Gottfried Christian Friedrich Lücke / Friedrich Luecke

(On 1 John 2:18)
“Uniformity, in as far as it actually exists, may reasonably be ascribed to the shortness of the epistle, to the unity of its subject, and to the singleness of the mind from which it proceeded. But he who interprets this epistle with circumspection, will, not unfrequently, where an inaccurate exegesis discovers nothing but disorder and monontonous repetition, nay, even in expressions most intimately cognate and similar, observe nicely delineated distinctions ; and, in the apparent repetition and disorder, progress and good arrangement. Thus vanish in all directions the pretended indications of decrepitude.

At the destruction of Jerusalem, St. John was indeed of advanced age, at all events old enough to render it probable that he might, in this epistle, have committed those errors of old age with which he has been charged. Let us then suppose that such defects are observable in the epistle, still that would not compel, nor justify our assuming that the epistle had been composed after the destruction of Jerusalem. What hinders us from believing that it may have been written shortly before that event ?

Fourth, and lastly, it is maintained, that if the epistle was written subsequent to the destruction of Jerusalem, the silence respecting it, specially in ii, 18, is an inexplicable riddle, and this, too, is an error. For it cannot be proved that St. John, in the words eschate ora (last hour), at all referred to the destruction of Jerusalem.

As St. John, in his gospel, takes the coming of Christ so much in a spiritual sense, it is much more probable that, by eschate ora, he meant the relation, in point of time, between the pseudo-apostolical Antichrist, then already appearing, and the manifestation of Christ and the perfection of his kingdom. But let us even admit that St. John, in respect of time, considered the eschate ora and the destruction of Jerusalem as identical, and that he wrote his epistle after the destruction of that city ; what justifies the assumption that St. John, in that case, must necessarily have explained how and why the destruction of Jerusalem took place, without bringing along with it the victory of Christianity ? St. John wrote for Christians of Asia Minor, who, for the most part, had previously been heathens : and it cannot be proved, that among these the expectation ever was prevalent, that the destruction of Jerusalem would bring along with it the end of all things, and the perfection of Christ’s kingdom. Since, then, the concatenation of ideas, in the epistle, by no means necessarily led in that direction, and only the relation, as to time, between the anti-christian errors already appearing, and the coming of Christ, was to be explained, what would have been the object of alluding to, and correcting an error, which, probably, no person among the readers ever had entertained ?” (Epistles of John, pp. 13-14)

“Grotius finds in it a phrophetic allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem, which event, he thinks, was in apostolical phrophecy considered as the end of the present course of time, and the precise period for Christ’s manifestation in judgment. But, in this case, the epistle must have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem, since after that event the reference of the () to it, must have been abandoned. Now, what shall we say if the epistle was written after the destruction of Jerusalem ? In this respect it is quite impossible to determine the time when it was written. It is possible that St. John, along with the other Apostles, formerly believed that the destruction of the holy city would be the (end), but this is certain, that at the time he wrote his gospel and this epistle, whether that was before or after Jerusalem’s destruction, he no longer entertained this opinion. Grotius states in his support, Dan. ix. 26, 27, Matth. xxiv. 6, 14, Acts ii. 17. But in none of these passages is (), or any similar term, without any thing further, used as equivalent to the destruction of the holy city. In Dan. ix. 26, 27, and Matth. xxiv. 6, 14, the prophetic reference to it is only indirectly contained ; but of Acts ii. 17 not even so much can be said.

Since in our passage there can nowhere be discovered even a remote allusion to the destruction of Jerusalem, hyjarn wo«, according to the analogy of 2 Tim. iii. 1 ; 1 Tim. iv. 1 ; James v. 3 ; 1 Pet. i. 5 ; 2 Pet. iii. 3 ; Jude 18. and other places, can only be understood with a ^e/zera/ reference to the Messiah, as denoting the end of the then present era, which commenced with the first manifestation of Christ in the flesh, ending with his reappearance in judgment, cfr, V. 28.

The Judaeo-Christian views on which this is founded are in substance as follows :

The Jewish Messiah-theology divided the entire era of the world, roug uJoümc, into the present and the future Aeon. * The end of the present era, at which the long- wished for Messiah was to appear, to redeem his people, judge the nations, and commence his dominion on earth, the Jews called yp or pjid, or. *  Evil and difficult times, replete with moral corruption, pseudo prophecies, war and devastations, and other such calamities, by which the manifestation of the Messiah would be as much externally hindered, as internally promoted, were considered as a sure sign of the coming of the Messiah. Now, as all felicity was connected with the person of the Messiah, there early arose a notion of combining in one ideal person, in a countertype of the Messiah, afterwards called the antichrist, all the calamities of the above-mentioned evil and distressing times, all anti-Messiahnic sway and power. This notion, which was sometimes more, sometimes less crude and ma-

• See Koppe Exc. I. on Epist. Ephes. p. 138, sqq.

• S’ee Schottgen. Hor. Heb. et. Tahn. on 2 Tim. iii. 1.

terial, was founded on Ezekiel’s fiction of Gog, and on Daniel’s description of the antichristian Antiochus Epiphanes. * As in the proverb, ” When need is greatest aid is nearest,” the Jewish Messiah-theology concluded, from the growth of the antichristian principle, that the end was fast approaching, and that Christ, the Saviour, was about to appear.

These notions, and their various forms, passed over together with the idea of the Messiah, into the New Testament. The fundamental ideas, as well as their former concatenations remained the same ; but their contents, their meaning and extent, as well as also their internal relations, in detail, were changed.

Since Christ had appeared in the flesh, since he already had commenced his kingdom on earth, and had returned to his father, the Messiahnic eras and epochs necessarily obtained, with Christians, another signification, and entered into another relation to the history of the development of Christ’s kingdom. Thus the alojv ovTog of the Jews, in which the Messiah and his kingdom were only expected — became, in the New Testament, the time of the earthly establishment and development of Christ’s kingdom, the foundation to which had already been laid in tribulations and strife against the unchristian world.

• * See Schmidt’s Bibl. of Crit. and Exeg., Vol. I. p. 25, sqq.

• De Wette’s Bibl. Theologie, § 198 ; Bertholdt’s Christologia.

at which Christ was to reappear^ in the glory of his Father, to judge the world, and, finally, to accomplish the victory of his kingdom. Thus, too, the idea of antichrist obtained a more spiritual import, and a purer moral signification. But the transformation and complete Christianizing of these Jewish notions of the Messiah was, with the Apostles, only effected by degrees. Thus the Apostles, not having taken up the expressions of our Lord on the subject, in a manner sufficiently spiritual, at first formed a very material conception of the reappearance of Christ, and imagined that it was very soon to take place.

They made chronological calculations, and connected it with some external signs of the times or other, in a manner somewhat arbitrary. Undoubtedly the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the Jewish commonwealth, which had been foretold by the Lord, must hasten the reappearance of Christ in the spiritual sense of that term, and promote the prosperity of his kingdom ; this event, too, was indeed and in truth a glorious act of that oecumenic jurisdiction which he had continually exercised since he appeared as the life and light of the world. But the Apostles, full as they were in the beginning with the expectations of sense, and looking without sufficient perspectives into the future, saw, in the destruction of Jerusalem, the close of the development of Christ’s kingdom, and the visible manifestation of their ardently wished for Lord in a final oecumenic judgment And, in a like manner, they at first took up the idea of antichrist, rather sensually, politically, and according to Jewish doctrines. But particularly after Jerusalem had been destroyed, and the Lord had not visibly appeared ; and as they continually gained a more profound knowledge of the essence and true purpose of the person and kingdom of Christ, their hopes respecting the Messiah became ever more and more spiritual ; and although they did not relinquish the hope of surviving to witness personally the Lord’s return, they gradually ceased to calculate the precise time, and to seek beyond the internal sphere of Christ’s kingdom, in accidental and arbitrarily interpreted political events of every kind, the signs and conditions of that Parusia, which they ever more and more understood in a spiritual sense. ” (Commentary on John, pp. 170-174)