C2 - Jesus Eschatological Discourse

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, after the “woes” with which Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees - that is to say, in the context of the discourses given after his entrance into Jerusalem - there is a mysterious saying of Jesus that Luke also quotes (albeit at an earlier point, during the journey toward the Holy City): “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate …” (Mt 23:37-38; Lk 13:34-35). This passage clearly reveals Jesus’ profound love for Jerusalem and his impassioned efforts to elicit from the Holy City a positive response to the message he must proclaim, the message with which he takes his place in the long line of God’s messengers from earlier salvation history.

The image of the protective, solicitous mother bird comes from the Old Testament: God “found [Jacob] in a desert land … he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions” (Deut 32:10-11). One is reminded of the beautiful passage from Psalm 36:7: “How precious is your mercy, O God! The children of men take refuge in the shadow of your wings.”

Here Jesus expresses his own ministry and his summons to discipleship in terms of the powerful goodness of God himself, who protects Jerusalem with outstretched wings (Is 31:5). Yet this same goodness invites the free consent of the chicks, which they refuse: “and you would not!” (Mt 23:37).

The misfortune to which this refusal leads is described by Jesus mysteriously yet unmistakably in a saying couched in the language of ancient prophecy. Jeremiah records the words spoken by God concerning the abuses in the Temple: “I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage” (12:7). Jesus says exactly the same thing: “Your house is forsaken” (Mt 23:38). God is withdrawing. The Temple is no longer the place where he sets down his name. It will be left empty; henceforth it is merely “your house”.

There is a remarkable parallel to this saying of Jesus in the writings of Flavius Josephus, the historian of the Jewish War. Tacitus likewise took up the same idea in his own historical writing (cf. Hist. 5, 13). Flavius Josephus reports strange happenings in the final years before the outbreak of the Jewish War, all of which, in different and unsettling ways, heralded the end of the Temple. The historian tells of seven such signs altogether. Here I shall limit my comments to the one that bears a strange resemblance to the somber words of Jesus quoted above.

The event took place at Pentecost in A.D. 66 “At the Feast of Pentecost, when the priests had gone into the inner court of the Temple at night to perform the usual ceremonies, they declared that they were aware, first of a violent movement and a loud crash, then of a concerted cry: ‘Let us go hence’ ” (The Jewish War, p. 361). Whatever exactly may have happened, one thing is clear: in the final years before the dramatic events of the year 70, the Temple was enveloped in a mysterious premonition that its end was approaching. “Your house will be deserted.” Using the first person plural that is characteristic of divine utterances in the Bible (cf. Gen 1:26, for example), God himself is announcing (“Let us go hence!”) that he is to depart from the Temple, to leave it “empty”. A historic change of incalculable significance was in the air.

After this saying about the deserted house - a prophecy, not yet directly concerned with the destruction of the Temple, but rather with its inner demise, the loss of its meaning as a place of encounter between God and man - Matthew’s text continues with Jesus’ great eschatological discourse, which takes as its central themes the destruction of the Temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Last Judgment, and the end of the world. This discourse, found in all three Synoptic Gospels with certain variations, could perhaps be described as the most difficult text in the whole of the Gospels.

This is due in some measure to the difficulty of the content. The text refers partly to historical events that have taken place in the meantime, but mainly to a future that lies altogether beyond time and reality as we know it: indeed, it brings them to an end. A future is proclaimed that exceeds our categories yet can only be represented using models drawn from our experience, and they are inevitably inadequate for the purpose. This explains why Jesus, speaking as he always does in continuity with the Law and the Prophets, presents this material using a tissue of scriptural allusions, within which he locates the new element of his mission, the mission of the Son of Man.

While this vision of things to come is expressed largely through images drawn from tradition, intended to point us toward realities that defy description, the difficulty of the content is compounded by all the problems arising from the text’s redaction history: the very fact that Jesus’ words here are intended as continuations of tradition rather than literal descriptions of things to come meant that the redactors of the material could take these continuations a stage further, in the light of their particular situations and their audience’s capacity to understand, while taking care to remain true to the essential content of Jesus’ message.

It cannot be the task of this book to enter into the text’s many detailed problems of redaction criticism and history of transmission. I shall limit myself to exploring three aspects of Jesus’ eschatological discourse in which the underlying intentions of its composition become clear.

The End of the Temple

Before returning to the words of Jesus, we must cast a glance at the historical events of the year 70. The Jewish War had begun in the year 66, with the expulsion of the procurator Gessius Florus and the successful resistance to the Roman counterattack. This was not merely a war of Jews against Romans: in broader terms, it was a civil war between rival Jewish factions and their ringleaders. This was what accounted for the full horror of the fight for Jerusalem.

Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 339) and - from a different perspective - Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 403) tell us that even before the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem, the Christians had fled to the city of Pella beyond the Jordan. According to Eusebius, they decided to flee after a command to do so had been communicated to “those who were worthy” by a revelation (Hist. Eccl. III/5). Epiphanius, on the other hand, writes: “Christ had told them to abandon Jerusalem and go elsewhere, because it would be besieged” (Haer. 29, 8). In fact we find an instruction to flee in Jesus’ eschatological discourse: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be … then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. . .” (Mk 13:14).

It cannot be determined which event or reality it was that the Christians identified as the sign of the “abomination that makes desolate”, precipitating their departure, but there was no shortage of possible candidates - incidents in the course of the Jewish War that could be interpreted as this sign foretold by Jesus. The expression itself is taken from the Book of Daniel (9:27, 11:31, 12:11), where it referred to the Hellenistic desecration of the Temple. This symbolic description, drawn from Israel’s history, is open to a variety of interpretations as a prophecy of things to come. So Eusebius’ text is thoroughly plausible, in the sense that certain highly regarded members of the early Christian community could have recognized in some particular event, “by a revelation”, the sign that had been foretold, and they could have interpreted it as an instruction to begin their flight.

Alexander Mittelstaedt points out that in the summer of 66, the former high priest Annas II was chosen, together with Joseph ben Gorion, as director of military operations for the war - the same Annas who a few years earlier, in A.D. 62, had decreed the death of James, “brother of the Lord” and leader of the Jewish Christian community (Lukas als Historiker, p. 68). The appointment of Annas could easily have been interpreted by the Jewish Christians as a sign for them to leave. Admittedly, this is only one hypothesis among many. The flight of the Jewish Christians nevertheless reinforces with great clarity the Christians’ rejection of the “Zealot” reading of the message of the Bible and of Jesus himself: their hope is of an altogether different kind.

Let us return to the Jewish War. Vespasian, who had been put in charge of the operation by Nero, suspended all military action when the emperor’s death was announced in the year 68. Soon afterward, on 1 July 69, Vespasian himself was proclaimed the new emperor. So he assigned the task of conquering Jerusalem to his son Titus.

According to Flavius Josephus, Titus must have arrived at the gates of the Holy City just at the time of the Passover feast, on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, and therefore on the fortieth anniversary of Jesus’ crucifixion. Thousands of pilgrims were pouring into Jerusalem. John of Gischala, one of the rival leaders of the rebellion, smuggled armed fighters, disguised as pilgrims, into the Temple, where they began to massacre the followers of his opponent, Eleazar ben Simon, and so once again the sanctuary was defiled with innocent blood (cf. Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker p. 72). Yet this was only a foretaste of the unconscionable cruelties that ensued as the fanaticism of one side and the mounting anger of the other spiraled into ever-increasing brutality.

There is no need here to consider the details of the conquest and destruction of city and Temple. Yet it may be useful to reproduce the text with which Mittelstaedt summarizes the cruel unfolding of the drama: “The end of the Temple took place in three stages: first the suspension of the regular sacrifice, by which the sanctuary was reduced to a fortress, then it was set on fire, again in three stages … and finally the ruins were demolished after the fall of the city. The decisive destruction … took place through fire; the subsequent demolition is just a postscript … those who survived and did not then fall victim to famine or plague could anticipate the circus, the mine, or slavery” (pp. 84-85).

The death toll given by Flavius Josephus is 1,100,000 (The Jewish War, p. 371). Orosius (Hist. Adv. Pag. VII, 9, 7) and likewise Tacitus (Hist. V, 13) speak of 600,000 dead. Mittelstaedt says these figures are exaggerated, and it would be more realistic to assume about 80,000 dead (p. 83). Anyone who reads all the written accounts, with their tales of murder, massacre, looting, arson, hunger, desecration of corpses, and environmental destruction (everywhere within an eleven-mile radius was deforested and laid waste), can understand Jesus’ comment, based on a passage from the Book of Daniel (12:1): “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now, and never will be” (Mk 13:19).

In Daniel’s text, this prophecy of doom is followed by a promise: “But at that time your people shall be delivered, every one whose name shall be found written in the book” (12:1). Similarly in Jesus’ discourse, horror does not have the last word: the days are shortened and the elect are saved. God grants to evil and to evildoers a large measure of freedom - too large, we might think. Even so, history does not slip through his fingers.

In the midst of this whole drama, which is unfortunately all too typical of countless tragedies throughout history, a key event in salvation history took place, marking a turning point with far-reaching consequences for the entire history of religions and of the human race: on 5 August in the year 70, “the daily sacrifice in the Temple had to be abandoned because of famine and scarcity of material” (Mittelstaedt, Lukas als Historiker, p. 78).

It is true that after the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C., the burnt offerings were suspended for around seventy years. Then for a second time, between 166 and 164 B.C. under the Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV, the Temple was profaned and the sacrificial cult of the one God was replaced by sacrifices to Zeus. But on both occasions the Temple was restored and the worship prescribed by the Torah was resumed.

The destruction that took place in the year 70 was definitive. Attempts to restore the Temple under Emperor Hadrian through the revolt of Bar Kochba (A.D. 132-135), and later under Julian (361), were unsuccessful. The revolt of Bar Kochba actually led Hadrian to prohibit the Jewish people from entering the area in and around Jerusalem. In the place of the Holy City, the emperor built a new one, known henceforth as Aelia Capitolina, where the cult of Jupiter Capitolinus was celebrated. “Emperor Constantine in the fourth century was the first to allow the Jews, once a year, on the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem, to visit the City in order to grieve at the wall of the Temple” (Gnilka, Nazarener, p. 72).

For Judaism, the end of the sacrifice, the destruction of the Temple, must have come as a tremendous shock. Temple and sacrifice lie at the very heart of the Torah. Now there was no longer any atonement in the world, no longer anything that could serve as a counterweight to its further contamination by evil. What is more: God, who had set down his name in the Temple, and thus in a mysterious way dwelt within it, had now lost his dwelling place on earth. What had become of the Covenant? What had become of the promise?

One thing is clear: the Bible - the Old Testament - had to be read anew. The Judaism of the Sadducees, which was entirely bound to the Temple, did not survive this catastrophe; Qumran - which despite its opposition to the Herodian Temple, lived in expectation of a renewed Temple - also disappeared from history. There are two possible responses to this situation, two ways of reading the Old Testament anew after the year 70: the reading in the light of Christ, based on the Prophets, and the rabbinical reading.

Among the Jewish schools of thought prevailing at the time of Jesus, the only one to survive was Pharisaism, which acquired a new center in the rabbinic school of Jamnia and there developed its own particular way of reading and interpreting the Old Testament after the loss of the Temple, centered on the Torah. Only then did it become possible to speak of “Judaism” in the strict sense as a way of viewing the canon of Scripture as revelation and reading it anew in the physical absence of Temple worship. That worship no longer existed. In this sense, Israel’s faith also took on a new guise after the year 70.

After centuries of antagonism, we now see it as our task to bring these two ways of rereading the biblical texts - the Christian way and the Jewish way - into dialogue with one another, if we are to understand God’s will and his word aright.

Saint Gregory Nazianzen (d. ca. 390), contemplating with hindsight the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, divided up the world’s religious history into a series of phases. He speaks of the patience of God, who does not impose upon man anything too hard to understand: God acts like a good schoolteacher or a doctor. He slowly puts an end to certain customs, allows others to continue, and thus leads man forward. “A departure from time-honored, customary ways is, after all, not easy. Am I making my point? The first change cut away idols but allowed sacrifices to remain; the second stripped away sacrifices but did not forbid circumcision. Then, when men had been reconciled to the withdrawal, they agreed to let go what had been left them as a concession” (Oration 31, “On the Holy Spirit”, par. 25). From the perspective of this Church Father, even the sacrifices prescribed by the Torah appear as something merely allowed to remain - as a stage along the path to true worship of God, something temporary that had to be surpassed and was, indeed, surpassed by Christ.

At this point the decisive question that presents itself is: How did Jesus himself see this? And how did Christians understand him? The extent to which particular details of the eschatological discourse are attributable to Jesus himself we need not consider here. That he foretold the demise of the Temple - its theological demise, that is, from the standpoint of salvation history - is beyond doubt. As evidence for this, besides the eschatological discourse, there is above all the passage about the deserted house with which we began (Mt 23:37-38; Lk 13:34-35) and the words of the false witnesses at Jesus’ trial (Mt 26:61; 27:40; Mk 14:58; 15:29; Acts 6:14) - words that reappear as a taunt at the foot of the Cross and which the Fourth Gospel places earlier, in their correct form, on the lips of Jesus himself (Jn 2:19).

Inasmuch as it belonged to the Father, Jesus loved the Temple (cf. Lk 2:49) and taught there gladly. He defended it as a house of prayer for all peoples and tried to prepare it for that function. Yet he knew that the age of this Temple was over and that something new was to come, linked to his death and Resurrection.

Through attentive listening and reading, the early Church had to grapple with these somewhat mysterious and fragmentary sayings of Jesus - his references to the Temple and above all to the Cross and Resurrection - piecing them together until finally it was possible to recognize the full picture that Jesus wished to convey. This was no easy task, but it was begun on the day of Pentecost, and we may say that all the essential elements of the new synthesis had already been worked out in Paul’s theology before the outward demise of the Temple.

Regarding the relationship of the earliest community to the Temple, the Acts of the Apostles has this to say: “Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts” (2:46). So two key locations are named for the life of the infant Church: for preaching and prayer they meet in the Temple, which they still regard and accept as the house of God’s word and the house of prayer; on the other hand, the breaking of bread - the new “cultic” center of the lives of the faithful - is celebrated in their houses as places of assembly and communion in the name of the risen Lord.

Even if up to this point there has been no explicit distancing from the sacrifices of the Law, an essential distinction has nevertheless been drawn. The place of the sacrifices has now been taken by the “breaking of bread”. Yet concealed beneath this simple phrase is a reference to the legacy of the Last Supper, to fellowship in the Lord’s body - to his death and Resurrection.

As for the new theological synthesis that sees in the death and Resurrection of Jesus the end of the Temple’s place in salvation history, even before its outward destruction, there are two names that stand out: Stephen and Paul.

Within the original Jerusalem community, Stephen belongs to the group of “Hellenists”, Greek-speaking Jewish Christians whose new understanding of the Law paved the way for Pauline Christianity. The great discourse with which Stephen seeks to present his new vision of salvation history, as recounted in the Acts of the Apostles, breaks off at the key point. His opponents’ anger has already reached fever pitch and is unleashed in the stoning of the messenger. The real point at issue, though, is clearly indicated in the formulation of the charge brought before the Sanhedrin: “We have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place [that is, the Temple], and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:14). It is all to do with Jesus’ prophecy concerning the demise of the Temple of stone and concerning the new and entirely different Temple, words that Stephen makes his own and openly declares in the course of his testimony.

Even if we cannot reconstruct Saint Stephen’s theological vision in detail, its nucleus is clear: the era of the stone Temple and its sacrificial worship is past. For God himself said: “Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool. What house will you build for me … or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?” (Acts 7:49-50; cf. Is 66:1-2).

Stephen is familiar with the Prophets’ critique of the former cult. For him the era of Temple sacrifices and with it the era of the Temple itself came to an end with Jesus; now the Prophets’ words can come into their own. Something new has begun, in which the cult’s original meaning is brought to fulfillment.

The life and the message of Saint Stephen remain as a fragment that is cut short by his stoning, although at the same time this is what brings his message and his life to their completion: in his passion he becomes one with Christ. Both his trial and his death resemble the Passion of Jesus. Like the crucified Lord, he too prays as he dies: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” (Acts 7:60). The task of fully expounding this theological vision in order to build up the Church of the Gentiles fell to another: to Paul, who as Saul had consented to the killing of Stephen (cf. Acts 8:1).

It is not the task of this book to delineate the principal elements of Pauline theology, not even those concerned with worship and the Temple. Our concern is simply the early Church’s conviction that long before its outward destruction, the era of the Temple in salvation history had come to an end - as Jesus had declared with his references to the “deserted house” and the new Temple.

Saint Paul’s enormous efforts to build up the Church of the Gentiles by developing a form of Christianity “free from the Law” had nothing to do with the Temple. His quarrel with the various currents within Jewish Christianity revolved around the basic “customs” through which Jewish identity was expressed: circumcision, the Sabbath, food laws, purity regulations. While the question over the necessity of these “customs” for salvation gave rise to some fierce battles among Christians, too, leading ultimately to Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem, strangely there is not a hint to be found anywhere of a dispute over the Temple and the necessity of its sacrifices, even though, according to the Acts of the Apostles, “a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith” (6:7).

Still, Paul did not simply ignore the question. On the contrary, the belief that all sacrifices are fulfilled in the Cross of Jesus Christ, that in him the underlying intention of all sacrifices is accomplished, namely expiation, that Jesus in this way has taken the place of the Temple, that he himself is the new Temple: all of this lies at the very heart of Paul’s teaching.

A brief indication must suffice. The most important text is found in the Letter to the Romans (3:23-25): “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

The Greek word that is here translated as “expiation” is hilasterion, of which the Hebrew equivalent is kapporet. This word designated the covering of the Ark of the Covenant. This is the place over which YHWH appears in a cloud, the place of the mysterious presence of God. This holy place is sprinkled with the blood of the bull killed as a sin-offering on the Day of Atonement - the Yom ha-Kippurim (cf. Lev 16), “whose life is offered up to God in place of the life forfeited by sinful men” (Wilckens, Theologie des Neuen Testaments II/1, p. 235). The thinking here is that the blood of the victim, into which all human sins are absorbed, actually touches the Divinity and is thereby cleansed - and in the process, human beings, represented by the blood, are also purified through this contact with God: an astonishing idea both in its grandeur and its incompleteness, an idea that could not remain the last word in the history of religions or the last word in the faith history of Israel.

When Paul applies the word hilasterion to Jesus, designating him as the seal of the Ark of the Covenant and thus as the locus of the presence of the living God, the entire Old Testament theology of worship (and with it all the theologies of worship in the history of religions) is “preserved and surpassed” [aufgehoben] and raised to a completely new level. Jesus himself is the presence of the living God. God and man, God and the world, touch one another in him. The meaning of the ritual of the Day of Atonement is accomplished in him. In his self-offering on the Cross, Jesus, as it were, brings all the sin of the world deep within the love of God and wipes it away. Accepting the Cross, entering into fellowship with Christ, means entering the realm of transformation and expiation.

All this is hard for us to understand today; we will return to it in greater detail when we consider the Last Supper and Jesus’ death on the Cross, and we will try to understand it. Here our intention is simply to demonstrate that Paul has already completely absorbed the Temple and its sacrificial theology into his Christology. For Paul, the Temple with its worship is “demolished” with Christ’s crucifixion; its place is now taken by the living Ark of the Covenant - the crucified and risen Christ. If with Ulrich Wilckens we may accept that Romans 3:25 is a “Jewish-Christian faith-formula” (Theologie des Neuen Testaments I/3, p. 182), then we see how quickly this insight matured within Christianity - from the beginning it was known that the risen Lord is the new Temple, the real meeting place between God and man. Wilckens can therefore rightly say: “From the beginning, Christians simply did not take part in Temple worship … The destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70 did not therefore constitute a religious problem for Christians” (Theologie des Neuen Testaments II/1, p. 31).

Thus it also becomes clear that the great theological vision of the Letter to the Hebrews merely expounds in greater detail what in essence Paul had already said and what Paul in turn had found already substantially contained within the earlier ecclesial tradition. Later, we shall see that, in its own way, the high-priestly prayer of Jesus offers a similar reinterpretation of the event of the Day of Atonement and hence of the heart of Old Testament redemption theology, seeing it fulfilled in the Cross.

The Times of the Gentiles

A superficial reading or hearing of Jesus’ eschatological discourse would give the impression that Jesus linked the end of Jerusalem chronologically to the end of the world, especially when we read in Matthew: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened. . .; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven …” (24:29-30). This direct chronological connection between the end of Jerusalem and the end of the whole world seems to be further confirmed when we come across these words a few verses later: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place …” (24:34).

On first glance, it seems that Luke was the only one to downplay this connection. In his account we read: “They will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led captive among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (21:24). Between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, “the times of the Gentiles” are here inserted. Luke has been accused of thereby shifting the temporal axis of the Gospels and of Jesus’ original message, recasting the end of time as the intermediate time and, thus, inventing the time of the Church as a new phase of salvation history. But if we look closely, we find that these “times of the Gentiles” are also foretold, in different terms and at a different point, in the versions of Jesus’ discourse recounted by Matthew and Mark.

Matthew quotes the following saying of Jesus: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (24:14). And in Mark we read: “The gospel must first be preached to all nations” (13:10).

We see at once how much care is needed when making connections within this discourse of Jesus; the text is woven together from individual strands of tradition that do not present a straightforward linear argument but that must, as it were, be read in the light of one another. In the third section of this chapter (“Prophecy and Apocalyptic”), we will look in more detail at this redactional question, which is of great significance for a correct understanding of the text.

From the content, it is clear that all three Synoptic Gospels recognize a time of the Gentiles: the end of time can come only when the Gospel has been brought to all peoples. The time of the Gentiles - the time of the Church made up of all the peoples of the world - is not an invention of Saint Luke: it is the common patrimony of all the Gospels.

At this point we encounter once again the connection between the Gospel tradition and the basic elements of Pauline theology. If Jesus says in the eschatological discourse that the Gospel must first be proclaimed to the Gentiles and only then can the end come, we find exactly the same thing in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “A hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25-26). The full number of the Gentiles and all Israel: in this formula we see the universalism of the divine salvific will. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Paul, too, recognizes an age of the Gentiles, which is the present and which must be fulfilled if God’s plan is to attain its goal.

The fact that the early Church was unable to assess the chronological duration of these kairoí (“times”) of the Gentiles and that it was generally assumed they would be fairly short is ultimately a secondary consideration. The essential point is that these times were both asserted and foretold and that, above all else and prior to any calculation of their duration, they had to be understood and were understood by the disciples in terms of a mission: to accomplish now what had been proclaimed and demanded - by bringing the Gospel to all peoples.

The restlessness with which Paul journeyed to the nations, so as to bring the message to all and, if possible, to fulfill the mission within his own lifetime - this restlessness can only be explained if one is aware of the historical and eschatological significance of his exclamation: “Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).

In this sense, the urgency of evangelization in the apostolic era was predicated not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history: if the world was to arrive at its destiny, the Gospel had to be brought to all nations. At many stages in history, this sense of urgency has been markedly attenuated, but it has always revived, generating new dynamism for evangelization.

In this regard, the question of Israel’s mission has always been present in the background. We realize today with horror how many misunderstandings with grave consequences have weighed down our history. Yet a new reflection can acknowledge that the beginnings of a correct understanding have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep the shadows.

Here I should like to recall the advice given by Bernard of Clairvaux to his pupil Pope Eugene Ill on this matter. He reminds the Pope that his duty of care extends not only to Christians, but: “You also have obligations toward unbelievers, whether Jew, Greek, or Gentile” (De Consideratione III/1, 2). Then he immediately corrects himself and observes more accurately: “Granted, with regard to the Jews, time excuses you; for them a determined point in time has been fixed, which cannot be anticipated. The full number of the Gentiles must come in first. But what do you say about these Gentiles? … Why did it seem good to the Fathers … to suspend the word of faith while unbelief was obdurate? Why do we suppose the word that runs swiftly stopped short?” (De Consideratione III/1, 3).

Hildegard Brem comments on this passage as follows: “In the light of Romans 11:25, the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God, ‘until the full number of the Gentiles come in’ (Rom 11:25). On the contrary, the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering (cf. Ep 363). . .” (quoted in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Winkler, I, p. 834).

The prophecy of the time of the Gentiles and the corresponding mission is a core element of Jesus’ eschatological message. The special mission to evangelize the Gentiles, which Paul received from the risen Lord, is firmly anchored in the message given by Jesus to his disciples before his Passion. The time of the Gentiles - “the time of the Church” - which, as we have seen, is proclaimed in all the Gospels, constitutes an essential element of Jesus’ eschatological message.

Prophecy and Apocalyptic in the Eschatological Discourse

Before we address the strictly apocalyptic part of Jesus’ discourse, let us attempt a summary of what we have seen so far.

First, we saw the prophecy of the destruction of the Temple and, in Luke, explicit reference also to the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet it became clear that the nucleus of Jesus’ prophecy is concerned, not with the outward events of war and destruction, but with the demise of the Temple in salvation-historical terms, as it becomes a “deserted house”. It ceases to be the locus of God’s presence and the locus of atonement for Israel, indeed, for the world. The time of sacrifices, as regulated by the Law of Moses, is over.

We have seen that the early Church was aware of this profound watershed in history long before the outward demise of the Temple, and we have seen that amid all the difficult debates over which Jewish customs needed to be retained and imposed on Gentiles too, there was evidently no dissent over this point: with the Cross of Christ, the era of sacrifices was over.

Moreover, we have seen that the nucleus of Jesus’ eschatological message includes the proclamation of an age of the nations, during which the Gospel must be brought to the whole world and to all people: only then can history attain its goal.

In the meantime, Israel retains its own mission. Israel is in the hands of God, who will save it “as a whole” at the proper time, when the number of the Gentiles is complete. The fact that the historical duration of this period cannot be calculated is self-evident and should not surprise us. But it was becoming increasingly clear that the evangelization of the Gentiles was now the disciples’ particular task - thanks above all to the special commission given to Paul as a duty and a grace.

From this perspective, it can be understood that this “time of the Gentiles” is not yet the full Messianic age in terms of the great salvation promises, but it remains the time of present history and suffering; yet in a new way it is also a time of hope: “The night is far gone, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12).

It seems obvious to me that several of Jesus’ parables - such as the parable of the net with good and bad fish (Mt 13:47-50), the parable of the darnel in the field (Mt 13:24-30) - speak of this time of the Church; from the perspective of a purely imminent eschatology, they would make no sense.

As a subsidiary theme, we also came across the instruction to the Christians to flee from Jerusalem at the time of an as yet unspecified profanation of the Temple. The historicity of this flight to Pella in Transjordan cannot be seriously doubted. While for our purposes this may seem a peripheral detail, it has a theological significance that should not be underestimated: their refusal to take part in the military defense of the Temple, through which the sacred place itself became a fortress and an arena for cruel military actions, corresponds exactly to the approach taken by Jeremiah at the time of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem (cf. Jer 7:1-15; 38:14-28, for example).

Joachim Gnilka emphasizes the link between this approach and the heart of Jesus’ teaching: “It is most unlikely that the Christian believers in Jerusalem took any part in the war. It was Palestinian Christianity that transmitted Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. So they must have known Jesus’ commandments regarding love of enemies and renunciation of violence. We also know that they did not take part in the revolt at the time of Emperor Hadrian” (Nazarener, p. 69).

A further key element of Jesus’ eschatological discourse is the warning against false Messiahs and apocalyptic enthusiasm. Linked with this is the instruction to practice sobriety and vigilance, which Jesus developed further in a series of parables, especially in the story of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25:1-13) and in his sayings about the watchful doorkeeper (Mk 13:33-36). In this last passage we see clearly what is meant by “vigilance”: not neglecting the present, speculating on the future, or forgetting the task in hand, but quite the reverse - it means doing what is right here and now, as is incumbent upon us in the sight of God.

Matthew and Luke recount the parable of the servant who noted his master’s delay in returning and, thinking him absent, made himself master, beat the servants and maids, and gave himself over to fine living. On the other hand, the good servant remains a servant, knowing that he will be called to account. He gives to all their due and is praised by the master for so doing: acting with justice is true vigilance (cf. Mt 24:45-51; Lk 12:41-46). To be vigilant is to know that one is under God’s watchful eye and to act accordingly.

In the Second Letter to the Thessalonians, Paul explained in stark and vivid terms what Christian vigilance involves: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat. For we hear that some of you are walking in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work in quietness and to earn their own living” (3:10-12).

A further important element of Jesus’ eschatological discourse is the reference to the persecution that lies in store for his followers. Here, too, the time of the Gentiles is presupposed, for the Lord says that his disciples will be brought not only before courts and synagogues, but also before governors and kings (Mk 13:9): the proclamation of the Gospel will always be marked by the sign of the Cross - this is what each generation of Jesus’ disciples must learn anew. The Cross is and remains the sign of “the Son of Man”: ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapon than the witness of suffering.

Let us now turn to the strictly apocalyptic section of Jesus’ eschatological discourse: to the prophecy of the end of the world, the second coming of the Son of Man, and the Last Judgment (Mk 13:24-27).

What is striking here is that this text is largely composed of Old Testament passages, especially from the Book of Daniel, but also from Ezekiel, Isaiah, and other scriptural texts. For their part, these passages are interconnected: old images are reinterpreted in situations of hardship and developed further; within the Book of Daniel itself one can observe such a process of rereading certain passages as history unfolds. Jesus places himself within this process of relecture, and hence it is understandable that, for their part, the community of believers - as we saw earlier - reread Jesus’ words in the light of their new circumstances, naturally in such a way that the fundamental message remained intact. Yet the fact that Jesus spoke of the future, not in his own words, but by proclaiming the words of ancient prophecy in a new way is highly significant.

First, we must of course note the element that is genuinely new: the coming Son of Man, of whom Daniel had spoken (7:13-14), without being able to give him personal features, is now identical with the Son of Man addressing the disciples. The old apocalyptic text is given a personalist dimension: at its heart we now find the person of Jesus himself, who combines into one the lived present and the mysterious future. The real “event” is the person in whom, despite the passage of time, the present truly remains. In this person the future is already here. When all is said and done, the future will not place us in any other situation than the one to which our encounter with Jesus has already brought us.

In this way, the focusing of the cosmic images onto a person, who is now present and known to us, renders the cosmic context a secondary consideration. Even the question of time loses its importance: the person “is” in the midst of physically measurable things; he has his own “time”; he “remains”.

This relativization of the cosmic, or, rather, its focusing onto the personal, is seen very clearly in the closing words of the apocalyptic section: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mk 13:31). The word - which seems almost nothing in comparison to the mighty power of the immeasurable material cosmos, like a fleeting breath against the silent grandeur of the universe - the word is more real and more lasting than the entire material world. The word is the true, dependable reality: the solid ground on which we can stand, which holds firm even when the sun goes dark and the firmament disintegrates. The cosmic elements pass away; the word of Jesus is the true “firmament” beneath which we can stand and remain.

This personalistic focus, this transformation of the apocalyptic visions - which still corresponds to the inner meaning of the Old Testament images - is the original element in Jesus’ teaching about the end of the world: this is what it is all about.

From this standpoint, we can understand the significance of Jesus choosing not to offer a description of the end of the world, but rather to proclaim it using words already found in the Old Testament. Speaking about things to come using words from the past strips these discourses of any temporal frame of reference. What we have here is not a newly formulated account of the future, such as one might expect from a clairvoyant, but a realignment of our perspective on the future within the previously given word of God, manifesting both the perennial validity and the open potentialities of that word. It becomes clear that the word of God from the past illumines the essential meaning of the future. Yet it does not offer us a description of that future: rather it shows us, just for today, the right path for now and for tomorrow.

Jesus’ apocalyptic words have nothing to do with clairvoyance. Indeed, they are intended to deter us from mere superficial curiosity about observable phenomena (cf. Lk 17:20) and to lead us toward the essential: toward life built upon the word of God that Jesus gives us; toward an encounter with him, the living Word; toward responsibility before the Judge of the living and the dead.