By Christian / Tom Wright
This series takes up the main ideas from the book by Bible scholar N. T. Wright Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (German Von Hoffnung überrascht – Was die Bibel zu Auferstehung und ewigem Leben sagt).
I read the book in the German translation. So the quotes are from the German translation and retranslated into English. The quotes will therefore differ from the English original.
When he comes
However different the Christian faiths may be, believers often have a desire to go to Jesus. However, the main truth that the early Christians insisted on again and again is that Jesus is coming back to us.
Coming, appearing, revealing and the royal presence
Interestingly, the concept of the ’second coming‘ or the ‚return of Christ‘ is often the subject of discussion today, although this term only occurs very rarely in the New Testament.
It may therefore come as a surprise to some to hear that „despite the widespread opinion to the contrary, Jesus said nothing about his return during his earthly ministry“. (S. 154)
‚Wait a minute‘, you may think and want to refer to texts such as Mark 13:26: „Then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and great glory.“ (NEÜ) Or Mark 14:62: „It is I,“ Jesus replied. „And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Almighty and coming with the clouds of heaven.““ But here Jesus is quoting from Daniel 7, which is why Jesus is not talking about his return but his rehabilitation after suffering. „The „coming“ is an upward movement, not a downward movement. In their context, the key texts mean that although Jesus goes to his death, he will be vindicated by events that take place afterwards.“ (p. 154) And this is also how the early church saw it.
And what about the parables of a king who goes away, leaving his subjects to manage the economy in his absence until he returns? Even if these parables were also interpreted in this way early on, they „belong to the Jewish world of the first century, in which everyone will have heard this parable as a story about God himself, who had left Israel and the temple at the time of the exile and who finally returned, as the post-exilic prophets had said, back to Israel, back to Zion, back to the temple. … In their original situation … they do not deal with the second coming of Jesus, but with his first.“ (S. 155)
Even if Jesus did not teach about his return, this does not mean that it is not true. With this topic, it is particularly important not to jump to conclusions. We have to be careful because the parables do not quite fit the Second Coming.
If the texts that speak of the „coming of the Son of Man on clouds“ refer to the year 70 AD, which according to my reasoning they do (in part), then that does not mean that 70 AD was the „second coming“ because the „Son of Man“ texts are not texts about the Second Coming at all.“
The return of Christ has not yet taken place.
N. T. Wright, Von Hoffnung überrascht, S. 156
But if we read nothing in Jesus‘ words in the Gospels about the return of Jesus, where does this teaching come from? From the rest of the New Testament after Jesus‘ resurrection: „This same Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come again just as you have seen him go into heaven.“ (Acts 1:11 NEÜ)
In Paul’s letters in particular, we find thoughts on the return of Jesus. And also a Greek word that has misled both laypeople and scholars: parousia. „It is usually translated as ‚coming‘, but literally it means ‚presence‘ – that is, presence as opposed to absence. It appears in two key passages in Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:15 and 1 Corinthians 15:2,3).
In particular, 1 Thessalonians 4:17 has fired the imagination: „After this we who are still alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And then we will be with him forever.“ (NEÜ) But it doesn’t say anything about people going to heaven after the ‚encounter‘!
In fact, parousia had two meanings in the non-Christian world at that time.
The first was the mysterious presence of a deity. „Josephus sometimes uses this word when he speaks of YHWH coming to save Israel.“ (S. 158)
„The second meaning occurs when a high-ranking personage pays a visit to a subject state, especially when the king or conqueror visits a colony or province. The word for such a visit is royal presence: in Greek, parousia.“ (S. 158)
„It should be noted that in none of these contexts do we find even the slightest suggestion that anyone is flying around on a cloud. Nor is there any hint of the imminent collapse or destruction of the universe.“ (S. 158)
What were Paul and the rest of the early church trying to say?
That Jesus, whom they worshipped, was close in spirit but physically absent, but that one day he would be physically present and that then the whole world, including themselves, would recognise the sudden transformative power of this presence.
A word that lends itself naturally to this would be parousia.
They wanted to say that Jesus, who had been raised from the dead and exalted to the right hand of God, was the rightful Lord of the world, the true ruler before whom all other rulers would tremble and before whom they would bow their knees in fear and amazement.
And they wanted to say: just as the emperor might one day visit a colony like Philippi or Thessalonica or Corinth (the normally absent but ruling ruler who now appears and rules in person), so one day the absent but ruling Lord of the world would appear and rule in person within this world, with all the consequences that would have.“
N. T. Wright, Von Hoffnung überrascht, S. 158
N. T. Wright explains 1 Thessalonians 4 in much more detail in his book. Let’s look again at 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:
For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 NIV
First of all, it should be emphasised once again that this text clearly states that the resurrected do not meet Jesus in heaven. We deduce this from the last part of the verse, because the Lord will be in heaven. But that is not what this text says. „The main point to note about these tricky verses is that they are not to be understood as a literal description of what Paul says will happen. They are simply another way of expressing what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:23-27 and 51-54 and Philippians 3:20-21.“ Where the NIV translation says „will be caught up“ in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, Paul uses the term „transformed“ in 1 Corinthians 15:51, which is translated as „transformed“ in the Züricher translation for example. Philippians 3:21 also speaks of this transformation as „transforming“.
It is interesting that Philippians 3:20 is translated in the Züricher version as follows: „For our home is in heaven, from where we also await the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour“. And the King James Bible has: „For our conversation is in heaven.“ No wonder if someone then thinks that they are going to heaven. But this translation unfortunately reflects a religious persuasion and not the original text. The original text reads πολίτευμα (politeuma), which means citizenship: „But we have our citizenship in heaven.“ The Neue Evangelistische Übersetzung translates this correctly. Also the NIV: „But our citizenship is in heaven“
What did Paul mean by this? It was certainly not a literal description, because in the next chapter, 1 Thessalonians 5, he speaks of „the thief coming in the night, so that the woman will have labour pains, so that you should not get drunk, but stay awake and put on your armour.“ (p. 161) If these are methaphors, then we are also dealing with a metaphor in chapter 4.
In fact, three stories in one metaphor. Paul was good at linking things so compactly. Paul links the story of Moses coming down from the mountain (a trumpet sounds here too) with Daniel 7. He links this to Daniel 7 and then adds a situation from the life of the Philippians.
If the emperor visited a colony or province, the citizens of the city would go and meet him at some distance outside the city gates. It would be disrespectful to actually let him arrive at the city gate, as if his subjects had no desire to greet him properly. If they met him, they would not remain outside in the open field; they would accompany him royally into the city. When Paul speaks of the „meeting“ with the Lord „in the air“, he is not talking about the saved believers remaining floating somewhere in the air, away from the earth, as we find in popular rapture theology. It is about the following: After they have gone out to meet their Lord, they will accompany him royally into his domain, i.e. back to the place from which they came.
Even if we note that this is a significant metaphor, not a literal description, the meaning is the same as in the parallel passage in Philippians 3:20. As the Philippians knew, being a „citizen of heaven“ did not mean expecting to return to the hometown, but expecting the ruler to come from the hometown to give the colony its full dignity, to rescue it if necessary, to defeat enemies, and to set everything right.
The reality to which the rhetoric refers is this: Jesus will be personally present, the dead will be raised, and Christians who are then alive will be transformed.
N. T. Wright, Von Hoffnung überrascht, S. 162
And so it is no longer surprising when an Aramaic expression suddenly appears at the end of 1 Corinthians. Mind you, an Aramaic expression in the Greek text. Some translations leave it in and you don’t even understand what is meant by it. In 1 Corinthians 16:22 we find „Marána thá – Our Lord, come!“ (Einheitsübersetzung 2016), which goes back to the very early Aramaic-speaking church.
In Colossians 3:4, by the way, Paul uses the word „appear“ and not „come“. „Jesus does not have to float down from heaven like a spaceman. … When heaven and earth are joined in the new way that God has promised, then Jesus will appear to us – and we will appear to him and to each other, in our own true identity.“ (S. 164)
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