Parousia

PAROUSIA. - Greek term (παρουσία) which in the New Testament designates (16 times out of 24) the second coming of Jesus for the concluding phase of the messianic Kingdom.

It means properly "presence" (from παρὼν "present") and by obvious extension the "presenting oneself," the "coming"; this classical usage occurs 3 times in the Septuagint (II Macc. 8:12; 15:21; Jud. 10:18) and 6 times in St. Paul

(I Cor. 10:10; etc.). The "coming with power and glory" (Mt. 24:30) of Jesus is called p. by St. Paul 7 times (I Cor. 15:23 and 6 times in I-II Thess., besides the p. of the Antichrist in II Thess. 2:9), by Jas. 5:7, 8, by II Pt. 1:16; 3:4, 12, by I Jn. 2:28, and by Mt. 24:3, 27, 37, 39. Equivalent to it are the terms: "day [of the Lord or Christ]" (17 times in St. Paul: Acts 2:20; I Pt. 3:10, 12; Apoc. 16:14), "manifestation" (ἐπιφάνεια: 5 times in the pastoral epistles), "revelation" (ἀποκάλυψις: I Cor. 1:7; II Thess. 1:7; I Pt. 1:7, 13; 4:13). It is also called "visitation" (ἐπισκοπή: Lk. 19:44; cf. 1:68, 78; 7:16; I Pt. 2:12 [cf. 5:6]) according to the prophetic expression (pēquddāh: Is. 10:3; Hos. 9:7; Num. 16:29 is "the death that is the lot of all").

In the Hellenistic world p. had become a technical term for designating the solemn "coming" or "visitation" of a king or of the emperor (in documents from the 3rd century B.C. to the 2nd century A.D.), celebrated with memorable festivals, sometimes with the beginning of the reckoning of a new era. The inscription of Olbia (3rd century B.C.) narrates the p. of King Saitharphanes; a papyrus from Tebtunis (ca. 113 B.C.) speaks of the feverish preparations for the p. of Ptolemy II Soter; an inscription from Tegea is dated to the 69th year of the first p. of the god Hadrian in Greece; Corinth and Patras, in memory of the p. of Nero, struck coins inscribed "Adventus (=p.) Augusti"; Germanicus Caesar notifies the Alexandrians (A.D. 19) that he does not want, at his appearing (ἐμφανίζεσθαι) among them, acclamations (cf. Acts 12:22) as a god (ἐσθένειες ἐσφανήσεις) which belong only to the emperor "true savior and benefactor of the entire human race." Analogous are the texts relating to the salvific "manifestation" of the emperor's birth: inscription of Priene (9 B.C.), which extols the glad tidings (εὐαγγέλια) of the peace connected with his p., inscriptions of Paullus Fabius Maximus (9 B.C.) and of Narbonne (Sept. 22, 12 B.C.), all with "messianic" resonance like Virgil's IV Eclogue.

In the New Testament writings, p. preserves the fundamental sense of "presence," and only by force of the context can it imply the sense of "return." Like the "manifestation" (II Tim. 1:10; 4:8) or the "revelation" (I Pt. 1:7, 13) of Jesus, his p. is a presence begun with the nativity, which must culminate in his supreme appearance as universal king-judge. Correlative to the Kingdom of God (II Tim. 4:1), which "has come" and yet must still come (Mt. 4:17; 6:10), the p. of the King-Messiah, reality and end toward which everything tends, assumes different aspects, according to the phases of the Kingdom to which it corresponds. The p. is the renewing theophany that fills "the day" of the Lord, which is "the day of Yahweh" of the Prophets (Is. 2:12; 13:6, 10; etc.). Even the Incarnation was called p. (St. Ignatius, Ad Philad. 9:2: it was the first theme of the εὐαγγέλιον; perhaps II Pt. 1:16). The p. of Christ is the beginning and the epilogue, the inauguration and the conclusion, the faith and the "blessed hope" (Tit. 2:11-13; Col. 3:1-4); it is not limited to the terminal episode of the human drama; therefore "to await the p." (I Cor. 1:7; Phil. 3:20; Rom. 8:19-25) is not equivalent to awaiting the end of the world. Like the Kingdom of God, the p. of Christ is constantly progressive: it has opened the era of the definitive (I Cor. 10:11 "the ends of the ages have come upon us") as "first fruits," then it will mark the end in the full attainment of the goal (ibid. 15:23-28), when Jesus will reappear in the glory in which he will introduce all the elect (I Thess. 3:13; 4:14-17; II Thess. 1:7-10; cf. St. Ignatius, Ad Eph. 15:3).

Jesus preaches the Kingdom of God as already brought by him among men (Mt. 11:12; 12:28; Lk. 17:21), open to whoever wishes to be happy (Mt. 5:3-11; 11:25-30), but also as still enclosed in the seed and developing little by little before being realized (Mt. 13:24-33), which happens slowly and without anyone noticing (Mt. 13:31-33; Mk. 4:26-29; Lk. 17:20; Is. 18:36); present, or in gestation, the kingdom is nevertheless future, especially as eternal reward for individual faithful at their death (Mt. 22:1-44; Lk. 14:15-24; 16:19-31). And, in connection with the mysterious advent of the Kingdom, Jesus announces his future p., determinable neither in time nor in space (Mt. 24:25-36); it is not calculable in human figures or dates, since "the day" of God does not coincide with human days (II Pt. 3:8 = Ps. 89:4). The prophetic perspective, on the plane of the eternal, placing the messianic advent, capital for the salvation of individuals and of peoples, in intimate connection with the life of every soul and of every generation, would seem, to a superficial glance, to make the beginning of the messianic era coincide with the end of the world; and every man, since he places himself at the center of history, tends to confuse the absolute with the immediate in time and space relative to himself. Jesus insists on the moral-ascetic consequence of this essential indeterminacy of his p. in time; like the prophetic "day of Yahweh," it is a reality always impending over individual and collective humanity, fearfully sudden (Mt. 24:36-42, 44, 50; Lk. 12:39; 17:22-37), near because no one will escape it, in which the account of life and death will be settled for all. It will surprise "like a thief" during sleep; one must therefore "watch," always "ready" with lamps lit, doing good without cease (Mt. 24:36-25:13; Mk. 13:32-37; Lk. 12:35-48), even if it "delays" (Mt. 24:49; 25:5; Lk. 12:45; Heb. 10:37; II Pt. 3:4-9), awaiting "the day and the hour" in which it will swoop down to "demand the soul" (Lk. 12:20).

As in the second part of Daniel (chaps. 7-12), the preaching of Jesus and the Apostles often recalls the mystery of the end, a mystery that unfolds in three moments: the appearance of the Son of Man (Dan. 7:13 = Mt. 24:30 and 26:64), the resurrection and the universal judgment, the glorification of the saints. In the customary biblical apparatus of theophanies (trumpet, cry, cloud, smoke, storm), amid human calamities and the convulsions of the entire cosmos (Mt. 24:6-9, 29: prophetic images from Is. 13:10; 34:4; Am. 8:9; etc.) — which has also reached its final goal — Jesus with his own destroys in the parousia all hostile forces (flesh, sin, death in the individual sphere; evil spirits and men in the collective sphere). As King and universal judge, redeemer of the faithful and avenger of the oppressed, he will close the militant earthly age of the Kingdom of God in order to inaugurate its glorious heavenly age. The last act of the parousia consists in the resurrection of the dead (I Cor. 15:26, 54-57); the risen will appear before the throne of the Messiah "who comes on the clouds of heaven." Jesus will judge "the living and the dead," that is, past, present and future generations, "those on earth (τῇ ζώντων) Ps. 26:13; 51:7; etc., in opposition to those in Hades (ἀν' ἁδί)" and "those in the netherworld" over whom he has all power (Phil. 2:10; for "the heavenly" cf. I Cor. 5:3): the formula of apostolic catechesis "the living and the dead" (Acts 10:42; II Tim. 4:1; I Pt. 4:5), which entered the Creed, must be understood in relation to the one who recites it (St. Thomas, Suárez), since it is obvious that, after the universal resurrection, all will be alive. Once the just have been taken up into glory and the wicked cast into eternal fire (Mt. 25:31-46), there will come the reunion of those whom death had separated: "together" (ὅμα σόνο) they will shine in the procession of the divine King, with whom they will rejoice in his love and in that of the dear ones found again (I Thess. 3:13; 4:17; Apoc. 7:4-17; 14:1-5; cf. Dante, Paradiso, XXII, 97-110). The precursor sign of the parousia is the Antichrist (v.), working "the mystery of iniquity" that sweeps people into "apostasy": Jesus will destroy him "with the manifestation of his parousia" (II Thess. 2:3-12). On the "signs" of the parousia, cf. Didaché, 16:3-8.

As for the time of the parousia, Jesus declared it unknowable (Mt. 24:36; Acts 1:7). In Mk. 13:32 he specifies that "that day and hour" are known only to the Father, "neither to the angels nor to the Son": with emphasis he affirms here that the power to establish it belongs (by appropriation) to the Father (whose every secret Jesus knows: Mt. 11:27), and that what is at issue here is not theoretical information but the tremendous mystery that cannot be revealed, which "imposes unceasing vigilance." The Holy Office condemned (June 5, 1918) those Catholics who, after H. Klee (1848) and H. Schell (1893), limited Jesus' knowledge (Denz-U, nos. 2183-85), specifying the condemnation of propositions 33-34 of the decree Lamentabili (July 3, 1907; Denz-U, no. 2033 ff.).

J. Weiss (Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes, Göttingen 1892, revised ed. 1900), followed by A. Loisy and A. Schweitzer, claimed that Jesus' messianism was purely eschatological, based on the imminence of his glorious parousia which was to inaugurate the Kingdom of God; Christianity would have been born from this illusion concerning the end of the world. But Jesus did not consider the end of the world to be near: he founded the apostolate and the Church, he preached a morality of family and social stability. He does predict, indeed, his vindication in the course of a generation (Mt. 10:23; 16:28; 24:23-28 and 34; 26:64; the discourse on the parousia in Lk. 17:22-37); but such allusions to Jesus' imminent return certainly refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, with which the new religious era began. The Kingdom of God does not begin through evolution, but through rupture. In the texts of the "synoptic apocalypse" (Mt. 24; Mk. 13) many Catholics distinguish the end of Jerusalem from the end of the world; but it is better to understand everything as referring to the end of Jerusalem (A. Feuillet, F. Spadafora), which represents the entire messianic economy of tribulation and struggle. The theory of J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer has been well refuted within liberal Protestantism itself, first of all by H. Windisch; R. Bultmann (v. bibl., p. 39) notes that Jesus' preaching "is not at all influenced by the thought that the end of the world is near"; according to E. Holmström the Christian notion of the "nearness" of the Kingdom implies only the virtual and growing presence of the future Kingdom; H. D. Wendland demonstrates well that Jesus foresaw the parousia as very distant in the centuries, as he deduces above all from the founding of the Church on Peter (Mt. 16:16-19); P. Busch, finally, sees in the "synoptic apocalypse" a strong warning against the illusion of an imminent parousia, rightly identifying the predicted "tribulation" with the long messianic Kingdom on earth.

The mentality of the continuers of Jesus' preaching is no different. In Christianity, the mystery of Christ's eschatological coming stands at the center of history and in the intimacy of souls. But it does not at all appear that in the 1st century the end of the world was awaited more than in earlier or later generations. The expectation or fear of cosmic catastrophe surfaces in all human generations, accompanied by predictions, portents and calculations; on the other hand, Christian preachers, from Jesus and the Apostles onward, always inculcate the fear of the last things. It appears only that among the faithful of Thessalonica, around 52, there were some who were "frightened" by the prospect of the end, and St. Paul exhorts them not to believe that "the day of the Lord is imminent" (II Thess. 2:2); nothing more. Like Jesus, the Apostles refuse to concern themselves with the time of the supreme parousia, and take advantage of every question on the matter to recommend vigilance and persevering action, over the long term (Acts 1:6-8; I Thess. 5:1-11; II Pt. 3:4-14; Apoc. 3:3; 16:15); like Jesus, St. Paul describes the "signs" that precede the parousia, which must strengthen moral resistance (Mt. 24:21-27; II Thess. 2:3-12). The apostolic charge is ascetical ("to watch"), since Christ's judgment is always suspended over the world, and mystical: Jesus is present, and yet one must desire him, hasten his return, run to meet him.

St. Paul always taught the universality of death (Rom. 5:12-21; I Cor. 15:22; Hebr. 9:27; cf. Gen. 3:19; Eccle. 12:7; Ps. 88:49). The whole redemptive economy he illustrates is summed up in the antithesis death-life, in the succession of two aeons: the tribulation of this time and the glory to come; and the only passage between the two is the one already traversed by the Redeemer: death and resurrection (Rom. 8:11-17 ff. 23; II Cor. 4:17). A positive man of perfect balance, who never denied obvious experience and common sense, St. Paul never doubted that he had to die, in order then to rise again, he and his disciples.

He affirms this in 51 in I Thess. 5:10; in 57-58 in I Cor. 6:14; II Cor. 4:14, and after 64 in II Tim. 4:6-7; in 61 (W. Michaelis, Die Datierung des Philipperbriefes, Gütersloh 1933, dates Phil. between 53 and 56) in Phil. 1:21-23 he declares that the true life, with Christ, is the one that follows death (P. Joüon, in Recherches de sc. rel., 29 [1938], p. 89 ff.) and "to die is gain"; he expresses several times this desire for bodily death (Rom. 7:24), like all the saints, because "to be separated from the body" is an indispensable condition for being united to the Lord (II Cor. 5:6-8). While he awaits death, Paul is wholly intent on awaiting the parousia (Phil. 3:13-21; II Tim. 4:8), the summit of hope and salvation; meanwhile the union of the heavenly and the earthly continues to be accomplished in Jesus (Eph. 1:10). We are therefore in the new, last epoch, since the old era, with its economy, has ceased (II Cor. 5:17; Heb. 8:13); we are near the "end of all things" of the world (Heb. 10:25, 37; Jas. 5:8; I Pet. 4:7; I John 2:18). When the Apostles proclaim "the Lord is near" (Phil. 4:5; Rom. 13:11; Jas. 5:8; Rev. 3:20), it is a matter of a spatial-spiritual nearness rather than a temporal one; it is the presence of Jesus already living among his own (Matt. 18:20; 28:20; John 14:3-23), in which the whole theology of Grace is contained. In this mystical perspective time does not count: Paul and the "perfect," immersed in the absolute, saw on earth only the precariousness (I Cor. 7:29-31; I Pet. 4:7; I John 2:15-18) of men and of events (B. Allo [v. bibl.], pp. 180-83). And Christians are united from now on, living with Christ, to his p. which will also be the p. of his faithful (Col. 5:4; Heb. 9:28; I Pet. 5:4; I John 2:28; 3:2). The "nearness of the Lord" is a cause of fear, like the irruption of a thief (I Thess. 5:2-4; II Pet. 3:10; Rev. 1:3; 16:15), of austerity (Rom. 13:11 ff.; I Cor. 7:29-32; II Cor. 6:2), but also of joy (Phil. 4:4-6). Because it is connected with death and judgment, the p. must be awaited with anguish and with trust, being the passage from the precarious to the eternal (II Cor. 4:14-17; Rom. 8:18-25).

The Apostle was in continuous contact with death, to which he was always ready, whose expectation was familiar to him; he swears that he is "in danger every hour; every day I am exposed to death" and that only the hope of resurrection after death gives him courage (I Cor. 15:30-32); in continuous danger of death, he hopes only "in the God who raises the dead" (II Cor. 1:8 ff.), and he glories in this life of his, of risk and of infirmity: entire chapters insist on this theme (II Cor. 4:7-17; 11:23-33; 12:5-10). St. Paul teaches that all will be judged according to what they did "through the body," that is, before dying; he expresses the desire to leave the body since there is no other way than death, which frees us from exile, in order to be reunited with the Lord (II Cor. 5:6-10: after death, there will be the particular judgment [cf. I Cor. 3:13-15], and for the just the blessed reunion with Christ, in awaiting the resurrection). And the Christian economy that Paul foresees on earth requires many centuries: he hopes, among other things, to save only "some" Jews, while their mass (τὸ πλήρωμα αὐτῶν) will come to Christ long after his death, after "the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:24).

But many exegetes, including Catholic ones, hold that St. Paul, conforming to the alleged opinion of the Christians of his time, hoped not to die, considering the p. imminent. The first Catholics who attributed to Paul and to the Apostles the error or the illusion of the imminence (desired or feared) of the p. were A. Maier (1847) and A. Bisping (1865), followed by J. Corluy (1887), E. Le Camus (1905), L. Duchesne (1906), A. Lemonnier (1906), A. Cellini (1907), F. Prat (1908), F. Tillmann (1909), and many others in the course of the 20th century, up to F. Guntermann (1932), who maintains that for St. Paul death and resurrection were a purely theoretical possibility, since he awaited it at a very short term and preached as near the p. of the Lord. Suffice it to cite for all F. Prat, La théologie de St Paul, I, 12th ed. (Paris 1924), p. 89: "Undeniable fact: the Christians of the apostolic age believed themselves to have reached the end of the times... Their error, made in part of desire and of hope, was connected with the universal prejudice... perhaps also to a false interpretation of the phrase of the Savior" (Matt. 24:34), and he adds that nothing prevents St. Paul from having "shared the common illusion," which however he did not teach. He further specifies that St. Paul always "taught that the last generation of the just will be clothed with immortality without passing through death" (p. 90) and invokes in support of this "the clear affirmations, three times repeated" of I Thess. 4:15-17; I Cor. 15:51; II Cor. 5:3. For the most part Catholic authors today follow this opinion. Of these three texts, J. Chaine excludes the third, and more so B. Allo in his commentary (Deuxième aux Corinthiens, Paris 1936, pp. 124-29), where he demonstrates that in II Cor. 5:3 the desire for death is expressed. Nor is it serious to speak of a nonexistent "universal prejudice of the Jews of that time."

Since obscure passages must be explained by the clear ones, and not vice versa, it is certain instead that St. Paul teaches without equivocation that all men will have to pass through death to reach glory. Jesus had affirmed it (John 12:24) and St. Paul is indignant against anyone who held the contrary: "Fool! What you sow cannot reach the vigor of life unless it first dies" (I Cor. 15:36). And the whole of ch. 15 of I Cor. is the application of this fundamental axiom; the resurrection, which presupposes death, is the supreme truth for every Christian: it rests on the principle of the double Adam, Jesus being "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (I Cor. 15:20-22, 45-49), and the whole life of St. Paul is based on the expectation of the resurrection of the dead (ibid. 30-32, cf. 58); it is impossible that "corruption (the earthly body) can inherit incorruption" unless it be annulled by death (v. 50); the whole "mystery" of glorious renewal described by St. Paul is the ultimate and definitive victory over death (I Cor. 15:26-54-57), a mystery analogous to the great mystery of the death and resurrection of Jesus. "In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet, all on one side we shall no longer be in sleep, all on the other hand we shall be transformed: the dead will rise incorruptible, we (therefore) shall be transformed, since it is necessary that (through death annihilated by the resurrection: cf. vv. 55-56) this (our) corruptible and mortal body put on incorruption and immortality" (vv. 51-53). The context, and the open teaching of the whole chapter, impose this translation; it is instead an error to translate πάντες μὲν οὐ χομυγῆσάμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησάμεθα, as if the construction were οὐ πάντες... ἀλλὰ; the two πάντες are opposed in the rhetorical scheme of anaphora, and both express the full universality of the resurrection, enunciated under two aspects.

Nor does the text of I Thess. 4:13-18 (whose theme is "the p. of Our Lord Jesus Christ and our reunion in him": II Thess. 2:1) prove that St. Paul cherished the very strange illusion of escaping death, even if... he did not teach it. There the Apostle reproaches the faithful of Thessalonica because they wept for their dead "like those who have no hope"; when one weeps for the dead, the only harrowing doubt that arises is whether one will ever be reunited with them; and to "console them" (vv. 13 and 18) he holds out to them the joyful Christian hope, based on the resurrection of the dead (deriving from the fact "that Jesus died and rose again," v. 14, as also 5:10): we shall be reunited with our dead in Jesus, who will return with Jesus. And the Apostle declares solemnly "on the word of the Lord": "We who are alive, who are left (the present sense is certain), shall not precede at the presence (or coming) of the Lord (εἰς τὴν παρουσίαν has a local, not temporal, value, and refers to the verb, as appears from the constant construction of φθάνω in St. Paul) those who have fallen asleep." And he describes the resurrection of the dead "while the Lord himself will descend from heaven." There will follow the joyful reunion of "we who are left," weeping over the separation from our dead, with the dear departed: "Then we who are alive (here it cannot be a question of those who will not have died at that time, for after the resurrection all will be alive), who are left, shall be caught up together with them on the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (cf. St. John Chrysostom: PG 60, 678), and so (we who are left today reunited with our dead of today) we shall be with the Lord forever. Therefore console one another... cf. St. John Damascene: PG 95, 275-277, 913-15 (and 96, 27-44). Thus also explain L. Simeone, A. Piolanti, F. Spadafora, K. Staab. There is no need whatsoever to construct implied events (hopes of an imminent cosmic end, illusions of not dying, errors concerning the fate of the dead, letters to St. Paul who would repeat the inexact or equivocal words of his faithful...). Those who, like St. John Chrysostom (PG 62, 436), saw here an allusion to the survival of the contemporaries of the p. excluded any illusion on St. Paul's part, and had recourse to enallage: "we" (as also I Cor. 15:51) would be a plural by which the writer associates himself with the faithful, with the Church, of any time.

One cannot admit, with F. Guntermann (1932) and many others, that on this point Paul's thought changed over the years (between 58 and 61, in only 3 or 4 years). The non-Catholic T. A. Lacey (The Historic Christ, Ital. trans., Turin 1907, p. 122) already noted: "The words written by St. Paul on two occasions (II Cor. 5:8 and Phil. 3:11), separated by a long span of time, show the continuity of his thought. His constant aspiration was, both at the beginning and at the end, to penetrate the mystery of the resurrection... passing through death," and in 1941 B. Allo developed the demonstration of this. No indication reveals that the Apostle in the later letters felt the need to modify or retract what he had written a few years earlier; nor did the faithful, who read the epistles publicly and learned them, ever discern contradictions between the first and the last.

The general theme of II Pt. is the p. of the Lord. St. Peter is about to "put off his tabernacle" (1:14 ff.). He exhorts that the coming of Jesus be prepared with Christian virtues (1:3-15): the p. of Jesus is certain, foretold by the Prophets and begun in the transfiguration (1:16-21 and 3:1-4); in it the wicked will be "judged" and the just rewarded (2:1-9). But no one knows when: one day of God is a thousand years for us and vice versa: "the day of the Lord will come like a thief," and with the cosmic dissolution the new era of the transfigured world will begin: therefore one must watch and, waiting and hastening toward the p. of the day of the Lord" (3:5-16).

The entire Apocalypse (v.), finally, describes the grandiose p. of Jesus, to which the Fourth Gospel often alludes (Jn. 13:31-33; 14:18-23; 16:16-30; I Jn. 3:8); it will be preceded by, and in its first phases accompanied by, a long stubborn struggle between good and evil. Jesus also comes to a single person (Apoc. 2:16; 2:5; 3:3). All those who will go to meet Jesus will have passed through death and resurrection (ibid. 14:13; 20:6, 12-13). The "end" is considered in the broadest sense, and the final universal p. is there conjoined with the present personal p. awaited and invoked (ibid. 1:7; 3:20; 22:7, 11, 12, 20; v. MARANATHA).

Even today, as in apostolic times (Hebr. 9:28), the p. of the Lord is awaited, desired and invoked. Every Christian life is summed up in this expectation of faith, hope, love; the liturgy of Advent, of the Easter vigil, of the whole year, expresses this imploring expectation (cf. I. Herwegen): Jesus will repeat his coming with victorious and total efficacy. Jesus has come; Jesus comes; Jesus must still come. Three aspects of the same mysterious redemptive reality, which every believer understands, which preachers recall in order to exhort, after Jesus, to "be ready" always (cf. St. Bernard, In adventum Domini sermones VII: PL. 183, 35-56).

The P. Biblical Commission (June 18, 1915: Denz-U, nn. 2179-81) asks Catholics not to maintain that St. Paul, or another Apostle, expressed, even without teaching it, the erroneous personal opinion of the proximity of the p. (responsum I); in fact "all that the inspired writer affirms, declares, insinuates" derives as such from the Holy Spirit (responsum II); the words of I Thess. 4:15-17 ἥλεις οἱ Ὑπνῶς οἱ περὶ Ἀντιδύσῳνων do not affirm in any way that the p. will occur while St. Paul and his addressees are still alive (responsum III). The erudite commentary on this document by L. Méchineau (in Civ. Catt., 1918-20) is always useful, to be supplemented with L. Billot, La parousie, Paris 1920.

Antonino Romeo