Christopher M. Hays, in collaboration with Brandon Gallaher, Julia S. Konstantinovsky, Richard J. Ounsworth, and C.A. Strine. When the Son of Man Didn’t Come: A Constructive Proposal on the Delay of the Parousia. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016. See here to purchase the book.
Many Christians have wrestled with the claim that Jesus at his first
coming predicted the imminent end of the world and establishment of an
eschatological paradise, or at least predicted that these things would
occur within decades. In Matthew 10:23, Jesus tells his disciples that,
when they are persecuted in one city, they should flee to another, and
they will not have gone over the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man
comes. In Mark 9:1, Jesus says to his disciples that some among them
will not taste death, before they see the Kingdom of God come with
power. In Matthew 16:28, Jesus says some will not taste death before
seeing the Son of Man come in his kingdom. In Mark 13:30, after Jesus
talks about calamity that will befall Jerusalem and the coming of the
Son of Man, Jesus says that this generation shall not pass away, until
all of these things have taken place.
Over two thousand years have passed, and the second coming of Christ
has not yet occurred. Did Jesus err in saying that the coming of the
Son of Man was imminent or soon? Does that show that Christianity is
false: that Jesus was merely a man, without a divine identity or a
divine message? In Deuteronomy 18:21-22, a criterion is presented for
determining whether a prophet speaks God’s words or not. The criterion
is that, if a prophet speaks in God’s name, and the prophecy fails to
come to pass, then the prophecy is not from the LORD. Does Jesus fail
at this prophetic criterion?
When the Son of Man Didn’t Come includes scholarly essays
that wrestle with such questions. In this review, I will comment about
each essay, then I will offer a critique, detailing what I believe are
the positives and negatives of the book.
Chapter 1: “Introduction: Was Jesus Wrong About the Eschaton?”
In this chapter, Christopher M. Hays lays out the problem. Against
scholars such as N.T. Wright, Hays contends that Jesus indeed did
predict an eschaton that was soon. Hays states that Mark 13 holds that
the second coming of Christ would occur soon after the destruction of
Jerusalem, which historically occurred in 70 C.E. That did not happen,
however. Hays also offers an overview of the history of the problem in
New Testament scholarship, which includes the tendencies of some
scholars to argue that Jesus was originally non-eschatological, but that
people later added an eschatological layer to Jesus’ teaching.
Chapter 2: “Prophecy: A History of Failure?”
In this chapter, Hays notes what may be a similar problem in the
Hebrew Bible, only this problem concerns the end of the Judahite exile.
Jeremiah prophesied that the Judahite exile would last for seventy
years (Jeremiah 25:8-14; 29:10-14). Yet, seventy years passed, and the
grandeur that Jeremiah predicted would accompany the restoration still
had not occurred. Judahites returned to the land of Israel and rebuilt
the city of Jerusalem, but they were still ruled by Gentiles, and they
were not experiencing peace and prosperity. There are different views
in the Bible about when the exile actually ended, and Daniel in Daniel 9
seems to reinterpret Jeremiah’s seventy years as four-hundred-ninety
years. Some voices in the Hebrew Bible believe that the sins of Israel
are hindering the full restoration of the Judahite people. Second
Temple Judaism continued to wrestle with the delayed restoration of
Israel.
Chapter 3: “Reconceiving Prophecy: Activation, Not Prognostication.”
In this chapter, C.A. Strine argues that the fulfillment criterion in
Deuteronomy 18:21-22 was not the only game in town when it came to
prophecy. In Jeremiah 18:1-10, God states that whether God fulfills
prophecies of disaster depends on people’s repentance: if people repent,
then God will not send the prophesied disaster. Strine notes a
conditional view of prophecy elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, in the
Ancient Near East, in rabbinic literature, and in early patristic
sources. Could God have changed God’s mind about the prophesied timing
of the Son of Man’s return?
Chapter 4: “The Delay of the Parousia: A Traditional and Historical-Critical Reading of Scripture: Part 1.”
In this chapter, Hays and Richard J. Ounsworth talk about the partial
fulfillment of prophecy. There is some recognition in the Hebrew Bible
that the Judahites’ return from exile had been partially fulfilled, and
a belief that the delay in its full fulfillment was due to Judahites’
sin. Similarly, within New Testament Gospels, there is the idea that
Jesus’ inauguration of the Kingdom of God was partially fulfilled
through his ministry and the work of the church. For Hays and
Ounsworth, partial fulfillment of a prophecy does not entail the
prophecy’s failure.
Chapter 5: “The Delay of the Parousia: A Traditional and Historical-Critical Reading of Scripture: Part 2.”
In this chapter, Hays contends that Jesus’ prediction of the soon
coming of the parousia was a conditional prophecy. Hays cites passages
in the synoptic Gospels in which Jesus gives ethical exhortations to his
disciples that accompany his prophecies about the end. What if
Christians failed to heed those exhortations? Hays states: “Insofar as
people did not respond properly (as evidenced by the myriad of ethical
rebukes contained in the New Testament epistles and the letters to the
seven churches in Revelation 2-3), one might aver that it is not only
understandable, but necessary that the end not occur within the
prophesied time-frame” (page 100). Jesus said that the end would come
after the Gospel has been proclaimed to the world, but what if the
disciples fail to do that (Mark 13:10; Matthew 24:14)? Would Jesus
delay the end? Hays also argues that there are indications in Jesus’
eschatological teaching that he did not regard the timing of the Son of
Man’s return to be a firmly set event: why else would Jesus tell his
disciples to pray that God’s kingdom might come (Matthew 6:10), or
instruct them to pray that their flight from Jerusalem does not occur in
the winter or on the Sabbath day (Matthew 13:18; 24:20)? Does not that
imply that God may base the timing of the end on Christians’ prayers?
Acts 3:19-21 also factors into Hays’ discussion: there, Peter tells the
people of Israel that God will send the Messianic restoration if they
repent. Then there is II Peter 3, which talks about how God delays the
end to give people an opportunity to repent, while also saying that
Christians can hasten the coming of the day of God by their holy lives.
Hays tries to address whether this is a contradiction: should
Christians desire the delay of the end so that more people have a chance
to repent before God comes in judgment, or should they seek to
accelerate the coming of the eschaton through their holy living? Hays
fails to offer a completely satisfactory answer to this question, but
this chapter is still the best in the book, in that it offers a biblical
case for Hays’ (and the book’s) claims. In addition, Hays talks about
the appearance of such themes (i.e., delayed judgment) in Second Temple
literature and patristic sources. I should also note that, later in the
book (page 232), Brandon Galaher and Julia S. Konstantinovsky refer to
an additional example: Paul seems to have believed that he could
accelerate the second coming by bringing more Gentiles into the people
of God (Romans 11).
Chapter 6: “Negating the Fall and Re-Constituting Creation: An
Apophatic Account of the Redemption of Time and History in Christ.”
At this point, the book shifts gears and discusses theology. In this
chapter, Julia S. Konstantinovsky talks about such issues as God’s
eternity and the limitations in human understanding of God. Her
argument seems to be that God is outside of our time, and that we cannot
understand from our limited perspective why exactly God has delayed the
second coming. Her discussion reminded me of Madeleine L’Engle’s
distinction between kairos and chronos: kairos is divine time, whereas
chronos is human chronological time. Kairos (as I understand it)
includes God’s larger plan and story, and God being above and beyond
time, with all people and events before God simultaneously.
Chapter 7: “Divine Possibilities: The Condescension of God and the Restriction of Divine Freedom.”
In this chapter, Brandon Gallaher and Julia S. Konstantinovsky argue
that God can pursue different possibilities and still be God: the
different possibilities that God chooses are rooted in God’s character
as God. In essence, they are saying that God has the leeway to change
God’s plan in response to human behavior, and they maintain that such a
view exists throughout the history of Christian thought, from Augustine
to Barth. God can plan for Christ to return immediately after Pentecost
in Acts 2, as Peter seems to expect in that chapter, or God can change
God’s mind in response to human behavior and delay the second coming.
For Gallaher and Kontantinovsky, God is not flippant, arbitrary, or less
divine in pursuing either option.
Chapter 8: “Divine Action in Christ: The Christocentric and Trinitarian Nature of Human Cooperation with God.”
This chapter is by Gallaher and Konstantinovsky. It discusses the
Trinity and the cooperation that exists within it, as the Father begets
the Son and the Son allows himself to be begotten. It also offers
practical points of application in reference to eschatology, on such
topics as worship, social justice, mission, and contemplation. On a
related note, later in the book, on page 298, Hays refers to the
“pro-Chalcedonian dynamics of dyotheletism of the Sixth Ecumenical
Council (i.e. the Third Council of Constantinople)” that “the divine
will and the human will in Christ cooperate; neither one dominates the
other.” This corresponds with the book’s claim that God works with a
freely-acting humanity, which the book believes offers some explanation
for the delay of the second coming.
Chapter 9, by Strine, Ounsworth, and Gallaher, is about the festivals
in the Hebrew Bible, typology, the circularity and linearity of history
(i.e., salvation history), and liturgy’s role in celebrating God’s
past, present, and future activity. Chapter 10, by Hays and Strine,
discusses the method of the book’s composition and points of practical
application. Chapter 11, by Hays, provides the conclusion.
The book effectively made the case that the timing of the second
coming is flexible and contingent, at least in some passages of
Scripture. Perhaps the authors are correct that God has delayed the
parousia to give people the opportunity to repent. The book also is a
helpful guide to the history of biblical interpretation regarding the
timing of the parousia and contingent prophecy. Those interested in
theology will probably find Kontantinovsky’s contributions informative.
Kontantinovsky and Gallaher make an important point when it comes to
debates about libertarianism, compatibilism, and determinism: that God
can pursue different options, while still being true to God’s nature.
For Kontantinovsky, I gather, God is not limited to one righteous
option, for there may be a variety of righteous options. While
detractors can respond that God would inevitably choose the best option,
and there is only one best option, perhaps Kontantinovsky can retort
that God considers being flexible in response to human free will to be
the best option. (I do not recall her making that retort, but it is a
retort that she could make.)
While the book had positives, its negative is that so many
significant questions were left unanswered. Why exactly did Jesus
predict that the parousia would be imminent, or at least soon, and what
specifically did Israel and the church do, or not do, that influenced
God to delay the second coming? To say that God delayed the second
coming because Israel failed to repent may be faithful to Acts 3:19-21,
but it is a problematic solution when other biblical passages are
considered. For instance, Mark 13 and parallels depict Jesus coming
back after the destruction of Jerusalem, which presumes that Israel does
not repent. Matthew 10:23 holds that the Son of Man will return when
Christians are being persecuted in Israelite cities, which, too,
presumes non-repentance on the part of much of Israel when Christ
returns. Non-repentance of Israel, in these passages at least, is not
enough to delay the second coming.
Did the church do, or fail to do, something and thereby delay the
parousia? Did it fail to spread the Gospel to the world, and thus
violate the condition for Christ’s return set forth in Mark 13:10 and
Matthew 24:14? But Romans 10:18 and Colossians 1:23 appear to imply
that the Gospel had gone to all the world in the first century C.E. Was
the church too sinful for Christ to return in the first century? But
there are many parables in the synoptic Gospels in which Jesus talks
about the Son of Man returning in a time when certain Christians are not
ready, or when some Christians are sinful (i.e., Matthew 25). Christ
does not appear to be waiting for the church to be perfect, before he
returns! The book should have interacted with such questions;
otherwise, it seems to be appealing to the conditionality of prophecy in
an attempt to find a loophole, rather than exploring the implications
of its arguments.
The same can be said about the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible about
Israel’s restoration from exile. God does not fully restore Israel
because she is still sinful? But the prophecies say that God will take
care of this problem when God restores Israel: God will punish the
wicked Israelites and transform the Israelites so that their hearts are
yielded to God’s righteous ways (see, for example, Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel
11:19; 18:1; 20:33-38; 36:26; Zechariah 14:8-9). In this case,
non-repentance does not delay the eschaton.
There is also the question of what exactly the faithful should do
with Deuteronomy 18:21-22, which says that non-fulfillment of a prophecy
disqualifies a prophet. Strine argues that this scenario is not the
only game in town, and, yes, focusing on the conditionality of prophecy
in the Hebrew Bible may be more useful in terms of the book’s thesis.
But what should be done with Deuteronomy 18:21-22? Does appealing to
the conditionality of prophecy invalidate Deuteronomy 18:21-22? After
all, if prophecy is contingent on people’s ethical or religious
behavior, could not any non-fulfillment of prophecy be explained away?
One can always note some moral flaws or imperfections in people, or
something that they are doing right.
The book should have explored more fully the question of why God says
that God will do things, that God does not do. Unless we can see
clearly that people repent, and this influences God to change God’s mind
(i.e., Jonah), then a change in mind on God’s part appears somewhat
flippant (not that I want to judge God, but this is a theological issue
that should be addressed). Why would God threaten evildoers in explicit
and specific terms, then delay the punishment to give them time to
repent? Does that not cheapen the initial threat? What was the purpose
of the initial threat? In my opinion, there is a place for divine
flexibility in response to human behavior, but, unless we can see
specifically how that comes into play when it comes to the second coming
or any prophecies, God appears to be making threats or promises and not
carrying them through. Perhaps the authors could respond that God
makes these threats and promises in an educational sense, or to
influence human behavior. While that may be a good answer, there should
be more wrestling with how God can go back on what God said, without
appearing flippant. Does God say things that God does not really mean?
There is also the question of whether the contingencies related to
the second coming are inconsistent. If people repent, then God will not
send disaster; yet, disaster accompanies the second coming because it
is a time of divine wrath, so will God delay the second coming if people
repent? Yet, God delays the second coming when people do not repent,
to give them more time to repent! The book’s authors could perhaps
respond that they are not presenting an exact science. Fair enough, but
when does it get to the point when God’s words appear meaningless,
under this book’s model, or explanations of the non-fulfillment of
prophecy become special pleading?
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss. My review is honest.