Tim asks (March 2, 2006)
I've been told that Covenant Amillennialism is "a radical departure" from the views of the early church. Is this true?
Jon Welborn asks (July 23, 2006)
I would like to mirror the question of Tim on March 2, 2006. It seems that our premillenial friends are quick to retort that all ancient church fathers were chilial. While recognizing that this is not entirely true as we see the likes of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus readily acknowledging opposing millennial views from orthodox Christians in the early church, what would bo your response to the statement that "From a theological perspective -- specifically an eschatological one -- the Edict of Milan also signaled a monumental paradigm shift -- from the well-grounded premillennialism of the ancient church fathers to the amillennialism or postmillennialism that would dominate eschatological thinking from the fourth century AD to at least the middle part of the nineteenth century...the groundwork for this shift was laid long before Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in AD 313. In the two centuries that led up to the edict, two crucial interpretive errors found their way into the church that made conditions ripe for the paradigm shift incident to the Edict of Milan. The second century fathers failed to keep clear the biblical distinction between Israel and the church. Then, the third century fathers abandoned a more-or-less literal method of interpreting the Bible in favor of Origen's allegorical-spiritualized hermeneutic. Once the distinction between Israel and the church became blurred, once a literal hermeneutic was lost, with these foundations removed, the societal changes occasioned by the Edict of Milan caused fourth century fathers to reject premillennialism in favor of Augustinian amillennialism.?"
Kim Riddlebarger’s Answer:
Tim and Jon, this is a common argument and widely accepted, since a number of the Church Fathers (i.e. Irenaeus) were premillennial (chiliasts).
I would recommend that you track down the book by Charles E. Hill, Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). Dr. Hill was a classmate of mine at Westminster Seminary California and is now associate professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando.
Hill makes the case that while there were a number of premillennarians among the Church Fathers, there was also a group (Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Melito, Hippolytus, and Clement), who believed that the first resurrection came at the time of conversion (or death). This means that a chiliast tradition existed alongside a non-chiliast tradition. In other words, then, as now, there were both premillennarians and amillennarians, side by side, in the church.
I find Dr. Hill’s case both clear and compelling.
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