Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarification sought... By: tigger (12 replies) 30 March, 2006 - 13:58
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica By: andrew (30/03/2006 - 19:02)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica By: tigger (31/03/2006 - 11:20)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica By: tigger (31/03/2006 - 12:46)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: (01/04/2006 - 10:41)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: peter wilkinson (01/04/2006 - 20:12)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: andrew (03/04/2006 - 23:35)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: peter wilkinson (04/04/2006 - 11:24)
- The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome By: andrew (04/04/2006 - 18:03)
- Re: The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome By: peter wilkinson (04/04/2006 - 20:33)
- [Comment moved to new thread] By: andrew (04/04/2006 - 23:46)
- Re: [Comment moved to new thread] By: adhunt (25/09/2008 - 21:04)
- [Comment moved to new thread] By: andrew (04/04/2006 - 23:46)
- Re: The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome By: peter wilkinson (04/04/2006 - 20:33)
- The Apostolic Fathers and judgment on Rome By: andrew (04/04/2006 - 18:03)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: tigger (04/04/2006 - 11:10)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: peter wilkinson (04/04/2006 - 11:24)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: andrew (03/04/2006 - 23:35)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: peter wilkinson (01/04/2006 - 20:12)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity By: (01/04/2006 - 10:41)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica By: tigger (31/03/2006 - 12:46)
- Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity - clarifica By: tigger (31/03/2006 - 11:20)
Re: Post-eschatology and 2nd century church identity
Andrew - just to be devil’s advocate, I’d have thought from your point of view you would very definitely not want the church fathers to be included in an expanded biblical corpus. Despite some well meaning attempts to prove the opposite (which rather have the effect of proving the case), there is virtually no suggestion at all in the fathers that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70 was seen as a coming of the Son of Man, vindication of the same, and transfer of power and authority to the saints. Since the fathers were close enough to the event to have been the first to espouse such a view, it’s rather striking that they didn’t.
I’m also quite interested in the wider aspects of the historical/contextual/narrative interpretation. If there was little perspective beyond its eschatological/climactic events, and the NT documents as we have them merely fill in instructions and theology leading up to the events, what is left over for the shaping and outworking of God’s purposes for the subsequent millennia? (Assuming that everyone got it wrong, because the theological underpinning was wrong). Are we just left to cobble together any old approach - provided that it is communal, not individualistic; narrative grounded, not resting on a gospel which proclaims the Lordship of Jesus and the equipping of the church through the Spirit?
What really prevents the narrative historical approach from being a massive cul de sac, in which the biblical documents are no more than a history text book with marginal relevance for today’s world? This is a problem not simply for your approach, but for Wright and thorough-going preterism generally, in which everything happened in the 1st century, and there is very little left over for the times beyond that. I’m asking these questions on the basis of believing that there are, in any case, some fundamental flaws in key aspects of the extended interpretive basis of whatever we care to call the historical approach - for all the very useful insights that it has given us, in a somethat more limited understanding of its contributions.