The Early Church Fathers, on Premillennialism and Eschatology. Compiled and written by Jason Engwer.

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004

Answers

Ambrosiaster

It's often suggested, incorrectly, that premillennialism was just the briefly held view of some of the earliest church fathers, something rejected by later fathers as they matured in their beliefs and broke their ties with Judaism. While it's true that premillennialism was much more popular in the earliest centuries than it was in the later centuries of the patristic era, it was still held by some even after the time of Constantine. As I mentioned in an earlier segment, Augustine was once a premillennialist, though he later rejected the doctrine. For example, the bishop Quintus Julius Hilarianus, a colleague of Augustine in Africa, was a premillennialist and wrote in favor of the doctrine (Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Everett Ferguson, editor [New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999], p. 240). J.N.D. Kelly writes of Ambrosiaster:

"For Ambrosiaster, however, the collapse of the Roman empire was the sign of the approaching end of the world. Antichrist would then appear, only to be destroyed by divine power, and Christ would reign over His saints for a thousand years." (Early Christian Doctrines [San Francisco, California: HarperCollins Publishers, 1978], p. 479)

This later support for premillennialism is significant for a number of reasons. For one thing, it refutes the claim that the patristic support for the doctrine was only brief. It also refutes the suggestion that the later rejection of the doctrine was universal or the result of some ruling by a worldwide denomination that had authority over all of the fathers. The truth is that premillennialism was the popular view among the earliest fathers and continued to be held by some people, even church leadership, after it ceased to be the majority view. If premillennialism is a significantly dangerous false teaching, as Roman Catholicism claims, and the Roman Catholic view of eschatology is an apostolic tradition always held by the Christian church, why was premillennialism held so widely and so long among the fathers?

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Augustine

The RCC claims that all apostolic teaching has been passed down in unbroken succession throughout church history. Roman Catholic apologists often quote a church father agreeing with a Roman Catholic doctrine, then suggest that such a quote is evidence that the doctrine was always held by the Christian church.

In a previous segment in this series, I gave an example of how misleading that sort of reasoning can be. Though Augustine held to something similar to the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, he explained that he was speculating. Rather than relaying an apostolic tradition always held by the Christian church, he was describing his own speculative thoughts about what might happen in the afterlife.

Similarly, Augustine wrote about his eschatology:

"And this opinion [premillennialism] would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion." (The City of God, 20:7)

Augustine tells us not only that premillennialism can be acceptable, as long as it isn't too materialistic, but he also says that he was once a premillennialist. Roman Catholicism condemns premillennialism as a significantly dangerous false doctrine, yet Augustine tells us that, though he now rejects the doctrine, it's acceptable within orthodoxy and was the position he once held. Apparently, he didn't think that the RCC's eschatology was an apostolic tradition always held by the universal church.

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Commodianus

Commodianus is another church father who disagreed with the eschatology of Roman Catholicism:

"From heaven will descend the city in the first resurrection; this is what we may tell of such a celestial fabric. We shall arise again to Him, who have been devoted to Him. And they shall be incorruptible, even already living without death. And neither will there be any grief nor any groaning in that city. They shall come also who overcame cruel martydom under Antichrist, and they themselves live for the whole time, and receive blessings because they have suffered evil things; and they themselves marrying, beget for a thousand years." (Writings, 44)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Cyprian

Cyprian didn't agree with the eschatology of the RCC. Apparently, he was a premillennialist and held to the view that the world would last only six thousand years before the millennium began as the seventh day (a day being a thousand years):

"It is an ancient adversary and an old enemy with whom we wage our battle: six thousand years are now nearly completed since the devil first attacked man....the divine arrangement containing seven thousand of years" (Treatise 11; Preface, 2; On the Exhortation to Martyrdom, 11).

That Cyprian viewed the return of Christ as something that would occur at the end of the six thousand years, not at the end of the seventh thousand, is suggested in passages such as the following. Notice that the first passage is from the treatise quoted above, which means that Cyprian referred to the coming of the Antichrist being near in the same document in which he referred to the six thousandth year being near. Thus, the seventh millennium would have to come after the Antichrist:

"You have desired, beloved Fortunatus that, l since the burden of persecutions and afflictions is lying heavy upon us, and in the ending and completion of the world the hateful time of Antichrist is already beginning to draw near, I would collect from the sacred Scriptures some exhortations for preparing and strengthening the minds of the brethren, whereby I might animate the soldiers of Christ for the heavenly and spiritual contest." (Treatise 11; Preface, 1)

"For you ought to know and to believe, and hold it for certain, that the day of affliction has begun to hang over our heads, and the end of the world and the time of Antichrist to draw near, so that we must all stand prepared for the battle" (Letter 55:1)

"Nor let it disturb you, dearest brethren, if with some, in these last times, either an uncertain faith is wavering, or a fear of God without religion is vacillating, or a peaceable concord does not continue. These things have been foretold as about to happen in the end of the world; and it was predicted by the voice of the Lord, and by the testimony of the apostles, that now that the world is failing, and the Antichrist is drawing near, everything good shall fail, but evil and adverse things shall prosper." (Letter 67:7)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

The Didache

The RCC teaches that all of the dead will be raised at the same time:

"The resurrection of all the dead, 'of both the just and the unjust,' will precede the Last Judgment. This will be 'the hour when all who are in the tombs will hear [the Son of man's] voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.'" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1038)

But The Didache, one of the earliest patristic documents, refers to multiple stages in the resurrection, probably because of a premillennial eschatology:

"And then shall appear the signs of the truth: first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven, then the sign of the sound of the trumpet. And third, the resurrection of the dead -- yet not of all, but as it is said: 'The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him.' Then shall the world see the Lord coming upon the clouds of heaven." (16)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

The Epistle of Barnabas

"The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation thus: 'And God made in six days the works of His hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.' Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, 'He finished in six days.' This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years. And He Himself testifieth, saying, 'Behold, to-day will be as a thousand years.' Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished. 'And He rested on the seventh day.' This meaneth: when His Son, coming again, shall destroy the time of the wicked man, and judge the ungodly, and change the sun, and the moon, and the stars, then shall He truly rest on the seventh day." - The Epistle of Barnabas (15)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Hippolytus

"From the birth of Christ, then, we must reckon the 500 years that remain to make up the 6000, and thus the end shall be....'Now it was the sixth hour,' [John 19:14] he says, intimating by that, one-half of the day. But a day with the Lord is 1000 years; and the half of that, therefore, is 500 years. For it was not meet that He should appear earlier, for the burden of the law still endured, nor yet when the sixth day was fulfilled (for the baptism is changed), but on the fifth and half, in order that in the remaining half time the gospel might be preached to the whole world, and that when the sixth day was completed He might end the present life." - Hippolytus (On Daniel, 2:6)

"And 6,000 years must needs be accomplished, in order that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day 'on which God rested from all His works.' For the Sabbath is the type and emblem of the future kingdom of the saints, when they 'shall reign with Christ,' when He comes from heaven, as John says in his Apocalypse: for 'a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.'" - Hippolytus (On Daniel, 2:4)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Irenaeus

Historically, the RCC has been amillennial, and has condemned the premillennial view of eschatology. But the popular view among the earliest church fathers was premillennialism. Protestant historian Richard Kyle explains the significance and early history of the doctrine:

"Millennialism falls into three main groups - pre-, post-, and amillennialism. These positions differ as to when Christ will return. But their differences go well beyond the timing of Christ's return. They touch upon attitudes toward life, the way in which Scripture is interpreted, the number of resurrections, and the nature of the millennium itself....The rejection of apocalyptic [pre] millennialism [by later church fathers] must be seen in its proper context. Constantine had been converted to Christianity in 312, thus ending the persecution of Christians. The hope for the imminent return of Christ remained strong as long as Christians were a persecuted minority. But when Christianity became the official religion in the Roman Empire during the fourth century, these [pre] millennial aspirations either declined or took new forms....In 431 the Council of Ephesus condemned as superstition the belief in a literal millennium." (The Last Days are Here Again [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1998], pp. 20, 38-39)

Notice that this issue has significant implications for how we view the world, what we expect to happen in the future, how we interpret scripture, etc. So, when the earliest church fathers contradict the RCC on this issue, the contradiction can't be dismissed as insignificant. Such disagreements among the church fathers, and their departing from apostolic teaching, is plausible within the evangelical view of church history. But if the church fathers were Roman Catholics passing on all apostolic teaching in unbroken succession, how do you explain such widespread error, disagreement, and contradiction?

A Catholic Answers tract tells us:

"As far as the millennium goes, we tend to agree with Augustine and, derivatively, with the amillennialists. The Catholic position has thus historically been 'amillennial' (as has been the majority Christian position in general, including that of the Protestant Reformers), though Catholics do not typically use this term. The Church has rejected the premillennial position, sometimes called 'millenarianism' (see the Catechism of the Catholic Church 676). In the 1940s the Holy Office judged that premillennialism 'cannot safely be taught,' though the Church has not dogmatically defined this issue."

The church father Irenaeus was a premillennialist. He argued that premillennialism is the orthodox Christian view of eschatology, and he criticized those who are too allegorical in their interpretation of prophecy:

"If, however, any shall endeavour to allegorize prophecies of this kind, they shall not be found consistent with themselves in all points, and shall be confuted by the teaching of the very expressions in question. For example: 'When the cities' of the Gentiles 'shall be desolate, so that they be not inhabited, and the houses so that there shall be no men in them and the land shall be left desolate.' 'For, behold,' says Isaiah, 'the day of the LORD cometh past remedy, full of fury and wrath, to lay waste the city of the earth, and to root sinners out of it.' And again he says, 'Let him be taken away, that he behold not the glory of God.' And when these things are done, he says, 'God will remove men far away, and those that are left shall multiply in the earth.' 'And they shall build houses, and shall inhabit them themselves: and plant vineyards, and eat of them themselves.' For all these and other words were unquestionably spoken in reference to the resurrection of the just, which takes place after the coming of Antichrist, and the destruction of all nations under his rule; in the times of which resurrection the righteous shall reign in the earth, waxing stronger by the sight of the Lord: and through Him they shall become accustomed to partake in the glory of God the Father, and shall enjoy in the kingdom intercourse and communion with the holy angels, and union with spiritual beings; and with respect to those whom the Lord shall find in the flesh, awaiting Him from heaven, and who have suffered tribulation, as well as escaped the hands of the Wicked one." (Against Heresies, 5:35:1)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Justin Martyr

"I and others, who are right-minded Christians on all points, are assured that there will be a resurrection of the dead, and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged, the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare." - Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, 80)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Lactantius

"Therefore, since all the works of God were completed in six days, the world must continue in its present state through six ages, that is, six thousand years. For the great day of God is limited by a circle of a thousand years, as the prophet shows, who says 'In Thy sight, O Lord, a thousand years are as one day.' And as God laboured during those six days in creating such great works, so His religion and truth must labour during these six thousand years, while wickedness prevails and bears rule. And again, since God, having finished His works, rested the seventh day and blessed it, at the end of the six thousandth year all wickedness must be abolished from the earth, and righteousness reign for a thousand years; and there must be tranquillity and rest from the labours which the world now has long endured." - Lactantius (The Divine Institutes, 7:14)

"The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by 'all Israel', for 'a hardening has come upon part of Israel' in their 'unbelief' toward Jesus. St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: 'Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old.' St. Paul echoes him: 'For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?' The 'full inclusion' of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of 'the full number of the Gentiles', will enable the People of God to achieve 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ', in which 'God may be all in all'." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 674)

"Therefore, as we spoke in the fourth book concerning His first advent, so in this book we will relate His second advent, which the Jews also both confess and hope for; but in vain, since He must return to the confusion of those for whose call He had before come. For they who impiously treated Him with violence in His humiliation, will experience Him in His power as a conqueror; and, God requiting them, they will suffer all those things which they read and do not understand; inasmuch as, being polluted with all sins, and moreover sprinkled with the blood of the Holy One, they were devoted to eternal punishment by that very One on whom they laid wicked hands." - Lactantius (The Divine Institutes, 7:1)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Methodius

Methodius disagreed with the RCC's eschatology:

"For I also, taking my journey, and going forth from the Egypt of this life, came first to the resurrection, which is the true Feast of the Tabernacles, and there having set up my tabernacle, adorned with the fruits of virtue, on the first day of the resurrection, which is the day of judgment, celebrate with Christ the millennium of rest, which is called the seventh day, even the true Sabbath. Then again from thence I, a follower of Jesus, 'who hath entered into the heavens,' as they also, after the rest of the Feast of Tabernacles, came into the laud of promise, come into the heavens, not continuing to remain in tabernacles-that is, my body not remaining as it was before, but, after the space of a thousand years, changed from a human and corruptible form into angelic size and beauty, where at last we virgins, when the festival of the resurrection is consummated, shall pass froth the wonderful place of the tabernacle to greater and better things, ascending into the very house of God above the heavens, as, says the Psalmist, 'in the voice of praise and thanksgiving, among such as keep holy day.'" (The Banquet of the Ten Virgins, Discourse 9:5)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Nepos

"The occasion of these was Nepos, a bishop in Egypt, who taught that the promises to the holy men in the Divine Scriptures should be understood in a more Jewish manner, and that there would be a certain millennium of bodily luxury upon this earth. As he thought that he could establish his private opinion by the Revelation of John, he wrote a book on this subject, entitled Refutation of Allegorists." - Eusebius (Church History, 7:24)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Origen

Premillenialism was the popular eschatology among the earliest church fathers, but there were some exceptions, such as Origen and Dionysius in Alexandria in the third century. But the fact that a church father rejected premillennialism doesn't necessarily mean that he agreed with the Roman Catholic view of eschatology. Origen is an example.

Though premillennialists are often criticized for setting or suggesting dates for the end of the world, amillennialists and other opponents of premillennialism have often done the same. Origen thought that he was living "in the last times, when the end of the world is already imminent and near, and the whole human race is verging upon the last destruction" (De Principiis, 3:5:6). As with other issues, Origen's eschatology is often difficult to understand or inconsistent. Jacques Le Goff writes:

"like many of his contemporaries - indeed, probably more than most - Origen believed that the end of the world was near: 'The consumption of the world by fire is imminent....The world and all its elements are going to be consumed in the heat of fire by the end of this century' (Sixth Homily of the Commentary on Genesis, PG 12.191)....No clear distinction is made between time in Purgatory and the time of the Last Judgment. This confusion is so troublesome that Origen is forced both to expand the end of the world and to collapse it into a single moment, while at the same time making its prospect imminent. Purgatory is not really distinguished from Hell, and there is no clear awareness that Purgatory is a temporary and provisional abode. The responsibility for postmortem purification is shared by the dead, with their weight of sin, and God, the benevolent judge of salvation; the living play no part. Finally, no place is designated as the place of purgatory. By making the purifying fire not only 'spiritual' but also 'invisible,' Origen prevented the imagination of the faithful from gaining a purchase on it." (The Birth of Purgatory [Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1986], pp. 56-57)

The Roman Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott wrote that "The material identity of the body after the resurrection with the body which was on earth was disputed by Origen." (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma [Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1974], p. 490) The Protestant historian Philip Schaff wrote that Origen's view was a "denial of a material resurrection" 187:2). Origen criticizes Christians who hold to a high view of the correspondence between the body that dies and the body that rises:

"Certain persons, then, refusing the labour of thinking, and adopting a superficial view of the letter of the law, and yielding rather in some measure to the indulgence of their own desires and lusts, being disciples of the letter alone, are of opinion that the fulfilment 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....Those, however, who receive the representations of Scripture according to the understanding of the apostles, entertain the hope that the saints will eat indeed, but that it will be the bread of life, which may nourish the soul with the food of truth and wisdom, and enlighten the mind, and cause it to drink from the cup of divine wisdom, according to the declaration of holy Scripture: 'Wisdom has prepared her table, she has killed her beasts, she has mingled her wine in her cup, and she cries with a loud voice, Come to me, eat the bread which I have prepared for you, and drink the wine which I have mingled.'" (De Principiis, 2:11:2-3)

"We now turn our attention to some of our own (believers), who, either from feebleness of intellect or want of proper instruction, adopt a very low and abject view of the resurrection of the body. We ask these persons in what manner they understand that an animal body is to be changed by the grace of the resurrection, and to become a spiritual one; and how that which is sown in weakness will arise in power; how that which is planted in dishonour will arise in glory; and that which was sown in corruption, will be changed to a state of incorruption. Because if they believe the apostle, that a body which arises in glory, and power, and incorruptibility, has already become spiritual, it appears absurd and contrary to his meaning to say that it can again be entangled with the passions of flesh and blood, seeing the apostle manifestly declares that 'flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God, nor shall corruption inherit incorruption.' But how do they understand the declaration of the apostle, 'We shall all be changed?' This transformation certainly is to be looked for, according to the order which we have taught above; and in it, undoubtedly, it becomes us to hope for something worthy of divine grace; and this we believe will take place in the order in which the apostle describes the sowing in the ground of a 'bare grain of corn, or of any other fruit,' to which 'God gives a body as it pleases Him,' as soon as the grain of corn is dead. For in the same way also our bodies are to be supposed to fall into the earth like a grain; and (that germ being implanted in them which contains the bodily substance) although the bodies die, and become corrupted, and are scattered abroad, yet by the word of God, that very germ which is always safe in the substance of the body, raises them from the earth, and restores and repairs them, as the power which is in the grain of wheat, after its corruption and death, repairs and restores the grain into a body having stalk and ear. And so also to those who shall deserve to obtain an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, that germ of the body's restoration, which we have before mentioned, by God's command restores out of the earthly and animal body a spiritual one, capable of inhabiting the heavens" (De Principiis, 2:10:3)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Papias

"[Papias said] that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth." - Eusebius (Church History, 3:39:12)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Tatian

"The soul is not in itself immortal, O Greeks, but mortal. Yet it is possible for it not to die. If, indeed, it knows not the truth, it dies, and is dissolved with the body, but rises again at last at the end of the world with the body, receiving death by punishment in immortality. But, again, if it acquires the knowledge of God, it dies not, although for a time it be dissolved." - Tatian (Address to the Greeks, 13)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Tertullian

Tertullian disagreed with the eschatology of Roman Catholicism:

"But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, 'let down from heaven,' which the apostle also calls 'our mother from above;' and, while declaring that our politeuma, or citizenship, is in heaven, he predicates of it that it is really a city in heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of and the Apostle John beheld." (Against Marcion, 3:24)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.

Victorinus

Victorinus didn't agree with the eschatology of the RCC:

"And in Matthew we read, that it is written Isaiah also and the rest of his colleagues broke the Sabbath -that that true and just Sabbath should be observed in the seventh millenary of years....Wherefore, as I have narrated, that true Sabbath will be in the seventh millenary of years, when Christ with His elect shall reign." (On the Creation of the World)

-- David Ortiz (cyberpunk1986@hotmail.com), June 30, 2004.