Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid To Be Partners

52 Pages·2012·0.76 MB·English

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Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid To Be Partners
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006)

by William Thompson-Uberuaga

CHAPTER THREE
—supplements—

(1) eschatology and geography; (2) christology and the creeds, Alexandrines, Antiochenes,
technical categories, western and Syriac traditions, the hypostatic union.

Eschatology, Geography, and the Advancing Jesus Movement
It will be useful to return to the theme of time and space, which we noted in our second
chapter on the New Testament materials. We recall that the orientation to the divine Ground
transforms temporality into history, and space into place. At the same time, neither time nor
space is simply “there” for humans to manipulate or use in an arbitrary fashion. In some sense,
time remains time and not history, and space remains space and not simply place. Jesus and his
movement exist within these complicated coordinates, as all humans do, and we noted
something of the way in which the Jesus event revalorized each of these coordinates. Inasmuch
as Jesus through and with his new community mediates a more personalized relationship with
the divine Ground, history becomes even more fully packed with the promise of personal
meaning and space becomes even more fully an hospitable home/place for the advancing Jesus
movement. But the issue is really more complex, and returning to it offers us the possibility of
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adding greater texture to the themes covered in this chapter. It will also likely bring greater
ambiguity to our proposals. But such would seem to be the way of reality.
Apocalyptic and Eschatology
“Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things
continue as they were from the beginning of creation!,” some were apparently complaining at
the time of Second Peter (3.4), one of the later New Testament writings. Earlier Paul himself
had to contend with similar concerns, for he counsels his Thessalonian community “not to be
quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us,
to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here” (2 Thes 2.2). Apparently Paul’s considered
view on this matter, after perhaps expecting the Lord’s return in his lifetime (1 Thes 4.17),
settled into thinking that Christ and his earthly work represent the “first fruits,” to be followed
by his later “coming” for “those who belong to him,” which will then be the signal that the
“end” will come (1 Cor 15.23-24). One notices in this perspective the absence of any precise date
(see also Mk 13.32; Mt 24.36). But the grumbling recorded by Second Peter indicates that not
everyone had come around to Paul’s more considered viewpoint. The experience of Jesus,
particularly in the light of the resurrection appearances and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
apparently gave some the impression that the victorious reign of God which Jesus had preached
was now so “present” that its futurity was soon to be a thing of the past. It would take some
time to sort things out in a more differentiated manner, and Paul’s considered view was a sober
assessment immensely aiding this effort of differentiation.
Paul, we might say, has eschatologized apocalyptic elements in the Jesus tradition. That
is, some of the expected acts in the typical apocalyptic scenario (suffering, struggle, death,
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resurrection, judgment, establishment of the victorious reign of God, etc.) are taken over by
Paul, but assimilated into and thought through in the light of Jesus himself and his own
resurrection vindication. Apocalyptic’s harsh dualism, which pits a new world against an
utterly corrupt old one, the elect against the reprobate, is ameliorated to some extent, any
precise time calculations are omitted, an anxiety stemming from a destructive alienation in the
world is relaxed by a sense of faith, hope, and love, and responsible action in the world in an
expectant manner is called for. Paul believes that what has come with Jesus is a fullness (Gal
4.4; Col 1.19; 2.9-10) which somehow prefigures the end/eschaton, but the manner in which this
will be worked out within the constraints of history remains rather mysterious: “For in hope we
were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we
hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom 8.24-25). Paul also, at his
most profound, has a sense of how the dualism of good and evil cuts across all, including
himself. It is not a question of simply good people in an apocalyptic battle against utterly
corrupt people. “For I do not do the good I would …”; the Spirit helps us in our weakness …”
(Rom 7.19; 8.26).
Paul is working with the already/not yet tension we noted earlier in Jesus’ proclamation
of the new community. Eventually he seems to sense its qualitatively new dimension of
fullness, that is, a new personalized relationship with God is “at hand.” But this personalism
that is at hand does not abolish the already/not yet tension. Rather, it transforms it into a
potential kairos. Some others, in the early period of the advancing Jesus movement, seem to
have lost, or nearly lost, all traces of this tension. Paul also seems to have become keenly
attuned to the kenotic nature of the reign of God mediated by Jesus, that is, it comes humbly, in
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a servant mode, appealing to our response, slow as that may be in coming. This reign is not
another of the many empires of domination. Jesus, Paul wrote, “emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave . . . he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death
on a cross” (Phil 2.7-8).
We recall the imperial style of Christology and soteriology developed by Eusebius (d. c.
340). We will not be surprised, then, to find that this carries its implications for the theology of
history. Referring to the Emperor Constantine’s building of the Savior’s church at the site of the
resurrection in Jerusalem, Eusebius suggests: “And it may be that this was that second and new
Jerusalem spoken of in the predictions of the prophets, concerning which such abundant
testimony is given in the divinely inspired records.”1 Eusebius, apparently, has a rather
complicated apocalyptic eschatology, in which Emperor Augustus’ Pax Romana was the
kingdom of peace spoken of by the prophets (Is 2.1-4; Mic 4.1-4), and the Emperor Constantine
and his heirs were “the holy ones of the Most High” (Dan 7.18) who would govern Rome, the
fourth kingdom (Dan 2.31-45), up to the final tribulation, which would bring the world’s
destruction and the last judgment. He followed Origen, apparently, in holding that immortality
would be a form of life in a realm beyond the cosmos, but he was apocalyptic in his other
perspectives. The final apocalyptic events just noted were to occur sometime between several
generations and several centuries after his own life, according to Glenn Chesnut.2
Eusebius is representative of the earlier apocalypticism noted in Second Peter and in the
early Paul, and he manifests its lingering appeal in the later Church. Irenaeus (second century)

1 Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, 3.33 (A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian
Church, 2d ser. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969], 1:529). The reference may be to Rev 21.2: “And I saw the holy city,
the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God …” (idem, n.1).
2 Glenn F. Chesnut, “Eusebius of Caesarea,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, 2:675.
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would offer another example, but a more cautious one. For example, he suggests that “Lateinos
has the number six hundred and sixty-six; and it is a very probable [solution], this being the
name of the last kingdom [of the four seen by Daniel].” He goes on to say that “the Latins are
they who at present bear rule …,” but he cautions: “I will not, however, make any boast over
this [coincidence].” He also prefaced this entire section with the caution that “it is more certain,
and less hazardous, to await the fulfillment of the prophecy, than to be making surmises …”3
Paula Fredriksen offers us one explanation of how these apocalyptic number
calculations emerged. First, we should note the biblical tradition “that with the Lord one day is
like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pt 3.8; Ps 90.4). If we combine
this with the seven days of creation in Genesis 1 along with the thousand year reign of the saints
promised in Revelation 20, we arrive at a 6000 year period (the six days of creation, each day
viewed as a cosmic week/age of the world of a thousand years), followed by the millennium of
a thousand year reign, which then brings on the final end. In one of his sermons, Augustine
writes, “Behold, from Adam all the years have passed,” some Christians of his time are crying,
for Rome had fallen in 410; he continues: “and behold, the 6000 years are completed, and now
comes the Day of Judgment!”4 Obviously different writers offered different dates. Fredriksen
writes: “Calculations for the year 6000 fell variously between anno domini dates of 400 to 500, the
latter prevailing in the West.”5
Origen (d. c. 254) offers us an example of how one can react to this misguided
apocalypticism through spiritualizing and even interiorizing the apocalyptic passages of the

3 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.30.3 (ANF, 1:559). “666” is the number of the apocalyptic beast in Revelation 13.18.
4 Augustine, Sermon 113.8, as rendered by Paula Fredriksen, “Apocalypticism,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed.
Fitzgerald, 51.
5 Fredriksen, “Apocalypticism,” 50, 51.
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New Testament. Joseph Trigg, for example, tells us “that there is not the slightest trace of
apocalyptic eschatology, the notion that Christ will in fact reappear to establish God’s reign on
earth, in Origen’s understanding of the kingdom of God, ‘the blessed state of the reason and
the ordered condition of wise thoughts.’”6 His commentary on Matthew follows suit,
psychologizing and allegorizing apocalyptic passages. Christ’s (the Son of Man’s) “coming on
the clouds of heaven” (Mt 24.30) can be taken to mean “his appearance to the perfect in their
reading of the Bible.” Christ’s two comings express his coming to the Christian beginners and
the Christians of more perfect spiritual attainment, respectively, by way of further example.
Trigg notes that Origen nowhere explicity denies “vivid apocalyptic expectations”; still the
practical effect is their individualizing and spiritualizing.7 Origen’s approach prefigures the
tendency of the Hellenistic Christian tradition of Alexandria to spiritualize biblical texts. The
reader may wish to refer back to our earlier comments on patristic interpretation of the Bible in
our second chapter (supplement for further study).
Origen’s approach brings out something of the qualitatively kairotic nature of
eschatology, that is, the present moment is a moment of new opportunity through grace. In this
way it has a certain attractiveness and relevance. As G. Filoramo notes, Origen’s perspective
should not be confused with a doctrine of the last things, although Firolamo thinks it commonly
is. Origen offers us, rather, an “immediate expectation of the end.”8 When eschatology
becomes simply a speculation about what happens to the individual after death (the “last

6 Origen, On Prayer, 25.1 (trans. John Ernest Leonard Oulton, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 2 [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1954], 289); Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-century Church (Atlanta:
John Knox, 1983), 162.
7 See Trigg, Origen, 212-13.
8 G. Filoramo, “Eschatology,” in Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. Di Berardino, 1:286.
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things”), then we have really begun to evaporate the eschatological tension, along with simply
individualizing it. But with Origen we can sense something of the tension in its kairotic
dimension. Still the cost is somewhat expensive, for the social, collective punch of apocalyptic
and eschatology, and their futurity, seem greatly missing.
In Eusebius’ case, we can sense something of the danger of a Christian imperialistic
triumphalism, along with an ecclesiology which is rather politically subservient. This seems to
have been the typical danger of the Church in the eastern, Byzantine Empire, although the
eschatological thrust of Eastern monasticism provided something of a dialectical balance and
critique of Byzantine caesaropapism. Irenaeus’ case seems more difficult. One wonders if in his
case it is not simply his “reverence for ‘apostolic tradition’” which causes him to hold on to his
speculations regarding the millennium (the thousand year reign of Revelation 20.4-5), as
Jaroslav Pelikan seems to hint.9
It is not easy to gauge just how difficult it was for the early Church to follow up on
Paul’s hints and work out a more differentiated eschatology. Justin (second century) seems to
have thought that his period was that of the millennium of Revelation 20, but he also seems to
have admitted that “many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians,
think otherwise.”10 This would indicate a largeness of mind willing to learn from the lessons of
historical experience. It may also be that the already/not yet tension was healthily maintained
by liturgy and creed, as Pelikan suggests, thus enabling a transition to a more differentiated

9 Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1: 124: “Irenaeus, with his reverence for ‘apostolic tradition,’ described in
glowing terms the transformation of the cosmos and the animals during the millennium; as his authority he cited
Papias, who was a man of hoary antiquity, had heard the apostle John (writer of the Book of Revelation), and had
been associated with Polycarp.” See Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.33.4.
10 Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 81, 80 (ANF, 1:240, 239); see Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1:125.
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eschatology with relatively little angst.11 We have already noted how the Creed of Nicaea and
Constantinople confesses the first coming of the incarnation and the second coming of
judgment at the end. “…the references to the ‘coming’ of Christ in the scraps of early liturgies
that have come down to us,” writes Pelikan, referring to the Apostolic Constitutions and the
Didache, would seem to affirm this. “When the ancient liturgy prayed, ‘Let grace come [or ‘Let
the Lord come’], and let the world pass away,’ its eschatological perspective took in both the
final coming of Christ and his coming in the Eucharist.”12
One loses the eschatological tension either by pushing the reign of God too far off into a
distant future, or by phantasizing that it is more present than it truly is. A view of eschatology
as simply a doctrine of the “last things” which we await tends toward the former, while
apocalyptic’s keen sense of imminence tends toward the latter.13 True hope resides in the
creative tension between both poles. Augustine would meet this standard in the West, when he
interpreted the millennium as a symbol for “the period beginning with Christ’s first coming,”
explicitly ruling out, as he wrote, “any reference to that kingdom which he is to speak of at the
end of the world …” He counsels: “It is vain, therefore, that we try to reckon and put a limit to
the number of years that remain for this world, since we hear from the mouth of the Truth that
it is not for us to know this.” In this period, the Church can be considered the “kingdom of
Christ,” in the sense that it is a mixed reality of sinners and saints, whereas the “kingdom of
heaven” is the final realm of the saints alone. “And so even now his saints reign with him,

11 Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1:126-27.
12 Ibid., 126, referring to Const. App., 7.26.5 and Didache 10.6.
13 A pure doctrine of the last things would be the notion that the eschaton simply happens later, without much
regard for how it qualifies our present existence now, personally, collectively, and even cosmically. In fact, the view
likely did not exist in such purity.
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though not in the same way as they will then reign; and yet the tares do not reign with him,
although they are growing in the Church side by side with the wheat.”14 The symbols of the
“city of God” and the “earthly city,” which govern his classic City of God, complexify this
schema of the kingdom of Christ/kingdom of heaven,” just noted. For the love of God (= the
city of God) is a force at work within and without the borders of the earthly Church, in a
mysterious way known only to God, although it is more forcefully at work within the earthly
Church, apparently. And likewise, the (inordinate) love of self (= the earthly city) is a force at
work within both the earthly Church and beyond its borders, although apparently a force not
equal in effect to the power of love of God.15
With Augustine, then, the tension between the already and the not yet of Jesus’ new
community (reign of God) is given a multilayered interpretation. The tension is an historical
one, namely, the earthly pilgrimage of the heavenly city as it realizes its predestined purposes
within history, encountering struggles with the opposed earthly city, on its way toward the
final realization of the kingdom of heaven. The already/not yet is thus a historical tension
between divine love and creaturely selfishness. That tension is, secondly, a communal one,
playing itself out within both the earthly church and within society (of all kinds). Thirdly, that

14 Augustine, City of God, 18.53; 20.9 (Knowles, ed., 914-15). The references are to Acts 1.6-7 and to the parable of
the wheat and the tares in Mt 13.24-43.
15 Ibid., 11.1; 12.1; 15.1, etc. (Knowles, ed., 429-31, 471, 595). John von Heyking, Augustine and Politics as Longing
in the World, Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001), is
suggestive on the interplay between the heavenly and the earthly cities, and offers a stimulating defense of
Augustine’s qualified endorsement of political action in a Christian epoch. Voegelin, in my view, seems rather to
think that Augustine basically or at least largely ignored the poltical realm, given his attention to and absorption in
the transcendental inrush of Christian revelation. See, for example, among others, Voegelin, The Ecumenic Age, 335,
or The New Science of Politics, 184. Voegelin uses the phrase saeculum senescens (“an age that grows old,” ibid.) as
characteristic of Augustine’s relative lack of interest in the world and politics. This precise phrase may be an
inversion of Alois Dempf’s senescens saeculum in his Sacrum Imperium: Geschichts- und Staatsphilosophie die Mittelalters
und der Politischen Renaissance (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1962), 119, 129. I have not been able to
find the exact phrase in Augustine’s works, as of yet.
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tension is a personal one, playing itself out in the mysterious depths of each individual, as she
or he through grace and free will is formed or deformed by the various possible objects of love
chosen on the pilgrimage. The Christological kairos, namely, the challenge of a personal and
interpersonal relationship with God through Jesus, is the decisive feature of this personal level
of the already/not yet tension. “ … in order to give man’s [sic] mind greater confidence in its
journey towards the truth … God the Son of God, who is himself the Truth, took manhood
without abandoning his godhead … As God, he is the goal; as man, he is the way.”16 Fourthly,
there is even a hint of the spatial dimension of the tension, that is, the pilgrimage occurs within
space, and not simply in an abstract, spiritual interior. In this regard, the crucial factor is the
symbol of the “city,” whether of God or of evil.17
Geography and the Jesus Movement
Augustine’s “hint” of the spatial dimension of Christian and human existence is an
appropriate place to offer some observations on this theme. Scholars usually stress the
temporal and historical insights of the early Church, given the role of historical consciousness in
messianic traditions like Judaism and Christianity, but as we recall, space cannot be separated
from time, and so there will likely be reverberations between them all along the line. The
already/not yet tension has its correlate in a Christian form of here/there tension. In becoming
flesh, the Divine valorizes the space upon which flesh dwells, and makes it into a home.18 The
Divine “dwelled among us” (Jn 1.14) and in so doing showed us a way to convert space into a

16 Augustine, City of God, 11.2 (Knowles, ed., 430-31).
17 Ibid., 11.1, for Psalms 87.3; 48.1,2,8; 46.4 (for the city of God) (Knowles, ed., 429).
18 The early Christian debate with Hellenism over the resurrection of the body, as against simply the soul’s
immortality, to some extent based upon a somewhat narrow view of the range of Plato’s thought, is a related
discussion over the incarnation’s valorization of space, for our bodies are our link with space.