Ah…one of my favorite topics!
Indeed, many of the Church Fathers and other various shades of early Christians expressed a premillennialist view in their writings, such as Papias, St. Victorinus of Pettau, St. Justin Martyr (though some argue that his own eschatological views were not consistent), St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, St. Melito of Sardis (as per St. Jerome’s testimony), Lactantius, and others, and even various gnostic groups and the Montanists. Justin makes it clear from early on though that the view he holds was not universal and that there was some differences in opinion, as “
many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise.”
The concept of a temporary earthly messianic kingdom at the Messiah’s coming was not an invention of Christianity; instead it was a theological interpretation developed within the apocalyptic literature of early Judaism. You can already see this line of thinking in some apocalyptic works like
1 Enoch (2nd-1st century BC) and
2 Esdras (post-AD 70?). Some rabbis even debated as to how long the messianic kingdom would last, with figures ranging from sixty years up to 2000 years, or whether there would even be a messianic kingdom at all. Far from being a newly-invented Christian idea, it seems that premillennialism was already alive and thriving when Revelation was still being written. This is probably what is meant by the disciples of St. John understanding Revelation in a premillennialist light: one can say that they had merely inherited their beliefs from some Jewish schools of thought.
Now that being said, early Christian premillennialism, known as
historic premillennialism, and the new-fangled Dispensationalist premillennialism of Darby and his ilk - the kind you encounter today in some Protestant circles - are two different beasts. Historic premillennialism, for instance, sees no radical theological distinction between Israel and the Church, unlike Dispensationalism. It maintains chiliasm because of its view that the Church will be caught up to meet Christ in the air after a period of tribulation (notice here: **no Rapture for the believers!) and then escort Him to the earth in order to share in His thousand-year rule. Early Christian premillennialism was often bound up with the belief in sexta-septamillennialism, the view which holds that the created universe will last for only six thousand years and then will enjoy a thousand years of Sabbath rest before the end. This septamillennial scenario echoes the six days of creation and the seventh day that God rested.
There had been rising opposition to premillennialism in the Patristic period, especially in the 3rd century AD. One of the first recorded opponents to this belief was the infamous hereitc Marcion. Not just the idea of a thousand-year messianic kingdom, he in fact doubted whether there would be a Parousia at all. There was no logical place in his system for a real second coming, all because he never believed that Jesus really became human in the first place.
Another one whom we know disagreed with this idea was Origen. Through allegorical interpretation, Origen had been a proponent of amillennialism, but in some of his writings he apparently took his allegoricalism too far and completely spiritualized Christ’s second coming: “
Christ’s return signifies His disclosure of Himself and His deity to all humanity in such a way that all might partake of His glory to the degree that each individual’s actions warrant.**” (Commentary on Matthew 12.30) Even Origen’s milder forms of this teaching left no room for a literal millennium and it was deemed so extreme that few actually followed it.
Dionysius, Pope of Alexandria (reigned 248-265) - himself once a student of Origen - stood against premillennialism when the chiliastic work,
The Refutation of the Allegorizers written by an Egyptian bishop named Nepos, who was a strict literalist and designed the book to be a refutation of those who held allegorical interpretations of Scripture, became popular in Alexandria. With his reply,
On the Promises, he argued against Nepos’s influence convincingly and with charity (he held Nepos in high regard and managed to criticize the doctrine without attacking the person!) and convinced the churches of the region of amillennialism.
We know this because the historian and bishop Eusebius of Caesarea preserved the story for us (
Church History 7.24-25). Eusebius, for the record, had low regard for Papias, and attributed his premillennialism to a “
misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures,” all because he had “
very limited understanding.” (
History 3.39.12-13)
That’s a pretty good summary of the history of the doctrine but it still doesn’t answer the question: Why did the Church follow Origen instead of the earlier Fathers?
- it is by no means the only opinion that existed, as St. Justin notes. It could be that the Apostles themselves never really had a definitive opinion on the eschaton and left it an open book, in turn allowing their disciples to formulate their own ideas about it, which may explain the multiplicity of opinions in the early Church. In general, however, premillennialist views appear in many available writings of the early Church but it was evident from between the lines that it and amillennialism existed side-by-side. Even today the Church has no definitive dogma on the matter, even though amillennialism has become the default opinion amongst most Catholic theologians.