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

Edited factual error 9/10/06 (I used the word “only” when Gene used the word “just” - there is no difference in meaning in context, but that is precisely what Gene said, and I want to use his precise words)

I am taking a bit at a time the various issues that fell out of my interview with Gene Cook. Since I don’t have a week to dedicate to the various hyperpreterist responses and tactics, here they come one at a time. I wanted to get this one off my plate as soon as possible for two reasons: Roderick is already fuming at my other criticisms so might as well give him another; and two, this is what I think the WORST issue when it comes to blatant misuse and misrepresentation.

From what I know of Roderick, it is really unfathomable to me that he would pull this great a stunt. I don’t find it terribly surprising when he uses people’s words in such a way to support his peculiar agenda, such as he does with R.C. Sproul. I find it inappropriate and opportunistic, but at least in that case, he is not forcing R.C.’s words to mean the exact opposite of what they really meant in context or pouring entirely different connotations in them. Instead, he is using them for more than they were intended and likely in a way that the author didn’t intend.

That is not what Roderick has done with Gene Cook, and what he has done is more than troubling, and it should be troubling not only for preterists, but for his hyperpreterist companions. The problem is, frankly, no one really cares. Not on “my” side, not on “his.” Most people simply are too busy or too wrapped in supporting those who “agree” with them to care when there is such a blatant misuse. This one though is serious - both sides should care, but I don’t expect more than a few to actually do so. I would hope Roderick himself though would care and stop this nonsense. He has much more going for him (despite his heresy) that he doesn’t have to behave like this.

This is going to require patience, attention to detail, and the committment to listen to these audio clips. If you, the reader, are not willing to do this, ignore everything I just said, and close your browser window. If you are willing to consider, then continue.

In the link given above, on August 15, 2006, I was a guest on Pastor Gene Cook’s radio program. If you are reading this site, you are interested in preterism and refuting hyperpreterism, thus when you get some time, listen to the entire show. Save it to your MP3 player. It is ultimately necessary to listen to the entire show to insure to yourself that there is nothing at all left out of the context I am giving here that would mitigate in Roderick’s favour.

Soon after the show, Roderick started making the claim that “Gene admitted” that the Bible “seemed to teach” that the resurrection involves a spiritual body, with the implication being that he was conceding a hyperpreterist point. In fact, he started proferring on his own site multiple times the following audio clip hosted on his site:

Gene Cook admits

(that title is Roderick’s title not mine)

with the claim on the Unchained Radio forum:

1. Gene admits the Bible seems to teach a “spiritual resurrection”. … It is amazing that he admits all of this yet thinks it perfectly valid to attack Christians who simply see the resurrection as Gene himself said the Bible seems to teach — a spiritual resurrection.

Unbelievable. Do you notice what Roderick did here? I will go over each of these and why they are important.

1. Rod excises a clip with NO context

This very clip in which Roderick is trying to claim that Gene does not think that the hyperpreterists redefine the resurrection and concedes that a “spiritual resurrection” (the way the hyperpreterists define it) is what the Bible “seems” teach is introduced by the following clip. Listen very carefully and note that Gene indicates right from the start that hyperpreterists DO redefine the resurrection and the reason he is stating it to me as a question rather than a statement is for “the benefit of the listening audience.” In other words, as an interviewer, he was leading me in questions he already knew the answers to in order to educate the listening audience, which is what an interview between two people who share the same view does. Please listen to this clip and understand that this clip comes SECONDS before the clip Roderick is prostituting:

Clip 1

2. Rod takes a question and turns it into a definitive and definitional statement

After listening to “Clip 1″ it is obvious that the context is Gene asking me leading questions as an interviewer. He is not making a definitive statement on his own final position. He is acting as a “devil’s advocate,” taking a common objection that is made to a “physical resurrection,” and asking how I, as a fellow orthodox Christian (which he defines here) [for another Roderick misuse on another angle see the PSS to this blog] can believe this when there is a surface understanding (thus the completely equivocal use of “seems”) that would contradict that. Gene is raising an objection and asking me, for the benefit of the listening audience, how I would answer it. Gene has his own idea about how to answer that and the way he crafted the question was to lead me in a certain direction. However, as is often in live radio, I followed a bit of a different tact, and Gene dropped the direction he was initially heading in and took the lead I offered. Much more on that point below.

Before we leave this point, I need to speak more on the use of “seems” which Roderick has twisted into an insinuation of “does.” When we are asking a question for which we believe and anticipate a rebuttal answer, “seems” is used to indicate that one is posing a typical objection that needs to be answered, and the baggage that it carries is that this is a surface objection. For example, I collect “Bible Difficulty” books. I got into that habit years ago when a I was new believer and looking for answers, and now it is a hobby of mine. I likely own more of these books, dating from the early 1800s, than anyone reading this post. The one I just purchased is subtitled “101 Seeming Contradictions with Their Possible Solutions”. That author is not “admitting” that there are ACTUAL contradictions in the Bible, but that there “seems” to be some, but they are explainable in a different way.

Heck, the Bible “seems” to teach (and I have said it that very way when debating futurists and anticipating their objections) that the very universe will dissolve in the event described in the Olivet Discourse. And that is true. The Bible does “seem” to teach that, but it in fact, doesn’t teach that.

The word “seems” is at its heart equivocal, and the context determines what the author meant by it, and the context both before and after that mined quote indicates that Gene was firmly affirming the orthodox understanding of the resurrection and was not “slipping in” some clandestine hyperpreterist confession. Roderick has “booby-trapped” the conversation with the fallacy of equivocation by spinning Gene’s use of “seems” to mean “yes that is the way it appears to be and thus is likely to be the truth” when “seems” also means, and Gene in fact clearly meant in context, “this is a surface appearance only, and what follows is the correct interpretation.”

3. Roderick subtley changes exactly what Gene said and imports hyperpreterist meaning into it to then claim that Gene conceded a hyperpreterist point when Gene, in context, meant nearly exactly the opposite.

Here is the entire portion of the conversation that Roderick mined from, it is a bit long because it was an extended conversation but it is necessary to listen to understand the depth of what Roderick did. There will be another lengthy clip from another show. This clip begins with what was used for “clip 1″ above and continues to the end of that portion of the discussion:

Clip 2

After listening to that, go back to the beginning of this blog and read Roderick’s claim once again. If you are not shocked by the manipulation, you haven’t been paying attention. No one would want their words prostituted in this manner.

Now after Roderick’s shameless twisting, I called Gene on his next eschatology show (8/28/06) and asked him about this situation. Following is a clip of our discussion about Roderick’s clip and misuse of it:

Gene Answers Roderick’s charge

Now Gene gave some insight that I did not have before I called, and that is, where he was intending to go with that question to me, when I went in a slightly different direction. Knowing that, it makes his wording even MORE obvious. For instance, after listening to Gene here, you can tell by Gene’s use of “just” in that clip of Roderick’s is NOT in any shape or form teaching that the Bible teaches a “just spiritual” resurrection but that it teaches a spiritual resurrection that is PHYSICAL. Gene explains that Roderick is engaging in fallacy of a false dilemna or false dichotomy.

That is manipulation and quote-mining at its worse and of the caliber routinely done by Jehovah’s Witnesses. Roderick listened to that follow-up conversation with Gene and could have, at that point, conceded some misunderstanding and withdrawn his claims. Instead he persisted, and unbelievable, got worse, degenerating into outright IMHO, deception.

At the Unchained Radio forums when Roderick was confronted with the fact that hyperpreterists deny the resurrection by radically redefining it to mean something utterly different from that which Christianity teaches he actually had the chutzpah to say:

How about a denial of the resurrection? That has been the charge falsely leveled over & over against preterist Christians. PRETERISTS DO NOT DENY THE RESURRECTION, nor according to Gene Cook himself do we “re-define” it.

In support he once again gives the “Gene Admits” audio clip linked to above, and this is after the second radio program, after which Roderick has no excuse. You can see already from what was said above that Rod is stretching his manipulation even further. There is no stretch of the imagination that can twist Gene’s words to mean what Roderick just said. What compounds this error is THIS quote from Gene, ON THE VERY SAME PROGRAM that Roderick was quoting from:

Clip 3

Now, Roderick doesn’t come out with the fact that Gene DID in fact on that very same show say exactly what he claimed Gene didn’t say. Why did Rod hide this? Why did he not say this from the outset? Certainly he can take the unbelievable position that Gene is so mad or so stupid that he contradicted himself over and over and really in his heart is some hyperpreterist, but honesty demands that if one is going to CLAIM that Gene said something indirectly in some clip that one bring out the fact the Gene EXPLICITLY addressed that very point in the opposite way within the very same program. It is inexcusable.

Roderick can crow all he wants that he gave his readers the information for them to go listen to the original show themselves - that does not relieve him of the responsibility to accurately represent what was said. The fact is that unless someone is really wrapped up in this preterist v. hyperpreterist thing, they are not going to listen to a two hour program to try to find out if Roderick is correct about one clip in amongst the numerous points that Roderick claimed unless they had some reason to think he was lying. There is an implicit trust that Roderick was not flying fast and loose with Gene, and Roderick breached that trust.

There is something to add about Roderick’s list above in it is noticeable how he once again tries to press the point that Gene attacks “Christians” when in fact, he omits the very point, that Gene doesn’t consider them Christians. Another slippery move.

Now I know at this point, there are readers who didn’t follow my instructions and read the whole post even though they were not willing to invest the time to listen to all the audio clips. Okay, I urge you once again to do so. But if you listen to only one thing, let me summarize the worst part and just listen to the below.

Roderick said, using THIS CLIP, the following:

PRETERISTS DO NOT DENY THE RESURRECTION, nor according to Gene Cook himself do we “re-define” it.

Gene on that very program said THIS CLIP.

Interesting eh?

PS: Roderick is twisting some more and insinuating some conspiracy as to why Gene Cook deleted his posts on the Unchained Radio forums. I wasn’t even aware of it until I went to start writing this post a few days ago. I then went into my personal computer cache and retrieved most of the thread. I have those cached pages saved and available to anyone who wants them, Roderick included. I was going to host the cached versions here, and then decided that would be disrespectful to Gene who didn’t want them, and it is his forum. I am offering the saved versions I have for two reasons. One, to put paid to Roderick’s silly accusation that I somehow had a thing to do with, directly or indirectly, the deletion of his posts. Of course though everyone who disagrees with Roderick is “scared” of him and hates Jesus. (that is sarcasm for the satire-impaired) Gene can do what he likes with his forum and if Roderick is going to misrepresent Gene so badly, he gets what he gets. That is between he and Gene. The second is reason is that I do think Roderick is entitled to copies of his own posts so if he doesn’t have saved versions, I am more than willing to give them to him.

PSS: Roderick then ranted in his shoutbox that perhaps I should just remain silent stating: “hey, I’m just trying to play by her “rules of orthodoxy” as she stated in the audio — orthodoxy says she needs to be silent” Now for those of you who listened to the audio - is there ANYWHERE in the audio where such an issue would be defined as orthodoxy? No. Roderick is twisting again, thus misusing what people say is once again proven to be his particular specialty.