115. The Discourses of Jesus On His Second Advent. Criticism of the Differe... (Chapter 1. Relation of Jesus to The Idea of A Suffering and Dying Messiah;...) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Strauss, David Friedrich)

NOT only did Jesus, according to the Gospel 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 rumors of wars, 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; perfid, 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 656 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 you, and compass you round, and keep you in on every side, and shall lay you even with the ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you 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 earh, 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 connection), 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 whic 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 ^{P.657} of his house (v. 45-51); of the wise and foolish virgins (xxv.l- 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).

Thus in these discourses Jesus announces that shortly (eu)qewj, 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 contemporary generation (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 contemporary 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 a 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 Wolfenb ttel 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 ob- ^{P.658} scure 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.

Such inferences from the discourse before us would inflict a fatal wound on Christianity; hence it is natural that exegetes 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 connection 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 Irenaeus and Hilary, living still 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 beginning in Matt. xxiv. to its end in Matt, xxv., to the still future return of Christ to judgment. But as this interpretation admits that Jesus in the beginning 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 excgetical 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. 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 ^{P.659} 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, 3,15ff. of the devastation of the temple, cannot be referred to the end of the world: on the other hand, what is predicted xxv.31ff. 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 exegetes, and here the onl 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. 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 de. ^{P.660} 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. Quite erroneously, appeal is made, in support of this merely figurative meaning, to the prophetic pictures of the divine day of judgment, Isa. xiii.9ff.; xxiv.18ff.; Jer. iv. 23 f.; Ezek. xxxii.7ff.; Joel iii.3ff.; Amos viii. 9,; further, to descriptions 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 prdigies 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, fails from its rendering much that goes before incapable of explanation; the next expedient is to retreat as far towards the beginning 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. 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, whichMatthew connects by an adverb expressive of the shortest possible time (eu)qewj). It has been sought to remove this inconvenience by the assertion that evOeug 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 ^{P.661} interpretation of eu)qewj 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," (e)n e)keinaij taij h(meraij meta thn qliyin e)keinhn) 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 genea, as the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist 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; at another the adherents of Jesus; and of both the oe 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 contemporaries would yet live to see ajl of which he had been speaking. But this alleged necessity so to interpret the word genea, has long been dissipated by the distinction between an inexact indication of the space of time, beyond which the event will not be deferred (genea), and the precise determination of the epoch at which it will occur; the former Jesus gives, the latter he declares himself unable to give. But the very possibility of interpreting genea in the above manner vanishe, when it is considered, that in connection with a verb of time, and without anything to imply a special application, genea 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 "when you 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 but of some standing here whereby it is shown in the most decisive manner, that in the present passage also, ^{P.662} Jesus intended by the above expression the race of his contemporaries. who were not to have become extinct before that catastrophe should occur. 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 iind 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. 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, until all these things be fulfilled: we must inevitably understand by panta tauta, (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 further on, after v. 35 or 42. 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 rig-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 ^{P.663} speak of the end of the world. 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 Scliulz, 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, 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. 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 separat 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 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.22ff. and xxi.5ff., have each their appropriate connection 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 connection 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, and when Schleiermacher explains this as a mere image representing the revelation of the religious signifiance 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 connection 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 whiph were uttered at different times are associated; but there is nothing to warrant ^{P.664} 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; 1'hil. iv. 5; 1 Thess. iv.15ff.; 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 further on and until the close, of his return at the end of all things, and that he places the two events in immediate connection. 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 (v. 29 fF.) comes the revolution effected among mankind by the publication of the gospel; a revolution wich 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 story of the world, will be made known by an all-comprehending, final revelation. But the famous utterance of the poet, 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," show that it is to be thought of as momentary; the "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. If we consider in addition to this the extravagant figures, which it is not less necessary to suppose on this ^{P.665} interpretation, than on the above-mentioned reference of the 24th chapter to the destruction of Jerusalem, 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 clay, 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.