Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  The mainstream tradition was therefore horrified at Albert Schweitzer’s portrait of Jesus as a first-century apocalyptic Jew. Instead of the wise, loving teacher of “the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of Man,” Jesus suddenly became remote, unappealing, a first-century fanatic followed by other first-century fanatics, all of them believing that the world was about to end, and all (including Jesus) dying disappointed. Schweitzer represented a would-be Christian version of Nietzsche, warning the upbeat nineteenth century that its easygoing optimism was based on quicksand. Unsurprisingly, most Jesus-scholarship looked the other way, not only for “religious” reasons (who wanted a “Jesus” like that?), but for political reasons as well: “apocalyptic” sounded too much like Marxism for comfort.

  But the horrific events of World War I sowed the seeds for the comeback of a post-Schweitzer “apocalyptic.” Karl Barth’s famous Romans commentary did not make “apocalyptic” as such a main theme, but its effect was the same: instead of the liberal belief in “progress,” with humans advancing their own cause and improving their own lot, God had to step in, vertically from above, and denounce the whole plan, breaking in with a fresh Word of judgment and grace. (Barth, himself suspected of being a Marxist, was and remained a sort of Calvinist. Elements in that combination remain powerfully attractive to many.) With the hindsight of nearly a century, we can see that Schweitzer and Barth were saying something similar, however different their details. Both were protesting in favor of a better understanding of Israel’s Scriptures. Both were envisaging the gospel as God’s sovereign intervention (“invasion”?) into a rebellious and unready world.

  By the middle of the twentieth century, the earlier sneers against “apocalyptic” had given way to a despairing re-embracing. Walter Benjamin, often cited at this point, had developed his own brand of messianic Marxism, a secular version of his native Jewish hope. If there was no divinity, no outside agency to bring the necessary upheaval, revolution would have to emerge instead from the immanent processes of history. But when that hope was thwarted, and with it, the parallel (and equally Hegelian and Darwinian) hopes of National Socialism, Benjamin rejected the possibility that “history” might lead anywhere except wreckage.[15] What Benjamin and others were rejecting, however, as in Käsemann’s famous angry response to Stendahl, was the kind of secularized Heilsgeschichte which many had embraced, on both sides of the political divide, in the 1930s.[16] There is no sign that either the embracers or the rejecters knew much about the ancient Jewish apocalypses.

  Käsemann invoked the category “apocalyptic” to provide a history-of-religions context for early Christianity, replacing Bultmann’s proposal of “Gnosticism.” He did this partly for historical reasons: he had seen that the gnostic sources did not support the hypothesis. But he also had theological, social, and political reasons: Käsemann, like Barth in some ways and Benjamin in others, had seen that immanent historical processes would produce, not utopia, but nightmares. Something quite different had to happen. But what?

  Käsemann’s placing of “apocalyptic” as “the mother of Christian theology,” meaning by that, that the first Christianity focused on “imminent expectation,” was a proposal not only about theology, but about history. The proposal stands or falls by whether or not it can produce a historically credible reconstruction and understanding of first-century Jewish “apocalyptic”; most specialists would say that, by that test, it falls. Käsemann’s view of “apocalyptic” was still far too colored by the older German ideas. That, indeed, was why it appealed: the first half of the twentieth century had demonstrated the dismal failure of the old liberal dream, including Bultmann’s version. The features which had previously made “apocalypticism” unattractive were the very things Käsemann wanted to find. But Käsemann, a serious historical critic, was not simply spinning ideas. He was proposing a history-of-religions setting. We can, of course, use words how we like, but we cannot invent a non-historical movement called “apocalypticism” and expect it to provide a firm historical basis for theories about early Christianity.

  That does not mean, of course, that Käsemann was completely wrong, or that we should return (as some now want to do!) to non-Jewish sources as the primary matrix for understanding early Christianity.[17] We need to do history better. But this has been made more difficult by the fact that, in the post-Käsemann flurry of “apocalyptic” studies, there are almost as many meanings for the word as there are exegetes using it. For Käsemann, it meant simply the imminent Parousia-expectation.[18] For Martyn, despite his homage to Käsemann, it means something very different: a divine “invasion” of the world that has already taken place in Jesus’ crucifixion.[19] For de Boer, on whose work Martyn claimed to rest, the original proposal was a hypothesis about possible tendencies (“cosmic” or “forensic”) within Jewish “apocalyptic eschatology.” De Boer was careful to note that the distinction was not absolute; that many texts contained elements of both; and that both were, in their own way, species of “apocalyptic.”[20] This fine-grained proposal has been oversimplified and distorted in subsequent discussions, and it has been assumed that an “apocalyptic” reading of Paul stands over against “forensic justification,” on the one hand, and “salvation history” or “covenant,” on the other hand.[21] This, as we saw, is strange, considering that the writers of actual Jewish apocalypses generally believed in the coming great Assize, and also in the providential ordering of history by the God whose covenant with Israel continued to give them grounds for hope. (It also gave them grounds for difficult questions, as with 4 Ezra; but the questions raised in that work are themselves signs of a strongly implicit covenant theology.) In particular, Douglas Campbell has absolutized the distinction between “apocalyptic,” on the one hand, and Paul’s “forensic” doctrine of justification, on the other. This would have horrified Käsemann, for whom Paul’s forensic justification was central.[22]

  It is not always easy to keep one’s bearings in this many-sided discussion. The eagerness with which some have heralded and promoted Martyn’s version of “apocalyptic” is an interesting phenomenon in itself. Martyn’s polarization of the main alternatives in Pauline interpretation looks remarkably like the either/or proposed, in relation to theories of Atonement, by Gustav Aulén, leading one to speculate about hidden but powerful faultlines within Western Protestantism.[23] These are indeed important questions; but invoking “apocalyptic” in favor of an Aulén-like reading of Paul will not help. Sometimes, this approach merely collapses into a newer, and supposedly historically rooted, version of the debates between Augustine and Pelagius, or between the Reformers and the Arminians (or, even, between Calvin and Luther). Sometimes, the main thing at stake seems to be grace itself, with “apocalyptic” being invoked as the instrument of that grace (the sovereign divine “invasion”): at this point, the word “apocalyptic” can seem, for some at least, to mean merely “Barthian.”[24] Not for the first time, a supposed technical term can become a blank check which those playing theological Monopoly can use as they please. This is precisely why we need history, and historical exegesis: to prevent the whole thing descending into a chaos where the real issues, theological, political, or whatever, are hidden behind the outward appearance of historical exegesis. All of which brings us, at last, to Paul.

  Paul the Apocalyptist?

  If “apocalyptic” is primarily a literary genre, then Paul is not primarily an “apocalyptist.” None of his letters looks remotely like Daniel, Revelation, or 4 Ezra. Granted, he sometimes employs imagery which reminds us of some of the Jewish “apocalyptic” works, as in the description of the Parousia in 1 Thessalonians 4, of the final judgment in 2 Thessalonians 1 and 2, the victory of the Messiah over all hostile powers in 1 Corinthians 15, or the renewal of all creation in Romans 8. Granted, too, that Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians 12 of being caught up into the third heaven; that he describes his Damascus Road experience in terms of the apokalypsis of God’s son; that he speaks of the gospel as the means whereby God’s
“righteousness” is “revealed” (ἀποκαλύπτεται); that he sees the “rulers of this age” being thwarted through their own crucifying of the Lord of glory; and that he writes of “new creation” as the key not only to Christian ontology, but also to Christian epistemology (2 Cor. 5:16–17). Does this make him an “apocalyptic” thinker? Does it make him a representative of something called “apocalypticism”?

  No. It simply makes him Jewish. Granted that there were many varieties of Jewish thought, life, and hope in the period, most Jewish writing of the period might comfortably include most of this list. To categorize such material as “apocalyptic” over against other hypothetical categories is to revert to nineteenth-century constructs, setting “apocalyptic” against “legalism” or prophetic insight, or, more recently, against “wisdom” or “forensic” categories, or against “covenant” or “salvation history.” Just as in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or the Psalms (all, of course, highly influential in early Christian writing), we find all these things together, not played off against one another. As with the earlier attempts to polarize constructs such as “Jewish Christianity,” “gentile Christianity,” “early Catholicism,” and “enthusiasm,” we should resist such blatant anachronisms, and the projection of modern Western antitheses on to ancient texts, as much as we should avoid perpetuating the older, misleading understandings of “apocalyptic” (even if, now, such views were seen as positive rather than negative!). Jewish thought and life was many-sided. Paul exactly reflects that pluriformity.

  However, we must readily acknowledge that much Pauline exegesis has long screened out the supposedly “apocalyptic” elements in his thought altogether, and that it is important to put them back, and indeed, to give them a central place. For that, we must be grateful to Käsemann, Beker, Martyn, de Boer, and others. But the challenge of producing a fully rounded account of Paul’s thinking and writing, highlighting elements sometimes forgotten, ought not to involve the heavy Sachkritik which privileges one “strand” and relativizes, or even rejects, others that supposedly conflict with the favored one. The question ought rather to be: How can we give an account of Paul in which previously forgotten themes and emphases, not least those highlighted with the modern label “apocalyptic,” are given their proper place?

  Part of the answer to this, which strangely has not featured in the school of supposedly “apocalyptic” interpretation which draws centrally upon the work of J. L. Martyn, is to recapture the ancient political dimension of “apocalyptic.” Most ancient Jewish apocalypses were decidedly political, offering symbolic narratives about the divine plan which gave coded encouragement to the oppressed, enabling them to see apparently chaotic and horrifying events within a different framework, and predicting the downfall not just of “cosmic” powers (in the sense of “suprahuman” entities), but of the actual pagan empires and their rulers. This is so well-known in relation (for instance) to the book of Revelation that it is surprising that the study of “apocalyptic Paul” and the equally vibrant contemporary study of “political Paul” have not made common cause. Attempts to separate out these two, for instance, by suggesting that Paul’s real target was non-human powers and that therefore he was uninterested in earthly ones, have not, in my view, proved successful.[25] Recent major studies of actual Jewish apocalypses, as opposed to hypothetical “apocalypticism,” strongly confirm this.[26]

  So, to the texts. Obviously, there is no room for detailed exegesis. I simply offer a sketch.

  If I had to sum up Galatians in three passages, I would choose the beginning, the end, and the middle. Chapter 1, verses 1–5, states that, in fulfillment of the divine purpose, Jesus “gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age.”[27] We cannot de-emphasize the “giving himself for our sins,” or suggest that this is a mere concession on Paul’s part to a view he does not completely share, since when Paul reaches the climax of the first two chapters (2:19–20), he makes this central (“the son of God . . . loved me and gave himself for me”). But nor may the “giving up for sins” obscure the larger purpose—the rescue “from the present evil age.” For Paul the events concerning Jesus, particularly his death “for our sins,” have launched the long-awaited age to come. These two cannot be played off against one another, as (to be fair) much older Pauline exegesis has done in one direction, and the recent “apocalyptic” interpretation has done in the other.

  The end of the letter makes the same conjunction. “Circumcision . . . is nothing; neither is uncircumcision” because “what matters is new creation” (6:15). This means what it means because of 6:14, which highlights the Messiah’s cross, through which “the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” The cross and the new creation go hand in glove; and the latter inaugurates the “new age,” which supplants “the present evil age.”

  The purpose of new creation, of being rescued by the cross from the present evil age to share in God’s new world, is unveiled in the middle of the letter (4:1–11) as the meaning of the Exodus-shaped covenantal rescue. Once we were slaves, says Paul, but God acted to redeem us, to make us his children and heirs, so that now, we have a new sort of knowledge, generated by God’s knowledge of us, in which we recognize the enslaving powers for what they are (“now that you’ve come to know God, or, better, to be known by God,” how can you turn back to the stoicheia?). How, in other words, could you think of going back to “Egypt”? This (like Romans 8) is an Exodus narrative. At its heart, echoing Gen. 15:16 (from the chapter expounded at length in Galatians 3), Paul says that the redeeming action came “when the fullness of time arrived” (ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου). We note that Paul uses χρόνος, not καιρός. He has in mind a temporalsequence, previously invisible. This again, of course, has nothing to do with immanent development or evolution, but rather, as in 1:4–5, with the divine purpose. Thus, as new-Exodus people, believers are to understand themselves as Abraham’s family, heirs according to promise (3:29).

  When, therefore, in chapter 1, Paul describes his conversion in terms of God’s “apocalypse” of his son (1:12, 16), this does not mean that we must abandon the ideas of divine promise, of the covenant with Abraham concerning his family and his inheritance. We should not mistake Paul’s use of a first-century Greek word for an allusion to a nineteenth-century theory. The covenant promises have been suddenly and shockingly fulfilled. Paul believes that this is the way in which the ancient Israelite vision of new creation itself is to come about, and with it, new knowledge, a new mode of knowledge. The Messiah’s apocalypse unveils the covenant purpose. Isaiah, frequently echoed in Galatians, says as much. Paul’s thinking remains Jewish to the core, however much his beliefs about Israel’s crucified Messiah have caused radical revisions.

  If this is true of Galatians, what of the Corinthian epistles? The whole of 1 Corinthians can be seen in the light of chapter 15, where the thoroughly “apocalyptic” doctrine of resurrection is expounded at length. In 15:20–28, Paul describes the inauguration of the Messiah’s rule over all opposing powers: he is already reigning, but not yet over death itself, the final enemy. This is the stuff of what some today call “apocalyptic,” and Paul expounds it through a complex interwoven exegesis of Psalms 2, 8, and 110: apocalypse, in other words, in service of messianic, and hence covenantal, theology. This produces a new-creational reading of Genesis 1, 2, and 3. The last Adam, the second Man, undoes the fault of the first, and so inaugurates, with his own risen body, the new creation itself. The resurrection of Jesus, symbolizing and embodying the new creation, was not detached from the ancient messianic promises. It was rather to be seen as their fulfillment, however shocking this may have been to Jews who demanded signs and Greeks who sought wisdom.

  That, of course, is the point of 1 Corinthians 1–3, one of Paul’s central statements of the new mode of knowing brought about by the Messianic revelation. God’s foolishness and weakness overthrow human wisdom and power, generating a new wisdom. For the
ancient philosophers (to speak very broadly), how you knew things was a function of what there was; that is, logic correlated with physics.[28] Because Paul believed that in the resurrection God’s new world had been launched, there was now a new mode of knowing: “we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery . . . the wisdom God prepared ahead of time, before the world began, for our glory” (2:7). The “rulers of this present age” did not, of course, know about it; otherwise, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. A new kind of wisdom had been let loose in the world, in sudden fulfillment of God’s ancient purposes. That is why Paul could speak later of the new knowing which was called forth by the divine “knowing,” and which took the form of love (8:2–3, closely parallel to Gal. 4:9; 13:8–13). This knowledge is still “partial,” because the eschatology is inaugurated, not complete. But it looks on to the completion as the fulfillment of what is already begun.