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50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quite Good, but could have been better, August 2, 2002
Eschatological views within evangelicalism have long been a source of serious division between believers. This book, in a succinct way, offers the presentation of 4 major views of the millennium, each view represented by one scholar. Like other books of its kind, the book is presented in such a way that each eschatological position is presented by the scholar advocating such a position, and then the other 3 scholars representing other points of view have the opportunity to critique the presentation. Given that the four scholars represented in this book are all respected to varying degrees, I felt that this format worked quite well in this book.I felt that the two views represented the best were by far the historic premil and amillennial views articulated by Ladd and Hoekema respectively. Both did a good job of providing a rather thorough presentation of their respective views. I also felt that Hoekema did the best job of critiquing the other 3 views in his short rebuttals to the other 3 proposals. Ladd certainly could have been better in this regard. I frankly wasn't expecting much from Hoyt, and both his presentation of dispensational premil and his rebuttals were about what I expected - which was disappointing. As was pointed out in the rebuttals to his view, Hoyt did not even attempt to provide an exegesis of Rev. 20:1-6 in his proposal, which is a monumental deficiency in his presentation. In addition, Hoyt, like many dispensationalists unfortunately, had no effective way to defend their 'literal' interpretation technique against the many well argued points made against it by the other 3 scholars. Since interpretation technique is the central issue in each millennial view presented, Hoyt's inability to effectively defend the technique he is adopting to argue his position is another serious deficiency in his presentation. But in my view, the biggest disappointment was Boettner's presentation on postmillennialism. Like Hoyt, no analysis of Rev. 20 is found in his proposal, and even worse, Boettner doesn't offer up any significant exegesis of any Biblical passages at all. Boettner's entire argument is not one that is Biblically based, but is one that tries to experientially look at the world and argue that it's getting better over time. As Ladd points out, this is a double edged sword, but even more than that, even if one accepts Boettner's premise, that doesn't automatically mean that postmillennialism is the correct eschatological view. His presentation was universally deficient, and that's a real shame coming from a scholar as respected as Boettner. And this is the main reason why I'm giving this book 4 stars instead of 5. As a view, postmillenialism was not represented well at all here, and that's unfortunate. Put simply, this view was not presented with any Scriptural basis at all. The other major criticism I have of the book is Clouse's postscript which seems to heavily criticize premillennialism. I found Clouse's postscript to be flat out inaccurate in parts, or at the very least, seriously outdated in its criticisms. Premillennialists, as a group, do not shun the liberal arts as a legitimate and necessary field of study, nor do they shun social activism as a result of their eschatology. It is true that there are way too many end times hunters on the scene who repeatedly make themselves look bad by trying to predict certain end times events by interpreting supposed present day signs of the end of the world. I certainly agree that to the extent that these end times hunters are 'teachers' in the Biblical sense, they should be held to severe accountability when their teachings prove to be wrong, but that way too often, these guys are instead given a free pass to continue teaching error and that this is an embarassment to the entire Body of Christ. But Clouse's other negative contentions regarding premillennialism are decidedly out of place and inaccurate. Overall, I think many readers will come away from reading this book with a much better understanding of what the points of contention are between the varying millennial views, and why such points of contention exist. While the postmillennial view clearly should have been presented better, the book still provides a solid basis to understand what each view is saying and why they are saying it. The reader may also conclude, as I did, that each view presented has certain strengths and weaknesses, and that no system of millennialism has been proposed that doesn't have weaknesses in it. But this book will provide a very good jumping off point for readers to further explore these views in more detail and reach their own convictions about which millennial view is most faithful to the entirety of Scriptural truth.
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by Steve Gregg
by Craig A. Blaising
by Gleason Leonard Archer
by C. Marvin Pate
by Anthony A. Hoekema
See all 51 books this book cites
