Preterism

Definition and Meaning

Preterism is an interpretive approach holding that a substantial portion of the Bible's end-time prophecies has already been fulfilled in the past. It is applied chiefly to the Book of Revelation and to Jesus' discourse on the end times delivered on the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24 and parallels). It is one of four principal approaches to reading Revelation. The other three are:

• Futurism: holds that most of the prophecies concern events still to come.
• Historicism: holds that the prophecies are fulfilled in sequence across the whole history of the church.
• Idealism: holds that the prophecies symbolically portray spiritual principles rather than specific events.

Preterism itself divides into two branches:

• Partial preterism: holds that many prophecies, such as those concerning the destruction of the Temple, were fulfilled in the first century, while the Second Coming of Christ, the bodily resurrection, and the Last Judgment remain future.
• Full preterism: holds that even the Second Coming and the resurrection were fulfilled around AD 70. Theologians from many denominations criticize this position as incompatible with the confession of the Apostles' Creed that "from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead."

Biblical and Historical Background

Preterists appeal to Matthew 24:34: "This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." They also cite "things which must shortly come to pass" (Revelation 1:1) and "for the time is at hand" (Revelation 1:3), understanding these passages to refer to the era in which the original readers lived. Accordingly, preterists often favor an early date for Revelation, holding that it was written on Patmos before AD 70. By contrast, the traditional and widely accepted view assigns Revelation a late date, placing its composition at the end of the first century under the Emperor Domitian, and proponents of this view question the preterist interpretation.

Some early church writers are known to have connected Jesus' prophecies with the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. A systematic preterist interpretation is generally credited to the Jesuit priest Luis de Alcázar in the early seventeenth century. Some assess his work as a response to the Protestant historicist interpretation of the time, which identified the pope as the Antichrist. Full preterism began to be advocated in the English-speaking world in the late nineteenth century.

Preterism in the Korean Church

Popular understanding of the end times in the Korean church has been strongly shaped by dispensationalism and futurism. Sermons that treat the Rapture, the seven-year Great Tribulation, and the appearance of the Antichrist as future events are therefore common, and preterism remains relatively unfamiliar to ordinary church members.

The situation is somewhat different in academic theology. Among Presbyterian scholars in the Reformed tradition, commentaries that adopt certain elements of partial preterism alongside amillennialism have been made available. In churches of the Pentecostal tradition and in those strongly influenced by dispensationalism, futurist interpretation reportedly predominates.

There are no widely known cases of a major Korean denomination officially adopting preterism as doctrine or issuing a separate ruling on it. The subject is treated mainly as one interpretive method within discussions of eschatology and the millennium.