MILLENNARIANISM
AND ERROR
By HORATIUS BONAR,
D.D.
Let us inquire into the connection said to subsist between millenarianism
and false doctrine. Can it be proved by
facts? Or is it the mere inference of
those who, having a very bad opinion of the system, think that it must be, and
ought to be, connected with all forms of error?
I state then, and am willing to prove, that those who have not
only endangered, but subverted the whole fabric of Christianity, have
not been millenarians, but their opponents.
The gnosticism of the early ages was openly as well as
essentially anti-millenarian. It was allegorical and antiliteral,
a patch-work of Christianity and pagan philosophy. It not only allegorized into a spiritual
shadow the first resurrection, but
all resurrection whatsoever, condemning as carnal all who believed in any
resurrection, just as our opposers condemn us for believing in the first
resurrection. And who upheld the truth
against these anti‑millennarian and
allegorizing gnostics? Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, two noted millenarians. The connection between anti‑millenarianism
and heresy, in the first ages, can be clearly established by fact. The antagonism between millenarianism and
heresy can be as clearly proved. The heretic
gnostics
were the only opposers of
millenarianism in these days; the thoroughly orthodox fathers were its
unanimous supporters. Gnosticism and anti-chiliasm were friends;
Gnosticism and chiliasm* were open
enemies. Yet our system is said to be
all along linked with heresy.
[* The dopctrine
of the Personal Reign of Christ on earth during the millennium.]
The carnal follies of Cerinthus are sometimes exhibited as specimens of
millenarianism. But Cerinthianism
and chiliasm were thoroughly and openly opposed to each other. The millenarian fathers were the strongest
condemners and confuters of Cerinthus and his
abominations. There was antagonism, not
alliance between them; and it would be as correct to identify Calvinism and Socinianism, because Priestley happened to be a predestinarian, as to identify chiliasm and Cerinthianism, because Cerinthus spoke
of the saints reigning on earth.
In the second century the state of matters was the same; millenarianism
and orthodoxy still went hand in hand. Whencesoever
the danger to the fabric of Christianity might come, it did not come from
millenarians. “Chiliasm constituted (says a German
writer), in the second century, so decidedly an
article of faith, that Justin held it up as a criterion of perfect orthodoxy.”
Then Origen
came into the field, - no friend to chiliasm, and as little to orthodoxy. He turned the whole Bible into a riddle; he
denied the doctrine of eternal punishments. He seems to have been thoroughly unsound even
upon fundamental points. In his case,
surely heresy and anti-chiliasm were the allies. The chiliasts in these days, instead of “endangering the whole fabric of Christianity,” were
its steadfast supporters against anti-chiliastic heretics, who were introducing
“not only a new dispensation, but a new Christianity.”*
[* Dionysius of
Alexandria, who is considered to have given the finishing stroke to
chiliasm in the Eastern Church, was a denier of the Godhead of the Holy
Spirit.]
Then came Jerome,
one of the keenest and most unswerving opponents that millenarianism ever had;
one who never loses an opportunity of assailing it. Was Jerome sound in the faith? Alas! he seems to
have no idea of free justification at all. All with him is works;-
superstition and self-righteousness darken the pages both of his Epistles and
his Commentaries. Perhaps Popery owes
more to Jerome than to any of the fathers. Even in his day, the great mass of the godly,
as he tells us more than once, were millenarians. Are chiliasm, and
heresy then inseparable? or is not the reverse the
truth? I know that Augustine was against us, and he was much sounder in the faith; but
his case is only a confirmation of our statements, for he is almost the only
example in that age, of orthodoxy and anti-millenarianism being in union.
Anti-chiliasm was now spreading. And how did its abettors defend it? By denying the inspiration of the
Apocalypse! “It is worthy of
remark," says Bishop Russell -
no chiliast, - “that so long as the prophecies regarding the millennium were
interpreted literally, the Apocalypse was received as an inspired production,
and as the work of the apostle John; but no sooner did theologians find
themselves compelled to view its annunciations through the medium of allegory
and metaphorical description, than they ventured to call in question its
heavenly origin, its genuineness, and its authority.
Dead churches have been pre-eminently anti-chiliastic, and
from the pens of some of our coldest divines have come the strongest
condemnations of our system. In the days
of the Westminister Assembly there were many
chiliasts to be found: Twisse,
the prolocutor, and many members were such.
A century after, hardly a supporter of the system was
to be found in
[It must, however, be admitted that during the last hundred
years, in Irvingism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism
in its origins, and various Tongues sects, the Powers of Darkness have repeated
their strategy in Montanism – studiedly linking their
manifestations with Advent truth, they have sought to besmirch it hopelessly in
the eyes of the sober and the Scriptural.
The Advent and the miraculous gifts are most counterfeited the nearer
they draw. But feather-brained fanaticisms
have no remotest resemblance to Millennial truth as it
is presented in the Prophets; and the true antidote to perverted Millenarianism
is not scepticism but Scripture.
Some ancient Chiliasm was superstitious and grotesque; but
where it was merely gross or carnal, the error probably arose from ignorance of
the two compartments of the Kingdom – a heavenly, for ‘the bodies celestial’ (1
Cor. 15: 40) of the risen, in the Holy City
overhanging earth; and an earthly, for ‘bodies terrestrial’ on the earth
itself, where men are still in the flesh.
Paul prayed to be preserved unto thev heavenly
Kingdom (2 Tim. 4: 18)* - D. M. Panton.
*Mr. Mauro is right in protesting, as we ourselves have done,
against an extreme dispensationalism which, while
justly repudiating the Law of Moses in the day of grace, stretches that Law so
as to cover all the New Testament except four short Letters, thus robbing the
Church of all but the entire Book of Grace; on the other hand, the man clever
enough to make the Bible coherent without dispensational truth (the four epochs