Mike Morrell has articulated a good question about the thesis of The Coming of the Son of Man and Re: Mission. It comes down to this: Given the metaphorical potential of biblical language, what keeps us from deflating all apparently final language to historical proportions? Or more crudely: Why not ‘go the full preterist route’? By what criteria do we decide that in some contexts the language of cosmic transformation is figurative and in other contexts literal? This is how he sums it up…