Living in an atmosphere which was charged with such militant elements, an atmosphere breathed by some of the most ardent and earnest
* .Tosephus (liJ vi. 40) makes Titus ask hia troops connrJently, at tlie siege of Jerusalem. ' What do their dissensions arui famine and sie^'c mean, except that God's wrath is against them and His aid on onr side ? '
t The parallels, whioh are sometimes close, are collected by F. IJoll, Arts tier Ofenbarutifj Johannis, Leipzig, 1914, pp. 130-135.
I J. M. P. Smith, ' Relijjion and War in Israel,' in .i./Th xix. [1915] 30.
souls of the age, did Christianity in the early church become alVected by this hot air? To answer this question, we must lirst of all glance at the rauline eschatology and chrislology.
The jirevalciit idea that the crucihxion had been a di.-iastrous strategical error on the Jiart of the supernaluial I'liwers of evil in the uiiiver.se (1 Co 2") was natmally connecteii with the idea that Jesus had then and there triumphed over these dethroned authorities of the present age. The forgiveness secured bj' Christ at His death and resurrection is, in one aspect, a signal triumph over the hostile demon-siiirits (Col 2"'-): 'he cut away the angelic Killers and Powers from us, exposing thein to all the world and triumphing (C/najujSfiiuas) over them in the cross.' They are disarmed and rendered impulent to injure Chris- tians. St. Paul drives home the paradox by his military metaphor. The cross is not the ignomini- ous defeat of Jesus ; it marks the open subjugation of His supernatural foes, it is a trophy of His victor}', which has decisively stripped them of their power. The metaphor is military, a.s in the martial (|uota(ioii of I'qili 4", but it is more than a metaphor. The hunutn soul is beset by those real supernatural forces, and the victory of Jesus inaugurates the peace and freedom of His people (so 1 P 3--). 'riius it is that Athanasius [i/e Inearn. xxiv. 4) takes the crucilixion — altliou'di he proceeds, in his passion for demonolog}-, to add (xxv. 5f. ) that Jesus was lifte<l u]> on the cross to 'clear the air' from the demons who infested it and beset the hiiinan soul with their stratagems. In 1 Co 15™- the last battle in the campaign is described, when death is tinally annihilated after the rout of all the anti-divine authorities and jiowers ; then and only then docs the triumphant Christ, at the end of the ages, hand over His myal authority to the Father. Kven if rayixa. ('each in his own division ') in v.^ is not a military metaphor, as Trapovffla, the visit of a potentate, certainh' is, the follow ing passage delinilely depicts a Christian riqilic.'i of (<;) above, and human as well a.s su]ier- natuial foes are included in the rout which brings the messianic reign to a successful conclusion.* The inlluence of the tradition in the UOtli psalm is felt here as elsewhere, even, e.g., in an epistle like Ilelirews, where the primitive e.schatological idea of the enthroned Christ waiting in heaven until His enemies are humiliated and forced to do homage, or, as the Oriental phrase went, 'put under his feet' (10'-'-), is out ot keeping with the author's characteristic scheme of things. In Hebrews the expression is almostentirely ligiirative. lint in the Pauline eschatology the realistic idea emerges in the apocalyptic preiliction of 2 Th !"• and 2'^'-, where the apostle hints that King Jesus must ultimately intervene to defeat the lawless one whom even the restraining power of the Koman emjiire could not hold in check. The mysterious opponent is a sort of false niessiah, issuing from .hidaism, and invested with a Satanic authority which produces a|)0sta.sy on the verge of the end. The delusion sweeps .lews and pagans alike into an infatuated rcicllion against Goil. St. Paul has nothing to saj' about the fate of Satan, who instigates the outburst. It is the victims and tools of Satan who are destroyed, those who at present jiersecute Christians and those who dare to eugage in the last and imminent struggle to their own doom — 'men who will jiay the penally of being destroj'ed eternally.' Tliis apocalyptic prediction draws upon sagas like those in Daniel
• Ultimately, this messianic trinniph (joes hack to the cosmo- logioal myth of a contest between tJotI and the powers of the ahyss ; hut, lonjr before Christianity, the mytlt had been moral- ized and developed, so much so that an tncideiU.al Kliini>sc of this hinterland, like that in IV S9i<* (' thou hast broken ilahab in piet:eH'), seems almost foreign to tlie OT.
and in the Asccnsio Isaiw ; it is from the former especially that the note of self-deification as a trait of the last deceiver is derived.
Half a century later the ardent messianic hope of a eampaigti against antichrist (cf. DAC i. 67 f. ), which breathes through this passage in 2 Tliess. , broke out again under the strain of the Domitianic persecution. In 2 Thess. the hot air of the later Judaism, with its apocalyptic anticipation of the jus tnlionis applied by God to the enemies of His people and His cause, produces a climax of history which is judicial* rather than distinctively military. The moral order is vindicated by an overwhelming manifestation of the di\ine glory which sweeps all enemies of Jesus and of Christians to ruin. The outraged conscience becomes indignant and even vindictive at the sight of cruelty to itself or to others. The relief of the distressed elect means the doom of their foes, and the encouragement oflered is the hojie of such a speedy and crushing intervention. Christians need not stir a finger. Their very sufl'ering sets in motion the divine engine of retribution against these wanton foes of goodness. This is emphatic enough, but it is when we pass forward to the apocalypse of St. John (cf. DAC i. 71 f.) that we come upon what is by far the most e.\plicit reproduction of this militant messianism, from the livid horse of 6' (for the horse is invariably a martial figure; cf. DAC i. 585 f.) onwards, amid the horrors and terrors of the pei'iod which the pi'ophet anticipates in the near future, when Christians are harried ruthlessly by the authorities for refusing to join in the Imperial worship. The prophet repeats unflinch- ingly the message of Jesus : submit patiently to the trial (13''"'"), do not resent the cruelty and injustice of the ordeal.