The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

V. Extra-Biblical Influences on Early Christian Chiliasm

“The most striking point in the eschatology of the ante-Nicene age,” says Schaff, “is the prominent chiliasm, or millenarianism.” ⁴² Pseudo-Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Methodius, Lactantius, and others believed that the second, personal, literal coming of Christ was to introduce a millennial reign, beginning with the actual resurrection of the righteous and ending with the second resurrection and the general judgment, followed by the eternal state. The millennium was expected to be the result of sudden divine interposition, not of a gradual historical process. PFF1 301.3

1. OLD TESTAMENT PROPHECIES COMBINED WITH REVELATION

This belief was based principally upon the prophecy of Revelation 20. But many of these early writers expected an earthly kingdom centered in Jerusalem, not for the literal Jews, as most modern premillennialists hold, but for the Christian church as the true spiritual Israel. ⁴³ PFF1 302.1

Revelation 20—the only passage in the Bible mentioning that specific period—is clear on the doctrine of a thousand years as coming between the first and the second resurrections, during which there is a reign of the “blessed and holy” ones who rise in the first resurrection. But it says nothing of a kingdom on earth, or of either Christians or Jews reigning in Jerusalem over unconverted nations. On these points, the millenarians cited certain Old Testament prophecies which themselves give no hint of belonging, necessarily, to a thousand-year period. PFF1 302.2

2. ORIGIN OF THESE EARLY CONCEPTS

Where then did these early millenarians get such ideas? Most modernists would, of course, trace the whole millenarian doctrine to non-Christian sources, because Christian converts from either Jewish or pagan backgrounds were familiar with traditions of a future golden age which had been current in various guises in many ancient religions. But it is not necessary to suppose that these extra-Biblical ideas did more than color their interpretation of the Scriptural millennium. PFF1 302.3

Doubtless contemporary extra-Biblical ideas, like a catalyzing agent, influenced the ante-Nicene millenarians to combine these Old Testament Messianic prophecies with Revelation 20, in order to construct on this twofold basis the elaborate picture of an earthly golden-age kingdom preceding the final resurrection. Certain it is that the apocalyptic writings in which Jewish converts were, of course, steeped, were current in the Christian church, and even though extracanonical, had a direct influence, through their emphasis on an earthly Messianic kingdom centering in Jerusalem. PFF1 302.4

“In spite of the fact that, save in the Apocalypse, the NT did not speak of the Millennium, and that Christ does not connect the Parousia with the establishment of an earthly Kingdom, this belief had an extraordinary hold on the minds of Christians. Doubtless a misunderstanding of the Apocalypse gave the belief a certain authority, but it is rather from its Jewish antecedents that its popularity and the elaboration of its details are to be explained.” ⁴⁴ PFF1 303.1

For example, an extravagant description of the millennial fertility of the earth—the vine with ten thousand branches and bunches of ten thousand grapes, et cetera—is accepted by Irenaeus as from apostolic tradition,, and attributed by Papias to Christ Himself; yet it comes from a Jewish source. ⁴⁵ PFF1 303.2

3. EARLIEST PROPONENTS OF CHILIASTIC IDEAS

The author of the Epistle of Barnabas, the earliest extant ecclesiastical writer who mentions millenary periods, speaks of six ages of the world and the seventh millennium of rest at the second coming of Christ. But, significantly enough, he does not identify this seventh millennium with the thousand years of Revelation 20. ⁴⁶ Justin Martyr says that the orthodox Christians of his day believed in a resurrection of the flesh and a thousand-year kingdom in a restored Jerusalem, for which he cites Ezekiel and Isaiah, ⁴⁷ who, however, do not mention the thousand years. Others go into more or less specific detail about this kingdom age. Some, like Tertullian, emphasize the spiritual aspect, ⁴⁸ whereas others, as already mentioned, wax extravagant in their descriptions of the saints’ prosperity, fertility, and dominion over their unregenerate enemies. ⁴⁹ PFF1 303.3

4. THE INFLUENCE OF PAGAN CONCEPTS

Just as Jewish Christians inherited these traditional apocalyptic conceptions, so Gentile Christians found them the easier to accept because of their widespread former pagan beliefs in a golden age to come, marked by happiness and plenty. ⁵⁰ Even the thousand year length of the period was often based by Christians on an assumed six-thousand-year duration of the world, which not only was Jewish-apocalyptic but was traceable as well in paganism. The Etruscans in Italy ⁵¹ and Zoroastrian Persians ⁵² believed that the human race was to last six thousand years. And some scholars would find evidence of Persian influence on the Jewish apocalyptic and Talmudic writings, ⁵³ in which the six millenniums of the world, followed by an epochal change, are paralleled with the six days of creation and the Sabbath, as in the Slavonic Enoch. ⁵⁴ PFF1 304.1

From the Jews this idea passed on to the Christians, who certainly could have found no such information in the simple Bible record. This very concept of six thousand years has given rise to periodic time settings for the world’s end, that have characterized the centuries, from Hippolytus ⁵⁵ to modern times. It is well, therefore, to keep this in mind. PFF1 304.2

Thus the non-Biblical background of the ante-Nicene Christians helps to explain why they could apply Old Testament prophecies—some of which spoke clearly of Old Testament times, and some concerning the “new heavens and the new earth”—to an interim earthly state based on a passage in Revelation 20, which in itself had no such connotation. PFF1 304.3

5. INFILTRATION OF JEWISH-PAGAN CONCEPTS

Several factors may be considered in accounting for this. Let us note three of them: PFF1 304.4

(a) For one thing, the Christians circulated and highly valued many of the writings of the Jewish apocalypticists, who naturally were unwilling to admit any nonfulfillment of conditional predictions of Israel’s future glory. PFF1 305.1

(b) Further, the Old Testament Messianic prophecies—in which frustrated Jewish nationalism saw a picture of future earthly dominion and victory over their enemies—were appropriated by the persecuted Christian church into visions of her future deliverance and dominion as the true spiritual Israel; for the anti-Judaistic Gentile Christian, although absorbing the Messianic traditions, could not then allow a literal Jewish rule in the Christian Era. PFF1 305.2

(c) In addition to this, certain ideas in pagan philosophy, which assumed the inherent evil of matter, could not be reconciled with a divine new earth on a material basis; such concepts had to be spiritualized. PFF1 305.3

These ideas, when infiltrated into the church, would tend to reinforce the belief that all passages of Scripture which speak of a material existence in a future age must be placed in a future intermediate period, for the eternal state of being was conceived of as transcending any existence in matter. The influence of these Jewish and pagan conceptions could easily account for the Old Testament—Jewish apocalyptic coloring, of Christian chiliasm. PFF1 305.4

Therefore, if the Messianic prophecies must, as it seemed to the early church, be unconditionally fulfilled on earth, and had not been realized in the first advent of Christ, they must be fulfilled at some time in the future. In that case, if they could not be applied to the old Jerusalem in the present age, and if they could not be accepted as extending into the eternal existence after the general resurrection, then it would follow necessarily that their fulfillment must be expected in the thousand years between the two resurrections, in the interlude separating the gospel age from eternity. PFF1 305.5

6. MILLENNIALISM STRONG IN EARLY CHURCH

Millennialism was historically strong in the early church, at least on the point of the premillennial timing of the personal, visible coming of Christ to change the world order and set up His kingdom. Not all writers located or described the millennial kingdom exactly, and some conceived of it in more spiritual and less material terms than others. Among the premillennialists, says Schaff, are counted many “who simply believe in a golden age of Christianity which is yet to come.” ⁵⁶ Doubtless many did not share the extreme materialistic concepts, and unquestionably some of the fantastic imagery used was not meant so literally as it was taken by opponents. PFF1 306.1

7. BATTLE LEADS EAST TO REJECT APOCALYPSE

The Gnostics, of course, opposed chiliasm as too materialistic. The Montanists, who propagated their special kind of chiliasm—built on supposedly divine revelations of the imminence of the end of the age—with the millennial kingdom to be established at their center in Phrygia, brought millenarianism into disrepute through their fanaticism. ⁵⁷ Origen attacked it because of his allegorizing and spiritualizing interpretation of Scripture, pursuant to his pronounced Greek philosophical ideas. In the East, chiliasm died out in proportion as Greek philosophical concepts seeped into the church. ⁵⁸ There the fight against it resulted in the temporary rejection of the Apocalypse from the canon of Scripture; but the West never gave up the Apocalypse, and retained chiliasm until the fifth century. PFF1 306.2

8. THE ECLIPSE OF PREMILLENNIALISM

Looking back, we can now see that if the chiliasts had taken their stand on the foundation of Revelation 20 alone, for the doctrine of the millennium, and had not added the Jewish apocalyptic conceptions of the earthly monarchy, with ruling saints slaughtering or enslaving their unregenerate foes and feasting on incredible bounties, and if they had not placed the emphasis on the material prosperity and the fantastic elements—even allowing for a due proportion of Oriental metaphor in some of the extravagant statements—millenarianism would not have aroused such opposition. The church at large never turned away from belief in the second coming of Christ in glory, to punish evil and reward the saints, although in making chiliasm a heresy it probably tended to thrust the whole subject of the second advent into the background of obscurity and doubt. This will become clearer as we proceed. PFF1 306.3

We can consequently see at least some reason for Jerome’s deprecation of the “Jewish dream” of the millennial kingdom, ⁵⁹ even while we discount his possible exaggeration. We can likewise see why Augustine reversed his earlier acceptance of the doctrine, even though we regret his leading the church, through an alternative millennium, into exchanging a future dominion of the saints in the Holy City for the present dominion of the saints in the church. ⁶⁰ PFF1 307.1

This abandonment of millenarianism was made possible because of the changed status of the church in the world in the fourth century. ⁶¹ After Constantine had suddenly lifted Christianity out of persecution into popularity, and not only the wealth but the multitudes of the Gentiles had begun to flow into it, the church came to think less of the personal coming of Christ and more of its own increasing influence in this present world. This trend continued and increased over a period of centuries. PFF1 307.2

“The Christian life of the Nicene and post-Nicene age reveals a mass of worldliness within the church; an entire abatemerit of chiliasm with its longing after the return of Christ and his glorious reign, and in its stead an easy repose in the present order of things.” ⁶² PFF1 307.3

By Augustine’s time the West, while retaining the Apocalypse, abandoned premillennialism, transforming the thousand years into the indefinite period of the Christian Era, and the first resurrection into the new birth of the soul, and the reign of Christ into the reign of the church—a concept in which lay the germ of the whole religio-political system of the Middle Ages, which will be discussed in due time. But for the present we must turn to Origen to trace the beginnings of the church’s change in attitude. PFF1 307.4