Postmillennialism: A Postmil Critique (On Postmillennialism Pt. 1)
“Optimism is cowardice.
We are born in this time and must bravely follow the path to the desired end … Our duty is to hold on to the lost position, without hope, without rescue. To hold on like that Roman soldier whose bones were found in front of a door in Pompeii, who died because they forgot to relieve him when Vesuvius erupted. … This honorable end is the one thing that cannot be taken from Man.”
- Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics
I am a postmillennialist, or an eschatological optimist. I believe that all the nations (and their kings) will be converted before the bodily return of Christ. But I also believe that there are some issues with postmillennialism, which are maybe not so much problems with the system itself as much as with the way it has been used. There are too few, in my estimation, who grasp the truth of Spengler’s condemnation of optimism. While he is certainly refuting a different sort of optimism than is necessarily entailed in postmillennialism, it is not at all the case that the sort of optimism he has in mind does not characterize many postmillennialists.
In addition to being a postmillennialist, I am also a traditionalist. This may sound like a contradiction or Hegelian synthesis for those who think of postmillennialism as the theological equivalent to Whiggism, but I would maintain that the two are very different things. I believe that Julius Evola, apart from his ironically modern and broad-brush approach to religion, was on the right track in his Revolt Against the Modern World, and that his ancient traditionalism and opposition to modern “progress” bears no contradiction to the essential ideas of postmillennialism.
In these two essays, I want to address certain tendencies among postmillennialists that I find misguided (Part One) and then present what I believe to be a more robust approach to eschatological optimism, which I am calling ‘Bronze Age Postmillennialism’ (Part Two). In doing so, I hope to offer some guidance in how postmillennialists might be able to get out of our own way, particularly as it regards our political efforts.
The Millenarian Problem
The first tendency of postmillennialism that needs to be curtailed is that which is manifest most clearly in classic postmillennialism. This is the kind which is generally presented in chart-form alongside its eschatological alternatives, which is distinctly millenarian. It posits that the millennium of Revelation 20 is not figurative, referring to the whole church age (as most modern postmillennialists, along with the amils, would contend), but is rather a literal thousand year ‘golden age’ in our future.
Millenarianism, or chiliasm, has been identified as a source of error and dangerous apocalyptic anxiety for most of church history, despite being held by notable figures such as Irenaeus and Justin Martyr. It has long been the case that belief in a sudden uprooting of the natural order–which obligates men to change their way of living in anticipation of imminent change–has been a tool of heretics to send men into a frenzy that makes them easy to manipulate. Such was the case with Montanus, Apollinaris, Joachim of Fiora, the Anabaptists, and all the 19th century American cults whose figureheads claimed their movements were the only faithful remnant with special knowledge of the coming end.
Often, millenarianism has been identified as a form of Judaizing, subverting Christian societal order and encouraging men to embrace Old Covenant realities that have passed away. Among those who issued such a warning are Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, as well as later Protestant Confessions. The Augsburg Confession, the original 42 Articles, and the Second Helvetic Confession all warn of the “Jewish dream” of a coming “golden age” in which the saints reign corporally with Christ in complete peace and prosperity on an entirely Christianized earth.
The targets of these condemnations of millenarians, whom the 42 Articles go so far as to deem “hereticks,” were the Anabaptists. Bullinger clarifies that the condemnation of the Second Helvetic Confession in his Sermons on the Apocalypse was particularly aimed at the expectation of Christ’s physical reign with the saints before the Second Coming and the elimination of all persecution of the ungodly. While he still expects the success of the spread of the gospel, he warns against the anticipation of a sudden elimination of all enemies and suffering prior to the Lord’s return.
These continual condemnations throughout church history of contemporary millenarian views were issued in response to the repeated tendency of millenarians to uproot the social order and rebel against both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. This tendency can likewise be observed in prominent postmillennialist theologians in the 17th and 18th centuries. For instance, John Owen’s expectation of an imminent age of peace and victory for the church, beginning in England, was a contributing factor to his support for Cromwell in the English Civil War. Likewise, the postmillennial eschatology of men like Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Hopkins contributed to the development of revivalism, a movement which encouraged an excessive emphasis on extraordinary spiritual experiences and greatly undermined the authority and influence of established Christian institutions.1
It could in fact be argued that postmillennialism, through revivalism and related social reform movements, was a major contributor to the decline of Christian influence on American politics. Hopkins’ expectation of the millennium’s imminent revival fueled an emphasis on social activism, which would be influential on the abolitionist and temperance movements. Later postmillennialist, Charles Finney, allegedly stated, “if the church will do her duty, the Millennium may come in this country in three years.” This expectation was likewise a motivation for engagement in social reform movements, such as the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. The progressive Social Gospel movement, though it would likely be condemned by these men, was merely an expansion of their zealous millenarian social reform to more and more aspects of society.
Modern postmillennialism, to which I subscribe, escapes this millenarian problem–at least in theory. It could equally be described as “optimistic amillennialism,” as the thousand years of Revelation 20 is understood symbolically, not as a literal period in our future. Nonetheless, we expect that the church age has a trajectory of victory (rather than decline or stagnation) in which the Great Commission is successful and the kings of the earth all bring their glory into the city of God.
Yet despite lacking the sudden expectation of transformation that can make millenarian views dangerous, there is still a tendency among postmillennialists to act like millenarians. Even if, in theory, we acknowledge that we’re “playing the long game,” it is not uncommon for postmillennialists to misapply their optimism to the short term or to refuse to acknowledge periods of decline. While it is not, in theory, an eschatology of a constant bull market–in which the stocks will only rise and rise until the Second Coming–its adherents often have a tendency to act as if this is the case. One postmillennialist, for instance, expressed to me his complete confidence that Trump would win the 2020 election because “we win down here.”
This attitude is especially destructive when considering the possibility that maybe not all, and possibly only a small minority, of theological, societal, and technological developments over the past few centuries have been positive. While secularism, Darwinism, and Marxism may be acknowledged as negatives, other developments like multiculturalism, classical liberalism, and the Industrial Revolution are often identified as part of history’s march of progress wrought by the hand of God.
Modern postmillennialist theologians, who are staunchly conservative on ethical matters, have advocated for all kinds of developments on the basis of eschatological progress: soy meat, open borders, libertarianism, democracy, social egalitarianism, multiculturalism, laissez faire economics, uncovered female heads in worship, theistic mutualism, and so forth. It can also be seen in the “convert them all before gaining power” or “bottom-up” approach to politics, which expects an unprecedented revival as the precursor to political action, and which can at times appear indistinguishable from retreatist dispensationalism on a practical level.
If postmillennialism is to avoid the millenarian trap, it will require a grounding in tradition and natural law. But elaboration on this point will have to wait until Part Two.
Eschatology Matters, but Not That Much
An ill-informed and oft-repeated critique of Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism has been the claim that he is simply reviving the Christian Reconstructionist movement under a different label. While the inability to distinguish what he is saying from the ideas advocated by Greg Bahnsen or Gary North demonstrates poor reading comprehension, the way that the discussion around Christian political theory has been framed for the past century or so does explain the confusion to some degree.
For the most part, the Christian Reconstructionists, and those adjacent to them, have been the most vocal advocates for an explicitly Christian political order since the mid-20th century. The motivation for this movement’s political engagement was their belief in postmillennialism, and their arguments developed largely in reaction to equally eschatological arguments for political disengagement by dispensationalists. In turn, responses to the reconstructionists have likewise focused largely on attempting to refute their eschatological vision, proving it to be an immanentization of the eschaton. Eschatology has thus been central to the debate over politics for decades, at least in the evangelical sphere.
Consequently, nearly every reader of Wolfe’s book went into it looking for eschatological arguments, as is the custom. Some were disappointed that eschatology was nearly absent, while many others simply assumed that an unspoken postmillennialist eschatology was lying hidden between the lines of each argument. The overemphasis on eschatology in prior discussions of Christian political theory was thus a catalyst for misreadings and misrepresentations, leading many-a-critic to miss the point (whether intentionally or not).
Wolfe’s book relies on historic Reformed sources to establish the case for an explicitly Christian society, and in doing so, builds the case on different grounds than those to which we are accustomed. His argument is based on the nature of man and his relation to others within society, not on the trajectory of history. This should cause us to question whether we might be caught up in a rather modern way of thinking about politics. If the founders of our tradition found the Anabaptist approach to the civil magistrate just as destructive as we observe in its Escondido strain today, and did so apart from the help of postmillennialism, then maybe it is not as central to the case for Christian government as is commonly assumed. It may be that part of the trouble in convincing Christians to take up arms for their Christian heritage is that we’ve asked them to accept more propositions than necessary in order to do so.
The postmillennialist argument actually does contain within it the same argument for Christian nations that the Reformers made. But it is made only implicitly within a larger argument that demands acceptance of more than is necessary. The standard postmil argument is that as God’s will is advanced on earth as in heaven, this will inevitably include the Christianization of the nations. This is based on the belief that as the kingdom advances, all things come closer to their telos, including political life. And since the nations were made to seek God as their heavenly end, advancement toward their telos must necessarily involve explicit Christianization. The foundation of the eschatological argument is therefore a far more fundamental teleological argument.
This teleological argument is the argument employed by our forefathers in the Reformed tradition, as opposed to an eschatological one. It is the eschatological argument that depends upon the teleological, not the other way around. By skipping over arguments concerning the nature of civil government straight to its historical destination, postmillennialists attempt to persuade others of a more fundamental idea with greater historical precedent not by arguing for it directly, but rather by appealing to an idea that is contingent upon it and more subject to debate. In doing so, it may be the case that we have dissuaded many from accepting the telos of civil government by creating the impression that it can only be believed alongside a debatable corollary.
While I would, of course, love to persuade everyone of postmillennialism, it is important to be able to distinguish the various propositions that are being presented in our case for a Christian nation and not present the essential and peripheral together as a package deal. I would much rather men be the son who said he wouldn’t do what his father said but did it anyway, rather than the son who did the inverse.
In other words, I find it much more essential that men live in a manner that brings about the Christian nations promised in the Psalms than to agree with me that God will surely bring it about. What is much more crucial is that men do their duty and believe that God will certainly accomplish His will, whatever it may be. God will accomplish His will regardless of what we believe it to be. But men will only accomplish His will if they are convinced of what they ought to do.
Regardless of one’s eschatological position, if a faithful Christian believes that the earthly end of civil government is the common good and its heavenly end is the glory of God, then he will act the way we’d expect of a good postmillennialist. Even if one believes he is doomed to face impossible odds that promise only worldly failure, he is not excused from his duty to seek the good of his city and to act on his natural affection for kin and country. Even if he believes that the just order he establishes in his generation will be mismanaged and destroyed by generations to come, a man of integrity will still refuse to despair and desert his post.
In addition to this, by insisting on the adoption of the whole system of postmillennialism, we can often hinder the stronger case that can be made for other individual aspects of the system that are not necessarily unique to it. There are many who reject aspects of postmillennialism which have a large degree of historical precedent because they view them as necessarily attached to a particular view of the events preceding the Second Coming, which are generally less attested.
For instance, Athanasius sees the conversion of the nations and abolition of idolatry as having already been fulfilled in his own day, yet does so without explicit dependence on a particular view of the millennium.2 Likewise, in his explanation of the prophecy concerning the conversion of all the kings of the earth in Psalm 138, Augustine claims that it is presently being fulfilled, and certainly will be, within history.3 He nonetheless also believed in a worldwide persecution of the church at the end of history.4
Thomas Aquinas also presents the postmillennial reading of 1 Corinthians 15:21 as a plausible interpretation, not seeming to find it inconsistent with a latter day rise of the Antichrist.5 Additionally, John Calvin believed the kingdom of God, though beginning as an internal reality, would result in the renovation of the world.6 Yet he also identified the papacy as the Antichrist and considered the sufferings of the Great Tribulation as being characteristic of the entire church age.7
While those of us who accept the postmillennialist system might find our way of accounting for these ideas to be the best, we should not present our case in such a way that distracts from the much greater historical precedence of these important ideas that stop just short of full on postmillennialism. I would much prefer that people get seventy-five percent of the way there than remain convinced that the church were all political Anabaptists until Rushdoony came along, simply because they stumbled over our view of the events preceding the Second Coming. It should therefore be our aim to first convince others of what is essential to understanding our natural political duties and general historic Christian expectations for the world, and only thereafter persuade them of the fuller hope we have for success in these regards.
Thus ends Part One. In Part Two, I will provide some positive propositions, making my case for Bronze Age Postmillennialism (a.k.a., BAP lol).
See Peter Leithart, “Revivalism and American Protestantism” in The Reconstruction of the Church. 46-84. https://www.garynorth.com/freebooks/docs/pdf/the_reconstruction_of_church.pdf
Athanasius, On the Incarnation.
Augustine, Psalm 86 (LXX), 12. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1801086.htm
Augustine, City of God. XX.11.
Aquinas, Commentary On the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 15.943; Treatise on the Incarnation, Q8.A8.
Calvin. Commentary on the Bible. Luke 17:20.
Calvin. Commentary. 2 Timothy 3:1.