Spirit Of The Times

Irony Of The Times

I just can't help but think about how terribly funny (and simultaneously sad) it is, that at the end of the year 1492 most men in Western Europe felt exceedingly gloomy about the future.

Sound like another of my articles? This one is thanks to Gary DeMar (go figure). . .

At that time, "Christian civilization appeared to be shrinking in area and dividing into hostile units as its sphere contracted. For over a century there had been no important advance in natural science, and registration in the universities dwindled as the instruction they offered became increasingly jejune and lifeless. Institutions were decaying, well-meaning people were growing cynical or desperate, and many intelligent men, for want of something better to do, were endeavoring to escape the present through the study of the pagan past.Islam was now expanding at the expense of Christendom. . .The Ottoman Turks, after snuffing out all that remained of the Byzantine Empire, had overrun most of Greece, Albania and Serbia; presently they would be hammering at the gates of Vienna."

That information was taken from Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: A Life of Christopher Columbus (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1942), 3.

Anyway: the intent of this article is to point out that the prevailing attitude of the times was a pessimistic one, similar to the attitude of many Christians today, and yet...the end has STILL not come.

Think of the wasted hours many may have spent in anxious worry over the advance of the Turks, the spiritual state of the Empire, or the fact that the refigerator had yet to be invented.

What can we learn from all this?

God, thou art my God, earely will I seeke thee: my soule thirsteth for thee: my flesh longeth greatly after thee in a barren and drye land without water. Thus I beholde thee as in the Sanctuarie, when I beholde thy power and thy glorie. For thy louing kindnesse is better then life: therefore my lippes shall prayse thee. Thus will I magnifie thee all my life, and lift vp mine hands in thy name.

Psalme 63:1-4

Post-Post Millennialists

The falacy of the complete Millennium

The Germans have a word which describes most arm-chair theologians, especially where Eschatology is concerned: zeitgeist.

It means, The Spirit of the Times.

In this respect, each generation in Christendom has formed and re-formed its own respective Eschatological views.

But what is the true answer? How are we to know what is true, without being affected by the influences of our own generational near-sightedness?

One solid answer is to glean the truths of each preceding age. Dispensationalism, for instance, grew out of the heritage of Medieval Catholic Eschatology. The Protestant Reformation, however, marks a break with the Roman Catholic Church. And even though some of its theology continued to draw from Medieval thought, much of it was a return to Biblical theology, the area of Eschatology included.

The death of John Knox in 1572 set the stage for a shift in the development of English apocalyptic interpretation. During his last year, Knox preached a series of dynamic sermons at St. Andrews University on the prophecies of Daniel. James Melville, who was a student at that time, wrote: "he maid me sa to grew and tremble, that I could not hold a pen to wryt." From that point on, prophetic studies dominated the theological discussions at St. Andrews for decades to come.

However, while many of these circumstances may have far-reaching results in our own century, it would be - of a certainty - very far-fetched to assume that the direct result of Medieval and Puritan Eschatological studies is our own day's hyper-dispensationalism, or even our day's post-post millennialism.

In order to claim that a post-post's view of the millenium is legitimate because it had its inception in the Medieval ideologies of the seven dispensations, etc., one would have to also accept the whole system.

The first problem with this (for Protestants) is that it means re-aligning with a Catholic idealogy, which has long since been abandoned.

The second is that, since the system is built upon the Middle English idea of

"The World shall last sixe thousand yeeres;

Two thousand thereof shall be a vacuitie

Two thousand the Law shall continue;"

(Daniel Featley's Clavis Mystica by R. Bauckman, Tudor Apocalypse (Appleford: Courtenay Classics, 1978), 2-283.),

one has to also accept this thought to accept the rest. Becaus as many earlier (Catholic) theologians believed, the earth would only last for about 6,000 years. (Six days of creation / six thousand years of History.)

But the system is fouled up. It would have been convenient for those who lived pre-15 or 1600. For us, however, it is obvious that the Tudor Apocalypse is not the end, nor the beginning of the end.

Once again, this belief is a result of a generational near-sightedness, one which is proved incorrect when placed against the test of time. To truly understand the whole "dating system," take it ALL the way back to Christ, who said, "this generation shall not pass, until all these things have been fulfilled."

Medieval Roots of Dispensationalism?
Seven dispensations, the Church, future conversion of the Jews & the invasion of Gog and Magog
Edward E. Hindson, the Dean of the Institute of Biblical Studies (Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia) has written that,
"Dispensationalism grew out of the heritage of Medieval (Catholic) eschatology...

A typical early English version reads:

The World shall last sixe thousand yeeres;
Two thousand thereof shall be a vacuitie;
Two thousand the Law shall continue.

Eventually the Six Ages were popularly distinguished as:

1. Adam to Noah
2. Noah to Abraham
3. Abraham to David
4. David to the Captivity
5. Captivity to Christ
6. Christ to last Judgment.

This concept of distinguishing specific ages of biblical and contemporary history became entrenched in medieval theology. It was later paralleled to the six days of creation. Thus, it was observed that man was created on the sixth day and that Christ came in the sixth age. Eventually, the concepts of the Three Eras and the Six Ages were conflated (since they both totalled 6,000 years) by Martin Luther in the title page to his Supputatio Annorum Mundi (1541):

ELIA Propheta
Sex milibus annorum stabit mundus.
Duobos milibus inane.
Duobos milibus Lex.
Duobos milibus Messiah.
Insti sunt Sex dies hebdomadae coram Deo.
Septimus dies Sabbatum acternum est.
Psalm 90. Et 1 Pet. 2
Mille anni sicut dies unus."

Many Catholic thinkers accepted the popular Medieval concept that the "Prophecy of Elijah" limited human history to six thousand years. The belief that the six days of creation corresponded to the six ages of human history was established as early as Isidore of Seville (560-636) and Bede (673-735). Bede even paralleled the morning and evening of the days of creation to the six ages. All of this figurative imagery was based, of course, on pure hypothesis and conjecture, as much of the early Catholic (and dare I say, LATER Catholic) theology.

By the twelfth century, commentators such as Rupert of Deutz (c. 1075-1129) and Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173) interpreted the Apocalypse as outlining all of church history. As the Catholic church strayed from orthodoxy, others viz., Otto of Freising (1111-1158) began to view the Book of Daniel as predicting the rise of the Roman Empire (fourth monarchy) and Revelation as predicting the struggle of the Roman Church. They forsook an Historic stance on the Apocalypse, and emphasized the literal interpretation of prophecy and its relevance to universal history. Otto also introduced the idea that the 1,000 year binding of Satan began with Constantine's legalization of Christianity (325) and would end in about 1325, when Satan would be loosed to deceive the world prior to his ultimate destruction.
The concept of Satan's binding from 325-1325 was thereafter commonly accepted by Medieval writers. It led to the idea that the Antichrist would appear in the fourteenth century.

Joachim of Fiore (1135-1202) became the most influential Medieval scholar in the area of apocalyptic eschatology. Joachim viewed the seven seals of the Apocalypse as predictive of seven ages of Church history, an idea that was also popular with early dispensationalists. He saw the last stage as the "Age of the Spirit," followed by the final cataclysm. He also viewed Mohammed as the False Prophet and the Turks as Gog and Magog.

One scholar noted that "The widespread popularity of his views held sway over European scholars until the time of the Reformation."

I respond by saying, "How true. When the light of the gospel shines in upon the imaginations of men, their foolishness ceases, and they accept the doctrines of God."

A Revival Of Logic
Why Protestants Are Thinking (The Neo-Thomistic Doctrine)

"Early in the 19th century in Italy certain Catholic professors of philosophy began to see in Thomas Aquinas's teaching basic principles that might resolve the problems associated with Kantian and Hegelian Idealism, British Empiricism, current Rationalism, Skepticism, and Liberalism. By 1850, neo Thomism or neoscholasticism began to be heard through the writings of Gaetano Sanseverino in Naples, Matteo Liberatore in Rome, and the Jesuit periodical Civilita Cattolica founded in Naples in 1850. These efforts were brought to a head by Josef Kleutgen in Germany, Henri LaCordaire in France, Zeferino Gonzales in the Philippines and Spain, and Tommaso Zigliara and Pope Leo XIII in Italy. The charter of this neo Thomism was Leo's Aeterni Patris (1879). Through subsequent encyclicals, Leo exemplified the applicability of Thomistic ideas to contemporary problems. All subsequent popes, including John Paul II, reiterated the need for a Christian philosophy based on Thomistic principles.

The rise of Modernism in the Roman Catholic church after 1900, however, resulted in a multiplicity of ecclesiastical condemnations, a legislated Thomism, and a failure to realize the hopes of Leo XIII. Despite this and two world wars, much fruitful work was accomplished by outstanding scholars, numerous periodicals, and editors of historical texts, including the critical edition of the works of Aquinas (the Leonine Edition). Among the great number of modern scholars who called themselves Thomists (but not neo Thomists or neoscholastics) were Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Martin Grabmann, and Yves Congar."

With the rise of Hyper-Fundamentalism, a reaction against Aquinas and neoscholasticism occurred in the 1960s. While some have erroneously pointed to the the Second Vatican Council, which turned people's minds toward social rather than doctrinal issues, the true culprit was the Voluntaristic style emphasized by fundamental zealots.

This brings us to the ray of light which I have been itching to write about: Neo-Thomism.
This twentieth century revival of Thomas Aquinas' thoughts differs from the original philosophy, in that it undergirds Protestant theology more firmly, while not at the expense of much Roman theology (only in some areas of ecclesiology.)

"The metaphysical distinctive of neo Thomism may be found in its insistence on the maxim that 'existence precedes essence.' For that reason (it has been claimed) that Thomism is the original existentialism. Put simply, this means that one has to know that something exists before one knows what it is, and before one knows that something exists, one has to accept that anything exists. This latter conviction is not the result of a rational deduction; it is an immediate awareness. Thus the act of being, apprehended in a direct intuition, precedes its various modalities.

This apprehension of being leads the Thomist to posit the existence of God via the cosmological argument. For even though the reality of being is an inescapable fact, it is not a logically necessary truth. Being exists, but need not exist. Thus being is inherently contingent, and its contingency makes it finite. If it exists in view of having no inherent necessity to do so, it must be caused to exist. Also, the very forms which being assumes are due to the interplay of various causes; and the fact of change, so characteristic of being, must be the result of causal actions as well. Thus being is bounded by causes wherever it appears.

However, since it is a logical absurdity for anything to cause itself, there must be an external cause of being. Now if that cause is also finite, we have not grounded finite being yet, and it still should not exist. A chain of finite causes would carry the same problem with it. Hence the Thomist posits an original uncaused cause of all being, viz. God. It must be noted that this argument is based on the metaphysical necessity for a cause of being, not on a need for explanation, as would be the case with Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason.

The understanding of God as unconditioned necessary existence goes far in providing the basis for Thomistic natural theology. For if God is uncaused, he is unlimited. Then he contains all perfections infinitely; e.g., he is all - good, omnipresent, omniscient, all - loving, perfect person, etc. There can be only one such God, since a God who possesses all perfections cannot differ from any other God who would also possess all the identical possessions. Thus Thomists feel confident that their philosophical arguments concern the same God whom they worship in church.

Thomism understands the relationship between God the Creator and the created order to be analogical. God is the source of all being, and finitude participates in his being, but only with limitations. In the matter of applying language to God, predication proceeds analogically as well. Language is derived from the finite world. But then it is applied to God with the understanding that he is the source of all named properties and that he posseses all those properties without limitation. For example, one may apply the word "love" to God, even though it is a word learned within human finite relationships, because God is pure love and the originator of all human love.

The insistence on being over essence also makes itself felt in Thomism's understanding of the human person. Thomism avoids both a Platonic mind - body dualism and a reductive materialism. With the understanding of the soul as the form of the body, the human is seen as a unit, composed of soul and body in mutual dependence. Thus, for instance, cognition combines both the physical / empirical (sensation) and the spiritual (abstraction). Thomistic writings have consistently defended the dignity and integrity of human personhood, particularly against totalitarian ideologies."

While some argue that Thomism (even Neo-Thomism) is a purely Catholic doctrine, we at the WBI Study Centre would disagree.

"In theology Thomism has usually been linked to conservative expressions of orthodox doctrines, partially due to the close dependence on Aquinas's own formulations. Since the Second Vatican Council it has lost much ground in Catholic circles to philosophies of more recent origin, e.g., phenomenology or process thought, due to a certain impatience with Thomism's supposedly outmoded Aristotelianism. At the same time there has been some movement in evangelical Protestantism to adopt Thomistic philosophical principles for purposes of apologetics and theological enhancement, e.g., by Norman L Geisler."

W Corduan
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)

"But we fear that the dispensationalist method of interpretation does violence to the unity of Scripture and to the Sovereign continuity of God's purposes, and cavalierly leaves out of account a major portion of the apostolic teaching - that, chiefly, of the Acts and the Epistles - as unrelated to the perspective of the Old Testament authors."
Philip E. Hughes, Interpreting Prophecy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), p. 104.