Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors

by James Freeman Clarke

It is also a remarkable fact that only one coming of Christ is mentioned in the New Testament. Orthodoxy speaks continually of Christ's second coming, but without any warrant. It assumes that the manifestation of Jesus in the flesh was his first coming as the Christ, and that consequently the predictions (in Matt. ch. 24, and the parallels) must refer to a second coming. Hence the phrase “second coming” has been introduced, and naturalized in theology. But, in truth, the life of Jesus on earth was not regarded as his coming as the Messiah.[41] What the disciples expected was his manifestation or investiture as the Messiah, which evidently had not taken place at the time of their conversation. And this was to be, not “at the end of the world,” but at the end of the age. They, like other Jews, divided time into two periods, “the present age,” or times previous to the Messiah, and “the coming age,” or times of the Messiah's reign. When, therefore, Jesus was with them, only teaching and healing, they did not at all consider him to have come as the Messiah. But when he spoke of the destruction of the Temple, as that [pg 326] indicated the end of the existing economy, they understood it to be synchronous with his coming as the Christ. So they said, “What shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the age?” And so through the Epistles, when the “coming of Christ” is spoken of, is meant his manifestation in the world as the Messiah. This was a single event, to take place once, not to be repeated. Such a thing as “Christ's second coming” is unknown to the Scriptures.[42]

§ 3. Were the Apostles mistaken in expecting a speedy Coming of Christ?

It is often said that the apostles themselves were mistaken in expecting a speedy coming of Christ. No doubt they did expect his speedy coming, and with reason; for he himself had told them that the existing generation should not pass away till all those things were fulfilled. Therefore they were justified in looking for a near coming of Jesus as the Christ. We admit that they expected his speedy coming; but we think they were not mistaken, for he did come. He came, though not perhaps in the manner they anticipated. Possibly they interpreted too literally what he said concerning his coming.

For though Christ spoke so much in symbols and parables, literal people took him literally. And so they do still. When he said that except men ate his flesh and drank his blood they could not be his, the literalists said, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” And so many persons still think that somehow Christ's actual body is to be eaten in the Lord's supper. So, when he said that the Son of man should be [pg 327] seen “coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and send his angels with the sound of a trumpet, and gather his elect from the four winds,” they took it literally. His apostles, even, may have supposed that he was to be seen up in the air in physical form,[43] and that a material trumpet was to be blown. But all this was the flesh, the garb of his thought. The spirit of his thought only is of value; the flesh profits nothing. The apostles were wrong in supposing—if they did suppose it—that Christ was to come in their day in the air, in an outward physical fashion, with an outward noise, making a great demonstration to the senses of sight and hearing. Christ never came so, and he never will come so. The only coming of Christ possible is spiritual coming, for Christ is spirit. He did come, therefore, in the days of the apostles, in the great access of faith and power in their own souls, and in the souls of those whom they converted. He came in power and great glory, when his truth came to human minds, and his love to human hearts. He sent his angels then, and gathered his elect from the four quarters of the heavens. When Paul was converted, Christ came to him; when the negro chamberlain of the Queen of Ethiopia was converted, Christ came to him; when the people of Ephesus and Corinth, Philippi and Rome, were converted, Christ came to them. The trumpet sounded, but it was in their souls that it sounded; the angels summoned the elect, but these angels were the convictions sent into their reason, and the longings awakened in their hearts.

Materialists and Literalists are always the same. The apostles soon rose out of their literalism, and soon spoke of Christ as being revealed within them, not outside of them; [pg 328] dwelling, not in the air, but in their hearts. But literalists, down to this day, have always imagined the coming of Christ to be to the senses, rather than to the soul. They do not see that a great noise in the air is not so glorious a thing as a voice heard in the depths of the heart, and a great outward conflagration somehow seems to them more imposing than the burning up of falsehood and sin in the world. So we are always hearing people predict that Christ is to come in 1846, or 1856, or 1866, meaning thereby that they expect some great outward event then, visible to eyes and ears. “Fools, and slow of heart,” not to see that the only possible coming of Him who is spirit and love is a coming in the soul, and that he has come, and is coming, and is to come more and more abundantly, from day to day. So they read about the heavens and earth being burned up, and of a new heavens and earth; and they imagine that the sky is somehow to be burned with material fire, and the surface of the earth to sink into the flaming abyss beneath us. But if this should happen, that would have nothing to do with the coming of Christ. The heavens and earth which he consumes with the breath of his mouth, and destroys with the brightness of his coming, are the religions and moralities, the institutions and works, of men. And the new heavens and new earth which take their place are the higher, nobler, purer religions and moralities which flow out of the Spirit of Christ.

§ 4. Examination of the Account of Christ's Coming given by Jesus in Matthew (chapters 24-26).

A great difficulty in regard to the coming of Christ is to combine in one view the different notions given in Scripture concerning it. Many of these ideas indicate that the coming of Christ took place at the destruction of Jerusalem, as, for example, the description of wars, destruction of the Temple, and especially the declaration that “this generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled.” On the other hand, the coming of Christ is expressly connected, in our translation, with “the [pg 329] end of the world,” and with the general judgment. Hence a difficulty in interpreting these passages, some persons thinking that the coming of Christ took place at the destruction of Jerusalem; others thinking that it is yet to take place at the end of the world; others, again, maintaining two or more comings of Christ; and others spiritualizing the whole of it, and making it mean the spread of the spirit of Christianity.

Let us, therefore, examine the passage in which Christ's coming is spoken of, and endeavor to find its natural and obvious meaning, and so see how far the common Orthodox conception is correct.