S Clement has a verj' explicit doctrine of bodily resurrection and judgment at the Parousia (ix. 1-5). The day of the appearing of God is not known (xii. 1); the day of judgment is at hand; it is conceived of, as in 2 Peter, as the destruction of heaven (possibly ' some ' of the heavens, if Tives be accepted) and earth by hre (xvi. 3). The day of Christ's appearing is the day of judgment ac- cording to men's works (xvii. 4, 5).
Ignatius is too absorbed by his own desire to attain to God to be much occupied with the Parousia. For him resurrection and the perfect state follow immediately after death (see art. Immortat.ity). But he recognizes ' the last times ' as present, and warns his readers of coming judg- ment (Eph. xi. 1). He speaks repeatedly of 'Jesus Christ our hope.' The resurrection is both of flesh and spirit (Smyrn. xii. 2) ; ad Polyc. vii. 1 is not clear, but may imply a future resurrection at the Parousia, when every man's work will be manifest.
Polyrarp in his Epistle to the Philippinns sets forth what probably represents the general ortho- dox view : ClirLst is coming as Judge of living and dead (ii. 1); God will raise up believers at the Paro\isia (ii. 2, v. 2) ; the saints will judge the world (xi. 2).
The Didache in its last chapter gives a brief resum^ of primitive Christian eschatology : tir.st the apostasy, then Antichrist, then the tribulation and final woes, then the three-fold sign of the end : the sign spread out in heaven (a reference to Mt 24^"), the sign of the trumpet, and the sign of the resurrection of the righteous ; finally there is the Parousia. Of subsequent esehatologieal develop- ments there is no mention. It is to be noted that the author does not support his doctrine of the pre-millennial resurrection of the righteous by any reference to 1 Thess. or Rev., but by an OT refer- ence—Zee 14°. Note also the mystic allusion 16', 'saved by the Curse itself.'
Barnabas refers to the approaching tribulation (iv. 3 [to TAeioK crmcSaXoi'] .and xvi. 5 [a direct quotation from Eti. Ixxxix. 56]). In v. 7 he refers to the coming of Christ to raise the dead and judge the risen, so also xxi. 1-3.
Hence in general, with the possible exception of Ignatius, the attitude of the .\postolic Fathers towards the Parousia represents arrested develop- ment, the tendency to stereotype the phrases of the Gospels and Epistles into set statements. There is the general acceptance of an outline of final events in which the Parou.sia forms the crisis, and is identitied w illi the day of resurrection and general judgment. There is a wavering on the question of whether all are raised or only the righteous, but the doctrine of a bodily resurrection is generally accepted without question, even by Ignatius. Ignatius approaches more to the Johan- nine type of eschatology, but the nature of his Epistles makes it impossible to draw large general- izations from them.
3. Conclusion.— Tlie general survey of the period gi^■es us the impression of two tendencies at work — the progressive and the reactionary. Starting from the acceptance of a Jewish conception of the Parousia, we lind the primitive Church modifying it by fitting into the Jewish apocalyptic mould the historical conceptions of the death and resurrec- tion of Jesus the Messiah. While the general con- sciousness of the Church, after the first intensity of expectation of hope had died down, tended to stereotype the eschatology in set phrases as a vague future of blessing and judgment centring round Christ, the master minds first of St. Paul and then of St. John (if we may for convenience so speak of the author of the Fourth Gospel) seized on the implications of the historical facts of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and worked them out in all their bearings on Christian life and thought. But this working out, espe- cially in St. Paul's case, was not a merely intel- lectual etibrt of systematization, but arose partly from the practical needs of his missionary work ■and partly from his o\vn inward experience of the life in Christ. Hence his thinking bears the marks of fragmentariness and incoherence. Wonderful and far-reaching intuitions exist side by side with remains of the older framework of eschatology, which only gradually breaks down and never entirely disappears. In investigating the eschato- logy of the period, or any part of it, we labour under certain limitations which must not be for- gotten, even in the demand, as quoted above from Schweitzer, for a coherent system of eschatology.
These limitations are: (1) the fragmentary nature of our sources : we have to imply and infer from scattered hints and phrases, and there is always a danger of implying too much, and attempting an artificial construction, assuming a common eschatology which may never have existed ; (2) the conditions under which the primi- tive eschatology was gradually modified, the motive impulse being more the practical needs of the growing communities than the desire to systema- tize : hence the conditions were not such as to pro- duce a coherent scheme, even if we assume a coherent scheme to start with, which is wholly improbable ; (3) the disintegi-ating effect upon any scheme of eschatology of the change of perspective as the immediate hope was not fulfilled ; (4) the obvious fact that the work of the greatest and most original minds of the Apostolic Age in this direction did not produce an effect on the thought of the Church in any way proportionate to its value. These con- siderations may serve to keep us from expecting a coherent esehatologieal system in which the place of the Parousia is always fixed and its precise nature always defined, the hope of the Parousia to the early Church was like the dawn in the east, taking on strange colours and varying forms, but bearing witness to the great fundamental fact that the day had come at last, the day-star had risen in the heart of the believer.