Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 06:1 (Winter 1965)
Article: Millennialism in the Seventeenth Century
Author: Robert Clouse

GJ 6:1 (Wtr 65) p. 3

Millennialism in the Seventeenth Century

Robert Clouse

Assistant Professor of History
Indiana State College

[Dr. Clouse earned his B.D. degree from Grace Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. degree in history from the State University of Iowa.]

Through the centuries of the Christian era many individuals have clung to a belief in a literal kingdom of Christ which should be established upon earth, a view which has been called millennialism or chiliasm. This view was a legacy from Judaism. In its classic premillennial form it taught that Jesus would intervene directly in history and raise the righteous dead and they would rule together over a renewed and glorious earth for a thousand years. This period would be followed by the general resurrection, the judgment and end of all things, the everlasting happiness of the elect and the eternal loss of the wicked.

Though this interpretation has persisted, it has rarely been the prevailing opinion. However, there have been at least two periods when millennial teaching has been widely believed by Christians. The first of these was the first through the third centuries when the Christians were suffering great persecutions. From the Apostle John came the inspired Apocalypse known also as the Book of Revelation. This book, with its further expansion of the prophecies of Daniel, has been the object of intensive study by those who have been interested in the thousand year reign of Christ.1

Origen seems to have led the opposition to the literal acceptance of the teaching of the millennium from the Apocalypse of John and to have insisted upon a figurative interpretation of the New Jerusalem and its joys. The old belief, however, was deeply entrenched in the Scriptures themselves and it persistently held its own throughout the third century in the western Roman world and in certain regions of the east. In time the legalization of Christianity caused the hope of relief from this present age to dim, and in the Middle Ages, except in isolated cases, this teaching nearly died out. Following the Reformation in the seventeenth century it experienced a new popularity, and there was a second great age of chiliastic teaching that rivals that of the early centuries. It is with the seventeenth century chapter of the history of millenarianism that we will deal in this paper.

During the middle ages the eschatology of the great mass of Christians was Augustinian or amillennial. They believed that the millennium should be interpreted spiritually and was fulfilled in the church. There were a few dissidents to this view, such as Joachim of Flora, his followers the Spiritual Franciscans, and the Hussites....