Second Meditation: What Is Judgment? 111
ment scholars tend to do, that the most obviously historically
situated of these prophecies- the so-called little apocalypse
of Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21- is a specimen of vati-
cinium ex even tu ( that is, prognostication written back into
the record retrospectively, after the events supposedly foretold
have already come to pass). Jesus may indeed have foreseen
and foretold it all. Let us assume he did. Even then, in doing
so, he nevertheless seems to have been using the cosmic and
apocalyptic imagery of transcendent judgment as symbols of a
catastrophe immanent to history.
And yet, of course, that cannot be the whole story. The
more traditional readings of Christ's prophecies, as direct au-
guries of the end of history, cannot simply be dismissed. Even
if it is the case that many of the prophecies recorded in the syn-
optic gospels should be understood primarily as spiritual com-
mentaries upon the history of first-century Judaea, expressed
in grand and mysterious eschatological figures, by this very
token it must also be the case that this same imagery indicates
something about the wider eschatological grammar of Christ's
teachings as a whole. Moreover, even the most thoroughgoing
of preterist readings of the texts cannot obscure the reality that
Christ speaks in the gospels not only of a tribulation near at
hand for the children of Israel, but also of how the whole of
history and the totality of human life stand in light of God's
eternity and God's justice. And so one still must ask what
Christ promised and what his hearers presumed, concerning
both salvation and condemnation. Again, though, this is no
easy matter.
Let us consider, to begin with, the very language of
heaven and hell, which to us seems so clear, but which is al-
most impossible to impose consistently or unambiguously
upon the Greek of the New Testament. The language of scrip-