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

Repost: Originally posted May 30, 2006

I am continuing in my reading of N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God. I am at the point in which he is discussing Philippians Chapter 2 and the exaltation of Christ. Interestingly he brings out Verse 15 in which the Philippian Christians are exhorted that they become blameless and harmless so that they may “shine as a light in the world.” As Wright states (page 228) “this is a deliberate echo of Daniel 12:3, indicating that Paul, here as elsewhere, had thought through the present life and vocation of Christians in terms of the resurrection life which had already, in one sense, begun, even though it was to be completed in the bodily resurrection itself.” Wright continues in footnote 45 on that same page, “we might comment in addition that the poem’s central point — that Jesus was “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” — places the stress on humiliation, which is the reverse to buy exaltation; but also strongly implies that death itself is to be defeated or reversed, which of course means a resurrection.” - which of course meant something SPECIFIC in this ANE context.

This progressive layering of redemption working from creation to consummation is what hyperpreterism pitifully reduces. Hyperpreterists believe that they have the trump card in Daniel Chapter 12 by stating that the resurrection in that passage is noted as being a first century event. First, it is far from clear that the passage refers to the general physical resurrection at the end of time, and it is absolutely certain that if it does, it does not refer to that event solely. There are many options available to us, one of which being that it is a process that did in fact began in the first century. There are plenty of examples in the New Testament where these solutions are used for our present life, even the present life of the Christians back then who had not experienced the “resurrection” that the Hymenæan preterists claim happened in AD70 (and those poor Christians went through being resurrected and didn’t even realize it!). Thus, whatever resurrection that the first century Christians were still expecting was something different and more than what they were already experiencing. Hyperpreterism offers no such hope. The Gospel is destroyed and the work of Christ is truncated.