Could you explain what the term “Victorious Eschatology” means? Someone was telling me it concerns the rapture. I have never heard of this before, have you?
Victorious eschatology stems from Preterism which is the belief that all Biblical prophecy was fulfilled by 70 AD and there is no rapture, 2nd Coming, or millennium that we can anticipate. Advocates claim that victorious eschatology is the complete and total victory achieved through Christ’s death, resurrection, and return. Since Christ returned in A.D. 70, death, sin, Law and Satan are now defeated totally. Therefore the Christian walk is a walk in life (spiritual life). They say as long as we walk in Christ, we cannot die for we live in the Resurrection, i.e. in Christ. It’s a highly spiritualized view of eschatology. (Eschatology is a scholarly term that means “the study of the end times”.)
This contrasts with the Futurist view of eschatology, which holds that the rapture, 2nd Coming, and millennium are yet to come. Preterists call Futurism defeated eschatology because we see sin and death and Satan as still being part of our present. We believe that because of our sin nature, we cannot achieve the total victory over sin and death that God intends for us until we are perfected in the rapture.