Revelation
The expectation of a speedy Advent of Christ to establish the Messianic kingdom is one of the most prominent features of the apostolic hope. It is a part of the gospel of St. Paul no less truly than of that of the ewish Christians.
As in the Synoptics, it is ordinarily associated with the judgment at the end of the age, the only certain exception being Revelation, which distin- guishes a preliminary from the final pen ig associating the former, which, after OT analogy, it conceives as a battle-scene, with the Advent of Christ, and inserting between this and the final judgment a millennial kingdom of 1000 years. Cf. MILLENNIUM.
Thus the first chapter of Acts begins with the prediction of the angels to the weeping disciples that ‘this Jesus... shall so come in like manner as ye beheld him going into heaven’ (1"). Accordingly we find St.
Peter re- garding the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost as a sign of that impending Day of J” to which OT prophecy looks forward (2), and urging the Jews to pray that God may send the Christ whom He hath appointed, even Jesus, whom the heavens must receive until the time of the restoration of all things (3), To Cornelius he preaches Christ as the judge of quick and dead (10); while St.
Paul warns the Athenians to repent, inasmuch as God ‘hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath ordained’ (17"; cf. 24", the resur- rection of just and unjust). Equally explicit is the testimony of the Epistles, St. James urges patience until the coming of the Lord, and warns Yhristians not to judge one another, since ‘the judge standeth before the doors’ (δ᾽).
St, Peter regards the present tribulations of Christians as the beginning of that judgment which is presently to overtake ‘the ungodly and the sinner’ (1 P 47-18) and the preceding context (v.") shows that reference is had to the Percusia. St. Paul, while in certain passages associating the final judgment directly with God (so Ro 1 2**7, and especially 678 PAROUSIA συν."
‘the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his works’; ef. He 10” 12°, Rey 20"), elsewhere explicitly connects the judg- ment with Christ (so Ro 2” ‘the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ’; 2 Co 5! ‘the judgment- seat of Christ’; 2 Th 158,9 Ti 41 ‘Christ Jesus, who shall judge the quick and thedead’).
At this judgment not only must Christians themselves be tested to see whether their work shall abide (1 Co 3"), but they themselves shall take part as judges in the great world assize, which includes even the angels (1 Co 6°). ut although the Parousia is thus associated with the judgment, it is not ΘῈΣ this aspect of Christ’s return that the Epistles lay the most stress. The Advent is to introduce that salvation which is the end of their faith (1 P 17; cf.
Ro 13", He 9%); that ‘cosy iia for which they were sealed (Eph 4%; cf. 1}, 83). Then shall be established ‘the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ’ (2 P 1"; cf. 2 ΤῊ 15, 2 Ti 44, Ja 2°). Then shall appear that heavenly Jerusalem in which there shall be no more sin and sorrow (Rey 212%, Itis true that Revelation postpones the ger pas of the aeavenly Jerusalem till after the Millennium, but the conception itself is found in other books which show no trace of millen- arianism, e.
g. Gal 4%, He 12"). Then shall be re- vealed the glory of Christ (1 P 4%; ef. Tit 2); and His followers, renewed in body (1 Th 5%, Ph 3%, Ro 8%), soul (1 Th 5%), and ἘΣΤΙ: (1 Th 5%, 1 Co 5°-*), shall be manifested with Him in glory (Col 8", 2 Th 1°), and rejoice in the vision and likeness of Christ (Ph 3", 1 Jn 33.
Then shall they receive that inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, which, during this present riod of tribulation, is reserved for them in reaven (1 P 1; ef. Eph 1); that rest for which now they vainly long (2 Th 1’); that crown of life which the Lord has promised to all who love His appearing (2 Ti 4°, cf. 1 Co 955, Ja 1%).
This is the Day of Visitation (1 P 213), that consummation for which the whole creation, now groaning in pain, longs and cries, the revelation & the children of God in the liberty of that glory when all sin shall have ceased, and the bondage of corruption have been done away (Ro 8”), To the emphasis which St. Paul lays upon the Parousia as introducing the kingdom of glory is doubtless to be attributed the fact that he speaks oats of a resurrection of believers (1 Th 418, Ph 34, 1 Co 15%).
From this fact many have concluded that St. Paul was a chiliast, distinguishing, like Revelation, between the first resurrection intro- ducing the millennial kingdom and the final re- surrection of all men before the last judgment. In favour of this view is quoted 1 Co 1533: 33, where St. Paul distinguishes between the resurrection of believers and the end when Christ shall deliver up the kingdom to the Father. Cf. MILLENNIUM. But, apart from possible exegetical objections (Salmond, pp. 520ff.
, 561 ff.), this view not only ignores those passages in which St. Paul seems to associate the final judgment with the Parousia (e.g. Ro 315; cf. Pfleiderer, Paulinismus*, p. 280 f.), but also fails to account for the admitted fact that St. Paul nowhere speaks of a higher glory to follew that of the Messianic kingdom.
As to the manner of the Advent, with the ex- ception of the Apocalyptic passages, 2 Th 2°, Rev 19, which follow the warlike imagery of the OT, it is represented, as in the Synoptic Gospels, as a coming on the clouds of heaven (Rev 1’, Ac 14, 1 Th 416-17), eeceapaniod by hosts of angels, to gather His saints living and dead into His heavenly kingdom. The fullest account is 1 Th 4165.
‘For the Lord PAROUSIA himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the deaa in Christ shall rise first. Then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we be ever with the Lord’; ef. 1 Co 15. This coming is further associated with a renewal of nature (Ro 84, 1 Co 7%; cf.
Ac 3%, Rev 211), after the fashion of Is 65", a transformation which 2 P represents as a great world conflagration in which all the present elements shall be dissolved and melt away in fervent heat (3", ef. He 12%). As to the time of the Advent, it is near (Ja 5%, 1 P 47, He 105, Rev 22’, Ro 134, 1Co7*). ‘The Lord is at hand’ (Ph 4°). ‘Yet a little while, and he that cometh will come, and will not tarry’ (He 1051), St. Paul expects His arrival within his own lifetime (1 Th 425, 1Co 1551.
83), Yet the exact time is unknown (1 Th 5%, 1 Ti 6"). There are certain preliminary signs which must be accomplished (the destruction of Antichrist, 2 Th 2°; the conversion of Israel, Ro 11:; ef. Eph 1° ‘a dispensation of the fulness of the times’). It is with these pre- liminary signs (the things shortly to come to pass, 1) that Revelation chiefly deals.
The coming to which the seer looks forward most vividly is not the Advent of the Last Day, but the impending judgment which awaits unfaithful Christians (Rev 55. 18 38-1), When the day comes it will be as a thief in the night (1 Th 5?, 2 P 3!°). Hence there is need of patience (Ja 5’), and of watchfulness (1 Th 5°). Even in St. Paul’s day there were those who doubted the resurrection (1 Co 15"; cf. 2 Ti 217-18), In the later books such doubt has become common.
2 Peter speaks of mockers who ask ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For fron. the day the fathers fell asleep, all things continue az they were from the beginning of the creation,’ and answers their objection by reminding them that one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. ‘The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slack- ness, but is long-suffering to you-ward, not wishing that any should perish’ (38:5).
From this brief survey the importance of the Parousia in the apostolic thought has been made manifest. Especially significant in this connexion is the teaching of St. Paul. The Christian to St. Paul is indeed already a spiritual man (Ro 85- 10), and as such a new creature (2 Co 5"). Even in this life he rejoices in the peace of Christ (Ro 15%), and sits with Him in heavenly places (Eph 2%, ef. He 65).
But his full salvation les in the future, in that completed kingdom to which his thought continually turns (see SALVATION). Entrance to this kingdom is the goal of all his endeavour (Ph 311-14), the hope of it he is sustained when all seems darkest. ithout it he would be of all men the most pinens (1 Co 15). Thus the entire thought οἵ St. Paul is dominated by the eae tation of the speedy coming of Christ.
his expectation he finds expressed in the frequent cele- bration of the Eucharist, which shows forth the death of Christ ‘ until he come’ (1Co 1138). It gives character to his ethics, leading him to desire for himself and for his disciples freedom from those family cares which may render their service less eflicient during that short time which remains before the coming of the Lord (1 Co7).
It is ever peat in his prayers, whether, in his fear lest he rimself fail to reach the goal, he commit himself to Him who is able to keep that which he has entrusted to Him against that day (2 Ti 1"), or, in his fatherly anxiety for those converts who are to be his glory and crown at the Parousia (2 Co 1"), he prays that the good work begun in them may be perfected unto the day of Jesus Christ (Ph 1°).
PAROUSIA PAROUSIA 679 eS This sense of the nearness of the time leads to & passing over in St. Paul’s thought of the period between death and the Advent. The middle state, when referred to, is described as a sleep (1 Th 4%, 1 Co 15), from which the disciples of Christ shall awake to share the gladness and triumph of the Parousia. This is not, indeed, always the case. In certain important passages (2 Co δ᾽", Ph 12%) we find St.
Paul’s thought passing over into that mysterious region, and expressing the hope of a communion with Christ which nothing can disturb, not even death before the Parousia. Especially significant in this connexion is 2 Co 5', where St. Paul associates this hope with the possession of a new Rady to be put on at death. In this much- discussed passage some interpreters find evidence of a departure from St.
Paul’s earlier views of the future—a departure to be accounted for only on the ‘ound of experiences which have led him to revise s former expectation of himself living to witness the Parousia, and hence have brought into the foreground of his thinking the life immediately after death. Hence they attribute to it great historic significance, as marking the transition between St. Paul’s own earlier thinking and that type of doctrine represented in the Fourth Gospel.
ee especially Schmiedel, Hdcomm. ii. pt. i. pp. 200-202. Cf. also art. RESURRECTION. iii. THE PAROUSIA IN THE FouRTH GOSPEL.— With the Fourth Gospel, we find ourselves trans- ported into a different atmosphere. The Coming at the Last Day is not, indeed, denied (cf. 5% 6% 21%, 1 Jn 2%, possibly also 14°; cf. Stevens, Joh. Theol. 333), but it is no longer the centre of interest.
he coming on which Jesus lays most stress in His farewell words to His disciples is not His judicial coming at the end of the age, but His personal Advent to His disciples, whether physical at His resurrection or spiritual in the gift of the Paraclete (Jn 14%), This fact is the more significant, because these discourses take the place in the Fourth Gospel of the ‘ Apocalypse’ of the Synoptics with its prediction of the Parousia and the destruction of Jerusalem.
The Day to which reference is repeatedly made in these dis- courses (14” 16%) is not the ‘ Last Day’ of the judgment, but the gospel dispensation. So of the allied conceptions, the resurrection and the judg- ment. The resurrection at the Last Day is not denied, but it is not upon this that Jesus lays the most stress, but rather upon that present resur- rection which introduces a man here and now into the life which shall never end.
‘I know,’ says Martha, ‘ that [my brother] shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ Jesus answers, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He that be- lieveth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die’ (11%-%; cf. the passages which speak of eternal life as a present possession, e.g. 6% 17%). So of the judgment of which Christ is the agent.
While its decisions are not finally disclosed till the last day, they are being pares upon men here andnow. ‘ He that believeth not hath been judged already’ (318), This emphasis on present spiritual life is not, indeed, peculiar to St. John. We have found it already in St. Paul, who no less than St. John has the doctrine of a spiritual resurrection. But with St. Paul the chiel stress falls on the future, with St. John on the present.
This change of emphasis, while no doubt chiefly due to the mystic tone which pervades the entire Gospel, may be partly ἘΝ ταν by the changed con- ditions under which it was composed. t. Paul and his generation have passed away. The period between death and the last day looms ever larger, as an increasing company of believers pass over into the unseen world. The Church is firmly estab- lished as an institution in the world, and looks forward to a period of continued existence.
The Antichrist to be feared is no longer external but internal ; not a hostile power to appear at the end of the ages, but those false teachers who are already working in the Church (1 Jn 2%). It is natural, then, that chief stress should be laid on present communion with Christ—a communion not only real and precious here, but continuing unbroken in the life immediately after death. In such a theology the Parousia is no longer, as with the Synoptics, the centre of interest.
Instead of a sudden catastrophe, introducing the disciples into a new order of existence, we have a gradual pro- cess, of which the ‘Last Day’ is only the final consummation. Cf. Holtzmann, Hdcomm ἦν. 177. We have thus completed our survey of the NT material, and we find that it presents us with two distinct types of thought. To the one, represented most fully in the ‘Apocalypse’ of the Synopties and the earlier Epistles of St.
Paul, but present also in most of the other books, the Parousia is conceived after the analogy of the contemporary Jewish Hpocalypees as a great catastrophe, {See ing to a conclusion the present ἘΠΕ: of the universe, and introducing the new age in which alone the Kingdom of God can be realized.
To the other, represented most fully in the Fourth Gospel, but having points of contact in Revelation, in such Synoptic passages as Mt 26% 18”, and in the Pauline doctrine of the present union of the be- liever with Christ, the Parousia is rather the com- pletion of an order of things which is already existing, than the beginning of one which is new. The question naturally resents itself as to which of these two types most fairly represents the teach- ing of our Lord?
Are we to think of Him (with Holtzmann and others) as sharing the common expectation of the early disciples of a visible ree in glory within the first generation? And does the Fourth Gospel represent the fading out of this early expectation, in view of later experi- ences? Or is the very opposite the truth? And is it the fact (as E.
Haupt contends) that the Fourth Gospel presents us with the true eschato- logy of Jesus—a ge which, because of its depth and originality, the disciples were able only gradually to apprehend? It is perhaps not pos- sible to answer this question from a study of the eschatological p: es alone. The view taken must be eeerrinied in part by considerations drawn from Jesus’ teaching as a whole. Here, as elsewhere, our Lord’s doctrine of the Kingdom is fundamental.
Those who give the phrase a urely eschatological meaning, and minimize esus’ teaching concerning the present Kingdom (e.g. J. Weiss), will naturally interpret the passages concerning the Parousia after the analogy. of their Jewish parallels.
Those, on the other hand, who see in Jesus’ doctrine of the Kingdom something radically new, and who find this newness in His assurance that the Messianic Kingdom is already present in the little company of believers who accept His gospel, will favour a spiritual inter- retation.
Faced with a difficulty on either side, it will seem to them easier to account for those passages which are inconsistent with such an interpretation as due to an imperfect apprehen- sion by the disciples of the Master's meaning, than to believe that He, who in all other respects possessed an insight so much clearer than His con- temporaries, should, in the matter of eschatology alone, have had nothing new to contribute. iv. THE PAROUSIA IN THE LATER CHURCH.
— No doctrine was more prominent in the early Church than that of the Parousia. It was the great hope by which the Christians were sup- ported under the persecution and contempt which 580 PAROUSIA PARTHIANS were so fr among the Jewish Christians, with whose expecta- tion of a conquering Messiah it was catarelly in accord, but among the Gentile Christians as well. In many cases, as in the Canonical sere bre it in uently their lot.
It meets us not only is associated with the hope of a Millennia g- dom, preceding the final judgment—a Kingdom conceived now carnally (Papias), now spiritually (Barnabas). See MILLENNIUM. In others, as in most of the NT books, it is associated with the final judgment, and regarded as introducing the world to come. By Marcion and the Gnostics it was rejected as part of the Jewish corrup- tion of the gospel.
The Montanists preached a speedy Advent, and looked for the setting up of a Millennial Kingdom at Pepuza. The extrava- gances of their doctrine, together with the grow- ing strength and self-consciousness of the Church, led to a gradual shifting of emphasis to other doctrines. Tertullian, Irenwus, and Hippolytus still look for a speedy Advent; but with the Alexandrine Fathers we enter a new circle of thought.
As in the Fourth Gospel, tle Parousia is not denied, but another set of conceptions is placed in the foreground. With Augustine’s identification of the Millennium with the period of the Church militant, the Second Advent is post- ned to a distant future, and the way prepared or that view of eschatology which has been on the whole controlling ever since. Into the history of modern interpretation we cannot enter.
We may distinguish four different positions, each of which has its advocates—(1) It is possible with Marcion and the Gnostics to re- gard the hope of the Parousia as a remnant of Judaism, useful indeed in supporting the faith of the disciples in the trying ΠΕ of the begin- nings, but without foundation in fact, and so destined to give place in time to a higher and purer set of conceptions.
But this involves the assumption of a mistake not only on the part of the apostles, but on that of Jesus Himself, since it seems impossible to deny not only that Jesus pre- dicted His own return, but that this expectation was an important element in His Messianic con- sciousness.
(2) It is possible, with Augustine and the majority of theologians since his day, to regard the Parousia as a literal coming on the clouds to judgment, but to postpone this coming to an in- definite future, concentrating attention in the meantime upon the life immediately after death. But this does violence to those passages, both in the apostolic teaching and in that of Jesus, which oe the Parousia within the generation then iving.
(3) Itis ible, with Russell, to identify the Parousia with the destruction of Jerusalem, and so to regard it as past. But this is open to the objection that the eat condition of the Church does not correspond to that glorious state to which the NT writers look forward.
(4) It is possible, finally, following the suggestion of the Fourth Gospel, to regard the Parousia rather as a dispen- sation than as a single event, beginning with the spiritual Advent by the risen Jesus, and con- tinuing on through all the intermediate experi- ences of the Church until that ‘Last Day’ when the work of salvation shall be fully accomplished, and the kingdoms of the world shall have become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. See also MAN OF SIN, MILLENNIUM, and PAUL, p.
729 f. LiTgraTuRR.—The art. ‘Second Advent’ in Kitto’s Bibl. Cyel. i. p. 75, which gives references to the older Eng. literature ; Warren, The Parousia ; Russell, The Parousia ; Ase The Christian Doctrine of Immortatity ; Beet, The Last Things; Terry, Biblical Apocalyptics ; Dieckmann, Die Parousie Christi (1898); Schmoller, Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes in d. Schr. des NT (1891); and the appropriate sections in the Biblical Theologies of Weiss, Beyschlag, Holtzmann, and Stevens.
—For the doctrine of Jesus, consult Weiffenbach, Der Wiederkunfts- gedanke Jesu, where the older critical literature is fully given ; Die Lehre Jesu, ii. Ὁ. 643 ff. (Eng. tr. fi. PP 265-307] ; Bruce, he Messiah Jilicher, Die Gleichnisreden J p. 240 ff.—For the teaching of St. Paul οὐ inismus?, p, 274 ff.; Kabisch, Die Eschatolog p. 228f%.; Briggs, Messiah of the Apostles; Stevens, The Pauline logy, p. 889 ff.—For the teaching of St. John, cf. Stevens, The (neato Theology, Ἐ 829 1ἴ.
; Holtzmann, Neutestamentliche Theologie, ii. p. 611 ff. Much information may be obtained also from the special notes on eschatology in Holtzmann, Hdcomm. (e.g. ii. p. ff., iv. p. 177). See also the literature given under MILLENNIUM. W. ADAMS Brown. PARSHANDATHA (xn73¢75 ; Φαρσάν, Φαρσανεστάν) —The eldest of the sons of Haman, vat to death by the Jews in Shushan (Est 9"). For the ety. mology Benfey suggests Pers. fragna-data=‘ given by prayer.’