Some of the strongest arguments against Christianity are the failed apocalyptic predictions in the New Testament. One extreme way to deal with them is known as "full preterism" (by adherents) or "hyper-preterism" (by opponents). I believe a former hyper-preterist Christian on YouTube called this position "the ultimate cope".
According to hyper-preterists, the end times predictions of Jesus *did* come to pass already during the first century. This forces them to interpret the prophecies metaphorically and almost esoterically. Or at the very least anachronistically!
Atheist Richard Carrier just the other day debated with a hyper-preterist named Don Preston on YouTube. Below is a link to Carrier´s extensive summary of his case against Preston´s Bible exegesis.
Two things about hyper-preterism are particularly strange. One is that the NT itself seems to argue against precisely such a heresy, associated with Hymenaeus and Philetus, a point not lost on Christian opponents of full preterism. Another is the weird insistence that a word can only mean one single thing in every context, throughout the entire Bible. I mean, most literalist fundamentalists don´t go that far!
I´m not telling you to abandon hope. But we should at the very least let go of the ultimate cope...
It's always a pleasure to get a dose of Carrier, like a jolt of strong coffee. His brilliance in exposing the fallacies of religious beliefs is a challenge for me to emulate. Of course, I do attend a church service every week. Not that Jesus will return and save me, but because it promotes a sense of community in my "haphazard" post-Covid and aging creaky lifestyle. In other words, I like going to Mass and singing the hymns (used to be a tenor in choir and a cantor) and listening to the crazy homilies put forth by the pastor. So yeah, sorry folks, no parousia anytime soon. But let's all make nice and at least strive to follow the social justice (uh oh!) urgencies our resurrected Hero idealistically promulgated!
ReplyDeletePretty cool though that after resurrection we will all get to "meet and greet" Adam and Eve!
DeleteYes, I think his debunking of preterism is the definitive one. Has implications for "partial" preterism, too, of course.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of Adam and Eve...there is a later legend (medieval?) about a monk who is caught up to the third heaven, where he indeed finds the Garden of Eden. He even brings back some apples from Eden to give to his fellow monks?! Something like that. Crazy stuff. Not sure if he met Adam and Eve, though.
I use to think preterism was an interesting position, since there (of course) is a lot of allegorical language in the Bible. Does "the end of the world" always mean "the end of the world"? So the main take away from Carrier´s article for me is the contextual stuff. In its proper New Testament context, the end-of-the-world language really does mean a quite literal destruction of the entire cosmos, not just the Jewish War or something to that effect.
ReplyDeleteAlso proven by 2 Peter, of course, but also by the fact that something similar to full preterism existed already during New Testament times...but was considered a heresy by the NT writers!
Christianity may have had other shall we say redeeming traits (the mysticism is interesting), and one can always discuss whether it´s some kind of "cosmic archetype of love and sacrifice" trying to "get through" to suffering humanity, but a literal first century parousia it clearly wasn´t!