What Presbyterians Believe Eschatology
Section II - Eschatology in the Reformed Tradition 

Other parts of this paper:

Background

Introduction

SECTION I - Context

SECTION II - Eschatology in the Reformed Tradition

SECTION III - Eschatology in Biblical Perspective

SECTION IV - Implications for Individual and Church

SECTION V - Principles of Faith Related to Eschatology

APPENDIX: Report on Dispensationalism (1944 GA)

 II. Eschatology in the Reformed Tradition

A. Up to the Westminster Assembly (A.D. 1647)

The first Protestant Reformers inherited the traditional Augustinian eschatology developed in his City of God. 'The millennium of the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation was seen as a symbolic representation of the whole span of time from before Christ to the Last Judgment and the Kingdom of Christ was institutionalized in the visible Roman Catholic Church. From the Council of Ephesus (431), which condemned belief in a literal, future millennium, the Augustinian interpretation was dominant in Roman Catholicism and later mainline Protestantism. The only premillennialists of the Reformation period were found among the radical reformers such as Thomas Muntzer who was involved in the Peasant's Revolt (1524-25) and the militant Anabaptists who took over the town of Munster (1534).

Martin Luther, a traditional Augustinian, believed that he was living at the close of history and interpreted prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to certain forecasts of events relating to his time, such as the decline and overthrow of the Papacy. The Lutheran Augsburg Confession contains a rejection of the premillennialism of the Anabaptists.

Calvin likewise had an Augustinian approach to the thousand years of Revelation 20. Its time reference was to the whole of Christian history rather than to events at the end of the age. Calvin stressed the Ascension and the Return of Christ as the two decisive appearances of the Lord by which the life of the Church and the Christian in the intervening period are to be determined. The date of the return is unknown to us that we might be expectant and ready for it. The Church must nonetheless proclaim the Gospel to all peoples. Only at the second Advent of Christ will the glory and power of His Kingdom be fully manifest. He will come to judge the godless and to complete the redemption of the faithful who now live in hope of the resurrection and of the blessed life of the world to come. The return of Christ and the general resurrection have as their purpose full redemption and share in Christ's triumph over his and our enemies in the ultimate establishment of the rule of Christ or its culmination in the eternal Kingdom of God.

Calvin was critical of historic premillennialism which he saw as making the rule of Christ a temporal and transient kingdom, thereby dissolving the true hope which is directed to the eternal Kingdom. To Calvin, Revelation 20 spoke of the spiritual rule of Christ over individuals in their earthly life until the completion of their course at death and in the general resurrection. At the same time, Calvin believed that Christ's Kingdom, already established, would have a yet -greater triumph in history before the Consummation. He did not explicitly include a general conversion of the Jewish people in his vision of the course of Christianity, but he was confident that the enemies of Christ, such as the Turks and the Papacy, would be defeated. The second Helvetic Confession (1566) is a Reformed creed following Calvin that specifically condemned premillennialism as being in the category of "Jewish dreams."

The Augustinian historicist approach continued to be popular in the sixteenth nod seventeenth centuries. Among some of the Reformers and successors of Calvin, such as Bucer, Francis Lambert, Beza, Peter Martyr, and the editors of the Geneva Bible, appeared a belief that the Jewish people would be converted to Christianity and that through their conversion the Church on earth would experience great blessing. Belief in the future conversion of the Jews became widely diffused in England, Scotland, and New England in the seventeenth century. The Puritans followed Calvin in believing the Gospel would progress throughout the world. This understanding of the future is not explicit in the Westminster Confession of Faith, but it can be seen in the Westminster Larger Catechism (answer to Question 19 1), the Westminster Directory of Worship ("Of Public Prayer before the Sermon"), and the writings of the Westminster divines. While a few were moderate premillennialists, the great majority expected the propagation of the gospel and the Kingdom of Christ among all nations, the conversion of the Jews, the fullness of the Gentiles, and the fall of Antichrist. The common Augustinian eschatology is affirmed in the Westminster Confession, compatible with either its amillennial or postmillennial forms.

B. Westminster Confession and Catechisms

The understanding of eschatology in the Westminster Standards grows out of the writers' convictions about the authority of Scripture and how we are to read it. An impression of "proof-texting," is given, unfortunately, by the Scripture references appended to the Confession and Catechisms. However, these proofs were added after the documents were completed. The substance of the Westminster Standards does not often betray a narrow focus on one or two selected passages. The intent was to wrestle with the full range of the witness of Scripture. If we follow the Standards' position on Scripture, conclusions about what "the Bible says" are to be arrived at in light of the entire canon.

1. "That Day Unknown"
"As Christ would have us to be certainly persuaded that there shall be a day of judgment, both to deter all men from sin and for the greater consolation of the godly in their adversity, so he will have that day unknown to men, that they may shake off all carnal security and be always watchful, because they know not at what hour the Lord will come, and may be ever prepared to say, 'Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly,' Amen

(Westminster Confession of Faith XXXV:3)

The passages in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms that deal with our hope for the future show no interest at all in making Scripture yield a set of predictions about the future. Indeed, XXXV:3 insists that God holds the time of the Day of Judgment unknown in order to preserve the immediacy and urgent watchfulness of our expectation of that day. The Westminster divines would oppose as "carnal security" the attempts to pin down that day by piecing together out of Scripture a set sequence of events.

The usual sense of "carnal security" is present in this passage, i.e., a failure to trust in the power of God and dependence on the things of the flesh for security. There is, however, a closely related and special use of the phrase in the context of XXXV:3. We are indulging in "carnal security" when we create a scenario of the future, for the result is that our trust is placed in that scenario instead of in the Lord, and we watch, not for Christ, but for the next event on the timetable. Such a misplaced trust is, very likely, not the intent of most modem writers who interpret Scripture and produce schedules; it is nevertheless the effect of what they do with the Bible. They move the focus away from the coming Day of the Lord to the debate about which stage we happen to be in just now, and they encourage an approach to the Bible that has less to do with faith and more to do with fantasy and using the Bible as a crystal ball.

Many places in Scripture speak of the future victory of Christ, and, quite obviously, each passage talks about this future in some sequence, there being no other way to put words on paper. It is not surprising that interpreters of Scripture would want to compare these various sections of the Bible and work them into some agreement so that they would all fit into a comprehensive schedule. The fact that the Westminster divines made no attempt - at such a prediction and that they insisted that God wants "that day unknown" is evidence that they found it injudicious to reduce the wealth of Scriptural images about God's future to a precise scenario of the future.

2. Scripture Interprets Itself
"All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear to all, yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

"The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold but one), it may be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly."

(Westminster Confession of Faith 1:7-9)

Westminster's disinterest in developing a scenario of the future from the Scripture is not to be construed as a merely negative position, as though the divines could not make up their minds and so were silent. It is legitimate to understand their refusal to boil the biblical hope down to a schedule as testimony that we trust in God, not in special knowledge (XXXV:3).

We can also see that this position is based on a particular understanding of how to read the wealth of images which are used to point to the coming of Christ. Chapter One of the Westminster Confession of Faith recognized that certain parts of Scripture are not altogether plain, and that some question is possible in regard to their true and full sense. By their acceptance of God's declaration that the actual time of the Day of the Lord is kept unknown, it is implicit that the Westminster divines understood these biblical images for the future to be one of the areas which is not clear and need not be clear. These less plain passages are interpreted in the light of others that are more plain, such as "of that day and hour no one knows" (Matthew 24:36) and "the day of the Lord will come like a thief' (11 Peter 3: 1 0) This is the way in which the Westminster Confession allowed Scripture to interpret Scripture, listening not merely to the words of one or two texts, but to the full chorus of Scripture.

Drawing together all Scriptures pertinent to a particular subject to grasp the entire witness of Scripture can be a legitimate and helpful method of research. Care must be taken, however, not to violate the specific original context of each Scripture so gathered. A most serious error is made, especially in dealing with so-called prophetic segments, when neglect is given to the primary meaning of passages usually and obviously fulfilled at the time or closely subsequent to their utterance. Even more serious is to develop a set interpretation of Old Testament images and events and to impose that interpretation upon New Testament passages as though this were Scripture interpreting Scripture. The New Testament clearly indicates examples and limits of the spiritual lessons afforded by Old Testament persons, events and symbols (e.g., John 3:14, 15; Acts 2: 11-21 and 8:25-35; 1 Cor. 10:1-11; Hebrews 11).

When the Confession has surveyed all the Scriptural witness, the hope for our future is focused on the Resurrection, the Return of Christ, and the Day of Judgment. These events are treated with reserve and without an attempt to organize a lot of the details. Within this understanding of God's future, we are free to read the varied images of the hope for that future, paying attention to their uniqueness and particular emphasis, without having, to destroy them in order to force them into some imagined sequence.

3. The Hope for Church and World
While the Westminster Confession of Faith does not devote major attention to the future of the Church and world in the time before the end, its chapter on providence provides a solid basis for hope. In V:4, the sins of men and angels are said to be restrained by God's "most wise and powerful bounding." That the Church has cause for hope is spelled out in V:7, "As a most special manner, it taketh care of his church, and disposeth all things to the good thereof."

To fill out our understanding of the hopes which the Westminster Standards have for the Church and world in this time before the Last Judgment, we turn to the Larger Catechism, question 191.

Of the petition in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come," the Larger Catechism says that in these words "we pray: that the kingdom of sin and Satan may be destroyed." While there are those who identify "the kingdom of sin and Satan" with this fallen world, the Catechism does not make such an equation. In fact, the very next phrase says that in this petition we also pray that "the Gospel (be) propagated throughout the world." The destruction of the kingdom of sin and Satan is set down as parallel to the propagation of the gospel and with the growth and sanctification of the Church.

The Larger Catechism has none of that pessimism which would write off the Church or the world as hopelessly in the grip of Satan. The hope for the Kingdom of God includes the hope for the overcoming of sin and Satan in this world before the time of the end as well as for the nourishing of the Church.

C Reformed Tradition Since Westminster

The clearest creedal statement among the English heirs of Calvin affirming what may be termed a latter-day glory concept for the Church on earth is found in the Savoy Confession of Faith (I 658): "In the later days Anti-christ being destroyed, the Jews called, and the adversaries of (Christ) broken, the churches of Christ being enlarged and edified through a free and plentiful communication of light and grace, shall enjoy in this world a more quiet, peaceable and glorious condition than they have enjoyed."

Along with a growing interest in the Jewish people and the advance of the Church, biblical expositors of the 17th century gave more attention to the thousand years of Revelation 20. There was wide acceptance of the belief that the millennium had reference neither to the past nor the present, but to the future. In fact, before the end of the seventeenth century an interest in eschatology and in the future of the Jews became a European phenomenon. The expectation of an era when the knowledge of Christ and faith in Him would be universal took form in millennial categories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Premillennialism did not gain general recognition among Protestants until after the rise of the Irvingite Catholic Apostolic Church, Plymouth Brethren and Millerite Adventist movements of the first half of the nineteenth century. Premillennialism spread a mood of pessimism, regarding the Church as an institution without a future.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, were in the main favorable to an optimistic postmillennial view that a future period would be brought about by preaching and the means of grace under the influence and power of the Holy Spirit continuing and expanding on Calvin's view that the gospel would make progress throughout the world.

The majority of English-speaking heirs of Calvin were optimistic about the future of the Church on earth. The evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth century emphasized and reinforced the conviction that Spirit-empowered preaching was the divine means for extending the Kingdom of Christ. The great modem missionary movement and the proliferation of voluntary benevolent societies rose out of the context of a belief that through the work of the Holy Spirit and in fulfillment of divine promises Christianity would possess and affect the whole earth. Local revivals, missionary expansion, and benevolent enterprises were seen as the first ripples of a movement that would engulf the earth.

In the first three centuries of American Christianity virtually all of the leading scholars, missionaries and evangelists of the Reformed tradition in America, if not also in Great Britain, advocated a postmillennial vision of the future. These included John Cotton, Jonathan Edwards. Samuel Hopkins, Timothy Dwight, Archibald Alexander, Albert Barnes, Lyman Beecher, Charles and A. A. Hodge,. W.G.T. Shedd, Benjamin B. Warfield, Thomas Smyth, James H. Thomwell, William Swan Plumer, F. R. Beattie, T. V. Moore, Moses D. Hoge, John L. Girardeau, Robert L. Dabney, and nearly all of the Southern Presbyterians at least through the first quarter of the twentieth century.

In the later part of the nineteenth century there began currents which would contribute to the breakdown of the postmillennial consensus. Postmillennialism showed a tendency to lose itself in social reform, identifying with the national interest, and with institutional growth. Such secular vision of the future focuses upon humanity in general in terms of social, biological and technological progress rather than upon the future of the church in this world or the next. From the point of view of millennial theology in the 20th century the increasing popularity of premillennialism was in part a protest against the secularization of hope for the future, as well as reaction to despair over liberal theology, evolutionary theory, and the higher critical study of the Bible.

Disillusionment brought about by two world wars and what many see as the decline of western civilization played a part in diminishing the attraction that the Reformed Faith had for the postmillennial vision. At the same time, premillennialism and amillennialism have been characterized by a defeatism that has tended to discourage the fulfillment of the church's mission and task since both traditionally expect a constant progression of evil. Quite apart from any vision of the future, the latter half of the twentieth century has seen among evangelicals and fundamentalists the emergence of "uneasy conscience" and efforts to add some degree of social concern to the traditional evangelistic witness.

Until recently, Presbyterians have had an affinity for a type of postmillennialism that labors in faith and hope for the manifestation of Christ's Kingdom and His spiritual conquest of the world in this age. Only within the past century has amillennialism in a modem form gained a new ascendancy in American Presbyterianism. In the rise of fundamentalism, the older Princeton theologians and the premillennialists made common cause against liberalism. A pessimistic evaluation of the institutional church and its prospects produced a readiness to accept amillennialism or to ally with premillennial fundamentalism, and to separate from the major Presbyterian denominations. Since 1967, conservative elements in both major Presbyterian denominations have appeared working within the structure of the churches to provoke a resurgence of personal and pulpit evangelism, to commend social activism at a purely personal level, and to direct the courts of the Church away from making social, political or economic pronouncements.

None of the older categories are adequate as eschatological systems but are still descriptions of certain attitudes. A contemporary statement of eschatology in keeping with the Reformed Faith affirms that the Kingdom of Christ will not appear in all its fullness until the Advent of Christ, hence we pray, "Thy kingdom come." But already established in the course of human history and in the hearts and lives of the Christian community, we celebrate "for Thine is the kingdom." To pray the Lord's Prayer and to fulfill Christ's Great Commission requires love for God and neighbor, faith in God whose Spirit uses and blesses human proclamation and deeds for the advancement of His Kingdom, and assured hope that His Kingdom is universal and invincible in its sweep. This accords with a theology of hope, in the direction of a modification of the Augustinian eschatology known as the postmillennial or latter-day glory vision of the church's future in this world and age.