Paul's Non-Millenarian Eschatology

Being “In Christ” Anticipates the Glories of the “Age to Come”

Throughout his letters, Paul contends this present evil age will give way on the day of Jesus’ return to the glories of the age to come, just as Jesus went from death (Good Friday) to resurrection life (Easter Sunday). Paul describes a tension between what Jesus has already accomplished (in his death, resurrection, and ascension) and what remains to be fulfilled at the final once for all consummation; when Jesus returns on the day of resurrection and brings about the final manifestation of the wrath of God (cf. Romans 2:5, 5:9, Ephesians 2:3), elsewhere spoken of as the day of judgment (2 Corinthians 5:10). This tension is often described as the “already” and the “not yet” and is found throughout the letters of Paul. What we are “in Christ” anticipates and foreshadows the glories of “the age to come.”

The Main Event — the Return of Jesus Christ

Primarily, however, Paul’s two-age eschatology points ahead to that one critical event which brings about the end of the curse (sin, guilt, and death), and in which all the promises of God are fully realized (forgiveness, righteousness, and eternal life).[1] That event, of course, is the bodily return of Jesus Christ at the end of the age to raise the dead, judge the world, and make all things new. As Paul puts it in Titus 2:13, we are “waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” The heart of New Testament eschatology is not the hope of a millennial age in which this present “evil” age is progressively transformed into some sort of earthly utopia either before or after Christ returns. Biblical eschatology cannot be viewed through the lens of secular and cultural progress, nor current events. The end of human history comes about at Jesus Christ’s second advent described by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11; 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:51-57. For Paul, Christ’s second advent is the final consummation. This present age with its sin and death will come to a final and dramatic end (as will all things temporal). Yet, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the age to come is even now a present reality (through the work of the Holy Spirit), but awaits that moment when the Lord returns and the temporal finally gives way to the eternal.

No “In-Between” Utopian Millennial Age, “Pre” or “Post”

Because his two age eschatology is focused squarely upon Christ’s bodily resurrection (the already) and his second coming (the “not yet”), there is no “in between” age, such as that proposed by millenarians.[2] Paul does not anticipate a glorious golden age upon the earth before Christ returns. Paul is not a post-millenarian. The gospel and the kingdom will spread to the ends of the earth, but Paul never states that the earth will be transformed through great cultural, religious, and economic progress (as a consequence of the spread of Christ’s kingdom) before the Lord’s return.[3] Paul sees this transformation occurring in all its fullness when Jesus returns, but not before.

But neither is Paul a premillennarian.[4] Nowhere does he tell us that when Jesus returns, he will establish a visible kingdom upon the earth inhabited by people in natural bodies, apparently living among those who have been raised and given gloried bodies when Jesus returns (and how will that work?), only to follow Satan en masse when he is released from the abyss and a time of apostasy begins before the final judgment—and this after Jesus has ruled over the earth for a thousand years. The presence of evil in the millennial age is a huge problem for all forms of premillennialism.

Christ’s Return Is the Consummation

On the day our Lord returns (the last day, when the trumpet sounds, cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11; 1 Corinthians 15:50-57), God’s people will receive their full and final inheritance, not in an earthly millennial age where we live upon this earth, procreate, go about some sort of improved but temporal life while Satan is bound for a thousand years. The promised blessings (eternal, not temporal) come in the consummated new creation. Paul speaks directly to this expectation in Romans 16:20, when he writes, “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” words which point to the ultimate fulfillment of Genesis 3:15: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel,” and now read in the light of Psalm 8:6, which Paul sees as fulfilled in Christ (“You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet”). Jesus won the promised victory over Satan on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Satan is currently bound through the preaching of the gospel and through the providence of God. But as Paul tells the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians 2:7-9, Satan will be released in the final days, an act associated with the appearance of a final Antichrist (the Man of Sin), after a restraint of some sort is lifted, only to be destroyed by Jesus at his second advent (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12).

(An excerpt from Episode Two of the Blessed Hope Podcast: “No Other Gospel” — Galatians 1:1-10)

_____________________________

[1] Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology, 53-57.

[2] As illustrated in the chart found in Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, 38.

[3] Campbell, Paul and the Hope of Glory, 440.

[4] Campbell, Paul and the Hope of Glory, 562, citing from Scott M. Lewis.