Roderick, first of all, you don’t have to shout. I can hear you perfectly well without the capital letters and bold text.

Secondly, the question is not ‘Is hyperpreterism even Christian?’ The question is ‘What can the emerging church learn from preterism?’ It’s at the top of the page. I presume that ‘hyperpreterism’ refers to some rather extreme form of preterism. If that’s the case, then there is already a likelihood that your reaction to the question will miss the mark.

Thirdly, this is not, in my view, fundamentally about the rights and wrongs of preterism. It is a matter of hermeneutics: How do we read the New Testament? How do we think about its relation to history. How do we develop from it a viable belief system? As I’ve said before, that conversation can be had quite reasonably on literary or historical grounds without reference to preterism in any form and without the participation of preterists.

Fourthly, I agree that the consistent historical reading of the New Testament is likely to conflict with ‘historic Christianity’ at a number of points. Tom Wright’s work (and he is only the visible tip of a rather large iceberg of moderately conservative scholarship) has challenged a number of traditional, Reformation, and popular theological assumptions. My argument would be that we are at a juncture when the whole structure of Christendom theology (which to a large degree is what we mean by ‘historic Christianity’) needs to be reassessed, and that the only way we can do this is by trying to understand the nature of the New Testament in particular as a historically grounded text. I think we should give biblical Christianity priority over historic Christianity.

That means, finally, that I refuse to conduct this debate as a slanging match between rival eschatological positions, or as a witch-hunt, no matter how well intended. We can look at the biblical texts. We can discuss the history of the early church or of theology. We can discuss respectfully the dynamics and difficulties of contemporary theological conversations after Christendom and after modernism. But I won’t put up with intelligent contribution to the debate being condemned by labelling.

So if anyone wishes to defend the three statements regarding AD 70 that you list on the grounds that they are consistent with the premises and scope of an emerging theology, then they are welcome to do so. Then we can consider whether they make sense exegetically, how they work within the whole biblical narrative, and whether they really misrepresent biblical Christianity as badly as you seem to think. I just don’t see that we are helped very much in that process by a strident polemic against hyperpreterism.