B.F. Westcott on the Many Comings of Christ

Brookes Foss Westcott was a giant in terms of bible history and interpretation. He had a personal, controversial life, too. Just google it. But, his view on the “coming of the Lord” sounds a lot like Todd Dennis, John Noe and “realized preterism” or “exegetical eschatology”. Whatever one wants to call it. Here it is. And here is what I want to happen from the readers: where is this view at fault?

From The Historic Faith: Short Lectures on the Apostles Creed (1883)

I say nothing on the general character of such rash conclusions. I readily admit that there may have been self-willed believers in the first age, as there are in all ages, who boldly determined how Christ should return and how He should establish His Sovereignty. So it was before Christ’s first Coming. Such men were indeed disappointed; and, as we see from the Epistle to the Hebrews, they found it hard to submit their fancies to God’s will. But their errors, their mistaken and defeated hopes, alter nothing in the fulfilment of the divine counsel. The apostles looked for Christ, and Christ came in the life-time of St John. He founded His immovable kingdom. He gathered before Him the nations of the earth, old and new, and passed sentence upon them. He judged, in that shaking of earth and heaven, most truly and most decisively the living and the dead. He established fresh foundations for society and a fresh standard of worth. The fall of Jerusalem was for the religious history of the world an end as complete as death. The establishment of. a spiritual Church was a beginning as glorious as the Resurrection.

The apostles, I repeat, looked for Christ’s coming in their own generation, and Christ came. The form of His Coming, His Coming to judgment, then is a lesson for all time. As we study it we can learn part at least of the meaning of our present faith, that He shall come again. We see in that Coming the type and the promise of other Comings through the long ages, till the earthly life of humanity is closed. We see in it the signs of a divine Presence which is laid open in the great crises of social movement. We see in it the assurance that the world is not left unvisited by Him Who died for it; and we take courage at the sight.

For it is at once obvious that the Coming of Christ is not one but manifold. “I will not leave you,” John 11:18, “desolate—orphans—He said Himself, “I will come to you.”" The conviction that this is so gives a new significance to the past and to the future. We look back, and we may without presumption recognise Comings of Christ in earlier centuries of Christendom. We look forward, and with patient confidence we rest in the knowledge that in due time He will shew His purpose and His power to those who love Him.

At the foundation of the Byzantine Empire in the fourth century, at the conversion of the Northern nations in the eighth century, at the birth of Modern Europe in the thirteenth century, at the re-birth of the old civilisation in the sixteenth century, Christ came as King and Judge.

He came, and we can see that He came, at the time when Athanasius, the champion of the East, vindicated the supreme independence of the Faith, and Augustine, the champion of the West, affirmed the world-wide embrace of the Church.

He came, and we can see that He came, at the time when the Irish Saint Columban offered to the barbarian warriors the virtues of an unseen power stronger than the arm of flesh, and our own English Boniface sealed by a fearless death a life of victorious sacrifice.

He came, and we can see that He came, at the time when the Italian Francis of Assisi claimed once more for the poor their place in the Church beside emperors and popes and nobles, and taught the love of God and the love of man in the universal language of his age.

He came, and we can see that He came, at the time when men as far apart as Loyola and Philip Neri, Luther and Calvin, Colet and Cranmer, shewed in many parts and with many failures that Christ claims and satisfies the individual power of every man. On each of these occasions

new thoughts, new principles, new estimates of things, entered into the world, and remain still to witness to their divine origin. The successive spiritual revolutions were not at once recognised or understood. Christ moved among men and they did not know Him. But meanwhile believers A present Coming were confessing their faith, as we do, that He vn. should come again to judge the quick and the dead; and we now rejoice to acknowledge that their faith was not in vain though it was confirmed in ways which had not been foreseen.

The wider range of our vision enables us now to recognise these manifold Comings of Christ already accomplished, and we may be most thankful for such teaching of experience, but we do not rest in them. We take the great thought that this world in which we work, with all its sorrows and sins, with all its baffled hopes and unworthy ambitions, is the scene of a divine government. We take the thought, and therefore we believe that Christ has not yet revealed the fulness of His power or uttered the last voice of His judgment. We still say, as we look often with sad hearts Or what man has made of man, upon the terrible disproportion between human capacities and human achievements, that He who lived for us and died for us and ascended for us shall come again to judge the quick and the dead; and the confession, if we enter into its meaning, is sufficient to bring back trust.

Perhaps we need the encouragement more than we know. For there are abundant signs of change about us now. New truths are spreading widely as to the methods of God’s working, as to our connexions one with another and with the past and with the future. Through these, as I believe, Christ is coming to us, coming to judge us, and His Coming must bring with it trials and (as we think) losses. Every revelation of Christ is through fire, the fire which refines by consuming all that is perishable. It may then be that we, to our bitter loss, shall fail like those of earlier times to read our lesson as it is given. It may be, the Spirit helping us, that we shall in part interpret it and use it for our inspiration and guidance. It may be at least that we shall gain a living assurance that divine powers are working about us, and a divine purpose going forward to its end, and a divine judgment passing into infallible execution: a living assurance that the article of our Creed which we are considering is not for the past only or for the future only, but for the present too: a living assurance that we may gain strength in the performance of our common duties, in the study of the world about us, from knowing that Christ shall come again, is coming again, to judge the quick and the dead. This aspect of Christ’s Coming, the trustful and reverent recognition of His manifestations in history and in society, is of the highest moment to us now. I have dwelt upon it because it is often overlooked. But it does not include the the final Coming -the whole view of the truth of our Creed. The reality and the meaning of these Comings are clear to faith, but like the Presence of Christ Himself they are hidden from the world. None but believers saw the Risen Christ during the forty days: none but believers see Christ in the great changes of human affairs. But beyond all these preparatory Comings there is a day when ‘ every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him.’ In that Coming, that Manifestation, that Presence, the first Coming on earth and the later Comings in history shall be shewn in their full import. Then all things, our actions and ourselves, shall be seen as they are, seen by ourselves and seen by others. Then the whole course of life, the life of creation, of humanity, of men, will be laid open, and that vision will be a Judgment beyond controversy and beyond appeal.

It is a Judgment universal and personal. In its universal aspect it is the supreme declaration of the truth that there is an end, a goal for creation, a purpose to be fulfilled, a will to be accomplished. We, who see but small fragments of social movement which distract and engross us, are apt to regard history as an aimless succession of changes. Such would be the judgment which a being of narrower faculties might form from observing a few days or hours of our individual Divine Judgment.

But from time to time revolutions, which are seen to be the intelligible results of the past, reveal the reality of a law of progress in the ‘ life of humanity. By the revelation of the final Judgment we are enabled to see that for mankind as for men there is an appointed close to earthly work.

The Judgment is personal also. And in this connexion we must master the thought which has been expressed before that the judgment of Christ, the Son of man, is the revelation of things as they are. His judgment does not change the judged: it simply shews them. It is not, as far as we can conceive, a conclusion drawn from the balancing of conflicting elements or a verdict upon a general issue. The judgment of God is the perfect manifestation of truth. The punishment of God is the necessary action of the awakened conscience. The judgment is pronounced by the sinner himself and he inflicts inexorably his own sentence. In our present state a thousand veils hide from us the motives, the thoughts, the conditions which give their real character to men and the conduct of men. We judge of others by what we see in them: and, what is more perilous still, we are tempted to judge of ourselves by what others can see in us. But in the perfect light of Christ’s Presence everything will be made clear in its essential nature, the opportunity which we threw away, and knew that we threw away, with its uncalculated potency of blessing, the temptation which we courted in the waywardness of selfish strength, the stream of consequence which has flowed from our example, the harvest which others have gathered from our sowing.

We know our own hearts imperfectly; but is there one of us whom the thought of this revelation does not fill with contrition ?

Our imaginations are dull; but is there one of us who can imagine keener suffering than to see the glory for which we were made and feel that we have sacrificed our birthright ?

How this last Coming of Christ to judgment shall be accomplished, which reveals the world to itself, we know not and it is idle to speculate. But for each one of us death is its symbol. For each one of us that solemn coming, which seals our earthly work, is in a most real sense the vision of God, instantaneous and age-long, the vision in His light of ourselves.

So it is then, to sum up what has been said, that we confess our belief that Christ shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead: we believe that He will come socially in the secret spiritual forces which mould kingdoms and churches and at last with open majesty; we believe that He will come personally in those inner flashes which shew us for a moment the very truth of things, and at last in that supreme hour when He will take account of our finished service. And when we reflect upon the confession we know that it answers to the noblest ideal of life. It declares that there is a purpose in the course of history and in the possibilities of our little parts: that we may look in both for intelligible tokens of the divine will: that it is our duty to lift our eyes to the end when the full work of the Saviour shall be indicated on the scene of His sufferings: that even now we are charged and enabled to find an eternal element underlying the commonest occupations, something which we . shall once see as it appears to Him Whose we are and Whom we serve.

Our eyes are dim and our hearts are cold. We fancy that that is far off which is about our feet. We treat as a thought almost indifferent that which is a revelation of the issues of life. This article of our Creed helps us to see things more justly and to cherish greater hopes. An old Gentile writer said, feeling after the truth, ‘All things are full of gods’: we know that ‘ all things are full of God, ‘ and that His Presence shall hereafter be made clear, clear in the world at large,clear in our own souls, clear with the manifestation of perfect righteousness and with the consequence of inevitable retribution:

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He shall reward every man according to his doing.

Verily I say unto you—the words of the Lord which follow have, I believe, a most certain application to ourselves—There be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom.

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