But preterists both full and partial, amillenials and post-millennialism in all it's forms don't have that option even when they are nominally protestant. If the history of The Church is the fulfillment of the Thousand Years refereed to in Revelation 20 and/or New Jerusalem, then we should have known that from the start.
I don't necessarily expect the reverse to be true though, the whole point of Pre-Millennialism is that we consider the age of Grace to be one where the follows of the true God are just as capable of getting things wrong as we were before, even at the earliest stage, The Apostles themselves kept misunderstanding Jesus while He was right there correcting them.
So I'm not even making this investigation because I think it could be the ultimate death nail to other views. It's because I care about history being represented properly, and because I do respect the early Christians, even the ones I most disagree with, and so don't want to see their views misrepresented for the sake of an ideological argument by anyone on my side or agaisnt it.
First let's talk about what does not inherently make someone a Preterist in their view of Revelation.
1. Referring to what happened in 70 AD as being foretold by Jesus.
There seems to be some straw-manning of Futurism going around where some think any acknowledgment that Jesus "not one stone" comment refers to 70 AD is incompatible with Futurism. When the truth is I've rarely seen that connection denied by even the most extreme futurists.
First of all I don't think we even need the three "Olivte Discourse" chapters to find Jesus foretelling it, in Luke especially he refers to it a lot. I personally see 70 AD in more prophecies then most of my fellow Futurists. Of the the three chapters in question I only have a definitively futurist stance on Matthew 24. However there is also a position called Middleism which takes a Preterist view of Matthew 24 but a Futurist view of Revelation, these terms didn't exist in antiquity but it looks to me like that position was a common one in the Early Church.
2, Viewing the 70th Week of Daniel as already fulfilled.
Lots of Post-Trib Futurists and Historicists (who are generally Pre-Mill and so more akin to Futurism on what I think matters most then Preterism) also view the 70th Week as already fulfilled. My own view is that the 70th week was 30-37 AD, so on that issue I'm more preterist then the people who obsess over 70 AD.
Basically those are the two most prominent examples of a more general fact that what someone says about other prophecies proves nothing about their view of Revelation.
Yes your view of Revelation will effect how you view other things because it's referencing older Prophets all the time. But there is no consistency even within a basic view to what conclusions believers will make from those connections. In my own view sometimes Revelation is claiming to be what that older Prophecy was actually about all along, but sometimes it's more like history repeating itself and/or making an analogy to help us understand what it's talking about.
3. Identifying The Church as now the true Israel in some capacity.
Like the 70th Week example it seems a lot of people opposing Futurism treat it as if Pre-Trib Dispensationalism is the only form Futurism comes in. Post-Tribbers pretty much all take this view in some way, and I as a form of Mid-Trib hold a position between the extreme Dispensationalism of Chuck Missler and the extreme conflation of Post-Tribers.
There are multiple non Dispensational views on how The Church and Israel relate. Two-House theology is predicated on specifically equating The Church or at least the "Gentile" Church with Ephraim. Mormonism is actually based on a form of that view but it's also popular in the Hebrew Roots/Torah Observant movements.
Rob Skiba likes to call "Replacement Theology" a straw man, he says the Dispensationalists are the true Replacement theologists. He stresses how even in The Torah citizenship in the Nation of Israel was not predicated solely on bloodlines, people not biologically descended from Jacob or even Abraham could be counted in as long as they got Circumcised and kept the Torah. To him it's about us being the continuation of Israel.
But that's not a Strawman when applied to 70 AD Preterism. I was recently watching a Partial Preterist's video on Revelation 11 and the Two Witnesses and he made it explicitly clear, God divorced one wife to replace her with another, there will be no redemption for the divorced wife. This view is known as Supersessionism. And make no mistake there are Post-Trib Futurists who also see it that way not Rob Skiba's way. And the sad thing is that seems to be the way the "Early Church" talked about this issue and is the main reason I have no real desire to agree with them, Anti-Semitism creeped into the Greek Speaking Church very early on.
Even when someone is talking specifically about Revelation some things are simply not as inherently Preterist as Preterists looking for support will assume.
4. Identifying Mystery Babylon with Jerusalem isn't inherently Preterist either.
Chris White is a "Pre-Wrath" Futurist who wrote a book on Babylon being Jerusalem, and he was willing to do that even though he's just as much of a Dispensational Zionist as the Pre-Tribbers. When he says he intends nothing Anti-Semitic by it I believe him, he's simply misguided. Among the openly Anti-Semitic Conspiracy theorists there are people like Texe Marrs who was Post-Trib from what I've read.
This 4th example I kinda didn't need to include because I'm currently aware of no early Patristic support for it, though I certainly could have missed something. In fact from what I've seen so far Babylon as Rome is the only Mystery Babylon view I've seen among them. Instead the Anti-Semitism of the Early Church manifested in viewing the "Antichrist" as a Jewish Messiah claimant The Jews will accept. So literally the polar opposite of the standard modern Preterist view on the bad guys of Revelation.
Now onto specific claims.
A website called Preteristarchive has pages devoted to a number of early fathers where they concede the Futurist stances of some but spend a lot of time engaging in the above distractions and other tactics to mislead people. It does not have pages for Tertullian or Methodius and wrongly classified Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius as Ante-Nicene.
Froom is the name of a Historicist who wrote a book called The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers that you can find online. He generally avoids trying to make anyone sound more in agreement with his views then they actually were, instead trying to speculate on why they were sometimes wrong in his view. His one mistake in that area was claiming Tertullian made a connection he didn't actually make regarding The Temple of God as The Church and the Temple in II Thessalonians 2. While I don't always agree with him his book was a key source in the research I did for this post.
An interesting thing about the most popular forms of Historicism is during the Pre-Nicene and even early post Nicene era their view on at least The Antichrist would have still been a pretty Futurist one. None the less there were still things you could believe back then pretty incompatible with proper Historicism.
His book documents pretty well how Pre-Nicaea it was pretty much only the Alexandrians and maybe Victorinus of Potiou who entertained any position other then Pre-Mill on Revelation 20.
Justin Martyr is the oldest definitely known example of anyone referencing The Revelation at all. Maybe The Didichae had Revelation 12's description of The Dragon in mind when it says "the world deceiver", if so that was a futurist application inserted into what seems like a futurist application of Matthew 24 (it's very possible Matthew was in fact the only NT writing the Didichae used at all).
The Preteristarchive has a page on Justin Martyr, and it takes a lot of things he said out of context to make it seem like he's explicitly rejecting Pre-Mill, but they exist in the context of him debating with a Jew about the Rabbinic Jewish Sabbath Millennium concept. Today many Dispensationalists and Hebrew Roots types like identifying the Revelation 20 Millennium with that Rabbinic concept, but Justin clearly didn't. I myself have come to not like defining the Millennium as a "Sabbath" Millennium because 1 Corinthians 15 defined it as a period that isn't a "rest" at all.
They failed however to quote the one and only time Justin explicitly refers to The Revelation. I shall provide it here.
More then one website and blog trying to paint the Early Church as non Pre-Mil as possible will inevitably concede the Pre-Mill Futurism of Hippolytus of Rome and to some extent also his "mentor" Irenaeus.
The problem with conceding him and trying to paint him as the ONLY one is NOT their alleged connection to John which I feel is overstated and don't care about. It's that only he actually wrote in depth on Bible Prophecy at all, it was really not a major priority of the surviving writings we have from the Early Church especially Pre-Nicaea. It mostly comes up when refuting Gnostics and Origen on The Resurrection, in which context it frequently comes across that the "Proto-Orthodox" clearly seem Pre-Mil when stressing a literal Bodily Resurrection. Only Hippolytus wrote an entire book on specifically the subject of The Antichrist. And in so doing expressed many views on the matter I no longer and/or never did agree with, but his view on the matter was definitely a Futurist one. And he was not speaking as if he was massively breaking with the norm, he spoke as if some of his specific details may be new but the gist was basically what everyone already agreed on..
And when the only unambiguous counter example(s) to pre-mill are Origen and some other Alexandrians linked to Origen, then your side is on the shakier ground since he was condemned as a Heretic at a Synod in the 540s. He's connected to a lot of Heresy, but none of his earliest critics like Methodius of Olympus ever objected to his Soterology, it was his Pre-Existence of Souls doctrine and how that effected his view of The Resurrection that was the core issue.
I'm not an Origen apologist the way most of my modern fellow Universal Salvation proponents often are, because I know that Soteorlogy was also supported by many others who shared none of Origen's issues, and a few condemned for going in the opposite direction on the literal/allegorical dichotomy.
I actually feel like 70 AD Preterism is far more incompatible with a God of Love who Saves ALL then Futurism, because as I stressed above they are adamant on YHWH's refusal to forgive Israel, they make YHWH's promises to never permanently cast Israel aside into bold faced LIES.
Origen's view of Revelation was probably more Idealist then 70 AD focused Preterism given his approach to Scripture in general.
On both Tertullian and Hippolytus one Amill blog admits they were Pre-Mill but says "not like modern Premillenialism", by which they mainly must mean not being Pre-Trib Dispensationalists. Hippolytus was clearly Post-Trib on his timing of the Parusia, though he did support the gaps in Daniel 9 and 11 that are today usually typical of Dispensationalism. I myself even in how I view The Millennium's nature am not like most modern pre-Millers, but my disagreement puts the Patristics I've looked at as closer to them then to me.
Tertullian was influenced by the Montanists and so occasionally viewed with suspicion by later generations of The Church, but still not as much suspicion as Origen. Again Froom tried to paint him as the one Pre-Nicene father who seemed compatible with his Historicism, and indeed Tertulian is the earliest example I've seen of explicitly identifying Babylon with Rome. But he also clearly identified The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah.
Eusebius of Caesarea was agaisnt the Millennium but because of that questioned the Canonocity of Revelation altogether. Thing is a lot of writers at this time saw the Diocletian Persecution and it's relief under Constantine as the fulfillment of the future Kingdom happening then not back when The Church was founded. Constantinople was in turn viewed as the New Jerusalem as much as it was a New Rome.
Athanasius, Ambrose, Hilary and Jerome all spoke about things like The Antichrist in ways that show a futurist understanding of that issue, even Gregory of Nysaa the one time he mentioned The Antichrist clearly viewed him as yet future. Both versions of the Nicene Creed rule out at least Full Preterism by clearly defining the Parusia as having not happened yet..
A website called Preteristarchive has pages devoted to a number of early fathers where they concede the Futurist stances of some but spend a lot of time engaging in the above distractions and other tactics to mislead people. It does not have pages for Tertullian or Methodius and wrongly classified Ambrose of Milan and Eusebius as Ante-Nicene.
Froom is the name of a Historicist who wrote a book called The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers that you can find online. He generally avoids trying to make anyone sound more in agreement with his views then they actually were, instead trying to speculate on why they were sometimes wrong in his view. His one mistake in that area was claiming Tertullian made a connection he didn't actually make regarding The Temple of God as The Church and the Temple in II Thessalonians 2. While I don't always agree with him his book was a key source in the research I did for this post.
An interesting thing about the most popular forms of Historicism is during the Pre-Nicene and even early post Nicene era their view on at least The Antichrist would have still been a pretty Futurist one. None the less there were still things you could believe back then pretty incompatible with proper Historicism.
His book documents pretty well how Pre-Nicaea it was pretty much only the Alexandrians and maybe Victorinus of Potiou who entertained any position other then Pre-Mill on Revelation 20.
Justin Martyr is the oldest definitely known example of anyone referencing The Revelation at all. Maybe The Didichae had Revelation 12's description of The Dragon in mind when it says "the world deceiver", if so that was a futurist application inserted into what seems like a futurist application of Matthew 24 (it's very possible Matthew was in fact the only NT writing the Didichae used at all).
The Preteristarchive has a page on Justin Martyr, and it takes a lot of things he said out of context to make it seem like he's explicitly rejecting Pre-Mill, but they exist in the context of him debating with a Jew about the Rabbinic Jewish Sabbath Millennium concept. Today many Dispensationalists and Hebrew Roots types like identifying the Revelation 20 Millennium with that Rabbinic concept, but Justin clearly didn't. I myself have come to not like defining the Millennium as a "Sabbath" Millennium because 1 Corinthians 15 defined it as a period that isn't a "rest" at all.
They failed however to quote the one and only time Justin explicitly refers to The Revelation. I shall provide it here.
Dialogue with Trypho 81.4 "And further, there was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied, by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem; and that thereafter the general, and, in short, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place."Pretty clearly and unambiguously a Pre-Mill interpretation.
More then one website and blog trying to paint the Early Church as non Pre-Mil as possible will inevitably concede the Pre-Mill Futurism of Hippolytus of Rome and to some extent also his "mentor" Irenaeus.
The problem with conceding him and trying to paint him as the ONLY one is NOT their alleged connection to John which I feel is overstated and don't care about. It's that only he actually wrote in depth on Bible Prophecy at all, it was really not a major priority of the surviving writings we have from the Early Church especially Pre-Nicaea. It mostly comes up when refuting Gnostics and Origen on The Resurrection, in which context it frequently comes across that the "Proto-Orthodox" clearly seem Pre-Mil when stressing a literal Bodily Resurrection. Only Hippolytus wrote an entire book on specifically the subject of The Antichrist. And in so doing expressed many views on the matter I no longer and/or never did agree with, but his view on the matter was definitely a Futurist one. And he was not speaking as if he was massively breaking with the norm, he spoke as if some of his specific details may be new but the gist was basically what everyone already agreed on..
And when the only unambiguous counter example(s) to pre-mill are Origen and some other Alexandrians linked to Origen, then your side is on the shakier ground since he was condemned as a Heretic at a Synod in the 540s. He's connected to a lot of Heresy, but none of his earliest critics like Methodius of Olympus ever objected to his Soterology, it was his Pre-Existence of Souls doctrine and how that effected his view of The Resurrection that was the core issue.
I'm not an Origen apologist the way most of my modern fellow Universal Salvation proponents often are, because I know that Soteorlogy was also supported by many others who shared none of Origen's issues, and a few condemned for going in the opposite direction on the literal/allegorical dichotomy.
I actually feel like 70 AD Preterism is far more incompatible with a God of Love who Saves ALL then Futurism, because as I stressed above they are adamant on YHWH's refusal to forgive Israel, they make YHWH's promises to never permanently cast Israel aside into bold faced LIES.
Origen's view of Revelation was probably more Idealist then 70 AD focused Preterism given his approach to Scripture in general.
On both Tertullian and Hippolytus one Amill blog admits they were Pre-Mill but says "not like modern Premillenialism", by which they mainly must mean not being Pre-Trib Dispensationalists. Hippolytus was clearly Post-Trib on his timing of the Parusia, though he did support the gaps in Daniel 9 and 11 that are today usually typical of Dispensationalism. I myself even in how I view The Millennium's nature am not like most modern pre-Millers, but my disagreement puts the Patristics I've looked at as closer to them then to me.
Tertullian was influenced by the Montanists and so occasionally viewed with suspicion by later generations of The Church, but still not as much suspicion as Origen. Again Froom tried to paint him as the one Pre-Nicene father who seemed compatible with his Historicism, and indeed Tertulian is the earliest example I've seen of explicitly identifying Babylon with Rome. But he also clearly identified The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah.
Eusebius of Caesarea was agaisnt the Millennium but because of that questioned the Canonocity of Revelation altogether. Thing is a lot of writers at this time saw the Diocletian Persecution and it's relief under Constantine as the fulfillment of the future Kingdom happening then not back when The Church was founded. Constantinople was in turn viewed as the New Jerusalem as much as it was a New Rome.
Athanasius, Ambrose, Hilary and Jerome all spoke about things like The Antichrist in ways that show a futurist understanding of that issue, even Gregory of Nysaa the one time he mentioned The Antichrist clearly viewed him as yet future. Both versions of the Nicene Creed rule out at least Full Preterism by clearly defining the Parusia as having not happened yet..
Aphrahat one of the oldest Syrian Fathers also definitely taught Premillenialism and a Literal Resurrection. His Eschatology can be considered a from of Historicism, but does not have the Antichrist view typical of Protestant Historicism.
In 380 Ticonius published a Revelation commentary that became the foundation of Post Millenialism as we know it today, and was in turn the basis for Augustine of Hippo's eschatology.
Over the course of the next few centuries the leadership of the Church became increasingly either Post-Mill or not Prophecy concerned at all as now Jesus overthrowing the current world system became no longer desirable to them. However the Popular literature of this era implies Futurism was still the preferred eschatology of the masses, like the Apocalypse of Pseudo Methodius and other texts related to The Last Roman Emperor tradition. Meanwhile The Book of The Bee shows that understanding of Prophecy continued to thrive among the "Nestorians" into the 13th Century.
Also identifying The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah seemed pretty universal when they came up all.
In 380 Ticonius published a Revelation commentary that became the foundation of Post Millenialism as we know it today, and was in turn the basis for Augustine of Hippo's eschatology.
Over the course of the next few centuries the leadership of the Church became increasingly either Post-Mill or not Prophecy concerned at all as now Jesus overthrowing the current world system became no longer desirable to them. However the Popular literature of this era implies Futurism was still the preferred eschatology of the masses, like the Apocalypse of Pseudo Methodius and other texts related to The Last Roman Emperor tradition. Meanwhile The Book of The Bee shows that understanding of Prophecy continued to thrive among the "Nestorians" into the 13th Century.
Also identifying The Two Witnesses with Enoch and Elijah seemed pretty universal when they came up all.
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