Ethics and the
Millennium
In my ethics lectures, I indicate
that biblical eschatology is much misused today. Although in Scripture, it
functions mainly as an ethically purifying doctrine, in evangelical
theology and preaching, it often serves mainly as a pretext for
speculations about the order of events in the end-times, so that the
ethical focus gets lost.
However, students have sometimes
asked whether there are ethical implications to the three major millennial
theories. The conventional wisdom of course is that premillennialists
and amillennialists tend to be pessimistic about
influencing society in biblical directions, while postmillennialists
tend to be optimistic. Of course I have known some optimistic premillennialists and amillennialists,
and some pessimistic postmillennialists.
Optimist and pessimism seem to me to have more to do with one's
personality and spiritual maturity than with his theology of the end
times. And there are some types of postmillennialism
which are actually conducive to pessimism. One postmillennialist
thinks that Western civilization is doomed, at least in the near future;
his optimism is for the long term only. But how long is the "long
term?"
The movement in the 1970s and '80s
toward greater Christian involvement in social issues was spearheaded, not
by Reformed amils and postmils,
but by Arminian premils
like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. This is an
embarrassment for us: Reformed people like to think that they have a
corner on Christian political thought and action, and they tend to
look down their noses at "fundamentalists" for their lack of a "full-orbed Christian world-and-life view." Of course, it
may be argued that fundamentalists like Falwell
and Robertson were influenced, maybe at third or fourth hand, by Reformed
people like Rushdoony, North and Francis Schaeffer. But it was the Evangelical premils who took the lead in the actual movements
for social change, and we should give them credit. Another reason
why the church should re-examine its divisions: full
implementation of Christianity in our time requires the gifts given to all Christian
traditions
[1]
Therefore, a premil
commitment does not destroy all motivation to Christian social action,
though perhaps one might still argue that from a strictly logical (as
opposed to emotional) standpoint postmillennialism ought to be a greater encourgement to such action. Thus would I resolve the
argument between North, who thinks one must be postmillennial
to be a theonomist, and Bahnsen,
who thinks postmillennialism is an advantage to
a theonomist but not an absolute necessity.
My own eschatology? Through my
career I have avoided the millennial question like the plague. Needless to
say, I have never been asked to teach a course in eschatology! But let me
try a "perspectival" approach,
suggesting that all three views have some of the truth. I agree with the amils and premils that
this age is an age of suffering and persecution for God's people.
I also agree with the postmils that in the long run this age can be seen as an
age of Christian triumph, not only in narrowly "spiritual"
matters, but in the church's social influence as well. That is in fact
what we see in history: believers are always persecuted in some measure;
but eventually Christianity triumphs and comes to profoundly influence the
institutions of the societies it touches. (To limit the church's triumph
to a narrowly "spiritual" realm is, as postmils
emphasize, Platonic rather than Scriptural.)
Ethically, this approach saves us
from premature triumphalism and from undue
pessimism and frustration. Suffering comes first, then glory; but the
blood of the martyrs is the seed of a great church. And as we look back
over two thousand years of Christian history, it is wonderful to see how
divine providence, slowly but surely, brings triumph out of dark
circumstances. The church follows the path of the cross, and it shares in
the glory of the cross.
The troubles of Christianity in our
own time are not, in my opinion, the worst troubles the church has
experienced. The Roman persecutions, the barbarian invasions of Europe,
the spiritual darkness preceding the Reformation and the religious wars
following it, the secularist "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth
century, the totalitarian persecutions of Christians in the early
twentieth century (now declining somewhat) were all more difficult
challenges, in some respects, than we face today in modern Western
civilization. But the church's persecutors are now obscured in historical
dust, while the Christian church continues by God's grace as a powerful
witness to Christ's Lordship and salvation. The troubles we face today
will be similarly dispatched. In God we trust, and in Him we
are confident for the future.
Now: can I say anything in favor of premillennialism specifically? Sure, why not? [2] I believe that Jesus is coming visibly to earth to judge the living and the dead, and that that judgment just might take a thousand years! [3] I do not base that assertion on Revelation 20!