IIKLL 



681 



a few passages of Scripture, and count among its 

 modern supporters Watts, Isaac Taylor, and 

 \\hately. 



The principal theories of future retribution hav- 

 ing thus IMTM l>i idly .sketched, it only remains to 

 say a few words more generally upon the signifi- 

 cance of New Testament Mehfttolagy i and the mode 



of its development. ; and here we .shall follow 

 closely in the track of Plleiderer. The whole of 

 the Primitive-Christian community lived in the 



expectation of the s| dy return of Christ and the 



advent of his visible kingdom of glory upon earth. 

 Further, the Afiocalypse of John (following the 

 Jewish apocalyptic e.g. the Book of Enoch) dis- 

 tinguished between (1) the earthly kingdom of 

 Christ (of limited duration 1000 years, hence 

 C/tilin.\-in), beginning with the Parousia and First 

 Resurrection, and (2) the definitive end of the 

 world ( llev. xx. 2-7) following thereupon, which, 

 through a second general resurrection and judg- 

 ment of the world, together with the annihilation 

 of the kingdom of Satan, will introduce the eternal 

 completion of the kingdom of God : which com- 

 pletion, moreover, the Apocalypse also still repre- 

 sents in accordance with the analogy of the Israel- 

 itish theocracy descent of the heavenly Jerusalem 

 (Rev. xxi. ). 



In the Pauline eschatology two essentially differ- 

 ent views cross each other : ( a ) On the one hand, the 

 specifically Jewish-Christian expectation (handed 

 down in the Christian community) of the follow- 

 ing miraculous catastrophes : Parousia, Earthly 

 Ueign of Christ, Resurrection of Christians, General 

 Judgment (1 Cor. xv. 23-26 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13-18) 

 under the assumption of which the state of souls 

 between death and resurrection appears as a middle 

 state, like sleep ; on the other hand (b) a result of 

 the specifically Pauline doctrine of the Spirit of 

 Christ viz. the expectation of a glorified state of 

 individual Christians in fellowship with Christ a 

 state already prepared in the life of the Christian 

 on this side the grave, ami therefore beginning 

 immediately after death to unfold its fullness in the 

 manifestation of a body-of-light (Rom. viii. 10 et 

 seq., and 17-23; 1 Cor. v. 1 et seq.; Phil. iii. 20 

 et seq. ). The latter mode of conception appeared 

 first in the Later Pauline epistles, without however 

 being made to harmonise with the first. The 

 definitive end of the world Paul conceives as intro- 

 duced by the subjugation of all the enemies of God, 

 which is carried out under the earthly rule of 

 Christ as king (whether through their conversion 

 or even through their complete annihilation), and 

 finally of even death itself. On this follows the 

 surrender of the kingdom by Christ to God and the 

 dominion of God alone in all creation, even to out- 

 ward nature glorified and serving God in freedom 

 ( 1 Cor. xv. 27 et seq. ; Rom. viii. 21 ). 



The ideal tendency of the Pauline eschatology 

 \\ :i-> strengthened from the side of Hellenism, under 

 whose influence already the Epistle to the Hebrews 

 bad combined the future Messianic world of Jewish- 

 Christianity with the higher, heavenly, or ideal 

 world, and had immediately attached the perfect 

 state to the death of the individual ( Heb. xii. 23 ; 

 iv. 9 et seq. ; ix. 27 ). 



In John the idealising spiritualisation of the 

 traditional eschatology goes still further by trans- 

 forming the external perfection (in the future) into 

 the internal perfecting of the religious Christian life 

 of the present church. As already the 'coming 

 again ' of Christ, in the valedictory discourses, 

 wavers lietween future Parousia and present Com- 

 ing in-the-Spirit ( John, xiv. 16), so also the 'eternal 

 life ' of believers has now already l>ecome realised in 

 the present in their corporate unity with God and 

 Christ, which is above death and judgment, and 

 which receives no essential addition even through 



the future resurrection to life (which, withal, iu 

 here firmly adhered to). In like manner, alMo, 

 Judgment realises iteelf already in the historical 

 life of the community, continuously, in the process 

 of separation betwixt faith and unliclief, Honxhip to 

 God and to the Devil which separation will find 

 only its full outward manifestation in the future 

 two-sided resurrection (John, xvii. 3 ; xi. 25 et sen. 

 vi. 40 ; v. 24 et setf. ; iii. 17-21, 36; xvi. 8 et eq.). 



In t he Hpirituahsation of eschatology Origen only 

 went further on the line pursued by the Gotqiel of 

 .liilin. The other Church Fathers in opjK>sition 

 to Gnostic spiritualism laid stress all tne more 

 decisively on the sensuous reality of the last things, 

 even to the Pharisaic fleshly identity of the resur- 

 rection body with the earthly one. Only it must 

 lie noted that Chiliasm, as an apocalyptic hope for 

 the future, was from the 3d century all the more 

 decisively rejected by the church, the more ite 

 idea realised itself in the church's own dominion 

 over the world, and the Parousia of Christ was 

 pushed forward from the near future to the far- 

 off distance. 



The conception of the Ignis Purgatorins, derived 

 from the Platonic doctrine of the purifying pen- 

 ances of souls in the world beyond the grave, was 

 early adopted by individuals, but from the time of 

 Gregory I. l>ecame a part of the Catholic Church's 

 faith, closely connected with the Mass and with 

 the church s penitential discipline, for which 

 reasons it was rejected by Protestant orthodoxy, 

 which makes the unchangeable and endless retri- 

 butive states of salvation and damnation ensue 

 immediately on the death of the individual, 

 between which states there is no third, though 

 different degrees within both are admitted. In 

 no other respect does the Protestant eschatology 

 differ from tne Catholic. Chiliasm is rejected as. 

 a Jewish error ; but the Parousia of Christ with 

 general resurrection, judgment, and transformation 

 of the world stands as the solemn close of time and 

 entrance on eternity. In the further course of 

 Protestant theology some more mystical thinkers 

 have sought to vivify the abstract monotony of the 

 world beyond the grave as conceived by the church 

 () by adopting once more the biblical Chiliasm, 

 now termed Millenarianism, or (b) by finding a 

 compensation for purgatory in assuming the capa- 

 bility of conversion beyond the grave, or assuming 

 a growing perfectibility, or assuming a general 

 restoration of all men (A/ioattastasis). 



On the contrary the more rational theologians 

 tended rather to set aside the last remaps or the 

 primitive Christian dogmas Parousia and Resur- 

 rection, and to reduce this whole section of doctrine 

 to the Alexandrine form of the incorporeal con- 

 tinuance of souls. Philosophic thinkers found the 

 essential idea of Christian eschatology in the im- 

 manent eternity or infinity of the religious spirit ; 

 along with which the individual continuance of 

 souls was denied by some (as in Schleiermacher's 

 Reden ; it is otherwise in his Glanben-slehre ; and 

 by the Hegelian Left), but asserted by others (as 

 by Leibnit/, Wolff, Kant, Fichte, Sohelling, the 

 Hegelian Right, 'Krause, Herbart, Lotze, Teich- 

 m ii Her. &C. ). 



Theology holds almost exclusively to the latter 

 side. The Christian faith has from the beginning 

 combined the two fundamental forms of hope for 

 the future : (a) the Hebrew, of hope for the earthly 

 future perfection of the people of God, and (6) the 

 Hellenistic, directed to the supra -in nmhntr |>erfec- 

 tion of the individual soul. Each of the two 

 represents an essential side of the Christian hope, 

 and is conceivable without self-contradiction ; it 

 is only from the mixture of both sides, as it passed 

 over from the Jewish theology into primitive 

 Christianity, that obscurities and contradictions 



