Ancient ideas about ‘the End’, and theories about an afterlife, are inevitably varied (Adams 2007). Many are pessimistic, envisioning a catastrophic destruction of the cosmos, as in the Stoic ‘conflagration’ (ekpyrōsis) (Salles 2009). For Paul, the beginning of the eschaton has begun (1 Cor 10:6), but in a penultimate sense. ‘The Christ-event is the turning point in time that announces the end of time’ (Becker 1980: 362). The current time is ‘the time that time takes to come to an end’ (Agamben 2005: 67). Believers thus belong to an era in which ‘the form (to skēma) of this world is passing away’ (1 Cor 7:31). Creation waits expectantly, groaning and in agony (Rom 8:19–22), for God’s coming ‘revelation’ (apocalypsis) (1 Cor 1:7). The ultimate beginning of the End (the novissima) is the impending ‘Day of the Lord’, or parousia, when Christ descends from the heavens above to be present again with his people, rescuing them from a coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10). This cosmic event will be accompanied by the call of the archangel and the trumpet of God (1 Thess 4:16; 1 Cor 15:52). Paul assures the Thessalonian assembly that they need not worry about believers who have died (1 Thess 4:13–18). The dead will be raised first, and then the living will join them: ‘Then we who are alive, who are left, will be carried off together with them, in the clouds (en nephelais), to meet the Lord in the air (eis aera), and thus we will be with the Lord for ever’ (1 Thess 4:17; cf. 1 Cor 15:51–57).

As the citation of Isa 45:23 makes certain, there is a marked universalism in Pauline reasoning about the coming eschatological judgement, as there are universalist inclinations elsewhere in Paul’s thinking about the relation of Christ and humanity (cf. 1 Cor 15:22, 27–28; Rom 5:17–19). Some will not ‘inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor 6:9– 10; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:5). On the ‘Day of the Lord’, those associated with darkness will be terminated (1 Thess 5:1–10; cf. 2 Thess 1:6–9; Phil 3:18–19). Their end is ‘sudden destruction (olethros)’ (1 Thess 5:3), ‘the penalty of eternal destruction (olethron)’ (2 Thess 1:9). Whether they are simply annihilated or are counted among those ‘under the earth’ (katachthonios) who will eventually confess Christ as Lord (Phil 2:10) is never explained. This is the anthropology of Paul’s eschatology: ‘If, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ’ (Rom 5:17).