Eschatology: 13–19

Walt Henrichsen December 31, 2014

Part Thirteen

If God took Israel into His confidence regarding their future, as noted with Abraham, Jeremiah, and Daniel, then we can conclude that He does not do this with the Church. From the time of Christ’s disciples to the present, God’s people have been unable to ascertain the time of Christ’s return.

I remember a book entitled Eighty-eight Reasons Why the Lord is Returning in 1988. When 1988 came and went, the author published a new book, Eighty-nine Reasons Why the Lord is Returning in 1989. I thought at the time, if he keeps writing and lives long enough, he will eventually get it right! The best seller 1994 is another of this species.

No one is able to maintain a high intensity of waiting for the return of Christ. You only wait on the top of the mountain so long before deciding to go down, build a house, and live out your life. This is obviously a caricaturizing of the point, for Jesus told us what to do between the two Advents.[1]

Nevertheless, it was this loss of imminence that caused the Church to begin institutionalizing. As Dewick noted, there was a “slow but steady decline of the eager expectation of an immediate return of the Lord….and thenceforward with every fresh decade the primitive hope silently retires more and more into the background.”[2] The Patristics reveal in their writings this evolving from a preoccupation with Christ’s return to the building of the institutional church.

If you believe that Jesus will come tomorrow, you probably will not spend today buying a piece of property for a new church building. All of the New Testament writers anticipated the imminent return of Christ, and for this reason, as Paul Johnson notes, they left no instructions on how to organize and institutionalize the church. Thus it wasn’t until the third century that the first church buildings appeared.

JUSTIN MARTYR

Justin, a Christian apologist, living about AD 100-165, established a school in Rome during the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-161) and died a martyr. We were introduced to him in part 7 of this series. In his First Apology he tries to allay the fears of the emperor regarding Christians seeking to establish a kingdom. He says, “And when you hear that we look for a kingdom, you suppose, without making inquiry, that we speak of a human kingdom; whereas we speak of that which is with God, as appears also from the confession of their faith made by those who are charged with being Christians, though they know that death is the punishment awarded to him who so confesses. For if we looked for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ…”[3]

Later in this series we will note that with the rejection of chiliasm, the church began to develop political aspirations, which in turn fostered persecution from Rome. Not so, Justin Martyr; his hope in an earthly rule of Christ in the millennium precluded his having a political agenda. In his extensive writings, Justin gives a clear picture of his perception of the Church’s view of millennialism and the Church’s replacement of Israel. For this reason, I will quote him extensively.

MILLENNIUM

Regarding the millennium, Justin, in writing to Trypho, says, “But tell me, do you really admit that this place, Jerusalem, shall be rebuilt; and do you expect your people to be gathered together, and made joyful with Christ and the patriarchs, and the prophets, both the men of our nation, and other proselytes who joined them before your Christ came: or have you given way, and admitted this in order to have the appearance of worsting us in the controversies?”

He answers that the opinion of Christians is divided on this point. “But I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned and enlarged, (as) the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare.”[4]

ANTI-SEMITISM – CHURCH REPLACED ISRAEL

Since God reveals Himself to the poor, blind, and contrite, it is obvious to Justin that the church, not Israel is the receipient of the affection of God. God is not delighted with those who keep the rituals of the Old Testament, but rather with those who live lives of purity and righteousness.[5]

“.For the true spiritual Israel, and descendants of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham (who in uncircumcision was approved of and blessed by God on account of his faith, and called the father of many nations), are we who have been led to God through this crucified Christ, as shall be demonstrated while we proceed.”[6] (Emphasis mine).

“For the circumcision according to the flesh, which is from Abraham, was given for a sign; that you may be separated from other nations, and from us; and that you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer; and that your land may be desolate, and your cities burned with fire; and that strangers may eat your fruit in your presence, and not one of you may go up to Jerusalem. For you are not recognized among the rest of men by any other mark than your fleshly circumcision. . . Accordingly, these things have happened to you in fairness and justice, for you have slain the Just One, and His prophets before Him; and now you reject those who hope in Him, and in Him who sent Him – God the Almighty and Maker of all things – cursing in your synagogues those that believe on Christ.”[7]

Making reference to the circular letter sent out by the Jews warning the synagogues against those preaching Christ, Justin says: “For other nations have not inflicted on us and on Christ this wrong to such an extent as you have, who in very deed are the authors of the wicked prejudice against the Just One, and us who hold by Him. For after that you had crucified Him, the only blameless and righteous Man,- through whose stripes those who approach the Father by Him are healed. . . you not only did not repent of the wickedness which you had committed, but at that time you selected and sent out from Jerusalem chosen men through all the land to tell that the godless heresy of the Christians had sprung up, and to publish those things which all they who knew us not speak against us….Accordingly, you displayed great zeal in publishing throughout all the land bitter and dark and unjust things against the only blameless and righteous Light sent by God.”[8]

The spiritual gifts have been stripped from Israel and given to the Church. “For the prophetical gifts remain with us, even to the present time. And hence you ought to understand that (the gifts) formerly among your nation have been transferred to us.”[9]

The Jews hate Christians, having perpetrated all manner of lies. Christians, on the other hand, love and pray for Jews. “…yet you not only have not repented, after you learned that He rose from the dead, but, as I said before, you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus….Besides this, even when your city is captured, and your land ravaged, you do not repent, but dare to utter imprecations on Him and all who believe in Him. Yet we do not hate you or those who, by your means, have conceived such prejudices against us; but we pray that even now all of you may repent and obtain mercy from God, the compassionate and long-suffering Father of all.”[10]

Justin calls the Church, “Israel.” “As, therefore, all these latter prophecies refer to Christ and the nations, you should believe that the former refer to Him and them in like manner….For you are neither wise nor prudent, but crafty and unscrupulous; wise only to do evil, but utterly incompetent to know the hidden counsel of God, or the faithful covenant of the Lord, or to find out the everlasting paths.[11]

“Since then God blesses this people, and calls them Israel, and declares them to be His inheritance, how is it that you repent not of the deception you practice on yourselves, as if you alone were the Israel, and of execrating the people whom God has blessed?”

“What, then?” says Trypho; “are you Israel? and speaks he such things of you?”

“If, indeed,” I replied to him, “we had not entered into a lengthy discussion on these topics, I might have doubted whether you ask this question in ignorance…As therefore from the one man Jacob, who was surnamed Israel, all your nation has been called Jacob, and Israel, and Judah, and Joseph, and David, are called and are the true sons of God, and keep the commandments of Christ.”[12] (Emphasis mine).

This last paragraph is an illustration of the point Harnack made (cf. parts 8 and 9) when he noted that the Gentile church stripped from Israel her promises, applying them to herself. In Chapter 131, Justin sets out to show that the Gentiles were more faithful to God than the Jews, having been converted to Christ. In Chapter 132, Justin sees the name of Jesus in the OT word Joshua, and the marriages of Jacob are a figure of the Church in Chapter 134. Notice in this next set of quotes how Justin handles the Old Testament, comparing it with the footnotes.

“And when Scripture says, ‘I am the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who have made known Israel your King,’ (Is 43:15)[13] will you not understand that truly Christ is the everlasting King? For you are aware that Jacob the son of Isaac was never a king. And therefore Scripture again explaining to us, says what king is meant by Jacob and Israel: ‘Jacob is my servant, I will uphold Him; and Israel is mine Elect, my soul shall receive Him. I have given Him my Spirit; and He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, and His voice shall not be heard without. The bruised reed He shall not break, and the smoking flax He shall not quench, until He shall bring forth judgment to victory. He shall shine, and shall not be broken, until He set judgment on the earth. And in His name shall the Gentiles trust.’ (Is 42:1-4)[14] . Then is it Jacob the patriarch in whom the Gentiles and yourselves shall trust? or is it not Christ? As, therefore , Christ is the Israel and the Jacob, even so we, who have been quarried out from the belly of Christ, are the true Israelitic race….understand, therefore, that the seed of Jacob now referred to is something else, and not, as may be supposed, spoken of your people. For it is not possible for the seed of Jacob to leave an entrance for the descendants of Jacob, or for (God) to have accepted the very same persons whom He had reproached with unfitness for the inheritance, and promise it to them again; but as there the prophet says, ‘And now, O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord; for He has sent away His people, the house of Jacob, because their land was full, as at the first, of soothsayers and divinations;’ (Is 2:5f)[15] even so it is necessary for us here to observe that there are two seeds of Judah, and two races, as there are two houses of Jacob: the one begotten by blood and flesh, the other by faith and the Spirit.”[16]

CONCLUSION

Read and reread carefully Justin’s treatment of Scripture, especially how he interprets Isaiah in his 135th chapter in the Dialogue With Trypho. This hermeneutic, viewing the Old Testament figuratively, and tampering with the text, is necessary if you are going to get the Old Testament to say that Israel has been replaced by the Church.

In the bonds of Christ,

[1] Acts 1:8.

[2] op.cit. Dewick, p.371.

[3] op. cit., ANF, Vol I, p. 166, The First Apology of Justin, chapter XI.

[4] ibid, p. 239, Dialogue With Trypho, chapter LXXX.

[5] ibid, p. 200, chapter XII.

[6] ibid, p.200, chapter XI.

[7] ibid, p. 202, chapter XVI.

[8] ibid, p. 203, chapter XVII.

[9] ibid, p. 240, chapter LXXXII.

[10] ibid, p. 253, chapter CVIII.

[11] The KJV says, “In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land:” This is entirely different, i.e., not a third Israel, but Israel the third with… In his endeavor to demonstrate that the Church is Israel, he misquotes the OT.

[12]op.cit. ANF, p. 261, chapter CXXIII.

[13] The KJV says, “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.” Isaiah does not call Israel “King” as does Justin.

[14] In the KJV the words Jacob and Israel are not mentined. Isaiah does not identify who the “servant” is. Justin assumes that it is Jacob and Israel, which alters the meaning of the text.

[15] Justin quotes from Is 2:5-6 and stops. Actually, Is 2-3 deals with the chastisement of the Lord, and Is 4 deals with the blessing of God on the restored nation. As the seemingly first of the patristic writers to appropriate God’s promises given to Israel, transferring them to the Church, Justin sets the pattern for amillennialists that follow, even though Justin himself was premillennial.

[16] op.cit. ANF, p. 267, chapter CXXXV.

Part Fourteen

In the last issue, Justin Martyr (100-165) wrote seeking to allay the fear of the Roman Empire regarding Christians having as their goal the establishment of a kingdom in conflict with Rome. It was his conviction, and we may safely conclude the conviction of most Christians, that the Church wasn’t trying to build anything nor seeking to replicate the theocratic kingdom of Old Testament Israel. “For if we look for a human kingdom, we should also deny our Christ.”[1] The “human kingdom” came later in the history of the Church.

At the same time, the doctrine that Israel was replaced by the Church in the affections of God, was well established by the time of Justin. In other words, the Church perceived herself as Israel, but had not as yet completely borrowed for the Church the warp and woof of the Old Testament system.

EVOLUTION OF DOCTRINE – CHURCH

Doctrine evolved in the Church’s life. As we saw in part 7 of this series, little by little the Lord’s Table became an Altar, the Lord’s Supper a Sacrifice, etc. L.W. Bernard states in his book Justin Martyr, His Life and Thought that: “He (Justin) accepts, with most second-century Christian writers, that the Church is a supernatural society founded by the apostles in Christ’s name[2]. . . Justin, in no uncertain terms, repudiates those who stand outside the pale of the Church. . .

And they likewise proclaim that them that believe on him, as men of one soul and one synagogue and one Church, the Word of God addressed as Daughter, namely the Church…They are the true Israel.[3]

There are reasons for doubting whether the Church in Rome was an organizational entity in Justin’s day. There were in Rome numerous groups of resident aliens, some of whom became Christians, and a number of congregations of a semi-heretical tinge. Some of these heretical teachers were anxious to capture ‘the Church’ for their views. There is also the fact that no trace of an indigenous Latin Christianity is found in Justin’s time. Converts came mainly from Orientals and until the end of the second century the Roman Church was predominantly Greek-speaking and oriental in Character. L.E. Elliott-Binns suggests that there may have been a number of bishops or presbyter-bishops ruling different congregations in the city until well on into the second century.[4]”[5]

EVOLUTION OF DOCTRINE – SACRAMENTS

In dealing with the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist in the writings of Justin, Barnard says, “It is significant that there is no mention, in Justin’s account, of presbyters or elders taking part in the service…”[6] Evidently the laity could still participate in the Lord’s Supper without the presence of a pastor or priest.

Many of the scholars, writing on the Patristics’ view of the sacraments, agree that . . . “there was no fixed liturgy with a ‘structure’ known to Justin . . . In the Eucharist there is a further action of the logos (a term used for Jesus Christ in John 1) such that the elements of bread and wine become united with the logos and so become the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus. How this occurs Justin does not state apart from saying that the food is consecrated ‘by the Word of prayer which comes from him,’ . . To go beyond Justin’s words into an explanation as to how the elements become the flesh and blood of Christ is to go beyond the evidence. And to state that the mere recital of Christ’s words effects transubstantiation of the elements is to read later theories into Justin.[7]”[8] (Parenthesis mine).

In Justin the incorporation of the OT imagery into the sacraments has not yet taken place. The Eucharist is called a “sacrifice” in the Dialogue, but connected with the death of Christ rather than anything Old Testament. The Lord’s table is not called an altar and the one officiating is not called a priest. Baptism takes on a special significance, but comes short of being “baptismal regeneration.” Clement (fl. c. 90-100), on the other hand, makes a clear distinction between the clergy and laity, calling the former “priests.” He even distinguishes between “priests” and the “high-priest,” a clear indication that he saw the New Testament church in Old Testament terms.[9]

IRENAEUS

Scholars are not sure when Irenaeus was born and died. It probably was about 140-177 AD, dying in the persecution of 177-8. A native of Smyrna, he labored in Lyons, France – known as Gaul in that day. He was heavily involved in the Montanist debate.[10]

As we saw in our study of Polycarp, Irenaeus states that in his youth he sat at the feet of Polycarp and received from him oral traditions handed down from the apostles. He is the greatest chiliast of patristic literature, the most erudite and scriptural expositor of the early fathers. From his writings you will see that he embraced all of the major tenants of premillennial thought. In this first quote, note that Irenaeus believed in two literal resurrections separated by a literal thousand year reign of Christ, as depicted in Revelation 20.

“Inasmuch, therefore, as the opinions of certain (orthodox persons) are derived from heretical discourses, they are both ignorant of God’s dispensations, and of the mystery of the resurrection of the just, and of the (earthly) kingdom which is the commencement of incorruption, by means of which kingdom those who shall be worthy are accustomed gradually to partake of the divine nature (capere Deum); and it is necessary to tell them respecting those things, that it behooves the righteous first to receive the promise of the inheritance which God promised to the fathers, and to reign in it, when they rise again to behold God in this creation which is renovated, and that the judgment should take place afterwards. For it is just that in that very creation in which they toiled or were afflicted, being proved in every way by suffering, they should receive the reward of their suffering; and that in the creation in which they were slain because of their love to God, in that they should be revived again; and that in the creation in which they endured servitude, in that they should reign. For God is rich in all things, and all things are His. It is fitting, therefore, that the creation itself, being restored to its primeval condition, should without restraint be under the dominion of the righteous; and the apostle has made this plain in the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 8:19-21).”[11] (Emphasis mine).

Irenaeus believed that there was a resurrection, followed by reigning in an earthly kingdom, concluding with judgment. As we saw in part 12 of this series, the “material re-creation” that forms the essence of the Old Testament hope in a Messianic Kingdom, is embraced by Irenaeus as well.

Notice the strong language of Irenaeus; “those who are ignorant of God’s dispensations and do not expect a resurrection of the just, come to their conclusions from heretical sources.” In this next quote we see that Irenaeus interprets Revelation literally.

“Such, then, being the state of the case, and this number being found in all the most approved and ancient copies (of the Apocalypse), and those men who saw John face to face bearing their testimony (to it); while reason also leads us to conclude that the number of the name of the beast, (if reckoned) according to the Greek mode of calculation by the (values of) the letters contained in it, will amount to six hundred and sixty and six . . . .[12]”[13]

From here Irenaeus discusses the use and misuse of 666 in seeking to ascertain its meaning. The important point, however, is the literalness with which he views this.

“But when this Antichrist shall have devastated all things in this world, he will reign for three years and six months, and sit in the temple at Jerusalem; and then the Lord will come from heaven in the clouds, in the glory of the Father, sending this man and those who follow him into the lake of fire; but bringing in for the righteous the times of the kingdom, that is, the rest, that hallowed seventh day; and restoring to Abraham the promised inheritance, in which kingdom the Lord declared, that ‘many coming from the east and from the west should sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.'[14]”[15]

When Irenaeus wrote, the temple was of course destroyed. On the basis of Revelation 11 he predicts the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem. After the reign of Antichrist, there will be a judgment and the establishment of Christ’s earthly kingdom, followed by the second resurrection and the new heaven and new earth.

“If, however, any shall endeavor to allegorize (prophecies) of this kind, they shall not be found consistent with themselves in all points, and shall be confuted by the teaching of the very expressions (in question)….For all these and other words were unquestionably spoken in reference to the resurrection of the just, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all nations under his rule; in (the times of) which (resurrection) the righteous shall reign in the earth, waxing stronger by the sight of the Lord: and through Him they shall become accustomed to partake in the glory of God the Father, and shall enjoy in the kingdom intercourse and communion with the holy angels, and union with spiritual beings; and (with respect to) those whom the Lord shall find in the flesh, awaiting Him from heaven, and who have suffered tribulation, as well as escaped the hands of the Wicked one….And Jeremiah the prophet has pointed out, that as many believers as God has prepared for this purpose, to multiply those left upon earth, should both be under the rule of the saints to minister to this Jerusalem, and that (His) kingdom shall be it…[16]

Irenaeus continues step by step, expositing the remaining section of Revelation, describing the new heaven and earth. Amillennialism sees only one literal resurrection, viewing one of the two mentioned in Revelation allegorically. Irenaeus clearly teaches two resurrections, and says the Old Testament saints will share in the first resurrection, along with the Church.

The millennium represents, according to Irenaeus, a transition stage between this world and eternity. Using the template of seven days, as discussed in eschatology, part 6, the millennium of Revelation is the seventh, a “day” of rest prior to the new heaven and earth. It is also the transition stage between the preliminary defeat of Satan in Rev. 19 and his final, decisive defeat at the end of the millennium in Rev. 20.

With the work of history brought to a close, he believed God creates the new heaven and earth in Rev. 21-22.

CONCLUSION

In tracing the evolution of doctrine, it is easy to see how the church’s perception of truth shifts, and how profoundly eschatology contributes to this shift. As the church shifted in the perception of herself as a struggling minority to the conviction that she was to claim the world for Christ, she borrowed the Old Testament framework. In her eyes, it had already been determined that she replaced Israel; it was now a simple matter to incorporate the imagery and task of the Old Testament theocracy. Justin Martyr correctly understood that the church is not in conflict with Rome.

To the degree that I am correct in all of this, it behooves us to learn from history, filtering history’s lessons through the grid of Scripture. If Scripture is “our only rule of faith and practice,” we must be careful not to allow ourselves to be unduly influenced by history, tradition, and culture.

Lord Jesus, come quickly.

[1] ibid, p. 166.

[2] “See the important remarks of M. Goguel, The Primitive Church (London, 1963), p.78: ‘…the idea of the Church, as a supernatural society founded by the apostles…, is now no more open to question than the conception of the Church as a depository of a doctrine of salvation. By the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, there seems to have been fairly wide agreement as to the conception of the Church and the character of the ministries exercised within it.’”

[3] “Dial with Try. cxix, cxxv, cxxx, cxxxv.”

[4] “The Beginnings of Western Christendom (London, 1948), p. 102.”

[5] Bernard, L.W., Justin Martyr, His Life and Thought, Cambride University Press, Cambridge, 1967, pp. 129-134.

[6] ibid, p. 143.

[7] “It is interesting to compare Justin’s theory of the Eucharist with that of Irenaeus. Irenaeus emphasises, more clearly than Justin, the composite character of the Eucharist. While retaining Justin’s realism he introduces an invocation of the elements (epiklesis) and states that a heavenly element (pragma ouranion) is added to them and operates through them (Adv. Haer. IV. 18. 4.). He also stresses, more than Justin, the effects of the Eucharist as a means of imparting life to the body and soul of man (cf. Ignatius’ ‘medicine of immortality’).”

[8] ibid, p. 148.

[9] Cf. this eschatology series, part 6, page 4.

[10] Montanism became prominent in the middle of the second century. Strongly millennarian, Montanus believed in the imminent return of Christ, and protested against growing formalism and worldliness in the official church. The most illustrious follower of Montanism was the theologican/ lawyer, Tertullian.

[11] op.cit., ANF, Vol I, p. 561, Irenaeus Against Heresies, book 5, chapter XXXII.1.

[12] Rev. 13:18.

[13] ibid, p. 558, book 5, chapter XXX. l.

[14] “Matt. 8:11.”

[15] ibid, p. 560, chapter XXX. 4.

[16] ibid, p. 565, chapter XXXV. 1.

Part Fifteen

The Patristic scholar Dewick, in his Primitive Christian Eschatology, shows that the allegorical interpretation is necessary for Reason and Conscience to shape the tradition of the church. “It is interesting to observe in the literature of the first two centuries how the writers were unconsciously or half-consciously preparing the way for doctrines which were not clearly formulated for a long time afterwards. The idea of Purgatory, for instance, and the closely allied practice of praying for the departed, are nowhere set forth as recognized elements of primitive Christian faith and practice. Yet the thoughts of the writers are moving along lines which (humanly speaking) were sure to lead them on to more definite opinions on these matters…”[1]

With the introduction of extra-biblical doctrines such as Purgatory and praying for the dead, Reason and Conscience, not Scripture are the final court of appeal, i.e., the “tradition of the Church.” It was in this milieu that amillennialism was born and premillennialism rejected.

“The supremacy of righteousness as the essential condition of admittance to the Kingdom of Heaven was being tacitly challenged by the growing belief that the correct performance of rites and ceremonies were at least an acceptable substitute, if not actually of predominant importance.”[2]

This doesn’t mean, however, that this shift was intentional. Rather, it was a subtle conforming to the cultural milieu in which they lived, as the Patristic scholar Bernard notes: “It is, I believe, important to note that Justin openly claimed that he was a representative of the great body of Christians and that he had received his Christianity from the Church of the preceding age. It is necessary to stress this, as a cursory study of his writings – and especially the Apology – might suggest that he was fundamentally a Middle Platonist philosopher who incorporated into his philosophic presuppositions a smattering of Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have already seen how his philosophy did, in fact, modify the biblical basis of his faith, but Justin himself was unaware of this. He presented his Apology in the name of all true Christians and he makes the point that they should not be confused with Christians falsely so called. The doctrine which Justin represented was, he believed, the traditional belief of the Church: ‘We have learned from tradition that God has no need of material offerings from men…we have been taught and firmly believe that he accepts only those who imitate the good things which are his…’[3] “[4]

Both Dewick and Barnard notes the change from “primitive” Christianity to monolithic Church after the conversion of Constantine; Bernard argues that it was not a willful endeavor on the part of men to mold the Church into their own liking. Rather, they were children of their age, influenced by culture. In either case, this drift toward institutional Christianity, contributed to the Church’s anti-Semitism.

Much of the change was motivated by a desire to reach the world, so strongly influenced by Greek thought. Alexandria, Egypt was a center of effort in this direction, as previously noted. In this issue, we look more clearly at Origen, one the most influential church thinkers in the second and third centuries from Alexandria.

ORIGEN

Most of what we know about Origen is found in Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, book six, plus a couple of less significant sources. Born in Egypt (c. 185 – c. 254) and raised by Christian parents, he studied in Clement of Alexandria’s catechetical school. His father was martyred in 202, and although Origen wished to die with him, his mother prevented him by hiding his clothes.

Taking Matt. 19:12 literally, he castrated himself in his pursuit of an ascetic and pious life. He developed a systematic theology, incorporating the allegorical method of interpretation in an endeavor to reach the Greek mind.

Bietenhard, a German Patristic scholar, observes, “War was declared on chiliasm by the Alexandrians Clement and Origen. Clement did not refer to it directly, but his thinking as a whole was unfavorable towards it. Origen was more specific and consistently hostile.” The objective of Bietenhard’s article is not to outline the eschatology of Origen, but to show in Origen’s denunciations of Chiliasm some basic observations on the exegesis of Scripture and theology generally. “For Origen the Chiliasts were visionaries, deluded and fools, and what was worse, literalists. The millennium as they pictured it was in terms of the flesh. On the basis of the Old Testament promises, and perhaps after the manner of Papias, they painted it in strongly realistic colors. They looked for the rebuilding of the earthly Jerusalem with gold and precious stones.”

The true Christian, according to Origen, was the man of the Spirit who had no worldly expectation. The hope of the Christian is a hope of heaven; the earth is not worthy of a Christian’s hope. “But this meant a complete abandonment of the Christian conception of time. A Greek dualism of above and below replaced the NT contrast between this world and the world to come. Origen had also forgotten that the millennium is not identical with the kingdom of God, but is rather a transitional stage between two worlds. The basic principle that Scripture must be interpreted according to the Spirit and not the flesh was a right principle, but Origen’s application of it was disastrous, for he identified the spiritual with Neo-Platonic philosophy. Yet Scripture itself remained, and this was sufficient to preserve the factual and historical elements from complete dissolution and to ensure the continuing possibility and even actuality of a true Biblical realism.”[5]

ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION

Origen’s opposition to chiliasm was so violent that in his exposition of Revelation 7 & 14 he says of the 144,00, “These, then, who are sealed on their foreheads from every tribe of the children of Israel, are a hundred and forty-four thousand in number….Now these taken from the tribes are, as we showed before, the same persons as the virgins. But the number of believers is small who belong to Israel according to the flesh; one might venture to assert that they would not nearly make up the number of a hundred and forty-four thousand. It is clear, therefore, that the hundred and forty-four thousand who have not defiled themselves with women must be made up of those who have come to the divine word out of the Gentile world.”[6]

Hanson, another Patristic scholar reminds us that Origen was not the originator of Christian allegorizing, he was its great apologist, systematizer and amplifier. He systematized the use of allegory, making it universally popular and intellectually respectable in the ancient church by the weight of his great authority as a scholar and a theologian. “In his De Principiis he divides the senses of Scripture into three: …the literal meaning;…metaphorical, but usually has some reference to a point of moral edification;…the spiritual sense which also at its lowest is merely metaphorical but usually has reference to some point of theology or doctrine.”

According to Origen’s theory, the literal sense is to be followed unless it simply makes no sense. “But this distinction between spiritual and moral is on the whole throughout Origen’s works lost and the two senses blend….On the whole, allegorization becomes simply ‘the spiritual sense,’ a convenient resort whereby the difficulties of the Old Testament may be overcome and the conviction maintained that the Bible is inerrant without involving the Christian scholar in the impossible task of defending its literal truth.”

On occasion Origen allegorizes the historicity of incidents even in the New Testament, although not as readily as he will dispose of stories in the Old. “He frequently maintains a theory found also in Clement of Alexandria and in Philo that God may have in the Bible deliberately related things which were not true for the ultimate improvement of mankind. There can be no doubt that Origen had no misgivings at all in on occasion abandoning the historical authenticity of incidents in the Bible.”

It is necessary to believe in the historical truth of Christianity, according to Origen, “because this belief is an inescapable prelude to belief in the timeless, spiritual Logos; it is the door, or the first rung of the ladder. But it should be transcended, escaped from, as soon as possible. History was the screen upon which God threw the film of his truth. It was the charade by which he conveyed to us the saving knowledge of himself.”[7]

CONCLUSION

When you use the hermeneutic of Philo, Origen and the Greek school, which is allegorical and figurative, you are forced to look to the tradition of the church for a proper interpretation of Scripture. If a literal hermeneutic is inadequate and the passage doesn’t really mean what it says, who gets to determine its meaning? If “no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation,”[8] the answer is the church. The church, however, is victimized by culture, and is constantly shifting its position on issues such as divorce, the role of women, and abortion.

The line between reason and revelation is absolute. This doesn’t mean that you do not carry reason into revelation, for the process of interpretation requires reason. Hodge rightly notes that the primary job of reason is the reception of revelation.[9] But reason must be in subjection to revelation; revelation is the supreme court in man’s deliberations. Reason and tradition are important, but both must yield to revelation.

That group of Patristics called Apologists, according to Hanson, for all their readiness to introduce Greek forms of thought into the presentation of Christian doctrine, had been conservative in their eschatology, seldom if ever straying beyond the bounds of a literal interpretation of apocalyptic imagery, and had been, with a few exceptions, particularly preoccupied with a very literal presentation of the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh. Hanson notes that Irenaeus had seen no reason to extend to his treatment of eschatology an allegorical approach. “…his account of the Last Things had been conservative and almost naive….”[10]

Origen was the first to abandon this conservative approach, consistently allegorizing all eschatological imagery which he encountered in the Bible. “Until his day chiliasm, while not a universally held doctrine, had apparently been quite a popular one….But Origen sets his face resolutely against chiliasm. He is well aware that there are contemporary Christians who indulge in such hopes, but he regards them with contempt.”[11]

“With the Alexandrian school, Clement and Origen, a new tributary enters the stream of Christian allegory….From the third century onward the history of Christian allegory moves in ever-deepening currents of varied interpretations – spiritual, figurative, mystical, allegorical, analogical, topological – until by the end of the Middle Ages allegorical interpretation was not so much a stream as an ocean. The Reformation apparently checked and reduced its popularity, though none of the contending parties of the sixteenth century would probably have disowned it entirely. Since then its popularity has waned steadily until today it is almost true to say that the allegorical interpretation of Scripture is confined to liturgy.”[12]

You can see the tie between the allegorical interpretation of Scripture and the institutionalization of the church. If the followers of Christ are the New Israel, the model for the church is the Old Testament Theocracy. Promises to the nation of Israel were allegorized and applied to the church, and the church sought in incorporate the Old Testament imagery into its liturgy. The pastor became a priest, the Lord’s Supper a sacrifice, and the Lord’s table an altar.

So too, authority had to reside in the church, for if the literal meaning of Scripture is not the true meaning, the church had to become the final arbiter, and decipher for the believer the correct interpretation.

As Hanson pointed out, the Reformers corrected much of this abuse, but fell short of abandoning a hermeneutic that made the church the new Israel.

His ….. Yours,

Walt

[1] op.cit., Dewick, p. 373.

[2] ibid, p. 395.

[3] “I Apol. x.”

[4] op. cit., Barnard, Justin Martyr, His Life and Thought, pp. 127-128.

[5] Torrance, T.F., editor, Scottish Journal of Theology, Bietenhard, Pfarrer Dr. Hans, The Millennial Hope in the Early Church, Oliver & Boyd LTD., Edinburgh, Vol Six, 1953.

[6] op.cit., ANF, Vol X, pp. 297-298, Origen’s Commentary on John, bookI, chapter 2.

[7] Theology, A Journal of Historic Christianity, Hanson, R.P.C., History and Allegory, Vol LIX, 1956, pp. 499-502.

[8] II Peter 1:20

[9] Hodge, Charles, Systematic Theology, Vol I, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 1952, page 36.

[10] op.cit., Hanson, pp. 101-110.

[11] ibid, pp. 333-345.

[12] ibid, p. 498.

Part Sixteen

As we have seen throughout this series, eschatology influences hermeneutics, your view of the church, and a number of other important doctrines. In the early church John’s Revelation gave believers hope in the face of persecution. Thus they read Revelation 20 literally, but because of their antipathy of the Jews, interpreted the Old Testament figuratively, arguing that they replaced Israel in the affections of God.

Later, when the Roman persecutions began to wane, the church distanced itself from earlier pre-millennialism. They modified the earlier figurative approach to hermeneutics by reading John’s Revelation allegorically while giving the Old Testament a more literal reading. As the New Israel, they needed the Old Testament structure to organize. Meanwhile, the need for a figurative interpretation was necessary to reach the Greek mind in an almost exclusively Gentile church.

It is rather ironic that pre-millennialism with its literal approach to Scripture was rejected because it was too fleshly, too worldly, due to its belief in an earthly kingdom during the millennium. Ironic in that pre-millennialism was replaced by a-millennialism which now argues that pre-millennialism is invalid precisely because it isn’t worldly enough. It is accused of being so preoccupied with the eternal that insufficient attention is giving to building God’s kingdom on earth here and now.

DOCTRINE OF THE CHURCH

I have already introduced the relationship between eschatology and the doctrine of the church. Because of the implications, I want to develop this connection further.

In the Old Testament God had a dual commitment; He was committed to individuals and to the nation of Israel. Both commitments were an expression of His elective grace. God’s commitment to a perpetually apostate nation was an illustration of His grace. The issue of Israel being worthy of God’s grace is no more an issue than whether the individual believer is worthy of grace.

God emphasizes this point in Hosea. God’s prophet is commanded to marry the harlot Gomer. The marriage is nonsensical and void of reason. After her marriage to Hosea she continues her life of infidelity. God says that this is an object lesson of His love and commitment to the nation of Israel. Like Gomer, Israel lusts after pagan gods, habitually violating her covenant with God. Still, God is faithful to His betrothed.[1]

In the New Testament, God has only an individual commitment. The church, which comprises the elect, is an organism rather than an organization or institution. There are institutional expressions of the church, such as Baptists, Reformed, Presbyterians, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, etc. But God has no commitment to any of these institutions. None of them go to heaven, only individuals. There is no such thing as an elect institution in the New Testament.

There are, in the United States, in excess of 2000 denominations, each believing that they adequately represent God. Augustine, the “father” of a-millennialsim said that there was no salvation outside of the church, by which he meant the institutional manifestation of the Roman Catholic Church (a position currently held by the Roman Church). This means that none save one of the 2000 plus denominations have God’s blessing, and none of those affiliated with these denominations can consider themselves saved.

It seems to me that there are two fundamental presuppositions that undergird historic a-millennialism: 1) The conviction that the Mosaic Covenant continues to be normative in the church which is the New Israel. 2) The apostolic tradition whereby the Holy Spirit continues to lead the institutional church, giving it an authority higher than that of the individual believer, and to which the believer is amenable.

The two presuppositions are intertwined and interdependent. The second is relative in application, from the Roman Catholics on one extreme and possibly the Baptist on the other. For example, a Baptist church, with a congregational form of government, may have rules that restrict the behavior of the members, such as no drinking, gambling, or smoking.

There is a natural propensity for the church to assume that God has entrusted to her what has not been entrusted to the individual believer. This is a different question from the need for church discipline as outlined in I Corinthians 5 and that of interdependence which is the theme of I Corinthians 12-14; the mutual dependence of the members of Christ’s Body is not the same as saying that God has a special commitment to an institution in the New Testament.

STRUCTURE OF THE CHURCH

Structure requires control, and the church discovered that the Old Testament pattern was useful. Moreover, with the passing of time the antipathy that existed between Rome and the church subsided, and as Kirsch notes, the church responded by viewing an alliance with Rome as a possibility. “There is no doubt that this turn of events did such towards weaning the Christians from the old millenarianism, which during the time of persecution had been the expression of their hopes that Christ would soon reappear and overthrow the foes of His elect.”[2]

As noted in Eschatology, Part 6, the earlier Clement (mentioned by Paul in Philippians 4:3 as distinguished from Clement of Alexandria) refers to the presbyters as “priests” and the bishops as “high priests”[3] This Old Testament mind-set which saw the church as the New Israel served well in bringing structure to the church. Still, it wasn’t until the third century that church buildings began to appear. Harnack notes that prior to this time people met in private houses, while men like Paul might hire a school for his lectures.[4] As Harnack says, “One thing is clear, and this is, that the idea of a special place of worship had not yet arisen. The Christian idea of God and of divine service not only failed to promote this, but excluded it, while the practical circumstances of the situation retarded its development.”[5]

The beginning of the third century, particularly during the peace that reigned from the emperor Gallienus to the beginning of the fourth century, saw “…the growth of the Christian congregations, the ecclesiastical consciousness, and the complicated requirement of the priesthood and the cultus[6] (which approximated more than ever to those of paganism), involved not only larger buildings but buildings for special purposes (e.g., chapels for the martyrs).”[7]

In the early years of the church each community was a self-sufficient unit while at the same time a reproduction of the collective church of God. “We do not know how this remarkable conviction arose, but it lies perfectly plain upon the surface of the apostolic and post-apostolic ages. It did not originate in Judaism…Nor did the conception spring up at a single stroke. Even in Paul two contradictory conceptions still lie unexplained together: while, on the one hand, he regard each community, so to speak, as a ‘church of God,’ sovereign, independent, and responsible for itself, on the other hand his churches are at the same time his own creations, which consequently remain under his control and training, and are in fact even threatened by him with the rod….Here the apostolic authority, and, what is more, the general and special authority, of the apostle as the founder of a church invade and delimit the authority of the individual community, since the latter has to respect and follow the rules laid down and enforced by the apostle throughout all his churches….”[8]

The early expression of Christianity in the Roman world was unique. Void of any political or ethnic undercurrents, it was a society uniting fellow-believers resident in any city. Assuming a relationship of the closest ties, strangers became instantly yoked through their commonality in Christ. It was a bond that provided spiritual benefits while imposing duties, creating a sense of stability for the individual. “It was this, and not any evangelist, which proved to be the most effective missionary. In fact, we may take it for granted that the mere existence and persistent activity of the individual Christian communities did more than anything else to bring about the extension of the Christian religion.”[9]

CONCLUSION

Harnack describes the church as an organism naturally bonded in geographical groups. The vitality and life that created such an attraction to outsiders was based on the unity of the Spirit. As Paul Johnson notes, the gifts and the Spirit precluded the need for organization.[10]

The absence of organization, however, means the absence of control. As the church matured and heresies flourished, thinking men saw the need to establish control. Union replaced unity. In John 17 Jesus prays for unity and Paul rebukes its absence in I Corinthians. Paul argues in I Cor 12 that the Holy Spirit gave gifts to all believers making them important, but no believer has all the gifts, making him dependent. This was meant to enhance unity.

If the history of the church has taught us anything, it is that union tends to destroy unity. With union you have a vested interest in the system, which in turn breeds disagreement. You can see this phenomenon in movements like Promise Keepers. Organization is at a minimum and union is not an objective. Thus people from various traditions and doctrinal persuasions can join together in beautiful harmony.

These same men, when they sit on the boards of their churches, find such a spirit of unity evaporate. The reason is obvious: An endeavor to ensure union inhibits unity.

None of this is to suggest that union is wrong. A cardinal principle of hermeneutics is that the believer is free to do whatever the Bible does not prohibit. There may be compelling reasons to organize. But we do well to remember that God has no commitment to the organizations that we create.

United in His Spirit,

[1] Hosea 2:19-20

[2] op.cit., Kirsch, J.P., The Catholic Encyclopedia, Millennium, pages 307-309.

[3] op.cit., The Epistle of S. Clement to the Corinthians, The Apostolic Fathers, page 30.

[4] Cf. Acts 19:9.

[5] op.cit., Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol II, pages 85-87.

[6] Cultus: The beliefs, rites and ceremonies of a religious system.

[7] ibid, pages 85-87.

[8] ibid, Vol 1, pages 431-444.

[9] ibid, pages 431-444.

[10] op.cit., Johnson, A History of Christianity, page 44.

Part Seventeen

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.”[1]

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.”[2]

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.[3]

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. [4] 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.[5] 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.[6] 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.”[7]

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.”[8]

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.”[9]

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.[10] 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.”[11]

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.”[12] 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.”[13]

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,

[1] ibid, page 44

[2] op.cit., Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol 1, page 437.

[3] op.cit., Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, pages 732-733.

[4] op.cit., Harnack, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol 1, pages 470-471.

[5] op.cit, Cross, The Early Christian Fathers, page 176.

[6] ibid, pages 139-140.

[7] op.cit., Johnson, A History of Christianity, page 50.

[8] ibid, page 51.

[9] Chadwick, H., The Journal of Theological Studies, Clarendon Press, Oxford, Vol XII, Hanson, R.P.C., Notes on Tertullians’s interpretation of Scripture, 1961, page 279.

[10] cf. Revelation 20:1-6, esp. vv. 5-6.

[11] op.cit., Bietenhard, The Millennial Hope in the Early Church.

[12] ibid.

[13] ibid.

Part Eighteen

How does eschatology influence how we live? This series seeks to show how eschatology appreciably influences much of what we think and do. In this issue, we will look at how eschatology roots Christianity in history. Christianity is an historical religion, and if its ties to history are cut, it becomes a vague, mystical religion with no ability to deliver man from his bondage to sin and death.

THE DEMISE OF JEWISH CHRISTENDOM

Most of Paul’s letters were written urging Jews to accept Gentiles as equal members in the family of God. When Paul wrote Ephesians, in about 64 AD, Gentile Christendom was barely ten years old, and at this stage of its development, Paul had every reason to believe that the church would remain predominantly a Jewish-Christian movement, irrespective of the proportion of Jews to Gentiles.

He had won the debate at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, and although it was an uneasy acquiescence on the part of James and Peter, the Gentile church was on the ascendance. Still, the leadership was almost universally Jewish Christian, and with it the ethos of the movement. As Paul says in Ephesians, it was the Gentiles who had been “brought near” to the Jews, not vice versa.[1]

All of this was short-lived, however. In the decade to follow, the great Jewish Christian leaders of the Apostolic generation were martyred. By now Jewish converts must have recognized that they were associating with a predominantly Gentile community facing sever persecution. Although opposition touched both Jews and Gentiles, the greatest toll was taken in the Jewish segment of the church, for they had to face not only the wrath of Rome, but also of their own people who considered them apostate.

Josephus reports that the High Priest Ananus procured the death of James, the brother of the Lord, from the Roman Procurator, on charges of violating the Mosaic Law.[2] The fact that this was done by a sentence of the Sanhedrin indicates an official determination to rid the Jewish community of their fellow Jews who had abandoned the faith of their fathers to follow Jesus.[3] As already noted, the Jewish Christian remnant got smaller and smaller, finally disappearing altogether.

Because Jewish believers were considered by fellow Jews as traitors to the Jewish faith, their number, as a percentage of the church, rapidly declined. By the end of the first century, they constituted a struggling minority, culturally adrift, not comfortable with either Judaism or a predominantly Gentile church. The union of Jew and Gentile in the Body of Christ, so fervently sought by Paul, was irreparably destroyed. Gentile believers saw themselves as the true people of God, the New Israel. Once the persecution subsided, the church began to work towards fulfilling the failed mission of Old Testament Israel, creating the Theocratic Kingdom.

A millennial hope, so important to the church during its persecution, served no useful purpose as the church prospered, gaining recognition, and finally equality with Rome.

INFLUENCE OF GREEK MYSTERY CULTS ON CHRISTIANITY

The demise of chiliasm, combined with Christianity’s exposure to Greek mystery cults, began to sever Christianity from history. Christianity, with its essential tie to history and eschatology (eschatology is by definition historical), discovered that, when it assimilated the Greek mystery cult, the effect was the transmuting of eschatology into timeless mysticism.

This is important to note, for the depreciation of eschatology cut the historical moorings of Christianity, leaving it adrift in a Hindu influenced culture. One of the reasons Augustine became revered in the church was due to his understanding this propensity and his creating an eschatological system that checked it.

JEROME

Jerome (c. 342-420) was a contemporary of Augustine. He is probably best known for his translation of the Bible from the original languages into Latin. We look at him in this context because he exemplifies the wild directions eschatology took between the time of chiliasm’s demise and Augustine’s City of God.

For Jerome, Chiliasm and Judaism are identical. To destroy the foundation of chiliasm, he spiritualized John’s Revelation. But this was not enough; Jerome re-edited the commentary of Vicotrinus, expunging his chiliastic conclusion, replacing it with a new and independent exposition.

“I do not believe that the millennium is an earthly kingdom, for, if it were, they would cease to reign when the 1000 years have passed. But as far as I can understand it, the 10 represents the decalogue and the 100 the crown of virginity. If a man maintains his virginity, and faithfully observes the commandments, and keeps himself from impure habits…. he is a true priest of Christ, and we may believe that as he has fulfilled the whole 1000 he will reign with Christ and that the devil is really bound before him. But if a man is led astray by blasphemies and heresies, in him the devil is loosed.”[4]

In this we see that although Jerome spiritualized Scripture, embracing the same hermeneutic as Augustine, it was an altogether different interpretation from that of Augustine in the City of God. Those who have read a-millennial commentaries on Revelation know that even within the confines of Augustine’s understanding of eschatology, a multiplicity of theories abound.

OLD TESTAMENT ESCHATOLOGY

The Old Testament emphasizes a cosmic re-creation, as seen in passages such as Isaiah 2, while giving only a cursory look at individual re-creation, as seen in passages such as Job 19:26.[5]

The New Testament is the opposite, with an emphasis on individual re-creation.[6] The anti-Jewish emphasis of men like Jerome fed the Gnostic tendency to view the world and the flesh as evil, and the spiritual world as good. But the New Testament emphasis on the physical resurrection left unanswered the question of how to view our present world, especially in light of the New Testament casting a negative shadow on the two words for “world,” aeon and cosmos.

Pre-millennialism saw the solution in a material re-creation. The world was not to be loved[7], not because the physical is evil and the spiritual good, as taught the Gnostics, but because of the depravity of man that has negatively influenced all of creation, an influence corrected with a material re-creation[8]. (A-millennialism had no answer for this perplexing question until years later with their introduction of the cultural mandate). The hope in a material re-creation was deeply rooted in the sub-apostolic church.

“The wildest beam, which lights up the whole doctrinal scene and enables us to see the evidence more simply arranged, is cast by the presence in the church of the Apostolic Fathers of two quite distinguishable thought-tendencies on the last things, and specifically on the final function of this material creation. For want of more accurate names we call the one Jewish Hellenistic and the other Greek Hellenistic. The clash between these two had begun well before Christian times and no Father is free from either one’s influence, but, viewing these two attitudes as theoretical extremes, we find that some Fathers take up a position favouring one extreme very much at the expense of the other.

“….in view of the Apostolic Fathers’ widely differing origins, backgrounds and literary forms, coupled with their lack of interdependence, belief in a material re-creation of the world was widespread during the sub-apostolic age.”[9]

It was the Hellenistic influence, with its emphasis on timeless mysticism, that caused the Jewish hope of a re-created earth to wane in the church, especially as persecution ceased and their hope became temporal.

CONCLUSION

We will explore more fully in the next issue the subject of Gnosticism. It was an attractive world view simply because it seemed to explain the pain, tribulation, and opposition that all experience in this life. Paul says that tribulation is designed by God to purify our hope and prepare us for heaven.[10] Gnosticism says that tribulation is the fruit of living in a material world that is evil.

If the material world is evil, as Gnosticism taught, then obviously God would not recreate a material world in the millennium; the material world is a prison from which the soul longs for freedom. This dualism, that the material world is evil and the spiritual world is good, found fertile soil in Christianity, precisely because it appears reasonable. Thus, New Testament writers spend considerable effort arresting Gnostic thought.[11]

Paul, in Romans 8:18-23, discusses the travail creation is currently experiencing because of sin. In this passage he says that part of the blessed hope is the material re-creation of this world which “waits for the manifestation of the sons of God,” and eagerly anticipates deliverance “from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

A premillennial world view, with its heavy emphasis on an earthly re-creation, was a potent factor in keeping Gnosticism at bay. The church, anti-Jewish as she was, and seeing herself as the New Israel, took over the national hope of Israel. “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God,’” says Paul in Romans 9:26. As the New Israel, the early church saw Israel’s national hope in terms of a material re-creation after the return of Christ. The writings of John’s Revelation formed the rationale for their thinking.

The Patristics interpreted John’s Revelation and the Old Testament passages pertaining to a future material re-creation literally, while spiritualizing the Old Testament promises to Israel, applying them to the church. When the church jettisoned the pre-millennialism embraced by the Patristics, Revelation and all Old Testament passages pertaining to the future were interpreted figuratively. It is easy to see why, at this point, the church was vulnerable to a Hindu world-view. But more of this next issue.

Hoping for His imminent return,

[1] cf. Ephesians 2:11-18, esp. v. 13.

[2] Josephus, The Jewish War, Cornfeld, Gaalya, General editor, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1982, page 169.

[3] op.cit. Dix, Jew and Greek – A Study in the Primitive Church, pages 61-63.

[4] op.cit., A quote of Jerome’s exposition of Rev. 20, In Isaiam, proph. lib. XVIII, prooem.

[5] In this remarkable confession of faith, Job believes in a physical re-creation or resurrection.

[6] cf., e.g., I Cor 15, Rom 8:18-23.

[7] cf., e.g., I John 2:15-16.

[8] cf. Rom 8:18-23.

[9] op.cit., O’Hagan, Material Re-creation in the Apostolic Fathers, pages 139f.

[10] cf., Romans 5:1-12.

[11] John, in particular, in his epistles, combats Gnosticism.

Part Nineteen

Dear Co-laborer,

As you read this you are in preparation for the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday. Leette and I pray that it will be a special family time of remembering and rejoicing.

In the last issue we briefly looked at the importance of understanding Christianity being rooted in history, and the part eschatology plays in that. You don’t have to read deeply in the Old Testament to discover that the physical world plays an important part in God’s program for Israel. God gave them the land in perpetuity, promising that in the future He will return the Jews to Israel.

The Patristics maintained this view of an eschatology rooted in the promise of a physically restored land. Because they divorced God’s promises regarding the future physical restoration from the Jews, the Patristics tended to create extra-biblical visions of the millennial kingdom. This, in turn, created a back-lash against chiliasm.

Many believe that John’s Revelation, from which we get the word millennium[1], was the path by which belief in a physical restoration of the world entered the church. This is not true; every Jewish convert carried something of his former beliefs with him when he entered this community of Christ’s followers.

Jesus and the Apostles, as noted in part 2 of this series, saw no distinction between Israel and the church. They were the true Israel. Later, with the Jews’ rejection of Christ, the Patristics saw the church as the true Israel and concluded that the Old Testament references to the contrary were figurative.

The early church had to face not only the hostility of Jewish rejection and persecution, but also the hostility of Hellenism which sought to absorb Christianity as another mystery religion. Gnosticism, an endeavor to do just that, was a pervasive problem as early as the writings of John. Because it played a strategic role in shaping the doctrinal debate in Christianity, let’s take a brief look at it.

GNOSTICISM

Derived from the Greek word know, Gnosticism purported to offer knowledge of the otherwise hidden truth of total reality as the key to salvation. It was a syncretistic religion, based primarily on a Hindu world-view, that incorporated Jewish, Iranian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and other Oriental traditions – all blended with Christianity.

All of these divergent religions were merged in a dualism between man and the world and the world and God. Man and the world mirrors on the plane of experience the primordial oneness of God and the world. Man and God belong in essence together against the world, but are in fact separated by the world.

Gnosticism taught that the God of the Old Testament was the Demiurge, who believed himself to be the only God, and engaged in creations designed to satisfy his ambition, vanity, and lust for dominion.

The Spirit is in a state of exile from His innerworldly existence, as the result of a primeval tragedy, and is immersed in the soul and body of man. The process of conveying the saving knowledge to the world-imprisoned hostage of Light begins with Adam and runs through history.

The Scriptural account of Adam is reversed; the serpent, as the original messenger of knowledge in defiance of the Creator’s mandate of ignorance, becomes the symbol of the spiritual principle that awakens captive man.

There is an eternal Messenger who moves through history in ever new incarnations, Buddha, Zoraster, Jesus, Mani, to name but a few manifestations of him. The anti-Jewish interpretation of Genesis is confirmed by the absence of Moses from this list of incarnations.

Marcion, a proponent of this philosophy, rejected the whole body of Hebrew Scripture. The main battle was fought between the church and the Gnostics on the issues of their irreverent exegesis and rejection of the Old Testament, along with their refusal to identify the God of Moses with the Father of Jesus Christ.

The material universe is like a vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth, the abode of man. The tyrannical Demiurge, with His threat of retribution, aims at the enslavement of man. Man is composed of flesh, soul, and spirit. Both the body and soul are products of the cosmic powers, who shaped the body in the image of the divine Primal Man and animated it with the appetites and passions of natural man.

Enclosed in the soul is the Spirit, a portion of the divine substance. Only this innermost Spirit is the true man, and he is not of this world. The transcendent God (as opposed to the Old Testament God) is as alien to this world as the Spirit in the midst of man. The goal of Gnostic striving is the release of the inner man from the bonds of the world and his return to his native realm of light.

To do this, he must know about the transcendent God, about himself, and about the nature of the world that created his problem. Thus ignorance is the essence of mundane existence. Since the transcendent God is unknown to the world and cannot be discovered by it, revelation is necessary.

The goal of this revelation or knowledge is freedom from the mundane world and union with the divine substance. The individual’s ascent is part of the restoration of the deity’s own wholeness. The end comes when the deity retrieves his own and they become one. With the completion of this ingathering, the cosmos, deprived of its elements of light, comes to an end.[2]

GNOSTICISM AND THE CHURCH

Early Christianity fought gnosticism most successfully with millenarism. Irenaeus and others did this by reasoning that both an individual and corporate eschatology must be preached.

In the Old Testament judgment of both the individual and the nation runs parallel. Individually, we note that God judged Adam and Eve, Cain, Achan, Saul, and David, to mention but a few. Corporately, God judged the world through Noah, Egypt through the Exodus, Babylon, Edom, and of course Israel, as well as many others.

Although in the New Testament, the preponderance of evidence is in the direction of individual judgment,[3] nations are included in passages such as Matt 25:31-46.

For the a-millennialist, there can be no final judgment of nations; a material re-creation is necessary for such a judgment. There can be no corporate accountability in the end time (eschaton) without a material re-creation of some kind.

O’Hagan notes that Gnosticism with its dualism, was rejected by the church. A-millennialism emphasized the importance of the corporate, mystical church, while pre-millennialism that of the individual and the physical church, in the re-creation of Revelation 20. For the a-millennial, Rev 20 was spiritual; for the pre-millennialism it was physical. In this, pre-millennialism had a stronger defense against Gnosticism. The Bible teaches that the world is good; God will re-create it. Gnosticism teaches that the world is bad; man is to escape from it.

Many years later, a-millennialism corrected this with its emphasis on the cultural mandate.[4] In the Old Testament the Greek words for “world”[5] (aeon and cosmos) are consistently good – i.e., the world is good. In the New Testament the world is consistently evil.[6] Pre-millennialism teaches that this evil world will become good in the material re-creation of the millennial kingdom of Christ. A-millennialism eventually defended itself against Gnosticism by teaching that the present world is good, but that there will be no material re-creation in the eschaton.

Patristic anti-Jewishness fed the Gnostic tendency as well in that the Patristics taught that God had rejected His Old Testament people, and Gnosticism taught that the Jews, along with Abel, Jacob, Moses, et. al were evil. To the degree that the church allegorized the Old Testament, they had difficulty refuting the Gnostics.

Ignatius of Antioch refuted Gnosticism by stressing a literal, physical resurrection in Revelation 20, while those who opposed chiliasm believed Revelation 20 to be spiritual.[7]

In the Jewish view of Scripture, the fulcrum of history is the Day of the Lord when Messiah sits on David’s Throne. According to Revelation 20, judgment occurs after the millennium. The a-millennialists saw Christ’s first advent as the fulcrum of history and the second advent only as a time of judgment and consummation; for them there is no material re-creation of the earth. For the Patristics, who were historic pre-millennialists, because they divorced the material re-creation of the earth in the eschaton from a Jewish hope, the earth played a relative unimportant role. Thus, when there was an abatement in persecution, they had no compelling reason to hold it.

CONCLUSION

From this we learn two important lessons: First, we again see the subtle, but strategic role culture plays in the life of the church. Culture can and must be resisted, but still it has its way. Its influence may not be perceptible to the present generation, but glaring to those who look in retrospect and evaluate.

Second, because the Bible is written by God and is a unified whole, what we believe about one aspect of biblical truth appreciably influences the whole. We may divide the truth of Scripture into various components we call doctrine, but each doctrine is intertwined with all others; modify one doctrine, and you modify them all. Your view on eschatology will influence your understanding, not only of the timetable of God, but more importantly, your understanding of God Himself.

The view of the early church on eschatology and God’s commitment to Israel, influenced its ability to withstand the attack of Gnosticism. Israel is God’s illustration of Sovereign Grace and Election. If you conclude that the Jews flunked the test of God’s grace, where does that leave you?

His….Your Servant,

[1] Cf. Rev 20:1-7 where the phrase “thouand years” appears six times. Millennium is latin for “thousand;’ chiliasm is greek for “thousand.”

[2] Edwards, Paul, editor in Chief, The Encyclopeaia of Philosophy, Macmilllan Publishing Co, New York, 1967, Vol III, Gnosticism, pp. 336-341.

[3] cf., e.g., I Cor 3:10-15, II Cor 5:10, II Thess 1:8-9.

[4] Taken from Gen 1:28, the Cultural Mandate (sometimes called the Dominion Covenant) teaches that God’s command to Adam is perpetual, and thus, in part, constitutes the mission of the church. The “mandate” was never repeated after the Fall, with the exception of Gen 9:1 (where the words “subdue” and “dominion” are missing), and there is no reference to it in the New Testament.

[5] The Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament is called the Septuagint (LXX). Jewish tradition attributes its origin to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Alexandria about 285-246 B.C.

[6] cf., e.g., Mark 4:19 (“…and the cares of the aeon choke the Word…”) and I John 2:15-16 (“Love not the cosmos….”).

[7] op.cit., O’Hagan, Material Re-Creation in the Apostolic Fathers, page 107.