THE PAULINE ESCHATOLOGY

by

GEERHARDUS VOS, Ph.D., D.D.

Professor of Biblical Theology in Princeton Theological Seminary

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR

1930

DEUS CREATOR REDEMPTOR CONSUMMATOR

IN HIS TRIBUS RELIGIO NOSTRA UNIVERSA PENDET

PREFACE

CHRISTIAN faith has at various times put widely varying appraisals on biblical eschatology. The latter was first held in esteem because of the service it was able to render to early apologetics. The two at the outset were practically identical. The vindication of the new-born faith depended on the proof that the Messiah, that great Agent and Consummator of God’s world-purpose, had appeared upon the scene. Whosoever believed in this found himself drawn into the center of the eschatological movement, by prophets long foretold. It is true, this apologetic subserviency did not always work in even measure to the advantage of the Scriptural scheme of Eschatology. The Old Testament was the chief armory from which weapons had to be drawn. Even Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue could not quite replace this, whatever its ultimate provenience. And as to the Old Testament, who can deny that sometimes minor and isolated correspondences were subjected to a harder strain than they ought to have been asked to bear.

At all times through the life of the Church the eschatological hope remained securely fixed upon her mind. It was an uncontroverted, accepted belief. Perhaps the retention of it may sometimes have been largely of a formal nature. But there is something about these expectations and visions of the last things, that will send them into the light and focus of the consciousness of believers, whenever storms of persecution arise and hard distresses invade. The mediaeval Roman Church seemed so unshakably fixed beyond every chance of transitoriness, and it moreover so clearly typified the true image of the ultimate city of God, that in it, one would suppose, only little soil could have been left for the cultivation of super-terrestrial fields. And yet this appearance was to some extent deceptive. The finest products of the hymnody of that Church, with their unearthly aroma still clinging to them after so many ages, are here to prove how rich a vein of piety ran through the hearts of their authors, derivable from the living waters of Paradise alone. Its hills still stood and the birds were still delighting the saints of God with jubilance from their leafy trees.

In the period of the Reformation the problem of the obtaining of righteousness before God filled hearts and minds. For the time this forced the eschatological hope into the background, although even then it would have been by no means paradoxical to say that the two strands of the justifying faith and the eschatological outlook remained closely intertwined. Paul knew the inevitableness of this and knew it better, perhaps, than the foremost heroes of the Reformation, not even Luther or Calvin excepted. While the Reformers were by no means unacquainted with the melodies of eschatological ...