When I was in college, I took a Church history class that used a textbook whose title I don’t remember by a Protestant author whose name I cannot recollect.
What I do recall, however, is that the author attempted to account for what St. Paul meant by the phrase “fullness of time” from Galatians 4:4-5: “But when the fullness of time had come,” explains the Apostle, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption.”
As I recall, the misguided textbook endeavored to assert that the “fullness of time” can be entirely explained in geographic, political, sociological, and economic terms. The implication is that the “fullness of time” is a merely chronological reference, and, most importantly, that it had obtained before Jesus came.
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