Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  Paul’s Setting

  Saul of Tarsus lived in a world of intense eschatological expectation, rooted in Israel’s scriptures and heated to boiling point by political circumstances. Jewish life since the Babylonian exile was a story of hopes raised and then dashed. The hope was for Israel’s ultimate rescue (after an “extended exile”), and the ultimate glorious return of Israel’s God. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down”; “the glory of YHWH shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together”; “Then YHWH my God will come, and all his saints with him”; “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Isa. 64:1; 40.5; Zech. 14:5; Mal. 3:1). Israel’s God would return in person to sort everything out—to put the world right, and particularly, to put Israel right, by dealing with pagan oppression and rescuing God’s people from their grip. This powerful strand of Jewish thinking can be seen under the overall heading of “new Exodus.” All this is massively documented and should be uncontroversial.[1] It constituted the “sudden fulfillment of divine promise.” Saul of Tarsus came to believe that these promises had been fulfilled in the dramatic and unexpected events concerning Jesus and the Spirit.

  Within this world, the literary form sometimes called “apocalypse” served a particular purpose. Hope deferred may have sickened the heart, but it sometimes inspired the mind; and one writer after another wrote—whether like Coleridge because of actual dreams or like Bunyan because of literary choice—in a form which declared that, though the coming ultimate revelation was still delayed, a word from beyond, a vision of the heavenly realm and its mysteries, might be given to select mortals to encourage them ahead of the final great day, perhaps even to stir them to new ways of looking at their present circumstances, understanding the dark nature of present oppression, and grasping the sure promise of eventual deliverance. If the longed-for glorious presence of the Shekinah was delayed, and if (in particular) the dark forces of the non-Jewish world seemed to be all-powerful, there might nonetheless be ways in which, through prayer and study, glimpses might be granted, even in the present time, of heavenly truths, heavenly purposes, and perhaps, also eventual divine victory. The literary genre we call “apocalypse” was one way of reflecting or embodying this belief, whether or not, in this or that case, it was intended as a transcript of actual visionary experience. Thus, both (what we call) “mysticism” and (what we call) “apocalyptic” can be credibly located, within the ancient Jewish world, within the puzzlement, persecution, and dogged hope of the Second Temple period.

  The genre we have come to know as “apocalypse” is found in many cultures. But if we are to place Paul in relation to this kind of writing, or its supposedly specific content, we must focus on Jewish sources in particular: on the line from Ezekiel and Daniel through to 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, and within early Christian writing from certain passages in the gospels through to the book of Revelation and second-century texts such as the Shepherd of Hermas. When we speak of “apocalyptic” in relation to a Jewish or early Christian text, we must at the very least indicate that we mean to bring it into this orbit. (How odd it is, in passing, that people discuss “Paul and apocalyptic” without reference to Revelation or the Shepherd! If we want to investigate early Christian apocalyptic, and Paul within it, they might be obvious places to begin.[2]) The point of introducing “apocalyptic” as an explanatory or organizing category in New Testament studies, at least since Käsemann, was to locate it within a credible history-of-religions, and perhaps also theological, setting. Whatever form the proposal now takes, it must make sense within that Second Temple Jewish world.

  Marking out this literary territory does not, of itself, mean highlighting a distinct theology. Nor does the theology sometimes expressed in some “apocalyptic” writings need this particular genre. Most Jews of Paul’s day, and on into the high Rabbinic period long after “apocalyptic” had fallen from favor, distinguished “the present age” from “the age to come.” Most Jews, then and later, acknowledged the existence of non-human agencies, both good and evil. All ancient Jews for whom we have evidence believed that heaven and earth were neither identical nor separated by a vast unbridgeable gulf. Commerce between heaven and earth was thinkable, and the Jerusalem Temple symbolized, and might perhaps actualize, their ideal overlap. (Details of the Temple and its liturgical practices continued, of course, to be discussed for centuries after its destruction.) None of these beliefs is specific either to the literary genre we call “apocalypse” or to any “movement” that might deserve the name “apocalypticism.” The particular genre we know from Daniel, 4 Ezra, and the rest was one way among others in which these issues could be addressed. In other words, you did not have to write an “apocalypse” in order to talk about “the present age and the age to come,” or about the baleful influence of hostile non-human powers. Equally, if you were writing an “apocalypse,” you didn’t have to talk about those themes. Two-age discourse and the narrative of cosmic warfare and victory were neither necessary nor sufficient conditions for the presence of something which can, with historical basis, be called “apocalyptic,” and vice versa. Details about the promised future were naturally an important feature of such writings. But these works were concerned with many other things besides, as Christopher Rowland and others have demon-strated.[3]

  Referring to any of these elements as “apocalyptic,” therefore, simply begs the question. To refer (as some do) to suprahuman powers, believed by some to influence the course of this-worldly events, as “apocalyptic” powers is a combination of muddled thinking about the first century and subtle influence from our own (where the word “apocalyptic” is used as an arm-waving indicator of the enormous or terrible scale of, say, a natural disaster). Calling them “cosmic” powers may not be much better, since the word “cosmic” is itself used in a variety of ways, of which “non-spatio-temporal” or “suprahuman” is only one. Granted, we are here at the borders of language, and we may suspect that first-century Jews were as well. That is why they developed particular genres, to say in symbol and metaphor what ordinary language might struggle with.[4]

  One particular problem with our descriptions of ancient Jewish thought, and particularly with “apocalyptic,” centers on the word “dualism.” That word regularly misleads.[5] There is such a thing as radical ontological dualism, in which the present world of space, time, and matter is basically evil and in which another world—without space, time, and matter—is basically good. But that is not, so far as we can tell, how most ancient Jews characteristically saw things. There are indeed, within ancient Jewish writings, what may be called “dualities”: between, for instance, “the present age” and “the age to come,” which (as I noted a moment ago) was a distinction made as much by the Rabbis as by the writers of apocalypses. Paul himself, in Gal. 1:4, labels the “present age” as “evil.” But to call that statement “dualistic” (or to regard a belief in the existence of hostile powers as “dualistic”) can mislead us into forgetting that most Jews, Paul included, regarded the present world as, nonetheless, the good creation of the good Creator, and the present time as under the Creator’s sovereign providence. Part of the point of many actual apocalypses is to affirm this very point, in the teeth of apparently contradictory evidence.[6] If we today find it difficult to believe in divine sovereignty at the same time as saying (with, for instance, 1 John 5:19) that the world is “under the power of the evil one” or of the delegated agents of that dark force, that is our problem. The early Jews, and the early Christians, managed, not perhaps without a struggle, to hold those things in dynamic tension (e.g., John 19:11).

  Nor was the content of “apocalyptic” writing polarized over against other strands of Jewish culture.[7] People used to play off a supposed “apocalyptic” Jesus against a supposed “wisdom” Jesus (this was a favorite ploy of the “Jesus Seminar”), but this is a false antithesis. Insofar as we can isolate elements characteristic of “wisdom” or of “apocalyptic,” we find them regularly intermingled, as in the Scro
lls, the Wisdom of Solomon, the synoptic tradition, or the book of Revelation. A good deal of ancient Jewish literature, in fact, warns us against confusing genre and content, at this or any other point.

  Jewish “apocalyptic” literature, then, frequently affirms divine sovereignty over the history, not only of Israel, but of the wider world. Such writings often describe the long, dark, and puzzling purposes of the One God, purposes which can be mapped through devices such as the many-metaled statue in Daniel 2, the four beasts out of the sea in Daniel 7, or the sheep, the bull, and so on in 1 Enoch. The authors of these writings did not envisage the ultimate deliverance, if it were to come, as emerging from a steady crescendo of “progressive revelation” or immanent development. Any suggestion of such a developmental eschatology, even if dignified with the slippery term “salvation history,” is out of the question; though, as we shall see presently, there is something in the texts, both Jewish and Pauline, which can properly be named in that way, as Ernst Käsemann rightly saw. The strange, terrible, and often apparently chaotic events of history, into which deliverance would break as a fresh and cataclysmic act, were nonetheless under some kind of ultimate divine control, and the divine promises of ultimate deliverance, often coming at what seemed like the darkest moments, could be seen at least in retrospect as signs of that control, and of its covenantal focus (see below). Thus, “apocalyptic” texts regularly saw the present state of affairs, not as mere chaos, nor of course as constituting any kind of “progress” or “development,” but as a nevertheless divinely ordered sequence of woes or wicked kingdoms, symbolized by metals, animals, or monsters. The coming event would be a dramatic reversal in which, suddenly, the long, dark sequence would be over and the ancient promises would be fulfilled. But the sequence itself, though not in any way about “progress,” was all about providence. Articulating all this in a balanced way is, to be sure, quite difficult. That, no doubt, is why special literary forms were used for the purpose.

  My basic point here concerns false antitheses. Within the literary genre “apocalypse,” and within any putative movement labeled “apocalypticism,” it was normal to combine a sense that the present age was evil, dominated by wicked suprahuman forces, with an equal sense that Israel’s creator God was working his purpose out, not as a steady evolution, but with an inscrutable justice and timing, and that at the right moment, he would unveil, to an unready world, the shocking and sudden fulfillment of his ancient promises. The underlying doctrine of providence, so prominent in Josephus (to take an example from a quite different genre),[8] did not mean that one could read divine purposes out of observable historical events. When Josephus wanted to explain what God was really up to, he had to invoke his own supposed prophetic powers (e.g., War 3.405–7). Nor did belief in providence imply a steady crescendo leading to a fortissimo fulfillment. The apocalypses affirm a dogged trust that somewhere, somehow, even in the thick darkness, the one God was still in control, and would fulfill his seemingly impossible purposes at the proper time. But the phrase “at the proper time” was important. Once more, this had nothing to do with a linearprogress, an evolution or development. On the contrary, it would seem that the night was getting darker. When the dawn came, it would not be heralded by a long, slow twilight, but would burst suddenly upon a slumbering, unready world. Here is the first false antithesis to avoid: the idea that because the divine action will come suddenly and unexpectedly, it bears no relation to the ancient promises, or to the ultimate divine overruling of the dark history that precedes it.

  Nor do I find a major difference of theology between different putative types of apocalyptic, such that some might be “cosmic” and others “forensic.” This is a second false antithesis. The introduction of this supposed distinction (by my fellow essayist Martinus de Boer in his original dissertation) was linked explicitly to the debate between Bultmann and Käsemann, thereby, in my view, foisting an ill-fitting mid-century German polarization on to the ancient material.[9] Quite apart from the slippery and anachronistic nature of both the terms in question, we cannot fail to notice that the texts hailed as “cosmological” (including 1 Enoch) also foresaw a great final Assize (the “forensic” idea); while those hailed as “forensic” (including 4 Ezra) also foresaw the coming showdown with the forces of evil. (Paul’s letters as they stand, of course, include both.) It is not clear that any of the writers invoked on either side were addressing the question which de Boer puts to them—that is, whether the origin of evil lies with non-human evil powers (which must therefore be defeated) or with evil human deeds (which must therefore be atoned for), and hence, whether salvation comes through the defeat of evil powers or through the divine dealing with human sin and guilt. Even if there had been any merit in reading back into these ancient texts such a modern polarization (which looks suspiciously similar to that made by Gustav Aulén in his famous book Christus Victor),[10] the subsequent dichotomous use that has been made of de Boer’s (initially heuristic) categories[11] has made matters much worse, as we shall see presently.

  The third false antithesis which we must avoid—if, that is, we intend to talk about the actual history of belief and practice in the Jewish world of Paul’s day, and so to provide a credible historical context—is that between “apocalyptic” and “covenant.” The Jewish belief in divine “providence” went hand in hand with the persistent belief that the creator God was, more specifically, the God of Israel. The word “covenant” remains an accurate and convenient shorthand for this belief, held by most Second Temple Jews for whom we have evidence, and certainly, more importantly for our topic, by the authors of the actual apocalypses we possess. The “covenant” hope, allied to the underlying belief in providence, was brought into focus by the scriptural promises to Abraham, Moses, and David: the God who was hailed as the world’s creator, ultimate ruler, and final judge was Israel’s God. The coming moment when the previously inscrutable providence would suddenly erupt in a fresh act of judgment and mercy would be like the Exodus: after long years of unrelieved darkness, God would remember his covenant, and deliverance would appear. Closely allied with all this is “salvation history,” often attacked as radically incompatible with an “apocalyptic” reading of Paul in particular— though neither Käsemann himself, nor indeed de Boer, drew that conclusion from their more nuanced studies. The idea of “covenant,” and the correlated idea of “salvation history,” have been criticized by those who see them as encapsulating either a private soteriology (the “covenant” people distinct from the rest of the world) or an automatic or evolutionary revelation or salvation (a steady, linear development leading gradually to the goal). To those, I reply with Latin tags: abusum non tollit usum, and corruptio optimi pessima. The abuse does not remove the proper use; the worst is the corruption of the best. In fact, Käsemann, to whom appeal is often made in this connection, saw very clearly that there were indeed important strands of covenantal and salvation-historical thinking, both in Israel’s scriptures and in Paul’s retrieval of them. Whether his description of either, and his attempt to integrate them into his understanding of Paul, really worked is another matter.[12]

  Thus, to invoke “covenant,” as I have done in my writing on the Second Temple Jewish world, and on Paul in particular, is not to deny the presence or importance of “apocalyptic.” It is, rather, to contextualize it historically and theologically. In the same way, to invoke “apocalyptic,” as I am happy to do, is not to deny “covenant” or “history.” It is, rather, to explain that, in the first century, the covenant hope had been so long deferred that it was natural to choose, for the continued expression of that hope, a genre ideal for expressing secret advance revelations of the divine presence and purpose. Though Paul refers to such revelations, he did not choose that genre to express them. As we shall see, that was at least partly because he believed the decisive unveiling of the long-awaited divine rescue operation had already taken place.

  Was there, then, an actual “movement” which we could call “apocalypti
cism”? I doubt it. How many books in a particular genre does it take—spread over several centuries!—to make an “ism”? Did people think of themselves as belonging to such a body? Did other people speak of them in that way? Did anyone in the ancient world think in terms of different types of movement of which “apocalypticism” might be one? I am skeptical. When Josephus describes the four “philosophies” within the Jewish world, he makes no mention of this one (Ant. 18.12–25). The real roots of “apocalypticism,” I suggest, lie in the same place as those of many other “isms”: in the world of nineteenth-century idealism (that term being itself an example of its own blessed rage for categorization). But to probe further, we must turn from Paul’s context to our own.

  Our Own Setting

  If we are to understand the resonances of the word “apocalyptic” in today’s biblical scholarship, we need at least as much hermeneutical sophistication as when trying to understand the first century. I have written about this elsewhere, so here, need only summarize (risky though that is).[13] The relevant parts of the story begin in the German scholarship of the nineteenth century; I still find one of the most helpful accounts to be that of Klaus Koch in his book The Rediscovery of Apocalyptic. The original German title, Ratlos vor der Apokalyptik (“Clueless in the Face of Apocalyptic”) made the point: for much late nineteenth-century German scholarship, “apocalyptic” was the dark, dangerous mindset at the heart of Spätjudentum. Compared with the supposedly earlier “prophetic” strands of Jewish religion, far more congenial to the optimistic liberal mindset of the day, “apocalyptic” appeared as a negative, world-denying religion, abandoning hope for the present world and looking only for divine judgment on the wicked. Books such as Daniel and Revelation made little sense in a world which, drawing on Kant and Hegel, believed in social improvement (in some cases, in Social Darwinism), and had no historical sense of what the ancient “apocalyptic” writers were trying to do. Such writing represented, to them, a degenerate and sectarian retreat from the world. One can see a similar reaction in the so-called “Jesus Seminar” of the 1990s, who saw “apocalyptic” as the “bad” side of traditions about Jesus, representing a bombastic, judgmental attitude rather than the wise, savvy “wisdom” teaching characteristic (so they thought) of Jesus himself. No doubt, the bizarre and supposedly “apocalyptic” teachings in American fundamentalism made such a solution appear all the more attractive.[14] Thus, for some in late nineteenth-century Germany, and for some in late twentieth-century America, “apocalyptic” came to represent the wrong sort of religion, a religion so clearly visible as a separate entity that it could be dignified as an “ism.” Thus, “apocalypticism” was born, a hypothetical movement with its own worldview and theology.