Why the Early Church Finally Rejected Premillennialism

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The hermeneutical question is indeed an important one, but to put the debate in terms of literal against allegorical is overly simplistic. Both sides used literal exegesis and both used allegorical exegesis when they deemed it best. For example, despite Origen’s intentional use of the allegorical method, his essential critique of chiliasm had real theological and traditional motivations. These motivations were not his alone but belonged to large segments of the Church. The early Montanists, it turns out, were not chiliasts and were never criticized for being so.3 Tertullian, who became a Montanist, did not get his chiliasm from them, but from Irenaeus. There is no evidence that chiliasm was hurt by any association with Montanism. By the time Constantine proclaimed Christianity the state religion in the fourth century, a non-chiliastic eschatology was surely the norm in most places, and in many it had been so ever since Christianity had arrived there. Many signs thus tell us that even without the aid of Augustine, chiliasm was probably in its death-throes by the time he wrote the last books of The City of God in a.d. 420­26.

So why did the Church reject chiliasm? As with most historical questions, the answers are complex and have social as well as hermeneutical and theological aspects. It would take a long time to compare and evaluate the exegesis of individual biblical passages by a number of given authors. One common criticism, however, can serve as a convenient organizer for what are probably the most important factors in chiliasm’s demise. That common criticism, known from Origen to the Augsburg Confession and beyond, is that chiliasm is a “Jewish” error.4 This criticism is open to grave misunderstanding today if one views it as part of the Church’s shameful legacy of anti-Semitism. But this is not what lay at the base of such criticism of chiliasm as “Jewish.” Jesus was a Jew, as were all of his apostles. “Salvation is of the Jews,” Jesus said, and all the Church fathers knew and agreed with this. There is no embarrassment at all in something being “Jewish” and the ancient and honorable tradition of the Jews, in monotheism, morals, and the safeguarding of Holy Scripture, is something Christian leaders always prized.

Another modern misunderstanding of this criticism must also be avoided. Certain current forms of premillennialism, particularly dispensationalism, might seem “Jewish” to some because they promise that the kingdom of God will be restored to ethnic Jews as the just fulfillment of the Old Testament promises to Abraham and his descendants. But this was not the case with ancient Christian chiliasm. The New Testament’s revelation of the Church as the true Israel and heir of all the promises of God in Christ was too well-established and too deeply ingrained in the early Christian consciousness for such a view to have been viable. Ancient Church chiliasts like Irenaeus did indeed argue that some of God’s promises to Israel had to be fulfilled literally in a kingdom on earth, but they recognized that the humble recipients of this kingdom would be spiritual Israel, all who confessed Jesus as God’s Messiah, regardless of their national or ethnic origin.5 Ancient chiliasm was not criticized because it “favored” the Jews as having a distinct, blessed future apart from Gentile Christians.

What then did critics mean by calling chiliasm “Jewish”? Their use of the label meant “non-Christian Jewish,” or even, “anti-Christian Jewish.” These early critics believed that chiliasm represented an approach to biblical religion that was sub-Christian, essentially failing to reckon with the full redemptive implications of the coming of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah. They saw it as an under-realized, a not-fully-Christian, eschatology. We can outline at least three aspects of this criticism.

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Why the Early Church Finally Rejected Premillennialism | For the Love of His Truth