Mr. Johnson finds himself in the same place that all orthodox preterists do, namely, having to figure out why Paul mentioned what on the surface seemed to be a incidental timing mistake, and yet became ballistic over that mistake. The orthodox for centuries have assumed that the implication of that timing mistake was that Hymenaeus and Philetus were asserting that since the "resurrection" had already come (either some sort of gnostic-spiritual resurrection, or the partial physical resurrection mentioned in Matt 27:52-53), they were obviously implying there wasn't going to be another physical one at the end of time, and since Paul held the end-of-time resurrection to be such an important doctrine, he unloaded on them. However, Mr. Johnson says that the timing mistake made by Hymenaeus and Philetus implied some other dangerous error, namely that (1) Jesus' teaching in the Olivet discourse, and the apostles' teaching elsewhere, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and associated events, is erroneous, because that A.D. 70 coming to destroy Jerusalem is associated by Jesus and the apostles with the resurrection that Hymenaeus and Philetus said had already come. If Hymenaeus and Philetus were right that the resurrection had already come, then Jesus was wrong when he (as alleged by the hyperpreterists) said that Jerusalem would be destroyed when the resurrection came, because Jerusalem was still standing in the time of Hymenaeus and Philetus. (2) Christians pre-A.D. 70 would still see the sacrificial system working in Jerusalem, a sacrificial system which should have been destroyed at the pre-A.D. 70 hymenaean "resurrection," and therefore Christians in Paul's time would think that Jesus' sacrifice would not be once for all, and (3) a pre-A.D. 70 hymenaean "resurrection" would imply that the Lord's coming in judgment had already arrived, and therefore the relief from Jewish persecution that the pre-A.D. 70 Christians were expecting would not happen, thus discouraging them.
Let's first show, on orthodox preterist premises, how Mr. Johnson's objections can be handled. All three of his objections above assume that the resurrection of the dead occurred in A.D. 70. However, Jesus never associated the resurrection of believers with his coming in judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70. In addition, the apostles never linked the resurrection of the dead to Jesus' coming in judgment in A.D. 70. To assert that the resurrection of the dead occurred in A.D. 70 is of course, the hyperpreterists' main contention, and to refute it would involve a detailed exegesis of the relevant coming and resurrection passages, which is far beyond the scope of this article. Such a discussion, however, can be found in Jonathan Seriah's The End of All Things, which conclusively destroys the heretical preterist notion that every coming passage, including those linked with the resurrection of the dead, occurred in A.D. 70. If you buy into the orthodox preterist premise that a distinction should be made between "coming in judgment in A.D. 70" and "resurrection of the dead at the end of time," than Mr. Johnson's three objections fall away. For example, in objection (1), with the resurrection decoupled from the judgment coming in A.D. 70, it is perfectly plausible that Hymenaeus and Philetus could assert a gnostic, spiritual resurrection, still leaving the possibility of a judgment-coming intact, thus maintaining Jesus' and the apostles' truth-telling integrity. In objection (2), a gnostic, spiritual resurrection claimed by Hymenaeus and Philetus is still compatible with a later judgment-coming to take care of the OT sacrificial system. In objection (3), a gnostic, spiritual Hymenaean "resurrection" pre-A.D. 70 still leaves open the possibility of a later judgment-coming to relieve the pre-A.D. 70 Christians of their persecution.
However, many reading this article will not buy into orthodox preterist premises. So, for the sake of argument lets now assume to be true Mr. Johnson's heretical preterist premises, and reduce his argument to absurdity.
First, one will notice that his argument requires a close link between the resurrection of the dead and Jesus' destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. When Hymenaeus and Philetus erroneously claim the resurrection of the dead has already occurred, asserts Mr. Johnson, then Hymenaeus and Philetus are also erroneously asserting that Jesus' destruction of the temple in A.D. 70 has also occurred, thus making Jesus' Olivet Discourse a lie, thus leaving intact the defunct OT sacrificial system and clouding the centrality of Jesus' blood sacrifice, thus depriving the pre-A.D. 70 Christians of hope for deliverance from persecution. Now, the question I have for Mr. Johnson is this. How could Hymenaeus and Philetus maintain such an erroneous idea in the face of this stupendous fact: THE CITY AND TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM WERE STILL STANDING PRE-A.D. 70 DURING THE TIME OF THE DISPUTE BETWEEN HYMENAEUS AND PHILETUS AND PAUL!!!! Mr. Johnson taunts me with this question: "If Paul was so upset over Hymenaeus' understanding of the nature of the resurrection, then why did he not challenge their non-physical concept? This would have been Paul's golden opportunity to challenge their erroneous concept of the resurrection. Instead Paul challenges their understanding of the timing." Well, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I now ask Mr. Johnson the same question he asks me, mutatis mutandis: "If Paul was so upset over Hymenaeus' understanding of the timing of Jesus' coming in judgment of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 and the resurrection that was going to happen then, then why did he not challenge their miscomprehension by pointing out that the temple was still standing, and that the (spiritual) resurrection hadn't occurred yet? This would have been Paul's golden opportunity to challenge their erroneous concept of the resurrection, which was that it had come before Jesus had come in judgment on Jerusalem. Instead Paul challenges their understanding of the timing." To put it simply, if Hymenaeus and Philetus were saying the resurrection was divorced from the coming in judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70, having occurred pre-A.D. 70, and the resurrection, having occurred pre-A.D. 70, was divorced from the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 with which the coming was intimately linked by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, then the simplest and quickest way for Paul to rebuke Hymenaeus and Philetus was to taunt them with the continued existence of the temple, which would immediately and easily prove to anyone potentially seduced by Hymenaeus and Philetus that indeed, the resurrection had not come yet, contrary to the assertions of those two. And yet Paul did not do this. The logical reader will deduce thus that Paul was not, therefore, concerned with an erroneous conception of the timing of an A.D. 70 resurrection. I have already shown in my previous article that he couldn't be upset with a mere matter of a maximum forty year timing error. If the issue was not a mere matter of timing, and if the issue could have had nothing to do with an erroneous claim that required a destroyed temple, we can only conclude, therefore, that the only thing left about which to be upset with Hymenaeus and Philetus was the fact that the end-of-time resurrection hadn't happened yet, and when Hymenaeus and Philetus said "THE resurrection" had already taken place, they were saying that THE resurrection at the end of time had been pre-empted,2 and therefore, since the one and only resurrection had already occurred, and wasn't going to happen again, and the tombs everywhere still had physical bodies in them, the tombs were always going to have physical bodies in them, and therefore there wasn't ever going to be a physical resurrection. This last conclusion is exactly what today's heretical preterists believe, placing them squarely in the center of the same target at which Paul aimed his heavy verbal artillery when he called Hymenaeus and Philetus blasphemers, gangrenous, vile cankers, and faith-shipwreckers.
Let me anticipate an objection to my argument above. In a private email addressed to me, a hyperpreterist stated that "News in the first century traveled very slowly and rumors about what was happening in other parts of the Roman Empire were abundant (you'll hear of 'wars and RUMORS of wars'). It would be very easy for a rumor to get started that the Temple had been destroyed, thus signaling to the rest of Christendom that the END of the OLD TESTAMENT had come" (emphasis his). In other words, Hymenaeus and Philetus could have maintained their erroneous claim that the resurrection and the alleged associated destruction of Jerusalem had occurred, if a false rumor persisted that Jerusalem had been destroyed. This would, of course, vitiate my arguments in the paragraph above.
I would answer these arguments in the following manner. First, there is absolutely no evidence that there was a rumor that the Temple had been destroyed. The assertion of such a rumor is sheer supposition. Second, when Jesus said there would be "rumors" of wars, he certainly did not mean that there would be in the near future rumors of a war that had destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, as my email correspondent alleges, thus allowing Hymenaeus and Philetus to get away with their claim that the destruction of the Temple and the (alleged) associated resurrection of the dead had already occurred. When Jesus said "rumors of wars," he most certainly meant there would be rumors of wars that might be about to happen, but which in fact, were not happening at the time the rumor was heard. If Jesus meant for "rumors" to refer to impending, but not actually occurring wars, than the Temple would be standing, there would have been no resurrection of the dead, and Hymenaeus and Philetus' assertion of an already-occurred resurrection in conjunction with a destroyed Temple would be so laughable that Paul would yawn when he heard their claims. The way Jesus said "wars" and "rumors of wars" indicates that he meant that the disciples would hear of "WARS" that were actually happening, and "RUMORS OF WARS" that might be about to happen, but which in fact, had not yet happened. Third, it is simply not true that "news in the first century traveled very slowly." The Roman roads and well-developed commerce made sure that news traveled fairly quickly. For example, in the ancient and medieval world, it took about thirty days to travel by sea from Alexandria to Marseilles, a distance of 1500 miles. And that was under unfavorable circumstances (adverse winds, currents). The travel time was even quicker under favorable circumstances.[3] Therefore, an erroneous rumor that the Temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed at the most could have lasted only a month or so. A month is not long enough for Hymenaeus' and Philetus' gangrene to have spread far enough to cause Paul concern. Fourth, if erroneous news that the temple was still standing traveled so slowly that the Christians could be deceived into thinking it was destroyed, then that also means that correct news assuring them that the resurrection hadn't already come and that (by implication) the Temple was still standing, also traveled just as slowly. This means that Paul's good news that the resurrection hadn't already come could never counteract the false hymenaean error that the destruction of Jerusalem and the resurrection had already come.
In short, there is no credible way to assert that early Christians could have been deceived for very long that a stupendous, world-shaking event such as the destruction of the Temple had occurred when in fact in had not. This means that if the early Christians tied together the resurrection of the dead and the coming in judgment on Jerusalem in the fashion the heretical preterists allege, and if the early Christians knew that the Temple was still standing, therefore the early Christians had no choice but to know that an A.D. 70 resurrection of the dead had not occurred. Therefore, they could potentially only have been seduced by Hymenaeus and Philetus, not about the TIMING of an A.D. 70 resurrection as erroneously alleged by hyperpreterists, but rather about the NATURE of the resurrection. It was possible for Hymenaeus to assert a gnostic, spiritual type of resurrection, or a partial Mat 27:52-53 physical resurrection, and have that false claim believed, because there was no simple way to refute that error, as, for example, by pointing to graves that were still full. On the contrary, if Hymenaeus and Philetus were impliedly and blasphemously asserting, as the hyperpreterists claim, that the Old Covenant was still in effect, then there would be a simple way for Paul to refute their error. He could have simply pointed to the still-standing Temple in Jerusalem. Therefore the hyperpreterist attempt to pin blasphemy on Hymenaeus and Philetus for messing with an alleged A.D. 70 resurrection simply will not work. Hymenaeus and Philetus were (by implication) blasphemously denying the physical resurrection at the end of time. There is absolutely no other explanation for Paul's outburst against them.
Mr. Johnson brings up other scriptural arguments against a physical resurrection in his article which are not directly related to the topic of Hymenaeus and Philetus. In the interest of space, I will deal with but one of them, although they can all be easily refuted. The rest I intend to address in future articles. The one argument I choose to answer in this article is Mr. Johnson's interpretation of the Greek word mello used in Acts 24:15. I choose this particular argument because Acts 24:15 was a verse I was holding for future use offensively, and to my surprise Mr. Johnson attempts to use it as a strong point for his case. I also choose this argument to refute because it is so weak that even a dumb Business Administration professor can handle it.
Mr. Johnson quotes Acts 24:15 triumphantly: "and I [Paul] have the same hope in God as these men [Pharisees], that there is (about to be) a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked." Paul made that statement before Felix as he was defending himself against charges brought by his opponents the Pharisees. Paul cleverly identified himself with one doctrine of the Pharisees, the resurrection of the dead, to blunt their charges against him. Mr. Johnson's argument is that Paul stated there was "ABOUT TO BE" a resurrection, which implied one coming shortly from the time spoke, i.e., A.D. 70.
There are four problems with Mr. Johnson's interpretation, any one of which in isolation is devastating to his argument, and all four of which in conjunction with each other make his argument ludicrous. The first problem: the Greek word mello which Mr. Johnson translates as "about to be" does not consistently mean "about to be," as the so-called "consistent preterists" love to insist. There is another meaning of mello which means "of certainty, compulsion or necessity, to be certain to act." (Vines, Vol. 1, "About," 1981, p. 15.) Here are some other recognized authorities who give a meaning of "certainty" to mello in addition to the meaning "about to." For example, the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains by Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida Eds., (United Bible Societies, entry 71.36), state this as one of the definitions of mello: "to be inevitable, with respect to future developments - `must be, has to be,' citing Mt 17.12: `in the same way the Son of Man must also be mistreated by them.' The abridged Liddell and Scott, under its entry for mello, states this as the second definition of mello: "to express a certainty," citing classical Greek texts such as "it must be that I am hated by Zeus," and "I must have sinned against the immortals." Finally, we have the testimony of Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, who at the entry for mello, state that in Act 11:28 and Acts 24:15, where mello is used with the future infinitive, that the word "denotes certainty that an event will occur in the future." (BAG, 3rd edition) Mr. Johnson left out this clearly established meaning for mello in his article. An oversight, perhaps?
In addition to Greek authorities, we may cite English translations. The NASB translates Acts 24:15 "there shall CERTAINLY be a resurrection." The New Century Version translates the verse: "...the hope that all people, good and bad, will SURELY be raised from the dead." Most versions translate mello in this verse as "there SHALL be a resurrection..." or "there WILL be a resurrection..." (KJV, NIV, Centenary Translation, New English Bible, Third Millennium Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Douay-Rheims, for example). These latter translations are ambiguous about whether the future resurrection is "ABOUT to come" as per the hyperpreterists, or "CERTAINLY to come." But the latter translation is certainly within the semantic domain of mello. It would take very much chutzpah for any hyperpreterist to claim that mello in Acts 24:15 definitely means that the resurrection was ABOUT to occur just after Paul spoke the words.
I am sure a hyperpreterist would want to respond here, and assert that the translators' biases in favor of a physical resurrection impelled them to choose "certainty" over "about to." Well then, let us examine other Scriptures in which logic, not translator bias, compels a translation of mello as "certainty" and not "about to." For example, Acts 26:22, where Paul says to Agrippa that he was "stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was GOING TO (mello) take place; that the Christ was to suffer..." One has to ask: when the Prophets and Moses prophesied that Jesus was "about to" (mello) suffer, just how close in time was the prophesying and the suffering? Doesn't it make much more sense to take mello in the sense that the Prophets prophesied that Jesus was CERTAINLY to suffer? Another example is Rom 5:14, in which Paul says "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was TO COME (mello)." I ask the reader: was Adam a type of Him who was ABOUT TO come, or was Adam a type of Him who was CERTAINLY to come? How soon did Jesus come after Adam?[4] Our conclusion can only be that mello does not always mean "about to," and therefore it is hyperpreterist presumption that takes mello in Acts 24:15 ("there is ABOUT TO be a resurrection") to refer to an imminent A.D. 70 resurrection.
The second problem with Mr. Johnson's interpretation of Acts 24:15 is that Paul completely identifies himself with his Pharisee opponents when he says that he "had a hope in God, WHICH THESE MEN [THE PHARISEES] CHERISH THEMSELVES, that there shall certainly be a resurrection..." In other words, Paul says that what the Pharisees say about the resurrection, I, Paul, believe it to be true, also. Now, then: what did the Pharisees believe about the resurrection? Did they believe it to be a physical resurrection of the body? Yes, they did. It is well-known that they believed fervently in a physical resurrection, even to the extreme. They even believed that a part of the spine would be preserved out of which a new resurrection body would be preserved. Therefore, if the Pharisees believed in a physical resurrection, Paul also believed in a physical resurrection, not a gnostic spiritual resurrection like the heretical preterists erroneously assert.
A hyperpreterist might assert here in defense that Paul identified publicly with the Pharisaical view of a physical resurrection while privately holding to a spiritual resurrection. The short answer to that is this. Were Paul to do this, he would either be stupid in promoting a physical resurrection in which he didn't believe, or he would be a hypocrite and a liar for saying falsely he agreed with the Pharisees just to save his neck. It is evident that Paul was using "resurrection" in the same sense as his audience. Everyone in the audience took "resurrection" to be physical, when Paul used the term, the audience would immediately take it to be physical. Therefore, when Paul used the term in an unqualified sense, he knew the term would be taken as "physical resurrection." To let his audience take the term as "physical resurrection" when Paul meant privately "spiritual resurrection" would mean that Paul was either a stupid fool in allowing that to happen, or a cowardly hypocrite.
The third problem with Mr. Johnson's view of Acts 24:15 is related to the second. For when Paul identified himself publicly with the resurrection views of the Pharisees, he not only identified himself with the Pharisees' view of the NATURE of the resurrection, he also identified himself with the Pharisees view of the TIMING of the resurrection. Now, when did the Pharisees believe the resurrection was going to occur? Did they believe that it would occur in a few years when a judgment coming destroyed Jerusalem in accordance with the words of Jesus? Obviously not, they didn't even believe Jesus was the Messiah. They didn't believe the Messianic age had come. They didn't believe the end of the Old Testament age was upon them. In other words, they were blatant futurists. They believed the resurrection of the dead would occur at the end of time. And Paul identified himself with the Pharisees' beliefs about the resurrection.
The fourth problem with Mr. Johnson's view of Acts 24:15 is that Paul states in that verse that he believed "that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous AND THE WICKED." The heretical preterists believe that the resurrection of the dead occurred in A.D. 70. This resurrection, according to Paul in Acts 24:15, included a resurrection of the wicked. So, on a hyperpreterist view, when and how did the resurrection of the wicked occur in A.D. 70?
Let me conclude by restating my two major theses. First, orthodox Christians have no reasonable way to distinguish the beliefs of Hymenaeus and Philetus, condemned as blasphemers by Paul, from the present-day hymenaean heresy. Too many orthodox have swallowed the lie that there is an essential difference between current day hymenaeans and the ones of Paul's day.[5] Second, even granting the heretical preterists their false premise that the resurrection occurred in A.D. 70, their argument to deflect Paul's wrath from themselves, by distinguishing themselves from Hymenaeus and Philetus, is not even remotely reasonable.
It may be premature to say that the house of God is burning, but without a doubt a fire has started. My question is simple: will we stand around and watch, or will be bring out the fire hoses?
ENDNOTES
[1]Many thanks to Dee Dee Warren for pointing out to me the begging-the-question fallacy used so often by the heretical preterists.
[2]I realize that there is a textual problem with the "the" that stands before "resurrection." The editors of the Nestle text have the definite article, but they put the "the" in brackets, which means that there is a great deal of difficulty in establishing the correct reading. However, it is clear from the context that "the" is the correct translation. I have checked nineteen translations (NASB, ASV, NKJV, KJV, TMB, NLT, NRSV, RSV, Good News Translation, Douay-Rheims, NCV, God's Word Translation, WEB, The Message, The Bible in Basic English, Darby, Hebrew Names, Webster, Young's Literal) and seventeen of the nineteen translate the phrase as "THE resurrection." One, the Good News Translation, translates the phrase as "OUR resurrection," which, of course, is not helpful to the hyperpreterist cause. I could find only one translation, God's Word Translation, which translates the passage without the definite article: "people who have died have come back to life."
Not only does the context lead the overwhelming majority of translators to translate the passage using the definite article, but logic also compels us to assume that when Paul referred to "resurrection" here, he meant "THE" resurrection. For if we assume an indefinite article, that "a" resurrection had already taken place, this would leave open the possibility that Hymenaeus and Philetus held that another resurrection was going to occur down the road. This doesn't make much sense on anybody's view, orthodox or hyperpreterist. On the orthodox view: why would Paul be so incensed, since Hymenaeus and Philetus would have left open the possibility for a future physical resurrection of the dead? On the heretical preterist view, why would Paul be so incensed, since Hymenaeus and Philetus would have left open the possibility for a future A.D. 70 resurrection associated with the coming of Jesus and the destruction of the Old Covenant? It simply makes no sense to leave the "the" out.
[3]Lionel Casson, Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World (Princeton, 1971) pp. 220 ff. Also see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Time of Philip II (NY 1972) I, pp. 358 ff.
[4]There is a faint hope for hyperpreterists who want to wriggle out of the dilemma presented by this verse. The Greek is ambiguous, and so "was to come" could theoretically be translated as "is to come." This would make the time referred to by mello to be the time to elapse between Paul's writing of the text, and Jesus' coming in A.D. 70. The context of the verse impels us to conclude otherwise, however. Seventeen of the nineteen translations I checked translate as "was to come," reflecting the common sense view that the context is talking about the time that elapsed between Adam and Christ, the "coming" being the First Advent, when the Second Adam fulfilled the type presented by the First Adam.
[5]To disassociate themselves from Hymenaeus and Philetus, hyperpreterists have used other arguments than those used by Mr. Johnson in his "Response." However, these arguments are not nearly as clever as those used by Mr. Johnson. I intend to deal with some of these arguments in a future article.
http://courses.coker.edu/dtrotter/contra/preterism/frame2.html
Dr. Trotter is a Business professor at Coker College and can be contacted at [email protected] or (843)-383-8110
This article was published on Planet Preterist
http://planetpreterist.com
The URL for this story is:
http://planetpreterist.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1428
