Thinklings Book Club Discussion Six: Chapters 10 and 11



Highlights and Reflections

1. Hoekema begins Chapter 10 with a discussion of the state of expectancy in the Church today. On p.110, he writes:

There may be various reasons for the loss of this sense of expectation. It may be that the church today is so caught up in material and secular concerns that interest in the second coming is fading into the background. It may be that many Christians no longer believe in a literal return of Christ. It may also be that many who do believe in a literal return have pushed that event so far into the distant future that they no longer live in anticipation of that return. Whatever the reasons may be, the loss of a lively, vital anticipation of the Second Coming of Christ is a sign of a most serious spiritual malady in the church.

On the other hand . . . ;-)
This is really where The Bible and the Future shows its age, I think. While it is certainly true that ?the church today is . . . caught up in material and secular concerns,? it is not at all true that interest in the second coming has faded into the background. Hoekema?s book was published in the late 70s, so it perhaps just missed the rise of Hal Lindsay and Lindsay-esque speculation, as well as the A Distant Thunder pretribulational propaganda films. And it obviously pre-dates the Left Behind phenomenon. The Church today does not lack this expectation Hoekema missed in the mid to late 70s. If anything, the Church has fallen off the horse on the other side. Witness The Rapture Index.

2. A solid excerpt from p.113:

If, then, Christ himself, according to his own admission, did not know the hour of his return, no other statements of his can be interpreted as indicating the exact time of that return. And that includes the difficult passages just referred to. The insistence that these passages require a Parousia within the generation of those who were contemporaries of Jesus is clearly at variance with Jesus? own disavowal of the knowledge of the time of his return.

What interests me, however, is that Hoekema writes ?a Parousia,? and not ?the Parousia.? Other amillennialists, those who are not full preterists, have conceded that a sort of parousia occurred in the events of AD70, because the ?this generation? constraint in the Olivet Discourse just seems too rigid to get around.
I hang up on that section of the Discourse, as well. All explanations I have heard attempting to say ?this generation? refers to anyone other than the generation of the folks Jesus was speaking to just don?t seem convincing to me. Add to that the other version of the Discourse where Jesus flat-out says, ?Some of you will not taste death.? Who is ?some of you? if not somebody he?s talking to?

Of course, the sticky wicket then is trying to figure out what the ?this? in ?all this will take place? is. Also on p.113, Hoekema begins describing the difficulty in discerning the Olivet Discourse. It?s just a tangled web of prophecy, parable, and apocalypticism. What is literal? What is poetic? What time frame, or how many time frames, is/are involved? The threads running through Mark 13 and its parallels are myriad and intertwined. I?ve been studying the Discourse off and on for nearly ten years, and it still gives me fits. In consulting commentaries, I became somewhat comfortable with my persistent ignorance when reading no less an NT scholar than D.A. Carson saying the elements of Matthew 24 are incredibly complex and resistant to dissection.
Which, I assume, is why there are so many different eschatological views out there!

3. The common bottom lines, however, are a joyful expectancy, a secured hope, and a faithful readiness:
?Jesus? purpose in uttering these words is not to give an exact date for his return, but rather to indicate the certainty of his return? (p.116).

4. On p.117, Hoekema writes:

By ?this generation,? then, Jesus means the rebellious, apostate, unbelieving Jewish people, as they have revealed themselves in the past, are revealing themselves in the present, and will continue to reveal themselves in the future. This unbelieving and evil generation, though they reject Christ now, will continue to exist until the day of his return, and will then receive the judgment which is their due. Interpreted in this way, Jesus? statement comes as a logical conclusion to a discourse which began with the proclamation of the destruction of Jerusalem, as a punishment for Israel?s obduracy.

In the margin of my book next to this paragraph I simply wrote ?Wow.?
First, I?m not entirely convinced of Hoekema?s interpretation here, but it has nothing to do with my take on the future of national/ethnic Israel.
Secondly, this is an interesting contrast with the amillennial view of, say, Kim Riddlebarger, who does foresee a general repentance and turning to Jesus for salvation of national/ethnic Israel sometime before and precipitating the Parousia. (While I?m not convinced of that view either, Riddlebarger?s A Case for Amillennialism is a great and informative little book.)

5. Hoekema touches on the phenomenon known as ?prophetic perspective?:

What was said above about prophetic foreshortening must also be remembered: in speaking to his disciples, Jesus often linked together matters which were in the near future with events in the far distant future, as the Old Testament prophets often did. (p.119)

Which is what makes parsing out lengthy passages like the Olivet Discourse so tricky.

6. In pp.122-123, Hoekema turns to Pauline eschatology. On p.123, he writes:

A number of recent New Testament scholars contend that there was a shift in Paul?s thinking on this point. In his earlier epistles, so it is said, he looked for a speedy Parousia ? so speedy, in fact, that he expected still to be living when the Lord returned. But in his later epistles, it is affirmed, he no longer had this expectation; instead he anticipated that he would die before Christ returned, and that the Parousia would occur sometime later. Some of these scholars even speak of Paul?s thus correcting an earlier mistake.

Certainly this view creates problems for biblical infallibility and inerrancy, and even for its inspiration. (ie. Could Paul have been inspired to believe a mistake?)

7. The passage is too lengthy to reprint in this space, but Chapter 10 closes with a nice detailing of the practical implications of eschatological expectancy (pp.127-128), a helpful touch, I hope, for some of our more application-minded readers.

8. At the bottom of p.127, I jotted down this little list, one I titled ?Problems with ?Pan-tribuationism?,? which is the view most often cited by those uninterested in studying eschatology:
a. It won?t ?pan out? for unbelievers
b. The Bible teaches readiness, implying actions to be taken.
c. The Bible teaches extensively on eschatology, so it is worth being informed.

9. On p.130 in Chapter 11, Hoekema writes, ?Is not the lack of a lively expectation of the Parousia among many Christians today perhaps due to an excessive emphasis on the doctrine of the signs of the times??
Huh?
Hoekema can obviously be forgiven for writing just before expectation got not just ?lively? but practically chaotic, but I don?t understand how an excessive emphasis on signs of the times might lead to a lack of expectation. Wouldn?t it do the opposite? Again, witness The Rapture Index, which was birthed byu our obsessed-with-the-rapture Church subculture.

10. Two sentences down, though, I jotted ?Yes!? next to this great and true line:
?One such mistaken understanding is to think of the signs of the times as referring exclusively to the end-time? (p.130).
And then this one:
?In the meantime, all of the signs of the times described in the New Testament characterize the entire period between Christ?s first and second coming, and every decade of that period? (p.130).

11. ?Another mistaken understanding of these signs is to think of them only in terms of abnormal, spectacular, or catastrophic events? (p.130).

12. And here?s a beauty of a guideline affecting our entire study of prophecy:

Prophecy is very different from history. It is not intended to give us a knowledge of the future analogous to that which history gives us of the past. (p.132)

I would only add that sometimes the way history is recounted in the Bible does not tell us about the past in the same way we usually expect History to (ie. scientifically).

13. From p.133:

Both Ridderbos and Berkouwer are very critical of what they call ?reportorial eschatology? ? the attempt to understand the eschatological predictions of the Bible as giving us a kind of ?news reporter?s? account of the exact order of events in the end-time . . . In its preoccupation with war, with the chaotic phenomena of history, uncertainty enters in and the heart of the real eschatological proclamation is lost.

Yes!
(And when I read about the ?news reporter?s? account of eschatology, I thought of that cheesy Jack Van Impe show where he and his cotton-candy-haired wife read newspaper headlines between Jack?s quoting of allegedly related Scripture verses.)

14. A good word on a biblical imminence (as opposed to a ?newspaper? imminence):

It is quite common, particularly in dispensationalist circles, to say that the Second Coming of Christ is ?imminent.? If by ?imminence? it is meant that no predicted event needs to occur before Christ comes again, this view gives us difficulties ? since, as we have seen, the New Testament teaches that certain things must indeed happen before the Parousia occurs. (p.135)

15. And a final note on p.136:
?As will be shown later, there is no sound biblical basis for dividing the Second Coming of Christ into these two phases [rapture and ?real? Second Coming].?
Cool.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. On p.111, Hoekema reviews various views of Jesus? allegedly errant eschatological expectation, including the ?consistent eschatology? of the Schweitzer school. While evangelicals of course reject the Schweitzerian notion of Jesus being erroneous, most of us do acknowledge that there is in the man Jesus a (self-willed?) limited omniscience. If, by Jesus? own admission, the Son doesn?t even know the time of His return, is it at all possible that Jesus could have been mistaken in the speculation of Matthew 24? Why or why not?

2. On p.121, Hoekema cites George Eldon Ladd on the quality of readiness:
?The word translated ?watch? in these several verses . . . does not mean ?to look for? but ?to be awake.? It does not denote an intellectual attitude but a moral quality of spiritual readiness for the Lord?s return. ?You must be ready? (Lk. 12:40). The uncertainty as to the time of the parousia means that men must be spiritually awake and ready to meet the Lord whenever he comes.?
This ties in somewhat to my question last time about ?treasures in heaven.?
Please explain how this emphasis does not suggest a works salvation? Can one be saved, yet be found in a state of backsliding sin at the Lord?s return, and therefore miss the blessed hope?

3. These two chapters cover a lot of material, even as they generally cover just two subjects. So here?s your chance to either state your own perspective or ask your own questions regarding the following topics:
a imminency and/or readiness
b. the idea of ?two comings? in the Second Coming
c. anything and/or everything in the Olivet Discourse
d. the future of national/ethnic Israel and/or ethnic/religious Jews
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Next week?s reading, for Monday (5/16) ? Chapter 12 (approx. 27 pages).