The image of transition between two ages, two kingdoms, or even two bodies (mortal and immortal), captured in the phrase “now and not yet,” conveys a partial truth about the dynamic of the Christian life, but does not capture the New Testament focus on the fullness of victory in Christ. The phrase conveys the overlap and tension between two ages but limits Christ’s victory, picturing the Christian life more in terms of (a Romans 7) struggle rather than a (Romans 8) triumph. This is clearly the case in a salvation history approach, but is also true in an apocalyptic approach (though, I will suggest is not decisive). Ann Jervis argues that Paul does not refer to two overlapping ages (the old and the new), but to the present evil age (what she calls “death-time”) as opposed to “life-time” in Christ.[1]
She argues, those in Christ are not constrained by the old age (defined by death), but having been crucified and raised with Christ there is nothing partial, incomplete, or split, about it, so inasmuch as “now and not yet,” grounds salvation history and apocalyptic theology, this demonstrates their inadequacy. Christ’s victory over sin and death, the defeat of the devil, the exposure of the deception of sin, adoption into the family of God, resurrection life now, entry into the life of Christ, and an alternative experience (all of which are primary themes of Paul and the New Testament) are not pending, overlapping with something else, or partial and “not yet.” To characterize them as such is to mischaracterize salvation. The power of darkness and death or the power of futility or a lie are defeated by the light and truth unleashed in the person of Christ. Here there is no overlap, sequence, or interdependence of two ages, and the degree to which theology has focused on two ages, two kingdoms, or two orders of power in conflict, it misses that Paul is not describing two orders of time and reality, but two relationships: a relationship with law or a relationship with God. You can be a slave to the law and what is the same thing, to the fundamental principles of the world, or you can be a son or daughter of God (Gal. 4:6-7).
Salvation History Overlooks the Adequacy of Christ
In a salvation history perspective the focus is on the outworking of history through two ages. There is a flat dependence on history and time, and a failure to account for the completeness of Christ’s work, as completion must await the outworking of history and the return of Christ. History is continually moving toward a goal which it has not yet reached.[2] N.T. Wright, a salvation historical theologian (though he also wants to embrace an apocalyptic understanding) illustrates this overdependence on the unfolding of Israel’s history, such that he seems to bypass the need for God to break through the world so as to give his own Person as the subject of knowledge. Jesus claims he is the way, the truth, and the light, yet Wright has collapsed divine self-disclosure into history, identifying that disclosure too simply with the objective consideration of the historical events behind the texts of Scripture. God is known by our “critically realist” knowledge of his historical activity, given to us by the accounts of Scripture, behind which it lies. Scripture records and bears witness to these events, but the question is if the appearance of Christ is dependent on this history (see my blog here).[3]
Paul, in Galatians for example, is not interested in the history of Israel for its own sake, and is not trying to show how Israel’s salvation history would benefit either Jews or Gentiles. Paul may think Israel was in a different situation than the pagans in that he distinguishes between the child and the slave but this is in no way a description of some sort of intermediate state, as is revealed in his focus on explaining the similarities. All suffered a form of oppression and all in Christ have received adoption as children. So, the salvation historical focus on a historical “now and not yet” sells the work of Christ short in depicting it as incomplete. The question is if apocalyptic theology is equally guilty?
Salvation is Complete in Christ and Not an Age
Paul is not depicting two overlapping ages and does not speak of a new age, though apocalyptic theologians suppose this is implied in his use of new creation, kingdom of God, and eternal life.[4] As Jervis notes, contrary to the apocalyptic reading, “Paul regarded not the new age but life in and with Christ as God’s goal for humanity. Paul connects certain concepts with that life . . . but makes clear that new creation, kingdom, and eternal life are the consequences and conditions of life with Christ.”[5] Paul’s primary focus is on Christ, and there is no overlap of ages or new creation with the evil age. In Galatians 6:14-15 for example, the old world in no more for Christians. They are not living in two worlds or two ages, but are living in Christ: “in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). “Not only is Christ’s crucifixion the foundation of new creation, but Paul strongly emphasizes union with Christ—not new creation—as the result of Christ’s crucifixion.”[6] Being in Christ is new creation: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Cor. 5:17). This is not a contrast of ages, but of being “in Christ” or living for the self and the flesh. “To be clear, new creation signals more than an anthropological concept—a new humanity that exists in the present evil age. It is a new humanity that exists in Christ.”[7]
So too, “kingdom” is not an entity existing apart from Christ or subject to other kings. It is his rule, his defeat of sin and death that marks his kingdom. “For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom. 14:9). His is not a kingdom separate from who he is, and the resurrection power he exercises is marked by all who are made alive in Christ (I Cor. 15:22). That is, the kingdom is constituted by those belonging to Christ (Gal. 5:16). As Jervis concludes, Paul’s references to “new creation” and “kingdom of God” focus not on new age concepts but on Christ. Paul did not organize his understanding of Christ’s death, resurrection, and exaltation within a two-age framework or a conception of the overlapping of the ages for believers.[8] Believers are entirely united with Christ, as a couple is united in marriage (I Cor. 6:17), and this union in Christ is the liberating reality freeing from the present “evil age” (Gal. 1:4).
Paul’s point (throughout Romans and elsewhere) is for Christians to recognize that death or the old age no longer pertains to their reality: “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6:2). They may struggle with sin, but only because they have failed to fully realize the reality of being in Christ. Christ has defeated death (Rom. 6:8-10) and the Christian is to live the reality of this victory: “consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). This eternal (αἰώνιος) life is not a form of life which participates in mere finitude, though the Christian may occasionally fall back into the delusion of life controlled by death. If there is overlapping and partiality, it is not because the Christian has to defeat an enemy not yet conquered, but because they are not “presenting the members of their body dead to sin” (Rom. 6:13). The deception of sin is not partially removed, in some sort of half-truth and the sting of death does not survive in half-life half-death. Christians are made alive in Christ and the truth of Christ has completely dispelled the lie. “The fact must be acknowledged that the apostle speaks not about the old age and the new but rather about the present evil age and Christ.”[9]
Then What is the Status of Apocalyptic Theology
Apocalyptic theology might be served by Jervis’ critique (though she does not pose this possibility) by recognizing that the problem of sin and deliverance do not pertain to impersonal “ages,” or “kingdoms,” but to a personal enslaving deception and liberating truth. Early apocalyptic theology so identified human enslavement with the demonic that it missed human subjectivity. As the question was put to Ernst Käsemann (among the original modern apocalyptic theologians), “If God’s intervention on the human stage, exorcising the world of its demons, is 100% of the equation, where is human subjectivity in any recognisable form?”[10] Louis Martyn, as Beverly Gaventa points out, has practically removed the role of human initiative or any notion of personal faith.[11] “Martyn’s avoidance of conversion language and earlier individualistic readings of Galatians has taken us too far here, so that even the function of Paul’s self-reference in the letter’s argument (or re-proclamation) does not become clear.”[12] The focus on the demonic or the powers has tended to miss the explanatory power of the personal plight (deception) and Personal resolution (truth) in Christ. According to Bruce McCormack, readers “are left with a rich battery of images and concepts but images and concepts alone, no matter how rhetorically powerful, do not rise to the level of adequate explanation. How is it that the ‘rectification’ of the world is achieved by Christ’s faithful death?”[13]
Jervis is not concerned to rescue apocalyptic theology, though she deploys her own apocalyptic-like categories (with life-time displacing death-time). Her death-time points to the deep personal deception surrounding death: “God permits God’s foes a limited range of influence, allowing humanity to choose to exist in the illusory dead-end temporality grounded in defeat (what I term “death-time”); which is in reality non-time.”[14] “Paul thinks that believers have experienced two types of time: one ruled by death, from which they have been liberated, and one of life, from which death has been expelled . . .”[15] In her explanation, Paul describes Christ’s defeat of death and sin as simultaneous, as death has enslaved to fear, and Christ liberates from this enslavement. Though Jervis does not deploy “apocalypse” as part of her position, nonetheless her depiction of death’s deception and how Christ makes a world of difference, potentially supports an apocalyptic perspective.
Paul’s depiction of deception in regard to death poses the possibility of cosmic and personal enslavement, which explains how Christ’s defeat of this lie is of cosmic proportions (appropriately described as apocalyptic). Explanation of death’s deception provides explanation that focus on the demonic, the powers, the ages, the kingdom or even anthropology has not provided (see my book, The Psychotheology of Sin and Salvation).
[1] L. Ann Jervis, Paul and Time: Life in the Temporality of Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023)
[2] Jervis,17.
[3] Grant Macaskill, History, Providence and the Apocalyptic Paul” – https://aura.abdn.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/2164/7574/History_2c_Providence_and_Apocalyptic_Paul_SJT.pdf;jsessionid=FA0FD8F9F020B597D401884CE00C1150?sequen
Douglas Campbell spells this out quite brilliantly in Deliverance, but is available in his review of Wrights Volumes on Paul and The Faithfulness of God – https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/douglas-campbell/
[4] Jervis, 48.
[5] Jervis, 49-50.
[6] Jervis, 51.
[7] Jervis, 52.
[8] Jervis, 55-56.
[9] Jervis, 60.
[10] “A Tribute To Ernst Käsemann and a Theological Testament,” 391. Cited in David Anthony Bennet Shaw, The ‘Apocalyptic’ Paul: An Analysis & Critique with Reference to Romans 1-8, (Fitzwilliam College, 2019, unpublished dissertation) 145.
[11] Shaw, 143
[12] Beverly Roberts Gaventa, “Review of Galatians by J. Louis Martyn,” RBL, 2001. Cited in Shaw, 145.
[13] Bruce L. McCormack, “Can We Still Speak of ‘Justification by Faith’? An In-House Debate with Apocalyptic Readings of Paul,” in Galatians and Christian Theology: Justification, the Gospel, and Ethics in Paul’s Letter, ed. Mark W. Elliott et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 167. Shaw, 160.
[14] Jervis, xiv.
[15] Jervis, 73.