Text:
9 Pray then in this way: Our father who is in the heavens, may your name be sanctified;
10 May your kingdom come; may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth;
11 Give us today our bread for the coming day;
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors;
13 And may you not lead us into trial, but deliver us from the evil one.
Notes:
Here is a good example of the sort of tight corner that a historical reading of New Testament eschatology can get us into. The Lord’s prayer is a central element in our formal and informal liturgies. We assume that it is timeless: we imagine that we pray it in the same way and for the same reasons that the first disciples prayed it. For example, I have been reading Scott McKnight’s The Jesus Creed. He regards the prayer as fundamentally an expression of Jesus’ core creed: to love God and to love others. This is an excellent thing to express, but I fear that it really misses the point of the prayer. McKnight recognizes that it is Jesus’ version of the Kaddish but he appears to have nothing to say about the significance of the obvious eschatological orientation of this Jewish prayer. There are numerous other ways in which the prayer is tied to - and potentially confined to - a narrative framework, but these are obscured by the traditional liturgical use of the prayer.
The dilemma, therefore, is this: How should we pray Jesus’ eschatological prayer in a post-eschatological context? Of course, that is my particular dilemma - not everyone will be bothered by it! But the exegetical details are worth considering, and I would argue that there are constructive ways of keeping the prayer central to our worship that do not compromise its narrative integrity.
Jesus’ version of the Kaddish
The model for the Lord’s prayer is the Jewish Kaddish:
Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world He created according to his will. May he establish His kingdom during your life and during your days, and during the life of all the house of Israel, speedily and in the near future. And say Amen.
Like the Kaddish, therefore, it is a prayer that YHWH will bring to an end the state of judgment, deliver Israel from oppression, and come to reign over his people in the place of their enemies, with the result that the name of Israel’s God would be vindicated throughout the world. The strong emphasis on fulfilment within the lifetime of those praying is missing from Jesus’ prayer, but to pray for the kingdom of God to come is to pray for the fulfilment of Jesus’ re-told narrative of the Son of man:
Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Matt. 16:28)
This is a prayer for the lifetime of the disciples. It must be seen as having immediate and credible historical relevance.
May your name be sanctified
J.D.G. Dunn (Jesus Remembered, 476-77) cites Wright, who cites Fitzmyer (in good rabbinic fashion), for the argument that the petition ‘may your name be sanctified (hagiasthētō to onoma)’ is meant to invoke the words of God to Israel in Ezekiel 36:23 LXX:
And I will sanctify my great name (hagiasō to onoma mou…), which was profaned among the nations, which you profaned in the midst of them; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord when I am sanctified among you before their eyes.
The name of YHWH has been brought into disrepute by Israel’s sin and the disgrace of exile; it will be sanctified by the rescue of Israel from the nations, from its enemies, the cleansing of the people, and the renewal of the covenant through the Spirit. The Lord’s prayer begins, therefore, as an eschatological prayer for the restoration of a sinful people oppressed by its enemies.
May your kingdom come
Jesus announces at the beginning of his ministry that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Matt. 4:17). The coming of the kingdom is not an event that will be indefinitely postponed. It will happen within a generation. It will consist of a transfer of sovereignty over Israel from Caesar to YHWH, but Daniel’s vision of the symbolic Son of man figure has suggested that YHWH will then give this sovereignty to the suffering community - that is, to Jesus and those who suffer in him.
Bread for the coming (epiousion) day
The word epiousios is difficult to translate, and we are dependent, therefore, on the narrative context that we construct for it. If there is an allusion to the provision of manna in the wilderness sufficient for the day ahead, then Jesus’ point would be that his disciples are going through a transitional period of extreme reliance on God to provide for their needs for the sake of the re-establishment of the people in a new ‘promised land’. There may also be the thought of the coming eschatological ‘day’ - so it would be the bread of the age to come, which is the age of the restored people of God. In John’s Gospel these two thoughts are merged:
I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:48-51)
The disciples pray, therefore, not only for material support as they endure the ‘birthpangs’ of the end of Israel’s age but also for the spiritual life of the new age in the Spirit of God.
Forgive us our debts
This is, in the first place, a prayer for the forgiveness of Israel’s sins. Luke 11:4 has ‘forgive us our sins’ (aphes hēmin tas hamartias hēmōn). In the background are passages such as Isaiah 55:7 LXX:
…let the ungodly leave his ways, and the transgressor his counsels: and let him return to the Lord, and he shall find mercy; for he shall abundantly pardon your sins (aphēsei tas harmartias humōn).
Jesus urges the disciples to forgive each other as a sign that God has forgiven Israel. Notice that Isaiah 55:1-2 also has the exhortation to Israel to buy good bread from God:
Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.
May you not lead us into trial (peirasmon)
This is not a general petition not to be led into ‘temptation’ - ‘don’t let me look at the magazines on the top shelf’. Again, the eschatological crisis of the end of the age of second temple Judaism is in view. One relevant motif here is the ‘testing’ (tou peirasmou) of Israel in the wilderness (Ps. 94:8 LXX; cf. 1 Cor. 10:13). Because of the hardship of the exodus journey (in this instance the lack of water) the people lost faith in the God who brought them out of Egypt and promised them a new land. For the Psalmist this is the reason why that generation did not enter God’s ‘rest’. Jesus teaches the disciples to pray that the community will remain faithful despite the hardships of the transition to the new age.
It is also a prayer that the disciples would not be ‘tested’ in the way that the Maccabean martyrs were ‘tested’:
Therefore, tyrant, put us to the test (peiraze); and if you take our lives because of our religion, do not suppose that you can injure us by torturing us. (4 Macc. 9:7)
Peter later writes about the ‘trials’ faced by the faithful, suffering community:
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, as was necessary, you have been grieved by various trials (peirasmois), so that the tested genuineness of your faith - more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire - may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Pet. 1:6-7)
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you (pros peirasmon), as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. (1 Pet. 4:12-13)
The prayer, therefore, anticipates the experience of the persecuted church. These are not generalized concerns: Jesus teaches his followers to rely on God during the period of opposition that would culminate in the vindication of the Son of man.
Deliver us from the evil one
This can be translated ‘deliver us from evil’, but the eschatological orientation of the prayer suggests that Jesus has is mind the adversary who opposes the community that seeks to remain faithful to YHWH during the crisis of the end of the age. This is the Satan who seeks to divert Jesus from his calling, who demands to sift the disciples like wheat, who inspires the extreme opposition of Greek-Roman paganism.
Conclusions
There are two themes running through the Lord’s prayer. The first has to do with the restoration of the people of God at the end of the age of second temple Judaism: the forgiveness of Israel, the defeat of the oppressor, the restoration of God’s reign over his people in the place of all other political-religious powers. The second theme has to do with the endurance of the community during the difficult period of eschatological transition for the sake of the future of the people of God.
If that is all more or less correct, then the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples has been answered. The people of God was restored, Caesar was finally overthrown, God’s kingdom was established, the community survived the eschatological crisis and entered the promised land - or as Paul puts, inherited the world (Rom. 4:13). So what do we do with it now? I suggest that we need to pray this prayer in the same way that we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, as a way of remembering the exodus journey that the suffering community made in Christ.
We do not need to pray for the kingdom to come - certainly not in the way that the disciples did. The prayer has its place in the narrative, but the story-line has moved on. The victory over Satan and death that is envisaged in the New Testament has been won; Jesus is our king. Our task is to live and work under that kingship. But we cannot forget the basic reason why sovereignty was given to the Son of man: we have a ‘king’ who gave himself out of love for God and for his people so that the mission of God would have a future.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Andrew, those are excellent thoughts! I have always been fascinated with this prayer…even more so after getting my eschatology framed in a preteristic contect. How do we pray for the Kingdom to come if it is still here?
I especially like your second conclusion, namely “the endurance of the community during the difficult period of eschatological transition for the sake of the future of the people of God”
This is great stuff! It’s getting posted on PP today :)
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Virgil, I greatly appreciate your comments and certainly do not wish to discourage you from referring to this post on Planet Preterist. But I hope you will forgive me if I repeat a point that I have tried to make on other occasions, which is that I do not regard this as a ‘preterist’ argument. I know this will sound disingenuous and I am aware of the overlap with various preterist positions, but I would insist that this approach to eschatology is the outworking of a critical-realist hermeneutic; it is not the product of a prior eschatological position.
It seems to me much more important to stress that for the early church the coming of the kingdom constituted an urgent and plausible future hope than that from our point of view it defines a fulfilled hope. Preterism is still a backward-looking approach to New Testament eschatology. A narrative theology requires us to look forward with the New Testament community through an exercise of the historical imagination.
“may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
Andrew
You comment
“The people of God was restored, Caesar was finally overthrown, God’s kingdom was established, the community survived the eschatological crisis and entered the promised land”
I think you have responded to this before- but in what sense was “Caesar finally overthrown?”
Also, you do not comment on
“may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
In the usual translation (see some examples below) I have regarded this verse as marking one of the major discontinuities between the New and the Old Testament conceptions of God. In the Old Testament, Jahweh is a God of power who intervenes frequently in earthly affairs. By contrast the God of the New Testament eschews earthly power. Thus this verse implicitly acknowledges that God is not master of earth- why else would we be asked to pray that his will be done on earth as in heaven? However your translation seems to erode this distinction by suggesting that God’s will is done both in heaven and on earth.
Was that your intention?
New International Version
your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
King James version
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
New American Standard Version
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Re: “may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
1. I am strongly inclined now to see the New Testament argument about Christ’s exaltation to the right hand of the father as having a key polemical aspect: Christ is confessed as Lord, saviour and God in defiance of an imperial ideology that proclaimed a ‘gospel’ about Caesar as Lord, saviour and god. I think this polemic lies behind Philippians 2:6-11, for example, as well as the more obviously apocalyptic texts.
A forward-looking eschatology asks what really mattered to the early believers who took the risk of making this anti-social and subversive confession. I would argue that what really mattered to them was that they would ultimately be ‘vindicated’ (or, we might say, justified) for having taken this radical step. That vindication would mean different things. It could be internalized - the inner conviction of faith. It also took the form - to use John’s language - of a ‘first resurrection’ of those who would lose their lives because of their testimony to Jesus. But I think we must also allow for a real political dimension in the form of the collapse of the culture that supported the supremely blasphemous and ultimately satanic claim to rule the world and the emergence of the suffering community from oppression.
2. I would read the ‘your will be done’ petition under the heading of the coming of the kingdom of God. It is eschatologically contextualized in Jesus’ prayer. The will of God is that his people should be delivered from oppression and restored to worship YHWH without fear (cf. Luke 1:74). The prayer is precisely that something should happen, be changed, on earth, but this is limited (in this case at least) to Israel’s immediate condition. It is a prayer for God to intervene for the sake of his people, but (this is crucial) he intervenes through the self-giving and suffering of the Christ. He disarmed the principalities and powers that ruled over Israel not through military action (or for that matter through torah observance) but through the cross. It is through the confession that the crucified one has become the anti-Caesar, has been given the name which is above every name, that the people of God has its freedom from all forms of totalitarianism - political, intellectual, cultural and religious.
It is in this particular sense that God’s will was done. It does not mean that God’s will is always now done on earth. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
Re: “may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
Andrew
You say
But I think we must also allow for a real political dimension in the form of the collapse of the culture that supported the supremely blasphemous and ultimately satanic claim to rule the world and the emergence of the suffering community from oppression…..He disarmed the principalities and powers that ruled over Israel not through military action (or for that matter through torah observance) but through the cross
In what sense did Jesus disarm the principalities and powers that ruled over Israel? As far as I can see they just went on to bigger and better things: the Roman Empire endured in the West until the late 5th century and in the East for thousand years after that.
Re: “may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
Paul, part of the problem here again is that we are looking backwards with hindsight rather than forwards with uncertainty and faith. The issue for the early church was whether they could confront the seemingly absolute might of Roman imperialism and get away with it. The prophetic announcement at the heart of New Testament eschatology was that as they proclaimed throughout the pagan world that Jesus rather than Caesar was king over God’s people, nothing could overcome them. Not even death could destroy the integrity of the community that was inaugurated with Peter’s confession that Jesus was the Christ. This was the crucial assurance for the early believers - that the love of God in Christ Jesus was more powerful than anything that the world could throw at them.
But it is also part and parcel of the self-understanding of the people of God that subjugation to any other power was a sign of judgment and alienation from YHWH. If Israel was forgiven, sooner or later that would have to mean that any power that made war against the community of the Son of man (this is Daniel’s language) would be concretely overome. Going right back to Abraham God brings into existence a new humanity, a new creation - but this new humanity is fundamentally compromised if in any sense it is subject to the powers that rule the old creation. If Jesus has genuinely and fully rescued the creational microcosm from destruction, it must mean that the people of God as a community (and not just as privately spiritual individuals) are concretely set free from persecution and oppression. Yes, it took a long time, but the journey to the promised land took 40 years, and Daniel was warned that the restoration of Israel following the exile would take seven times 70 years. Political narratives are told much more slowly than personal narratives.
Re: “may your will be done, as in heaven and upon earth”
Andrew
If I understand you correctly you are saying that part of what Christ accomplished through his death was the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in around 470 and in the East a thousand years later.
I have two problems with that.
One is that it suggests that God is doing what he had always done, intervene in earthly affairs. Before he had done it by hardening the heart of Pharaoh, manipulating the Persians and the Assyrians, magnifying the military prowess of the Jews etc The means he chooses on this occasion are very different (the suffering of Christ) but it serves the same purpose. This is radically at odds with my understanding of the gospel as revealing a God who refuses to, and perhaps cannot, exercise political power.
Secondly, there seems to be absolutely no connection between the suffering of Christ and the dissolution of the Roman Empire. Compare this with the demise of the Raj which can be directly attributed (at least in part) to the non violent resistance of Ghandi.
Paul
Politics and the community in Christ
1. The point here is that God intervenes (at least in the horizon of the New Testament) to bring about what is basically political change but not by exercising political power. It is through the weakness of the cross that the principalities and powers that rule the world and oppress Israel are defeated and the situation of the people of God in the world transformed. I would maintain insistently that the New Testament does not advocate a purely internalized, spiritual form of faith. We are called first, above all, to be a community - and that immediately has political implications.
2. Not so. My argument in The Coming of the Son of Man is that the New Testament envisages a community that suffers in and with Christ. These are redescribed as the saints of the Most High in Daniel’s vision against whom the pagan oppressor makes war and who are represented symbolically by the figure of the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven. It is this community, identified with the suffering Christ as the Son of man, which concretely overcomes the power of Rome through its faithful suffering. This is not a fanciful construction. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the willingness of the early church to suffer both in martyrdom and in compassion was a crucial factor in its ‘victory’ over paganism. Jesus is the ‘pioneer’ of this faithfulness; he gains the victory of faithfulness over death. But this salvation is worked out concretely in fear and trembling by the community of his disciples.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
I appreciate this comment so much, Andrew! This is exactly my feeling on the matter as well, and your writings always help to remind me of that crucial distinction between looking forward and looking backward. Thanks!
(Not meant as a snub in any way, Virgil. :-)
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Andrew, I completely understand your position and hesitance to turn this into a preterist argument….because it is not. For a while now preterism has “lost its soul” to dogmatism and the looking backwards that you are mentioning. Personally I do not care how you come to the conclusion that the Kingdom is a present reality; whether it is a hermeneutic specific to Andrew Perriman or a remote spinoff of preteristic eschatology, living out the promises of God and participating actively into the manifestation of his presence and the fulfillment of the hope, as you mentioned, is key.
Disingenuous or not, the article is great and preterists can learn a lot from your unique approach.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Andrew’s argument is a variation on classic preterism - why not call a spade a spade? Virgil preteristically asks: why pray for the kingdom to come when it is already here? The answer: because there is a past, present and future aspect to the kingdom.
We can continually pray for more of God’s kingdom to come - and to be expressed in many situations in our lives and across the earth.
As far as the kingdom having already come (when, precisely, Andrew?), the term is used in a variety of ways in the NT; Andrew wants the term to refer exclusively to a judgement and deliverance which took place in the 1st century. The NT won’t fit into that straitjacket - as much as Andrew wants it to.
‘The coming of the Son of Man’ is a term and phenomenon not exclusively applied to the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, and nowhere as far as I can see applied to judgement on Rome. The groundwork on which Andrew constructs his theological and exegetical detail is flawed.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Hi, Peter, I thought I might here from you on this one!
I think there are very good reasons for resisting the ‘preterist’ label. I don’t mean to diminish its insights, but it carries far more baggage with it than is helpful for reading the New Testament. It defines a particular modern dogmatic tradition which is quite different to my own intellectual tradition, and I think it is of crucial importance (for me at least) to preserve that distinction. It is not enough to say that we should call a spade a spade. My argument would be that preterism is not using a spade to dig over the soil of scripture. It is using some other implement, not particularly well designed for the purpose.
Obviously, if the reign of God over his people is established through the eschatological narrative of the New Testament, then we now live under that reign. This is a dynamic experience: we are always seeking to live in obedience to Christ as Lord, and in that sense there remains a present and future aspect to the kingdom of God. But what the Gospels emphasize is the coming of the kingdom of God as an event, a turning point, a transition, in the life of the people of God. That event is in the past. That is no more a sectarian dogmatic judgment than to say that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt is in the past.
My argument is that the coming of the kingdom in the Gospels is to be understood in essentially the same terms as it is understood in Isaiah: God comes to deliver his people from oppression and restore their political and religious integrity (cf. Isaiah 52:7). But if you proclaim that ‘good news’ in the Roman world, you inevitably come into conflict with the pagan ‘good news’ that Caesar is the world’s saviour and lord. Why do I have to keep repeating the point that the coming of the kingdom is not confined to the first century?
The motif of the coming of the Son of man very easily encompasses judgment on Rome. The heart of Daniel’s vision is the destruction of a pagan power that makes war on the saints of the Most High. Jesus’ focus is on the confrontation with the Jewish authorities, but Paul in 2 Thessalonians certainly speaks of judgment on the enemies of the early churches in terms drawn from the larger narrative of Daniel 7-11.
I would not argue, however, that the Son of man narrative is the only way in which the New Testament speaks of the rescue of the people from oppression. The other motif is that of YHWH descending from heaven either to judge his people or to deliver them from their enemies. This is a thoroughly political hope: Israel believed that God would directly intervene to change concrete circumstances. It makes perfectly good sense to think that the early church expected its Lord to ‘descend from heaven’ to bring persecution to an end.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Andrew - Well, I couldn’t not leap in, could I?
I don’t really see much difference between a narrative of the Coming of the Son of Man and a narrative of YHWH descending from heaven to deliver his people from their enemies - they both have the same kind of focus on a deliverance from worldly powers through judgement. This is a part of the NT narrative, but leaves out elements of the story which receive much greater prominence in the NT - in which the cross is at the centre.
The reign of God as the NT describes it is at its heart quite different from a reign which can be understood in terms of power politics. It is a reign over far greater adversaries than Judaism or Rome alone - and which Paul describes as a ‘reign in life’ - Romans 5:17, for those who believe in Jesus. Romans 5 shows that this life is far more than judgement or deliverance in the here and now. Life is imparted throught the life-giving Spirit, in contrast with the death which is bound up with all aspects of the old creation - including governmental and political structures. The best that could be said for these is that they have an interim value. At worst they are oppressive and demonic.
The NT describes the kingdom of God as an on-going reign of God - facilitated by an event, the event of the cross, but inescapably and inexorably connected to the resurrection, ascension, outpoured Spirit - and judgement of Jesus. Mini-judgements, such as the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, are all precursors of the final judgement. The reign of life, as Paul describes it, must have political consequences - it holds every power structure up to scrutiny, challenging each to yield allegiance to the true king. But the focus was and is not on challenging the old structures, but the emergence of the new community of God’s people through the outpoured Spirit, and the final triumph of this new community, affecting the entire creation. This was Isaiah’s vision, which is shot through the whole of the NT, and in terms of which Paul describes his own divine commission.
I don’t think it is possible to take Daniel’s vision and apply its fulfilment exclusively to Mark 13 and Matthew 24. The fulfilment has to interpreted in the light of our understanding of the NT as a whole, in which the overthrow of the powers begins at the cross (Colossians 2:15), and is not primarily political, but addresses forces behind political and ideological opposition.
Preterism has provided many insights - and there are many varieties of preterism in terms of their extent (comprehensive/thorough-going, moderate/partial etc). But in the end, theology is an exercise conducted not just by individuals, or even individual groups, but by the entire community of faith - and not just in our own age, but throughout all ages. The judgement of this community has been against preterism in its more extreme forms. But the same must be said of all theological innovations. We are on dangerous territory if we say that the conclusions of the community of faith in most of the Christian era have been wrong, and that a radically reworked version of the Christian narrative is nearer to the historical understanding of the early church, and true for us today.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Peter, I also noticed the preteristic aspects of Andrew’s arguments, but I don’t want to keep pointing it out if he doesn’t want it pointed out :)
I also readily realize that the kingdom encompasses the past, present and future…in fact I believe that a “past present future” framing of the Kingdom is even too narrow since I believe the Kingdom is a construct that exists outside of our space-time continuum, i.e. Jesus saying “my Kingdom is not of this world.”
Now, if Andrew’s groundwork is flawed, what then does the coming of the Son of Man apply to? After all there are specific characteristics to this “coming” that can still be discussed:
- there was a “coming in judgment” (who’s judgment?)
- it was to take place “soon” (when?)
- it likely involved first-century characters like Nero, Jerusalem and Israel
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
I don’t know from preterism, or whether the “kingdom come” in Jesus’ prayer is more imminent than in the Kaddish. To the Jews who heard Jesus’s rendering of the Kaddish, though, what would stand out as particularly startling would be the first two words: Our Father. The Kaddish refers to God as lord and creator but not as father. Jesus starts off his prayer with a bang.
Well-versed in the New Testament, we don’t realize how few are the Old Testament passages that proclaim God’s fatherhood. Often he is called “the God of our fathers;” rarely is he “our Father.” God is a father metaphorically in Psalm 68:5 and 103:13, Proverbs 3:12 and Jeremiah 3:19. There are a few passages with explicitly messianic connotations: Psalm 2:7 (Thou art My Son, today I have begotten Thee), Psalm 89:26-27 (I also shall make him My firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth), Isaiah 9:6 (For a child will be born to us… and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace).
There are 3 passages I know of where the fatherhood of God is front and center. The context of each might be helpful, since in all likelihood Jesus’s prayer would have called these passages to mind.
Deuteronomy 32:6ff. Moses is an old man, barred by God from entering the Promised Land. He assembles the elders of the tribes in order to testify against them, knowing that even after he dies and they cross the Jordan they will continue to act corruptly. He assembles all Israel and speaks to them the words of his Song.
Moses goes on to describe how God cared for His people, guiding them through the desert, carrying them on His wings, feeding them honey from the rock. But they forsook Him for strange gods, provoking Him to anger.
Isaiah 63:16 and 64:8. Over and again Isaiah repeats the seemingly perpetual oscillation: God’s people rebel, bringing His vengeance; they call upon Him and He relents. Here Isaiah calls upon God:
Malachi 1:6 and 2:10. God is reminding His people of His partiality toward them. Esau was Jacob’s brother – seemingly not much difference between the two of them – Yet I have loved Jacob, says Yahweh, but I have hated Esau… A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? Malachi proclaims God’s word: change your ways, honor the covenant He made with Levi, or be prepared for the worst.
In each of the three Old Testament fatherhood passages the context is similar: a prophetic voice condemns the rebellion of the people of God, who will profane the Promised Land as soon as they set foot in it, who bring desolation upon Jerusalem, who profane the covenant and God’s sanctuary. And yet, say the prophets, God is our father and we are His children, brothers to one another. To rebel against a Lord is one thing; to be disloyal to your Father quite another. And yet, because God is our Father, his loyalty is far greater than it would be to mere subjects or covenantal partners.
The prayer of Jesus follows in the tradition of the Song of Moses and the prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi. Note also the reference to the “sons of man” in the Song of Moses and the imprecation by Isaiah for our Father to come down from the heavens. The historical circumstance of Israel in Jesus’ time seemingly repeats the old pattern of judgment and foreign domination. And yet Jesus explicitly invokes the fatherhood of God not in the context of repentance and a call for deliverance, but in the moral teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, teachings that seemingly describe a way of life rather than a crisis. Would those who heard this speech sense an undertone of menace and coming judgment when Jesus invoked the name of the Father? Or would it signal a new way of relating to God on an ongoing basis, a way of relating to one another as brothers who forgive one another, a sitting down to table together to eat their daily bread? Personally I think the call to a particular kind of ongoing godly life dominates the discourse, a life that can and should be lived even while Jesus lives out his mortal life. But surely the context of prophetic crisis would not have been lost on those who heard Jesus pray to “our Father.”
The eschatological 'abba'
John, that’s an excellent contribution to the discussion. We typically recognize the crucial note of intimacy in Jesus’ use of abba but miss the narrative-eschatological associations that are as significant here as anywhere else in Jesus’ teaching. The three passages you cite powerfully underline the fact that this is a prayer given to the Jesus community for a transitional period of judgment and renewal.
So why back off that insight? The beatitudes work in the same way: they use similar OT motifs to define an eschatological community. The Sermon on the Mount concludes with a vision of impending judgment on Israel - a coming flood that would sweep away a nation that had built its house on the sand. Only the community that followed Jesus down the difficult path leading to life would survive the crisis. The sermon certainly outlines a way of life, but it is a way of life (as a historical reading of the text would naturally expect) for a community that must endure the coming judgment and the conflict with Rome. That community is precious to God; they are sons of God, and are uniquely privileged to call him Father.
This lifestyle does not cease to be relevant for us in a post-eschatological setting, but we need something bigger than that. We are called to be God’s people not in response to a restricted eschatological crisis but in response to a creational crisis. We are not the exodus community; we are a community that has inherited the world as new creation.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Virgil - Jesus was looking at the temple when he made the Matthew 24 predictions; he had in view primarily, but perhaps not exclusively, a ‘coming of the Son of Man’ which was associated with the destruction of the temple in AD 70.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-8, it seems as if Paul had in mind a figure like Nero in the 1st century - one who could ‘set himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.’ As there has been no temple since AD 70, it seems to have a 1st century application.
But ‘coming’ is a word which applies to ‘the man of lawlessness’ as well as Jesus. And what exactly was ‘the brightness/splendour/epiphaneia’ of Jesus’s coming? When was the Man of Lawlessness destroyed - and how? This event seems to be a combining of a 1st century occurrence, and ‘the day of the Lord’ - the final judgement - referred to in 2 Thessalonians 2-3. Further, the destruction of the Man of Lawlessness by Jesus with ‘the breath of his mouth’ points to a latter day judgement, rather than a 1st century event. (Nero committed suicide - no signs of judgement there).
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, a ‘coming’ of Jesus is described which does not fit into a 1st century framework at all.
The ‘coming’ of Jesus in Revelation 22 is in the context of a future consummation, which has in view the new creation order in its fulfilment - not a 1st century judgement of Jerusalem (or Rome), where the accompanying deliverance of God’s people is unmentioned in the NT, and therefore seems not to have been of eschatological significance.
It seems therefore that we should view the use of the phrase ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ rather more flexibly and liberally than has been the case. Undoubtedly, according to 1 Thessalonians, there is a future ‘coming’ which is yet to be. Equally, there are precursive ‘comings’, one of which is described in Matthew 24, but through the lens of which we can validly see a further, future coming. For the disciples, the destruction of the temple was the end of the created world. Clearly, they had it wrong - there was yet to be a future termination of the old creation beyond the destruction of the temple. There is the ‘coming’ of 2 Thessalonians, which rather than being one past historic event, seems to combine past and future possibilities. The ‘coming’ of Jesus here seems to combine a variety of aspects of his ‘coming’ - especially his ascension in glory - and maybe a future ‘coming’ as well. We cannot in the end be dogmatic - different viewpoints have been suggested.
My main point of disagreement with Andrew is that he wants to locate the ‘coming’ of Jesus exclusively and specifically in 1st century events, one of which was visible - the destruction of Jerusalem, the other wasn’t - the destruction of Rome. He claims that Daniel 7:13 in particular corresponds exactly and exclusively to a 1st century scenario sketched out by Jesus in Matthew 24. I argue that apocalyptic language cannot be taken so completely literalistically.
I argue, along with, I think, the majority opinion of the faith community through the ages, that while there is a 1st century application of Matthew 24, which we are prone to overlook, this does not complete the meaning of ‘the coming of the Son of Man’ as a term which relates to historical events. One of the main reasons for holding to this latter point of view is to do with the illogicalities which arise when an exclusively 1st century fulfilment of the term is adopted. We then end up with not just a Lord’s Prayer, but Matthew 24 and an entire New Testament, gospels and letters, which are provisional and relevant to the 1st century only. We have a cross which is no longer the centre of Christian belief. We are in a postmodern smorgasbord of pick-and-mix religion par excellence.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
I have responded to these comments in a new post (The coming of Jesus and the relevance of history) because they range too far beyond the topic of the Lord’s prayer.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Peter, you are raising valid points that would literally take hours to discuss, so I consider this kind of environment least condusive to cover those issues, but I will try.
It seems like your biggest objection to a past return is the lack of a physical re-creation of the universe (obviously the tangible creation was not “re-made” in AD 70) so you are forced to place it somewhere in the future, together with the “final” Parousia and with the final judgment.
But I believe there is a problem with this argument in that it is being created in a framework that placed the physical creation at the top of God’s list of problems to be solved, if you will. What if I propose to you a new framework in which we no longer use the physical/flesh as a point of reference and rather we use the spiritual, unseen nature of God as such?
I don’t really want to start proof-texting here, but Paul put forward this framework in 2 Cor. 5 when he wrote, “Therefore from now on we recognize no one according to the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know Him in this way no longer.”
It seems to be evident that Paul is proposing a “new way” in which we can understand and relate to God, a new framework that is not bond by atoms and molecules of this creation. He continues: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature, the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.”
Paul is presenting his argument in light of what Mircea Eliade called the “Eternal Return” - the ever-present theme we see throughout our faith, the desire to always return to the sacred, to our Creator, to our Eden where we are in a constant relationship with God. Paul is using ginomai to illustrate tha the “new” has already arrived and in next verse, in 18 he is pointing out the exact problem humanity had: reconcilliation, relationship between God and his creation.
The biggest problem humanity is facing is not one of atoms being arranged the wrong way; it is rather a relational one: we lack a relationship with God. The Orthodox Church has expressed the solution to this problem with the pascha icon, the icon of the resurrection of Jesus, where he is coming out of the grave with the gates of Hades smashed under his feet, with Adam and Eve at his side, bringing them “back to life” - renewing them and through them renewing us, returning us to where we are suppose to be, a relationship with the Creator. The narrative does not revolve around the re-creation of the physical universe, but the re-creation of our relationship with God.
I agree with Andrew in that traditional Preterism focuses too narrowly on the historical aspects of Matthew 24 and the events surrounding AD 70 while missing the greater points of praxis-centered living for us today. Jesus did says that “My Kingdom is not of this world” and whatever that means, I cannot see it mean a throne in Jerusalem where Jesus sits on in a physical body with the world worshipping him in a physical sense. There is something missing from that picture for me.
Please consider my points in love :) I always appreciate your feedback and have always enjoyed interacting with you here.
Re: The Lord's prayer and its eschatological context
Virgil (and this could go on ad infinitum!) - my biggest problem with a completely fulfilled ‘coming’ of Christ in the past is not the lack of recreation of the physical universe. That idea is connected with the disciples’ mistaken perception that the destruction of the temple would accompany the end of creation.
The past ‘coming’ of the Son of Man was not a return of Christ in the way that it is commonly understood. It was a ‘coming’ into the presence of God. One outcome of this was the outpouring of the Spirit. (I take the ascension, and the outpouring of the Spirit, as a primary fulfilment of Daniel 7:13). Another outcome, some time later, was the destruction of Jerusalem. (Judgement follows the blessing of the Spirit - the fire of the Spirit which Jesus poured out has both renewing and destructive characteristics, as John the Baptist predicted). The actual outcome of events in the history of Jesus has to be taken into consideration in interpreting both his own predictions and those of the OT which are interpreted in the light of the events.
My simple observation is that ‘coming’ is a somewhat flexible term, and its interpretation depends on the context. A 1 Thessalonians ‘coming’ seems to me to apply to events which have not yet occurred. It also seems to me that a 2 Thessalonians ‘coming’ must have some 1st century application, but there is more than a hint of events which have not yet occurred, and it seems obvious to link these with the theme of the ‘coming’ passage in 1 Thessalonians. The Revelation 22 ‘coming’ clearly had not occurred at the time it was written, and it seems not unreasonable to link it with the future aspects of the rest of Revelation 22, which most commentators agree are future - along with Revelation 21, and arguably much of Revelation 15-21. (In other words, future beyond AD 70 or a judgement on Rome).
I am ‘coming’ to the tentative conclusion that the ‘coming of the Son of Man’ in Matthew 24, which is clearly linked to 1st century events, was not a term exclusively linked to those events. This is not to irritate Andrew or annoy yourself; it’s just trying to take in all the relevant data on the subject, and this, or something like it, seems to be the considered response of the faith community through the ages. It’s the ‘double perspective’ idea - which preterists, not totally unreasonably, tend to want to dismiss.
You don’t have to agree with this; I know what your position on the subject is. I have a copy of your notes on the subject, which are reasonable, coherent, but - to my mind - distort evidence which we have from both the bible and experience. We can probably agree to differ, disagreeing agreeably, as it were.