An Answer to Bob Gundry
Dr. Thomas Ice
Dr. Robert Gundryof Westmont College, a leading posttribulationist, stated in a personal letterto Thomas Ice in December 1995 that the presentation of Pseudo-Ephraem's sermonby Demy and Ice has "renewed my interest in the topic."
Gundry admitsthat if our interpretation of PE's sermon is correct, then "his dividing thesecond coming into two stages separated by a definite period of years called'the tribulation' would put the essential elements of pretribulationismcenturies and centuries before the late eighteenth or early nineteenthcentury."[5] Sowhy does Gundry think that PE is teaching posttribulationism?
Gundry's Disagreements
After earlieradmitting that if PE is speaking of a pre-trib event then it does contain "theessential elements of pretribulationism" (p. 161), Gundry implies that it isnot a pre-trib statement because certain elements of a completepretribulational statement are missing. He cites the omission of "a coming of the Lord," "a resurrection ofdeceased Christians and translation of living ones," and "a heavenlydestination." Of course, anargument from silence is no argument at all. The statement from PE's sermon of "and are taken to theLord" would imply a coming of the Lord as well as a heavenly destination. As long as we are arguing from silence,would it not be stretching the imagination to think that the Lord resides inheaven? Further, the vocabulary of"taken" is the same as that used to describe the transportation of Enoch toheaven (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5). There are many omissions in these biblical statements that a similarcritic could cite to argue that Enoch was not really taken to heaven.
PE speaks of thebodies of dead Christians going unburied during the tribulation because of thefear of Antichrist's persecution upon all. Gundry believes this is at odds with a pre-tribunderstanding of the sermon (164). This is no problem at all since pretribulationists believe that therewill be converts to Christianity during the tribulation. These bodies are those of post-raptureconverts during the tribulation.
Gundrymanufactures another "problem" because of an allusion to a resurrection, eventhough it is not explicitly mentioned in the text (169). Though not clear in section 10, Gundryappears to be saying that PE speaks of a single resurrection and not a multipleresurrection required from pretribulationism. This point is hardly a proof for Gundry since he must assumethat PE's statement relating to the rising of the sleeping ones is connectedwith the unburied Christians during the tribulation (169). Even if this is granted, and aresurrection is meant, this would not contradict a pretrib understanding ofSection 2 of PE. Pretribulationists believe in a resurrection of tribulation saints atthe end of the tribulation.
In this section,Gundry argues for a posttrib understanding of the phrase "to meet."
Afurther problem for the pretrib interpretation of Pseudo-Ephraem's sermonarises out of this same and final Section 10. The deceased righteous are told not only to "arise" but alsoto "meet Christ." The Latin verbtranslated "meet," occurrite (moreliterally translated "run to" or "hasten to"), is cognate to the Latin noun occursum,"meeting," in the supposedlypretrib passage of Section 2: ". . . prepare ourselves for the meeting of theLord Christ." Since Section 10explicitly and indubitably puts this meeting after the tribulation, theparallelism of terminology with Section 2-and also with the phrase "for ameeting of the Lord in air" in Paul's description of the rapture (1 Thess.4:17, translated literally)-indicates that PseudoEphraem sees the meetingin Section 2 as occurring after the tribulation and therefore as differing fromthe saints' being gathered and taken to the Lord "prior to the tribulation"according to a slightly later passage in section 2. (170)
Itis conceded that there is a cognate relation between the two nouns. However, the immediate context of anystatement is the greatest factor in determining specific meaning. Gundry is fond of going to anotherpassage that he believes provides the meaning he desires and bringing thatcontext into the passage under discussion as proof for his understanding. This is an exegetical fallacy accordingto James Barr. "The error thatarises, when the 'meaning' of a word (understood as the total series ofrelations in which it is used in the literature) is read into a particular caseas its sense and implication there, may be called 'illegitimate totalitytransfer.'"[6] Gundry has imported the meaning of "meeting" from Section 10 andasserted that it has the same meaning in Section 2.
Instead, "meetingof the Lord Christ" in Section 2 is better governed by its immediate context,which is described as a gathering "prior to the tribulation," whereby, thosegathered are "taken to the Lord." The meeting in Section 10 is clearly said to occur "when the three and ahalf years have been completed," which for PE is the length of thetribulation. Gundry's attempt toreverse the meaning of PE's pretrib statement in Section 2 falls to the groundwhen taken in the context that PE's sermon provides.
Gathering
Gundry's nextdistortion occurs when he spins the meaning of "gather." He provides over a dozen pages ofmaterial from Ephraem the Syrian and shows the manifold ways in which he usesthe word.
Inview of the foregoing evidence, it seems an understatement to say that Ephraemand his tradition make heavy use of Jewish pilgrimages to Jerusalem as a symbolof all nations' being gathered evangelistically and taken to the Lord inChristian conversion. This use isneither obscure nor rare. It isclear and frequent, and it appears throughout a wide range of hiswritings. We have every right,then-indeed, every obligation-to apply the use to Pseudo-Ephraem's sermon,drawing as it does on Ephraem's works and those attributed to him. (183)
Out of all thedozens of uses cited by Gundry for "gather" in Ephraem, we admit that he rarelyuses it in an eschatological context. Yet, this is without dispute the way in which PE is using the term. To say that because Ephraem uses gatheron numerous occasions evangelistically does not mean that this is the way PE, atotally different individual, uses it on a specific instance. Gundry engages once again inillegitimate totality transfer. Ifgather in PE is an evangelistic gathering, then it should be obvious from thecontext of PE's sermon. It wasapparently obvious in the individual citations from Ephraem that each use has aparticular nuance, since Gundry was able to classify each of them from theirimmediate contexts. Not once didhe have to go to other passages to determine Ephraem's specific use in a giventext. While providing us withinteresting information on how Ephraem, who is not PE, uses a particular word,it does nothing to assist us in understanding PE's use of the word.
Gundry's exerciseprovides proof that PE did not borrow his idea of a pretrib gathering fromEphraem. Paul Alexander tells us,"Bousset . . . observes that PE normally does not depend on Ephraem but thatboth use the same apocalyptic material.[7] What does Alexander mean by "the same apocalyptic material?" He is speaking of the same generalthemes such as Antichrist, Gog and Magog, The Last Roman Emperor, etc. It is within this context thatAlexander cites PE's departure from the same apocalyptic material and notesconcerning the subject of shortening the time of the tribulation because PEdoes not include such a notion in his sermon.[8] Gundry recognizes that Alexander understands PE's statement at thispoint to be that of a physical removal of "the saints and Elect of God" beforethe tribulation-a pretrib statement.
It is significantthat the late Paul Alexander (d. 1977) understood this passage as apretribulational translation of "the saints and elect." He could hardly have been influenced byhis beliefs in his interpretation, since he appears to have been Greek Orthodox. Alexander arrived at a pretribunderstanding of PE from reading the sermon in its own context. Because of his expertise in the fieldof Byzantine literature and history in general and Byzantine Apocalypticism inparticular that he arrived at his conclusion which supports that of Dr. Demyand I.
Along withGundry, we believe that Section 10 is speaking of Christ's second coming to theearth. Thus, his arguments thatSection 10 is a reference to the posttribulational return of Christ are not indispute (187-88).
Conclusion
In spite of thefact that Gundry has put forth a heroic effort attempting to prove theunprovable, he has not been able to deliver. Gundry's contention that the passage is merely anevangelistic gathering cannot be supported by the clear context of PE'ssermon. PE's sermon stands as atestimony that at least one individual taught something resembling a rapturebefore tribulation as early as the fourth century. True, this statement does not contain all the elements ofpretribulationism, but it contains enough to elicit a serious response from aleading posttribulational scholar. Maranatha!
[1]Personal letter to Thomas Ice from Robert H. Gundryreceived, December 5, 1995.
[2]Robert H. Gundry, The Church and the Tribulation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1973).
[3]Bob Gundry, First the Antichrist (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997).
[4]Timothy J. Demy and Thomas D. Ice, "The Rapture and anEarly Medieval Citation," Bibliotheca Sacra (July/Sept. 1995; Vol. 152, No. 607), pp.306-17. The sermon is on ourwebsite at www.pre-trib.org/article-view.php?id=169.
[5]Gundry, First the Antichrist, pp. 161-62.
[6]James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Languages (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 218.
[7]Paul J. Alexander, The Byzantine ApocalypticTradition (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1985), p. 210, f.n. 85.
[8]Alexander, Byzantine Apocalyptic, pp. 210-11.