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When the Son of Man Didn't Come: A Constructive Proposal on the Delay of the Parousia
The delay of the Parousiathe second coming of Christhas vexed Christians since the final decades of the first century. This volume offers a critical, constructive, and interdisciplinary solution to that dilemma. The argument is grounded in Christian tradition while remaining fully engaged with the critical insights and methodological approaches of twenty-first-century scholars. The authors argue that the deferral of Christ's prophesied return follows logically from the conditional nature of ancient predictive Jesus has not come again because God's people have not yet responded sufficiently to Christ's call for holy and godly action. God, in patient mercy, remains committed to cooperating with humans to bring about the consummation of history with Jesus' return. Collaboratively written by an interdisciplinary and ecumenical team of scholars, the argument draws on expertise in biblical studies, systematics, and historical theology to fuse critical biblical exegesis with a powerful theological paradigm that generates an apophatic and constructive Christian eschatology. The authors, however, have done more than tackle a daunting theological as the group traverses issues from higher criticism through doctrine and into liturgy and ethics, they present an innovative approach for how to do Christian theology in the twenty-first-century academy.
- GenresNew Testament
317 pages, Hardcover
Published June 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 11, 2025
God is a trickster. He can never lie; He can only be misunderstood. His promises are always contingent on undisclosed conditions that will be fulfilled through contemplation of the divine and prove God’s essence through his existence of maximal participation through His lack of interference within human experience. God through his incarnation Jesus and the Holy Spirit left the prophecies not yet fulfilled and the liturgy and contemplation of the divine economy will take the body of Christ through His Church and fulfilled the eschaton with teleological certainty. At least that’s what these authors argue for in this book.
There’s a desperate and pathetic attempt presented in this book at defending the absurdities concerning Jesus’ promised second coming and the certainty that early followers believed. See “Broken Promises” by Mark Smith for how the NT does not deliver on its promise of the second coming.
Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” loves Gregory of Cusa for his ‘coincidences of contradiction’ and these authors do too (see “Philosophical Allusions in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”, by Baines or just read the Wake yourself).
Alarms are raised when I hear pseudo-Dionysius get quoted as Dionysius the Areopagite. He was not a real person and never knew Paul. Aquinas thought the same in his Summa and advocates for Aristotelian contemplation as the ultimate meaning for humans participating in humanity. Aquinas didn’t know that pseudo-Dionysius wasn’t really Paul’s first convert and that he was just a fictional creation to solidify the Trinity as real while entering the negative road (‘via negativia’), and these authors enter that road too in support of their negation theory for words-do-not-mean-what-they-say theory.
When Karl Barth becomes your defense for God warning bells should ring. Barth creates a fictional world of mythology that describes the certainty of nothing as the all that needs to be understood with no relation to reality. I’ve only read his first volume in his Dogmatics and one day I want to read the other volumes in the series, but I already know it leads to the kind of defense of God these authors create out of their certainties that Trickster God(s) are real.
One day is like a thousand years to the Lord. It’s in the Bible, that proves that mere humans were thinking about the eschaton in silly ways. That’s a major point in this book.
To read the Book of Daniel is to understand the trick the Pesher scribes were making with their own re-interpretations of prophecies that weren’t coming true. They turned weeks into years and reassigned starting dates and prophesized regime change in their day while their numbers never added up just right. I’m not sure if these authors ever explicitly acknowledged that Daniel is fiction and was written 160 BC or so.
There is something that was always obvious when you read the Bible both the OT and NT, the prophecies never came true. Also, I can’t emphasize it enough, the NT is rife with the imminent return of Jesus and the end times are coming within their life time. To not get that is to ignore what the NT says. Albert Schweitzer gets that and “Broken Promises” by Mark Smith shows that.
This book avoids the failed messianic prophecies of the anointed one, Christ. If anything, this book uses the failed prophecies in the OT as justifications for the failed second coming prophecies. This book chooses to focus on Christ’s failure at predicting his second return and pretend that they were conditional. The other possible explanations that this book quickly dismisses are against the preterist and the realist who see them as never going to happen. Their presuppositions force them into this convoluted reasoning of conditionality. The alternative would mean that Jesus, i.e. God, as guided by the Holy Spirit were ill informed.
When Meister Eckart is invoked, you know you’re going to get a paradox that’s resolved by dogmatic assertion such that the more you know the less closer to Jesus and the further from the truth you’ll be and to experience God and his message fully the empty side of the assertion must be embraced. This book gives you the null set through its process of negating the finite to deduce the infinite. This book quotes from Aquanis and Scotus, and Aquanis used analogy to prove through reason and Scotus used his ‘synchronic contingency of the now’ to show absolutely that the perfect was real and must be. For these authors Scotus shows that the unfolding of history was meant to be, but not on the time line the NT implied.
I have a soft spot for books like this one since they cite many of the books I’ve read. I’ve read Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Cusa, Aquinas (yes, I’ve read his complete works), Barth, Aristotle, Plato, Scotus, Hegel, Heidegger, and most of the other writers the authors rely on.
The author’s appealed to Hegel as well as Heidegger. Yes, the authors are far ranging in their philosophical meanderings. I started to connect a Heideggerian concept that fit some of their God-ness talk and as Heidegger in his Time part for being makes our being-in-the-world through our ‘care’ of the past, present and future. That corresponded at times to how the authors were making the Trinity such that the Father is the past, Jesus the present and the Holy Spirit the future.
The best defense for God and Jesus not returning is the author’s approach for their persisting in the insistence of an essence that in its very being of unknowing makes for an omni perfect being who incarnated in human form to enable us to become perfected such that the second coming will happen as we’re guided by the Holy Spirit (past, present and future) through the Churches, liturgy and contemplation of the divine, and obviously that is not a very good defense. It takes a lot of mumbo-jumbos to have it make sense and the authors are more than happy to provide that. It takes a trickster god for it to work and explain away the non-event of the second coming not happening in the first century AD, and these authors guide the readers in that approach.
There’s a desperate and pathetic attempt presented in this book at defending the absurdities concerning Jesus’ promised second coming and the certainty that early followers believed. See “Broken Promises” by Mark Smith for how the NT does not deliver on its promise of the second coming.
Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” loves Gregory of Cusa for his ‘coincidences of contradiction’ and these authors do too (see “Philosophical Allusions in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake”, by Baines or just read the Wake yourself).
Alarms are raised when I hear pseudo-Dionysius get quoted as Dionysius the Areopagite. He was not a real person and never knew Paul. Aquinas thought the same in his Summa and advocates for Aristotelian contemplation as the ultimate meaning for humans participating in humanity. Aquinas didn’t know that pseudo-Dionysius wasn’t really Paul’s first convert and that he was just a fictional creation to solidify the Trinity as real while entering the negative road (‘via negativia’), and these authors enter that road too in support of their negation theory for words-do-not-mean-what-they-say theory.
When Karl Barth becomes your defense for God warning bells should ring. Barth creates a fictional world of mythology that describes the certainty of nothing as the all that needs to be understood with no relation to reality. I’ve only read his first volume in his Dogmatics and one day I want to read the other volumes in the series, but I already know it leads to the kind of defense of God these authors create out of their certainties that Trickster God(s) are real.
One day is like a thousand years to the Lord. It’s in the Bible, that proves that mere humans were thinking about the eschaton in silly ways. That’s a major point in this book.
To read the Book of Daniel is to understand the trick the Pesher scribes were making with their own re-interpretations of prophecies that weren’t coming true. They turned weeks into years and reassigned starting dates and prophesized regime change in their day while their numbers never added up just right. I’m not sure if these authors ever explicitly acknowledged that Daniel is fiction and was written 160 BC or so.
There is something that was always obvious when you read the Bible both the OT and NT, the prophecies never came true. Also, I can’t emphasize it enough, the NT is rife with the imminent return of Jesus and the end times are coming within their life time. To not get that is to ignore what the NT says. Albert Schweitzer gets that and “Broken Promises” by Mark Smith shows that.
This book avoids the failed messianic prophecies of the anointed one, Christ. If anything, this book uses the failed prophecies in the OT as justifications for the failed second coming prophecies. This book chooses to focus on Christ’s failure at predicting his second return and pretend that they were conditional. The other possible explanations that this book quickly dismisses are against the preterist and the realist who see them as never going to happen. Their presuppositions force them into this convoluted reasoning of conditionality. The alternative would mean that Jesus, i.e. God, as guided by the Holy Spirit were ill informed.
When Meister Eckart is invoked, you know you’re going to get a paradox that’s resolved by dogmatic assertion such that the more you know the less closer to Jesus and the further from the truth you’ll be and to experience God and his message fully the empty side of the assertion must be embraced. This book gives you the null set through its process of negating the finite to deduce the infinite. This book quotes from Aquanis and Scotus, and Aquanis used analogy to prove through reason and Scotus used his ‘synchronic contingency of the now’ to show absolutely that the perfect was real and must be. For these authors Scotus shows that the unfolding of history was meant to be, but not on the time line the NT implied.
I have a soft spot for books like this one since they cite many of the books I’ve read. I’ve read Augustine, pseudo-Dionysius, Cusa, Aquinas (yes, I’ve read his complete works), Barth, Aristotle, Plato, Scotus, Hegel, Heidegger, and most of the other writers the authors rely on.
The author’s appealed to Hegel as well as Heidegger. Yes, the authors are far ranging in their philosophical meanderings. I started to connect a Heideggerian concept that fit some of their God-ness talk and as Heidegger in his Time part for being makes our being-in-the-world through our ‘care’ of the past, present and future. That corresponded at times to how the authors were making the Trinity such that the Father is the past, Jesus the present and the Holy Spirit the future.
The best defense for God and Jesus not returning is the author’s approach for their persisting in the insistence of an essence that in its very being of unknowing makes for an omni perfect being who incarnated in human form to enable us to become perfected such that the second coming will happen as we’re guided by the Holy Spirit (past, present and future) through the Churches, liturgy and contemplation of the divine, and obviously that is not a very good defense. It takes a lot of mumbo-jumbos to have it make sense and the authors are more than happy to provide that. It takes a trickster god for it to work and explain away the non-event of the second coming not happening in the first century AD, and these authors guide the readers in that approach.
December 31, 2017
This book is a spectacular theological book written by a diverse group of thinkers which makes it even more spectacular. I love the deep research and unique thinking. There is a very noticeable change in tone and direction about half way through, but by the time the book finishes you’re glad it was all there. A few sections feel off topic for a bit, but if you keep reading, it connects and is well worth it. Probably one of my favorite books I read this year.
May 15, 2023
Good, but not great. I expected a lot more back up for the view they are putting forward. I also felt like the second half of the book deviated from what the book was supposed to actually be about. I think the view they suggest is extremely plausible, but they sure didn't do a great job defending it, especially against other views.
December 29, 2017
"Ambitiously, we have sought to weave historical criticism, typology, canonical consciousness, ecclesial Christocentric Trinitarianism, liturgy, ecumenism, and ethics into a coherent thesis. Perhaps a single volume is simply too small for this effort; perhaps, it will strike readers more as a cacophony than a symphony."
Hays, Christopher M (Kindle Locations 4848-4850).
I couldn't have said it better myself. However, I agree with the cacophony part.
The theme of the book is the historical critical problem of non-fulfillment of the second coming in the events of time and space (Mat 24:34, Mark 13:30). Jesus was wrong about "this generation". Other views outside the "academic juggernaut" of historical critical interpretation aren't considered. Then a reversal is done to include all the above named ideas into an interpretation. The church is to build the kingdom on earth (2 Pet 3:12).
Preference for spiritual Christianity over social Christianity is a docetic distortion of the Gospel according to the authors. "Creation exhibits its cruciform shape by our ecological care, by our building of a society that is Christ-like in its concern to feed the hungry, by welcoming the stranger and protecting the outcast, by seeking justice through a fair distribution of goods and services in society, through protecting the most vulnerable in the world, and, no doubt, by spreading the good news of the Gospel."
Partial fulfillments are the "stepping stones" through salvation history. God can and has changed his mind about the timing of the eschaton in response to the work and shortcomings of the Church. It's too bad God didn't know about these things ahead of time or he could have fixed them before He inspired their writing. This book reminds me of the Joan Osborne song.
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make His way home?
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews