Denying the Flesh Breeds Heresy Without End
One of the most serious theological errors promoted by hyper-preterists like Don Preston and those influenced by similar trends1 is the distortion of 1 Corinthians 15:28 that logically comes about when they deny the ongoing humanity of Christ. According to their view, Christ assumed a human body only because it was “fitting” for the Old Covenant administration—earthy, temporary, and natural—and, having accomplished His redemptive work, He allegedly abandoned that humanity and returned to a disembodied, “spiritual” state. But this view, when applied to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15, results in profound logical, Christological, and Trinitarian problems. Paul writes, “Then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.” But if Christ no longer possesses a true human nature—if the Incarnation was merely a temporary phase later discarded—then what else is left but His divine nature? And if that’s the case, then this final act of subjection is not the act of the incarnate Mediator, but of God the Son, as God, being subjected to God the Father. What else is left to be subjected but His divinity?
Such a view leads directly to ontological subordination within the Godhead, collapsing the eternal equality of the persons of the Trinity into a hierarchy of essence. If the Son, now supposedly de-incarnated, is subjected to the Father in His divine nature, then He is no longer of the same glory, power, and majesty as the Father. This stands in open contradiction to the historic confession of the church and the Westminster Confession of Faith, which affirms that the Son is “very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father” (WCF 8.2). This eternal equality of persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is essential to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. To deny it is to depart from orthodoxy and embrace a rebranded form of Arianism, where the Son is eternally subordinate not merely in role, but in essence. Such a move is not merely speculative—it is fatal to the Christian faith. An unequal Trinity means that the Son cannot fully reveal the Father (John 1:18), cannot be fully trusted to bear the weight of divine mediation (1 Tim. 2:5), and cannot truly be “very God of very God” as confessed by the Nicene Fathers.
The Westminster Confession affirms that the Son of God, “when the fullness of time was come, took upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin… of her [Mary’s] substance” (WCF 8.2). His two natures—Godhead and manhood—are “inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.” This is not a temporary arrangement but a permanent union. Christ's humanity is not a costume to be shed, but an essential aspect of His mediatorial identity. The Confession goes on to say in 8.4 that “on the third day he arose from the dead, with the same body in which he suffered; with which also he ascended into heaven, and there sitteth at the right hand of his Father, making intercession; and shall return to judge men and angels at the end of the world.” These statements leave no room for a Christ who has abandoned His flesh. They explicitly confess a resurrected, ascended, glorified God-man, reigning and interceding even now.
Further, in 8.7, the Confession insists that “Christ, in the work of mediation, acteth according to both natures; by each nature doing that which is proper to itself: yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.” This guards against any notion that Christ’s human nature can be separated from His ongoing role as Mediator. It is the God-man, not the Logos abstracted from humanity, who reigns from heaven and who will return in glory. Any suggestion that Christ's role as Mediator is reduced to a divine function without the human nature reintroduces confusion into the person of Christ, and ultimately compromises the integrity of the gospel.
To rob Christ of His humanity is to deny that Christ remains the second Adam, the prophet, priest, and king of His church, and the resurrected firstfruits of the age to come. And worse, by promoting a Son who is eternally subordinate to the Father in essence, it dismantles the co-equal glory of the Triune God and introduces a divine inequality that the church has historically condemned as heretical. This is not simply an error of timing in eschatology—it is a Christological and Trinitarian rupture, and as such, a denial of the Christian faith itself. The Son who was raised is the Son who reigns—still fully God and fully man—and it is this Christ, the glorified Son of Man, who will return in the same glorified flesh to raise His people and deliver the kingdom to His Father.
Kim Burgess and Gary DeMar, The Hope of Israel and the Nations: New Testament Eschatology Accomplished and Applied, Vol. 2 (Powder Springs, GA: American Vision, 2024), p. 414, “Christ’s incarnation, which was under the Old Covenant order (‘under the Law’: Gal. 4:4), perfectly fit the bill for the nature of the Old Covenant order because the Old Covenant order was ‘natural’ and ‘earthy’ (made of dust). It was physical. It was material. It was visible. It was bodily. Christ came in that form because He had to have a human body to be able to die to make atonement for sin (Heb. 10:5–7; 2:14–15).”