Christianity began with the announcement that time and history were about to end. In the mid-1st century, the apostle Paul stated this conviction. (For example, he speaks of “the impending distress” and announces that “the appointed time has grown very short” because “the form of this world is passing away,” 1 Corinthians 7).

In the closing decades of the first century, some evangelists attributed this teaching to Jesus. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1:14); “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1).

Did the historical Jesus, back in the year 30 CE, say the things that Mark attributed to him sometime after 70 CE? And did Paul circa 50 mean the same thing that Jesus might have meant back in 30, or that the evangelist would have meant circa 70? That is exactly the sort of question that New Testament scholars argue among each other. (I answer “Yes, probably” to these three questions, but dissenting colleagues also have good arguments in the other direction.)

The point remains, however, that by the time that Paul affirmed the impending end, and by the time that Mark attributed a similar statement to Jesus, the Kingdom was already late. It did not arrive in or around the year 30; nor (depending on how you look at these things) has it come any time since.

Apocalyptic prophecies, paradoxically, are easy to dis-confirm but virtually impossible to discredit. (I limit my remarks to my own field, ancient Christianity, but readers should know that what I state can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the two other Western monotheisms as well.) Rather than dump a disproved prophecy, believers retain it by recalculating its timetable. Such a recount protects the prophecy itself. It was not at fault; the prior calculation was.

We see some of these re-dating strategies already in the later documents of the New Testament. The author of 2 Peter explains that God is not late, he just measures time differently from the way that we do: For him, 1000 years is like one day (2 Peter3:8). In Acts, the Risen Christ tells his assembled apostles not to worry about “when,” and just to get on with the world mission (Acts 1:6-8). An angel reveals to John of Patmos all sorts of visions and images that portend the various events that must precede the end, including the coming of a beast whose head is marked with the number 666 (Revelation 13:11-18). During the First Gulf War, various modern sages decoded the number to mean “Saddam Hussein.” And so on.

In The City of God, written in the early 5th century, Augustine tried to put a halt to millenarian speculation by reinterpreting these apocalyptic symbols as coded historical realities.

The Second Coming of Christ in his raised body, said the saint, meant the establishment of the Church, which is the body of Christ, after his resurrection. In this view, in other words, the Second Coming had already occurred at the first Pentecost (Acts 2). The reign of the saints with Christ on earth was happening already, he argued, on the basis of the miracles that the saints’ powers effected when the ill and injured prayed at their shrines. And the saints will reign for 1000 years with Christ, Augustine averred.

But “one thousand” is a spiritual quality, not a numerical quantity. 1000 = 10x10x10, and thus stands as a metaphor for “fullness” or “perfection.” The saints’ reign on earth through the church, in other words, would last, according to Augustine, until God was good and ready to do something else, and that moment was not coming any time soon.

Unfortunately for Augustine’s argument, within twenty years of his death, North Africa was overrun by marauding tribes of northerners, among whom the Getae and the Massagetae. One of his own former students pointed out that these tribal names resonated with the Gog and Magog of John’s revelation. The apocalyptic toothpaste was out of the biblical tube yet again.

Christianity has been marked by this awkward adjustment to its own success, rolling onward as its own prime prophecy (if interpreted literally) fails. But why interpret literally? If a 5th-century bishop knew better than that, modern people should be able to adjust. So, out of religious conviction, do I believe that the world is going to end? No.

But don’t get me started on global warming . . . .