# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1860_S211
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

The So-Called Millennial Kingdom. 211

...to introduce contradiction into the system of Christian doctrine. — With
the growing development of theology, in the age of the Church Fathers
proper, from the fourth century on, Chiliasm fell more and more into
disrepute. Lactantius is its last notable representative. The authority of
Jerome and of Augustine worked especially for its removal. The former
styled the chiliastic opinions "Jewish fables," but remarked that what
should restrain one from an outright ecclesiastical condemnation was "that
many churchly men and martyrs have said such things." That, too, we must
still let be said to us. The issue here is not a controversy touching the
very ground of faith; it is a matter of brotherly understanding among
those who are agreed on the ground of faith, concerning a point on which
one may hold differing opinions without the innermost life of the spirit
being thereby endangered.*) Augustine (The City of God, Bk. 20, Ch. 7)
says: "We too were once of that opinion," but he later came to better
knowledge, and calls the chiliastic views, in their crude form, "ridiculous
fables." In his book On Heresies, addressed to Quodvultdeus, he lists the
crude Chiliasm among the heretical opinions. Throughout the Middle Ages
Chiliasm lay entirely dormant. In the revision of the whole churchly
inheritance during the Reformation era, it could not but be that here and
there it surfaced again, particularly among the Anabaptists, who were
inclined to everything abnormal and bizarre. But the Augsburg Confession
decisively opposed it. It says, in its Seventeenth Article, after rejecting
the Anabaptist doctrine of the restoration of all things: "Item, here are
condemned certain Jewish opinions, which are also making an appearance
now, that before the resurrection of the dead the saints alone shall hold
worldly dominion and shall root out all the ungodly." This judgment has
been referred solely to the Chiliasm of that time. But against this speaks
the fact that the Confession speaks of teachings that are also appearing
at present, and thus also has in view the earlier forms in which it
appeared; and further, that the designation "Jewish teachings" is borrowed
from Jerome. It has been maintained that the Augsburg Confession means
only the crude Chiliasm. But between the crude and the refined Chiliasm
there is only a fluid boundary, and if the Confession had wished to make
a distinction, it would have had ample occasion to note it, since in the
ancient Church various forms of it, cruder and finer, already existed. If
the Confession does not exempt the latter, it plainly did not wish to
draw that distinction. That the whole class is meant, and not merely a
single species of it, stands out especially when we consider the
affirmation that precedes the two denials — of the restoration of all
things and of Chiliasm — and forms their foundation. There it is taught,
"that

*) We mean that by clinging to any error which "flatly contradicts the sayings
of the LORD, etc.," the spiritual life is brought into danger. — L. u. W.