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?“

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.

The quote belongs to Dr. Samuel Lee, who translated Eusebius’ Theophania in 1843. I sincerely apologize for the misattribution and for the argument I tried to make from it. Read my original post to see my revision of it, which now presents an actual quote from Eusebius affirming Matthew 24’s apocalypse as having occurred in the first century. This is not the same thing as full preterism; for instance, Eusebius in the Theophania actually gives the routine line from the ECF about a future resurrection of the “selfsame” body, which full preterism rejects. Does this harm my theology? Not exactly.

Think of it this way: the ECF disagreed about a lot of things. They agreed on a number of things as well. On the things they disagreed upon, we are told to believe that at least one of the parties was wrong and one was right; on the things they agreed upon, it is the very truth of God. But why should we believe that on any one of those issues, any of the parties was correct? Could the issues upon which they agreed have been blind shots in the dark that happened to hit the same, but wrong, target? I see no scriptural mandate that the ECF had to be right on anything, much less everything. The ECF weren’t even mentioned in the Bible. Rather, it was the Apostles that the Holy Spirit was going to lead into all truth, and that’s recorded in Scripture. People, listen: most of my friends know that there is no more fierce advocate for studying and appreciating the ECF and the teaching of believers gone before us than I, but can we ever accept their words over the Bible? I think not. And for me the biblical evidence for full preterism and against a future end of the world is insurmountable.

So take it as you will. Thanks, anonymous poster, for “undeceiving” me: I welcome and covet your interaction on these issues.

Something jumped out at me several days ago when I was reading Acts 13: it reminded me of Romans 11. And well it should. After all, Acts was written by a fellow who accompanied Paul on numerous missionary journeys and should have been quite in sync with his doctrine and theology.

Interestingly enough, at about the same time I noticed the obvious parallel, my brother-in-law Josh was having an epiphany of his own that was soon manifested in two posts on his site, “Predestination: A Misunderstanding of Jew vs. Gentile In the New Covenant?” and “Predestination Misunderstanding Part II: Vessels of Honor and Destruction“. The subject is clear from his post titles, and they intersect with what I was reading in Acts. Let’s get down to it, shall we?

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?

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 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.

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:

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.

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!”

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.

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 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.

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.

This is the conclusion of a series. The first two installments are:

Part 1: Romans 7 and 8

Part 2: Gracious Sovereignty

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?

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
Del.icio.us : eschatology, poetry

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.

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?

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:

2. “The Son of Man” comes “with great glory” (24:30), “in his glory” (25:31)
3. Angels accompany Him
4. The nations are called into account (24:30) and (25:32)
5. 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.