I have three items for my write-up today on Jesus, Paul, and the End of the World, by Ben Witherington III.
1.
I Thessalonians 4:16-17 states the following (in the King James
Version): "(16) For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a
shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and
the dead in Christ shall rise first: (17) Then we which are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet
the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord."
Witherington
does not think that this verse is about a pretribulational rapture, in
which Christians will be raptured up to heaven soon before the Great
Tribulation. Actually, for Witherington, Paul believes that he
and other Christians are already experiencing "the messianic woes that
precede the end of history" (page 158; Witherington cites such passages
as Romans 1:18; 8:18; I Thessalonians 3:4; I Corinthians 7:26; and
Colossians 1:24), which means that Paul (like certain other Jewish
writers) may have thought that he was in the midst of the great
tribulation! Rather, Witherington argues that Paul in I
Thessalonians 4:16-17 is saying that the saints will meet Christ in the
air at the parousia, then they will escort Christ down to earth. According
to Witherington, this reflects what happened when kings visited a city
in the Greco-Roman period. There were times when a herald would
announce with a trumpet and a shout that the king was coming, and a
greeting committee would go out and escort the king to the city.
I
think that Witherington's interpretation of I Thessalonians 4:16-17 is
sound. But his view that Paul could have believed that he and other
Christians were suffering the Great Tribulation is hard to reconcile, in
my view, with his argument that Paul did not hold that the end of the
world was necessarily imminent. Do not the birth pangs of the
end indicate that the end is near? Was the Tribulation seriously
supposed to last over two millennia?
(UPDATE: But can the language of imminence be used to describe an event that will not occur immediately?
Witherington on page 162 talks about writings that use the language of
imminence, yet they contain "periodization or calculations".)
I thought that something Witherington says on page 177 was interesting: "Paul
is referring to dead and living Christians being gathered together to
meet the Lord, while Jesus may have been referring to elect Jews in the
Dispersion." Jesus, for Witherington, had more of a focus on
God gathering the dispersed Christian Jews (if I'm interpreting "elect
Jews in the Dispersion" correctly). This makes a degree of sense. In
Matthew 24:31, Jesus talks about angels gathering the elect from one end
of heaven to another (to draw from the KJV). In Deuteronomy 30:4, God
tells Israel that he will gather even those Israelites who have been
driven to the utmost parts of heaven. Some interpret Matthew 24:31 as
supporting a rapture, but it appears to concern gathering people who are
on earth, not in heaven. Perhaps Jesus regards those people as
Israelites, the topic of Deuteronomy 30:4.
2. II Thessalonians 2:3-4, 7-9 states (again, in the KJV):
"(3)
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come,
except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed,
the son of perdition; (4) Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all
that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in
the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God...(7) For the mystery
of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until
he be taken out of the way. (8) And then shall that Wicked be revealed,
whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall
destroy with the brightness of his coming: (9) Even him, whose coming
is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying
wonders..."
As the Kingdom of God is already-and-not-yet,
Witherington notes that the mystery of lawlessness is
already-and-not-yet. For Witherington, Paul (and Witherington does
think that Paul wrote II Thessalonians) believes that the mystery of
lawlessness is already present and may be "associated with the suffering
of the messianic woes [that] is already happening" (page 163). But
there is yet to come an apostasy, which Witherington says "can mean
political rebellion or religious apostasy and here may convey some of
both ideas" (page 162), and also a man of sin who will enter the Temple
proclaiming to be god. Witherington says that we do not entirely know
what Paul had in mind when he talked about the man of sin, but
Witherington does refer to things that may have been in Paul's mind: stories about a pagan god entering a temple, Antiochus Epiphanes desecrating the Temple, and
Gaius Caligula having "his statue set up in the Jerusalem temple in
order to assert his claims of divinity in A.D. 40" (page 161). Paul
does not identify these things with the man of sin, for these things
were part of the past or present, whereas Paul was clear that the man of
sin would come in the future. But Paul may have thought that these
events demonstrated the likelihood of someone like the man of sin
arising and desecrating the Temple.
3. I Corinthians 15
is about the resurrection from the dead. Witherington does not think
that Paul is addressing Christians who do not believe in the
resurrection at all, for Witherington notes that Paul calls them
brothers (which means that they accepted a crucial element of Christian
doctrine such as the resurrection) and reminds them that they already
believe in the resurrection. But Witherington maintains that Paul is
seeking to "correct an overly spiritual and an overrealized view of
resurrection" (page 190). When Paul refers to a spiritual resurrection
body and contrasts that with a soulish body, Witherington contends, Paul
is not saying that the resurrection body will be composed of spirit. Rather,
for Witherington, Paul is contrasting our current bodies, which are
alive on account of our souls, with the resurrection body, which will be
sustained and empowered by God's Holy Spirit.
I have two problems with Witherington's argument. First,
if Paul were trying to correct a spiritual view of resurrection, Paul
did not help himself by referring to spiritual bodies and to Jesus as a
life-giving Spirit, or by saying that flesh and blood will not enter the
Kingdom. I realize the Witherington has certain interpretations of these passages, but
I think that Paul would have emphasized the physical nature of the
resurrection had he been contending against an over-spiritual view. Second, I wonder how Witherington interprets I Corinthians 15:45, which says that Christ became a life-giving spirit. That appears to me to say that Christ is a spirit, not that his resurrection body is empowered by the Holy Spirit.
And remember that Paul draws a parallel between Christ's resurrection
and that of believers. Witherington may address this question, but I am
only commenting based on my latest reading.