My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

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

Post by dwilkins » Fri Mar 25, 2016 12:22 pm

I'm very sympathetic to skepticism about interpreting Revelation. Though I think the preterist view of it is coherent and fits in with the rest of preterism in scripture, it's certainly a bad idea to claim to be the guy finally understands it perfectly. I prefer to approach preterism from the point of view of the Jewish expectation built on their own prophets, the way that the Apostles describe Jesus's ministry beginning the cycle of fulfillment, and the way the epistles claim to be connecting this to a near term resolution. In other words, I think a completely coherent preterist position can be explained without referring to Revelation at all.

As far as 1st Cor. 15 and the concept of a physical pneumas goes, it takes a bit to wrap your mind around it since the competing Platonic view is at the core of western thought on "spirit". I started down this road after almost simultaneously reading from Wright (in The Resurrection of the Son of God) that Stoicism was the dominant cosmology of the NT era, and from Martin (in The Corinthian Body) that Stoics considered pneumas to be a physical property. It seemed, and still seems, odd to me that Wright would stipulate that Stoic cosmology was the dominant view of day, but then he fails to unpack this and make it part of his analysis of what it would mean to have a physical resurrected body. Martin, on the other hand, engages this directly and flatly states that a physical body made of pneumas would have fulfilled everything that Paul claimed about a future resurrection body (one that would be invisible, but physical, and in fact made up of the same physical elements of the actual believer so that it's his own personal physical body).

For the sake of argument, grant me for a moment that pneumas is a physical substance sort of like highly refined or perfect air that is contained in every part of your flesh body. If that is true, and your own pneumas is the basis for a body made of pneumas at the resurrection, doesn't Paul's position in 1st Cor. 15 become rather simple?

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.

If the Stoic peumas position is correct then this is a very simple proposition. At the resurrection the pneumatic parts of your body become your resurrection body in heaven. On the other hand, if you can't accept this cosmology I don't know how you make sense of this passage. I'd argue instead that a failure to embrace Stoic cosmology is what has driven such strange and varied approaches to what Paul means here.

Doug

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

Post by psimmond » Fri Mar 25, 2016 2:48 pm

Hi Doug,
I think the pneuma/body concept works with Paul's words, but my question would be how likely is it that Paul's view of "spirit" would align more closely to a Greek Stoic view than to a Jewish view (as expressed in the OT and in the intertestamental period)? In my mind, it's kind of like asking how much are conservative Amish in America influenced by popular/dominant American philosophical views. We might expect some influence, but how much?

RickC mentioned he believes judgment is ongoing (whenever a person dies) rather than reserved for a day in the future. Do you also believe this and do you think scripture speaks of a future resurrection?
Let me boldly state the obvious. If you are not sure whether you heard directly from God, you didn’t.
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dwilkins
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by dwilkins » Fri Mar 25, 2016 4:03 pm

psimmond wrote:Hi Doug,
I think the pneuma/body concept works with Paul's words, but my question would be how likely is it that Paul's view of "spirit" would align more closely to a Greek Stoic view than to a Jewish view (as expressed in the OT and in the intertestamental period)? In my mind, it's kind of like asking how much are conservative Amish in America influenced by popular/dominant American philosophical views. We might expect some influence, but how much?

RickC mentioned he believes judgment is ongoing (whenever a person dies) rather than reserved for a day in the future. Do you also believe this and do you think scripture speaks of a future resurrection?
You bring up some good points. I think the most challenging one has to do with inspiration and cosmology in different generations of the Biblical narrative. I think most Christians assume that the same cosmology is behind the message of the Bible because the Holy Spirit inspired it to be so. I was surprised to find out that this isn't so. In each generation God seems to use the cosmology of that day through his authors to communicate the essential point he's trying to make. We see this in two different ways in the Old Testament. First, a great deal of language has to do with national revival as opposed to individual resurrection. It's obvious that this imagery is used to make a point, but very few people other than some full preterists would be comfortable saying that it exhausts the concept of resurrection. Likewise, as is seen in Daniel 12:1-4 and other places in Isaiah and Ezekiel associated with Lucifer, another concept used to teach about resurrection is based on apotheosis. That is, the justified become stars in the heavens. There might be some tangible truth to that sort of imagery in as much as believers are glorified in some sense at the resurrection, but we don't typically accept that resurrection means that you or I become a star. Again, popular imagery from that day is used to make a point, but it doesn't mean that it is literally so.

Getting back to physical pneumas, I'm not saying that the absolutely scientifically (that's, the final version of accurate science that we manage to grope our way to over the next 10,000 years) correct way of explaining resurrection is that we are made from a body of perfect ethereal gas. That would be the best way available of explaining the concept in Paul's day (and in each generation we see cosmological condescension in scripture). Because we have no inspired writings after Paul's generation, and because there was some Platonic cosmology in his day to draw from, I don't think the Platonic system will end up being useful to explain these concepts. Paul chose Stoicism over Platonism for a reason, even if part of it is still a mystery to us.

As far as the timing and function of the resurrection goes, part of the difficulty here is that there was a fundamental transformation of the way dead people were handled that happened in association with the fulfillment of eschatology in the first century. Before the resurrection in 70AD (and so still today if people want to be consistent) the dead went to the Hadean realm to await final judgment. No one went to heaven to be in the presence of God in the same sense that will be true in the final state. There is some difficulty making sense of imagery like that found in Rev. 6, where the martyrs are in the outer court (which may be imagery associated with Abraham's bosom, so still part of the Hadean realm). But, at least we can say that they are not fully united with God as would be the case after the resurrection. In my opinion, when Rev. 20 says that Death and Hades (personifications of the old system of storing the dead in the Hadean realm before the resurrection and final judgment) were emptied, and that Death and Hades were then thrown into the Second Death, this meant that the old holding tank system was made obsolete. Now, as is seen in Rev. 14 (Rev. 20 is a recapitulation of this chapter) those who die in the Lord from now on (after 70AD) will have their works follow them to an individual judgment. Likewise, at the end of the judgment scene in Rev. 20: 11-15 we see a hint that an individual judgment might continue after Death and Hades is destroyed. I propose that this is the normal state after that first batch of judgment.

This brings up an interesting twist on the issue of the resurrection. Technically, the resurrection is the raising of the souls from the Hadean Realm to be judged. When that happened, the believers would be united with the bodies of pneumas that had been prepared for them. After that happened, I that individuals go through that reuniting immediately after death and their own personal final judgment. Because scripture was written on the left side of the timeline of this judgment there is not much talk about the paradigm for our age. They were mostly concerned with what was facing them, which makes sense as a point of audience relevance. But, as a result, those who die in modern times and are united with their body of pneumas might not be resurrected in the same sense that the authors of scripture anticipated. The resurrection from Hades was for those trapped in Hades. If you go straight from this life to the final judgment the definition of resurrection changes a bit because there is no layover in Hades first. In my opinion, scripture describes the end state of believers on both sides of the final judgment (a term used to describe the batch judgment at the end of the Hadean era, but not necessarily to rule out individual judgments afterwards) as being the same; believers live in the presence of God in bodies of pneumas. But, there might be a technical use of the term resurrection that doesn't describe the modern mode very well.

More later. Gotta go to work.

Doug

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by psimmond » Fri Mar 25, 2016 5:35 pm

Thanks Doug, it's interesting to think of different possibilities.

The more I study different eschatological views, the more I become like my dad. I know this is a corny cliche but he called himself a panmillennialist and said he believed it would all pan out in the end. (The funny thing is it used to drive me nuts that my dad wasn't as consumed as I was to grasp the truth in all areas of theology. :) )
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by psimmond » Sat Mar 26, 2016 3:54 pm

Doesn't the fact that Luke and Matthew make it very clear Jesus' resurrected body was physical weaken the idea that Paul and other first century Jews were operating from a Stoic pneuma/body view?
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by Homer » Sat Mar 26, 2016 8:25 pm

Doesn't the fact that Luke and Matthew make it very clear Jesus' resurrected body was physical weaken the idea that Paul and other first century Jews were operating from a Stoic pneuma/body view?
Seems to me that is the point made when Jesus ate food with disciples after His resurrection - the same food they ate.

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by psimmond » Sun Mar 27, 2016 11:13 am

Homer, I agree. I suppose a person could argue that although Jesus' resurrected body was in some very obvious ways similar to his pre-resurrection body, everyone else will have pneuma bodies at resurrection. But I can see no good reason to think ours should be different from his...
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by dwilkins » Sun Mar 27, 2016 2:10 pm

Unfortunately, we don't have any explicit statement in scripture about the composition of Christ's body after his resurrection (how "changed", exactly, was his body since it could walk through walls, etc.), or any potential change in its composition after the ascension. But, we do have some pretty specific information regarding the believer's resurrection body, so I propose following the text on that.

Doug

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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by psimmond » Sun Mar 27, 2016 3:41 pm

But Doug, we are given a fair amount of information about Jesus' resurrected body. Although it appeared to have some supernatural abilities--moving through walls (or teleporting), appearing and disappearing--we also are told he walked, talked, and ate food. We know he was visible to human eyes and that he could breathe and that he could be touched. We also know that his resurrected body looked like his pre-resurrected body, including his scars. Since his is the only example we have, and since he was the firstfruits of all who would be made alive at his coming (1 Corinthians 15:23), I don't see why it makes sense to suppose Paul had something different in mind.
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Re: My Preterist Journey (so far + video)

Post by dwilkins » Sun Mar 27, 2016 4:03 pm

I think that the examples you give proves less than you think. All of the physical functions you describe were done successfully by angels at some point in the Old Testament. The fact that they ate or were touched by people didn't necessarily mean that they had resurrected flesh bodies. And, nothing you've touched on speaks to the possibility that whatever flesh body was present after the resurrection is necessarily the same body he had after the Ascension.

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