Page History

SCANNED PDF

On the "in principle/in fact" distinction, see especially the following:

"In . . . conceiving history after Christ as an interim between the disclosure of its true meaning and the fulfillment of that meaning, between the revelation of divine sovereignty and the full establishment of that sovereignty, a continued element of inner contradiction in history is accepted as its perennial characteristic. Sin is overcome in principle but not in fact. Love must continue to be suffering love rather than triumphant love. This distinction becomes a basic category of interpreting history in all profound versions of the Christian faith, and has only recently been eliminated in modern sentimentalized versions of that faith.

"One seemingly serious, but actually superficial, change in Jesus' own interpretation must be made. He expected the historic interim between the first and second establishment of the Kingdom to be short. In this error he was followed both by St. Paul and [by] the early church, with the consequent false and disappointed hope of the parousia in the lifetime of the early disciples. The error was due to an almost inevitable illusion of thought which deals with the problem of the relation of time and eternity. The eschata which represent the fulfillment and the end of time in eternity are conceived literally and thereby made a point in time. The sense that the final fulfillment impinges on the present moment, the feeling of urgency in regard to anticipating this fulfillment, expresses itself in chronological terms and thereby becomes transmuted into a 'proximate futurism,' into the feeling that the fulfillment of history is chronologically imminent.

...

"This single adjustment in the New Testament view is defined as superficial rather than serious to distinguish the idea of 'interim' as here used from that of Albert Schweitzer. According to his conception the whole ethic and religion of Jesus is based upon his illusion of his proximate return. The absolute character of this ethic is due, in the opinion of Schweitzer, to the belief that the 'time is short.' The real fact is that the absolute character of the ethic of Jesus confirms conforms to the actual constitution of man and history, that is, to the transcendent freedom of man over the contingencies of nature and the necessities of time, so that only a final harmony of life with life in love can be the ultimate norm of his existence. Yet man's actual history is subject to contingency and necessity and is corrupted by his sinful efforts to escape and to deny his dependence and his involvement in finiteness. The idea that the time is short expresses Christianity's understanding that these limitations and corruptions of history are not finally normative for man.

...