The Preterist Blog ~ 100% Hyperpreterist Free|we can haz rezurekshun?

A little while back I was listening to a live podcast of Dr. James White when a caller asked a question about N.T. Wright.  Dr. White chuckled and remarked something to the effect that N.T. Wright giveth, N.T. Wright taketh away noting that his colleagues in Britain consider Dr. Wright to be a liberal theologian.  At that he cautioned his listeners to be guarded about Dr. Wright’s work explaining that while he offered some very astute work in some areas his conclusions in others bent toward the liberal.  The hyperpreterist community experienced this first hand. 

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In “The Corpse of Caiaphas” I reviewed the second so-called error listed in chapter 1 of Breaking the Apocalypse Code in which Hitchcock and Ice argue that Hank Hanegraaff is wrong when he claims Caiaphas and the council must have seen Jesus’ coming in judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70. We discovered that while Hanegraaff is indeed wrong, since Caiaphas and many of the council members were dead by then, Hitchcock and Ice miss the point. Jesus’ promise that they would see Him “coming on the clouds” and “sitting at the right hand of power” is in no way a reference to His Second Advent. Rather, He promised them that “from [then] on” they would see the evidence and outworking of His ascension to the throne in heaven, which in fact they did.

Of the other six errors Hitchcock and Ice allege are made by Hanegraaff in The Apocalypse Code, one deserves special attention since it calls into question the dating of the book of Revelation. It should be noted that the last chapter of the book, “When Was Revelation Written,” (which I reviewed in “The Dating Game” part one and part two) discusses the dating of Revelation, and so it seems a bit disingenuous to be discussing it in this first chapter some 150 pages earlier. Nevertheless, it is the authors’ prerogative to do so. Let’s take a look.

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I’m under no illusions about the fact that my view on the mind-body problem is a minority view in the history of Christian thought. I’m a physicalist. This puts me in the minority because, as well known Christian philosopher of mind William Hasker (himself a dualist of sorts) put it:

By all odds the most influential mind-body theory in Western civilization has been mind-body dualism. Dualism was first developed as a philosophical theory by some of the Greek philosophers, notably Plato. It was adopted by most of the Christian thinkers of the first few centuries and subsequently came to share Christianity’s dominance of European civilization.
Hasker, Metaphysics: Constructing a Worldview, Contours of Christian Philosophy (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1983), 65.

This is not such a terrible indictment on Christian theologians. It’s hard to live in a culture utterly saturated with a certain viewpoint without being influenced by it. As an almost inevitable result, “the Greek Fathers of the first three centuries of the Common Era (c.E.) drew upon various traditions within the Greco-Roman world from as early as Plato and Aristotle in formulating their language and concepts of the human person.” [Ray Anderson, “On Being Human: The Spiritual Saga of a Creaturely Soul” in Warren Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Maloney (eds) Whatever Happened to the Soul?: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 183.]

As the facts of history would have it in the pre-modern world, physicalism was a quiet voice amidst a loud dualist majority. As the facts of recent history would have it, the tables are turning on this state of affairs. In contemporary Christian philosophy and theology, there is a growing acceptance of physicalism as an expression of a biblical holisitc picture of humanity, evidenced by a flood of scholarly yet conservative books, articles, conferences and so on, advocating a real willingness to question the cultural baggage that Christianity has taken on board and a fresh willingness to revisit what the Bible has to say about all this. Christian dualism is still the majority view, but it is a majority in decline, a fact I take some pleasure in. If you’re a dualist, all of this may be a little unnerving. As Bob Dylan told us decades ago now, the times they are a changing! I have no intention of dragging you kicking and screaming out of dualism in this fairly short blog, so don’t bother preparing for battle with me just now. The purpose of this blog isn’t to promote my views on that issue (however much I think those views would be good for your theology). However, it’s best to lay all my cards on the table right at the outset so you know what I am.

The reason I’m even broaching the subject is to draw attention to how philosophy of mind is related to the hyperpreterist controversy (controversy? OK, so in Christianity in general it’s not even a storm in a teacup, so insignificant is that movement, but you know what I mean). Hyperpreterism is necessarily a very dualistic outlook, even more dualistic than mainstream Christian dualism. Here’s why: Read the rest of this entry »

After a rather lengthy process Sam Frost has finally gotten to the crux of the matter in his use of Dr. Gordon Clark’s view of man.  For the past several months Frost has been reviewing Dr. Clark’s book the “The Biblical Doctrine of Man”.  Although one could see shades of where Frost was headed in his review it wasn’t until this last and final installment of his review did he make his intentions known?   

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After reading Sharon Nichols exposure of the less than adequate scholarship employed by co-author Dave Green of “House Divided” a hyperpreterist apologetic, I thought it might be a good idea if I began a little investigation of my own.   I’ve encountered Green a little on the internet and have noticed he isn’t exactly forthright with the facts.  Sharon Nichols painstakingly demonstrated, Green has a serious issue keeping track of who authored the argument he is critiquing.  Below is another example of his malady. 

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Recently there has been a few developments on a couple of hyperpreterist web-sites.  For purely entertainment value watching the hyperpreteirsts deal with a couple of guys who have taken their own claims to what some consider the extreme is a real hoot.  The hyperpreterists have attempted to classify these heretics as the “real” hyperpreteists. 

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I am with my people today (Christian Mac users) for a training seminar on the Accordance Bible Software. As you may recall, I reviewed this software just over a year ago. Some exciting new features are in the works, and hopefully, I will be able to review Version 9 when it is out.

Pride can be a catastrophically destructive force.

Setting aside embarrassing cases of “date shifting” when things did not work out as planned, the WatchTower Society taught that the Lord would have returned and that notorious battle of Armaggeddon would be a done deal by 1914

“…we consider it an established truth that the final end of the kingdoms of this world, and the full establishment of the Kingdom of God, will be accomplished by the end of A.D. 1914″ (Watchtower founder, Charles Taze Russell, The Time is at Hand, p. 99).

So tumultuous were the times in which they were already living, some Jehovah’s Witnesses found this hard to believe. They thought that perhaps the time would come sooner than 1914, rather than later:

CAN IT BE DELAYED UNTIL 1914?…our readers are writing to know if there may not be a mistake in the 1914 date. They say that they do not see how present conditions can last so long under the strain. We see no reason for changing the figures - nor could we change them if we would. They are, we believe, God’s dates not ours. But bear in mind that the end of 1914 is not the date for the beginning, but for the end of the time of trouble. (Watch Tower, 15 July 1894, p. 226).

Because of the fact that however wrong they might have been, they weren’t living under rocks, the Jehovah’s Witnesses knew full well that when Christ had returned and fully finished establishing his kingdom in the world, having completed the overthrow of all his enemies, the last enemy that would be defeated was death itself, and the dead would be raised to life.

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I have dropped hints hither and thither that I am coming closer to the Calvinist position. ‘Tis true. A great deal of the reason is the apologetic for the position given by Dr. James White, and he is also a great deal of the reason it might have taken me so long. How’s that? He is nauseatingly arrogant at times (and refuses to recognize it) in the way he deals with Arminian Christians. I don’t find him that way on every subject, not even on every subject I don’t agree with him on–just on this particular area of theology. I was able to get past the ‘tude to see the validity of the arguments but still have a little bit more thinking to do. His arguments against molinism are for the most part exceedingly awful arguments from incredulity, so it wasn’t those that are close to convincing me, just am thinking that another paradigm might better explain the totality of the evidence. Further I don’t think that Middle Knowledge is incompatible at all with a Reformed position, it just couldn’t be the basis of election, but it could definitely be the basis for a whole host of other things despite White’s, “OMG!!! That makes God a cosmic micromanager!” argument.

As I mentioned before, I am involved in an irenic discussion/debate over at TheologyWeb with a futurist regarding Daniel 9. That discussion can be found here, and the discussion thread can be found here. However, I know that many will not follow the links or some may find it through a search that turns up this blog so I will be reproducing my substantive postings here. You won’t see the context though of my opponent’s points without going to the actual discussion.

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