Eschatology: 20–24

Walt Henrichsen March 12, 2015

Part Twenty

Dear Co-laborer,

A very happy new year from our house to yours. May 1997 be the best year ever in your life, and may it be the year of His return! Lord willing, 1997 will bring to a close this series on eschatology. Four parts remain, which means the last issue will be in September.

What role, if any, does the Old Testament Law play in the life of the New Testament believer? This question baffles many of Christ’s followers. People are confused when it comes to deciding how to relate to the Old Testament Law.

As we have already seen, this is an eschatological question; if the church is the New Israel, then the church is under the Mosaic Law. This is what the theologian calls the continuity of the Mosaic Covenant. If the church and Israel are separate metaphysical entities, then the Mosaic Law is for Israel, not the church. In this issue, I want to explore more fully the implications of these conflicting views.

THE LAW AND ESCHATOLOGICAL HOPE

Hebrews 11 is commonly referred to as God’s “Hall of Fame;” in it are the heroines and heroes of the Faith. All of them were great because of a future or eschatological hope. They “looked for a city, whose builder and maker is God.”[1]

The author of Hebrews 11 includes Moses, Joshua, and Rahab, but gives “honorable mention” to those who live after the land is conquered and the nation established. The Abrahamic Covenant, and the hope of those who embraced it, was eschatological. The Mosaic Covenant dealt with a temporal rather than an eternal hope. As far as I know, all the laws encompassed in the Mosaic Covenant are temporal.

It is for this reason that the church throughout history has been jealous of the Jews and their Mosaic Covenant; it provided a temporal hope. It is difficult and uncomfortable to live in a temporal environment with only an eternal hope. All of us want God to commit Himself to our temporal well-being. Thus the establishment of a temporal institution created and blessed by God meets the longing of the human heart. The Mosaic Covenant gives the rationale for such a system.[2]

THE LAW IN HISTORIC PREMILLENNIALISM

The Patristics were historic premillennialists; they believed that the church is the New Israel, and that she will participate in a literal thousand year reign of Christ on earth. In this they interpreted Revelation 20 literally and the Old Testament figuratively.

The Patristics are the same as amillennialists and postmillennialists in the sense that they believe that the church is obligated to keep all Old Testament Law unless it is repealed in the New Testament. This view of the role of the Law in the life of the New Testament believer was not questioned until a group of 19th century laymen argued that Israel and the church were different metaphysical entities.

These laymen, in seeking to read the New Testament objectively, concluded that when Paul says we are no longer under the Law, he means that the believer is not obligated to obey any of the Old Testament Law unless it is repeated in the New Testament. Part of their concern was how the Christian life is to be lived. But it also influenced their understanding of the nature of the church.

For example, if the believer is not obligated to obey the Law of Moses, then what about the Ten Commandments? All of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament with the exception of one: the fourth dealing with the Sabbath. The closest command in the New Testament to keep the Sabbath is Heb 10:25, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is….” This verse says nothing regarding the day of week, frequency, etc. You can see how this alters traditional ecclesiology.

THE LAW IN OLD TESTAMENT ISRAEL

Twice in Romans 11[3] Paul argues that the setting aside of Israel advantaged the Gentiles. The Law defined Israel as a nation and gave her a culture. “Israel was what it was by reason of God’s Law, a Law sacred and divine in itself, the true interpretation of which has been handed down from generation to generation…”[4] When you think of a Jew, or try to portray some aspect of Judaism, almost always you use the Law. This is illustrated again and again in novels and movies, where for example, the family is gathered around the table in celebrating a religious feast like the Passover.

The Gospel is trans-cultural. Paul’s argument in Romans 11 is, God set aside Israel with her Law so that the Gentiles could enter the family of God without having to change cultures. For example, you can imagine the impediment it would be if a man had to agree to being circumcised in order to become a Christian, in the same sense that he must agree to be baptized.

Old Testament Israel was a Theocracy in its conception. A nation needs law, and the Mosaic Law was the instrument by which Israel was to be governed. The Mosaic Law was good as an instrument for maintaining civil order in the nation, but had no ability to address issues of the heart.

LAW FOR JUSTIFICATION OR SANCTIFICATION?

Under the Old Testament system, did God intend the Law as the means of justification, and/or sanctification? I am not asking how the people in the Old Testament understood how they were saved, but rather the intent of God. Bible-believing people are universally agreed that it never was God’s intent that Israel look to the Law as the means by which it was justified. Rather, the Law was given to teach them their need for justification, and as the means whereby they were sanctified.[5],[6]

The same question may be asked regarding the New Testament. All will agree that it is not God’s intent that the seeker look to the Law as the means of justification. No one has ever been a able to satisfy the Law’s demands, Christ excepted. This being the case, in what sense is the New Testament believer no longer under the Law? Under the Law for what? If we reason, not under the Law for justification, then there is no difference between how people in the Old and New Testaments relate to the Law.

This means that the plethora of verses in Paul’s epistles to the effect that we are not under the Law is the same message preached to the Old Testament believing community; the saints in both Testaments look to the Law as the means of sanctification. As Rousas Rushdoony, a Reformed pastor wrote, “Salvation is by the grace of God through faith; sanctification is by the law of God.”[7] Quoting Geerhardus Vos, a Reformed theologian, on Matt 11:29-30, Rushdoony says, “‘…to take up the yoke of the kingdom of heaven,’ mean(s) ‘to vow obedience to the law.’”[8]

For amillennialists, Paul’s contrast between law and grace in not a contrast between how people in the Old Testament live vis a vis those in the New Testament, but between those in Christ and out of Christ, irrespective of whether it is New or Old Testament. If this is true, then in this respect the Apostle Paul’s message was no different from that of the Old Testament prophets. The only difference between the saints in the two dispensations is, the New Testament saint is not obligated to obey those laws specifically repealed in the New Testament, such as sacrificing animals.

PAUL’S TEACHING ON THE LAW

We don’t have room in this issue to exegete all that the New Testament says about the place of Law in the life of the Christian. Romans 6-8 discusses it in depth. Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, all deal with it. Here, however, I want to look briefly at I Corinthians 9.

In I Cor 9:1 Paul asks a rhetorical question, “Am I not free?” Free from what? If any are in doubt, Paul answers in vv. 19-23. In v. 20 he says, “And unto the Jews I became as a Jew…” Paul “became” as a Jew. Although a Jew by birth and religion, when he met Christ he ceased being a Jew; he was now a citizen of heaven. As the Gospel is trans-cultural, so Paul endeavored to make himself the same way. As he said, “I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some (v. 22b).”

In verse 21 Paul says, “To them that are without law, as without law…” If the Law were obligatory, then how could Paul act as though he were free from the Law? For example, in my desire to reach the lost, I cannot break the commandments of Christ. “All things to all men” is within the parameters of biblical standards, and this includes the Mosaic Law if we are still under its authority. As he said, in v. 21, “we are under the law of Christ.” Paul can be “without law” because the Mosaic Law was no longer binding on his life.

CONCLUSION

The conviction that the church is Israel carries with it the continuity of the Mosaic Covenant. The church is to emulate Old Testament Israel in all respects excepting those Old Testament commands rescinded in the New Testament. The Law, for both Israel and the church (since they are one and the same), is the means of sanctification.

I wrote Rousas Rushdoony for clarification regarding the implications of this. In a publication of Rushdoony he wrote regarding Montanus, “His physical lack of wholeness, according to Leviticus 21:17-23, should have disqualified him from leadership.”[9] In my letter I asked, “Do you feel that the Old Testament qualifications for the Levitical priesthood are in effect today for those who wish to assume leadership in the church? Do you make a distinction between the office of elder and pastor, and if so, would this Levitical qualification be applicable for both?”

Rushdoony wrote the following answer: “The simple fact is the Lev. 21:17-23 was the law for the church for many centuries. In 318 AD, a church council at Bythinia ruled that the only exceptions were mutilations by barbarians, or necessary surgery on an existing pastor or elder. The Synod in Trullo a little later RE-AFFIRMED the biblical ban by exempting those who had been castrated, blinded, or otherwise mutilated by the pagans during the persecutions. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus shortly thereafter ruled, and it was generally accepted, ‘nor shall those women who have been ravished by them (barbarians, and/or persecutors) be treated as guilty of fornication, unless they were before of lewd lives.’ In my youth, the barring of all but the whole from the ministry was still practiced by most churches in terms of Scripture. Since World War II, things have changed. There are more people living now than ever died before in all of history, and most of them have been born since World War II. They know little of the real (not liberal media’s version) past, and the church is suffering from this fact.”[10]

I have always admired Rushdoony, and I especially admire his consistency. As many of you know, he is a Theonomist, advocating the creation of a theocratic nation in the US. Many, if not most, amillennialists are uncomfortable with the position he has taken. I remember, several years ago I asked the president of Westminster Theological Seminary about Rushdoony. The president told me that he did not like Rushdoony’s conclusions, but admitted that he was more consistent with the amillennial system than most in the Reformed faith.

If the Old Testament Law is binding in the life of the New Testament believer, then much must be changed, even among the strongest advocates of amillennialism. For example, Deut 23:2 says, “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.” Who do you know that teaches that an illegitimate child cannot attend church, nor his offspring for the next ten generations? I have been in the ministry for over forty years, and I have never heard it preached.

The Christian is no longer bound by the Law. As we saw in I Cor 9:21, he is bound by the “law of Christ,” but not by the law of Moses. The program for this age includes redeeming people and making them fit for heaven; it does not include establishing the Old Testament theocratic kingdom. The Law has been replaced by the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. As Paul says in II Cor 3:7f., “The administration of death has been replaced by the administration of the Spirit.”

Resting in His grace,

[1] Hebrews 11:10 refers to Abraham, but the context, as evidenced by vv. 16, 39-40 includes all in the “Hall of Fame.”

[2] Bill Garrison, layman, Fort Worth, Tx, December, 1996

[3] cf. Rom 11:12 and 15.

[4] op.cit., Burkitt, Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, pages 14-15.

[5] This is not to argue that these were the only two purposes of the Law; as previously noted, the Law was also the instrument used to govern the state. There were other purposes as well.

[6] As you know, Justification is a legal act whereby the sinner is declared forgiven before a righteous God because of the propitious death of Christ. Sanctification is the process whereby the sinner, having been justified, is conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

[7] Rushdoon, Rousas John, The Institutes of Biblical Law, The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1973, Vol 1, page 714.

[8] ibid, page 717.

[9] Rushdoony, Chalcedon Position Papers, number 52.

[10] personal correcpondence, September 21, 1984.

Part Twenty-One

I remember reading a Peanuts cartoon a number of years ago in which Charlie Brown say, “I love the world, it is people that I can’t stand.” From a biblical perspective, it is the opposite; we love people and hate the world.[1] But from an empirical perspective, Charlie Brown is right.

For example, I was on an elevator in New York City with one other person. I looked him in the eye and said, “Good morning.” He refused to answer, completely ignoring me. A couple of weeks ago I was walking down a street when a very large man, probably in his thirties, ran me off the sidewalk, bumping me as we passed.

I am confident you have had similar experiences: people cutting in front of you, being mean, surly, uncivil. Why is this so? I believe they perceive the world (not as a system, but as the place where people dwell) as hostile or a threat. Yet when you meet these same people in a different context, they are warm and gracious.

It is for this reason that changing society holds such an attraction for most people. We don’t like being threatened by the world. It is also why it appears reasonable to conclude that the material world is evil, the dualism characteristic of Gnosticism.

These two themes of seeing the material world as evil and seeking to change society, flowed together in an emerging church. One of the great influencers of thought during this period was Eusebius. Let’s briefly study him.

EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA

Born in 264, Eusebius lived in Palestine in his youth, seeing the youthful Constantine there in the service of the Emperor Diocletian. The two things to remember about Eusebius are, his living in the eastern or Greek speaking part of the empire, and his being a contemporary of Constantine.

The major influence upon Eusebius at Caesarea was one Pamphilus who had migrated from Alexandria. He was a devoted Origenist, building around him at Caesarea a notable library and school, modeled after Origen’s. Eusebius accepted Origen’s hermeneutic, remaining loyal to it all his life, with this exception: His method of interpretation was based on the belief that the writers of the Old Testament wrote of Christ, whether they called Him David, Jacob, an angel, or Lord.

In April 313, having achieved a great military victory, Constantine issued an edict granting toleration to the Christians. Shortly thereafter, Eusebius was consecrated bishop of Caesarea. With the conversion of Constantine, the church gained notoriety, and with it a spectacular growth in membership. Both men shared a vision for building and expanding the church to accommodate the influx of new converts.

About this same time Eusebius became embroiled in the Arian controversy, the greatest doctrinal dispute of the early church. Arius taught that Christ was created by the will of the Father at a specific moment of time and was therefore neither eternal nor begotten of divine substance. Christ’s divine title was the result of adoption by the Father on account of His merits.

Although it is not completely clear where Eusebius stood in this debate, he did write letters requesting Arius’ reinstatement after the latter’s expulsion from the church. The dispute was finally settled against Arius and Eusebius at the Council of Nicea.

Eusebius shows an anti-Jewish bias throughout his works. The underlying movement of history was a progression from Abraham to Christ to Constantine. He believed the roots of Christianity to lay, not in Judaism proper, but with the patriarchs. In this era true religion was practiced, whereas with Moses on there was a decline from the primitive faith. Having survived the period from Moses to Christ, the pure faith reemerged in Christ.

“The conception here is not of individual but of corporate salvation, a conception of a whole people under God, dedicated to His service…There can be no separation of sacred from secular for such a people, for all is sacred in the life of a nation chosen by God…In embracing the era of the patriarch, the age of Promise, as his golden age, Eusebius was committing himself to this noble conception of human society….He was appealing not simply to a passage or two gleaned from the New Testament…but appealing to the goal and end towards which the whole Old Testament was pointing, from Genesis onwards. The fulfillment of the Promise was to be a theocracy which included all mankind, in Which God ruled His people and in which every part of the life of that people was dedicated to their God.”[2]

Rome, which played a strategic role during Augustus in the coming of Christ, is seen as having a positive part to play in the divine purpose. Constantine appeared to Eusebius as a second Abraham. It is interesting that the words of Jesus in John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” is quoted in his earliest works, but with the rise of the first Christian emperor, that verse was shelved.

“The Abrahamic dispensation did not merely prefigure the Christian: it was, as we have attempted to show in many quotations from Eusebius, identical….The essence of Eusebius’ view was that the clock had been put back, that history was repeating itself, with the qualification that now the ‘bright intellectual daylight’ had dawned there was no night to follow.”[3]

Eusebius sees in Constantine the recipient of divine sovereignty. He suggests that his dispensation will endure for eternity, going so far as to apply to Constantine’s sons the prophecy of Daniel 7:18. His theme is that the chosen people shall exercise territorial rule, and in the empire under Constantine he sees the promise fulfilled in what was an extension of the kingdom of Heaven upon earth.

“Eusebius goes further than any of the other Fathers in his rejection of millenarianism and of the old realistic eschatology. For him prophecy finds an adequate fulfillment in the historical circumstances of his own age. The Messianic Kingdom of Isaiah is the Christian Empire, and Constantine himself is the new David, while the new Jerusalem which St. John saw descending from heaven like a bride adorned for her husband means to Eusebius nothing more than the building of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Constantine’s orders.”[4]

CONCLUSION

As we move toward the end of this series on eschatology, it is apparent that the various themes that produce an amillennial world view converge and blend. This can be seen in the life of Eusebius. Beginning with his hermeneutic patterned after Origen, he fell prey to the Arian heresy. You may reason that this is an unfair connection, but I suggest that a less than literal interpretation of Scripture opens you to heresy, as evidenced in 19th century rationalism in Europe, and latter in the US. Bultmann’s demythologizing is but an extension of this hermeneutic. I am not suggesting that amillennialism is heretical; rather that it embraces a hermeneutic that, as with Eusebius, easily leads to error.

Viewing Old Testament Israel as the church and carrying her mission into the New Testament, led to viewing Constantine as the answer to fulfilling the mission of the church. This resulted in the marriage of church and state, which became the model for all cultures that embraced Christianity, without exception, until the birth of the United States.

When the vision of the church is married to the temporal goals of the state, the people are led to expect some form of utopia, a dream doomed to failure. For this reason, Europe in large part is post-Christian; the failure of the state to produce was perceived as the failure of the church. Communism and Hitler’s Third Reich are aberrations of this world view.

The mission of the church, viewed from a purely New Testament lens, is the redemption and growth in Christ of individuals, encompassed in Christ’s Great Commission. Any addition or alteration of this mission is, to say the least, counter-productive.

Yours for the fulfilling of the Great Commission,

[1] The two Greek words for “world” are cosmos and aeon. Both have a negative connotation in the New Testament. Cf. I John 2:14-15 for the use of cosmos, and Mark 4:19 for the use of aeon. In the LXX translation of the Old Testament, cosmos and aeon are good.

[2] Wallace-Hadrill, D.S., Eusebius of Caesarea, London, A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1960, pages 172-173.

[3] ibid, page 183.

[4] A Monument to Saint Augustine, Essays on some aspects of his thought written in commemoration of the 15th centenary, Dawson, Christopher, St. Augustine and His Age, Sheed & Ward, London, MCMXXX, page 51.

Part Twenty-Two

It seems certain that the doctrine of a future termination of this world as we now know it, held no place in the Graeco-Roman world, apart from the beliefs of Jews and Christians. The six centuries between Alexander the Great and the Emperor Constantine was an age of syncretism, of the mingling of religions, a period during which Europeans civilization was influenced by Oriental beliefs rooted in Hinduism. For example, astrology was a religious philosophy; it was an attempt to formulate the influences which to a certain degree molded the lives of all dwellers under the roof of heaven.[1]

During these years of confluence, material re-creation, established in Jewish apocalypse and carried forward in the church through premillennialism, arrested the tendency of the church to cut her historical ties. As already noted, reason suggests that the material world is evil, a world from which to escape. Oneness with God upon death, with no hope of a future physical re-creation, the premise of Gnosticism, was a short step from agreeing that the historicity of Christianity was unimportant.

TYCONIUS

In order to make the link between amillennialism and the propensity to sever Christianity from history, let’s take a brief look at Tyconius. His primary ministry encompassed c. 370 – c. 400, making him a contemporary of Augustine (c. 354-430). Interestingly, he was a Donatist lay theologian with whom neither the Donatists nor the Catholics were not all that comfortable.

Tyconius reasoned that the whole of the New Testament eschatological expectation had to be interpreted figuratively, including Revelation 20. He lived in expectation of the second coming, believing that Christ would come in 380. In summary, Tyconius said the millennium is the present age in which the saints Providentially overcome sin. This is the first resurrection: from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. The second resurrection is literal and future.

A person participates in the first resurrection through being born again in baptism. The millennial rule of the church lasts until the end of the age. The twelve thrones are the judicial office of the church. Christ’s throne is His incarnate body to which the saints are added, and He sits at the right hand of power from where He rules. That rule is now, in the church.

The souls of the righteous are those who die with Christ in present affliction. Tyconius reasoned that this is necessarily prior to the resurrection, for only their souls are mentioned in Rev 20, and if a corporal rule was intended, martyrs would have a part in it. The millennial rule of Christ is shared by the dead as well as the living.

Those who have a part in this kingdom do not bear the mark of the beast, but the Divine image and likeness, the image in the body and the likeness in the soul.

The figurative 1000 years indicates that this is not a future rule, but the finite, perfect rule of the church-age, which continues until the end of the world.

In spite of Augustine’s opposition to Donatism, he embraced Tyconius’ understanding of eschatology, incorporating it in his famous City of God.[2] Augustine mentions that he too had once understood the millennium as a universal Sabbath replete with spiritual joys, but abandoned this interpretation because of the wild exaggerations found in other Chiliasts. Interestingly, Augustine is only one in a long list of critics who accuse Chiliasts of viewing the millennium as a time of orgies and satisfying of fleshly appetites. But in all of the reading that I did in the Patristics who embraced chiliast views, I found none who actually make such statements. All sources accusing the Patristics of excess are second hand, causing me to wonder if, to a certain degree, it was polemic, endeavoring to discredit chiliasm.

In support of his new view taken over from Tyconius, Augustine used Mark 3:27, arguing that the strong man is Satan, his goods Christians, and he is bound in such a way as to be kept from Christians, shut up in the abyss, which is the heart of the wicked. At the end of the age he will be loosed to test the church.[3]

THE DONATIST CONTROVERSY

Let’s pause and take a brief look at Donatism and its impact on the church. Donatism was a separatist, pure church movement in North African. It began when a group of laymen refused to accept Caecilian as Bishop of Carthage on the ground that his consecrator, Felix of Aptunga, had been a traitor during the Diocletianic Persecution. Were men holy because of their hearts and lives, or because of their office? The Catholic Church said it was the consecration of the office; the laity said it had to be the life. The schism continued until the African Church was destroyed by the Arabs in the 7th-8th centuries.[4]

Although I am a Donatist by temperament; I want things to be pure, clean, neat, and orderly, the implications of Donatism are disquieting. It is easy to side with the Donatists in arguing that sin and impurity disqualify the minister and invalidate his ministry. I like the image of a pure, unspotted church standing over against a godless world.

In the parable of the wheat and tares (Matt 13:24-30) the Donatists argued that the field containing the wheat and tares was the world. Augustine countered that it is the church. Augustine’s image of the church was a secular institution, containing the people of God, but also the unregenerate. The distinction between the world and the church is real, but it is eschatological rather than sociological or historical; the are separable only in the final judgment.

In this I find myself more Augustinian than Donatist. Tyconius separated from Donatism at this point as well; he elaborated a theology of the church’s holiness as eschatological. The parable of the wheat and tares is the church, not the world. In truth, it is impossible to distinguish between wheat and tares in any fellowship. In every man’s heart resides greed, avarice, and lust; the enemy is rarely external. Solomon noted that the difference between the oppressor and the oppressed is opportunity. “A man must learn to accept the darkness within himself and pray to be able to live as a question in God’s sight: how much more must a Church do likewise!”[5]

On the other hand, Augustine saw the church as the sole, exclusive abode of holiness. There was no salvation outside the institutional manifestation of the “Holy Catholic Church,” and only within the church were the sacraments valid. His was an expanding church, confident of conquering a world which had been promised to it by the prophecies of the Old Testament. It is easier to side with the Donatists in opposition to this view.

The principle reason Tyconius rejected the Catholic church was its readiness to call in the state to persecute fellow Christians when those Christians disagreed with official doctrine and policy. But since the church is, in a real sense, secular, in Augustine’s mind this did not present a conflict. “The true Church was both holy and worldly; in some sense it had also always to suffer persecution from the world. In no way, at any rate, could it be identified with any worldly institution, and conversely, no worldly institutions could ever validly claim to be ‘Christian’ or ‘sacred.’

“In Augustine’s eschatological perspective, the distance between the only true Christian society and any historical society, past, present or future, was infinite. His recasting of the vocabulary of ecclesiology implied that in so far as one could speak of any society possessing any quality of sacredness, one could do so only in virtue of its eschatological orientation. The eschatological orientation required was identity with the City of God; and this was the sole prerogative of the Church. There could be no other ‘Christian society.’ In the final analysis, there are only two ‘cities;’ there is no hierarchy of related societies.”[6] We will look more closely at the City of God in the next issue.

CHRISTIANITY ROOTED IN HISTORY

There are two principle reasons why Augustine rather than Tyconius is considered the father of amillennialism: First, Tyconius was a Donatist layman who lacked the stature and prestige of Augustine. Second, Tyconius did not sense the direction amillennialism took in severing its historical roots.

There was a growing tendency in the third century for the church to assimilate Greek thought and culture. This culminated in Origen’s synthesis of Christianity and Hellenism, which had a profound influence on theology and the social and political attitude of Christians. When he broke with millenarian tradition, he also severed the concrete realism of Christian eschatology, substituting in its place cosmological speculations of Greek philosophy.

“The historical facts of Christian revelation consequently tended to lose their unique value and became the symbols of higher immaterial realities – a kind of Christian Mythos… Salvation consists not in the redemption of the body, but in the liberation of the soul from the bondage of matter and its gradual return through the seven planetary heavens to its original home.

“Consequently there is no longer any real unity in the human race, since it consists of a number of individual spirits which have become men, so to speak, accidentally, in consequence of their own faults in a previous state of existence…The traditional conception of the Church as an objective society, the new Israel, and the forerunner of the Kingdom of God fell into the background as compared with a more intellectualist view of the Church as the teacher of an esoteric doctrine of gnosis which leads the human soul from time to eternity.”[7]

CONCLUSION

The two mother religions of the world are Judaism and Hinduism; all other religions flow from these. Judaism sees history as linear, the material world as important, and the people of God firmly rooted in history. Hinduism sees history as cyclical, the material world as evil, and history as unimportant.

The material re-creation promised in the prophetic portions of the Old Testament were embraced by the Patristics in what was called Chiliasm. As the church matured, it was more widely accepted, developed political ambitions, and in an endeavor to accommodate the prevailing world view, embraced tenants of Greek philosophy, Hindu in origin.

By the third century men like Eusebius, in cutting their tie with chiliasm, found themselves embracing a predominately Gnostic or Hindu world view. The eschatology of Tyconius, in part arrested this drift, but it wasn’t until Augustine that it was checked.

Rejoicing,

[1] op.cit., Burkitt, Jewish and Christian Apocalypses, page 3.

[2] op.cit, Augustine, City of God, Book 20, chapter 7.

[3] op.cit., Bietenhard, The Millennial Hope in the Early Church, pages 12-30.

[4] op.cit., Cross, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, page 419.

[5] Markus, R.A., Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, Cambridge at the University Press, 1970, page 124.

[6] ibid, page 125.

[7] op.cit., Dawson, St. Augustine and His Age, pages 49-50.

Part Twenty-Three

The Hindu teaching that history is cyclical, and with it the transmigration of the soul, finds its way into Greek philosophy and religion. John’s Revelation cuts across this with the assertion that history is linear, has a purpose, and is moving to a definite end at which time there will be a material re-creation followed by judgment. This biblical distinctive began to fade as the church jettisoned chiliasm and sought to accommodate Greek thought.

There evolved a variety of figurative interpretations of Revelation 6-20 and the return of Christ. For example, we looked at Jerome’s and Eusebius’ interpretation of end times. Amillennialism, currently constituted, was the interpretation of Tyconius who didn’t use his views as a means of arresting the church’s slide toward a Hindu world view. Augustine, sensing the danger, borrowed Tyconius’ interpretation of Revelation, and it became the official view of the Latin or western church. In this issue, we will look more closely at Augustine, one of the most influential thinkers in the history of Christianity.

AUGUSTINE’S INTERPRETATION OF REVELATION

Book XX of Augustine’s The City of God, deals, in part with John’s Revelation. Chapter 6 deals with the two resurrections of Revelation 20, chapter 7 with the thousand years, and chapter 8 with the binding of Satan.

After quoting Rev. 20:1-6, Augustine attacks millenarianism, quoting, I believe, the Epistle of Barnabas. Barnabas says the seven day creation coincides with the unfolding of history; the seventh day of rest is the millennium. Referring to this, Augustine says, “One might put up with such an interpretation if it included belief in some spiritual delights accruing to the saints from the Lord’s company during that Sabbath rest. In fact, I myself at one time accepted such an opinion. But when these interpreters say that the rising saints are to spend their time in limitless gormandizing with such heaps of food and drink as not only go beyond all sense of decent restraint, but go utterly beyond belief, then such an interpretation becomes wholly unacceptable save to the carnal-minded.”[1]

As in II Peter 3:8, “One days with the Lord is as a thousand years,” so in Rev 20 the thousand years cannot be taken literally. It is “the span between Christ’s first and second coming.” Satan is bound and cast into the abyss in the same sense as Tyconius said, the abyss is the hearts of the unregenerate. When Satan is unbound, “the church will not be on earth…” Augustine also follows Tyconius in arguing that the first resurrection of Rev. 20:4-6 is interpreted figuratively and refers to conversion; the second resurrection is literal, referring to the return of Christ. Babylon of Rev. 17-18 is the godless city as opposed to the City of God.

The three and a half year tribulation (e.g., Rev. 13:5) is evidently literal. It is a time of persecution in which the saints continue to reign with Christ. “We conclude, then, that the reign of Christ with His saints will be longer than the Devil’s bonds and imprisonment, for, even when he is released, they will continue to reign with their King, the Son of God. for these three and a half years.”[2]

THE CITY OF GOD

Men have always longed for the security that a united world would bring. But the unity of a political, temporal society is impossible without a universal religious society. History does not study solely material facts and institutions; its main objective is the study of the human mind. According to Augustine, it is religion that dominates the man, his family and the ancient city. “Religion did not say to a man, showing him another man: That is your brother. It said to him: That is a stranger; he cannot participate in the religious acts of our hearth; he cannot approach your family’s tomb; he has other gods than yours, and cannot unite with you in a common prayer…he is your enemy…The gods common to several families alone made possible the birth of the city. Society developed only so fast as religion enlarged its sphere.”[3]

Stoic philosophy, which profoundly influenced fourth century Christianity, thought the world to be one. Man is part of an infinitely vaster order than his own particular political society. As a citizen of the universe, he is a citizen of the highest state, of which all other states are but households. This idea of a universal society of men first appeared in the natural religion of Hinduism; man is meant to be one with the universe, and the quest of religion is to free man from the material world and make him one with the universe.

Thus a world conqueror would still not end with a common society. Only a society in which men were one in God, would this commonality truly exist. It was in the Roman Empire, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, there appeared “the gentle Founder of a truly universal society.” That He came to the Jews was a perfect expression of a completely religious nationalism. He who created the universe, created the people. Why should He make a covenant with only one of them? It is a universal religion. This was always the intent of God, shown in the Old Testament prophets. Established as the light of the nations so salvation might reach the world, Israel, like Jonah, rebelled against the mission entrusted to it by God. Jesus came, in part, to teach Israel the world was the objective of a loving God.

The church alone understood this mission of God, and it is not surprising that Christianity was trans-national. The believer has a dual citizenship. In the world but not of the world, his first allegiance is to God. This put the church in conflict with Rome until the state was Christianized. Thereafter, when the subjects betrayed God, they betrayed the state. The unity of the empire was bound up with the unity of the faith.

It was the same people in both Testaments of the Bible, but now they are spread out over the world. The church and Israel are one, and are united with the holy emperor, a union that would bring peace and prosperity in this world while waiting for the glory of the next. Since the state was Christian, the church protected the state. “Only baptize this Empire, and it could become the center of a Christian universal society, so that, by the very fact of being a Christian, a man could enjoy membership in that society.”

Augustine wrote The City of God over the course of several years (413-26), in response to the fall of Rome to Alaric in 410. The Roman Empire was beginning to crumble at the precise moment when Christians thought of making full use of it. The empire fell, but the church did not. This began a polemic between Christians and pagans over who was responsible: The Christian renouncement of the world turned citizens away from service to the state. Not only so, but the rise of Rome was bound with the worship of her gods. The Christian religion ascended at the exact time the empire began her decline. The correlation was too obvious to miss. How could people who believe Matt. 6:24-34 be expected to protect the state from invaders?

Augustine’s reply was two-fold: First, the pagans preached the same virtues for which Christians were blamed. God does not command Christ’s followers to refrain from protecting the state. The vices of the people rather than the Christian emperor brought ruin upon the empire. Second, Christianity has two goals, to save human society and to build up that society to be holy. Here then are the two cities; the one that is and the one that one day will be. Borrowing from the Stoic philosophy of oneness, the world has as its end the constitution of a holy society. The City of God extends beyond the limits of the world; it includes everything that is, God excepted, and encompasses the work of God.

When Augustine addresses the human city, he has Rome in mind. However, Rome was not a true society, because true justice had never reigned in Rome, and without true justice a society cannot exist. This means that only one city can exist, because it alone observes the laws of true justice. It is the City of God whose Head is Christ. The human city exists only because the City of God exists; there could be no city of injustice if there were no City of true justice. Every society must be defined in relation to the City of God, in the same way that truth defines error.

There may be numerous cities in the world, but only two are of interest to Augustine. When God created, He created through a man. All men are bounded physically by their father Adam. God created in this way to show that He is pleased with unity in diversity. As men are naturally bothers in Adam, they are supernaturally brothers in Christ. So we have two kinds of men, exemplified in Cain and Abel.

Augustine uses “city” in a figurative or mystical sense. Two loves produce two cities; those, following Abel love God and are united in Christ. The others, following Cain love evil. It is Jerusalem and Babylon; Babylon is Babel, the city of confusion. All men are citizens of one or the other city. Human society is not the earthly city and the church is not the City of God. As in the parable of the wheat and tares, there are those identified with Babylon who will one day belong to Jerusalem, and some in Jerusalem are in reality followers of Cain.[4] Nevertheless, the church is the incarnation of the City of God.

The earthly city is not united by an a common truth, whereas the City of God requires acceptance of a single truth encompassed in Scripture. The earthly city has many philosophers with conflicting ideas regarding truth and reality. The City of God has, in Scripture, a group of authors announcing the same message and united in purpose. This is why the city of earth cannot unite behind a single philosopher or system of thought, but the City of God can. Babylon is the city of confusion.

Augustine did not anticipate Marx and the communist state. Marxism is a belated realization of the necessity of unity in achieving a universal society. The communist state is man’s endeavor to create the City of God with the rulership of man, an oxymoron to say the least. Belief in a unified system of truth makes possible heresy. Heretofore, the earthly city never thought in terms of heresy, leaving her citizens to chose for themselves their favorite philosopher. When communism sought to emulate the City of God, it emulated this concept of heresy as well.

For Augustine, the spiritual authority of the City of God intervenes to restrain the temporal liberty of her citizens. When the authority of the church conflicts with the authority of the state, opposition between the two cities results. It was this conflict that Augustine did not anticipate. He saw it from a positive perspective; true peace and fulfillment cannot be found anywhere except in the City of God. The individual who seeks this peace must submit to the authority of the church. When Caesar is converted, the sword of the state is made available to the church.

As faith, which transcends reason, conquers and gives understanding, can not the church, which transcends all nations and races, confer upon them a unity and peace on earth that approximates heaven? Augustine did not bequeath to his successors an ideal of a universal human city united with temporal ends, but in the City of God he did inspired men with the desire to organize the earth into a single society made in the likeness of the heavenly city.[5]

CONCLUSION

In the City of God Augustine recaptured the absolute significance and eternal value of history in the temporal process. Augustine gave it philosophic analysis and definition, restoring the Christian religion as the child of Judaism rather than Gnostic mysticism.

“Thus the past is the soul’s remembrance, the future is its expectation, and the present is its attention…He compares the time-process with the recitation of a poem which a man knows by heart. Before it is begun the recitation exists only in anticipation; when it is finished it is all in the memory; but while it is in progress, it exists, like time, in three dimensions – ‘the life of this my action is extended into the memory, on account of what I have said, and into expectation, on account of what I am about to say; yet my attention remains present and it is through this that what was future is transposed and becomes past.’”[6]

Augustine abandoned chiliasm, but preserved traditional social realism in his attitude of the church. He found no place for material re-creation, encompassed in Jewish hope and reiterated by Paul in Romans 8 and John in Revelation 20, but he did see history as linear and essential in unfolding the eternal plan of God.

With this we will bring our study of eschatology to a close. In the next issue we will summarize the salient points and how it should touch our lives.

Grateful for His hope,

[1] op.cit., Augustine, City of God, Book XX, chapter 7, paragraph 4.

[2] ibid, Book XXII, chapter 30, paragraphs 11-12.

[3] Deferrare, R.J., editor, The Fathers of the Church, Fathers of the Church, Inc. New York, 1954, Vol 24, Forward in St. Augustine’s City of God by Etienne Gilson, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (Toronto).

[4] Augustine argued that there is no differenc between the conqueror and the robber except the scale of their operations. “What is banditry but a little kingdom?” A pirate is reported to have said to Alexander the Great, “Because I do it, with a little ship, I am called a robber, and you, becuase you do it with a great fleet, are called an emperor.”

[5] op.cit., Forward in St. Augustine’s City of God, Gilson, Etienne.

[6] op.cit., Dawson, St. Augustine and His Age, page 70.

Part Twenty-Four

This is the final issue in a rather long series on eschatology. I am sure that many of you tired of this long ago, and are happy with this news. In this last issue I would like to summarize where we have been.

In the days of our Lord’s life on earth, no effort was made to separate His ministry from the Old Testament hope of Israel. He came proclaiming that He was the fulfillment of their expectations. In the minds of His followers, Israel and the fruit of Jesus’ ministry were one and the same. Did He not come exclusively to the Jews?[1] The followers of Christ were the true people of God. Granted, they weren’t numerous, but then the elect in the Old Testament were never but a remnant.

In Acts, the disciples saw themselves as the true Israel. Gentile converts had to come to Christ via the law. A mission to the Gentiles was not in the thinking of the early church. The time between Christ’s two advents would be short, and the inclusion of the Gentiles in fulfillment of the Old Testament, would take place when Christ returned to sit on David’s Throne.

The Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 changed all of this. Paul alone saw that the Mosaic Law was no longer in force in the church, allowing for the inclusion of Gentiles without their having to change cultures. His definitive treatment of this is Romans 9-11, especially 11:25-28.

No one in these early days of the church believed that two thousand years would lapse between the first and second coming of Christ. The New Testament Authors are consistently in agreement in anticipating His imminent return. Having expected the Lord’s return during his life, Peter closes his second epistle reflecting on the possibility that his death would precede Christ’s second coming.[2]

John’s Revelation lays out the events preceding the Lord’s return. Granted, there are a plethora of interpretations on what John saw and recorded, but let’s take a broad overview of it. Revelation 6-19 deals with a time of tribulation of seven years duration prior to Jesus’ second coming. This is followed by a thousand year reign of Christ, a discussion of two resurrections (Rev 20:1-6), followed by a loosening of Satan, Satan’s judgment, and the judgment of the Great White Throne (Rev 20:7-15).

If amillennialism is correct and the return of Christ comes after the millennium, then the disciples would have anticipated a rather lengthy period of time between the two advents. Augustine, the father of amillennialism, thought the thousand years were literal, beginning at the conversion of Constantine. But let’s assume that it isn’t understood literally, representing, rather, an indefinite period of time. Still, the disciples of Jesus would have had no legitimate reason to believe in His imminent return.

If we assume that the Apostles had just cause to believe in Christ’s imminent return, then whatever conclusions we come to regarding the interpretation of Revelation, Jesus would have to come before the tribulation and millennium to gather His saints. This, of course, is the first resurrection mentioned in Rev 20, and may coincide with I Thess 4:13-18.

The Patristics who commented on eschatology were all, in the early years of the church, premillennial. It formed the foundation of their hope in perilous days of persecution. They saw the millennium in Gentile terms, having rejected the Jew’s claim as the people of God. From the very beginning, the Patristics saw themselves as the New Israel, which was the perception of the Apostles as well – with this difference: The Apostles saw the true Israel in Jewish, not Gentile terms, and even Paul, the one who argued for the inclusion of the Gentiles into the church apart from the law, believed that the Gentiles came to the Jews, not vice versa. [3]

As persecution began to wane, the church saw opportunity to expand its influence in the Roman Empire. You can see a direct correlation between the tapering off of persecution and the ascendance of a-millennialism. By the time of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity, not only was there no need for premillennialism, it proved to be an impediment to a church that saw itself in imperial terms.

If premillennialism was ridiculed for its excesses, it at least maintained a consistent hermeneutic in so far as its interpretation of Revelation is concerned. Those who would later be classified as a-millennial were even more excessive in the sense that their hermeneutic allowed for all sorts of fanciful interpretations. You see this clearly as you read men like Jerome, Eusebius, Tyconius, and Augustine.

Greek philosophy such as Gnosticism had an influence on the church. As the church began to shed its acceptance of an eschatology that was material or earthy and rooted in history, while embracing a figurative interpretation of Scripture, it began to drift towards a Hindu world-view, seeing history as cyclical rather than linear. In large measure, Augustine was responsible for correcting this drift.

IMPLICATIONS

Discussions on eschatology tend to be emotional and polemic. For a long time I wondered why this is so. As I studied the subject it became apparent that eschatology, in defining a biblical hope, sets the foundation for your world-view. In short, it is the difference between a temporal and an eternal world-view.

Amillennialsim and postmillennialism are more optimistic than pre-millennialism. Since they see themselves in Old Testament terms, their vision for the world is Theocratic.[4] Whether they believe that there efforts will succeed or fail, they understand their mission in temporal terms: correcting the ills of society and claiming her institutions for Christ. Anti-abortion, religious right, Colorado Amendment 2, etc., are all expressions of this.

Pre-millennialism tends to be more pessimistic. The mission of the church is defined by the New Testament in general, and the great commission in particular. Taking their clue from Jesus who said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,”[5] they see this life as the seed-time for eternity. Life has no purpose other than to prepare people for the life hereafter. We are best prepared by participating with God in what He is doing: reaching people with the gospel and helping them mature in Christ so they can repeat the process.

If you have been reading this series on eschatology, you no doubt have concluded that I am pre-millennial in my understanding of Scripture. You are correct. I of course, cannot convince you or anyone else that I am right. All I can do is present the evidence, and even here, I have not tried to exegete the biblical passages on eschatology. Rather I have sought to lay out its historical development. But I can suggest the consequences or implications of your decision on this important manner. By way of review they are:

It will influence your view of the mission of the church, as already noted above.

It will influence your view of the role of the laity. When you see the church in Old Testament terms, there is a tendency to make a laity/clergy distinction not found in the New Testament and hold in suspect an unruly laity not under the control of the institutional church.

It will influence your view of the place of the Mosaic law in the Christian life. A-millennialism says that you are obligated to obey the Old Testament law unless it is repealed in the New Testament . Pre-millennialism argues that you are not obligated to obey the Old Testament law unless it is repeated in the New Testament.

It will influence your view of the church. In the Old Testament God had a dual commitment, to the individual and to the institution of Israel. In the New Testament He has only a commitment to His elect.

CONCLUSION

Finally, let me note that pre-millennialism has never been popular in the institutional church. It is, by and large, a lay theology. It is born out of a simple, straight-forward hermeneutic that reads the Bible as one reads the newspaper. The laity generally have no vested interest in the institutional church, and therefore have no problem with the implications of chiliast eschatology.

Humans are creatures of hope. In the Old Testament, this hope was principally temporal, rooted in the promised land. In the New Testament, a biblical hope is primarily eternal, rooted in the life to come.[6] It is hard to maintain a focused hope that remains eternal rather than temporal. We all want to express our creative energies and make our environment more comfortable and attractive.

The laity can embrace a temporal hope, pouring his talent and energy into his vocation, while objectively concluding that the Bible calls upon the believer to hope in the eternal. This is a bit more difficult for the clergy, simply because there is lacking that clear distinction between the temporal and eternal in his vocation.

The work of God cannot be created, measured, or controlled; the work of man can. Ministry, therefore, cannot be created, measured, or controlled. It is hard for a man to pour his life into what he can never create, measure and control. Thus he is prone to embrace a world-view that argues that God is committed to the temporal, and that his contribution can be created, measured and controlled.

Even those trained in premillennial seminaries, such as Trinity, Dallas, Biola, and Western in Portland, become “closet amillennial” for this reason. And it is precisely for this reason the subject of eschatology takes on an emotional, polemic tone.

Consider well what the Bible says, and the pull of culture, as you formulate your eschatology. The implications are eternal.

Irrespective of your eschatology,

I am,

Your friend and co-laborer in Christ,

[1] cf., e.g., Matt 15:24.

[2] cf. II Peter 3:3-4.

[3] cf. Eph 2:11-22, esp. vv. 11-13.

[4] We remind ourselves that within each of the schools of eschatology, there are as many variations as there are adherents. My summary endeavors to capture an overview of each system, understanding that it may not accurately represent the convictions of all concerned. I simply suggest that this is how it was concieved at its conception.

[5] John 18:36.

[6] cf., e.g., John 6:27, Matt 6:19-20, II Cor 4:18.