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Notes -
In preparation for the currently ongoing papal conclave, I decided to read the official rules currently in force, UNIVERSI DOMINICI GREGIS, issued by John Paul II in 1996. The document contains this provision (emphasis added):
Seems simple enough right?
Whoops.
Here I was, a schmuck, reading the canonically promulgated apostolic constitution as if it mattered, as if the supposed men of God involved in this 2000-year-old institution might care about established procedures.
Sure, Francis could have changed the rules, as many popes have done throughout the centuries, but he didn’t. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and neither did anyone else with influence within the Vatican either. How am I supposed to take this seriously if the cardinals and popes don’t even take it seriously?
I wish Christianity were true. I really do. It would certainly make my dating life easier. I’d have a sense of purpose in life, defined rules of virtue to follow, but it just doesn’t make any actual sense. The inconsistency I cited above is relatively minor, but it is illustrative of what one finds everywhere when one digs into the claims of Christianity and treats them with the truth-preserving tools of logic. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus and Vatican II, Matthew 24:34, these are fundamental truth claims that can’t be handwaved away like the finer points of ecclesiastical law.
John Paul II himself saw Cardinals in excess of the number. It wasn't a proclamation of God ordaining there be only 120 Cardinals, it was a matter of bureaucratic efficiency to "establish fitting norms to regulate the orderly election of their Successor." Sola Church has libraries of debate, and I would need to know your exact issues with Vatican II, but for the last I can at least point to—
Preterism.
I'd like to get a bit more blow-by-blow of how you think preterism resolves Matthew 24.
Do you mean which specific events? Preterism resolves this as the belief that most or all Biblical Prophesies, such as those in Matthew, were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. I can't rightly say it's what "I" think, by which I mean I didn't derive it myself. I was curious about certain verses in the Gospel, read on eschatology and found Preterism.
In particular, in Matthew 24, the disciples ask Christ:
He says in verse 34:
Generation here, and elsewhere in Matthew, is the Greek genea, and in its uses in the context it means the living generation, the people who were alive at that time. The genea would witness those events. What events did they witness? Nero's reign, his imperial cult, his persecution of Christians, and the Romans destroying the Second Temple as they razed Jerusalem. The Antichrist, the False Prophet, the War with the Saints, and the Great Tribulation.
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"Cardinal" and "cardinal elector" are two distinct concepts. Having more than 120 cardinals in existance does not violate the document. Having more than 120 cardinals vote in a conclave does.
Regarding preterism, from Matthew 24:
This flat out didn't happen in history. And before you say that this is all supposed to be allegorical, 1 Thessalonians 4:
Paul sure seems to think that Christ coming in the clouds from heaven means the ressurection of the body.
Maybe Matthew just got confused. Jesus prophesied first the destruction of the temple (itself an ending, and one which would be in a generation) and then later got asked by the disciples more about this terrible event but also the end times (different event).
I don't think you even need confusion on the part of the author, there – from what I understand manuscripts at the time were not necessarily always good at section breaks (chapters and verses were a more recent innovation) and text might not fully capture clarifying content that would be found in conversation. We read it as one long answer to three questions, but it seems possible to me that it person it might have been more clear which question was being addressed at which time.
You can even see how this might work on a skim – something like 1 - 25 are direct actionable pieces of advice for the Apostles concerning the near future, 26 - 31 is a contrast to 1 - 25, and the subsequent parable of the fig tree is referring to the things that they would experience and that did happen at the time with 26 - 31 not being referred to in this parable because it was a digression. That might be clearer in an in-person conversation than it would be written down. (I'm not particularly attached to this reading and haven't dug into it at all, so there might be slam-dunk reasons it is wrong, I'm just using it as an example of how the text might not capture what was and wasn't a digression.)
You also see double meanings fairly often in Scripture, where one event typifies or resembles another. (This reminds me of Isaiah's prophecy against the king of Babylon, which goes on to talk about a far greater power).
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Yes, and again, it violates bureaucratic decree, not divine proscription.
Partial Preterism, which is not considered incongruous with orthodoxy, holds much of the prophesies of Revelation as being fulfilled in 70 AD. The destruction of Jerusalem, Nero as the Antichrist, and the Romans as the tool for God's judgment on Israel as the Great Tribulation. It does not hold the Second Coming, the bodily resurrection of the dead, and the Last Judgment as having occurred.
That said, 29 is metaphorical, it uses the same language found throughout the Tanakh where what is being referred to is not the literal sun, moon and stars, but God's judgment on the nations of man. Invoking the Tanakh continues with 30, as God is repeatedly described as arriving upon a cloud to enact his judgment. And also, Paul was writing and died before 70 AD. He did condemn those, in his time, who claimed the prophecies had been fulfilled, but he did so while warning in his epistles of the imminence of the Second Coming.
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