The CREC Scholastic? Part II: Postmillennialism
Continuing my explanation of why I'm a CREC guy and a Reformed Scholasticism guy, this time with eschatology
[Continuing my Apologia de CREC. The first post is here.]
Postmillennialism is popular these days, at least in the kinds of circles in which I post. It has also been subject to a bit of shift in signification. In ye olden days, “postmillennialism” generally referred to the view that there would be a real Millennial Kingdom of sorts on earth, a true golden age in which Christianity flourishes and the world improves and everything is awesome, perhaps (by some accounts) even literally a thousand years long, and then (i.e. post) Christ will return.
Nowadays a good number of people (most of them?) who identify with postmillennialism do not specifically subscribe to this exact view. The term has expanded to accommodate all who expect that the Gospel will reach the ends of the earth and that it will bear enormous fruit, so much so that there will be tons of Christians and innumerable improvements in every sphere of life, by the time Christ returns. Whether there is a specific future period of a “golden age,” with a specific beginning and end, is no longer widely considered necessary to being postmillennial. Instead, “postmillennialism” as used today tends to blur into what has been called “optimistic amillennialism,” to wit, the view that the Millennium in Revelation symbolically represents the whole period of Christ’s rule from the Ascension to His bodily return, and that this period will result in many blessings for the world as the Gospel progresses and the Church grows.
The CREC mostly (at least as far as I’ve ever seen) consists of adherents to this latter, broader form of postmillennialism. Whether this should continue to be called “postmillennialism” or just “optimistic amillennialism” I will leave to people with even more pedantic hobbyhorses than I ride myself. For my own part, I will simply explain my view.
I was, shockingly enough, raised Southern Baptist and implicitly in dispensational premillennialism. Later, when I became a theology nerd, I soon became amillennial, having been emboldened (if my memory holds rightly) by the example of David Platt. I had no interest in any form of postmillennialism and indeed disparaged it for some time as “eschatological synergism.”1