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PAROUSIA

(Gk. parousía)

A Greek noun, used of persons or things, meaning “arrival” or active “presence” (from the verb páreimi, “to be present”). Before the Christian era, broad Hellenistic use of parousía for the divine presence at meals gave the word a sacral ring. Gradually the noun gained technical force, denoting the local visit of a ruler or other high personage, healing manifestations by the gods, or the divine presence implicit in philosophical insight. In a world otherwise dominated by a view of events as recurring in eternal cycles, however, it was interaction with Jewish belief that lent this term a new sense of finality.

Pre-Christian Jewish tradition uses the image of God’s “coming” to mark specific moments God has chosen to judge humanity, or events which reveal God’s powerful presence and purpose. Such tradition sees God’s presence in concrete terms like “the day,” “the time,” or “the year” of the Lord, or through graphic images such as the ark of the covenant, the meeting tent, the holy place, the cloud, the Spirit, the Hand, or the Word of God. The LXX, reflecting the Hellenistic origin of parousía, uses it only in works first written in Greek, only in its profane sense, and clearly prefers the verb.

Israel’s growing sense of God’s regal stature, however, demanded worldwide submission to God’s rule, and the notion of direct, definitive divine appearances gave way to those agents deemed divinely chosen to wield such authority in the world. The later decline of Jewish kingship provoked deep disputes over the authority of the priestly cultus to express God’s will. In this vacuum, prophetic, otherworldly, elliptical, apocalyptic visions of God’s final self-manifestation flourished. By the 1st century c.e., beyond Christian circles Jewish use of parousía remained limited. The first-century b.c.e. Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo never uses it. Even after Rome destroyed the Jerusalem temple, priesthood, and cultus with impunity in 70 c.e., the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus still employs parousía for God’s potent, saving presence on behalf of Israel. But the overt, apocalyptic, political overtones of such terminology have faded. In subsequent rabbinic usage the vivid, complex vision associated with God’s promised parousia loses most of its earlier apocalyptic force.

Parousia enters early Christian usage from several directions. But the main vector is Paul, who joins older, traditional Jewish terminology with Hellenistic notions about the visit of a ruling personage (e.g., 1 Cor. 15:23; 1 Thess. 2:19). The resulting blend envisions an imminent, future “coming” of Jesus with cataclysmic, global finality. Paul’s fusion of judicial with covenantal imagery, combined with a temporal ambiguity in his views about the end of the world, produces conflicts that continue to challenge his modern interpreters. Although the Synoptic tradition clearly presumes Jesus’ coming global assertion of God’s authority over this world, the noun parousía is entirely missing from Mark, from Q, and from Luke and Acts. The verb páreimi does appear, but mainly in its common, secular sense. Mark and Q prefer standard Jewish expressions such as “the day of the Lord” for Jesus’ imminent return in power as God’s final messianic judge. By comparison, Matthew inserts parousía into his source material, giving his own special connotation to this term by portraying the Risen Jesus as already present, but hidden, within his Church until the end of time (Matt. 24:27, 37, 39). In the post-Pauline Pastoral Letters parousía yields to the still more abstract epipháneia, usage already presaged in 2 Thess. 2:8 (cf. Acts 2:20). This complements 2nd-century Christian trends away from historical, messianic thinking about Jesus in favor of more logocentric, timeless, universalized Christology. Modern biblical scholarship has seen much lively debate over the historical impact of Jesus’ delayed parousia in changing Christianity from a fluid, charismatic movement to a more stable, institutionalized, worldly entity.

Bibliography. A. Oepke, “parousia, pareimi,” TDNT 5:858-71.

F. Connolly-Weinert

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

PAROUSIA

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)