Let's talk about tradition and early Church history

Early Christians believed in a literal future Millennial kingdom and a rapture. So what changed?

Dec 08, 2022

Hello fellow Bereans!

Let’s dive right in.

One claim that's often made by opponents of both dispensationalism and the pre-trib rapture doctrine is that these views are recent and that the opponent's view – be they amillennial, post-millennial, preterist, or pre-mil/post-trib – is the “historical” view. As we've covered in previous letters, this is the logical fallacy known as “appeal to tradition” – the automatic, unquestioning assumption that tradition is always correct.

I'm not going to spend time here re-hashing why that reasoning is fallacious or what Jesus thought of the Pharisees and their traditions. You can go read my article covering logical fallacies for that. Today, I'm going to focus on how this historical claim runs into a teensy little problem – that it ignores the first 300 years of Church history and what the earliest Christians believed and taught, and grounds itself in traditions that arose in the middle ages and afterwards.

Note that I'm not claiming that the early Church taught systematic dispensationalism. I'll deal with the history of dispensationalism in a future article. But the early Church undeniably believed and taught a pre-tribulational rapture, some of the earliest evidence of which is in the writings of Irenaeus.

Irenaeus was a Greek bishop who lived from AD 130 to 202. More importantly, he was a disciple of Polycarp, who was both a contemporary and a disciple of John the Apostle. You know, the guy who wrote the Gospel of John, First, Second and Third John, and Revelation. So Irenaeus was directly taught by a teacher who was directly taught by one of the Twelve. I'd say that lends Irenaeus a certain amount of credibility.

While gnosticism was already coming into being and trying to work its way into the Church in the first century – John himself alludes to it in 1 John 4:2-3, and equates the gnostic teaching that Jesus didn't come in the flesh with the spirit of antichrist – it was really gaining a foothold in the second century, under Irenaeus' watch. He wrote Against Heresies to refute this heretical teaching, which also denied the bodily resurrection of believers. In volume 5 of Against Heresies, Irenaeus affirmed the following:

A literal future Tribulation
The literal future, millennial reign of Christ on the earth
The future rebuilding of the literal third temple (and its subsequent desecration by the Antichrist)
The future bodily resurrection of believers coinciding with the catching up of the Church before the Great Tribulation

On this last point, it's actually debatable whether Irenaeus saw the rapture happening before the entire seven-year Tribulation, or in the middle of it. While some passages seem to definitively teach a pre-trib view, other passages seem to indicate that he believed the Church would suffer persecution directly at the hands of the Antichrist (although I think those passages are less cut-and-dried than the pre-wrath rapture proponents think; I'll link to some of the discussions at the end of this article so you can make up your own mind).

UPDATE: According to Greek scholar Lee Brainard, there is no debate: Irenaeus definitely taught a pre-trib rapture.

In any case, Irenaeus was hardly alone. A pre-tribulation rapture was also clearly taught by the Shepherd of Hermas, written between AD 95 and 150; Victorinus around AD 270; and Ephraem of Nisibis who lived from 306 to 373. What's more, many early Church Fathers and early Christian writings affirm the doctrine of imminence, which states that Jesus could return at any moment. Seeing as how his second coming to the earth to establish his Kingdom can't and won't occur until after a number of signs have occurred and certain events have already taken place, and seeing as how scripture tells us the exact number of days between the Antichrist renewing a covenant with Israel and Jesus' return to the earth, you simply can't make a case that imminence refers to the second coming. It can only logically apply to Jesus returning to gather up the Church to himself.

Of course, it should go without saying that we don't believe in the rapture – or anything else – because it's what the early Church leaders believed. We believe because that's what we understand to be the clear teaching of scripture. But my main point is to illustrate that, even if there was some debate then, as there is now, about the timing of the rapture, the early Church largely held to a plain, literal interpretation of scripture, including Bible prophecy.

So what changed?

Antisemitism, Constantine, Gnosticism and Competing Theological Schools of Thought

While Christianity began as a Jewish sect, by the end of the third century it was overwhelmingly predominated by Gentile believers. During that time, Christians faced severe persecution, not only at the hands of Rome, but also from the Jews. Between both this and a recognition that the revised rabbinical Judaism that arose after the destruction of the temple bore little resemblance to scripture, hostility arose among the early Christians toward the Jews, along with a strong desire to separate Christianity from its Jewish associations.

This all gave rise to the beginnings of replacement theology in the middle of the second century, as gentile Church leaders began to deviate from literal interpretations of scripture to spiritualize passages pertaining to future Israel and read the Church back into those passages. They began to blame the Jews for the crucifixion (ignoring the fact that the Jewish leaders and gentile Romans shared equal responsibility – because Christ died for all) and to claim that because of this, Israel had been disinherited from her promised future blessings, which were now embodied in the new Israel, the Church.

This new teaching gained ground and increased the animosity between Jews and Christians. And then, in the early 300s, emperor Constantine, whose mother was a Christian, converted to Christianity – in name, if not in truth – and outlawed the persecution of Christians. What's more, he made Christianity the official religion of Rome, effectively marrying Church and State and giving Christian leaders full government backing and authority. This led to some pretty severe antisemitic persecution of the Jews.

UPDATE AND CORRECTION: Constantine indeed legalized Christianity, but he didn’t make it the official religion. That was his successor, Theodosius I.

(Constantine also purportedly introduced a lot of synchretistic pagan practices into the Church, but this isn’t something I’ve looked into much yet, so I’m glossing over it here).

In the midst of this environment arose the School of Alexandria – a theological school of thought that threw out the historical-grammatical (i.e., literal) Biblical hermeneutic favored by the early Church and replaced it with an allegorical hermeneutic. The Alexandrian theologians were heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, particularly Stoicism and Platonism (a form of gnosticism that emphasized the superiority of the spirit over the flesh and enlightenment through the pursuit of knowledge).

Probably the best known leader of this school of thought is Origen, who believed that philosophy was the key to interpreting the Bible. As far as Origen was concerned, scripture was mostly written as allegory, and reading it through the lens of Greek philosophy would reveal its true, hidden meanings.

Catch that – one of the most influential leaders in the early Church interpreted scripture through the lens of human ideas, and not the other way around. There's just so much wrong with this picture, not the least of which is that those ideas were pagan and gnostic – a philosophy that John identified with the spirit of antichrist.

Meanwhile, up in Antioch, a competing school formed to defend and uphold the literal view of scripture held by the Apostolic Fathers. A lot of debates and some pretty fierce battles took place between the two schools. But Rome favored Origen and the Alexandrians and threw their weight behind them, and Antioch just couldn't compete. Eventually, Antioch split off from Rome and became the foundation for the Eastern Orthodox church.

As outrageous as all of that might sound, at least Origen put some limits on how far allegorizing scripture could be taken. But he managed to cement replacement theology as accepted Church doctrine.

Which brings us to...

Augustine of Hippo

Where Origen and the other Alexandrians put guard rails around their allegorical interpretations, Augustine smashed right through those rails and never looked back. This “saint” deserves his own entire article, and he's going to get one. For now, suffice to say that he, too, was heavily influenced by Platonic gnosticism, as well as a gnostic sect that bore a striking and disturbing resemblance to what we would call Luciferianism. He read scripture through these lenses and developed a great many doctrines that don't line up in any way, shape or form with a literal interpretation, or with careful exegesis, and he had the power and authority to bully the Church into accepting his views as official doctrine.

Among these doctrines are amillennialism in all its forms, all five points of what we call Calvinism, and most of the problematic beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic church.

I'll go into all of that in more detail in my next letter. For now, just be aware that, when someone says that their view is the historical or traditional view, what they usually mean, although they might not realize it, is that theirs is the Augustinian view. And if you point that out to them, they likely won't see why that's a problem.

But we'll cover that next time.

Until then, I hope you have a blessed week!

Jean