The Millennium: was Augustine's solution the best?

[spauline]

In Catholicism, one cannot adhere to chiliasm. Chiliasm is opposed to dogma, which renders, “from thence, He shall come to judge the Living and the Dead.”

Hence, the Church condemns the notion that Christ could return BEFORE the end of time, and reign in the Old Creation prior to the New Creation.

but is Augustine’s amillennialism the best solution to the Millennium?

Modern Catholic data, based on an ocean of fully approved Private Revelations down through the centuries since Augustine, suggests not.

First, Catholic spirituality has developed since Augustine. In Augustine’s time, the illuminative and unitive phases of the saint were considered one and the same. That is, it was not entirely apparent the illuminative and unitive phases are distinct, and that what partitions them is the dark night of the soul, an intermediate darkness, if you will.

Hence, for Augustine, the age of the Church begins with darkness, or purgation (pagan Rome), succeeded by the general light that is the illuminative and unitive phases together (the Millennium), followed by the darkness of martyrdom (the Antichrist and Great Apostasy), followed by, of course, “heaven”, or the Second COming and New Creation.

But modern Catholic spirituality now knows that the illuminative phase is, in general, distinct from the unitive, such that the purgation is followed by the illuminative phase, which is then followed by the dark night of the soul, and after the dark night of the soul, then comes the unitive, followed by martyrdom and heaven.

Hence, seeing as in the unitive phase, there is really no more illumination, and just rest in the grace of God, where the Saints will becomes one with the will of God, an alternative view of the Millennium seems appropriate.

In a similar vein, the Church now has a plethora of fully approved private revelations that , according to EWTN scholarly analysis (Desmond Birch and Collin Donovan), makes most likely the scenario that before the great apostasy, there shall occur an intermediate, or minor, apostasy, followed by a conditional chastisement, followed by a glorious reunion of Christians, and an extension and restoration of the Catholic Gospel throughout most of humanity. Hence, showing that the age of the Church does indeed follow the path of the modern Catholic spirituality, and not Augustine’s less developed understanding.

Hence, clearly, the Millennium is better seen as merely the unitive phase of Church history, and not the fusion of the illuminative and unitive ways, seeing as a great darkness partitions them (the minor apostasy), as well as that, the preceeding 1700 years of Church history has shown the dragon to be quite active, and not chained in a practical sense, as opposed to coming age of peace, which more practically images a chaining of the dragon, seeing as the majority of the Gentiles shall walk in peace with God and the Catholic Church.

 

[epostle]

Good article but I am having trouble following it . The meaning of unitive and illuminative seem obscure, insofar as they are applied to the Church.

Lets suppose the life of the Church follows Our Lord’s life. We can start with the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary. Or would that be the Luminous? The Sorrowful Mysteries is obvious, followed by the Resurrection.

On a lower level, we are born, we live, we die and we live. My vote is for St. Gus.

HOLY MASS ON THE SOLEMNITY OF THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
St. Thomas of Villanova Parish, Castel Gandolfo
Wednesday, 15 August 2007

*In his great work “De Civitate Dei,” St Augustine says once that the whole of human history, the history of the world, is a struggle between two loves: love of God to the point of losing oneself, of total self-giving, and love of oneself to the point of despising God, of hating others. This same interpretation of history as a struggle between two loves, between love and selfishness, also appears in the reading from the Book of Revelation that we have just heard.

Here, these two loves appear in two great figures. First of all, there is the immensely strong, red dragon with a striking and disturbing manifestation of power without grace, without love, of absolute selfishness, terror and violence.

At the time when St John wrote the Book of Revelation…*

zenit.org/article-20333?l=english

 

[spauline]

On a lower level, we are born, we live, we die and we live. My vote is for St. Gus.

No problem with what you are saying, or what Augstine says above: yes, we are born, we live, we die, and we live.

But the Church is not content to analyze the life of the saint in this utterly broad sense. She delves deeper:

we are born,

i. we pass through darkness (purgation)

ii. we pass through light (illumination)

iii. we pass through darkness (dark night of the soul)

iv. we pass through light (unitive)

v. we pass through darkness (martyrdom)

vi. and then comes the eternal light (heaven)

Hence, what i am saying is, Augustine fuses stages ii through iv, and makes them the Millennium, because, at that time, the Church did not know that stages ii through iv are three stages, and not one stage.

Secondly, Benedict is not broad enough, for the beast existed from the fall of man until now, not merely in the age of the Church. In its broadest sense, the dragon is Satan, the false prohet is the symbol of his cardinal lies from the beginning in the garden, and the beast is the symbol of the incarnation of the fallen nature within human history, which is by no means confined to the age of the Church.

and the manifestation of these two perennial opposing forcees of darkness and light do not coexist and mature in a field side by side in equal degree across salvation history, but, rather, alternate in assertion. Hence, FIRST darkness speaks (a head of the beast arises, or that is, the sun sets), THEN the light speaks (a head of the beast is slain, or that is, the sun rises), THEN darkness speaks, THEN light speaks.

And how many times shall these “days” occur, first darkness, then light, in all of human history? Will it not be eight days, just as there are seven days of creation that are extended to eight in Tradition, and just as the beast has seven heads, or kings, that are extended to eight in Apoc 17?

Hence, Augustine’s problem is to say that day six is the same as day seven, for the same reason that he draws no distinction between the illuminative and untive phases, but considers them to be one and the same.

for these three ways, purgative, illuminative, and unitive, see this from New Advent:

newadvent.org/cathen/14254a.htm

 

[Lief_Erikson]

What book did St. Augustine include his writings about the Millennium? I’m very curious to read what he had to say.

Are there any articles on the Internet that you know of, about his eschatology?

 

[spauline]

What book did St. Augustine include his writings about the Millennium? I’m very curious to read what he had to say.

Are there any articles on the Internet that you know of, about his eschatology?

I think it is called City of God (Dei Civitas?)

 

[spauline]

What book did St. Augustine include his writings about the Millennium? I’m very curious to read what he had to say.

Are there any articles on the Internet that you know of, about his eschatology?

also, I’m probably putting words into his mouth.

But i believe it is true that in Augustine’s time, the illuminative and unitve were considered the same, but I do not know if he connected the way of the saint to the way of the Church.

I do not know if any theologian has suggested to correlate the way of the saint with the Church’s history, but the analogies are appropriate.

 

[spauline]

Let us expand:

Several earlier fathers drew that analogy that the days of creation are really about the recreation of the world, that is the redemption of man.

There were originally seven days of creation, but they were extended to eight in the NT, such that Christ’s resurrection on the eighth day is a type of the General Resurrection that shall occur at the end of time.

But it seems these analogies are rejected by Catholics as an application to salvation history because, presumably, the Fathers that use this analogy were chiliasts, in so far as the seventh day, or millennium of rest, was seen as literal, in that Christ literally reigns on earth in this period.

Hence, the entire analogy is discarded simply because it is assumed to be inseparable from the doctrine of chiliasm.

In response, at least two other options exist, one of which is, the Fathers that espoused the theory were not chiliasts but rather something analogous to the interpretation that is being suggested in this thread.

The other possibility is that they were chiliasts, and hence, the analogy of the creation days has been PARTIALLY corrupted by chiliasm, but the Apostles nevertheless accepted the general analogy, and it simply needs to be used in a context that is not chiliasm, but chiliasm tweaked with allegory as is suggested here.

Hence, the problem with Augustine, and modern commentators, is that, believing that Divine Revelation only tells us of pagan Rome and the end of world antichrist, and of no intermediate darkness, is what forces the dismissal of the days of creatoin analogy, and that analogously explains away the associated eighth king of the beast in Revelation 17, that parallels the days of creation.

More specifically, two fathers explicitly treat of the ages of salvation history, and they are Methodious of Olympus, and St. Augustine himself.

paraphrasing, Methodious delineates five ages to the old law (see Revelation 17:9 “five have fallen”), one age for the Church (“one is”), the seventh as the Millennium o rest, and the eighth the New Creation.

Augustine affirms the first six ages like Methodious, and even goes on to delineate how they are laid out (especially the five of the OT).

Hence, the five ages of the Old Law pose no problem. The problem is rather how to interpret the three for the NT era: the sixth, seventh, and eighth.

For, assuming the long standing model of Augustine, there are only two darknesses in the major Church age, pagan Rome in the beginning, and the NT Antichrist at the end. Hence, that three darknesses are in the NT conflicts.

BUT, assuming that the Minor Apostasy, or derivatively, the intermediate darkness of the dark night of the soul, is part of Church history, as well as that the subsequent age of peace, which resembles a seventh day sabbath, is legitimate, then the data fits perfectly:

the sixth day is then Pagan Rome/Catholic Christendom, the seventh day is the Minor Apostasy/Age of Peace (thereby saying the Millennium of rest is itself the age of peace), and the eighth day is the Great Apostasy and Antichrist / Second Coming and New Creation.

Hence, the data of the mystics sheds new light on this ancient analogy, and provides an interesting solution that may not have been apparent earlier.

 

[spauline]

Here’s the quotes:

St. Methodius of Olympus, Ecclesiastical Writer (+300 AD):
Writing on the eight ages of the world: “Five are the ages of the old law, the sixth age is designated to the Church, the seventh is the millennium of rest [when Christ will reign over the earth], and the eighth designates the eternity of heaven” (New Catholic Encyclopedia, Ibid., Vol. IX, p. 742)

St. Augustine, On the Catechising of the Uninstructed
CHAP. 17.–THE SPECIMEN OF CATECHETICAL DISCOURSE CONTINUED, IN REFERENCE SPECIALLY TO THE REPROVAL OF FALSE AIMS ON THE CATECHUMEN’S PART
.…28. "Now, on the subject of this rest Scripture is significant, and refrains not to speak, when it tells us how at the beginning of the world, and at the time when God made heaven and earth and all things which are in them, He worked during six days, and rested on the seventh day. For it was in the power of the Almighty to make all things even in one moment of time. For He had not labored in the view that He might enjoy (a needful) rest, since indeed “He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created;” but that He might signify how, after six ages of this world, in a seventh age, as on the seventh day, He will rest in His saints; inasmuch as these same saints shall rest also in Him after all the good works in which they have served Him,–which He Himself, indeed, works in them, who calls them, and instructs them, and puts away the offenses that are past, and justifies the man who previously was ungodly. For as, when by His gift they work that which is good, He is Himself rightly said to work (that in them), so, when they rest in Him, He is rightly said to rest Himself. For, as regards Himself, He seeks no. cessation, because He feels no labor Moreover He made all things by His Word; and His Word is Christ Himself, in whom the angels and all those purest spirits of heaven rest in holy silence…

CHAP. 22.–OF THE SIX AGES OF THE WORLD.
39. "Five ages of the world, accordingly, having been now completed (there has entered the sixth). Of these ages the first is from the beginning of the human race, that is, from Adam, who was the first man that was made, down to Noah, who constructed the ark at the time of the flood. Then the second extends from that period on to Abraham, who was called the father indeed of all nations which should follow the example of his faith, but who at the same time in the way of natural descent from his own flesh was the father of the destined people of the Jews; which people, previous to the entrance of the Gentiles into the Christian faith, was the one people among all the nations of all lands that worshipped the one true God: from which people also Christ the Saviour was decreed to come according to the flesh. For these turning-points of those two ages occupy an eminent place in the ancient books. On the other hand, those of the other three ages are also declared in the Gospel, where the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh is likewise mentioned. For the third age extends from Abraham on to David the king; the fourthfrom David on to that captivity whereby the people of God passed over into Babylonia; and the fifth from that transmigration down to the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ. With His coming the sixth age has entered on its process; so that now the spiritual grace, which in previous times was known to a few patriarchs and prophets, may be made manifest to all nations; to the intent that no man should worship God but freely, fondly desiring of Him not the visible rewards of His services and the happiness of this present life, but that eternal life alone in which he is to enjoy God Himself: in order that in this sixth age the mind of man may be renewed after the image of God, even as on the sixth day man was made after the image of God.