As the year 2000 CE approached, many fundamentalist-evangelicals were confident that the second coming of Christ was near based on Bible prophecy. Thirteen years on from the annus memorabilias the world keeps spinning along, and Jesus Christ has neither split the sky nor raptured the faithful. In light of the troubling intrusion of end-times theology into American politics, some might have hoped such enthusiasm would have waned as the new century wore on. Yet a 2013 poll suggests otherwise. Conducted by Barna Group-OmniPoll, the survey revealed that a startling 41% of all U.S. adults believe we are now living in the biblical end times. 77% of evangelicals Christians, 54% of all Protestants, and a surprising 45% of practicing Catholics hold to the view according to the poll. As we shall see presently, the idea that the Bible contains a kind of blueprint for predicting the end of the world based on political developments appeared first in the nineteenth century, but in the United States remained largely confined to the ranks of Christian fundamentalists until the latter half of the twentieth century. From roughly that period onward prophetic teaching based on ‘dispensational premillennialism’ spread within the wider evangelical community and eventually became its dominant eschatology.
The penetration of end-times theology into the American mainstream is often traced to Hal Lindsey’s 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth. In it Lindsey cleverly (and quite pretentiously) located the fulfillment of Bible prophecies in the geopolitics of history–and in the events his own time–in order to predict that the end was near. The success of his work spawned a thousand imitators, creating an end-times cottage industry replete with books, films, and weekend seminars. More recently, dispensationalism made its greatest inroad into mainstream culture through the popularity of the Left Behind series. For many Americans it is quite possibly the only interpretation of biblical millennialism they have encountered. Yet, as this study seeks to demonstrate, from the long view of history Christians have been all over the biblical map with respect to interpreting the holy book’s allusions to the end of the world. Moreover, those interpretations have often been influenced more by cultural and political factors than by any principles of biblical hermeneutics. Thus, we should approach this study with our minds open to possibilities other than the one that is currently fashionable. We may also rightly ask if any consensus for the doctrine of last things can be found or if it is even reasonable to seek one?
Introduction to Millennial Terminology
Before embarking on our survey it will be useful to clarify some terminology. Since the first century CE there have been three dominant strains of millennialism within Christian thought: 1) premillennialism, 2) amillennialism, and 3) postmillennialism. The English word ‘millennium’ is derived from the Latin word for ‘one thousand’ and in biblical context refers specifically to the 1,000 years during which a group of believers will reign with Christ on earth as foretold in Revelation 20: 1-7. The word is also employed more broadly to describe any transformational period of peace or progress in human society. Within Christianity this applies to certain adherents of postmillennialism (discussed more fully below) or the belief that Christ will return only after the millennium of Revelation.
In contrast to postmillennialists, premillennialists believe Christ’s literal second coming will precede the millennium, while amillennialists generally regard the millennium as a figurative idea and tend to associate it with the present age of the church. In the Bible the word ‘apocalypse’ is taken from the Greek word for ‘revelation’ or ‘unveiling’ and generally refers to a catastrophic consummation of the ages brought about by God. It is usually characterised by a sense of impending crisis and belief in two distinct ages. ‘Apocalyptic’ describes a genre of literature, both canonical and noncanonical, found in Judaism and early Christianity, and includes the Book of Revelation. In most apocalyptic literature a cataclysm of some sort foreshadows the coming of a golden age or millennium. Taken together, the two events highlight the pessimistic and optimistic strands in Christian expectations of last things.
Premillennial Continuity
If the doctrine of end-times is a difficult one to nail down, it is possible to argue for the credibility of certain positions based on their continuity in history. Premillennialism, for example, has appeared with some frequency in Christian history. It was popular during the patristic era from the first through the fifth centuries. The development of the doctrine during this period is also known as historic premillennialism to distinguish it from dispensational premillennialism, which we will come to presently. Papias, a bishop in Asia Minor (d.130 CE), is thought to be the first post-New Testament writer to address millennialism. By using Old Testament texts like Isaiah 65 in conjunction with Revelation 20 he taught that ‘there will be a certain period of a thousand years after the resurrection from the dead when the kingdom of Christ must be set up in a material order on this earth’.[1] From the noncanonical Epistle of Barnabas (early second century) came the ‘year-day tradition’, a conflation of the six-day creation in Genesis and 2 Peter 3:8, ‘With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day’. Thus in six thousand years all of history would be completed, followed by the millennium. Other patristic-era leaders such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Commodianus and Lactantius advocated a similar form of premillennialism. Patristic premillennialism reached its apex under Irenaeus (d. 200), Bishop of Lyons. His Against Heresies described a three-and-a-half year rule of Antichrist interrupted by the second coming followed by the millennium. Premillennialism thus maintained a fairly consistent hold on western theology during the patristic era until being displaced by Augustinian amillennialism in the fifth century.
Premillennialism resurfaced during the seventeenth century when the German Calvinist scholar Johann Heinrich Alsted (d.1638) defended the doctrine in The Beloved City (1627). Joseph Mede (d. 1638) popularised Alsted’s ideas in England and placed a future millennium squarely within his own prophetic scheme. Mede inspired Isaac Newton and Cotton Mather along with radical groups of the English Revolution like the Fifth Monarchy Men. Premillennialism was challenged by postmillennialism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but reemerged in Great Britain as a vibrant movement in the 1820s and grew steadily in popularity. For example, by 1855 more than half of all evangelical clergy in Britain were thought to be premillennialists and by 1901 it was assumed that nearly all adhered to the belief.[2] The British renewal in prophecy was initially sparked by anxiety over the French Revolution, but was also symptomatic of the influence of romanticism on evangelicalism. Instrumental in the early spread of premillennialism were Edward Irving, Henry Drummond and his Albury prophetic conferences (1826-1830) and the teaching of James Hatley Frere.
Millennialists of this period unified around interest in prophetic scriptures, the salvation of the Jews and the physical return of Christ prior to the millennium. The dominant figure to emerge out of the period was John Nelson Darby, whose ‘futurist’ or dispensational premillennialism made headway in Britain, but became the dominant position among American evangelicals, primarily through the influence of C.I. Schofield’s 1909 Schofield Reference Bible. Since the time of Darby, dispensationalists have rallied around a basic set of beliefs: The second coming prior to a literal millennium; a continued prophetic role for the Jews and, since the 1940s, the modern state of Israel; a literal antichrist, pre-tribulation rapture and seven-year tribulation period; the Battle of Armageddon, final judgment and a new heaven and earth. Also instrumental in the early rise of dispensationalism in America were D. L. Moody, A. T. Pierson, William Blackstone and James Brookes, leader of the Niagara Bible Conferences. Dispensationalism was far more dominant in America than in Great Britain in the latter half of the twentieth century. The most influential advocates of that period were Billy Graham and prophecy authors Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye, whose hugely popular Left Behind series advocates the essentials of dispensationalism and has further cemented its place as the doctrine of choice for many contemporary evangelicals. Other notable modern exponents of dispensationalism include Charles Ryrie, Lewis Sperry Chafer, John F. Walvoord, Arno C. Gaebelein, J. Dwight Pentecost and Norman L. Geisler. Consistent adherence to dispensational premillennialism among evangelicals led to its dominance by the end of the twentieth century.
Along with dispensationalism, ‘historic’ premillennialism has also been popular among evangelicals since the nineteenth century and has maintained a fairly consistent visibility. While differing from dispensationalism on the rapture of the church, the tribulation, and the prophetic role of Israel, modern-day historicists fall within the premillennial tradition of a literal millennium thought to commence with the second coming of Christ. Notable modern exponents of the historic position have included W. J. Eerdman, J. Barton Payne, R. A. Torrey, Millard Erickson, Clarence Bass and George Eldon Ladd. Thus, premillennialism has been a popular position for Anglo-American evangelicals since the early nineteenth century, although there has not been uniformity among scholars.
Amillennial Continuity
Amillennialism presents another example of continuity in Christian millennial expectations. Adherents to this position have argued for a figurative interpretation of Revelation 20. This approach first appeared with Origen (d. 254), leader of the Alexandrian School, which was dominated by the Neo-Platonist tradition and was thus inherently anti-materialistic. Origen therefore rejected the notion of a future, earthly millennium. Revelation 20 was instead describing a spiritual reality in the soul, while the antichrist symbolised evil in the present world. An allegorical approach was also taught by the North African Donatist thinker Tyconius (d. 390). In his Book of Rules, the earliest manual for biblical hermeneutics, he interpreted Revelation as a picture of church history rather than future prophecy; the millennium represented the period between Christ’s first and second advents.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (d. 431) adopted the view of Tyconius and incorporated his eschatology into Book 20 of his masterpiece The City of God (c. 426). In it he interpreted the first resurrection of Revelation 20 to mean a personal spiritual experience of passing from death to life. The thousand-year period is figurative of the period ‘from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world, when he shall come the second time’.[3] Two other events are conspicuous in the establishment of amillennialism. First was the Roman emperor Constantine’s official endorsement of Christianity in the fourth century, which brought respectability to the church and quelled the apocalyptic fervour of the previous generation. Amillennialism was more suited to the church’s new-found status of acceptance within the empire. Secondly, when the Council of Ephesus (431) condemned millennialism as a superstition, amillennialism became the official position of the church for the next twelve centuries. These developments, along with the long shadow cast by Augustinian theology (and reinforced by Thomas Aquinas), made amillennialism the consistently held position of Roman Catholicism throughout the Middle Ages and beyond.
Despite their break with Rome, most Reformation leaders continued the amillennial tradition. Luther, Zwingli and Calvin each rejected millennialism and Protestant orthodoxy continued the aversion. All the confessional statements of the major Reformed traditions rejected an intervening millennial period before the second coming, including the Augsburg Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Westminster Confession and the Thirty-Nine Articles. In modern times notable exponents of amillennialism have included G. C. Berkouwer, Stanley Grenz, Anthony Hoekema, Louis Berkoff, Abraham Kuyper and Karl Barth. Thus a figurative interpretation of Revelation 20 has been consistently visible in Christianity since the Patristic era and continues to the present in the major Protestant traditions.
Postmillennial Continuity
Christian history offers another example of continuity in millennial expectation known as postmillennialism. For postmillennialists, the second coming of Christ follows a literal millennium, with expectations of a realised kingdom of God within the present age. A cataclysmic end to history is therefore postponed until after the millennium, which may or may not be a literal thousand-year period. This view enjoyed widespread acceptance within Anglo-American Protestantism from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. It marks the adaptation of end-time beliefs to the wider cultural influence of the Enlightenment, especially its themes of progress and perfectibility. Traces of postmillennialism appeared earlier, however, with the English Puritan Thomas Brightman (d. 1607), who introduced the idea of a ‘latter-day glory’ which, he believed, was prophesied in Revelation chapters 20 to 22. Brightman heralded a progressive growth of the ‘true gospel’, which he believed had commenced with the fourteenth-century reformer John Wycliffe and would consummate in the latter glory.
The conversion of the Jews (a staple of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century millennialism) would occur followed by the latter-day glory and finally the second coming. Postmillennialism’s official founding, however, is often credited to the English divine Daniel Whitby (d. 1725). In his 1703 work, Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament, he posited the world’s conversion to Christ, the restoration of Jews to the Holy Land, and the defeat of the antichrist figure of the pope followed by a thousand-year golden age of righteousness and peace, all prior to the second coming. This view became popular among eighteenth-century New England Puritans, largely through the influence of Jonathan Edwards. His postmillennialism paralleled Whitby’s, but in the context of the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s took on uniquely American dimensions.
For Edwards, the Great Awakening revival became evidence that the latter-day glory could be attained on earth through the proclamation of the gospel. Drawing on Cotton Mather’s American exceptionalism, Edwards speculated in 1742 that the millennium would likely begin in America, albeit well into the future. The sentiment was widely shared. In 1743 almost seventy New England ministers signed The Testimony and Advice of an Assembly of Pastors which supported the revivals, declaring that the effusions of the Spirit confirmed the expectations ‘of such as are waiting for the Kingdom of God, and the coming on of the . . . latter Days’.[4] Protestants thus came to view the nearness of the millennium as motivation for revivals, missions and voluntary societies. William Cogswell of the American Education Society echoed this sentiment in 1833:
Soon the whole earth will chant the praises of the Redeemer, and the song of salvation will echoe from shore to shore. But in order to [do] this, there must be more fervent prayer, more abundant labors, more enlarged charities. In this conquest of the world to Christ, the church must become a well-disciplined army.[5]
This optimistic outlook became the hallmark of postmillennialism and mirrored Enlightenment ideas of secular progress. Postmillennialism reached its heyday in the middle to late nineteenth century. Notable Americans exponents of that period included Lyman Beecher, A. H. Strong, Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, Jonathan Blanchard, Samuel Harris, Charles Finney, Washington Gladden and Josiah Strong. Notable British advocates included Patrick Fairbairn, Thomas Chalmers, Andrew Fuller, Joseph Sturge and Robert Rainy. Postmillennialism was thus a widely held view in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
By the early twentieth century, postmillennialism had become a minority view but resurfaced and maintained a presence throughout the latter half of the century and into the twenty-first century. One popular strand was restorationism, visible in America, but most prominent in Britain through the House Church movement of the 1970s. A second strand was found in reconstructionism or dominionism, a convenant-based Reformed theology that hearkened back to the Puritan age. More popular in the U.S., it has come to be associated with the Christian Right movement, which began in the 1970s under the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Its seminal thinkers include Rousas Rushdoony and Gary North. Reconstructionism mandates strict application of moral biblical law including the death penalty for offences cited under Mosaic Law. This model also drew upon the old Puritan ideal of the holy commonwealth. In the twenty-first century it has seen a resurgence through the New Covenant Movement. A third strand of modern postmillennialism was found in the ‘Kingdom Theology’ movement and was epitomised by the late John Wimber in the U.S. His evangelical approach harkened back to Jonathan Edwards, but placed greater emphasis on healing miracles and other ‘signs and wonders’. Postmillennialism has retained a presence within evangelicalism.
Popular Millennial Continuity
A final area to explore for continuity in millennial expectations found in a fourth version that may be described as ‘popular millennialism’. Since the theological categories of premillennialism, postmillennialism and amillennialism were popularised in the nineteenth century, it can be difficult to impose these terms rigidly on all expressions of millennialism at all times. Another approach, however, enlists the aid of sociology and addresses the topic of Christian millennialism as only one part of a much broader social phenomenon. From this perspective it is possible to discern a form of millennialism that had populist appeal, especially among persecuted sects and other groups on the fringes of church and society Popular millennialism was often countercultural and heavily influenced by apocalyptic writings. This was certainly true in biblical writings such as the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, which many scholars date from periods when the Jews faced extinction. The book of Revelation also sprang from a period of persecution of Christians by the Romans.
The following is a sample, by no means comprehensive, of popular, revolutionary and fringe millennialists: the immediate, first-century Christian readers of John’s Apocalypse; the Montanists of the second century; Joachimists like the Spiritual Franciscans in the Middle Ages; Hussites and Taborites in the pre-Reformation era; Anabaptists like Melchoir Hoffman and Thomas Muntzer in the Reformation period; Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, Muggletonians and Fifth-Monarchy Men during the English Puritan Revolution of the seventeenth century; eighteenth-century communal groups like French Saint-Simonians; nineteenth-century American utopian sects like the Oneida commune, Shakers, Mormons and the new Adventist denominations, Seventh-Day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses; nineteenth-century British sects like the French Prophets and followers of Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott; twentieth-century apocalyptic cult leaders Jim Jones and David Koresh along with the Christian Identity movement.
Norman Cohn’s classic The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957) established that millennialism remained constant throughout the Middle Ages in the obscure underworld of popular religion. Sects of this type, Cohn asserted, came in a wide variety ranging from violent aggressiveness to mild pacifism and from the most ethereal spirituality to the most earthbound materialism. They further varied in social composition and function. For Cohn, the groups within this more liberal definition of the term coalesce around a type of ‘salvationism’ characterised by five essential qualities: collective, terrestrial as opposed to other-worldly, imminent, totally transformative to life on earth and miraculous. Cohn employs these categories but focuses his study mainly on revolutionary movements among the poor during the Middle Ages which, he asserts, occurred in Europe with increasing frequency from the eleventh century onwards. According to Cohn, these sects were generally led by a messiah figure and drew inspiration from an amalgam of prophetic passages from Christian Sybilline eschatology (like the popular fourth-century Tiburtina), the book of Revelation and, beginning in the thirteenth century, pseudo-Joachimite eschatology based on the writings of Joachim of Fiore (d. 1202).
Joachim’s ‘third age of the Spirit’ was reinterpreted by various sects beginning with the Spiritual Franciscans who viewed their order in prophetic context. The pseudo-Joachimite Commentary on Jeremiah (c.1240s) had profound influence in the Holy Roman Empire where a belief arose that Frederick II was fulfilling prophecy as the Emperor of the Last Days and would liberate the Holy Land to prepare the way for the second coming and the millennium. These sects flourished under urban conditions of increased population, weakened social bonds and widening gaps between rich and poor. Cohn finds examples throughout the Crusades (Peter the Hermit and the ‘People’s Crusade’ of the First Crusade) and the Flagellant movement inspired by the bubonic plague of the fourteenth century. Popular millennialism retained a presence throughout the Middle Ages, albeit an inconsistent one.
J. F. C. Harrison took a similar sociological approach in The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780 – 1850. In a somewhat confusing use of terminology, his study focuses on popular (or folk) ‘millenarianism’ not, he stressed, on sophisticated (or scholarly) ‘millennialism’. Harrison’s distinctive approach lies in examining worldviews rather than doctrine alone. The ‘black and white’ simplistic worldview of Harrison’s popular millenarians is an ideology of social change that became popular during the French Revolution in the 1790s. He likens this to the millennial movements of the English Revolution such as the Muggletonians. Popular British millenarians highlighted by Harrison includes prophetic figures like Richard Brothers, Joanna Southcott, John Wroe, Zion Ward and Anglo-American utopian groups like the Shakers and Mormons. Harrison places these within the populist, anti-intellectual stream of millennialism, demonstrating evidence for a continuous presence of popular millennialism.
Premillennial Inconsistencies
If examples of continuity in millennial expectations are visible in Christian history, they must be balanced against numerous inconsistencies. Despite the dominant place of premillennialism among modern-day evangelicals, there has not been consistent agreement about its proper interpretation. In the 1950s challenges to dispensationalism began to emerge from within evangelicalism by scholars who believed it was contrary to correct biblical teaching and the historic premillennial position of the church. The central point of contention revolved around the radical dichotomy dispensationalism had created between Israel and the church regarding prophecy. Leaders of this historic school, such as Clarence Bass, insisted that the church is the spiritual Israel and all covenant promises made to Abraham are fulfilled in it. Consequently, God does not have a separate prophetic track for Israel, and the millennium is therefore a golden age intended for the church, not primarily Israel as dispensationalists hold.
The role of the Jews also led to conflicting views of the rapture and great tribulation. For dispensationalists the rapture must be pretribulational since the seven-year period is fulfilment of God’s prophetic time clock for the Jews. Historic premillennialists reject the idea of unfulfilled Jewish prophecy and adhere to a posttribulation rapture and the church’s full participation in the tribulation. Additionally, dispensationalists themselves splintered with the arrival of ‘progressive dispensationalism’ in the 1980s which challenged classical dispensationalism. Progressives modified the classical view of dispensations, reducing them from seven to four and eliminated the sharp distinction between Israel and the church. They further modified the classic view by affirming that some promises previously relegated to the millennium are currently fulfilled in the church age. The influence of progressives placed dispensationalism in a much more fluid state. These developments demonstrate the conflicting views of modern premillennialism.
Amillennial Inconsistencies
Despite the endorsement of amillennialism in both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxy, the doctrine has not always followed a consistent pattern. Christian history has witnessed two primary models of amillennialism: the ‘ecclesial’ and the ‘heavenly’. While all amillennialists agree that Revelation 20 is a symbol of the current age and not a prophecy about a literal future age, they do not agree on the exact nature of the symbolism. The older ecclesial view of Augustine understands it in terms of the spiritual reign of the victorious believer on earth. A reference to time is included since this takes place during the church age and ends with Christ’s second coming. The heavenly model is a more recent view offered by nineteenth-century German scholar Theodor Kliefoth. This more widely held view interprets the millennium in terms of the spiritual reign of the saints already in heaven.
Yet another form of amillennialism is found with the Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer who employs the phrase ‘apocalyptic comfort’ to explain the intention of the book of Revelation. For Berkouwer the millennium is a metaphor of the triumph experienced by believers in the midst of tribulation. With their diverse range of opinions amillennialists have clearly not followed a consistent millennial view.
Postmillennial Inconsistencies
Although postmillennialism maintained adherents in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, inconsistencies existed in the manner in which they defined it. In eighteenth-century America, for example, the postmillennialism that sprang from awakened piety in the 1740s had morphed, for many, into a form of civil millennialism by the 1750s. When the revival fires of the Great Awakening went out postmillennial expectations cooled, but, as Nathan Hatch has skillfully demonstrated, the successes of the French and Indian War reignited expectations that the millennium was about to dawn. The conflict easily took on apocalyptic dimensions since the French represented the antichrist of Catholic popery in the minds of American clergymen.
The Virginian Samuel Davies was representative of this view and framed the battle as ‘the commencement of this grand and decisive conflict between the Lamb and the beast’ the victorious outcome of which would usher in ‘a new heaven and a new earth’.[6] The New England clergyman Jonathan Mayhew believed a victory would trigger a larger civil and religious revolution worldwide, noting ‘all kingdoms thereof are to become the kingdoms of our Lord’.[7] When conflict with the British arose in the mid-1760s, Americans quickly (and remarkably considering their previous idealization of British liberty) transferred antichrist’s seat of power to the British Crown and Parliament. Hatch sees these developments as a grafting of Whig political values into New England’s traditional collective identity, which created a religious patriotism merged with millennial expectations. Of course postmillennialists had not abandoned the need for conversion, but the addition of civil millennialism was a long way from the apolitical millennialism of Jonathan Edwards and reveals an inconsistency in American colonial postmillennialism.
Another inconsistency is visible when comparing the postmillennialism of the eighteenth century to that of the later nineteenth. It is an oversimplification to attribute the optimism of postmillennialism solely to the influence of Enlightenment notions of progress. However true this became by the nineteenth century, it was not the primary philosophy behind the postmillennialism of New Lights in the Great Awakening generation. Here it is useful to examine the New Light Puritan ‘afflictive model of progress’ as presented by James West Davidson. The model employs an Old Testament belief that God redeems history in the same way he redeems individuals: that is, great humiliation must precede conversion. Within this framework there exist awakenings of individual salvation, greater awakenings like revivals, and the greatest of awakenings, the millennium. The ‘morphology of conversion’, as Davidson calls it, provides the model of progress followed by postmillennialists of the Great Awakening generation. Showers of grace, they believed, only come after a time of spiritual declension and deadness, just as the cross preceded the resurrection. Chastisement of the faithful is necessary therefore for history’s consummation, and tension always exists between hope and despair.
The afflictive model remained central to Jonathan Edwards’ understanding and explains why he and other New Lights expected evil and rebellion against God to continue even as the preaching of the gospel was destined to triumph throughout the world, leading ultimately to the millennium of peace. In America and Great Britain, the idea that the millennium would come through conversion, aided by scores of voluntary associations and agencies, existed as a consensus until approximately the mid-nineteenth century. This consensus began to unravel, however, in the wake of Enlightenment notions of progress and the newer anti-supernatural theory of ‘process’ or natural continuity. By the 1870s, many societies and agencies were becoming less subservient to evangelicalism and increasingly prototypical of secular social work. A similar process was at work in denominational colleges in the U.S., a process which ultimately led to postmillennialism’s embrace of the ‘cult of efficiency’, social engineering and its eventual demise. By 1914 a writer in the Methodist Review remarked: ‘Ah! the city which John saw! . . . It will take considerable engineering as well as preaching to get the world there. Hail, Engineer, co-agent of the millennium!’[8] The kingdom of God was now to be advanced by the meeting of eschatological hope with the celebration of modern technology and civil institutions. Although similar, this too was some distance from the postmillennialism of Jonathan Edwards. Thus even during its span of dominance, postmillennialist did not steadfastly adhere to a consistent eschatology.
Popular Millennial Inconsistencies
The social-scientific dimensions of Christian millennialism as outlined above are also open to charges of inconsistency. Bernard McGinn has demonstrated that apocalyptic speculation penetrated all levels of medieval society. Monastic scholars and theologians, for example, contributed to or frequently referenced the Sibylline oracles. In her landmark study of prophecy in the later Middle Ages, Marjorie Reeves notes that the dream of millennial glory under a Last World Emperor ‘was cherished not only by the crazy and fanatical, but by sober historians and politicians’.[9] In addition, the twelfth-century German abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, found wide mainstream acceptance as a writer and illustrator of apocalyptic visions. Moreover, guilds of urban elites supported miracle plays and other religious dramas that frequently featured themes of antichrist, the last judgment and other apocalyptic images. Additionally, the Crusades, hardly on the fringe of society, were fuelled by intense millennial expectation.
McGinn believes millennialism (or the often synonymous ‘millenarianism’) is inadequate as a blanket term when applied to medieval materials. He takes issue with Cohn’s use of the word when applied to medieval revolutionary groups, preferring to call them ‘apocalyptic’. Many medieval beliefs about end times do not fit Cohn’s salvationism model, according to McGinn. Moreover, the general tendency toward sociological stereotypes of millennial movements as subterranean and amorphous popular revolts fails to fit a number of patristic and medieval apocalyptic movements. Beliefs about the coming age played just as vital a role for social continuity as they did for social change. He also takes issue with sociological preoccupation with crisis situations as a catalyst for millennialism. McGinn notes, for example, that the immense crisis of the bubonic plague in the 1340s had only a minor effect on the history of apocalypticism, while, by way of contrast, the conversion of the Roman Empire, a positive event, led to a new stage in the apocalyptic traditions, that of the ‘Last World Emperor’ of the Sibyllines. As Cohn himself recounts, Christian Sibyllines of the period viewed Constantine as a messianic king, and following his death Sibyllines continued to make emperors and kings the subjects of prophecy.
While in sympathy with the understanding of apocalyptic as the literature of consolation, McGinn asserts that it is not merely stimulated by a crisis situation, but may be the result of any challenge to the established understanding of history that ‘creates the situation in which apocalyptic forms and symbols, either inherited or newly minted, may be invoked’.[10] This is because the anthropological roots of apocalypticism are rooted in the human desire for a sense of belonging in time (a grasp of history) combined with a longing to attach a special significance to the present. Thus, in McGinn’s phrase, it is the ‘meeting of this age and eternity’.[11] For his part, J. F. C. Harrison’s sociological analysis may be faulted for including the followers of Richard Brothers in the folk or populist stream of millennialism. Despite his populist appeal, Brothers also had among his ardent supporters the MP Nathaniel Brassey Halhed and he attracted several Anglican clergy and prominent businessmen. These do not fit well into Harrison’s category of unsophisticated ‘millenarians’. Moreover, the British millennialists who followed Edward Irving were also drawn from the well-to-do and the better educated. Popular millennialism, therefore, has not always followed a consistent path.
Conclusion
It is possible to conclude from this brief outline that locating consistent millennial expectations in Christian history is a daunting enterprise wherein consistency is elusive at best. Premillennialism had a consistent hold on the Patristic era, but also witnessed popular millennialism such as Montanism, the allegorical model of Origen and the sea change to amillennialism under Augustine. Its resurgence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries maintained a consistent following, but one that was generally superseded by the more widely held postmillennial position. Its return to dominance among evangelicals since the twentieth century has revealed a consistent preference for dispensationalism. This, however, has been the case more so in America than in Britain. Amillennialism held nearly uniform domination of Catholic and Protestant Orthodoxy from Augustine to Alsted, yet the Middle Ages and the Reformation era gave rise to numerous millennial groups that ranged from militant to pacifist, from spiritualistic to materialistic, from reactionary to world-affirming and from populist to elitist. Postmillennialism held sway for nearly two centuries but began with visions of a fully evangelised world and ended in a more secularised version of eschatological hope. Finally, although sociological models provide a helpful tool for analysing popular millennialism, they do little to explain why such manifestations have sometimes maintained social continuity as well as respectability and are not always stimulated by crises.
In sum, history provides no consensus with respect to who is right about millennial expectations. Christian history from the first century to the present has revealed patterns of consistency, but they have often been periodic, sporadic and highly diverse in nature. Given the subjective nature of the doctrine, if one chooses to embrace any form of millennialism it should certainly be grounded in an understanding of its complexities. Interpreting apocalyptic literature as a poetic and figurative expression of the human condition has long been a reasonable alternative for many scholars. Perhaps most importantly, we have seen that there are certainly other plausible options available than those offered by dispensational premillennialism.
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[1] As cited by Eusebius Ecclesiastical History 3.39, quoted in The Millennial Maze: Sorting Out Evangelical Options (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p. 39.
[2] David Bebbington, ‘The Advent Hope in British Evangelicalism’, Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, 9, (1988), p. 105.
[3] Augustine, The City of God, trans., Marcus Dodds, (New York: Modern Library, 1995), 20.7.
[4] Thomas Prince, Jr., ed., The Christian History Boston, 1743 – 1745), pp. 11, 95. Quoted in Nathan Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 29.
[5] William Cogswell, The Harbinger of the Millennium (Boston: Peirce and Parker, 1833), 299 – 300. Quoted in World Without End: Mainstream American Protestant Visions of the Last Things, 1880 – 1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana university Press, 1999), p. 6.
[6] Samuel Davies, ‘The Crisis: or, the Uncertain Doom of Kingdoms at Particular Times’, in his Sermons on Important Subjects (Philadelphia, 1818), 5: 239-266. Quoted in Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty, p. 41.
[7] Jonathan Mayhew, Two Discourses Delivered October 25th, 1759 . . . (Boston, 1759), p. 61. Quoted in Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty, p. 42.
[8] R. O. Everhart, ‘Engineering and the Millennium’, Methodist Review 96 (1914), p. 44. Quoted in ‘The Erosion of Postmillennialism in American Religious Thought, 1865 – 1925’, Church History, 53:1 (1984), pp. 75, 76.
[9]Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 302
[10] Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 31.
[11] McGinn, Visions of the End, p. 30.
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