# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1847 09 20_S11
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

whom you will not be able to roast." When the pyre was lit and the flame struck against him, he sang in a clear voice: "Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for us, have mercy on me!" As he prayed it a third time, the smoke choked his voice. But through the flames one could see how his lips still moved in prayer until he expired. His ashes were scattered on the Rhine.

(Submitted.)
Is modern chiliasm compatible with the seventeenth article of the Augsburg Confession?

This question was raised more than a hundred years ago and has been answered differently by different people. It does not seem to me unimportant to raise this question once again, and the great reputation which the founders of that doctrine attained, and still enjoy, ought not to make one timid about discussing the question once more, whether the answer turns out in their favor or against them. It may be assumed as generally known that by modern chiliasm is meant the doctrine — first sketched in general outline by Spener and later marked out more sharply by Bengel — of a still-to-be-expected blessed condition of the church during a thousand-year binding of Satan on this side of the Last Day. Spener, although he did not put forward his "hope of better times" as a necessary article of faith, believed, on the ground of several passages of Scripture, especially the Revelation of St. John, that one might expect such a happy condition of the church of Christ as had never yet existed, since after a general conversion of the heathen and the Jews and the fall of the Roman papacy, the kingdom of God would spread gloriously both inwardly and outwardly. Although he held the opinion that this happy condition was identical with the thousand-year binding of Satan, he did not venture to determine whether those 1000 years were to be understood precisely or merely signified a long period. Among Spener's almost countless disciples it was especially Bengel who, building on Spener's foundation, constructed his own peculiar apocalyptic system; and although in general following in Spener's footsteps, he nevertheless ventured upon an exact determination of the 1000 years, and even dared, by an ingenious calculation, to fix their beginning. A complete powerlessness of Satan, a total fall of the papacy, a general conversion of the heathen and the Jews connected therewith, a higher measure of the Spirit in believers, a blessed, fruitful condition of the earth — these are the prominent features of his chiliasm. Both Spener and Bengel were charged by their theological opponents with violating, by their doctrine, the seventeenth article of the Augsburg Confession, where among other things it is said: "Here are condemned certain Jewish opinions, which are also now making their appearance, that before the resurrection of the dead the holy and righteous alone shall possess a worldly kingdom, and shall destroy all the ungodly." Both rejected this charge, replying that their doctrine of the thousand-year kingdom had nothing in common with those "Jewish opinions," since they did not maintain a worldly kingdom of Christ and his saints, nor any violent destruction of all the ungodly, nor did they in any way turn the militant into a triumphant church. The Augsburg Confession, they held, had condemned only the fanatical chiliasm of the Anabaptists, but not this, as they thought, biblical chiliasm. Now it cannot indeed be denied that this Spener-Bengelian chiliasm has often, without cause, been mixed up with the crudest chiliastic fantasies, and that consequences have been ascribed to them which they never remotely intended; one must also grant that the authors of the Augsburg Confession had primarily in view only the abominations of the Anabaptists, which were then rampant, and by whose express condemnation they wished to repel the slanders of their papist adversaries, as though they had any part in that mischief. Nevertheless I believe I may assert that this modern chiliasm, of which we here speak, is also incompatible with the seventeenth article of the Augsburg Confession, and that for the following reasons: If it is a correct principle of all sound interpretation, both of Holy Scripture and of all human writings, that in doubtful passages one must go back to the sense and intention of the writer as he has expressed it clearly elsewhere, then, in order to find the full meaning of the seventeenth article of the Augsburg Confession, we must go back to the other writings of the Reformers, to find their real opinion on this matter. If it should turn out that, at the time the Augsburg Confession was drawn up, they held a chiliasm similar to that of Spener and Bengel, or had laid down propositions from which it would follow by natural inference, or had left it open as a theological problem — then indeed the chiliasm here in question might perhaps be reconciled with the seventeenth article. But if it turns out that they neither maintained, nor approved, nor tolerated this chiliasm, but that, on the contrary, all the individual elements of their doctrine are of such a nature as to contradict every kind of chiliasm, then it follows that the seventeenth article of the Augsburg Confession can have no other meaning either. Let us, for brevity's sake, confine ourselves to Luther alone, in whom in any case the faith of his fellow workers is concentrated; the following propositions then emerge as his constant teaching:

1. The church of Christ is and remains a kingdom of the cross; it is oppressed and afflicted by the devil, by tyrants, and by heretics, and has no complete deliverance to expect except on the Last Day. The nearer the Last Day, the more dreadful the times to be expected;

2. all the signs of the Last Day in sun, moon, and stars, etc., are already so far fulfilled that we are not obliged to expect still others;

3. the gospel has already, in the time of the apostles, been preached to every creature under heaven; the promised conversion of the heathen has been continually taking place since the time of the apostles; a general conversion of all the heathen is not to be expected;

4. just as little is a general conversion of the Jews to be hoped for, even though individual Jews will always continue to be converted;

5. the one chief enemy of Christendom, the Turk, will be subdued only immediately before the Last Day;

6. the other chief enemy, the Roman papacy, has already been judged by the gospel and will not be brought to an end otherwise than by the appearing of the coming of the Lord;

7. the thousand years of the Revelation of St. John have already elapsed;

8. therefore nothing else remains to be expected but the Last Day, which Luther, according to his private opinion, imagined to be very near.

That these eight propositions are the unanimous teaching of the whole age of the Reformation, no one will deny who is acquainted with the writings of that time — with the possible exception of the general conversion of the Jews, which was hoped for by some, even by Luther himself in his earlier years. If matters stand, then, with these eight propositions as stated, it follows that Luther was as far removed from modern chiliasm as from any other. But if he was altogether far from it, then he was so also when the Augsburg Confession was drawn up, and consequently also its seventeenth article, even though the contradiction against it is not explicitly stated. The objection that in the seventeenth article only the crude Jewish-Anabaptist chiliasm is condemned, and that one may not go further than the words state, does not seem to carry much weight, and may perhaps serve as a legal but not a theological argument; that the crude chiliasm was expressly condemned by name had its historical ground in the Anabaptist agitations of that time; that the fine, modern chiliasm was not expressly mentioned by name was quite natural, since it was at that time still an unknown thing. Just as the Calvinist error concerning the Holy Supper finds no support in the tenth article of the Augsburg Confession, although it is not condemned by name, since it did not yet exist historically at that time — or just as the Calvinist doctrine of election is incompatible with the Augsburg Confession, although it is not condemned by name therein — the same is the case with the chiliasm of which we speak here. It has, indeed, also in our own time numerous friends and eulogists; it has come to the point that it is no longer regarded merely as a private opinion or a theological problem — to many of our contemporaries it counts as an article of faith and has become the center of their