Amillennialism

Schools Relations with: Amillennialism or amillenarism is a chillegoristic eschatological position in Christianity which holds that there will be no millennial reign of the righteous on Earth.

[5] Amillennialism rejects the idea of a future millennium in which Christ will reign on Earth prior to the eternal state beginning, but holds:[9] Amillennialists also cite scripture passages that they believe to indicate that the kingdom of God is not a physical realm.

[citation needed] Nonetheless, they maintain that good and evil will remain mixed in strength throughout history and even in the church, according to the amillennial understanding of the Parable of the Wheat and Tares.

[11] Though most writings of the time tend to favor a millennial perspective, the amillennial position may have also been present in this early period, as suggested in the Epistle of Barnabas, and it would become the ascendant view during the next two centuries.

Justin Martyr (died 165), who had chiliastic tendencies in his theology,[18] mentions differing views in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, chapter 80: "I and many others are of this opinion [premillennialism], and [believe] that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but, on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise.

[25] Origen's idealizing tendency to consider only the spiritual as real (which was fundamental to his entire system) led him to combat the "rude"[26] or "crude"[27] Chiliasm of a physical and sensual beyond.

The premillennial beliefs of the early church fathers, however, are quite different from the dominant form of modern-day premillennialism, namely dispensational premillennialism.It is the conclusion of this thesis that Dr. Ryrie's statement [that the early church fathers held dispensationalist views] is historically invalid within the chronological framework of this thesis.

'"[30] Likewise, the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger wrote up the Second Helvetic Confession, which asserts, "We also reject the Jewish dream of a millennium, or golden age on earth, before the last judgment.

"[31] John Calvin wrote in Institutes of the Christian Religion that chiliasm is a "fiction" that is "too childish either to need or to be worth a refutation."

He interpreted the thousand-year period of Revelation 20 symbolically, applying it to the "various disturbances that awaited the church, while still toiling on earth.