NOTES for Ti2 3:2-5

Describing the people of the last times, Paul may appear to be overstating things somewhat. Yet even in his own time everything he said was characteristic of the society in which he had to live, to one degree or another. And people of other eras who read Paul's letters surely thought that the last times had already come: they recognized their own contemporaries in the apostle's description. And, it must be admitted, they were not far from the truth.

The fact is that Paul may well have regarded, if not his own age, then at least the age that began soon after his martyrdom, after A.D. 70, when the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed and Judea ceased to exist as a Jewish autonomy within the Roman Empire, as the last times. This is exactly how the Savior Himself described the last times, mentioning the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Judea as essentially the final historical event after which, in His own words, "the end" would come.

This, of course, does not mean that He would return on the very day the Temple was destroyed, as third- and perhaps fourth-generation Christians thought when they became contemporaries of the events Jesus had foretold. But all subsequent human history unfolds within a different historical logic, one that can be called eschatological. And within that logic, one must first speak about the spiritual polarization of humanity, and all the processes taking place within it increasingly point precisely to the polarization mentioned by both Paul and John in his Book of Revelation. All who seek a godly life in Christ are persecuted, while those who do evil prosper. This is no surprise: the fallen world lies in evil, and the only question is how much that evil is visible in it and how much is hidden.

At times it looks as though there have been bright intervals in human history, as though not everything in it is so dark, and as though customs in some places were not at all like those described by the apostle. Indeed, a patriarchal, traditional society, at first glance, does not look as corrupt as the Hellenistic society described in the letter. Unfortunately, however, this is only a question of time: every society sooner or later stops being patriarchal and traditional and comes to resemble the one Paul described. But that is not the only point.

One can certainly lament the corruption of morals and the destruction of the good old patriarchal foundations, but they are not destroyed by accident. They are destroyed because the evil of the fallen world is present in them too; it is simply less visible. And when a world that seemed good and moral collapses under the pressure of alien morals and customs, it collapses not because it is being "destroyed" or "eroded," but because evil exists in it too, only before it was not so visible. Now what was hidden has become manifest, and events have begun to unfold in their own course. The logic of the eschatological age is universal, and the only question is where the polarization mentioned by the apostle will appear earlier and where later. But Paul has no doubt that it will happen.