July 1994
Dear Co-laborer,
A number of you have commented on this series on
eschatology, and for this I am deeply appreciative. Your comments, positive or negative, raising questions or
correcting my "facts," is all helpful.
A couple of you correctly pointed out that the Bar-Cochab
rebellion, to which I referred in the last issue, took place in 132 AD, not 66
AD The Jewish Christians fled to Pella in 66 AD when the Roman general Titus
(son of the emperor Vespasian) began his assault on Jerusalem.
It was also noted that there may be some ambiguity
regarding sources such as Moltmann and Harnack.
A couple of times I mentioned that "they are no friends of
evangelical Christianity." Possibly
I should be more emphatic; they are hostile to many of the major tenets of the
Faith. Moltman is a liberation
theologian who looks for the dawning of a utopian age via socialism.
Although these, and other scholars, have very different
presuppositions than the evangelical, from which they operate, I quote them
since they approach the historical record without seeking to prove this or that
eschatological view. For example,
Moltmann does not argue that the Patristics agree with his presuppositions.
As liberals, men like Moltmann see no need to assert that their positions
are representative of historical Christianity and a literal interpretation of
the Bible; reason is their "final court of appeal," and it is from
their reason that they assert what they believe to be true.
Thus they read the Patristics objectively.
This is why I quote them.
A godly professor once said to me, "If you want to
know what the text says, go to the liberals.
They are fine scholars and can give great insight.
If you want to know what the text means, you must go elsewhere, for the
liberal has no idea!"
Eschatology, Part
6
As you know, the New Testament writers quoted generously
from the Old Testament, applying various Old Testament passages to Christ and
the New Testament age. Often their
use of the Old Testament Scriptures seemed in violation of a proper hermeneutic.
For example, Matthew quotes from Hosea 11:1, "Out of
Egypt have I called my son." God,
speaking through the prophet Hosea, uses this reference in regard to Israel at
the Exodus; Matthew uses it in reference to Jesus' family returning to Palestine
after the death of Herod. Without
Matthew's use of Hosea 11:1 we would not be able to discern that it had a
messianic meaning.
Another illustration is Paul using allegory in Galatians
where he uses the two sons of Abraham to draw attention to the distinction
between law and grace. Paul even
calls it an allegory.
The early patristic writers lived in a period of time when
there was no clear understanding or agreement as to what constituted the New
Testament canon. Nor did they
distinguish between the rules of interpretation available to those writing under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit vis-a-vis those that did not.
It was natural, therefore, for these men to employ the same hermeneutic
they saw used by Matthew, Paul, et al. Once
they became anti-Semitic, it was a short step for them to apply the Old
Testament kingdom prophecies to the Church.
The Patristics failed to comprehend:
1) The delineation in the thinking and writing of New Testament authors
such as Paul and John regarding the role of the Church vis-a-vis the future of
Israel in the on-going program of God, and 2) The hermeneutic restraints on the
writers of Scripture vis-a-vis all other authors.
That the Patristics saw themselves in the train of the apostles is
obvious by their style of writing, such as introduction, frequent quotes from
the Old Testament, and moralizing.
We will frequently see this as we proceed in our study of the Patristics.
Let's take a brief look at some of the earliest
post-apostolic writings, noting their references to the millennium.
THE DIDACHE
The Didache is The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,
or The Teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles Through the Twelve Apostles.
Although the author is unknown, historians feel it was written around
100-150 AD somewhere in Syria. In
part, the Didache reads: "And
then shall appear the signs of the truth; first, the sign of an outspreading in
heaven; then the sign of the sound of the trumpet; and the third, the
resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, but as it is said: The Lord shall come
and all His saints with Him. Then
shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven."
Paul references the return of Christ with the sound of a
trumpet in I Corinthians 15:52 and I Thessalonians 4:16.
Only in I Thess. 4:17 does he refer to the clouds at the appearing of
Christ. The Didache says that some
of the dead rise, which implies two resurrections.
As we will see in our study of Augustine, "one resurrection
only" is at the heart of a-millennial eschatology.
"The writer of the Didache, like the generality of the
Church of the first centuries, was a pre millenarian, and held that the Second
Advent of Christ would bring the Resurrection of the righteous only, so that
they might take place only after this. This
doctrine arises from a very literal rendering of Revelation XX, 1-7"
THE EPISTLE of BARNABUS
Written around 100 AD, its authorship is disputed, and
although some hold that it was actually written by Barnabas, the companion of
Paul, the tone of the epistle seems to refute this. There are twenty-one chapters in the letter, and it carries a
strong anti-Jewish undercurrent:
"But they (the Jews)
thus finally lost it, after Moses had already received it.
For the Scripture saith, 'And Moses was fasting in the mount forty days
and forty nights, and received the covenant from the Lord, tables of stone
written with the finger of the hand of the Lord;' but turning away to idols,
they lost it. For the Lord speaks thus to Moses: 'Moses, go down quickly;
for the people whom thou hast brought out of the land of Egypt have
transgressed.' And Moses understood
the meaning of God, and cast the two tables out of his hands; and their covenant
was broken, in order that the covenant of the beloved Jesus might be sealed upon
our heart, in the hope which flows from believing in Him....And all the more
attend to this my brethren, when ye reflect and behold, that after so great
signs and wonders were wrought in Israel, they were thus at length
abandoned."
The epistle picks up the same argument again in chapter XIII, arguing
that Christians rather than Jews are heirs of the Old Testament covenant.
"Barnabas' view of history necessitates that in
handling the eschatological questions that arise in the Epistle, his solutions
always favor the Christians, the true chosen people, at the expense of the
rejected race, the Jews. In chapter
6 we saw how Barnabas transferred the land of the promise from Jew to Christian
by identifying the land itself with Christ in some way, saying that therefore
this land - now the eschatological land - is already possessed spiritually by
the Christian..."
In chapter 15 "Barnabas" uses the seven days of
creation as a template for history; as God created in six days and rested the
seventh, so history is six thousand years in length with the seventh the
millennium. On the eighth
"day" God recreates with a new heaven and earth.
The origin of this division of history into seven periods is somewhat ambiguous,
but can be found in I Enoch and IV Esdras.
This division of history into seven parts, with the seventh
being the millennium, is a repeated theme throughout the Patristics.
Even Augustine embraces it, arguing that the millennium "is now
passing, and cannot be measured by any number of generations...."
CLEMENT
Clement's name is mentioned by Paul in Philippians 4:3,
although we are not positive that it is the same person as the patristic bearing
this name. In his first epistle,
although there is no statement expressing either a belief in pre-millennialism
or a repudiation of it, he talks about the second coming of Christ in terms that
would be difficult to understand if he did not embrace a millenarian mind-set.
O'Hagan thinks that the tone of Clement indicates that he
believed in a period of time after judgment in which the land would participate
not only in punishment, but also purification - a "material
re-creation," as he calls it.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Clement argues against
the removal of presbyters without good reason.
His argument comes out of the Old Testament. "For unto the high-priest
his proper services have been assigned, and to the priests their proper office
is appointed, and upon the Levites their proper ministrations are laid.
The layman is bound by the layman's ordinances."
CONCLUSION
We see Clement's ecclesiological presuppositions here, and
this may well have been a precursor to an Old Testament view of the ministry.
It is this tie between the Old and New Testament, in the minds of the
Patristics, that produced a limited role for the laity, culminating in an Old
Testament view of the mission of the Church.
Whether Clement saw a literal thousand-year reign of Christ
through the Church, as did most of the Patristics (historical pre-millen-nialism),
is not the important issue. Rather, he saw the Church in Old Testament terms and this
influenced his perception of the ministry.
The conviction that the nation of Israel had been permanently removed
from the program of God and replaced by the Church, produced an Old Testament
"grid" through which every aspect of the life of the Church passed.
An illustration of this can be seen in what R.R. Williams,
Principal of St. John's College, Durham; Examining Chaplain to the Bishops of
Durham and Chelmsford, says in his book on authority: "In St. Paul's mind
the final criterion by which all ministerial questions had to be judged was the
welfare of the Church. The object
of the ministry was the building up of the body of Christ, the edification of
the Church, so that the Church too could embark on its share of ministry (see
especially Eph. iv. 11-15)...."
"There was no sharp distinction between a charismatic
traveling and a local, non-charismatic ministry. In such a distinction, few scholars now believe.
Gifts of the spirit were needed for the local ministry as much as for a
traveling 'assignment.' But that
there was tension between traveling prophets and local ministers is suggested by
the Didache, and this may lie behind the divisions at Corinth revealed by
Clement's letter, and the troubles between 'the Elder'
and Diotrephes."
It was this "tension" between para-church
("traveling prophets") and church ("local ministers") that
gave impetus to viewing the ministry in Old Testament terms with a hierarchy of
leadership and the laity controlled by "priests."
Yours
for a life of ministry,