Archives for “Preterism”
A reader wrote in recently and asked some really good questions about my eschatology, which I have described on this blog as preteristic. Preterism is the belief that all (or most) of the eschatological expectations of the writers of Scripture were directed at the events culminating in the destruction of the Jerusalem and the Jewish temple.[1]
My position has evolved significantly since I’ve been writing on the subject, the earliest relevant posts dating back a few years. In the intervening time, key aspects of my theology have changed. Particularly, I have become more convinced of the Scripture’s organic nature and origin and have thus rejected inerrancy as an unfair expectation. As a result I have also grown increasingly distrustful of tidy theological schemata composed of verses here and there from this chapter and that book that find some way to incorporate every verse that appears to contradict the main contention, no matter how contrived the resolution may be. But because I continue to regard it as a relatively coherent system as systems go, preterism has so far escaped close scrutiny in light of my revised bibliology (at least on the blog), but in recent months I’ve been increasingly aware that it is indeed due a revisiting.
- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- Why eschatology matters Josh’s blog has something important to say on this. ‘Nuff said. ...
John Walton points out that often in the Ancient Near East, a temple dedication ceremony would take place over seven days’ time; for six days, the temple would be furnished and the priests would take up their posts, and finally on the seventh day the deity would come in to take residence and begin to exercise his/her authority. Walton argues that when the Hebrews heard the priests read the creation week of Genesis 1 to them, they would probably not have taken it (primarily, anyway) as a treatise on history or a scientific origins account but as a comosgony framed in terms of an analogy with the construction and resulting importance of the temple as God’s headquarters for the universe. Walton refers to Genesis 1 as a “temple text”: it is a literary form of analogy to the establishment of the sanctuary. His “rest” was not about sleep, but about settling in at the control booth and taking command of the cosmos He had set in place. Six days you shall work, rest on the Sabbath. In fact (and this is not from Walton), that’s why the Sabbath was not made for man, but man for the Sabbath: it became a day of doing nothing (even healing!), when, as Jesus demonstrated with the healing of the man with the withered hand, it was intended to be a day of doing the Lord’s work, a day set aside to remember God’s intention for the heavens and the earth (the implementation of His purposes).
Related posts:- Chaos in Genesis and Germanic mythology Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the...
- Why Genesis 1 was written Not that I have all the answers, of course. I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange...
- My position on the origins question Josh recently commented on another thread, “I want to hear your explanation of the origin of life on earth. I have heard the positions you are against. So how did...
This post is prompted by two recent comments, from two different commenters on two different issues. But their answer, it seems to me, is related.
I was asked, “Why wouldn’t Jesus say that evil would be forever dead instead of having this eternal fire to go to? Even if it was recognized as an exaggeration at the time, is not this caricature of a final death a scare tactic?”
Jesus’ words were not an exaggeration. Eternal fire is an apt metaphor for unquenchable, inexorable judgment. The eternal fire Jesus refers to emphasizes an irreversible judgment, a fire that doesn’t just last long enough to scorch or burn, but remains to consume completely and utterly.
Another important aspect to consider is that the judgment he’s referring to wasn’t to be the end of all things, either. It was tied to a specific event in history, now long past but with ongoing application. Anyone who’s read many of my eschatology posts will know where I’m going here. The Sheep and the Goats judgment was the start of something, not just the end of something. The fires haven’t stopped because there are still those who die at odds with God’s purpose for creation, but there are those who live to accomplish His will on the earth. Jesus was laying out a state of affairs that would begin with that judgment but, along with the world and its inhabitants, would continue for all time.
Related posts:- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
- Life in God’s Garden Summary of Part One God the Gardener created a son (Lk 3.38) to tend the garden. God, as a father, was training up his children Adam and Eve in the...
- The Sheep, the Goats, and the Judgment 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...
It is my belief that Revelation’s Lake of Fire/Fiery Sulfur was never intended to be read as an actual geographic location (even in the spiritual realm), but was a colorful apocalyptic image meant to depict and dramatize final termination of various sorts, including punishment. The key indicator of this is that the sulfur imagery and its concomitant punishment is not shown with much internal consistency. We need to look at the three references to this lake.
The first time it’s mentioned in 19.20 it’s only the beast and false prophet who are thrown “alive” into it, in obvious contrast to all the people who were killed by “the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider of the horse” and were devoured as carrion (v. 21). Do note that if too fine a point is put upon it, this contradicts 14.9-11, which calls for those deceived to also receive torment with fire and sulfur, which scholars usually take to be borrowing imagery from Sodom’s destruction in sulfur and fire in Gen 19.24. Note here that if the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, a definitive punishment thought to be so complete as to have left almost no trace, was indeed being alluded to, then using that imagery to refer to eternally continuing punishment in Revelation would be a somewhat foreign, counterintuitive intrusion.
Related posts:- H E double hockey sticks I was recently asked to contribute to a podcast for Love for All Ministries, a group of young Christians dedicated to honest, intellectual dialogue with non-believers of all walks and...
- Life in God’s Garden Summary of Part One God the Gardener created a son (Lk 3.38) to tend the garden. God, as a father, was training up his children Adam and Eve in the...
- The timing of the Millennium I have recently been dialoguing with a new full preterist friend, Patrick Stone, about the timing of the millennium. Early on in the conversation, the possibility was raised that the...
I was recently asked to contribute to a podcast for Love for All Ministries, a group of young Christians dedicated to honest, intellectual dialogue with non-believers of all walks and creeds. The topic for the discussion when I was on was “Hell”. I haven’t talked much about hell on this blog so far, so I thought I’d point to this podcast.* I didn’t want to bring in too many of my own unique and esoteric beliefs on the topic – although I would have brought in more if I had had time – but I was primarily interested in problematizing the typical fundamentalist/evangelical view of hell.
My primary goal in discussing this topic was to emphasize something that Travis, the show’s main host, brought up on his own: the majority understanding of hell is not easily demonstrated in Scripture. The main biblical sources that fanned the flame (so to speak) of the medieval imagination on the topic of hell are all highly figurative (more on this in another post, perhaps). But even the word “hell” is nowhere near as clear-cut as modern Christians think it is: for one thing, there is no single word for “hell” in the Bible. We have the obscure and poorly understood sheol in the Old Testament, translated as Hades in the New Testament, which in the OT was the place both the righteous and unrighteous slept after death; we have Peter using (of angels) a verb that means “imprison in Tartarus”, another word originally tied to Greek mythology; one more word that has played into the current understanding of hell is the NT word Gehenna.
Related posts:- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
- Search and rescue – or invasion and annexation? I, like Josh, don’t believe the Bible teaches a “rapture”. Shocking as that may be for some, the passage that serves as the primary source for the doctrine was never...
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
I have recently been dialoguing with a new full preterist friend, Patrick Stone, about the timing of the millennium. Early on in the conversation, the possibility was raised that the First Resurrection of Rev 20.4-6 occurred at the beginning of the Roman-Jewish war and corresponds to the resurrection of the martyrs at the time the fifth seal is broken (Rev 6.9-11). Patrick has been exploring the viability of this interpretation, and has come out in the affirmative with this extensive article. As a bonus, his interpretation makes some very interesting suggestions about the nature of the Resurrection.
In this article, Patrick utilizes a hermeneutic for reading the recurring symbology of Revelation that I find to be quite plausible for a conscious first-century author: it has the virtues of not viewing Revelation as either a reckless jumble of imagery or a composition of wholly ecstatic origin, decipherable only with an esoteric “key” (usually some ad hoc rubric favorable only to a predetermined interpretation). Of course, one of the biggest problems with interpreting Revelation is its undeniably cryptic usage of numbers, which for futurists has strangely not called into question the idea that the “millennium” must require a time period that at least resembles 1,000 years. Patrick gives a novel but quite simple numerical interpretation that makes some sense of the millennium in relation to other time periods mentioned in Revelation.
Related posts:- The reign of Christ during the Millennium As my regulars probably know, I like podcasts. One I listen to regularly (it comes out daily) is Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries. He is...
- The Millennium and the Resurrection of the Dead I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following....
I have not tried to find a reason to disagree with the majority when it comes to my theological positions. Any reader of this blog will recognize that this has nevertheless happened on occasion. Chiefly, theistic evolution puts me at odds with most evangelicals and full preterism puts me at odds with most believers. In other words, I hold a minority position on protology (the doctrine of first things) and eschatology (the doctrine of last things). From what I know, only a handful of Christians who accept full preterism also accept the scientific consensus on origins; likewise, only a few believers who accept the scientific consensus on origins accept full preterism. I am amazed by this because of how well the two fit together. I’ve been meaning to write a post such as this for some time, so here goes.
Related posts:- And the Lord spake, saying, “What was I thinking?!” 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...
- Caution: not for the close-minded It having recently come to my attention that a surprising number of my intimate acquaintances are uninformed of the specifics of my eschatological beliefs, and owing to my conviction that...
- Major revision to an earlier post A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a...
Note: I regularly break what seems to be an unwritten law for blogging that says that, except for minor editorial fixes, one shouldn’t edit posts that add new information without some kind of notification. I have added a little more material to this post to make my arguments more clear; my position remains the same, whereas my explication of my position has hopefully been augmented.
Ah, the infamous, dreaded, and hitherto confusing “unpardonable sin”. What is it? Well, until this week I didn’t know.
Ironically, I first encountered the interpretation I am about to present when hearing someone dismiss it in favor of the interpretation quite popular in evangelical circles nowadays, which is roughly as follows.
Looking at the immediate context of Jesus’ statement on the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, we see that the Pharisees were attributing the miraculous works of Jesus to Beelzebub (Mat 12.24), charging Jesus with simply carrying out Satan’s orders. But instead of responding with an angry outburst or a pronouncement of doom upon the Pharisees, Jesus first deconstructed their argument logically (vv. 25-29) and then delivered the surprisingly magnanimous statement,
“And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.” (vv. 31-32)
Now, so far I’m in agreement with this interpretation. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is defined as rejecting the works of the Holy Spirit and condemning them as evil. But the majority of Protestants don’t allow you to believe that Christians can lose their salvation, so the inference is made that this must be something that is done by unbelievers; additionally, the majority of Christians have believed that the sins of unbelievers are not forgiven anyway. So they tie these things together: the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is simply rejecting the call of the Holy Spirit to salvation. Naturally I thought it was strange that the two men I heard advocating this belief last week are Reformed and so ostensibly don’t believe the Holy Spirit “wastes” his calling on the non-elect. However, not being Reformed myself, my own problem with this interpretation has always been that it seems tautological and smacks of having been retrofitted to match evangelical soteriology. In effect, it paraphrases Jesus’ statement as, “God will forgive any sin you commit (grant salvation to you) except for the sin of not asking forgiveness (accepting salvation).” What a convoluted way of saying something so simple! If that’s what it means, Jesus’ words disguise and lend a solemn air to an altogether obvious and trivial message.
Related posts:- Covenant Theology I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled. The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were...
- New Perspective I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get into a topic I’ve been reading into for quite a while now, but it’s so deep and I’m so shallow....
- Peter speaks Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence...
I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if trends emerged. Well, I just noticed yesterday that there is indeed a small trend. At present, there is a four-way tie for second place: Linguistics, Creation/evolution, Calvinism/Arminianism, and Worship. In first place by two votes is Eschatology/preterism, and in last place I was amused (and a bit disappointed) to see the very topic I just declared I was going to be writing another series on: Bibliology/hermeneutics! I still plan on writing on this in the near future, but to throw a bone to the masses, I decided I’d write one on the clear winner, eschatology. Fairly soon I will write about the intersection of eschatology (the study of last things) and protology (the study of first things) in my theology. I think they work together remarkably well, although I developed them mostly independently. But in the meantime, here’s a question to help me get the pulse of my readership on the issue of eschatology. And I expect at least all eight of you to answer! 
- Jesus’ eschatology and me A reader wrote in recently and asked some really good questions about my eschatology, which I have described on this blog as preteristic. Preterism is the belief that all (or...
- Election and Adoption Part 1: Romans 7 and 8 As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of...
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a new doctrine?“
Related posts:All authorities concur in the declaration that “when all these things should have been done” “the End” should come: that “the mystery of God should be finished as he had declared to His servants the prophets”: it should be completed: time should now be no more: the End of all things (so foretold) should be at hand, and be fully brought to pass: in these days should be fulfilled all that had been spoken of Christ (and of His church) by the prophets: or, in other words, when the gospel should have been preached in all the world for a testimony to all nations, and the power of the Holy People be scattered (abroad), then should the End come, then should all these things be finished. I need now only say, all these things have been done: the old and elementary system passed away with a great noise; all these predicted empires have actually fallen, and the new kingdom, the new heaven and earth, the new Jerusalem – all of which were to descend from God, to be formed by His power, have been realised on earth; all these things have been done in the sight of all the nations; God’s holy arm has been made bare in their sight: His judgments have prevailed, and they remain for an everlasting testimony to the whole world. His kingdom has come, as it was foretold it should, and His will has, so far, been done; His purposes have been finished; and, from that day to the extreme end of time, it will be the duty, as indeed it will be the great privilege of the Church, to gather into its bosom the Jew, the Greek, the Scythian, the Barbarian, bond and free; and to do this as the Apostles did in their days–in obedience, faith and hope.
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- Does majority rule in theology? In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself): Now I...
- On the cause and persistence of post-evangelical faith Since childhood, my personality has been marked by an undercurrent of a haunting yearning sometimes referred to in its extreme forms as “melancholy”, very much like what C. S. Lewis...
I was in college. In my fourth of five years, I heard about a professor who was fairly “liberal” in theology. A friend of mind took his class on Revelation, and was disturbed by how good the arguments were that Revelation was written about first century events. When my friend explained to me in brief terms the professor’s argument, I, too, was apalled – and intrigued. Something about the whole thing rang true. However, I would put it somewhat on the backburner for a little while.
By the time I was out of college, I was ready to dive in and find out if there was anything to this belief system. A few internet searches, and I found that the name for this scandalous view was “preterism”. I looked at a lot of arguments, asked a lot of questions. I discovered that there are two main types of preterists. Partial preterists see only some of prophecy as related to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and hold out for a future something or other (usually the Second Coming and the Resurrection) in the future. Full preterists, the main type of preterist with whom I corresponded on the theological forums, believe that all eschatological events were fulfilled in those events of the first century. Around this time I was starting to see the Bible as literature rather than as a magic text independent of its original cultural context. I saw that the prophetic diction in the New Testament was not a brand new creation, but that it was built upon the tradition of the Old Testament prophecies, and with this revelation and what it did to the Olivet Discourse (Mat 24-25), I was a preterist. Of some sort, anyway.
Then came to a momentous (and stupid) decision: I would decide whether full preterism was true or not by praying and then reading through all the epistles, trying to see if it all made sense from a full preterist standpoint. I didn’t get all the way through before the inevitable happened: I could not reconcile the relevant eschatological passages as I understood them in my fully dispensationalist mindset with the view of preterism. Surprise, surprise, huh?
Related posts:- Common objections to full preterism: below the surface (Preterism is the belief that there are no prophecies in Scripture that await a fulfillment in the future. Hereafter I will use the term “futurist” to describe anyone who believes...
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- You contribute: is Jesus coming back? I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if...
Who said this?
Related posts:But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those which are (now) before us. For He named the whole Jewish people, the children of the City; and the Temple, He styled their House. And thus He testified, that they should, on their own wicked account, bear the vengeance thus to be inflicted. And, it is right we should wonder at the fulfilment of this prediction, since at no time did this place undergo such an entire desolation as this was. He pointed out moreover, the cause of their desolation when He said, “If thou hadst known, even in this day, the things of thy peace:” intimating too His own coming, which should be for the peace of the whole world. But, when ye shall see it reduced by armies, know ye that which comes upon it, to be a final and full desolation and destruction. He designates the desolation of Jerusalem, by the destruction of the Temple, and the laying aside of those services which were, according to the law of Moses, formerly performed within it. The manner moreover of the captivity, points out the war. of which He spoke; “For (said He) there shall be (great) tribulation upon the land, and great wrath upon this people : and they shall fall by the edge of the sword.” We can learn too, from the writings of Flavius Josephus, how these things took place in their localities, and how those, which had been foretold by our Saviour, were, in fact, fulfilled. On this account He said, “Let those who are in its borders not enter into it, since these are the days of vengeance, that all may be fulfilled which has been written.” Any one therefore, who desires it, may learn the results of these things from the writings of Josephus.
- Common objections to full preterism: below the surface (Preterism is the belief that there are no prophecies in Scripture that await a fulfillment in the future. Hereafter I will use the term “futurist” to describe anyone who believes...
- Major revision to an earlier post A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a...
- Does majority rule in theology? In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself): Now I...
Summary of Part One
- God the Gardener created a son (Lk 3.38) to tend the garden.
- God, as a father, was training up his children Adam and Eve in the garden.
- Adam was put in a garden for instruction because gardening requires faith: both faithfulness in tending day by day and faith that what is planted and cultivated will one day grow. Planting and tending a garden is an exercise of faith.
- The prohibition against the Tree of Knowledge, like the dietary laws of the Mosaic Covenant abolished in the New, was intended to be a temporary restriction.
- The Tree of Knowledge was made for Adam and Eve when they matured.
Support for the last two points is found in Hebrews 5:13-14 (all quotations hereafter are from the NRSV): “. . .for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.”
- Adam did not have to earn his place in God’s Garden: rather, God gave good gifts to His children.
- Adam was gifted with gold, precious stones, rivers teeming with life, and authority over all living creatures; no dowry was demanded for him to take Eve as his wife.
- God created the world so that faith was necessary from the beginning. Adam lacked faith in what God told him, and impatiently asked for his inheritance before time (cf. the Prodigal Son).
- The temptation was a shortcut to glory (Genesis 3:5).
- Satan tempted them with something they already had (Genesis 1:27).
- God didn’t just throw His son out of the garden for the first mistake he made. God warned Adam of only one sin.
- Adam was being taught to trust His Father and His goodness. Adam’s sin was his rebellion against his own experience of what God was doing in his life, impatience with God.
The Garden in the New Covenant
Is this motif shown elsewhere in Scripture? Martin gives examples of the gardening metaphor in the NT, specifically as regards life under the New Covenant:
Related posts:- The Garden of Eden: thoughts from Tim Martin When I was at Truthvoice 2008 a month ago, the co-author of Beyond Creation Science, Tim Martin, gave two talks that I thought were worthy of discussion on my blog....
- Indiana Jones and the Fall of Man Commonly in Christian theology, the agreement between Adam and God (the Adamic covenant) and the agreement between the Israelites and God (the Old Covenant of Moses) are contrasted (the Noahide...
- Are the early Genesis stories historical accounts? Before I "took the road less traveled by" into historical linguistics, I was highly interested in ancient history, especially as it related to the Old Testament. I wanted to learn...
As my regulars probably know, I like podcasts. One I listen to regularly (it comes out daily) is Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries. He is well-known as a partial preterist, but, as you will see here soon, posits a future consummative coming of Christ. This is what he said in a recent podcast.
Related posts:After the Resurrection [Jesus] sojourns on the earth for a few weeks with His disciples until that moment comes where He ascends into heaven. And what’s the point of the Ascension? . . . [The] “ascension” here takes on a technical meaning, where it means not simply to go up, but . . . to go up to a specific place for a specific purpose. And the place to which He goes is the right hand of God and the purpose for His ascent is to go to His coronation, to His investiture, as the fulfillment of the Davidic Covenant, where God now crowns Him not just one more king in the line of Davidic kings, but He crowns Him the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and to Whom all the nations of the world are given beneath His authority and under His dominion. And His reign is announced by God in the New Covenant not to last for four hundred years like the dynasty of David but “He shall reign for ever and ever” and ever and ever to which the Church cries, “Hallelujah!”
- The timing of the Millennium I have recently been dialoguing with a new full preterist friend, Patrick Stone, about the timing of the millennium. Early on in the conversation, the possibility was raised that the...
- The Millennium and the Resurrection of the Dead I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following....
- Creation as God’s temple John Walton points out that often in the Ancient Near East, a temple dedication ceremony would take place over seven days’ time; for six days, the temple would be furnished...
I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get into a topic I’ve been reading into for quite a while now, but it’s so deep and I’m so shallow. The issue is the so-called New Perspective on Paul. The Paul Page has some extraordinary articles describing it (start with Mattison’s summary), and so what I reproduce on this blog should only be seen as appetite-whetting for that excellent website.
For those of you who would like a summary of the summary listed above, read on. What is this “new perspective”?
Well, for starters, it’s not really new; it takes into account what its supporters insist is the actual historical context for Paul’s teaching on justification and removes it from the lens of Luther’s anachronistic understanding of the issue. What’s “new” about it is that it wasn’t until the seventies that Christians first started taking it seriously. The four most important scholars for this view are Krister Stendahl, E.P. Sanders (with his watershed 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism), James Dunn (who modified Sanders’s view), and N.T. Wright (who has modified Sanders and Dunn). This position has plunged the scholarly community into a flurry of debate for the last forty years, with old school Reformed types standing the hardest against it but other Reformed theologians (such as Wright) showing a willingness to accept criticism of traditional Lutheran understandings on justification.
If you want a short sound-bite summary of this view as I did, you’ll be disappointed; it is, after all, an interpretation of one of the fundamental aspects of Pauline theology, which is remarkably complex for any position. But let me say a couple things that help position us to view Pauline theology in this way.
Related posts:- Campbell: what did Paul mean by “justified”? Here’s an excerpt from the first part of a review of a book I’ve been interested in since I first heard about it. It’s from the New Perspective school of...
- Election and Adoption Part 3: God’s Purpose in Election As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice....
- Election and Adoption Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it...
In this week’s installment of Theology Unplugged, a podcast I highly recommend, Reclaiming the Mind Ministries president Michael Patton made the following comments about full preterists (like myself):
Related posts:Now I would say, you can believe that, and you can make your arguments — and many people do from Scripture. I’m not persuaded at all by them — but at the same time I would say that this is an unChristian way to believe about a particular issue in the end times. It’s an unChristian way or, another way to put it, unorthodox; it is outside of the sphere of orthodoxy within historic Christianity. Now, the next thing we ask is, ok, if it’s outside of the sphere of historic Christianity, does that make… [you] automatically a nonbeliever, someone who is outside the grace of God, someone who is unregenerate as we sometimes put it, or someone who does not have a relationship established with the one true God? And I would say no.
- Is full preterism a new doctrine? (revised) Who said this? But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those...
- Covenant Theology I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled. The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were...
- My love affair with theology I haven’t been posting much lately. To explain why, allow me give you a sketch of my relationship with theology, which has always formed the backbone of this site. First,...
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Covenant Radio, today and feeling rather baffled.
The hosts, both Presbyterians, were interviewing a Reformed Baptist, Dr. Thomas Schreiner. They were engaging him in regard to a recent book of his called Believer’s Baptism that contended a position contrary to their own Presbyterian position. Not being Presbyterian, or even Reformed for that matter, I have had to read between the lines to discern the hot issues in the Presbyterian community from these hosts’ discussions with major Presbyterian ministers.
Now, as I understand it, there is a major rift in the Presbyterian denominations concerning Covenant: one side equates Covenant with salvation, and the other claims that, just as in the Mosaic system, there are participants in and beneficiaries of the Covenant who themselves are not of the elect.
These latter, of whom the hosts of this podcast are representatives, believe that there are by-products of the Covenant that even those who are damned may enjoy. The privileges of the Covenant, although not exhaustively or explicitly elucidated in the podcasts I’ve heard, ostensibly include such things as divine protection and blessing. So a damned child growing up in a household of elect can benefit from his participation in the New Covenant; this view tends to view the sacraments such as baptism (including, most argue, paedobaptism) and communion as ways for these non-elect to remain under the blessing and protection of the Covenant.
Dr. Schreiner sides with the other camp of Presbyterians and argues for believer’s baptism only, for the same reason that only believers are supposed to partake in communion – they heap (additional?) damnation onto themselves by unworthily participating. He views Hebrews 6 and the other warning passages not as directed toward any non-elect Covenant members (a concept he rejects) but toward the elect. He attempts to defend his view against those like me who say that the multitude of warning passages throughout the Bible, if directed toward the eternally secure elect, are merely empty threats, since it is impossible for them to become apostate. He argues that the teaching of Hebrews 6, “The elect who fall away are damned”, is a completely true statement — only it never actually has the occasion to be realized. In other words, it’s not an empty threat, but a theoretical statement of an impossibility expressed as though it were a possibility. I fail to see how the nonsense factor is mitigated by this spin.
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As I stated in Part 2, I reject the notion that foreknowledge is prescriptive. I hold to the conviction that there is an interplay between man’s choice and God’s choice. One cannot rationally hold a robot responsible for the destruction it wreaks if it merely follows the software intentionally programmed to make it destructive. Yet the Bible throughout calls people and nations into account for their own choices and decisions.
In Romans 9, Paul gives two examples of “vessels of destruction”, Esau and Pharaoh. Reformed theologians will often argue that these vessels only have the appearance of choosing wicked behavior: in actuality, they (like everyone else) have no free will to choose; my position is that they had the actual ability to choose, and if God were left out of the equation, their nature and character was bent so that they could only hardly have chosen any other way than they did This may seem a trifling distinction in practice, since if God creates people in full knowledge of what good or evil they will do, if He chooses the “hardware” with which they make their decisions, it’s hard not to see that God is passively determining the path of certain people one way or another. However, do not forget that He is said to not be willing that any should perish (2 Pe 3.10), that He takes no delight in the death of the wicked (Ez 18.32), and that “God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Ti 2.4). Taking these passages into consideration implies that, as a rule, He supplies mankind with “hardware” that could go either way, and only occasionally has He stacked the deck one way or another, as it were. I explained in Part 2 why Pharaoh, for instance, was chosen to be a vessel of destruction; Paul is very clear that vessels of and honor and destruction were chosen only for the purpose of fulfilling “His purpose in election” (Ro 9.11). What is this purpose?
Read more…
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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.
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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.
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I had to cut the last post short, somewhat abruptly as you might have noticed. But presenting bite-size chunks is better for blogging anyway (not that you would know it from my posts!), so I went ahead and posted it. Here’s a continuation.
What I’m trying to do is present an audience-relevant view on certain passages that have, since Augustine and continuing in the Reformed tradition, been taken out of context and made into what is known as the Calvinist doctrine of election.
On the outset of this one, allow me to cut to the chase for some of you. I do not have a problem believing that God can, and that He in fact has, predestined certain individuals for life and some for destruction. I’m not one who says that God cannot determine someone will for them, or at least provide the circumstances that will tilt someone toward one choice or another. However, is every decision by every human determined by God? This is clearly not so, as a multitude of Scriptures clearly indicate. Here’s something I ran across that presents many of these passages along with some good old fashioned logic.
Many Calvinists aware of these passages feel constrained nonetheless because of certain passages such as Ephesian 1 and Romans 9 that explicitly talk about predestination based on God’s election. The Reformed doctrine of election is the solution to a puzzle with many pieces missing; tragically, many of these pieces are right there in Scripture but result from the misunderstanding of other doctrines. I think the key misplaced piece is eschatology. I am laying a lot of groundwork before expounding my understanding of election. That’s because we can’t view these Calvinist proof-texts in isolation from their original context.
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As long as I can remember, I have struggled hard against the Calvinist understanding of the doctrine of election. Recently I have been observing and interacting with a number of people of the Reformed persuasion, and I am astounded at the intellects of some of the people wholly sold on a teaching that requires so much nonsense ad hoc philosophy and theology in order to sustain it. In order to make the Calvinist God “sovereign” as they understand that concept, people such as John Piper have to redefine “love” — you know, the love that God says He is and that He requires us to have one for another — to mean its polar opposite: selfishness. All this to prop up an unscriptural understanding of the quite scriptural doctrine of election.
The confusion is magnified because of bad eschatology. This next couple of posts will address eschatology and the doctrine of election at the same time. Sound like fun?
John McPherson, in his article called “A Biblical Perspective on Election”, pulls out one of the most famous proof-texts for the Calvinist take on election, Ephesians 1:4 and 5. Let me supply his annotated version of this passage (vv. 3-12) in context, and I want you to see if you can grasp our point before I spell it out.
“3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: 4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: 5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. 7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; 8 Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence; 9 Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself: 10 That in the dispensation of the fullness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him: 11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will: 12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.”
Did you catch the importance of that last sentence? It defines the “we” and “us” everywhere throughout the passage: Paul was referring to his first-century, firstfruits audience!
Leaving that aside for the time, we are going to talk about Paul’s use of the term “adoption”. What is going on in Ephesians 1?
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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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Preterists point to a panoply of time statements in Scripture regarding the eschaton. Twenty of the twenty-six books of the NT give such time statements, expectations of an imminent occurrence of eschatological significance: “this generation shall not pass until…”; “about to”; “some standing here will not taste death before…”; “at hand”; “soon”.
Matthew 3:2,7,10,12, 4:17, 10:7,23, 12:32, 16:27,28, 21:40-45, 24:34, 26:64
Mark 1:15, 12:9,12, 13:30
Luke 3:7,9,17, 10:9,11, 20:15-19, 21:22,32, 23:28-30, 24:21
John 14:18,20,22, 21:22
Acts 2:16-17, 4:25, 17:31, 24:15
Romans 4:23-24, 8:13,18, 13:11-12, 16:20
1 Corinthians 7:29,31, 10:11, 15:51-52, 16:22
Ephesians 1:21
Philippians 4:5
Colossians 1:23,46, 2:16-17
1 Thessalonians 4:15,17, 5:23
2 Thessalonians 1:6-7
1 Timothy 4:8, 6:14,19
2 Timothy 3:1-9, 4:1
Hebrews 1:1-2,14, 2:5, 6:5,7-8, 8:13, 9:8-10,11,26, 10:1,25,27,37, 13:14
James 2:12, 5:1,3,7,8
1 Peter 1:6,20, 3:3,5, 4:5,7,17, 5:1
2 Peter 1:19, 2:3, 3:10-12
1 John 2:8,17,18, 4:3
Jude 4,14-15,17-19
Revelation 1:1,3, 2:25, 3:10,11, 12:5, 18:24, 22:6,7,10,12,20
If time statements are at all suggestive, they must always be taken at face value. It is no good to point at the majority of these listed above and proclaim, “The New Testament ubiquitously predicts an imminent, first-century Day of the Lord,” and then deny one or two instances of those time statements. If one or two may be denied as truly imminent, all may be denied. If Jesus’ standing “at the door” (Rev 3:20) or if the axe “already laid at the root of the tree” (Matt 3:10) can be said to admit a multi-millennia interval, then partial preterists cannot claim with a straight face that any of the other time statements demand imminent fulfillment.
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Josh’s blog has something important to say on this.
‘Nuff said.
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