Undeception

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 three-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!

The strength of preterist eschatology is its exegesis. I don’t have any interest in going into the issue of church history in this post (check this out [corrected link!] for a summary of my position on this matter), but instead I want to examine purely scriptural evidence; this is because most evangelical Christians in the Protestant tradition who make up my core audience believe that no church dogma should be adopted amidst biblical evidence to the contrary. Contingent of course upon your cooperation, I’m not going to write the meat of this post. In asking you the following narrowly delimited question, I want to know (and want you to make sure) that your position has biblical support and is not just an inherited presupposition. Here it is:

Question: Quote or reference the one passage or verse that you think most clearly promises a return of Christ yet future to us. If you do not believe there is a future coming, state so, and respectfully interact with those who do.

Stipulation: Please do not use as your reference a passage that only presents another eschatological event that you think has to happen before, with, or after the next coming of Christ (e.g. the Resurrection, Romans 8’s groaning creation, etc.), but rather provide an out-and-out reference to an advent that has not yet occurred (whether or not you think of it as a “second” coming).

Why that stipulation? Any evangelical affirming a future return should presumably have a scriptural basis for that belief, and I want to see if it can be found when you strip away complex theological constructs; if there is in fact at least one passage that explicitly predicts a still future Coming, I would like to see it produced. If you believe in a future coming strictly on philosophical rather than biblical grounds, I would be interested in knowing that as well.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation!

I’ve been thinking about switching themes for months now, but this weekend I’ve been toying with the one you see here. I can already see some things that I’m going to want to tweak, but if you have any suggestions as well, let me know. Also notice that I am trying out a “wall” widget à la Facebook on the rightmost sidebar right beneath the “Recent comments” widget; if you wouldn’t mind, leave any comments you have on the theme there so I can see how it works.

Edit: I removed the wall widget. One, I can’t see people using it, and two, I didn’t like the comments showing up in my “Recent Comments” widget.

I come from a Christian tradition that downplays or contradicts basic principles of biblical interpretation (hermeneutics) on a regular basis. The starting assumption is that the Bible is God’s Word written; this effectively entails the idea that the Bible is about as divine as He is: inerrant because He is, authoritative because He is, perfect because He is, etc. The fact that evangelicals have taken to referring to the canon by one of Jesus’ own titles is an indication that they view it as a proxy for Him on the earth; Karl Barth rightly noted that, on the whole, Protestants have installed a paper pope in lieu of a living one. For these, reading the Bible is as close as most of us will get to gazing into God’s eyes. Surely this takes it too far. What if the Bible is not the ipsissima verba (”very words”) of God? Its profitability for the Christian life is not a result of near-divinity but of our wise God’s decision on how to create it, namely its humanity. The divine is the Bible’s subject, not its nature or essence.

The Bible should perhaps not be thought of as an exhaustive instruction book for humanity written by God as much as a journal written by mankind recording their encounters with God; it’s a play-by-play recounting of salvation history as guided by God. We learn by the revelation they received from God and their experiences, but we shouldn’t expect every statement and every thought to contain “a word for us” directly from God’s lips. C. S. Lewis put it this way:

The total result is not “the Word of God” in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

As someone else put it (more succinctly than Lewis), “The Bible is made up of 66 books, not 31,000 fortune cookies.” Too many evangelicals are wont to expect the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the Scriptures to function independently of the context and often in apparent contempt of it. The idea is that because the Bible is a mystical, magical book (which is how many understand the adjective “inspired”), each passage or verse can mean whatever God wants it to, and we should look forward to those instances in which He extracts nuggets of personally relevant data in blatant violation of the context in which He inspired it. But if the Bible can mean anything, it means nothing. Either context is an essential factor for determining meaning, or its value is essentially trivial because it is wholly subject to being thrown out as soon as someone decides that the passage means something more suitable to him/her in their situation. Original, contextual meaning gathers dust beneath the shadow cast by the Holy Spirit’s illumination. There is no middle ground because the more “spiritual” reading is always able to tilt the table in its direction.

No offense, James! This was just too funny - although such language is not unique to this one politician by any means.

Effective this post, I’m going into radio silence for approximately one month. Well, not exactly. I mean, for one thing, this isn’t radio. And for another, I hope I’ll not be altogether silent over the next month, but there are no promises, either.

What’s the occasion? Well, let’s just say that the outcome of the event that transpires in the next month is the single most definitive turning point for me so far and will largely determine what I do for the rest of my life. Am I overstating things? Hardly.

I hate that this comes now when my blog traffic is at a record high. But as I said above, I’m not planning on unplugging completely: I will still be on to respond to comments as necessary, maybe put up a link I’ve found, summarize a thought going through my head, etc. So don’t take me off your blogroll yet.

If you would, whenever (if ever) this blog comes to your mind in the next month, drop to your knees and send out a fervent prayer on my behalf - or at least whisper, “Lord, help jog Steve’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad memory.” Thanks!

~Steve

I’ve not got much to say about this, but please check out Cliff Martin’s post that describes his thinking on the unchanging nature of God, progressive revelation, and the inspiration of Scripture. I don’t think I disagreed with anything he said. Here’s an excerpt:

I believe that the Bible is a unique book, inspired from Genesis to Revelation. I believe it is the very book God wanted us to have. I hold to the authority of the Scriptures in matters of faith and practice. I believe the Bible provides a solid and dependable foundation for Christian living. I read it. I study it. I love it. I teach it. I find that it is “useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). I believe all the Scriptures are infallible. Infallibility, as I use the term, means that the Bible, in its totality, does not mislead on issues of faith and practice, though it may not be without error in all respects. In my years of reading and studying the Bible, this view is more consistent with the Scriptures themselves than what I consider a forced claim of inerrancy.

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?

Lawrence Boadt’s excellent Reading the Old Testament has a chart on page 79 that illustrates some key differences between the way the ancients viewed history and the way we do today. We tend to be shocked when we discover that there might be any deviation from what we subconsciously have accepted as the only viewpoint. These are examples Boadt gives for distinctions that should inform our study of the Old Testament, even the parts written in some sense as history. Here is the chart:

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 Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and of course Hebrew so that I could study the Ancient Near East (ANE) and how it related to the Bible. The more I read on my own, the more I realized that such studies did not confirm the Bible as a purely divine record of history. ANE archaeology and history demonstrate the ANE heritage of the Bible; but once we acknowledge the ANE context of the Bible, we should not expect to see those aspects which differ from 21st century Western ideals to be omitted from it and should likewise not expect to see our modern ideals in place. Sadly, it is difficult for readers of literature to approach any text fully aware of the ideals, mindsets, and motivations of the authors even when contemporaneous with them, much less when separated by changes to culture, social context, and language wrought by millennia of intervening time; the unconsciously anachronistic depositing of ideas and concepts foreign to the author and original audience are also hard to identify and purge from our readings.

Readers of this blog should know that I believe the Bible is no less subject to anachronistic misinterpretation than other literary works, and I would point out to those who disagree that there are myriad cases in which they themselves make provision for this problem - any time they insist on doing anything beyond a surface reading that doesn’t take into account the history and culture of the people involved with the writing of the Bible. Educated evangelicals in particular have a tendency to eat up any book they can get their hands on that purports to show the Bible in its original context, provided the conclusion is “conservative” and is treated as upholding the historicity of the Bible. I myself tend to do this even today, and with some just cause: zealous secularist debunkers approach the text looking for erroneous information they suppose invalidates the message of Scripture. For most evangelicals, an appeal to historical/cultural contextualization is especially lauded when is used to clear up apparent challenges to scientific inerrancy. Take for example Edwin Thiele’s observation of Judah and Israel’s alternating usage of accession and non-accession year dating in recording regnal lengths in First and Second Kings, a situation somewhat perplexing to anyone advocating the “plain reading” approach. This has caused some conservatives (especially fundamentalists) to attack Thiele’s explanation as an end-run around God’s intention to provide us all truth provided we use a plain, literalist hermeneutic (witness one such person reviewing Thiele’s book, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, on Amazon).

The plain, literalist hermeneutic is useful for upholding the current ideals of historiography in the Old Testament narratives. The problem is that this is a dreadfully anachronistic endeavor: the modern genre of historiography was not developed before a Greek movement that took place centuries after the supposed origin of the stories, and even then it took quite a while for those ideals to saturate Greek historiography and then the rest of the world through Hellenism. It’s not that those before the turn of the first millennium A.D. were incapable or too ignorant to write history the way we expect it in our post-Enlightenment world. It’s just that they had different ideals for what they wanted from a story. Cold, dispassionate, scientific history without any foreseeable application failed to supply the meaning or entertainment they demanded from their stories. They wanted colorful stories that gave them meaning, not history for history’s sake. Modernists, however, tend to believe that an exact recounting of history is the highest or most important use of narrative. As I wrote elsewhere, “The difference between the ancient and the modern motivations for and method of speculation about unknowns is that the ancients used mythological stories in order to apply meaning to the subject of their speculation and we tend to use scientific enquiry to sever meaning from the subject, and are thus generally skeptical that any meaning can or should be applied. The ancients were content to be ignorant of the mechanics of how, as long as they knew why. Modernists feel satisfied to have discovered the natural causes, the how’s, and seem convinced that this abolishes meaning.”

But the use of mythology to convey meaning is not something that disappeared without a trace with the onset of the Age of Reason. Gordon Glover likes to point out that the American tall tales about such figures as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill are not intended to explain topographical features such as the Grand Canyon, but they do acknowledge the existence of those features as integral aspects of the frontier and use fantastic stories about their creation as entertaining vehicles of meaning to illustrate character virtues such as strength and courage which have now successfully been associated with the frontiersmen who tamed the wilderness.

Would it be so scandalous if the Israelites, like all their neighbors, had little use for a cold recounting of geological, astronomical, and biological history, preferring stories chock-full of meaning? What would be wrong if God saw it fit to communicate the truths most relevant and significant to them in the way most familiar to them? The self-centeredness of the objection that this genre isn’t as relevant to us is readily apparent and needs no comment here.

ANE scholarship has long pointed out the similarities between the early Genesis stories and the myths of the ANE, from the obvious Utnapishtim/Noah parallel to shades of Enki and Ninhursag in the Garden narratives. Nevertheless, literalists have a few preferred methods of explaining these parallels away. First, they will deny any similarity of style between the Genesis narratives and the ANE myths. Other times they will insist that the similarities are merely chance or so general and vague that they are hardly significant. Lastly, when the parallels are undeniable, they break out their ace in the hole: they claim that Genesis is the original, historical basis for the ANE stories, regardless of the fact that the latter predate Genesis by as much as a millennium.

I want to share a few of my thoughts on these literalist responses.

Do you believe that the theory of evolution has never been observed? That it is purely theoretical and has never been, can never be, demonstrated in the laboratory?

Well, it appears that this ICR and AIG favorite is no longer a sustainable argument:

A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.

And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.

Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.

The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.

This population of E. coli was observed to evolve a new trait known as Cit+, the ability to metabolize citrate. What’s really interesting is that the inability to metabolize citrate has previously been one of the distinguishing features of E. coli. This is more remarkable than it may seem on the surface. How so?

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:

From Fox News following Metro.co.uk.:

One unlucky British teen suffered a painful shark attack without ever going near the water. In fact, he was bitten in the face by one of the sharp-fanged animals in his own bedroom, Metro.co.uk reported.

The “attack” happened at 14-year-old Sam Hawthorne’s home in Dudley, England.

Hawthorne was sleepwalking when the teeth of a dead souvenir shark from a family vacation, that hangs on the wall of his nautical-themed bedroom, became embedded in his face.

The teeth left blood pouring from the teen’s face, his mother, Susan, told Metro.co.uk. “It was like something out of a horror film,” she said. “The shark must have been embedded in Sam’s cheek for about 15 minutes and he was in a lot of pain.”

In the end, Hawthorne came away with only a small scar. “It was the most frightening experience of my life,” he told Metro.co.uk.

Whaa…?