Presupp and Preterism

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Introduction

I recently had occasion to sit down with Gary DeMar from American Vision. The original plan had been to discuss eschatology and preterism, and the still unresolved differences of a few years back, but then the topic got changed and we talked about some other stuff instead—things related to Moscow and the recent CNN segment. I assume that the change was because Gary went on CrossPolitic while he was here and they talked about the resurrection of the dead there.

But because of what we were going to talk about, I had been meditating a bit more on the deep problems with full preterism, and another difficulty lying underneath that whole system occurred to me. This one is a bit meta, so I will have to ask you to bear with me for a little while. Once all the pieces are assembled, it will all be elegant enough, but in the meantime, the kitchen will look like I am trying to throw together some Beef Wellington at the last minute.

I will begin by teasing you all with my conclusion. There is a fundamental contradiction between full preterism and presuppositional apologetics. It has to be one or the other. And if that doesn’t get your motor running, I don’t know what will.

Once I get started, as I will in a minute, it will appear that I have changed the subject, but I can assure you that I have not. The applications to full preterism come at the end. But no fair skipping to the end because, if you do that, it will look like I am just coming out of left field. Which we all know cannot be the case.

Sola Scriptura

Many evangelical Christians have drifted into a fundamental confusion about the doctrine of sola Scriptura, and this confusion is understandably picked up and used by Roman Catholic apologists against Protestants generally.

The confusion holds that sola Scriptura means that Scripture is the only spiritual authority that we have to deal with in the course of our lives. This is a gross misunderstanding of the doctrine as held by the Reformers, but that doesn’t keep it from being very popular in North American currently. I call it the confused doctrine by the name of solo Scriptura—”just me and my Bible.”

But we have many spiritual authorities that are not Scripture. We begin with our parents (Eph. 6: 1). Wives look up to their husbands, as the church does to Christ (Eph. 5: 24). Parishioners in the church are instructed to obey those who have the rule over them (Heb. 13: 7). We are to honor the decisions of broader church councils (Acts 15: 28). It is simply false to the Scriptures, and false to the experience that all of us have had, to say that Scripture is our only spiritual authority. The problem with solo Scriptura is that it is false.

So what does the sola in sola Scriptura mean then? It means that Scripture is the only spiritual authority in our lives that has the attributes of ultimacy and infallibility. Only Scripture is ultimate, which means there is no court of appeals beyond Scripture, and only Scripture is incapable of error. All the other spiritual authorities in our lives, and there are many of them, are limited in their jurisdictions and are capable of error. It is possible to appeal past them, showing they are not ultimate, and there are times when we need to appeal past them, showing that they are not infallible.

The Table of Contents

Now when you go and open up your Bible and look at the Table of Contents, whose word is that? Is the Table of Contents part of the inspired content? Who made the determination? Who set the boundaries of the canon? Is that list of books the Word of God, or is it the word of the Church?

Now some Protestants might want to swallow this reductio implied by this question and claim that the Table of Contents was inspired—simply because they don’t want Roman Catholics to make hay out of the fact that we acknowledged that it is the word of the Church. And the RCs grant the point I am making, but misuse it when they try to say that this puts the Church in a position of some sort of seniority to Scripture, and Protestants know that we can’t have that.

But at the same time to claim inspiration for the Table of Contents really is untenable. To whom was it revealed? When did this moment of inspiration happen?

Now I really need to ask you to remember this next part, because it is going to come up again later. The Table of Contents is the first creed of the Church, and it is our foundational creed. It functions as a creed, and has the authority of a creed. This creed developed in two stages through the course of history—first through Israel (giving us the Old Testament) and secondly through the Church (resulting in the New Testament).

The Israel of God in the Old Testament was the fallible librarian that assembled the Old Testament canon, which Paul tells us directly.

And the oracles of God in the new covenant era were entrusted to Israel in her renewed form. It was her responsibility to recognize, preserve, and honor the Words of God as they came to us from Christ and His apostles. This was faithfully done, and so the Church defined for us the 27 books of new covenant revelation. The Jews had already preserved 39 books for us, and the Church preserved the books of the New Testament.

Now both of them did this as fallible authorities, which means that we have to define what we mean by fallible.

Fallible Source, Infallible Truth

Because the scriptural writers were inspired by God, their infallibility was guaranteed. They spoke and wrote as inspired by the Spirit, and the Spirit cannot err. “The words of the Lord are pure words: As silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times” (Ps. 12:6). When Isaiah came to the people with “thus saith the Lord,” it was not necessary to budget for the possibility of error. The inspiration of the Spirit guaranteed the purity of the Word. But when the Church speaks, or a portion of the Church, it is completely necessary to budget for the possibility of error. This what Paul was doing in the book of Galatians in the run-up to the Jerusalem Council.

But there is more. A fallible source, without having such a guarantee, could still write an infallible book, a book with no errors in it. Shoot, I could do that. Being a fallible authority means that mistakes are possible, not that mistakes are constant, universal, and ongoing. Your pastor is fallible, but this does not mean that he gets everything wrong. It means that error is a possibility that we must budget for, and so this is why we imitate the Bereans (Acts 17:11).

Now in order for me to write an infallible book, I would have to be very, very careful, and limit the scope of my assertions just as carefully, and have it proofed ten times, but the thing could be done. Page one: two apples added to two apples will result in four apples. Page two: two oranges added to two oranges will result in four oranges. Page three: two pineapples added to two pineapples will result in four pineapples. Page four: two mangoes added to two mangoes will result in four mangoes. You get the drift. It wouldn’t be a very exciting book, but it would in fact be an infallible one . . . because the truth is infallible.

I don’t believe the Apostles Creed is inspired, not at all. But I do believe it is infallible . . . because the truth is infallible. The truth does not err. In the same way, I believe that the Table of Contents for the Scriptures is not inspired, but it is infallible. God in His providential kindness guarded the Church as she worked through the issues surrounding the canon. Consequently, the canon of Scripture is a confessional issue for me. I accept the doctrine of the canon that is taught by the Church (WCF 1.2). But if you don’t accept the authority of creeds then there is no fundamental reason why you shouldn’t include the Shepherd of Hermas into your eschatological reasoning—which would make things quite a bit more festive.

But the fact that the Church has infallibly pointed to the contents of the Scripture does not make the Church senior to Scripture, contra some RC arguments. To borrow an illustration from Martin Luther, the fact that John the Baptist pointed to Christ and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” did not make the Baptist senior to Christ. The lesser can testify to the greater. The fallible Church can point to the infallible collection of God’s messages to us, and the Church can get that testimony right. The Church did get it right—and what they got right was our foundational creed. The Table of Contents is the ur-creed.

So the contents of the book of Romans are infallible because they are directly inspired by the Spirit of God. The place of Romans as listed in Table of Contents is infallible because it is correct. It is true. So God gave us His infallible words in Scripture by means of inspiration. He gave us the library of His words by means of providence.

The Book that Fell from the Sky

Now it is commonplace for full preterists to be dismissive of the early creeds of the church. This is necessary for them to do because, starting with the Apostles Creed, full preterism is denied. The universal church has made no declaration on the details of eschatology except for this one point . . . that full preterism is wrong. The Apostles Creed says this: “from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.” The Nicene Creed does the same. “He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.”

And the response to this is usually to deny the authority of the creeds, and to say that full preterists want simply to appeal to Scripture. But in order to do that they must assume (presuppose) the authority of at least one creed . . . the creed that gave them their Bible. But how can they affirm such creed without a theology that has a place for creeds?

If they deny that the Table of Contents is a creed, then I would ask them where they got the Bible. That would be a tough one for them. And if they agree that the Table of Contents is a creed, then I would ask them to articulate the principles they use for distinguishing good creedal statements from bad ones. After all, the generation that gave us Nicea is also the generation that gave us the canon. Athanasius, who was the champion of orthodoxy at Nicea, is the same man who was the first one to use the word canon in reference to the New Testament.

Now I accept the authority of the ecumenical councils, with my enthusiasm rolling to a stop shortly before Second Nicea. And the reason I don’t accept Second Nicea is because the Second Commandment trumps Second Nicea. Praying to pictures and statues is not a hard violation to identify.

I accept the authority of these early creeds, but I remember always that they are not Scripture. They nevertheless have real authority, which I must recognize and submit to, unless I have plain statements from the Word which contradict the creed—the way I do when the Second Commandment contradicts Second Nicea. When I decline to accept a creed, I can give a reason for it, which I can do because I have a theology of the relationship of Scripture to the creeds. I need to be able to give a reason for it. All the creeds after the ur-creed must give way to Scripture, and I simply accept the ur-creed by faith.

Now my point is this. Having a reflex reaction that simply dismisses the authority of the creeds needs to explain why the Table of Contents is not included in the dismissal.

What Presupp Presupposes

When I presuppose Scripture, I need to presuppose the whole package. I cannot presuppose a Bible that magically appeared on my desk one day. I must presuppose the entire history of revelation, one that includes the inspiration of the Spirit and the human personality of writer selected and empowered by that same Spirit. I also have to presuppose God’s providential care for His Word after the fact. I don’t just get the Spirit’s “content,” I also get Paul’s life story and personality as part of the mix. Belief in inspiration does not mean adhering to a “dictation” theory of inspiration, where the human personality of the writer disappears.

And just as it would not be possible to include the human writer in your acceptance of Romans, say, if you did not have a theology of human writers, so also it is not possible to presuppose the Scriptures as the Word of God without having a theology of faithful creeds. You must have a theology of scriptural formation, which means you have to have a theology of what was going on in the first three centuries of the Christian era. You have no Bible otherwise.

To presuppose Scripture, therefore, means that also included is the presupposition that Rome existed, that letters were written on parchment, often by means of secretaries, that Paul was a converted Pharisee, that fluency in Greek extends beyond the vocabulary used in the New Testament, and that the process of canonical formation was a creedal process that took place over the course of three centuries. And not only all that, but much, much more.

An Odd Sort of Biblical Solipsism

Accepting the full authority of the Bible while rejecting the authority of creeds can result (and frequently has resulted) in an odd kind of biblical solipsism. It is as though the Bible were lowered from the heavens with ropes, and a Siri-like voice said unto us, “These are your premises. Reason ye from them. Build your systems with them. Ignore everything else.”

It was this sort of thing that distinguished the truncated “presuppositionalism” of Gordon Clark from the full-orbed presuppositionalism of Van Til. Put another way, it is not tenable to begin your theological reasoning with an already-completed Bible. This whole thing reminds me of the old joke about the atheist and the Christian who were debating the origin of life, and the atheist claimed that he could create life. The Christian asked how. The atheist said that first he would gather up some dirt, to which the Christian replied, “Ah ah ah . . . get your own dirt.”

And so Athanasius believed in the resurrection of the body at the last day the same way that Martha did (John 11:24). Jesus spoke of a “day of judgment” when both Capernaum and Sodom would stand shoulder to shoulder (Matt. 11:23-24), an event which has not yet occurred. This is why Paul cried out in the Sanhedrin that he was on trial because of the hope of the resurrection (Acts 23:6-8). We happen to know what the Pharisees affirmed and what the Sadducees denied, and Jesus told us that we were to go with the Pharisees on that point (Matt. 23:1-3). This is how Paul could speak before Felix with such confidence: “And have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15). He was not talking about the events of 70 A.D. because the unjust were not raised then. And neither were the just for that matter.

It is not a denial of the sufficiency of Scripture to look at classical literature to help you understand the semantic range of a biblical hapax. Nor is it a denial of the Bible’s sufficiency to understand the Scripture’s teaching about the last day against the backdrop of first century Jewish convictions. And we know what those were. However, that kind of understanding will take you outside your Bible bubble, but a Bible bubble is an artificial construct—and one of the fundamental things that it ignores is how that “bubble” came to be in the first place.

In sum, a robust presuppositionalism presupposes the Word, along with the entire world in which the Word was given. This has to include history, linguistics, reason, tradition, creeds and councils, apostasies, recoveries and reformations, and the faith of our fathers.

It also includes the black leather cover, the gold leaf, the ribbon, the maps and concordance. It includes all that . . . but it doesn’t start there.