PRETERIST-IDEALISM

Jesus as Focal Point of all Bible Prophecy

2 Cor. 1:20 "For all the promises of God, whatever their number, have their confirmation in Him; and for this reason through Him also our "Amen" acknowledges their truth and promotes the glory of God through our faith." Weymouth New Testament

John Cassian (420) "The tropological sense is the moral explanation which has to do with improvement of life and practical teaching, as if we were to understand by these two covenants practical and theoretical instruction, or at any rate as if we were to want to take Jerusalem or Sion as the soul of man, according to this: "Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem: praise thy God, O Sion." (Conferences)

Frederic W. Farrar: Christ Wails Over Jerusalem (1899) "This incident is an allegory. The soul of each one amongst us is such a Jerusalem. The soul has its history of shame or of faithfulness, and its prophecy of triumph or of doom, just as Jerusalem had. Jerusalem had warnings..  Jerusalem found that it was so, and so shall all men who persist in defying the mercy of God which calleth us to repentance."

Peter J. Leithart  ""[T]ropologically, the history of Jerusalem can be understood as a model for the history of the soul (secundum tropologiam).  Just as David conquered Jerusalem and set up the Lord's throne there, so Jesus, His Son, conquers the inner city of the sinner and consecrates him as a saint, a holy one." (Ascent to Love, pp. 22)

Isaac Pennington (1658) "Now for the sakes of such as have been truly exercised in their spirits by the Spirit of the Lord, (and have felt the powerful work of his grace, and a building raised up by him) and may yet be further exercised, I shall add this. Jerusalem was a type of an inward building in the spirits of God's people"

Joseph Wood (1906) "Inspiration is that which is of universal application. If any utterance is only for an age, and local in its interpretation, we do not regard it as inspired. The Psalms, for instance, were mostly suggested by local considerations, the trials, the joys, the experiences of David and others, under peculiar circumstances. But, nevertheless, we feel as we read them that they pass beyond the limits of the local and the individual— they belong to humanity—they are true of human nature and life everywhere. Or take Christ's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. It was spoken at Jerusalem about Jerusalem, and in a manner which seemed limited to Jerusalem. But had the prophecy been true only of that city of sorrows, it would never have been regarded as inspired. Whereas Christ's principle was this : that the doom pronounced on Jerusalem was universally applicable, and that it was but a style and specimen of God's judgment everywhere. The judgment comes wherever there is evil grown ripe for judgment, wherever corruption is complete. And the gathering of the Roman eagles to the carcase is but a specimen of the way in which judgment at last overtakes any city, any country, and any man in whom evil has reached the point where there is no possibility of cure. We who have lived through the last fifty years have seen the eagles gathered together in Naples, in America, in France, in Bulgaria. The Lord's judgment on Jerusalem has been fulfilled many times—it was not simply of local but of universal application." (The Bible, what it is and is not [lects.], p. 97)

Writers on the "Tropological Sense" of Jerusalem

Total fulfillment of all of Israel's shadows, which are but applications of eternal realities in Christ

Marcus Booker

• "I agree that the law and prophets spoke of Jesus. It is the way in which they spoke of Jesus which is in question (not whether or not they did speak of him). Jesus was seen in types and shadows. I've elsewhere written about how Jesus stood as the substance behind the law (as say Hebrews and Colossians). A shadow cannot exist apart from a body and a light. God's light upon Jesus cast a shadow upon the earth. That shadow was the law.  We, for our parts, seek and serve the body and not the shadow. God first revealed the shadow and then the body. Even so, the body is preeminent; it supersedes the shadow. It is the true object to which devotion is due." (22/5/2003 PP Forums)

Todd Dennis

• Matthew 26:64 is NOT a "Preterist Time Indicator" Pointing to AD70 "In short, the usage of "Apo Arti" in Matthew 26:64 [Apo ("from" - Strongs 575) and Arti ("now on" - Strong's 737)] is highly suggestive of the themes that have been previously offered at this blog ; that is, a series of revelatory recognitions of the power and glory of Jesus Christ's dominance by friend and foe alike. Though the typically pret-friendly Weymouth translation would like to make Jesus say "later on, you will see.." this is not really honest. I would rather say that it was simply a mistake, but I find it impossible to believe that neither Richard Francis Weymouth ("If this belief ever obtains general acceptance the earlier date of the Apocalypse will also be regarded as fully established. For it will then be seen that the book describes beforehand events which took place in 70 A.D.") nor Earnest Hampden-Cook (co-editor and author of "The Christ Has Come") were aware of the importance of this passage regarding their Preterist assumptions. However, not only is there no sense of futurity in this very emphatic Greek phrase, but rather we see quite the opposite."

• Matthew 10:23 is NOT a "Preterist Time Indicator" pointing to AD70 (2008) "It has become a working assumption of Hyper Preterism that the "coming" passages in the New Testament refer to AD70. And the eisegetical presupposition that Matthew 10:23 is a "(Hyper) Preterist time indicator" is considered to be unassailable, even though there is not a hint of reference to AD70 in the text or context of the chapter from which to support this conclusion."

• Matthew 16:27-28 is Not About AD70 (2008) "Why would we expect the Lord to perform his acts of power and glory just once — be it in the past or the future? What good does that do all the other generations?  It seems to me that all prophecy ultimately finds its accomplishment in Christ internally and personally, as opposed to externally and historically. Even the cross must be received, and each follower must bear it as Jesus said."

• On Leaving Full Preterism After a Decade (2006)

• An Interview with Virgil Vaduva on Preterist Terminology and Hybrids (2006)

• Hebrews 12:25-29: Jerusalem as the Heart (2006) "Looking closer at the "promised land," we can see how the spiritual intent was revealed through fulfilled prophecy in Israel's day.  Though there was an appearance in the promises to Abraham of an ultimate fulfillment in reference to the everlasting possession of a particular tract of land in history, we know from New Testament revelation that the intent was regarding spiritual things in Christ.  Though the promise found natural fulfillment in "Preterist Israel", it was given to signify the true, greater fulfillment in "Ideal Israel" -- with actual participants from all nations, throughout all generations (including ours).

Nathan DuBois

• Scripture Interprets Scripture: Part One - The Covenants, The Jerusalems, The Flesh and The Spirit "Since most preterists agree that the kingdom is within and written on the heart and that the Spirit brought us to life and into an eternal covenant (the new covenant on the heart), then isn't the description of the Jerusalem from above warranted and accurate as a portrayal of our heart in Christ vs. the Jerusalem from below as our heart under the law?"

• The Nature of the Christ: The Dilemma of Chronology "Jesus was Messiah from the foundation, He did not become the Messiah only after He did the work. He did the work to reveal Himself as Messiah.. Are we really putting the "Type" as being the purpose and fulfillment over the "anti-type" to which they pointed?

• Why I Needed to Repent: A Letter to a Friend... Among Friends (2006) "Am I saying full preterists are the Pharisees of today? NO! But I am saying I AM ONE! I was so caught up in the system of things that I could SEE that I was missing, and causing others to miss, the things that can only be seen by the heart. I saw the purpose and will of God in AD 70, the "new" (though very old) law of God being advented, but I missed the heart behind it. I have been guilty of Phariseeism."

• God, The Judge of the Heart (2006) "The gospel is living, it is active. Today men are judged righteous or unrighteous by being "in Christ" or not.  Judgment accompanied the kingdom because it was at the "revelation of Christ" in AD 70, to the world, that men were judged by the gospel vs. the law. "

• My Thoughts and Understanding of Preterist Idealism (2006) "Any theology which looks to the temporal things as its finality, any theology which takes ANY scripture and applies them to the temporal realm, and does not apply them to the spiritual truth behind it for which it was written, is an incorrect theology."

• Blog: Nate4OneNation - "Where do we put the value of the truth. In the event? Or the pre-existing fact, kept in secret, from the very beginning. Is it us in AD 2006 seeing the cross made of wood, and the temple made of stone that crumbled, that can boast, because of those events (AD 30-70), that our salvation is true? Or was it true, because God declared it before the foundation of the world ever existed."

Frederic W. Farrar

• Christ Wails Over Jerusalem (1899) "This incident is an allegory. The soul of each one amongst us is such a Jerusalem. The soul has its history of shame or of faithfulness, and its prophecy of triumph or of doom, just as Jerusalem had. Jerusalem had warnings..  Jerusalem found that it was so, and so shall all men who persist in defying the mercy of God which calleth us to repentance."

John Noē - Preterist-Idealist

• He Never Left "..if you insist on limiting the comings of Jesus to only two times, then this second time occurred, chronologically, when Jesus came and appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:4-5) or to John on the isle of Patmos (Rev. 1). How do you count or discount those comings of Jesus?—and there are more."  My working definition for “a coming of Jesus” is this: it’s a personal and bodily intervention and/or manifestation of Jesus into the life of an individual, a group, or a nation on this earth. As we shall see, there are many different types of comings for different purposes, and they occur at different times and places.  Some are visible appearances; some are invisible interventions."

• An Exegetical Basis for a Preterist-Idealist Understanding of the Book of Revelation (2007) “The revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev 1:1) has a fuller significance and deeper character beyond its AD 70 eschatological fulfillment.  Consequently, the preterist notion that it only applies to AD 70 when Christ supposedly came in “finality” is a weakness to be amended.  And in a preterist-idealist synthesis, the strength of idealism remains that it “secures its relevance for all periods of the church’s history.”  But its major weakness—i.e. “its refusal to see a firm historical anchorage”— is removed.  That missing anchorage is supplied by Revelation’s A.D-70 fulfillment." 

G.K. Beale

•  "He’s an idealist and he’s an evangelical. Almost all idealists used to be liberal, but now you want to be a scholar and all this kind of stuff." (Tommy Ice)  | "Idealist G. K. Beale characterizes Revelation as “a symbolic portrayal of the conflict between good and evil, between the forces of God and of Satan. . . . a timeless depiction of this struggle.”  (John Noe)  
   

Willibald Beyschlag

• New Testament Theology (1895) "The common error.. of conceiving the parousia as a single historical event instead of the whole course of Christ's victory and triumph over the historical world, dominates also the writer of the Apocalypse. But this error marks simply the necessary limits of prophecy, which Paul describes in the words (1 Cor. xiii. 12): "Now we see (in our prophecy) through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face." To see the things of the future face to face is granted only to the after life ; to him who looks forward the future appears only in the mirror of the present ; the symbol of the future hovers before him in the signs of his time. Hence the conflict of Christian history and the hope of eternal victory were to the writer of the Apocalypse symbolically reflected in the confusions of his time ; and if he saw close at hand the eternal triumph of the kingdom of God, he simply erred in the same way as Isaiah or his greater post-Exilic successor, the former of whom expected that the Assyrian oppression and deliverance from it, and the latter that the Babylonian captivity and deliverance, alone separated them from the Messianic salvation."

William Neil  (1950) God's timeless judgment which is past, present, and future - "[The Day of the Lord] is God's timeless Judgment which IS past, present, and future. In a sense it is always to come, in a sense it is always present, and in a sense it has already been passed . . . Thus the Parousia [a technical word for the second coming] is, like Creation, in a real sense timeless;  not an historical event, but the underlying purpose of history and the summing up of all things in Christ." (Thessalonians, pp. xli–xlii)

Joseph Wood (1906) "Inspiration is that which is of universal application. If any utterance is only for an age, and local in its interpretation, we do not regard it as inspired. The Psalms, for instance, were mostly suggested by local considerations, the trials, the joys, the experiences of David and others, under peculiar circumstances. But, nevertheless, we feel as we read them that they pass beyond the limits of the local and the individual— they belong to humanity—they are true of human nature and life everywhere. Or take Christ's prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem. It was spoken at Jerusalem about Jerusalem, and in a manner which seemed limited to Jerusalem. But had the prophecy been true only of that city of sorrows, it would never have been regarded as inspired. Whereas Christ's principle was this : that the doom pronounced on Jerusalem was universally applicable, and that it was but a style and specimen of God's judgment everywhere. The judgment comes wherever there is evil grown ripe for judgment, wherever corruption is complete. And the gathering of the Roman eagles to the carcase is but a specimen of the way in which judgment at last overtakes any city, any country, and any man in whom evil has reached the point where there is no possibility of cure. We who have lived through the last fifty years have seen the eagles gathered together in Naples, in America, in France, in Bulgaria. The Lord's judgment on Jerusalem has been fulfilled many times—it was not simply of local but of universal application." (The Bible, what it is and is not [lects.], p. 97)

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