Featured Understanding Preterism

'For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed' (2 Cor. 5:4).

 

I struggled with preterism for along time read many books on the subject... Russell, DeMar, Preston, and various other authors and definitely Josephus... Now embracing many views of various authors from an historical stand point of the early church see those things fulfilled. Some would say I have been through the mill!... And I have, and at this point in my journey I am Amil... That being said also to some extent partial historical biblical preterist... The thing that has stop me in my tracks to not being a full one is the physical bodily resurrection... Jesus after his resurrection refers to his body as flesh and bone... Why?... If the same Jesus that was raised from the dead has flesh and bone immortalized why is there a question that we will not have the same body?... I believe the man Christ Jesus in a flesh and bone immortalized body is now sitting at the right hand of God making intercession for his children his Father gave him!... I also believe that I will see the nail prints in his hands and feet as a reminder to me and all his other children of who he is and what he did... I wait until this mortal shall be clothed in immortality... Those are my thoughts but we will know for sure when he comes again to take us home!... Brother Glen

 

The answer is that physical existence is not part of God's "natural" essence. Think about it, the Son had existed in perfect union with the Godhead throughout eternity past without a physical body. It was no denigration to His glory - it is none now - to be without a physical body.

And as far as His physical body being an example for our own resurrection body, you have no intimation of that in Scripture. Instead you have verses like John 17:5:

"And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed."

What glory did Christ have before the world existed? We have only the slightest idea, but we do know that it was not in a physical body.

We are so used to this physical existence that we have a hard time appreciating the possibility that a change from a spiritual existence to a physical one might be a real denigration. I believe that, not only was Christ's sufferings and hardships - culminating in the shame and pain of crucifixion on our undeserving behalf - part of His rescue mission, but also His being in the flesh. His very existence in flesh was part of His humiliation. Paul touches upon this in Phil. 2.

The Incarnation was never meant to be ongoing. It was suited and delimited to a set purpose. There was only a certain time that Christ was in the flesh, and it all had to do with the necessity of saving us. Once the necessity was put away so was the need for His fleshly existence. This is why Paul, in his anonymous letter to the Hebrews, wrote:

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence." Hebrews 5:7

God's whole purpose - from eternity past - was to make us like Christ, not to make the second Person of the Trinity like us, limiting one part of the Godhead forever to a partial-flesh existence!

 

Excellent explanation Tom. Thank you.

 

Though I disagree Tom (and we have been over Acts 1:9-11 several times) your rationale is a good one.

Still - assuming your proposition is true, what do you think was the disposition of Christ's physical body? vaporization perhaps? Seriously.

HankD

 

I don't know the answer to that one, quite frankly. I don't think there is any passage that even speaks of it.

 

Thanks, Kyredneck. I will try to stick around longer this time. Although right now in China we have the added problem of this ongoing congress. I say "problem" because yesterday morning all websites I visited were blocked except their China Daily. But this shouldn't last too long and things will get back to semi-normal.

 

I wrote an answer to this post but now I don't see it here. Hmm. I don't feel like typing it all again. In a nutshell I had written to look at the context. It gets harder to see 2 Cor. 5:4 as referring to physical bodies when you consider the preceding verse of this chapter.

 

I'm sorry you lost your post; there seems to be a bit of that going on for some reason. However, I see nothing in the context of 2 Corinthians 5:3-4 that negates what is the clear and obvious meaning of the text that Paul is looking forward to receiving his new resurrection body of which he has spoken so very clearly in his previous letter.

May I ask you, do you believe in a future physical, bodily return of Christ in glory at the end of the age? A yes or no answer will suffice.

 

No.

 

I had suggested going back, not just one verse, but all the way to the beginning of the chapter. Better yet would be to include the last two verses of chapter 4.

Verse 3 is linked grammatically to the preceding, "being clothed" connected to the "habitation" and "house" of the first part of this thought. And this is part of those things that are "unseen", 4:18.

 

I assume you mean the resurrection chapter of 1st Corinthians. That is probably my favorite chapter in all of Paul's writings. It was a key factor in my believing what I do now about the resurrection. I don't know why literalists have this as their go-to passage. It teaches quite differently than what many seem to think.

But this should probably be in a different thread.

 

Thanks for being a "straight shooter" Tom.

HankD

 

Make your mind up!

 

For those like myself that are trying to understand preterism and its application to the resurrected physical body or not, how do preterist explain what follows in 2 Timothy?... Do you address it or it doesn't apply?... I'm seeking further clarification of scripture!... Brother Glen

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

2:16 But shun profane and vain babblings: for they will increase unto more ungodliness.

2:17 And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus;

2:18 Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some

 

I see the confusion. Sorry, my fault. This is a typo. I meant to write "verses", not "verse".

 

Posing this verse as a problem for Preterists overlooks a basic fact that events happen that change the applicability of passages. The error of Hymenaeus and Philetus - one of several errors - is in timing. They jumped the gun. Their error was like Theudas in the 40's (I think), mentioned in Acts 5:36 and Josephus, who seems to have taught that the times of Messiah had come.

For that matter - though to a much lesser degree - we can also compare Eve's comment,

"I have gotten a man (THE Man) from the LORD".

She was apparently thinking of the Messianic promise of Gen. 3:15. Her error was also one of timing.

In short, although all of God's Word is eternally fixed in the heavens, it is not all eternally applicable. Some of His promises are to events already realized.

 

The idea that somehow the physical in itself is inferior to spirit is gnostic and quite untrue. When God had made the world, before he had made man, He pronounced it 'good.' When He had created a flesh-and-blood man, He pronounced it 'very good' (Genesis 1:25, 31). After the fall, of course, man fell into sin, so the Lord Jesus came 'in the likeness of sinful flesh' (Romans 8:3). However, there is also such a thing as 'sinful spirit' as seen in the angels who sinned. The Apostle John is very clear that our Lord came 'in the flesh' (1 John 4:2-3; 2 John 7). He did this in order to remove the curse on the fallen physical world (Revelation 22:3) and to redeem mankind.

In the new heavens and new earth, the redeemed will be like Jesus Christ, the firstfruits from the dead who rose in a real body (Luke 24:39), ascended into heaven in a real body (Acts 1:9-10) and will return in a real body (Acts 1:11). Asterisktom may choose to believe that He put His body aside in heaven. The martyr Stephen would disagree (Acts 7:56).

To deny the physical return in glory of the Lord Jesus Christ has always been regarded by the Church as an error of the same magnitude as denying His deity or His resurrection.

 

No, this idea is not gnostic. They (gnostics) go to unbiblical extremes, saying that matter is in itself evil. Genesis, as you pointed out, shows that the creation was all pronounced “good”. You are proving what I already believe.

Yes, it was pronounced “good” and “very good”. But there is a quality that is higher than “very good” and that is “perfect”. And that is what God had been throughout eternity past without any connection to “materiality” (for want of a better word). God is Spirit. I am surprised that I even have to argue how spirit existence in itself is superior to physical existence.

Not sure why you bothered writing this. I agree with all of it. Maybe you don't know what Preterists believe.

We will be like Jesus. And, in the words of Jesus, We “will be like the angels”, Luke 20:36 (ἰσάγγελοι). What does that mean? Angels never had bodies.

How are we like angels? The answer is in the context of that chapter in Luke. The Sadducees, also, were so fixated on the physical world, as well as on their Jewish dispensation, that they had serious blind spots concerning the spiritual nature of the Kingdom of God – and consequently, of the resurrection also..

Like I wrote earlier, there was no need for Christ to remain in a physical body. The Incarnation was mission-specific.

That is why – as I also wrote; unnoticed, uncommented on – Paul refers to that time as the “days of His flesh”.
Why did he use that phrase?
Are these present days not also - according to you - "the days of his flesh"?
Why didn't Paul just write the "days of His humiliation" or "the days of His presence on Earth"?

Stephen saw a vision of Christ. Yes, he saw Him. But he did not see an actual physical Christ in heaven, with human dimensions. Likewise, John saw a somewhat different vision of Christ. Other visions of angels in Revelation fall into this category – the angel with pillars for legs, one on land, the other the sea.

No, this is not true. Romanists said similar things to the Reformers – pointing confidently to a long tradition of hoary but erring beliefs. The church has always believed an admixture of good and bad doctrine – much more good than bad. It is, after all, made up of erring humans.

Christ's return, His Appearing/Presence (Parousia) was indeed "in glory", the glory that He had with the Father before the world was made, just as He prayed in John 17.

 

Our Lord qualifies this statement; we will be like the angels in heaven in that we shall not marry. We shall also resemble them in that we shall not age and grow old. But we shall be more blessed than the angels in that we shall have a perfect resurrection body for unlike the angels, we are 'children of the resurrection' (Luke 20:36) and resemble Jesus Christ, the firstfruits from the dead, who rose with a resurrection body. What we are eagerly looking forward to is the return of Christ, 'Who, by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body' (Philippians 3:20-21). Therefore the ascended Christ has a body, a glorious, resurrection body, but a body nonetheless q.e.d.

Every creed of which I am aware: ecumenical, Romanist, Protestant, Baptist, from the Apostles' and Nicaean Creeds to the present day speaks of the Return of Christ in glory. It is a glorious and wonderful truth and one which no orthodox Christian would ever deny.