(1862-1949) Professor of Biblical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.
In the period of the Reformation the problem of the obtaining of righteousness before God filled hearts and minds. For the time this forced the eschatological hope into the background, although even then it would have been by no means paradoxical to say that the two strands of the justifying faith and the eschatological outlook remained closely intertwined. Paul knew the inevitableness of this and knew it better, perhaps, than the foremost heroes of the Reformation, not even Luther or Calvin excepted. While the Reformers were by no means unacquainted with the melodies of eschatological music, theirs was by preference martial music drawn from the storm and stress of the Psalter. But they received something better from Paul than either prophet or Psalmist had been able to give. Paul had been the first to grasp with his master-mind the single items of eschatological belief scattered through Scripture, and to weave them into a compact, well-rounded system, so coherent, that, speaking after the manner of man, it became next to impossible for any of the precious texture henceforth to be lost. He it was who made the single items of hope find themselves and group themselves into crystal formations with symmetrical shapes. Truly for this, not his smallest gift, he may justly be called the father of Christian eschatology.
~Geerhardus Vos~
The Pauline Eschatology (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1930), vi.
The Old Guys 