TODAY IN MISSION YEARBOOK
Mission Yearbook: Pittsburgh Theological Seminary traces what Jesus started but didn’t finish
Is Jesus coming back, and if so, when?
This is a question that followers of Jesus and those who study those followers have asked since the early days of the Jesus movement. But when did these questions start and by whom? Such is the preoccupation of Dr. Tucker S. Ferda in his latest book, which was published last September by Eerdmans Publishing.
Ferda recently presented an overview of “Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins” as part of a series of book talks hosted by Pittsburgh Theological Seminary’s Barbour Library. The library has posted a recording of the talk, a reading guide and a bibliography on its website for those interested in uncovering the secrets of Christianity’s greatest eschatological mystery and in finding perhaps not when Jesus will return but why it’s thought that he will.
“We can’t understand modern views on the Second Coming if we don’t see how they've been shaped by social and cultural forces in reception history,” Ferda recently told a crowd in person and online.
Ferda summed up the stance that has been popularized and passed down particularly through Protestantism as people have engaged and interpreted the Bible for themselves and their times by quoting John Lennon: “Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
As Ferda traced how Lennon came to this opinion, he discussed the idea of how the Bible has been received and attitudes passed down over time. This concept of reception history is central to Ferda’s book and where his research begins.
Ferda worked backward, starting with reception history before exegeting primary texts in their own context and conducting historical Jesus research. He began his research with the most recent modern New Testament scholarship and described a more than 60-year silence on the topic of the Second Coming. Ferda described how an unquestioned consensus that the concept of the Second Coming was a fascination by those who followed Jesus, not by the sage himself, developed over the past half-century. He remembered hearing in various lecture halls professors answering questions about the Second Coming, not with researched arguments but by reference to “what scholars
agree” as the origins of this theological concept.
Ferda set out to break what he considered a “sustained kind of silence on the question.” He told the crowd, “Nobody's writing about this.” However, Ferda also was clear his work was historical and not theological. “If you came thinking I was going to predict the day and time of the return of Christ, you’re going to be very disappointed,” he said.
“This is a work of history, so my fundamental question is asking, ‘Where did this belief in the Second Coming of Jesus come from?’ That might seem really straightforward, but it’s actually a very complicated question,” he said.
Ferda could not find evidence that Jesus himself was silent on the subject of his return. Ferda cited what he described as the earliest document in the New Testament, Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians. In First Thessalonians, Paul comforts those who are grieving the dead and tells them to have confidence in a general resurrection when Christ returns. Ferda depicted Paul’s eschatological preaching as formed through summary, not direct quotations of Jesus. “The claim in Paul’s letters is Jesus said something about this from our earliest text to be preserved around 50 C.E., or 20 years removed from the ministry of Jesus,” said Ferda.
Later depictions of Jesus through the Gospels, particularly of Matthew, Mark and Thomas, put the promise of return in the mouth of Jesus himself. In working with these early Christian texts through the lens of the historical figure of Jesus, Ferda argued that the “eschatological imminence” that is captured through the belief traditions of the Second Coming, the coming Day of the Lord, and the final judgment is present in the teaching of Jesus and that there is a sense that this is happening soon.
“My argument is going to be that this Second Coming hope does indeed go back to Jesus, and it’s not something that was invented in the post-Easter period,” Ferda told the audience.
Beth Waltemath, Communications Strategist, Interim Unified Agency (Click here to read original PNS Story)
Let us join in prayer for:
Lauren Pash, RNS Project Archivist, Presbyterian Historical Society, Interim Unified Agency
Stephanie Patterson, Multimedia Associate/Designer, Presbyterian Women
Let us pray:
Gracious God, you have taught us to celebrate with those who are celebrating and to cry with those who are crying. May our eyes be open to see and distinguish between the two. Keep us mindful of all those who need your Spirit shining through us as much as they may need our monies and our labors. Amen.