Following its parent Judaism of the Second Temple, Christianity views time as linear. There is a line running from a beginning up to now: this is all our history; and the line continues running through an ever-passing moment we label ‘now’ into the future. There, in front of us, lies our hope – and, also, the source of our fears. This linear view of time is so embedded within Western culture (it is not only part of the Christian inheritance but is at the heart of our physics as when we refer to ‘The Big Bang’) that we are apt to think that it is the only way to view time. But other and earlier cultures have thought of time in many other ways. The most common alternative is to think of time as a great circle: all recurs in cosmic cycles – and this view pops up in such notions as reincarnation and the ‘migration of souls’ or in astrology where events on earth are presented as explicable by the cycles of the heavens. For those who look on time as linear, the present is the outcome of the past, and the future is something that is open: it is being built, partly, by our decisions now.
For Israel and for us, this view of time underpins almost everything we say about God, the creation and our response to God. History began because God brought all into existence at the creation, and God made himself known in history and entered a covenant with his people. Over time this relationship grew, and God promised a time when he would establish a new relationship not just with his chosen people but with all his children. We see this notion of the future promised time in this oracle from Malachi (1.11), which is used in the Didache (14.3), when a pure offering is what is presented to God:
For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is great among the nations, says the LORD of hosts.
(Mal. 1.11 [RSV])
God began history, showed his hand in history, and, for the disciples of Jesus, this involvement reached a new level in Jesus: ‘God with us’ (Matt. 1.23). This view of history’s promises being fulfilled in Jesus, the Anointed of the Father, was at the heart of the kerugma:
the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord…
(Rom. 1.1–4 [NRSV])
The early Christians held that the Logos was at the beginning of history (John 1.1–3), had become flesh and dwelt among us (John 1.14), and would come again to take his people to himself (John 14.3). They even had a simple shorthand to express this: Jesus the Christ was ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end’ (Rev. 21.6 [RSV]) ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’ (Rev. 1.8 [RSV]) – see Figure 7.1 opposite. The Christians were a people waiting in the aftermath of the Christ for him to return in glory ‘to judge the living and the dead’ (Acts 10.42; 2 Tim. 4.1). For all his followers, Jesus was ushering in the kingdom; the Day of the Lord had come; they were the new people of the final age of the world; and for the first generations it seemed that the time between Jesus’ ascension to the Father and his coming again in glory was going to be only a short time. Paul expressed this view that the time of the Christ’s return was at hand when he wrote:
I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
(1 Cor. 7.29 –31 [NRSV])
The Chi-rho (= ‘Christ’) set between an alpha and an omega: this was not simply a logo, but a succinct statement of the Christian view of history.
Moreover, there was not just one view of the future, however short, but several. Jesus preached that the kingdom was at hand, but it was the kingdom of the Father’s welcome. The new life of the disciples would open them into the welcome of the Father’s forgiveness. In this view of the future, the Father’s forgiveness is paramount, and we see it in the story of ‘the prodigal son’ (Luke 15.11–32) or Jesus’ statement that the woman who anointed him had been forgiven much and therefore could love much: ‘Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love’ (Luke 7.47 [NRSV]). However, there were also Christians who still looked to the future with the more widely based notion – preached, for example, by John the Baptist (e.g. Matt. 3.12) – that the future would be one of a terrible trial when God would take vengeance on sinners:
See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. (Mal. 4.1 [NRSV])
A still more frightening view of the future was that there was going to be a massive time of trial when the forces of light and the forces of darkness would join in battle; then, after a terrifying cosmic struggle, God would be triumphant and he would rescue those who were loyal to him. We refer to this strand of viewing the future as ‘apocalypticism’ and it was a significant force in Judaism in the time of Jesus. The most familiar examples of this movement are in the book of Daniel, in the passages in the Gospels such as Mark 13.5–37 (with parallels in Matt. 24.4–36 and Luke 21.8–36) which we label ‘the synoptic apocalypse’, and in the book that is known variously as ‘the Apocalypse of John’ or the ‘book of Revelation’. Apocalypticism is characterized by a select group being given a secret key to understand the history that is about to occur, when a great battle will take place (the first rumbling can already be heard on the horizon), and then will come the final victory of God (> Collins, 1984).
All these various positions on the future – would the return of Jesus be soon or in the distance, would the final victory be the banquet of forgiveness, a trial followed by retribution, or a mighty battle of the men and angels against Satan and darkness – can be found intermingled to a greater or lesser extent in the writings of the first generations of Christians. A more-or-less consistent view of the final times would only emerge in the second century; and even after that time the old patterns of apocalyptic thought would continue to pop up in times of fear, and they are still today a feature of some branches of Christianity (> Cohn, 1970). Only when we are aware of these various, and intermingled, positions about the future can we appreciate what the Didache says about how Christians should look forward.
Be prepared!
The Didache’s teaching about the future takes the form of a little homily. It still has the tone of instructions being given as commands, but the sense of regulations is absent. While reading through this homily you will notice the number of times that it seems to echo verses from across the writings in the canonical collection – now an echo of Paul, then a echo of a parable from one of the Gospels, then something from somewhere else – but always with a slightly different tone or nuance. We have to think of all the hopes and fears of those Christian communities as forming a common imagination: each text is a particular expression, each is distinct, and yet each helps us appreciate all the others.
Watch over your lives. You must not let your lamps go out, nor should you let your loins be ungirded, rather you should be ready because you do not know the hour at which our Lord is coming.
Gather together frequently and seek those things that are good for your souls. Otherwise what use will having faith over all the time of your life be to you, if at the end of time you are not made perfect.
(Did. 16.1–2)
The lamp – usually a simple affair made of clay burning olive oil – was already a well-used metaphor for faith by the time of Jesus: the Lord was a lamp for life that dispelled darkness (Ps. 18.28), and like a lamp for one’s way (Ps. 119.105), but it was also a symbol of someone who was ready, prepared and had planned for the future – and who could cope with the unexpected. Hence the use made of the image of lamps in the parable of the wise and foolish girls in Matthew 25. The wise were ready for the arrival of the bridegroom at an unexpected hour. But here in the Didache the symbol of the lamp is made even more explicit: the lamp is a symbol of anyone who is watching and waiting for the Lord.
We hear this opening sentence in different places in the preaching of the evangelists. Mark has:
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Watch therefore – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning – lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.
(Mark 13.31–37 [RSV])
And Matthew (24.42– 44) also has the command to watch for the Lord is coming at an unexpected hour. While Luke has a slightly different approach to this notion of being ready with one’s lamp burning when the Lord says:
Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning
. . .
You also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an unexpected hour.
(Luke 12.35 and 40 [RSV])
The Didache expresses common teaching and then adds that while the community waits it should assemble frequently because this is a way of keeping their attention fixed on what is important in following the Way or, to put it metaphorically, to keep their lamps burning brightly.
A time of tribulation
A very common theme in early Christianity was a fear about a time before ‘the last days’ when society will break down, loyalties will evaporate, good people will turn nasty, and corruption will enter the assembly of God. Here is how this fear of the future expresses itself in the Didache:
For in the last days there are going to be many false prophets and those who would corrupt you, then the sheep will turn into wolves, and love will turn into hate.
Then when lawlessness is increasing, people will hate and persecute and be treacherous with one another. Then, indeed, the Deceiver of this world will appear as if a son of God and he will do signs and wonders and the earth will be delivered into his hands and he will commit lawless acts such as have never been seen since the world began.
Then all people will be brought through the trial of fire.
Then many will fall away and will perish; but those who stand firm in their faith will be saved by the Cursed One himself.
> (Did. 16.3–5)
These few lines are almost a summary of early Christian apocalypticism. Compare this passage with the following statements from around the time of the Didache (you will notice that the same motifs crop up again and again but in different combinations).
That false prophets will arise and corrupt Christians: ‘False messiahs and false prophets will appear and produce signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be alert; I have already told you everything’ (Mark 13.22–23 [NRSV]); this statement by Mark is followed exactly by Matthew (24.24–25) and in yet another form in Matthew 24.4–5. The image of the sheep become wolves also appears, but in a different way in Matthew’s preaching: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves’ (7.15 [NRSV]). And the idea that all this will be in the last days is found in this statement: ‘First of all you must understand this, that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts’ (2 Pet. 3.3 [NRSV]).
That this final time will be one of lawlessness and treachery, when the Christians will be hated, appears in two forms, one in Mark and the other in Matthew:
Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; someone on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; someone in the field must not turn back to get a coat.
(Mark 13.12–16 [NRSV])
And in this form:
Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But anyone who endures to the end will be saved.
(Matt. 24.9 –13 [NRSV])
The imagery was swirling around the early churches combining and recombining to make different points. This variety should serve to remind us that we have to read all these texts, the Didache and the Gospels, primarily as a witness to the mindset of the early Christianity as it struggled to make sense of its beliefs in what it saw as a potentially hostile environment, while at the same time coping with the fact that its expectations were, day by day, changing because the Christ had not yet returned.
In this time of trial the Christians are not just opposing wicked human beings who hate them and want to persecute them, but are imagined confronting a supernatural enemy. This enemy has many names (most commonly the enemy is called ‘Satan’) but in the Didache it is simply referred to as ‘the Deceiver’. This name, and this activity of deceiving the Christians, is also found in a letter attributed to John the Evangelist:
Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist! Be on your guard, so that you do not lose what we have worked for, but may receive a full reward.
(2 John 7– 8 [NRSV])
And the Deceiver will be able to do many mighty deeds, a notion we find in an early letter of Paul:
The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
(2 Thess. 2.9 –10 [NRSV])
This time will be one of fiery trial:
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.
(1 Pet. 4.12–13 [NRSV])
But, as we have seen in statements just quoted (Mark 13.12–16; Matt. 10.21–22 and 24.9–13), they believed that those who endure will be saved. Indeed, if they stand firm in faith (see 1 Pet. 5.9), they will be saved by ‘the Cursed One himself’. This seems to our ears a very strange title for the Christ, but it was used among the first generation of Christians – but then, probably because the idea of describing the Lord as ‘the Cursed One’, no matter how understood, seemed too inappropriate it disappeared completely. Paul once refers to the Christ in this way: ‘Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”’ (Gal. 3.13 [NRSV]). The title is a way of referring to Jesus on the cross by reference to this statement in the law:
When someone is convicted of a crime punishable by death and is executed, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night upon the tree; you shall bury him that same day, for anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse.
(Deut. 21.22–23 [NRSV])
For those who referred to Jesus as ‘the Cursed One’ it was a reference to the shameful nature of his death, and shows us that they understood that death as Jesus removing the sins of his followers by taking their ‘curse’ upon himself. The implications of the use of the title, the Cursed One, in the Didache is that by undergoing the cross Jesus saved his people: his people are saved by what he himself did which caused him to be called ‘the Cursed One’.
Not only does this passage in the Didache show us the fears of the communities about the end of the world but also the overlaps show how the Didache reflects ‘the common knowledge’ about this belief among the first generations of disciples.
Christ in glory
While apocalyptic fear, as we have just seen, was an important feature of the life of early Christian communities, the fundamental ‘gospel’ – the good news announced – was that the Christ had triumphed. He had fought his dual with death, and risen triumphantly: his tomb was empty, and so the Christians could await that day when he would return in glory and they too would then leave their tombs; ‘for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment’ (John 5.28–29 [RSV]). So if the Didache ended with apocalyptic fear, it would seem out of step with the hope of those early communities – indeed, if the Didache were out of step with that hope, one would wonder how widely it was used in training new disciples within communities. However, the Didache ends with the ‘signs’ of the Christ’s final victory. The imagery of this victory belongs to the apocalyptic imagination (> Rowland, 1982), but there is an important difference. Instead of ringing out with the fearsome judgement of God annihilating the wicked, it presents a vision of the Lord coming in glory with all his people: the saints. Here is how the Didache ends:
And then, the signs of the truth will appear:
The first sign will be the heavens opening;
Then [second,] the sound of the trumpet;
And, third, the resurrection of the dead –
but not of everyone, but as it has been said: ‘the Lord will come and all his saints with him’.
Then the world will see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven. (Did. 16.6–8)
The whole passage, and especially the notion of signs appearing in heaven, is expressed in this passage of Matthew (> Verheyden, 2005):
Then the sign of the Son of man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see “the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven” with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
(Matt. 24.30–31 [NRSV])
Here the trumpet is like that used by an army to call soldiers to rally round, but by the time Matthew preached this image of the final trumpet was already well established, and in the Didache we see it used in a less developed way. For Paul, writing to the Thessalonians, the trumpet was a call to the dead to wake up for they would now arise to a heavenly life: ‘For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first’ (1 Thess. 4.16 [NRSV]). But later, writing to the Corinthians, the trumpet is far more like the signal that the end, and with that the final victory of Christ, has come:
Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
(1 Cor. 15.51–53 [NRSV])
This reference in 1 Corinthians expresses a notion of the trumpet as a sign that is perhaps closer to that in the Didache, and, as in the Didache, the trumpet is just before the resurrection.
Then, finally, the Lord will return on the clouds ‘with all his saints with him’. The text referred to in the Didache when it says ‘as it has been said’ is a prophecy from the prophet Zechariah:
And the valley of my mountains shall be stopped up, for the valley of the mountains shall touch the side of it; and you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the LORD your God will come, and all the holy ones with him.
(14.5 [RSV])
This was one of those verses of the Scriptures that were in frequent use among the first Christians to help them explain why they were placing their hope in Jesus. We see Paul allude to that same prophecy in this statement:
may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all men, as we do to you, so that he may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
(1 Thess. 3.12–13 [RSV])
In just three sentences the Didache sums up Christian hope and expresses the common view of the Christians of that time about where this will all end. The communities of the saints will be gathered, finally, with their Lord, triumphant over all.
It has been suggested that the Didache may once have had a longer ending (> Aldridge, 1999), but there is a certain crispness to the ending as we have it that makes the notion of a longer ending unnecessary. So rather than speculate about what it ‘might have had’ it is better, all in all, to take the text just as we have it.
Why this apocalypticism?
While today there is a strong strand of apocalypticism among Christians, usually looking back to the same texts in the New Testament with which the Didache overlaps, this is not the mainstream, and most Christians see those who preach ‘the end is nigh’ and can explain current affairs in terms of the beginning of ‘the tribulation’ as eccentric. So how do we account for it being so widely found in early Christian communities? No complete explanation is possible, but it is worth bearing these factors in mind.
First, apocalypticism in Judaism seems to have arisen out of the role that prophecy played within the religion of the time of the Second Temple. These were promises by God, and so they should come to fulfilment. This interest in the final fulfilment, when God would bring his justice into the world, was widespread across many forms of Judaism and, not surprisingly, it played an important part within those movements which saw themselves as being the new Judaism, distinct from the lukewarm ‘ordinary’ Judaism around them. So not only was it in the religious air all Jews in Palestine were breathing, but it would have been attractive to the very people who would have been willing to listen to John the Baptist or Jesus.
Second, the followers of Jesus took as a starting point of their faith that prophecy had just been fulfilled, that God had intervened in history showing his hand, in Jesus. So if God had just intervened, then all that was expected about the end times might now be in train. Apocalypticism is a way of understanding current events within a great historical plan. Now they believed that Jesus had explained history to them, and so all that was expected would soon come about. Jesus had risen and departed from them, but had promised he would return and take them to where he was going: so maybe it would all happen in a matter of years or decades (> Yarbro Collins, 1984). Certainly Paul, in the early years of his preaching, thought that the Return of the Christ would not be too far in the future. Only with the passing of time would this Return become something that had to be understood in terms apart from the historical order of the creation.
Third, apocalyptic ways of looking at human affairs usually appear in societies that are under great stress. They sense that they are in a time of crisis, they are excluded from the power structures of the society, and often have a sense of being the righteous few suffering persecution from the sinful many. Such people seem to have been attracted to Christianity, and certainly the Didache shows us a people who believe they do not want to be linked with the proud, the arrogant or the mighty. They perceive themselves to be the poor, the oppressed, the righteous few, and to be a people who suffer at the hands of the wicked. It shows us communities with many of the classic signs of being stressed and alienated, and who still want to explain how it happens that God lets good people suffer.
This apocalyptic section points out that when Christians look back to their early roots, they cannot simply engage in a simple act of repetition nor either adopt or reject positions en bloc. Just as the Didache emerged out of a community’s reflection on its faith and its situation, so the work of theology must continue in the community. Theology is part of a community’s very life, rather than some rarefied activity of religious boffins or the handed-down ‘answers’ of religious leaders.
The end of the road
One of the little stylistic features of many ancient texts is that if they are dealing with a process, a sequence of events leading from a to b to c…, then that process is reflected in the very sequence of what we find in the text. The beginning is at the beginning and the end is at the end! Despite its brevity, the pattern can be seen in the Didache. It opens with a choice facing every individual: the choice of life as a disciple of the Lord or death; it ends with all the disciples being gathered into eternal life by the Lord.
The pattern within the text is not rigid – oral texts never have that neat logic of texts produced for private reading and for study as a book – but it is clearly there, with each step marked by words indicating that it is now time to move on to the next topic (> Varner, 2008, p. 310). Having now gone through the text we can summarize it by looking at the step-by-step plan. The Didache opens with an encounter with an individual outside the Church. That person has been brought to that point by the preparation of the Spirit and an encounter with the Christians and their message. So the first step is to decide to set out on the Way, to hear its demands and learn what the Way demands from those who follow it and look to its promise of Life (> ch. 2 above). The next step is to join the community of the Christ through baptism which marks the boundary of the new people (> ch. 3 above). Then having entered the community, one had to learn its basic ways and times, its rules for regular fasting and prayer (> ch. 4 above); and then how to appreciate, indeed offer, the blessing, as the central meal which models discipleship and maintains the community in its most visible expression (> ch. 5 above). Then, knowing and living within that community as it, as a people, follows the Way, there was need for knowledge about how the community related to other Christians and needs for leaders (> ch. 6). Finally, the community looked to its future, its fears for the time of fiery trial it would have to face, and on to the final destination of the Way and the gathering of the community by the Lord: ‘Then the world will see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven’ (Did. 16.8).