Category: eschatology

The R2K flavor of Christianity with its amillennial eschatology, along with the amillennialism of the Protestant Reformed Church variety both by way to theological implication dismiss the postmillennial and Biblical position that Christ is the explicit King of the whole cosmos. R2K avoids this position by talking about how “Christ rules the common realm by His left hand.” By this maneuver the R2K heretics escape from any responsibility of identifying the explicit rule of Christ over different jurisdictions in the common realm with a clerical wave of the hand saying something ignorant like, “we need to stay in our lane,” as if the Lord Christ needs to be circumscribed in how and where He can exercise His authority. The Protestant Reformed Church, on the other hand, is just allergic to any talk of a Gospel Christianity where Christ is victor in space and time before His second advent.

It is difficult to see how those who reject the explicit Kingship of Christ over the whole cosmos and every area of life can affirm the time worn title of Jesus Christ as “Prophet, Priest, and King.”  Of course, the tack the rabid amillennialists take is to give a Gnostic turn Christ’s Kingship. The Kingship of Christ, per the R2K types and the foaming at the mouth amillennialists is “spiritual, don’t you know.” And “spiritual” ends up meaning “not concrete.” The Kingship of Jesus ends up being constrained to the Church realm as the Church is identified 100% as a synonym with Kingdom, so that Christ’s Kingdom is comprised of the Church alone, as if the rest of the Cosmos ticks along apart from the explicit rule of Jesus Christ as communicates in His Law-Word. The exegesis and theology that is required to come up with this neutering of the explicit Kingship of Jesus Christ is, shall we say, original.

Taking this matter in broad theological strokes we would observe that as Adam fell in such a manner as to completely transgress and violate the standards of God’s Kingdom, the Lord Christ, by His obedient life, death, resurrection, ascension, and session so repairs the wound that Adam inflicted that the results is that just as paradise was lost in Adam, so paradise is restored in principle in our great King Christ. In Adam all of creational reality received a mortal blow in space and time and in Christ all of creational reality receives a complete vivification in principle in space and time. To deny this would force us to conclude that the damage wreaked by old slew-foot is greater than could be repaired by the eternal victorious God man, Jesus Christ. In the words of Isaac Watts in his “Joy to the World,” Christ;

Comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found. 

As a matter of theology, Cornelius Van Til (inconsistently an amillennial himself) said;

‘The first three chapters of Genesis are the passage from grace to wrath; the rest of the Bible and the rest of history is the passage from wrath to grace that eventually leads to the wedding supper of the Lamb, the final judgment, and the extension into the eternal kingdom beyond history.”

So, the challenge for the rabid R2K amillennialist who insists that Christ rules by His left hand everything except the realm of grace and so didn’t die to restore and renew the family, the civil government, politics, art, education and whatever else David Van Drunen and David Engelsma has read as outside of Christ’s  kingly hegemony is to give us a non-contradictory exegesis and theology (upper register and lower register Mosaic covenant anybody?) that proves once and for all that Jesus Christ as ascended to the right hand of the Father to the end of ruling the cosmos for the benefit of the Church;

Ephesians 1:20 That power is the same as the mighty strength ²⁰ he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, ²¹ far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. ²² And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Maybe it’s just me but “appointed Him to be head over everything for the Church” seems pretty clear, unambiguous, and conclusive.

What the Biblical Christian looks for, following Scripture, which teaches that Christ must reign until all things are put under His feet,” is a cosmic and exhaustive redemption that redeems all as far as the curse is found. To deny that suggests that Adam’s rebellion was more totalistic than Christ’s restoration. Apart from that looming triumphant reality, happening eventually in space and time before the second advent, amillennialists seem to be teaching and believing that Satan’s wound is greater than God’s ability to heal the wound of the fall.

Now, I can hear in my mind, the accusations from the amen corner of the party of the Reformed Church who delights in defeat and glories in the anticipation of Christians being martyred so that all the more glory can be gained that I am guilty of “a theology of glory,” as if confidence in Christ’s victory is a sin I should be shamed on for believing, or failing that D. G. Hart is sarcastically chirping somewhere in Hillsdale on how I am “immanentizing the eschaton,” as if the R2K gang who can’t shoot straight aren’t they themselves creating their own future here on earth by teaching that the future for Christians is nothing but “gloom, despair, and agony on me.” By cracky, according to the pessimistic gang anyone “expecting the victory and triumph of the church militant have sure and certain proven that they are possessed by demons.”

Here is the skinny of optimistic postmillennialism. We are not in a power contest between God and Satan. God, in Christ, has won the victory and the victory is now, though we understand the nowness of this victory has a not yetness about it. However, the “not-yetness” of the Kingdom, while being frontloaded in the Old Covenant has now given way to the “nowness” of the Kingdom being frontloaded with the coming of Christ and His bringing in of the Kingdom of God. This was the message of all the healings done by the Lord Christ, as well as the demon castings. All of this shouted, “The King and the Kingdom has arrived,” and that Kingdom brought in by the King is just as real today as it was in the 1st century Palestine during His ministry. Again, we get it, that there is more yet to come of this current nowness of the Kingdom but it is simply the case that the more that which is to come does not in any way diminish the now that is currently present among us. With the triumph of Christ in His obedient life, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension, and session, the ongoing, increasing and progressive sanctification of the cosmos has never ceased.

Oh, to be sure, the sanctification of the cosmos ebbs and flows in the course of history. There are dark times where it looks like the wound given at the fall will consume all of mankind. The tide of optimism recedes because man’s ugliness is more pronounced. However, in God’s economy the high tide of healing (salvation) is still ahead of us and eventually the tide will come in so high, before the return of our great Captain and Liege-Lord, that the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the water covers the seas.

The R2K lads and the foaming at the mouth amillennialists point at all the wrongs in the world. Our only response is to sing to them;

This is my Father’s world:
Oh, let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world,
The battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

Satan will be put down just as decidedly in space and time before Christ’s return as he was put down at the cross, resurrection, ascension, and session. If we do not believe this then by way of implication we seem to be saying that Mephistopheles is more powerful in the context of world history, than the Church of Jesus Christ of which He is the Head. There’s an expression for this view of history: It’s called “defeatism” – it’s the doctrine that Jesus the Christ is a loser in history; it’s the doctrine that the bride of Christ is a loser of history,” and it is the doctrine embraced by premillennialists and amillennialists.

Let it never be named among the called and battle ready troops of Jesus Christ.

“Nothing has been more characteristic of current post-millennialism than its emphasis on the kingship of the ascended Christ; nothing fires the Postmil vision more than that reality. Yet it is just this reality that post-millennialism affectively compromises and, in part, even denies. Postmils especially will no doubt find this last statement startling, maybe even outrageous, so let me explain.

Nothing is more distinctive to the postmil vision than its expectation of promised “victory” for the church, a future “golden age,” before Christ’s return. That golden era is variously conceived; in its reconstructionist versions, for example, it is to be a period of global supremacy and control by Christians in every area of life. But all postmil constructions—past and present, and all of them marked (as postmil) in distinction from other eschatological viewpoints—have in common that the millennial “gold”/”victory” (1) is expected before Christ’s return and (2) up to the present time in the church’s history, apart from occasional anticipations, has remained entirely in the future.

Here, then, is where a problem—from the vantage point of New Testament teaching, a fundamental structural difficulty—begins to emerge. Emphasis on the golden era as being entirely future leaves the unmistakable impression that the church’s present (and past) is something other than golden and that, so far in its history, the church has been less than victorious. This impression is only reinforced when, typically in my experience, the anticipated glorious future is pictured just by contrasting it with what is alleged to be the churches presently dismal state (the angle of vision seldom seems to include much beyond the church scene in the United States!), usually with the added suggestion that those who do not embrace the postmil vision are “defeatists” and contribute at least to perpetuating the sad and unpromising status quo.

The New Testament, however, will not tolerate such a construction. If anything is basic (and I’m inclined to say, clear) in its eschatology, it is that the eschatological kingship of Christ begins already at his first coming culminating at his resurrection and ascension. “God has placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph 1:22; cf. v. 20).

…In other terms, for the New Testament, the entire interadventual period, not just a closing episode, is the “golden age” of the church; that period and what transpires in it, as a whole, embodies the churches millennial “success” and ” victory.”

RICHARD B. GAFFIN, JR.| “Theonomy and Eschatology: Reflections On Postmillennialism” in William S. Barker and W. Robert Godfrey, ed. Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 202–03.

1.) It is true that Post-mills find Gaffin’s statement startling and outrageous, as well as humorous, but then we find most statements by Amillennialists to be startling, outrageous and strange. We find that to be the case because none of what Gaffin says represents our position. The above is a case of building a straw man and then proceeding to demolish what nobody believes.

2.) Gaffin affirms that Postmillennialism champions the Kingship of Christ but only does so while denying that Kingship at the same time. The problem with Gaffin’s observation here (and a problem, that Gaffin of all people should not make) is that Postmillennialism understands the hermeneutical dynamic in Scripture of the “already/now/not yet.” Postmills emphasize, as Gaffin rightly acknowledges the “kingship of the ascended Christ. Further, Gaffin is correct that “nothing fires the Postmil vision more than that reality.” This truth represents the reality that Christ has indeed already taken up His office of King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The Postmill understands that Christ has been inaugurated as the King of the Cosmos. This is the “already” and “now” of our eschatology. Unlike the Amillennialist Gaffin, the Postmil believes that this Kingship is not merely a spiritual Kingship but the Postmil believes that this Kingship is a reign that rules over every area of life.

However, the Postmil also understands that with the passage of time the already and now inaugurated Kingship of Jesus Christ is going from increasing consummation unto  increasing consummation which each passing day. We understand, unlike the Amills, that the Kingship of Jesus Christ while already present has a “not yet” quality that takes time to demonstrate. Has Gaffin forgot the Kingdom parables?

  “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

And that,

 “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds^[b] of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Matthew 13

Gaffin desires to indict the Postmillennialists because we understand this principle and he apparently does not?

3.) So, Gaffin is just in error when he says that for the Postmil the Kingship of Christ is entirely future. It is because we believe in the Present Kingship of Jesus Christ that we expect the future of that already present Kingship to be more and more glorious. However, for the Amillennialists, like Gaffin, the Kingship of Christ is a pretend/fantasy Kingship. The Kingship of Christ is exercised only in the Church realm. We can only see and can only expect to ever see the Kingship of Christ with spiritual eyes that see spiritual realities. In just such a manner the Amillennialist can retire from contending for the crown rights of Jesus Christ in every area of life, satisfying himself with the ability of his “spiritual” eyes to see “spiritual” realities that more often than not are not really there, except so as to satisfy the militant A-millennialists retreatist, defeatest, pietistic, and quietistic cowardice.

3.) So, the Postmil, contra Gaffin’s assertion is quite content in seeing the Kingdom present and growing now, while retaining the expectation that the full flowering of the already present Kingdom will go from fuller flowering unto fuller flowering. We Postmils, of course rejoice in the truth that even now;

“God has placed all things under his (Christ’s) feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church” (Eph 1:22; cf. v. 20).

And because we believe that is true the Postmils operate from that truth. Because Eph. 1:22 is true we work from the confidence of that truth unto seeing that truth progressively demonstrate its already current truthfulness. Because we believe the King currently reigns we lean into life living as if the King reigns. It is why we keep praying, apparently unlike the Amills, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done.” Or has Gaffin dispensationalized that prayer since, in his world, the King and the Kingdom has already come and therefore we need not pray that any longer. Is Gaffin suggesting that that prayer was for them and not for us?

4.) As a Postmil, I have no problem affirming with Richard that;

the New Testament, the entire interadventual period, not just a closing episode, is the “golden age” of the church; that period and what transpires in it, as a whole, embodies the churches millennial “success” and ” victory.”

Postmils affirm that we are going from victory unto victory and success unto success. It’s just that Postmils don’t spiritualize the Kingdom so that it is always invisible and non-corporeal all of the time everywhere. Postmils, understand, unlike Amils that since the King now reigns there is work to be done in seeing that every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.

Postmils see that happening in time and space (consider B. B. Warfield’s Eschatological Universalism) as the Holy Spirit makes it so the knowledge of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea whereas Amils like Gaffin, treasuring defeat and surrender, see this only happening with the cataclysmic event that is the return of Jesus Christ.

As a codicil here I will offer that there are many Amillennialists who call themselves “Optimistic Amillennialists.” I call these chaps my friends even if I can’t figure out how they get there. It is the militant Amillennialists who never met a Postmil they didn’t want to pulverize and mock that find my hackles getting raised.