Eschatology Crisis: Understanding Jesus' Prophecies and Expectations

The nineteenth century in the field of theology, as well as in other academic disciplines, was dominated by theories of evolution. Now, we tend to think of evolution strictly in biological terms, but the theoretical thought of the nineteenth century was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Frederick Hegel who had an evolutionary view of all of history, not just of biological developments among living species and so on, but all of the dynamic of history was cast against this backdrop of progressive evolution. [00:01:06]

The Religious Historical School was a school of thought that dominated liberal theology in the nineteenth century that applied these principles of evolution to biblical religion, saying that biblical religion follows the same basic pattern that all religions follow in their historic development, that religion begins in a simple manner and then develops to a more complex viewpoint. It begins in animism with a view that supposedly inanimate objects are inhabited by spirits, usually evil spirits, and then you've developed from that into polytheism and henotheism and finally in a later time in history you see the emergence of full orbed monotheism. [00:02:09]

Now, hand in hand with the Religious Historical Schools, application of evolutionary principles to the development of biblical religion was a powerful anti-supernatural bent that controlled the analysis of the content of the Scriptures, so that anything that communicated miracle was rejected out of hand -- anything supernatural, such as the virgin birth of Jesus, the atonement as a cosmic event of reconciliation between the human and the divine, the resurrection, the ascension, and obviously the return of Jesus at the end of age was also considered part of the mythological trappings that were included in the biblical documents. [00:03:36]

Albert Schweitzer, and we know of Schweitzer because of his career as a musician, as a superb organist, and also as a missionary, probably one of the most famous missionaries of all time. But he was first of all an academic person, a scholar of the highest order, and his book was translated into English under the title, 'The Quest for the Historical Jesus.' And what Schweitzer did was he analyzed and critiqued the whole drift of this evolutionary thought and revision of the New Testament concept of the kingdom of God that had become popular in nineteenth century liberalism. [00:08:20]

Schweitzer himself was very much influenced by another scholar by the name of Johannes Weiss, or 'Wise' we would say, but it was Weiss in German. And Weiss had argued and had argued convincingly that if we're going to take the New Testament documents seriously and the teaching of Jesus and the apostles seriously we have to understand the teaching of the kingdom of God against a Jewish background of apocalyptic eschatology. Now, that sounds a little bit fancy, but what basically Schweitzer was saying was that the message of Jesus and His teaching about the kingdom is unintelligible apart from the central focus of eschatology in it. [00:09:11]

When Schweitzer talked about Jesus' eschatological view of the kingdom of God he did not mean by the term 'eschatological' what is normally simply meant by the term. Usually we use the term eschatological or eschatology simply to refer to the last things or the last times or the end times, a future orientation. But when Schweitzer talked about an eschatological kingdom he meant a kingdom that comes not by a gradual evolutionary, this-worldly progressive development of ethics and so on as the nineteenth century liberals were want to describe it, but that this kingdom that Jesus spoke about that was coming would come catastrophically, suddenly, supernaturally, coming transcendentally from above, that the kingdom was something that God would bring from heaven intruding into the normal process and progress of history. [00:10:44]

According to Schweitzer first, for example, when Jesus sent His 70 out to the various villages and towns of Israel announcing the kingdom of God, He expected that God would act and bring the kingdom to pass at that time. But it didn't happen. And so in Jesus' own consciousness, Jesus had to go through the certain periods of delayed anticipation in His own consciousness. So that, for example, when He came to Jerusalem in the crisis moment of the triumphal entry perhaps now God was going to bring the kingdom. Still didn't happen. [00:13:00]

But Jesus persisted with His expectation to the very end, even to allowing Himself to be arrested, to be convicted -- and remember He spoke about, you know, you can't do this except I let you do it. I can call on legions of angels and they could save me, but He doesn't do it. He waits for God to intervene and intercede and to bring the kingdom. But finally in His last moments on the cross, Jesus realizes it's not going to happen. And He cries out from the depths of His own agony and disillusionment, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me?" [00:13:47]

The value of Schweitzer is, of course, since Schweitzer's work it's been next to impossible for serious scholars to treat the teaching of the New Testament and the teaching of Jesus and not realize that it is couched constantly in eschatological language. That's the contribution Schweitzer has made to this crisis. Of course his -- the downside is though he argues for the eschatological centrality of Jesus' teaching, of course Jesus was wrong, and He ended in disillusionment. [00:15:11]

One of the most important was the British scholar by the name of C. H. Dodd, who wrote on the Gospel of John and on the parables of Jesus which are focused on Jesus' teaching about the kingdom of God. You know when the parables say the kingdom of God is like unto this; the kingdom of God is like unto that and so on. C. H. Dodd is important for developing what was called 'realized eschatology,' where Dodd sees that for the most part the predictions of Jesus, Dodd takes to have reference to a timeframe of the first century. [00:17:00]

Cullman developed a theory that was called the D-Day Analogy that had quite a lot of adherents in the middle of the twentieth century, or actually shortly after World War II, where he talked about the analogy or the relationship between D-Day, the allied invasion of Normandy that took place in June of 1944, many months before the capitulation of Germany. The war wasn't over until the following spring of 1945, but the turning point of the war was D-Day. [00:20:45]

Herman Ridderbos takes a similar position and he developed the concept in Dutch of what's called the 'Als and the nog niet,' or the already and the not yet, in which he says if we're going to understand the New Testament we have to see that the kingdom of God has already come in large measure. There is an 'als' to the kingdom of God, an already. But yet there still remains at the end of time the final consummation of that kingdom which has not -- which has come not yet, 'nog niet.' [00:22:43]