; cf. Man 4.4.1-4).
This is not the counsel we often find in today’s Christianity.
One last point should be brought out as well from the Shepherd. A former time of repentance had been granted, but was now postponed up until the time of Hermas’ day. His generation is the last generation. Hermas stated that God has now given a second time of repentance because the building was not yet complete. Hermas’ ethical appeals must be understood within this context, for now Christianity has entered into its second and third generations, and it appears that laxity (what he calls “double-mindedness” – obviously borrowing from James) has settled into the church. This historical period faced what historians have called “the delay of the parousia” (vid., Pelikan, 123,124).
Logically, when something is delayed, it was supposed to have occurred, but did not. Hermas is largely writing under this impression, I believe. The language of Hermas in Sim 9.31.2 reflects I Pe 3.1-ff concerning the supposed “delay” of the parousia. In Sim 5.5.3 Hermas uses the word parousia for that which is about to occur. One gets the impression from other passages that a “second repentance” is now being given in light of God delaying the time so that more of those “about to believe” can be added to the building, echoing I Pe 3.
Whether Hermas correctly interprets I Pe 3 correctly is another question. The fact is, he explicitly saw himself as living in the “last days” (Sim 9.12.3), with the “age to come” soon to approach, and with the “great tribulation” about to unfold, climaxing with the parousia of the Lord. 1 There was no post- millennial, or a- millennial expectation that history would continue to unfold for thousands of years. History, for Barnabas and Hermas, was about to end in a great conflagration.
For exegetical purposes, it is important to see that 1) Barnabas and Hermas wrote in a relatively early period of the church; 2) both claimed to have direct access to the “word of the Lord” concerning the things of which they spoke; 3) both interpret the language of imminence in the NT with a literal understanding, using the same vocabularly: near means near, not maybe near. Since the “end” of the world did not happen in the lifetime of the apostles, Hermas explicitly mentions that God has drawn out the coming of the Lord up to Hermas’ own generation. However, that generation was indeed the final generation.
Such an appeal to an imminent end had its force, but only up until the third and fourth centuries. Esteemed historian Jaroslav Pelikan explains,
“What the texts [the early church writings] do suggest is a shift within the polarity of already/not yet and a great variety of solutions to the exegetical and theological difficulties caused by such a shift. These included the reinterpretation of biblical passages that had carried an eschatological connotation, the reorientation of ethical imperatives toward a more complex description of the life of faith and love within the forms of the present world, and the reconsideration and eventual rejection of certain types of apocalyptic expectation that could claim ancient sanction but were no longer suited to the new stage in the development of Christian eschatology” (Pelikan, 124).
Landes cites the force of the apocalyptic:
Nor are these poles of emotion mutually exclusive: destructive prodigies could change self-confident joy to real terror; genuine repentence could change dread to joy; and disappointment could turn joy into sorrow and rage. Thus, whether through fear or hope, the approach of the End was the occasion for great, even superhuman efforts to prepare oneself and one's community for the coming judgment of God. Since apocalyptic expectation brings God's judgment rather than meaningless annihilation, it often engenders feverish activity: to convert the heathen, to spread the ardent spirituality of the apostles, to assist the Lord in bringing about his kingdom of peace and justice, to give generously to the Church and the poor, to reform society in order to allay the wrath of both an indignant God and an aroused populace (Landes).
Now, according to Pelikan, this “feverish activity” now had to “reorient” the ethics of the Bible in a much more complex way. Quite simply: if everyone sold all that they had and gave to the poor, the poor would be rich and the rich would be the new poor. Such ethical demands in the NT must be interpreted in light of the current “crisis” as Paul called it. But, was there an “eschatological crisis” in Paul’s day that has been overlooked or under-rated?
Eliot has remarked, ““The New Testament seems to say slightly less than it used to about the final days of the world as a whole. There has been a similar trend in Old Testament studies over the last decade” (Elliot, 3). What is increasingly being seen within Evangelical scholarship is that the sack of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. carried with it a far reaching covenantal Weltanshauung. When the city and the nation along with it collapsed, “heaven and earth” passed away as well (Fletcher-Louis, 145-170).
If the NT is to be interpreted in a more “preteristic” fashion, then the great tribulation, antichrist, and the conflagration of the universe (kosmos) has already occurred. The de-creation language found in the book of Revelation is “apocalyptic language” and not to be understood literally in every aspect of its fulfillment.
This means that the early church and its apocalyptic fervency was based upon an exegetical failure to recognize Hebrew covenantal language: the language of the “end” and the “last days.” James Jordan offers a unique interpretation that may have plausible merit:
And one of the interesting things that happens in church history is that, when you look at the immediate post-apostolic church, you find that they did not know very much. You read the apostolic Fathers like Barnabus and Clement, who were writing around the year 100 and you think, “How could they not know more than they know?” And you start to look at the other fathers and you find they don’t know much either. Barnabus has an exposition of the dietary laws that is crazy. He says that the Jews were never supposed to actually offer sacrifices. He did not get that from Paul. And you think what happened to the disciples of the disciples? Didn’t John and James and Peter and Mark and Matthew and Paul raise up a large company of people who would know New Testament Theology? Biblical theology? And pass it on? There is a gap. And the explanation for that gap seems to be that the 2 witnesses are killed in the city, and the first fruits church is harvested, and the church kind of starts over again after AD 70….Now, I would suggest that not everybody was harvested. But there was a big harvest. A lot of Christians taken off the scene. And that is why there is not the kind of continuity we expect between the Apostolic Church and the Early Church. Why they seem to be ignorant of so many things (in Paul). I don’t think Christians died under the Romans. They were killed by the Jewish church and the Judaizers before the destruction of Jerusalem. See, Babylon is punished for killing the saints. The wine that is poured out of the wine pressed is taken and then poured out on Babylon (Jordan).
What else did these fathers “not get” from Paul? According to a growing number of Evangelicals, the parousia spoken of in Mt 24 was fulfilled in 70 C.E. Thus, the ethical imperatives found in the second century that were based on a imminent arrival of the Second Coming gradually passed out of existence precisely because the world did not end in the way it was expected to end. This expectation of the end is, in turn, based on reading passages like I Pe 3 in terms of crass literalism. It begins to dawn on the fourth century theologians that crying “it is the last hour” when hundreds of years have past appears absurd. Augustine wrote, “If we had been there with John [when he wrote it is the last hour (I Jn 2:18)], who would have thought that so many years would pass” (Landes, Millennium, 148). Landes adds, “Ultimately God would render the time-bomb set by these [apocalyptic] chronologies irrelevant” (Landes, ibid., 148).
The ethical imperatives of the Bible must be rooted in something other than “it is the last hour.” If God has indeed exploded the apocalyptic by sheer time itself, then perhaps He has not “delayed” the coming of the Lord, and perhaps we need to take a fresh approach to the whole enterprise of eschatology. If God is not being heralded as threatening to blow the world up, then perhaps, just the opposite, he is out to save the world. If God is saving the world by transforming one life at a time, and by that, one culture at a time, then the ethical imperative can be derived from a more positive impetus. Rather than being a church that proclaims the end of the world, perhaps a new found breath from God can be seen in heralding the salvation of the world, and our living out the faith would, in turn, be rooted in joining with God to save the world in all of its cultural significance.
1 Whether Barn or Herm were chiliasts or not is debatable, vid., Chuck Hill, Regnum Caelorum).
Bibliography
Chadwick, Henry, The Early Church, Penguin Books, 1973.
Elliot, Mark W. Eschatology in the Bible & Theology: Evangelical Essays at the Dawn of a New Millennium, Kent E. Brower, & Mark W. Elliot, Eds., “Introduction: Understanding the Times”, IVP, Downers Grove, 1997.
Fletcher-Louis, Crispin H.T., Eschatology in the Bible & Theology: Evangelical Essays at the Dawn of a New Millennium, Kent E. Brower, & Mark W. Elliot, Eds., “The Destruction of the Temple & the Relativization of the Old Covenant: Mark 13:31 & Matthew 5:18”, IVP, Downers Grove, 1997.
Jordan, James B., Tape 3 Revelation Series. Thanks to Mike Grace for pointing out this quote.
Lake, Kirsopp, The Apostolic Fathers, London, 1912, v. I.
Landes, Richard, Giants With Feet of Clay: On the Historiography of the Year 1000< http://www.mille.org/scholarship/1000/AHR9.html>
Landes, Richard, “Lest the Millennium Be Fulfilled: Apocalyptic Expectations And the Patterns of Western Chronography 100-800 C.E.”, The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages, Eds., Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, Leuven University Press, 1988.
Lightfoot, John B., The Apostolic Fathers, Twin Brooks Series, Baker, 1987 – orig. pub., 1891
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