A Proleptic View of the Kingdom of God
The term prolepsis signifies the rhetorical/literary device of referring to a future event as if it had already occurred and, therefore, exists as a present condition; as such, it expresses anticipation and assurance regarding that future event. (As when one is invited to a party and says, “I’m there,” or when a soon-to-be executed prisoner is referred to as a “dead man walking.”) While scholars and serious students of the Bible recognize prolepsis as a biblical figure of speech, I am persuaded that too few realize how frequently it appears in the biblical writings and how central it is to the biblical message.
A consideration of the biblical definition of "faith" reveals that Christian faith is a proleptic concept:
"Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). (The objective renderings "reality" and "evidence" are better translations of the Greek terms hypostasis and elenchos, respectively, than are the typical subjective renderings of English NT versions, "assurance" and "conviction," according to the original-language resources I have consulted.)
The proleptic feature of biblical faith is that the biblical message itself ("the word of Christ," which is the object and content of faith, according to Rom. 10:17) is the present “reality” of the future events that the message (and, therefore, that Christian faith) anticipates. Those future events are the "things hoped for" and, therefore (because they have not yet occurred), the "things not seen." So, to speak believingly is to speak about those future events--specifically, the parousia (i.e., the future coming) of the risen Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment, and the coming of God’s kingdom--as if they had already occurred and, therefore, are a present “reality.” A reality, then, not of fact but of faith in that though they have not yet occurred (are not yet a matter of observable fact), they are predestined to occur by the purpose of God, who has revealed his purpose in his promise to Abraham (see Gen. 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18; Rom. 4:13; Gal. 3:8). (The biblical, as opposed to the Calvinistic, meaning of predestination is that what God has promised is, for that very reason, predestined to occur.) Which is also to say that these "things" are a matter of God’s foreknowledge in that God knows that what he has purposed and promised will inevitably
occur. (Biblical foreknowledge, like biblical predestination, is simply the prophetic revelation of God's promised future.) What God has promised, then, is a present reality of faith (visible only to the eyes of faith) and will be a future reality of fact (visible to all inhabitants of earth).
To speak faithfully (i.e., believingly), then, is always to speak proleptically, that is, to speak of God's promised future (revealed in the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom of God) as if it had already occurred and is, therefore, a present "reality.” This “reality” is, once again, the biblical message itself, which Paul calls “the word of faith” (Rom. 10:8) because it constitutes what is believed: God’s promise of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God, already fulfilled in the experience of Jesus himself. God’s promise (“the word of faith”) is the "reality” of what God has promised because God is faithful (which is the biblical definition of the righteousness of God).
The proleptic feature of biblical faith is also revealed in Paul's reference to the God "whom [Abraham] believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were" (Rom. 4:17). In this case, “the dead” to whom God “gives life” is not singular but plural (Greek, nekrous, lit., “the dead ones”) and, therefore, God’s activity of giving-life-to-the-dead refers to the future resurrection of the dead to everlasting life in the kingdom of God. Which is to say that God now “gives life to the dead” as a matter of promise, to be fulfilled and, therefore, experienced by “the dead” when the risen Jesus (whose resurrection anticipates and assures the resurrection of the dead) comes to raise the dead, judge the world, and bring God’s kingdom.
God’s gift of salvation, then, is given in the form of promise: God’s grace is the promise of life in the age to come, assured by the forgiveness of sins which has been accomplished through Jesus’ death on the cross, offered to all and given to believers in the biblical word of promise. Jesus’ resurrection is itself, then, the past event which allows the future resurrection of the dead to be spoken of proleptically, that is, spoken of as if it had already occurred and is, therefore, a present reality (see Eph. 2:4-7). Likewise, Jesus’ proclamation of the good news of the kingdom allows the kingdom of God to be spoken of proleptically, as if present, as indeed it is a present reality of faith.
In conjunction with “giv[ing] life to the dead,” God "calls things that are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17), which is the very definition of prolepsis: To speak of future events as having already occurred and, therefore, as if they were a present reality is to call “things that are not [yet] as though they were.” (I am quoting from the NIV because, in this case, its rendering is closer to the original language--which even more literally says, “calls things not being as being”--than are the renderings of typically more literal versions, such as the NASB, which says, “and calls into being that which does not exist.”) That is, the “things that are not” (Rom. 4:17) are the same as the “things hoped for” and, therefore, “not seen” (Heb. 11:1). And because “faith” is the “reality” and “evidence” of those promised “things,” to believe is to call those “things” as God calls them: To speak the word of God is to call “the not [yet] being as being,” that is, to speak of God’s promised future as a present reality. Through faith in the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom (i.e., “the word”), God's promised future is present--real and evident--in the mind and heart and life of each member of the community of Christian faith. The “reality” and “evidence” (Heb. 11:1) of God’s promised future--the kingdom of God--is the power of “faith” that transforms Christian lives from the inside out: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).
Paul’s reference to God’s promise to Abraham accords with this interpretation: "As it is written: 'I have made you a father of many nations'," (Rom. 4:17a). God “made [Abraham] a father of many nations” by means of the promise to give Abraham a son, through whom God would make of Abraham a great nation, through which God would bless all nations (see Gen. 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18). God called Abraham, hundreds of years before these words became a reality of fact, to believe the promise (the fulfillment of which Abraham would not see in his lifetime) and, therefore, to consider himself "a father of many nations." That Abraham did so, through faith in God’s promise, was his “righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6).
While not a reality of fact at the time it was made, God's promise constituted a reality of faith for Abraham. This is another way of saying that faith in God’s promise made hope a life-transforming “reality” for Abraham: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations . . .” (Rom. 4:18). The essence of Abrahamic (and, therefore, Christian) faith is that “he was fully persuaded that God was able to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:21), and so, “it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:22).
As Paul says, “the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also” (Rom. 4:23-24), in that our righteousness, like Abraham’s, comes through having believed--and continuing to believe--God’s word of promise (which the NT writers call "the gospel," that is, "the good news of the kingdom of God," Luke 4:43). This is the faith, the confession of which refers proleptically to the promised “things hoped for” and “not seen” as if they have already occurred and, therefore, are a present reality. And this faith makes God's promise--the Christian hope of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God--as it was for Abraham, a life-transforming “reality” (i.e., power) in the community of Christian faith, both individually and collectively.
Christians can speak of the kingdom of God as present and of themselves as having entered therein because God’s promise makes this hope a reality of faith. When the risen Jesus comes with the kingdom, God’s promise will be fulfilled, and that reality of faith--evident now only to the eyes of faith, which alone "see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3)--will become a reality of fact, evident to, because observable by, all the inhabitants of the earth.
The reason the proleptic feature of Christian faith has been so little understood and, therefore, so little applied to biblical interpretation by ecclesiastical Christianity is that ever since the Hellenization of (that is, the imposition of Neo-Platonic philosophy on) the Christian tradition by the post-apostolic “Church Fathers” and their successors, realities of faith have been perceived as existing not proleptically but literally, in the present. These ecclesiastical realities of faith are “not seen” not because they are “hoped for” (Heb. 11:1) and, thus, have not yet arrived, but because they are believed to exist in an invisible, eternal world that transcends this visible, temporal world (a worldview, unbeknownst to most Christians, having come from Plato rather than from Moses and/or Jesus). Included among these supposedly invisible, eternal realities of faith are the immortal souls that indwell the mortal bodies of the living, as well as the immortal, disembodied souls of the dead, who have supposedly ascended to everlasting, ineffable bliss in Heaven or descended into unending, conscious torment in Hell (a word and a concept appearing nowhere in the original language of the Bible). Which is to say that, in ecclesiastical terms, the non-observable realities of faith of the invisible, eternal world are supposed to exist at the same time as the realities of fact that are observable in the visible, temporal world.
By comparison, the biblical realities of faith are the “things hoped for” and, therefore, “not seen” (Heb. 11:1). That is, they are the eschatological (from Greek, eschatos, lit., last) things of the coming age of righteousness and life: the parousia of the risen Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment, and the kingdom of God. These “things” are promised by God in the biblical message of Jesus and the coming of God's kingdom. As realities of faith, they are, at the present time, proleptic “things.” Nevertheless, the fact that they have yet to occur makes them no less real--that is, powerful--in the lives of Christians. They are as real as God’s word of promise, the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God, which Paul calls “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes . . .” (Rom. 1:16). They are as real as God’s “Spirit” (Greek, pneuma, literally, breath, the biblical metaphor that represents God's presence and power in the form of the gospel), through which God has revealed these “things” (1 Cor. 2:9-13) and through which God empowers the lives of those in whose minds and hearts dwell the Christian hope of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God: “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).
This proleptic view of the kingdom of God accords with the biblical texts that refer to the presence of the kingdom (e.g., Matt. 13:38, 41; Col. 1:13) as well as with those that refer to the futurity of the kingdom (e.g., Matt. 13:43; 1 Cor. 6:9; 15:24). The kingdom of God is primarily eschatological (not ecclesiastical, as it was for St. Augustine, who began the ecclesiastical tradition of equating "the Church" with the kingdom of God on earth) in that the kingdom of God will be a coming-age reality of fact, even as it now constitutes the Christian hope of salvation. Nevertheless, the kingdom of God is, for that very reason, a present-age reality of faith, existing in the form of the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom, as it is believed, empowering the minds and hearts and lives of Christians, who consider themselves, through faith, to be citizens of the kingdom of God even as they anticipate its coming at the end of the age with the parousia of the risen Jesus.
A consideration of the biblical definition of "faith" reveals that Christian faith is a proleptic concept:
"Now faith is the reality of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). (The objective renderings "reality" and "evidence" are better translations of the Greek terms hypostasis and elenchos, respectively, than are the typical subjective renderings of English NT versions, "assurance" and "conviction," according to the original-language resources I have consulted.)
The proleptic feature of biblical faith is that the biblical message itself ("the word of Christ," which is the object and content of faith, according to Rom. 10:17) is the present “reality” of the future events that the message (and, therefore, that Christian faith) anticipates. Those future events are the "things hoped for" and, therefore (because they have not yet occurred), the "things not seen." So, to speak believingly is to speak about those future events--specifically, the parousia (i.e., the future coming) of the risen Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment, and the coming of God’s kingdom--as if they had already occurred and, therefore, are a present “reality.” A reality, then, not of fact but of faith in that though they have not yet occurred (are not yet a matter of observable fact), they are predestined to occur by the purpose of God, who has revealed his purpose in his promise to Abraham (see Gen. 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18; Rom. 4:13; Gal. 3:8). (The biblical, as opposed to the Calvinistic, meaning of predestination is that what God has promised is, for that very reason, predestined to occur.) Which is also to say that these "things" are a matter of God’s foreknowledge in that God knows that what he has purposed and promised will inevitably
occur. (Biblical foreknowledge, like biblical predestination, is simply the prophetic revelation of God's promised future.) What God has promised, then, is a present reality of faith (visible only to the eyes of faith) and will be a future reality of fact (visible to all inhabitants of earth).
To speak faithfully (i.e., believingly), then, is always to speak proleptically, that is, to speak of God's promised future (revealed in the biblical message of Jesus and the kingdom of God) as if it had already occurred and is, therefore, a present "reality.” This “reality” is, once again, the biblical message itself, which Paul calls “the word of faith” (Rom. 10:8) because it constitutes what is believed: God’s promise of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God, already fulfilled in the experience of Jesus himself. God’s promise (“the word of faith”) is the "reality” of what God has promised because God is faithful (which is the biblical definition of the righteousness of God).
The proleptic feature of biblical faith is also revealed in Paul's reference to the God "whom [Abraham] believed--the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were" (Rom. 4:17). In this case, “the dead” to whom God “gives life” is not singular but plural (Greek, nekrous, lit., “the dead ones”) and, therefore, God’s activity of giving-life-to-the-dead refers to the future resurrection of the dead to everlasting life in the kingdom of God. Which is to say that God now “gives life to the dead” as a matter of promise, to be fulfilled and, therefore, experienced by “the dead” when the risen Jesus (whose resurrection anticipates and assures the resurrection of the dead) comes to raise the dead, judge the world, and bring God’s kingdom.
God’s gift of salvation, then, is given in the form of promise: God’s grace is the promise of life in the age to come, assured by the forgiveness of sins which has been accomplished through Jesus’ death on the cross, offered to all and given to believers in the biblical word of promise. Jesus’ resurrection is itself, then, the past event which allows the future resurrection of the dead to be spoken of proleptically, that is, spoken of as if it had already occurred and is, therefore, a present reality (see Eph. 2:4-7). Likewise, Jesus’ proclamation of the good news of the kingdom allows the kingdom of God to be spoken of proleptically, as if present, as indeed it is a present reality of faith.
In conjunction with “giv[ing] life to the dead,” God "calls things that are not as though they were” (Rom. 4:17), which is the very definition of prolepsis: To speak of future events as having already occurred and, therefore, as if they were a present reality is to call “things that are not [yet] as though they were.” (I am quoting from the NIV because, in this case, its rendering is closer to the original language--which even more literally says, “calls things not being as being”--than are the renderings of typically more literal versions, such as the NASB, which says, “and calls into being that which does not exist.”) That is, the “things that are not” (Rom. 4:17) are the same as the “things hoped for” and, therefore, “not seen” (Heb. 11:1). And because “faith” is the “reality” and “evidence” of those promised “things,” to believe is to call those “things” as God calls them: To speak the word of God is to call “the not [yet] being as being,” that is, to speak of God’s promised future as a present reality. Through faith in the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom (i.e., “the word”), God's promised future is present--real and evident--in the mind and heart and life of each member of the community of Christian faith. The “reality” and “evidence” (Heb. 11:1) of God’s promised future--the kingdom of God--is the power of “faith” that transforms Christian lives from the inside out: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17).
Paul’s reference to God’s promise to Abraham accords with this interpretation: "As it is written: 'I have made you a father of many nations'," (Rom. 4:17a). God “made [Abraham] a father of many nations” by means of the promise to give Abraham a son, through whom God would make of Abraham a great nation, through which God would bless all nations (see Gen. 12:1-3; 15:1-6; 18:18). God called Abraham, hundreds of years before these words became a reality of fact, to believe the promise (the fulfillment of which Abraham would not see in his lifetime) and, therefore, to consider himself "a father of many nations." That Abraham did so, through faith in God’s promise, was his “righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:3; Gal. 3:6).
While not a reality of fact at the time it was made, God's promise constituted a reality of faith for Abraham. This is another way of saying that faith in God’s promise made hope a life-transforming “reality” for Abraham: “In hope he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations . . .” (Rom. 4:18). The essence of Abrahamic (and, therefore, Christian) faith is that “he was fully persuaded that God was able to do what he had promised” (Rom. 4:21), and so, “it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:22).
As Paul says, “the words ‘it was counted to him’ were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also” (Rom. 4:23-24), in that our righteousness, like Abraham’s, comes through having believed--and continuing to believe--God’s word of promise (which the NT writers call "the gospel," that is, "the good news of the kingdom of God," Luke 4:43). This is the faith, the confession of which refers proleptically to the promised “things hoped for” and “not seen” as if they have already occurred and, therefore, are a present reality. And this faith makes God's promise--the Christian hope of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God--as it was for Abraham, a life-transforming “reality” (i.e., power) in the community of Christian faith, both individually and collectively.
Christians can speak of the kingdom of God as present and of themselves as having entered therein because God’s promise makes this hope a reality of faith. When the risen Jesus comes with the kingdom, God’s promise will be fulfilled, and that reality of faith--evident now only to the eyes of faith, which alone "see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3)--will become a reality of fact, evident to, because observable by, all the inhabitants of the earth.
The reason the proleptic feature of Christian faith has been so little understood and, therefore, so little applied to biblical interpretation by ecclesiastical Christianity is that ever since the Hellenization of (that is, the imposition of Neo-Platonic philosophy on) the Christian tradition by the post-apostolic “Church Fathers” and their successors, realities of faith have been perceived as existing not proleptically but literally, in the present. These ecclesiastical realities of faith are “not seen” not because they are “hoped for” (Heb. 11:1) and, thus, have not yet arrived, but because they are believed to exist in an invisible, eternal world that transcends this visible, temporal world (a worldview, unbeknownst to most Christians, having come from Plato rather than from Moses and/or Jesus). Included among these supposedly invisible, eternal realities of faith are the immortal souls that indwell the mortal bodies of the living, as well as the immortal, disembodied souls of the dead, who have supposedly ascended to everlasting, ineffable bliss in Heaven or descended into unending, conscious torment in Hell (a word and a concept appearing nowhere in the original language of the Bible). Which is to say that, in ecclesiastical terms, the non-observable realities of faith of the invisible, eternal world are supposed to exist at the same time as the realities of fact that are observable in the visible, temporal world.
By comparison, the biblical realities of faith are the “things hoped for” and, therefore, “not seen” (Heb. 11:1). That is, they are the eschatological (from Greek, eschatos, lit., last) things of the coming age of righteousness and life: the parousia of the risen Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment, and the kingdom of God. These “things” are promised by God in the biblical message of Jesus and the coming of God's kingdom. As realities of faith, they are, at the present time, proleptic “things.” Nevertheless, the fact that they have yet to occur makes them no less real--that is, powerful--in the lives of Christians. They are as real as God’s word of promise, the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God, which Paul calls “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes . . .” (Rom. 1:16). They are as real as God’s “Spirit” (Greek, pneuma, literally, breath, the biblical metaphor that represents God's presence and power in the form of the gospel), through which God has revealed these “things” (1 Cor. 2:9-13) and through which God empowers the lives of those in whose minds and hearts dwell the Christian hope of resurrection from death to everlasting life in the kingdom of God: “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).
This proleptic view of the kingdom of God accords with the biblical texts that refer to the presence of the kingdom (e.g., Matt. 13:38, 41; Col. 1:13) as well as with those that refer to the futurity of the kingdom (e.g., Matt. 13:43; 1 Cor. 6:9; 15:24). The kingdom of God is primarily eschatological (not ecclesiastical, as it was for St. Augustine, who began the ecclesiastical tradition of equating "the Church" with the kingdom of God on earth) in that the kingdom of God will be a coming-age reality of fact, even as it now constitutes the Christian hope of salvation. Nevertheless, the kingdom of God is, for that very reason, a present-age reality of faith, existing in the form of the apostolic gospel of Jesus and the kingdom, as it is believed, empowering the minds and hearts and lives of Christians, who consider themselves, through faith, to be citizens of the kingdom of God even as they anticipate its coming at the end of the age with the parousia of the risen Jesus.
posted by Robert Hach @ 3:41 PM
51 comments
51 Comments:
Good work Robert. That's why we are told that we are already in the heavens seated with Yahhsuha at the right of the the Father.
peace
Robert Roberg
There is MUCH that could be said here but I do not have time. I will say though that you obviously have not spent much time studying Calvin's predestination.
Romans 9:10-18
10 Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God's purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls—she was told, "The older will serve the younger." 13 Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
Kevin,
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
You wrote:
"There is MUCH that could be said here but I do not have time. I will say though that you obviously have not spent much time studying Calvin's predestination."
I infer from your comment that you are addressing my definition of biblical predestination as referring exclusively to what God the Father purposed in the beginning and promised through the prophets regarding the Son.
I am not an expert on Calvinistic predestination, but I am conversant with the five points of Calvinism identified by the acronym TULIP: Total depravity; Unconditional election; Limited atonement; Irresistable grace; and Perseverance of the saints.
I believe that I understand Calvinistic predestination. I simply disagree that it correctly interprets the testimony of the biblical writers.
In regard to Romans 9:10-13:
10 Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. 11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad?in order that God's purpose in election might stand: 12 not by works but by him who calls?she was told, "The older will serve the younger." 13 Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
My interpretation:
God's choosing of Jacob rather than Esau to be in the line of promise from Abraham, the Patriarch, to Jesus, the Messiah ("Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated") was part of God's original purpose to bring the Son into the world. Paul's argument is that God's choice of Jacob over Esau had nothing to do with their "works" but was a matter of God's sovereign will, or "purpose in election."
Therefore, his choosing of Jacob qualifies as a case of God's having predestined Jacob to be in the line of promise from Abraham to Jesus as a part of the fulfillment of his original purpose. It is not an example of God's having predestined anyone to be saved or lost, or of anything outside of God's purpose and promise.
In regard to Rom. 9:14-18:
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16 It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. 17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth." 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
My interpretation:
Likewise, God predestined Pharaoh's role in the exodus according to his original purpose and Abrahamic promise to make of Abraham a great nation, through which God would ultimately bless all nations (Gen. 12:1-3; 18:18). God fulfilled his purpose and promise through Pharaoh by delivering the Israelites from Egypt and, thereby, making of Abraham a great nation through which God's "name might be proclaimed in all the earth."
Further, God hardened Pharaoh's heart by means of "the word" that Moses spoke to Pharaoh, whose pride in his own sovereignty would not allow him to submit to the sovereignty of God expressed in "the word of God" spoken by Moses.
Again, therefore, God's hardening of Pharaoh was for the purpose of fulfilling his original purpose and Abrahamic promise, which would reach its ultimate fulfillment in the proclamation, crucifixion, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.
Neither of Paul's examples (Jacob nor Pharaoh) are intended to illustrate that God predestines all the occurs, or who will be saved and who will be lost, except to say that God predestines that all will be saved in Christ, which means that those who believe the NT gospel will be saved and those who disbelieve will be lost. Individuals are free to choose.
In my view, the most egregious error of Calvinism is the assumption that since God is sovereign, all that occurs must be purposed by God.
Calvin failed to understand that God's sovereign will is that human beings be free to choose to believe "the word" or not, free to love their Creator or not, free to accept or reject the hope of salvation. All that occurs is God's will in the sense that God's sovereign will both purposes and permits. God's purposive will was expressed in his promise to give Abraham a son, through whom God promised to make of Abraham a great nation, through which God promised to bless all nations. God predestined this to occur and brought it to fulfillment in Christ because of his love for his human creation.
All else that has occurred, does occur and will occur is a matter of God's permissive will. God permits human unbelief and evil because his sovereign will includes his desire for the exercise of human freedom. How else can humans grow into maturity except through the exercise of freedom.
Granted, this is my interpretation of biblical predestination just as Calvinism may be yours. The question is which interpretation is more consistent with the testimony of the biblical writers.
I hope you'll feel free to comment further on this or other posts on this blog.
Robert
I have just found your blog and have read a couple of the articles. Have you studied the eschatological view called preterism? If so, what are your thoughts on it?
Thanks, Jay
Jay,
My opinion of preterism is that it constitutes a rejection of the hope of resurrection from death to life in the kingdom of God when it arrives at the end of the present age. Preterism spiritualizes resurrection by claiming that the resurrection of the dead (along with the day of judgment and the arrival of the kingdom of God) occurred at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. This belief breaks the inseparable union of the literal resurrection of Jesus with the literal resurrection of the dead (see 1 Corinthians 15), perverting the Christian hope of a future resurrection to life in the kingdom into the ecclesiastical substitute borrowed from Platonism: the ascension of the immortal soul to a heavenly afterlife. While I believe the destruction of Jerusalem was a biblically significant event, I think that preterism inflates its significance far beyond anything the NT writers say.
Hi Robert,
What sources have you used in writing this blog, and who would you recommend for further reading on prolepsis?
thx,
John.
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