Someone recently asked me whether I had ever responded to the following post by Dave Green, the hyper-preterist who took to calling me “Talbot-Jason.” He wrote it in 2012. I did not know it existed until now. Since Dave gave me a nickname, I will return the favor. Paul said the talk of those who claim “the resurrection has already happened” will “spread like gangrene” (2 Tim. 2:17-18). For the rest of this post, he is Dave Gangreen. Here is his post in full:
Talbot-Jason has posted a superb example of the “full preterist presuppositions” that have increasingly emerged from within the church in history.
The Westminster Confession of Faith:
Q. 85. Death being the wages of sin, why are not the righteous delivered from death, seeing all their sins are forgiven in Christ?
A. The righteous shall be delivered from death itself at the last day, and even in death are delivered from the sting and curse of it; so that, although they die, yet it is out of God’s love, to free them perfectly from sin and misery, and to make them capable of further communion with Christ in glory, which they then enter upon.
My response: Note on the one hand: We must wait for the end of human history (which the Confession calls “the last day”) before we can be “delivered from death.”
Yet on the other hand: When saints die today, they are delivered from “the sting” and “curse” of death, and are perfectly freed from sin and misery in glory.
There are at least two problems here: 🙂
ONE: If after believers die they are immediately delivered from the sting and curse of death, and are perfectly freed from sin and misery, then how are they in need of “deliverance” from death? Hello. 🙂 “And the saints around the throne prayed, ‘Lord please save us from this sting-less, curse-less,perfect freedom from sin and misery in glory’” (Revelation 23:13, The ‘Consistent’ Futurist Version).
TWO: 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 makes it crystal clear that “the sting of death” is NOT removed UNTIL the Resurrection of the Dead: “So WHEN this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, THEN shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
Versus the WCF: “The righteous . . in death [today] are delivered from the sting [of death].”
As one can see, there is a flat contradiction between the Westminster Confession’s full preterist presuppositions and its futurist exegesis. The flawed eschatological exegesis of the post-apostolic church has said that the Resurrection of the Dead is yet future, while the church’s Spirit-presupposition has always, and increasingly, taught that the Resurrection of the Dead stands wholly consummated in the body of Christ today and forever.
Talbot-Jason: Oh, we’ll receive a nasty blow alright, but Death will not hold us down for the count.
Jesus: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?” (Jn. 11:26)
Talbotism’s unspoken answer: “No.”
Talbot-Jason: our enemy’s name is Hades
My response: God crushed the enemy of the saints beneath the feet of the church about 2,000 years ago (Rom. 16:20; Rev. 3:9), the cardboard of Talbotism notwithstanding.
Talbot-Jason: . . . i used to float around Florida and Tennessee with my big ole swollen head, . . . with my superior reasoning skills
My response: Under Dr. Talbot’s tutelage, Talbot-Jason has indeed undergone a startling transformation: He has gone from one who was puffed up wearing the badge of Full Preterism, to one who is puffed up wearing the badge of Historic Orthodoxy.
In the Talbotian error, only Jesus has attained to the fulness of the promise made to the fathers, while Jesus’ disciples in heaven (or in Hades, according to Talbot-Jason) remain in the diabolical grip of Corruption and Death, and will remain in that state of “groaning” until AD 1,000,000 (or whenever). And yet at the same time, Jesus’ disciples in heaven have been “delivered from the sting and curse of death” and are “in perfect freedom from sin and misery” (WCF, quoted approvingly by Talbot-Jason). 🙂
And, while the saints are in heaven today, their spirits are not really separated from their physical bodies. It only appears that way to the church. Fortunately the church has Dr. Talbot to remove the veil of Illusion from the face of Death. If it wasn’t for his insight, we would all think the saints in heaven today are living with Christ separate from their physical bodies. :^)
Yes, it is hard to believe that Talbotism prides itself on its superior use of logic, and its avoidance of all theological paradox. 🙂 :^o :^O
I would agree though that Talbotism is free of paradox. It’s fraught with full on, universe-shattering Contradiction.
Strip out the emoticons and the argument is this: the Catechism says believers are delivered from death itself at the last day but from its sting and curse at death; 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 says the sting is removed only at the resurrection; therefore Westminster contradicts Paul, and the only fix is to say the resurrection is already finished. Everything else in the post hangs on that.
First, let’s start with the citation. Gangreen calls it “The Westminster Confession of Faith” and quotes Question 85. The Confession has no questions. He is quoting the Larger Catechism. A man who wants to convict the Westminster Standards of “universe-shattering Contradiction” should at least know which document he is criticizing.
It gets worse. Had Gangreen looked at the Scripture proofs the Westminster divines attached to Question 85, he would have found the very passage he quotes against them. The proofs run 1 Corinthians 15:26, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death,” then 15:55-57, including Paul’s definition of the sting as sin, then Hebrews 2:15, where Christ delivers those who “through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” The order follows the answer. Death as the last enemy supports “delivered from death itself at the last day.” The removal of the sting and the end of bondage support “even in death are delivered from the sting and curse of it.” Gangreen presents 1 Corinthians 15 as a passage the divines missed. They didn’t miss it at all. They cited it! There is no contradiction; Gangreen can’t read.
His argument reduces to this:
Believers have been delivered from the sting and curse of death.
Therefore believers have been delivered from death itself.
Therefore there can be no future bodily deliverance from death.
Line 2 does not follow from line 1. Gangreen has quietly swapped “death itself” for “the sting and curse of death” and then announced that the two cannot be true at different times. That is not a contradiction in the Catechism. It is an equivocation in Gangreen.
Paul makes the same distinction in the passage Gangreen quotes. Gangreen stopped at verse 55. Verses 56-57 read:
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul defines the sting. The sting (kentron) of death is sin, and sin draws its power from the law’s condemnation. So the question is simple: does the believer who dies today die under the condemnation of the law? “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). Then the sting is drawn. By that I mean what Paul means: death’s condemning power has been removed for those in Christ, even though death still lays the body in the grave. Death for the believer is a serpent with its fangs pulled. Paul’s thanksgiving in verse 57 fits this exactly. God is the one who gives (didonti) us the victory through Christ, and Paul offers that thanks while the resurrection he has just described in verse 54 is still future.
What about Gangreen’s capitalized “WHEN . . . THEN”? Verse 54 says that when the perishable puts on the imperishable, “then shall come to pass the saying that is written.” The tote governs the fulfillment of the saying, the public, final swallowing up of death that Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14 announce. It does not say believers remain under condemnation until then. That is the proposition Gangreen needs, and the text doesn’t say it. The taunt “O death, where is your sting?” is a victory song sung over an enemy already disarmed at the cross and finally abolished at the resurrection. A defanged snake is not yet a dead snake.
Romans 8 puts both halves of Larger Catechism 85 side by side.
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom. 8:10-11)
The body is dead (nekron); the Spirit is life. One is present possession, the other is future promise, and the promise is attached to the very “mortal bodies” (ta thnēta sōmata) that are still dying. A few verses later: “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23). Notice that the people groaning already have the Spirit. What they lack is the redemption of our bodies (tou sōmatos hēmōn). Not the body of Christ as a corporate metaphor. Our bodies. No condemnation now in verse 1, bodies still awaiting redemption in verse 23: if Gangreen’s logic holds, Paul contradicts himself within a single chapter.
As for Gangreen’s failed joke about the saints in heaven praying to be saved from their own bliss, Scripture has already answered it, and the answer is not in “Revelation 23:13.” It is in Revelation 6:
I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete. (Rev. 6:9-11)
There they are: souls (psychas), not resurrected bodies, in the presence of God, robed in white, at rest, and still asking “how long?” They are told to rest (anapausontai) a little longer. Gangreen may insist that this waiting ended in AD 70. That is another argument entirely. What he cannot maintain is that blessedness in God’s presence and waiting for further fulfillment are inherently contradictory, because Revelation 6 portrays both at once. His joke fails regardless of when he thinks the waiting ended. Mocking the Apostle John isn’t a good look.
Paul says the same about himself. “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Phil. 1:23). Yet, two chapters later: “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:20-21). Departure to Christ is “far better,” and the transformation of the body is still awaited.
This also disposes of Gangreen’s claim that the saints in heaven remain “in the diabolical grip of Corruption and Death.” No. Their bodies decay. Their souls in heaven do not. Had he read the next question, he would know this.
The communion in glory with Christ, which the members of the invisible church enjoy immediately after death, is, in that their souls are then made perfect in holiness, and received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies, which even in death continue united to Christ, and rest in their graves as in their beds, till at the last day they be again united to their souls.
Question 87: “the self-same bodies of the dead which were laid in the grave” will be raised.
His mockery of the idea that the spirits of the saints “are not really separated from their physical bodies” is a fabrication. Nobody says that. The Confession speaks explicitly of “souls separated from their bodies” (WCF 32.1). What the Catechism says is that the body remains united to Christ. United to Christ is not the same thing as united to the soul. Paul calls the dead “those who have fallen asleep through Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:14). Gangrene is mocking a doctrine that the Westminster Standards do not state and nobody holds.
Now his proof text from John 11:26. Gangreen quotes half a sentence and asks whether I believe it. I do. I also believe the half he skipped:
I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. (John 11:25-26)
In the same breath Jesus says the believer dies (kan apothanē) and that the believer will never die, using the ordinary Greek idiom for “forever.” Either Jesus contradicts himself in consecutive clauses, or bodily death does not touch the life he gives. That is the Catechism’s distinction from the lips of the Lord. And consider what prompted the saying. Martha had just confessed, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (v. 24). Jesus does not correct her futurity. He grounds it in his own person. Then he walks to a tomb, has the stone rolled away, and calls a four-day-dead body out of it. He did not comfort Martha with the news that Lazarus was doing fine in a disembodied state and that the real resurrection was a spiritual reality in the corporate body. He raised the corpse. Gangreen has turned Christ’s demonstration of bodily resurrection into an argument against bodily resurrection.
The phrase “the last day,” which Gangreen attributes to the “flawed eschatological exegesis of the post-apostolic church,” is Jesus’ own. Four times in John 6: “I will raise him up on the last day” (tē eschatē hēmera, vv. 39, 40, 44, 54). The object is singular: him, the individual believer, not a corporate abstraction. The Catechism took its language straight from the Gospel Gangreen is quoting against it.
His complaint that only Jesus has been raised while his people wait is Paul’s own order: “Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Cor. 15:23). Firstfruits and harvest are the same crop. Christ’s body left the tomb, so the harvest is bodies leaving tombs. Verse 53 says which bodies: “this perishable body must put on the imperishable.” The demonstrative (touto) points to the mortal body Paul has. In verses 42-44 the same subject is sown and raised: “It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.” In Gangreen’s system, what is sown stays in the ground and something else is “raised.” That is the view Paul wrote the chapter against: “how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (v. 12).
Which brings us back to 2 Timothy 2:17-18: “Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened.” Gangreen will say their only mistake was the date. The text gives no sign that Paul’s objection was the calendar. Paul does not tell us exactly what they taught, so I offer this as an observation: they declared the resurrection done while the bodies of the saints were still in the ground. So does Gangreen.
He mocks me for calling Hades an enemy. Scripture does: “Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them. . . . Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:13-14). “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor. 15:26). I never said the saints are in Hades. Their souls are with Christ. I said death still holds their bodies and will not hold them forever. Peter makes the same distinction at Pentecost: David “both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day,” but Christ “was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption” (Acts 2:29-31). Peter’s argument turns on a body still in a tomb versus a body that left one. Gangreen admits the saints in heaven are without their bodies. Then death still has their bodies, and the last enemy is not destroyed. He has simply decided the body does not matter.
His only answer is Romans 16:20 and Revelation 3:9. Romans 16:20 is about Satan, not death or Hades, and the verb is future: God “will soon crush” (syntripsei) Satan. Revelation 3:9 is about the synagogue of Satan bowing before the church in Philadelphia. Neither verse mentions the resurrection. He changed the subject.
His historical claim is the most absurd part of the post. He says the church’s “Spirit-presupposition has always, and increasingly, taught that the Resurrection of the Dead stands wholly consummated.” The Apostles’ Creed confesses the resurrection of the flesh (carnis resurrectionem). The Nicene Creed looks for the resurrection of the dead. Every major confessional tradition has taught a future raising of human bodies. Gangreen’s theory requires the church to have confessed one thing out loud for two thousand years while secretly believing his view, until he arrived to tell it what it really meant. He cites no evidence. He has none.
Yes, I used to float around Florida and Tennessee with a swollen head. I was wrong, and I said so. Full preterism required me to set myself against the church’s confession of the resurrection and assume I understood the apostles better than everyone before me. Leaving it required admitting error. Gangreen calls that trading one kind of pride for another. Fine. His opinion of me does not repair his argument, and his inability to follow a distinction does not create a contradiction.
He prides himself on logic, yet he has misidentified his source, ignored the proof texts the divines attached to the answer he attacks, skipped the two questions that resolve his objection, severed John 11:26 from verse 25, and stopped reading 1 Corinthians 15 one verse before Paul defines the term he is arguing about. Every distinction he called a contradiction is in the text: sting and death distinguished in 1 Corinthians 15:56-57, the dead body and the living Spirit in Romans 8:10-11, bodily death and unending life in John 11:25-26, souls at rest yet waiting in Revelation 6:9-11, departure that is “far better” alongside a body still awaited in Philippians 1 and 3. If these are contradictions, his quarrel is with the apostles. I will stand with them, with the Catechism he misnamed, and with Martha at the tomb: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”