My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

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RickC
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Mon Aug 31, 2015 8:45 am

(Addendum)

With the fairly recent death of the Jewish actor, Leonard Nimoy (Spock on Star Trek), I saw that William Shatner (Capt. Kirk), also Jewish, Tweeted that he regretably couldn't make it to Nimoy's funeral in time (which was no more than three days after Nimoy died, if I'm not mistaken).

So I'm wondering if this 'quick funeral' custom is still going on today(?).

I think I have some links on how 1st century Jews saw this; that it, perhaps, was a kind of rabbinical teaching, i.e., not in the Tanach, but maybe in the Mishna/Talmud(?).

When I wrote that Jews weren't considered 'officially and fully dead' till the fourth day, I could have better stated that as legally dead, i.e, in terms of haggadah, Jewish law.

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Homer
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by Homer » Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:43 am

Hi Rick,

How does a preterist understand this?

1 Corinthians 15:20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

20. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.


It seems obvious the fruit that follows "first fruit" is the same in nature. Would that not be true in Paul's thinking?

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Mon Aug 31, 2015 11:15 am

Hello Homer! You wrote:How does a preterist understand this?

1 Corinthians 15:20 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

20. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

It seems obvious the fruit that follows "first fruit" is the same in nature. Would that not be true in Paul's thinking?
'Christ, the first fruits' is referencing the Jewish custom of offering 'first fruits' of a harvest to God. The exact time of when the 'first fruits' is has been contested: Is this referring to spring harvest? or a final fall time harvest?, etc.

I know that at least some preterists link 'Christ, the first fruits' to the parable of the wheat and tares (cf. Matt 13:30), wherein the harvest time occurred at 70AD.

Otherwise, I'd say what was the same about Christ and anyone else being raised is that they, Christ included, were 'asleep' ('sleep' being a metaphor for death).

As far as a time lapse between Christ being raised and whoever else goes, 'Christ, the first fruits' indicates a time span of some sort. I'm not sure what to make of it, as I haven't really studied this out yet.

By the way, I'm not really an expert on what full preterists teach, though I'm generally familiar with a few of them. Though I've read online and listened to some full preterists, most of why I became preterist has to do with my own Bible studies.

Also, the video I posted may answer some of your questions re: preterism ("You've Gotta Be Kidding . . . Right?", page one)

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Mon Feb 22, 2016 3:45 pm

Greetings! (several months later, providing dwilkins' full post from page one for context -- reply at bottom) . . . .
dwilkins wrote:I think the key to the resurrection piece is that starting immediately in post-scripture early Christian writings you have the work being done by people trained in Greek philosophy. There was very little Christian understanding of the classical way that Hebrews used the text. So, in 2nd Peter he says that the heavens will melt at the second coming. This matched almost verbatim the expectation of the Stoics and other Greek philosophers who expected the universe to melt in order to purify it. None of them seemed to notice that in Isaiah 34 we see the heavens melting when the Babylonians destroyed Edom, a real moment in history only seen on earth as "the struggles of man." In the Greek mind, the universe had to melt in order to purify it. In the Hebrew mind (no longer presented in much Christian writing) such language described the gravity of a terrible military disaster.

But, studying the Greek philosophers (specifically the Stoics) does give us a way to understand some of the New Testament resurrection language since theirs was the dominant system of physics taught at the time. Without it, I don't think you can make coherent sense of the passage below:

1Co 15:35 But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?"
1Co 15:36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.
1Co 15:37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
1Co 15:38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
1Co 15:39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.
1Co 15:40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.
1Co 15:41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
1Co 15:42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.
1Co 15:43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
1Co 15:44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.

1Co 15:45 Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
1Co 15:46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.
1Co 15:47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.
1Co 15:48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.
1Co 15:49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
1Co 15:50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

It's clear to me in this passage that Paul was trying to say that people are raised with bodies made of spirit, or pneumas. This can't be twisted into a gnostic claim since gnosticism was based on Neoplatonism, which hadn't emerged at the time of the writing of the New Testament. Instead, the Stoic view of pneumas was that it was an invisible, perfect gas like air. The Hebrews also considered the spirit, ruach, to be like air (cf. John 3). It was the invisible life force glue that held the universe together. The better or more complex the life form was, the better the quality of pneumas it had. God would naturally have a perfect quality of pneumas. When Paul talks about God putting his pneumas in believers he's saying that the believers have just been transformed and now transcended normal, fleshly humanity. And, since flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, when the believer soul is raised from the Hadean realm it's his renovated pneumas bonded to God's pneumas that forms his new physical body. This high quality physical pneumas body is suited for heaven, which is the anticipated abode of believers after death.

You have to be dead to be resurrected according to Paul, so at the resurrection all of those who'd died up to that point were issued new, prefect pneumas bodies. This was invisible to living humans, but was very much a physical event. Those believers, along with all of the believers who've since died and been issued their new pneumas bodies, reside in heaven forever.

Without the insight that the Stoics preceded the gnostics (who didn't formulate a coherent doctrine until at least 50 years after the New Testament was finished), and that the Stoics demanded that pneumas be physical there was no way for the church to come up with a coherent doctrine on the matter. Murray Harris' book on the resurrection alludes to this in several places. The church's doctrine has always held a great deal of mystery (really, incoherence) because they couldn't make sense of spirit being physical, and the believer's new body being spirit.

Doug
I've finally started reading through one of two books I have by Troels Engberg-Pedersen: Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit

[excerpted from Abstract]

This book argues that the traditional, mainly cognitive and metaphorical ways of understanding central Pauline concepts, e.g. ‘being in Christ’, which have been heavily influenced by the incorporation of Platonic dualism into early Christianity from the 2nd century onwards, must be supplemented by a literal, not just cognitive and non-metaphorical understanding that directly reflects Paul's cosmology. That cosmology, including Paul's understanding of the pneuma (‘spirit’), was a materialist, bodily one, with the pneuma being understood by Paul as consisting of a combination of physical elements that would at the resurrection act directly on the ordinary human bodies of believers and transform them into ‘pneumatic bodies’.

________________________________

I can't recall if dwilkins recommended this book to me or if I found it myself.

I'm only about 1/3rd through it and have skipped some of the footnotes (which were specified by Engberg-Pedersen as 'for the scholar'). I've bypassed these because this is one of the BEST theological books I've ever read! I can't slow down! but will get to the footnotes later, I'm sure!

If what dwilkins posted about Paul & Stoic cosmology and/or understanding of the 'self' (body, soul, spirit, flesh, etc.) sounds far-fetched -- this book seems to me to be irrefutable proof that Paul utilized Stoic concepts. Not just as a convenient play on words or an attempt to sound 'contemporary'; Paul believed in, and worked from, the Stoic worldview --- but of course, with his important Jewish-Christian distinctives.

I'm beside myself!
Totally recommend this book!
Not 'light' reading, but Engberg-Pedersen is a great teacher!
It's opening up the scriptures to me in ways I haven't experienced in DECADES!

Thanks, dwilkins & all! :)

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RickC
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Mon Feb 22, 2016 4:07 pm

Addendum: The book link provides synopses of the chapters. Also, the book isn't (necessarily) directly related to preterism though what I've read so far seems to be consistent with it. It would be of interest to anyone who's interested in 'the resurrection body'.

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by dwilkins » Thu Feb 25, 2016 1:55 pm

There are three books that speak to this issue that are extremely important. You are reading the first one:

http://www.amazon.com/Cosmology-Self-Ap ... 361&sr=1-3

A similar book edited by the first author is a series of papers that explores related material:

http://www.amazon.com/Stoicism-Early-Ch ... b+pedersen

The third is a book by A. A. Long on the history of philosophy. It ends up engaging schools of thought that are very important in the New Testament era:

http://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Philo ... philosophy

I highly recommend all three.

Doug

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Fri Feb 26, 2016 9:07 am

Thanks, Douglas!

I actually also have Troels Engberg-Pedersen's earlier book, "Paul and the Stoics" (c. 2000, 448 pp. including footnotes) -- which I got used at a really good price. I decided to read "The Material Spirit" first because it seemed more directly related to eschatology.

After finishing "Material Spirit" I'll probably go back to J.S. Russell's "The Parousia" which I had started, but it seemed most of what I read I had already gone over, so to speak. That is, though I'm learning a lot, I'm having 'no problems' easily understanding Russell's exegesis, etc.

But thanks much for the recommendations! (I'll keep these reads in mind as I progress in my studies), <facebook thumbs up emoticon>
Last edited by RickC on Fri Feb 26, 2016 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by dwilkins » Fri Feb 26, 2016 11:04 am

The "physical pneumas" theme books have nothing directly to do with preterism. I think everyone should read them. Even opponents of preterism will find interesting and useful information in them.

I'm a fan of Russell's book, but his analysis starts to get strained towards the end. He misses what I think is the proper interpretation of Rev. 20, so after that that point he sort of goes off of the rails.

Doug

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Fri Feb 26, 2016 3:07 pm

Douglas wrote:The "physical pneumas" theme books have nothing directly to do with preterism. I think everyone should read them. Even opponents of preterism will find interesting and useful information in them.
Yes. Engberg-Pedersen's book delves deeply into Paul's cosmology and/or worldview: 'Stoic-like' -- and in some senses quite Stoic -- yet with Paul's Jewish-Christian distinctives (succinctly NOT Stoic).

The chapter I'm reading discusses Paul's anthropology and the various views of: trichotomist, dualistic, monistic.

Otherwise, I'm finding things that will be useful for apologetics. Too many to list!
Douglas continued and wrote:I'm a fan of Russell's book, but his analysis starts to get strained towards the end. He misses what I think is the proper interpretation of Rev. 20, so after that that point he sort of goes off of the rails.
I stopped reading at the Gospels section (parables). I had heard that Russell wasn't 'full preterist' in the sense we understand that today.

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by RickC » Fri Feb 26, 2016 3:36 pm

I felt I should add . . . .

I've been concentrating on eschatology over the last few years. Actually, eschatology has always been one of my favorite doctrines.

Yet no doctrine/teaching sits in isolation to [the] others.

Lastly for now, Engberg-Pedersen's exegesis of 1 Cor 15 is the most comprehensive I've ever read, seen or heard. In fact, it's the only one that has entirely made sense to me. Also, Engberg-Pedersen hasn't taken on any certain position on eschatology. That's not what he's trying to do in the book. He's getting into Paul's mind and carefully dissecting it.

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