Welcome to My Blog!
My name is Christopher R. Cutler, and here I’ll be posting various articles dealing with theological, apologetic, and philosophical matters—advocating certain positions and examining the merit of others. I’ll also be using this space to further defend and expand on the positions presented in NO OTHER GOSPEL: Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Revised Edition).
I love thinking deeply about these topics, and my hope is to spark good dialogue and meaningful engagement. Please feel free to share any thoughts, questions, or critiques you might have—I look forward to hearing from you!
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Dear Christopher R. Cutler,
On your “Home” page you mention that “‘Ful & Filled’. . . holds an optimistic eschatology.” Just for clarification: By this, do you mean to say that you hold to a form of Postmillennialism, or simply to what some would term an “Optimistic” Amillennialism?
I would appreciate your response. May God greatly bless your ministry!
Sincerely,
Emanuel E. Cardona-Ruiz
Hi Emanuel,
Thanks for your question. You know that once I answer this, the jig is up 🙂 But I’ll answer. I’m Postmillennial. If you’re interested in knowing the backstory, see below:
I started out confused, undecided, and somewhat indifferent about it. I procrastinated looking into it for a while. Then, around 2014, I finally decided to start digging in. I read Sam Waldron’s The End Times Made Simple, where he laid out the two-age model and the interpret the unclear in light of the clear hermeneutic. After reading that, I was convinced of Amillennialism.
Then I found out there were also differences within the millennial positions—preterism, idealism, historicism, futurism. I landed on [partial] preterism, then dabbled with idealism for a bit. I read Beale, Dennis E. Johnson, and a bunch of other Amil guys… and ended up back at Amil partial preterist.
I didn’t embrace the Postmil position at first because I was convinced of the two-age model I had learned from Waldron, and thought you had to reject that in order to be Postmil. Then I found out that Gentry embraces the same two-age model—he just contends that “the age to come” has broken into “this age.” With that issue out of the way, I had no problem embracing the optimism. 1 Corinthians 15 was especially compelling, along with Psalm 2, 110, Habakkuk 2:14, Isaiah 11:9 and chapter 65, the parable of the wheat and tares, the mustard seed, the leaven, etc.
I feel like, as a preterist, I was already halfway there (since the pessimistic passages were, from that perspective, in the past). But that alone doesn’t prove things will get better. I became convinced of that through exegesis of the passages above.
I apologize for my delay in getting back to you. Thank you for your answer—I am Postmil as well! It’s truly encouraging to hear your back story, and what the Lord used to convince you of a God-glorifying optimistic eschatology.
As a 1689 Federalist, I am just recently navigating the contours of a biblical view of “God’s Law” (namely Theonomy), but the main difficulty I see is in how few resources are available out there that deal with the integration of Theonomy into 1689 Federalism, and how to go about embracing these two things at the same time (to my best knowledge). So I was wondering if you have anything you might recommend to me for my study, in the way of a reading list of sorts, or some advice. That would be great!
And thank you for all the work you do, because its taken a long time to find a brother who brings together exactly all the right ingredients (RB, 1689 Fed, Postmil, and Theonomist)! God bless.