Last week I posed a question: how do we factor in the Parousia (Jesus’ return) with regard to Christian conduct and ethics? This is a huge topic that goes well beyond the scope of a blog post! Nevertheless, it is a topic that I have spent much time working on during the writing of my thesis this year. What follows are some reflections on the relationship between the temporal proximity of the Parousia and Christian ethics.
New Testament scholars have long recognized the cause and effect relationship between Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom and Christian conduct. Even Albert Schweitzer recognized the relationship between eschatology and ethics. Schweitzer constructed an overly eschatological Jesus (konsequente Eschatologie) who preached an “interim ethic” that was intended to prepare disciples to enter into a kingdom that never materialized. For Schweitzer, the imminence of Jesus’ kingdom was the primary motivating factor for Jesus’ followers to act in a certain way. However, Schweitzer gave up on the Parousia, arguing that Jesus’ kingdom failed.
Unlike Schweitzer, I hold onto hope for the Parousia; in fact, I think that the Parousia is paradigmatic for Christian ethics. I am not trying to espouse some sort of crazy Left-Behind eschatology. On the contrary, I am trying to situate the Parousia within Jesus' own orientation of the kingdom. Jesus’ actions were rooted in the kingdom; in other words, the government of God has entered planet earth via Jesus’ life and teaching. Seeing eschatology with the kingdom in mind most fully captures Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom as events behind the church and as an event yet to be realized in front of the church. In other words, Christians are caught between the tension (or dialectic) of present and future. A common phrase among NT students that captures this line of thinking is the “now but not yet tension.” As far as I can tell, this thought goes back to Oscar Cullmann (See Christ and Time [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964], 145-46). More recent New Testament ethicists such as Wolfgang Schrage situate Jesus’ ethics within Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom. Schrage writes: “Jesus’ ethics is a direct consequence of his eschatological message of the kingdom and mercy of God. The imminent kingdom of God motivates people to act in a way appropriate to this kingdom” (The Ethics of the New Testament, trans. David E. Green [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988], 24).
All of this is to say that Jesus’ proclamation of the imminent kingdom causes people to act in a certain way. The challenge for us in the church today is to address the question: how do we hold onto the imminence of a kingdom that has failed to fully materialize over the past 1900 plus years? Is this intellectually credible? Is it even possible? In my next post I will introduce Hans Conzelmann’s thesis that Luke is writing his two-volume work under a crisis in the early church—the delay of the Parousia. Thus, Schweitzer argued that the Parousia is failed and Conzlemann argued that the Parousia is delayed. Both of these approaches to the Parousia have had significant implications, I think, for Christian ethics over the past 100 years.
Both of these approaches to
Both of these approaches to the Parousia have had significant implications, I think, for Christian ethics over the past 100 years.
Submitted by Sam (not verified)
on Thu, 01/14/2010 - 18:21