Did Jesus hint he would return in the far future?

5/27/2012

In a recent critical review of my book, reader Karsten Klien correctly observes that most of my arguments against Christianity have been well known for a long time and that many intelligent Christians have maintained their faith despite these challenges. I responded by asking him for his take on one of the problems I find most troubling for Christianity: Jesus' failure to return in the generation of his contemporaries as he promised. The solution he prefers is that Jesus provided clues in his Olivet Discourse that he would return only after there were believers to be gathered from the ends of the earth, which Karsten takes to mean in a future generation, since presumably there wasn't even time for the gospel to have spread that far in the first generation. I was intrigued by this explanation since I hadn't previously considered it, and I appreciate his bringing it to my attention.

Since I've already taken the time to respond to Karsten's Amazon review, I've decided to kill two birds with one stone and turn my response into my blog post for this week. For anyone who wishes to respond, I would ask that you be respectful of Karsten, whom I find to be engaging and respectful himself. It may be best to comment directly on Amazon if you have a question for him. If you're a believer (or even an unbeliever) and you have an alternate explanation for the problem of Jesus' return, preferably an explanation I did not discuss to your satisfaction in my chapter on prophecies in my book, then I would be glad to hear your take on this problem.

Without further ado, here's our Amazon exchange regarding the timing of Jesus' return:

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Karsten's comments:

You were correct when you asserted that certain Christians misuse the word for "race." Many people want easy "quick fixes." As to possible valid solutions, there have been many explanations of this passage, from the Lewis one you quoted, to double fulfillment, to dispensational takes on it, to various others. After all this is a question that Christians have had to deal with for over 2000 years. So there are few options that could be plausible.

But the [explanation] that makes the most sense to me is that Jesus is certainly speaking of all future events that have not occurred. The context of the passage is in global terms, so it appears difficult to assume that in a short amount of time there would be believers "from the ends of the earth"(Mk 13:24-27). Jesus appears to be speaking of a future time, and that the generation alive at that time will not be completely wiped out, but will see Christ return.

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Ken's comments:

That's an interesting take on the issue. However, by the time Mark was written, the gospel had already been taken to "the ends of the earth." For first century Christians, this did not include Australia or the Americas; it corresponded to the world with which they were familiar, centered in the Mediterranean and spreading out nebulously from there. It apparently included parts as far east as India, where tradition maintains that the Apostle Thomas brought the gospel around A.D. 52, well before the passing of that first generation. Most scholars date all four Gospels (including Mark) after the lifetime of Paul, who preached in Rome and, according to tradition, as far west as Spain, representing the westernmost "end" of the earth to those living in the first century. So no, Jesus (or the author of Mark who penned the Olivet Discourse) wasn't speaking of a far-future state of affairs. Furthermore, the discourse was directed to the disciples (witness the multiple references to "you") who had asked Jesus when the end would come. If Jesus knew he was speaking of a generation not yet living, then why did he address all his remarks to his disciples as "you"--the ones who, after all, had asked about the timing of all this--with every indication it was for their consumption, not for ours 20 centuries removed?

But I fear the discussion of this one passage is getting away from the bigger New Testament picture. Do you maintain that when Paul wrote, "we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air," (1 Thess. 4:17) he did not believe he was going to be among those still alive at Jesus' return? Or that when Paul stated in 1 Cor. 7:29 that the "time is short" and advised his readers to live as though the end was at hand, he didn't really think the end was at hand? Do you maintain that the author of 1 John 1:18 believed "the end" to be in a future generation: "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour"? Or that when Jesus pronounced that "some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:27-28), he had a future generation in mind? Or that when he said to his disciples in Matthew 10:23, "When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another. Truly I tell you, you will not finish going through the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes," he meant that there would still be towns in Israel to go through in the year 2012? If God inspired the New Testament writers, and he knew that Jesus was not going to return in the generation then living, is the reference to "the ends of the earth" (and the 1 Peter passage you quoted, which I'll come to momentarily) the best he could have done to make it clear he wasn't in fact going to return in that generation, as all the above passages suggest? I see this as an illustration of the principle I alluded to in an earlier comment: the smartest committed believers (among whom I'll count you) are the best equipped for devising ingenious solutions to the challenges to their faith. But we have to stop and ask ourselves: is this what the text is really pointing to, or is it just a way to sidestep the weight of the problem?

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Karsten's comments:

Regardless of if this explanation satisfies you, (I'm quite sure it won't), I think the key for this is that the disciples were certainly not confused or thrown back by his so-called fail to return. They did not appear to understand it as having to occur in their lifetime. As is quoted in 1Peter, 'With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.'

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Ken's comments:

The problem with this passage (2 Peter 3:8) is that it can be used to make language mean nothing. You lamented in your last comment that postmodernism seems to be reigning, which I take to mean that truth is relative. What finer example of relativism is there than this passage? When it appeared that Jesus' promise to return in that generation failed, then it was time to reassess. Here's a thought: remove all meaning from time, then what do you know, the problem is gone! Never mind Jesus' references to "this generation," or his "some who are standing here will not taste death until," or Paul's "we who are alive," or John's "this is the last hour," or every other passage that speaks to the imminence of Jesus' return; it can all be swept under the rug with one all-encompassing redefinition of time itself. The author of 2 Peter (which critical scholars unanimously hold to be pseudonymous, written after the real Peter's death) was another example of a smart, committed believer who knew very well how to bring reason into the service of his prior commitments. How smart was he? Smart enough to convince even postmodern-eschewing believers of the twentieth-first century that Jesus' failure to return in the first century as promised is not a problem for the Christian faith.

I'll close with a general observation that those who purport to foretell future events almost always have in mind a fulfillment in their own lifetime. Take Harold Camping's prediction that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011. Are we to suppose that his advancing age had nothing to do with his choice of 2011 rather than, say, 2100? Is it a coincidence that Hal Linsey is convinced Jesus will return in his generation? Or that William Miller predicted Jesus' return in 1844, when Miller happened to be living? Or that the New Testament writers believed they were living in the generation of the parousia? (Even the author of 2 Peter, who used the day-is-a-thousand-years argument, goes on in 2 Peter 2 to warn his readers of Jesus' impending return.) I'm not saying that no one has ever prophesied about events specified to take place after the death of the seer, but surely it must be a very rare exception. After all, of what benefit is it to the seer if the fulfillment is going to take place after he's dead? This being the case, should it surprise us that the very human New Testament Christians believed they were part of the end times?

David Swedberg

5/28/2012 11:00:20 pm

Ken,

Prophesies in the Bible in some cases are fulfilled twice or more - I haven't done my homework to illustrate, but hope you remember the concept.

There are many books out now including 90 minutes in Heaven and one by a child, that relate individual experiences where a person has died. Typically, they leave their body, suspend in an observer mode, and move upward to eventually meet Jesus in heaven. My assumption is that this experience is duplicated for all people with relationships with Jesus, and those without these relationships do not meet Jesus - i.e. 23 minutes in Hell.

These being individual experiences are like individual data points for an empiricist, and are very hard to duplicate because only a very few ever come back to relate their experience - maybe .0001 % of the population. And this low return rate is hard to set up as an experiment with control to come to a statistically significant observation.

However, it does seem to show that individuals meet Jesus in the air, and this could again be fulfilled at the end of time when Jesus returns for all that remain alive. Maybe imminent is the correct word since everyone dies and no one knows when unless they are suicidal.

Just thinking . . .

Andy

5/29/2012 12:47:38 am

David,

I think you may be reaching here. The Bible is fairly explicit about the fact that Jesus is the one doing the returning. But then again, the Bible is also very good (or maybe it is our interpretation of it) at leaving doors open so that almost anything can be explained by some creative wording. Maybe you're right. Don't you think Jesus and the other Biblical authors would have been a little clearer about what they meant if they were actually referring to meeting Jesus in death? Why would they even imply that Jesus would be coming back if what they really meant was that we will go see him when we die?

Also, near death experiences are far from empirical. They should not be regarded as proof of anything. For all we know, and many scientists believe this, they are due to a random firing of a dying brain. Granted, it is impossible to prove one way or another. They are wildly subjective and completely unverifiable.

Ken, I thought you did a really good job of supporting your argument. Really enjoyed this one!

Ken Daniels

5/29/2012 02:07:34 pm

Thanks, Andy--very well said! The conversation continues over at Amazon...

Ken

Ken Daniels

5/29/2012 01:50:54 pm

Thanks for joining in the conversation, David! I appreciate and welcome contributions from those who think differently from me. I tend to agree with what Andy already wrote in response to your post and don't have much more to add.

Regarding prophecies with dual fulfillment prophecies, I think it's difficult to show that they were intended originally by the author to have both a near and a far-future fulfillment. For example, if you read Isaiah 7:14 in context, there is every indication that the author was referring to a child to be born to a young woman (not necessarily a virgin in Hebrew) within a very short time and no indication of a far-future fulfillment in Jesus' virgin birth. The fact that Matthew came along centuries later and reapplied it to Jesus doesn't mean that Isaiah had this later even in mind. It's not difficult to take bits and pieces from just about any text, biblical or otherwise, and apply it to a later situation.

The point I was trying to make was, What interest does a seer or his audience have in what might happen dozes of generations in the future? What reason would anyone have to listen to Harold Camping or to Hal Lindsay if they pronounced that Jesus was going to return in ten generations from now? It would fall absolutely flat. But if it's in THIS generation, well now, maybe they can get an audience, because it matters to this generation what's going to happen in this generation.

christianagnostic link

5/29/2012 05:32:35 pm

Nice post...I always had a nagging feeling whenever I read those passages. After years of trying to make sense of them, I gave up.

David Swedberg

5/29/2012 08:10:43 pm

Please bear with me a little longer to explain my response and this may help explain the point of view of the authors of the Bible. We were talking about time, and while we think that it is thousands of years, yet my response was concerning “empirical” time, of which everyone only has a few short years – I have had 55 of which most of them I can no longer remember. Prophesy has been described as an author’s view of a “mountain range” of significant future events that they observe now but will not occur until the future. This provides a clue that there are other ways to look at time like 2 Peter suggests, in this case a bar-chart of individual experiences versus a measuring line of overlapping generations.

Andy, I am not “reaching here” empirically, although I would agree with you that I am in all other senses! We are reaching when we say that there are thousands of years, since no man has experienced more than his own lifetime – unless Hinduism and reincarnation do exist.

Empiricism is the theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience. That means to me that the world is only as old as the years I am able to sense-experience it. Imminence is my perception that time will end when I die and I will experience something else. Jesus, when he stood to be judged by Pilot said something very interesting when he said “My kingdom is not of this world . . . my kingdom is from another place”. Generally, we judge someone from the laws of the kingdom he lives in, and only from those he visits while he is there, not when he no longer is there.

Suppose Jesus’ kingdom is outside of our life-time of maybe 80 years or our theory of the age of the universe – are we up to a trillion years? Suppose God is not only every-where present, but also every-time present. Suppose there is only one generation – the one we individually live in. Then some of these prophesies may make more sense. Our objection that the authors didn’t intend this or understand it doesn’t really matter because time can’t be understood or communicated clearly in our experience, since we experience so little of it.

I pointed out in my note that practically, I only have a short time before I will meet my maker or meet Jesus in the air as I explained. At that time I will answer for clues he has given me for what I should do with the years of experience he has given me. I think everyone is held accountable to the ends of the earth, even those who I think have not been “reached” with the gospel in my time-line of serial events. I will be judged by the laws of a different kingdom that I will be in when I leave empirical time. If this isn’t true, then where will I go – or is that not one of the great questions of life the authors were trying to help me understand?

Sorry if I have again wasted your time, there is so little of it.

Julia

5/30/2012 02:16:49 am

I was actually taught in my Lutheran upbringing this idea that the message had to reach the ends of the earth, with no secure understanding on our part possible of exactly what that entails, and that this was one of the 'reasons' that Jesus' return was not late in arriving.
Much of what I was taught had that sort of "practical" feel to it - never the understanding that we are in heaven immediately upon death for instance, or much thought about angels, or explicit knowable answers to our prayers. Which made it easier I think for my type of personality/thinking style to hang on for so long.
Later, I experienced other styles of belief, but by then I was near
(although I wouldn't have believed it could be so at the time) the end of making sense of any of it.

At this place in the journey (a term I dislike, but which seems to fit so well) I can only think, when I see anguished sounding attempts to make sense of the nonsensical (especially when the word "suppose" is used/needed) it just brings to mind things like, ""Moses supposes his toeses are Roses,
But Moses supposes Erroneously," :-)

And on a more serious note, it points to the fact that at that level of supposing, we can make ANY religion in the history of mankind very possibly TRUE! Now if that is the case, then I am not going to worry about being judged on having chosen the correct one to have supposed upon. Especially since with few exceptions, the one chosen by people is the one of their culture or upbringing.

The only way that can be "supposed" to make sense, I "suppose," is by following a predestination route.

Not stopping to smell the Toeses,
Julia

mikespeir

5/30/2012 02:44:48 am

But surely, David, you can see how this would seem more like an excuse than an explanation to those of us who don't believe. This is one of the problems we run into all the time: Christians insisting we believe in their God and in their Christ upon pain of Hellfire (or whatever the eternal unpleasantness of the month might be). And then when we show how it doesn't add up they come back with something that sounds ridiculously made-up to our ears. Even if by some stretch you're right, we've still been given no good reason for us to think so. You can see that, can't you?

6/6/2012 03:16:22 am

mikespeir,

The funny thing is that Jesus and Paul were universalists. Lol!

David Swedberg

5/30/2012 09:55:43 pm

Your points are good, and I stand guilty as charged, and sorry about my toeses. I was just feeling defensive that a couple thousand years delay in prophetic fulfillment for the end of the world is "one of the problems I find most troubling for Christianity".

This feels unfair from my perspective, when some theories for the beginning of the world keep asking for more time in the range of billions of years.

I think textual criticism has the same issues as faith, everything is as unbelievable as it is excusable. I appreciate your comment that "Christians insist we believe" and I am sorry if I come off that way. I am just trying to answer basic questions of life for myself and find I have to believe in any conclusion I come to. I normally don't do my thinking in a blog, but Ken is my hero.

Brad

5/31/2012 09:01:09 am

'The context of the passage is in global terms, so it appears difficult to assume that in a short amount of time there would be believers "from the ends of the earth"'.

If I write – ‘He’s in love and he’s going to tell the whole world’ – do you think that he’ll be doing that literally? If someone I know travels a lot and I say – ‘He’s been everywhere’ – is that really the case?This is simple hyperbole and as common a literal device as you’ll find.

There was an event in Dallas just 50 years ago which was filmed, photographed, viewed by people still alive today, dissected and investigated to the nth degree by thousands of people and still we have people who can’t agree on what exactly happened.

Yet some of these people will accept as gospel (no pun intended), events written about many centuries ago as a third hand account, decades after the event, by someone with a not unreasonable agenda and which has been translated through at least two languages.

I’m not sure how that works.

Ken Daniels

5/31/2012 09:38:04 am

Brad, you have a point about hyperbole, which is used liberally throughout the scriptures (and in our everyday speech, as you mentioned). For example, see the account of Pentecost in Acts 2:5: "Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven." Every nation? I doubt it. I also mentioned this in my ongoing dialog with Karsten in response to his review of my book on Amazon.

Thanks for your input!

Ken

6/5/2012 03:13:32 am

Ken,

Not sure if it will make a difference at this point but you are in error about the NT necessarily being incorrect about the imminent 1st century return of the risen Lord Jesus.

Allow me to explain.

The eschatological road map of Jesus and his first followers involved the soon return of the risen Lord Jesus as the eschatological king of Israel to reign over (and with) his disciples in the kingdom of God, which was understood to be the typological equivalent of the "promised land" for Israel in the "last days." This event would then be followed by a long stretch of time in which disciples of Jesus would be made throughout the whole world and secretly gathered into the kingdom of God upon their deaths, this long stretch of time would then reach its climax in a spectacular, visible manifestation of the Lord Jesus and his disciples in the kingdom of God at the last battle on the day of the Lord. Although the details of this eschatological road map are never spelled out in full anywhere in the Bible, nevertheless you can get a rough sense of its outline in such passages as Rev 20:1-10.

Unfortunately, Christian orthodoxy has a long tradition of erring in its understanding of this eschatological road map by merging the coming of the Lord Jesus to live with his people in the kingdom of God and the spectacular, visible manifestation of the Lord Jesus at the last battle into a single event. This misunderstanding unnecessarily creates the problem articulated in your blog post and in your book, that of explaining why a spectacular, visible return of Jesus did not take place within the lifetime of his first followers. Needless to say, it is a false dilemma for Christian faith, Jesus and the writers of the NT (with the lone exception of the person who forged 2 Peter) are unanimous in their understanding that the return of the Lord Jesus to live with his disciples in the kingdom of God would be a mysterious event that would neither be visible to those living in this world (Lk 17:20) nor would it bring an end to the normal processes of life in this world (Lk 16:19-31; Jn 3:8; 21:22-23).

mikespeir

6/6/2012 02:04:50 am

Interesting. But it leads me to wonder how so many smart people could have gotten it so wrong for so long. ;)

Ken Daniels

6/6/2012 10:41:27 am

Thanks for your perspective, NW. I'd be interested in knowing more. Would you describe your position as being in the Preterist family? Could you point us to any resources expounding on this view? I reread Revelation 20 and still don't see how it corroborates your position. I think it's telling that there's no one passage that maps out this vision of the future. It would seem that the fragmentary nature of the accounts allows diverse groups to pick and choose bits from here and there and to string them together in ways they think coincide with the past and with an imagined vision of the future.

How would you explain the following two passages that suggest Jesus' return was not only expected in that first Christian generation, but was also to be accompanied by visible signs? From your perspective, did those signs occur at that time, or are they yet to occur in the future?

"For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:27-28).

"There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near ... Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Luke 21:25-33).

By the way, I'm happy to see you acknowledge the critical consensus that 2 Peter was pseudonymous (a.k.a., forged) and that you appear to be a universalist.

Thanks again,

Ken

6/6/2012 01:53:04 pm

Hello Ken,

Yes, my position is in the preterist family. No, I don't have any books to recommend, sadly, but that's not too surprising seeing as how there aren't many books on the Bible worth reading anyway.

My purpose in referencing Rev 20:1-10 is that it is quite clear in that part of the NT that the coming of the kingdom of God and the reign of Christ with his resurrected saints in the kingdom precedes the last battle by a long stretch of time. Obviously, there are many other aspects of the NT's eschatological road map that are not covered in that passage, but a rough outline of this road map can be most easily discerned there.

On the contrary, there's nothing particularly telling about the fragmentary nature of the eschatological data in the NT, such is also the case with the eschatological data scattered throughout the OT and in any case the writings that makeup the NT typically assume a great deal of context that we no longer share, so that what seems almost hopelessly fragmentary to us would probably have seemed considerably less so to the writers of the NT.

Now, on to the passages of Scripture that you had questions about.

(1) Mt. 16:27-28

First of all, the proper translation of v 28 should read "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming with his kingdom" (note the presence of "until" and "with" in the translation). The idea is that Jesus will return and bring the kingdom of God with him and that this event will take place within the lifetime of his first followers. Now, it should be stressed that the coming of the kingdom of God, which is the eschatological event mentioned here (notice that Mt 16:28 = Mk 9:1 = Lk 9:27 is a bit of triple tradition), was not an event that would visibly take place from the perspective of this world (Lk 17:20)! However, it was to be accompanied by the visible destruction of the temple, so that when the followers of Jesus saw the destruction of the temple they would know that the coming of the kingdom of God had taken place in the invisible heavenly sanctuary (more on that below). Therefore, it follows that this event should have taken place along with the destruction of the temple in 70 CE.

If I may back up for a moment, from the perspective of the NT Jesus had already entered the invisible heavenly sanctuary after the pattern of the high priest on the day of atonement in the OT and had ascended all the way up to the throne room of God (Heb 9), which is in the second section of the heavenly sanctuary (the heavenly holy of holies you might say), at which point he was clothed with his glorified spiritual body and given the kingdom of God in fulfillment of Dan 7:13-14. At this time it was also understood that Jesus had been given authority to send the Spirit to his disciples so that his presentation before God in the second section of the heavenly sanctuary would have been understood to have taken place at Pentecost (Jn 7:39). Therefore, the perspective of much of the NT is that Jesus will come down very soon from his perch in the second section of the heavenly sanctuary, which is also referred to as the third heaven (2 Cor 12:2-3), and bring with him the kingdom that was given to him so that he can live with his followers in the lower first section of the heavenly sanctuary (Heb 10:19), which is (as you might imagine) the second heaven. The logic of Lk 17:20 is now recovered, those who were still living on earth under the first heaven of Gen 1:1 at the time when Jesus comes down with his kingdom from the third heaven to the second heaven (a la Mt 16:28) were not expected to see this event.

Unfortunately, it's not practical to prove all this in painstaking detail for you in this comment so you'll just have to take my word on a lot of it.

Finally, If all that verbiage is just too much for you, it might suffice to observe that those followers of Jesus that lived long enough would not die "until" they saw the kingdom of God after it had come with Power (Mk 9:1). The logic of Mt 16:28 = Mk 9:1 = Lk 9:27 is that some of Jesus disciples would die too early and would have to spend some time in Sheol before they saw the coming of the kingdom while the rest would live long enough to die after the kingdom had already come so that the moment of their death and the moment they saw the kingdom would be the same moment. Bottom line is that the coming of the kingdom is something that takes place in a whole other reality entirely and that the early followers of Jesus could only expect to see the kingdom on the other side of death.

(2) Luke 21:25-33

As you know, this passage is part of the Olivet discourse and most certainly does contain signs in vv 25-28 that are clearly supposed to be visible from the perspective of this world and that as of yet have not taken place (contra most preterists), which in the light of vv 31-32 begs the question as to whether my account of the invisible coming of the kingdom of God is in fa

6/6/2012 01:54:06 pm

(continued)

(2) Luke 21:25-33

As you know, this passage is part of the Olivet discourse and most certainly does contain signs in vv 25-28 that are clearly supposed to be visible from the perspective of this world and that as of yet have not taken place (contra most preterists), which in the light of vv 31-32 begs the question as to whether my account of the invisible coming of the kingdom of God is in fact correct.

The solution to this old conundrum is to realize that Mk 13, the original Olivet discourse, is about two different events and follows an ABABABAB alternating structure (similarly, Lk 21:5-36 follows an ABABAB alternating structure) where thread A concerns events that lead up to the coming of the kingdom of God and thread B concerns events that lead up to the spectacular visible manifestation of the risen Lord Jesus at the last battle. If this solution seems a little wild I can assure you that it is not as the ancient Hebrews were prone to structuring their eschatological oracles in either elaborate alternating or chiastic patterns.

Here's the ABABABAB breakdown for Mk 13:

A: (vv 1-7), (vv 14-18), (vv 21-23), (vv 28-31)
B: (vv 8-13), (vv 19-20), (vv 24-27), (vv 32-37)

And here's the ABABAB breakdown for Lk 21:

A: (vv 5-9), (vv 20-24), (vv 29-33)
B: (vv 10-19), (vv 25-28), (vv 34-36)

Check it out for yourself and see if the two different versions of the Olivet discourse in Mk 13 and Lk 21:5-36 don't unwind exactly as I say they do. As you can imagine, I would say that everything having to do with thread A was fulfilled by 70 CE while the climactic events of thread B are yet to take place.

6/6/2012 02:16:24 pm

Contrary to most critical scholars, I think 2 Peter is the only forgery in the NT. Perhaps a slim majority of critical scholars would say that roughly half of the Pauline corpus is forged; however, I find these arguments to be very weak and unconvincing. Also, against most critics, I find it hard to believe that Peter in his capacity as one of the main leaders of the early Jerusalem church didn't have the resources available to him that he would have needed to write 1 Peter even if his literary proficiency never exceeded that of a semi-illiterate, which cannot be proven in any case.

If most evangelical scholars can't bring themselves to admit the one clear example of a forgery in the NT the majority of non-evangelical critical scholars go way too far in seeing roughly half of the Pauline corpus and the entirety of the Petrine corpus as forgeries.

6/6/2012 03:00:24 pm

One last parting thought for you before I go to bed (see how I generous I am).

One of the major eschatological motifs in the OT is that peoples from every nation will experience the eschatological salvation of Yahweh (Ps 82:8; Isa 2:2-4; 66:18-21; Dan 7:14; Mic 4:1-3; Zech 8:23; 14:16-17 etc.). Now, Jesus and his first followers, who constituted a radical and seemingly insignificant Jewish sect (particularly at the time of the crucifixion), believed that these oracles would be fulfilled by preaching the gospel to every nation and thereby making disciples of every nation that would enter the kingdom of God upon their deaths. And, wonder of wonders, can we not say in the year of 2012 that for all intents this incredible expectation of Jesus and his ragtag band of followers has not been fulfilled! If Christianity remains as nothing more than another Jewish sect with a few non-Jewish converts then this expectation fails. If Christianity becomes the dominant religion in the Roman empire but continues only as a predominantly Mediterranean religion then this expectation fails. If Christianity becomes the dominant religion in all of Europe but continues only as a predominantly European religion then this expectation fails. If Christianity doesn't penetrate every land and every people then this expectation fails. But it has, and I think the realization of such an otherwise highly improbable expectation should make for a nice feather in the cap of any Christian apologist.

Ken Daniels

6/7/2012 12:28:29 pm

Wow, lots of back and forth in my absence! Yesterday was our 20th anniversary, so I was AWOL. Plus with a full-time job and family and lots of other correspondence coming my way, I'm not always quick to respond, but I do read what comes in, and I thank you all for your contributions.

I find the format of this blog site to be constraining. All the back-and-forth is dizzying, and long comments get cut off, and it's difficult to follow who's responding to whom. I've thought of moving to a different, more robust site and renaming my blog from the Deconversion Desert to the Deconversion Oasis. The process of deconverting is traumatic for most who go through it, and my vision was to provide a place for those going through this desert to find refuge and support in their journey. I'm not currently in a desert, but it was certainly a very difficult process to go through, at least in the first couple of years.

I've known about preterism for some time, but I've never come into contact with anyone who espouses it until now. I will say I respect the preterists' honesty in acknowledging that when Jesus said, "this generation," he didn't mean "that generation," and that when he said "generation" he didn't mean "race." It's amazing how so many well-meaning people can make these words mean whatever they want them to say, all in the service of what they believe to be the greater good. It's sobering to realize we're ALL susceptible to the tendency to weasel our way out of any tight spot we can weasel out of to preserve our prior position.

NW, thanks for considering me to be intellectually honest. None of is fully intellectually honest; we all deceive ourselves (and others) to one extent or another, often without realizing it. Yet I take your complement with some reservation, because couched within it seems to be the suggestion that if I listen to your arguments and finally disagree with them, I may not be as intellectually honest as I make myself out to be. It feels as though you're provisionally giving me the benefit of the doubt because I haven't been fully exposed to the views you espouse, but once I've been fully informed of them, I will either adopt them and maintain my intellectual honesty or reject them and expose myself as an ideologue, driven primary by factors other than the pursuit of truth.

I'm going to need to look into the chiastic structure of the Olivet Discourse and such before I can respond in more detail to your position. I'm sure you're aware of the biblical arguments marshaled against preterism by fellow believers, such as the article, "Historical Problems for a First-Century Fulfillment of the Olivet Discourse" at http://tinyurl.com/7qnge3l . Do you consider such believers to be intellectually dishonest or merely mistaken? From my vantage point, it all looks like an intramural debate, with each side righteously asserting the other side is gravely (perhaps willfully?) mistaken. And why does this debate exist among well-meaning believers who think they're being led by the spirit of truth? It seems to me the most parsimonious answer is that there's a real problem with the eschatology of the NT. Should that be surprising? After all, every other apocalyptic sect that has made predictions about the end of the world has been mistaken… and their mistakes don't even usually kill the sect. Instead, the sect goes on to reinterpret what happened to make sense of it, and the faithful persevere despite the disappointment. Witness how Millerite-influenced Adventism flourished (with over 16 million members today) even after William Miller's failed prediction of Jesus' return in 1844 known as "the Great Disappointment"; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher) . Is it really that unlikely that something similar (not identical, granted) happened in that first generation?

Again, eventually I hope to do some research on the chiastic structure of Luke in particular, but my provisional hypothesis is that, composing the text after the fall of Jerusalem, the author was juxtaposing events that had already taken place (representing them as prophecy) with those that were expected to take place in the near future, before the end of the first generation. The intended readers, knowing that some of the prophecies had already been fulfilled, would then be more likely to lend credence to the events that had yet to be fulfilled. This would be similar to how critical scholars view the prophecies of Daniel: detailed and accurate until 165 B.C. but diverging significantly from historical events after that date, leading (among other lines of evidence) to the conclusion that Daniel was written around that time. I hold this Luke hypothesis lightly as I haven't done the requisite research on it to say anything with much confidence. I invite my readers to weigh in on this.

One troubling aspect of your explanation as to why early Christians failed to adopt the correct (preterist) interpretation of eschatology as

Ken Daniels

6/7/2012 12:31:45 pm

(continued)

One troubling aspect of your explanation as to why early Christians failed to adopt the correct (preterist) interpretation of eschatology as that it suggests that correct belief is contingent on being exposed to the right information at the right time. Certain mysteries and secret events can be discerned if you're a Jew but not a Gentile in a certain era, or if you live centuries later and can look back and reconstitute the original recipe that those living in intervening generations missed. It almost reminds me a little of Gnosticism. What happened to the doctrine of the perspicacity of the scriptures? What does God gain by making the true interpretation of biblical eschatology so difficult to discern, so contingent upon one's place in history, instead of just plainly spelling out what's going to happen for all to understand? Which is the most likely explanation for why preterists and futurists both feel justified in their mutually contradictory interpretations of what happened or what will happen: 1) God inspired the text without making it plain, 2) God inspired the text and made it plain, but the preterists (according to the futurists) or the futurists (according to the preterists) willfully twisted the plain meaning of the text or 2) human authors wrote the text and didn't know what was going to happen, so got it wrong, like every other apocalyptic sect in history?

NW, I welcome your contribution to this blog. I would hope we can all stay away from personal slights, as in referring to my post-Christian activities as running "victory laps." It surprises me how many Christians think I should just slip quietly away after discovering (I use that word expressly, as that it what it feels like psychologically) that Christianity is untrue, all the while supporting Christian ministers and apologists who promote what they consider to be true. Can their activities be fairly described as running victory laps?

6/7/2012 02:56:40 pm

Ken,

I think that you're an intellectually honest person because of the circumstances under which you lost your faith and the manner in which it was lost. Certainly, you had every reason not to give up your Christian faith and yet you did so out of intellectual conviction. I respect that, and even if you respond to all my arguments negatively, which is what I expect, this assessment of mine won't change.

To briefly comment on the issues you raised:

(1) Although my eschatology is a lot more realized and fulfilled than most Christians I am not a true preterist in the sense that I do think some things are yet to take place in the future. A true preterist would see the entirety of the NT as being fulfilled within the lifetime of the first followers of Jesus and I don't think that.

(2) My contention is that the Olivet discourse is organized according to the alternating structure listed above and not according to a chiastic structure. All you have to do to see this for yourself is to copy and paste Mk 13 into your preferred word processor and separate out the oracle according to the divisions listed above and see if there aren't two different threads interlaced with each other just as I claim. No further research is required on your part, I already did all the hard work for you when I gave you the divisions that specify the alternating structure.

(3) With respect to the article that you referenced, I agree with it. I don't think that the Olivet discourse was entirely fulfilled in the 1st century. Did you not read my previous comment?

(4) It doesn't follow that there must be some problem with the eschatology of the NT simply because Christians aren't of one mind about it. Nothing of significance follows from the fact that Christians disagree about the eschatology of the NT.

(5) Your provisional hypothesis about Lk 21:5-36 is entirely baseless. The Olivet discourse in Luke is patterned after the Olivet discourse in Mark which is itself patterned after Zech 14:1-19. The failed oracle that was tacked on to the end of Dan 11 by a later scribe couldn't be more irrelevant to this discussion.

(6) I don't hold to either the perspicuity, inspiration, or inerrancy of Scripture. My view of Scripture is that just as God has set aside an imperfect collection of people for his work in the world so also he has set aside and preserved an imperfect collection of writings that are sufficiently reliable for the purposes of theology for his imperfect people. Therefore, it is neither troubling nor surprising to me that Christians have failed to correctly discern the complicated eschatological paradigm of Jesus and Paul from their scriptures.

(7) From my perspective as a Christian, God is evidently not all that interested in having Christians be completely unified around the correct eschatological doctrines. After all, why should he be? It's certainly not necessary for the spreading of the gospel nor the larger ministry of the church. In contrast with Gnosticism, Christianity is not about having one's head filled with all the correct doctrines, as you should know.

(8) Point taken about my "victory laps" comment.

6/7/2012 03:48:33 pm

Ken,

A couple extra remarks:

(9) I object to your comparing the early Jesus movement to the Millerites and other so-called "apocalyptic" sects. That sort of connection is by no means automatic even in scholarly circles and needs to be established. In my opinion, the early Jesus movement did not expect an imminent end to the world but they did expect an imminent destruction of the temple, which actually did take place within the lifetime of the first followers of Jesus just as predicated.

(10) I would remind you that your proposed historical reconstruction about what's going on with Lk 21:5-36 is based on no evidence whatsoever. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that Luke-Acts was probably written at least several years before 70 CE! My argument runs as follows: We know that the same person that wrote Luke also wrote Acts and that the latter was written after the former; however, the latter indicates no awareness of either the deaths of Peter and Paul nor the destruction of Jerusalem (in contrast, note the awareness of the death of Peter in Jn 21:18-19 and the deaths of Peter and Paul in Rev 11:3-7), which seems unlikely if indeed Acts was written after these events. Therefore, neither Acts nor Luke was written after these events, hence they could have been written no later than 66-67 CE. Finally, the reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in Lk 21:20 does not necessarily provide evidence of a later date for Luke as this statement could have been inspired by one of the many oracles concerning the eschatological destruction of Jerusalem in the OT in much the same way that the reference to the destruction of the temple in Mk 13:1-2 is thought to be inspired by such eschatological traditions as Dan 9:26 and Isa 66:6.

Ken Daniels

6/9/2012 08:16:01 am

NW,

Thanks for your ongoing feedback. Before I address your specific points, allow me to take a step back and make some more general observations. I find it interesting how easily you were able to dismiss Islam as an obviously false religion, simply because of its relation to the religious traditions that preceded it. Are you sure this is a real problem? Have you asked every sect within Islam how they view God’s dealings with previous generations? What if there are some groups within Islam that interpret the Koran differently from the majority, just as partial preterists interpret the Bible differently from full preterists, who in turn interpret it different from futurists? Have you studied and internalized all minority interpretations of the Koran as thoroughly as you expect me to study and understand the minority partial preterist interpretation of the NT (which I confess I have not yet done)?

Even if all Muslims see it the same way, how does that automatically disqualify Islam? What if God just wanted to start fresh with Muhammad, just as he did when he (according to Genesis) wiped out everyone but the righteous Noah? Are you saying God isn’t free to do what he wills in his sovereignty? Christianity as taught by Paul is not just a slightly revised version of Judaism: it represents a seminal shift away from the observance of the Torah (including circumcision, dietary and Sabbath restrictions, etc.) to a radical new view of what it means to be a follower of God. Do you not see how self-serving your easy dismissal of Islam is? No doubt you will proceed to argue that there is more continuity between the OT and the NT than there is between the OT and the Koran, and I would be willing to grant you that, but great differences do exist in both cases, so it’s problematic for you to attempt a sweeping dismissal of Islam on the basis of matters of degree like this. And Judaism itself isn’t the most ancient of religions; there’s archaeological evidence of religious activity (burial grounds, artwork, etc.) going back at least tens of thousands of years, long before anything even remotely resembling Judaism or Christianity existed. Does that automatically disqualify Christianity, which doesn’t trace the thread of God’s dealings with those who worshipped at the temple in Gobekli Tepe, Turkey (9600 BCE; see the June 2011 issue of National Geographic), for example?

My point in all this is to suggest, as I did in my book, that we all tend to give our own position the benefit of the doubt. Can you not see how a typical Muslim would find Christianity, which proposes a three-person Godhead (one of whom is the son of one of the others), ludicrous on its face and worthy of instant dismissal, just as you find Islam so easily dismissible because it fails to account for God’s dealings with his people in previous generations? And yet you expect me to find a minority-within-a-minority, difficult-to-understand partial preterist position as a satisfying explanation to what appears on a plain reading of the text to be a glaring problem (i.e., Jesus’ failure to return as promised in the first generation) for those of us on the outside looking in? Am I obligated to go study every harmonization or explanation for every problem in every religion before I can safely move on? Or is Christianity somehow special, more deserving of patience and meticulous study and the benefit of the doubt before concluding it’s unfounded like the rest?

If what you consider to be the most significant defeater for Islam is nothing of the sort, then is it possible that other “defeaters” for Islam are also imaginary, and if so, will you now submit to Allah and acknowledge that Muhammad is his prophet? ;)

Imagine you’re a visitor to Earth from Mars, and you learn that are and have been many apocalyptic sects throughout history, and whenever they predict the end of the world, it’s virtually always scheduled to happen within the lifetime of those making the prediction (which makes sense; after all, why would they or their hearers be interested any anything that’s going to happen in a future generation?), and so far none of these end-of-world predictions have materialized. Then you come across a figure named Jesus and discover that he, too (at least based on a surface reading of the text) predicted that the end of the age would occur within the lifetime of his hearers. Not too surprising; it’s just one more example of the same pattern. Then you as a Martian are told by one of Jesus’ followers living twenty centuries later that if you read some of Jesus’ other texts about an invisible kingdom, and if you tease out from the prophetic text things that were and weren’t fulfilled in that first generation, you can explain how some of the predicted events happened in that generation, some were invisible, and others could be pushed off to a far future ge

Ken Daniels

6/9/2012 08:17:58 am

(continued)

Then you as a Martian are told by one of Jesus’ followers living twenty centuries later that if you read some of Jesus’ other texts about an invisible kingdom, and if you tease out from the prophetic text things that were and weren’t fulfilled in that first generation, you can explain how some of the predicted events happened in that generation, some were invisible, and others could be pushed off to a far future generation. Say what? You’re a busy Martian; time to move on.

Now that I’ve looked little at the forest, I’ll take a look at some of the trees. I want to reiterate again that I’m not a biblical scholar, and I’ve never made any pretensions to being one. Though I was trained in Bible Translation, and I learned a fair bit about the Bible in seminary and in my own study, I don’t claim to be as knowledgeable as you, especially when it comes to eschatology. I’ve already made several mistakes in my responses to you, both in representing your position and in representing what the Bible says. I’m learning a good deal as a result of this exchange, and I thank you for giving me this opportunity (though the time I can devote to this is more limited than I would like). I would wager that the typical preterist, being in the minority, is generally better informed about eschatology than the typical non-preterist like me. Ignorant as I am about preterism, I’m liable to raise questions you’ve already considered from every angle. Reminds me of when I first heard about evolution as a junior higher and thought I came up with a good retort: “If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys today?” Anyway, the non-scholar that I am, I must give credit to liberal Christian author Thom Stark, author of The Human Faces of God (which I highly recommend to all my readers), for a number of the observations below.

Here’s the structure you proposed for Mark 13:

A: (vv 1-7), (vv 14-18), (vv 21-23), (vv 28-31) – events leading up to the destruction of the temple
B: (vv 8-13), (vv 19-20), (vv 24-27), (vv 32-37) – later events

This looks convincing a first glance, but with the exception of Jesus’ visible return, all the B events were taking place or were fulfilled no later than the time of the A events.

Take verse 8 (in the B list), which says that nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. Rome was at war with the Parthian Empire during that time (e.g., 36, 58, and 63 CE), and Claudius invaded Britannia in 43 CE, among other “nations rising against nations.” In verse 8 we also read of earthquakes and famine. What age has been without earthquakes and famines? Certainly not the first century! A major earthquake destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in 62 CE, and they were not fully rebuilt until 79 CE. So we can see that verse 8 could just as easily made to fit in the A list as in the B list.

Verse 9, which tells of Jesus’ followers being handed over to councils, being beaten in synagogues, and standing before governors and kings, could also just as easily fit in the A list. According to Acts, Jesus’ followers were handed over to councils and beaten in synagogues. Paul was routinely beaten by Jewish leaders. He stood before governors and even requested to stand directly before Caesar, which Acts implies took place prior to 70CE.

Verse 10 says the good news is to be proclaimed to all nations. I’ve already dealt with this topic in my original blog post; it readily fits in the A group. Verse 11, regarding the disciples’ being empowered by the Spirit to speak when on trial, is another A verse. Verses 12-13 state that families will be broken up and Jesus’ disciples will be hated. Again, A, not B. So the entire first set of B verses in your first B group (8-13) are really (or can be) A verses, and there’s no discernible alternating pattern so far.

Verses 19-20 mention the great suffering that would occur “in those days,” the days of the suffering of the Jews in and around Jerusalem during the Jewish-Roman war of 66-70 CE. Another A group.

Verses 24 to 27 (sun/moon darkened, stars falling from sky) are intended to refer to the period shortly after the destruction of the temple, because it says, “In those days, after that suffering.” The suffering refers to the Jewish-Roman war. These were intended to be A verses.

Versus 32-37 (no one knows the day or hour) aren’t really events, but teachings to his disciples about being on guard. They were intended for first-generation consumption and as such were A verses.

To summarize, the only event that wasn’t fulfilled by the time the temple was destroyed was the visible return of Jesus.

You mentioned that Mark 13 is based on Zechariah 14, but where is the AB pattern in this list of predictions? (1) Jerusalem will be attacked by forei

Ken Daniels

6/9/2012 08:19:28 am

(continued)

You mentioned that Mark 13 is based on Zechariah 14, but where is the AB pattern in this list of predictions? (1) Jerusalem will be attacked by foreign nations. (2) The inhabitants will flee to a valley supernaturally created between a mountain split in two. (3) God will then destroy all of the enemies of Israel that attacked Jerusalem. (4) Jerusalem will be left standing as an eschatological age is consummated in which all the nations of the earth come to Jerusalem to worship Yahweh. The most parsimonious explanation is that Zechariah—a human like any other prophet—failed to predict the future.

Now on to Luke 17:20-21, which you take to mean that Jesus’ coming kingdom would be invisible: “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

Among Jewish apocalyptic sects (e.g., the Essenes), there was an idea that in the last days before the consummation of the kingdom on earth, the kingdom would manifest itself in small increments ahead of time to an elect group of people in ways not perceptible to outsiders. The Essenes at Qumran looked to a visible coming of the kingdom within a short time, but they also believed they were already participating in elements of the kingdom not yet available to others, such as fellowship with angels. Similarly, Jesus and his followers believed the kingdom of God was present among them (as shown by their miraculous powers, etc.) as a foretaste of the coming of the global kingdom. If, as you propose, Luke 17:20 meant that Jesus’ coming kingdom was to be invisible, then Luke 21:31 (“So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near”) would make no sense. According to Luke 17:20, the kingdom of God had already come. If the invisible kingdom of verse 20 means the same in verse 20 as in verse 31, then this is a contradiction. I’m with the majority of scholars who hold that Luke 17:20 speaks of an anticipatory presence of the kingdom leading up to the consummation of the kingdom on earth, which is “near” immediately after the destruction of the temple in 70 CE. You’re right that the invisible kingdom of God was already present among Jesus and his followers, but it was to become visible to all by the end of that generation. If, as you claim, the coming kingdom was invisible even after 70 CE, then it’s no different from the invisible kingdom already present during Jesus’ ministry. How can the invisible kingdom be both already here and “near”? No, it was present first in Jesus’ ministry and would become manifested visibly and globally shortly after the destruction of the temple. This near-consensus reading is clinched by its parallels in other Jewish apocalyptic sects. As far as I’m aware (correct me if I’m wrong), there are no parallels for anything like preterism in any other Jewish apocalyptic sects; if that’s the case, then this makes your position dubious at best. Could it be that your primary reason for rejecting the obvious reading is your prior conviction that Jesus and his early followers could not have been mistaken?

You wrote, “Finally, If all that verbiage is just too much for you,” (it is ), “it might suffice to observe that those followers of Jesus that lived long enough would not die ‘until’ they saw the kingdom of God after it had come with Power (Mk 9:1)… Bottom line is that the coming of the kingdom is something that takes place in a whole other reality entirely and that the early followers of Jesus could only expect to see the kingdom on the other side of death.”

This is contrived; you’ve placed an awful lot on your idiosyncratic interpretation of the word “until.” The text does not say that they will not see the kingdom until they die; it says they will not taste death until they see the kingdom. You contend that their death and their vision of the kingdom happen in the same moment. What the text clearly conveys is that some of his disciples would live long enough to see the kingdom come. I doubt you would have proposed that “until” means what you’re saying it means here in any other context; such an eisegesis suggests to me an attempt to salvage your belief that Jesus was not mistaken.

As for the dating of Acts, the omission of the Paul’s death (other than as a soon-to-be-fulfilled prophecy) does not mean Luke (if he was the author) completed it while Paul was still alive. Even the stalwart evangelical scholar F. F. Bruce had this to say in his commentary the book of Acts: “Again, whether Paul’s execution was or was not an incident in the Neronian persecution, the fact that it is not mentioned in Acts is not a decisive argument for the da

Ken Daniels

6/9/2012 08:20:42 am

(continued)

As for the dating of Acts, the omission of the Paul’s death (other than as a soon-to-be-fulfilled prophecy) does not mean Luke (if he was the author) completed it while Paul was still alive. Even the stalwart evangelical scholar F. F. Bruce had this to say in his commentary the book of Acts: “Again, whether Paul’s execution was or was not an incident in the Neronian persecution, the fact that it is not mentioned in Acts is not a decisive argument for the dating of the book: Luke’s goal has been reached when he brought Paul to Rome and left him preaching the gospel freely there… It is difficult to fix the date of composition of Acts more precisely than at some point within the Flavian period (A.D. 69-96), possibly about the middle of the period” (F.F. Bruce 1988, “The Book of Acts,” pp. 11-12).

Luke presented Paul’s death in prophetic form through Paul’s farewell speech at Miletus: “But now I know that none of you to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels will ever see my face again. . . . When he had finished speaking he knelt down and prayed with them all. They were all weeping loudly as they threw their arms around Paul and kissed him, for they were deeply distressed that he had said that they would never see his face again. Then they escorted him to the ship” (Acts 20:25-38). If Acts was written after Paul’s death and the readers of Acts knew he was dead (both plausible), why restate what the readers already knew to be true? It could only have served to take the wind out of the prophecy.

Hans Conzelmann: “The final point is made clearly: διετια, ‘unhindered’—an appeal to Rome. The reference to the διετια, ‘two years,’ certainly assumes that this situation of Paul was terminated. The farewell speech in Miletus leaves no doubt as to how this came about: Paul was executed. But Luke did not wish to tell about that. The purpose of the book has been fully achieved; therefore we ought to reject all hypotheses which understand the book as incomplete or which declare the ending to be accidental” (Conzelmann, “Acts of the Apostles,” pp. 227-228).

Joseph A. Fitzmyer: “In any case, it may seem strange that the reader is not told anything about the death of Paul, the hero of the second half of Acts. Yet the ending, such as it is, may not be as puzzling as some think, because it does record that Paul continued to preach the kingdom of God, even in Rome, ‘with all boldness and without hindrance’ (28:31). That is the note of triumph on which Luke wanted his story to end. The gospel was thus being preached at Rome, the ‘end of the earth’ (1:8), ‘and without hindrance’ (28:31). The reader of Acts already knows that Paul’s personal end was not far off; the Lucan Paul intimated as much in his speech at Miletus, and so Luke felt no need to recount it. Homer’s Iliad is not seen to be incomplete because it does not describe Achilles’ death!” (Fitzmyer, “The Acts of the Apostles,” pp. 791-792.)

Finally, regarding Revelation 20:1-10 and the thousand years, I’ll refer you to the Jamieson, Fausset and Brown commentary’s brief discussion at http://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/jamieson-fausset-brown/revelation/revelation-20.html:
“thousand years--As seven mystically implies universality, so a thousand implies perfection, whether in good or evil [AQUINAS on ch. 11]. Thousand symbolizes that the world is perfectly leavened and pervaded by the divine; since thousand is ten, the number of the world, raised to the third power, three being the number of God [AUBERLEN]. It may denote literally also a thousand years.”

In apocalyptic literature, numbers are symbolic, not usually indicators of time but of messages. In Jewish apocalyptic, 10 is the number of completion. So 1000 years, 10x10x10 is a symbol of eschatological completion. It does not suggest a “long period” of time but rather the *completion* of the time. This is the majority position of critical scholars. What’s more, the Gospels themselves teach that Satan was already bound and during the ministry of Jesus and his disciplines (c.f. Luke 10:17-20: The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”). The loosing of Satan for a short time after the “thousand years” (time of completion) likely refers to the Roman-Jewish war, and/or to the persecutions of

Ken Daniels

6/9/2012 08:30:28 am

(continued)

The loosing of Satan for a short time after the “thousand years” (time of completion) likely refers to the Roman-Jewish war, and/or to the persecutions of Christians in the late first and early second centuries. Thus Jesus in Revelation is able to say repeatedly that he is “coming soon.” For the writer of Revelation, the thousand years refers to a time that had already past, rather than as a prediction of the distant future.

Again, thanks for your exchange, NW. I doubt I'm going to be able to keep up the pace with you (I want to have sort of a life, and I'm a slow writer!), so I'll let you and my other readers have the last word.

As others have expressed, I appreciate your universalist position. The doctrine of eternal damnation was the single greatest impetus for me to write my book (understand that even if you don't believe in hell, most of those I've traveled through life with still do). I'm glad that neither your desire to save me from going to hell, nor my desire to save you from believing in hell, has anything to do with this discussion!

6/9/2012 11:46:37 am

Ken,

Thank you very much for taking the time to consider all the points I've made thus far so as to mount something like a comprehensive reply. I really do appreciate the effort.

(1) I can see where you would find my sweeping critique of Islam and Mormonism a bit convenient and perhaps also hypocritical in light of everything I've said in defense of Christianity in the comments here. My summary dismissal of those religions begs the question as to whether I am extending the same charity to them that I would have you extend to Christianity in our discussion. Perhaps I am engaging in a double standard of sorts.

The difference is that my critique of those religions does not take place at the level of their individual doctrines, as we have been discussing about Christianity in the comments here, but from the point of view that they are the wrong sort of religion in the first place. In particular, both Islam and Mormonism try to appropriate the authority of an older religious tradition in order to clothe it with new religious forms; however, they can't pull off this trick without also admitting that God's purposes in the older religious tradition were frustrated by those to whom that tradition was given, which seems like a highly implausible situation for the creator God to find himself in.

On the other hand, this sort of critique doesn't work at all when applied to Christianity. Similarly with Islam and Mormonism, Christianity also markets itself as a new development of a prior religious tradition, namely that of the ancient Hebrews, but the difference is that Christianity asserts that it is a natural development that was predicted by the prior religious tradition itself. And, sure enough, when we investigate the sacred texts of the ancient Hebrews we find that they did expect their god Yahweh to do a new thing in the "last days;" in particular, Israel would be punished but a new king after the pattern of David would come, a new covenant would be made, a new Israel would be created, and peoples from every nation would become a part of this new Israel and experience the salvation of Yahweh. Christianity can plausibly claim to stand in continuity with the religion of the ancient Hebrews in a way that neither Islam nor Mormonism can claim about the Judeo-Christian tradition that preceded them.

Now if I were to critique either Islam or Mormonism at the level of their individual doctrines then I might have to do a fair bit work in order to make sure that I am critiquing the correct understanding of their religion, which might involve engaging the different branches of those religions as well as the different doctrinal interpretations within those branches. As you can see, this sort of critique would involve a great deal more work on my part, but luckily I can dismiss these religions on more general grounds without having to wade through their doctrinal marshes.

(2) Yes, if you're going to critique Christianity at the level of individual doctrines then you need to be prepared to wade through its doctrinal marshes, which might involve engaging with something like a "minority-within-a-minority, difficult-to-understand partial preterist position" if there is indeed a good argument to be made for such a position.

(3) I never argued that the true religion must be the oldest one nor does such an idea strike me as being particularly plausible. In fact, I would imagine that if God were to reveal himself to humanity in the form a religion that this would probably take place not at the first but after humanity had reached a certain stage in its development. Indeed, is it not interesting that the religion of the ancient Hebrews transitions into Christianity right around the time when humanity's intellectual development begins to flower (perhaps a new apologetical argument is in the offing here)! At any rate, nothing follows from the fact that Christianity cannot trace its origins to the oldest religion.

6/9/2012 03:53:55 pm

(continued)

(4) Simply noting that the early Jesus movement predicted the soon return of their Lord is not enough to identify the movement as an apocalyptic sect like the Millerites or the Jehovah's Witnesses as how the early Jesus movement understood the soon return of their Lord and the end of the age is a matter of controversy. Moreover, instead of huddling together and waiting for the proverbial end like those movements we find the early Christians establishing communities throughout the empire with the understanding that the gospel would have to spread to every nation. Now we know that the early Christians in their capacity as 1st century Jews at the very least knew about Southern Europe, the Near East, North Africa, East Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia (parts of the globe that their national tradition had direct experience with) not to mention other parts of the globe that would have been known by their assimilation into the various Greco-Roman empires that spanned Israel's history. Therefore, it seems highly unlikely to me that the early Jesus movement would have expected to thoroughly evangelize every nation within a short period of time given their knowledge of the planet and especially in light of the fact that they didn't even expect to thoroughly evangelize Judea before the soon return of their Lord (Mt 10:23).

(5) I've also read Stark's book, the chapters near the beginning and end are relatively well-argued while the chapters in the middle are filled with bad arguments. I plan on using it as a Sunday School resource to show how intellectually bankrupt much of biblical scholarship is.

(6) Your contention that much of what I've identified as belonging to thread B in Mk 13 fits nicely within the context of 1st century events is less than convincing. For example, vv 8-13 refers to the fact that the followers of Jesus will spread the gospel to all nations even as they are persecuted by the nations, that doesn't sound like something that will happen in the 1st century as argued above; vv 19-20 speaks of a tribulation that is unparalleled from the beginning of creation that threatens to wipe out all of the elect scattered throughout all the nations, the 1st century saw some rough events but nothing that was unparalleled in known human history and certainly nothing that threatened to wipe out the entire Christian community; vv 24-27 refers to the vengeance that the Lord Jesus will dole out against the nations for how they persecuted his people as described in vv 8-13 (cf. Joel 3:19-21) as well as the deliverance of the elect in the sight of the nations, obviously these events have no correspondence in the 1st century as you acknowledge; vv 32-37 is a warning that doesn't necessarily apply to the 1st century anymore than it could to any other period of time.

Aside from all this, much of your analysis is an exercise in missing the point as you completely ignore the thematic parallelism between the proposed threads. Allow me to spell it out for you.

A: (vv 1-7) contains an oracle of disaster (vv 1-2) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 3-7)
B: (vv 8-13) contains an oracle of disaster (v 8) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 9-13)

A: (vv 14-18) describes the tribulation that will be experienced in 1st century Judea.
B: (vv 19-20) describes an unparalleled tribulation that will be worldwide in scope as it will threaten the elect who exist in every nation.

A: (vv 21-23) warns against following after people who claim to be the Messiah but aren't.
B: (vv 24-27) describes what happens at the visible return of the real Messiah.

A: (vv 28-31) says that all these events will take place within this generation.
B: (vv 32-36) says that no one knows the day or the hour when these events take place.

6/9/2012 04:48:29 pm

(continued)

(7) Zech 14:1-19 is a very complicated oracle that also follows an alternating pattern; however it's not quite as neatly laid out as Mk 13 and there are admittedly some translation issues that obscure the divisions. Moreover, I find your willingness as an admitted amateur to dismiss this very complex oracle in the most facile of ways to be somewhat offensive. For the sake of politeness, I will not remark upon what you had to say here.

(8) Contrary to what you claim, Lk 17:20 says nothing about the kingdom of God already being present in the ministry of Jesus. In fact, nowhere in the NT is it claimed that the kingdom of God was already present in the ministry Jesus, that was an idea invented out of whole cloth by early 20th century Reformed theologians for reasons that I will not get into here. The kingdom of God is something that followers of Jesus could only enter by means of resurrection from the dead (Mt 13:43; 1 Cor 15:50-53) and following eschatological judgment (Mt 25:34) neither of which was a reality during the ministry of Jesus. All Lk 17:20 says is that the coming of the kingdom won't be visibly observed, which does not contradict 21:31 as you claim because while the coming of the kingdom would not be visibly observed it would nevertheless be accompanied by visible signs that would precede the destruction of the temple (i.e. Jerusalem being surrounded by armies in 21:20 which is what 21:31 refers to).

The argument you were trying to make but didn't know how to make is the idea that perhaps 17:21 refers to the presence of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus as it closes with the statement "the kingdom of God is in your midst." But this argument also fails because the entirety of v 21 belongs to the future as it opens with the expression "nor will people say," hence cannot refer to the presence of the kingdom in the present context of Jesus' ministry. Moreover, the last clause in v 21 is mistranslated and should read instead "for you are within the kingdom of God." You see the theology vv 20-21 is in parallel with that of vv 22-24 in the sense that just as the coming of the kingdom of God will not be seen (v 20) so also the disciples will yearn the visible return of Jesus but will not see it (v 22) and that just as the kingdom of God is not in one place and not another but a whole other world entirely that one is within (v 21) so also the visible return of Jesus will not be seen in one place and not another but will be seen by all within this world (vv 22-23). There is no teaching in these verses about the presence of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus whatsoever.

Circling back to my point about the Olivet discourse. We know that the spectacular visible events of Lk 21:25-28 cannot possibly refer to the imminent return of Jesus when he brings the kingdom of God (Mt 16:28 = Lk 9:27) because the latter will not take place visibly by Lk 17:20. Therefore, something like the proposed alternating structure of the Olivet discourse is required in order to separate the invisible coming of the kingdom of God in Lk 21:31 from the visible return of Jesus in Lk 21:27. Not only this but Luke tells what it's going to look like when the righteous are gathered to Abraham's side in the kingdom of God while the wicked are punished in Sheol in his story of the rich man and Lazarus Lk 16:19-31. In that story the entire process is mysterious and takes place invisibly from the perspective of those living in this world, hence could not have been inaugurated by the worldwide destruction of Lk 21:25-28. The thematic parallelism between the two threads in Mk 13 that I spelled out for you plus these additional theological considerations derived from Luke are so compelling as to demand assent.

6/9/2012 05:47:47 pm

(9) Your accusation of eisegesis in my handling of Mk 9:1 is unfounded, the verse says, "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." The expression is awkwardly worded which is why your brain is automatically substituting "until" with "before;" however, if you follow the logic of the verse using the literal definition of "until" you will find that it says exactly what I said it does. Namely, that some disciples of Jesus will not taste death until [the moment] they see the kingdom of God after it [has already] come, the moment they taste death and the moment they see the kingdom are the same moment. And not only that but these disciples see the kingdom after it has already come following their deaths, which is the same scenario that Luke describes as happening to Lazarus in Lk 16:19-31 where Lazarus gets to join Abraham in a kingdom that has already come following his death. Its the same theology throughout the gospels again and again, Jesus returns to bring the kingdom invisibly and his disciples enter into that kingdom following their deaths (see also Jn 21:22-23, the beloved disciple gets to live until the return of Jesus but that doesn't mean that he won't die a natural death).

(10) My argument for an earlier date of Luke-Acts was admittedly an argument based on silence and therefore must be considered a weak one. Honestly, it's impossible to date Luke-Acts with any real confidence and it's not as if the date is all that important anyway.

(11) I'm well aware of that interpretation of the thousand years of Rev 20, but I never thought I'd meet anyone who actually believed it!

The real origin behind the thousand years is that the time in which the saints reign with Christ is synonymous with the time of eschatological judgment (i.e. the day of judgment), remember the righteous enter the kingdom following judgment (Mt 25:31-46). However, the author of Revelation also knew that the day of judgment would last for a long time so he represented that length by a thousand years echoing the language in Ps 90:4. Moreover, the author of Revelation was evidently not the only person to use the expression to denote a long stretch of time as it is also used in this way in 2 Pet 3:8. There can be no doubt, the thousand years in Rev 20 is a reference to the fact that the day of judgment will last a long time, your 1000 = 10 x 10 x 10 means completion cubed interpretation is nonsensical.

(12) You're mistaken, I do believe in the reality of eschatological punishment in Sheol (i.e. hell). The original doctrine of eschatological punishment is that everyone whose sins aren't forgiven will experience a punishment that is proportional to the evil that they've done throughout their life so that those who've been exceptionally wicked will experience a lot more punishment than those who were less wicked. You can think of it as Christianity's solution to the problem of evil, Yahweh solves the problem of evil by punishing each individual for the evil that they've contributed to the world before allowing them into the kingdom. Beyond that I have no idea how this will work, but I am sure that it is quite real based on the evidence we have from NDEs. Unfortunately, the articulation of the doctrine that is dominant today in the churches is so ridiculous and offensive that it would discredit the religion if it were actually the true teaching of the NT.

6/10/2012 01:14:04 am

(13) Your attempt to identify the moment when Jesus says that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven in Lk 10:18 with the binding of Satan in Rev 20:1-3 cannot be correct as the ensuing thousand year reign of Christ with his resurrected saints in the kingdom of God was not yet a reality in the time of Jesus' ministry (Lk 9:27; 10:9-11; 19:11; 21:31; Acts 1:6-8), once again the kingdom of God is always spoken of as being close at hand but not yet a reality in the gospels. On the contrary, it's far more likely to be the case that in keeping with his prophetic consciousness that Jesus was describing a vision of the future in Lk 10:18. The reason that Jesus is able to say that he is coming soon at the end of Revelation is because he is referring to his invisible coming with his kingdom at the beginning of the thousand year reign of Christ with his saints in the kingdom of God and not his visible return at the end of the thousand years at the last battle. Finally, the majority position of critical scholars on anything to do with Revelation carries no force as the scholarly community still has no idea what to do with that book.

6/10/2012 07:44:19 am

(continued)

(14) With respect to your charge that Paul greatly revised Judaism and that there remains considerable discontinuity between the OT and the NT, as you would expect I strenuously disagree with both statements. In fact, I've studied the OT's eschatological bits extensively enough that I can now see the logic of what Paul was doing in his letters, as incredible as it may seem everything he did away with (e.g. Sabbath observance, dietary laws, worship at the temple, etc.) was supposed to be done away with while everything he kept (e.g. moral principles and other teachings) was supposed to be kept and the new innovations that were introduced were almost invariably natural consequences of what the OT predicted (e.g. the Lord's supper) with a few exceptions (e.g. meeting on the first day of the week). The reason why the discontinuity is not nearly so great as it seems is that the eschatological passages in the OT anticipate the annulment of the covenant made at Sinai and the inauguration of a brand new covenant with a new people. A good orthodox Jew in Paul's day who was also a student of his sacred writings knew that everything was supposed to change in the future and that the old religious forms would be done away with, even the Rabbinic school that identified itself in opposition to Christianity following the destruction of the temple recognized this fact in their teachings about what the Messianic age would be like.

(15) I can see how a typical Muslim would find the Athanasian formulation of the trinity to be worthy of instant dismissal. Heck, I might even agree with him! The idea that Jesus and the Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal persons with Yahweh himself as part of a triune Godhead seems very implausible. But, as almost every critical scholar now recognizes, the Athanasian formulation of the trinity was the not the doctrine of God that Jesus and Paul originally had in mind nor is it taught anywhere in the NT. Therefore, while our hypothetical Muslim may be excused for dismissing the Athanasian formulation of the trinity out of hand he may not be excused for dismissing the true Christianity of Jesus and Paul out of hand. He must wade through the doctrinal swamp of the NT along with yourself if he wants to dismiss it on these sorts of grounds.

6/10/2012 09:04:17 am

Ken,

I would remind you that even if Christian churches are prone to teaching doctrines that are either gross distortions of what's found in the NT (e.g. the eternal conscious torment of the wicked, Athanasius' doctrine of the trinity, etc.) or fictions invented out of whole cloth (e.g. Augustine's doctrine of original sin, Anshelm's satisfaction theory of the atonement or the Reformer's penal substitution theory of the atonement, the doctrine of inerrancy, etc.) none of this speaks against the truthfulness of the early Jesus movement that did not hold to these crazy doctrines. In fact, I found myself becoming more convinced of Christianity's truth in my investigation of its origins when I realized that all the doctrines I had the most difficulty accepting as being true were not in the fact the doctrines of the early Jesus movement nor the NT. Moreover, there are very good arguments to be made for the basic metaphysical furniture of Christianity (i.e. the existence of God, the existence of the soul) as well as the truth of Christianity as a particular religion via at least two different strands of fulfilled prophecy that meet all your criteria in addition to a relatively strong argument that can be made for the historicity of the resurrection. If that wasn't enough, all the major world religions have serious problems with their core theological metanarratives with the sole exception of Christianity (at least there is no good argument against the Christian metanarrative that I am aware of and I'm a smart guy). If I may be a bit tongue-in-cheek, the evidence demands a verdict! If there's any part left in you that's sympathetic to this religion I would strongly advise giving it another look, who knows, returning to it might also improve your family life (although it seems like your doing a great job there).

With respect to the world of biblical criticism, my advice is that you stay away from it. It's obvious to me you don't know how to sift the wheat from the chaff and there's a lot of chaff in this area of research as nothing distorts the objectivity of Western scholars like Christianity (think about it). People like you can't see through the holes in Stark's book because you never learned how to think critically in the first place, perhaps the most telling feature of your own book was your admission in the preface how you were influenced by thinkers whose criticism were anachronistic when they weren't fallacious (i.e. Paine and Ingersoll) as well as a punchy pseudo-scholar (i.e. Price). Also, citing a textual critic like Ehrman on matters pertaining to the historical Jesus instead of a scholar who actually specialized in that area, it was obvious to me you had no idea what you were doing in your investigation of Christianity. Finally, that you seem somewhat peeved by my instance that you consider a minority eschatological perspective on the soon return of Jesus also tells me that you aren't much an intellectual, so why read critical scholarship if you don't have much of an appetite for getting down into the messy details of these arguments? If you're just reading this stuff so as to parrot other people's criticisms that lay evangelicals have no answer for then I have to wonder what the purpose of that is.

Anyway, I'm an academic with a wife and kid and life of my own and so can't spend too much more time here assaulting everyone with my intellect. Please take what I said to heart, I mean the best for you.

See you on the other side, brother.

mikespeir

6/10/2012 09:42:18 am

Whee! Now, wasn't that fun? And profitable, too! Right here, in our own midst, we entertained of personage of such moliminous learning that he can dismiss Ehrman and slur Price (with his two earned doctorates) as a "pseudo-scholar." And now, in a show of magnanimity, to spare us continuing exposure to his searingly refulgent intellect, he has chosen to take his leave. But the afterglow remains. I think it might be gamma rays or something.

Bah! Egotists shouldn't be fed. Let them graze elsewhere.

6/10/2012 10:38:48 am

Look who crawls out from under his rock as soon as I have to do something else, lol.

mikespeir,

Ehrman is not bad when he sticks to textual criticism. Price really is a hack though, you can't trust everyone who has a PhD. I hear Ken Ham has some PhDs working for him at the creationist museum in Kentucky, would you be similarly offended if I dismissed their work as well?

Julia

6/6/2012 02:23:14 am

I don't know how Ken stays so patient and involved; it is admirable.
I come to a point when I seem unable to take it any more, and it is often the point at which interpretations become so convoluted that by applying similar ones to virtually any myth or story in all of existence, one could claim as much sense, consistency, etc. It seems to become pointless to even discuss, and I begin to feel like the teenager I should have been when I was the right age for it, who just throws out a snarky comment about spaghetti monsters at this point (or long before).
I admire your ability to refrain from that, Ken. I should be better at it, having thought so long from other perspective; perhaps I'm doing too well at attempting to wipe my memory.

6/6/2012 02:52:10 am

Julia,

With respect, your aversion to complexity is precisely why so-called "fundamentalist" attitudes have dominated the church for so long. People like it nice and simple without any hint of complexity or ambiguity lest some part of their faith be in doubt.

Holly

6/10/2012 06:06:27 pm

Hi NW
I don't know why I can't reply to you off of your latest post. There's no reply button. This is what I take away from all you said.

Ken: It would be good if we stay away from personal attacks.

NW: Point taken about my "victory laps" comment

a few days later....

NW: -"The argument you were trying to make but didn't know how to make..."

-"It's obvious to me you don't know how to sift the wheat from the chaff...people like you can't see through the holes..."

-"...tells me that you aren't much of an intellectual..."

How are we to take your word for anything on your fancy assessment of NT scriptures and what they say about Jesus' failed promise to return if you can't remember or honor agreeing to keep your post free of personal insults?

6/11/2012 12:15:38 am

Holly,

All those statements of mine were accurate even if they stung. Sometimes the truth just hurts. In contrast to those statements, I admittedly insulted Prince when I called him a pseudo-scholar hack, and my "victory laps" comment was also an insult.

But how many insults of Christianity and Christian people have been made on this blog and the comments therein without so much as a peep from yourself and others? Heck, mikespeir insulted me in the comments here, where's your admonishment of him?

"How are we to take your word for anything on your fancy assessment of NT scriptures and what they say about Jesus' failed promise to return if you can't remember or honor agreeing to keep your post free of personal insults?"

If you're an intellectual then you'll ignore my rhetoric and concentrate on the substance of my arguments.

Holly

6/11/2012 01:04:44 am

NW
I don't consider myself to be an intellectual on these matters. Ken has not personally insulted you once and asked the same respect of you towards him. I personally cringe when either side delves into personal insults towards the other, but the reason I felt compelled to respond to you is because Ken invited you to continue the dialogue, but free of personal insults. It seemed you agreed. Yet you go back on this. Yes, there's criticisms on this blog of Christianity, well-warranted in my opinion. But the tone has always been respectful towards individuals from Ken. He can't control what others say (well he could if he chose to delete the comments). He's keeping true to his commitment. You're not.

6/11/2012 02:20:20 am

Holly,

Ken didn't know how to make the argument that he was trying to make about Lk 17:20-21, fact. See my response to him above.

Ken can't see through the holes in the arguments he read and then parroted in our exchange, fact. See my response to him above.

Although an honest man, Ken is not much of an intellectual as he gets irritated at the prospect of wading through the messy details of an argument, a reasonable inference to make based on how he's reacted to my eschatological reading of the NT in the comments here. His attitude was an anti-intellectual one of "Come on, apocalyptic sects routinely predict an end that doesn't come so why should I have to consider your arguments?" Well, for one thing it's not clear that the early Jesus movement was an apocalyptic sect in the way in which Ken is using the term and secondly my arguments should be considered on their own merits and not on the basis of the failed expectations of the Millerites and Jehovah's Witnesses. I was completely taken aback by this response.

"Yet you go back on this."

No I did not.

"Yes, there's criticisms on this blog of Christianity, well-warranted in my opinion."

Some of it is, a lot of it is just cheap insults.

"But the tone has always been respectful towards individuals from Ken."

Ken is a great guy, no doubt. And I can be a little bit of a jerk, no doubt.

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 03:54:05 am

NW,

You most certainly did personally attack Ken, and no you were not justified in doing so. You're being disingenuous pretending you don't know the difference between a disagreement and ignorance. Ken would only be ignorant if you're right about your arguments, but you're not. Regardless, accurate statements can still be insulting. For instance: NW, your anonymous ignorance is outpaced only by your anonymous overconfidence. See? Accurate statement, but also insulting. You broke the seal.

You repeatedly say things like, "trying to make an argument you don't know how to make." Of course, the argument he's making is one that is made carefully by numerous scholars whose credentials and knowledge of the material far outstrip yours. Take a dose of sanity.

I've already demonstrated elsewhere that your biases prevent you from reading critical scholars carefully. Shall I do it again?

Ken Daniels

6/11/2012 04:16:51 am

I had decided to let NW have the last word, but there a couple of points I can't let go uncontested. First, I clearly stated that the Millerite sect is not the same in every respect as the early Christian movement. The one common thread to all apocalyptic sects of which I'm aware is that they predict that the end of the age will occur within the lifetime of those making the predictions. Yes, the Millerites predicted it would come on a certain date, and yes, Jesus did not predict the day or the hour on which it would occur. On these points we can fully agree. We can also agree that Jesus' followers didn't huddle together awaiting the fateful day of his return like the Millerites did, precisely because neither the day nor the hour was known. It was only predicted to occur in that generation, not on a given date.

If there have been, say, 100 (there are probably many more than that) apocalyptic sects whose within-this-generation predictions have failed, then even before we’ve examined any of the substance of the Christian apocalyptic religion, the odds are already in favor (100:1) of its having failed within-this-generation predictions also. If all the known apocalyptic sects called for cataclysmic events to occur within the lifetimes of those making and hearing the predictions, then the odds are 100:1 that Jesus’ cataclysmic predictions were also meant to be taken as applying to the generation of his hearers, not to future generations. It’s just the way prophecy is generally done, and there’s every indication that this is how Jesus’ (and his followers’) prophecies were done. It’s the most natural, clear, and parsimonious conclusion. I can’t and won’t stop you from attempting to tease out ways to rescue Jesus’ prophecies from falling into the same camp as those of the other 99 sects, but my money is on the simplest explanation, the one that flows most naturally from the text and from history: Jesus and his followers were humans were mistaken, like so many other apocalypticists. I have no doubt you're convinced the partial preterist framework is solid, but for those of us on the outside looking in, it simply doesn't look plausible, particularly when Jesus said at the end of the Olivet Discourse, "Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until ALL (note the ALL) these things have happened."

Regarding the meaning of "will not taste death until," I stand by my original assertion. If I were to say I'm not going to die until I see the Grand Canyon, I wouldn't mean by that that I was planning to leap into Grand Canyon as I caught my first sight of it. I recall (but fail to recall the reference to) a story in I or II Samuel where the men took an oath not to eat until they killed someone (was it Joab's men regarding Abner? I forget...). Did that meant they popped a burger in their mouth at the very moment they ran him through with a sword?

Again, I find it astounding how easily you're able to come up with convenient rules that allow you to dismiss Islam as an outsider without grappling with any of its variants and nuances regarding how it stands vis-a-vis previous religions, while at the same time requiring that outsiders grapple in such great detail to learn how the text of the Christian scriptures can be interpreted to mean what it doesn't appear to mean on the surface. How do you expect an outsider like me (presumably not filled with the Spirit) to be convinced of your interpretations when the majority of your coreligionists--including many Spirit-filled, knowledgeable intellectuals--don't find them convincing? I'd be more interested in seeing an intramural debate between you and a well-qualified non-preterist before engaging in further debate with you about it. If a creationist were to spar with an evolutionist and learned that the evolutionist was a Lamarkian, I would not fault the creationist for saying that the Lamarkian's views have been considered by the mainstream scientific community and found wanting; let the Lamarkian spar first with some competent non-Lamarkian evolutionary biologists before coming back to the creationist for more. Why should the creationist spend inordinate amounts of time learning and responding to such a theory? That said, I do welcome your perspective on my blog, partly because it might serve to show to other believers how someone as well-informed and earnest as you can reject the widespread (at least in my circles) doctrines of eternal conscious torment, of inerrancy, of inspiration, of the Athanasian Trinity, and probably much else beside.

Like Holly, I do not claim to be an intellectual. And like Holly, I'd like to see this blog stand in contrast to so many insulting slugfests out in the blogosphere. So far it's not nearly as bad as many others I've come across, but I just want to make sure it stays that way. I'm not so thin-skinned that I can't take criticism, but I just don't want it to devol

Ken Daniels

6/11/2012 04:20:57 am

(continued) ...devolving into a slugfest on either side of the divide.

Ken Daniels

6/11/2012 04:47:18 am

Spelling correction related to my previous comment: Lamark > Lamarck

Ken Daniels

6/11/2012 05:50:28 am

NW, I just now reread one of your earlier comments contesting my contention that Christianity was an apocalyptic sect. I guess I had homed in on your later comment contrasting Millerism and early Christianity and wanted to clarify that they differ with respect to the exact timing of the end. I apologize for skating over your earlier point; I am aware there's scholarly debate about whether Christianity started as an apocalyptic sect. However, by the time the Olivet Discourse was composed, I don't see how there can be any doubt about what at least some of his followers believed, with ALL these things coming to pass in "this" generation.

6/11/2012 06:59:05 am

Thom,

First of all, welcome to this blog. I am glad that you are here.

"For instance: NW, your anonymous ignorance is outpaced only by your anonymous overconfidence. See? Accurate statement, but also insulting. You broke the seal."

Pot meet kettle. I can be a bit of a jerk from time to time but I don't hold a candle to you. Everyone here should visit your blog and take the temperature of the kind of rhetoric that you bring to the kitchen. No comparison.

"I've already demonstrated elsewhere that your biases prevent you from reading critical scholars carefully. Shall I do it again?"

You demonstrated no such thing. It is impossible to argue with you over at your blog where you heavily moderate the comments and arbitrarily cut off discussions.

6/11/2012 07:20:46 am

Ken,

"The one common thread to all apocalyptic sects of which I'm aware is that they predict that the end of the age will occur within the lifetime of those making the predictions."

What the Jesus movement meant by "end of the age" - well, in particular Matthew since this expression shows up nowhere else - is a matter of contention and not as obvious as you suggest. That's why you can't just lump the early Jesus movement along with all the other apocalyptic sects and make a probability argument. That's too easy.

"I have no doubt you're convinced the partial preterist framework is solid, but for those of us on the outside looking in, it simply doesn't look plausible, particularly when Jesus said at the end of the Olivet Discourse, 'Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until ALL (note the ALL) these things have happened.' "

Again, I've already showed you how that statement only applies to what I am calling Thread A in the Olivet discourse. I've even spelled out the thematic parallels between the threads and why the different portions of what I am calling Thread B don't correspond to 1st century events very well. Moreover, I've even spelled out for you in excruciating detail why the spectacular events of Mk 13:24-27 don't sync up at all with what the NT has to say about the return of Jesus when he brings the kingdom of God. In fact, common sense ought to tell you that there's no point in Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple as well as Israel if in fact he was talking about the destruction of the world.

"I stand by my original assertion. If I were to say I'm not going to die until I see the Grand Canyon, I wouldn't mean by that that I was planning to leap into Grand Canyon as I caught my first sight of it."

Right, from your anachronistic 21st century American English perspective "until" would mean "before" in Mk 9:1, but I'm willing to bet that the original 1st century ancient Greek perspective probably thought differently based on all the other lines of evidence that I've teased out for you.

"Again, I find it astounding how easily you're able to come up with convenient rules that allow you to dismiss Islam as an outsider without grappling with any of its variants and nuances..."

Again, my argument with Islam is at the level of their religious metanarrative while your argument Christianity has been at the level of individual doctrines. Apples and oranges.

"devolving into a slugfest on either side of the divide."

Unfortunately Thom and I are a recipe for a real slug fest complete with the most hostile rhetoric two preening intellectuals can bring to the table.

Julia

6/6/2012 02:23:33 am

6/6/2012 02:46:54 am

mikespeir,

The answer to your question is threefold:

1) Following the destruction of Judea and the dissolution of the Jerusalem church, the Gentile churches that remained were largely on their own in terms of understanding the complex Jewish eschatological heritage that was passed on to them by the Jewish apostles. Major misunderstandings were inevitable.

2) One of these major misunderstandings was the idea that the resurrection of Jesus was the pattern after which the resurrection of the church would take place. As counter-intuitive as it might seem to us, the first followers of Jesus thought that their Lord had been clothed with a glorified spiritual body in heaven following the ascension of his natural body into heaven but that the souls of the righteous dead would be clothed with their glorified spiritual bodies in heaven subsequent to the ascension of their incorporeal souls into heaven. Hence, the later church mistakenly understood the resurrection of the righteous dead as well as life in the kingdom of God in very physical, concrete, earthly terms, which naturally led to the idea that the kingdom of God would have to replace the earthy kingdom of this world, ergo would probably come on the heals of some great conflict (i.e. the last battle).

3) The later church codified a small number of major errors (such as the one previously mentioned) in their ecumenical creeds, which made it very difficult for later Christians to revisit the reasoning that went into those creeds and correct some of these mistakes.

If you think of Christianity as a major world religion that was, metaphorically speaking, dropped on its head as an infant in the 1st century destruction of Judea then everything else makes sense when it comes to understanding how major theological mistakes got entrenched in the church.

mikespeir

6/6/2012 07:14:58 pm

Actually, I think there's a simpler, more parsimonious answer. But in deference to Ken's desire for more congenial atmosphere here, I'll let it go.

6/6/2012 11:58:33 pm

mikespeir,

Lol! How about this: On the basis of a complex eschatological paradigm involving a crucified Messiah, a new strand of Judaism was formed that quickly took in many Gentile adherents. Unfortunately, the Jewish congregations that new the most about the eschatological paradigm that was the impetus for their faith were shortly dissolved by a war, leaving their Gentile coreligionists to themselves to rediscover this eschatological paradigm from scattered bits of writings left over from the time before the war. Needless to say, these Gentiles were not entirely successful in discerning the eschatological paradigm of their Jewish forebears from these writings and codified a few errors in their ecumenical councils. Unfortunately, by anathematizing congregants who did not entirely agree with the statements that came out of these early councils, the Gentile church made it practically impossible for later Christian interpreters to recover the true eschatological paradigm of their faith, even to this day.

Anything simpler than this cannot possibly be correct.

julia

6/6/2012 04:25:10 am

NW,
I appreciate the warning, and it is important. I haven't suffered any lack of deep discovery on these topics, however. The Lutheran of my childhood was known for requiring much study of its pastors and members, and I followed that with decades of further investigation. My trouble was that while thinking I was studying deeply and coming to correct understandings, I was doing so only within the context of Christianity being true. I would have denied that at the time; I truly thought I was being open minded in my studies.
Now I have moved behind open mindedness *within* the faith to open mindedness going far beyond it.
Julia

6/6/2012 04:54:53 am

Julia,

If you don't mind me asking, why did you give up your Christian faith? As someone who still has a robust Christian faith, I would like to know.

Julia

6/7/2012 12:19:37 am

NW,
I guess I've never attempted to tell about that in this sort of setting; rarely have I tried at all to share it in fact. I'm not sure I should be cluttering Ken's blog post off the main topic, and I also run the risk of being quite boring, but I'll try.

My abandonment of Christianity has taken over four years to totally sink in, although it began very suddenly and intensely. The 'way' it happened and how I could possibly go from decades of deep certainty to having no way to even pretend the things I formerly believed are true is difficult for me to understand, let alone tell, but I'll try.

I had always clung to Luther's teaching about avoiding basing one's faith on emotion; it made me feel validated in the way that my personality was far more suited to what I thought of as logic and reason. And yet when the change came for me, I saw that even for me, the root of my certainty must have actually been more of a feeling/emotion.

I cannot remember the source of this quote, unfortunately, but it struck me as quite apt to my own situation and to many recent studies and findings I have recently read about the workings of our brains:

"Religious belief is not bound to regular standards of evidence and logic. It is not about logic, but about something more intuitive and primal. Arguments with believers start from a false premise -- that the believer is bound by the rules of debate, rather than being bound by the belief itself. The believer is rarely "free to concede." At best, the bits of logic or evidence put forth in an argument go into the hopper with a whole host of other factors. "

Here are just a few examples of recent work on the subject that, along with my personal experience, lead me to think these workings of our brains are not as simple as they may at first appear:
http://www.rburton.com/_i_on_being_certain_i___believing_you_are_right_even_when_you_re_not_63166.htm
http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2012/01/price-of-your-soul-how-your-brain.html
http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20080414/brain-decides-faster-than-you-think

Probably because our brains are so adept at maintaining our sense of certainty, it seems that often something big has to happen to break into the feeling of certainty in a manner which allows opposing information to be *truly* considered before a religious belief can undergo major change. (It seems to me, based on personal observations and recent studies, that certainty shares more in common with a feeling than with a reasoned decision, even when its formation is experienced by the person who is certain as being a reasoned decision.)

Sometimes this break is simply the transition to adulthood. It seems to me that after that first, most likely window, certainty in the area of religion is a done deal for most people. Even a major event or insight, past a certain age, seemingly fails to affect most people's certainties enough to do more than cause a shift in *form* of belief. I cannot think of a single person I have met, on line or in real life, who has had the kind of change I have this late in life. The mid/late life changes I've seen have either been an almost lifelong drift or continual process of shift, or changes to different ways of seeing/explaining/interpreting things but still within some form Christianity or religious spirituality. My best guess is that this is probably because the trauma of cognitive dissonance caused by a more dramatic shift in such a long held certainty is *so* very great, and all of our minds rebel so very strongly against such a deep admission of having been wrong. Well, I know mine did.

(And then, as a believer I learned the line that if someone does make a change following a major event or insight, that person is likely just "angry with God," "didn't receive the answer s/he wanted," or another similar explanation.)

I would never have believed that I would even come close to leaving Christianity behind. I took my faith so seriously that as a child I wanted to be a missionary. Our Lutheran pastor was such a close family friend that I felt almost like a PK. As my life progressed, I continued to study and read and build much of my daily life around my faith. My only regrets were of not living it as fully as I thought something so important should be lived. In retrospect, I do see the way I had to search deeply to find answers to seeming inconsistencies and the way I took it all so much more seriously than most people around me as perhaps a sort of overcompensation due to my personality and thinking style actually not fitting very well with much of Christianity. But I don't think there is much that could have made me really look beyond *how* it *is* true and move on to truly being open to whether it may *not* be true. (I would have claimed to have fully explored the possibility of it not being true, just as I thought I had explored the concept of eternal consequences for belief and unbelief, but

Julia

6/7/2012 12:23:37 am

(continued)
I would never have believed that I would even come close to leaving Christianity behind. I took my faith so seriously that as a child I wanted to be a missionary. Our Lutheran pastor was such a close family friend that I felt almost like a PK. As my life progressed, I continued to study and read and build much of my daily life around my faith. My only regrets were of not living it as fully as I thought something so important should be lived. In retrospect, I do see the way I had to search deeply to find answers to seeming inconsistencies and the way I took it all so much more seriously than most people around me as perhaps a sort of overcompensation due to my personality and thinking style actually not fitting very well with much of Christianity. But I don't think there is much that could have made me really look beyond *how* it *is* true and move on to truly being open to whether it may *not* be true. (I would have claimed to have fully explored the possibility of it not being true, just as I thought I had explored the concept of eternal consequences for belief and unbelief, but I could later see that regardless of how deeply I thought I had, I really had not, to a level that could affect my "certainties" anyway.)

In my case it was experiencing people I love more than existence coming to the conclusion that there is no way to know the truth of these things (and surely no way to know one set of these things is true over any other) that suddenly and traumatically shook up my certainty factor. I think most Christians observing would claim I just didn't want the concept of eternal consequences for unbelief/separation from God to be real so I chose to deny it, or that I was angry at God, or that I was under attack by Satan. In fact, I had to wrestle myself over some of those possibilities, having been taught they must be considered.

Of course, having seen how much more of an 'emotion' or 'feeling' my certainty was than I could ever have known, let alone admitted, has left me understanding that the same can be happening to me now, and by definition I would not know it.

But the difference is that the certainty I painfully let go of was based on many things accepted on "faith," whereas the situation I am left in is just the opposite.

I would agree that likely many of the same sorts of thought patterns involved in my former feelings of certainty are working now as well to give me back a sense of certainty, albeit a differing one. I think that may be quite necessary for sanity; it was in the time between one sense of certainty and the other that my sanity was at deep risk.

I am more and more able to be thankful that now my certainty emotions are not working to hang on to a faith based belief in the area of religion, despite the pain that change in the deepest parts of one's mind does indeed bring.

6/7/2012 01:13:35 am

Julia,

Thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciated it.

As you hinted at in your story, our desire to maintain our beliefs are not just a phenomenon that takes place in the context of religious belief but in all human belief. For example, we have enough data to know that human minds can non-physically transmit information to each other (i.e. telepathy) and that the consciousness of people who have had a near-death experience (NDE) cannot be accounted for by their physical brains and yet the mainstream scientific establishment refuses to accept these conclusions (in spite of the data) because to do so would nullify a materialist paradigm that's become entrenched in academia. To me, denying the reality that we as human beings have non-physical souls that will experience a conscious afterlife is about as silly as young earth creationism with everything we know in the world of 2012, but people who stubbornly cling to the old materialistic mechanical paradigm aren't ready to give up the faith (and neither are young earth creationists according to the latest poll). Such is life.

I would also have you know that neither Jesus nor Paul believed that any human soul would be permanently separated from God, that was a fiction propagated by religious hearts that were seared with sectarian bias. According to the NT, all of us will be reconciled to God, eventually.

At the same time, I want to affirm the moral intuitions behind your falling away. The all-powerful good God that Christians putatively believe in cannot possibly be a god that leaves the vast majority of humanity permanently separated from him in torment. If the NT actually taught that then it would falsify the religion.

Holly

6/7/2012 10:58:42 am

Wow! Happened to check back on this blog post to see if anything else interesting was going on and there sure is! Julia, I am like you. I'm 37 and left Christianity 4 years ago. I went to an evangelical christian college and considered my life as a Christian to be top priority. I still struggle every day to come to terms that I have made the switch that I have. I also have had people insinuate that God must have let me down, or I didn't get what I wanted or that I'm angry about something. None of this is true. I just really can't believe that the Bible is the word of God or that Christianity (or any religion) is the true religion. Great discussion!

6/7/2012 01:18:50 am

Julia,

Also, don't worry about cluttering up Ken's blog, I'm doing that for you.

6/7/2012 03:04:12 am

Ken,

After looking at some of your other blog posts I can see that Jesus' supposedly failed promise to return within the lifetime of his disciples is a big deal for you. But if it turns out to be the case that Jesus was not necessarily wrong about his return, as I argue, then what does that say about your ability to critically assess the Christian faith? If what you were once convinced was an irreconcilable defeater for the Christian faith turns out not to be so then how can you trust the validity of all the other defeaters that you mentioned in your book? My suspicion is that you only dug deep enough to find the holes in the conservative American evangelical theology of your youth but not deep enough to see how those holes point toward a better understanding of the Christian faith.

Just some food for thought as I continue in my efforts to increase your cognitive dissonance.

6/7/2012 06:04:16 am

Ken,

Lo and behold, by your own admission you left the "faith of [your] youth." Here's what I found in a previous comment of yours: "I think we as deconverts sometimes value truth and integrity and honesty about all else--that's what drove us out of the faith of our youth, after all, despite the great cost of doing so."

The problem with the conservative evangelical theology that we were raised with is that it not only contains major problems but is usually presented to people in such a way as to discourage them from critically examining their own faith lest they discover its problems and question those above them. Naturally, a piety that depends on ignorance doesn't work for everyone and when people such as yourself start investigating their childhood faith after having uncritically accepted it (more or less) for many years and find all of its problems seemingly at once they are left without the critical tools needed to either put the pieces back together or to properly assess the weight of the arguments (which is why you were taken in by the pseudo-scholarship of Price). If you had dealt with these issues gradually and over a long stretch of time in the context of an active faith that is critical of itself my guess is that it would have evolved and matured into an adult faith of your own instead of trying to hang onto the childhood faith that was given to you by someone else.

Andy

6/7/2012 06:41:54 am

I don't believe it is your intent, but your argument comes off as somewhat condescending, NW. The obvious implication of your last post is that if we non-believers had only taken a more intellectual approach to faith, the only rational conclusion we could reach is that Christianity is the one true faith.

I appreciate your more open-minded take on Christianity and interpretation of the Bible, but it seems that almost any religion could be construed as rational and true given the right frame of reference. There are some very open minded and intelligent Muslims that make Islam seem quite appealing. The same goes for almost any of the world's religions. What is it that you believe sets Christianity apart?

6/7/2012 07:34:13 am

Andy,

You're right, that's not my intent. That Ken went through the experience of unintentionally deconstructing the evangelical faith of his childhood after he had already made the decision to become a missionary is both tragic and understandable. However, that he seems to have been content to do victory laps over that same faith these last few years is less understandable to me.

Do I think that the Christian worldview is far and away the most likely one to be true? Yes. Do I think that becoming a follower of Jesus Christ is a matter of intellectual assent? No. Faith is a mysterious thing.

As for your comment that "almost any religion could be construed as rational and true given the right frame of reference," I completely disagree. Personally, I find that it's not too difficult to dismiss practically every other religion as being absurd just by examining its religious metanarrative alone. For example, consider the case of Islam and its American equivalent, Mormonism. In those religions there is a recognition that God originally revealed himself and his divine purposes to the ancient Hebrews and/or Christians but that the latter groups corrupted and/or misinterpreted both the deposit of revelation they were given as well as their sacred texts to the point where God had to reveal himself afresh and anew and apart from these earlier traditions to a particular prophet (Muhammad in the case of Islam and Joseph Smith in the case of Mormonism). However, the problem with the whole religious metanarrative upon which the credibility of Islam and Mormonism depend is the rather dubious assertion that God’s original purposes in revealing himself to the ancient Hebrews and Christians were so frustrated by the latter groups that it demanded a religious “reboot” of sorts. Islam and Mormonism would have us believe that when the God who created us acts in human history that his purposes can be frustrated by his creation, as if he were a member of the Greek pantheon, but surely the existence of this sort of creator God is high unlikely therefore rendering one of the core features of the religious metanarrative of Islam and Mormonism as being highly unlikely. And believe me, I could go on about the polytheistic nature of Hinduism, the incoherence of Buddhist doctrine, the absurdity of Rabbinic Judaism given the absence of a temple in Jerusalem, the metaphysical impossibility of materialistic atheism, etc.

Julia

6/7/2012 06:37:30 am

Maybe he would have, but my 'two cents' on that possibility is that even if it were true, that doesn't make it the best, good, right, or truth-bearing outcome to have occurred!
In my opinion if that were the case, it would only mean that he would never have come to a point of being able to fully open his mind; he would have remained trapped in the idea that he was doing so, while actually only doing so within the realm of Christianity. So yes he may have stayed within the realm of faith; because of all of the things I wrote about the difference between feelings of certainty and truly objective reason in my own tale of leaving faith, what you suppose may be the case. But again, that would only mean that those feelings of certainty perhaps would not have been broken into enough to allow really seeing outside information realistically/logically.
To oversimplify greatly, I see three groups - those who question not at all or in a limited sense, those who question to great depth and scholarly level but only within the world of faith, and those who truly take their questioning beyond religious faith completely. In my experience, once you have broken in sufficiently to those feelings of certainty about things which are not testable or knowable through means currently available to humans, you leave that realm of religious faith altogether and no longer have any use for any of the explanations which, if accepted, can answer questions *within* faith.
Because you have gone beyond the realm of faith, and it's a whole new ballgame.

6/7/2012 08:19:52 am

Julia,

But as evidenced by the title this blog, since Ken's deconversion he's been in a desert place. I find it hard to believe that Ken wouldn't have preferred to develop a more intellectually respectable form of Christian faith than be where he is now. And as a Christian who has spent his entire adult life thinking critically about his faith, I would be remiss if didn't try to show him the way out of the desert and back to the springs of living water.

With respect to the notion that our thinking can go beyond the realm of faith, I have found that this isn't really possible in practice. In particular, most people that leave behind their religious worldview usually end up adopting another worldview before too long, which then commands a measure of their faith. To give an example, if I were to go to the local "free thought" conference and present them with all the scientific data that demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that we are conscious in spite of our brains and not because of them and that we should expect to experience consciousness after physical death they would kick me out of the conference because I would be challenging their faith in a materialistic worldview.

Julia

6/7/2012 08:07:01 am

For the record, I do not agree that Ken investigated on a less than truly scholarly level. My point is that even were you correct, and if there is some path that could have left him in what you refer to as a "mature adult faith," that proves nothing about whether that would be the best of correct outcome.
Some people move out of both childhood and mature faith into an understanding of reality not based on things accepted on any form of faith.

mikespeir

6/7/2012 08:26:03 am

It isn't about religion. It isn't about bringing us any "good news." That's not why NW is here. I'm going to suggest we just let him talk to himself.

6/7/2012 09:17:05 am

mikespeir,

I have not hidden the fact that I'm here to maximize Ken's cognitive dissonance. If he's as intellectually honest as he says he is (and I believe him) then he'll welcome the challenge that I bring.

6/7/2012 09:47:25 am

mikespeir,

Honestly, why do you think I'm here if not to advance arguments that I don't think Ken has considered? I'd like to know.

By the way, your suggestion to ignore me indicates that I'm doing a good job.

Frank link

6/8/2012 11:54:39 pm

Hi Ken,

Thank you for your work and patience with this pesky issue. The failure of Jesus to return "quickly" used to bother me as much as the old testament conquest narratives did.

I linked your post today to my facebook page and got an immediate hit from an old friend. But something different happened today in my processes. Until recently, I had never considered how heavily I used to lean on the admonition to receive faith like a child (Luke 18:17). That was my default solution to difficult passages: "just have faith like a child!" That's how I used to resolve a bit of dissonance. But as I continued in my faith journey my adult mind would continue to wrestle with the complexity of imagining the meaning of ANE cultural expressions and references because I also held the admonition to be "noble-minded" like the Bereans who were elevated in Act 17:11.

Eventually, like you, I came to my own conclusions about my once cherished faith practice. I had to move on. And now I don't like labels or aligning with any one ideology anymore . . . following anyone else just isn't as attractive as it used to be.

Thanks again. I admire your courage and commitment. Good luck to you.

Frank

6/9/2012 01:14:48 am

Frank,

Jesus was not necessarily wrong about his soon return, see my previous comments to Ken about this subject above.

6/9/2012 01:19:29 am

Let me rephrase that, Jesus was not wrong about his soon return. I am that confident in the above exegesis.

Frank

6/9/2012 03:58:39 am

Hello NW.

No, sorry, but you're not allowed to rephrase your first reply to my post. Rules are rules and you're obliged to justify your original statement: Jesus was not "necessarily" wrong about his soon return.

So, please explain what you meant by the phrase "necessarily wrong?" Also, please explain what other types of "wrong" there are within your understanding. I'm interested in that, truly.

I didn't see any references to a contiuum of wrongness explained in your prior comments, either. Please explain.

Thank you,
Frank

6/9/2012 04:29:16 am

Frank,

Lol! I've been dying for some humor in these comments, thank you for stepping up.

The soon return of Jesus in the NT is a heavenly event that was not supposed to be visible to those living in this world (note Lk 17:20 and the triple tradition that is Mt 16:28 = Mk 9:1 = Lk 9:27); however, it was supposed to be accompanied by the visible destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Now, the destruction of the temple did take place within the time frame indicated by the NT, but as to whether the accompanying return of Jesus in the invisible heavenly sanctuary took place, who knows. As a professing Christian, I believe it did take place, but it's impossible to know for certain on this side of death. Hence, my saying that Jesus was "not necessarily wrong" about his soon return.

Frank

6/9/2012 05:55:07 am

Thanks NW. I'm glad you weren't offended. I did intend humor. I had my suspicions that you had that type of explanation in mind.

But, then again, his return was supposed to be obvious to the entire world, as in coming on clouds, etc, wasn't it? Else we might be mislead by word of his coming here or there, right?

Nevertheless, I'm glad you're not literalistic in your interpretation. That's the tradition I left and to which I will not return. I'm o.k with understanding many verses as something like allegory or having a more mystical interpretation / explanation . . . that kind of reminds me of the gnostic tradition.

Hey, you don't interpret spiritual dreams do you? Man, I've had some real doozies.

Nevertheless, good luck in your journey, brother!

6/9/2012 06:13:04 am

Frank,

Lol! No, I don't interpret dreams spiritual or otherwise, my wife has a lot of those and I don't know what to make of them (though I've tried).

Yes, the NT does speak about a spectacular, visible return of Jesus to the earth at the last battle, which is supposed to take place many years after the soon return of Jesus in the invisible heavenly sanctuary to establish the kingdom (see Rev 20:7-9). Obviously, this has not happened yet, but I believe it will happen eventually.

I'm also a Christian universalist so I believe that we all get to the same place eventually. No one's "eternal destiny" is on the line in this madhouse, we're all on different paths to God.

Best of luck on your journey as well, brother!

Julia

6/9/2012 04:48:10 am

If a believer is honest and cooperative enough to really continue engaging in answers to each topic under discussion, as it seems you may be doing, NW, it *always* eventually comes to the inevitable corner of "it's impossible to know for certain." (another term for which is sometimes, "faith")
I respect the willingness to finally come to that honest dead end/wall, but each time I also wonder why the believer has bothered then with all the twist and turns, studying, etc. when this is the bottom line. "It's impossible to know for certain." "Faith"
You don't need all the other stuff then.
It's a matter of "faith" and "it's impossible to know for certain" is the beginning, middle and end of the story. If that is enough for us, in order to believe, we need nothing else.
Even if that were still enough for me, I wouldn't have any reason to choose one such "impossible to know for certain" answer or set of answers over any other, one religion over any other.

The human mind is a fascinating puzzle.

6/9/2012 05:03:01 am

Julia,

But that's exactly what Ken has done. He cannot know for certain that God does not exist nor can he know for certain that his perception of either objective moral values or free will is wholly illusory and merely a sociobiological construct. In fact, there is no worldview on offer that doesn't include all sorts of beliefs that cannot be known for certain, hence the presence of such beliefs in any particular worldview doesn't tell us anything about the truthfulness of that worldview.

Julia

6/9/2012 05:22:47 am

I wonder if you've heard the term, "ignostic," coined by a rabbi in the 1960s. No one even knows, or agrees on, what they are speaking of when they say, "God," so how can one even say s/he believes in "God" or doesn't believe in "God?" I don't "believe" there is a "God," and I don't "believe" there is not a "God." There is no reason, other than the fact that I was brought up with this story and it exists in my culture, that I even need to think about this topic. I find the term, ignostic, most fitting for my position.

I find it just a matter of linguistics and word games to try to turn the lack of a thing into itself a thing. It can be done of course, but it has no meaningful implication to my life nor, I think, to anyone's.

6/9/2012 05:38:37 am

Julia,

I think the point is somewhat pedantic, when we as Westerners engage in God-talk we usually do so with the assumption that God is defined in terms of classical Western theism (a very fine assumption by the way). So, it's not as if we don't know what we're talking about when we engage in this kind of conversation.

With respect to your assertion that there is no reason to think about this topic, I completely disagree. As human beings we feel compelled to explore our world and make sense of it, inevitably that will mean constructing a worldview of some kind in which something like the concept of God is either present or absent. Throwing up our hands in frustration about the big questions of life seems like the wrong move to make.

Julia

6/9/2012 10:25:15 am

(Sent this hours ago from my phone, but it did not post so trying again)
What stand are you taking on fairies, taken seriously in nordic countries I've visited? How will you cover the infinite issues and beings your mind could invent, or that other minds already have invented? Practical life in reality overrides this point that you make, even for those who do agree with you about it.
My real life is calling me away from this thread now. Words like 'cannot know with certainty' signal to me the end of rational discussion. If you think that to have absence of belief is the same thing as having belief, is itself a 'belief,' then even more reason there can be no reasoned discussion, just an eternal ping pong game.
Off to enjoy the outdoors now,
Julia

Julia

6/10/2012 11:05:25 pm

The amount of time, effort, intellect, mental health, etc. eaten by religion once again astounds and saddens me. Even those who no longer believe continue to suffer by religion's presence all around us. This blog thread gives one good picture of the reasons I find myself unable to agree with those who see religion as a benign or even positive enough issue that to simply put aside personal faith in it should be the extent of our concern as nonbelievers.

6/11/2012 02:28:48 am

Julia,

Instead of thinking in terms of religion you need to think in terms of worldview. In reality the people who participate in "free thought" conferences and forums are no less "religious" in the sense in which you are using the term.

Julia

6/11/2012 02:51:55 am

I would agree that there may be some truth to this, regarding some of the participants and/or to some degree.

However there are also some major differences and exceptions:

Some "Free Thinkers" have left religion behind and yet desire some of the tangential benefits that sometimes come along with religion, such as social support, shared experience, and/or working together for causes. These aspects are separate from the idea of a belief in God, but they are missed by some people who do not join together with others around a shared belief in God, and they seek to fill that need by getting together with others who share some experiences in common.

Other people participate in such groups because they are emotional damaged due to having been mentally filled with myths they suffered to free themselves from, sometimes at great cost. These people are joining together, not around a belief but around a shared pain for which they can find understanding and support in recovery.

6/11/2012 03:14:43 am

Julia,

If I may invert your observations.

Some "Free Thinkers" do gather together because of a shared non-belief in God, that doesn't seem much different from religious people who gather together because of a shared belief in God.

Some people become religious because of how they were mistreated by a secular world, that doesn't seem much different from how some people become "Free Thinkers" because of how they were mistreated by religious people.

Julia

6/11/2012 03:20:33 am

No --- because that inversion only "works" if one accepts your premise that lack of a belief is an analogue of belief. I do not. I understand that you can apply linguistic and/or philosophical analysis in order to claim it to be the case, but in practical reality it is not the case, and I have no desire to rejoin that game, as I have previously mentioned.

6/11/2012 03:45:58 am

Julia,

"No --- because that inversion only 'works' if one accepts your premise that lack of a belief is an analogue of belief. I do not."

First of all, if someone does not believe in the existence of God then it means that they evaluate the proposition "God does not exist" as being true, hence they do believe in something.

"I understand that you can apply linguistic and/or philosophical analysis in order to claim it to be the case, but in practical reality it is not the case"

I understand, stay with me for just a moment more.

Usually when people give up their belief in the existence of God and then become atheists they not only give their belief in the existence of God but also of the soul, objective moral values, free will, etc. In other words, the person who left their religious tradition for atheism usually becomes a materialist who believes that the only stuff that exists is physical stuff that can be measured in principle (i.e. no room for Randi's "woo"). Now that's quite a claim, kind of like saying that Yahweh exists and that he is the only true god; indeed, an entire worldview can be developed around the belief that the only stuff that exists is physical stuff. Hence, when "Free Thinkers" gather together around their non-belief in God they usually are also gathering together in support of a fully-developed materialistic worldview that has no room for a great deal of phenomena.

Therefore, in practicality it is the case with "Free Thinkers" as well.

Julia

6/11/2012 05:20:46 am

Why do you repeat the same word game (unbelief = belief) which I find meaningless and have already answered; why do so without adding anything new to your argument for its applicability to reality?

As for the analysis of people who gather as "Free Thinkers," I already agreed there can be some taking it in a manner that has some characteristics in common with religions, but I find both the possibly shared characteristics and the number who take it that way to be small. So again, this I already spoke to.

As far as "materialistic world view," which you have mentioned enough times that I sense it is one of your biggest peeves, I have something to add on that point. In the reality we humans currently inhabit there is no way to prove things beyond the "material," that I am aware of. If you do prove them materially, they are by definition material. Only things which cannot be proven materially are "spriritual," by definition. Perhaps our definitions of material don't match.
As you have conceded, some things are "impossible to know for certain," and/or we won't know this side of death. The "free thinkers" I've met are simply people who feel sorrow and dismay at the time, effort, intellect, resources, and even sanity being wasted on things of this nature, which by very definition cannot be known but can only be "accepted on faith." The fact that "free thinkers" waste any of *their* time on any of it is often simply in effort to end or decrease that waste, loss, and pain.

Of course, as you point out, they cannot know they are right either. But the majority of them, of which I speak and with which I have experience, are not claiming they are right! They are pointing out that since no one can know (in our current reality), it is damaging to claim to know! They do not claim to. They will be perfectly willing to accept anything which can actually be known, and unfortunately in our current reality this is limited to the material.

Unclear areas can exist such as those you mentioned early in this thread regarding telepathy, etc. Most free thinkers I know would not encourage a final answer be accepted if there are ways to test these issues, but testing the immaterial by material means can be tricky. And a few studies would also not convince most free thinkers I know to make a final decision/stand against these; nor would a few isolated studies convince them of their absolute certainty. Thus the term "free thinker," never set on one absolute, unchangeable, final answer.

Julia

6/11/2012 05:26:48 am

A more succinct and exact way of saying what I attempted to say in my final paragraph is that --
Most 'free thinkers" stake their hopes not on a specific set of answers, but on a specific way of asking questions

Julia

6/11/2012 05:39:32 am

....testing the *seemingly immaterial" by material means can be tricky

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 08:57:34 am

NW,

I never made a pact with you to be courteous, like the pact you made with Ken, which you broke when he started pushing back. You're the hypocrite, not me.

"You demonstrated no such thing."

Um, yes I did, by quoting scholars who contradicted your claims about what scholars "really" think about numbers in apocalyptic texts. You had (and have) no idea what you're talking about.

"It is impossible to argue with you over at your blog where you heavily moderate the comments and arbitrarily cut off discussions."

This is a complete lie. I have never withheld one of your conversations in moderation. I've never deleted your comments, edited them, or any such thing. And I have never "arbitrarily" ended discussions. I have said, after a long discussion, that I wasn't interested in further discussion, but I've always responded to your repeated "Just one more thing" comments. So you're lying.

And at any rate I don't think I've been especially rude to you, certainly less so than you've been to Ken. Apart from our last discussion on the Carrier thread, our discussions have been very congenial and good-spirited. In the case of Carrier, it wasn't all that bad I don't think. A bit repetitive, but certainly nothing worse than what you're dishing out here.

I'm selective about who I'm rude to. Not everyone deserves it, and Ken certainly doesn't deserve what you've been giving him here.

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I've also read Stark's book, the chapters near the beginning and end are relatively well-argued while the chapters in the middle are filled with bad arguments. I plan on using it as a Sunday School resource to show how intellectually bankrupt much of biblical scholarship is.
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I pity your Sunday school students.

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Your contention that much of what I've identified as belonging to thread B in Mk 13 fits nicely within the context of 1st century events is less than convincing. For example, vv 8-13 refers to the fact that the followers of Jesus will spread the gospel to all nations even as they are persecuted by the nations, that doesn't sound like something that will happen in the 1st century as argued above.
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This is wrong. The text does not imply that they will be persecuted by all nations. And pointing out that this prophecy that the Gospel would be taken to all nations isn’t fulfilled to the letter is not a valid argument against the consensus position. Prophecies fail, especially optimistic ones like this one. Regardless, you’re in a minority as you argue that this prediction was not adequately fulfilled by 70 CE.

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vv 19-20 speaks of a tribulation that is unparalleled from the beginning of creation that threatens to wipe out all of the elect scattered throughout all the nations, the 1st century saw some rough events but nothing that was unparalleled in known human history and certainly nothing that threatened to wipe out the entire Christian community.
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Again, you’re using a failed (or at least hyperbolic) prediction to argue that the prediction must have meant something else. This is an apologetic tactic. That Jesus’ prediction failed is not evidence for your ABAB pattern. You’re reading the text like a true believer, not like a critical scholar. Which is fine. But in that case don’t pretend you’re engaging in critical scholarship.

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vv 24-27 refers to the vengeance that the Lord Jesus will dole out against the nations for how they persecuted his people as described in vv 8-13 (cf. Joel 3:19-21) as well as the deliverance of the elect in the sight of the nations, obviously these events have no correspondence in the 1st century as you acknowledge.
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Right. Another failed prediction, like all such failed predictions produced by apocalyptic Jews of the period. A failed prediction is not evidence for your misreading of the text.

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vv 32-37 is a warning that doesn't necessarily apply to the 1st century anymore than it could to any other period of time.
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This is nonsense. I’ll get back to this when you bring it up again.

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Aside from all this, much of your analysis is an exercise in missing the point as you completely ignore the thematic parallelism between the proposed threads.
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If it’s an exercising in missing the point, it’s an exercise in missing a point you hadn’t made until now. Your original claim was that the A thread led up to 70 CE while the B thread led up to a much later eschaton. Ken pointed out that most of the predictions made in your imaginary B thread were in fact fulfilled prior to 70 CE. Now you wish to argue for an imaginary thematic parallelism.

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Allow me to spell it out for you.

A: (vv 1-7) contains an oracle of disaster (vv 1-2) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 3-7)
B: (vv 8-13) contains an oracle of disaster (v 8) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 9-13)
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Your di

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:00:09 am

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Allow me to spell it out for you.

A: (vv 1-7) contains an oracle of disaster (vv 1-2) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 3-7)
B: (vv 8-13) contains an oracle of disaster (v 8) plus warnings to the disciples (vv 9-13)
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Your division is artificial. Verse 7 and verse 8 are talking about the same thing. They are both talking about the wars that must happen before the end. The whole of verses 3-13 are describing what must take place before the initial prediction in vv. 1-2, the destruction of the temple. Verse 8 is not a new prediction; it is a description of what must take place before the initial prediction of the destruction of the temple. Verse 8 expressly says that these wars, earthquakes and famines are but “the beginning of the birth pangs.” Take note of that analogy: “birth pangs.” It will become important in short order.

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A: (vv 14-18) describes the tribulation that will be experienced in 1st century Judea.
B: (vv 19-20) describes an unparalleled tribulation that will be worldwide in scope as it will threaten the elect who exist in every nation.
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No. This is a failed prediction. The Jesus of Mark believed that the destruction of the temple would instigate divine wrath that would be directed at “the nations.”

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A: (vv 21-23) warns against following after people who claim to be the Messiah but aren't.
B: (vv 24-27) describes what happens at the visible return of the real Messiah.
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Correct. The visible return of the messiah within one generation, as the very next verses go on to predict.

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A: (vv 28-31) says that all these events will take place within this generation.
B: (vv 32-36) says that no one knows the day or the hour when these events take place.
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These two claims are not mutually exclusive, NW. I’m not sure how you can be so illogical, especially since you’ve read my book. Saying that no one knows the day or hour of the visible return is not incongruous with the prediction that it would take place within one generation.

And here is where the “birth pangs” of verse 8 are important. We know how long a full term pregnancy lasts: 40 weeks. But we don’t know the precise day or hour the baby will come. In the same way, we know how long the last days (birth pangs) will last: one generation = 40 years. But we don’t know the precise day or hour the new world will arrive. This is Mark’s analogy, not mine.

Your ABAB pattern is entirely imagined and is belied by the text itself.

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Zech 14:1-19 is a very complicated oracle that also follows an alternating pattern; however it's not quite as neatly laid out as Mk 13 and there are admittedly some translation issues that obscure the divisions. Moreover, I find your willingness as an admitted amateur to dismiss this very complex oracle in the most facile of ways to be somewhat offensive. For the sake of politeness, I will not remark upon what you had to say here.
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There is no ABAB pattern in Zech 14. It’s as imaginary as the ABAB pattern you propose in Mark 13. For the sake of politeness, I will not remark upon your arrogant ignorance.

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Contrary to what you claim, Lk 17:20 says nothing about the kingdom of God already being present in the ministry of Jesus. In fact, nowhere in the NT is it claimed that the kingdom of God was already present in the ministry Jesus, that was an idea invented out of whole cloth by early 20th century Reformed theologians for reasons that I will not get into here.
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This is completely false. The Mustard Seed parable in Mark 4 and Matthew 13 clearly implies that the kingdom of God grows up on earth before the harvest. Same with the parable of the leaven. In Matthew 16, Jesus gives Peter the “keys to the kingdom” and tells him that whatever he binds/looses on earth will be bound/loosed in heaven, i.e., Peter has access to the dominion of the kingdom on earth. In Matt 12:28 // Luke 11:20, Jesus says, “But if it is by the finger/Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Your bald denial that the idea of a proleptic presence of the kingdom is nowhere to be found in the gospels is nonsense, as is your claim that the idea is an invention of early 20th century Reformed theologians. The notion of the kingdom being present increasingly, starting small, growing to culmination, is one that is paralleled in numerous second temple texts, not just at Qumran. You should know this, since you claim to have read Dale Allison’s _Constructing Jesus_. For Paul also, the kingdom was both a present reality, and a future event, as Allison and so many others argue.

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The kingdom of God is something that followers of Jesus could only enter by means of resurrection from the dead (Mt 13:43; 1 Cor 15:50-53) and following eschatological judgmen

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:01:04 am

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The kingdom of God is something that followers of Jesus could only enter by means of resurrection from the dead (Mt 13:43; 1 Cor 15:50-53) and following eschatological judgment (Mt 25:34) neither of which was a reality during the ministry of Jesus.
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You present a false dichotomy. It’s a both/and, not an either/or. Yes, disciples could miss out on entering the consummate kingdom, but this does not mean they could not experience the proleptic presence of the kingdom prior to its ultimate arrival.

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All Lk 17:20 says is that the coming of the kingdom won't be visibly observed, which does not contradict 21:31 as you claim because while the coming of the kingdom would not be visibly observed it would nevertheless be accompanied by visible signs that would precede the destruction of the temple (i.e. Jerusalem being surrounded by armies in 21:20 which is what 21:31 refers to).

The argument you were trying to make but didn't know how to make is the idea that perhaps 17:21 refers to the presence of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus as it closes with the statement "the kingdom of God is in your midst." But this argument also fails because the entirety of v 21 belongs to the future as it opens with the expression "nor will people say," hence cannot refer to the presence of the kingdom in the present context of Jesus' ministry. Moreover, the last clause in v 21 is mistranslated and should read instead "for you are within the kingdom of God." You see the theology vv 20-21 is in parallel with that of vv 22-24 in the sense that just as the coming of the kingdom of God will not be seen (v 20) so also the disciples will yearn the visible return of Jesus but will not see it (v 22) and that just as the kingdom of God is not in one place and not another but a whole other world entirely that one is within (v 21) so also the visible return of Jesus will not be seen in one place and not another but will be seen by all within this world (vv 22-23). There is no teaching in these verses about the presence of the kingdom of God in the ministry of Jesus whatsoever.
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This is all nonsense. Your translation of the verse as “for you are within the kingdom of God” is incorrect. It is properly translated by almost everyone, “the kingdom of God is among you.” Second, since you’ve read Dale Allison’s _Constructing Jesus_, you should know that Luke 17:20 does not necessarily mean that “the kingdom of heaven won’t be visibly observed.” I’ll quote Allison at length:

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Many today read Luke 17:20-21 as a statement of antithetical exclusion: because the kingdom of God is even now “among you,” it cannot, someday down the road, be “coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’” Jacques Schlosser, however, has made the intriguing suggestion that this reading fails to see that we have here the common Semitic idiom of relative or dialectical negation, in which all or almost all of the emphasis lies on the second limb of the saying. Although the form of a sentence may be “Not A, but B,” nothing is really being said about A; it is negated solely in order to stress B, as in the following sentences:

* Exod 16:8: “Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.”
* 1 Sam 8:7: “And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’”
* Jer 7:22-23: “For in the day that I brought your ancestors out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to them or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. But this command I gave them, ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk only in the way that I command you, so that it may be well with you.’”
*Mark 9:37: “Whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
*Acts 5:4: “You [Ananias] did not lie to us but to God!”

In each of these cases the first part of the statement is literally false: the generation in the wilderness did complain against Moses; the Israelites did reject Samuel; God did give commandments regarding sacrifices; those who welcomed Jesus did welcome him; Ananias did lie to the apostles. The denials are not to be taken literally but are instead transparent exaggerations for emphasis, rhetorical ways of setting the stage for and underlining the importance of what follows. They are like Matt 23:3a, where “do whatever they [the scribes and Pharisees] teach you and follow it” cannot, given what Matthew says elsewhere, be taken at face value. The verse is instead just a hyperbolic way of introducing 23:3b: “but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.”

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:02:29 am

In each of these cases the first part of the statement is literally false: the generation in the wilderness did complain against Moses; the Israelites did reject Samuel; God did give commandments regarding sacrifices; those who welcomed Jesus did welcome him; Ananias did lie to the apostles. The denials are not to be taken literally but are instead transparent exaggerations for emphasis, rhetorical ways of setting the stage for and underlining the importance of what follows. They are like Matt 23:3a, where “do whatever they [the scribes and Pharisees] teach you and follow it” cannot, given what Matthew says elsewhere, be taken at face value. The verse is instead just a hyperbolic way of introducing 23:3b: “but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach.” It is the same in 1 John 3:18: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” This is not a call to refrain from speech that is loving. In like manner, Schlosser has suggested that Luke 17:20 does not really deny that the kingdom of God will someday come “with things that can be observed”; rather, Jesus says that solely in order to emphasize the unexpected declaration that follows in 17:21: the kingdom is present among you. (Dale C. Allison Jr., Constructing Jesus, pp. 104-106.)
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So, it may very well be that Luke 17:20-21 does not at all mean what your position requires it to mean. “Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, “Look, here it is!” or “There it is!” For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.’”

The Semitic idiom of dialectical negation means that vv. 20-21a are not literally true, but contain hyperbolic negations designed to emphasize v. 21b. In short, what’s important are not the coming signs, but the fact that the kingdom is already present in their midst. Vv. 20-21 speak to the proleptic presence of the kingdom because the audience is the Pharisees. They need to believe _now_. The disciples, who already believe, are given a different, non-idiomatic explanation in vv. 22-23: don’t worry recognizing when the kingdom of God will ultimately arrive in full: you won’t be able to miss it. The different way he answers the question is explained by the different audience. Jesus always refuses to talk of signs with unbelieving Jews and instead puts the impetus on them to believe in him now based on what they’ve already seen (vv. 20-21). But with the disciples, who already believe, Jesus is more forthcoming.

You call Ken ignorant and say things like, “the argument you were trying to make but didn’t know how to make.” Yet Dale Allison made the same argument, in less detail than Ken, back in 1985, writing, “as the preaching of Jesus itself made real the experience of God as king, questions concerning the time of the kingdom’s coming are misdirected (cf. Luke 17:20-21)” (Dale C. Allison Jr., The End of the Ages Has Come, p. 108).

But here’s what you had to say about Dale Allison on my blog on April 30th of this year: “If you want good, honest, Christian scholarship I heartily recommend ‘Constructing Jesus’ by Dale Allison. Once you’ve tasted the real thing you’ll be better able to detect the cheap imitation that the buffoons serve up.”

So Ken is an idiot for making the same argument that Dale Allison, whom you expressly respect and recommend, has been making for the past 27 years. Oops.

You go on:

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Circling back to my point about the Olivet discourse. We know that the spectacular visible events of Lk 21:25-28 cannot possibly refer to the imminent return of Jesus when he brings the kingdom of God (Mt 16:28 = Lk 9:27) because the latter will not take place visibly by Lk 17:20.
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For the reasons articulated above, and for other reasons, this is a horribly tenuous argument. There’s also the possibility (a possibility you, no doubt, will not entertain) that Luke himself made up this logion—that it did not originate with Jesus. Many, many scholars have argued this, as Allison discusses as well in _Constructing Jesus_, which you heartily recommend to skeptics like Ken.

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Therefore, something like the proposed alternating structure of the Olivet discourse is required in order to separate the invisible coming of the kingdom of God in Lk 21:31 from the visible return of Jesus in Lk 21:27.
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Your “therefore” hangs in mid-air like Wyle E. Coyote, holding up a sign reading, “Mother!”

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Not only this but Luke tells what it's going to look like when the righteous are gathered to Abraham's side in the kingdom of God while the wicked are punished in Sheol in his story of

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:03:10 am

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Not only this but Luke tells what it's going to look like when the righteous are gathered to Abraham's side in the kingdom of God while the wicked are punished in Sheol in his story of the rich man and Lazarus Lk 16:19-31. In that story the entire process is mysterious and takes place invisibly from the perspective of those living in this world, hence could not have been inaugurated by the worldwide destruction of Lk 21:25-28.
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This is a horrible reading of the Lazarus parable, not to mention the fact that this parable takes place in time prior to the final judgment, where obviously where people went when they died was invisible to those who remained alive. But of course, making a statement about the visibility or invisibility of judgment is not at all the point of the parable, which is actually about radical reversal, a theme in Luke from the Magnificat onward. Parables aren’t expository doctrinal statements meant to be analogous point for point. Your lack of training emerges yet again.

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The thematic parallelism between the two threads in Mk 13 that I spelled out for you plus these additional theological considerations derived from Luke are so compelling as to demand assent.
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I’ll phone Dale Allison and let him know that his assent is now demanded.

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Your accusation of eisegesis in my handling of Mk 9:1 is unfounded, the verse says, "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power." The expression is awkwardly worded which is why your brain is automatically substituting "until" with "before;" however, if you follow the logic of the verse using the literal definition of "until" you will find that it says exactly what I said it does. Namely, that some disciples of Jesus will not taste death until [the moment] they see the kingdom of God after it [has already] come, the moment they taste death and the moment they see the kingdom are the same moment. And not only that but these disciples see the kingdom after it has already come following their deaths, which is the same scenario that Luke describes as happening to Lazarus in Lk 16:19-31 where Lazarus gets to join Abraham in a kingdom that has already come following his death. Its the same theology throughout the gospels again and again, Jesus returns to bring the kingdom invisibly and his disciples enter into that kingdom following their deaths (see also Jn 21:22-23, the beloved disciple gets to live until the return of Jesus but that doesn't mean that he won't die a natural death).
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This is not how Paul understood it:

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For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. (1 Thess 4:15-17)
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Paul obviously believed that those who lived until the end would be alive when they were taken up into heavens to be with the Lord “forever.” This is clear against in 1 Cor 15:51-52:

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Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
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It doesn’t get any clearer than that. “We will not all die.” “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we [i.e., the living] will be changed.” So Paul, at least, disagrees with you on how to understand Jesus’ teaching. And take my word for it, he’s not the only one. Your idiosyncratic interpretation is, at best, humorous.

“Until” (heos) often had loose usage. For instance, in Matthew 26:36, Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while [heos] I go over there and pray.” “Literally” his disciples should have sat there until he had gone over to pray. But what he meant was for them to remain there until he had finished praying. If they were as pedantic as you, they could have left while he was praying and claimed they were being obedient. It’s a juvenile hermeneutic. Equally, Mark 12:36: “Sit at my right hand until [heos] I put your enemies beneath your feet.” Does that mean that after God had put the Lord’s enemies beneath his feet, he would no longer have the invitation to sit at God’s right hand? His sitting at God’s right hand does not end after the defeat of his enemies any more than the surviving disciples “not tasting death” does not end after the Son of Man ha

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:03:53 am

“Until” (heos) often had loose usage. For instance, in Matthew 26:36, Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while [heos] I go over there and pray.” “Literally” his disciples should have sat there until he had gone over to pray. But what he meant was for them to remain there until he had finished praying. If they were as pedantic as you, they could have left while he was praying and claimed they were being obedient. It’s a juvenile hermeneutic. Equally, Mark 12:36: “Sit at my right hand until [heos] I put your enemies beneath your feet.” Does that mean that after God had put the Lord’s enemies beneath his feet, he would no longer have the invitation to sit at God’s right hand? His sitting at God’s right hand does not end after the defeat of his enemies any more than the surviving disciples “not tasting death” does not end after the Son of Man has come with power, as Paul clearly argues in multiple letters. You have this convoluted system of interpretation that doesn’t fit within broader apolcayptic Judaism, nor within Pauline apocalypticism, nor within the apocalypticism of the Gospels. You preterists simply trade in apologetic anachronism.

You continue:

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My argument for an earlier date of Luke-Acts was admittedly an argument based on silence and therefore must be considered a weak one. Honestly, it's impossible to date Luke-Acts with any real confidence and it's not as if the date is all that important anyway.
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“Not as if the date is all that important anyway.” Should we allow you to get away with this? You should that Ken’s “proposed historical reconstruction about what’s going on with Lk 21:5-36 is based on no evidence whatsoever. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that Luke-Acts was probably written at least several years before 70 CE!” When Ken destroyed your argument for this dating, you responded that the dating wasn’t important, apparently forgetting that it’s the first reason you cited to support your claim that Ken’s reconstruction (i.e., that of the consensus of scholars) is “based on no evidence whatsoever.” The fact is, the majority of scholars date Acts to the last decade of the first century or first decade of the second.

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I'm well aware of that interpretation of the thousand years of Rev 20, but I never thought I'd meet anyone who actually believed it!
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Apparently indicating the paucity of your familiarity with critical scholarship.

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The real origin behind the thousand years is that the time in which the saints reign with Christ is synonymous with the time of eschatological judgment (i.e. the day of judgment), remember the righteous enter the kingdom following judgment (Mt 25:31-46).
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This last claim has already been shown to assume a false dichotomy.

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However, the author of Revelation also knew that the day of judgment would last for a long time so he represented that length by a thousand years echoing the language in Ps 90:4.
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This is almost too ridiculous to respond to. A “day” of judgment that lasts one thousand years. There is no parallel for this idea of an incredibly long period of judgment anywhere in apocalyptic Judaism.

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Moreover, the author of Revelation was evidently not the only person to use the expression to denote a long stretch of time as it is also used in this way in 2 Pet 3:8.
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The author of the pseudonymous 2 Peter was not using a thousand years to refer to a period of extended judgment. There is a distinction between the binding of Satan and the judgment of Satan. The judgment happens after the binding and short-term loosing. The judgment is quick. The period of the binding is a period in which the people of God have authority over Satan prior to his ultimate defeat.

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There can be no doubt, the thousand years in Rev 20 is a reference to the fact that the day of judgment will last a long time, your 1000 = 10 x 10 x 10 means completion cubed interpretation is nonsensical.
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It is not “nonsensical” at all, except perhaps to those who don’t understand apocalyptic numerology, as you have displayed here and in another discussion with me on my own blog is the case with you. The number of the beast in Revelation is a pure example that numbers often had meanings having nothing to do with their numerical values. 666/616 both mean Caesar Nero. 10 is a common number in apocalyptic for completion, and multiplying numbers to the power of 3 serves to amplify their meaning. Both Richard Bauckham and Adela Yarbro Collins, among many others, argue that to take the “thousand years” as a “long period of time” is to miss the point. It is figurative, and what it figures is the righteousness of the martyrs who have died and

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 11:04:29 am

It is not “nonsensical” at all, except perhaps to those who don’t understand apocalyptic numerology, as you have displayed here and in another discussion with me on my own blog is the case with you. The number of the beast in Revelation is a pure example that numbers often had meanings having nothing to do with their numerical values. 666/616 both mean Caesar Nero. 10 is a common number in apocalyptic for completion, and multiplying numbers to the power of 3 serves to amplify their meaning. Both Richard Bauckham and Adela Yarbro Collins, among many others, argue that to take the “thousand years” as a “long period of time” is to miss the point. It is figurative, and what it figures is the righteousness of the martyrs who have died and are dying. “This vision interprets the beatitude spoken in the vision of the three angels [14:13]. . . . The vision of the thousand year reign shows in a figurative way what it means to say that ‘their deeds follow them.’ It is doubtful that this vision ought to be read as a forecast of particular, historical events. It is much too vague and impressionistic for that sort of reading. Rather, it is a story told to shape the present. It claims that what seems to be defeat—submitting to a violent death for the faith—is really victory” (Adela Yarbro Collins, The Apocalypse, p. 140). The 10-to-the-power-of-3 years reflects the culmination of the interim period between the first coming of Christ and the final judgment. It means, “the time is complete.” Standard apocalyptic fare. At any rate, what the millennium envisions, if taken literally, does not comport with a post-millennial eschatology such as the one you seem to hold. To equate the present reality with the thousand year reign on a literal reading is simply delusional.

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With respect to the world of biblical criticism, my advice is that you stay away from it. It's obvious to me you don't know how to sift the wheat from the chaff and there's a lot of chaff in this area of research as nothing distorts the objectivity of Western scholars like Christianity (think about it). People like you can't see through the holes in Stark's book because you never learned how to think critically in the first place, perhaps the most telling feature of your own book was your admission in the preface how you were influenced by thinkers whose criticism were anachronistic when they weren't fallacious (i.e. Paine and Ingersoll) as well as a punchy pseudo-scholar (i.e. Price). Also, citing a textual critic like Ehrman on matters pertaining to the historical Jesus instead of a scholar who actually specialized in that area, it was obvious to me you had no idea what you were doing in your investigation of Christianity. Finally, that you seem somewhat peeved by my instance that you consider a minority eschatological perspective on the soon return of Jesus also tells me that you aren't much an intellectual, so why read critical scholarship if you don't have much of an appetite for getting down into the messy details of these arguments? If you're just reading this stuff so as to parrot other people's criticisms that lay evangelicals have no answer for then I have to wonder what the purpose of that is.

Anyway, I'm an academic with a wife and kid and life of my own and so can't spend too much more time here assaulting everyone with my intellect. Please take what I said to heart, I mean the best for you. See you on the other side, brother.
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While I agree that Price is not a reputable scholar, all you’ve shown here is that you’re an anonymous, condescending asshole. Ehrman and Allison (the latter of whom you recommend) agree by and large on precisely these issues, as do I with them. You recommend Allison as an honest scholar while dismissing me for arguing Allison’s position. The holes you think you see in my arguments are more likely just holes in your education, or holes in your worldview.

When Ken pushes back against your poor arguments, you get all personal and arrogant. Your judgment is not to be trusted, nor is your overconfidence to be taken seriously.

That said, you’re not an idiot, and I like you. I just don’t like the way you’re talking to Ken, and the way you’re framing your arguments as unassailable, which is just a little bit nuts, but I like you based on previous engagements.

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 09:02:02 am

Thom Stark

6/11/2012 11:05:21 am

Ignore this sub-thread. It's a duplicate posted in the wrong place.

6/11/2012 11:11:55 am

Thom,

I love you too, I think you're a great guy in your own way. But let's be honest, a guy who writes with your kind of rhetoric is not offended by the sorts of criticisms I gave Ken.

First of all, what I meant by the assertion that you heavily moderate the comments over at your blog is that comments at your blog don't appear until after you (or perhaps someone else) personally approves them, which means that in practice sometimes comments don't appear until hours after they were originally submitted and there's always the potential that you will cutoff the discussion when you think it should end rather than letting it end naturally. Ergo, the kind of back-and-forth that I was able to enjoy at this blog in the space of a few days would require at least a couple weeks at your blog and would almost certainly be accompanied by threats from you to end the discussion if it got too long in the tooth (as this one has). And while you've never denied me a comment at your blog that I can remember I feel that this way of running a blog and the discussions it generates is rather heavy handed. You may disagree, but that's how I see it.

For the sake of brevity and readability, I will try to ignore your rhetoric inasmuch as possible and not quote you at length as you did me and others you referenced.

(1) You said, "And pointing out that this prophecy that the Gospel would be taken to all nations isn’t fulfilled to the letter is not a valid argument against the consensus position."

The point is that the early Jesus movement thought that the many oracles in the OT about peoples from every nation participating in the salvation of Yahweh would be fulfilled at least in part by making disciples of all the nations. Now, we know that 1st century Jews knew about the existence of a pretty large chunk of this planet (as I mentioned earlier to Ken) and so it seems very unlikely that they would expect to thoroughly evangelize planet within the space of a generation and especially in light of the fact that they didn't expect to thoroughly evangelize Judea before the return of Jesus (Mt 10:23). Therefore, it seems very unlikely that they would expect to do just that before the end of a single generation contrary to what you said above. Your dismissal of this point is not convincing.

Moreover, I don't care if I'm in the minority in thinking this way. People who try to align their thinking with the latest version of the majority consensus are invariably wrong about a lot of things and usually don't learn how to think for themselves very well. I don't evaluate my thoughts in this way and that is partly why my thinking is so idiosyncratic, which is one of the consequences of thinking for yourself.

(2) You said, "The text does not imply that they will be persecuted by all nations." The text says that the disciples of Jesus will be persecuted even as they spread the gospel to all the nations, so I'm just putting two and two together here.

(3) As you know, the tribulation described in Mk 13:19-20 is supposed to come right before the visible return of Jesus in vv 24-27. The eschatological pattern of the OT is that a brief period of intense tribulation always precedes the salvation of Yahweh (if I remember right you said as much in your book). However, seeing as how the tribulation described in vv 19-20 threatens the very existence of the elect, who were supposed to exist in all the nations shortly thereafter in vv 24-27, we can conclude that tribulation described in vv 19-20 must be worldwide in scope. I'm just following the logic of the text.

(4) You said, "These two claims are not mutually exclusive...Saying that no one knows the day or hour of the visible return is not incongruous with the prediction that it would take place within one generation. " I never said they were.

(5) You said, "And here is where the 'birth pangs' of verse 8 are important. We know how long a full term pregnancy lasts: 40 weeks" Therefore, what exactly? If you're suggesting that 40 weeks = 40 years then I would dismiss such a connection as being very unlikely.

You also said, "But we don’t know the precise day or hour the baby will come...But we don’t know the precise day or hour the new world will arrive." I agree with you about this connection.

(6) You said, "Your ABAB pattern is entirely imagined and is belied by the text itself." No it isn't, it's right there in the text itself, the thematic parallelism couldn't be more clear, you just refuse to recognize it. Of course, I can't make you recognize it in the comments but I would advise everyone following this conversation to copy a version of Mk 13 into their favorite word processor and see if the oracle doesn't unwind according to the divisions I provided.

Ken Daniels link

6/11/2012 11:19:54 am

Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your contributions. Due to the limitations of this blog site (comment length limitations, poor nesting, no html in comments, etc.), I've decided to move to a new site with a new name, "The Deconversion Oasis." It's still a work in progress, but you may continue the discussion at http://deconversionoasis.com/2012/06/11/hello-world/ , where I've copied over all the comments en masse.

6/11/2012 11:57:58 am

(continued)

(6) You said, "Your ABAB pattern is entirely imagined and is belied by the text itself." No it isn't, it's right there in the text itself, the thematic parallelism couldn't be more clear, you just refuse to recognize it. Of course, I can't make you recognize it in the comments but I would advise everyone following this conversation to copy a version of Mk 13 into their favorite word processor and see if the oracle doesn't unwind according to the divisions I provided.

(7) The Mustard Seed parables in Mk 4 and Mt 13 are principally about how the kingdom of God will start off very small but grow to become very large and therefore having no bearing on our discussion about the coming of the kingdom. In fact, if you look at the parable of the growing seed in Mk 4 and the parable of the weeds in Mk 13 you will see that citizens of the kingdom sprout up like grain before the harvest, which is when the kingdom of God comes.

The precise interpretation of Mt 12:28 = Lk 11:20 is contested but I take it as referring to the fact that the signs that Jesus is performing are proof that the kingdom of God has come near in the sense of Lk 10:9 in light of the fact that the kingdom of God is always a future reality in the gospels with the possible exception of the difficult Mt 12:28 = Lk 11:20 and Lk 17:21. Again, I could sight many different traditions in support of the fact that the kingdom of God is a future reality in both the gospels and Paul's letters. The now/not yet understanding of the kingdom is pure eisegetical fiction.

You said, "You present a false dichotomy. It’s a both/and, not an either/or." No, contrary to you Paul said that those who belong to Jesus could only enter the kingdom following their participation in the resurrection from the dead (1 Cor 15:50-53). The kingdom of God is principally a place that can only be entered via resurrection of the dead and theologically functions as the promised land of the new Israel in the last days. It would be more accurate to say that the followers of Jesus could experience some of the benefits of the last days via the indwelling the Spirit subsequent to Pentecost before the full realization of Yahweh's salvation in the last days.

(8) You said, "Your translation of [Lk 17:21] is incorrect." No, it is probably correct. It is the more unlikely translation that reads en-tos' as in the midst of/among.

(9) I found the many fanciful interpretations of Lk 17:20-21 given in Allison's Constructing Jesus to be humorous. It was one of the weaker parts of the book for me; however, there weren't many of these in his book and that's why I heartily recommend both the book and Allison's scholarship more generally.

Lk 17:20 clearly says that the future coming of the kingdom won't be visibly seen by those in this world. The linguistic and thematic parallels that exist between vv 20-21 and vv 22-24 guarantee that this is the correct reading of v 20, anything else is wishful thinking. Of course, I can't make you see the light on this either.

In fact, the NT contains a tradition of mentioning the coming of the kingdom of God and the last battle next to each other in the same way that vv 20-21 and vv 22-24 are next to each other (see also Acts 1:6-8 and 1:9-11; 1 Thess 4:15-18 and 5:1-3) perhaps having its origins in Ps 110 where the salvation of Yahweh is mentioned in vv 2-4 and the last battle is mentioned in vv 5-7.

(10) You said, "There’s also the possibility (a possibility you, no doubt, will not entertain) that Luke himself made up this logion—that it did not originate with Jesus. Many, many scholars have argued this" and I would agree with those scholars that think this. This just goes to show that you don't know me as well as you think you do.

6/11/2012 11:58:06 am

(11) You said, "This is a horrible reading of the Lazarus parable, not to mention the fact that this parable takes place in time prior to the final judgment" Not it isn't, the context of the story is clearly eschatological as the rich man is experiencing eschatological punishment in Sheol. The principal message of the story is that the arrogant rich religious leaders of Judea who sit at the top of society (cf Lk 16:14-15) are headed for punishment in Sheol because they won't listen to Moses and the Prophets while many of the poor are at the bottom of society will experience eschatological bliss with Abraham in the kingdom of God (cf. Lk 13:28-30).

Ken Daniels link

6/11/2012 12:45:49 pm

NW (and everyone else),

Sorry about the interruption, but could you post any further comments on the new site, deconversionoasis.com.

Comments are closed.

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Kenneth W. Daniels (1968-), son of evangelical missionaries, is the author of Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary. He grew up in Africa and returned as an adult to serve with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Niger on the edge of the Sahara Desert. While studying the Bible on the mission field, he came to doubt the message he had traveled across the world to bring to a nomadic camel-herding ethnic group. Though he lost his faith and as a result left Africa in 2000, he remains part of a conservative Christian family. He currently resides with his wife and three children in suburban Dallas, TX, where he works as a software developer.

Did Jesus hint he would return in the far future?

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