Paul thought that the end of the age was near so he tells people to not marry and to minimize all their dealings with society.
- If there is one thing that can be said for certain about Paul’s intellectual world, it is that he believed that the Apocalypse was near. “If there is any consensus in Pauline studies, it is that Paul’s theology is deeply informed by Jewish apocalyptic eschatology.”
“apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology” -Ernst Käsemann
“The early community around Jesus, both before and after his crucifixion, awaited the approaching End. This belief bound them together as a community. The persistent failure of the Kingdom to come made the belief in the second coming of Jesus a necessity.”
But when does Christ return? Soon, says Paul. How soon? Paul expects the parousia within his own lifetime—at least, that is what he says. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed” (1 Cor 15:51). “We” are awaiting the Lord’s parousia (Phil 3:20). “We who are alive, who are left” will be caught up with and to the transformed, resurrected dead (1 Thess 4:17). History, teaches Paul, is moving quickly toward its finale: the travails before the Kingdom are “impending,” the “appointed time has grown very short,” the form of the world “passing away,” and upon Paul and his community “the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 7:26, 29, 31; 10:11: note the past completed action of the verb, katēntēken).
