Jesus Christ and History by George E. Ladd 1963

\ 5 ~ I V P Series in Contemporary

Jesus
Christ
and
History
by'
George Eldon Ladd
Do es hi story mean anyt hing? Are plan and pur pose dis cernibl e
in its ongoing course? Or does Albert Camus refer apt ly to "t he
savage, forml ess movement of history"?
What is Cod's relation to history? Does the Eternal invade the
temporal? Can th e Absolute be known in historical rel at iviti es?
Must God break into history?
According to the aut hor, "The pu fl)ose of t his little book-is to set
fort h t he biblical view of God and his tory and to expound the role
of the second coming of Christ in thi s -bihlicul per specti ve,"
In thus relating hist ory and escha tology, Dr. Ladd deals wit h a
problem that is crucial for th e Juistian and the world. As Dr.
Bromilev writes in the preface to t his little book : " It is indeed a
tract for th e times, coucent ratin r the fruits of biblical and theo-
lo!!ical study and applying them to th e needs of the hour, which
are busicnl lv the needs of everv human hour. "
. . ~ - - - - - _ . __ . ~ - -
JESUS CHRIST AND HISTORY
IVP Series in Contemporary Christian Thought
Christianity and Philosophy by Dr. Arthur F. Holmes,
Director of Philosophy, Wheaton College
EmU Brunnef': An Introduction to the Man and His
Thought by Dr. Paul K. Jewett, Associate Professor of
Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary
Christianity and Aesthetics by Dr. Clyde S. Kilby,
Professor and Chairman, Department of English,
Wheaton College
Christianity and Sex by Dr. Stuart Barton Babbage,
Professor Elect of Christian Apologetics, Columbia
'Theological Seminary; Principal, Ridley College, Mel-
bourne; formerly, Dean, St. Andrew's Cathedral, Syd-
ney, and St. Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne
An Interpretation of Karl Barth by Dr. Kenneth S.
Kantzer, Professor of Bible, Chairman of the Division
of Bible and Philosophy, Wheaton College
H you wish, you may enter a subscription for the series,
so that you may be sure to receive, on approval, each
new booklet as it is published. Write Inter-Varsity
Press, 1519 North Astor, Chicago 10, Illinois.
Jesus
Christ
and
History
by
George Eldon Ladd
ProfessM of Biblical TheolDgy
Fuller TheolDgical Seminary
Inter-Varsity Preas Chicago 10
Library of Congress catalog cardnumber: 68-8556
Copyright 1963 by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship,
Chicago 10. All rights reserved. No part of this booklet
may be reprodwed in any form whatever (except for brief
qf.lOlations in reviews) without written permission of
Inter-Varsity Preu.
Unle88 otherwise noted, Scripture quotations Me from the Be-
oised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946 and 1 9 5 ~
by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council
of Churches, and used by permilBion.
The quotation on pages 10 and 11 from John Wick BOf.OfI'tIJ3.
Prophetic Realism and the Gospel, copyright 1955, W. L.16ft..
kina, is used by permi88ion of the Westminster Pr888.
Cover design by Jack Sidebotham
Printed in the united States of America
Preface
ONLY a few decades ago the problems of history and
eschatology might have seemed remote from each other.
Eschatology was a final chapter in dogmatic theology
which to many bore little relation to the actual march
of historical events. Or it was a special development in
the biblical world which could excite the detached and
often cynical interest oaly of a few specialists. Or it was
a preserve of Bible students whose historical interest
lay in the "prophetic" interpretation. of current events
or the construction of a final chronology.
Today, however, the situation is very different. By a
strange and fruitful interaction of theological develop-
ment and actual historical events, the problem of escha-
tology has become a crucial one both for the Christian
world and the world at large. The human story has
been and has had to be, reconsidered in an eschato- ,
logical light.
Many forces and factors have combined to bring
about this result. In the theological world, it is the
product of a new and more genuinely historical study
of the Bible, and of an accompanying criticism of the
humanistic optimism which so often passed for Christi-
anity prior to the first world war. In the world of his-
torical development, it is the product of the catastrophic
[v
EX LIBRIS ELTROPICAL
PREFACE
Contents
60
7
50
1
16
. 27
SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS.
IV. The Unfolding Biblical Perspective .
V. The Second Coming and the Present Lordship 45
of Christ.
.
VI. The Second Coming and History.
1. The Philosophy of History .
II. The Second Coming of Christ in Debate .
Ill. The Biblical Presuppositions
events of the century which have made nonsense of the
Liberal reading of history and demanded a more au-
thentic Christianity in place of "de-eschatologized"
presentations.
The point is that both theology and life have put to
us afresh, and in the acutest possible form, the problem
of the meaning of history. They have put this question
in such a way that, if we are to escape either the scepti-
cism of futility or the illusion of Marxist apocalyptic,
only an eschatological solution will suffice.
The gospel is this eschatological solution. Thisis the
theme, and the significance, of the present book. This
is why it merits the most urgent and diligent attention
of readers. It opens up for us an eschatology which is
evangelistic rather than esoteric. It claims us for the
only truly biblical, and the only truly relevant, message
of the reconciling action of God centered in Jesus
Christ. It is indeed a tract for the times, concentrating
the fruits of biblical and theological study and applying
them to the needs of the hour, which are basically the
needs of every human hour.
GEOFFREY W. BROMILEY
Professor ofChurch History
Fuller Theological Seminat'Y
vi]
[vii
I. The Philosophy of History
THE PHn.JpPIAN JAlLER asked Paul, "What must I do
to be saved?" (Acts 16:30). Today the question has as-
sumed a new form: "Is there any salvation for the hu-
man race?" For modem man, the sense of being lost
seldom focuses on the fear of losing heaven after death;
it consists rather of a sense of the meaninglessness of
present existence, of the emptiness of life. This feeling
of personal futility is but the individual and personal
expression of the loss of meaning in history as a whole.
To many, living seems without significance because
history itself appears to lack purpose and destiny.
What is the meaning and goal of history? No more
important question can be asked today than that. The
form of the contemporary question is a modem one.
Outside of the Hebrew-Christian tradition, the ancient
world ignored the issue. In ancient Semitic religions,
the pagan gods were deities, known in and through the
processes of nature and more or less identified with
these processes. The great Greek thinkers sought for
meaning in the realm of ideas rather than in the flowof
history. Hesiod saw a process of degeneration in his-
tory from a golden to an iron age. Plato looked upon
the course of time as a series of cycles, each of which
begins through the activity of a creative absolute as a
[1
IVP SERIES I CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
Golden Age and deteriorates under the hand of Fate;
following its destruction, the absolute starts another
cycle. Aristotle noted the circular movement of the
firmament and concluded that the necessary coming-
to-be of everything was a circular motion. Theo Preiss
goes so far as to say that, with few exceptions, all the
known metaphysical systems imply or profess a cyclical
vision of time" (Life in Christ, p. 63). The great Greek
and Roman historians, Herodotus, Thucydides, Po-
Iybius, Livy, and Tacitus believed that the lessons of
the past could give wisdom for the present; but none of
them found a purpose or goal in history.
The Middle Ages were dominated by a Christian
philosophy of history that stemmed from Augustine's
City of God. This classic was Augustine's apology for
the Catholic church standing over against the decaying
Roman empire. These two great societies, the religious
and the secular, were viewed as the city of God versus
the city of men. The city of God, consisting of all true
Christians, has its visible expression in the Catholic
church, and is to be supreme over the city of men. In
fact, Augustine interpreted the millennial rule of Christ
in Revelation 20:4 as the present reign of Christ through
the church in the world. Since the church was the
medium of Christ's actual reign in the world, it must be
supreme over all human institutions and demand sub-
mission of the city of men.
The rise of the modem scientific outlook rejected all
attempts to understand history in terms of the Christian
faith, insisting that the study of history should be ap-
proached with pure objectivity. The scientific study of
2]
history claimed one concern: to discover the facts as
they actually happened, freed from dogmatic and ec-
clesiastical interpretations. However, such dedication
to facts became itself an interpretation of history, for it
demanded that truth must be sought elsewhere than
in history. As Lessing put it, "The accidental truths of
history can never become the proof of necessary truths
of reason." Truth must be absolute and unchanging;
history by definition has to do with the relative and the
contingent. Therefore one must seek for truth in the
sphere of reason or human spirit, not in the ceaseless
flux of history.
Hegel attempted to understand all history in terms
of mind or reason. The real is the rational, and mind is
at work throughout the universe in an evolutionary de-
velopment. Thus history is the history of mind or spirit
unfolding itself through a rhythmic process of opposing
forces which ever emerge into new syntheses. Karl
Marx reversed Hegel's view of reality by making matter
rather than mind or spirit the only reality; but he bor-
rowed Hegel's dialectical principle of struggle between
conHicting forces producing new syntheses to fashion
a materialistic view of historical evolution, the goal of
which is the dictatorship of the proletariat in a classless
society.
In the nineteenth century especially in Germany,
many Christian historians tried to apply a rigid sci-
entific historical method to the study of the Bible. As
a result, they found the truth of the gospel, not in the
events or movement of history, but in the religious
consciousness or in universal values. Adolf von Harnack
[3
IVP SERIES I CONTEMPORARY C H R I ~ T I A N THOUGHT JESUS CHRIST AND HISTORY
God has done or will do in history; it is something God
does in my present historicity. The cross of Christ
means my death to myoid life; His resurrection means
myresurrection into the new life of authentic existence.
Here alone can meaning be found-in the events of
my historical existence (Geschichte).
Followers of Bultmann feel that he has gone too far
in severing the existential encounter (Geschichte) from
the historical Jesus (Historie ) . They are therefore
now engaged in a new quest for the historical Jesus,
using new concepts of history. They refer to Colling-
wood, who has argued that history has an outside and
an inside. Objective positivistic lllstory is concerned
only with the outside. A deeper dimension belongs to
the inside of events. Thus the thought expressed in an
event is more important than the event itself, and the
historian must seek to experience afresh the thoughts
embodied in past events. Historical knowledge is the
knowledge of what mind has done in the past, and the
historian must try to reenact the past in his own mind.
By the use of such concepts of history, the "post-
Bultmannians" are trying to recover the historical
Jesus, who will be relevant for modem faith, by dis-
covering in him the same concept of existence which
they find in the gospel.
In these modem interpretations of the gospel,
whether Harnack's liberalismor Bultmann's existential-
ism, the second coming of Christ can play no possible
role. Harnack considered such apocalyptic ideas to he
the husk of Jesus' first-century Jewish environment,
[5
IVP SERIES / CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
which the prophet of necessity used to convey the true
kernel of the eternal gospel. Modem men must strip
off the husk and preserve the gospel.
For the existential interpretation, the essential is
alone that which happens in my existence. The nones-
sential includes all of the biblical accounts of the al-
leged objective acts of God in history, including the
accounts of the incarnation, the resurrection, and the
second coming of Christ. Such alleged events are
mythological in character; therefore the gospel must be
"demythologized"; i.e., it must be relieved of this bur-
den of mythological acts of God, not Simply by reject-
ing out of hand such concepts as did liberalism, but
by seeking out the idea of existence which they reflect,
By the use of this idea of existence, the gospel is pre-
served, freed fromits first-centuryfreight of mythology.
When we turn from this survey of modem ideas of
history to the Bible's view of history, we must bestruck
by the fact that the Bible constantly looks both back-
ward and forward. In the Old Testament Israel c0n-
stantly looked backward to God's deliverance from
bondage in Egypt; but she also looked forward to the
coming of God's kingdom. The New Testament looks
back to Christ's death and resurrection; but it also
looks forward constantly to His second coming. The
question which we must ask is, therefore, a twofold
question: What is the Bible's view of history, and what
is the meaning of the second coming of Christ in this
historical perspective? Is the second coming of Christ
essential or unessential in the biblical view? Under-
lying these questions is an even more profound QUe5-
6]
tion: What kind of a God is the God of the Bible? Is He
the Lord of history who works in history, and who has
a goal for history? Or is He a God who is known only as
He speaks to individual men? The purpose of this little
book is to set forth the biblical view of God and history
and to expound the role of the second coming of Christ
in this biblical perspective.
II. The Second Coming of Christ
in Debate
APPROACHING THE SUBJECT of the Bible's view of the
goal of history, we find biblical scholarship engaged in
a livelydebate about the meaning of the second coming
of Christ. In fact, for the past fifty years New Testa-
ment theology has struggled to know what to do with
the New Testament teaching of Christ's coming. We
have already seen that the liberalism of scholars like
Harnack was able to strip away such apocalyptic 1 no-
tions with no sense of loss. Harnack felt that the kernel
of the gospel could be safely preserved without the
1 "Apocalyptic" is a technical term designating the kind of escha-
tology which- conceives of God's kingdom as coming from outside of
histOry, by a cosmic act of God that disrupts the present order and
inaugurates the final perfect order. "Eschatology" is a more compre-
hensive term which includes all ideas about the final destiny of both
the individual soul and the human race.
[7
husks of eschatological concepts. Jesus was reduced to
an ethical teacher compatible with nineteenth-century
standards.
However, this idealized picture of Jesus was shattered
by the work of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer is un-
questionably one of the greatest minds and noblest
humanitarians of our century. One of the areas of his
fame is theology. He has given the world an interpreta-
tion of Jesus which has made it impossibleto strip away
the role of eschatology in his teaching, but he has done
it in such a way as to undermine the confidence of
many in the historical foundations of the Christian
faith.
Schweitzer interprets Jesus, not as the incarnate Son
of God, but as a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who
came to his own people to warn them that God's judg-
ment was about to fall, that the end of the world was
about to take place, and that human history was about
to be cut off in a great apocalyptic conHagration. Jesus
conceived his mission to be that of proclaiming the
imminent end of the world and rousing Israel to re-
pentance to be ready for the coming kingdom. He did
not come to tell men how to live in this world. He came
only to warn them that time had run out and to pre-
pare them for the imminent inbreaking of God's king-
dom. This end did not occur. History did not end. The
kingdom did not come. God did not act. Jesus died
upon the cross with a plaintive cry of frustration and
despair on his lips: "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). He was, in short, a
deluded Jewish fanatic who died a martyr to his own
8]
fanciful delusions. Schweitzer concludes his famous
study by saying that the historical Jesus, the man who
actually lived and taught in Palestine, is of no help to
modem man, but is an offense to modem religion be-
cause his views were completely alien to modem con-
cepts of history.
Several theologians have attempted to meet this
problem by reinterpreting eschatology, including the
doctrine of Christ's second coming, in terms which
would be acceptable and meaningful to twentieth-
century man. C. H. Dodd has given us "Realized
Eschatology." The gospel is indeed eschatological;
eschatology, however, denotes not the last things but
the ultimate things. Eschatology is concerned with re-
ligious finality, not with the temporal end. In the mes-
sage, person, and work of Christ, all the Old Testament
prophets' promises of a redeemed society are realized.,
but in radically reinterpreted form. The real meaning
of eschatology is discovered in terms not of the future
but of the eternal. The kingdom of God is not an order
of existence which stands at the end of history; it lies
altogether beyond history, above history, for it belongs
to the eternal, not the temporal. It is the Absolute, the
"whollyother." In the "eschatological"events of the gos-
pel, the eternal has entered into the temporal; the
"wholly other" has entered into time and space. The
biblical terminology about the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of God and coming with the clouds is
not meant to be taken literally. It is a symbolical way
of describing suprasensible, suprahistorical realities,
which in Christ have become available to men living in
[9
time and space. There can be no future "coming" of
the Son of Man, for there is no before or after in the
eternal order. Eternal realities cannot be confined in
the categories of time.
An influential American theologian, Professor John
Wick Bowman, has given us an interpretation of es-
chatology which he calls Prophetic Realism. God's
kingdom is the rule of God in this world on the planeof
history. This note resounds again and again. In Bow-
man's view, the apocalyptic perverts the biblical mes-
sage, for it relegates the kingdom of God to a realm
outside of or beyond history. He is equally critical of
all nee-orthodox theologians whose view of revelation
will not let them conceive of God working within his-
tory; Any theology which presents God as "wholly
other," standing over against man rather than entering
into dialogue with man, Bowman describes as "apoca-
lyptic pessimism." Albert Schweitzer's altogether futur-
istic interpretation of eschatology is also "apocalyptic
pessimism," for it, like nee-orthodoxy, cannot conceive
of the kingdom of God on the plane of history.
Schweitzer places the kingdom beyond history; neo-
orthodoxy places it above history. Bowman places it
within history.
Bowman's interpretation of the end of history is ex-
pressed in eloquent, almost poetic words. "There will
be an end to history because its stage will be no more.
The theater bums down; so the actors wrap themselves
in their cloaks and go homel Homel-That is exactly
where they do go. Home for the believer is where God
is; home stands for fellowship with God." (Prophetic
10]
Realism and the Gospel, P: 270). This view needs no
second coming of Christ. One day, human history will
end, for the stage of history-the earth-will be no
more. The redeemed will leave the earth to spend eter-
nity with God. This sounds very much like a Greek con-
cept of immortality.
The most influential continental reinterpretation of
eschatology is that of Rudolf Bultmann. Although he
has now completed his active teaching career, Bult-
mann's views are just beginning to make a strong im-
pact on the En;lish-speaking world. We have already
seen that Bultmann considers eschatological ideas of
the coming of Christ to establish his kingdom to be
mythological and insists they must be "demytholo-
gized." To Bultmann, the term eschatology does not
mean the final accomplishment of the will of God either
at the end of or within human history. It designates,
rather, the realization of the true meaning of personal,
human existence. Eschatology, which traditionally has
dealt with the "last things" in terms of the human race,
refers rather to that which has ultimate meaning for
individual existence. In the eschatological experience
of salvation, the individual is brought to the end of his
old world and ushered into a new world that is one of
complete openness to God. God is experienced in
terms of one's own truest existence. As to the future of
human history, Bultmann is agnostic (see p. 4). The
second coming of Christ is not an event that gives
meaning to the course of history. Meaning is to be
found only within the individual's "eschatological"
experience. The idea of a Heavenly Being coming to
[11
IVP SERIES / CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN THOU,CHT
bring history to its end (the second coming of Christ)
belongs to a mythological world view that modem
man cannot accept. The truth embodied in this escha-
tological mythology must be reinterpreted in terms of
individual eschatological experience. This process of
biblical mythology is called "demytholo,
glzmg.
When we tum to more orthodox theologians to ask
meanin? second coming of Christ and
role m the BIbles VIew of history, we are again
dismayed by the diversity of interpretation.
The hope of Christ's coming has too often become a
subject of controversy and debate within the church.
Orthodox theologians frequently have been more con-
cerned with the order of events that will attend the
return of the Lord than with the fact itself and its role
in the biblical view of history. Several different views
may be identified. One of the oldest forms of eschato-
logical expectation is found in Irenaeus (cir. A.D. 2(0),
whose writings contain the first extensive extant inter-
pret.ation.of the Christian hope. The second coming of
Christ will not bring about the immediate end of
earthly existence. It will be followed by a final era of
human history, when the kingdom of Christ will be
manifested in the world for a thousand-year period
before the Bnal consummation. This so-called "millen-
nial" 2 interpretation is based on Revelation 20, and the
thousand-year reign of Christ with His saints in Revela-
.20:4 is understood to refer to a literal period
WIthin human history after Christ's return. Only at the
2 "Millennium" means a thousand years.
12]
end of the millenniumwill the final consummation take
place. Only then will death and evil be destroyed and
the present order of existencereplaced by a new heaven
and a new earth. This view has come to be known as
premillennialism, for it anticipates the return of Christ
before His millennial kingdom.
A modem variant of this view interprets the millen-
nial reign of Christ primarily in terms of Israel rather
than the Church. This view is called dispensationalism.
It holds that there are two peoples of God, Israel and
the Church, through whom God is carrying out two
different purposes. God's program for Israel is found
in the Old Testament and is primarily earthly and
theocratic. It is God's purpose to display His power and
glory to the entire world through the destiny of the na-
tion Israel. On the other hand, God's purpose for the
Church is spiritual and redemptive. During the Church
age, God has temporarily broken oft His dealings with
Israel and is forming the Church. But at the end of
this "great parenthesis" when His purpose for the
Church is complete, God will resume His dealings with
Israel. The Jews will be restored to Palestine as a na-
tion, the Old Testament cultic order of temple and
sacri.fices will be reconstituted, and Christ as the Da-
vidic King of Israel will reign from Jerusalem over the
world.
Premillennialismand dispensationalismare closelyre-
lated but not synonymous terms. Dispensationalism is
a variant form of premillennialism. All dispensational-
ists will be premillennialists, but many premillennialists
are not dispensationalists. What may be called historic
[13
[15
premillennialism understands the millennial age to be
a further manifestation of the same redemptive kingdom
of God now experienced by the Church, rather than a
restoration of the Jewish order. There is therefore an
important theological difference between dispensa-
tionalism and premillennialism.
Many theologians feel that biblical eschatology ex-
cludes any millennial period after the return of the
J:lis return will bring God's redemptive purposes
Immediately to their consummation, ushering in at
once the eternal order of the new heaven and the new
earth. This view is called amillennialism because it
denies any literal millennial kingdom on earth. The
:<thousand years" when Christ reigns with His saints
IS a symbol of the Church age. The reign refers either
to the working of Christ's kingdom in the world
thr?ugh Church, or else to the reign of martyred
believers m heaven during the Church age.
Another view postpones the second coming of Christ
into the distant future. It expects the kingdom of God
to established in this world by the Church's procla-
mation of the redeeminggospel. The power of the
gospel entrusted to the Church is able not only to save
men, but also to transform the entire social order. It is
the:efore of the Church, through the power
. In Its supernatural redeeming gospel, to
ehristianize the entire social order and usher in the
s kingdom before the coming of
?hrist. This VIew is called postmiUennialism, because
It postpones the return of Christ until after the millen-
nium" or the achievement of God's kingdom on earth.
14]
Because of such differences of interpretation, the
truth of the Lord's return has often been a subject of
controversy. These several views embody different
philosophies of history. postmillennialism expects the
kingdom of God to be established by the Church's
proclamation of the gospel. Dispensationalism expects
the kingdom of God to include a restoration of Judaism.
Premillennialism expects a realization of God's kingdom
within history which amillennialism denies.
In the face of these several modem reinterpretations
of history and eschatology, and in view of the great
diversity of opinion even among conservative scholars,
the thoughtful Christian must ask, What is the deeper
meaning of the biblical teaching of the second coming
of Christ? Is this hope as it appears in the New Testa-
ment merely a piece of Jewish mythological thinking?
Did the early Christians simply derive certain elements
of their world view or Weltanschauung from their re-
ligious environment of Jewish apocalyptic? Must the
modern Christian try to disengage the essential mean-
ing of the redemptive work of Christ from an alien
Jewish eschatological setting? Or is there indeed a pro-
found theology involved in the doctrine of the second
coming of Christ that is essential to the biblical view
of God and history? Furthermore, is there some central
significance in the truth of the second coming of Christ
that should be acceptable to all conservative Christians?
It is the purpose of this brief study to show that the
latter is the case, and that to eliminate the teaching of
the second coming of Christ is to emasculate the bibli-
cal concept of history and redemption.
I I I. The Biblical
Presuppositions
THE MEANING of the second coming of Christ can be
disclosed only in the context of the basic structure of
the theology of the entire Bible. Underlying this doc-
trine are certain biblical presuppositions about the na-
ture of God, man, and the world without which it
cannot be fully understood.
First and most important is the biblical revelation of
God. He is the living God who wills the blessing and
redemption of man. He is the creating God who is the
source of all life and blessing. God discloses His glory
and goodness through His acts in nature. The stars in
the sky, the alternation of the seasons, the return of
seedtime and harvest, the fruitfulness of the earth, all
reflect the faithfulness of God.
Modem man often thinks of "laws of nature" almost
as though they were an unbreakable set of rules, which
govern the forces of nature and to which God himself
must conform. Such thinking is foreign to the Bible.
The regularity of nature does not inhere in nature it-
self but in the God of nature. The "laws of nature" re-
flect merely the orderliness of God's activities in the
world. But since He is indeed the Lord of nature, God
16]
can, if He chooses, vary His mode of action. He who
initially created life can destroy life, and He can also
recreate. The question of the "natural" versus the
"supernatural," properly formulated, is not really a
biblical question. It is a human question that often
leaves God out of the picture and assumes that our
observation of the ordinary functioning of nature is
the measure of all reality. It is a man-centered question
rather than a God-centered question; this reverses the
biblical order. He who believes in the God revealed in
the Scriptures, who is the Lord of nature, will recognize
that what we call the "natural" and the "supernaturaY'
in the Bible are nothing other than two different modes
of the divine activity in the world.
The biblical view of nature is a corollary of its view
of God. The world is God's world. We do riot always
realize how often our thinking is colored by the in-
fluence of Greek dualism, which finds a moral difference
inherent in the realms of matter and spirit. Dualism
thinks of the material as the realm of evil, the spiritual
as the realm of good. Such dualistic thinking logically
leads to an eschatology that finds ultimate redemption
in the Hight of man's soul or spirit fromthis fallen world
to a different world, the realm of spiritual existence.
In this view, the world, including bodily existence, is a
necessary but temporary evil, destined ultimately to be
sloughed off. Man will find his true redemption in .an
altogether different order of spiritual, i.e., nonmaterial,
existence.
This again is unbiblical thinking. When God created
the world, He saw that it was good (Genesis 1:31). The
[17
goodness of nature has indeed been marred by sin.
"The whole creation has been groaning in travail to-
gether until now" (Romans 8:22). This fact, however,
must not be interpreted to mean that creation has fallen
from goodness to evil, so that it has become offensive
to its Creator. The world was created for God's glory
(Psalms 19:1); the ultimate goal and destiny of creation
is to glorify and praise its Creator (Psalms 98:7-9). The
world is not a temporary stage on which man acts out
the drama of his mortal existence. Neither is it the
realm of sin and evil from which man must be rescued.
The world was and is God's world and therefore des-
tined to play a role in the consummation of God's
redemptive purpose.
The prophet expresses it in poetical terms: "The
mountains and hills before you shall break forth into
singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their
hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle; and it
shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting
sign which shall not be cut off' (Isaiah 55: 12-13).
Paul employs more didactic language: "Creation it-
self will be set free from its bondage of decay and ob-
tain the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Ro-
mans 8:21).
The biblical view of man is a second corollary to the
biblical doctrine of God. Man shares with nature the
fact of creaturehood. But man stands apart from all
other creatures in that he was created in the image of
God; therefore he enjoys a relationship to God different
from that of all other creatures. However, this does not
18]
mean that man will ever transcend creaturehood. In-
deed, the very root of sin is unwillingness to aoknowl-
edge the reality and implications of creaturehood. The
fact that man is a physical creature in the world is not
the measure of his sinfulness and, therefore, a state
from which he must he delivered. In fact, the accept-
ance of his creaturehood, the confession of complete
and utter dependence upon the Creator God, is es-
sential to man's true existence. Man truly knows him-
seH, recognizes his true self, only when he realizes that
he is a creature. Then he accepts the humble role of
one whose very life is contingent upon God's faithful-
ness and whose chief joy is to serve and worship his
Creator. The root of sin is found in the intent of man to
lift himself out of his creaturehood, to exalt himself
above God, to refuse to give God the worship, praise,
and obedience that are His due.
Salvation, therefore, does not mean deliverance from
creaturehood; this creaturehood is an essential and
permanent element of mans true heing. For this reason,
the Bible does not picture ultimate redemption in
terms of escape from earthly, bodily existence. Salva-
tion does not consist of freeing the soul from its engage-
ment in the material world. On the contrary, ultimate
redemption will involve the redemption of the whole
man, body, soul, and spirit. The resurrection of the
body is an integral part of the biblical hope. Redemp-
tion cannot be limited to the spiritual realm, Le., to
the realm of the human spirit. Since man is a unity,
the whole man must be redeemed and his body as
well as his soul delivered from the penalty of fallenness.
[19
The biblical view of history must also be understood
in its relationship to biblical eschatology. The Hebrew-
Christian faith is primarily an historical faith. Christian
theology is not primarily a set of abstract theological
truths or philosophical absolutes. It is the systematic
structuring of the inspired meanings that interpret the
redemptive acts of God in history.
God called Israel out of Egypt. He revealed himself
as the Lord of nations and of history by His deliver-
ances of His people within history. Through God's acts
in history, Israel was to learn that the Lord was her
God (Exodus 6:6-7). Yet God's purpose, even in the
Old Testament, was larger than Israel. He promised
Abraham, "By you all the families of the earth will be
blessed" (Genesis 12: 3). God chose Israel, not only
because He was concerned to provide a way of salva-
tion for individual men and for a single nation, but be-
cause He had a purpose for the entire race. The realiza-
tion of this purpose will be the goal of history: the king-
dom of God. God who chose Israel to be the people of
His rule will finally extend this rule through and be-
yond Israel to the whole earth. When God's redemptive
purpose is completed, "the earth shall be full of the
knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea"
(Isaiah 11:9). The goal of redemption is never pic-
tured in terms of the salvation of the individual soul,
escaping to a remote heaven somewhere far off beyond
the skies. The goal of redemption is historical and con-
cerns men, not only.as individuals but as a social group.
This concern for history is a unique element in the
Hebrew faith in contrast to other Semitic religiOns. The
20]
pagan gods were not gods of history but nature deities,
known in and through the processes of nature and more
or less identified with these processes. The God of Israel
was the Creator and Lord of nature-but He was to be
known primarily in and through history. He was the
Lord of history: His people were to enjoy His blessings
in nature but. even more in historical experience. Our
modem feeling for movement and meaning in history,
even in such a distorted form as that of dialectic ma-
terialism, is derived ultimately from the stimulus given
to the Western mind by the Hebrew-Christian tradi-
tion.
In the New Testament, the people of God is the
Church rather than Israel. However, Paul makes it
clear in Romans 11 that the promises of God to Israel
have not failed, and that Israel is yet to be brought
back into God's redemptive purpose. Even though the
Church, which is the new Israel, no longer has the na-
tional identity or political character of the old Israel,
the concern for God's people in history is not surren-
dered. This is clearly disclosed by our Lord's escha-
tological prophecy in Matthew 24. While the forecast
of the future of this age to its end says nothing about
specific events or personalities and contains no men-
tion of single nations or political movements, yet our
Lord's concern is with history and with the fate of His
people in their historical experience.
The purpose of this forecast of the course of the age
is not to tell how to calculate the time of the end. In
fact, Jesus warns against such calculations by saying,
"You will hear of wars and rumors of wars . . . but
[21
the end is not yet" (Matthew 24:6). The Lord's dis-
course prepares His disciples for their historical mis-
sion in the world. This mission is not to build the king-
dom of God or to transform this age so that it becomes
the kingdom of God. They are indeed to preach the
gospel of the kingdom in all the world (Matthew
24:14), and we may say that the kingdom of God works
in the world through its emissaries. Yet an inevitable
hostility exists between this age and the kingdom of
God, and the disciples of the kingdom must be pre-
pared to meet this hostility. The kingdom of God will
not come until the end of the age, when the Son of Man
comes in glory and power to overthrow evil and estab-
lish His kingdom.
Thus the end of the age and the coming of Christ
will not conclude earthly social existence. The purpose
of the glorious coming of the Son of Man will be to
gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other (Matthew 24:31) into the kingdom
of God. The kingdom of God remains in the New Testa-
ment the goal of history. Therefore we pray, "Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven." The New Testament as well as the Old is con-
cerned with history and the relationship of God's king-
dom to history.
A final biblical presupposition underlying escha-
tology is the nature of evil. God's kingdom cannot come
until the enemies of His kingdom are destroyed. The
final kingdom of God is the perfect realization of the
rule of God, including the full enjoyment of divine
fellowship and blessings by His creatures. In one sense
22]
of the word, of course, God's rule is omnipresent and
eternal. His rule is intrinsic to His deity. "The Lord
has established his throne in the heavens, and his
kingdom rules over all" (Psalms 103:19). However,
God in His sovereign mysterious wisdom has per-
mitted His rule to be temporarily limited. He permitted
man to exercise freedom and rebel against the Creator.
He permitted sin to come into the world. In creation,
God had displayed His goodness by making man the
chief of all creatures and by subjecting the created
world to man's care (Genesis 1:28), entrusting to him
dominion over all other creatures. When. man in proud
seH-assertionrefused to accept the role of creaturehood,
when he succumbed to the temptation to "he like God"
(Genesis 3:5) and fen into sin, God placed the curse
of death upon man and the burden of decay and evil
upon the entire world, that man might be oontlnually
reminded of the fundamental fact that sin disrupts the
enjoyment of the blessings of God, even in the physical
realm. Life and blessing are GoOs gifts; death, toil,
and pain are the toll of sin. The final redemption in the
kingdom of God will include salvation from death, pain,
and decay, not only in mans individual experience but
in the entire created order.
Furthermore, the Bible reveals something about evil
which even modern thinkers outside of the Christian
tradition are realizing: evil is greater than man and
greater than all men. Evil does not inhere in the nature
of material reality. Evil, in fact, is essentially spiritual
in character. The evils in the physical creation are but
a reflection of evil in the spiritual realm. The root of sin
[23
is not in man's body but in his rebellious spirit. The
ultimate source of evil, however, is not man but the
spiritual world. The Bible represents this by its doctrine
of Satan. Satan or the Devil is pictured as a spiritual
being who has rebelled against God and who exerts
every effort to frustrate God's purposes. Since man, too,
is a spiritual being, even though he is also a part of the
material created order, Satan is particularly concerned
to frustrate God's loving purposes for man. That man
may prove himself to be a responsible being, God has
permitted Satan to challenge man with the dilemma of
choosing between submission to the will of God and
against it, by forsaking God for the lying
enticements of Satan. Sin is essentially rebellion
against God.
this way, the Bible shows that evil is a power lying
outside of man, a power which is greater than man, a
power which man can resist but cannot conquer, a
power which must be destroyed before God's kingdom
can be perfectly realized among men.
Here are the foes of God's kingdom: Satan, evil, sin,
death. Here are the foes of man's happiness and blessed-
ness. Here are the forces which have doomed both in-
dividual experience and human history to a long record
of violence, suffering, decay, and futility.
If these are the foes of God's kingdom, two facts are
clear. Man by himself cannot establish the kingdom of
The popular terminology about building the
kmgdom is quite unbiblical. The enemies of God's
kingdom are greater than man and greater than all
men. God alone can subdue them.
24]
It follows also that human history, in and of itself,
cannot produce the kingdom of God. Human history is
a victim of the evils that plague men. History is the
macrocosm of man; the awful tragedies of war, vio-
lence, oppression, and human exploitation reveal the
sinfulness of the human heart writ large in historical
terms. Yet there is something even more fearful than
man's sinfulness. Behind and through human history
lurks the dark form of an evil demonic power, before
which even good men feel helpless.
Here are the presuppositions of redemptive history.
God's kingdom must mean the redemption of all that
man is, his physical as well as his spiritual being; for
man's physical being is not foreign to his true being,
but is essential in that it expresses his creaturehood.
God's kingdom includes the redemption of the created
order, for the world was created not to be the passing
scene of one act of the human drama, but to glorify
God. God's kingdom is the goal of redemptive history.
It is concerned with mankind, not only with individual
men. God must disclose His lordship both over nature
and over history, by bringing His kingdom as the ful-
fillment and goal of historical earthly experience. Yet
the kingdom of God is now frustrated by powers before
which man ultimately is helpless. Man cannot rise
above Satan, sin, and death to establish or to build the
kingdom of God.
It follows, therefore, that only God can bring His
kingdom. In the truest sense of the word, the kingdom
is a reality only if God is God, only if God is the living
God, only if God is the Conqueror of Satan, the De-
[25
stroyer of sin, and the Victor over death. Only a super-
natural God can bring His kingdom, and only a super-
natural act of the living God can rout His enemies,
giving men the blessings of His reign.
This is the biblical background for the necessity of
the second coming of Christ. The second coming of
Christ means the inbreaking of the divine world into
the world of human history. Although it will occur
within history, there is a real sense in which the second
coming of Christ may not be called an "historical"
event in the technical use of that word. "History" in
the strict sense designates the How of events, which
can be understood in terms of an unbroken nexus of
cause and effect, and interpreted in terms of analogy
with other historical events. The second coming of
Christ will not be an event arising out of history; nor
will it be the result of other historical events. It will be
a free act of God, breaking into history in the person
of the glorified Christ, to redeem history from the evils
of the centuries and to transform it into the kingdom of
God. It will be without real analogy. The incarnation
was indeed an invasion into history from God's world,
and so may seem partly analogous. But in the incarna-
tion, the coming of God was veiled. Only the eye of
faith could behold His glory (John 1:14); even His own
friends thought Jesus was insane (Mark 3:21). The sec-
ond coming of Christ will be a glorious inbreaking of
the power of God, by which God will do for history and
for mankind what neither history nor man can do for
themselves.
26]
IV. The Unfolding Biblical
Perspective
THE RELATIONsmP of eschatology to history can be un-
derstood only in the light of the nature of prophecy, as
described by Peter: And we have this prophetic word
made more sure. You will do well to pay attention to
this as to a lamp shining in a dark place" (II Peter
1:19). The prophetic word is here likened to a lamp
whose purpose is to guide men through the darkness of
thislife until the day dawns" at the return of our Lord.
A Palestinian lamp gave a limited light. It was a small
clay vessel filled with oil, which provided enough light
to guide a traveler through dark streets, showing him
loose stones or pitfalls which might lie in his path. It did
not, however, illuminate the entire village nor turn the
night into day, as modem street lights often transform.
our cities. The primary purpose of such a lamp was to
guide the traveler along his way and to enable him to
avoid stumbling or falling upon injury.
We would often like to change the biblical idiom and
think of prophecy as a set of blueprints for the future.
We would like to have every question answered, every
problem solved. However, the prophetic word is a lamp,
not a blueprint, It is given to guide us, not to satisfy our
[27
curiosity. It is important to understand that at any given
time in the history of God's redemptive purpose, He has
shed as much light upon the future as was necessary to
guide His people in the present. At one point He would
send one ray of light, at another time another ray of
light. For this reason we find in the New Testament
much more light upon the future than in the Old Testa-
ment; but we cannot appreciate the necessity and mean-
ing of the second coming of Christ unless we interpret
the New Testament teaching against its Old Testament
background.
"Christ" is the Greek equivalent of the Old Testa-
ment "Messiah," which means "anointed one." The Old
Testament itself contains no doctrine of a "second com-
ing" of Messiah. It looks forward usually to a single
great day of redemption, when God will intervene in
human history to judge evil and to establish His k i n g ~
dom. "For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his
place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their
iniquity" (Isaiah 26:21). "For behold, the Lord is com-
ing forth out of his place, and will come down and tread
upon the high places of the earth" (Micah 1:3). "I am
coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall
come and shall see my glory" (Isaiah 66:18). "For be-
hold, the Lord will come in fire . . . for by fire will
the Lord execute judgment" (Isaiah 66:15, 16). "And
he will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob
who tum from transgression, says the Lord" (Isaiah
59:20). "Behold,. the Lord God comes with might, and
his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock
28]
like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms"
(Isaiah 40:10-11). "Then the Lord your God will
come, and all the holy ones with him" (Zechariah
14:5).
None of these verses in their Old Testament setting
refer to the Messiah. They describe a final visitation of
God to judge the world and save His people. It is a
judgment in history, on the earth. The same God who
created the earth, who visited Israel in Egypt to save
them from bondage and oppression, will finally visit
the earth for both judgment and salvation. All these
verses speak of a coming of God rather than the Mes-
siah.
This visitation is sometimes called the day of the
Lord. The Lord's day will be the day when the Lord
breaks down everything that lifts itself up against
Him, so that "the Lord alone will be exalted in that
day" (Isaiah 2:12, 17). The day of the Lord will be a
day of wrath and judgment against everything evil,
both among men and in the physical world (Zephaniah
1:7, 14, 18; 2:3).
Out of judgment will emerge the kingdom of God.
"In that day" Israel will be restored from bondage
(Amos 9:11). "In that day" God's dispersed people will
be regathered, and the Lord will reign over them for-
ever (Micah 4:7). "In that day" all weapons of war
and all instruments of evil will be swept away (Micah
5: 10ff.), "In that day" the curse will be lifted. The earth
will become fruitful, the deaf will hear, the blind will
see, and the poor will rejoice in the Lord (Isaiah
29:18-19).
[29
When God visits His people to redeem them, He will
raise up a messianic King to rule over them and to exe-
cute justice and righteousness (Isaiah 11:4). Violence
and evil will be purged from the earth, and "the earth
shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the wa-
ters cover the sea" (vss. 6-9). All this will happen be-
cause "In that day the root of Jesse [the messianic King]
shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the
nations seek, and his dwelling shall be glorious" (vs.
10). In this future kingdom, God's people will be gath-
ered in righteousness and blessing. God will make a
new covenant with them, when He will give them a new
heart and a new spirit, that they may be perfectly obe-
dient to their God (JereIniah 31:33-34; Ezekiel 36:25-
27). He will forgive their sins and will pour His Spirit
upon all His people (Joel 2:28 ). He will open a fountain
to cleanse them from all uncleanness (Zechariah 13:1).
Godwill be their God and they will be His people (Jere-
miah 31:33), and God will dwell in their midst (Zech-
ariah 2:10-11).
In addition to the expectation of a messianic King,
two other messianic portraits appear in the Old Testa-
ment which are not integrated with the prophecies of
the messianic King. In Isaiah 53, the Servant of the Lord
pursues a path of meekness and suffering, and finally
pours out His soul in death to bear the sin of the people
and to make atonement for the transgressors. This suf-
fering Servant is not, in the Old Testament, identified
with the messianic. King; and Jewish theology could
never quite decide what to do with this prophecy.
There is an entirely different portrait in Daniel 7. In
30]
this vision "one like a son of man" comes to the Ancient
of Days, and to Him is given the kingdom of God that
all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve
Him in an everlasting dominion and rule which shall
never pass away (Daniel 7:13-14). He is an individual
who represents and is identified with the people of God
(vs. 18). However, this heavenly Son of Man is not
identified with the messianic King; and neither Son of
Man nor Messiah is identified with the suffering Ser-
vant. The relationship of these several prophecies was
never understood until our Lord came to fulfill them.
This is why we cannot understand the Old Testament
apart from its New Testament fulfillment. Fromthe Old
Testament alone, one would think that these were three
different personages, each with a separate mission.
The Old Testament neither shows the relationship
existing among. these three messianic personages nor
outlines a program of events by which God's kingdom
is to be established. Yet several important features char-
acterize the kingdom of God, and these must not be
overlooked.
The kingdom is a kingdom in history. It primarily
concerns, not the salvation of the individual soul, but
the salvation of God's people. It will mean the consum-
mation of God's redemptive working with Israel in his-
tory. The God who saved Israel from the bondage of
Egypt will finally save His people from bondage to all
sin and evil.
The kingdom is akingdom produced, not by history,
but by God. But the Old Testament does not conceive
of all history as a manifestation of God's power working
[31
redemptively in all historical processes. On the contrary,
there is an evil element, a demonic force at work in his-
tory which causes men and nations to exalt themselves
against God and oppose His holy will. Therefore God
became uniquely active in one stream of history-
in the experience of Israel-to change the course of his-
tory and to bring to pass His purposes for all.men, Israel
escaped from Egypt, not because she successfully re-
volted against the Egyptians or because of Moses' wis-
dom and cunning. God acted and delivered Israel from
Egypt. The final deliverance from evil in the kingdom
of God will be caused only by a final and mighty act
of God, when all evil is destroyed and God's people
saved.
The kingdom of God will be both spiritual and ma-
terial. There is no purely "spiritual" salvation. Sin has
cursed man in his relationship to God, in his relation-
ship to his fellowmen, in his relationship to himself,
and even in his relationship to his physical environ-
ment. Therefore salvation must involve deliverance
from all evil. Only a mighty visitation of God in judg-
ment, only a new creative act of God who is Lord of
both nature and history, can avail to rescue men from
all that evil signifies. This divine act of salvation is
viewed in the Old Testament as a single great redemp-
tive event, which will take place on the day of the Lord.
The New Testament further unfolds God's redemp-
tive purpose, revealing its fulfillment as far more com-
plex than the Old Testament prophecies suggest. How-
ever, a redemption'that is both spiritual and material in
the Old Testament does not become exclusivelyspiritual
32]
in the New. Redemption of the physical order remains
a continuing feature in the New Testament (Romans
8:21). But the redemptive event, which was viewed
as one dayin the Old Testament, in the New Testament
is seen as two days. The single redemptive act expected
at the day of the Lord has now become two acts. These
two acts are the incarnation of Christ and His second
coming.
This does not imply that God has changed His plans,
or that the Old Testament is in error. It merely indicates
that in the movement of redemptive history, God pro-
gressively revealed the steps by which He will accom-
plish His purposes for man's redemption. There are in
the New Testament, as it were, two days of redemption.
The coming of Christ in history ushered in the fulfill-
ment of the Old Testament promise of salvation; yet the
second coming of Christ must occur to bring this salva-
tion to its consummation.
This is why the New Testament redemption involves
a strange tension between present fulfillment and fu-
ture consummation. In the synagogue at Nazareth our
Lord read a passage from Isaiah which foretold the
"year of the Lord's favor," Le., the coming of the king-
dom of God; and then he announced, "Today this scrip-
ture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21).
Yet the prophecy in Isaiah announced "the day of
vengeance of our God" (Isaiah 61:2), but Jesus did not
include these words in His proclamation of fulfillment.
The day of the Lord's favor has come, but the day of
God's vengeance stands yet in the future.
This tension between fulfillment and consummation
[33
is the reason the New Testament speaks of the great
redemptive realities as something both present and fu-
ture. Thus Paul can say, "Behold, now is the acceptable
time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (II Corin-
thians 6:2); yet Peter speaks of "a salvation ready to
be revealed in the last time" (I Peter 1:5). Thus we
are told that the kingdom of God has come (Matthew
12:28; Luke 17:21); yet we pray for its coming (Mat-
thew 6:10). Thus we have eternal life as a present pos-
session (John 3:36; 10:10); yet we shall receive eternal
life in the future (John 12:25; Matthew 25:46).
The gospel proclaimed in the New Testament is the
good news that "the Lord God of Israel.. . has vis-
ited and redeemed his people" (Luke 1:68). It is the
proclamation of what God has done in history in Jesus
Christ. Yet everywhere in the New Testament the day of
the Lord remains, as in the Old Testament, a future day
of eschatological consummation (I Thessalonians 5:2;
I Corinthians 1:8; II Thessalonians 2:2).
We may change the metaphor by saying that in the
Old Testament the drama of salvation occurs in one
great act, while in the New Testament it has become
two acts. But it is the same play. This means that the
second coming of Christ does not stand in the future
by itself, but is rather inseparable from His past work
in history. Incarnation, second coming: these are the
two steps in the accomplishment of the messianic re-
demption. Together they constitute a single event.
This fact can be illustrated in two ways, by a con-
sideration of Jesus' messianic office and a consideration
of His messianic work.
34]
The NewTestament shows us that the three messianic
portraits in the Old Testament-those of suffering Ser-
vant, messianic King, and Son of Man-depict different
aspects of the one messianic personage. This is made
clear by our Lord's use of the term Son of Man, which
is quite different from the Old Testament use.
In Daniel, the Son of Man is associated with a dra-
matic "apocalyptic" inbreaking of God's kingdom. This
coming of God's kingdom is first described in Daniel
in Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a great image that repre-
sented the several successive empires of world history.
Nebuchadnezzar saw a stone, cut out by no human
hand, smite the image on its feet, breaking the image
and grinding it to powder so that the wind swept it
away. Then the stone which smote the image grew until
it became a mountain and filled the whole earth (Dan-
iel 2:31-35). The message of this dream was that the
kingdom of God would not arise gradually within his-
tory by a slowprocess of growth or evolution, but would
come suddenly, catastrophically by a mighty act of God
to accomplish both judgment and salvation. The king-
dom of God would come in history, but it would come
from outside of history.
In the parallel vision in the seventh chapter we are
told that this kingdom will be given to the Son of Man,
who will come with the clouds of heaven and will then
rule in His kingdom over all nations on the earth for-
ever (Daniel 7:13-14).
Jesus taught that He was the Son of Man who one
day will come with the clouds and with power and great
glory, as Daniel described, to establish the kingdom of
[35
God (Matthew 16:27; 24:27; 25:31; 13:41). But first,
before He appears in power and glory, the Son of Man
hasappeared humbly on earth to fulfill a mission of suf-
fering and death. The Son of Man has a twofold mis-
sion: present suffering and future glory.
Even in His humility, He is the Son of Man. As this
Son of Man from heaven, He has authority on earth to
forgive sins (Mark 2:10). He is Lord of the sabbath
and has authority to reinterpret the Law of Moses
(Mark 2:28). He is indeed the channel of communica-
tion between heaven and earth (John 1:51). Yet even
though He is the heavenly Son of Man, He is among
men in weakness, without a home (Matthew 8:20),
destined to be surrendered into the hands of men (Mat-
thew 17:22), to be tortured and finally put to death
(Matthew 20:18-19). This, however, was no historical
accident; it was the mission of the Son of Man to come
to give His life a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28).
Suffering and death were to be His present mission,
glory and exaltation as the Judge of the world His fu-
ture destiny. As the Son of Man on earth, He must first
the role of the suffering Servant. A second phase
of redemptive missionis His future comingin glory.
This twofold missionof sufferingand of glory are not
unrelated acts; rather, they are two phases of a
sIngle redemptive work. This is shown by such sayings
as Mark 8:38: "For whoever is ashamed of me and of
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of
him will the Son. of Man also be ashamed, when he
comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
36]
The response of men to the humble, suffering Son of
Man will determine their judgment by the glorious Son
of Man. He is the same Son of Man in suffering and in
glory. As men confess Him in His atoning sufferings,
He will confess them in His glory.
Thus it becomes clear that before the Son of Man
comes in glory to judge the world, to purge the earth
of all evil, and to gather the righteous into the kingdom
of God (Matthew 13:37-43), He has a prior missionto
fulfill: that of sufferingand death. The sufferingServant
of Isaiah 53 is indeed the Son of Man of Daniel 7; but
His mission of suffering and death must precede and
provide the basis for His mission as the heavenly Son
of Man.
This twofold drama of salvation is illustrated, not
only by Jesus' messianic office but also by His mes-
sianic work. We have seen that the Old Testament looks
forward to a single great day of the Lord, when God
will intervene in history to destroy evil and to gather
His people into the kingdomof God. The further revela-
tion in the New Testament shows us something that
Goddid not disclosein the Old Testament: the triumph
of God's kingdom over evil occurs in two acts, not
one.
The New Testament teaches that the two greatest
enemies of God's kingdom are death and Satan. The
purpose of Jesus' total redemptive mission is summed
up concisely in I Corinthians 15:25-26: "For he must
reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death." Here is the
[37
final goal of Jesus' redemptive work: to deliver "the
kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule
and every authority and power" (vs, 24).
This conquest of God's kingdom occurs in at least
two acts. The death of Jesus of Nazareth was not merely
the death of a man. He was the heavenly Son of Man
on earth who came to grapple with death and to de-
stroy it. Dying was His very mission (Mark 10:45).
Through His death and resurrection, He "abolished
death and brought life and immortality to light through
the gosper' (II Timothy 1:10).
Here is an amazing statement. Death has already
been abolishedI Obviously, this verse requires explana-
tion. The Greek word translated "abolished" is the same
word translated "destroy" in 1 Corinthians 15:26. It can
mean "to destroy." but it can also mean to break the
power. to make ineffective." The destruction of death
occurs in two acts. By His death and resurrection Christ
has already attacked the enemy. death. He has already
broken its power. He has already brought to men the
blessing of the eternal life of the future kingdom of
God.
This is why Paul describes the resurrection of Jesus
Christ as the beginning of the final resurrection (I Co-
rinthians 15:23). The resurrection of Jesus was not
the reanimation of a dead body to physical life. Lazarus
had been restored from death to physical life (John
11:44). but Lazarus never dreamed of saying. "1 am
the resurrection and the life; because I live. you shall
live also:' Lazarus was a mortal man who was restored
to mortal life.
38]
Not so with Jesus' resurrectionI His resurrection de-
notes something new. something never before experi-
enced. It demonstrated the emergence of a new order
of life. resurrection life. the life of the kingdom of God.
It may be crudely described in these words: a piece
of the resurrection of the last day. which will introduce
the eschatological kingdom of God. has been split off
and implanted in the midst of human history. The es-
chatological resurrection has already begun. Therefore
the Christian hope of resurrection and immortality is
far more than a hope; it is a certainty based on the fact
that the first stage of the resurrection has already oc-
curred. We merely await the second stage of the event.
This is the meaning of eternal life. It is the life of the
future eschatological kingdom of God (Matthew 19:16.
23). Yet this life is already ours through the resurrec-
tion of Christ. He brought into human history the life
and immortality of the kingdom of God. We may there-
fore even now experience His resurrection life (Ephe-
sians 2:5; Romans 6:4). This is why the Gospel of John
says so much about eternal life as a present reality
(John 3:36; 10:10). The life of the resurrection (John
5:29) has become present experience (5:25) because
the Bearer of eternal life (5:26) and the Conqueror of
death (11:25-26) has come among men.
Nevertheless. we die. Although we have eternal life.
we go to the grave. The mortician who prepares a corpse
for burial is unconcerned whether the deceased was
Christian or non-Christian. In either case. the body is
dead.
The present victory of Christ over death is a real vic-
[39
tory, but it is only a partial victory. Death must be
finally destroyed so that God's people no longer die.
Mortality must be swallowed up by life (II Corinthians
5:4). This final victory will occur only at the end of
Christ's reign. Man cannot conquer death; medical and
biological science cannot conquer death. Only the Son
of God, who has already conquered death, can finally
destroy it. Therefore Christ must come again to consum-
mate the victory He has already won. At the end, death
and the grave are to be thrown into the lake of fire
(Revelation 20:14). Apart from the second coming of
Christ, God's victory over death remains incomplete.
The conquest is unfinished, the triumph only provi-
sional. But His coming is assured, because He will cer-
tainly finish what He has begun. He came once to
break the power of death; He will come again to destroy
death forever.
A second enemy to be destroyed is evil and the spir-
itual source of evil-Satan. The Gospels tell us that at
the heart of our Lord's earthly ministry was a struggle
with satanic evil. Satan assaulted Jesus in the wilder-
ness and tried to turn Him aside from His God-
appointed mission. Satan tried to entice Jesus to take a
short-cut to His destiny as glorious Son of Man by avoid-
ing the cross. He urged Jesus to compel recognition of
His glory by spectacular miracles. He promised to in-
stall Jesus as Lord of the world if Jesus would heed
him (Matthew 4:5-10).
Jesus in turn described His own mission as an assault
against the kingdom of Satan. One of His most charac-
teristic and repeated miracles was the exorcism of de-
40]
mons. Everywhere He went, Jesus delivered men from
this satanic bondage. Mark sounds this note as one of
the most significant aspects of His ministry. The peo-
ple said, 'What is this? A new teachingl With authority
he commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey
him" (Mark 1:27).
When the Pharisees accused Him of being in league
with Satan himseH, Jesus replied that the charge was
ridiculous, for it would entail civil war within Satan's
household, and the falI of his kingdom (Matthew
12:25-26). Then Jesus spoke these significant words:
"Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plun-
der his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?
Then indeed he may plunder his house" (Matthew
12:29).
Satan is the strong man. His "goods" are men and
women-human personalities-in bondage to satanic
powers, to evil. While demon possession is the most ex-
treme manifestation of satanic power, it is exercised
only over a few men. Paul tells us that the heart of
satanic evil is bondage to darkness, blindness to the
glory of God (II Corinthians 4:4). Jesus' mission was
to deliver men from the dominion of darkness and trans-
fer them to the rule of God (Colossians 1:13). How-
ever, first He must defeat the strong man. Jesus cannot
enter Satan's house and plunder his goods, delivering
men from bondage to darkness, except He "first binds
th " e strong man.
Jesus has already attacked Satan's kingdom. He has
assaulted his house. He has already "bound" the strong
man. Because this victory over satanic evil has been
[41
won, we may now experience deliverance from darkness
in the freedom of Christ's kingdom.
Hebrews expresses this same truth in different lan-
guage. Since those whom Christ would redeem are flesh
and blood, He, the heavenly Son of Man, took upon
Him the same human form and nature, "that through
death he might destroy him who has the power of
death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who
through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage"
(Hebrews 2:14-15). The death of Jesus, as well as His
life and miracles, was an attack on Satan. Through His
death, Jesus has assaulted and "destroyed" him who
has the power of death. This word "destroy" is the same
word we have already met in I Corinthians 15:24 and
II Timothy 1:10. It means "to break the power." Christ,
both by His life and death, has broken Satan's power,
has "bound" him. God's kingdom has assaulted Satan's
kingdom and won a great victory. Satan is now, be-
cause of the incarnation, a defeated foe.
Yet evil remains in the world. To be sure, there is
far more righteousness in human history than before
Christ came. The gospel of Jesus' incarnation, death,
and resurrection does far more than promise a blessed
future to the individual soul. The gospel changes lives.
It revolutionizes human personalities. It transforms hu-
man conduct. It rebuilds homes and communities, and
sometimes even nations. No Christian missionary is con-
tent to preach a spiritual salvation to primitive people
while leaving their bodies and minds in bondage to
filth, disease, superstition, and ignorance. Wherever
it goes, the gospel has power to transform all life to-
42]
ward righteousness, delivering men from bondage to
evil of all kinds.
Yet the world continues to be an evil place. The king-
dom of God has come into history and is at work in
history. Nevertheless, history has not become the king-
dom of God. Today many of our best minds who do
not accept the distinctly Christian teaching recognize
a demonic element in human history. Evil is greater
than man and greater than all men; and our generation
is fearful that evil may destroy it.
The second coming of Christ is necessary to complete
the conquest of evil. This man cannot do; only God can
conquer and destroy Satan. We may picture the c o ~
quest of evil as a warfare with two great battles. In His
incarnation, Christ attacked Satan and won a mighty
victory. He saw Satan fall from his place of power in
heaven (Luke 10:18). The warfare has been launched;
the first and crucial battle has been fought and won.
D-day has taken place; but V-day awaits the second
coming of Christ," Then and then only will evil be fi-
nally destroyed.
The Scripture pictures this final destruction of Satan
in vivid terms. There is a lake of fire prepared for the
devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). At the end of
Christ's reign, every enemy will be destroyed, and the
devil will be cast into the lake of fire (Revelation
20:10). His final doom is sure, for he is already a de-
feated enemy.
In summary, the Scriptures teach that the second
aOscar Cullmann in his excellent book Chrilt and Time bas popu-
larized this idea.
[43
coming of Christ is the means by which God will ac-
complish the destruction of His enemies and. the gath-
ering of His people into the blessings of the kmgd?m of
God. The kingdom of God implies that the salvation of
the individual is never viewed in detachment from the
salvation of the people of God. The kingdom of God is
therefore the final goal of human history.
The seeming difference in the prophetic expectation
in the Old and New Testaments is inherent in progres-
sive revelation. The Old Testament hope is expressed
primarily in terms of the nation Israel as the people of
God, while the New Testament further defines the pe0-
ple of God in terms of the Church. This New Testament
redefinition does not, however, exclude Israel. Israel
is yet to be saved and included in the people of God.
While there is a difference in emphasis, the underly-
ing theology in the Old and New Testament hope is
the same. In fact, the New Testament hope can be un-
derstood only in light of the Old Testament. The Old
Testament looks forward to one great day of the Lord
when evil will be destroyed and God's people gathered
into His kingdom. The New Testament shows us that
this goal of God's kingdom is to be achieved in two
great redemptive acts. By His life,
and resurrection, Christ has entered Into human history
to attack the enemies of man and God. He has defeated
the power of satanic evil, He has broken the
of death, He is gathering together a people m His
Church who have been delivered from bondage to dark-
ness and fear of death, who have experienced the power
of His resurrection and shared His life. Yet evil and
4A]
death continue; and although redeemed, even God's
people still sin and die. We await the second coming
of our victorious Lord to complete the conquest of our
enemies and to bring us into the fullness of redemption.
He who has already attacked and defeated Satan will
come again to destroy him. He who came once to con-
quer death will come again to destroy it. When He
comes again, He will gather His redeemed people into
the kingdom of God, where they will be forever de-
livered from evil, sin, and death and will enjoy all that
constitutes eternal life in fellowship with God.
v. The Second Coming and the
Present Lordship of Christ
PETER COMFORTS believers experiencing fiery ordeals
with the hope "that you may also rejoice and be glad
when his glory is revealed" (I Peter 4:13). Paul also
promises to suffering Christians the hope of rest "when
the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven" (II Thessa-
lonians 1:7). The second coming of Christ will mean
the revelation, the disclosure to the world, of the glory
which already belongs to Him who is now the Lord in
heaven.
The fact that the second coming of Christ will be the
[45
[47
disclosure of His present lordship serves as a corrective
to two unbiblical views of the kingdom of God. It cor-
rects the view that God's kingdom can come apart from
the second coming of Christ; it corrects the view that
the kingdom of God belongs altogether to the future,
without being at the same time one dimension of His
present work. The coming of His kingdom will be the
manifestation in the world of a reign which Christ en-
tered at His resurrection and ascension. From one point
of view, the return of Christ will import nothing new.
It will disclose to the world the glory which He now
possesses, manifest the lordship which He now enjoys,
extend among men a reign He is now exercising.
The fact is that Jesus is now Lord. He is now en-
throned at God's right hand as the messianic King. His
second coming will display this lordship, acknowledged
today only by believers, to all the world.
We have shown in the previous chapter that the king-
dom of God means the effective, redemptive rule of
Christ over His enemies. This conquest over His ene-
Inies-sin, death, and Satan-does not belong to the
future only. By His life, death, and resurrection, Christ
attacked and defeated Satan. He has already broken
the power of death.
Now we are ready to consider a further fact: the as-
cension of Christ and His session or enthronement at
the right hand of God is a further step in His conquest
of evil. However, the victory which He won in His res-
urrection and ascension is now unseen by the world. As
human history moves on, it sometimes seems as though
Satan were the god of this age" (II Corinthians 4:4)
46]
in an almost unqualified sense of the word.
this is not true. It is only the appearance of things.
Back of the ebb and How of history lies the fact that
evil has been defeated, Jesus has been enthroned a.s
Lord, and God is only waiting for His own hour until
Christs lordship is revealed, evil is trampled beneath
His feet and His rule extended over the whole world.
In the temptation, Satan tried to turn Jesus away
from the cross by proInising Him rule over. the
without suffering (Matthew 4:8-9). Yielding to this
temptation would have meant the victory of the rule of
Satan over the kingdom of God. Jesus faithfully and
unswervingly pursued the mission of obedience and
humility for which He had come. Although as the
f God He had existed with His Father in heaven m
form of God, He had not seized upon equality with
His Father, but had emptied himself in humiliation by
taking the form of a slave and being born as a man
among men. As a man, He humbled himself yet further
and became obedient even to death on the cross. How-
ever because of His obedience and faithfulness unto
death God the Father has highly exalted Him. God
has Him from the dead, exalted Him to God's
own right hand, and bestowed upon Himthe name that
is above every name: Lord (PhilippianS 2:6-11).
Jesus is now the Lord. This was the heart of the early
Christian confession: not Jesus as Savior, as is so often
true today, but Jesus as Lord. It is confession of Jesus
as Lord which saves (Romans 10:9). This wasthe sub-
stance of the early Christian gospel: Jesus Christ is
Lord (II Corinthians 4:5).
This confession meant more than a personal relation-
ship of total obedience to Christ, although obedience
was included. It was first of all the confession of a
theological fact. It meant the recognition that Christ ac-
tually is the Lord, enthroned in heaven. Because Jesus
is the heavenly Lord, the individual believer submits
to His lordship.
This was Peter's message on the day of Pentecost.
The first Christian sermon proclaimed the fact of Jesus'
lordship and appealed to men to accept it. Jesus, who
had been crucified, could not possibly be left in the
grave, for David had prophesied that God "would set
one of his descendants upon his throne" (Acts 2:30).
Peter finds proof of this in Psalms 110:1: .. 'The Lord
said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make thy
enemies a stool for thy feet'" (Acts 2:34, 35). This
Peter interpreted with the affirmation, "Let all the house
of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made
him both Lord and Christ (Messiah), this Jesus whom
you crucified" (vs. 36).
Lord and messianic King! This is Jesus' office even
today. All authority has been given to Him in heaven
and on earth (Matthew 28:18). He has been enthroned
at God's right hand (Hebrews 1:3; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2).
This fact Signifies nothing less than that Jesus in His
triumph and exaltation shares the very throne of God
himself (Revelation 3:21). He is now reigning as King
(I Corinthians 15:25); and He will continue His kingly
reign until all His enemies have been made the footstool
of His feet-until Satan and death are finally destroyed
Now we can understand more precisely what the
48]
second coming of Christ represents: the manifestation
and the extension of His present reign over the world.
The world does not know that He is now enthroned as
Lord and King. Every knee does not bow and every
tongue does not confess that He is Lord (Philippians
2:10-11). His lordship is indeed being proclaimed in
all the world, but only those who accept the gospel con-
fess His lordship and bow before His kingly rule. This
is why the second coming at Christ is absolutely neces-
sary. His return will be the means of bringing the strug-
gle with evil to an end. The final victory is assured,
because the initial victory has already been won, and
He is already the victorious, regnant Lord and Christ.
This triumphant second coming of Christ is vividly
pictured in the Revelation in terms of a conquering war-
rior (Revelation 19:11-16). The Kin,g of kings and Lord
of lords, who is also the Word of God, is pictured as
coming on a white battle charger. He is crowned with
the insignia of royal power; His clothing is splashed
with blood from the battle. He is accompanied by the
armies of heaven, who are similarly garbed and
mounted. However, the only weapon of conflict is a
sword-a sharp sword issuing from the mouth of the
returning King-the sword of His mouth, the Word of
God.
What an incomprehensible conception! Who can take
this picture literally! Who can conceive of a warrior
with a sword swinging back and forth out of his mouth,
chopping down his foesl Yet what a majestic concep-
tion! In the beginning, God spoke, and the world came
into being (Genesis 1:9; John 1:1, 3; Hebrews 11:3). In
[49
the incarnation, God spoke, and redemption was accom-
plished (John 1:1-14; Hebrews 1:1-3). At the end,
Christ will speak, and evil will be destroyed. However
we are to understand the details, one central fact is
sure. Christ will come; His kingdom will yet rule over
all; every knee will bow and every tongue confess His
lordship.
VI. The Second Coming and
History
IN THE FIRST CHAPTER, we outlined several modem re-
interpretations of history and eschatology which make
little room for the second coming of Christ. One might
ask, If the teaching of the second coming is so very
important in biblical thought, why do not all modem
biblical interpreters accept it?"
The difficulty with this doctrine does not rest in the
obscurity of the biblical teaching. It grows out of mod-
em ideas about history. As we saw in the first chapter,
the modem concept that history has destiny and pur-
pose reflects the impact of the Old Testament idea of
history moving to a divinely appointed goal. However,
many of the modem interpretations have forsaken the
biblical perspective at an all-important point. The Bible
50]
JESUS CHRIST AND HISTOBY
is God-centered, while our modem views are man-
centered. History is no longer understood in a biblical
sense but in a modernized sense. History is defined in
terms of contemporary philosophies rather than in terms
of God, the Lord of nature and history.
It is often said that if history really has a goal, this
goal must be achieved within history and by historical
forces. If history itself does not produce the kingdom
of God, the kingdom is not really historical. Therefore
we must seek to discover forces of progress and devel-
opment within history. The idea of a heavenly Son of
Man coming with glory from heaven does not mean
the redemption of history. It means rather the destruc-
tion of history. Such concepts, we are told, are utterly
foreign to historical experience. Rudolf Bultmann ex-
presses it: It is no longer possible for anyone seriously
to hold the New Testament view of the world ... We
can no longer look for the return of the Son of Man on
the clouds of heaven or hope that the faithful will meet
him in the air." Therefore the New Testament notions
about a heavenly Sonof Man coming in glory cannot be
an essential part of the gospel, but only the religiOUS
framework taken over by the early Christians from their
environment of Jewish apocalyptic thought.
This is why Bultmann reinterprets eschatology alto-
gether in terms of personal existence and confessescom-
plete ignorance as to the goal of history. Such thinking,
however, soradically reinterprets the gospel as to empty
it of its fundamental character. For the gospel is not
concerned alone with personal existence and individual
salvation, although it includes these. The gospel COD-
[51
sists of the redemptive acts of God in history; therefore
it points to a goal for history as the final objective of
God's redemptive acts. This is not to say that the final
historical redemption is accomplished by history. Pre-
cisely here is the significance of the second coming of
Christ: history cannot save itself. Evil is real. Evil is
greater than man, greater than men, and stronger than
all history. Only a mighty act of God breaking into his-
tory can save it.
This is the message of the whole Bible. This neces-
sity for divine intervention to redeem history from the
curse of sinfulness and evil is not limited to the second
coming of Christ; it belongs to the entire redemptive
line. The experiences of Israel in the Old Testament
were the result of God's intervention. God was acting
in history for Israel's blessing in a way He was not act-
ing elsewhere in human affairs. Israel alone He called
to be His people. Israel alone He delivered from bond-
age and led into the land of promise. To Israel alone,
and to those who would come under Israel's influence,
did He promise the kingdom of God. The fulfillment of
these promises of the kingdom would not be the prod-
uct of history, but would be the result of a divine act
in history. God will arise and visit the earth in judgment
and salvation. The divine visitation will bring judgment
and salvation for both men and the world of nature.
Out of the ruins of judgment will emerge both a new
world, freed from the curse of evil, and a new people,
cleansed from their sins and renewed in their hearts.
We have seen that the New Testament fulfillment of
this Old Testament hope occurred in unexpected terms.
52]
Before the Son of Man comes in glory to bring the king-
dom of God, He came as the suffering Servant, in weak-
ness and humility to die. However, the New Testament
clearly teaches that both acts of the drama of redemp-
tion involve nothing less than an inbreaking of the
world of God into human history.
The life and death of Jesus of Nazareth was no mere
historical" event in the modem limited scientific sense
of the word. Jesus was not, like Socrates or Epictetus,
merely the product of a certain historical and religious
environment. To be sure, Jesus appeared in a given
historico-religious milieu of late Judaism, and He can-
not be understood historically apart from this environ-
ment. However, one can master the environment and
miss completely the significance of Jesus, for He was no
less than God incarnate in the flesh, In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us" (John 1:1, 14). One of the most sig-
nificant discoveries of modem gospel criticism is that
the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels is no less a portrait of
a Divine Being than is the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel.
The earliest Gospel relates "the gospel of Jesus Christ,
the Son of God" (Mark 1:1) .
Jesus of Nazareth was no mere product of history; He
was the coming of God into history. In him God dwelt
among men. In Him, the Eternal has invaded the tem-
poral. In Him, the Absolute is known in the relativities
of history. The virgin birth of Jesus does not stand apart
as an irrelevant legend; it is of a piece with all that
Jesus was and did. The virgin birth denotes nothing less
[53
than that Jesus of Nazareth was not the product of his-
tory. Only by a creative act of the eternal God, an act
quite inexplicable by all the physical sciences, did Jesus
come into the world. The virgin birth indicates that in
the coming of Jesus, something happened which tran-
scends all historical causality and analogy. The pre-
existent Son of God "emptied Himself, taking the form
of a servant, being born in the likeness of men" (Philip-
pians 2:7).
The resurrection of Christ is of a piece with His birth.
No mere reanimation of a corpse, it brought into view
the emergence of a new order of life in human history
-resurrection life-the life of the age to come. This
was such life as history had never before experienced
and could not of itself produce. There is not nor can
there be any natural "historical" explanation or analogy
of the resurrection. It is suprahistorical. It is a direct
unmediated act of God.
TIlls act does not imply a breaking of the "laws of
nature." It indicates rather that God, the Creator and
Lord of nature, is not bound by His own creation, but
can act in nature by powers which exceed ordinary
human observation. The essential question is this: Are
human history and nature the measure of God and of
God's working? The biblical answer is an unequivocal,
No. While both man and nature are God's creation,
both are marred by sin; and only by an interoention
of God can either be redeemed. Left to itself, human
existence ends in death, and nature groans endlessly
under the burden of violence and corruption. The gos-
pel is the good news that God has abandoned neither
54]
man nor the world, but that He has intervened in the
miraculous birth, the miraculous life, and the miracu-
lous resurrection of the incarnate Son of God. Even the
death of Christ involves a supernatural event, although
one that was entirely unseen. For in that awful death,
a spiritual event was taking place. Atonement was be-
ing made for the sins of men.
The incarnation of Christ and His second coming
alike are both interventions of God in human history.
He who has no room in his thinking for the second
coming of Christ, because it is not an "historical" event,
or because it is not consistent with historical experience,
does not really understand the biblical doctrine of in-
carnation. Incarnation represents an invasion into hu-
man history of the suprahistorical realm to accomplish
for man in history what man could not accomplish for
himself. The import of the second comingof Christ is
similar, but with this difference. The glory of the in-
carnate Son was veiled; the glory of the returning Son
will be manifest. No real contradiction to this statement
is found in John's statement, "We have beheld his glory,
glory as of the only Son from the Father" (John 1:14);
for the glory to which John refers was not an unveiled
glory but a concealed glory, evident only to the eye of
faith. Jesus first "manifested his glory" at Cana of Gali-
lee when He changed the water into wine (John 2: 11),
but this glory was seen only by His disciples who be-
lieved on Him. All that others experienced at Cana was
unusually good wine. God's glory was there, but in a
hidden form, seen only by faith.
When Christ comes again, His glory will be unveiled,
[55
displayed to the world. He will come "on the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory (Matthew 24:30).
He will sit on His glorious throne (Matthew 25:31).
He who came once to Bethlehem, to be greeted only by
a handful of shepherds, will return to be seen by all.
But in both incarnation and second advent, the same
Lord comesfromheaven to earth for man's redemption.
Therefore in a real sense, the coming of the kingdom
of God means both the redemption of history and the
end of history. It is not incorrect to think of the kingdom
of God as a realm "beyond history," if by this we imply
that the kingdomof God will involve an order of human
existence transcending all past historical experience. It
will be life in time and space on the earth; yet it will be
life of a new and different order, for it will be human
earthly existence lifted out of its present weakness, de-
cay, strife, and death.
This fact is evident even in the Old Testament hope
of redemption. The lion shall eat straw like the ox
(Isaiah 11:7). How are these words to be interpreted?
Are we to think of carnivorous animals with the teeth
and digestive organs of cattle? The Scripture obviously
does not ask such questions. This statement means that
nature will be freed from violence. The lion will no
longer prey on the ox, but will become placid. This sin-
gle statement suggests a complete transformation of na-
ture that we can scarcely imagine. What will nature be
like without the struggle for survival and the strong
preying upon the weak? What will the world be like
without the cycle of life and death? Obviously it will
not be nature as we know it, but nature lifted to a new
56]
level of existence that surpasses the limits of all human
experience.
The New Testament teaching of resurrection re-
flects the same kind of transformation. In the resurrec-
tion, they "neither marry nor are given in marriage, for
they cannot die any more, because they are equal to
angels (Luke 20:35-36) in this fact: that there is no
death and therefore no need of procreation and the
marriage relationship. But when we reflect on these
words, how can we, in terms of present experience,
conceive of human existence without aging and dying,
procreation, and the sexual relationship? From a bio-
logical point of view, the entire present human en-
deavor centers around the sexual function. Such words
indicate that the life of the age to come will stand in
continuity with present history but will be different-so
different that we can scarcely conceive of it even in the
imagination, let alone in terms of actual experience.
The rapture of the Church at the return of Christ is
another element in this transition from present history
to the life of the age to come. When Christ comes, "the
dead in Christ will rise flrst, then we who are alive,
who are left, shall be caught up together with them in
the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall
always be with the Lord (I Thessalonians 4:16-17).
The word "rapture comes from the Latin rendering of
"caught up (rapiemur). For the living, it is equivalent
to the resurrection of the dead. The dead in Christ will
be raised; the living in Christ will be caught up to meet
the Lord. This designates the same transformation
into resurrection life for both the dead and living
[57
saints. 'We shall not all sleep [in death], but we shall
all be changed" (I Corinthians 15:51). Both the dead
and the living who have already mown the resurrection
life of Christ in history will experience the redemption
of the body. "For this corruptible must put on incor-
ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality"
(I Corinthians 15:53, AV). The rapture of the Church
is the event by which the saved who are alive at Christ's
return are translated into the resurrection life without
passing through death. It is the symbol of transition
into a new order of life that transcends all present
historical experience.
Yet not quite; for "Christ has been raised from the
dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep"
(I Corinthians 15:20). We have already pointed out
that the resurrection of Christ was an actual event oc-
curring in history, and yet that it stands apart from all
history, without historical causality and without his-
torical analogy. It was not the reanimation of a dead
corpse but the emergence of a neworder of life, appear-
ing in history, but going beyond all historical experi-
ence.
The Gospels record that the resurrection body of Jesus
was a real body which could be seen, heard, and felt,
yet that it was different. Jesus could go and come
freely. He suddenly appeared among His disciples
(John 20:19; Luke 24:36) and with equal suddenness
disappeared (Luke 24:31). The Gospels relate this
strange conduct without comment or embellishment as
simple "historical" facts. The only adequate explana-
tion is that the resurrection body of Jesus was a real
58]
body that moved, nevertheless, in a higher order of
existence, exceeding the ordinary laws of space and mo-
tion. Does this not involve essentially the same issue as
that of a world in which the lion eats straw like an ox,
in which there is neither procreation nor dying? God
has implanted in the heart of human history an event
which will ultimately transform human historical ex-
perience in the immortality and redeemed resurrec-
tion life of the age to come. Christ's resurrection in his-
tory is the beginning of the eschatological resurrection
at the last day.
Here is the fundamental meaning-of the second com-
ing of Christ for history. Man cannot redeem himself,
nor can history produce the kingdom of God. Perverted
by sin, man has lost his way. Burdened by evil, history
of itseH is doomed. Speaking as a purely "objective"
historian, Bultmann rightly describes the search for
meaning in history as meaningless. Such familiar names
as Auschwitz and. Dachau speak of the snarl of irra-
tional and demonic threads in the warp and woof of
history, which men cannot weave into a meaningful and
purposeful pattern.
The gospel is the good news that God has abandoned
neither man nor history. In the incarnation of Christ,
God has invaded human history to defeat the forces of
evil that man cannot conquer. In the second coming of
Christ, God will again invade history to finish the re-
deeming work He has begun. Redemption from begin-
ning to end is the work of Godwho transcends history.
The return of Christ is the means by which redemption
will be consummated. Even so come, Lord Jesus!
[59
SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS
BOWMAN, JOHN WICK, The Religion of Maturity. New York:
Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1948.
__, Prophetic Realism and the Gospel. Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1955. While these books are not
primarily concerned with the second coming of Christ,
they provide an exposition of the theology of "Prophetic
Realism," which turns attention away from the return of
Christ to center it upon the present working of God's
kingdom "on the plane of history."
BULTMANN, RUDOLF, Jesus Christ and Mythology. New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
__, The Presence of Eternity. New York: Harper & Bros.,
1957. The former book provides an introduction to Bult-
mann's program of "demythologizing," and the latter is a
positive exposition of Bultmann's attitude toward history.
CAIRNS, EARLE E., "Philosophy of History," in Contemporary
Evangelical Thought, Carl F. H. Henry, ed., Great Neck,
N. Y.: Channel Press, 1957. An excellent brief survey of
various philosophies of history.
CAMPBELL, RODERICK, Israel and the New Covenant. Phila-
delphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1954. A
"postmillennial" study which includes the salvation and
christianization of the world within the church's historical
mission.
COLLINGWOOD, R. G., The Idea of History. New York: Ox-
ford University Press, 1946. A survey of the history of
historiography, together with an exposition of one of the
most inBuential modern interpretations of history.
60]
CULLMANN, OSCAR, Christ and Time. Philadelphia: West-
minster Press, 1950.
--, "The Return of Christ" in The Early Church, A. J. B.
Higgins, ed., PhUadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956. A
critical European scholar defends the view that redemp-
tive history must have an eschatological goal.
DODD, CHARLES HAROLD, The Parables of the Kingdom.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
---, The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments. New
York: Harper & Bros., 1960.
--, The Coming of Christ. Cambridge: The University
Press, 1951. The first book deals with the teachings of
Jesus and contains Dodd's "symbolic" interpretation of
apocalyptic language. The second book gives Dodd's de-
fense of "realized eschatology." The third book is his
most recent interpretation of the second coming of
Christ.
LADD, GEORGE ELDON, Crucial QuestiOns about the King-
dom of God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1952.
--, The Gospel of the Kingdom. Grand Rapids: Erdmans
Pub. Co., 1959. These two books offer an interpretation
of the kingdom of God both as God's redemptive acts in
history and the eschatological goal of history.
--, "The Saving Acts of God," in Basic Christian Doc-
trines,C. F. H. Henry, ed., New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, 1962. A brief statement of the biblical COD-
cept of revelation in redemptive history.
McINTYRE, JOHN, The Christian Doctrine of History. Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1957. The theme is
discussed from a more philosophical perspective than the
present essay.
ROBERTS, T. A., History and Christian Apologetic. London:
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1960.
[61
An excellent essay pointing up the limitations of a strict
historical method in interpreting Christian origins.
SUMMEIlS, Ru, The Life Beyond. Nashville: Broadman
Press, 1959. A comprehensive study of biblical eschatol-
ogy from a conservative amillennial viewpoint.
WALVOORD, JOHN, The Millennial Kingdom. Findlay, Ohio:
Dunham Pub. Co., 1959. A detailed defense of the dis-
pensational interpretation.
62]

Jesus Christ and History by George E. Ladd 1963

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jesus Christ and History by George E. Ladd 1963

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jesus Christ and History by George E. Ladd 1963

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

\ 5 ~ I V P Series in Contemporary

You might also like