<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>[color:"blue"] DPM began in the early 19th century. [color:red]
Amillennialism as a distinctive system began in the late 19th century and was not even labelled as such until the early 20th century</font color=red>. OTOH postmillennialism has a much older history going back to Augustine, Calvin and the English Puritans.</font><hr></blockquote><p> While [color:red]
the term “A-Mil”</font color=red> may not have been in existence that long it does not mean that the doctrine was not
taught or not
true. When did the term “computer” come into existence (did Augustine use one or name it?)—yet you use one don’t you? Your argument from [color:red]
silence of a term</font color=red> in ancient history is indefensible, but expected. Not only that, but it is untrue as well:<br><br>Westminster Theological Journal. electronic edition. Philadelphia: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1998,<br><br><blockquote>[color:red] Amillennialism as the most consistent expression of Reformed covenantal theology maintains that the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises awaits the consummation , the present age of the Spirit being semi-eschatological. </blockquote> </font color=red> Dr. Walvoord, a
DPM admits that,<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue] Reformed eschatology has been predominantly A-Mil. [color:red]
Most if not all of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation were A-Mil in their eschatology, following the teachings of Augustine</font color=red> (Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan-Mar, 1951). </blockquote></font color=blue> And I am sure you will have an explanation of one called
Hippolytus, who according to you, was arguing against something that did not even exist in 3rd century,<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]The intense interest of Hippolytus in eschatology is not coincidental; nor is it simply a function of his larger exegetical interests, which placed him (together with Origen) in the first rank of the biblical scholars of the third century. ….
[color:red]Only in his Chapters Against Gaius does he present a forthright attack on amillennialism, ..... </font color=red> <br><br>Thus the chiliasm of Hippolytus is affirmed by H. Bietenhard (“The Millennial Hope in the Early Church,” SJT 6 [1953] 19–20); L. Gry ( Le millénarisme dans ses origines et son développement [Paris: Alphonse Picard et fils, 1904] 94–95; and Neumann ( Staat und Welt , 70, 76), but denied by d’Alès ( La Théologie , 198-99) and L. Atzberger ( Geschichte der christlichen Eschatologie [Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1896] 278–80). </blockquote></font color=blue> Or, how could these be arguing against or for something that did not exist before the 19th-20th Centuries?<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue] Pelikan, Tradition, pp. 128-129, A shift away from premillennialism was clearly under way. It had no place in the theology of the Alexandrian school. [color:red]
Origen</font color=red> in particular denied a future millennium by his allegorization of OT passages…. [color:red]
Eusebius of Caesarea</font color=red> rejected Papias’ millenarianism as “bizarre” and “rather mythological.” [color:red]
After the time of Constantine it becomes clear that the doctrine was waning, and through the influence of Tyconius and Augustine it was pushed completely into the background and replaced by another scheme of eschatology, which, since the fifth century, has been regarded more or less as the orthodox teaching. This view is generally known as amillennialism.</font color=red> <br><br>Augustine gave up the view that the one thousand years of Revelation 20 were to be understood literally as referring to a future reign of Christ on the earth between the two resurrections. The one thousand years referred to the history of the Church, representing the perfect period of time appointed by God for the Church’s sojourn in the world. Then would come the last .judgment. The Church was identified as the kingdom of God. The first resurrection ( Rev 20: 1–6 ) was thought to be the regeneration of the soul. For hundreds of years following Augustine, all forms of millenarianism were regarded as heretical aberrations. <br><br>This adherence to the Augustinian concept of the millennium carried over into Protestantism. Calvin and Luther denied the possibility of a future, literal one-thousand-year reign of Christ, as did Lutheran and Reformed confessions. Though militant radicals such as Thomas Müntzer preached a type of literal millennium, it was not until the seventeenth century that deviations from Augustinian amillennialism became respectable.<br><br>In seventeenth-century England a new, optimistic variety of eschatology developed, the Puritan doctrine of the latter-day glory. Its earliest proponents were Thomas Brightman, William Gouge, John Cotton and John Owen. They often disagreed as to the details, but there were many characteristic points held in common. They dropped the Augustinian equation of the millennium with the whole age of the Church. They held an optimistic view of the last period of world history. It would be marked by the coming of the kingdom of God by the power.<br><br>The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. electronic edition. Garland, TX: Galaxie Software, 1998.</blockquote></font color=blue> Most ascribe the doctrine of a-millennialism to Augustine (AD 400). This term was unknown to Augustine, however he is usually credited with crystallizing amillennial teachings. Augustine in effect sounded the death knell to chiliasm. He set forth in clear terms that the Church was the spiritual kingdom of God upon the earth, and that the Church was presently in the millennium,<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, stands preeminent among theologians of all time. His influence upon all Christian faiths has been significant. His emphasis on a personal experience of the grace of God as necessary to salvation has caused Protestants to accept him as a forerunner of the Reformation. His emphasis on the church, her creed, and sacraments has appealed to Roman Catholics. [color:red]
His teaching that the Millennium was the period between Christ’s first and second comings, during which time the church would conquer the world, has contributed greatly to amillennial and postmillennial theologies of past and present.</font color=red> Augustine’s teaching that man is in all his parts perverted by sin profoundly influenced Calvinistic theology. <br><br>Vos, Howard Frederic, and Thomas Nelson Publishers. Exploring Church History. Originally Published in 1994 Under Title: Introduction to Church History; and in Series: Nelson's Quick Reference. Nelson's Christian cornerstone series. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1996. </blockquote></font color=blue> Even another source (Anti-A-Mil) agrees with the history of the A-Mil view tracing back to Augustine,<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]Two points should be noted about this theological anti-Semitism ...... [color:red]
Second this replacement theology can be traced to Augustine and some other early church fathers, whose theological system had no place for the Jews. Today their system is known as covenant theology and is sometimes referred to as amillennialism.</font color=red><br><br>Israel My Glory : Volume 51 Issue 2. Bellmawr, NJ: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc., 1999.</blockquote></font color=blue> And again, <br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]The following concepts develop between 313 and 590 A.D: purgatory ....... [color:red]
Augustine popularizes the amillennial view of eschatology, which strips Israel of future blessing. </font color=red><br><br>Israel My Glory : Volume 57 Issue 6. Bellmawr, NJ: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, Inc., 1999.</blockquote></font color=blue> Victorinus was an ecclesiastical writer who flourished about 270 [[color:red]
so old to be so young</font color=red> [img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/grin.gif" alt="grin" title="grin[/img]], and who suffered martyrdom probably in 303, under Diocletian. He was bishop of the City of Pettau (Petabium, Poetovio), on the Drave, in Styria (Austria) in his Commentary On The Apocalypse Of The Blessed John, the Twentieth Chapter,<br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]Those years wherein Satan is bound are in the first advent of Christ, even to the end of the age; and they are called a thousand, according to that mode of speaking, wherein a part is signified by the whole, just as is that passage, "the word which He commanded for a thousand generations," although they are not a thousand. Moreover that he says, "and he cast him into the abyss," he says this, because the devil, excluded from the hearts of believers, began to take possession of the wicked, in whose hearts, blinded day by day, he is shut up as if in a profound abyss. And he shut him up, says he, and put a seal upon him, that he should not deceive the nations until the thousand years should be finished. "He shut the door upon him," it is said, that is, he forbade and restrained his seducing those who belong to Christ. Moreover, he put a seal upon him, because it is hidden who belong to the side of the devil, and who to that of Christ. For we know not of those who seem to stand whether they shall not fall, and of those who are down it is uncertain whether they may rise. Moreover, that he says that he is bound and shut up, that he may not seduce the nations, the nations signify the Church, seeing that of them it itself is formed, and which being seduced, he previously held until, he says, the thousand years should be completed, that is, what is left of the sixth day, to wit, of the sixth age, which subsists for a thousand years; after this he must be loosed for a little season. The little season signifies three years and six months, in which with all his power the devil will avenge himself trader Anti-christ against the Church. Finally, he says, after that the devil shall be loosed, and will seduce the nations in the whole world, and will entice war against the Church, the number of whose foes shall be as the sand of the sea.</blockquote></font color=blue> The following quote by the early church historian Eusebius from his classic work
The History of the Church clearly demonstrates the amillennial, consummationist outlook held by the early church. Speaking of the grandsons of Jude, he writes, <br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]"the grandsons of Jude.... When asked [by the Emperor Domitian] about Christ and his kingdom--what it was like, and where it would appear--they explained that it was not of this world or anywhere on earth but angelic and in heaven, and would be established at the end of the world, when he would come in glory to judge the quick and the dead ...." [The History of the Church by Eusebius] from Charles Ludwig, Ludwig’s Handbook of New Testament Rulers and Cities.<br><br>Quoted in the article "The Return of Nero" by Gary Stearman, Prophecy in the News, Vol. 16, No. 5, May 1996, p. 6.</blockquote></font color=blue> Two of the preeminent creeds of the early church that contain verses that clearly lean towards an amillennial belief are the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Apostles’ Creed contains the words, <br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]"He [Christ] shall come again to judge the quick and the dead," implying that both judgement and the resurrection will take place at His coming. The Nicene Creed states that Christ "shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end." Note that Christ’s kingdom is viewed here as eternal, not as a temporal reign of 1000 years.</blockquote></font color=blue> By far the early church statement of faith that most vividly presents the early church’s belief in an amillennial, "consummationist" eschatology is The Athanasian Creed. Attributed to Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria and the champion of the Council of Nicaea, around 325 A.D., the creed ends with these words, <br><br><blockquote>[color:blue]"He shall come again to judge the living and the dead. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life eternal, and they who indeed have done evil into eternal fire. This is the catholic faith, which except a man have believed faithfully and firmly he cannot be in a state of salvation." </blockquote></font color=blue>Let us analyze these closing verses more carefully to see how they align with the belief system we know today as amillennialism, and how they oppose any belief in an earthly 1000 year reign of Christ.<br><br> <ul>[color:red]
He shall come again to judge the living and the dead.</font color=red> This simply means that there will be those who are alive as well as those who are dead when He comes (1 Thess. 4:15). Notice that judgement of the living and the dead occurs at His coming (cf. Matt. 25:31-46), not a thousand years after His coming. <br><br>[color:red]
At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies ....</font color=red> Thus, at Christ’s coming all rise, the good and the evil alike (cf. John 5:28,29, Matt. 12:41,42). Not just the good, and then a thousand years later the wicked. <br><br>[color:red]
...and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life eternal, and they who indeed have done evil into eternal fire.</font color=red> This is a clear reference to Matt. 25:31-46. Athanasius views this as taking place after the resurrection (or translation), making it a post-resurrection judgement. This is in sharp contrast to the dispensational view that Matthew 25:31-46 is only a judgement of "living, mortal Gentiles" who survived the tribulation. Note again that it (i.e. Matt. 25:31-46) is viewed as a judgement of all men, the Jew and the Gentile, the wicked as well as the good. [/LIST] There are many more historical comments and connections in the ECF as well. You need to restudy your Church History.[img]http://www.the-highway.com/w3timages/icons/igiveup.gif" alt="igiveup" title="igiveup[/img]
