Tucker Ferda’s “process eschatology” and the coming of the Son of Man

In an excellent interview on the Protestant Libertarian Podcast about his book Jesus and His Promised Second Coming: Jewish Eschatology and Christian Origins (2024), Tucker Ferda uses the expression “process eschatology” to register the fact that in Jewish apocalyptic writings the “end” is generally conceived not as a single event but as a series of events. More often in the book we have the phrase “eschatological process.” That seems to me quite an interesting idea to explore.

I have been reading the book on Perlego, so I don’t have page numbers. My quick overview of Ferda’s thesis is based on his “Concluding Thoughts on Part 4 and the Study.” The “process eschatology” argument is developed in the preceding chapter on “Two Scenarios and Das Leben Jesu Revisited.” The analysis of Mark’s eschatology comes from chapter nine, “Jesus and the Future in Mark.” I’ll mention some relevant sections here and there.

A quick overview to begin with

Ferda challenges the scholarly consensus that the doctrine of the second coming does not go back to Jesus himself but was an invention of the early church. Broadly, he attributes the emergence of this view to the determination of the Enlightenment church to dissociate Jesus from ‘popular-level eschatology (especially apocalyptic and millenarian movements), and the construct of “Jewish messianism.”’

He argues that there is little evidence that prophetic or charismatic inspiration in the early church functioned generatively. The dependence of the tradition on Daniel’s vision of “one like a son of man” is “best explained on the grounds that Jesus himself had already used Dan 7 eschatologically and self-referentially, and that he had already spoken of the future with the help of traditions about God’s day.” Moreover, there is plenty of evidence from other second temple Jewish texts for connecting a future “day of the Lord” with the work of an “eschatological redeemer or messianic figure” (“Help from Heaven”).

So the expectation of a second coming should be attributed to Jesus the Jewish apocalypticist, not to the Spirit-led imagination of his followers.

But what motivated Jesus to introduce the idea that he would come again? It was the realisation that he would probably die before the advent of the great day of the Lord of Jewish prophetic-apocalyptic belief.

In Ferda’s view, however, the historical Jesus did not expect to be raised from the dead. That’s quite a clever twist. It has often been noted that in the Synoptic Gospels predictions of the individual resurrection of Jesus are not directly connected with the coming of the Son of Man sayings.

We may suppose, therefore, that Jesus thought only that he would die and would come again at the end of the age, at the time of a general resurrection of the dead and final judgment—either by way of resurrection or from heaven. Into this rather conventional apocalyptic scenario his followers inserted the premature resurrection of Jesus on the third day after his death.

What early Christians did, then, in believing that Jesus had been raised from the dead individually, is they pulled back into the present the beginning (Paul would say firstfruits) of that general resurrection, thereby creating a more realized eschatological situation. They also put their belief in Jesus’s individual resurrection of the dead on his lips in the form of explicit prediction.

Finally, Jesus shared Jewish apocalyptic convictions about an “eschatological process,” consisting in a period of tribulation—the “so-called messianic woes”—before the “soon-to-come consummation.” So the prospect of his own suffering and death “would not require a radical revision of his eschatological expectations.”

What does Ferda mean by “process eschatology”?

The argument is that we find in the Gospels and in Jewish apocalyptic writings “the common expectation that the eschatological fulfillment of God’s purposes in history would involve some kind of process, with various events expected to transpire with varied transformative effects.”

• In Isaiah we have a return through the wilderness, the restoration of Zion, and finally a “new heaven and new earth.”
• The books of Baruch, Tobit, and Jubilees “imagine God’s longed-for future to involve a sequence of events.”
• Apocalyptic writings such as Daniel, Revelation, 4 Ezra, and Testament of Moses envisage periods of time, including suffering, which will culminate in vindication and kingdom. The periodisation of history is also found in Qumran texts, the Apocalypse of Weeks in 1 Enoch, and the Apocalypse of Clouds in 2 Baruch. “These passages invest the present with eschatological significance by situating the readers somewhere within the timeline.”
• According to 4Q246 a “trampling” by the nations precedes the “establishment of God’s peace and kingdom.”
• The “raising up” of David’s seed in Psalms of Solomon 17 will entail the purging of Jerusalem, the gathering of the tribes, and other events.
• Numerous texts have the idea of a “hidden messiah” who will be revealed in the course of the eschatological process.

On the strength of this evidence, Ferda concludes that when Jesus spoke of the coming of the kingdom, he had in mind “the inauguration of some kind of eschatological process of fulfillment, albeit with a short fuse, and he saw at the end of that process his own unveiling as Dan 7’s son of man.”

Process eschatology in the Gospels

When we look at the Gospels, however, the “process” seems little more than beginning and end—albeit a rather complicated end.

The inauguration of the kingdom is announced in various ways and signalled by the healings and exorcisms. The parables of growth “make the most sense within the framework of eschatological progress toward consummation.”

The consummation will be preceded by a period of tribulation. Then we have the dramatic unveiling of the messiah “along the lines of the prediction of Dan 7’s vision of the son of man coming before the Ancient One,” the “resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the life thereafter.”

We can fill this out somewhat by looking at the earlier discussion of Mark’s Gospel in chapter nine. Ferda says that the “story is self-consciously aware of its placement in an in-between time after the ministry of Christ and before… his imminent return in glory.”

The Gospel begins with an “assuredly eschatological proclamation about a transition underway in salvation history from one time or age to another.” It also anticipates events that would occur between the death of Jesus and the time of Mark’s first readers: the absence of the bridegroom, the preaching of the gospel to all nations, war and persecution, and the appearance of false messiahs.

Other events, however, are expected to take place after the first reading of the Gospel.

1. “Satan and his minions” (so that’s what they’re doing there!) will be defeated in keeping with hopes expressed widely in second temple literature—for example: “Then his kingdom will appear throughout his whole creation. Then the devil will have an end” (T. Mos. 10:1). This cannot be reduced to some “historical happening” in the first century CE,” according to Ferda (“By the Mouth of Demons”).

2. There is “a good deal of material in Mark that seems to expect a future in which there is a radically transformed state of life.” Some people will be thrown into gehenna, others will enter life or the kingdom or the age to come, which will not be characterised by the conditions of normal family. At the transition between the ages, some will not be forgiven, the first will be last and the last first, and scribes who “devour widows’ houses” will suffer a greater condemnation. “What could this refer to,” Ferda asks, “but the final judgment?”

3. The Son of Man will come from heaven to establish the kingdom of God within the lifetime of at least some of his disciples. The temporal emphasis may be “theologically inconvenient, but it sits squarely within the larger eschatological outlook of Mark’s Gospel” (“After Peter’s Confession”).

Ferda notes—correctly, in my view—that the transfiguration is not itself the fulfilment of the prediction that some of the disciples would live to see the second coming (it is certainly not a revelation of his divinity); rather it is a prefiguration of the glory of the Son of Man to be revealed at the parousia (Mk. 8:38-9:8).

He does not think, however, that the description of the coming of the Son of Man in clouds in Mark 13:24-27 has anything to do with the destruction of the temple. The discourse of Mark 13 predicts two different things: yes, the tumultuous prelude to the destruction of the temple, but also “another and even more climactic event to follow…: the coming of the son of man from heaven.”

Finally, Jesus’ response to the high priest about seeing “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” is taken to be a reference to the final judgment.

All roads lead to Jerusalem, then Rome

There are two aspects of Ferda’s study that I plan to come back to: the argument about the relation of the coming of the Son of Man to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, and the nature of the “process” in Jewish eschatology. I think that the evidence, in both cases, points precisely to significant historical developments before any final resolution.

Here I will make a few general points about the connection between the apocalyptic language and historical events.

1. The defeat of Satan and his minions

There is perhaps a binding (Mk. 3:27) but no final defeat of Satan in the Gospels because Jesus’ focus is on the catastrophe facing his own people, not on any subsequent judgment against the enemy of his people. He is concerned that the demons which he has exorcised will come back with a vengeance as the nation descends into chaos in the period before the war (Matt. 12:45).

The more significant suppression of Satan comes into the field of apocalyptic vision at a later stage. John sees Satan confined to the abyss directly following the overthrow of pagan Rome and the defeat of the misguided nations by the Word of God (Rev. 20:1-3). Satan, like Belial in the Qumran literature, is the disruptive and destructive force behind the unclean gentile oppressor.

The appearance of God’s kingdom and the end of Satan in Testament of Moses 10:1 is likewise connected with the defeat of “a king of the kings of the earth who, having supreme authority, will crucify those who confess their circumcision” (8:1; 10:7). Much the same resolution to the historical crisis is envisaged as in Daniel 12:

And God will raise you to the heights. Yea, he will fix you firmly in the heaven of the stars, in the place of their habitations. (T. Mos. 10:9)

And on that day the whole people will be exalted…. And many of those who sleep in the flat of the earth will arise…. And those who are intelligent will light up like the luminaries of heaven, and those who strengthen my words will be as the stars of heaven forever and ever. (Dan. 12:1-3 LXX)

2. The life of the age to come

It is very easy, I think, to over-interpret the “life of the age to come” language in the Gospels. It’s important that we hold our nerve.

Jesus warns that the grasping scribes will receive a “more abundant” (perissoteron) condemnation, denounces the rich, who throw into the offering box in the temple “out of their abundance (perisseuontos),” and then directly announces the coming destruction of temple. These details cannot be torn from each other, they are part of the same narrative fabric. The destruction of the temple will be the “final judgment” on a rapacious and corrupt political-religious elite.

Whereas it will be very hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, the displaced and impoverished disciples will receive the life of the age that will come after God intervenes as king to judge this wicked and adulterous generation. So, “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mk. 10:23-31).

The judgment of gehenna is precisely the suffering that will attend the siege of Jerusalem.

There will be a resurrection of some of the dead at this time of national regeneration, who will shine like the stars of heaven but will not marry (Dan. 12:2-3; Mk. 12:25); but this is not a final resurrection of all the dead. It corresponds to John’s “first resurrection” of the martyrs, which precedes the second resurrection of all the dead by a symbolic “thousand years” (Rev. 20:4-6).

3. The coming of the Son of Man

Ferda has stressed the connection between the coming of the Son of Man and the coming of the kingdom of God:

For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.” (Mk. 8:38-9:1)

The coming of the kingdom of God is, in the first place—both chronologically and thematically—the act of divine judgment that will punish an “adulterous and sinful generation” of Judeans, deliver the righteous, and transform the nation so that Israel becomes a signal of YHWH’s saving power among the nations.

The connection with the coming of the Son of Man attributes some manner of agency to Jesus in the outworking of an event that is conceived entirely in historical terms.

Ferda notes the relevance of Zechariah 14:5 LXX for understanding Jesus’ saying about the Son of Man coming in the glory of the Father with the holy angels: “And the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with him.”

But look at the context!

Days of the Lord are coming the YHWH will gather the nations against Jerusalem; the city will be taken, and the people will go into captivity. Then the Lord will come with the “holy ones” and fight against the nations, cutting off the peoples who waged war against Jerusalem. Living water will flow from Jerusalem, YHWH will become king over all the land/earth, and Jerusalem will have security and peace (Zech. 14:1-11).

There is more to the story, not less, than we find in Mark, but there is no end of history here. In fact, it seems that Jesus has in view not much more than the vindication of his persecuted followers in the eyes of the Jewish establishment and their deliverance from suffering.

Final point: there is no coming of the Son of Man when we do get to what appears to be a final resurrection of all the dead for judgment in Revelation 20:11-15. The Word of God has appeared in the wake of the overthrow of Babylon the great, which is Rome, to subdue the nations of the empire and rule them with a rod of iron (19:11-16). That becomes the overriding eschatological vision of the later apostolic community: the triumph of the testimony of the martyrs over the monstrous empire and the nations which did its bidding.

Between Jesus and the apostles we shift from a parousia aligned with a judgment against Jerusalem to a parousia aligned with the triumph of the witnessing churches over the ancient pagan world dominated by Rome. What comes next is the rule of the messiah over a world formerly governed by Rome—otherwise known as Christendom.

There’s more to come, but not that much more

So I disagree with Ferda that Mark’s Gospel envisages a transcendent future that cannot be related to the immediate historical outlook of Jesus and the early church.

Everything centres on the coming war against Rome as the moment of eschatological judgment, which will be just the sort of “great and terrible day of the Lord” described in the scriptures. Jesus sees little beyond that other than the regrouping of his elect, the rewarding of his faithful servants.

Nothing in the Gospel points to this being anything other than an event within the normal flow of history, except that some of the dead will be raised and won’t get married.