For Wright, such views operate “within a tacitly Deist framework in which one believes (a) in an absent god and a closed space-time continuum or (b) in a normally absent god who occasionally intervenes and acts in discontinuity with that space-time continuum” (The New Testament and the People of God, 298). ↵
“Paul’s Apocalyptic Politics,” ProEccl 22, no. 2 (2013): 129–52, at 140 (my emphasis). The seminal piece is J. Louis Martyn, “Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Corinthians 5:16,” in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, eds. W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule, and R. R. Niebuhr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 269–87; republished as idem, “Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 89–110. ↵
Ironically, then, apocalyptic (at least in this sense) has become one of the very things Beker sought to oppose with his own brand of apocalyptic—a form of Neo-orthodoxy in which eschatology “signifies the transcendent, ultimate character of the Christ-event as God’s new self-revelation” (Beker, Paul the Apostle, 142). ↵
Martyn’s emphasis on the moral addressability of the Christian community is found especially in “Epilogue: An Essay in Pauline Meta-Ethics.” ↵
Galatians, 406n59. Martyn does trace the human plight back to Genesis 3 as well, but this much less prominent. For that theme, see J. Louis Martyn, “World Without End or Twice-Invaded World?,” in Shaking Heaven and Earth: Essays in Honor of Walter Brueggemann and Charles B. Cousar, eds. Christine Roy Yoder et al. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 117–32. ↵
J. Louis Martyn, “Galatians, An Anti-Judaic Document?,” in Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 77–84, at 82. ↵
Martyn, “Apocalyptic Antinomies,” 119. ↵
By now, it is clear why Congdon links Martyn with Barth and why, understood in these terms, he has ambitions of bringing Bultmann into the apocalyptic fold. One wonders though why Käsemann is excluded from their circle, given that homo religiosus was, clearly and frequently, in his sights. Granted he does not invoke “apocalyptic” to address these concerns—his preferred pin to burst religious pretension was the slogan “the justification of the ungodly”—but nevertheless, Käsemann was a prolific burster of pious bubbles. ↵
Martyn, Galatians, 104. ↵
For which, see Douglas A. Campbell, “An Attempt to Be Understood: A Response to the Concerns of Matlock and Macaskill with the Deliverance of God,” JSNT 34, no. 2 (2011): 162–208, at 180. ↵
The emphasis upon the way in which God’s victory is won through self-giving and his power demonstrated in weakness is also tempering enthusiasm for the military language. See, e.g., Susan Grove Eastman, “Apocalypse and Incarnation: The Participatory Logic of Paul’s Gospel,” in Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology: With and Beyond J. Louis Martyn, eds. Joshua B. Davis and Douglas Harinck (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 165–82, at 171; Richard B. Hays, “Apocalyptic Poiēsis in Galatians: Paternity, Passion and Participation,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 200–219, at 217n37. Campbell, of course, is not alone in finding the theological senses of apocalyptic catalogued above fruitful for ethical and political reflection, and as one might expect, the theological diversity can be developed in various political directions. For other reflection, see, i.e., Jennings Jr., “Apocalyptic and Contemporary Theology”; Nancy J. Duff, “The Significance of Pauline Apocalyptic for Theological Ethics,” in Apocalyptic and the New Testament : Essays in Honor of J. Louis Martyn (Eugene: Cascade, 2012), 279–96. Research into the significance of Jewish apocalypses as works of political resistance is also being acknowledged and embraced in this connection, e.g., Anathea E. Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). ↵
Rowland, The Open Heaven, 14: “To speak of apocalyptic, therefore, is to concentrate on the theme of the direct communication of the heavenly mysteries in all their diversity.” He is singled out for rare praise in Matlock, Unveiling the Apocalyptic Paul, 282–88. ↵
See, e.g., J. Louis Martyn, “Apocalyptic Antinomies in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians,” NTS 31, no. 3 (1985): 410–24, at 424n26: “We have noted above that in composing Galatians Paul employs at crucial points the noun ἀποκάλυψις and the verb ἀποκαλύπτω. It is strange that in the investigation of apocalyptic patterns in Paul's thought relatively little attention has been given to the Apostle’s use of these vocables.” ↵
John J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 9–10. ↵
Rowland, The Open Heaven, 374–86. ↵
“Revelation” as a theme by itself can hardly be restricted to apocalyptic literature, nor can an interest in “mysteries,” as Beale and Gladd’s survey of Jewish literature reveals. G. K. Beale and Benjamin L. Gladd, Hidden But Now Revealed (Nottingham: IVP, 2014), 47–55. ↵
See, e.g., the discussion in Bockmuehl, Revelation and Mystery in Ancient Judaism and Pauline Christianity, WUNT 2/36 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990), 138–41. ↵
Seeking to express the element of continuity and discontinuity, Wright speaks of Paul’s conviction that “the one God had acted suddenly, shockingly and unexpectedly—just as he had always said he would” (Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2:1411). ↵
Martyn, Galatians, 158. ↵
Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 81. For de Boer, Rom. 1:17–18 also speaks of this cataclysmic invasion. ↵
Beverley R. Gaventa, “The Singularity of the Gospel: A Reading of Galatians,” in Pauline Theology Vol. 1: Thessalonians, Philippians, Galatians, and Philemon, ed. Jouette M. Bassler (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 147–59, at 158–59. ↵
Gaventa, Our Mother Saint Paul, 82–83. ↵
Campbell, The Quest for Paul’s Gospel, 57n3. ↵
3
Apocalyptic as God’s Eschatological Activity in Paul’s Theology
Martinus C. de Boer
Apocalyptic Eschatology as the Expectation
of God’s Definitive Intervention
In publications devoted to “apocalyptic Paul,” I have consistently used the term “apocalyptic” as an adjective, modifying the noun “eschatology.” The focus of my research has been Paul’s “apocalyptic eschatology.”[1] But I am not averse to using the term “apocalyptic” also as a noun.[2] When I do, I employ it as convenient shorthand for this particular form of eschatology.[3]
In using the expression “apocalyptic eschatology,” I have profited from a threefold distinction propounded by Paul D. Hanson in an article published in 1976.[4] He distinguishes “apocalyptic eschatology” from an “apocalypse,” on the one hand, and “apocalypticism,” on the other. John J. Collins has propounded a similar distinction.[5]
The term apocalypse, for Hanson, designates a literary genre. This has become the accepted and ubiquitous academic use of the term, mainly through the efforts of Collins.[6] The paradigm of the genre is the NT book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse. In fact, the genre designation is derived from this book whose first word is ἀποκάλυψις, “apocalypse/revelation.”[7] It is not clear, however, whether the term here already functions as a genre designation[8] or simply as a description of the book’s content(s): “An ἀποκάλυψις of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John” (Rev. 1:1, RSV, 2nd ed.). The ἀποκάλυψις of Jesus Christ, it may be noted, concerns events that must soon occur.[9] As the rest of the book makes plain, these coming events are eschatological.[10]
Hanson uses the term apocalypticism to describe “the symbolic universe in which an apocalyptic movement codifies its identity and interpretation of reality.” “This symbolic universe,” he continues, “crystallizes around the p
erspective of apocalyptic eschatology which the movement adopts.”[11] Since apocalyptic eschatology is evidently the defining characteristic of an apocalyptic movement’s symbolic universe and is also given separate treatment by Hanson, a more appropriate definition of “apocalypticism” would be: “a social movement adopting an apocalyptic perspective on reality,”[12] or “a group having recourse to apocalyptic eschatology as its symbolic universe.”[13] It is important for our purposes to note that, for Hanson, apocalyptic eschatology is not confined to historical apocalyptic movements to the extent such can be traced; it can be embraced by different social groups in diverse circumstances.[14]
That brings us then to Hanson’s understanding of apocalyptic eschatology. He defines it as “a religious perspective, a way of viewing divine plans in relation to mundane realities.”[15] For understandable reasons, apocalyptic eschatology as a perspective or worldview has been closely associated with the book of Revelation—the Apocalypse— and other ancient literature sharing (at least some of) its generic features,[16] especially the so-called “historical apocalypses” found in such works as Daniel and 4 Ezra.[17] The eschatology found in Revelation is itself strongly indebted to Jewish antecedents and traditions, even if it goes far beyond them in its use of imagery and symbolism and has a specifically Christian focus.[18] Apocalyptic eschatology, whether Christian or Jewish, is assumed to bear at least a “family resemblance” to the eschatology found in the book of Revelation.[19] For this reason, among others, it has been called apocalyptic eschatology instead of something else.[20] Hanson notes that this perspective, or worldview, is not confined to Revelation nor to apocalypses generally, but that it can also find expression in or through other genres of literature (parables, hymns, letters, testaments). As a perspective, it is not genre-specific, it is not genre-bound.[21]
Hanson’s definition of apocalyptic eschatology as “a religious perspective, a way of viewing divine plans in relation to mundane realities,” is rather vague and needs elaboration. This Hanson, in fact, provides. He points out that as a religious perspective, early Jewish apocalyptic eschatology, which was Hanson’s particular area of expertise,[22] concerns God’s “final saving acts” and these final divine saving acts involve “deliverance out of the present order into a new transformed order” of reality. Hanson appeals in this connection to Isa. 65:17: “For behold, I [God] create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (RSV).[23] We may compare Rev. 21:1–2: “Then I [John] saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. . . . And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (RSV). The expected new order of reality will not be a rehabilitation or a reconfiguration of the present (social and political) order of reality (“this age”), as is generally the case in OT prophetic eschatology,[24] but its termination and replacement by something completely new (“the age to come”).[25] The new Jerusalem will replace the old Jerusalem.[26] The new order of reality will replace the old order of reality, and it will do so definitively, finally, and irrevocably, that is, eschatologically. This act of replacement will be initiated and brought about by God and God alone, which is to say that it cannot be initiated by human beings or effected by them.
The word “apocalyptic” in scholarly discussion—especially since the work of Johannes Weiss, and after him, Albert Schweitzer,[27] Ernst Käsemann,[28] and more recently, J. Louis Martyn,[29]—evokes this expectation of God’s own eschatological activity of putting an end to the present order of reality (“this age”) and replacing it with a new, transformed order of reality (“the age to come”). As Weiss wrote, in connection with Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God: “By force and insurrection men might establish a Davidic monarch . . . but God will establish the Kingdom of God without human hands, horse or rider, with only his angels and celestial powers”; “God himself must come and make everything new”; “The actualization of the Kingdom of God is not a matter for human initiative, but entirely a matter of God’s initiative.”[30] Weiss described such views as “eschatological-apocalyptic.” They are not just apocalyptic (matters of divine revelation) and not just eschatological (expectations of events concerning “the last things”), but both—what I would call (reversing Weiss’s word order) “apocalyptic-eschatological”! Apocalyptic (as I use the term) is a form of eschatology that expects God to come and establish a new order of reality for human beings.[31] That new order of reality will have a “heavenly” character because it will come from heaven, which is to say, from the realm of God (cf. Rev. 21:1–2, cited above). For that reason, this new world will be nothing like what has been seen before (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9: “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of a human being conceived”).
To adopt an apocalyptic perspective, then, is not “to concentrate on the theme of the direct communication of heavenly mysteries in all their diversity,”[32] but on the expectation of God’s own visible eschatological activity, what we may, I think, call the Apocalypse of God[33]—where the term “apocalypse” obviously does not denote a literary genre, nor does the term signify only divine revelation or disclosure of previously hidden information, but also, visible divine movement and activity on a cosmic scale.
In the view of Paul (but also in that of John, the seer of Revelation), this Apocalypse of God occurs in the event of Jesus Christ. So, Paul writes: “When the fullness of time came, God . . . .” God did something. He “sent forth his Son . . . so that he might redeem those under the Law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5; cf. Rom. 5:8; 8:3–4). As part of this same Apocalypse of God, “God sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal. 4:6). As Martyn has written, “The advent of the Son and of his Spirit is thus the cosmic, apocalyptic event.”[34] The difference here from ancient Jewish apocalyptic eschatology is the conviction that in the coming of Jesus Christ, God has inaugurated “the final saving acts” (to use Hanson’s phrase) that mark the definitive end of the old order of reality (“this age”) and its irrevocable replacement by the new order of reality (“the age to come,” which for Paul and John of Revelation is no longer solely a future expectation).[35] It is therefore a mistake to limit apocalyptic eschatology in Paul (or in Revelation) to the future acts of God (or Christ), that is, to the Parousia (1 Thess. 4:15; 1 Cor. 15:23) or the End (1 Cor. 1:8; 15:24).[36] For Paul (as for John of Revelation), apocalyptic eschatology involves an “already” and a “still more.”[37] The death and resurrection of Christ has inaugurated a unified apocalyptic drama that reaches its conclusion at the Parousia/the End (1 Cor. 15:20–26).[38] The Apocalypse of God in Jesus Christ covers events from the initial sending of the Son and his Spirit into the world to the transfer of Christ’s messianic sovereignty to God at the End (1 Cor. 15:23–28).[39]
God’s Apocalypse and the Human Plight
But now, the question arises: What makes God’s eschatological intervention necessary in ancient Jewish apocalyptic eschatology and in Paul’s christologically informed adaptation?[40] Why, in other words, is it that human beings are not capable of putting an end to the old order of reality (“this age”) and replacing it with a new one (“the age to come”)?
The answer is that “this age” is characterized, above all else, by death.[41] The term “death” is applied not only to the physical demise of human beings (bodily death), but also (in a metaphorical extension) to sinful behavior (moral or spiritual death) and to damnation or perdition (eternal or eschatological death).[42] In all these usages, death signifies separation from God and from life, which is understood to involve being in the presence of God and there acting according to God’s will. A presupposition of this picture is that human beings are incapable of doing anything about death. Death signifies the end of all human possibilities and hopes.[43] The understanding of “this age” as marked by death (irremediable separation or alienation from God) explains why there is no continuity between “this age” and “the age
to come.” It is only God who can bring life out of death, something out of nothing (cf. Rom. 4:17b), and for that reason, there is no remedy for the human plight apart from God’s own intervention. It is also for this reason that the resurrection of the dead, however it may be conceived anthropologically and whatever its scope may be, is an apocalyptic event. It is in fact, soteriologically speaking, the apocalyptic event, for through it, God rectifies what has gone wrong with the human world, and does so once and for all. Without this divine intervention, physical and moral death are tantamount to eternal death.
There are two basic and competing explanations in the relevant sources for the human plight (death in its threefold form), and thus also for the solution to this situation. In the first explanation, represented especially by 1 Enoch 1–36 (cf. also chs. 37–71), the human plight is attributable to evil angelic powers (Satan and his minions). These angelic powers are (ultimately) responsible for human sinfulness (idolatry in particular) and its primary consequence, the violent death of those who seek to acknowledge God’s rightful sovereign claim on the world. In the second explanation, represented especially by 2 Baruch (cf. also 4 Ezra), human beings are themselves responsible for their plight (cosmological powers play no role). All human beings beginning with the first, Adam, have sinned, and thus deserve the death that overcomes each and every human being.
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