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Can a Born Again Christian Believe in Amillennialism

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Foundations: No.65 Autumn 2013

Augustine on Revelation xx: A Root of Amillennialism

Revelation 20 is one of the key passages in debates well-nigh differing views of the millennium. It is oft thought that the amillennial view is of relatively recent origin, but in fact it is rooted in the early Christian centuries, especially in the interpretation of the chapter offered past Augustine. His written report of Revelation 20, ready out in Book xx of his great work The Metropolis of God, offers useful resource for an amillennial approach to the passage.

Are you Premill, Postmill or Amill? Few subjects accept a greater chapters to generate controversy among Christians than eschatology, specially when the subject of the millennium is involved. Indeed, for many evangelicals information technology is 1's view of the millennium that is the litmus test for "soundness" regarding an understanding of big tracts of Scripture, in particular the prophetic books. Most Fundamentalists are committed to a premillennial position, co-ordinate to which Christ returns to globe and reigns over an earthly king-dom before the end comes. A large number hold to the Dispensational version of this view. Many of the Reformed have held to a postmillennial position which places the return of Christ afterward a period of a m years, during which the gospel is the overwhelmingly dominant force on earth. Although this view still has pregnant support, a growing number of Reformed believers are committed to an amillennial position, which views the millennium as something other than an earthly kingdom to be expected at the cease of time. Many Christians are simply confused.

It may be tempting to conclude that there is no promise of developing greater understanding on eschatology among those equally committed to the supreme potency of the Bible. If that commitment is sincere, however, profound differences of biblical interpretation should stimulate more than careful and more than thorough exegesis of the relevant biblical texts, ever with the prayerful hope that greater unanimity may be attained. In this enterprise the insights of the smashing theologians and biblical scholars of the past must not be neglected. This is particularly necessary in a day when the new is automobile-matically assumed to exist superior to the onetime. Whilst we must never be captive to the past, we must profit from the wisdom of earlier generations of God'south servants.

With regard to eschatology, i of the virtually significant early on contributions to the subject was made by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in North Africa. In this, as in so many theological matters, Augustine (354-430) was a towering figure. Amid the diverseness of views in the Patristic flow, Augustine adult an understanding of the biblical cloth which proved to be a root of what has come to be termed Amillennialism. Primal elements of this view were formulated in Augustine's greatest work, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, written betwixt 413 and 427, in response to the sack of Rome by Alaric and the Goths in August 410.

Rather than endeavour to summarise Augustine'south full contribution to eschatology in the Metropolis of God, embracing as information technology does a philosophy of history and an exam of relations between Church building and State, also as his famous and controversial agreement of the "two cities", nosotros will focus on Augustine's exegesis of a crucial New Testament passage, Rev 20, which he considers in City of God Book 20, chapters 7 to 17. This volition highlight such central eschatological themes equally the nature of the resurrection, the millennium, terminal judgment and the new creation.

Eschatology in the Early on Church

To provide context for Augustine'southward views, nosotros must (briefly) notation the primary lines of thinking about eschatology among his predecessors in the Early Church. In doing and so we should bear in mind the warnings of J North D Kelly against views which minimise the conviction of the first generations of Christians that they were already living in the age of the Messiah and which debate that they quickly turned attention to an entirely time to come coming of the Kingdom. He argues that "the primitive confidence of enjoying already the benefits of the age to come was kept vividly before the believer's consciousness". [one]

Nevertheless, as Kelly recognises, the element of hope was crucial to Christian faith in the New Attestation and, every bit Gregg Allison notes, "This hope continued to characterize the church during its showtime few centuries of growth". [2] Nosotros could not imagine the early Church building without its longing for the return of Christ and the glorious new creation which he would usher in. Thus Irenaeus includes amidst the fundamentals of the faith, the regula fidei, the Lord'south "[hereafter] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father", when he volition "execute just judgment towards all" and may "in the practice of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His beloved, some from the commencement [of their Christian form], and others from [the appointment of] their repentance, and may environment them with everlasting celebrity". [3]

Given the possibility, and at times the fact, of violent persecution faced by Christians in the early centuries, much attention was given to the dramatic visions of books like Ezekiel and Daniel in the Onetime Testament and Revelation in the New Testament which draw both the sufferings and deliverance of the people of God. Persecution is summed upwards in the figure of Antichrist, the "Deceiver of the Globe" as the Didache describes him, one who "will work such wickedness as at that place has never been since the beginning". [4] Hence the exhortation to Christians, "Be watchful over your life; never permit your lamps become out or your loins exist ungirt, but keep yourselves always in readiness". [v]

The Christian's hope of a resurrection in glory is of course fundamental to eschatology, based as it is on the resurrection of Christ. In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, written around 96, Clement of Rome writes,

Remember, my dear friends, how the Lord offers usa proof later proof that there is going to be a resurrection, of which he has fabricated Jesus Christ the first-fruits by raising Him from the dead. [6]

The role of Christ as forerunner and blueprint of Christians' resurrection is a common theme in the early centuries. To take but 1 example, Ignatius writes to the Trallians,

[Christ] was also verily raised upwardly again from the expressionless, for His Father raised Him; and in Jesus Christ volition His Begetter similarly enhance united states who believe in Him, since apart from Him there is no true life for us. [7]

Information technology is no surprise that such a crucial doctrine should soon come under sustained attack. Thus, as Ronald Heine notes, "The subject of the resurrection became a tempest center in the second century in the debate betwixt orthodox Christians and gnostics". [8] On the orthodox side the key defenders of the doctrine of bodily resurrection were Irenaeus and Tertullian. Their gnostic opponents denigrated the material in comparing to the spiritual, recasting cadre Christian doctrines in the light of this fundamental commitment. In their view the textile creation was the work of an inferior deity, the idea of God taking homo flesh was unthinkable and actual resurrection highly undesirable. As Heine describes their outlook,

The goal of gnosticism was to free the spiritual element in human beings from its imprisonment in the fleshly body. People who were aware of the essentially useless and corrupt nature of flesh and lived but for the spiritual were said to be experiencing resurrection already. [9]


In response, orthodox theologians insisted on God'south having created the material realm, and originally "very good", and on the bodily nature of resurrection. Thus they argued that salvation involves the whole person, body every bit well every bit soul, and that the God who created human's trunk at the beginning is able to bring nearly a actual resurrection. Irenaeus argues, for example, that if God was able out of nothing to create homo's fabric torso and constitute him a rational creature, God is likewise able to heighten the torso to life at the general resurrection:

For He who in the beginning caused him to have existence who as yet was non, just when He pleased, shall much more reinstate once more those who had a former being, when it is His will [that they should inherit] the life granted past Him. [x]


In the view of Irenaeus the most convincing proof of bodily resurrection is the incarnation in which the Discussion causeless flesh in order to salvage it. [xi]

In similar way Tertullian defends the doctrine of bodily resurrection. He argues, for example, that body and soul are both involved in human actions, the soul motivating action and the body conveying it out, and then both must be raised in gild to received appropriate advantage or punishment. Whilst the soul is first to endure in Hades, "withal information technology is waiting for the mankind in club that it may through the flesh also compensate for its deeds, inasmuch as it laid upon the mankind the execution of its own thoughts". [12] In his exposition of 1 Cor 15:21 in the fifth volume of The Five Books Confronting Marcion Tertullian draws on the profound comparisons and contrasts between Adam and Christ; commenting on Paul'southward words, "Since past human being came death, by man came likewise the resurrection", he writes,

But if we are all so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity that nosotros are fabricated alive in Christ as a actual substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete, unless our revival in Christ concurs in identity of substance with our mortality in Adam. [13]


Nosotros might note at this point the dissenting voice of Origen who held to the resurrection of the "trunk" just was reluctant to speak of the "flesh" beingness resurrected. Origen wished to defend Christian truth against pagan detractors such as Celsus and eschewed what he perceived equally the crude literalism of a resurrection of the flesh. For Origen, pre-existing souls put on a fleshly body suitable for the life in this world which they enter, and at the resurrection they volition put on a different kind of body suited to heavenly life, a trunk that in some sense is put on over the present torso: "information technology assumes another [body] in addition to the sometime, which is needed as a meliorate covering, suited to the purer ethereal regions of heaven". [xiv] The resurrection body is of a different kind from the concrete trunk suited for the present life.

Another important aspect of the eschatology of the early on Church is a fairly widespread belief that after the resurrection of believers at the return of Christ, he will reign for a thousand years over an earthly kingdom centred on Jerusalem. This was thought to be the "millennium" mentioned in Rev 20, a central text for all millennial views, including that of Augustine. Thus Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho writes of "a certain human being with u.s., whose name was John, ane of the apostles of Christ" who prophesied

that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem and that thereafter the full general and, in brusque, the eternal resurrection and judgment of all people would likewise accept identify. [15]

In the same vein Tertullian writes,

But we do confess that a kingdom is promised to united states on the earth, although before heaven, just in another state of being; inasmuch as information technology will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely built city of Jerusalem "let downwardly from heaven"… [16]


This "premillennial" view places the return of Christ earlier the millennium and argues for an earthly reign by Christ centred on Jerusalem. It proved to be very influential in the early centuries and some of the Fathers could wax very eloquent regarding conditions on earth during the millennium. Thus Irenaeus, for example, writes of the creation, "renovated and set complimentary", condign abundantly fertile and fruitful about beyond imagination. He quotes the Lord as teaching:

The days volition come, in which vines will abound, each having 10 thousand branches, and in each branch x grand twigs, and in each true twig ten 1000 shoots, and in each i of the shoots ten thousand clusters, and on every one of the clusters 10 yard grapes, and every grape when pressed will give 5 and twenty metretes of wine. [17]


All other crops would be similarly abundant and all the animals would live in harmony with each other.

By no means everyone was convinced about this premillennial reading of eschatology. Theologians from the Alexandrian tradition, especially Origen, rejected such a literalistic understanding of Rev 20 and associated texts. In view of Origen's understanding of the resurrection body noted above this is not surprising. In De Principiis he attacks those who avoid hard thinking and are "disciples of the alphabetic character alone" who, in indulging their bodily desires,

are of the opinion that the fulfilment of the promises of the future are to be looked for in actual pleasure and luxury; and therefore they especially desire to have once more, after the resurrection, such bodily structures every bit may never be without the ability of eating, and drinking, and performing all the functions of flesh and blood. [eighteen]


Christians may certainly hope for the fulfilment of God'south promises, not in eating concrete bread but rather in eating "the staff of life of life, which may nourish the soul with the nutrient of truth and wisdom". [19]

Although it has often been suggested that the premillennial approach to eschatology was the predominant view in the early centuries of the Christian Church, this has been vigorously challenged by Charles Loma in his volume Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity. [twenty] His search in this written report, he indicates, is for an early on, orthodox (non-Gnostic) "non-chiliasm". [21] He recognises that there are difficulties in assessing the influence of chiliasm since many early Christian authors are silent on the bailiwick and, he claims, some unremarkably cited as chiliastic are in fact cryptic in their position. Although we exercise not accept scope in this article to examine Colina's study in particular, we might notation that for him the crucial test to utilise to determine an author's chiliastic outlook is what view of the intermediate state is held. Not-chiliasts in full general held that at death the soul passed immediately into the presence of God, whilst chiliasts usually envisaged an intermediate period of unconsciousness. As Hill expresses information technology,

[Nosotros] may in one sense resolve the affair into the question whether the regnum caelorum, the kingdom of heaven, (understood as the acting reign of Christ), would have as its majuscule the terrestrial or the celestial Jerusalem. [22]


After careful study of a broad range of evidence, Loma concludes that in fact, contrary to much received wisdom, non-chiliast views in the early Christian centuries were "quickly and widely diffused". [23] This was the case even in Syria-Palestine with its stiff undercurrent of nationalist-political Jewish chiliasm. Loma sees the commencement traces of chiliasm in Asia Minor among writers such equally Papias, Justin Martyr and, specially, Irenaeus, all the same even in Asia Minor chiliasm was not the dominant view. There were competing patterns of eschatological teaching in the early on centuries, but in that location was, for example, an early not-chiliastic interpretation of Rev 20, and, Loma concludes, "A solidly entrenched and conservative, non-chiliastic eschatology was present in the Church to rival chiliasm from start to end." [24]

Augustine on Revelation twenty

Augustine'southward amillennial eschatology, which shapes his exegesis of Rev 20, is not entirely his ain creation. It is evident from Augustine'south writings that he drew significantly on the work of a theologian named Tyconius, whose writings are lost apart from the use made of them past Augustine. Tyconius, a quaternary-century African Donatist theologian, wrote a work on biblical interpretation entitled The Book of Rules, which fix out seven rules that exerted a powerful influence on subsequent biblical estimation. Indeed, Gregg Allison points out that Augustine'southward On Christian Doctrine presents "a modified summary of The Book of Rules". [25] Information technology was Tyconius' contention that biblical prophecies will be fulfilled spiritually, not physically and materially as the premillennialists held. In relation to Rev twenty "Tyconius focused on a spiritual millennium corresponding to the electric current church menstruum". [26]

Initially Augustine was attracted to the premillennial position: "I likewise entertained this notion at once". [27] He came to feel repulsed, however, past the crass materialism of "the most unrestrained fabric feasts" said to be enjoyed by the saints, together with quantities of drink "that will also exceed the limits even of incredibility". [28] Augustine became convinced that the spiritual interpretation of prophecy was the correct approach and, rather than abnegate the premillennial view of those he termed "Chiliasts" and "Millennarians" in particular, he chose to set out the positive position which he believed to be sound. In City of God 20.7-17 he expounds Rev xx:

Chapter 7:  The two resurrections and the millennium. The descriptions of John in the Apocalypse, and their interpretation.

The background to Augustine's understanding of the ii resurrections mentioned in Rev 20 is his consideration of Jesus' words in John 5:25-29, set out in chapter 6. As Augustine notes, Jesus speaks of a present resurrection: "…I am telling you that a time is coming, in fact has already come up, when the dead will hear the vocalization of the Son of God, and those who hear shall alive…" (v. 25). Conspicuously, Augustine argues, this is not the resurrection of the body but of the soul, and the dead who are delivered are dead in soul. It is only in v. 28 that Jesus comes to refer to the resurrection of the body. Those who accept shared in the offset (spiritual) resurrection volition be spared condemnation and the "second death".

In affiliate 7 Augustine uses John five to exegete Rev xx:one-half-dozen. He notes how some Christians have misunderstood John and take concluded that the "first resurrection" of v. 5 is a actual resurrection. He links this to their excitement over the mention of a menses of a m years in v. 2. Cartoon on Peter'due south reference to one twenty-four hours being to God as a one thousand years (2 Peter 3:eight), they believed that the 6 days of creation provided the design for the 6000 years of man history and that the subsequent millennium would be "a kind of 7th solar day of Sabbath rest for the final g years, with the saints rising over again, evidently to celebrate this Sabbath". [29]

Indeed, in the last affiliate of the book Augustine states that "We ourselves shall go that 7th day" [30] and, as Michael J Scanlon comments in this connection, "the hereafter is the Christian's favourite tense". [31] Withal, Augustine vigorously rejects the view of the "Chiliasts" because of its crassly materialistic understanding of the blessings of the millennium. Every bit noted previously, Augustine admits that he was one time attracted to such views, but now rejects them.

The thousand years relate, according to Rev 20:1-3, to the imprisonment of Satan in "the bottomless pit" (or the Abyss). Augustine offers two possible interpretations of this period. I possibility is that the thousand years point the sixth millennium, "the sixth 24-hour interval", which, according to the scheme discussed above, precedes the eternal Sabbath, "the seventh solar day", and of which, says Augustine, "the latter stretches are now passing". [32] The second possibility is that the thousand years are intended

to stand for the whole menstruum of this earth'south history, signifying the entirety of fourth dimension by a perfect number. [33]


The perfect number is, of class, g, the cube of ten. In affiliate five of Book twenty Augustine considered some significant numbers in Scripture and notes here how 100 is sometimes used to signify totality, as in Christ's statement that those who accept left all to follow him will "receive a hundredfold in this world" (Matt 19:29, Augustine'south quotation). He goes on, "If this is so, how much more does 1000 correspond totality, being the square of 10 converted into a solid figure". [34] Augustine does not draw a specific determination from this discussion of the 1000 years assigned to the devil's confinement.

As far as the confinement is concerned, the "abyss" in Augustine'southward view "symbolises the innumerable multitude of the impious, in whose hearts there is a dandy depth of malignity against the Church building of God". A barrier is ready past the angel which the devil is unable to pass, whilst the "sealing" to which John refers suggests to Augustine "that God wished it to be kept secret who belongs to the Devil'due south party, and who does not". [35] This, he believes, is why in this world it is uncertain who of those continuing business firm volition later fall and who amongst the fallen will rise once again.

This binding of the devil means that he is no longer able to pb astray "the nations of which the Church is made up, nations whom he led off-target and held in his grip before they were a Church". [36] Augustine recognises that the devil does atomic number 82 nations off-target, though God ensures that individuals inside them are not led off-target into concluding condemnation. He does insist, still, that God has called certain nations to make up his Church. Quoting Eph 1:four, which in context does non appear to refer to nations, Augustine asserts that "God chose those nations before the foundation of the world" [37] and though they once were led astray past the devil, his binding now means that he cannot lead them off-target.

Chapter 8: The binding and unloosing of the devil.

In chapter 8 Augustine turns to consider the release of the devil described in Rev twenty:3. He asserts that this does non indicate that the devil, having been prevented by his binding from leading the Church off-target, volition afterwards be able to pb it astray: "he volition never seduce that Church which was predestined and chosen before the foundation of the world". [38] He believes in this regard information technology is important to notation that there will still exist a Church on world when the fourth dimension for the devil'south loosing comes. He finds support for this exclamation in Rev twenty:9-10, where reference is made to the Church'southward enemies surrounding "the camp of the saints and the beloved city" just before the final judgment. The Church will not be absent when the devil is released nor will he succeed in annihilating it.

Augustine therefore argues,

the Devil is bound throughout the whole menstruation embraced by the Apocalypse, that is, from the first coming of Christ to the end of the world, which will be Christ's second coming… [39]


During that time the devil is immune to attack the Church building but "he is not permitted to exert his whole power of temptation either by force or by guile to seduce men to his side by violent compulsion or fraudulent delusion". [40] He will exist unloosed confronting those who cannot be conquered, namely the Church building, in gild that his full malignity and "the endurance of the Holy Metropolis" [41] will exist conspicuously seen. Though he has been cast out of the hearts of the saints, he is allowed for iii and a half years to assail outwardly "and so that the City of God may behold how powerful a foe it has overcome to the immense glory of its Redeemer, its Helper, its Deliverer". [42]

In Augustine's view the binding of the devil began every bit the Church was spreading beyond Judaea, continues now and will last until the end of the age. This is evidenced past the conversion of sinners, the property of the "potent man" of Matt 12 existence carried off. What may and then be said of the unloosing of the strong human being who has been bound? Augustine outset suggests that this will mean that during the three and a one-half years "no one will join the people of Christ", [43] although some will fall away from the Church. The latter, Augustine is sure, "will non exist people belonging to the predestined number of the sons of God". [44] The elect remain secure.

Augustine and then wonders about "the picayune ones". Surely during the time of the devil'southward terminal onslaught children will be built-in to believers? If they are, how could it be thought that none of them will exist brought to the "washing of rebirth" (quoting Titus 3:5), for Augustine the sacrament of baptism by which they will be saved? This leads him to a unlike view from that which he expressed previously: he accepts that fifty-fifty during the fourth dimension the devil is unloosed new members will be added to the Church building. There will be those who receive baptism and in that location will exist those who come to believe for the outset time who volition take victory over "the strong human" fifty-fifty though he is no longer leap. God'due south grace will nonetheless be at piece of work: there will exist those

who will then, with the aid of God's grace, and by the study of the Scriptures… go more resolute to believe what they did not believe before, and stiff plenty to overcome the devil, even when unloosed. [45]


Chapter 9: The nature of the kingdom of the saints, lasting a k years; and its difference from the eternal kingdom.

The saints, says Augustine, reign with Christ during the whole of the thousand-year bounden of the devil, the period beginning with the first coming of Christ. Information technology is not possible that this is the kingdom mentioned in Matt 25:34 ("inherit the kingdom prepared…"), which depicts Christ speaking at the end of the world. So, argues Augustine,

even at present, although in some other and far junior fashion, his saints must be reigning with him, the saints to whom he says, "Run across, I am ever with you lot, right upward to the end of the globe". [46]


It is the Church, according to Augustine, that is in this sense called Christ's kingdom. It is from this imperfect kingdom, the Church, that the reaping angels volition gather the tares at the stop of the earth (Matt 13:39ff). The tares are collected "from this kingdom, which is the Church in this earth". [47]

Developing this thought, Augustine refers to Matt 5:19 where both the human being who does not go along Christ's commandments and the human who does keep them are said to be in the kingdom of heaven. Alongside this statement must exist placed Jesus' instruction in poetry 20 to the event that only those whose righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, something that is possible simply for those who obey the commandments, volition enter the kingdom. Augustine holds both of these texts together by understanding the kingdom in two senses, one which includes both the keeper and the breaker of the commandments, and another which required obedience for entry. His conclusion is,

Thus where both are to be found nosotros accept the Church building equally it now is; simply where merely one kind will exist found, there is the Church where it volition be, when no evil person will be included. [48]


Even at present the saints reign with Christ, but the tares in the Church building exercise not.

Augustine goes on to link these truths with the "get-go resurrection" referred to in Rev 20. John tells his readers, "I saw thrones, and those who saturday on them, and judgment was given" (v. 4, Augustine's translation). These thrones he interprets every bit "the seats of the authorities past whom the Church is now governed, and those sitting on them every bit the regime themselves". [49] Their reign, Augustine believes, consists in the binding and loosing described in Matt xviii:18. Information technology is non but the living who reign with Christ however. The souls of the martyrs, according to Rev 20:4, also share in this reign.

As Augustine puts it, "the souls of the pious dead are not separated from the Church building, which is even now the kingdom of Christ". [50] Augustine sees this belief reflected in such ecclesiastical practices as commemorating the pious dead at the altar when the Lord's Supper is observed or when in time of danger baptism is sought for fearfulness of dying unbaptised (and and so separated from the expressionless in Christ). Thus the pious dead share in the reign of Christ during the 1000 years. Augustine does note that "this reign after death belongs peculiarly to those who struggled on truth's behalf even to death", [51] but is unwilling to exclude any of the expressionless in Christ and argues that John is using the role (martyrs) to refer to the whole (all expressionless saints).

The "balance" who do not come to life until the g years are ended (Rev 20:5) are those who do non believe in Christ and so practise not share in the outset (spiritual) resurrection. At the concluding twenty-four hour period they will be raised to face judgment, not to enter into life. At this "second" resurrection the unsaved volition pass body and soul into the "second death". Had they participated in the first resurrection they would have escaped the second death.

Chapter 10: The notion that resurrection has reference just to the body, not to the soul.

In defending his view of the "first resurrection" Augustine must address opponents who fence that the concept of "resurrection" refers simply to the bodily aspect of man nature. Their logic (insofar as it may exist termed "logic") is that only what can autumn can rise once again and since bodies autumn when they die there can be a resurrection only of bodies. Leaving bated the manifest weaknesses of this type of argument, although he was no doubt aware of them, Augustine makes his appeal to the articulate teaching of Scripture, where the language of "resurrection" is used oft of what is clearly a spiritual, not a actual, feel.

Augustine quotes, for case, Col iii:one-2, which in his rendering says, "If you have risen with Christ, show a taste for the higher wisdom". Undoubtedly, Augustine argues, the Apostle "was surely addressing those who had risen again in the 'inner human', not the outer". [52] He reinforces his case by entreatment to Paul's exhortation to Christians to "walk in a new manner of life" just equally Christ rose again from the dead (Rom vi:4) and to the summons, "Awake, you sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you lot" (Eph 5:14). In all of these examples the resurrection in view is spiritual.

Even the argument that only what falls tin can ascent may be answered from Scripture. Along with a quotation from Ecclesiasticus Augustine offers Rom 14:4, "in relation to his own Master he stands or falls" and i Cor ten:12, "Anyone who thinks he is standing firm should beware in case he may autumn". He concludes, "For the autumn that we should beware of is, I imagine, the fall of the soul, not that of the trunk". [53] There is no biblical obstruction, in Augustine'due south view, that the "first resurrection" is spiritual.

Chapter 11: Gog and Magog, the agents of the devil'south persecution towards the end of the world.

The figures of Gog and Magog mentioned in Rev 20:8, and in Ezek 38-39, accept exercised the ingenuity of exegetes and stirred the imaginations of Bible readers for the entire history of the Church building. It is noteworthy that suggested interpretations take oftentimes focused on identification in terms of geography and accept reflected the interpreter's circumstances to a remarkable degree. Thus the view of such a widely influential twentieth-century Dispensational writer as Hal Lindsey that Gog refers to the USSR, and that Israel'southward next war would be with Russian federation, clearly reflects the Cold War state of affairs of the 1960s and 1970s. [54] Equally with all such theories, geopolitical changes before long leave them looking foolish.

Augustine will accept no truck with such approaches which seem to have reared their heads fifty-fifty in his day. When Satan is released at the end of the thou years, John says that he "will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the world, Gog and Magog, to gather them for boxing" (Rev 20:8). Co-ordinate to Augustine, this upshot is non to exist idea of in terms of some circumscribed geographical area:

This, in fact, volition be the terminal persecution, when the last judgment is imminent, and this persecution will be suffered throughout the whole world by the holy Church, the universal City of Christ existence persecuted by the universal city of the Devil, each at the height of its ability on earth. [55]


Thus Gog and Magog are non to exist understood as designations for barbarian tribes "outside Roman sway" but rather they exist all over the world, "at the 4 corners of the globe" every bit John says. Despite some wildly inaccurate etymologising of his ain (not unusual in Augustine), he concludes that the names designate all the nations deceived by the devil.

Nosotros should also notation that "the camp of the saints and the beloved city" of Rev 20:ix is not, in Augustine's opinion, one specific location, certainly not Jerusalem as many Dispensationalists believe. Rather, says Augustine, "these are simply the Church of Christ spread all over the world". [56] He continues,

It follows that wherever the Church is at that fourth dimension, and it will be among all the nations… at that place the camp of the saints volition be and there God'due south beloved City. [57]

At the end of history, this City will face the full fury of the devil and the nations under his sway.

Chapter 12: The burn that consumed Gog and Magog: and the fire of the last punishment.

The outcome of this cataclysmic confrontation between the two cities is not in doubt. Burn comes down from heaven and consumes the enemies of "the beloved urban center" co-ordinate to Rev 20:9. Augustine stresses that this is not the fire of final, eternal penalization. John will speak of this in after verses. This burn down from sky is, rather, "the compactness of the saints which will proceed them from giving way to those who rage against them and from carrying out the wishes of these opponents". [58] The enemies will be tormented by the blazing zeal of the saints whose "compactness" originates in the "firmament" of heaven. The zeal of the saints will be the burn down that consumes their enemies.

Virtually as an afterthought Augustine suggests an alternative explanation of the fire: information technology may refer to the destruction of the persecutors of the Church when Christ returns, the killing of the Antichrist past the breath of his mouth, spoken of in two Thess two:8. Either manner, this fiery devastation is not the final penalisation of evildoers, of that Augustine is sure.

Chapter xiii: The relation of the persecution of Antichrist to the 1000 years.

Is Satan's brief, intensive attack on the Church building to be viewed every bit taking place during or after the "thousand years"? That is the question to which Augustine now turns. On the one hand, he argues, if the release of the devil described in Rev 20:7 falls inside the thousand year reign of the saints with Christ, and so their reign lasts longer than the devil's binding. Yet the saints must surely reign with Christ even in the last persecution, "in fact, especially at that time, when they will overcome all its great evils, at a time when the Devil is no longer spring, so can persecute them with all his might". [59] How could the reign of the saints and the bounden of the devil last for a thousand years if he is released three and a half years before the end of the saints' reign?

On the other manus, if the devil is released after the thousand years, the determination would take to be drawn that the saints practice not reign with Christ during the final, terrible persecution. Such a determination is unacceptable to Augustine. Indeed, by the same token those who perished during the times of persecution in the course of the g years could not, in Augustine's view, be considered to reign with Christ. He concludes, "At present this, to exist sure, is utterly cool, a conclusion to exist repudiated at all costs". [lx] If whatever Christian may exist thought to reign with Christ it is surely the martyr who gave his life for the cause of Christ.

Augustine offers two possible solutions to the trouble, both preserving the reality of the reign of the saints with Christ. It may be that in each case the thousand years is non and so much a precise number of years as it is a designation for the "particular totality" of years allotted to each, though the exact figure differs for the saints and for the Devil. The other possibility is that the Devil'south three and a one-half years of freedom is and then curt that it demand non be taken into account when speaking of the thousand years. In either case the saints reign with Christ fifty-fifty in the darkest hours of suffering and persecution.

Chapter 14: The condemnation of the devil and his followers; and a summary account of the resurrection of the trunk and the final judgment.

The persecution of the holy City is for a strictly limited time. God'due south judgment volition exist executed on all his enemies. The I sitting on the great white throne will exist the Estimate, according to Rev twenty:11. Augustine interprets John's state-ment that heaven and earth fell from the 1 on the throne as indicating the terminate of the present universe, after the last judgment, and the ushering in of the new. He is careful to stress the nature of this modify: "For it is by a transformation of the physical universe, not past its annihilation, that this world will pass away". [61]

As the judgment unfolds, books are opened (Rev 20:12). These Augustine takes to be the Scriptures, setting out the divine constabulary given to men for his obedience. Reference is then fabricated to "another volume" that is opened to enable judgment to be passed on all men. This, according to Augustine, is "the volume of every man's life, [which] was to evidence which of these control-ments each man had fulfilled or failed to fulfil". [62]

Augustine muses about the nature of this volume of each human being's life. If it were a textile volume, what size would information technology take to exist to comprise accounts of the lives of all men? How long would information technology take to read all its contents? Perhaps we should suppose that in that location is an angel assigned to each menstruation who will read the account of that individual's life: one volume for each person. Augustine'south favoured explanation recognises that John refers to a single book:

Consequently, nosotros must understand this to hateful a kind of divine power which will ensure that all the actions, good or bad, of always individual will be recalled to heed and presented to the mind'due south view with miraculous speed, and then that each homo's cognition will accuse or excuse his conscience. [63]

All the dead volition give business relationship, as John indicates past his references to the sea, Death and Hades giving upwards their dead (Rev xx:13).

Affiliate 15: The meaning of the expressionless given up past the sea, and by Death and Hades.

Expounding John'south words regarding those who are judged in some more than detail, Augustine first suggests that the dead given up by the body of water are those, both good and evil, who vest to the present age ("the ocean") and who will be alive and in the trunk when the Lord returns. Thus John's reference "means that this age gave up all who belonged to it, because they had not yet died". [64]

Those who have died before the Lord's return are embraced by the terms Death and Hades, which besides give upwardly their expressionless. Although the distinction is not fabricated in the Greek text of Rev 20, Augustine speaks of Death and Hades "giving back" their expressionless whilst the sea "gives up" its expressionless.

How are Expiry and Hades to be distinguished? Augustine suggests that "Death" embraces the good, and "Hades" the wicked. The saved experience death simply are spared the penalty of hell, whilst the wicked must endure both. At this point Augustine refers to the position of those holy people who lived earlier the coming of Christ: Old Testament saints. They, he says,

dwelt in regions far removed from the torments of the ungodly, but yet in the nether world, until Christ'south claret and his descent into those regions should rescue them from that place. [65]


All the redeemed now look the full enjoyment of the blessings purchased by the sacrifice of Christ.

The lake of fire awaits "those whose names were not found in the book of life". As Augustine notes, this "book" is non an assist to the divine memory, to ensure that no mistakes are made. Rather the book is a symbolic reference to predestination, the prescript of God which determines those to whom eternal life volition be given. "The fact is that his foreknowledge of them, which is infallible, is itself the volume of life in which they are written, that is, they are known beforehand". [66] The sovereign action of God is thus the crucial factor determining the eternal destiny of all homo beings. Augustine maintains the emphasis on God's sovereign ballot and grace that is such a central theme especially in his anti-Pelagian writings. As Matthew Levering notes, for Augustine "the central consequence at stake in predestination arguments is the radical gift-character of salvation equally an intimate participation in God". [67] At the consummation of man history, God's electing grace is triumphant.

Chapter 16: The new heaven and the new earth.

Whilst at showtime sight Rev 20 does not deal direct with the new creation, Augustine, as noted earlier, sees a reference to this transformation in John's statement in poetry eleven that from the presence of One seated on the slap-up white throne "earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them". After the devil and all who are absent from the book of life have been flung into the lake of fire,

and then the form of this earth will pass away in a blazing up of the fires of the world, just equally the Drench was caused by the overflowing of the waters of the earth. [68]

The world volition be transformed by this conflagration, non annihilated, and the outcome volition be a home fitted for resurrected saints. Augustine's description is worth quoting:

Thus in that blazing up, as I phone call it, of the fires of the world, the qualities of the corruptible elements which are advisable for our corruptible bodies will utterly perish in the called-for, and our substance itself will acquire the qualities which will exist suited, past a miraculous transformation, to our immortal bodies, with the obvious purpose of furnishing the world, now renewed for the better, with a fitting population of homo beings, renewed for the ameliorate even in their flesh. [69]


Augustine wonders whether the fact that "there is no longer whatsoever body of water" indicates that the heat of the burning will dry up the body of water or perhaps it besides volition be changed for the amend. It may, he concludes, be the bounding main in a metaphorical sense, "For from that time the rough weather condition and the storms of this historic period will cease to exist, and 'the sea' is used as an allegory of this stormy historic period". [70]

Thus the scene is set for the vision of the New Jerusalem of Rev 21 which Augustine examines in chapter 17. He has, nevertheless, reached the consummation of the divine work of grace and the beloved City is triumph-ant. As Henry Chadwick notes,

Augustine offers much more hope to the individual than to the institutions of human society, peculiarly liable to be vehicles of grouping egotism. [71]


At that place will, even so, exist a pure and blest society filling the new cosmos to the glory of God throughout eternity.

Decision

It is perhaps surprising that the standard expositions of Augustine'southward theology requite scant attention to his exposition of Rev 20. Often the author's involvement is more taken past Augustine'southward views of history and politics than by his eschatology. [72] Fifty-fifty a study devoted specifically to The Urban center of God, such every bit the commentary on Augustine's work by J H S Burleigh [73] devotes only a couple of pages to the section on Rev 20. Interests mostly lie elsewhere.

In that location has, in dissimilarity, been some acknowledgement of Augustine's role in the development of amillennial eschatology, and in particular an amillennial understanding of Rev 20. The acknowledgement is, however, limited. In his classic work The Bible and the Future A A Hoekema mentions Augustine's views several times, although at one point he does not seem to reflect Augustine's understanding of the nowadays reign of the saints equally embracing all the saints living and dead, and after dissents from Augustine'south inclusion of the living in the k-yr reign. [74] Cornelis Venema notes Augustine's contribution to the decline of premillennialism in the early Church building and also comments that "Augustine gave impetus to the amillennialist contention that the millennium does not follow chronologically the early on history of the New Testament church". [75] Most disappointing is the very recent volume by Sam Storms in which Augustine is mentioned twice, once to mention that he is claimed by some postmillennialists and again at the very terminate of chapter 17 where he quotes Augustine's confession with regard to the Antichrist, that he does not know what Paul means. [76]

Augustine's careful exegesis of Rev 20, whether nosotros agree or disagree with it in detail, deserves much better treatment. He is certainly one of the roots of an amillennial eschatology and he yet offers valuable exegetical and theological resources for the twenty-first century Church.

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Source: https://www.affinity.org.uk/foundations-issues/issue-65-article-4-augustine-on-revelation-20-a-root-of-amillennialism

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