Till Jesus Comes: Origins of Christian Apocalyptic Expectation

Till Jesus Comes: Origins of Christian Apocalyptic Expectation. By Charles L. Holman. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996, xli + 181 pp., $12.95 paper.

Far from joining the virtual scholarly flight from the apocalyptic, Holman has convincingly argued for the importance of apocalyptic eschatology in early church preaching and for the Biblical perspective of a dialectical tension between expectation and delay being part of Jesus' own outlook (p. 136). While he may have shared certain eschatological ideas with his contemporaries, "No other person saw himself at the center of the great event to come as did Jesus" (p. 137). And this book has a special interest in explaining how it was possible to maintain a living tension between expectation and ongoing delay.

The growing edge of apocalyptic eschatology in the NT milieu seems to be the concept of two ages with a supporting collage of motifs: woes, an anti-god figure, apostasy and extreme persecution (p. 40). The source of apocalyptic is not in Persia or Zoroastrianism (cf. Norman Cohn) nor in the Hebrew wisdom movement (cf. G. von Rad) but in the prophetic tradition (Paul D. Hanson).

Nevertheless, as Holman recognizes (Part One), the roots of Israel's hope are to be traced to its premonarchical covenants. In the literature of the two centuries preceding the Christian era (Part Two), the Daniel tradition set the place where expectation becomes a way of reckoning with delay (p. 82). With the Jewish material roughly contemporary to the time of the origins of Christianity delay comes even more into focus with the recurrent "how long?" question. Answers come in appeals to divine sovereignty, encouragement of expectation so that "the theme of an imminent end is basically a way of coping with delay" (p. 98).

The fundamental and distinctive aspect of Christian apocalyptic is that hope has been and is yet to be realized in Jesus (Part Three). With the Christ event transforming and explaining hope-rather than being the mother of Christianity (Kasemann)-apocalypticism was a useful vehicle through which to express eschatological expectation (pp. 157-158). Furthermore, the nonfulfillment of the parousia did not present any more of a theological crisis than it did for Judaism; both reinterpreted their traditions in the face of new challenge.

Holman notes (Part Four) that, for us, the time has grown "very long" (p. 160). Following Ladd, we could claim that the parousia has always been "imminent" in that within any generation it could come (p. 161). The linking of mission and eschatology means that "the time of the grand triumph of God in history is both within his sovereign ordering of history and within the contingency of human obedience to the commission" (pp. 165-166).

This balanced book is written for a wide spectrum of readers who are being introduced to the breadth of material needed to deal with this theme. At times, one wished for a more obvious line of argument so that it was clearer what place particular arguments and material had in the larger argument.

Graham H. Twelftree

North Eastern Vineyard Church, Adelaide, South Australia

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Jun 1999
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