July 1996
Dear Co-laborer,
Eschatology, Part
17
The British, Roman Catholic historian, Paul Johnson, in his
A History of Christianity, notes that although the Christian community,
during the closing years of the first century, had a “homogenous and extremely
virile body of doctrine... it had no organization behind it.
Paul did not believe in such a thing.
He believed in the Spirit, working through him and others.
Why should man regulate when the Spirit would do it for him? ... Its
leaders exercised their authority through gifts of the Spirit, not through
office... Worship was still completely unorganized and subject to no special
control. There was no specific
organization to handle funds. And
there was no distinction between a clerical class, and laity.”
Adolf Harnack makes the same point, noting that by the
close of the second century bishops sought to increase their own dioceses by
restricting the erection of bishoprics in other towns.
By 325 AD, the episcopal form of government was in control, entirely
taking away the rights of the laity. “Henceforth
it (bishopric) became an object of desire, coveted by everyone who was on the
look-out for power, inasmuch as it had extraordinary forces at its disposal.”
MONTANIST
CONTROVERSY
The Montanist controversy, which arose in the Roman
province of Asia about 172 AD, had a number of facets to it. Primarily it was a prophetic movement emphasizing a
pre-millennial view of the imminent return of Christ. It erupted at a time when the consolidation of episcopal
power, with authority residing in the bishop, occupied the attention of the
church. Montanists believed in the
ministry of the laity, but their wild, eccentric claims threatened the apostolic
tradition embraced by the bishops.
Harnack notes that the Montanist controversy was both a
struggle to ensure a more pious life as well as the freedom of the laity to
practice their “priesthood.” It
was only after the Montanist conflict was finally suppressed that the church was
able to reach its collective goals. Prior to their suppression, individual
Christians relied only upon God and their spiritually endowed brethren.
After the close of the second century, the bishops became entrenched as
the teachers, high priests, and judges of the church.
Earlier, Igantius had compared the bishop’s position in
the individual church to that of God over the whole of the Church.
This was later modified so that bishops were regarded as representatives
of the apostolic office. The organized power was then directed towards “such
brethren of its own number as refused submission to the church upon any pretext
whatsoever.” This in turn
prevented the “catholic church” from recognizing or tolerating any form of
Christianity whatever outside its own boundaries.
Cyprian (third century bishop of Carthage) concluded that a
bishop was essential to every community, and without one the church could not
survive.
This movement towards a monolithic organizational structure resulted in
fierce resistance by the Roman government during the third century.
By way of example, Paul of Samosata was one of the first
Christian leaders to combine ecclesiastical office with high civil rank.
Paul, as the protégé of Zenobia, the celebrated Queen of Palmyra, was
made Bishop of Antioch when Antioch became hers after the defeat of Valerian.
In 272 AD Antioch fell to the Roman Emperor Aurelian, who ordered Paul to
step down in deference to Aurelian’s choice of Bishop. It was the first know intervention of a secular power in
church matters.
As Rome saw the church increase in political strength, it sought to
control the church. A new wave of
persecution resulted.
TERTULLIAN
Since Tertullian was a Montanist, this may be a good place
to introduce him. Born in Carthage
of pagan parents about 160 AD, he was educated in law and rhetoric, and was a
master of Greek. He made law his
profession, moving to Rome where he gained a reputation as a jurist.
Around the turn of the century he was drawn to the Montanists by their
rigorous system of morals. He was a strong advocate of millenarianism.
He was the first and possibly the most outstanding Latin
theologian, and one of the most prolific writers of the Latin Fathers.
Because of his theological grasp, combined with his proficiency in both
Latin and Greek, he appreciably influenced theological thought in the Western
Church. Tertullian followed the
earlier Patristics in embracing a pre-millennial view of eschatology while
arguing that the promises made to Israel have passed to the Gentiles.
About 200 AD Tertullian wrote De Praesciptione
Haereticorum.
Praescriptio is the technical, legal term for the statement which a
defendant in a law suit inserts in his speech containing the grounds on which he
urges further proceedings should his case be stopped.
Tertullian reasoned that Praescriptio
is the means by which orthodoxy can stop the pretensions of heretics.
Truth has been entrusted to catholic Christianity, and the church alone
possesses ancient catholic tradition, the Scriptures, and the right to interpret
them. It was apostolic succession
that played an indispensable role in enabling the Gospel to be faithfully
transmitted to us.
In short, Scripture cannot be interpreted by the ordinary laity.
It must be done through the church, and then only through apostolic
succession.
Interestingly, it was after he wrote De Praesciptione
Haereticorum that he converted to Montanism. This man who was a scourge of heretics, eventually joined a
heretical movement. “He could not
continue to endorse an orthodoxy which denied any independent role to the Spirit
and insisted that all communication with the deity should be through the regular
ecclesiastical channels.”
Tertullian might be called the first Protestant.
Because he was such a towering theological figure in the life of the
church, he, by and large, escaped the violent attack leveled against Montanism.
“The sects which attracted the largest followings were, as a rule, the
most austere and God-fearing; but, being the most successful, they had to be the
most bitterly assailed on moral grounds. There
is thus a sinister Goebbels’ Law about early Christian controversy: the louder
the abuse, the bigger the lie.”
Tertullian’s chiliast views can be seen in his
hermeneutics. He acknowledged as
legitimate the practice of allegorizing Scripture in the church of his day, but
by and large resisted doing it himself, preferring the literal sense instead.
You would think that, following the example of the Patristics, he would
allegorize the Old Testament in a wholesale fashion.
But in this he is remarkably restrained, holding that there was a
permanent, unchanging moral ethos in the Old Testament.
“Having virtually removed the burden of a legalistic Old
Testament religion, he introduced a legalistic New Testament one....He decides
the question of whether Christians can be soldiers simply on one word of Christ,
His telling Peter to put up his sword, disregarding all other evidence....The
tendency to turn Christianity into a baptized Judaism, observable in many
aspects of the life and the thought of the third century, finds its earliest
exponent in Tertullian.”
This enigma of a man teetered between fighting heretics and
being one himself. He defended the
millennial hope against the Gnostic Marcion, who denied that the Christian can
have any hope for a world created by the God of the Jews.
Tertullian contended that Christians have an eschatological hope for this
earth and for this age. Marcion was similar to the hellenistic spiritualizers who
postulated a present dualism of heaven and earth in their endeavor to explain
away the biblical doctrine of death and the resurrection.
This was a mysticism that taught the oneness of the soul with God.
Later we will explore more fully the influence of Gnosticism on the
church.
In John’s Revelation, John says that there will be two
resurrections following the return of Christ.
As noted earlier in this series, this is a crucial point in the
millennial debate. In order for
a-millennialism to work, the first of the two resurrections must be interpreted
figuratively and the second literally. Pre-millennialism
interprets both resurrections literally.
A-millennialism teaches that the first resurrection takes place when the
believer is converted to Christ. “It
was this very doctrine - with its identification of the first resurrection with
the resurrection from sin in baptism - which was later to prevail in millenarian
interpretation.”
Tertullian anathematized this teaching of Marcion that the
first resurrection was spiritual. He
argued that if John had thought of the first resurrection in this way he could
not have specified that there would be one thousand years between the two
resurrections. “According to
Tertullian the two resurrections would both be at the end of the age, with the
millennium between them.”
This was a rebuttal of the Gnostic teaching that the material world was
bad and only the spiritual good. O’Hagen
calls this “material re-creation” (cf. issue #12).
“But unwittingly, and against his will, Tertullian helped
to discredit the millennial hope by joining the Montanists.... It was not
unnatural that in the fight against Montanism and rigorism the church suppressed
this eschatology altogether.... By the end of the second century, then, chiliasm
had been severely harmed by fanaticism and Judaism.”
CONCLUSION
We see, then, the converging of several forces.
First, a Gentile church held the Jews responsible for the death of Christ
and the persecution of the church. They
concluded that Judaism did not represent God, and that the church was the New
Israel. Second, we have a viral
laity who, in their exuberance, mingle heresy with truth.
Then add to this mix those concerned individuals who not
only longed for a more stable church, but were persuaded that if they were in
control they could bring it about. As
they became successful in their endeavor to consolidate, they were a threat to
Rome who wanted to control them. An
alliance between church and state was not all that odious, for with the sword of
the state in their hands, the church could control an unruly laity.
In a way chiliasm was a catalyst. The early church, as seen in men such as Justin Martyr,
sought to distance themselves from any perceived political ambition, while
embracing the millennium of Revelation 20 as their hope.
But when the millennium of Revelation 20 was divorced from the
fulfillment of God’s promises to the nation of Israel, it drifted in
unhealthy, sensual directions.
With the ascendancy of the hierarchy of the church, the Old
Testament Theocracy afforded a pattern of structure and control.
As persecution waned, the millennium was no longer considered an
essential doctrine, and its demise served the needs of an increasingly temporal
perception of the mission of the church. The
“New Israel” was about ready to compete with the state in defining a vision
for the world. With the conversion of Constantine in the first part of the
fourth century, the time was ripe for the church to assume her imperial role,
ready to confront and conquer the world.
Awaiting His Kingdom,