The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Attacks on the Advent Hope and on Prophecy

We have now come to a turning point in the history of the rapidly expanding church. Arriving at that determinative fork in the road, she began to veer radically from her original position on the prophecies concerning the second advent. The three most definite steps in progressive digression were taken during the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, and center on the names of Origen, Eusebius, and Augustine, as will be seen. PFF1 309.1

This is not to say that the decline of the church from apostolic standards in many other respects—such as in doctrine, polity, and worship—began with Origen and reached full development with Augustine; or that the whole apostasy is included in, and attributable to, the abandonment of the earliest views on the prophecies. There was play and interplay of various forces in the church both before and after the major changes in the prophetic point of view. We have found Paul calling attention to the early signs of apostasy, even in his day, and we have noted the infiltration of unscriptural elements so early that Tertullian justified them on the basis of tradition. On the other hand, it will become clear in the discussion of the Council of Nicaea that new departures in the union of the church with the world can be contemporary with a conservative doctrine of the second advent: ¹ PFF1 309.2

Prophetic interpretation was not the only factor, but it was a major factor, in a complex development. However it has often been underestimated as a force which influenced and accelerated apostasy, and which was sometimes used to justify it. Shifts in direction were not sudden or complete, for historical processes do not work that way, but we can chart the changing course of the ancient church by conspicuous landmarks along the way. And Origen looms up as the first of three from which she took false bearings. PFF1 310.1