Wow, what a great book. Michael Scott Horton is on target on so many issues. It is refreshing to see someone finally deal with the real issues of historical fulfillment in a way that surrounds the Preterist city and takes down their temple stone by stone. There is so much found in this book, and I would recommended it to anyone dealing with Hyper-Preterism. It nails down their chief assumption that in time changed everything. Hyper-Preterism is just another timeline driven theology that is narrow and limiting. As Horton points out, it is not a horizontal line (a pre-70ad, and post-70ad period) but a vertical line between things above and things below. There are so many greater things that appear when time is not the issue as so many Preterist claim to be true.
Michael Scott Horton; Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama; 2002
"Gadamer’s general hermeneutical theory cannot account for that transformation that Christians call “conversion” a lifelong process of “putting on Christ.” THE HEARER/READER’S SITUATEDNESS IS DEFINED AS “THIS PRESENT EVIL AGE THAT IS PASSING AWAY.” THIS RELATIVIZES EVERY “PAST” “PRESENT” AND “FUTURE” AND THEREFORE COUNTERS CONSERVATIVES NOSTALGIA AS WELL AS THE NEAR FATALISTIC EMBRACE OF THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE. IT ALSO MEANS THAT THE BELIEVING COMMUNITY TODAY IN THE US HAS MORE IN COMMON WITH THE BELIEVING COMMUNITY IN FIRST CENTURY ASIA MINOR THAN IT HAS WITH THE LATE CAPITALIST CULTURE OF LOS ANGELES AND NEW YORK. OUR IDENTITY IS PREEMINENTLY SHAPED BY THE ROLE WE PLAY IN THE DRAMA OF REDEMPTION (THE AGE TO COME AS IT HAS DAWNED IN CHRIST)" (Page 13)
Talking about the Two Age Model and the confusion of theologians he writes “ biblical eschatology disorients and reorients. It does so first by replacing the ontological and epistemological dualism with dualisms of an entirely different kind: ethical (righteousness/unrighteousness; sin/grace; justice/injustice) and historical (“this present age” and “the age that is to come”.) Thus, it locates the meaning of history in God’s purposes for creation and locates the problem of alienation in personal actions concentrated in the drive for automoy rather than in the denigrated side of the various polarities. The danger of superficial generalizations is ever present in attempts to provide contrasting typologies." (Page 28)
"When the NT writers refer, for instance, to the believers being “seated with Christ in heavenly places” in the kingdom of grace, it is never meant to convey the impression that they are not also active citizens of the kingdoms of this world. In the scheme we are advancing, one does not have to choose between the historical and the eschatological, since they are coordinated vectors. There is often an antithesis in principle (viz., “this present age” inasmuch as it is dominated by sin) but not in essence. The entithese that do exist are the result of concrete historical breaches in the divine human relationship, not the product of the structures of created reality itself. Romans 8 bears this out." (Page 29)
"Such terms as “above/heavenly” and “below/earthly are to be understood in this sense, not in Greek abstanctions. So, for instance, to set ones mind on “things above” is not to take flight from this “world of appearances” for the realm of pure spirit, but is to set ones mind on the “the things above where Christ is, seated”. (Col 3:1) “Above” and “below” like “transcendence” and “immanence,” are analogical terms, as classical theology is fully aware when it affirms divine omnipresences. . . . "(Page 29)
"It becomes clear that this two age model is concerned not with two worlds or realms, but with two ages, one inferior to the other not for any necessary or ontological reasons but for situational and ethical ones. . . . “This present age” is marked by rebellion against God’s reign, while “the age to come” is characterized by the triumph of God over sin, death, and evil. That which happens in the present is not simply for that reason (ie being located “in this age”) evil, for God’s providence or common grace is active in upholding all things and restraining evil, and God’s Spirit is creating a community of faith, hope, and love out of spiritual death. It is not “this world” of matter, transience, contingency, and so forth, that is set against “the other world” of pure spirit and apathetic bliss, but “this world age” of human rebellion, injustice, and irresponsibility in opposition to the “the age to come” in which God’s reign is uncontested, the cross is transformed fully and finally into glory, and faith and hope are exchanged for sight." (Page 32)
"The tendency to reduce eschatology to cultural-anthropological development rendered many theologians in the twentieth century reticent to identify kairos time with chronological history, but once the contrasts are seen as ethical-eschatological rather than ontological, one may be left wondering why the Kantian a prioris ought to be allowed to determine how much of Paul or the rest of the New testament is acceptable." (Page 35)
"Pauline eschatology insists that this new age actually arrives in Christ as “firstfruits,” the beginning of a full cosmic salvation." (2 Cor. 5:17) (2 Tim 1:10, Col 1:16, Rom 16:26, Gal 4:4, 2 Cor. 6:2, Eph. 3:2)
"FOR CHRIST SURELY DOES NOT COME “IN TIME”, HE COMES TO TRANSFORM TIME. THE REDUCTION OF ESCHATOLOGY TO TIME IN THE FRAMEWORK OF SALVATION HISTORY ALSO REALLY ABOLISHES ESCHATOLOGY ALTOGETHER, SUBJECTING IT TO CHRONOS, THE POWER OF TRANSIENCE." (Page 40)
"Why must once choose between either the reduction of eschatology to chronos or dispensing with chronos as the linear plane of fulfillment?" (Page 41)
"There is a time for preparation (John the Baptist), a time for deliverance (“these last days”), and a time of judgment and consummation (“the last day”). Revelation, including its doctrinal and ethical deliverances, must be seen as SUBSERVIENT to the temporal history of redemption. NOT VICE VERSA." (PAGE 41)
By recognizing Jesus Christ as the key actor in history, all things being “summed up in him” . . . (Page 112)
If all of this depends on a universal historical horizon, is such a view possible? (Page 112)
WOW, Dealing with Universalism because of a historic line. “As the assertion of divine action in history raises questions about universality and access to such salvific events for those outside the community, predicating divine speech meets with similar objections. (Page 124)
"And the biblical text is not merely a record of past and future events of redemption, but the medium of our own incorporation into that history."(Page 183)
"IN THE MODEL WE ARE PROPOSING, eschatology provides the vertical corollary for the horizontal line of history. In other words, redemptive history not only moves forward, that is, through history, but advances by being acted upon "from above" (Page 222)
"Christian theology cannot simply correlate its message to the interests of "history" apart from recognizing the presuppositions of modern historical method, according to which redemptive events or divine actions are either irrelevant or impossible. . . . "Yet, as Moltmann emphasizes, the reality of the presence of "the age to come" here and now is contradicted by our experience "in this present age." (Page 223)
"It is the penetration of history from "above" that creates the three-dimensional topography that would otherwise be flattened into a ONE-DIMENSIONAL TIME LINE." (page 223)
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FOOTNOTE: Michael Scott Horton is Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California, editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine, and host of the nationally syndicated radio broadcast, The White Horse Inn. He was formerly the president of Christians United for Reformation (CURE), which later merged to become the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals (ACE). From 2001 to 2004 Horton served as the president of ACE, but is now no longer affiliated with the organization. Both Modern Reformation magazine and The White Horse Inn radio broadcast are now entities under the umbrella of White Horse Media, whose offices are located on the campus of Westminster Seminary California.
Horton received a M.A. from Westminster Seminary California, a Ph.D. from Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Coventry University, and completed a Research Fellowship at Yale Divinity School. He was ordained a deacon in the Reformed Episcopal Church and is currently a minister in the United Reformed Churches in North America in which denomination he has served two churches in southern California.
