When Paul applies the word hilastērion to Jesus, designating him as the seal of the Ark of the Covenant and thus as the locus of the presence of the living God, the entire Old Testament theology of worship (and with it all the theologies of worship in the history of religions) is “preserved and surpassed” [aufgehoben] and raised to a completely new level. Jesus himself is the presence of the living God. God and man, God and the world, touch one another in him. The meaning of the ritual of the Day of Atonement is accomplished in him. In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away. Accepting the Cross, entering into fellowship with Christ, means entering the realm of transformation and expiation.
All this is hard for us to understand today; we will return to it in greater detail when we consider the Last Supper and Jesus’ death on the Cross, and we will try to understand it. Here our intention is simply to demonstrate that Paul has already completely absorbed the Temple and its sacrificial theology into his Christology. For Paul, the Temple with its worship is “demolished” with Christ’s crucifixion; its place is now taken by the living Ark of the Covenant—the crucified and risen Christ. If with Ulrich Wilckens we may accept that Romans 3:25 is a “Jewish-Christian faith-formula” (Theologie des Neuen Testaments I/3, p. 182), then we see how quickly this insight matured within Christianity—from the beginning it was known that the risen Lord is the new Temple, the real meeting place between God and man. Wilckens can therefore rightly say: “From the beginning, Christians simply did not take part in Temple worship. . . . The destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 did not therefore constitute a religious problem for Christians” (Theologie des Neuen Testaments II/1, p. 31).
Thus it also becomes clear that the great theological vision of the Letter to the Hebrews merely expounds in greater detail what in essence Paul had already said and what Paul in turn had found already substantially contained within the earlier ecclesial tradition. Later, we shall see that, in its own way, the high-priestly prayer of Jesus offers a similar reinterpretation of the event of the Day of Atonement and hence of the heart of Old Testament redemption theology, seeing it fulfilled in the Cross.
2. The Times of the Gentiles
A superficial reading or hearing of Jesus’ eschatological discourse would give the impression that Jesus linked the end of Jerusalem chronologically to the end of the world, especially when we read in Matthew: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened. . .; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. . . .” (24:29-30). This direct chronological connection between the end of Jerusalem and the end of the whole world seems to be further confirmed when we come across these words a few verses later: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place. . . .” (24:34).
On first glance, it seems that Luke was the only one to downplay this connection. In his account we read: “They will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (21:24). Between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, “the times of the Gentiles” are here inserted. Luke has been accused of thereby shifting the temporal axis of the Gospels and of Jesus’ original message, recasting the end of time as the intermediate time and, thus, inventing the time of the Church as a new phase of salvation history. But if we look closely, we find that these “times of the Gentiles” are also foretold, in different terms and at a different point, in the versions of Jesus’ discourse recounted by Matthew and Mark.
Matthew quotes the following saying of Jesus: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (24:14). And in Mark we read: “The gospel must first be preached to all nations” (13:10).
We see at once how much care is needed when making connections within this discourse of Jesus; the text is woven together from individual strands of tradition that do not present a straightforward linear argument but that must, as it were, be read in the light of one another. In the third section of this chapter (“Prophecy and Apocalyptic”), we will look in more detail at this redactional question, which is of great significance for a correct understanding of the text.
From the content, it is clear that all three Synoptic Gospels recognize a time of the Gentiles: the end of time can come only when the Gospel has been brought to all peoples. The time of the Gentiles—the time of the Church made up of all the peoples of the world—is not an invention of Saint Luke: it is the common patrimony of all the Gospels.
At this point we encounter once again the connection between the Gospel tradition and the basic elements of Pauline theology. If Jesus says in the eschatological discourse that the Gospel must first be proclaimed to the Gentiles and only then can the end come, we find exactly the same thing in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “A hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25-26). The full number of the Gentiles and all Israel: in this formula we see the universalism of the divine salvific will. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Paul, too, recognizes an age of the Gentiles, which is the present and which must be fulfilled if God’s plan is to attain its goal.
The fact that the early Church was unable to assess the chronological duration of these kairoí (“times”) of the Gentiles and that it was generally assumed they would be fairly short is ultimately a secondary consideration. The essential point is that these times were both asserted and foretold and that, above all else and prior to any calculation of their duration, they had to be understood and were understood by the disciples in terms of a mission: to accomplish now what had been proclaimed and demanded—by bringing the Gospel to all peoples.
The restlessness with which Paul journeyed to the nations, so as to bring the message to all and, if possible, to fulfill the mission within his own lifetime—this restlessness can only be explained if one is aware of the historical and eschatological significance of his exclamation: “Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).
In this sense, the urgency of evangelization in the apostolic era was predicated not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history: if the world was to arrive at its destiny, the Gospel had to be brought to all nations. At many stages in history, this sense of urgency has been markedly attenuated, but it has always revived, generating new dynamism for evangelization.
In this regard, the question of Israel’s mission has always been present in the background. We realize today with horror how many misunderstandings with grave consequences have weighed down our history. Yet a new reflection can acknowledge that the beginnings of a correct understanding have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep the shadows.
Here I should like to recall the advice given by Bernard of Clairvaux to his pupil Pope Eugene Ill on this matter. He reminds the Pope that his duty of care extends not only to Christians, but: “You also have obligations toward unbelievers, whether Jew, Greek, or Gentile” (De Consideratione III/1, 2). Then he immediately corrects himself and observes more accurately: “Granted, with regard to the Jews, time excuses you; for them a determined point in time has been fixed, which cannot be anticipated. The full number of the Gentiles must come in first. But what do you say about these Gentiles?. . . Why did it seem good to the Fathers . . . to suspend the word of faith while unbelief was obdurate? Why do we suppose the word that runs swiftly stopped short?” (De Consideratione III/1, 3).
Hildegard Brem comments on this passage as follows: “In the light of Romans 11:25, the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God, ‘until the full number of the Gentiles come in’ (Rom 11:25). On the
contrary, the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering (cf. Ep 363). . .” (quoted in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Winkler, I, p. 834).
The prophecy of the time of the Gentiles and the corresponding mission is a core element of Jesus’ eschatological message. The special mission to evangelize the Gentiles, which Paul received from the risen Lord, is firmly anchored in the message given by Jesus to his disciples before his Passion. The time of the Gentiles—“the time of the Church”—which, as we have seen, is proclaimed in all the Gospels, constitutes an essential element of Jesus’ eschatological message.
3. Prophecy and Apocalyptic in the Eschatological Discourse
Before we address the strictly apocalyptic part of Jesus’ discourse, let us attempt a summary of what we have seen so far.
First, we saw the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple and, in Luke, explicit reference also to the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet it became clear that the nucleus of Jesus’ prophecy is concerned, not with the outward events of war and destruction, but with the demise of the Temple in salvation-historical terms, as it becomes a “deserted house”. It ceases to be the locus of God’s presence and the locus of atonement for Israel, indeed, for the world. The time of sacrifices, as regulated by the Law of Moses, is over.
We have seen that the early Church was aware of this profound watershed in history long before the outward demise of the Temple, and we have seen that amid all the difficult debates over which Jewish customs needed to be retained and imposed on Gentiles too, there was evidently no dissent over this point: with the Cross of Christ, the era of sacrifices was over.
Moreover, we have seen that the nucleus of Jesus’ eschatological message includes the proclamation of an age of the nations, during which the Gospel must be brought to the whole world and to all people: only then can history attain its goal.
In the meantime, Israel retains its own mission. Israel is in the hands of God, who will save it “as a whole” at the proper time, when the number of the Gentiles is complete. The fact that the historical duration of this period cannot be calculated is self-evident and should not surprise us. But it was becoming increasingly clear that the evangelization of the Gentiles was now the disciples’ particular task—thanks above all to the special commission given to Paul as a duty and a grace.
From this perspective, it can be understood that this “time of the Gentiles” is not yet the full Messianic age in terms of the great salvation promises, but it remains the time of present history and suffering; yet in a new way it is also a time of hope: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12).
It seems obvious to me that several of Jesus’ parables—such as the parable of the net with good and bad fish (Mt 13:47-50), the parable of the darnel in the field (Mt 13:24-30)—speak of this time of the Church; from the perspective of a purely imminent eschatology, they would make no sense.
As a subsidiary theme, we also came across the instruction to the Christians to flee from Jerusalem at the time of an as yet unspecified profanation of the Temple. The historicity of this flight to Pella in Transjordan cannot be seriously doubted. While for our purposes this may seem a peripheral detail, it has a theological significance that should not be underestimated: their refusal to take part in the military defense of the Temple, through which the sacred place itself became a fortress and an arena for cruel military actions, corresponds exactly to the approach taken by Jeremiah at the time of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem (cf. Jer 7:1-15; 38:14-28, for example).
Joachim Gnilka emphasizes the link between this approach and the heart of Jesus’ teaching: “It is most unlikely that the Christian believers in Jerusalem took any part in the war. It was Palestinian Christianity that transmitted Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. So they must have known Jesus’ commandments regarding love of enemies and renunciation of violence. We also know that they did not take part in the revolt at the time of Emperor Hadrian” (Nazarener, p. 69).
A further key element of Jesus’ eschatological discourse is the warning against false Messiahs and apocalyptic enthusiasm. Linked with this is the instruction to practice sobriety and vigilance, which Jesus developed further in a series of parables, especially in the story of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25:1-13) and in his sayings about the watchful doorkeeper (Mk 13:33-36). In this last passage we see clearly what is meant by “vigilance”: not neglecting the present, speculating on the future, or forgetting the task in hand, but quite the reverse—it means doing what is right here and now, as is incumbent upon us in the sight of God.
Matthew and Luke recount the parable of the servant who noted his master’s delay in returning and, thinking him absent, made himself master, beat the servants and maids, and gave himself over to fine living. On the other hand, the good servant remains a servant, knowing that he will be called to account. He gives to all their due and is praised by the master for so doing: acting with justice is true vigilance (cf. Mt 24:45-51; Lk 12:41-46). To be vigilant is to know that one is under God’s watchful eye and to act accordingly.
In the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul explained in stark and vivid terms what Christian vigilance involves: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are walking in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living” (3:10-12).
A further important element of Jesus’ eschatological discourse is the reference to the persecution that lies in store for his followers. Here, too, the time of the Gentiles is presupposed, for the Lord says that his disciples will be brought not only before courts and synagogues, but also before governors and kings (Mk 13:9): the proclamation of the Gospel will always be marked by the sign of the Cross—this is what each generation of Jesus’ disciples must learn anew. The Cross is and remains the sign of “the Son of Man”: ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering.
Let us now turn to the strictly apocalyptic section of Jesus’ eschatological discourse: to the prophecy of the end of the world, the second coming of the Son of Man, and the Last Judgment (Mk 13:24-27).
What is striking here is that this text is largely composed of Old Testament passages, especially from the Book of Daniel, but also from Ezekiel, Isaiah, and other scriptural texts. For their part, these passages are interconnected: old images are reinterpreted in situations of hardship and developed further; within the Book of Daniel itself one can observe such a process of rereading certain passages as history unfolds. Jesus places himself within this process of relecture, and hence it is understandable that, for their part, the community of believers—as we saw earlier—reread Jesus’ words in the light of their new circumstances, naturally in such a way that the fundamental message remained intact. Yet the fact that Jesus spoke of the future, not in his own words, but by proclaiming the words of ancient prophecy in a new way is highly significant.
First, we must of course note the element that is genuinely new: the coming Son of Man, of whom Daniel had spoken (7:13-14), without being able to give him personal features, is now identical with the Son of Man addressing the disciples. The old apocalyptic text is given a personalist dimension: at its heart we now find the person of Jesus himself, who combines into one the lived present and the mysterious future. The real “event” is the person in whom, despite the passage of time, the present truly remains. In this person the future is already here. When all is said and done, the future will not place us in any other situation than the one to which our encounter with Jesus has already brought us.
In this way, the focusing of the cosmic images onto a person, who is now present and known to us, renders the cosmic context a secondary consideration. Even the question of time loses its importance: the person “is” in the midst of physically measurable th
ings; he has his own “time”; he “remains”.
This relativization of the cosmic, or, rather, its focusing onto the personal, is seen very clearly in the closing words of the apocalyptic section: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mk 13:31). The word—which seems almost nothing in comparison to the mighty power of the immeasurable material cosmos, like a fleeting breath against the silent grandeur of the universe—the word is more real and more lasting than the entire material world. The word is the true, dependable reality: the solid ground on which we can stand, which holds firm even when the sun goes dark and the firmament disintegrates. The cosmic elements pass away; the word of Jesus is the true “firmament” beneath which we can stand and remain.
This personalistic focus, this transformation of the apocalyptic visions—which still corresponds to the inner meaning of the Old Testament images—is the original element in Jesus’ teaching about the end of the world: this is what it is all about.
From this standpoint, we can understand the significance of Jesus choosing not to offer a description of the end of the world, but rather to proclaim it using words already found in the Old Testament. Speaking about things to come using words from the past strips these discourses of any temporal frame of reference. What we have here is not a newly formulated account of the future, such as one might expect from a clairvoyant, but a realignment of our perspective on the future within the previously given word of God, manifesting both the perennial validity and the open potentialities of that word. It becomes clear that the word of God from the past illumines the essential meaning of the future. Yet it does not offer us a description of that future: rather it shows us, just for today, the right path for now and for tomorrow.
Jesus of Nazareth: From His Transfiguration Through His Death and Resurrection Page 5
