I agree we are looking for Christ to return. But certainly there have been those using various clues from Scripture to make specific predictions. I’m suggesting that your remark “Christians have always recognized that the second coming of Christ would follow certain preconditions” might be misleading. That is the preconditions also come with an admonition that you will be surprised,” i.e., you will misunderstand and misread the preconditions.

Christians expect Christ’s return. Yet for centuries after the return from exile Jews expected the Messiah. When he came He was nothing like what they expected.

What I’m trying to get at is that the political and social triggers/preconditions are likely not what we naively (or straightforwardly) might expect.

Fr. John Behr in The Nicene Faith notes that one of the principal hermenuetical principals that governed the understanding of Scripture in antiquity was “that it was a fundamentally cryptic document.” One precondition was that perhaps finally a virgin daughter of Israel betrothed to one of the lineage of David who would say yes existed … and that … not socio-political-economic conditions were the important thing.

So it seems to me that the premise of Joe Carter’s question has a lot of presumptions that are not being considered.

But when I think of the “right time,” I think more in terms of God having shown by this time the inadequacy of the Old Covenant. When that happened, it was time for Christ to come.

That sounds awfully odd to me. It’s really a lot like “If had hadn’t built that house, would I have waited until I built a different house before I moved in.”

I know you didn’t mean it like that, but it does come across like God is waiting and hoping that history will line up just how He hopes it will.

1.) Babylon dispersed the Jews.
2.) Greece established a common language.
3.) Rome established safe travel.

IIRC, Tim Keller pointed this out in one of his sermons on Habakkuk.

But the comparison with China is interesting.

No doubt. But what was that the “right time?” I’m sure there are more factors than we could ever know. But it is interesting to speculate why that time was chosen for the most important event in history.

Mark I thought one of the preconditions to be met was that “it would come as a thief in the night” and be unexpected, unlooked for, and a surprise.

Are you referring to the Second Coming? I wonder if that statement isn’t to be taken metaphorically. After all, since the Ascension has there ever been a time when Christians were not expecting, looking for Christ to return?

I also agree that the narrative takes precedence over any other conditions. But the narrative is rather flexible, and patient. If the social order had not been laid down by Rome, would God have waited to continue the narrative at a more opportune time?

Jeremy Peter van Inwagen makes exactly this argument in one of his papers on the problem of evil.

Do you know if that one is online? I’d love to read it. I assumed that someone had considered—and likely answered—the question before. I’m thrilled to hear that someone of van Inwagen’s intellect had wrestled with it.

Another way to look at it is not as a factor of social and political preconditions but narrative imperatives of the overarching narrative. Redemption & exile, temple and a people, and the narrowing of the chosen people from a people, to a tribe to a young temple slave (?) named Mary …

How do these narratives choose the time and place? How do the internal narrative structures depend on external political/social conditions, such as Alexandrian and Roman conquests?

God sent Jesus “at just the right time”, Joe.

That’s one of those sentences that you could probably ponder for a year and still have more to think about. It is also one of those sentences that will make you a calvinist.

:-)

Had the Chinese conquered Israel, though, they could have likely filled the social and political role that was performed by the Romans. That would certainly make for an interesting alternate history.

But that raises another question I didn’t consider in the original post: Did the philosophy of Ancient Greece (as filtered through Rome) have a significant impact on the global transmisssion of the Gospel?