Soul Sleep and Premillennialism

So I recently learned of the existence of a book called Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity by Charles E. Hill.  The main thesis of the book is that in the early centuries of the Church there tended to be a correlation between believing that believers are also in Hades between death and Resurrection (which Soul Sleep is a form of, Hades simply means The Grave not the modern understanding of "Hell") and Premillennialism (or Chillialism).

Now the thing is the author intends this to discredit Premilennialism, because yeah the popular Prmeillenialism of modern Evangelicalism tends to be taught by theologically uniformed Christians who absolutely do not want to be associated with something like Soul Sleep.  But for me it has the exact opposite effect, my openness to Post-Millennialism/Partrial Preterism was increased recently as I recorded on this blog in the Baptism of The Beast post.  However for reasons that extend well beyond my Eschatology I firmly believe in Soul Sleep, Paul's most vivid account of The Resurrection clearly states that the physically dead are "asleep".  The idea that we go to Heaven immediately when we die is a product of Platonist Corruption of true Biblical Teaching, as verified by his earliest list of people who taught this, Clement of Alexandria and Origen and then their influence on Cyprian.

Another annoyance I have at this book is contributing to confusing people on the difference between Post-Mill and Amillenialism.  The eschatology he is attributing to Cyprian is Post-Mill not Amill, Amill means you reject the Bodily Resurrection entirely, the chief of all heresies.

But that's the thing, teaching you go to Heaven when you die is essentially the Gateway drug to deemphasizing the Bodily Resurrection and then abandoning it entirely.  What separates Christianity from Paganism is that we do not teach an "Afterlife" we teach the inevitable reversal of Death entirely.  Just read my Do We have a promise to be with God when we Die.

Now this book is often wrong on who it places where.  He wants to argue Polycarp wasn't with Ireneaus and Papias but an Amazon reviewer of the book going by Dakota Sorenson has already argued against that.

"The most significant name on that list is Polycarp. Polycarp is the link between the apostle John and Irenaeus—between the apostle whose writing contains the key New Testament millennial text (Rev. 20), and the chief early defender of premillennialism. The fullest and most systematic early expression of premillennial eschatology occurs in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.31–36. Irenaeus’s expository discourse on the earthly millennial reign is “by far the most extensive and best reasoned in Christian literature to date” (p. 12). If Polycarp held to an amillennial position, how did his student Irenaeus come to hold a premillennial position? Hill argues that Irenaeus changed to the premillennialist position in the course of writing Against Heresies. Hill says we have “every reason to believe” that Irenaeus’ millennial eschatology “was not received from Polycarp” (p. 254). I would beg to differ. First off, Polycarp hints at the premillennial belief in an asynchronous resurrection of the just and the unjust (Phil. 2.2–3). He states that Christians can be resurrected only “if” (ἐὰν) they fulfill certain conditions, such as doing God’s will and loving the things he loved. This implies that those who fail to meet these conditions will not be resurrected. Yet, Scripture teaches that even the unjust will rise from the dead for judgment (John 5:29; Acts 24:15), which is indicated in Phil. 7:1. Thus the only way to make sense of Phil. 2.2–3 is that the just will be resurrected at a different time than the unjust. Lo-and-behold, this is precisely what the premillennial reading of Rev. 20:4–6 says! This is why Irenaeus taught that the resurrection of the just (“the first resurrection,” Rev. 20:5) chronologically precedes the resurrection of the unjust, with an earthly kingdom phase in between. Polycarp seems to have been a premillennialist who believed in a heavenly intermediate state.

Secondly, Brian C. Collins has demonstrated that there is no evidence Irenaeus changed his mind on the Millennium. He writes, “One of [Irenaeus’] chief arguments against Gnosticism was that he stood in line with the tradition of the elders that reached back to the apostles. But on Hill’s reading, at a fundamental point of debate (a point important enough to provoke a “momentous” change), the Gnostics stand in the traditional position, and Irenaeus outside it. It is difficult to believe that Irenaeus would undercut a major part of his argument from book 3 in this way. In addition, the claim that Irenaeus changed millennial positions and departed from the teaching of Clement of Rome, Polycarp, and others is inconsistent with Irenaeus’ own statements. In Proof 61 Irenaeus attributed the millennial reading of Isaiah 11 to the elders. 

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But I would argue his placement of Hippolytus with the Post-Millennialists is also wrong, his Against Plato right from the start makes his belief in Souls Sleeping in Hades clear, and his eschatology which he wrote more about then anyone else pre-Nicaea is clearly Premillennial with him predicting the Millennium to start 500 years after the time of Christ.

Another common Strawman authors like Hill engage in is calling the Millennial Kingdom "temporary", that's not what Revelation 20 implies, what ends the Thousand Years is Satan being let lose, The Kingdom is saved from Satan's attempt to end it and does in my view have continuity with New Jerusalem.  I'm sure I differ with a lot of mainstream Premillenialists on this but to me the New Heavens and New Earth are just as Carnal as the Millennium, it's the Spiritual being added to it that is the distinction.

In a separate article Hill argues agaisnt the assumption that the Montanists were Premillennial, and I think he might be right there, at the very least Tertullian's weird Eschatology is not as identical to theirs as people assume.  But that's the thing, they are another Pythagorean/Platonist influence on Early Church History being among the first Christian Ascetics.  Ultimately though I think the Montanists simply had a weird Eschatology that doesn't easily fit into any modern classification boxes.  However this article argues that the alleged New Jerusalem in Phyrgia idea came form a later offshoot group not the original Montanists.

People talking about this also sometimes say it like "the Chilialists were just a loud minority in Asia" but isn't Asian Christianity exactly who we'd expect people to get Revelation right?  In fact this lineage is specifically tied to Smyrna one of the two flawless Churches, and to Ephesus the Church most praised for Doctrinal Purity.  

At any rate Athenagoras of Athens taught Soul Sleep in-spite of his apparent Platonism and he was independent of this lineage.

Now one could reconcile the Biblical basis for Soul Sleep with Partial Preterist Post-Millennialism by arguing Soul Sleep was true up until the Millennium starts or a little before. But if you take literally Revelation's seeming account of Bodyless Souls in Heaven they seem to have always been there, at least the Martyrs who are were who Tertullian thinks are treated differently.

There is also a lot of debating about "why the Church rejected Chilialism" as if there is no dispute that it did.  The mainstream Hierarchy of the Church seems to have slowly distanced itself from it (though even Gregory of Nysa was clearly still a Futurist in what he says about the Antichrist). But it was never formally condemned by a Council and the common people remained broadly Futurist as shown by popular literature like Pseudo-Methodius.