# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1858_S176
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

176

(Submitted by Conr. Schick.)

Testimonies of the Church Fathers against Chiliasm.

In an earlier essay we communicated statements of several church fathers in which they set forth Chiliasm, of a cruder or finer form, as their own view; in the present one we wish to bring forward testimonies of great teachers of the ancient church against Chiliasm. By these, however, it is proven that the pure doctrine of the last things, which is grounded solely in Holy Scripture, was present in all its parts, in every age of the Christian Church, and in particular also in the earliest age, in the first centuries after Christ, and precisely in that time was loudly and publicly confessed by the greatest and most esteemed teachers of the Church; whereas, by contrast, the false doctrine of the Chiliasts, which has no foundation in Holy Scripture and thus derives from somewhere other than the pure Word of the only true God, was, as always, so in particular also in the earliest times of the Church, only the view of individuals. To be sure, we found among the representatives of Chiliasm men who, for the sake of their faith and of their gifts and personal activity, enjoyed great esteem in the Church and rightly still do. But the weight which their opinions carry at first glance through this esteem is far outweighed by the esteem of the teachers of the Church from whom we have testimonies against Chiliasm. Moreover, examination of the statements of the chiliastic church fathers has already taught us that the unscripturalness and extravagance of their views strikes the eye all the more forcibly the more fully they are set forth, so that they merely furnish the patristic evidence that Chiliasm is a false doctrine and an error. Since, then, the pure doctrine, which rests upon the unshakable rock-foundation of the Word of God, is directly confirmed by the testimony of the church fathers who are orthodox in this article, all statements found in the church fathers concerning Chiliasm, whether they be against it or for it, are patristic proof solely for the pure doctrine and against the error.

Now in what follows we wish to set forth the testimonies from the ancient Church against Chiliasm, chiefly following Johann Gerhard:

Of Dionysius (Bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, † 265) Jerome says, in Isa. ch. 18, — that he wrote a fine book in which he mocked the fable of the thousand years and of a golden Jerusalem adorned with precious stones upon earth.

Jerome himself († 420) says, besides in the passage just cited, also on Dan. 7: "The saints shall by no means have an earthly, but a heavenly kingdom: away, then, with the fable of the thousand-year kingdom!"

The same, on Ezek. ch. 36: "We do not expect, after the Jewish fa-