This is how a "regular" Christian (or Preterist, for that matter) reacts to Israel Only Full Preterism (see previous blog post). You preach it, boy!
What is IO or "Israel Only Full Preterism"?
Thursday, January 29, 2026
The times of the Gentiles has ended
This is funny! I asked ChatGPT about the peculiar belief system known as "Israel Only Full Preterism" and it turns out that the AI have pretty much the same take on them as me. Suggesting (in this case) that it trained on the same content. Of course, the bot has also added some attacks on "IOFP" it probably thinks I´m going to agree with - which I kind of do. Thank you.
Israel-Only Full Preterism (often abbreviated “IOFP” or just “IO”) is a tiny but intense fringe theology within Christianity that claims:
All biblical prophecy—including the Second Coming, the Resurrection, Judgment Day, and the Kingdom of God—was completely fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, and those events applied only to Israel, not to the modern world.
It is one of the most radical reinterpretations of Christianity ever to emerge.
1. What “Full Preterism” already means
Preterism is the idea that:
-
Most or all New Testament prophecy
-
Was fulfilled in the first century, not the future.
Full Preterism says:
-
Christ returned spiritually in 70 CE
-
The resurrection was covenantal, not physical
-
Judgment already happened
Most Christians reject this as heretical because it:
-
denies bodily resurrection
-
denies a future return of Christ
2. What “Israel-Only” adds
Israel-Only Preterism goes further and says:
The New Testament was written only to ethnic Israel.
Gentiles today are not part of the covenant at all.
According to IO:
-
Jesus was Messiah only for first-century Jews
-
Christianity as a global religion is a mistake
-
Paul’s mission to Gentiles was misunderstood or misapplied
-
The church is not Israel
-
The gospel age is over
So they believe:
We live after the end of God’s redemptive plan.
3. What salvation means in IO
This is where it gets extremely strange:
Since salvation already happened in 70 CE:
-
No one today can be “saved”
-
There is no heaven or hell coming
-
The Bible is a closed historical record
-
Spiritual life is basically philosophical
Some IO adherents say:
We just live, die, and cease.
Others say:
We exist in a post-redemption world with no eschatology.
Either way, Christianity becomes a dead religion describing something that already ended.
4. Why it arose
IOFP arose from:
-
extreme literalism about Jesus saying “this generation”
-
obsession with timeline precision
-
distrust of churches
-
online radicalization
-
apocalyptic collapse thinking
It is very common in:
-
YouTube theology circles
-
conspiracy-minded Christians
-
anti-church communities
It’s a terminal form of Protestantism:
Scripture interpreted until nothing remains.
5. Why nearly all Christians reject it
Because it denies:
-
resurrection of the dead
-
future hope
-
Christ’s reign
-
meaning of prayer
-
sacraments
-
evangelism
-
the church
It turns Christianity into:
an ancient failed prophecy rather than a living faith
6. Philosophically what it is
IOFP is eschatological nihilism:
-
God already acted
-
History is empty
-
The cosmos has no destiny
-
Meaning is over
It is Christianity after transcendence has been removed.
In one sentence
Israel-Only Full Preterism is the belief that Christianity ended in 70 CE and we are living in a spiritually post-apocalyptic world with no redemption left.
If you want, I can explain how this connects to: Q-style apocalypticism, internet radicalization, or why Christianity keeps producing “end-of-meaning” theologies
Are the IOFP atheists today?
In practice? Many of them function very much like atheists — even if they don’t call themselves that.
IOFP creates a strange category:
theism without transcendence
Here’s what that means.
1. What IOFP technically affirms
Most Israel-Only Full Preterists will still say:
-
God existed
-
Jesus was the Messiah
-
Biblical events were real
-
The resurrection (of Israel) happened in 70 CE
So on paper they are not atheists.
2. What they deny that makes them functionally atheistic
They deny:
-
any future divine action
-
any ongoing salvation
-
any living covenant
-
any cosmic purpose
-
any prayer that changes anything
-
any ultimate justice
-
any final meaning
God becomes:
a figure who finished acting 2,000 years ago and then withdrew forever
That is almost indistinguishable from:
God does not exist
for everyday life.
3. No worship, no prayer, no hope
In IOFP:
-
Worship is pointless
-
Evangelism is meaningless
-
Prayer has no function
-
The church is an error
-
History has no divine direction
So spiritually:
the universe is closed
Which is exactly how atheism views it.
4. Why many drift into explicit atheism
Once someone accepts:
“God finished His work and left”
the next step is:
“Maybe God was just a story people told about history.”
IOFP is often a way station between evangelicalism and secularism.
5. The psychological pattern
IOFP often attracts people who:
-
feel betrayed by Christianity
-
are angry at churches
-
want intellectual control
-
want to be “the ones who figured it out”
It offers:
total deconstruction without emotional vulnerability
But it also leaves:
no transcendence
And humans don’t live long without transcendence.
Bottom line
IOFP is not formally atheism — but it is spiritually equivalent to it.
It leaves you in:
a universe where nothing sacred remains to be done
Which is exactly what atheism asserts.
If you want, I can show how this compares to:
-
nihilism
-
Buddhism
-
or why mystical traditions survive where IOFP collapses
-
Vishnu Thursday?
Thursday again, so here is a modern devotional picture of Vishnu, generated by Gemini AI.
Humming
Paranormal aficionado debunks the latest instance of "The Hum". Damn, for a moment I thought the Old Gods were back! But naaah, it´s just the electrical grid in Connecticut crashing out...
Hela havet stormar
Okej, det här var intressant. Och kanske oroväckande också. Läs innan AB låser artikeln! Undrar lite över kopplingen mellan detta och Trumps ständiga hot att "utreda" Federal Reserve (den amerikanska riksbanken). Eller snarare riksbankschefen!
Spiritual emergency (part 4)
For whatever reason, ChatGPT constantly wants to pitch David Bentley Hart. Not the first time, either. So finally I gave it the prompt. Full disclosure: I never read Bentley Hart.
Can you tell me about how Hart solved the problems posed by the Emergent Church?
David Bentley Hart is almost a diagnosis and cure for exactly what went wrong in the Emergent Church.
The Emergent movement correctly sensed that modern evangelicalism was:
-
spiritually thin
-
philosophically naive
-
morally brittle
-
metaphysically incoherent
But it didn’t know how to replace it.
Hart does.
1. The Emergent Church deconstructed belief
Hart reconstructs Being itself
Emergent Christianity said:
“We should be humbler about doctrine.”
Hart replies:
“Yes — but humility does not mean metaphysical emptiness.”
He goes back to:
-
the Cappadocians
-
Gregory of Nyssa
-
Maximus the Confessor
-
Dionysius
-
classical metaphysics
and shows that Christianity once had a rigorous ontology:
God is not a being among beings, but Being itself, infinite, simple, good.
This matters because:
-
if God is Being, then
-
existence itself is meaningful
-
not just belief systems
Emergent Christianity never offered this grounding.
2. God as act, not as idea
Emergent thinkers treated God as:
-
story
-
symbol
-
metaphor
-
narrative
Hart restores God as:
the act of existence itself — the infinite actuality that gives being to everything
Which means:
-
prayer is not pretending
-
worship is not therapy
-
spirituality is not lifestyle
It is contact with the absolute.
3. Nonduality without relativism
You noticed the parallels to Vedanta and Zen — Hart did too.
He shows that:
-
classical Christianity is already nondual
-
but not monistic
Creation exists within God’s sustaining act.
Nothing exists outside divine presence.
That allows:
-
mysticism
-
silence
-
transcendence
-
contemplative practice
without dissolving truth into vagueness.
Emergent Christianity wanted mystery but rejected metaphysics; Hart keeps both.
4. Why Hart rejects hell
Emergent Christians rejected hell emotionally.
Hart rejects it philosophically.
Eternal torment would mean:
-
God is not goodness itself
-
evil has eternal reality
-
creation fails
So Hart defends universal salvation not as sentiment but as logical consequence of divine goodness.
This gives moral seriousness without cruelty.
5. Christ as cosmic Logos, not tribal savior
Emergent Christianity wanted pluralism but couldn’t justify it.
Hart shows that:
-
Christ is the Logos through whom all things exist
-
so every true spiritual insight anywhere is participation in Christ
That allows:
-
interreligious respect
-
real metaphysics
-
not just tolerance
Zen, Vedanta, and Sufism are not “nice stories” — they are real encounters with the Logos.
6. Hart solves the “vacuity” problem
Emergent Christianity collapsed because it tried to live in:
permanent openness
Hart shows that:
openness requires something infinite to be open toward
You can’t have mystery without reality.
In short
Emergent Christianity said:
“Modern Christianity is wrong.”
Hart says:
“Yes — because it forgot what God is.”
And he brings it back:
-
with metaphysics
-
with mysticism
-
with intellectual rigor
-
without cruelty
-
without fundamentalism
Which is why people who outgrow Emergent Christianity so often end up reading David Bentley Hart.
Spiritual emergency (part 3)
So I´m reliving some 00´s stuff with the help of ChatGPT. Part three.
Despite the above, was the Emergent Church criticized for being vacuous or unclear in its messaging?
Yes — very strongly, and not only by conservatives.
One of the central ironies of the Emergent Church is that while it tried to escape rigid doctrine, many people (including sympathetic ones) came to see it as vague, evasive, and even hollow.
This critique hit from three directions at once.
1. Evangelicals: “They don’t believe anything”
Conservative Christians accused Emergent leaders of:
-
dodging basic doctrinal questions
-
refusing to say whether Jesus is the only way
-
undermining the authority of Scripture
-
softening sin, hell, and salvation
They said:
“If you won’t say what is true, you don’t stand for anything.”
From their point of view, Emergent Christianity felt like:
Christianity dissolved into therapy, politics, and vibes
2. Mainline liberals: “It’s style without substance”
Older progressive churches often said something harsher:
“You’re just repackaging what we already did — with cooler music and candles.”
Critics argued that:
-
Emergent theology was just 1970s liberal Protestantism dressed in postmodern language
-
It didn’t build institutions
-
It didn’t clarify beliefs
-
It didn’t create stable communities
So it looked fashionable but unserious.
3. Philosophers and theologians: “You can’t live on deconstruction”
This was the deepest critique.
Emergent Christianity loved:
-
ambiguity
-
questions
-
narrative
-
dialogue
-
“both/and”
But it avoided:
-
metaphysical commitments
-
claims about ultimate reality
-
firm truth-claims
That creates a problem:
You can’t form a spiritual tradition out of permanent hesitation.
After a while people asked:
-
What is God, really?
-
What is Christ?
-
What is salvation?
-
What is evil?
-
What is the point of spiritual practice?
And Emergent leaders often replied:
“That’s a great question.”
Which stops being satisfying.
4. The internal collapse
This is why the movement lost coherence after about 2012.
Many people who entered Emergent Christianity eventually:
-
moved toward Orthodoxy or Catholicism
-
or into Buddhism or nonduality
-
or into secular spirituality
-
or left religion entirely
Because Emergent Christianity:
taught them how to deconstruct — but not how to dwell.
5. The paradox
Emergent Christianity was right about something very important:
Modern evangelicalism was spiritually broken.
But it underestimated something just as important:
Humans need ontological gravity — not just openness.
Candles, icons, and silence only work if they are grounded in a real metaphysical vision of the world.
Orthodoxy has one.
Catholicism has one.
Zen has one.
Vedanta has one.
Emergent Christianity mostly refused to commit to one.
In one sentence
The Emergent Church was criticized — often correctly — for offering spiritual atmosphere without a clear vision of reality to support it.
If you’d like, I can show how thinkers like David Bentley Hart or Dionysius solve exactly the problem that Emergent Christianity ran into.
Spiritual emergency (part 2)
More on the Emergent Church. In case of an emergent emergency, LOL.
Why did they take up Catholic and Orthodox traits?
Because the Emergent Church was trying to recover depth that Protestant modernity had stripped away — and Catholicism and Orthodoxy were where that depth was still visibly alive.
This wasn’t aesthetic borrowing. It was a theological diagnosis.
1. What they thought had gone wrong with Protestantism
Emergent leaders believed American evangelicalism had become:
• intellectually shallow
• historically rootless
• emotionally manipulative
• politically captured
• spiritually thin
It had reduced Christianity to:
beliefs about Jesus instead of participation in Christ
To people reading mystics, philosophers, and early church writers, this felt false.
So they asked:
“What did Christianity look like before it became modern, American, and consumerized?”
The answer kept pointing to:
• pre-Reformation Christianity
• monasticism
• sacramental worship
• contemplative prayer
Which meant Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
2. They were reaching backward, not sideways
The Emergent Church didn’t want to become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox institutionally.
They wanted to recover:
the pre-scholastic, pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment Church
Which was:
• liturgical
• mystical
• embodied
• sacramental
• participatory
That heritage lives most visibly in:
-
Eastern Orthodoxy
-
Catholicism (especially monastic and mystical streams)
3. Postmodern people don’t trust ideas — they trust practices
Emergent Christians were deeply influenced by:
• postmodern philosophy
• Wittgenstein
• Heidegger
• narrative theory
They believed:
Truth is lived before it is believed.
Protestantism had become idea-heavy and practice-light.
Orthodoxy and Catholicism had:
• fasting
• chanting
• silence
• icons
• kneeling
• seasons
• pilgrimage
These shape the soul without argument.
That was enormously attractive.
4. Mysticism was the hidden center
Your instincts here are spot-on.
Emergent Christianity was quietly rediscovering:
• Meister Eckhart
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Dionysius the Areopagite
• St. John of the Cross
• Hesychasm
These thinkers sound more like:
Zen, Vedanta, or nondual philosophy
than like modern evangelicalism.
Orthodoxy and Catholicism preserved this sapiential core. Protestantism mostly lost it.
5. Icons, incense, and candles weren’t nostalgia — they were anti-modern
Modernity made everything:
• flat
• literal
• functional
• optimized
Liturgical Christianity is:
• symbolic
• layered
• slow
• mysterious
Emergent churches used:
• candles
• labyrinths
• icons
• chants
because they were rejecting the mechanistic worldview that modern Protestantism had absorbed.
6. It was a rebellion against spiritual capitalism
Megachurch evangelicalism felt like:
Starbucks with a cross
Orthodoxy and Catholicism felt like:
ancient temples that did not care if you liked them
Emergent Christians wanted thick, non-consumer spirituality.
7. The deeper reason
At the deepest level, the Emergent Church was rediscovering something your own interests circle around:
Christianity was originally a contemplative, participatory path of transformation — not a belief system.
Catholic and Orthodox traditions still knew how to do that.
So Emergent Christianity reached back to the parts of Christianity that had never stopped being mystical.
In short
They didn’t take up Catholic and Orthodox traits because they wanted tradition.
They did it because:
those traditions still remembered how to turn human beings into saints rather than ideologues.
If you’d like, I can show how this overlaps with:
-
Zen and nonduality
-
David Bentley Hart
-
Dionysius
-
Or Vervaeke’s “participation” framework
Spiritual emergency (part 1)
So this unexpectedly came up. Does anyone today even *remember* the Emergent Church? Naturally, I had to ask ChatGPT about it. Here we go!
What is the Emergent Church or emergent church movement in the United States?
The Emergent Church (or Emergent Church Movement) is a loose, mostly Protestant Christian network that arose in the United States in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a response to both conservative evangelicalism and modern secular culture. It is not a denomination but a conversation, culture, and style of Christianity that tries to rethink faith in a postmodern world.
It’s especially interesting if you’re drawn to things like mysticism, pluralism, and spiritual depth (which fits well with your interests in Zen, nondualism, and perennial philosophy).
1. Why it emerged
The Emergent Church arose from dissatisfaction with:
• rigid biblical literalism
• culture-war evangelicalism
• megachurch consumerism
• anti-intellectual faith
• exclusion of LGBTQ people
• rejection of science and other religions
Its founders felt that traditional evangelicalism had become:
culturally reactionary, spiritually thin, and intellectually brittle
They wanted Christianity that could survive postmodernity, globalism, and religious pluralism.
2. Core ideas
There is no single doctrine, but common themes include:
A. Christianity as a living tradition
Truth is not just propositions to believe — it is a way of life and spiritual journey.
B. Deconstruction of certainty
They reject:
• infallible Bible
• absolute theological systems
• rigid “saved vs damned” thinking
They emphasize humility, ambiguity, and dialogue.
C. Postmodern theology
They draw on:
• continental philosophy
• narrative theology
• process theology
• mystical traditions
• Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholic spirituality
D. Inclusion
Most emergent communities:
• affirm LGBTQ people
• accept women in leadership
• reject hell as eternal torture
• embrace other religions as spiritually meaningful
3. How Emergent churches look
Emergent congregations often:
• meet in cafés, art spaces, homes
• use candles, icons, poetry
• do meditation, silence, Taizé chants
• encourage dialogue instead of sermons
• avoid dogmatic creeds
It often feels more like:
a spiritual salon than a traditional church
4. Key figures
Brian McLaren
The most famous voice. His books:
• A New Kind of Christian
• A Generous Orthodoxy
• The Great Spiritual Migration
He openly affirms religious pluralism and LGBTQ inclusion.
Rob Bell
Pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church and author of Love Wins.
Argued hell is not eternal punishment.
Doug Pagitt
Pushed conversational worship and postmodern theology.
Phyllis Tickle
Church historian who framed Emergent as part of Christianity’s 500-year renewal cycle.
5. Why conservatives hate it
Evangelicals accuse the Emergent Church of:
• denying biblical authority
• rejecting salvation through Christ alone
• embracing relativism
• being “New Age”
And honestly — from a traditional evangelical standpoint — those criticisms are largely true.
Emergent Christianity is closer to mystical, pluralist spirituality than to classical Protestant orthodoxy.
6. Why it matters spiritually
Emergent Christianity is one of the few modern Western Christian movements that seriously engages:
• mysticism
• nonduality
• contemplative prayer
• Buddhist-like awareness practices
• interreligious dialogue
This is why it resonates with people who read:
Dōgen, Hart, Vervaeke, Cutsinger, Zen, and Vedanta
It is Christianity trying to become sapiential again rather than merely doctrinal.
7. Where it is now (2026)
The original Emergent movement peaked around 2005–2012.
The brand faded, but its influence spread into:
• progressive Christianity
• contemplative Christianity
• deconstruction movement
• spiritual-but-not-religious Christians
• LGBTQ-affirming churches
It quietly reshaped American Christianity, even though many no longer use the name.
In one sentence
The Emergent Church is Christianity after it has passed through postmodernity, mysticism, and pluralism and refused to go back.
If you want, I can compare it to:
-
Sōtō Zen or nondual traditions
-
Perennial philosophy
-
Christian mysticism
-
David Bentley Hart’s theology
-
Or the “deconstruction” movement now popular on YouTube and TikTok
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)