Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 177:706 (Apr 2020)
Article: Were The Fathers Amillennial? An Evaluation Of Charles Hill’s "Regnum Caelorum"
Author: Brian C. Collins

BSac 177:706 (April-June 2020) p. 207

Were The Fathers Amillennial? An Evaluation Of Charles Hill’s Regnum Caelorum

Brian C. Collins

Brian C. Collins is Biblical Worldview Lead Specialist, BJU Press, Greenville, South Carolina.

Abstract

Charles Hill’s Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity seeks to reverse the one-time consensus that the earliest church fathers held to a millennial, rather than an amillennial, viewpoint. At the heart of Hill’s argument is the claim that early millennialism and amillennialism were part of systems of eschatology in which fathers who held to the millennial position also held to a subterranean intermediate state, whereas fathers who held to the amillennial position also held to a heavenly intermediate state. Working from this claim, Hill asserts that a number of early fathers, along with the New Testament writers, held the amillennial position. This study demonstrates the linkage of millennial views and views of the intermediate state to be faulty on the grounds that the early Irenaeus held to both a heavenly intermediate state and to a millennium.

Review Of Hill’s Argument

According to many church historians, millennialism played a dominant role in the eschatology of the early church fathers.1 In Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity, Charles Hill seeks to reverse the historical argument. He asserts that amillennialism dominated the early church and, in fact, preceded millennialism. Hill’s work is foundational for other amillennialists, who appeal to it to argue

BSac 177:706 (April-June 2020) p. 208

that premillennialism “was not the most widely held view” in the first centuries of the church.2 However, a full-scale critique of Hill’s argument has not yet been written.

Though the earliest writers who explicitly addressed the millennium held a millennial view, Hill argues that both Justin and Irenaeus observed that some orthodox Christians were amillennial.3 He proposes that these people can be identified by locating the place of millennial views within wider systems of eschatology. Those who affirmed a millennium also held that the redeemed exist in a subterranean intermediate state as they await the resurrection of the body. In contrast, early Christian writers who opposed millennialism all held that in the intermediate state the soul ascends to God’s presence in heaven.4 Hill grants the theoretical possibility that a person could have s...