ANSWER: I agree that it is impossible that the historic Church has been preaching a damnable Lie. However, as every believer agrees, it is possible for the Church to be caught in an eschatological error and to remain at the same time “the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth.” It is therefore not impossible that the historic Church was caught in an eschatological error for 1,800 years and at the same time remained “the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth.”
Eschatological error does not necessarily imply radical, Gospel-overthrowing blindness, deafness and heresy. Even a major eschatological error is not necessarily a Gospel-nullifying Lie. For instance, premillennialism contradicts the orthodox eschatology of the Apostles’ Creed itself. The Creed states that when Christ comes back, He will “judge the quick and the dead.” Yet premillennialists maintain that when Christ comes back He will not judge the quick and the dead, but will instead set up his earthly kingdom for a thousand years. Premillennialists are thus diametrically opposed to a cardinal element of traditional, creedal, eschatological orthodoxy.
But who among those who believe the eschatology of the Apostles' Creed would say that all premillennialists must be excommunicated from the universal Church? Or who among premillennial believers would say that all who believe the eschatology of the Apostles' Creed must be excommunicated from the universal Church?
If we agree then that a significant or major eschatological error is not necessarily a damnable error and that believers can be steeped in eschatological error and still be saved, we must also agree that the traditional, creedal, historic Church could have been caught in a major eschatological error (futurism) and at the same time remained “the Pillar and Foundation of the Truth.”
Usually the ecclesiastical implication of preterism –that the historic Church missed the fact that all things have been fully fulfilled– seems outlandish because many people unwittingly approach preterism using futurist categories. It would indeed be unbelievable that the Church missed a literal “thousand years,” and a literal return of Jesus-in-the-flesh, and a literal “rapture,” and a literal “resurrection of the dead,” and a literal destruction of the universe, and a literal “new heavens and new earth.” Thinking in those futurist terms, the suggestion that all the Scriptures that predicted those events were fulfilled without the Church knowing that those Scriptures were fulfilled is preposterous.
This is why we must think in terms of the preterist paradigm if we are to judge preterism righteously. From the preterist perspective it is not unbelievable that the historic Church had an exegetical misunderstanding about the fulfillment of all things written if the events were fulfilled spiritually according to the preterist interpretation. And from the preterist perspective, the Church’s failure to recognize that many prophetic passages are fulfilled does not imply that the Church “missed” the fulfillment of those passages. It only implies that the Church failed to connect all the right Bible verses to the Christological fulfillment that the Church truly and knowingly sees and embraces.
Despite futurist errors regarding various prophecy-texts, the Church has actually been teaching (full) preterism for nearly two thousand years now. For instance, according to preterism the Parousia was the Coming of Christ Himself to destroy the enemies in His sinful (old-covenant) Kingdom and to indwell His saints. Many or most of the Church Fathers believed that the indwelling of Christ Himself in His Church (in consummation of the work of the Holy Spirit) was already fully fulfilled in history. For example, Mathete’s Epistle to Diognetus, chapter 7 (written about sixty years after the fall of Jerusalem):
...Truly God Himself, Who is almighty, the Creator of all things, and invisible, has sent from Heaven, and placed among men, Him who is the Truth, the holy and incomprehensible Word, and has firmly established Him in their hearts.
The early Church, from the preterist perspective, did not “totally miss” the Parousia. The Church consciously recognized the coming of Christ Himself to indwell His people, and that indwelling, in the preterist framework, is itself the full fulfillment of "the Hope of Israel."
In Ignatius’ Epistle to the Ephesians (written about fifty years after the fall of Jerusalem), in chapter 19, he said that the destruction of Death took place from the time of the Incarnation to the destruction of "the old kingdom." Ignatius and other Church Fathers likewise connected the abolition of Judaism with the gathering of the elect.
From the preterist point of view, it is not a stretch to say that many or most of the Church Fathers perceived the Parousia-Presence of Christ (“Christ in you”) and perceived the destruction of Death and the establishment of the Kingdom in the destruction of Jerusalem ("the old kingdom"). They understood those preterist realities. They recognized them. They described them. They had a preterist understanding of their timing, nature and benefits. They praised God for them. They in no way failed to see them. Their only error was that they failed to connect what they knew and saw and embraced to all the right Bible texts.
The failure of the Church Fathers to connect all the right Bible verses to what they saw and embraced, is a long, long way from the Church Fathers “totally missing” what they saw and embraced.
In order to “totally miss” the fulfillment of all things written, one would have to deny the abolition of Judaism, and deny the gathering of the universal elect in the Christian age, and deny the establishment and presence of "Christ in you," and deny the establishment and presence of the Kingdom of God, and deny the presence of the Church as the established New-Covenant Temple of God, and deny the presence of all the saints, living and dead, as being one body or “communion” in Christ. Those realities are the sum total of (full) preterism. Therefore, if you believe in all those things (and many futurists do), you are a preterist, even if you are an exegetical futurist.
The Church Fathers did not “totally miss” the fulfillment of all things written. They exegetically mis-categorized it. They merely appended an extra-biblical scheme of future events onto their biblically sound, soteriological (full) preterism. The only thing the post-70 Church “totally missed” was the fact that it did not miss the fulfillment of all things written.
So from the standpoint of the preterist interpretation, the eschatological error of the historic Church was not a radical or fatal error. And since it is historically possible that the Church could have been steeped in a non-fatal eschatological error, the historical possibility remains open that preterism is true and that it represents a God-ordained correction of the historic Church’s understanding of certain eschatological texts.
Article take from
Preterist Cosmos
Q & A 108
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