„Vremea este aproape”: re-evaluarea limbajului nou-testamentar cu referire la apropierea parusiei

"The Time Is Near": Re-evaluating New Testament Language with Reference to the Nearness of the Parousia

Abstract

The NT uses plenty of terms or expressions that appear to be expressing the nearness of Christ’s second coming. Beyond the surface reading, however, we find scholars interpreting the event that is to take place soon in various ways. They refer to the personal second coming of Christ, to Jesus’ non-personal coming either in judgment or spiritually, or to an entirely different event associated with Christ’s presence. It is the purpose of the present study to explore virtually all occurrences of nearness in the NT epistles in order to evaluate how many of these affirm what they seem to affirm. The methodology draws on modern linguistics, as it tackles the semantics, syntactic, verbal aspect, and discourse features of all the key terms involved. The claim of the article is that if not all, then most of the texts tackled represent either implicit or explicit or statements affirming the soon return of Christ. On the one hand, there seems to be no eschatological delay taught in the NT. On the other hand, the nearness of the eschaton has a flexible dimension, too, as the article implies.