Ephron,
You may also find this helpful:
After all the disciples and the early church died, off and took their
original Jewish understanding of the "parousia" with them. The church
became mostly fill with Greek-Gentiles who brought a lot of pagan background
and understanding to the church with them. We have to remember after the
Jewish saints in the early church physical died off there were only a few
saints to draw on. (For some strange reason) after (A.D. 70) the church
went to great lengths to divorce itself from any Jewish roots and
connections. Unfortunately this included their original understanding of the
parousia.
So it made a significant impact on the Gentiles understanding of these
things. So in the middle of the second century church fathers like
(Shepherd of Hermas, Justin Martyr and other) postulated the "postponed
second advent (parousia)" idea. It didn't come from the Old Testament. A
vital point, they totally ignored is that Old Testament prophecy never
implied two coming divided be centuries ( see Isaiah 34:8, 35:4-6, 40:10-11,
61:1-2 62:11, 63:1-6, 66:6-16, Zech 14, and Mal. 4:16 etc. The language used
closely connects the coming of the Lord with both (salvation and vengeance)
"judgment."
The only thing in the New Testament which even comes close to teaching a
"second advent" is Hebrews 9:28, where it says Christ will "appear a second
time." This was using the symbolism of the High Priest at Yom Kippur when
he took the blood into the holy place and then reappeared back outside the
Temple to announce that atonement had been accomplished.
The early church understood this to be simply a reappearance during His
"one-and-only advent to consummated his kingdom. Not an entirely different
advent after a long indefinite period. However the saints who lived in the
middle of the second century when they saw the remaining prophecies
associated with Christ's parousia did not occur in the physical-literal way
they assumed they had not been fulfilled at all.
So they began adjusting their concept of the TIME of fulfillment, instead of
considering the possibility that their concepts of the NATURE of fulfillment
were the only things needing adjustment. This thinking is where the
mistake was made, and it has affected Christianity ever since.
Unfortunately it occurred before the creeds were developed, so this
misunderstanding was incorporated into them, as well. Many (but not all )
assumed that a physical body is the subject of N.T. resurrection texts, just
like the Jews assumed their physical temple, nation and land were the
subjects of all O.T. restoration prophecies. They assumed to much physical
and literal concepts.
Like the unbelieving Jews of Jesus's day who liberalized the "kingdom of
God" they liberalized the rest of the fulfillment associated with Christ
parousia, Justin Martyr, Shepherd of Hermas and 2 Clement seem to be
credited with changing thing because doubts about imminence were beginning
to ooze into their minds. The thought never seems to occur to them that
their concept of the NATURE of fulfillment was the problem instead of the
TIME of fulfillment. Rather than shift to a spiritual nature of
fulfillment, they instead tampered with the time statements.
Now Listen to these suggestions by Kurt Aland....we discover a decisive
turning point in the second half of the second century a watershed decisive
for the development of the Christian church. It was the definite conviction
not only of Paul, but of all Christians of that time, that they themselves
would experience the return of the Lord;
The Apocalypse expresses the fervent waiting for the end withing the circles
in which the writer lived-not an expectation that will happen at some
unknown point x in time, but one in the immediate present. If we browse
through the writings of that period we observe that this expectation of the
end continued. In fact, we also find ti the writing of the first half of
the second century sufficient evidence to indicate that the expectation of
the Parousia was by no means at an end then.
At the end of the Didache ("the teaching of the twelve apostles"), from the
time shortly after 100, there is, for example, an apocalyptic chapter which
corresponds completely in its outline to the Synoptic apocalypse in Mark 13
(and the parallel chapters in the other Synoptic Gospels.); here we can only
very cautiously say that it used the same words, but that its content is
imperceptibly in the process of change. It quite similar to the Epistle of
Barnabas which was written a little later that the Didache, where we read:
(The day is near in which everything will perish together with the evil.
The Lord ans his recompense are near).
Again and again the old expressions echo. They echo apparently almost
unchanged, but ("doubt about the imminence of the Lord's return is
increasingly mixed with them until around the middle of the second century
when the Shepherd of Hermas thinks he has found a solution and expresses it
with great thoroughness and emphaisi: the Parousia-the Lord's return-has
been postponed for the sake of Christians them selves. The building of the
tower has not been stopped,) it is only temporarily suspended. Therefore
and this is the warning of the Shepherd of Hermas, on account of which the
entire work was really written do good works for your purification, for if
you delay too long, the construction of the tower may be finished and you
will not be included as stones built into it.
The thought of a postponement of the Parousia appears all through 2 Clement
but here it is expressly mentioned for the first time. Thus, about the
middle of the second century, a decisive turning point occurs one which can
be compared in significance to all other great turning points, including the
Reformation. Obviously, we cannot fix this turning point precisely at the
year 150, for it took a while until the though caught hold everywhere. But
a development does begin with the Shepherd of Hermas which could not be
stopped-a development at the end of which we stand today. As soon as the
thought of a postponement of the Parousia was uttered once and indeed not
only incidentally, but thoroughly presented in an entire writing-it
developed its (own life and power).
At first, people looked at it as only a brief postponement, as the Shepherd
of Hermas clearly expresses. But soon, as the end of the world did not
occur, it was conceived of as a longer and longer period, until finally-this
is today's situation nothing but the thought of a postponement exists in
people's consciousness. (Kurt Aland. A History of Christianity. (2 vols.)
Fortress Press: 1985. Vol. 1,pp.89-102
These are pretty powerful statements, and they're coming from someone who
knows a "decisive turning point" when he sees one. It is time students of
Scripture exhaustively examined eschatology, using all the alliable
information that has accumulated since the first century, but reserving all
judgment to Scripture alone.
God Bless,
P70
