Preterism and apocalypse

A site full of interesting articles and reflections challenging the popular futurist interpretations of certain passages in Daniel, the synoptics, 2 Thessalonians and Revelation.

The Last Days: Rethinking Bible Prophecy in the Light of Scripture and History.

The links to historical and devotional material on the associated Be Still pages are also great. So much food I don't know what to touch first or taste last (to borrow from Stephen Gosson's The Schoole of Abuse, an anti-theatrical pamphlet from the 16th century that entertained us no end as undergraduates).

And here's another great site with collections of preterist and anti Christian Zionist articles.

Isaiah 3 and 4

(1-7) The LORD is about to take away supplies and leaders from Jerusalem and Judah

(8-9) for they brazenly deny the eyes of his glory and have stumbled and fallen

(10-11) the fate of the righteous will be good, but not so the wicked

(12-17) the LORD as judge and prosecutor of OPPRESSION and VANITY – the leaders of Zion, and of haughty women

(18-4:1) in that day the finey and the mighty men will be stripped away

(4:2-6) in that day the branch of the LORD shall be beautiful and glorious: the LORD will cleanse and protect…

The tenses blend present and future. ‘I will make boys and children rule’ (4) and ‘now youth and women rule’ (12). Does this make the future more vivid? Or is the LORD threatening to give them over (4) to what they already glory in (12), à la Romans 1:24?

To ponder:

Inadequate leadership is a major problem – not just inadequate but actively oppressive (14) at this period. The shocking thought is, however, is that one of God’s acts of judgement is to give crummy leaders to the people. He removes the good, what you might call the substantial citizens (1-3) along with the dodgy “clever enchanter” [Motyer; ESV, diviner] who is there, too. He replaces them with the bad (4,5, 12) and even with comedy leaders (6) – the people are so desperate they’ll accept anyone who owns a cloak…

These bad leaders oppress instead of tending the vineyard, especially oppressing the poor. They spend their time on consumption and on parading their wealth.

The chronology of the judgement is not clear but it is implied that judgement (18), hardship & degredation (4:1) and safety & cleansing (4:2-6) will come “at once”, as it were. [NB. The ESV reading of 4:4 suggests that at least some of the daughters of Zion will be cleansed and so will be among the survivors; Motyer and Dalzell argue that ‘the filth of the women’ = the sinful women themselves.]

But in that day who will be left in Zion? How do you get left in Zion?

We know they will be the righteous (3:10), to whom a specific message is given, but we don’t hear much more about them. Rather, we hear a lot about what the LORD will do…

The categories are bursting!
in Israel
in Zion
remain in Jerusalem
cleanse Jerusalem of bloodstains
cloud over all of Mount Zion…

This suggests something much greater than just a mountain in Palestine! Like so much of the OT, these prophecies point beyond themselves – compare the sacrifices, the temple, the monarchy… To take them literally would mean a JW-style reading, with just enough physical space (in square metres) for a limited number of people (the JW’s annointed ones?), which is what many dispensationalists do. (1) Verses 5-6 pick up the Exodus imagery of God’s protection, which is clearly not to be understood literalistically. (2) What about all the faithful Jews who lived out in the sticks!? Clearly no original reader of the OT would have taken Mount Zion physically and literalistically, but as representative: Jerusalem/Zion, here = the faithful people of God. And represenatation is crucial to God’s dealings with humanity! (Adam represents YHWH to the earth, Jesus represents God to man and man to God, etc.)

To run for a moment with the dispy-style interpretation of this and similar prophecies… It’s very tempting, granted, especially since the recent history of the state of Israel is remarkable (militarily and economically), and partial literal readings of the OT prophecy are not completely incoherent. Maybe there is a literal return to the land foretold? Maybe there is privilege in being Jewish?

If so, only in a small way – the big thing is the faithful from every nation inheriting the earth (Beatitudes, Revelation)! Nevertheless, the broken-off branches will be grafted back on (Romans) IF…

…there is acknowledgement of the rule of God and his Christ – which there is not
…righteousness characterises the people, which it does not
…there is fair treatment of the alien – which there is not

ETC.

So the dangers of the dispy-style reading are revealed in the uncritical support of Israelis, which multiplies injustice in Palestine today. Those Jews who return to the land while remaining unbelievers are theologically insignificant. As Walter Kaiser says, God can re-run AD70 if he has to. Sobering thought, and not one that US dispys would like to try to put in their systems! Instead, they participate in the classic ‘Armageddon Now!’ fervour, a self-centred approached to prophecy that sees it all happening to the interpreter’s generation. Oh please…

The Branch (4:2)

A person? The survivors themselves? The produce/supply of the refreshed land? (Calvin and modern liberals are agreed on the third reading!)

If the Branch is Messianic here – and it certainly is in chapter 11 – this fits the first two readings, given that they actually come from a theological understanding of Jesus, such that the Messiah is not merely a bloke, a single figure, but a corporate figure of blessing and rule. “Branch” will be broadened as we go through Isaiah, even if right now we hear only future echoes…

People of the Book? Kind of...

John Barton, People of the Book? The Authority of the Bible in Christianity, 2^nd edn (London: SPCK, 1993) has very little time for the likes of me! (Well... not quite true, as his tone is often gracious, and he sometimes even compliments 'fundamentalists' for their piety.) He is very concerned to undermine modern biblicism, and in this second edition also to bring out a constructive alternative. There are good things to plunder is this book - it is very erudite, eloquent and insightful - but overall I think he's wrong. Most of the time he falls for the fallacy of the excluded middle, but he is also fond of stating things as if they were arguments in favour of his position, when in fact they are not...

The arrival of Jesus, and of the new work God accomplished through him, draws its significance from the knowledge of God that already existed in Israel, and would be meaningless without it. (33)

Anyone would think, from the number of times Barton makes this claim in the early chapters of the work, Barton that he imagined it is a special insight of his own. But the ‘fundamentalists’ he criticises would say exactly the same thing. It is possible that there are some Dispensationalists, somewhere in America, who would in practice chop up salvation history in such a way as to undermine their assent to Barton's claim. But the conservative circles I move in would not do so. Nor would the even more thoroughly Reformed around the world. It is hardly the culminating blow of an argument against ‘fundamentalist’ handling of the Bible.

Bizarrely, Barton frequently couples it with a very strong anti-supersecessionist assertion. On page 33, he continues, Jesus’ God is the God of Israel, and that means not only of ancient Israel, but of Judaism. Christians who are antisemitic are cutting themselves off from their own roots, making Christianity into a new religion divorced from the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the God of the Jews. For Barton to claim that to deny the religious validity of modern Judaism is the same as antisemitism, with all the unsavoury and evil associations of that word, is highly irresponsible. He does not even argue this point he merely asserts it by juxtaposition.

Now, whether or not there is any continuing significance to Judaism and precisely what that significance is is hardly an uncontroversial point among those Barton labels ‘fundamentalists’ (of course it has historical, personal, sociological and cultural significance - the question is of its theological status). It would seem to me, however, that a strong case can be made that modern Judaism is essentially a creation of anti-Christian rabbis, and bears very little resemblance to Barton’s ‘God of Israel’. If we want to get all ethnic about it, then the first followers of Jesus (later, ‘Christians’) were all Jews, and many theologians have convincingly argued that ‘the church’ is true Israel. [Perhaps the best-known of these writers today is the Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, and I don't think he's signed up to antisemitism yet.] God’s plans have matured, and since the faithful remnant within Israel constitute true Israel – a common theme in later OT prophecy – that faithful remnant who embraced the maturing of God’s plans in the coming of the Messiah (ie. those who were later called ‘Christians’, first Jews and then Gentiles) are the theologically significant ones. Real ‘Judaism’ is now real ‘Christianity’, just as the faith of Abraham matured into the faith of Mosaic Judiasm as God’s revelation proceeded…

As regards Barton’s central thesis, the falsity of a ‘ fundamentalism that comes closest to adopting in Christianity theory of scripture like the majority Islamic view of the Qur'an – supernaturally inspired in origin, inerrant in content, oracular in function’ (1), I shall doubtless have more to say in future posts.

Note: for a taster on the typology of Jesus as Israel, see this post. And especially note who Leithart is dependent on: the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, John Barton's old tutor and hero! Perhaps this is too obscure to be irony, but...

another obscure/important thing

is dispensationalism. Again, it's not something we know much about in the UK Christian scene - we're just not self-conscious about it and don't usually have strong opinions about it (what is it, anyway!?). But it exercises a lot of people, and makes several people a lot of money (Left Behind and associated claptrap... oops, did I reveal a strong opinion there? not very British of me) and so I thought an oblique look at things might be of interest. I haven't read this properly yet, but it looks like it will get the grey cells going. Land, Seed and Blessing by Nathan Pitchford.