Amillennialism gained ground after Christianity became a legal religion. It was systematized by
St. Augustine in the 4th century, and this systematization carried amillennialism over as the dominant eschatology of the Medieval and Reformation periods. Augustine was originally a premillennialist, but he retracted that view, claiming the doctrine was carnal.
[18]
Amillennialism was the dominant view of the
Protestant Reformers. The
Lutheran Church formally rejected
chiliasm in
The Augsburg Confession—"Art. XVII., condemns the
Anabaptists (of Munster—
historically most Anabaptist groups were amillennial) and others ’who now scatter
Jewish opinions that, before the
resurrection of the dead, the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world, the wicked being everywhere suppressed.'"
[19] Likewise, the
Swiss Reformer,
Heinrich Bullinger wrote up the
Second Helvetic Confession which reads "We also reject the
Jewish dream of a millennium, or golden age on earth, before the
last judgment."
[20] John Calvin wrote in
Institutes that chiliasm is a "fiction" that is "too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation." He interpreted the thousand-year period of Revelation 20 non-literally, applying it to the "various disturbances that awaited the church, while still toiling on earth."
[21]
