Quote-mining the church fathers

A popular tactic in Catholic apologetics is to quote-mine the church fathers for statements that coincide with Roman Catholic dogma. There are potential problems with this appeal even on its own grounds. There's the danger of reading later developments and later interpretations back into these early statements. The risk of recontextualizing the original in light of subsequent developments, where you transplant a statement into a different theological framework.

For instance, an apologist like Newman may treat these statements as seminal claims ripe for further development. The beginning of an ongoing process which will reach fruition centuries down the line. From acorn to oak. But why assume the church fathers viewed their positions as merely seminal? What if they never intended to take it any further than that? What if that's where their position begins and ends? What if that was their complete position? 

ii) But beyond that, there's another problem. To my knowledge, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre share many theological positions in common. You could read pages of each and not see any difference. You could arrange their theological positions in parallel columns, where they match up on doctrine after doctrine.

But, of course, that would be deceptive, for despite their extensive theological commonalities, there was a major rift in their respective theological outlooks. Lefebvre became the leading dissident, on the right, of Vatican II. Their dissimilarities are at least as significant as their similarities. Despite having so much in common, Benedict XVI and Archbishop Lefebvre move further apart. They are ultimately defined by their theological divergence rather than convergence. They aren't moving toward a common destination, but in opposing destinations. 

In principle, Catholic Answers could quote-mine Lefebvre to attest Roman Catholic dogma, just like they quote-mine the church fathers, but that would be misleading and underhanded, because Lefebvre sharply diverged from official developments in Catholic theology in the 60s. Likewise, there's no reason to think church fathers, even those with "proto-Catholic" sympathies, would side with Pope Francis rather than Archbishop Lefebvre. 

Another quick-change artist

When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2008, Donald Trump donated to her campaign and raved about her White House credentials. She is “very talented, very smart,” he said. 

“Why would I say bad things?” he said. “I’m a businessman. Why would I say she’s doing a terrible job? I would rather not say that about somebody anyway on a humane basis, but why would I say she’s doing a terrible job knowing that I may need help from her or her husband in two years about something that I’m not even thinking about now.” 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-says-his-past-politics-were-transactional-1438213199

i) He's conceding, even bragging about the fact that he routinely lies when that advances his agenda. Okay. The obvious question that raises is: "Were you lying then or are you lying now?" Mind you, those aren't mutually exclusive.

Now that he's running for president, doesn't the same modus operandi apply? Now he's tacking to the right, making conservative noises. but since, by his own boastful admission, he habitually lies to promote his self-interest, why believe this is any exception to the rule? 

ii) I'd add that his excuse is implausible. There's a difference between badmouthing people in a position to help or hurt you, praising them, or keeping your personal opinions to yourself. 

Is there any other Fortune 500 CEO who's as much of a talking head as Trump? I suspect most of them keep a low profile and avoid bloating on controversial issues because that would alienate some of their customers. Their customers range all along the political spectrum. So, from a business perspective, it's generally better to say nothing.

Yet they are able to do business with they political class despite their refusal to go on talk shows and comment on powerful politicians or dicey social issues. 

Indeed, don't many CEOs have lobbyists to do the actual schmoozing and glad-handing, behind closed doors, while the CEO maintains a discreet distance? 

BioLogos and stealth atheism

Karl Giberson is an outspoken critic of ID theory, so it's revealing that he endorses an all-out assault on the Christian faith by apostate-turned-atheist John Loftus:

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/karl-giberson-reviews-atheist-john-loftus-new-book/

Tar-water

I will use Coulter's recent tweets as a launchpad:

Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 
Without @realDonaldTrump's immigration plan, it will be nothing but Obamas and Hillarys as president for the rest of our lives. 

 Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter
... too stupid to grasp that they'll never be in a position to do any of that unless we stop foreigners from voting in our elections. 

Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 
Nothing else matters. Unless we stop 3rd worlders pouring in, bloc-voting 4 the Dems, conservatives lose EVERYTHING.  

Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 
We haven't seen anything like this since Dwight Eisenhower's "Operation Wetback." Even @MittRomney wasn't this pro-American on immigration. 

Ann Coulter ‏@AnnCoulter 
I don't care if @realDonaldTrump wants to perform abortions in White House after this immigration policy paper. 

I myself am I hardliner on illegal immigration. That said:

i) Notice that Counter's tweets aren't about illegal immigration in particular, but "foreigners" or "Third World" immigrants in general. It's not about legal v. illegal immigration, but First World v. Third World. 

ii) Race and ethnicity are not equivalent to ideology. A "foreigner" or "Third-Worlder" is not a synonym for "Democrat" or "liberal." How does Bobby Jindal or Nikki Haley fit Coulter's taxonomy? 

iii) Considering how many Muslims now live in the First World (i.e. the EU and the UK), her stated position wouldn't screen out Muslim immigrants.

iv) Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Trump has a wonderful position paper on immigration reform. So what? If he doesn't believe what he says, it's a campaign promise that's DOA. Trump was a registered Democrat as late as 2009. And in the last presidential election cycle, he was critical of Romney for being too harsh on illegal immigrants. 

So Trump's newly-minted statements on immigration lack credibility. He's pandering to the audience. Just telling them what they want to hear. But there's no conviction behind his words. He's the classic politician who will say anything to get elected. It's an applause line, nothing more. I have no interest in candidates who say the right things if they are lying. The label may say it's a cure for cancer, but if its tar-water inside the bottle, I'm not buying. 

v) It may well be the case that illegal immigration in general is a lost cause. I'm sorry to say that. Consider Pete Wilson's valiant, but futile attempt to deter illegal immigration. Unfortunately, he failed. That was the beginning of the end of California.

Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rick Perry are weak on illegal immigration. But as a practical matter, how could an otherwise conservative politician succeed in Florida or the SW if he took a hardline on illegal immigration? Is that politically viable? Or does that banish you to political oblivion? 

Likewise, Florida is basically a must-win state for the GOP in presidential elections. And the electoral college math is the same for a fabled third-party candidate. How do you carry that state if voters perceive you to be anti-immigrant? Even if that perception is unfair, politics is unfair. 

Conservatives need to make allowance for the possibility that this is a losing battle. We have to pick our fights. If you alienate a necessary voting block, then Democrats will have a lock on the White House (and by extension, the Federal judiciary) for the foreseeable future. 

vi) At the same time, there's a difference between a candidate running for national office and a candidate running for a local or statewide position (e.g. mayor, governor, senator). What's politically feasible varies from state to state. 

vii) On a related note, I've read that some Trump supporters are concerned about outsourcing. However, it doesn't occur to them that closed shop and high corporate taxes are a major reason some American business outsource. Right-to-work laws and slashing (or abolishing) corporate taxes are a more targeted way to keep jobs at home. 

viii) Likewise, you can have voter ID laws. Again, that's a more targeted solution. 

God's Love Scene

I just listened to Frank Turek interviewing J. Warner Wallace on his book, God's Crime Scene (Colorado Springs, Colorado: David C. Cook, 2015). Near the end of the program, Wallace made a comment about how Christian romantic fiction books outsell books on apologetics, apparently by a wide margin. Turek suggested that Wallace change the name of his book to God's Love Scene. What a sad commentary on the state of professing Christianity in our culture.

Given how much time I see women spending on romance novels, I wonder how much better this culture would be if they spent even ten percent as much time reading material on apologetics, theology, philosophy, ethics, etc. I've often mentioned things men are more likely to waste time on in other posts (sports, pornography, video games, etc.), but I haven't said as much about the problem with women and romance literature. I've long been astonished at how often I see women reading one, two, or more romance books every week or every month who probably have never read through an entire book on, say, theology, politics, or apologetics. If you haven't read my material documenting how Americans have desperately false priorities and horrible time management, please click on the Time Management label below.

Something else that came up during the interview was a comment Richard Land has made about apologetics, to the effect that evangelism in our day requires apologetics. When people neglect apologetics, that tells us something about other areas of their lives as well. How involved are they in evangelism if they're so uninterested in apologetics? To the extent that they are involved in evangelism, what's the quality of that evangelism if apologetics has so little role in it?

Gluttony

Over at Cripplegate, Clint Archer kicked a beehive with a post on "Fat Secret: The Invisible Sin of Gluttony." I appreciate the fact that he was prepared to touch the third rail of evangelicalism. That said, it's the kind of post that only a thin guy would write.

So what about gluttony? Is it a sin? Is gluttony equivalent to obesity? How should we evaluate gluttony?

i) Compared to other "sins," the Bible has precious little to say about gluttony. I put "sins" in scare quotes so as not to prejudge the moral status of gluttony.

ii) In addition, interpreting references to gluttony, or equivalent usage, is complicated by the fact that the terminology may be figurative or denote something other than excessive eating. For instance:

In Deut 21:20 and Prov 28:7, the term may mean prodigal or squanderer, ISBE 2:483:a.   

In Gk. it [koilia] is found with the meanings of (1) belly, abdomen, bowels, stomach; (2) the abdomen as the site of the sexual organs, the womb; (3) the LXX and Rab. literature use it also metaphorically for the inner man, as a synonym for kardia (heart). NIDNTT 1:169.

In his commentary on Rom 16:18, Jewett suggests it has sexual connotations (p991). And in his commentary on Phil 3:19, Silva suggests it could be a synonym for carnality (sarx="flesh"); 181.

So it's actually hard to find any specific, unambiguous reference to literal gluttony, per se. 

iii) In addition, occurrences tend to be grouped with similar behavior. So it may reflect, not one particular behavior, but an associated lifestyle.

iv) Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this refers to obesity (which is disputable), who was in a position to be a obese? That might seem like an odd question. For people living in a generally affluent country, even the poor can be obese. That's because even the poor have access to copious amounts of food.

But in the ancient world, and parts of the Third World today, where food is often scarce, obesity might be much rarer, and largely confined to the upper class, who had an abundance of food at their disposal. 

So it might be a condemnation of a self-indulgent lifestyle associated with "conspicuous consumption." Conversely, malnourishment might be typical of the underclass. 

v) Likewise, in times and places where famine was both prevalent and unpredictable, I suspect people would be inclined to overeat when food was plentiful, to store up fat reserves. If you don't know from one day to the next where your next meal is coming from, you might stuff yourself. That gives you a margin. 

Likewise, for people who traveled long distances on foot, who might go for days at a time without food, I'd expect them to eat as much as they could when food was available, to compensate for lack of food at other times.

Overeating in these situations would not be gluttonous, but precautionary. 

vi) So I don't think the Bible has much specifically to say on the subject. We must turn to general principles:

vii) There's a difference between obesity and morbid obesity. As a rule, we should avoid abusing our health. 

viii) If we have dependents, then we have a duty to remain reasonably healthy. Likewise, we shouldn't impose ourselves on others by a lifestyle that makes us invalids. That's different from people who are invalids through no fault of their own.

ix) You shouldn't live for food, just as you shouldn't live for sex, sports, &c.

x) Parents should discourage their kids from becoming obese. For one thing, that predisposes them to develop medical problems down the line.

In addition, fat kids are unpopular kids. That's unfair, but that's reality. It's psychologically damaging to kids to be constantly shunned and ridiculed by their peers. 

In my observation, some obese parents have obese kids because it makes the parents feel better about their own obesity. 

xi) Obesity is visible in a way that psychological vices are not. Take physically fit people who support abortion. That's profoundly evil, but undetectable unless they express themselves. 

xii) Due to their metabolism and a sedentary lifestyle (e.g. a desk job), it can take an inordinate amount of effort for some people to avoid being overweight. So long as they don't become morbidly obese, I don't think Christians in that situation have a duty to diet and exercise to the degree necessary to maintain the waistline they had at 18. Just as some people center their lives on food, some people center their lives on physical fitness. That's the alter-ego of gluttony. 

Angelic A.I.

AI is a popular theme in SF film and literature. Whether AI is a realistic possibility is hotly contested. Ironically, many secular philosophers of mind don't think it's possible, even in principle, for a physical system to think. 

But for the sake of argument, let's grant that possibility. It can involve computers, robots, androids, or virtual characters. Let's consider the virtual character angle.

A virtual character may be sentient from the outset, or it may evolve sentient. And its sentience may be intended or unintended.

There are degrees of AI. At one level you have unintelligent characters. They can mimic reason. They can answer questions. But they don't understand what they are saying. They have no viewpoint. They are just repeating back what they were programmed to say.

These are like animals. Stimulus-response organisms. 

At a higher level are characters that are self-aware. They are cognizant of their surroundings. Cognizant of fellow characters. They have the detachment to objectify their situation. They have the capacity to think to themselves what it's like to exist, or to be in that situation. They can make plans. Feel emotion. They have a first-person viewpoint. 

At an even higher level are characters who become conscious of the fact that they are virtual characters–albeit sentient. 

In principle, this could be evolutionary. The programmer might design characters to cross the threshold from unintelligent to intelligent, then conscious of their virtual existence. 

They might find out that their world is a simulation because it's incomplete in some respects. Suppose their world is a replica of a modern period in world history. Supercomputers have vast information on that period, which enables them to construct a fairly detailed simulation of the period. Still, there are many gaps in the data-base. 

Keep in mind that unlike you and me, the virtual characters have no standard of comparison. Even so, they may figure out that something is amiss. 

In theological terms, the intelligent characters that are aware of their virtual existence are analogous to the regenerate or Christians, while the characters that are unaware of their virtual existence are analogous to the unregenerate or atheists.

Likewise, the program might contain telltale signs that it's a simulation, not because that's a computer glitch, but because the programmer intended some of his characters to discover his existence. So he scattered clues in the program. 

The realization that they are virtual characters would be both awesome and humbling for some characters. The knowledge that there's a greater reality over and above their simulated world. That they have a personal Creator. 

But for other characters, the discovery that they are just virtual characters–albeit sentient–might drive them insane. Indeed, criminally insane.

I'm reminded of Ted Kaczynski, the wunderkind and gifted mathematician, who not only went mad, but tried to destroy the "system." 

Perhaps Lucifer is like a virtual character who descended into madness after finding out his true identity, then turned against his Creator and creation. 

Finally, I think the notion of virtual characters who become aware of their nature is psychologically like the way people react to predestination. If you think about predestination, you may do a double take. It's like playing a chess game or poker game in which the player knows in advance that every play or move was determined in advance. If you think about it, it makes you acutely self-conscious, almost as if you could step outside of yourself and watch yourself.

For some people, that's heady. For other people, that's claustrophobic. An open theist once told a friend of mine that it gave him 'chills' to think of God knowing Beethoven's 9th Symphony ahead of time from eternity. God mentally composed the symphony before Beethoven did. 

Disproving Carrier's Proving History

Richard Carrier presumes to use Bayesian probability theory to disprove Bible history. One problem is that he's a dilettante. Both Tim and Lydia McGrew have documented what a hack he is–and they were just scratching the surface. But because he's shameless, and he has a sycophantic following, he keeps right on doing it. 

When he first got into this, he made so many mistakes that he had to revise the little treatise he put online. It's just a way to make himself look fancy. I have it on good authority that he has someone who has served as technical backup for him and helped him to catch and correct some of his more egregious blunders.

For those of you who wish to get into the weeds, here's a technical critique of his book Proving History:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/271358647/Richard-Carrier-Proving-History-Review

And here's a follow-up, in which Hendrix responds to Carrier at length:

The left v. the poor

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/08/the_left_vs_the_poor.html

Affirmative consent

32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.” 33 So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father. He did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

34 The next day, the firstborn said to the younger, “Behold, I lay last night with my father. Let us make him drink wine tonight also. Then you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve offspring from our father.” 35 So they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose. (Gen 19:32-35). 

This passage is striking in light of "affirmative consent" policies on some college campuses. Here two women roofie a man. That's a case of women raping a man (specifically a case of incest). They get him drunk to incapacitate him in order to sexually assault him. 

Somehow I doubt this will become the locus classicus of feminist theology.  

Second language

In her commentary on 1 Peter, Karen Jobes offered an original and astute defense of Petrine authorship against the common charge that its Greek is too refined for a Palestinian Jewish fisherman. 

I recently ran across two examples that are analogous to her argument. There's a Chinese Christian blogger who's currently a student at an American seminary. 

Normally he writes in a very educated English style. As a rule, his English style is more complex and erudite than many native English speakers. 

I chalk that up to the fact that his English is heavily influenced by the kind of reading he does. Reading English-speaking theologians and Bible scholars. Academic prose. 

Recently, however, I read two essays by him that contained a number of grammatical errors. That made me suspect that maybe his command of English is not as good as I supposed. Perhaps his usual routine is to write a draft, then have someone smooth out the grammatical infelicities. But on this occasion, for whatever reason, he didn't have that assistance. 

In a related example, I was reading a Bayesian probability theorist (Tim Hendrix) commenting on atheist Richard Carrier. English is not Hendrix's native language. On the one hand, his comments contained some very technical vocabulary. On the other hand, they contained conspicuous grammatical errors (usually involving number agreement). 

In both cases we have writers for whom English is a second language. Their vocabulary is more sophisticated than many native English speakers. Yet they commit syntactical blunders that a native English speaker would not. 

The law of superposition

The law of superposition poses a prima facie challenge to young-earth creationism. Here are two definitions:

His [Steno's] principle of superposition of strata states that in a sequence of strata, as originally laid down, any stratum is younger than the one on which it rests and older than the one that rests upon it.
Within a sequence of layers of sedimentary rock, the oldest layer is at the base and that the layers are progressively younger with ascending order in the sequence. This is termed the law of superposition and is one of the great general principles of geology. 

http://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-superposition

All things being equal, the law of superposition is a reasonable, commonsense principle. It is, however, easy to come up with examples in which that principle can literally be turned upside down. 

For instance, suppose I dig a grave. After I'm finished, I have a pile of dirt. Because I was digging down, the layers are now in reverse order. What was originally the bottom-most layer is now the top-most layer. Each layer is now older than the one on which it rests and younger than the one that rests upon it. The layers are progressively younger in descending order. 

Archeology frequently excavates mounds. But what was the order in which layers were heaped on other layers? Does it represent layers of progressive occupation? Or is this the result of digging into the ground to reuse old materials? 

Let's harmonize Genesis with a fake universe

BioLogos has a stable of scientists to defend deistic evolution, viz. Denis Alexander, Louis Ard, Francisco Ayala, Stephen Barr, Sean Carroll, Francis Collins, Darrel Falk, Karl Giberson, Denis Lamoureux, Clarence Menninga, John Polkinghorne, Dennis Venema.

Likewise, it has a stable of Bible scholars to reinterpret the Bible, or simply nix the authority of Scripture, to accommodate the scientific establishment, viz. Peter Enns, Kirk Daniel, Charles Halton, Tremper Longman, Scott McKnight, Kenton Sparks, John Walton, N. T. Wright.

They consider it essential to the survival and credibility of the Christian faith for theology to adapt to mainstream science. 

But when they labor to harmonize Gen 1-9 or Rom 5 with the hard scientific evidence, with the "real world," what's the frame of reference? Consider the following?

I began bemused. The notion that humanity might be living in an artificial reality — a simulated universe — seemed sophomoric, at best science fiction.  

But speaking with scientists and philosophers on "Closer to Truth," I realized that the notion that everything humans see and know is a gigantic computer game of sorts, the creation of supersmart hackers existing somewhere else, is not a joke. 

I asked Marvin Minsky, a legendary founder of artificial intelligence, to distinguish among three kinds of simulations: (i) brains in vats, (ii) universal simulation as pure software and (iii) universal simulation as real physical stuff. 

"It would be very hard to distinguish among those," Minsky said, "unless the programmer has made some slips — if you notice that some laws of physics aren't quite right, if you find rounding-off errors, you might sense some of the grain of the computer showing through." 

If that were the case, he says, it would mean that the universe is easier to understand than scientists had imagined, and that they might even find ways to change it.  

The thought that this level of reality might not be ultimate reality can be unsettling, but not to Minsky: "Wouldn't it be nice to know that we are part of a larger reality?" [Incredible Technology: How Future Space Missions May Hunt for Alien Planets ] 

For a reality check, I visited Martin Rees, U.K. Astronomer Royal, a bold visionary and hard-nosed realist. "Well, it's a bit flaky, but a fascinating idea," he said. "The real question is what are the limits of computing powers." 

Astronomers are already doing simulations of parts of universes. "We can't do experiments on stars and galaxies," Rees explained, "but we can have a virtual universe in our computer, and calculate what happens if you crash galaxies together, evolve stars, etc. So, because we can simulate some cosmic features in a gross sense, we have to ask, 'As computers become vastly more powerful, what more could we simulate?' 

"It's not crazy to believe that some time in the far future," he said, "there could be computers which could simulate a fairly large fraction of a world." 

http://www.space.com/30124-is-our-universe-a-fake.html

What if they are harmonizing the Bible with a cosmic computer simulation? 

Consider, too, how this theory cuts the ground right out from under historical geology or evolutionary biology. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that genetics and paleontology do indeed point to the evolution of man from microbes. Ah, but that's virtual evidence. The Grand Canyon is Virtual Reality. The population bottleneck is Virtual Reality. And so on and so forth. 

They scoff at mature creation, yet entertain a cosmic computer simulation as a realistic possibility. It's incredible that God would make the world "mature," but a serious scientific conjecture that an advanced alien civilization might simulate earth. 

I don't think it's true. I'm just responding to them on their own ground. 

Is Gen 1 merely functional?

John Walton has various strategies to dissolve the conflict between Gen 1 and the scientific establishment. Indeed, he position suffers from overkill. On the one hand, he says God accommodated erroneous depictions of the world. On the other hand, he drives a wedge between functional and material origins. If Gen 1 is merely about functionality rather than materiality, then it can't conflict with mainstream science. If, however, God accommodates error, then why bother with the functional/material dichotomy? 

Be that as it may, let's consider that dichotomy on its own terms. Were ancient worshippers really concerned with the functional value of shrines rather than the material value of shrines?

Fact is, it takes very little to discharge the functional value of a shrine. Consider numerous references to impromptu shrines in the OT, many forbidden, Take the Asherah pole. That's pretty modest. Or a particular tree under which to perform human sacrifice. 

For that matter, compare the tabernacle to the temple. They were functionally equivalent. If functionality is the ultimate consideration, why the lavish outlay for the Solomonic temple? 

Moreover, pagan civilizations build physically imposing shrines. Take Mesopotamian ziggurats and Mesoamerican pyramids. Or sprawling Egyptian temples–with their forest of columns. Take the Parthenon. The Temple of Artemis. The Pantheon. Vast Hindu and Buddhist temples. 

These are designed to impress the viewer. A statement of wealth and power. If anything, functionality takes a backseat to materiality. 

Racial Targeting and Population Control

Liberals routinely whine about "racial profiling," viz. people who fit the profile of likely terrorists (young single Muslim men). However, they turn a blind eye to real racial profiling:

http://lifenews.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/LifeDynamicsRacialReport.pdf

Lost in Genesis

In some respects, Averbeck is sympathetic to Walton. And in a way, that makes his key disagreements all the more striking:

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-lost-world-of-adam-and-eve-a-review-essay

Did God Really Command Genocide? Coming to Terms with the Justice of God

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/did-god-really-command-genocide-coming-to-terms-with-the-justice-of-god

‘Dreams and Visions’

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/2015/06/03/dreams-and-visions-the-muslim-encounter-with-isa/

Living in the last days

One stock objection to the inerrancy of Scripture is the claim that Bible writers thought the world would end soon. I've addressed specific passages. But I'd like to address a general source of confusion.

Scripture often refers to the "last days" or "latter days." Christians are said to be living in the "last days." Taken out of context, that might suggest they taught the end of the world was just around the corner.

The "latter days" stands in implicit contrast to the "former days." Roughly speaking, the "former days" denotes the epoch between creation and the Messianic age, while the "latter days" (or last days) denotes the inter-adventual age. 

The "last days" represents the final stage of redemptive history. There's nothing beyond that vis-a-vis redemptive history. This is where it ends. What lies beyond that is the palingenesis. Something very different. 

It's like going on a journey, where you must change roads from time to time–from one highway or interstate to another. But you get to the point where you make your final turn. That's the last road. The final leg of the journey. 

But to say we're in the final stage of redemptive history doesn't indicate how long that will be. It's not a statement of duration, but an epochal contrast between what came before (the former days) and what comes after (the consummation).

To take a comparison, suppose you were living in the former days. Suppose a prophet told you that you were living in the former days. That, by itself, would give you no hint as to the duration of that period. Even on a young-earth-creationist timeframe, that was at least 4000 years in duration, and on an old-earth-creationist duration, far longer.

In addition, even if the end of the journey may still be far away for the church, it is close by for every Christian–given our mortality. 

Donald Trump Is Planned Parenthood’s Favorite Republican

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/11/donald-trump-is-planned-parenthood-s-favorite-republican.html