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

Below is an excerpt posted by someone from a hypepreterist “pastor”, David Curtis who is writing to explain the “hope” of the hyperpreterist given everything has already been fulfilled.

It is not the physical body that is raptured. It is the Christian himself who is raptured as he leaves his body behind at physical death and moves into the spiritual realm. The dead believers were resurrected when Christ returned, and all other Christians would be caught up at their physical death.

 

http://preterismdebate.ning.com/profiles/blogs/where-is-my-hopeby-david

For several weeks now I’ve been waiting for Larry Seigle to explain why his hope, which as I understand it is essentially the same hope as spelled out by the hyperpreterist pastor above is any different than that of the Pagan Greek in the 1st Century?  N.T. Wright, in his work Resurrection of the Son of God points out the Pagan’s had a well developed view of the afterlife.

What happens to souls in Hades – at least, to souls who go there to begin with – is then far more interesting than anything envisaged in Homer.  Judgement is passed according to the person’s previous behavior: we see here the philosophical roots of those judgment scenes that became so familiar Platonized Christianity (or was it Christianized Platonism?) of the Middle Ages.  Three judges  are appointed, one each from Europe and Asia one (Minos, conveniently from Crete, poised as it were between the two continents) as the judge of appeal.  At last, after all the botched earthly attempts at justice, truth will out and judgment will be just; the virtuous will find themselves sent to the Islands of the Blessed, and the wicked will be put in Tartarus.  From here it is a step of Cicero and others, that virtuous souls go to join the stars. (The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright, Fortress Press, pg 49-50)

The hope of the hyperpreterist is to go to heaven; the hope of the Pagan was to go to the stars with all the other virtuous souls.  Once again, as with Larry, other than the nomenclature, what is the difference?  What we find is that hyperpreterism has in many respects adopted the Platonic thinking of ancient Greece.  Note, both views of “hope” for the afterlife are escapist in their thinking.  Frankly, this isn’t any hope at all.

The “pastor” goes on to write,

Where Is Heaven?
In answer to that, the Bible tells us that heaven is spiritual. Heaven is real; only it is in a different realm than that of the earth. We read in the Bible of the heavenly realm and of the earthly realm. The earthly realm is the realm of the physical, the material, the visible to our eyes, the realm that we can see, touch, smell, hear, and taste.

However, N.T. Wright in his work, Surprised by Hope astutely points out,

But the language of heaven in the New Testament doesn’t work that way.  “God’s kingdom” in the preaching of Jesus refers not to postmortem destiny, not to our escape from this world into another one, but to God’s sovereign rule coming “on earth as it is in heaven.” The roots of the misunderstanding go very deep, not least into the residual Platonism that has infected whole swaths of Christian thinking and has misled people into supposing that Christians are meant to devalue this present world and our present bodies and regard them as shabby or shameful.  (Surprised by Hope, N.T. Wright, Harper One, pg 18)

What the “pastor” is passing off as “biblical” teaching is nothing more than a Pagan hope repackaged around Christian terminology.  The hope of Christianity is not about flying away but God restoring that which was lost,

Eph 1:9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. ESV