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1907. ]ParousW vs. Second Advent.

61

ARTICLE IV.

THE PAROUSIA VERSUS THE SECOND ADVEXT.
BY THE REVEREND ARTHUR METCALF.
THAT the apostles

and the early church were in somemeasure mistaken about the Second Advent can hardly be
doubted in view of the uniformity and weight of the evidence.
That they expected to see an apocalyptic Day of the Lord before death should close their eyes, and that their expectations
were unfulfilled, is a matter of New Testament record. To meetthe cruel disappointment created thereby, certain passages in
the New Testament were written; so that the disappointment
which has been the lot of the church until our own day certainly began while the apostles themselves were yet alive. A
closer examination of the New Testament sources of thestrange faith which still holds the allegiance of a large sectionof the Christian church, should show its votaries that in clinging to the letter they have missed the spirit of the Parousia
their Master taught. Experience should correct, as well as
steady, faith.
Our doctrine of the Second Advent grew indirectly out of
the apocalyptic Jewish literature, which never had a place
within our canon, rather than out of our New Testament
writings. Indeed, the bulk of the New Testament was not
written until experience had shown the earliest conceptions of
the doctrine to have been faulty. It should be noted that theBook of Revelation, which lends itself most to the traditional
Advent, and which alone, of New Testament writings, teaches
the milknnial reign. was the last to gain admission within the

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canon, and has had, perhaps, the most difficulty in maintaining
its position there.
At best, the New Testament teaching on the Parousia is
conflicting and. uncertain. The time is very near: it is unknown:
it recedes with the passing years. It will be within the present
generation: before the gospelers shall have completed their
tour of the cities of Israel: at the end of the age: at the consummation of the world. The Parousia is the appearance ofJesus to his disciples after the resurrection: at the disciples'
death: personally to his judges, who shall see him in great
glory:' at a time when "every eye shall see him." One of theGospels falls but little short of distinctly identifying the Parousia with the Paraclete. Sometimes to die seems to be torealize the Parousia irmnediately. Still again the kingdom tobe established will be spiritual, invisible, without pomp; or it
will be established by a most spectacular invasion of the earth
by angelic legions, whose supernatural prowess will conquer
and chain the powers of evil-a world-power carnal as thatof Rome. The new power will work in society quietly as
leaven: will develop naturally as a seed: or will be a violent
inruption from another world. The Fourth Gospel's reign ofJesus is spiritua1. Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
Spiritual union with him is eternal life. The judgment is
automatic and continuous,-in strange contrast to the
apocalyptic Day of the Lord, with the Dantean cries of its
victims to the rocks and mountains to hide them from thewrath of the Great King. The Paraclete and the Parousia
would seem to be identified in a long process of enlightenment
in the Christian church. The Gospels and Epistles know ofno millenniaI reign, and such reign is foreign to Jesus' thought.
Only the Book of Revelation teaches it, amid symbols andmysteries so perplexing and confusing as to make all inter-1907.]

Pcwousia vs. Second Advent.

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pretation uncertain. The spirit of the Sennon on the Mountis at variance with the traditional doctrine. If Jesus rather
than the Book of Revelation be the basis of the faith, a reconstruction of the doctrine of the Parousia is inevitable.
Our doctrine of the Second Advent grows out of the Jewish
conception of the Messiah. The Jews regarded the precocious
dominion of David and Solomon as a lost Paradise, and indulged the hope that the path of the nation would one day
lead back into an Eden of prosperity and power. Hopedeferred, created and fed the mbSt persistent and heroic faithof history-the belief in a coming age of gold and theuniversal reign of Messiah, which the stern reality of disasterand defeat was never able to dim. They fondly dreamed of aworld-empire, long before the city on the Tiber had awakened
to the conquest of her environing peoples.
When the nation was scattered in exile, a great prophet
proclaimed to the handful in Israel who kept faith with thetheocracy, Jehovah's Suffering Servant, whose humility andsuffering would prove the salvation of the nation. This was
the finest conception of Messiah reached by the Jews, andcontinues a revelation of spiritual power to all ages. This
conception Jesus countenanced and fulfilled, and in it lies theessence of the ethics of redemption for all times and worlds.
But the idea of the Suffering Redeeming Servant contained inour canonical writings made no impression upon the popularmind. The Jewish writings and the popular i:nagination
drifted steadily and persistently from it toward the sensuous
views that in the end prevailed. Jesus' most spiritually-mindeddisciples protested against the Isaiahian suffering Saviour, andlooked for a spectacular kingdom in which suffering was displaced by carnal triumph. " Wilt thou at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel ?" photographs the Great Expectation of

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the age, and illustrates the triumph of the sensuous over the
spiritual in men even under the personal tutorship of Jesus.
Paul's eventual partial emancipation from the national conception marks a brilliant chapter in the unfolding of his mind,
and stamps him a son of genius.
Very suggestive is it that the Jews were indebted to their
non-canonical writings for their prevailing view of the
Messiah-the view that is responsible for our doctrine of
the Second Advent. Within the Old Testament canon thedoctrine of the Messiah is sane, ethical, spiritual: beyond, itruns riot in sensuous apocalyptic visions of the impossible andridiculous. The Western mind revolts at the cherished pictures of Messiah's reign which sustained the Jews through theclosing centuries of their national life, and while the New
Testament was being created. The kingdom was to berestored in a glory of which the son of Jesse never dreamed.
A lineal descendant of the beloved king would sit on the throneof the resurrected nation in triumph over its world-enemies.
This Messiah would be heaven's high executioner to Jehovah's
enemies. Already had the wonder-king been born into theworld. To preserve him to a more opportune day, a Merlinspirit of mystery had caught him up into heaven, from whence
he would come in an august advent of glory to claim and win
his throne among men. With him in the sky would cometeeming legions of angels with supernatural power to sustain
him in his great conflict. Some set the term of four hundredyears to his reign, while others claimed for him a full thousand
years of temporal glory. Then would co:ne the cataclysmic
end of all things, beyond which lay a field in which the imagination ran a wilder riot. The casual student can hardly
fail to recognize the outline, and even much of the detail, of
the current anticipations of the Second Advent, in these Jewish

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non-canonical conceptions of the Advent of Messiah. Without
a doubt they are the egg from which our queer bird washatched.
Such were the expectations of the age into which Saul of
Tarsus was born. The current conceptions of his nation were
his personal inheritance and environment. He held the
apocalyptic vision. He pinned his faith to Israel's great hope.
To Augustinian faith he added Torquemadan activity in theinterests of the current conceptions of Messiah's kingdom, andso persecuted vigorously the new church, because he rightly
identified it as an ene:ny of. the old faith.
In mid-career this Paul was arrested by a new light on theold problem of religion. The result of a mental and spiritual
revolution was, that he accepted the risen Jesus as the Messiah
for whom he had been looking. What a perplexing problem
now confronted him I The old forms of faith were shaken;
the new religion was yet inchoate-was to be, indeed,
largely, the creation of his own mind.
What of theold ought to survive in the new? Chief among the questions
confronting him was, "What has become of Israel's crowninghope?" The Messiah who came, came not with pomp nor
power. Because of the gulf between popular expectationand the spirit and purpose of Jesus, the nation had rejected
and crucified him. But Paul had come to know Jesus as
Messiah. How could this great active thinker reconcile thehope that had illuminated the dark centuries of the nation's
decline, and to which he still clung with passionate patriotism,
with the very mundane appearance of Jesus,' and the preponderance of the natural over the supernatural in his life ?
A problem of such magnitude, involving such a radical mental
and spiritual revolution, has rarely been presented for solution

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to the human mind. He retired to Arabia and looked thequestions involved squarely in the face, open to the inspirationof heaven.
We can only trace the evolution of Paul's mental world as
he has unconsciously recorded it in the letters and labors of hislater 'life. Systematic theology is the last thing to look for inPaul's writings. If he could be personally charged with thePauline theology to-day he would be astounded, and, when hegot his breath, would certainly plead, "Not guilty." He lived
in a period of transition, and built a bridge of life, rather thanof dogma, between the old and the new. The truth whichgrew out of his life came to him through a series of mental
and spiritual wrestlings reaching from Damascus to Rome,-which, after all, is the way of God's perpetual method of
inspiration.
Paul's earliest solution of the question was perfectly natural,and almost inevitable. He clung to the old faith, and simply
pushed t~e expected glorious Advent forward a little, to an
unknown day, but within the tenn of his own generation. The
first Advent had been humble-perplexingly so--but theSecond would be with great power and glory. H~ commends the Thessalonians for their staunchness, and urges themto abound in love, that they may be found unblamable inholiness at the Parousia shortly to be manifested. They are to
be quiet; mind their own business; walk honestly in view of
the coming event. They should waste no regrets that those
who have fallen asleep will miss the glorious triumph, forwhen the Lord comes he will bring the faithful with him, sothat the living shall have no precedence over the dead, butboth alike shall share the glory. This earliest setting of Paul'sSecond Advent is in the terms of the letter and spirit of thecurrent Jewish faith. The Lord shall come from heaven with

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Parousia vs. Second Advent.

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a great shout, attended by the shining hierarchy, with blazonof trumpets, and the living and dead saints shall be caught up
to meet him in the air. It should be noticed that Paul nowherelends the weight of his name to the idea of a millennial reign.
Inasmuch as that was indefinite in the Jewish traditions, hedoes not mention it.
The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians was written to
suppkment Paul's earlier teaching, and to correct certain
wrong impressions and evil effects growing, naturally enough,out of their acceptance of Paul's doctrine of the immediate
Parousia. If the day of their emancipation were so near, whyshould they continue the slaves of toil? They would rest, andfeast, and watch for his coming. And so the doctrine that
Paul meant to be a spur to holy living, a lever to righteousness, wrought disorder among the brethren-a disorder thathas been repeated in the history of the church whenever themillennial-advent doctrine has gained any considerable holdupon the imagination of men. Paul tells them the Parousia is
not so irtlIIlediate as they had supposed, but is still immediate.
The affiicters of the brotherhood shall receive retribution, andthe afflicted shall find rest in that fiery day. The Lord shall slay
the Lawless One with the breath of his mouth-a distinctly
Jewish and unchristian conception of Messianic power, andone which Jesus repudiated when upon earth. The lazy anddisorderly are enjoined to labor, and all are to watch hopefully
for the day of deliverance not far distant.
These earliest of Paul's extant letters reveal the motive 1:>ywhich at first Paul hoped to move the world to righteousness.
Men were to become holy in order to be ready for the reignof Messiah. It was almost John the Baptist's great cry,"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But it is a
kingdom that comes with observation, in which the simile of58

Parousia vs. Second Advent.

[Jan.

the leaven has no place. It overturns the spirit of the Sermon
on the Mount, and overlooks the aptness and power of thespiritual life to refonn and redeem the world. It is just sucha conception of religion as we might exped from one emerging
from the school of the Rabbis, and feeling his way among thethings of the new order. In no other of his Epistles does this
doctrine hold aught but a subordinate place. Perhaps it was
the misuse of the doctrine at Thessalonica that led Paul toabandon it as a means of stirring men's consciences to a sane,
practical religious life. Perhaps it was because a newer andlarger world was orbing upon his vision. Probably it was anatural combination of both of these reasons. His later teaching was certainly the servant of a much larger vision.
Constant thinking upon the problems of religion drove Paulever back upon the old prophets' conception of the SufferingSaviour-Messiah. "For I determined to know nothing among
you," he writes to the church at Corinth, "save Jesus Christ,and him crucified." He realizes that the apocalyptic Parousia
has failed to produce the type of religion that satisfies his
vision of life, and so feels for a higher motive. Ever afte-r,
the suffering Redeemer is central in his preaching. Henceforth he is conscious of a great mission looking towards the
slow', orderly redemption of men's nature by means of the
dynamical spiritual life. He deals with the perpetual struggle
between the spirit and the flesh. The crucifixion is central in
his thought as a great sacrifice and example. Men are to live
the life of faith apart from Law, Temple, and Priest, asAbraham did before these candidates for men's allegianceappeared. By the Holy Spirit, God himself dwells near man
in all the phases of his life. An intelligent witness of thespirit of man within to the spirit of God without, constitutes
the true religious life. The new church is the body of Christ,

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to see, to think, to act for him in the world, incarnating among
men his altruistic spirit. Even when Paul deals with matterseschatological, the apocalyptic features of Thessalonians arelater replaced by saner and more spiritual conceptions. The
resurrection is of a spiritual body. In his last charge to
Timothy he seems to have come to an almost purely spiritual
conception of the Parousia. It is hardly probable that he everconsciously discarded his earlier conception of the Advent.
Casual references to the question seem to reveal the old idea
at the base of his thought. But his larger message relegatedit more and more to the region of his subconsciousness. His
later preaching was of a spiritual kingdom, of a religious life
in man consonant with the Sermon on the Mount, which mac.lethe apocalyptic Parousia, hidden away among the prejudices of
his earlier life, an anachronism, if it did not negative it altogether. He was too busy and too strong a man to weaken his
onslaught on the world by seeking the intellectual consistency
which gives such abiding satisfaction to smaller and lessoriginal men. In stcenuous pursuit of his goal he did notconsider for a moment the possibility of carrying with him, orof caring for, the things he passed on the way. It was his
characteristic to ever be forgetting the things which werebehind, as, indeed, it is of all great men.
What did Jesus teach about the Parousia? From the Greek
fathers to our own day, it has been the fashion and folly of
theology to interpret Jesus by Paul. Paul is a much more
important figure in the theological world to-day than is Jesus,
though the tide is certainly turning. Now, Jesus' eschatological discourses have been gathered from scattered sayings
throughout his ministry, and edited by men completely
possessed by the materialistic and apocalyptic conceptions of•

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the Messiah. Therefore their interpretation is not an easy
matter. Some things, however, stand out clearly. Jesus'
ministry was a vigorous protest against those conceptions of
his kingdom which form the base of the traditional doctrineof the Second Advent. He yielded not one jot to cataclysmic
notions of the kingdom. His teaching is moral, ethical.
spiritual, looking towards the slow, orderly, moral redemptionof the world which has, as a matter of fact, operated throughthe intervening centuries. The" sign" he delighted in wasthat of his own unmiraculous preaching to and fro in the land,
persuading men to the spiritual life. Because he would not
be such a Messiah as modern premillennialists expect, the Jews
put him to death. A more solemn and final protest against
current conceptions of the Second Advent it would be impossible for him to have given. His whole teaching andlife, and death, cry out against the apocalyptical expectationsof men who profess to believe in his teachings, and life, anddeath IThe Gospels record two distinct conceptions of the Parousia.
In the Synoptics, written early, before men had comprehended
the spiritual significance of the discourses they record, therecord of the eschatological discourses of Jesus shows theParousia more or less apocalyptic, and in accord with the expectations of the age. The Fourth Gospel's corresponding
record is spiritual, natural, and consonant with universal
religious experience. Jesus will come again immediately andreceive his disciples unto himself, even as he comes to-day toevery spiritually-minded man. Even the resurrection is fro;na life of sin to a spiritual life, through vital union with Christ.
The center of interest is not the cataclysmic appearing of theLord at the imminent consummation of the world, but thequiet advent of the Parac1ete whose Parousia is to be per-

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manent in the church. Which of these two conceptions-the
one essentially carnal, the other finely spiritual-represents
more faithfully the mind of the Master? As the Parousia of
the Fourth Gospel is in full accord with the spirit of Jesus'
teaching about the nature of the kingdom, and is part of thewell-tested experience of the church, there can be little doubtthat it more faithfully preserves the spirit of his teaching, andthat his Parousia was to be the Presence of the Paraclete
through the Christian ages.
One significant item has been uniformly overlooked or explained away by the premillennial Adventists. In the mostpointed of Jesus' discourses on Last Things, he himself says,"This generation shall not pass away till all these things beaccomplished." This, it would seem, ought to be conclusive.
But for Matthew xxiv. 14, and Mark xiii. 10, all the Advental
items recorded in these two Gospels fall within "this generation." These passages really form no exception. "And thisgospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world
for a testimony unto all the nations." The question hangs
upon the &Ile¥ling of "the whole world" and "all thenations." The passages are evidently equivalent to Acts i. 8,"Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all
J udrea, and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of theearth." Manifestly those to whom he spake never were his
witnesses to "the uttermost parts of the earth," as we know
the earth. Are not these passages simply the foregleam of thetruth that the church would break away from Judaism into
the environing Gentile lands? Is it not simply equivalent tosaying that when the message shall have swung out to centers
independent of Jerusalem, then shall come the end in question?
A person studying the passages for the first time, free frombias, would, I think, so interpret them. This at least accords

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with Jesus' other saying, "Ye shall not have gone through thecities of Israel till the Son of Man be come," i.e., the Son of. Man shall come very quickly. Either Jesus was mistaken, or. the premillennialists are wrong in their expectations.
What is the reasonable explanation of Jesus' discourses on
the Parousia in the Synoptics? It is clear that, as always, heused the current conceptions to convey his higher truths. Two
immediate things were in his prevision. He foresaw the i::npending destruction of Jerusalem, which brought to an end
the Jewish nation. There is no real controversy about thefact that this approaching calamity was omnipresent in Jesus'
mind, and shaped his eschatological discourses. The canonical
Old Testament conception of Messiah involved a "Day of theLord," in which condign punishment would fall upon the unfaithful nation. Jesus was the Messiah of that type, andproclaimed himself Judge in this approaching Day of theLord. In that great visitation the Son of Man did pass judgment upon Israel, its effete religion, its proud Phariseeism,and upon its foolish Messianic dreams. The major part ofJesus' discourses upon Last Things is completely and consistently interpreted through the impending destruction of theCity.
The logical sequence of this Day of the Lord was the end of
the Temple dispensation and the beginning of the reign of thespiritual life in the world. It was the end of an Age in thehistory of religion. Cognate with the end of the age in Jesus'::nind, arose the far-off vision of the end of the world,-thegrand mysterious consummation toward which the ages tend.
He saw this far-off event, and his speech about the end of theJewish age is shot through and through with light from thefinal judgment-throne, as the scene lay in his prevision. It we,1907. ]Parousia vs. Second Advent.

63

lacking the strong prejudices of his audit~rs, could have heard
him speak, much that is now confused and uncertain would
doubtless be clear and easy to understand. As it is, there isno hint of a premillennial reign. He simply and sublimely
claims the arbiters hip of the eternal destiny of men, and ofnations, at the final consummation. His language is highlyoriental, pictorial, metaphorical. Reduced to Western terms,
it simply and grandly means that the Son of Man, rejected of
the nation upon the eve of its own doom, would still sit in judgment upon the nation in the day of its calamity, and even so
will be the Judge of all the earth at the far-off climax of theworld, whatever, wherever, and whenever that event may
prove to be.
But the Fourth Gospel undoubtedly represents the view of
the Parousia nearest Jesus' heart. Liddell and Scott define
the word "Parousia" as, "A being present, presence; thebeing present to assist." The secondary sense is .. arrival":
the primary is "presence." The theologians are responsible
for the changing of "Presence" to "Advent." "Lo, I am
with you alway, even until the end of the age," recorded in
the Synoptics. seems to be the sense in which Jesus meant theParousia to be understood. The Paraclete in John's Gospel
overshadows, if it does not entirely displace, the Parousia, andseems to be the true interpretation of it. It is a presence that is
to abide, not for a thousand years of doubtful glory, but always.
The spiritual presence of Jesus, moving upon the world of men,has wrought our Christian civilization, and has in it largest
prophecy for the world's future. Already it has wrought amillennium in human society. It is the true fulfillment of the
Old Testament conception, of the Sermon on the Mount, ofPaul's later profound philosophy of the religious life, and of
the noblest instincts of the Christian church. What are all

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the species of "Millerism" that have befooled and befogged
large sections of the church through the Christian ages, compared with the quiet, rational, operations of this spiritual
Parousia "within" man and the church? No spectacular
Advent could be half so dynamic; no bodily Presenoe half so
helpful. To tum from it to the Jewish type is to tum fro:nthe spiritual to the carnal. The current conception is puerile,gaudy, and appeals mainly to the childish love of wonder
incident to half-awakened man,-to those fundamental instincts in the race which make the bass drum the chief
instrument in the band. Look not for his coming in the clouds
when men exclaim, Lo I here, lo! there, for the kingdom ofheaven cometh not in that wise-it is within you.
What is the conclusion of the whole matter? Simply this:That Jesus founded a spiritual kingdom, of which the Paraclete
is the highest conception,-God with man, helping, lifting,blessing, unfolding his higher destiny. That the congenital
prejudices of the disciples and apostles naturally led them tomisunderstand and misinterpret much of Jesus' discourses upon "Last Things." That Paul, dominated by the current conceptions of the Messiah, and believing Jesus to be the Messiah,
simply postponed, in his earlier writings, the popularly expected Advent into the immediate future, and, with the otherapostles, daily expected the august event. That his later
insight into the spiritual led him to know no more this Christ
after the flesh, but to preach a religion ethical and spiritual,
which eventually pushed out of sight his earlier conceptionsof the Second Advent. That the teaching of Jesus on the
Parousia is fulfilled in his speedy coming in judgment upon
the nation at the fall of Jerusalem, and at the end of thetemple dispensation, and in his final judgment of the world

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at the great consummation. That Jesus nowh('re teaches amillennial reign, to precede the grand wind-up of the world.
That the reasonable doctrine of the Paraclete seems to embody
Jesus' personal views of the Parousia, whkh tenn simply
means a Presence rather than an Adveftt,-a Presence thatabides a~ong men forever-a Shekinah that goeth not out-an
incarnation whose object is to make man divine-that thewhole of Jesus' life, and the spirit of his teaching, was an emphatic protest against the concepti(\nq of the nature of the
kingdom which lie at the base of the traditional doctrine of
the Second Advent.
And what shall the far-off end be? Of that no man knoweth,and science, poetry, and theology can only dream. Jesus declared he did not know. It were wise of the church to standby the sober, reasonable, experimental truths she certainly
knows. Speed then in the church, and in the wide world, theParousia of the Spirit, and let the thawnaturgical Advent fadefrom the vital interest of man.

Vol. LXIV.

Xo. 253.

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