Responding to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism: Was AD 70 a Time of Covenant Transformation? #2- #6
Response To Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism – #2- #6
THE DAY OF THE LORD AND COVENANT TRANSFORMATION?
Be sure to read Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism.
Elton Hollon claims that the preterist view of covenant transition at the parousia is illogical. He says of the OT prophets: “They did not predict a transition of covenants in 70 CE.”; “If Preston’s day of Yahweh interpretation of the covenant transition, resurrection, regathering, etc., were correct, these would follow after each day of Yahweh in the OT.” This is a flawed argument.
With regard to covenant transformation, Hollon writes:
Mark 14:24 also speaks of Jeremiah’s ‘new covenant’ (Jer 31:31-34; cf. the Mosaic covenant in Exod 19-Num 11), but this relates the elements of Jesus’s supper with his body blood at the crucifixion in 30 CE. It also likely refers to the new hope of Jewish covenant renewal, but the new covenant was interpreted later by Christians with a universal focus on Gentile inclusion. Even so, some writers continued to speak of Jewish conversion and the remnant (Romans 11). The covenant undergoes reinterpretation as well, and it presents no difficulty identifying the eschatological nature of Mark 13:24-27.
Hollon suggests that covenant transformation was accomplished at the cross. This runs counter to the NT data that shows:
1. The Old Covenant could not pass until it was ALL fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-18) and Jesus himself posited that fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem (Luke 21:22).
2. Comcomitant with this, both Colossians 2:16-17 and Hebrews 9-10 spoke of the then still “standing” (from stasin, to have legal standing) and “imposed” (from epikeimai) nature of the Old Cultus until “the time of reformation” (Hebrews 9:10). That time of reformation would be at the parousia of Christ which was coming in a “very, very little while” (10:37).
Not only that, but in both Colossians and Hebrews the cultic feast days were still “shadows of the good things about to come’ (from mello, in the infinitive, see Blass-DeBrunner, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1961), 181; “mellein with the infinitive expresses imminence”).
So, at the time of the writing of both of these books, the typological / prophetic feast days of Israel were still not fulfilled. Since those final feast days foreshadowed the eschatological consummation, this means that the Old Covenant had not yet passed. (See my Resurrection Feast Fulfilled: A Study of Israel’s Final Feast Day -Succot – and Its Relationship with the Resurrection.)
3. Paul affirmed in 2 Corinthians 3 that covenantal transformation, from the Covenant written and engraven on stones, was taking place- he uses the present tenses– when he wrote. He did not say that the Law passed at the cross. In fact, he said that covenant transformation “from glory to glory” (3:16) was his personal and distinctive ministry (2 Corinthians 4:1-2).
4. When Hebrews was written, Jeremiah’s promise of the New Covenant, which would necessitate the removal of the Old (7:10-12) was in the process of fulfillment. The Old Covenant was “nigh (engus) unto vanishing away” (Hebrews 8:13). As long as Torah stood (stasin – valid, binding) there was no forgiveness, no salvation. And that Law would remain “imposed” (epikeimai) until the time of reformation, the time of salvation. The time of salvation – thus, the end of the prohibitive Law – was coming when, “to those who eagerly look for him he shall appear a second time for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28). That same author assured his audience, “And now, in a very, very little while (hosan, hosan micron) the one who is coming will come, and will not delay” (10:37). There was a period of covenantal transformation underway.
5. Revelation posits covenant transition in its vision of the opening of the MHP in Revelation 11 & 15, something unheard of under Torah. Leithart addresses this:
When the chronos of discipline and patience ends, then the mystery of God will be finished (etelethe). This is the word that Jesus speaks at the cross, when he proclaimed that it is finished, (this is) often taken as a declaration that salvation is entirely accomplished by the death of Jesus. Yet the work of the cross is not completed without the resurrection, the resurrection is not completed without Pentecost, and Pentecost is not completed until the end of the old order in AD 70. The final completion of the mystery of God requires that the contents of the book be enacted, and this includes the persecution and vindication of the martyr church. Until that happens, the mystery of God is not finished. (Peter Leithhart, International Theological Commentary, Revelation 1-11 (London, New York; Bloomsbury, T & T Clark, 2018), 409).
The relationship between Hebrews 9:6-10 should be noted. In Hebrews 9 no man could enter the MHP while Torah remained valid and no forgiveness was objectively available. But forgiveness, entrance into the MHP, salvation, would be given at the end of Torah, the time of reformation at the parousia of Christ. In Revelation, salvation (19:1-2) would arrive at the parousia in the destruction of Babylon, the city where the Lord was slain (11:8). That would also be the time of God’s Wrath, the time of the resurrection (11:15-19). When God’s Wrath was completed in the judgment of Babylon, man could enter the MHP (11:15f: 15:8).
So, following the Cross we have the fact of the coming, imminent covenant transition.
Thus, Hollon’s claim: “If Preston’s day of Yahweh interpretation of the covenant transition, resurrection, re-gathering, etc., were correct, these would follow after each day of Yahweh in the OT”- is not accurate. There was to be only one end of the age covenantal change, and that was to occur in the last days. And we cannot overlook the fact that Jesus and the NT writers repeatedly said that they were living in the times (the kairos, the appointed time) foretold by the OT prophets (Matthew 13:17 / Acts 2:15f / Acts 3:19f / 1 Corinthians 10:11). We have noted earlier, in my installment number four of this response, that the apostles understood the relationship between the changing of the ages in direct connection with the dissolution of the Jerusalem temple. They were not confused nor mistaken about that connection.
In the Tanakh none of the promises of an imminent Day of the Lord even hints at Covenant transformation at those ancient historical Days of the Lord. In fact, those OT historical Days of the Lord were as a result of YHVH enforcing the Deuteronomic provisions for Wrath against the covenant transgressions (Cf. Daniel 9; Amos , Hosea 9, etc.). The AD 70 judgment was also an enforcement of those covenantal provisions of wrath for violating Torah – and killing the Son (Revelation 16:19).
Mark Adam Elliott points how some Jewish sources recognized the AD 70 catastrophe as a covenantal judgment. He cites Josephus saying that AD 70 was a judgment on Jerusalem for her sin (War, 6:251). He also says, “The view that AD 70 was a judgment from God was probably widely current.” He says, “The authors of 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch, for their part, seem to have been convinced that God’s judgment was directed, not only against failed Zealot attempts, but against a general state of apostasy in Israel. The whole nation seemed to be caught up in futility and hopelessness.” He cites several other scholars who, “each in their own way pointed out that many Jews blamed the destruction on the sin of Israel, just as had been done in the first destruction of Jerusalem over six centuries earlier.” (Mark Adam Elliott, The Survivors of Israel, (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2000), 234).
William Lane, among others, also posits AD 70 as an expression of covenantal wrath, appealing to Jesus’ own Olivet Discourse prediction:
Jesus announces its destruction in close connection with the establishment of his sovereign dignity. The prophecy is distinctly eschatological in its significance. Malachi 3:1-6 had described the coming of the Lord to his temple in the context of the judgment for the refining and purifying of His people. In this context the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is to be understood as the judgment of God upon the rebelliousness of his people, and not simply the response of Imperial Rome to insurrection. Significant strands of Jewish literature also attributed the fall of Jerusalem to the sin of her people. (William Lane, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Mark, (Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1974), 453, n. 30).
That covenantal judgment of AD 70 was foretold in the Tanakh in a host of texts (For example, Deuteronomy 32 / Isaiah 2-4 / Isaiah 24-28 / Isaiah 65-66 / Daniel 9; 12 / Zechariah 12-14 / Malachi 3-4 – to name a few). Thus, it can hardly be argued that the Old Covenant had passed at the cross, since those Old Covenant sanctions for violation of Torah were being imposed in AD 70. But at that judgment, when all things written were fulfilled, (Luke 21:22) the New Creation came into full bloom (Revelation 21-22). The Old passed, the New was fully established. Even Eusebius commented on this aspect of AD 70:
Moses himself foresaw by the Holy Spirit that when the New covenant was revived by Christ and preached to all nations, his own legislation would become superfluous, he rightly confined its influence to one place, so that if they were ever deprived of it and shut out of that national freedom, it might not be possible for them to carry out the ordinances of his law in a foreign country, and of necessity they would have to receive the new covenant announced by Christ. Moses had foretold this very thing and in due course Christ sojourned in this life, and the teaching of the new covenant was borne to all nations, and at once the Romans besieged Jerusalem and destroyed it and the Temple there. At once the whole of the Mosaic law was abolished, with all that remained of the Old Covenant, and the curse passed over to those who became lawbreakers because they obeyed Moses’ law, when its time had gone by, and still clung ardently to it, for at that very moment, the perfect teaching of the new Law was introduced in its place. (Eusebius, Proof of the Gospel, Vol I, BK. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), chap. 6, p. 34-35).
In addition to positing Covenant transition at the judgment on Jerusalem, Eusebius also identified that judgment as the coming of the Lord in flaming fire. See also Proof of the Gospel, Bk. VIII, chapter 4, 144f where he says Christ came, “with the chariots and horses” to conquer the army of the Jews. In his comments on Micah 1:2-4; 3:9-12; 4:1-4 he said that the Lord came in the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. (Proof, Bk. VIII, chapter 3, 140+). Thus, the idea of covenant transition at the coming of the Lord, in flaming fire, in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is no preterist invention or contrivance.
As noted above, no Old Covenant prophet suggested that at their imminent Day of Wrath the Old Covenant was “nigh unto vanishing.” or that the New Covenant was imminent. They never even called the Tanakh “the old Covenant.” That appellation was reserved for the time of Paul in 2 Corinthians 3.
The Old Prophets spoke of the last days Day of the Lord (cf. Isaiah 2), as something far off, in contradistinction to a Day of the Lord that was imminent in their day and time (Isaiah 2-4 / Joel 2:28f). And it was to be in those distant last days that the New Covenant would be given.
Another element to consider is that the promised New Covenant was invariably posited at the time of the restoration of all twelve tribes (Isaiah 54-55 / Jeremiah 3:14ff / 31 / Ezekiel 37). Yet, the Day of the Lord against the ten tribes was totally contrary to that reality, as was the Babylonian captivity. Those Days of the Lord resulted in the Dispersion of the respective houses. Both of those destructions were labeled as the Day of the Lord, but were NEVER described in covenantal transition terms even closely resembling the NT terminology. But what we find in the NT record is the realization that Israel was being– post cross- restored under Jesus the Messiah. The “tabernacle of David” was being raised to restore Israel, as well as to invite the Gentiles into the blessings of the New Covenant (Acts 15:15-16).
(It must be kept in mind that the last days restoration of Israel is invariably a referent to the salvation of the remnant (Romans 9-11), not to the entire corporate body. In fact, the corporate body would perish (“The Lord God shall slay you…” Isaiah 65:13f) but the remnant would receive the New Covenant blessings in the New Creation (Isaiah 65:8f). The Old Covenant, “this creation,” (Hebrews 9:11) was to perish, openly manifesting the arrival of the New Creation of Christ. This is the very epitome of Covenant Eschatology, and not Historical Eschatology.
More of this excellent exchange to come.