Responding to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism- #2-#7- Mark, the Transfiguration and Prolepsis
Responding to Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism- #2- Installment #7 (#2-#7)
Mark, Transfiguration, Parousia and Prolepsis
Be sure to read Elton Hollon’s Critique of Full Preterism.
Much of my friend’s view depends on Mark’s use of prolepsis. Prolepsis is, of course, a common literary device in the NT. Hollon references the Transfiguration (among other texts, e.g. Matthew 23:37f) as an example of prolepsis:
Transfiguration:- “À propos exegetes commonly interpret Jesus’s transfiguration at 9:2-8 as proleptic of the Parousia 8 resurrection,9 exaltation/ascension,10 enthronement,11 or apotheosis, 9 ,10, 11 The Transfiguration is a foretaste of Jesus’ miraculous transformation (and plausibly the miraculous transformation anticipated at the eschaton).13 While these exegetes disagree about its precise reference, they agree on Mark’ use of prolepsis.” (Critique, page 5- for the reference notes that he gives please read his critique.)
Then, Hollon posits that since Mark records the fulfillment of Jesus’ personal resurrection promises, but omits the parousia, that, “By grounding the eschatological hope in accepted history, Mark assures his reader that the Son of Man’s visible cloud coming will likewise come to pass.”
The assumption here, once again, is that Mark – and Jesus – had in mind a literal, end of human history parousia. But this overlooks the fact that Mark, like Matthew and Luke, tied the parousia to his generation: (8:38): “for whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels. And He said to them, “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power.”” (Mark 8:38-9:1). If Mark anticipated the proposed “end of time” it goes without saying that he would not have recorded such an event, does it not? Not only that, but the Greek of Mark 9 positively excludes the idea of an end of time scenario.
As I have noted in earlier installments, Mark’s insistence that the parousia was to be in his generation presents other issues for my friend’s perspective. Hollon posits the writing of Mark after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. But according to Jesus in Mark, the parousia is, in spite of attempts to divorce the judgment on Jerusalem from the parousia, the parousia is tied inextricably to the fall of Jerusalem and assuredly the first century.
Keep in mind also that throughout the Tanakh, the end of the age, the Day of the Lord and the resurrection are all temporally linked to the time of judgment on Judah and Jerusalem. In fact, as Brant Pitre has properly noted, in the OT, the Great Tribulation, the judgment on Jerusalem and the temple, is, consistently linked with the resurrection. (Brant Pitre, Jesus, Tribulation and the End of Exile, (Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2005), 187). Hollon acknowledges that the Great Tribulation is tied to the time of the judgment on Jerusalem. The problem here is, in my personal view, severe.
If Mark wrote his Gospel after AD 70, (the time which Jesus gave for his parousia) to allay the disappointment in the early church about a failed / postponed parousia, how would assuring them that it would be in their generation, when the generation to whom that promise was made had almost all died out dispel their disappointment? After all, the time set by the Lord had already come and gone with “nothing” happening, so how would / could Mark, writing after that failed prediction set their hearts at ease by making another patently false prediction?
Jesus told his apostles that there were some standing with them that day that would not die until they saw that the kingdom had come: (Θεο ἐληλυθυiαν elēlythuian- perfect participle active). The force of the text is that those people would live until the parousia. They would live through it, and they would look back on it and realized it had happened. Numerous translations render the text as “having had come with power” or “having come with power.” (See e.g. Scott McKnight, The Second Testament). This hardly conforms to any idea that Jesus was predicting an end of time, physical cosmic event.
Second, if we accept the early dating of Mark and the other Gospels- which I do- then the omission of a record of that event – as the parousia – is perfectly natural since it was, to state the obvious, still future.
There is a great deal that could be said of the Transfiguration (one of my favorite topics). (See my book, Like Father Like Son, On Clouds of Glory, for an in-depth discussion of the Transfiguration and its importance).
I fully agree that the Transfiguration was a vision of the parousia of the Son of Man. But as we will see, the coming of the Son of Man is temporally delimited to the first century.
What many exegetes miss is that while the Transfiguration was a vision of the parousia of the Son of Man, it was not, in actuality, a vision of the end of time or the end of the Christian age. In fact, it was a vision of the end of the age of Moses, the law and the prophets. It was about covenantal transformation and transition. See my previous article for more on this.
Dorothy Lee correctly assesses the Transfiguration as a vision of the parousia, but misses the covenantal transformation / transition that is the focal point of the vision:
She asks:
What then is the theological relationship between the transfiguration and the parousia in 2 Peter? The simplest answer is that the one acts as an anticipation of the other. The transfiguration is a foretaste of the power of Jesus to be revealed in the fulfillment of God’s reign. The transfiguration serves as a guarantor of the parousia…..The one guarantees the other.” ( Dorothy Lee, Transfiguration, New Century Theology (London: Continuum Press, 2004), 95)
As Steven Kraftchick says, “In the Transfiguration God designated Jesus as the eschatological judge to come.” (Steven J. Kraftchick, Jude and 2 Peter (Nashville: Abingdon,2002),109). He also says:
Second Peter is not the only instance where the fact of the transfiguration is connected with the fact of the second coming. Both ancient and modern interpreters have made the link between the transfiguration and Jesus’ future coming, (e.g. Apocalypse of Peter, [See Neyrey 1993, 173-174, and Kee, 1972, 149]. (2002, 113).
Boobyer suggested:
2 Peter as a whole is concerned to buttress hope of the second advent; and in 1:16-18 itself the writer desires above all to show that the Lord’s dunamis and parousia were not ‘cunningly devised fables.’ They were not, because he and others had actually been ‘eyewitnesses of that glory.’ If this was to be of any value as a proof of the coming dunamis and parousia it must have been something of the parousia greatness that the eyewitnesses on the ‘holy mount’ saw. (G. H. Boobyer, “St. Mark and the Transfiguration,” Journal of Theological Studies, Vol. 41, London (1940), 121+).
It seems to me that Boobyer’s comments effectively counter the idea that the Transfiguration was in any way a projected vision of Christ’s resurrection or even his ascension.
What Boobyer, in his extensive early work on the Transfiguration, seems to have missed was the covenantal focus of that vision. But A. E. J. Rawlinson, points us in that direction: “The figures of Elijah and Moses disappear, thereby symbolizing that the regime of Law and Prophecy has been superseded by the manifestation of the Son of God. (A. E. J. Rawlinson, The Gospel According to Mark (London: Methuen and Co. Westminster Commentaries, 1947), 118). This is strongly suggested by the fact that in response to Peter’s zealous, “Lord, it is good for us to be here. Let us build here three tabernacles, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah” (Mark 9:5). But a cloud overshadowed them (Moses and Elijah) and the Bot Kohl – the heavenly voice of the Father – spoke, “This is my beloved Son, hear him” (9:7). The form of the Greek is in the emphatic, meaning “him hear”- as Moses and Elijah disappeared. The vision is patently not about the passing of the cosmos. It is not about the end of time. It is not about the end of the (endless) Christian age. It is about the passing of the Old Covenant world of Moses and the prophets and the surpassing glory and the authority of Jesus and his New Covenant. So, the Transfiguration was about the parousia, and it was about covenant transformation. This agrees perfectly with my last installment in which, contra Hollon, I demonstrate that the parousia is indeed posited at the time of covenant transformation.
There is a remarkable disconnect in the literature regarding the Transfiguration. Whereas the huge majority of commentators agree that the Transfiguration was a vision of the “end times parousia”, there are few commentators, indeed, I have found but one, who makes the connection between what the disciples actually saw on the mount and its eschatological significance. Peter Leithart comes the closest of any scholar I have found that expresses a recognition of the fact that the transfiguration defines the nature of the parousia. Leithart does a fine job of exegesis, but, proceeds to essentially abandon his entire argument by then claiming that the transfiguration, as a vision of the end of the Old Covenant age of Israel, was, in the final analysis, a foreshadowing type of a yet future literal coming of Christ at the end of the Christian age. There is nothing in the text to support such a claim.
This oversight in the commentators is due to one thing: a preconceived eschatological paradigm. Every futurist eschatology believes that the coming of Christ occurs at the end of the current Christian age. The problem is that when we compare the traditional views of the end with what the disciples saw on the mount, there is no similarity between the two. This disconnect between the traditional eschatologies and the Transfiguration vision is one of the greatest oversights imaginable. At issue in the Transfiguration vision is the very definition of the second coming of Christ; this is what Peter affirms.
Thus,
The Transfiguration was a vision of the parousia of Christ.
But the Transfiguration was a vision of the passing of the Old Covenant world of Moses and the Prophets (It was not a vision of the end of time or the Christian age).
Therefore, the parousia of Christ is connected to – identified as either synchronous with or synonymous with – the passing of the Old Covenant world of Moses and the Prophets.
All of this comports extremely well with the idea that Christ’s parousia was to be seen in the events of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, the very symbol of Moses and the prophets. To project the parousia of Christ into our future, and posit it at the end of the Christian (New Covenant) age distorts the meaning of the Transfiguration. Where ever you posit the parousia, it is there that Moses and the Prophets were to pass away, giving way to the transcendent glory of Christ and the New Covenant. In sum, the Transfiguration is powerful confirmation of Covenant Eschatology, (full preterism) not historical eschatology. It is about covenantal transformation, not cosmic destruction. It is about Covenant Eschatology, not Historical Eschatology.
In light of all of this, I believe it is untenable to suggest that the Transfiguration in any way subverts the full preterist paradigm. In fact, the Transfiguration serves as powerful probative proof of full preterism. In fact, Covenant Eschatology (Full Preterism) is the only eschatological view that properly assesses and accepts the covenantal nature of the parousia as established by the Transfiguration.
More to come.