Full Preterists and Communion

[Homer]

I am curious whether full preterists observe communion (the Lord's supper). Paul wrote:

1 Corinthians 11:26 (NKJV)

26. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.

Paul seems to indicate that the ceremony was to be practiced until Jesus came. If Jesus has already come, why would communion be observed, or why not?

[canada]

Good point Homer.

Full preterists are few and far between from my contacts, but that would be interesting to know how they would approach your query.

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[dwilkins]

Michael Miano follows Don Preston's path in preterism. In that scheme, technically known as Covenant Eschatology, they sometimes approach the 1st Cor. passage as strongly theological, so some of them still take communion while others don't. I don't follow that school of thought as tightly, so I don't think such advice is as theological as it might seem at first glance (that the parousia invalidates the theological reason for taking communion for all mankind). If you keep in mind that Christ and the Apostles are talking to a generation of people alive before the parousia, and that they generally expected to be in heaven with him after it (either through the rapture via Ed Stevens' theory, or simply through attrition), then there is no particular reason to take this statement as something that implied an expiration date of the practice for people hundreds or thousands of years later. Just because a piece of advice is given to someone in the New Testament doesn't mean that it automatically, universally applies to us 2,000 years later. In this case, the implication of an expiration of the advice seems to me to be based on the fact that at least most of them won't have to wait past their lifetimes to see Christ personally.

Doug

[dizerner]

[user account removed]

[dwilkins]

Sam's an interesting character. He was clear when he left Full Preterism that once he realized that it was irreconcilable with Calvinism he had to stick with Calvinism. He still hasn't come up with a new, fully defined eschatological position as far as I know (he's been picking away at various Partial Preterist positions for a while but I'm not aware of a position he's settled on). He has to wash everything against Calvinism and he can't make anything perfectly fit with it, so he's still searching.

Edit -

I thought I'd add that at the end of the show Sam talks about the philosophical reasons for not being able to accept Full Preterism. What he fails to mention is that he was most directly engaging Preston's brand of Full Preterism when he still considered himself to be one. That camp is known as Covenant Eschatology (all eschatology has to do with the Old and New Covenant) and is normally associated with a creation theology called Covenant Creation (the creation story is only concerned with the story of the creation of the Old Covenant). Since he was tied to that camp very tightly, most of his concerns are criticisms of that system. If he had been willing to back away from that to see that it wasn't the whole ball of wax he might not have made the same decision to leave. Who knows. But, his criticisms generally only apply to that particular school of thought.

Doug