Eschatology: 7–12

Walt Henrichsen December 31, 2014

Part Seven

By way of review, in the early days of the Church, Judaism sought to stamp out the heresy that Jesus was Messiah. By 100 AD, or 70 years after the death of Christ, the breach between Christianity and Judaism was absolute, with the latter sending out letters from Palestine to all synagogues informing them of the necessity of excluding Christians from their assemblies.

As the church became increasingly Gentile, this antipathy between Judaism and Christianity intensified, resulting in the latter bringing to the Scriptures a hermeneutic that excluded Israel from the program of God. The way this was accomplished was interpreting the OT promises regarding Israel’s future figuratively, applying them to the church. The Gentile church concluded that it had replaced Israel as the object of God’s grace. Thus, there would be no future for the nation of Israel.

The Church accused the Jews of three things: 1) – Killing their Messiah, Jesus; 2) – Closing access of Christians seeking to convert them; 3) – Joining Rome in persecuting Christians. As a result, Christians considered Judaism apostate, and therefore viewed themselves as the true Israel, appropriating the Old Testament promises to the Church.

Justin, the patristic, accused his Jewish friend Trypho: “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,…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….publishing throughout all the land bitter and dark and unjust things against the only blameless and righteous Light sent by God.”

The implications of this have been felt down through history to the present. A partial list includes: 1 – Interpreting other portions of Scripture figuratively as well, creating all forms of heresies in its wake. 2 – Viewing the ministry and mission of the church through an OT lens, resulting in seeking to replicate the OT theocracy rather than reaching out to the lost. 3 – Excluding the laity from any meaningful involvement in the ministry of the Gospel. 4 – Viewing the church as an institution rather than an organism, requiring membership in the institution a condition of salvation.

I closed the last issue observing that many in the maturing church saw the solution to the tension that existed between the traveling missionaries and the local churches in an OT view of the ministry. With this came a hierarchy of offices and the laity barred from the duties of the priests. A clergy/laity distinction developed with the clergy viewed as the continuation of the OT priesthood and the laity gaining access to God only through the priest.

THE NEED TO CONTROL

The Apostle Paul taught, “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ;”[3] Gifted men were given to the Church to equip the laity that the laity may do the ministry.

As this was enacted on the stage of history, no mechanism for control was available. Each believer ministered in his sphere of influence as he saw fit. This resulted in a dynamic lay-led propagation of the gospel, accompanied by various heresies. Early manifestations of this are apparent in the New Testament epistles. Much of Paul’s and John’s writings were given to correct errors such as gnosticism.[4]

Another ingredient was the absence of any wide-spread use of written documents. What Irenaeus called “the canon of truth” was an oral tradition with a condensed summary of the message and rules of the Faith. But how do you maintain purity of oral tradition? It was the job of bishops, who ostensibly traced their lineage to the apostles, to see that oral tradition did not deviate from the original revelation. The message was committed to the Church; the Church is the home of the Spirit, and the bishops are God’s vicars. The bishops became “an infallible charism of truth.”[5]

It was an error-prone environment. Since the Church had already concluded that it was the true Israel, it was easy for her to look to the Old Testament model for means of control. In the New Testament, Christ talked of believers as His Body, a living organism with Him as Head. In the Old Testament, Israel was a nation, an organization with clear, delineated lines of authority. The need for control required the Church to view herself in Old Testament terms.

The priesthood of the believer gave way to a formal priesthood. Gradually the communion table became an altar; the Lord’s supper a sacrifice; pastors were called priests, etc. Thus access to God was restricted. In the OT people could not enter the presence of God alone; they had to go through the Levitical priest. It was this view, carried into the church, that discouraged people from developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It wasn’t until 313 AD, with the conversion of Constantine, that the Church finally had at its disposal the “sword of the state.” It could now enforce its will on its subjects, purifying the Church of all aberrations. The zeal of the laity could at last be held in check and heresy could be eliminated. The church was in control. But the whole of that story is still ahead of us.

PAPIAS, BISHOP OF HIERAPOLIS IN PHRYGIA

Irenaeus writes, “And these things are borne witness to in writing by PAPIAS, the hearer of John, and a companion of Polycarp, in this fourth book; for there were five books compiled by him.”[6] From this we learn that Papias wrote at least five books,[7] sat under the ministry of the Apostle John, and was a friend of Polycarp (c. 69-155 AD).

One of the books Papias wrote, An Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord, in c. 130 AD, is lost save for fragmentary quotations in other ecclesiastical writings. Eusebius quotes Papias as saying, “But if I met with any one who had been a follower of the elders any where, I made it a point to inquire what were the declarations of the elders. What was said by Andrew, Peter or Philip. What by Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any other of the disciples of the Lord.”[8] (You may remember that one goal during my sabbatical was to read works by those who were able to ask questions of the apostles. Papias was such a man, but unfortunately, most of his writings are lost).

Eusebius goes on to say that “the apostle Philip continued at Hierapolis, with his daughters…”[9] Evidently Philip and Papias co-labored in Hierapolis.

In his discussion of Papias, Eusebius says, “…there would be a certain millennium after the resurrection, and that there would be a corporeal reign of Christ on this very earth; which things he (Papias) appears to have imagined, as if they were authorized by the apostolic narrations, not understanding correctly those matters which they propounded mystically in their representations. For he was very limited in his comprehension, as is evident from his discourses; yet he was the cause why most of the ecclesiastical writers, urging the antiquity of the man, were carried away by a similar opinion; as for instance, Irenaeus, or any other that adopted such sentiments.”[10]

Eusebius was a historian during the days of Constantine, and chronicled the move of the Church from a struggling, persecuted minority to the Imperial Church with the full weight and blessing of Caesar! We will study Eusebius in detail later, but note two extraordinary things: First, he was staunchly anti-millenarian, being at the vanguard of the move toward a-millennialism. Later, we will see how many of the writings of the Patristics were either purposely lost or fabricated to reflect an a-millennial view, so odious was chiliasm to later writers. That Eusebius would even mention Papias’ millenarian understanding of prophecy testifies to how strongly it was held by those of Papias’ day.

Second, Eusebius wrote in the fourth century. Papias was a man who had access to the apostles of our Lord, being personally tutored by John, the writer of Revelation. That Eusebius was so bold as to say that Papias didn’t understand the meaning of the apostle’s writings, but he, Eusebius, did, shows how arrogant and confident these advocates of an imperial church were.

A fragment taken from Anastasius Sinaita (abbot of the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai – d. c. 700) says, “Taking occasion from Papias of Hierapolis, the illustrious, a disciple of the apostle who leaned on the bosom of Christ, and Clemens, and Pantaenus the priest of the Church of the Alexandrians, and the wise Ammonius, the ancient and first expositors, who agreed with each other, who understood the work of the six days as referring to Christ and the whole Church.”[11] “So then the more ancient expositors of the churches, I mean Philo, the philosopher, and contemporary of the Apostles, and the famous Papias of Hierapolis, the disciple of John the Evangelist…and their associates, interpreted the sayings about Paradise spiritually, and referred them to the Church of Christ.”[12]

It is not clear if these are the thoughts of Papias or of Anastasius commenting on Papias, but in either case we see that already church leaders are called “priests,” and that they viewed the Church’s beginning in the Old Testament in that “the work of the six days…referring to Christ and the whole Church.” That is, the OT promises to Israel are to be understood figuratively, and will be fulfilled in a literal thousand years as taught in Revelation 20, applied to the Church. The Church has replaced Israel, taking from her the Old Testament concept of priesthood.

MILLENNIAL EXCESS

One of the arguments that men like Eusebius used against millennialists was, it encourages a temporal world view with a sensual, hedonistic view of heaven.

Origen (c. 185-250 AD), a great theologian from Alexandria, Egypt, described the excesses of those holding a pre-millennial eschatology. “Certain persons, then, refusing the labor of thinking, and adopting a superficial view…and yielding rather in some measure to the indulgence of their own desires and lusts…are of the opinion that the fulfillment of the promises of the future are to be looked for in bodily pleasure and luxury; and therefore they especially desire to have again, after the resurrection, such bodily structures as may never be without the power of eating, and drinking, and performing all the functions of flesh and blood, not following the opinion of the Apostle Paul regarding the resurrection of a spiritual body. And consequently they say, that after the resurrection there will be marriages, and the begetting of children,…that the natives of other countries are to be given them as the ministers of their pleasures, whom they are to employ either as tillers of the field or builders of walls, and by whom their ruined and fallen city is again to be raised up;…they think they are to be kings and princes, like those earthly monarchs who now exist….Such are the views of those who, while believing in Christ, understand the divine Scriptures in a sort of Jewish sense, drawing from them nothing worthy of the divine promises.”[13]

Using the allegorical method of interpretation, Origen seeks to refute millenarianism. Whether the Patristics, who adhered to a historic pre-millennial eschatology, actually believed these accusations, I am not sure. I was unable to find any corroborating evidence in the patristic writings.

The point, however, abides; whenever the millennium is divorced from Jewish expectations and embraced by the Church, it leads to excess. Jurgen Moltmann saw this clearly in his article, Israel’s No: Jew and Jesus in an Unredeemed World, as seen in “eschatology, part 4.” Hitler’s “thousand year Reich” is one of many illustrations.

Man is a creature of hope. Hope is always future and perceived to be to his advantage. Only the Jews were given a temporal hope, as promised in the Old Testament prophets and anticipated in the Revelation.[14] Hegel and Marx were non-believing Jews who sought to create utopia outside of the biblical parameters. Communism is eschatological, hoping to create the millennium of Revelation 20, and with it an utopian society without God. The millennium is a Jewish event, during which time God fulfills His OT promises to the nation of Israel. Whenever it has been interpreted differently, it leads to various aberrations. Origen said he saw it in an anti-Semitic pre-millennialism. Moltmann saw it in Hitler’s “thousand year Reich.” Communism is a current example.

All of these aberrations of a millennial hope are created by those with a Judeo-Christian world view in which history is correctly perceived as linear rather than cyclical (as is the case with Hinduism). They have in common a preconceived notion of how thing ought to be. They err in that with these preconceived notions, they approach the Bible for confirmation, and in the process misinterpret and misapply God’s Word. Surrender and integrity is the only antidote.

[1] op.cit., Barnard, p. 53.

[2] op.cit., ANF, Vol I, p. 203, Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, chapter XVII.

[3] Eph. 4:11-13.

[4] E.g., I John 4:2-3; II John 7.

[5] Kelly, J.N.D., Early Christian Doctrines, Harper, San Francisco, 1978, p. 37.

[6] op.cit., ANF, Vol I, p. 563, Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Chapter XXXIII, 4.

[7] ibid, p. 153.

[8] Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, Baker, Grand Rapids, 1966, Book 3, Chapter 39, p. 125.

[9] ibid, p. 126.

[10] ibid, p. 126.

[11] op.cit., ANF, Vol I, p. 155, Fragment of Papias, IX.

[12] op.cit., Lightfoot, The Fragments of Papias, p. 269.

[13] op.cit., ANF, Vol IV, p. 297, Origen De Principiis, book II, chapter XI, 2.

[14] John’s Revelation is a Jewish Book; with few exceptions, the verses are either a direct Old Testament quote or an Old Testament reference.

Part Eight

THE CHURCH AS THE NEW ISRAEL

The Christian community, as a separate entity from Israel, was a new creation. In order to root itself in antiquity, it transferred all the prerogatives and claims of the Jewish people to itself. The church was “the true Israel,” “the new people,” “the original people,” and “the people of the future,” that is, of eternity. “This estimate of themselves rendered Christians impregnable against all attacks and movements of polemical criticism, while it further enabled them to advance in every direction for a war of conquest. Was the cry raised, ‘You are renegade Jews’ – the answer came, ‘We are the community of the Messiah, and therefore the true Israelites.’ If people said, ‘You are simply Jew,’ the reply was, ‘We are a new creation and a new people.'”[2]

“There were one or two other quite definite convictions of a general nature specially taken over by the early Christians at the very outset from the stories accumulated by a survey of history made from the Jewish standpoint. Applied to their own purposes, these were as follows: (1) Our people is older than the world; (2) the world was created for our sakes; (3) the world is carried on for our sakes; we retard the judgment of the world; (4) everything in the world is subject to us and must serve us; (5) everything in the world, the beginning and course and end of all history, is revealed to us and lies transparent to our eyes; (6) we shall take part in the judgment of the world and ourselves enjoy eternal bliss. In various early Christian documents, dating from before the middle of the second century, these convictions find expression, in homilies, apocalypses, epistles, and apologies, …”[3]

CONFUSION BETWEEN THE CHURCH AND ISRAEL

Regarding Israel and the Church being separate entities in the economy of God, Harnack argues that there was a clarity in the thinking of Paul that eluded many of the other New Testament writers, and all of the Patristics. Paul may have been responsible for the absolute cleavage between Judaism and Christianity at the Acts 15 council, but he was clear that God had a future for the nation of Israel. This theme, argued especially in Romans 9-11, is not found in the writings of the Patristics.

“Finally, in Rom. ix-xi, Paul promulgates a philosophy of history, according to which the new People, whose previous history fell within the limits of Israel, includes the Gentile world, now that Israel has been rejected, but will embrace in the end not merely ‘the fullness of the Gentiles’ but also ‘all Israel.'”[4]

Judaism prepared the way for Christianity. “To the Jewish mission which preceded it, the Christian mission was indebted, in the first place, for a field tilled all over the empire; in the second place, for religious communities already formed everywhere in the towns; thirdly, for what Axenfeld calls ‘the help of materials’ furnished by the preliminary knowledge of the Old Testament, in addition to catechetical and liturgical materials which could be employed without much alteration; fourthly, for the habit of regular worship and a control of private life; fifthly, for an impressive apologetic on behalf of monotheism, historical theology, and ethics; and finally, for the feeling that self-diffusion was a duty. The amount of this debt is so large, that one might venture to claim the Christian mission as a continuation of the Jewish propaganda. ‘Judaism,’ said Renan, ‘was robbed of its due reward by a generation of fanatics, and it was prevented from gathering in the harvest which it had prepared.’

“The extent to which Judaism was prepared for the gospel may also be judged by means of the syncretism into which it had developed. The development was along no mere side-issues. The transformation of a national into a universal religion may take place in two ways: either by the national religion being reduced to great central principles, or by its assimilation of a wealth of new elements from other religions. Both processes developed simultaneously in Judaism. But the former is the more important of the two, as a preparation for Christianity.”[5] Harnack then quotes Jesus’ summary of the law, as loving God and neighbor,[6] to substantiate the claim that Christianity had taken the national religion of Israel and reduced it to two great principles.

Paul experienced opposition on his missionary journeys by Christian Jews who insisted that Gentiles accept Jewish dogma. “Still, two Jewish Christian parties continued to exist. One of these held by the agreement of the apostolic council; it gave the Gentile Christians its blessing, but held aloof from them in actual life.[7] The other persisted in fighting the Gentile Church as a false church.[8] Neither party accounts in the subsequent history of the church, owing to their numerical weakness. According to Justin (Apol., I. liii.), who must have known the facts, Jesus was rejected by the Jewish nation ‘with few exceptions’….In the Diaspora, apart from Syria and Egypt, Jewish Christians were hardly to be met with; there the Gentile Christians felt themselves supreme, in fact they were almost masters of the field.[9] This did not last, however, beyond 180 AD., when the Catholic church put Jewish Christians upon her roll of heretics. They were thus paid back in their own coin by Gentile Christianity; the heretics turned the former judges into heretics.

“Before long the relations of Jewish Christians to their kinsmen the Jews also took a turn for the worse – that is, so far as actual relations existed between them at all. It was the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple which seems to have provoked the final crisis, and led to a complete breach between the two parties.[10] No Christian, even supposing he were a simple Jewish Christian, could view the catastrophe which befell the Jewish state, with its capital and sanctuary, as anything else than the just punishment of the nation for having crucified the Messiah. Strictly speaking, he ceased from that moment to be a Jew; for a Jew who accepted the downfall of his state and temple as a divine dispensation, thereby committed national suicide….There were Jewish Christians still, who remained after the fall of Jerusalem just where they had stood before; evidently they bewailed the fall of the temple, and yet they saw in its fall a merited punishment. Did they, we ask, or did they not, venture to desire the rebuilding of the temple? We can easily understand how such people proved a double offense to their fellow-countrymen, the genuine Jews. Indeed they were always falling between two fires, for the Jews persecuted them with bitter hatred,[11] while the Gentile church censured them as heretics – i.e., as non-Christians. They are dubbed indifferently by Jerome, who knew them personally, ‘semi-Judaei’ and ‘semi-Christiani’….They followed the course of life which Jesus had himself observed. Crushed by the letter of Jesus, they died a lingering death.

“There is hardly any fact which deserves to be turned over and thought over so much as this, that the religion of Jesus has never been able to root itself in Jewish or even Semitic soil. Certainly there must have been, and certainly must be still, some element in this religion which is allied to the greater freedom of the Greek spirit. In one sense Christianity has really remained Greek down to the present day. The forms it acquired on Greek soil have been modified, but they have never been laid aside within the church at large, not even within Protestantism itself….Islam rose in Arabia and has remained upon the whole an Arabic religion; the strength of its youth was also the strength of its manhood. Christianity, almost immediately after it arose, was dislodged from the nation to which it belonged; and thus from the very outset it was forced to learn how to distinguish between the kernel and the husk.

“Paul is only responsible in part for the sharp anti-Judaism which developed within the very earliest phases of Gentile Christianity. Though he held that the day of the Jews (I Thess. ii.15) was past and gone, yet he neither could nor would believe in a final repudiation of God’s people; on that point his last word is said in Rom xi. 25, 29….In this sense Paul remained a Jewish Christian to the end. The duality of mankind (Jews and ‘nations’) remained, in a way, intact, despite the one church of God which embraced them both. This church did not abrogate the special promises made to the Jews.

“But this standpoint remained a Pauline idiosyncrasy. When people had recourse, as the large majority of Christians had, simply to the allegorical method in order to emancipate themselves from the letter, and even from the contents, of Old Testament religion, the Pauline view had no attraction for them; in fact it was quite inadmissible, since the legitimacy of the allegorical conception, and inferentially the legitimacy of the Gentile church in general, was called in question, if the Pauline view held good at any single point.”[12]

CONCLUSION

In other words, by the year 180 the tables had been turned on the Jews; instead of their stalking Gentiles, calling them heretics for not adhering to Judaism, the Gentiles judged the Jews as heretics, something similar to what Paul did in Gal 2:14f. The Jews now became the enemy. They were rejected of God. To substantiate this biblically, the Old Testament was interpreted allegorically or figuratively.

Paul was the only one who saw a place for a future, restored Israel. In the early writings we find no one from the early church sharing his viewpoint. If the Jews have any future, then how can the OT be taken allegorically? To solve this, they ignored Paul’s teaching in Rom 11.

Next time we will look at how this influenced their rules of interpretation.

[1] op.cit., Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, p. 125.

[2] Harnack, Adolf, The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Moffatt, James, translator, Williams and Norgate, New York, 1908, p. 240.

[3] ibid, p. 242.

[4] ibid, p. 244.

[5] ibid, pp. 15-16.

[6] Mark 12:28-34.

[7] Gal. 2:12-13.

[8] Acts 21:18 – 22:24. When Paul gave his defense to the Jews in the temple, they did not become hostile when he said Jesus was the fulfillment of OT expectations and that Paul was to procalim Him as Lord (22:8-16), but rather when he said Jesus commissioned him to preach to the Gentiles (22:21-24). Evidently these were believing Jews hostile to the Gentile mission.

[9] “The turn of affairs is seen in Justian’s Dial. xlvii. Gentile Christians for a long while ceased to lay down any fresh conditions, but they deliberated whether they could recognize Jewish Christians as Christian brethren, and if so, to what extent. They acted in this matter with considerable rigor.”

[10] “We do not know when Jewish Christians broke off, or were forced to break off, from all connections with the synagogues; we can only conjecture that if such connections lasted till about 70 AD., they ceased then.”

[11] “Epiphanius (xxix.9): ‘Not merely are they visited with hatred at the hands of Jewish children, but rising at dawn, at noon, and eventide, when they perform their orisons (prayers) in their synagogues, the Jews curse them and anathematize them, crying God curse the Nazarines! For, indeed, they are assailed all the more bitterly because, being themselves of Jewish origin, they proclaim Jesus to be the Messiah – in opposition to the other Jews who reject Christ.'”

[12] op.cit., Harnack, pp. 61-65.

Part Nine

A DIFFERENT HERMENEUTIC

If the people of Israel retained a single privilege, if a single special promise still had any meaning whatsoever, if even one letter had still to remain in force – how could the whole of the Old Testament be spiritualized? How could it all be transferred to another people? The result of this mental attitude was the conviction that the Jewish people was now rejected: it was Ishmael, not Isaac; Esau, not Jacob. Yet even this verdict did not go far enough. If the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament is the correct one, and the literal false, then (it was argued) the former was correct from the very first, since what was false yesterday cannot be true today. Now the Jewish people from the first persisted in adhering to the literal interpretation, practicing circumcision, offering bloody sacrifices, and observing the regulations concerning food; consequently they were always in error, an error which shows that they never were the chosen people. The chosen people throughout was the Christian people, which always existed in a sort of latent condition (the younger brother being really the elder), though it only came to light at first with Christ. From the outset the Jewish people had lost the promise; indeed it was a question whether it had ever been meant for them at all. In any case the literal interpretation of God’s revealed will proved that the people had been forsaken by God and had fallen under the sway of the devil. As this was quite clear, the final step had now to be taken, the final sentence had now to be pronounced: the Old Testament, from cover to cover, has nothing whatever to do with the Jews. Illegally and insolently the Jews had seized upon it; they had confiscated it, and tried to claim it as their own property. They had falsified it by their expositions and even by corrections and omissions.

Every Christian must therefore deny them the possession of the Old Testament. It would be a sin for Christians to say, “This book belongs to us and to the Jews.” No; the book belonged from the outset, as it belongs now and evermore, to none but Christians, whilst Jews are the worst, the most godless and God-forsaken, of all nations upon earth,[1] the devil’s own people, Satan’s synagogue, a fellowship of hypocrites.[2] They are stamped by their crucifixion of the Lord. God has now brought them to an open ruin, before the eyes of all the world; their temple is burnt, their city destroyed, their commonwealth shattered, their people scattered – never again is Jerusalem to be frequented.[3]….

Israel thus became literally a church which had been at all times the inferior or the Satanic church. Even in point of time the “older” people did not precede the “younger,” for the latter was more ancient, and the “new” law was the original law. Nor had the patriarchs, prophets, and men of God, who had been counted worthy to receive God’s word, anything in common inwardly with the Jewish people; they were God’s elect who distinguished themselves by a holy conduct corresponding to the election and they must be regarded as the fathers and forerunners of the latent Christian people.[4] No satisfactory answer is given by any of these early Christian writings to the question.

How is it that, if these men must not on any account be regarded as Jews, they nevertheless appeared entirely or almost entirely within the Jewish nation? Possibly the idea was that God in his mercy meant to bring this wickedest of the nations to the knowledge of the truth by employing the most effective agencies at his command; but even this suggestion comes to nothing.

AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Such an injustice as that done by the Gentile church to Judaism is almost unprecedented in the annals of history. The Gentile church stripped it of everything; she took away its sacred book; herself but a transformation of Judaism, she cut off all connection with the parent religion. The daughter first robbed her mother, and then repudiated her!….

By their rejection of Jesus, the Jewish people disowned their calling and dealt the death-blow to their own existence; their place was taken by Christians as the new People, who appropriated the whole tradition of Judaism, giving a fresh interpretation to any unserviceable materials in it, or else allowing them to drop. As a matter of fact, the settlement was not even sudden or unexpected; what was unexpected was simply the particular form which the settlement assumed. All that Gentile Christianity did was to complete a process which had in fact commenced long ago within Judaism itself, viz., the process by which the Jewish religion was being inwardly emancipated and transformed into a religion for the world.

About 140 AD the transition of Christianity to the ‘Gentiles,’ with its emancipation from Judaism, was complete.[5](This is an important footnote)….One thing, however, remained an enigma. Why had Jesus appeared among the Jews, instead of among the ‘nations?’ This was a vexing problem. After referring to John 12:20f and John 10:16, Harnack ends: The mission which his disciples carry out, is thus his mission; it is just as if he drew them himself.[6] Indeed, his own power is still to work in them, as he is to send them the Holy Spirit to lead them into all the truth, communicating to them a wisdom which had hitherto lain unrevealed.[7]

CONCLUSION

If the spiritual interpretation of the OT was the correct one, then it was always correct, and this is where the Jews went astray. They took it literally. A literal interpretation is a spiritual interpretation. The length to which the early church went in disassociating itself from its Jewish ties is appalling.

By 180 AD the church felt secure enough to distance itself from Pauline anti-legalism as well as the forced logic of the earlier fathers who argued that the figurative interpretation of the OT was the literal one, and switched to a literal interpretation of the OT in order to incorporate into the church those laws and institutions of the Old Testament that they deemed appropriate. With their more sound hermeneutic, they nevertheless refused to revisit the implications as it related to the OT prophecies and promises to the nation of Israel. Paul’s understanding of the role of Israel in God’s future program was forgotten.

[1] “Justin, for example, looks on the Jews not more but less favourably than on the heathen(cp. Apol., I. xxxvii, xxxix., xliii.-xliv., xlvii., liii., lx.). The more friendly attitude of Aristides (Apol xiv.) is exceptional.”

[2] “Cp. Rev. ii. 9, iii. 9, Did. viii., and the treatment of the Jews in the Fourth Gospel and the Gospel of Peter. Barnabas (ix. 4) declares that a wicked angel had seduced them from the very first. In 2 Clem. ii. 3, the Jews are called…’they that seem to have God’; similarly in the Preaching of Peter (Clem., Strom., vi. 5. 41):…’They suppose they alone know God, but they do not understand him’.”

[3] “Cp. Tertull., Apol. xxi.:…’Scattered, wanderers, exiles from their own land and clime, they roam through the world without a human or a divine king, without so much as a stranger’s right to set foot even in their native land’.”

[4] “This is the prevailing view of all the sub-apostolic writers. Christians are the true Israel; hence theirs are all the honourable titles of the people of Israel. They are the twelve tribes (cp. Jas. i. I), and thus Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are the fathers of Christians (a conception on which no doubt whatever existed in the Gentile church, and which is not to be traced back simply to Paul); the men of God in the Old Testament were Christians (cp. Ignat., ad Magn., viii.2, …’the prophets lived according to Christ Jesus’). But it is to be noted that a considerable section of Christians, viz., the majority of the so-called Gnostics and the Marcionites, repudiated the Old Testament along with Judaism (a repudiation to which the epistle of Barnabas approximates very closely, but which it avoids by means of its resolute re-interpretation of the literal sense). These people appear to be the consistent party, yet they were really nothing of the kind; to cut off the Old Testament meant that another historical basis must be sought afresh for Christianity, and such a basis could not be found except in some other religion or in another system of worship. Marcion made the significant attempt to abandon the Old Testament and work exclusively with the doctrine and mythology of Paulinism; but the attempt was isolated, and it proved a failure.”

[5] “Forty years later Irenaeus was therefore in a position to treat the Old Testament and its real religion with much greater freedom, for by that time Christians had almost ceased to feel that their possession of the Old Testament was seriously disturbed by Judaism. Thus Irenaeus was able even to repeat the admission that the literal observance of the Old Testament in earlier days was right and holy. The Fathers of the ancient Catholic church, who followed him, went still further: on one side they approximated again to Paulinism; but at the same time, on every possible point, they moved still further away from the apostle than the earlier generations had done, since they understood his anti-legalism even less, and had also to defend the Old Testament against the Gnostics. Their candid recognition of a literal sense in the Old Testament was due to the secure consciousness of their own position over against Judaism, but it was the result even more of their growing passion for the laws and institutions of the Old Testament cultus.”

[6] “Naturally, there was not entire and universal satisfaction with his explanation…The Christians of Edessa were still more venturesome. They declared in the third century that Jesus had corresponded with their king Abgar, and cured him. Eusebius (H.E., i ad fin.) thought this tale of great importance; it seemed to him a sort of substitute for any direct work of Jesus among pagans.”

[7] op.cit., Harnack, pp. 65-71.

Part Ten

PAUL’S MOVE FROM JUDAISM TO APOSTLE TO THE GENTILES

As Dom Dix, the Roman Catholic Patristic scholar notes, Acts passes very lightly over the Jewish-Christian mission to the Dispersion,[4] even though it caused a ferment in Judaism. Dix notes that Sir Idris Bell published a papyrus, which, in his opinion, indicated that the very serious disturbances in the Alexandrian[5] ghetto in AD 42-43 originated in opposition to the activities of Jewish-Christian missionaries “from Syria”. The “continual rioting” in the Jewish quarters at Rome, which resulted in the expulsion of many Jews from the city in AD 49[6] were ascribed to this cause. Possibly the riots were directed against Andronicus and Junias, Jewish “Apostles”, who came to Christ before Paul,[7] and who are members of the pre-Pauline Palestinian Jewish Church. We see traces of this in the earliest days of the Church.[8]

“When the mob at Salonica in AD 50 complains to the magistrates that ‘These people who have turned the whole world upside down have arrived here now,’[9] they indicated a far wider and more notorious disturbance than S. Paul’s own bare three years of missioning, mostly in remote towns in Galatia (i.e. south central Asia Minor), could have caused; and the rumor that the movement is disloyal to the Empire and proclaims ‘another Emperor, one Jesus’, suggests a propaganda addressed exclusively to Jews. No missionary to Gentiles would present ‘the Gospel’ as the proclamation of a ‘Jewish king’!”

In Acts 18, while in Corinth, Paul meets with Aquila and Priscilla from Rome, and at Ephesus with Apollos from Alexandria. All are Jewish-Christian converts – but not Paul’s converts. These co-laborers of Paul formed a vast movement of Jewish-Christian expansion, which begins (like Paul’s own missions, as he boasts) “from Jerusalem”,[10] which had spread through Syria almost before Paul was converted, and which had reached out beyond Syria while he was still quiescent at Tarsus.

“This is a mission to Jews only.[11] In the light of the later controversy on circumcision and discussions on the law and grace…it is easy to misunderstand this. It was only to be expected that the Jewish Christians would stand firmly by the declared attitude of Jesus Himself,[12] Who was, as S. Paul insisted, ‘a Minister of the Circumcision for the truth of God, to fulfill the promises made to the (Jewish) Fathers.’ Before he wrote that, S. Paul had learned to add ‘and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy.’ But S. Paul himself insists also, again and again, that even for him this had required a direct ‘revelation from Jesus the Messiah’,[13] by a vision which Acts xxii. 21 appears to situate in the Temple during the disappointing visit to Jerusalem recorded in Gal i. 18 (=Acts ix. 26sqq.) some three or four years after his own conversion (i.e. in c. AD 38-9).”

Dix observes that neither in Gal 1 nor in Acts 9 is there any suggestion that Paul preached to Gentiles at that stage of his Christian career. When he retired to Tarsus for the next six years or so, in all probability he did not occupy himself with evangelizing the local Gentiles. More likely this ex-Pharisee needed time to recover from such a shock as the idea of a mission to Gentiles, and fortify and understand this new idea by a fresh study of the Jewish Scriptures in the light of God’s call on his life, and to equip himself generally to approach the Greek mind.

“With all his passionate sense of a mission to the Gentiles, his epistles reveal that he always remained unmistakably a Jew talking to Greeks about a Jewish ‘gospel’, from purely Jewish assumptions. It was his love and his own burning faith in ‘the Gospel’ he preached which won his Gentile converts, rather than his presentation of it….

“This question of a special revelation to S. Paul in AD 38 or 39 set aside, it seems clear that before AD 40, at the very earliest, the idea of a mission to the Gentiles had not been contemplated by anybody. Jesus Himself was known to have made exceptions to His usual exclusion of Gentiles from His ministry…But apart from express indications of the will of God about individuals, the Gentiles as such were still entirely hidden from the sight of the Jewish-Christian Church in connection with ‘the hope of Israel,’ by that ‘wall of separation’ built between the whole Syriac and Hellenic worlds by centuries of conflict.

“It was the Jewish-Christian missions to the Jews of the Dispersion which first faced the question, not of accepting but of seeking Gentile converts. This step had been taken at Antioch at a date which must fall somewhere between c.A.D. 40 and 44…”[14]

CONCLUSION

Obviously Paul was not alone in his understanding that the comprehensiveness of the gospel included the Gentiles. Peter saw this in his encounter with Cornelius.[15] However, evidently none but Paul saw how the Gentiles fit into the Church and how Israel fit into God’s future plans. It was this failure of the pre-Pauline Jewish-Christian mission to the Jews to see how Israel fit into the eternal plan of God, that gave rise to the anti-Semitism among the Patristics.

With the Jewish rejection of Messiah, the Patristics deserted both the pre-Pauline and Pauline understanding of God’s commitment to Israel. These historic pre-millennialists had a divided hermeneutic; the Revelation was interpreted literally, the Old Testament figuratively. Adolf Harnack showed the pathetic results of their thought processes in this regard.

Dix is no doubt correct that Paul received his understanding of eschatology from special revelation. As the other apostles demonstrated, the inclusion of Gentiles in the family of faith apart from Judaism was not clear in the teaching of Jesus.[16] A Pauline understanding of how Israel and the Gentiles fit into God’s plan, however, makes good sense if you maintain a literal hermeneutic. If you read the Old Testament like the morning newspaper, understanding the inviolable nature of God’s promises to Israel based on grace, then it logically follows that Revelation 20 is the time when God will fulfill His promises to the Jews as Paul taught in Romans 11.

Are we going to allow a proper hermeneutic to shape our theological presuppositions, or vice versa? As we continue to look at how this influences our lives, we will see that this is not as easy a question to answer as it may appear. This will be the subject of the next issue.

In a spirit of dependence.

Part Eleven

It may be profitable to review before going on. Hope is a characteristic unique to man. Only man plans for the future, seeking to immortalize himself through his creative skills. As Solomon notes, only man has eternity in his heart.[1] Hope has at least two characteristics, it is future and it defines what we consider to be important.

People have short, middle, and long range hopes. Eschatology is the study of what God says we can expect in the future, especially during the time of Christ’s return. Eschatology, therefore, defines what God says is a legitimate hope. Eschatology defines hope, an essential component in the Christian life. So we see that eschatology is an extremely important subject.

The church, however, has had a problem agreeing on a biblical eschatology. This has caused great confusion among the people of God. This series seeks to identify the reasons for this disagreement and lay the foundation for arriving at a genuinely biblical hope.

In this issue I make two applications: The influence of culture and the importance of chaos.

INFLUENCE OF CULTURE

Culture plays a far more significant role in shaping our thinking than we care to admit. The Patristics were children of their age, influenced by their cultural melieu. None of us realize the extent, nor do we understand the areas in which it impacts us. If we did, we would monitor culture’s influence and prevent it from having any adverse impact.

Much of what culture teaches is benign and therefore non-essential. Missionaries tell us, when we visit them overseas, “The way they do things is not wrong, just different.” Often the frustrations we experience when entering a culture different from our own are the product of our not understanding the “rules” by which they live. We call this culture shock.

Much of what culture teaches, however, is unbiblical, ungodly, and therefore destructive. All of us are disturbed by the profound negative shift our culture in the United States has taken. This motivates many conscientious Christians to become involved in seeking to correct the ills of society.

In those areas that are benign we seek to adapt to culture, following the model of the Apostle Paul: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews; to those under the law I became as one under the law–though not being myself under the law–that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law–not being without law toward God but under the law of Christ–that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”[2] In essence, Paul says that he will do anything short of sin to influence people for Christ.

In those areas that are destructive to both ourselves and our relationship with God, Paul tells us we must resist and become non-conforming: “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”[3] This statement forms the heart of Biblical application. Instead of running the Bible through our cultural grid and conforming to the world, we are to run our culture through the Biblical grid and be transformed “by the renewing of our minds.”

This mixture of “good and bad” in culture makes it difficult to respond properly to the pressure of the world. What is unbiblical vis a vis being “all things to all men?” Looking in hindsight, we can see with relative ease the mistakes the Church made in conforming to culture. It is more difficult to see ourselves making the same kinds of mistakes as we sort through our own cultural melieu.

The Patristics afford us a frightening example. Jesus was a Jew, as were the apostles. The Old Testament Scriptures clearly teach a future for Israel. The persecution and rejection the Patristics received at the hands of Judaism caused them to run the Bible through their cultural lens and conclude that God had abandoned the Jews. Whatever else you read in the New Testament, you will not find Jesus’ disciples arguing for the permanent rejection of the Jews.

Let me suggest a two-fold application: First, we must be ever vigilant regarding the pervasive influence of culture. Although much of culture is innocent, we do well to hold all of it suspect. Each time you expose yourself to the Word of God, prayerfully covenant to challenge everything life teaches in light of Scripture. Recognize that the natural tendency is to do the opposite, to interpret the Bible in light of culture.

Second, take heart with the assurance that God listens to our prayers with a stethoscope. We only get into trouble with God when we are willful. A lot of things can hurt us temporally, such as ignorance, but only being willful with God can hurt us eternally. No where in the Bible, that I am aware of, does God say that He delights in theological purity. “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”[4]

IMPORTANCE OF CHAOS

Many of us have talked about this before; God purposely creates chaos to keep people dependent upon Him. I believe God purposely kept the Patristics from seeing clearly the theological issues and the profound impact they would make in shaping their world view.

We are given a remarkable insight into this aspect of God’s character in the Tower of Babel. When the “whole earth was of one language and of one speech,” the people decided to demonstrate their prowess by creating a tower to heaven. “And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”[5]

Astonishingly, God says if “They” do not stop them “nothing that they propose to do will be impossible.” Man is never more prone to independence and rebellion than when things are going the way he wants. Man’s quest for autonomy can either be left unchecked, in which case he goes to hell, or God intercedes in a way that forces him to understand his need of Him. Because of His grace, He does the latter.

Through the years I have tried to be a student of myself. If correct, I am a perfectionist living in an imperfect world. This has caused me no small amount of consternation. I hate dirt, disorder, and dysfunctional things. So I spend a great deal of time and energy cleaning, organizing, and fixing. God creates an entropic system, dirtying, disorganizing, and breaking. I become frustrated until I remember that His love and grace created the chaos.

I often feel like Charlie Brown when he faces Lucy with the football. I am tempted to conclude that God pulls away the football each time I seek to kick it. In one sense this is a correct perception of God. He never does it maliciously, but He does frustrate my efforts to keep me humble. In the Old Testament God frequently brought chaos into the lives of His people to keep them looking to Him.

So too in theology. God will never allow anyone to understand anything perfectly. We all “see through a glass darkly.”[6] God wants it no other way. Each generation of the Church thinks that it understands more fully the heart and mind of God than the generations before, only to have succeeding generations discover gapping holes in their thought processes. God is not as committed to theological precision as is His people!

This does not mean that we should “make a shrine of our ignorance.” Accurate theology does influence how we live. This is the purpose of our study in eschatology; your view of the future plays a profound role in how you live your life. In part, God will judge His people on their diligence in studying and applying His Word.[7]

I recognize that I am far more disturbed with the tangent the Patristics took than God. At least that is what I am lead to believe in studying the Bible. God will accomplish His work. Our accuracy/inaccuracy, faithfulness/sloth, etc., will not influence it. He said He will build His Church[8] and He is right on schedule, with or without our theological precision. We have the privilege of participating with Him in His work, but we cannot alter it. God’s work unfolds in history.

The Patristics are a good example of God’s superintending history. Although they embraced a faulty hermeneutic, causing the church to misunderstand God’s future for Israel, they were mightily used by God in preserving Orthodoxy in its doctrinal formulations.

Let me suggest a couple of applications: First, we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. “Our God is in the Heavens and He hath done whatsoever He had pleased.”[9] Theology is serious business, but not that serious. When judged by God, I would rather be wrong with a pure motive than right with an impure one. With God, ignorance is an excuse.[10]

Second, do not allow the sovereign control of God to lull you into thinking that your actions have no consequences. Granted, you cannot destroy another person’s life, but you can negatively influence the quality of your eternity with God.[11] Every action, thought, and intent has consequences, if not in this life, then for sure in the life to come.

CONSEQUENCES TO YOUR ESCHATOLOGY

There must be pragmatic reasons for embracing any doctrine. Lacking practical application, a doctrine will be either neglected or compromised. Your eschatological convictions will influence: 1)- Your understanding of the grace of God in that His promises to Israel are inviolable and not dependent upon reciprocity. 2) – Your view of the church (ecclesiology) as we have seen with the Patristics embracing an OT view, seeing themselves as the New Israel. 3) – Your view of the mission of the church as seen by the fact that when the Church ceased being a persecuted minority and became a triumphant majority, it saw itself as a counterpart to the theocracy of Israel with a temporal rather than eternal view of ministry. 4) – Your view of whose job is the ministry as seen by the early church gradually embracing an Old Testament mind-set with priests, an altar, and a clergy-laity distinction. 5) – Whether you are confused regarding the role of the Mosaic Law in the life of the Church. Although this was not so much a problem among the Patristics in that they, by and large, did not see themselves as under the Law, it became a problem among the amillennialists as they refined what being the New Israel looked like. 6) – Your hermeneutic and whether you allow for a less than literal interpretation of Scripture, which in turn leads to heresy.

The connection between these six issues and eschatology may not be immediately apparent, with the exception of interpretation which we have discussed earlier in this series. I hope, during our remaining sessions, to make the other five applications obvious.

Yours for a life of obedience.

Part Twelve

The Jews, during the days of our Lord’s ministry, were deeply involved in eschatology. Simeon and Anna both anticipated seeing God’s Messiah.[1] When the “wise men from the east” inquired in Jerusalem, the “chief priest and scribes” were familiar with Old Testament prophecies predicting Messiah’s coming.[2]

Added to this was the heightened expectation generated by a number of books written during the period between Malachi and Matthew, the inter-testamentary period. These include Esdra, the Book of Jubilees and I Enoch. All of these were indebted to the book of Daniel and the prophecy of seventy weeks.[3]

Throughout the Old Testament, God revealed, in a rather specific way, His plans for the future of Israel. For example, God told Abraham that his descendants would be captive in a strange land for four hundred years.[4] Thus it wasn’t hard for Moses and the Israelites to predict that their time of deliverance was close. Jeremiah predicted that Judah would be in Babylon seventy years,[5] and Daniel knew this when he prayed for Israel’s deliverance.[6]

This is the promise that God makes to the nation of Israel: “Does a bird fall in a snare on the earth, when there is no trap for it? Does a snare spring up from the ground, when it has taken nothing? Is a trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does evil befall a city, unless the LORD has done it? Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets.”[7]

It was not difficult, therefore, for the Jews of Jesus’ day to calculate that, according to Daniel’s seventy weeks, they were living in the days of Messiah’s coming.

LOSS OF HOPE

Jewish scholars surviving the destruction of Jerusalem rejected the previously popular Jewish apocalyptic literature with the expectation of Messiah’s coming. On this point the noted scholar F. Crawford Burkitt makes an interesting observation.

Quoting Johanan ben Zakkai, that God revealed to Abram this world, but not the world to come (Ber. rab. 44 [on Gen 15:18]), he says that there was a renunciation of the apocalyptic idea, the literal creation of the Kingdom of God on earth. It was this ideal that inspired the whole series of Jewish Apocalypses, and was the central thought of the earliest preaching of Christianity, intoxicating the Jewish people in their wild struggle with Rome. “Johanan ben Zakkai was a realist, content ‘to let the future age wait for God’s good time,’ and in the meantime channeled Jewish thought into new directions. On the other hand, the Christians believed, ‘the Kingdom of God is at hand.'”[8]

A HOPE TRANSFERRED

As the Jews were losing hope in the imminent, literal fulfillment of the Old Testament promises regarding the Kingdom of God, the Church was becoming increasingly Gentile, allegorizing these same Old Testament promises and applying them to the Church. Inconsistent in their hermeneutic, they interpreted the Revelation literally and the Old Testament figuratively. This was how they became “historic pre-millennial.”

Those who condemn the patristics for being pre-millennial because they were “Jewish” in borrowing from Jewish apocalyptic literature, must ask themselves why it was that Christians incorporated it into their doctrine? The only plausible answer is, they looked for the imminent return of Christ to establish His earthly reign. From where did they get this idea? Again, the plausible answer is, from the apostles and those who followed them.

Jesus’ disciples believed in His return and establishment of an earthly reign. Being Jews, however, they saw it in Jewish terms, applied to Israel, simply because in their minds they did not see a Church – Israel distinction. When wrestling with the Jew – Gentile distinction, they concluded that the two could unite in Christ. But this did not abrogate the Old Testament promises being fulfilled to Israel in an earthly kingdom with Jesus on the throne of David. It became a “Church event” only after a Gentile Church, in their anti-Jewishness, found no room for the Jews.

Let’s continue from here with brief looks at some of the other early church fathers.

CLEMENT

Clement of Rome was of noble birth and part of the family of the Caesars. His father Faustus was related to the reigning emperor; his mother Mattidia was also a kinswoman of Caesar’s.[9] His first letter to the Corinthians was written in approximately AD 96, or about 40 years after Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, about the time of the persecution of Domitian.[10] Some of the ancient manuscripts make him the successor of Peter as pope in Rome. In his I Corinthians epistle, Clement seems to indicate that he personally knew both Paul and Peter.

To understand Clement’s position on the millennium, we need to remind ourselves that the Jews believed in what O’Hagan calls a “material re-creation.”[11] The Old Testament promises a physical restoration of this earth, during which time the nations will be at peace and the lion will lie down with the lamb.[12] It is during this time that Messiah sits on the Throne of David and rules the world. Throughout Clement’s I Corinthians, he holds for a “material re-creation” in the cosmic sense, following clearly the Jewish tradition.[13]

A re-creation of the world as envisioned by the Old Testament prophets necessitates a millennial framework in which a new earth exists. No eschatology other than pre-millennialism has a place for this. Post-millennialism comes close in teaching that the church will capture the world for Christ before His return. Only pre-millennialism argues for an eschatological re-creation of the world; all other eschatologies teach that after the return of Christ we move into Revelation 21-22. A-millennialism replaces this Old Testament hope of a reconstituted world with the cultural mandate.[14] We will explore this further in future issues of this series, but it is this “material re-creation” that Clement and others embraced, even though they may not make reference to the millennium of Revelation 20.

POLYCARP

Reputed to have lived approximately 69 – 155 AD, Polycarp was “bishop” of Smyrna during the days when Ignatius was martyred. Irenaeus, as a youth, knew Polycarp and wrote of him: “But Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried (on earth) a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true.”[15]

Irenaeus also says of Polycarp: “…so that I can even describe the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit and discourse – his going out, too and his coming in – his general mode of life and personal appearance, together with the discourses which he delivered to the people; also how he would speak of his familiar intercourse with John, and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord; and how he would call their words to remembrance. Whatsoever things he had heard from them respecting the Lord, both with regard to His miracles and His teaching, Polycarp having thus received (information) from the eye-witness of the Word of life, would recount them all in harmony with the Scriptures.”[16]

The nineteenth century scholar, Lightfoot, comments that the Apostle John lived for more than a quarter of a century after the destruction of Jerusalem (AD 70) in the province of Asia. headquartering in Ephesus. Polycarp was one of the disciples John gathered around him. He may have been privy to the Revelation of John when he was on Patmos. John made him bishop in the church of Smyrna.[17]

In his epistle, Polycarp uses the language of Jesus who said, “… in the new world, when the Son of Man shall sit on His glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”[18] Polycarp says, “… and promised the kingdom of heaven to those who follow after righteousness.”[19] Again, “They that are true citizens of Christ’s kingdom now shall themselves be kings with Him hereafter.”[20] Finally, “… the saints shall themselves judge the world, as Paul teacheth.”[21]

Polycarp seems to distinguish between the promised kingdom of heaven and ruling with Christ as they judge the world. By deduction can we conclude that Polycarp was chilliest? It seems so, for Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, claimed his own teaching was the product of learning from Polycarp (and therefore of the Apostles and Christ). We shall see that Irenaeus was definitely a millenarianist.

CONCLUSION

In the next issue we will look at Justin Martyr, an important, if not the most important, patristic from the perspective of our study on eschatology. I don’t have room to cover him in this issue.

You notice that sprinkled throughout this series are quotes from various scholars, substantiating the over-arching theme of this study. They are not polemicists seeking to prove their own bias; many may not even be believers in Christ. E.C. Dewick, writing at the turn of the century affords us a partial summary of where we have been with a glimpse of where we are going.

Reviewing the period of the patristics from the time of Irenaeus forward, there is a slow, steady decline in an eager, imminent return of Christ. Actually the decline begins in the New Testament,[22] and with every fresh decade the primitive hope silently retires more and more into the background. This doesn’t mean that it ever entirely disappeared; quite the contrary, it has always remained ready to revive in times of tribulation. But generally speaking, when the church is trouble-free, it has ceased to be a living power in Christendom.

In what Dewick calls “primitive Christianity,” even in the waning anticipation of an immediate Second Coming there is the belief in the Millennial Reign of Christ on earth. It was most strongly opposed by those favoring a “subjective” religion combined with a liberal use of allegory. Origen and some of the Gnostics are illustrations. This, combined with the Augustinian conception of the church as the Kingdom of God on earth, contributed to the demise of millenarism.[23]

Eager for His return.