From the late 1980s to around 2002 I was a premillennialist. Moving from something like Historic Premillennialism, to Dispensational Premillennialism, then briefly to Progressive Dispensationalism. Then round 2006, give or take a few years, I gradually became convinced of partial preterism and postmillennialism.
However, the brand of preterism I held required the book of Revelation to have been written before AD 70. While I'm still open to Revelation being written before AD 70, for the past few years I wondered and speculated that maybe a combination of a partial preterist interpretation of Revelation and an idealist interpretation of Revelation made the dating of the book moot. Because when you couple both preterism and idealism, then the book could have been written in AD ~95 and still in some sense be about the events in Jerusalem surrounding AD 70, as well as future events.
The following is a conversation I had with META AI, and it turns out I'm not the only one who has come to these conclusions.
Of course, as always, take what AI writes with a grain of salt. AI is notorious for making mistakes, and even making things up.
AP: Is [it] possible to combine, and [have] there been people who have combined, partial Preterism with a late date of the book of Revelation in the mid 90s CE?
META AI: Yes, it's possible — and it's actually very common today.
You have to separate two issues that get lumped together:
*1. Partial Preterism* = most prophecy in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21) and _some_ of Revelation was fulfilled in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem. Full Preterism says _all_ prophecy including Second Coming was fulfilled then — that's considered heretical by most churches.
*2. Date of Revelation* = Early date (pre-70 AD, under Nero) vs. Late date (mid-90s AD, under Domitian).
Classic partial preterism _prefers_ the early date, because if Revelation was written in 65 AD, it can be a prophecy _about_ 70 AD.
But you can absolutely hold a late date (95 AD) and still be a partial preterist. You just shift what you apply preterism to:
### How people combine them:
*Option A — Split the fulfillment:*
- Matthew 24 / Luke 21 = fulfilled in 70 AD (preterist)
- Revelation = written in 95 AD, so it _cannot_ be mostly about 70 AD. It is about Rome, the ongoing persecution of the Church, and future consummation. Only Revelation 1-3 or 11 might look back at 70 AD symbolically.
This is the position of the majority of Reformed partial preterists today because the external evidence for the late date is so strong (Irenaeus, Clement, Eusebius all say John was exiled under Domitian).
Examples:
- *G.K. Beale, D.A. Carson, N.T. Wright, Sam Storms* — all hold late date of Revelation (∼95) but are partial preterist on the Olivet Discourse.
- *Hank Hanegraaff* — in his _The Apocalypse Code_ he holds late date but still uses partial preterist interpretation for much of the symbolism.
*Option B — Late date, but Revelation still looks back:*
Some argue Revelation was written in 95 AD as a _theological interpretation_ of what 70 AD meant — like a retrospective, not predictive prophecy. God's judgment on Jerusalem still stands as the fulfillment, John is just explaining it after the fact. Less common, but argued.
*Option C — Early date full partial preterism:*
The stricter camp says you _must_ have early date for Revelation to be truly preterist. That's *Kenneth Gentry, R.C. Sproul, Gary DeMar*. They argue the internal evidence (Rev 11 temple still standing, 666 = Nero) demands pre-70.
So:
> Early date almost forces you into partial preterism.
> Late date does NOT force you out of partial preterism — you just become partial preterist about the Gospels, not about all of Revelation.
If you want late date + partial preterism to hold together logically, most people do it by saying: "Jesus came in judgment on Jerusalem in 70 AD (Matt 24), and Revelation was written 25 years later about the coming judgment on Rome and the final return of Christ."
AP: Seems like another reason that you can combine a late date and partial preterism is if you also interpret Revelation by combining a partial preterist interpretation of Revelation with an idealist interpretation of Revelation
META AI: Exactly — that's exactly how most scholars who hold the late date do it. That's called the *eclectic* or *preterist-idealist* approach.
You're spot on about why it works.
Pure preterism needs Revelation to be _about one specific date_ — 70 AD or the fall of Rome. If it was written in 95 AD, 70 AD is already 25 years in the past, so it can't be a predictive prophecy about 70 AD.
Idealism solves that:
*Idealism* = Revelation is not primarily about one event, but about timeless patterns — the Church vs. the Beast, the martyrdom and vindication of the saints, which recurs in every age.
If you combine them:
1. *Preterist layer:* When John writes about Babylon, the Beast, the harlot, emperor worship, tribulation — his first readers in Ephesus in 95 AD would have immediately thought: "That's Rome under Domitian. That's what we are going through right now. And yes, that's also what happened to Jerusalem in 70 AD — same pattern."
2. *Idealist layer:* But those images are not _locked_ to Rome. They are archetypes. Babylon is Rome _and_ Jerusalem _and_ every oppressive world system until Christ returns. So 70 AD can be a partial fulfillment without being the _only_ fulfillment.
So you get:
> "Revelation 11's trampling of the temple? That _did_ happen in 70 AD — that's the preterist part. But Revelation as a whole is _still_ relevant in 95 AD because it's showing the idealist principle: God judges apostate cities and empires, whether it's Jerusalem or Rome or anything after."
That's why almost everyone who holds the late date _and_ partial preterism is a preterist-idealist:
- *William Hendriksen* — called it "progressive parallelism"
- *G.K. Beale* — late date, but says Revelation recapitulates the fall of Jerusalem as a type of the fall of all evil systems
- *Sam Storms, Dennis Johnson* — same approach
They will say: Revelation was written in the 90s, about the situation in the 90s, _using_ the theological vocabulary of 70 AD, to describe a reality that keeps repeating until the Second Coming.
In that system you don't need early dating to be a partial preterist. You just need to believe Matthew 24 was mostly fulfilled in 70 AD, and Revelation uses that as a _type_.
That's probably the most defensible way to hold late date + partial preterism together, and it's become the dominant view in Reformed seminaries for exactly that reason.
AP: Can all this be combined with postmillennialism too?
META AI: Yes — in fact, that's the classic combination. Late date + partial preterist/idealist + postmillennial is the system most modern postmills run.
Here's why it fits together so cleanly:
*Postmillennialism* = The millennium in Revelation 20 is not a literal 1,000 years, but the current Church Age. The Gospel will gradually Christianize the world, evil will be progressively restrained, and then Christ returns after a long golden age. It's optimistic.
That needs three things:
*1. Partial preterism for Matthew 24*
If Matthew 24 is mostly future (futurism), then Jesus predicted things will get _worse_ and worse until He returns. That's hard to square with postmill optimism.
If Matthew 24 was mostly fulfilled in 70 AD, then the big "judgment" obstacle is out of the way. What remains is the Great Commission succeeding.
*2. Idealist / preterist-idealist for Revelation*
If Revelation is all about a future Antichrist and Tribulation (futurism), you get pessimism.
If Revelation is idealist — it describes the ongoing battle between Christ and Satan, but Christ _wins_ progressively in history — and chapters 17-19 (fall of Babylon) are _types_ that have already started to be fulfilled (fall of Jerusalem, fall of Rome), then you can read Revelation 20 as: the Church age is winning.
The late date actually _helps_ postmillennialism here. If Revelation was written in 95 AD _after_ both Jerusalem and the first Roman persecution, and John still says "Christ reigns," that proves the kingdom continues to advance even after those judgments.
*3. Late date of Revelation is fine for postmill*
Postmill doesn't need Revelation to be early. It just needs Revelation 20 to be about the present age, not about a future 1,000-year utopia after Jesus returns (that's premill). Whether John wrote it in 65 or 95 doesn't change that.
### The standard package looks like this:
- *Olivet Discourse:* 70 AD judgment (partial preterist)
- *Revelation:* Late date (95 AD), written to persecuted churches under Domitian, using idealist symbolism — Babylon = any anti-Christian empire (Rome then, but also future systems). Its message is timeless: evil systems fall, Christ's kingdom grows.
- *Revelation 20:* We are in the millennium now. Satan is bound in the sense that he can no longer deceive the nations to stop the Gospel (compared to the OT era). The Church will win.
That's exactly what you see in:
- *Kenneth Gentry* (postmill, partial preterist, though he prefers early date — but admits his system works with late date)
- *Gary DeMar, Keith Mathison, Douglas Wilson, James White*
- *19th century Princeton guys:* B.B. Warfield, Charles Hodge — all late date, partial preterist-idealist, postmill
The only tension is:
If you are _strict_ partial preterist who says Revelation is _mostly_ about 70 AD, late date is awkward. But if you are preterist-idealist (70 AD is _a_ fulfillment, Rome is _another_, and there are ongoing fulfillments), late date + postmill fit perfectly.
So yes: Late date + partial preterism (Matt 24) + idealist (Rev) + postmillennialism is not only possible, it's the most common way postmillennialism is taught today.
Someone asked on Facebook, "Why is Sola Scriptura greater/superior to Sola Ecclesia?"
Here's may answer as a Calvinistic Continuationist Baptist:
Both views affirm the Scriptures and the authority of the church. Sola Scriptura explicitly states Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the church. The church has authority, but it's not infallible. Sects like Catholicism and Orthodoxy deny they hold to Sola Ecclesia. In one sense they are correct, because they don't teach Sola Ecclesia. But in a deeper sense they actually do, because that's how it works out in practice. Since, for them it's the church that determines both the *content* of Scripture & Tradition, as well as the *meaning* of Scripture & Tradition. So, it's functionally Sola Ecclesia.
Sola Scriptura is superior because God's inspired and infallible Word/Revelation [God's very Speaking] is greater than non-Revelation. And both Catholicism and Orthodoxy affirm the giving of inspired Revelation on par with Scripture ceased with the death of the last Apostle. They claim some Revelation has been preserved and passed down through Tradition. But the provenance is uncertain. Even dubious. And even in the Old Testament and New Testament times Scripture was the highest authority and final court of appeal. And that was DURING Eras of ongoing production of inspired Revelation. How much more NOW that such Revelation has ceased being given?
BTW, as a charismatic I do believe God continues to give Revelation. But since the Canon of Scripture is closed, we don't add those Revelations to Scripture. So they are functionally NOT on par with Scripture's inspired authority. Even if any particular post-Biblical or modern Revelation were hypothetically fully inspired by God. And some may not be for various reasons. One example might be because it wasn't given fully inspired. Or even if given fully inspired, it is interpreted by the recipient(s) in a way filtered through their fallibility,fallible. relayed to others fallibly. Whereas God didn't do that with the Revelations give by God to the Old Testament Prophets and New Testament Apostles [despite being fallible in themselves].
The implication above being that God would know that such a [hypothetical] fully inspired post-Biblical Revelation was equally authoritative as the Bible, but humans wouldn't epistemically know that. Nor would God have required humans to know that. Since He expects us to know the Canon is closed, as per the teaching of the New Testament that the original Apostles + Paul would uniquely reveal Christ. And therefore they alone are qqualified and authorized to write Scripture. All subsequent prophets and "apostles" would not have that prerogative. That's why post-Apostolic Revelations are and must be subordinate to already recognized and established Scripture.
The following is a discussion I had with ChatGPT on which side a few theologians leaned toward regarding human free will. Whether a theologian leaned more towards a libertarian free will view or a compatibilist free will view. As always take what Artificial Intelligence writes "with a grain of salt" because AI can be wrong and mistaken in a number of ways.
AP: While it's anachronistic, Is Thomas Aquinas better understood to have been a libertarian or compatibilist with regard to free will?
ChatGPT:
If forced to choose between the two anachronistic labels, Thomas Aquinas is much closer to a compatibilist than to a libertarian.
The caveat is that Aquinas predates the modern free-will debate by centuries, so neither category maps perfectly onto his views.
Aquinas holds several claims that modern libertarians often reject:
God is the first cause of every created action.
Nothing acts independently of God's causal activity.
God moves creatures to act according to their natures.
Divine providence encompasses all events.
God knows and wills the entire order of creation.
Human actions are included within providence rather than existing outside it.
Human freedom is compatible with being caused.
For Aquinas, an act can be genuinely free even if it has causes.
Freedom consists primarily in acting through intellect and will rather than through external coercion.
This resembles the central compatibilist idea that freedom and causal determination (or at least sufficient causation) are not necessarily opposed.
Modern compatibilists usually work within a framework of natural causation. Aquinas is operating within a very different metaphysics.
For Aquinas:
Human beings possess real powers of deliberation.
The will is not compelled by finite goods.
Rational agents can genuinely choose among alternatives presented by reason.
He does not think freedom is merely acting according to one's strongest desire. Rather, the intellect can consider different goods, and the will retains a certain openness with respect to them.
Because of this, some scholars argue that Aquinas preserves something like alternative possibilities, a feature often associated with libertarianism.
Modern libertarian theories typically insist that a free choice cannot be fully determined by prior causes.
Aquinas is uncomfortable with framing freedom that way because:
He does not see causation as inherently threatening freedom.
God's causality extends to free acts themselves.
The more God causes an act, the less free it is not; divine causation and creaturely freedom operate at different levels.
This is one of the most distinctive features of his thought. Aquinas rejects the assumption, common in many modern debates, that if God causes an action then the creature cannot truly cause it.
Many historians of philosophy describe Aquinas as holding a theory of free will compatible with divine determination and providence, though not necessarily compatible with modern physical determinism.
His position is often called:
Classical compatibilism
Scholastic compatibilism
or a theory of concurrentism, where divine and human causation coexist in the same act.
If a contemporary philosopher were sorting Aquinas into one of the two modern camps, compatibilist would be the better fit, because Aquinas explicitly argues that human freedom is compatible with being fully caused by God, but his account of freedom remains richer and more metaphysically robust than most modern compatibilist theories.
For John Calvin, the answer is much more straightforward than for Thomas Aquinas:
Calvin is overwhelmingly closer to a compatibilist than to a libertarian.
In fact, many modern discussions of theological determinism use Calvin as one of the clearest historical examples of a compatibilist position.
Calvin affirms all of the following:
God sovereignly ordains everything that occurs.
Nothing happens outside God's decree.
Human actions, including sinful actions, fall within divine providence.
Humans act voluntarily.
People choose what they want.
They are not generally forced by external compulsion.
Moral responsibility does not require the power to do otherwise.
A sinner is responsible because he willingly sins.
Responsibility is grounded in the will's voluntary character, not in an undetermined capacity for alternative choice.
These claims fit naturally with modern compatibilism, especially the kind associated with thinkers such as Jonathan Edwards, who explicitly developed a sophisticated compatibilist account within the Reformed tradition.
A key feature of Calvin's view is that fallen humans retain a faculty of will but lack moral freedom in a stronger sense.
For example:
A person chooses according to their desires.
But those desires are corrupted by sin.
Therefore, apart from grace, a person cannot choose God savingly.
This resembles the compatibilist idea that one acts freely when acting according to one's own motives, even if those motives are themselves determined.
Modern libertarianism generally requires that, at the moment of choice, an agent could genuinely choose among alternative possibilities in a way not fully determined by prior causes.
Calvin repeatedly rejects views that make God's decree contingent upon autonomous human choices.
He is especially hostile to the suggestion that human freedom requires independence from divine determination.
As a result, most libertarians would regard Calvin's position as incompatible with libertarian freedom.
Calvin himself does not usually frame the issue as "determinism versus free will."
Instead, he rejects what he sees as a false dilemma:
God is sovereign over all things.
Humans act voluntarily.
Therefore humans remain responsible.
He does not believe that divine predestination turns people into puppets, because their actions proceed from their own wills.
That structure is very close to modern compatibilist reasoning.
The contrast is revealing:
| Question | Aquinas | Calvin |
|---|---|---|
| God causes human acts? | Yes | Yes |
| Human acts are genuinely free? | Yes | Yes |
| Emphasis on rational openness among alternatives? | Strong | Much weaker |
| Divine predestination central? | Present but less emphasized | Central |
| Resembles modern libertarianism? | Somewhat | Very little |
| Resembles modern compatibilism? | Moderately | Strongly |
So if Aquinas sits somewhere between the modern categories while leaning compatibilist, Calvin sits much more decisively on the compatibilist side. Many contemporary philosophers would classify Calvin's view as a form of theological compatibilism, and some would even describe it as a form of theological determinism combined with compatibilist freedom.
For Augustine of Hippo, the answer depends heavily on which Augustine you're talking about.
His views developed significantly over time, especially during his controversies with Pelagius and the Pelagians.
If forced to place Augustine in the modern debate, I would say:
Early Augustine is difficult to classify but has some libertarian-sounding elements. Late Augustine is much closer to compatibilism.
In works such as On Free Choice of the Will (De Libero Arbitrio), Augustine strongly emphasizes:
Human responsibility.
The will as the source of sin.
The idea that evil choices originate from the creature rather than from God.
He argues that people sin because they freely turn away from higher goods toward lower goods. This can sound quite close to a libertarian intuition: genuine moral responsibility seems to require that the sinner could have chosen otherwise.
However, Augustine never develops a modern libertarian theory in the contemporary philosophical sense.
During the Pelagian controversy, Augustine increasingly stresses:
The necessity of grace.
The inability of fallen humans to choose God without grace.
God's predestining activity in salvation.
By this period, Augustine argues that fallen humans willingly sin because their wills are disordered. They are not externally compelled, but neither can they simply choose righteousness through unaided free will.
That starts to look very much like later compatibilist formulations:
People act according to what they most want.
Their desires determine their choices.
They remain responsible because they act voluntarily.
One reason Augustine is hard to classify is that he distinguishes between:
Free choice (liberum arbitrium) — the capacity to choose.
True freedom (libertas) — the ability to choose the good.
After the Fall:
Humans retain free choice.
Humans lose true moral freedom.
Grace restores genuine freedom.
This differs from both many modern libertarians and many modern compatibilists.
A modern libertarian typically insists that, at the moment of choice, the agent has an undetermined power to do otherwise.
Late Augustine increasingly emphasizes:
The bondage of the fallen will.
The efficacy of divine grace.
Predestination.
These themes sit uneasily with standard libertarian theories.
Unlike many contemporary compatibilists, Augustine does not think freedom is simply acting according to one's desires.
For Augustine:
Freedom is fundamentally oriented toward the good.
Sin is a kind of bondage.
The highest freedom is not the ability to choose either good or evil, but the inability to be separated from the good.
This is a very different conception of freedom from the one found in most modern compatibilist theories.
A rough comparison:
| Thinker | Libertarian resemblance | Compatibilist resemblance |
|---|---|---|
| Augustine (early) | Moderate | Moderate |
| Augustine (late) | Low–moderate | High |
| Aquinas | Moderate | High |
| Calvin | Very low | Very high |
One way historians sometimes describe the trajectory is:
Augustine → Aquinas → Calvin
All three affirm divine sovereignty and grace, but:
Augustine develops the foundational doctrines of grace and predestination.
Aquinas integrates them into a broader Aristotelian account of intellect and will.
Calvin radicalizes and systematizes the Augustinian emphasis on predestination and the inability of fallen humans.
So if you asked a contemporary philosopher to choose just one label for the Augustine who most influenced Western theology—the late anti-Pelagian Augustine—the better answer would probably be compatibilist, though with more hesitation than in Calvin's case and somewhat more hesitation than in Aquinas's case.
For Charles Spurgeon, the answer is fairly clear:
Spurgeon is much closer to compatibilism than to libertarianism.
In this respect, he stands firmly within the Augustinian–Calvinist tradition.
Spurgeon strongly affirmed:
Divine sovereignty.
Predestination.
Human responsibility.
The necessity of grace for salvation.
He repeatedly argued that these doctrines are compatible rather than contradictory.
Like Calvin, he maintained that people make real choices and are morally responsible, but those choices occur within God's sovereign plan.
Spurgeon often defined freedom in terms of acting according to one's desires rather than in terms of an indeterminate ability to choose otherwise.
He argued that sinners freely choose sin because they want sin.
Likewise, believers come to Christ willingly because God's grace changes their hearts so that they desire Christ.
This is very close to the classical Reformed understanding later developed by thinkers such as Jonathan Edwards.
A characteristic Spurgeon theme is:
God does not drag unwilling people into salvation.
God changes the will so that the person comes willingly.
That is a paradigmatic compatibilist move: divine determination and voluntary action coexist.
Modern libertarian theories usually require that, at the moment of decision, the agent possesses a genuinely undetermined power to choose otherwise.
Spurgeon generally rejected this framework.
He explicitly denied that fallen humans possess the moral ability to choose Christ apart from divine grace.
In his preaching, he often distinguished between:
Natural ability (people still have minds and wills).
Moral ability (people lack the disposition to choose God).
This distinction cuts against libertarian accounts of freedom.
Spurgeon was not a systematic philosopher.
Unlike Edwards, he did not construct a detailed theory of free will.
In fact, he often expressed suspicion toward overly abstract philosophical systems.
His approach was more pastoral and biblical than analytic.
As a result, you can find passages where he simply affirms both:
God's complete sovereignty.
Human responsibility.
without explaining precisely how they fit together.
Nevertheless, the underlying structure of his thought is unmistakably Reformed and compatibilist.
| Thinker | Libertarian resemblance | Compatibilist resemblance |
|---|---|---|
| Augustine (late) | Low–moderate | High |
| Aquinas | Moderate | High |
| Calvin | Very low | Very high |
| Spurgeon | Very low | Very high |
The main difference between Calvin and Spurgeon is not their position on freedom but their style:
Calvin develops a sophisticated theological account of providence and predestination.
Spurgeon primarily preaches and defends those doctrines to ordinary Christians.
If a modern philosopher were classifying him, Spurgeon would almost certainly be placed in the camp of theological compatibilism, very near Calvin and Edwards and quite far from libertarian theories of free will.
For Jonathan Edwards, this is probably the easiest classification of everyone you've asked about.
Edwards is not merely closer to compatibilism than libertarianism—he is one of the most important compatibilists in the history of philosophy.
If Calvin is a theological source for later Reformed compatibilism, Edwards is arguably its greatest philosophical architect.
In his major work, Freedom of the Will, Edwards argues that every act of the will is determined by what appears most desirable to the agent at the moment of choice.
In simplified form:
The will always follows the strongest motive.
Choices arise from the agent's character, desires, and understanding.
An uncaused or self-determining choice would be irrational and unintelligible.
Therefore moral responsibility does not require the power to choose otherwise.
That is remarkably close to what many philosophers today would recognize as a compatibilist position.
A large portion of Freedom of the Will is devoted to criticizing what would now be called libertarianism.
Edwards repeatedly argues that if a choice were not determined by the agent's motives, character, and reasons, then it would be arbitrary.
He presses a regress argument against the notion of a self-determining will:
If the will chooses itself, what determines that choice?
If another act of will determines it, what determines that act?
And so on indefinitely.
His conclusion is that libertarian freedom fails to provide a coherent explanation of agency.
For Edwards, freedom is not the power to do otherwise under exactly the same conditions.
Instead, freedom means something like:
The ability to do what one wants without external coercion.
If you choose according to your own desires, intentions, and character, the act is free—even if those desires and intentions are themselves determined.
This is a classic compatibilist definition.
Edwards is especially famous for insisting that:
God ordains all events.
Human actions are part of that ordained order.
Human beings remain morally responsible.
He sees no contradiction here because responsibility depends on actions flowing from the agent's own will, not on metaphysical indeterminacy.
This places him very close to modern compatibilists who reject the Principle of Alternative Possibilities (the idea that responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise).
Among contemporary philosophers of religion and historians of philosophy, Edwards is often treated as:
A major compatibilist thinker.
A precursor to many contemporary discussions of freedom and determinism.
One of the strongest historical critics of libertarian free will.
Interestingly, many secular compatibilists find parts of Edwards philosophically sophisticated even when they reject his theology.
| Thinker | Libertarian resemblance | Compatibilist resemblance |
|---|---|---|
| Augustine (late) | Low–moderate | High |
| Aquinas | Moderate | High |
| Calvin | Very low | Very high |
| Spurgeon | Very low | Very high |
| Edwards | Extremely low | Extremely high |
If I had to rank the figures you've asked about by how naturally they fit into the modern compatibilist camp, I'd probably put them in roughly this order:
Edwards (most compatibilist)
Calvin
Spurgeon
Aquinas
Augustine
The reason Edwards comes first is that he doesn't merely hold a compatibilist view; he develops one of the most systematic and philosophically rigorous defenses of compatibilism in the Christian tradition. Many of the arguments that contemporary libertarians still respond to are arguments Edwards articulated in the eighteenth century.
