Outside the gospels, there are many NT references to Jesus' coming at the end of the world. Christians historically have construed these as prophecies of a second coming—the first, of course, being his 30-year sojourn in Palestine during the first century of this era. But there is no such two-stage advent in the epistles. In those writings, there is only one coming of the Christ, and in most cases it has not happened yet.
Among other comments by Doherty:
Greek has no specific word for "return" in the sense of coming back to a place one has visited or been at before. The word erchomai is a basic verb of motion and can mean to come, or to go, or to pass; a specific meaning, which can include "return," is conveyed by adjuncts or the context. . . . For example, the simple word palin, "again," employed with erchomai, could have served this purpose, yet no one ever uses it.
Doherty offers I Cor. 1:7-8 as typical of references to a future coming that don't presuppose a previous coming. In response, Ted tries hard to find a two-stage something:
The context is an introduction which quickly leads into a discussion about the wisdom of God and foolishness of men. Paul talks in 2:23 of how the cross is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, and how the rulers who crucified Christ didn't understand God's wisdom in 2:7. The revelation of Christ upon his coming then may have a deeper significance beyond that of a visual appearance. The context supports the idea that the "revelation" of Jesus in the "day of the Lord" involves a new awareness that was not previously present. 2:10 says "God has revealed to us through the spirit".
But then he concedes: "It is true that the language doesn't reference or imply his having come previously."
Well, then, what was the point of all that verbiage about "context" and "deeper significance"? Ted is practically admitting that he was hoping to evade the issue by distracting the reader with irrelevancies. But just in case that didn't work, he looks for proof texts elsewhere that he hopes will contradict Doherty.
First up is Gal. 4:4: "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law." OK, "God sent forth his son . . ." but where to? This world? According to Ted, in the writings that are thought to be undisputably Pauline, this is the "clearest reference" to the Christ's having come to earth "the first time." But Paul here says neither that the son came to earth nor that it was the first of more than one coming to whereever it was. If that is the clearest reference he can find to a first coming, the others must be obscure to the point of opacity.
Next we get I Tim. 1:15: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Ted says Paul's authorship of this letter is "disputed by many." In fact, it is disputed by almost everyone except inerrantists. It could have been written during the late first century, but there is some evidence for, and none against, a second-century origin. So, its author might, consistently with Doherty's thesis, have believed in a historical Jesus. At any rate, he obviously did think there had been a coming of some kind, and it had occurred sometime previously to when he wrote the letter. But would there be another, second coming? This, he does not say, and so we don't yet have any clear affirmation of belief in a second coming. The author does elsewhere mention a future appearing, but the Greek there is epiphaneia, which is a manifestation, not an arrival.
Ted then goes to II Timothy, whose author mentions two appearances of the Christ, one apparently in the past and one apparently in the future. Again, though, the author is talking about a manifestation (epiphaneia), which might or might not entail the sort of coming that would be relevant to this discussion. Ted also remarks that "the first [II Tim. 1:10] sounds like an appearance on earth," which of course it does if we assume historicity. Without that assumption, though, it could just as easily be a reference to men on earth having visions of a Christ in heaven.
Ted next turns up three verses in I John chapter 3:
1 John 3:5 "5You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and
in Him there is no sin."
1 John 3:8 "8the one who practices sin is of the
devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning The Son of God appeared for
this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil."
1 John 3:2 "2Beloved, now
we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be We know
that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He
is."
The Greek word translated as appeared in all three instances is phaneroo. It does not mean come or arrive or anything similar. It means be revealed or render apparent.
We have already mentioned the time when I John was likely to have been written. Like I Timothy, it was late enough for some historicist notions to have influenced the writer. The same applies to II Timothy. But even if we suppose that to have happened, none of them is unambiguously asserting a belief that the Christ has actually come to earth once and will actually return at some future time. They are not talking about first and second comings. They are talking about past and future revelations. That is what their actual language clearly implies, and any suggestions that they mean something different can only be forced by historicist presuppositions.
After quoting I John, Ted has the gall to add: "The strongest linguistic evidence is found in the synoptics." If that is not begging the question, then the expression has no meaning. The very core of this debate is whether Paul and the other epistle writers believed the same things about Jesus that the gospel authors wrote about Jesus.
After all this, Ted finally gets to an apparently explicit second coming:
We do have one example in an early writing to the return of Jesus, in
Hebrews:
Heb 9:26b "26Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often
since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages
He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."
Heb 9:28 "28so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will
appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who
eagerly await Him."
The manifested of verse 26 is phaneroo again. The appear in verse 28 is yet another word, optonomai (or optomai), which just means something akin to be seen.
And finally, approaching his conclusion, Ted says,
"Paul also appears to echo a few of Jesus' words about his second coming." But
Paul cannot echo the gospels, which were written some decades after his time.
The gospels can only echo Paul. This is not nitpicking over a technicality.
Ted's phrasing is clearly reflective of an obdurate historicist mindset. To a
historicist, Paul must echo Jesus and not vice versa because Jesus lived
and died before Paul wrote anything and therefore his words had to have
been uttered first. But that begs the question of whether the gospels
record any real history. If we don't assume that they do, then all we know is
that Paul's writings preceded the writing of the gospels and therefore do not
echo them.
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This page last updated on June 15, 2015.