Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign.
These considerations regarding the distinctive character of the Synoptic eschatology were necessary in order to explain the significance of the sending forth of the disciples and the discourse which Jesus uttered upon that occasion. Jesus' purpose is to set in motion the eschatological development of history, to let loose the final woes, the confusion and strife, from which shall issue the Parousia, and so to introduce the supra-mundane phase of the eschatological drama. That is His task, for which He has authority here below. That is why He says in the same discourse, "Think not that I am come to send peace on the earth; I am not come to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. x. 34).
It was with a view to this initial movement that He chose His disciples. They are not His helpers in the work of teaching; we never see them in that capacity, and He did not prepare them to carry on that work after His death. The very fact that He chooses just twelve shows that it is a dogmatic idea which He has in mind. He chooses them as those who are destined to hurl the firebrand into the world, and are afterwards, as those who have been the comrades of the unrecognised Messiah, before He came to His Kingdom, to be His associates in ruling and judging it. [1]
But what was to be the fate of the future Son of Man during the Messianic woes of the last times? It appears as if it was appointed for Him to share the persecution and the suffering. He
- ↑ Jesus promises them expressly that at the appearing of the Son of Man they shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28). It is to their part in the judgment that belong also the authority to bind and to loose which He entrusts to them-first to Peter personally (Matt. xvi. 19) and afterwards to all the Twelve (Matt. xviii. 18)-in such a way, too, that their present decisions will be somehow or other binding at the Judgment. Or does the "upon earth" refer only to the fact that the Messianic Last Judgment will be held on earth? "I give unto thee the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 19). Why should these words not be historical? Is it because in the same context Jesus speaks of the "church" which He will found upon the Rock-disciple? But if one has once got a clear idea from Paul, 2 Clement, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Shepherd of Hermas, what the pre-existing "church" was which was to appear in the last times, it will no longer appear impossible that Jesus might have spoken of the church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Of course, if the passage is given an uneschatological reference to the Church as we know it, it loses all real meaning and becomes a treasure-trove to the Roman Catholic exegete, and a terror to the Protestant.
