The main contours of Matthew’s eschatology are relatively uncontested, including the apparent tension between what has been called his ‘realized’ eschatology and his ‘future’ eschatology. However, there is less agreement on whether or how this tension can be resolved, while Matthew himself seems to be remarkably relaxed about it. This article attempts to explain this surprising fact, and offers a new approach to reconciling the tension. The eschatological data in the Gospel are analysed by a process of ‘adaptive inference’ in order to build progressively its ‘implied temporal framework’. The article concludes with a claim that the temporal framework implied by the Gospel is a relatively simple threefold division of history in which, after the period prior to the coming of Jesus, the central pattern of tribulation and vindication experienced by Jesus in his life, death and resurrection inaugurates an age in which a derivative pattern of tribulation and vindication is to be experienced by his followers.
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