The Heresy of Hyper-Preterism
Full (or Hyper) Preterism states that literally all was fulfilled in AD 70. This would be little more than a bizarre curiosity if it were not a direct denial of the Christian hope. It is also appropriate to take notice of it when it begins to gain a following and cause division in the church. That has certainly been the case over the past two decades. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps most Evangelicals may still not have heard of it. However, many in the Reformed community will observe that Gary Demar, who has long held influence in circles that are committed to Postmillennialism and Theonomy, has more fully signaled his belief in the full preterist error in recent months. Equally noticeable are the forms his arguments take, which are not new to the movement. They tend to float back and forth between conflating the “possible” in interpreting texts in isolation with what is demonstrable given the full range of relevant texts.
Joined at the hip with this age-old pitting of biblical and systematic methods against each other, are the even more tiresome attacks on the orthodox position as credal-not-scriptural, when no one of significance has ever argued that the orthodox eschatology is either 1. exhaustively stated in the Creeds, much less 2. that we cite the Creeds in lieu of what is exegetically indemonstrable. Ordinarily those two methods of approach are foreign to the Reformed mind, but when we discover that the ringleaders of this movement came from the Restoration Movement, most immediately, the Church of Christ, the anti-credal, anti-systematic rhetoric begins to make more sense.
As a matter of fact, however, the Creeds are not cited to avoid exegesis of Scripture. They are brought in as a weighty rebuke to a particular sort of pride. Consider the implications of an insight so far reaching and yet so novel. Does the hyper-preterist really want to suggest that reality-altering hopes such as the physical return of Christ, future resurrection of our bodies, and final judgment were matters that the greatest Christian minds all either got wrong, or were at least too intellectually dishonest to challenge?
The Basics of Hyper-Preterism
Hyper-Preterism contains three basic errors, all heresies in their own right, and then issues forth into several other erroneous implications.
1. Denial of the future Second Coming. For the hyper-preterist, the parousia was past and spiritual. One of their authors, Edward E. Stevens, concisely put it: “Christ returned in AD 70!”1 They cannot be bothered by the words of Jesus (not a Creed) which say that “in like manner” He will return (Acts 1:11).
2. Denial of the future bodily resurrection. The resurrection is translated into an utterly spiritual rising in which the Christian is translated into a paradise parallel to our space-time continuum, but for that reason, one which does not require a final event in ours. Once again, our Lord’s words fall on their deaf ears, when He prophecies, “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out” (Jn. 5:28-29).
3. Denial of the future final judgment. The hyper-preterist sees the judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70 as the only judgment that is ever meant in the New Testament prophecies. The closing of any age mentioned is the close of the Jewish age. Again, the end of that verse in John 5:29 reproves him. Why are those bodies reunited to their souls on that singular day? Jesus tells us plainly: “those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
There are other implications of their teaching. I mentioned that in the place of a future resurrected body, they put a spiritually resurrected body at death. Naturally they lean heavily on Paul’s very mysterious teaching in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. They want to inflate phrases such as “heavenly bodies” (v. 40) and “spiritual body” (v. 44), and “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (v. 45), and “what you sow is not the body that is to be” (v. 37).
It all becomes less mysterious for anyone who bothers to read the beginning and then the rest of the chapter. Paul sets this “other kind” of body in the context of a glorified, perfected, incorruptible body. Grace perfects nature. It does not replace it with un-nature.
The words “nature” and “not” and so forth are relative. But it is the wider context that relativizes such words, not our own speculations. As always, the less clear must be interpreted in light of the more clear.
Additionally, hell is also transferred to the judgment of AD 70 for the hyper-preterist. The devil was said to be cast in hell in the same generation. Not too coincidentally, the Trinity and the present ministry of the Holy Spirit are both called into question. And since there can be no hint of a future hope in those aforementioned doctrines, hyper-preterism demands that all of the New Testament books were written before 70 AD.
Refutation as a Matter of History
Granted that the hyper-preterist will not consult the Creeds. But if their view is correct, we would expect to find the earliest Christian writings to have retained the apostolic teaching on the matter. In fact, those earliest writers wrote about the most main and plain expectations about the future with some frequency. Across the board, these statements make the second coming, future resurrection, and final judgment of ultimate importance.
Clement of Rome, in his epistle to the Corinthians, usually called 1 Clement (85-95 AD), says, “Let us consider, beloved, how the Master continually proves to us that there will be a future resurrection”2—and then he goes on to cite the works of providence such as cycles in agriculture and astronomy, but which he links to Paul’s metaphor of firstfruits in 1 Corinthians 15:20, 23. He mentions the resurrection in passing, with proof texts, also in 26.1, 42.3, and 50.3, which certainly gives evidence that there would have been no controversy about it as a matter of fact. Nor can anyone say that Clement wrote before 70 AD, since he speaks of Paul and Peter’s martyrdom as far back in his past (5.1, 6.1-3, 44.1-3) and the Corinthian church as “ancient” (47.6).
Hegesippus, writing in the second century, speaks of the grandsons of Jude, being persecuted by Domitian who was attempting to rid his empire of any last Jewish influence. In the process of being questioned about the nature of the kingdom of this Galilean Jew, the two explained to their inquisitors that, “it would be at the end of the world, when he would come in glory to judge the living and the dead and to reward every man according to his deeds.”3
Two statements of The Didache echo words of the Olivet Discourse but clearly apply it to the end of the world: “Gather [the church] … from the four winds to thy kingdom (10.5) … and let this world pass away” (10.6). Then, “be ready … for ye know not ‘the hour in which our Lord cometh’” (16.1), and then directly following, a series of phrases almost identical to concepts in Matthew 24, concerning false teachers, lawlessness increasing, an antichrist, a great tribulation or “fiery trial,” signs in the heavens, with those enduring to the end being saved, while Christ Himself comes on the clouds of heaven. Again, all of this is directed to the future end of the age. The same basic elements are found in the Shepherd of Hermas, usually dated around the middle of the second century.
Ignatius, writing his epistles between the years 98 and 117, says, “These are the last times,” and speaks of hell as “unquenchable fire” awaiting heretics, and then finally the link between Christ’s resurrection and ours—He was “truly raised from the dead …when his Father raised him up, as in the same manner his Father shall raise up … in Christ Jesus us [2 Cor. 4:14] who believe in him, without whom we have no true life.”4
Polycarp, writing in that same decade (107-117) to the Philippians, spoke of Christ as coming to judge the living and the dead, and that “he who raised him … will also raise us up” (2.1). Again, “he promised to raise us from the dead” (5.2). But perhaps most pointedly, he takes on this very error: “whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord for his own lusts, and says that there is neither resurrection nor judgment,—this man is the first-born of Satan” (7.1). As Charles Hill wrote, “his significance increases greatly if Irenaeus, one of Polycarp’s own pupils, is correct in saying that Polycarp was a hearer of the apostle John.”5
Then Hill gives the summary argument from history:
“Can we really believe that all these New Testament authors were unable to secure the transmission of their basic eschatological teaching to the next generation, leaving these teachings to vanish without a trace? Can we really believe that it remained for someone in the late nineteenth or twentieth century to rediscover the core of New Testament eschatology?”6
Concluding Thoughts on Why This is Heresy
It will be objected that it is simply a disagreement over the nature and time of the resurrection, not whether or not there is one. However this just begs the question on whether one kind of a “resurrection” is a resurrection at all in any sense that the Bible means it. As Gentry well says, “Written in a manner that emphasizes the historic, corporeal nature of key redemptive events, the public creeds move seamlessly from the physical resurrection of Christ to the physical resurrection of believers. No amount of special pleading—e.g., we just disagree with the ‘nature’ and ‘timing’ of the resurrection—can overturn the stubborn fact that historic, orthodox Christianity has always held to a future, physical resurrection.”7
Elsewhere, Gentry sets forth six points that are worth noting in conclusion: “Were it not for the second advent:
We would have a creation (Ge 1:1; Heb 11:3) without a consummation (Ac 3:20-21; Rev 20:11), resulting in an open-ended Universe (1 Co 15:23-24; 2 Pe 3:3-4).
We would have a world eternally groaning (Ro 8:22; 2 Co 5:1-4), without any glorious resolution (Ro 8:21; 2 Pe 3:12-13).
We would have a Savior quietly departing before his followers (Lk 24:50-52; 1 Co 15:5-8), without ever enjoying a victorious exhibition before his world (Ro 14:11; Php 2:10-11).
We would have a redemption spiritually focused (Ro 8:10; Eph 1:3), without a physical dimension (Ro 8:11; 1 Th 4:13-18).
We would have a Redeemer bodily ascended into heaven (Ac 1:8-11; Col 2:9), without any physical family joining with him (1 Co 15:20-28; Php 3:20-21).
We would have a gospel continually necessary (Mt 28:19; Ac 1:8), without any final victory (Mt 28:20; 1 Co 15:24)—the number of the elect would never be filled.”8
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1. Edward E. Stevens, What Happened in AD 70? (Bradford, PA: Kingdom Publications, 1997), 5.
2. Clement 24.1, cited by Charles Hill in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 65.
3. Hegesippus cited by Hill in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 67.
4. Ignatius cited by Hill in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 72, 73.
5. Hill in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 75.
6. Hill in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 107.
7. Gentry, in Mathison, ed., When Shall These Things Be? 31.
8. Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion, 3.
