Thanks for your response, Daniel. I was thinking about it today, and I wanted to mention… I think part of the reason why I have been keen to engage you on these issues is twofold: 1. You obviously have some very interesting ideas on your site, and the combination of history with exegesis and theology is really fascinating. but… 2. I think, in your eagerness, you are treading on dangerous ground, and I communicate with you to warn you, but also because it’s been good for me as wel to clarify some thingsl. In Romans, Paul talks about the creation being in “bondage to decay”, and he says it is that way because of the “one who subjected it”, and in the context, it’s clear that humans are the one who subjected it. And it says that creation is “groaning”, looking for it’s “liberation” from that “bondage to decay” that the sinful humans have subjected it to. Clearly then, the thrust of redemption (as indicated in other scripture as well), is that the direction of human history is a redemptive one, where eventually we will get back to “eden” (in this case the new Jerusalem), and sin will be eradicated. This, I believe, must be kept in mind as we read prophetic and cryptic scriptures like Revelation. And so I am actually suggesting that your full preterism is almost making “null and void” this redemptive direction. By claiming that all prophecy is fulfilled, and that any greater fulfillment for humans is “when they get to heaven” is, I think, to undercut the whole of redemptive history. Clearly humans have “subjected the earth” because of our sin nature in our actual bodies, and clearly the thrust of redemption is eventually the eventual eradication of this tendency. I am not one to cry wolf by saying such things as “heresy!” or “that’s unorthodox!” because I care more about what is true than what is orthodox. But at the same time, I can understand why people label full preterism as hyper preterism and “Hymenaeism”, because I believe that this view still today “destroys the faith of some”. And believe that the way it does that is by ultimately nulling and voiding the fairly obvious trend of redemptive history. If you concede that the sin nature in man came about at the fall, then you should also see that redemptive history looks forward to it’s eradication (and not just a hope in heaven). You are a very smart guy, but you are also on very dangerous ground, and to be honest, your full preterism (I think) has to eventually lead you out of real Christianity, because it forces a cognitive dissonance in the mind that is at odds with the overarching thrust of the whole story of humanity, and the ultimate “blessed hope”. Our world right now is getting much worse, not better, and this obvious reality combined with the attempt at grandiose language at the end of Revelation, to me, calls for a resolution to this. Saying that flaming arrows falling from the sky at the time of the crusades qualifies as “fire coming down from heaven and devouring them all” indeed could be possible, but it is purely speculative. And if you do adopt this view, it must logically force you to admit that we are still pre-Rev 21 if we see something similar happening in the same geographical area all over again. I guess I’m suggesting that it’s not just heresy you’re flirting with, but a disaster of epistemology as well, where any event could be construed as the final fulfillment of a prophecy. If we believe that the tree of life was a reality on the physical planet earth, then the recourse to the language of the tree of life at the end of Revelation (beginning same as the end) seems very clearly to imply the eventual eradication of the sin nature in humanity in it’s totality (for the original curse was universal, so also evetually the cure must be so as well). Thanks Daniel. -Jonathan ]]>
