Archives for “Preterism”
On a cue from Philip Harland, I found this remarkable passage showing an example of the perception that some pagans entertained of mid-second century Christians. It’s not pretty:
[Cynics and Christians] divide and upset the household, and bring into collision those inside with each other, and tell them the worst ways to manage their household. They never say, find, or do anything socially productive. They do not participate in panegyrics (festal assemblies), nor worship the gods, nor help govern the cities, nor comfort the sorrowing, nor make reconciliation with those of opposing persuasions, nor arouse the young – or anyone else for that matter – to the affairs of the world.
–Aelius Aristides in The Defense of the Four, as cited by Frances Margaret Young in The theology of the pastoral letters, p. 17.
This was written by an orator who is associated mostly with Asia Minor but who was certainly well travelled. It’s difficult to say how widely his observations applied to Christian communities throughout the world at the time, or whether he was taking just a few bad apples and making gross overgeneralizations. I point it out because 1) much of what Aristides described then seems to correspond to various visible factions of Christianity today and because 2) to the consternation of a wide range of critics both ancient and modern, those commonalities are probably indicative of what a significant constituency of the early church thought was proper.
- What the first century church really looked like Read 1 Cor 5.11-13 (below). The church usually focuses on the words I omitted in the “…” But what about the words I left in? Do we do what Paul...
- Not historic, orthodox Christianity Today Joel Watts posted a quote from one of the Early Church Fathers on the subject of the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord’s Supper or Communion): For not as common bread and...
- Levity as Leaven in Today’s Church Picture the children of old being taught by their elders the stories of their ancestors and the history of their faith. Imagine them with wide eyes as they absorbed and...
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.
Related posts:- 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. ...
Today Joel Watts posted a quote from one of the Early Church Fathers on the subject of the Eucharist (a.k.a. the Lord’s Supper or Communion):
For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. [Emphasis all Steve's]
This wasn’t post-Nicea, folks. The doctrine of transubstantiation, or Real Presence, which teaches that the bread and wine literally become Christ’s body and blood upon the blessing from the Church leader, goes way back. The above quote was from Justin Martyr in his First Apology (ch. 66), written about 155. When looking at the Early Church Fathers, we don’t get a whole lot earlier than Justin Martyr. Interestingly, wider context shows that his main point wasn’t even that the elements became Christ’s body and blood — that was a given — but that the Church leadership was entrusted with the administration of the sacrament. And it’s clear that Justin is under the impression that this teaching was handed down by the Apostles, so at very least it well predates 155.
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- Proving Christianity with inerrancy In a discussion involving my rejection of inerrancy, a frequent commenter mentioned the inerrantist objection, ”Without [our Bible] can we confidently walk up to a non-believer and ask him to believe our own...
- In Luther’s footsteps Last Sunday night, our church hosted a Reformation Party for the kids. It was sort of a Halloweenish deal, with lots of games and candy, and the kids were encouraged...
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.
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- 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...
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?
Related posts:- 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....
- Disputing Calvinism: vessels of temporary, conditional wrath? I wanted to share this excellent article that answers, mostly via Scripture, many if not most of the arguments of Calvinism. In an admirable show of the author’s critical thinking, while...
- 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...
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...
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:
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- 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...
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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...
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.
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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…
- 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 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...
- The jealousy of the Jews and the fullness of the Gentiles 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...
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.
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...
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- 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....
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.
Related posts:- 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....
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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?
Related posts:- 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....
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- 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....
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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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 about a rapture, at least as commonly understood. That passage is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Let’s get a picture of what’s going on here.
Most modern translations of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 apparently take their cue from the KJV: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NKJV)
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of {the} archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NASB)
“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NIV)
Close scrutiny of both the grammar and vocabulary made me question the propriety of this translation. Let’s start with the vocabulary. Read more…
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...
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What would it take to wipe out hunger and give all poor nations a chance at development?
Better yet, why aren’t more Christians asking this question?
This is something that’s been in my mind of late. Thoughts of children suffering and dying and their parents helpless to prevent it are so burdensome that only my strong defense mechanism (called “ignoring it”) keeps me from being constantly disturbed. But I ask myself – if you knew that your sibling(s) and/or parents were somewhere far away suffering the same way unaided, would you be content to put it out of your mind? Where’s the love for “the least of these”?
The U.N. tells us that 24,000 people die from starvation/malnutrition every single day. This figure is one of the lower I’ve read, so don’t think the U.N. is making it look worse than it is. Nor does this data even take into account the number of deaths that happen because of untreated, though easily treatable, medical problems.
Does any of that shock you? Or are they just statistics?
I have been disturbed to hear committed evangelical Christians shrug their shoulders at the insurmountable tasks I pointed out above. Three common responses:
1) If they’d just get off their lazy butts, they’d be able to do something about it.
It’s not the well who need a doctor, but the sick. Jesus came to seek and save the lost: even given occasional accuracy of the “laziness” accusation, those who are lost in self-destructive habits are prime examples of those who need our Savior’s administration in their lives.
2) All we can hope is to spread the gospel to as many places as possible so that Jesus can come back and end poverty once and for all.
This is a load of garbage (since I try to use more than four letters for all of my descriptive words, I will leave it at that). This is a perfect example of why futurist eschatology is dysfunctional and dangerous. That aside, this mindset makes the gospel look irrelevant: it ignores the example of Jesus who customarily treated the physical need before (or as a way of) ministering to the heart.
Related posts:3) We do send missionaries to help where they can. We’re helping out little by little.
- 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...
- Why eschatology matters Josh’s blog has something important to say on this. ‘Nuff said. ...
- 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...