Undeception

Mick found a great quote from N.T. Wright’s book, Evil and the Justice of God (pp. 138-139). Wright, a highly esteemed Anglican bishop, is not a full preterist, but what he says is very much in line with stuff I have written. One of the many books I’m going to eventually get around to reading is his The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church.

Hope you don’t mind, Mick, but because of its covalence with a recent topic of mine, I’m going to reproduce your quote here on my blog, too. Enjoy!

The four living creatures are singing “Holy, holy, holy” and the elders are casting their crowns before the throne; but the one who sits on the throne holds a scroll…sealed with seven seals, and nobody can be found worthy to open it and break its seals. The way to God’s unfolding purposes to put the world to rights, to complete the whole project of creation, appears to be blocked, since God made a world in such a way that it must be looked after by human stewards, and no human being is capable of taking God’s plan forward. This is Revelation’s statement of the problem of evil: God has a plan for the world; but unless He is to unmake creation itself, which is designed to function through the stewardship of God’s image-bearing creatures-the human race-it looks as though the plan cannot come to fruition. And that is Revelation’s statement of the answer: the lamb has conquered, has defeated the powers of evil. And now (Revelation5:9-10) the Lamb has ransomed people from every nation in order to make them a royal priesthood, serving God and reigning on the earth.

This theme, so frequent in the New Testament and so widely ignored in Christian theology, is part of the solution to the problem (of evil). It isn’t that the cross won the victory, so there’s nothing more to be done. Rather, the cross has won the victory as a result of which there are now redeemed human beings getting ready to act as God’s wise agents, His stewards, constantly worshiping their Creator and constantly being equipped to reflect His image into the his creation, to bring his wise and healing order to the world, putting the world to rights under His just and gentle rule. A truly biblical ecclesiology…the church is the community of those who, being redeemed through the cross, are now to be a kingdom and priests to serve God and to reign on the earth. Our fear of triumphalism on the one hand and on the other hand our flattening out our final destiny into talk merely of “going to heaven,” have combined to rob us of this central biblical theme.

“Knowledge puffs up.” This phrase is customarily pulled out of the rest of 1 Corinthians 8:1 and cast as a slur upon those like myself intrinsically driven to seek more learning and understanding. Even the immediate context of this phrase in 1 Corinthians 8 shows, however, that not only is knowledge necessary, but that it is actually deficient, incomplete knowledge that puffs up, knowledge devoid of love (for more on this, see this great article from bible.org).

A lover of learning is the type of person who, while his eyes pass over the landscape, notices each glint and out-of-place shadow, and is all but incapable of resisting the urge to investigate. Sometimes I really don’t like being the type who questions things. I fear that it appears I’m doing it for fun, or because I think it’s cool to “question everything”, or because I assume everyone is wrong but I. I fear this because I’ve identified those motivations in other people who like the limelight of being unique; yet I can honestly say that I would hardly put myself through the hassle of critiquing views held by the majority or especially by those I love for no other reason than a little self-aggrandizement.

But this Christmas I began to consider the two groups of people to whom the birth of Jesus was announced. The first group was the Jewish shepherds. They were minding their business, faithfully tending to their responsibilities. They weren’t seeking anything except the protection of their livelihood. They saw the angel and heard the voices of the heavenly hosts, and at once left to find the newborn Christ.

The other group was the Magi from the East, from as far away as Persia. These Gentiles were of a completely different faith, being a priestly class from the Zoroastrian religion. They were astrologers whose dedication to the study of their writings and what they thought the stars and planets told them was so great that they trekked up to a thousand miles to confirm it. Chances are great that they did not see Jesus until at least a couple years later. These men were seekers. There was no special annunciation given to them: God spoke to them through their own learning. This gives me no end of encouragement.

Many quarters of the church nowadays, at least in America, hold instruction in and critical examination of our faith at arms’ length; few denounce those pursuits outright, but most look sideways at it, fearful of becoming “puffed up”, afraid that what they learn might make them want to live out the faith even less. They look at academic, liberal theologians and equate the first adjective with the second. What they don’t do is acknowledge that there is definitely no shortage of liberals and libertines from among the unlearned masses as well. The issue is not of knowledge making the truth-seeking Christians “puffed up”, but of satisfaction with an insufficient amount of the truth of God; this is equally a problem with the learned who are distracted by empty truths and with the ignorant who are content with what gets them their next experience. It is the truth of God that saves: belief in Christ’s lordship and confession thereof are what matters, and even the “experience” side of the equation is dependent on antecedent knowledge of the existence of the thing to be experienced.

I sometimes envy the unquestioning, simple-trust sort of believers whom I know. They just believe and that’s it: this sort of belief, while tending too far towards “blind faith” and utterly impossible to pass on to unbelievers, is apparently sufficient for their own lives and helps them worry less over details. Similarly, the shepherds, being Jewish, were privy to the honor of experiencing the angelic visitation; but don’t forget that the point of the visitation was revelation, which is itself knowledge. God wants us to know so that we can experience. For this reason, God wishes to educate even those in the humblest circumstances. Those who seek, who delve deeper and deeper — God is faithful to lead us the whole thousand miles to bring us to the same place. Thank God for that.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Technorati : Christmas, education, knowledge, learning, theology

Preterists who deny a physical Resurrection of the Dead have been accused of being gnostic (because we supposedly believe that only spiritual reality matters and that the physical world is evil). Yet those who demand a destruction of the physical universe and the replacement with a spiritual new heavens and new earth are surely closer to this belief than are full preterists. We don’t see a reason to believe that the earth and the physical universe will not sustain us into virtual perpetuity. Our strictly spiritual Kingdom is more likely to take over the realm of the physical as we apply the mandate for dominion in every area of our lives. Those looking forward to a restoration of the physical universe need look no further than the preterist’s Kingdom of God made manifest in us, the sons of God, the co-heirs with Jesus.

Genesis 1:28 shows us the original intention God had for man: man was tasked with subduing the earth and ruling over it and its creatures. Now, think theoretically for a second. Was God thwarted in His plan? Was He forced to go back to the drawing board because man did something God knew he was going to do all along? Was the sum of human history a waste because no sooner did God give us the mandate, but we screwed up? Was God’s experiment with a physical universe a dismal failure that He’s been stuck with for millennia, while He sits up there and waits (for something or other) to wipe it off the map and forget the whole embarrassing experience? Poor God. Better luck next time!

This view is untenable for someone who believes that God is omnipotent and omniscient. So it’s really no wonder that Calvin and others devoted especially to the concept of God’s sovereignty should resort to the defense, “Well…God really wanted it that way! Yeah, He didn’t fail: He planned the whole fiasc–, uh, glorious plan!”

I think, rather, that His plan will be fulfilled and that His first-century work was a new beginning. We see a similar pattern in the flood account. What happened after God wiped out the wicked with the Flood? He started again, with the same earth and the same animals, and the faithful; in fact, the only change was in the topology and the exclusion of the wicked from the land. That’s what happened in AD 70. Noah, like Adam, was charged with populating the land with offspring and subduing the creation (Gen. 9:1-3, 7). So it is with us.

When Christendom has finally understood and embraced its reinvigorated Kingdom mandate, the physical world will reap the benefits. This goes for improvement in medical science: the world reshaped by the influence of Christianity has already done much in this direction, but there could be more. For instance, could Christians leading science in the far off future eventually essentially marginalize physical suffering, perhaps even going so far as to subjugate physical death? What about the environment? I don’t just mean caring for it in the ecological sense, but being able to predict and manipulate even the weather — sure, it sounds Star Trek, but my point is that the sky’s the limit. In a few millennia, the fallen world as we know it may be a distant memory, fading away much like the mother’s childbirth pain once she holds the newborn in her arms.

Is this fantasy?

Technorati : eschatology, theology

The heavens and the earth have passed

The new has dawned, the night complete,

The day of judgment come. At last

The rule of Death dies in defeat.

The fear, the tears our fathers knew

Awaiting the Redeemer’s call

Have dried, has fled. The Life broke through;

Death’s victory was snatched withal.

All hope fulfilled and joy made whole

By overflowing life within,

Those purchased with His blood extol

With lips and lives purged from all sin

The mighty arm of Him Whose name

Renowned from depths to utmost height

Has justly earned its glorious fame

By forging endless day from night.

Thus every proud dominion must

Assuredly return to dust

While we, the ransomed, with our birth

Possess new heavens and new earth.

Next time on the Poetry Channel: Germanic alliterative verse. Yeah, we’ll see about that…

Technorati : eschatology, poetry
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[video]http://youtube.com/watch?v=v0bKq3x74UE[/video]

The Center for the Study of New Testament Manucripts is engaged in a wonderful project. This is an effort to host high resolution scanned images of early biblical manuscripts. Right now, they’re working on the New Testament. They already have Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Washingtonensis, and Alexandrinus (all 5th century and before!), as well as some other, later medieval manuscripts. If you have any money lying around – please contribute to the effort in my stead

One of people’s hang-ups about full preterism is that they feel that the Great White Throne Judgment sounds too momentous to apply to less than the sum total of humanity rather than those who died before AD 70 alone. Has the judgment of the nations occurred yet? Revelation 20 depicts the “General Resurrection” as the time when “the rest of the dead” resurrected at the end of the Millennium would be judged. Enter the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats.

Judgment in the Olivet Discourse

Most of Matthew 24 and 25 are in red (Jesus’ words), with no interruptions after verse 3. In fact, the rest of the passage is a response to verse 3, forming an unsegmented pericope. The disciples look at the beautiful Herodian temple, apparently scoping out what they thought would be their inheritance when Christ took the reins in His Kingdom. Jesus responds by predicting the temple’s destruction, saying, “not a stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” Josephus the Jew describes how this literally took place after the first century siege when the Romans noticed the precious metal between the stones and decided to extract it by pulling them apart.

Now, this is very interesting. On hearing this ominous prophecy, the disciples ask an important question: “…When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” As I stated above, the following verses until the end of chapter 25 is entirely unbroken narrative. Can there be any doubt that this entire passage is related to the same time of the “end” and the same “coming”? Or did Jesus just decide to change the subject to another “coming” mid-stream to make things interesting?

Watch this: 24:30-31 and 33-34 read, “At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other…Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

At the end of chapter 25, Jesus launches into the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Let’s look at it here:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Matthew 25:31-34 NIV

Is this the same event? I believe it’s clear that it is. Notice the parallels:

“The Son of Man” comes “with great glory” (24:30), “in his glory” (25:31)Angels accompany Him

The nations are called into account (24:30) and (25:32)

Separation is made between the righteous and unrighteous (24:31, 25:32)

Please tell me you can see that these are the same event! If so, and if the first was to occur before that generation passed away, the second one must have as well. This means that the judgment of the nations is not a future apocalyptic event at some postulated close of human history. Rather this was what happened when the dead were raised, some to a resurrection of life and the others to a resurrection of judgment (John 5:29; cf. Daniel 12:2). This is the judgment of the living and dead that Paul said was “about to” occur in 2 Timothy 4:1.

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