Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (819 page)

Thus in these discourses Jesus announces that
shortly
(
e
u
q
e
w
V
, XXIV. 29),
after that calamity, which (especially according to the representation in Luke’s gospel) we must identify with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and within the term of the cotemporary generation (
h
g
e
n
e
a
a
u
t
h
,
V. 34), he would visibly make his second advent in the clouds, and terminate the existing dispensation. Now as it will soon be eighteen centuries since the destruction of Jerusalem, and an equally long period since the generation cotemporary with Jesus disappeared from the earth, while his visible return and the end of the world which he associated with it, have not taken place: the announcement of Jesus appears so far to have been erroneous. Already in the first age of Christianity, when the return of Christ was delayed longer than had been anticipated, there arose, according to 2
Peter iii. 3 f., scoffers, asking:
where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
In modern times, the inference which may apparently be drawn from the above consideration, to the disadvantage of Jesus and the apostles, has been by no one more pointedly expressed than by the Wolfenbüttel Fragmentist. No promise throughout the whole scriptures, he thinks, is on the one hand more definitely expressed, and on the other, has turned out more flagrantly false, than this, which yet forms one of the main pillars of Christianity. And he does not see in this a mere error, but a premeditated deception on the part of the apostles (to whom, and not to Jesus himself, he attributes that promise, and the discourses in which it is contained); a deception induced by the necessity of alluring the people on whose contributions they wished to subsist, by the promise of a speedy reward: and discernible by the boldness of their attempts to evade the doubts springing from the protracted delay of the return of Christ: Paul, for example, in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, sheltering himself in obscure

* Compare, on the import and connexion of this discourse, Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 695 ff; De Wette, exeg. Handb., I, I, s. i97 ff; Weizel, die unchristliche Unsterblichkeitslehre, in the theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1836, s. 599 ff. — In agreement with these commentators I append the following division of the passage in Matthew:

I. Signs of the
end,
t
e
l
o
V
, XXIV. 4 — 54.

a. More remote signs,
the beginning of sorrows,
a
r
c
h
w
d
i
n
w
n
, 4 — 8.

b
.
More immediate signs, the actual sorrows, 9-14.

II. The
end,
t
e
l
o
V
,
itself, xxiv. 15 — 25
,
46.

a. Its commencement with the destruction of Jerusalem, and the great
tribulation
q
l
i
y
i
V
,
which accompanies it, 15 — 28.

b
.
Its culminating point: the advent of the Messiah, together with the assembling of his elect, 29 — 31. (Here follow retrospective observations and warnings, xxiv.32 — xXV. 30.)

c
.
Close of the
t
e
l
o
V
with the messianic judgment, 31 — 46.phrases; and Peter, in his second epistle, resorting to the preposterous expedient of appealing to the divine mode of reckoning time, in which a thousand years are equal to one day.
^*

Such inferences from the discourse before us would inflict a fatal wound on Christianity; hence it is natural that exegetists should endeavour by all means to obviate them.* And as the whole difficulty consists in Jesus having apparently placed an event now long past, in immediate chronological connexion with one still future, three expedients are possible: either to deny that Jesus in part spoke of something now past, and to allege that he spoke solely of what is still future; or to deny that a part of his discourse relates to something still future, and thus to refer the entire prediction to what is already lying in the past; or lastly, to admit that the discourse of Jesus does indeed partly refer to something which is still future to us, but either to deny that he places the two series of events in immediate chronological succession, or to maintain that he has also noticed what is intermediate.

Some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenæus and Hilary — yet living in the primitive expectation of the return of Christ, and at the same time not so practised in regular exegesis, as to be incapable of overlooking certain difficulties attendant on a desirable interpretation — referred the entire prediction, from its commencement in Matt. xxiv. to its end in Matt. xxv., to the still future return of Christ to judgment.† But as this interpretation admits that Jesus in the commencement of his discourse uses the destruction of Jerusalem as a type of the final catastrophe, it virtually nullifies itself. For what does that admission signify, but that the discourse of Jesus, in the first instance, produces the impression that he spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem, i.e. of something now past, and that only more extended reflection and combination can give it a relation to something still lying in futurity?

To modern rationalism, based as it was on naturalistic principles, the hope of the second advent of Christ was in every form annihilated. Hence, not scrupling at any exegetical violence for the sake of removing from scripture what was discordant with its preconceived system, it threw itself on the opposite side, and hazarded the attempt to refer the discourses in question, in their entire tenor, solely to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the events which immediately preceded and followed it.‡ According to this interpretation, the
end
spoken of is only the cessation of the Judeo-Gentile economy of the world; what is said of the advent of Christ in the clouds, is only a figurative description of the promulgation and triumph of his doctrine; the assembling of the nations to judgment, and the

* Vom Zweck Jesu und seiner Jünger, s. 184, 201 ff., 207 ff.

† The former
adv. haeres.
v. 25; the latter, Comm. in Matth. in loc. Compare on the different interpretations of this passage the list in Schott,
Cammentarius in eos J. Chr. sermones, qui de reditu ejus ad judicium — agunt
, p. 73 ff.

‡ Bahrdt., Uebersetzung des N. T., I, s. 1103, 3te Ausg. ; Eckermann, Handb. der Glaubenslehre, 2, s. 579, 3, s. 427, 437, 709 ff; and others in Schott, Ut sup.sending of some into blessedness, and others into condemnation, is an image of the happy consequences which would result from embracing the doctrine and cause of Jesus, and the evil consequences attendant on indifference or hostility to them. But in this explanation there is a want of similarity between the symbols and the ideas represented, which is not only unprecedented in itself; but particularly inconceivable in this case; since Jesus is here addressing minds of Jewish culture, and must therefore be aware that what he said of the Messiah’s advent in the clouds, of the judgment, and the end of the existing period of the world, would be understood in the most literal sense.

It thus appears that the discourse of Jesus will not as a whole, admit of being referred either to the destruction of the Jewish state, or to the events at the end of the world; it would therefore be necessarily referred to something distinct from both, if this twofold impossibility adhered alike to all its parts. But the case is not so; for while, on the one hand, what is said Matt. XXiV. 2
,
3, 15 ff
.
of the devastation of the temple, cannot be referred to the end of the world: on the other hand, what is predicted XXV. 31 ff. of the judgment to be held by the Son of Man, will not suit the destruction of Jerusalem. As, according to this, in the earlier part of the discourse of Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem is the predominant subject, but in the subsequent part, the end of all things: it is possible to make a division, so as to refer the former to the more proximate event, the latter to the more remote one. This is the middle path which has been taken by the majority of modern exegetists, and here the only question is: where is the partition to be made? As it must present a space of time within which the whole period from the destruction of Jerusalem to the last day may be supposed to fall, and which therefore would include many centuries, it must, one would think, be plainly indicated, so as to be easily and unanimously found. It is no good augury for the plan, that this unanimity does not exist, — that, on the contrary, the required division is made in widely different parts of the discourse of Jesus.

Thus much on the one hand appeared to be decided: that at least the close of the 25th chapter, from v. 31, with its description of the solemn tribunal which the Messiah, surrounded by his angels, would hold over all nations, cannot be referred to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Hence many theologians believed that they could fix the boundary here, retaining the relation to the end of the Jewish state until XXV. 30, and at this point making the transition to the end of the world.* On the very first glance at this explanation, it must appear strange that the great chasm which it supposes to exist between V. 30 and 31, is marked simply by a
d
e
.

* This is the opinion of Lightfoot, in loc., Flatt,
Comm. de notione
b
a
s
i
l
e
i
a
t
w
n
o
u
r
a
n
w
n
in Velthusen’s und A. Sammiung 2, 461 ff.; Jahn, Erklärung der Weissagungen Jesu von der Zerstörung Jerusalems u. s. w., in Bengel’s Archiv. 2, I, S. 79 ff., and others, cited in Schott, S. 75f.Moreover, not only are the darkening of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and falling of the stars, understood as a mere image of the subversion of the Jewish state and worship; but when xxiv. 31, it is said of the Messiah, that he will
come in the clouds,
this is supposed to mean, invisibly;
with power —
only observable by the effects he produces;
with great glory
— with such as consists in the conclusions which may be drawn from those effects; while the
angels
who gather together the nations by the sound of the trumpet, are supposed to represent the apostles preaching the gospel.* Quite erroneously, appeal is made, in support of this merely figurative meaning, to the prophetic pictures of the divine day of judgment, Isa. XIII. 9 ff
.,
xxiv. 18 ff.; Jer. iv. 23 f.; Ezek. xxxii. 7 ff.;
Joel iii. 3 ff.; Amos viii. 9
;
farther, to descriptions† such as Judges V. 20; Acts ii., xvii. ff.
In those prophetic passages, real eclipses of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and the like, are intended, and are described as prodigies which will accompany the predicted catastrophe; the song of Deborah, again, celebrates a real participation of heaven in the battle against Sisera, a participation which in the narrative, iv. 15, is ascribed to God himself, in the song, to his heavenly hosts; lastly, Peter expects, that the outpouring of the spirit will be succeeded by the appearances in the heavens, promised among the signs of the
great day of the Lord.

The attempt to effect a division near the end of the discourse, at xxv. 30, failing, from its rendering much that goes before incapable of explanation; the next expedient is to retreat as far towards the commencement as possible, by considering how far it is inevitable to recognise a relation to the immediate future. The first resting place is after xxiv. 28; for what is said, up to this point, of war and other calamities, of the abomination in the temple, of the necessity for speedy flight, in order to escape unprecedented misery, cannot be divested of a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem without the greatest violence: while what follows concerning the appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, etc., just as imperatively demands an application to the last day.‡ But in the first place, it appears incomprehensible how the enormous interval, which on this explanation also is supposed to fall between the one portion of the discourse and the other, can be introduced between two verses, of all others, which Matthew connects by an adverb expressive of the shortest possible time (
e
u
q
e
w
V
).
It has been sought to remove this inconvenience by the assertion that
e
u
q
e
w
V
does not here signify the quick succession of the one incident on the other, but only the unexpected occurrence of an event, and that consequently, what is here said amounts merely to this: suddenly, at some period (how distant is undetermined) after the calamities attendant on the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah will visibly appear. Such an