Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory

By Hans Urs von Balthasar

 

This is the final volume of this series on "theological dramatic theory" by the great 20th century theologian Balthasar. This series is the second part of Balthasar's trilogy on the good, the beautiful and the true which is his major work. The first series in the trilogy is The Glory of the Lord, and following this Theo-Drama series will be Theo-Logic.

In this series "the good" has been the focus. Balthasar maintains that it is in the theater that man attempts a kind of transcendence to observe and to judge his own truth about himself. He sees the phenomenon of theater as a source of fruitfulness for theological reflection on the cosmic drama that involves earth and heaven. This fifth volume is trinitarian, focusing on the mystery of God. He draws heavily on Scripture and many passages from the works of the mystic Adrienne von Spyer. Some of the topics covered include "A Christian Eschotology", "The World is from the Trinity", "Earth moves Heavenward", "The Final Act: A Trinitarian Drama."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Jul 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781681495798

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was a Swiss theologian widely regarded as one of the greatest theologians and spiritual writers of modern times. Named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II, he died shortly before being formally inducted into the College of Cardinals. He wrote over one hundred books, including Prayer, Heart of the World, Mary for Today, Love Alone Is Credible, Mysterium Paschale and his major multi-volume theological works: The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic.

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NOTE

After the first volume of this work (Prolegomena), the second volume was anthropological, the third christological, and the fourth soteriological; this concluding volume is trinitarian.

Here many passages from the works of Adrienne von Speyr are reproduced and referred to in footnotes; title abbreviations of these works are given below. These quotations are not intended to give a full picture of her theology: that would require far more space; I quote her to show the fundamental consonance between her views and mine on many of the eschatological topics discussed here.

Karl Rahner has dubbed our theology gnostic; in all probability he will find his verdict even more strongly confirmed when he reads the chapter on the pain of God. We find his verdict unacceptable, however, for reasons that will be made clear in the final chapter of this book, which once again treats of God’s immutability, an immutability that persists in all aspects of the economy of salvation.

Elsewhere the same critic has called our theology Neo-Chal-cedonianism, which he personally wishes to avoid, preferring to call a halt at the classical Chalcedonian view that the divine and human natures of Christ are unconfused. It is a fact, however, that the formula One of the Trinity has suffered, which no doubt upsets him, was held to be orthodox (DS 401, 432); I cannot see how the pro nobis of Christ’s Cross and Resurrection can avail for us if the one who was crucified and risen is not one of the Trinity. Otherwise people might be quite right to say, God (or Jesus) may be having a hard time, but so what? That doesn’t help me when I’m having a hard time.

As this final volume of Theo-Drama comes to an end, it broadens out into what Karl Rahner rightly and emphatically refers to as the mystery of God. Anything we say, by way of a conclusion, regarding the last act of the play that involves earth and heaven is nothing more than an astonished stammering as we circle around this mystery on the basis of particular luminous words and suggestions of Holy Scripture. We have tried to go as far as revelation permits—some may feel we have gone one step too far—resolutely stopping at the point where pseudo-logical speculations have been shown to lead only into an abstract void or to superfluous lists of what is forbidden. There is nothing scientific—and this applies equally to theology—about speaking with exact precision about things that are unknowable (for example, the intermediate state). Following Aquinas, we have tried to erect theology on the articles of faith (and not vice versa): on the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son, his Cross and Resurrection on our behalf, and his sending of the Spirit to us in the apostolic Church and in the communio sanctorum. It is only on the basis of such a theology, today and in the future, that men can give witness in their lives and in their deaths to that highest gift of God which is irreversible and unsurpassable.

ABBREVIATIONS

Abbreviations of the titles of books by Adrienne von Speyr (all published by Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln). Where translations have been published by Ignatius Press, page numbers refer to that edition, but where this translator has referred back to the original German, somewhat altering the translation of particular passages to fit the present context, GT appears in parentheses after the abbreviation.

A    Das Angesicht des Vaters [The Countenance of the Father (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997)]

Ap    Apokalypse (Johannis)

B    Bergpredigt

Be    Die Beichte [Confession, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985)]

Bi    Das Licht und die Bilder

C    1 Korinther

E    Elija [Elijah, Ignatius Press 1990]

Ep    Epheser (Kinder des Lichtes) [The Letter to the Ephesians (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996)]

3F    Drei Frauen und der Herr [Three Women and the Lord (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986)]

F    Siefolgten seinem Ruf [They Followed His Call (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986)]

G    Der grenzenlose Gott

GE    Gebetserfahrung

Gh    Das Buch vom Gehorsam

Gl    Gleichnisse des Herrn

H    Die heilige Messe

Hi    Job

HI    Das Hohelied

Is    Isaias

1-4 Jo    Johannes vols. 1-4 [vol. 1: The Word Becomes Flesh; vol. 2: The Discourses of Controversy; vol. 3: The Farewell Discourses; vol. 4: The Birth of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987-1994)]

K    Kolosser [The Letter to the Colossians (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998)]

Ka I-II;   Kath. Briefe, vols. 1-2

KW    Kreuzeswort una Sakrament [The Cross: Word and Sacrament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983)]

L    Über die Liebe

M    Der Mensch vor Gott

MH    Magd des Herrn [The Handmaid of the Lord (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985)]

Mt    Passion nach Matthäus

OM    Objektive Mystik

P    Die Sendung des Propheten [The Mission of the Prophets (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996)]

Pa    Passion von innen [The Passion from Within (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998)]

Pf    Die Pforten des ewigen Lebens [The Gates of Eternal Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983)]

Ph    Philipper (Dienst der Freude)

Ps    Achtzehn Psalmen

Sc    Die Schopfung

SL    Sieg der Liebe (Romans 8) [The Victory of Love (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990)]

St    Christlicher Stand [The Christian State of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986)]

T    Das Geheimnis des Todes [The Mystery of Death (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988)]

W    Die Welt des Gebetes [The World of Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985)]

INTRODUCTION

A. THE IDEA OF A

CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY

1. Christ the Governing Center

If, in the context of theology, we speak of the final act in the world drama of creation and redemption, we automatically think first of the particular internal events expected at the conclusion of the history of the world. There are many indications in the New Testament that these events will be of a qualitatively special kind: they will be characterized by a heightening of the antagonism between the kingdom of Christ (cf. 1 Cor 15:24) and the kingdom of the prince of this world, who, once he has cast away all disguise, will appear as the Antichrist (2 Th 2:312). However, Christ, at his Second Coming, will destroy him with the breath of his mouth, whereupon the last things—resurrection, judgment, including purgatory, eternal salvation or condemnation—will take place. It is largely in the framework of such ideas that traditional dogmatics has set forth the concept and the treatise of the last things, or eschatology.

In more recent times, however, roughly since the work of Johannes Weiβ and his followers, exegetes have introduced a different concept of eschatology. This concept, while it is not totally clear and self-evident, nonetheless addresses the view of the world found in the realm of the New Testament events. It proceeds in one of three ways: either (1) it addresses the general, late Jewish apocalyptic expectation of an imminent end of the world, which seems to provide a context for the expectation of this end as seen by Jesus and the primitive Church, or (2) it concentrates on Jesus’ own expectation of the end. While many writers acknowledge that Jesus’ own view differs from that predominant in the Jewish world of his time, they assert that it too must ultimately be described as eschatological in its own way. Or finally, (3) it addresses primarily the primitive Church’s expectation of the imminent end of the world and the return of Christ. Again, this ecclesial expectation can be interpreted in various ways. It can be regarded as the continuation of Jesus’ own—allegedly apocalyptic—expectation of the end of the world, whereby both he and the Church are seen to have been mistaken. Or it can be regarded as at least a partial misunderstanding of what, in fact, Jesus’ personal expectation was, in which case the Church had quietly fallen back into Jewish apocalyptic expectations. We have already discussed these problems on several occasions earlier in the present work and have given a clear account of our own attitude toward them;¹ we shall not go into them again here. On the basis of what we have already discovered, it is possible to reconcile the two divergent concepts of eschatology—the dogmatic and the exegetical—albeit in a way that may astonish us and call for some serious rethinking and a new way of seeing.

If we respect the fundamental thrust of the New Testament, we find that there are two main accents in it, namely, the consciousness of Jesus and the consciousness of the primitive Church that believes in him.

To Jesus, his own destiny—which is inseparably bound up with the coming of the kingdom of God—is something close, imminent. His mission to the world will be accomplished through his personal death in that mysterious hour, and through his subsequent resurrection or glorification or coming again. Thus, in a new and original sense, he arrives at the end of the world, whether or not our world-time pursues its chronological succession. His eschatology embraces all continuing chronological time and qualitatively determines it. His eschatology is primary: of itself it qualifies the secondary eschatology of those who continue to live on earth, whether or not they believe in him. Naturally Jesus’ own expectation of the imminent end bears some relation to the current late Jewish expectation; but we must not imagine it to be dependent on the latter. In fact, in the perspective of salvation history we must say rather that the atmosphere of Jewish apocalyptic is providential, preparing the Chosen People for the one saving event that is truly final and conclusive—however many misunderstandings this actual, historical apocalyptic puts in the way of a grasp of the person of Jesus. If Jesus was the Messiah of Israel—and he knew that he was, even if, for good reasons, he rejected the title—it meant that the end-time for which Israel had looked with such passionate longing had actually arrived; the nation found it all the harder to see this because of the fantastic imagery with which it (the nation) had colored its expectation of the end.² What sealed Israel’s fate was not this, however, but the theological decision about whether Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God. Henceforth Israel’s destiny is inextricably woven into the personal eschatology of Jesus Christ. Thus Paul’s view is that ultimately all Israel shall be saved, namely, when it cries out Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! (Lk 13:35). If this is true of Israel, it applies all the more to those who believe in Jesus, his Church: the Church’s whole destiny proclaims that she belongs to him and that her destiny is shaped by his.

This second fundamental affirmation of the New Testament is of special relevance to the status of the (Christian) Church as the Israel of God (Gal 6:16). It is true that there are elements of Jewish apocalyptic in many New Testament writings, but after Paul—the first great interpreter of the events that have taken place in Christ—the main emphasis is not on these but on the fact that Christians are affected and defined by the eschatological destiny of Jesus: they have died with him and are risen with him (in however hidden a manner: Col 3:3). It is a mistake to try to spiritualize away this assertion by saying that the Christian is risen in spirit but not in his earthly existence. For Paul already bears on [his] body the marks of Jesus (Gal 6:17), is always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the [risen] life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh (2 Cor 4:11). And, according to the Apostle, what is particularly visible in Christians, the fact that their existence is governed by the eschatology of Jesus Christ, which is primary, is true of all men. For if one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised (2 Cor 5:14-15).³ Christological eschatology is therefore a primary law, of universal application, even if some do not realize it and perhaps continue to maintain what is an anachronistic stance, expecting a dénouement in the Jewish apocalyptic manner.

At this point, however, we discern within the New Testament a certain interference effect between the two modes of thought. On the one hand, we have the fact that, after Christ, mankind (and the Church in particular) is fundamentally defined by the Christ-eschatology with all its nuances and distinctions: the already and the not yet, the hidden and the open, or the primacy of faith and hope over seeing and possessing. On the other hand, as a way of articulating and illustrating these specifically New Testament polarities, we still have the Jewish apocalyptic expectation at our disposal, and the latter is all the more suggestive since it too speaks of the unveiling (apokalypsis) of saving realities that are already present (though in hidden form) in heaven. This interference can be observed, not only at a time when the primitive Church lives in chronological expectation of the imminent end—an expectation that is almost inevitable, given Jesus’ own words regarding it and the general apocalyptic atmosphere—but also in the wider context, in many images and categories of Jewish apocalyptic, now projected into the future.

Here too, however, we need to draw distinctions. In Theo-Drama IV we drew attention to a basic christological law regarding the (horizontal) history of the Church and the world. This law states that there is an ever-intensifying No to the Yes uttered by God in Christ. We saw in the structure of the Book of Revelation that the decisive No (on the part of the anti-Christian pseudo-trinity) only surfaces after the birth of the Messiah-child. Clearly it was felt necessary to clothe this specifically christological theologoumenon in the imagery of Jewish apocalyptic, according to which the manifestation of the Messiah must be preceded by the time of distress, of the birth pangs of the Messiah. The use of this Jewish language to express something Christian is clear in the so-called little apocalypses of the Synoptics (and it remains an open question how far existing Jewish themes were adopted and adapted and how far the Christian writer made use of Jewish images). Once one has acknowledged the priority of christological eschatology, with its power to put its imprint on all the residue of history (including the law of the reciprocal intensification of Yes and No), it is not difficult to give a correct assessment of the purely futurist Jewish imagery that is used in the New Testament to express christological eschatology.

We must add a special consideration here. No one who reflects upon the matter will deny that Jesus foresaw and predicted the fall of Jerusalem. But if we are to realize the full significance this event had for him, we must try to enter into his personal eschatology. This is, as it were, the negative side of his positive certainty that, in his divine mission, he is to deal once and for all with the world. He knows that he must and will reach the world’s inner end. The Johannine I have overcome the world is formulated from the vantage point of successful conquest. Jesus does not doubt that, through failure and suffering, he will attain the goal appointed for him. He will be baptized with the baptism that awaits him, and the fire he will cast upon the earth will truly burn. He lives for this eschaton, yet this hour involves and includes a negative decision on the part of Israel-Jerusalem, an eschatological decision that—as John will portray it—constitutes the Jews’  judgment upon themselves, the negative end of that history of salvation that leads from the most grievous breaches of the covenant, divine punishment and exile right up to Jesus. The great catastrophe in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel was a final illustration and warning: it showed that, as a result of the rejection of the last of the prophets—the Messiah—God’s progressive salvific revelation within history had come to an irrevocable end. Thus it is entirely in accordance with Jesus’ eschatological perspective when the end of Jerusalem is equated with the end of the world, whatever one may think of the apocalyptic additions in Mark 13 (parr.). No longer, henceforth, can there be a specific Jewish salvation history; the Chosen People, insofar as it holds on to faith and hope, clearly comes under the law of christological and ecclesiological eschatology: Jews may continue to await their Messiah, but only by looking forward, together with Christians, to the return of Christ (Acts 3:17-26). One cannot contradict this by quoting Romans 11—which seems to base salvation-history entirely on the root and stem of Abraham’s faith, regarding Christians as only alien branches grafted on to this stem—because, as far as Paul is concerned, Abraham’s faith in God’s promises looks unequivocally toward his offspring, toward Christ, who is the sole apex and fulfillment of this faith (Gal 3:18; cf. Rom 4:23f.). On the other hand, the time of the promises (the time of Abrahamic faith) moves into the phase of fulfillment (faith in Christ) not only negatively, by being brought to an end, but also positively, insofar as the old faith was itself wholly fashioned with a view to its goal (Heb 11; Gal 3:24). Thus the time of Jesus also embraces and contains the time of the Old Testament—and in a way beyond all we can imagine—since the ultimate purpose of this time is not the world’s judgment, but its salvation (Jn 3:17); although faithless Israel has passed judgment upon itself according to its own obsolete concepts of justice, its salvation becomes possible because of the overarching meaning and purpose of the time of fulfillment.

2. The Johannine Emphasis

It is clear from the foregoing that the so-called realized eschatology of the Gospel of John does not represent anything new as against the Pauline and other New Testament writings: it is simply a development and clarification of them. Furthermore we must note that the One speaking here is not—solely and one-sidedly—the pre-Easter Jesus, but the Redeemer who is able to integrate his entire destiny, a destiny that includes his exaltation (death and Resurrection). Martha’s Jewish hope for the end-time, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day, is sharply countered by the here-and-now assertion, I am the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:24-25), which leaves it an open question whether Jesus, in his present experience of the Last Day and of his Resurrection, includes or excludes Jewish faith.

One way or another Jesus’ assertion constitutes a corrective not only to the Jewish expectation of the end as such but also to those vestiges of Jewish expectation that persist within the primitive Church and her documents, just as John, at many a point, quietly corrects the Synoptics.⁴ For John, the Christ-event, which is always seen in its totality, is the vertical irruption of the fulfillment into horizontal time; such irruption does not leave this time—with its present, past and future—unchanged, but draws it into itself and thereby gives it a new character.

By adopting the great I am utterances of Yahweh (in Ezekiel and Deutero-Isaiah and dependent texts, including liturgical ones), Jesus presented the most audacious self-utterance;⁵ thus it is clear from the outset that John, too, considers the Old Covenant to be positively fulfilled by Jesus. The apparent opposition between the Law that was given through Moses and the grace and truth that came with Jesus (1:17) is explained by saying that Moses wrote of Jesus and that anyone who believes the writings of Moses must also believe in Jesus (5:45-47); moreover, Abraham rejoiced to see the day of Jesus; he saw it and was glad (8:56). Thus if the past is drawn into Christ’s eschatological presence, those few elements in John that point to a futurist eschaton can equally be referred to the same realized presence of the eschaton. All judgment has been given to Jesus by the Father (5:22), and there can be no doubt that he exercises this judgment now by being manifested in the world: The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live (5:25). At whatever time the dead may have lived, in a world alienated from God, the voice that wakes them is the voice of the Word of God who has come into the world; if they follow what this voice says to them, they escape judgment; but if they resist it, they thereby pronounce judgment upon themselves. This is the consistent Johanninc teaching. Ultimately it matters little whether 5:27-28 is regarded as an interpolation by an ecclesiastical redactor (Bultmann) or as applying what has been said to the intramundane eschatological situation (J. Blank); it is in any case no more than an extension of the train of thought and of secondary importance:⁶ for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment (5:28-29). The same thing applies to his teaching on the bread of life in chapter 6: here too the central fact is that the reality is present: He who believes [in me] has eternal life (6:47); the four times repeated and I will raise him up at the last day (6:39, 40, 44, 54) may be a clarification for the benefit of those who think in linear, Jewish terms, or it may signify that linear time is incorporated into christological-eschatological time by Jesus himself. The crucial point here is that John’s realized eschatology is not directed against futurist eschatology but draws the latter into that central eschatology that flows from Christology.⁷ In any case, wherever and whenever eternal life is given, it comes from the Son who was sent into the world and from his self-sacrifice.⁸ It is thoroughly Johannine when the seven churches of the Apocalypse are seen standing before the judgment of the glorified Son of Man, a judgment that is all the more implacable because it is a judgment of love. The fact that the light—which, as such, is life and love—shines in the darkness (1:5) is already the final and utter judgment upon this darkness. And there is an inner heightening of polarity here, for while the light convicts / convinces⁹ darkness of its negation, it does not simply uncover the fact of a static negativity: under the influence of the light, the negation actually hides itself. Thus this conviction leads to a movement of concealment and flight; benighted man hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed (3:20). In this sense, light intensifies the darkness, which we saw to be the fundamental dramatic theme in Theo-Drama IV. The light reveals the innermost nature of the darkness that shies away from it (cf. 9:41); but where it is accepted, where it comes to its own, it produces the eschatological miracle of resurrection from the dead (5:21, 24-25). In each case this resurrection applies to the whole person, which makes it difficult. . . to draw a distinction between the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘physical’ resurrection of the dead.¹⁰ As in the Synoptics, the presence of Jesus in the world means that man is faced with an ultimate alternative: his decision now determines the eternal decision of the last judgment (Mk 8:38 par.). Now is (nun estin) both salvation and judgment: "The nun is. . . christological, and hence eschatological."¹¹ Wherever the event becomes present in temporal history, this nun applies; we shall see that this now, ultimately, does not pass away: I will come again (Jn 14:3) in order to dwell with you (14:23); lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Mt 28:20). If this end is a reality to be taken seriously, it must show an inner relationship with the central eschaton of the Christ-event; in this case we shall not be surprised at the references to the last day in John 5:28-29 and the four places mentioned in chapter 6. Both natural, intramundane eschatology and Jewish eschatology are shown in their relation to their new and determining center.

In the face of this situation we must establish the following principle: What appeared (in the fourth volume) to be a predominantly horizontal theo-drama must now give place, when the final act begins, to the primacy of the vertical theo-drama; or rather, the horizontal must be integrated into the vertical since the latter gives it both meaning and form. This is basically self-evident in a theo-dramatic context, that is, where God, independent of world-time, is the primary actor. In such a context it is essential that God’s action should not shrink to a single, instant, immutable point in time that is constitutive of every moment of earth-time; God’s abiding forever must not be seen as a non-time but as a super-time that is unique to him; and this is illustrated in the fact that Christ’s time mediates between God’s time and world-time. Christ’s time recapitulates and comprehends world-time, while it also reveals God’s super-time. Jesus’ time, particularly in John, has a kind of inner periodicity that, while of course colored by the human time in which Jesus shares, has its own intrinsic validity as a result of his relationship with the Father; in other words, it has a trinitarian significance. The essential division between the life of Jesus and his hour (which embraces death and Resurrection in a single unity)¹² divides his glorification into two phases. The first began with the manifestation of his glory at his first miracle, a glory that was intrinsically a glorifying of the Father and to which Jesus looks back in 13:31, while at the same time he looks forward to the second phase, the imminent (at once) glorification through his exaltation on the Cross and his Resurrection (13:32-34). The voice from heaven in 12:28 has already confirmed these two phases: I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. This future event, to which the whole of Jesus’ life looks forward, cannot be precipitated; it can only be prayed for: Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee (17:1; cf. 4-5). The disciples, too, are affected by these phases: in the Farewell Discourses Jesus’ time enters the phase characterized by his death and Resurrection, his going away and coming again; the emphatic caesura between this and the former phase creates a hiatus for the disciples: accordingly, as he can no longer look after them himself, Jesus entrusts them to the Father for the duration of the hiatus (17:11). Jesus seeks to console them by speaking of a little while (16:17-19), yet for the disciples it will be long enough for weeping and lamenting, while the world rejoices; indeed, Jesus compares it with the pains of a woman in childbirth, a reference that, at least remotely, recalls the Jewish expectation of a time of the birth pangs of the Messiah. In the terms of Jesus’ own time, this caesura is the duration (which cannot be measured chronologically) of his Cross, of his God-forsakenness, of his dwelling in the realm of the dead. As far as the disciples are concerned, it is an open question whether it represents the time up to his Resurrection or up to his coming again; in a Johannine perspective one would be inclined to assume the former, but such a view is contradicted by the prophetic utterances concerning the persecution of Christians as they seek to follow their Lord (15:20-16:4)—utterances that refer to the whole of the Church’s time.

Words that announce the sending of the Spirit point even more strongly to the in-breaking into world-time, in and through the Christ-event, not only of eternity but of a divine super-time. Of necessity the Spirit can be sent only after the Son’s departure (16:4). According to John, the sending of the Spirit is clearly linked to the crucified Son’s surrendering to his Father of the Spirit of his mission; it is also linked to the incident of the piercing, and to the Risen One’s breathing of the Spirit upon the Church. The details of the Spirit’s task speak even more plainly: as the time of the Church unfolds, he will interpret the entire work of Jesus more profoundly and plumb its depths (16:13); as yet, it hardly exists at all. It is very characteristic that, on the one hand, Jesus seems to have said everything, so that the Spirit will need only to remind the disciples (14:26), and, on the other hand, he can say: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth (16:12-13). Nonetheless the Spirit does not speak on his own account but draws everything from the treasures of Christ, which are those of the Father (16:13-15). This means that everything not yet uttered, every apparently new interpretation and understanding, was always there in the utterance that Jesus is—and here we must think first and foremost of his whole existence as Word of the Father rather than as the word uttered in human terms. What he is always implies a coming, a future, that ever-greater which is inherent in the Word of God made man.¹³ Thus the now (nun) encompasses a soon (euthus, Jn 13:32; en tachei, Rev 1:1, and so on): Now is the judgment (Jn 12:31), ajudgment that takes place on the last day (6:39ff.). This extension into the future characterizes the time of discipleship and of the Church, a time that is immanent in the central Christ-event; here the Christ-event attains its own special space, its breadth. But it is nonetheless the effect of a superordinate divine super-time of the economic Trinity (sending the Son and, after his mission is complete—Jn 17:4—the Holy Spirit), which in turn is subordinate to the super-time of the immanent Trinity with its order of processions.

John’s particular emphasis, therefore, means that everything in the horizontal dramatic dimension is seen in the context of the vertical; thus it acts as a corrective to Jewish eschatology. But this vertical is the locus of a dramatic tension in which the action taking place between God and mankind, centered in Jesus Christ, differs fundamentally from any pagan and mythological epic, whether it be of fallen aeons or descending divinities. Here the drama of Christ remains the direct fulfillment of Yahweh’s covenant drama with Israel, which has been going on throughout the whole of history.

John’s emphasis corresponds in all essentials with the fundamental assertions of the rest of the New Testament. We can give no more than a brief summary here. The view that, in Jesus, the light from above has broken through to the darkness and shadow of death of a sinful world was already demonstrated by Matthew (4:16) on the basis of Isaiah 9:1f.; we do not need to invoke some special Johannine dualism to account for it. That man’s acceptance or rejection of this light even now determines his destiny is a view familiar to the Synoptics (Mk 8:38; Lk 12:9), who see it as an eschatological decision between heaven and hell (Mt 25). The descent and subsequent ascent of the Savior is found in Ephesians 4 (following Phil 2), and the concept of exaltation is found several times in both Old and New Testaments.¹⁴ The assertion that, prior to the coming of the Savior, this world lay under the power of the devil is the substance of the parable in Matthew 12:28 (par.) and many of Paul’s utterances (1 Cor 2:6; 2 Cor 4:4; Eph 6:12, and so on). Faced with Christ, however, man freely decides, and he is free if he opens himself in simplicity to God’s light, if his eye is single (Mt 6:22 AV). Anyone becoming a disciple of Christ must leave behind everything, including his own self, or, as Paul puts it more precisely, together with Christ he must die to the world and be raised to the kingdom of God, he must share in changing the polarity from the first to the second Adam (1 Cor 15:21ff.); but it is with a view to the Second Adam, Christ, for him and through him, that all things in the world are created (Col 1:16ff.; 1 Cor 8:6), since it is by him that they are to be redeemed. That Jesus is the principle of the resurrection is known to Matthew (27:51-53) just as much as to Paul (1 Cor 15:22-23). And the conviction that, finally, the entire work of redemption springs from the love of God the Father is found in the Synoptics in all Jesus’ references to his Father’s utter goodness, perfection and mercy; this is as explicit in Paul as in John (Rom 8:32). The only remaining question is whether John’s strong emphasis on the already of redemption and judgment does not actually mask the not yet that is stressed by the other writers, in such a way as to obscure man’s situation, a situation in which he always has to decide. For it cannot be disputed that the standpoint of Johannine theology is primarily christological; it is anthropological only within the overarching Christology. At the same time we must not forget the constant Johannine exhortation to abide, which is parallel to the Synoptics’ command to watch. As far as the believer is concerned, everything depends on the if here: You cannot bear fruit if you do not abide in me (15:4); "If you abide in me, and if my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you (15:7); Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love (15:10); You are my friends if you do what I command you (15:14). There are many other conditional sentences of this kind: If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples (8:31). If you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did (8:39). If God were your Father, you would love me (8:42). If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? (8:46). If you were blind, you would have no guilt" (9:41). Words such as these leave man his anthropological freedom to make a decision, which is what the Lord requires of him; this is in complete contrast to the notions of predestination found in Gnosticism.

3. The Synoptic Discourses on the End

and the Johannine Emphasis

It is a commonly held view that the Synoptic little apocalypse, burdened as it is with many Jewish apocalyptic images and ideas, differs sharply from the realized eschatology of John.¹ This view calls for some examination. Here we shall stick quite straightforwardly to the text (Mt 24; Mk 13; Lk 17 and 21), mostly following the Matthean version, without going into the question of how far the specifically apocalyptic expressions can be traced back to Jesus himself or to what extent they have been interpolated by the evangelists (in this case, chiefly Mark) on the basis of possibly Jewish sources.

If we examine these texts with an open mind, we shall be astonished how many of them—leaving aside those involved in prophesying the fall of Jerusalem—are concerned with the direct effect of Jesus’ presence in the world. In Theo-Drama IV we saw that Jesus’ presence has certain unavoidable consequences for that world history which continues after him (the end-time): these consequences are developed on a broad canvas in the Synoptic texts, largely without any specifically apocalyptic garb. Where such garb is employed, one must ask whether it is really left in its original Jewish context of understanding or whether it is not rather incorporated into the new, christological, context. If we concentrate on this clear central thrust of the Synoptic apocalypses, we can say that, in formal terms, they do not differ from the Johannine view: statements and warnings attributed to Jesus regarding the historical future all focus on the fact that he is and has been here in historical reality. Thus his word (which signifies his entire existence, his life, death and Resurrection) embraces the whole of world history; accordingly it is present in, and governs, all temporal futures: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Mt 24:35; Mk 13:31; Lk 21:33).

a. The discourse on the fall of the Holy City forms the prelude to the little apocalypse and can be taken as read here. We have already mentioned the cardinal point: In Jesus’ own self-consciousness this collapse is—quite legitimately—bound up with the fact that he himself has reached the end of this world of history and transience. Just as he himself is the capstone of God’s revelation in the form of history (for in him the triune God gives himself for the world in a way that surpasses all human comprehension), and all subsequent temporal process is only the vast unfolding of this concluding event, so too the fall of Jerusalem (because it rejected the Messiah) is eschatological. (Moreover, the salvation of all Israel cannot be an event within history but belongs to the mystery of the transcendent Judgment.)² The prediction of the city’s fall is identical in all three Gospels (Mt 24:1-2; Mk 13:1-2; Lk 21:5-6); Luke alone clearly refers the Mark 13:14-20 passage, which urges people to flee to the mountains and not to return home, proclaims woe to the mothers with child and with suckling infants, and bids readers pray that this distress should not overtake them in winter, to the imminent destruction of the city (Lk 21:20-24; cf. 17:31). In doing so, he suppresses certain elements of Jewish apocalyptic, for example, the Danielic desolating sacrilege in the holy places (Mk 13:14a) and the shortening of those days for the sake of the elect (Mk 13:30), replacing them with the concrete trials that take place when the city is surrounded and taken. Here Luke gives us the first significant example of de-apocalypticizing in favor of a christocentric eschatology; and it can remain an open question whether, and how far, Mark and Matthew too apply the relevant exhortations to flee, to make haste, and the woes regarding the mothers, and so on, to the destruction of Jerusalem (the most terrible events of all history: Mk 13:19).

b. When the disciples express their curiosity about the when of this catastrophe, which they automatically equate with the end of the world and (Mt 24:3) the return of Christ, Jesus does not simply say that this time is hidden from men (Mk 13:32; Mt 24:36); in fact this particular dictum comes at the end. First he gives a great many instructions that flow from the fact that he is and has been present in the world.³ Here world history is interpreted theologically as consequences of the Incarnation of the Word of God, consequences that signal both a forward movement and universality. Initially we have the warning against other putative Messiahs who will lead many astray (Mt 24:4-5), throwing doubt on Christ’s uniqueness and trying to go beyond him. This warning is repeated in 24:11: Many false prophets will prove to be successful in deceiving others. Verse 23: Then if any one says to you, ‘Lo, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. The false prophets will be many, working great miracles and misleading even the elect (24:24). If they say he is in the wilderness, or in particular rooms, do not believe it (24:26). Lo, I have told you beforehand (24:25). Christ’s absolute uniqueness is announced three times, followed by a related topic: the unavoidable discernment / separation [Scheidung] of spirits. Matthew had set forth the essential issue in his account of the sending out of the disciples (10:17-22), whereas Mark and Luke only mention it at this stage: And brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death (Mk 13:12). This second topic emphasizes two things: first, the forward movement implied by this situation of krisis and the resultant increase in apostasy (13:10), because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold (Mt 24:12), cf. Luke 18:8: Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth? Secondly, it is foretold that the disciples will encounter persecution in their discipleship of their Lord (Mk 13:9): they will be handed over to be oppressed and killed, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake (13:13). Matthew and Luke add that the disciples should not be anxious when they are brought to court; the Spirit (or the Lord himself) will give them the necessary words. Nothing can harm the man who holds fast in faith; he will be saved (Mk 13:13 par.). Thus the Christ-event is shown to be of world-historical dimensions; Mark adds the explicitly universal perspective: before the end comes, the gospel must first be preached to all nations (13:10).

c. On the one hand, we have this clearly christological core, and, on the other, we have a small number of passages that come from the realm of Jewish apocalyptic. The latter must be divided into those that can or probably should be provided with a context within Christology and those that must stay at the level of general apocalyptic language. Immediately after Jesus’ first warning to the disciples not to be led astray by false Messiahs, we read (Mk 13:7): When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. . . the end is not yet. Such things are still in the midst of history, for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. These same events, as well as the subsequent catastrophes of hunger, plague and earthquake, are expected by the Jewish apocalyptic writers too.⁴ The hostile treatment of the disciples, however, can also be interpreted in terms of society, in terms of those divisions within the family—for the sake of Christ—to which all the Synoptics refer. The other tribulations, hunger, disease and earthquake, come from the same apocalyptic imagery of the end as the expression used by Mark and Matthew (but suppressed by Luke): the beginning of the sufferings. The glorious reign of the Messiah, to which all were looking forward (irrespective of whether it was regarded as the final period of the world or as the penultimate period, before the Judgment), was to be preceded by the period of tribulation, the birth pangs of the Messiah. These would include the shaking of the foundations not only of the earth but also of the cosmos in its entirety. In the little apocalypse these signs are harbingers of the coming Son of Man: After that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken (Mk 13:24-25; Mt 24:29; Luke shortens this but adds the distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves: 21:25). It is only in these passages that clearly alien imagery interposes itself, imagery that has not been christologically assimilated; evidently it serves to provide a fitting introduction to the topic of the parousia: And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory (Mk 13:26; according to Matthew, the sign of the Son of Man appears in the heavens prior to his appearance in person; Luke, more modest, speaks of a cloud). This logion, in terms of origin and status, is quite different from those that precede it, for it is either a quotation (Mt 24:30) or a recasting (Mk 8:38) of Daniel 7:13-14, a text that Jesus applies to the Son of Man who comes in judgment, in other words, to himself in his exaltation (Mt 10:32). (Cf. Jesus’ testimony before the Sanhedrin, Mt 26:64; Mk 14:62; Luke adds, seated at the right hand of the power of God, and leaves out the cloud, 22:69.) So even the few passages that originate in the realm of apocalyptic, read in the context of this particular word of Jesus, actually acquire something like a christological function.

At this point a new question presents itself for our attention. The idea that the Son of Man—who now takes the place of God in judgment—is to come to judge the world at the end of time, even if it is not a purely apocalyptic notion, is surely a central Old Testament theme, familiar at least since the first prophets; and is not this futuristic notion the very thing to which John opposed his realized eschatology: Now is the judgment (Jn 12:31); the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God (5:25)?

Before proceeding, however, we must highlight a tension that is to be found in the words that conclude this discourse. For, on the one hand, this generation will not pass away before all these things take place (Matthew, Mark, Luke), and, on the other hand, no one knows the hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Matthew and Mark; Luke leaves this sentence out). It is possible to minimize this tension by referring this generation to the disciples, who remain faithful during the great tribulation, or by regarding it as a reworking of the logion in Matthew 16:28 and Luke 9:27, pointing, not to the end of the world as such, but to the Resurrection of Jesus. At all events, the tension remains, kept in place by the constant exhortation to be vigilant, to be ready, to pray. The New Testament’s eschatological soon is more than the merely chronological soon of apocalyptic writing; it implies the primacy of Jesus’ time and super-time over world-time. We have already dealt with this adequately in Theo-Drama III, 130ff., 135ff. It is characteristic that these two assertions—the imminence of the events and the fact that no one knows the hour—are simultaneously separated and united by the peerless saying: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away (Mk 13:31 par.).

4. The Day of the Lord and the Judgment

Jewish eschatology looks forward to a salvation that is unequivocally in the future, in linear time.¹ This is true even where the two aeons idea in many apocalypses envisages the coming aeon as existing already, hidden in God, in vertical relationship to the present; here too, when it actually manifests itself, it will take over from the present, transitory aeon and proceed in a linear manner. The borderline is the Day of the Lord, on which, in judgment and in salvation, God will call the past aeon to account; this image persists ever since the time of the Prophets, even if there are great variations in the way the eschatological events are seen (the Messianic age, the woes of the end-time, the collapse of the world, and judgment),² and even if the Day of the Lord can be expressed in different but equivalent terms.³ In the Old Covenant the concept of the Day of the Lord (or the Day, that day, and so on) goes through three phases. First there is a pre-prophetic phase (which we can only surmise) looking forward to an epiphany on the part of Yahweh, who would deal with Israel’s enemies and help his people to final victory. We should observe that, by contrast with the Babylonian and Egyptian prototypes that, no doubt, provided part of this imagery (God’s appearance on that terrible day,⁴ bringing sword, hunger, plague, with earthquake, darkness, and signs and wonders in the heavens, and so on), the borrowed imagery itself is only the cosmetic decoration of an event that is envisaged in a temporal future, as is appropriate to the historical nature of Israel’s covenant with Yahweh and the promises attached to it.⁵ Even though this expected intervention of God long remains purely intrahistorical, and can therefore be termed eschatological only in a qualified sense, it does contain the nucleus that will eventually be developed into the doctrine of the end-time.

There is of course a second phase, which first comes to light in Amos (5:18-20): here the expected Day of the Lord is not a bright day of victory for Israel but a dark day of judgment on the people. These images are gradually intensified, right up to the terrifying portrayals of Zephaniah.⁶ But this does not alter the formal structure of the Day of Judgment; it only means that now Israel is subjected to the hardest and most humiliating judgment.

In the final, post-Exilic phase, after the great trial of Israel’s banishment, the prophecy of salvation dominates once again: judgment and its attendant catastrophes are restricted to the heathen nations, the enemies of Israel, and the godless in Israel, whereas the Judgment becomes a day of redemption for the Chosen People.⁷ This represents a decline as compared with classical prophecy, which had succeeded in keeping alive the great tension implied in the Day of Yahweh: judgment is at its most severe when applied to the elect, but it does not signify rejection. Much of the New Testament’s concept of judgment finds its preliminary adumbration here.

The picture becomes threatening again in apocalyptic. The Day of the Lord, that day, that great day, is above all a day of judgment, of wrath and anger, the great and terrible day of God’s reckoning with the world, the day of vengeance and cursing, of violence, of punishment, of fear, of tribulation, but also the day of the elect of the Son of Man, of the rescue of the righteous, a day of mercy and consolation.⁸ Judgment is always preceded by the terrible last times involving anguish not known since the beginning of the world; the end will come when distress is at its height. The nations unite for the attack on Jerusalem; all the wild animals fight against the Lamb (the Messiah) (Test. Jos. 19); mankind is overcome by many plagues and led astray by false predictions (Apoc. Bar. 48:34); the very constellations are out of kilter (En. 80:6f.; 2 Esdras 5:4; Sib. III, 80f.); the righteous are guarded by angels throughout the period of tribulation (Ethiop. En. 100:5). But the end comes soon; the ‘soon’ is part and parcel of the nature of eschatological faith.⁹ God will suddenly destroy the nations attacking Jerusalem.¹⁰ Judgment comes suddenly and thereby takes the godless, in particular, by surprise.¹¹ The Judge is almost always God himself. In Ethiopic Enoch 62 the visionary sees God and the Son of Man together in judgment: Here it is the Son of Man who judges, whereas God pronounces the final sentence.¹² God often appears in judgment accompanied by his heavenly host (En. 1:4).

All this—and many other features could be adduced—is intended to illustrate the pressure exerted on the New Testament concepts by Old Testament Jewish eschatology with its expectation of God’s Day of Judgment in the end-time. Jesus’ largely christological discourse regarding the future was occasioned by the disciples’ characteristic question: Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign when these things are all to be accomplished? (Mk 13:4). The Pauline and other letters consistently look forward to the Day (1 Cor 3:13; 1 Th 5:4; Heb 10:25) as the day of wrath (Rom 2:5) and of judgment (Rom 2:16; 2 Pet 2:9; 1 Jn 4:17; Jude 6). It is the day of the Lord (which in Old Testament terms can mean the day of God: Acts 2:17-20; 2 Pet 3:12; in the New Testament it is the day of Christ: 1 Th 5:2; 2 Th 2:2; 1 Cor 1:8; the day of Jesus Christ: Phil 1:6; cf. 2:16). The language of the Gospels corresponds to that of the Letters: the Gospels point forward to the day of judgment (Mt 11:22; 12:36), to that day (Mt 7:22; Lk 6:23). Luke explicitly says that the day will dawn when least expected (17:26ff.); the day comes like a snare (21:34), like a thief in the night (Mt 24:43; 1 Th 5:2, 4; 2 Pet 3:10; Rev 3:3; 16:15). We have already seen that the idea of a disaster-laden end-time (including social and cosmic catastrophes) migrates into New Testament concepts; it is defined with particular clarity in the early Paul’s notion of the Antichrist: on his return, Christ will slay his opponent with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming (2 Th 2:8; cf. Isa 11:4; Ps 33:6).

Here the primitive Church seems to have missed the true meaning of Jesus’ own expectation of the imminent end and to have directly adopted the Jewish perspective of an end to earthly history, in particular by assuming that a period of the birth pangs of the Messiah would precede the end (since for the Jews, in one way or another, this end signalled the arrival of the Messianic age). Furthermore, certain words of Jesus (or of the evangelists) seem to indicate a final act within world history, for example, the appearance of the sign of the Son of man in heaven, after which all the tribes of the earth will mourn (Mt 24:30), or the sending forth of the angels to gather the elect from the four winds (Mt 24:31) and to separate the evil from the righteous (Mt 13:49).

There are, however, important contrary indications. Thus the appearing of the Son of Man in his day is likened to lightning that flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other (Lk 17:24; from east to west: Mt 24:27). The context is significant: in Luke it had been preceded by Jesus’ teaching that the kingdom of God is not here or there, that earthly means cannot observe its coming, and that the kingdom is in the midst of you; this was in reply to the question of when the kingdom of God would come (17:20 par.). Immediately after this comes the warning to the disciples: They will be urged to look here! and look there! for some purely historical Messiah, but they must not allow themselves to be led astray, because Jesus will return like a flash of lightning. Similarly in Matthew: If people point to a Messiah in the desert (where so many Jewish leaders assembled their troops) or hidden in houses (as indicated by many legends), do not believe them. This is followed by the metaphor of the lightning.

In 1 Thessalonians (5:1ff.) Paul dispels his readers’ anxieties with regard to the coming of the Lord by pointing out that this coming cannot be predicted and that only those who are lulled into a false sense of security will be taken by surprise; accordingly the letter ends with an exhortation to vigilance, readiness and the practice of every Christian virtue. Second Thessalonians equally warns its recipients against being knocked off balance by those who say that the day of the Lord has come, but it goes on to give reasons for the delay: the son of perdition, the Antichrist, has not yet appeared; for the present something is hindering him from stepping forth openly, although the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Here, no doubt, we see the influence of an element of Jewish apocalyptic¹³ that has its origin in Daniel 7-8, to which the Letter clearly refers. Here, indisputably, Jewish linear expectation of the end is transposed into Christian terms; but the expected Antichrist is not a Jewish (false) prophet: he is a figure confronting Christ directly, even if his appearance is accompanied by Danielic motifs.¹⁴ As in the Gospels, the signs of the end (a Jewish theme) indicate the zenith of evil, as at the time prior to the Flood (cf. Lk 17:26ff; 2 Tim 3:1-3); what restrains the Antichrist from appearing openly—namely, the linear extension of world history—is also, initially, a Jewish theme. As in the rest of the New Testament, however, these elements of Paul’s Jewish education are outshone and, as it were, reabsorbed by the central christological theme. If the mystery of godlessness is even now at work—and for Paul this godlessness can be nothing other than the negation of the Christian reality—it follows that the Antichrist is already present and putting forth his influence, exactly as I John asserts: Anyone who denies the Incarnation of Christ is not of God. This is the spirit of antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already (1 Jn 4:2-3). Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour (1 Jn 2:18). What, in the Jewish milieu, was the expectation of the evil time of the Messiah’s birth-pangs, becomes, in the New Testament, a consciousness of living in the end-time, or the last hour, or at the end of the aeons (Heb 9:26), in the wake of the death and Resurrection of Christ. Within this end-time it is superfluous to make qualitative distinctions between periods: the only feature that will ultimately persist and establish itself, whether visibly or invisibly, is the "krisis", the decision, the scission, that Christ has introduced into the world.

At this point we must mention an important topic to which we shall have to return in more detail later.

If we examine what the New Testament has to say about judgment, we find a peculiar discrepancy. At the formal level there is a holding fast to the Old Testament idea that the world will be judged at the end of the ages and also that the dead will rise. At the same time, however, judgment is depicted as an individual, not a universal, event. Accordingly, the individual’s death and his judgment are brought close together, as Hebrews 9:27 explicitly says: It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment. The old Day of the Lord was primarily a judgment on the nations, then (in the Prophets) on the people of Israel too; later, after the Exile, it was once more understood as a judgment on the nations and the godless in general. But under the influence of Ezekiel’s teaching (the sinner will be punished for his own sin) and also, no doubt, of the growth of Hellenistic thought, which envisaged the individual being rewarded and punished according to his deeds, the old concept of judgment was filled with a new content: individual responsibility. According to Paul, at the Judgment everyone must account for his own deeds (Rom 2:6; 14:12; 1 Cor 3:13, 15; 4:4; 2 Cor 5:10; Gal 6:7, 9), and since judgment belongs to God alone, everyone should refrain from judging his brother. Similarly James 4:11 (cf. 1 Pet 1:17); the Gospels are no different (Mt 7:1f.; Lk 6:37). Most striking here is the great judgment scene that in Matthew concludes Jesus’ public ministry: it is clearly an end-time setting, following Daniel’s depiction, and the separation of the good from the evil (sheep and goats) follows Ezekiel 34:17; the core of the entire scene is the announcement of the criterion to be used in judgment, namely, the presence or absence of works of mercy. This criterion was well known to the Jews, but what is new here—and has no prior analogy¹⁵—is that these works are regarded as being done to the Judge, who equates himself with the poor and hungry, and so on. It is this very personal relationship with the judging Lord that will decide the individual’s eternal salvation or perdition on that day (Mt 8:22). Although, in accordance with the ancient concept of the Day of the Lord, all the nations (Mt 25:32; cf. Rev 1:7) are assembled in this scene, it is not nations that are judged but only individual persons.

It is well known that, in contrast to the apocryphal writings, the New Testament engages in practically no speculation about a supposed intermediate state