6. Jesus and Apocalyptic ..............................91
6.
Jesus and Apocalyptic
THE SUBJECT of this essay has taken on new priority in recent developments in church and theology. This is not the first time this has happened. Again and again apocalyptic disturbs the peace in the exegesis of the New Testament; especially when it comes in the form of the question "What is the relevance of apocalyptic for the faith of the church?"
Since the days of Albert Schweitzer and Johannes Weiss (as a matter of fact even earlier) New Testament scholars have known that the preaching and appearance of Jesus of Nazareth have to be understood against the background of Old Testament and late Jewish eschatology. During the ascendancy of "liberal" theology little was made, in a theological sense, of this background, which was perceived as "fantastic." The attempt was made to leave eschatology in the background as much as possible and to present the preaching of Jesus as a breakthrough into this apocalyptic framework. The change came during the period after the First World War, when humanity awoke from its dream of eternal progress. Serious efforts were made to let the eschatological emphasis of the New Testament message in general and of the preaching of Jesus in particular come into its own.
This then led to a new understanding of the concept "eschatology," an interpretation directed not to the "horizontal" course of history to the end-time, nor to the how or the when of the end-time, but rather to the actual situation in which the individual sees himself placed, when confronted with the message that the end of all things is near. The theological meaning of New Testament eschatology would not lie in the knowledge of the future and of the end of history, but in the actual decision before which the new future of God continually places us here and now. This is the well-known existentialistic interpretation of eschatology, in which in the field of New Testament research the name of Rudolf Bultmann is prominent. This existentialistic interpretation of eschatology meant at the same time the so-called demythologizing of the apocalyptic frame of the New Testament message. According to Bultmann apocalypticism is the mythological expression of the way man understood himself in history. It is this existentialistic self-understanding which counts in New Testament apocalypticism. The rest of it is only mythology and religious fantasy.1
Closed and consistent, this program of demythologizing and existentialistic interpretation of apocalyptic influenced the study of New Testament theology for a long time. In recent years, however, doubts have risen on a large scale about the legitimacy of this interpretation. As often has been the case in the history of exegesis, the text and the evidence of Scripture appear stronger than the framework into which its interpreters, on the basis of their specific anthropological or philosophical presuppositions, have wanted to press it. If it is true, as has been admitted by Bultmann, that the "setting" of the New Testament kerygma has an eschatological character; and if it is also true that this eschatology in its New Testament form has been strongly influenced by Jewish apocalypticism, then it may seriously be questioned whether one can give the kerygma such an exclusively existentialistic and individualistic interpretation as have Bultmann and his followers. For does the specific meaning of apocalypticism not in fact lie in its concern for the counsel of God with regard to all things and its intention, in close conjunction with the Old Testament prophecy, to bring back the whole world and all that is created under the kingship of God?
The decline of Bultmann's influence has coincided with the increasing interest of recent systematic theology in the course
and the future of history, as for instance in the theology of hope of Jiirgen Moltmann and the historical views of Wolfhart Pannenberg. There is a strong regression in the interest in existentialism, insofar as it concentrates itself on individual man. I refer, for instance, to the severe criticism of Bultmann by Dorothee Solle. All the emphasis is now laid on social and political conditions as decisive for the position of the human being in history. The biblical message of salvation is consequently explained as a message of liberation from unrighteousness and discrimination in the social and political sense of the word. And all this is placed in the light of the great eschatological expectation of salvation. This partly explains the new interest in the apocalyptic character of the message of Jesus. Attention is directed to the future, when the poor will inherit the earth and all who are hungry and thirsty for righteousness will be satisfied.
This new interest in New Testament eschatology and apocalypticism raises new questions of its own. In how far can the progress of history be connected to the coming of the eschatological kingdom of God? Does apocalypticism not just mean the end of history, as Bultmann always pointed out, and therefore in fact not allow any more room for a perspective about the future of this present world and of the development of society? Still, no matter how one wants to judge these perspectives, it cannot be denied, particularly with respect to Jesus' preaching of the nearness of the kingdom, that her-meneutic attempts to undo the New Testament kerygma of its cosmic world- and future-enclosing dimensions are out of favor in current theology.
This shift in theological interest may explain why apocalypticism has received immense attention in the New Testament research. Even in the Bultmannian school, opposition to a onesided existentialistic interpretation of the kerygma has become stronger and stronger. Ernst Kasemann has argued strongly that the kingship of Christ in the New Testament is not limited to personal salvation but that it has cosmic dimensions too. One cannot remove this central notion from the message of the New Testament without seriously diminishing and changing that message. In this respect the apocalyptic interpretation of the person and the work of Christ in early Christianity is, according to Kasemann, essential for understanding the New Testament. That is how he arrived at his much-quoted pronouncement that apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology.2
True, Kasemann is of the opinion (and in this he reminds one of the old liberal tradition) that this apocalyptic character should be denied to Christ's own proclamation. While the preaching of John the Baptist moves entirely in this apocalyptic framework, Christ would have disassociated himself in this from his predecessor. The early church, however, under the influence of charismatic, prophetic voices in their midst, understood the works and the person of Jesus in the light of Jewish apocalyptic expectation, particularly by identifying him with the Son of Man of Daniel 7. And, Kasemann says, from their point of view they could not have done better. For in one sense or another you have to have this all-embracing, cosmic dimension in your Christian message. And Christian theology without this expectation of the full lordship of Christ over all things can never be complete and legitimate.
Not surprisingly some have accused Kasemann of a real inconsistency in his position. His view of the preaching of Jesus necessitates a "double discontinuity," on the one side with the apocalyptic preaching of John the Baptist and on the other side with the apocalyptic interpretations and expectations of the early Christian community. Would this not mean that Jesus' own preaching took place in a sort of historical vacuum? And how could the later church have identified Jesus with the Son of Man in Daniel, if they could not find a clear point of contact with it in Jesus' self-revelation? Could they rely for such an identification only on "prophetic voices" in their midst? What do we actually know of such a boom of charismatic apocalypticism in the early Christian church? Does it not make much more sense, even on historical grounds, to understand Jesus' own preaching as apocalyptic in itself?
Nonetheless, Kasemann's acknowledgment of the essential significance of New Testament apocalypticism, and his vigorous defense of this position against the sharp attacks this evoked from many of his old friends, illustrates that the apocalyptic dimensions of the New Testament message cannot convincingly be touched up by modern criticism. That this must have its consequences for the interpretation of Jesus' own preaching cannot, in my opinion, finally be denied. The book by the German scholar Klaus Koch, Ratios von der Apokalyptik (1970) ("Desperate about Apocalypticism") is illustrative in this connection. Koch's fascinating review shows how in the course of biblical research the attempt is always made to reduce the theme and value of apocalypticism as much as possible in the New Testament kerygma, especially in the preaching of Jesus, but how it has again and again appeared necessary to return to it. Theology is in a sense desperate in the face of the apocalyptic character of the New Testament message, but at the same time it has to accept it in order correctly to reflect the preaching of Jesus and the New Testament kerygma built on it.
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Now it may be remarked with some justification that to these questions no clear answer can be given until there is a clear definition of what is meant by apocalypticism. Is it in fact possible to speak in general of "apocalyptic"? It is well known that what we call apocalypticism is a complex phenomenon both in its forms and its content. It found its expression in a form of literature which in the Bible is rooted in the last books of the Old Testament, most clearly in the book of Daniel, but also with unmistakable points of contact in the older prophecies.3 It developed for a long time in late Judaism and led an independent existence in it, though the place and influence of apocalypticism in the spiritual life of Jewish people in those days are anything but clear to us.
Apocalyptic is characterized by a dramatic-symbolic manner of describing the future. It occurs especially in the form of visions similar to what we find in the New Testament Apocalypse of John, whence the name for the literary genre was later borrowed. These visions contain very remarkable material — images, representations, forms, and symbols — which also occurs in non-visionary passages. Their meaning is often far from transparent, and sometimes they make a fantastic impression on us. Yet most scholars are convinced that apocalypticism is not born of abstract speculations about the future. Behind apocalypticism lie totally different forces: the desire of and the urge of the human spirit to rise above the misery, mystery, and contradictions of history, and to seek a solution for this in the presently hidden, but soon-to-be-expected, completion and culmination of the divine plan. To discover that plan, the long eras of history were examined and categorized into periods. The writers identified themselves with the great figures of the past — Enoch, the patriarchs, Moses, Isaiah, Baruch, Ezra — in order to present in the form of a prophecy what was regarded by them to be the last chapter of history, as the outcome of a process that had long since been coming to fulfilment.
Obviously this is only a brief characterization of a very complicated phenomenon. No less important than the forms and structures is the apocalyptic view of life and history. All important in this respect is in fact the scheme of the two worlds or aeons — the "aeon mellon" and the "aeon houtos," which in the strictest sense are opposed to each other, as the old and the new, the evil and the divine world, and which seem to have nothing in common and no other continuity except that both are taken up in the counsel of God.
Closely related is the spiritual concentration of apocalypticism on the imminent end of this world and the ardently expected dawn of the coming world. In addition the universal and cosmic framework in which apocalypticism sees history being taken up causes all human certainties to disappear and throws man back for his salvation more and more on himself and his own personal relation to God. In this context the relation of apocalypticism to ethics comes into the discussion: the question of whether or not a pessimistic and deterministic character would be typical of apocalypticism in an anthropological and ethical sense. All these questions are important for judging the lasting meaning and relevance of apocalypticism as a particular specimen of the eschatological way of thinking.
If we return to our special theme, Jesus and apocalypticism, it becomes clear immediately that the form and presentation of the preaching of Jesus as it comes to us in the gospels are quite different from what is characteristic of the Jewish apocalyptic way of thinking. If one sets the obscure and inscrutable visions, the fantastic representations and calculations, of many intertestamental apocalypses next to the commandments, parables, and proverbs of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, one can ask whether there even is a point of comparison. But also if we try to qualify the more future-oriented predictions of Jesus, his warnings and penitential preaching with regard to the future, we cannot simply categorize these under what we know, for example, from the book of Daniel or from the Apocalypse of John.
Here lies one of the reasons many scholars have insisted that Jesus moved consciously away from the later apocalyptic development of prophecy and returned to the great prophetic tradition of the Old Testament, of whom Deutero-Isaiah is the last. But can one thus place the background of Jesus' preaching about four to five centuries earlier? For, though it may be correct to place emphasis on the relationship between the gospels and the older prophecies, the later development of prophecy (for example, in the book of Daniel) is also visible in the preaching of Jesus. And that line of prophecy also characterizes late Jewish apocalypticism. This is the sort of prophecy in which the expectation of salvation shifts itself more and more from this world to the coming world, with its universalistic perspective, its image of the imminent end of the world and the day of God's judgment, in which the whole cosmos is involved.
Undoubtedly, the roots of this expectation are grounded in the older prophecy, with the result that a clear separation of prophecy and apocalyptic, as advocated by some, is totally impossible. But there does exist, in the concentration on the passing of this present world and the imminent dawning of the new, an indication of a specifically apocalyptic view of the future. Without this background the New Testament in its totality and the preaching of Jesus in particular cannot be understood, no matter how unique and independent these may be in comparison with late Jewish apocalypticism. This is true not only of the great discourse in Mark 13, sometimes styled, perhaps not unjustly, as the "small" or "synoptic" apocalypse, but also of the overture of the whole gospel, the proclamation with which Jesus came to the people of Israel: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). And it holds especially for the most significant self-appellation, designated to Jesus by the univocal tradition, namely, Son of Man. It is important to go a little deeper into these two central concepts: kingdom of God and Son of Man.
Jesus' preaching on the kingdom of God brings our discussion to a very crucial point. On the one side, it cannot be denied that this concept "kingdom of heaven" was derived from the late Jewish expectation of the future. This implies, however, that Jesus saw his whole preaching and mission in the framework of the great future as promised by God, proclaimed by the prophets, and expected by Israel; and one cannot separate this concept from its historical roots without distorting it. This means that with the coming of the kingdom as announced by Jesus everything in heaven and on earth is involved, not only the individual person but also history — the whole cosmos, as is already evident from the third petition of the Lord's Prayer. On the other hand, it can no less be denied that Jesus' preaching of the kingdom fundamentally shatters the framework of Jewish apocalypticism.
Even the preaching of John the Baptist with regard to the imminence of the kingdom of God receives in the interpretation, and in the ministry of Jesus, a decisive shift in emphasis, which was unintelligible to. John. This shift is this, that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God not in the first place as a cosmic revolution of all things but as a spiritual reality which comes to man in his words, deeds, and forgiveness of sin, and which is therefore present already in this world. This means that the kingdom of God became a reality in a totally different way from what was expected in Jewish apocalypticism. It derives its character from the self-revelation of the earthly Jesus (which, for example, should be explained in connection with his parables) and is revealed by him particularly in the passion and death God laid on him. That is the uniqueness of the kingdom of God as proclaimed and presented by Jesus.
This, however, does not mean the renunciation of the great future of the kingdom of God as proclaimed by the prophets and expected by Israel. In all that Jesus said and did and bestowed, the future of the kingdom is in the picture, too. Present and future in the preaching of Jesus exist in an unbreakable relationship and are in the most absolute sense interdependent. In the proclamations of the coming of the kingdom (for example, in the Sermon on the Mount) the present and future continually alternate with one another; and it is often not easy to see both in correct relationship to one another. All the parables speak of the future of the kingdom, though their meaning is already directed to the present; and all the miracles, too, are directed to the future. The presentation of the kingdom in the present is in many ways to be understood only as a sign and anticipation of the future. That also holds for the person of Jesus. He is "the coming one," the eschatological figure who was heralded by John. But he can still be misunderstood today. "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me" (Matt. 11:6). That is why Jesus continues to speak of the future of the kingdom. And when he does that, all things in heaven and on earth are involved. He does not only speak of the future restoration of the kingdom of David, but in apocalyptic language of the redemption and judgment which will include the whole world and the whole cosmos. And that is not only true of the much-discussed apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13, but also forms the visible or presupposed background of all the pronouncements of Jesus about the future (e.g., Matt. 5:18; 8:11,12; 10:15; 13:30,43; Mark 10:30; 12:25, etc.).
All this stands out more clearly when we include Jesus' pronouncements about the Son of Man in our examination. For our theme this name is of particular importance. Its use in fact provides a direct relation, at least in a few pronouncements, with Daniel 7 and the apocalyptic figure who appears there, who is clothed with all power by the "Ancient of days" (Mark 14:62; Matt. 28:18). Therefore it is especially the interpretation of this name "Son of Man" which is of decisive significance with regard to the nature of the preaching of Jesus and of his self-revelation.
The gospel pronouncements about the Son of Man are the subject of much recent theological discussion. According to a number of scholars, one should deny all of these pronouncements to Jesus. Professor Vielhauer, for instance, contends that there would be a real incongruity between the non-apocalyptic way in which Jesus preached the kingdom and the apocalyptical sayings concerning the Son of Man.4 The latter, therefore, should not be considered genuine sayings of Jesus himself but ascribed to the early church. And we saw already that Kasemann, though much more in favor of apocalypticism than Vielhauer, is nevertheless convinced that not Jesus himself but the church of Jerusalem understood him in the light of apocalypticism and that therefore the church and not Jesus himself made the identification with the Son of Man of Daniel 7. And the church did this, as Kasemann says, under the strong influence of the charismatic and prophetic voices in their midst.
Now it cannot be denied on the basis of comparison of the synoptic gospels that the title Son of Man has undergone a sort of expansion in the early tradition. While for instance Matthew speaks of the Son of Man, Mark or Luke in the same sayings may speak of "I" or "me." This is a clear indication that the development of the tradition has multiplied the use of the name Son of Man.5
But it is another thing to deny to Jesus every use of this name. This cannot be done without doing violence to the evidence. As Colpe has pointed out in his well-known article on the Son of Man,6 a very close relationship existed between the concepts kingdom of heaven and Son of Man. Daniel 7 speaks not only of the Son of Man but also of the kingdom of God. Kingdom of God and Son of Man are in a certain sense parallel concepts. It would be most arbitrary to ascribe to Jesus the idea of the kingdom of God but to deny to him the use of the name Son of Man.
Secondly, the fact that the title Son of Man in the New Testament comes almost exclusively from the mouth of the historical Jesus and hardly seems to have played a role in the later church, is a very strong argument against the assertion that the title Son of Man for Jesus would have originated in the early church.
Even Bultmann does not want to go so far as to deny to Jesus every use of the name Son of Man. But he does argue that the fact that Jesus speaks only in the third person about the Son of Man proves that he did not identify himself with the Son of Man, but referred to a future apocalyptic figure whom he still expected. And it was only the later church who identified Jesus himself with this figure.7 But this opinion is dubious, for the authority with which Jesus acted and spoke, as the one sent by God (Matt. 5:21ff.; Luke 11:20; 17:20) hardly comports with the idea that he regarded himself only as a predecessor and not as the ultimate Savior.
Still, many find it difficult to believe that Jesus would have identified himself with the apocalyptic Son of Man of Daniel 7. Schweizer argues in his commentary on Mark that this name was originally derived not from Daniel 7, but from the prophecies of Ezekiel, where God speaks to the prophet as "child of man." That would mean that the name Son of Man was an indication of Jesus' humility, not his apocalyptic exaltation. Now it cannot be denied that Jesus often speaks in the gospels of the humble state of the Son of Man; for example when he says that he has no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). But that this name originates with Ezekiel rather than with Daniel is unacceptable. Nowhere in the gospels do we have indications that there exists such an essential relationship between Jesus and Ezekiel, while in a number of instances the relationship with Daniel is clearly evident.
Finally there is the idea that the expression originally had no prophetic and apocalyptic implications at all, but simply meant "man," and was used by Jesus to express his solidarity with the people. This interpretation, elaborated by the Norwegian scholar Ragnar Leivestadt,8 goes so far as to reject the idea that this name in Daniel and Enoch was meant to be a term of glory, and sees it there, too, as an indication of a human-like figure. So the term would have in Jesus' mouth only the meaning "man," a synonym for "I," but as qualification of this the particular meaning of a mere man, a man among men.
Regardless of how one interprets the meaning of the expression in Daniel 7, it is undeniable that this figure is invested with great power. Nor can it be denied that in Enoch and certainly also in the gospel, the name Son of Man is brought in direct relation with Daniel 7 and thus with the figure invested with all power. That is why it is difficult to see how one could deny that the use of this name in connection with Daniel 7 would qualify the bearer of his name as an apocalyptic figure.
Out of all these often laborious and confused discussions about the Son of Man, amid all that is uncertain, two things came to the fore: first, that on purely historical grounds the use of this name by Jesus, in close relationship to his own person, can hardly be denied; and second, that Jesus has put himself in direct relationship with the figure invested with power in the apocalyptic prophecy of Daniel.
This obviously does not mean, however, that the term Son of Man is reserved exclusively for statements which speak of the future glory of the Son of Man. We must rather point out that the totally unique and sovereign way Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God also holds for his use of the name Son of Man. As the kingdom of God is not merely future in the preaching of Jesus, but has already become a present divine reality, so also it can be said of the Son of Man that he has the power and authority on earth — here and now — to forgive sins (Matt. 9:6); and just as the kingdom of God has a paradoxical form of existence, hidden from human eyes and attacked by hostile powers (Matt. 13:4,5,13), so also there are paradoxical pronouncements about the Son of Man. He has no place to lay his head (Matt. 8:20). Above all, the Son of Man must suffer much (Mark 8:31). Certainly this "must" clearly belongs to fixed "apocalyptic" terminology (Rev. 1:1); and it needs no further argument here that this "must" flows forth from the divine counsel of God, not merely from the Svickedness of the people. Nevertheless, the statement that the Son of Man must suffer remains highly paradoxical. For "Son of Man" like "kingdom of God" is by its very nature a terminus gloriae. And that notion of glory comes to the fore also in Jesus' sayings about the Son of Man, in complete analogy with what is said about the future of the kingdom. Some day the prophecy of Daniel 7 will be fulfilled, and then the Son of Man will appear in divine glory (Matt. 13:26), suddenly and unexpectedly (Matt. 24:27). He himself will sit on the throne of God (Luke 22:69) and send out his angels (Matt. 13:27) and pronounce judgment on the earth and its people (Matt. 19:28; 25:31). In these pronouncements the Son of Man is also called "the king" (Matt. 25:31ff.). One can say that in this respect the sayings about the Son of Man bring to expression in a personal and therefore explicit manner what is implicitly said in the preaching of the kingdom about the person of Jesus. For the person of Jesus is also the secret of the kingdom whose coming Jesus has proclaimed.
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We face here the issue — for us inscrutable and inexplicable — of the self-consciousness of Jesus. That Jesus identified himself with the apocalyptical figure of the Son of Man may seem strange to us. But we cannot remove this grand and lofty strangeness from Jesus' words without great arbitrariness and bias. We cannot cut the historical figure of Jesus down to our own size and ascribe to the later church anything that seems strange to us, in order to be able to distance ourselves from it more easily. This strangeness holds not only for the special apocalyptic name and presentation Jesus applied to himself, but it holds for the total way he understood and presented himself to Israel. He placed his whole mission in and related it to the framework of Israel's expectation of the great future, and he used the language of Jewish apocalyptic for this.
This means, too, that we have always to keep in mind the special character of the apocalyptic way of speaking. In the prophecy of Daniel the Son of Man is just a symbol, not the designation of a historical personality. Therefore it is not without reason that Jesus speaks of the Son of Man exclusively in the third person. He maintained in this way a certain distance between his own personality and the figure of the Son of Man. Perhaps one may say that the way Jesus was speaking of the Son of Man is actually more an indication of his divine authority now and in the future than a direct self-identification with the Son of Man. It means that what had been proclaimed until now in prophetic symbols and images has become, in his coming and in his person, a new and unexpected reality and will become reality. This was the way in which Jesus made prophetic apocalypticism relevant to his disciples.
Speaking about this relevance, I realize that the less inclined we are to ascribe the apocalyptic sayings to the early church rather than Jesus himself, the more we face the real problem raised by the title of Rowley's 1947 book The Relevance of Apocalyptic. We must reckon with the possibility that Jesus may appear more strange to us as he comes nearer to us, stranger in the grand and lofty transcendence to which he lays claim, stranger, too, in the historical conceptual framework in which he expressed himself to his contemporaries. It cannot be the task of theological exegesis to retouch this strangeness as much as possible. Even to theologians the saying applies: "Blessed is he who takes no offense in me." On the other hand, one should not deny that theological explanation is bound to make the Scriptures understandable for present readers and present hearers, even though the individual exegete will be convinced that his efforts to add to the understanding of the greatness and strangeness of Jesus will always remain inadequate.
With this in mind, the following points seem to me of fundamental importance.
1. In every interpretation of Jesus' preaching two things must always get their rightful place: first, that this preaching of the kingdom and its attendant relation to the coming of the Son of Man is only to be understood against the background of the Old Testament and later Jewish apocalypticism; and second, that Jesus, in a totally unique and sovereign manner, gave these concepts their content, so that the key to the understanding should not be sought in one or another apocalyptic scheme, but in the preaching of Jesus.
2. With regard to the time of the kingdom Jesus, contrary to the current idea of "apocalyptic," proclaims the kingdom not only as future but also in his coming and work as an already present reality. In Jesus' apocalyptic preaching the human being is not only referred to the future for salvation, but also to the presence of the grace of God, to the freedom and the calling to live out of this new beginning as a child of God. All this brings with it an unmistakably different mentality with respect to this "evil" aeon. As Jesus goes out to seek the lost sheep of Israel and to orient himself, with the full power of God's grace, to all who have no helper, so he also asks his disciples to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world as children of God. Instead of the mostly negative mentality with regard to this world which one finds in the apocalyptic literature, Jesus comes with a positive approach. The meaning of this is therefore so radical and unlimited in its effect, because it is supported by the universality of the kingdom of God, as a reign of grace and righteousness.
3. It can be rightly concluded that the kingdom, as inaugurated by Jesus, includes history also. This is not only to be understood in the sense of the apocalyptic tradition, namely, that the coming of the kingdom forms the conclusion and the outcome of bygone history. Fulfilment which came with Jesus does not only mean the end of history. The kingdom of God also enters in a new and unprecedented way into the onward stream of history, as "a new doctrine imbued with power," a "seed," "salt," "light," "new wine" in old wineskins — a newness which like that of the kingdom of God breaks all boundaries, affects all relationships (cf. Matt. 13:8, 31, 33).
4. Still, there remains in Jesus' preaching a real tension between the present and the future of the kingdom and of the Son of Man. This tension does not allow itself to be released within the boundaries of this aeon. There remains an antithesis between what Augustine called the City of God and the City of Man. We see nowhere that Jesus anticipates a process of development in which the old, "evil" world will be gradually changed into the kingdom of God. Nowhere have the disciples received a mandate to complete the victory of Christ. The character of faith and of hope which Jesus kindled in the hearts of his disciples is of a different nature from that of an optimistic cultural view. It is a new assurance, concentrated in the person of Christ, of the presence of the mercy of God and of his redeeming righteousness in the midst of and in spite of everything that seems to contradict this in the present. In the death and resurrection of Christ this assurance receives its unexpected confirmation in both directions: in spite of the power of darkness, which tends to extinguish the brightest light, and in this power, God in Christ is present in the world to open the way to his future.
Not that one should interpret the tension between present and future of the kingdom as Bultmann does, in an exclusively individualistic manner, for example, as a new understanding by the believer of himself and of the nature of his humanity. This tension is equally related to the onward course of history and to the reality of the present world in the fullest sense of the word. The faith that in Christ the kingdom appeared and that Jesus is the Son of Man cannot ignore this unredeemed reality in its totality, but must in fact reveal itself as faith in the kingdom in confrontation with this reality. It is seeking, and hoping against hope, for the mercy and justice of God in this world.
5. Finally, as far as the descriptions of the future of the kingdom and the imminence of the parousia of the Son of Man are concerned, it is here that the apocalyptic setting of the gospel comes to the fore in all its strangeness for modern man. Here the relevance of apocalypticism seems very difficult to demonstrate. Certainly the soberness of the New Testament picture of the end-time and the absence of all calculations of the day of the Son of Man are totally different from what is found in some Jewish apocalypses. We are even surprised by the saying (Mark 13:32; Matt. 24:36) that no one knows of that day and that hour, not the angels in heaven nor the Son. But uncertainty over the time does not blot out the repeated talk of imminence nor eclipse the view of the future of the kingdom and the parousia of the Son of Man in the framework of contemporary events. Many have asked how this in many respects ominous description of the end-time and of the imminent end of the world can be in harmony with the liberating overture of the gospel, in which Jesus clearly distances himself from the preaching of judgment of John the Baptist. These are no easy problems, and they become more difficult still when one includes the fourth gospel in the discussion; problems which require a more thorough elaboration than is possible in this brief discussion.
So universal a character does the kingdom of God as starting point of Jesus' preaching bear that even the beatitudes he proclaims in and for this unredeemed world cannot be separated for a moment from the great and cosmic future. The difference between John the Baptist and Jesus is not that the preaching of the former is more and that of the latter less directed to the future. Rather, Jesus distinguishes himself from his predecessor in that he, out of his incomparable consciousness of the nearness of God's grace and love, paved the way to the future in the midst of all the puzzling highs and lows of history, even when the parousia of the Son of Man was delayed. The church, therefore, has to learn to live, to wait, to work by this presence of the grace of God; and that is why the fourth gospel witnesses to the unity of present and future as the hour that comes and is already here. At the same time the Spirit, who is its leader and comforter for the present time, is also the one who, as the Spirit of Christ, urges the church to go forward on the way of the future and to see all that happens on earth in the light of the coming judgment and salvation of the Son of Man.
The question which remains is not whether this expectation of the great future also belongs to the core of the gospel preached by Jesus. The certainty of this future is the overture and finale of the whole New Testament. The real problem also cannot be that Jesus has proclaimed the transcendence of the kingdom in the language of prophecy in apocalyptical visions and representations. It lies rather in this: that the future is seen in such shortened perspective that the time of the longer path of the church, of the preaching of the gospel, is not foreseen. It is this problem of the Naherwartung, with which the theological exegesis of the New Testament is confronted time and again, and to which it seems to me very difficult to give an adequate answer.
Must we, as some suggest, see here the aftereffect of Jewish apocalypticism, which did not know of the presence of grace in Christ and therefore had no other escape in the tribulations of time than anticipating the future of God? Or must we rather see in this anticipation the mark of a Christian faith that was, on the ground of the fulfilment in Christ, so sure of the future that it actually drew the future to itself as a reality which could not be postponed anymore?
Perhaps both answers are wrong. Maybe we have to see in that which seems strange and "irrelevant" in this Naherwar-tung the proof of our own incapability to live in the light of the great future, so to live as Christians that we can understand with John that the hour which comes is already near — and even has already come — in the way God is present in his judgments and grace in history. Since Jesus has come, the present and the future can no longer be separated, although the Father holds all things in his own hands and nobody knows the hour in which the signs will stop and the trumpet sound; nobody, not even the angels of heaven, not even the Son, but only the Father.