Augustine did not anticipate the
Last Judgment falling beyond AD. 1000 (The City of God, XX.7). Dating
the onset of the millennium from the beginning of Paul’s ministry, or as late
as the fourth century (with Constantine), would push the end of the
(a-)millennial period further into the future. Believing that the period was to
be followed by a parallel age of tribulation as had been experienced by the
Church for the first 300 years of its existence, as was the opinion of John
Foxe, might push the expected date for the second Advent as late as the onset
of the seventeenth century, Jacob Taubes pushes the question in a more
philosophical way in his argument that in the transition from the medieval to
Copernican worldview the purpose of life became less that of mirroring a divine
pattern on earth and more that of seeking fulfillment in some future earthly
ideal, hence an argument for the transmutation of a spiritual conception of the
millennium to what will be referred to as postmillennialism, or the progressive
realization of a perfected age on earth. (Rodney L. Petersen, Preaching
in the Last Days: The Theme of ‘Two Witnesses’ in the 16th and 17th Centuries [New
York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 253 n. 66)
The following is from Augustine, The City of God 20.7:
The evangelist John has spoken of
these two resurrections in the book which is called the Apocalypse, but in such
a way that some Christians do not understand the first of the two, and so
construe the passage into ridiculous fancies. For the Apostle John says in the
foresaid book, "And I saw an angel come down from heaven. . . . Blessed
and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second
death hath no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall
reign with Him a thousand years." Those who, on the strength of this
passage, have suspected that the first resurrection is future and bodily, have
been moved, among other things, specially by the number of a thousand years, as
if it were a fit thing that the saints should thus enjoy a kind of Sabbath-rest
during that period, a holy leisure after the labors of the six thousand years
since man was created, and was on account of his great sin dismissed from the
blessedness of paradise into the woes of this mortal life, so that thus, as it
is written, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years
as one day," there should follow on the completion of six thousand years,
as of six days, a kind of seventh-day Sabbath in the succeeding thousand years;
and that it is for this purpose the saints rise, viz., to celebrate this
Sabbath. And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that
the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on
the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion. But, as they
assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate
carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to
shock the feeling of the temperate, but even to surpass the measure of
credulity itself, such assertions can be believed only by the carnal. They who
do believe them are called by the spiritual Chiliasts, which we may literally
reproduce by the name Millenarians. It were a tedious process to refute these
opinions point by point: we prefer proceeding to show how that passage of
Scripture should be understood.
The Lord Jesus Christ Himself
says, "No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods,
except he first bind the strong man" --meaning by the strong man the
devil, because he had power to take captive the human race; and meaning by his
goods which he was to take, those who had been held by the devil in divers sins
and iniquities, but were to become believers in Himself. It was then for the
binding of this strong one that the apostle saw in the Apocalypse "an
angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss, and a chain in his
hand. And he laid hold," he says, "on the dragon, that old serpent,
which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him a thousand
years,"--that is, bridled and
restrained his power so that he could not seduce and gain possession of those
who were to be freed. Now the thousand years may be understood in two ways, so
far as occurs to me: either because these things happen in the sixth thousand
of years or sixth millennium (the latter part of which is now passing), as if
during the sixth day, which is to be followed by a Sabbath which has no
evening, the endless rest of the saints, so that, speaking of a part under the
name of the whole, he calls the last part of the millennium--the part, that is,
which had yet to expire before the end of the world--a thousand years; or he
used the thousand years as an equivalent for the whole duration of this world,
employing the number of perfection to mark the fullness of time. For a thousand
is the cube of ten. For ten times ten makes a hundred, that is; the square on a
plane superficies. But to give this superficies height, and make it a cube, the
hundred is again multiplied by ten, which gives a thousand. Besides, if a
hundred is sometimes used for totality, as when the Lord said by way of promise
to him that left all and followed Him "He shall receive in this world an
hundredfold;" of which the apostle gives, as it were, an explanation when
he says, "As having nothing, yet possessing all things," --for even
of old it had been said, The whole world is the wealth of a believer,--with how
much greater reason is a thousand put for totality since it is the cube, while
the other is only the square? And for the same reason we cannot better
interpret the words of the psalm, "He hath been mindful of His covenant
for ever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations," than by
understanding it to mean "to all generations."
"And he cast him into the abyss,"--i.e.,
cast the devil into the abyss. By the abyss is meant the countless
multitude of the wicked whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against
the Church of God; not that the devil was not there before, but he is said to
be cast in thither, because, when prevented from harming believers, he takes
more complete possession of the ungodly. For that man is more abundantly
possessed by the devil who is not only alienated from God, but also
gratuitously hates those who serve God. "And shut him up, and set a seal
upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years
should be fulfilled." "Shut him up,"--i.e., prohibited
him from going out, from doing what was forbidden. And the addition of
"set a seal upon him" seems to me to mean that it was designed to
keep it a secret who belonged to the devil's party and who did not. For in this
world this is a secret, for we cannot tell whether even the man who seems to
stand shall fall, or whether he who seems to lie shall rise again. But by the
chain and prison-house of this interdict the devil is prohibited and restrained
from seducing those nations which belong to Christ, but which he formerly
seduced or held in subjection. For before the foundation of the world God chose
to rescue these from the power of darkness, and to translate them into the
kingdom of the Son of His love, as the apostle says. For what Christian is not
aware that he seduces nations even now, and draws them with himself to eternal
punishment, but not those predestined to eternal life? And let no one be
dismayed by the circumstance that the devil often seduces even those who have
been regenerated in Christ, and begun to walk in God's way. For "the Lord
knoweth them that are His," and of these the devil seduces none to eternal
damnation. For it is as God, from whom nothing is hid even of things future,
that the Lord knows them; not as a man, who sees a man at the present time (if
he can be said to see one whose heart he does not see), but does not see even
himself so far as to be able to know what kind of person he is to be. The
devil, then, is bound and shut up in the abyss that he may not seduce the
nations from which the Church is gathered, and which he formerly seduced before
the Church existed. For it is not said "that he should not seduce any
man," but "that he should not seduce the nations"--meaning, no
doubt, those among which the Church exists--"till the thousand years
should be fulfilled,"--i.e., either what remains of the sixth day
which consists of a thousand years, or all the years which are to elapse till
the end of the world.
The words,
"that he should not seduce the nations till the thousand years should be
fulfilled," are not to be understood as indicating that afterwards he is
to seduce only those nations from which the predestined Church is composed, and
from seducing whom he is restrained by that chain and imprisonment; but they
are used in conformity with that usage frequently employed in Scripture and
exemplified in the psalm, "So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until
He have mercy upon us," --not as if the eyes of His servants would no
longer wait upon the Lord their God when He had mercy upon them. Or the order of
the words is unquestionably this, "And he shut him up and set a seal upon
him, till the thousand years should be fulfilled;" and the interposed
clause, "that he should seduce the nations no more," is not to be
understood in the connection in which it stands, but separately, and as if
added afterwards, so that the whole sentence might be read, "And He shut
him up and set a seal upon him till the thousand years should be fulfilled,
that he should seduce the nations no more,"--i.e., he is shut up
till the thousand years be fulfilled, on this account, that he may no more
deceive the nations. (NPNF1 2:426-28)
