MILLENIALISM IN THE REFORMATION
Daniel W. Petty
The purpose of this paper is
to examine the history of millennialism in the Protestant Reformation. The
Protestant reformers generally adopted the Augustinian tradition that rejected chiliastic
literalism in biblical interpretation. Still, there was some apocalyptic and
millennial speculation in the late middle ages, and such speculation had a
decided influence upon some in the Reformation period, particularly among the
Anabaptists. Thus it will be profitable to understand some of the medieval
developments of thought which cast a shadow upon the Reformers, and it is there
that we begin our study.
From the time of Augustine
through the middle ages, the prevailing tradition was against a literalistic
treatment of the thousand-year reign of Christ and other apocalyptic themes.
Still, there were those outside the mainstream of orthodoxy who held strong
apocalyptic hopes. Many past historians saw the eleventh century as an age of
intense apocalyptic expectation, based on a legend about the year 1000 and on
the apocalyptic motivation of the crusades. Though the year 1000 may not have
been a focus of expectancy as once thought, it may well have fostered the idea
of the imminent end of the world.
Speculations
About Antichrist. Much speculation
about the antichrist was sparked by the long struggle between the German
Emperors and the Popes of the middle ages. One writer of the early twelfth
century who witnessed the clash between Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Pope
Alexander III was convinced that the career of the Antichrist Emperor Henry IV
had begun the final catastrophic age of history. In a work titled The
Investigation of the Antichrist (1:19), he interprets Revelation 20:1-3 as
referring to the release of Satan through Henry IV. A thousand years had
already passed when the devil was imprisoned, and when free, he ruled as a
tyrant (Gerhoh of Reichersberg, in McGinn 99-100). Later, Pope Gregory IX used
Revelation 13:1-2 to designate Emperor Frederick II as the "beast."
The Emperor responded with a letter protesting his excommunication by the pope,
whom he called the monster of Revelation 6:4, the great dragon of Revelation
12, the Antichrist, and the angel coming from the abyss in Revelation 16:1-3
(McGinn 173-175). When Gregory's successor, Pope Innocent IV, deposed the
Emperor, an anonymous treatise interpreted the name Innocencius papa as
equal to 666, the number of the beast of Revelation 13:18. By applying a
numerical value to each letter of his name, the author declared, "There is
no doubt that he is the true Antichrist" (McGinn 175-176).
Joachim
of Fiore and His Theory of History.
Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202) is regarded as the most important apocalyptic
author of the middle ages and one of the most significant theorists of history.
He interpreted history through the Bible as the progressive unfolding of three
stages: the Age of the Father (fear and obedience under the Law), the Age of
the Son (present age of faith and tutelage under the Gospel), and the Age of
the Holy Spirit (Age of Fulfillment of spiritual freedom and love). The third
stage, in which human history would be consummated, was already dawning, but it
must be preceded by the atrocities of the Antichrist. In a sense, Joachim's
thought was a revival of millenarianism, but it was also a distinctive form of
utopianism that sought to give validation to such treasured institutions as
monasticism. In commenting on Revelation 14:14-16, for example, he interprets
this to refer to an order of just men (monks) who will imitate the Son of Man
perfectly (one like the Son of Man), then an order of hermits imitating the
angels' life. Thus he introduced an optimistic hope for a renewed church on
earth. Many religious groups identified themselves with the hoped for remnant
of spiritual men. Especially noteworthy were the Spiritual Franciscans.
Bonaventure became head of the Franciscans in 1257, and
wanted to suppress the extreme views of the Joachite Franciscans. However, he
also perpetuated an apocalyptic outlook by developing a unique apocalyptic view
of history. Bonaventure interpreted the six visions of Revelation as
corresponding to the six days of creation. He thought his own time was
witnessing the crisis of the sixth age prior to the time of peace before the
end of the world. Francis of Assisi himself was seen as the angel of the sixth
seal and the harbinger of the coming of the seventh age of the church (an age
of full understanding of Scripture). Although Bonaventure saw himself in
opposition to the tradition of Joachim, he in fact offered a revised version of
Joachim's scheme of history.
Others among the Spiritual Franciscans continued to
emphasize poverty as the unique apocalyptic sign to identify themselves as the
"spiritual men" who were to rule the Church in the age to come. Peter
Olivi, in his Commentary on Revelation, identified Francis as the
initiator of the sixth stage of history, so designated through the angel of
Revelation 10:1-3. He saw the events of the 13th century as the fulfillment of
the sixth seal of Revelation 7:2. From Revelation 13:1f, he saw two
Antichrists--the first a Mystical Antichrist, then the Great Antichrist.
Agreeing with Joachim and Francis, he identified Frederick II and his seed as
Antichrists. Others, following the same approach, identified Enoch and Elijah
as Francis and Dominic respectively. The evil beasts of Revelation 13 were
identified as evil popes.
The disasters and
instability of the 14th and 15th centuries helped create a climate in which
intense hopes and fears for the future flourished. Social and intellectual
changes were occurring too quickly to be understood. There was a growing sense
of historical crisis. This all occasioned innumerable prophecies concerning
profound troubles, the second advent, or a golden age soon to come. Many people
hoped for a final world emperor or a reforming pope. There was also an increase
in the use of prophecy as a means of dissent against the political, social, and
religious status quo. This was part of a growing sentiment to reform the church
in "head and members." There was a continuing tendency for people to
discover the Antichrist in the pope or other ruler. His advent was to be a sign
of the last days. The times were ripe for apocalyptic speculation.
Such speculations about the imminence of Antichrist and
the end of the world increased during the dark years of the "Babylonian
Captivity of the Church" (1308-1378), when the papacy was removed from
Rome and installed at Avignon, France. When the pope finally returned to Rome
from Avignon in 1377, it seemed the long ordeal was over. Instead, the early
death of the pope and the pressures of rival political factions led to the "Great
Schism" (1378-1417), the establishment of two--and at one point,
three--rival popes. Most writers of the period concerned with apocalyptic
themes were affected by this turmoil.
The
Taborites. In the early fifteenth
century, the Bohemian reform movement advanced when it became influenced by the
writings of the antipapal English thinker John Wycliff through the Czech
teacher John Hus (c. 1372-1415). Following Hus' death in 1415 at Constance,
splinter groups became revolutionary, most notably the Taborites. By the latter
part of 1419 apocalypticism had become an important part of the Taborite
movement. They came to believe they alone were the saved remnant in a world
under the control of Antichrist, and that they had the duty to cleanse the
world by forceful means. The millenarianism of the Taborites centered on a
belief that the new age of the Holy Spirit had dawned at Tabor, and that the
elect would rule in the world visibly for a thousand years with Christ. Much of
their speculation was based on the Book of Revelation (McGinn 268).
On the eve of the Protestant Reformation, both Italy and
Germany provided fertile ground for apocalyptic speculation. Pessimism and doom
were dominant themes of prophecy in the decades before Luther. The Dominican
friar Girolamo Savanarola (1452-1498) declared Charles VIII of France to be the
Last World Emperor who would restore a truly Christian order in the world, and
from 1494-1498, Savonarola in Florence preached the imminent defeat of
Antichrist and the inauguration of the millennium. In Germany, Wolfgang
Aytinger, an Augsburg cleric, speculated the end of the world was near due to
the Turkish threat. The time of apocalyptic crisis, he declared, had begun with
the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and would end with the Last World Emperor's
victory over the Turks, predicted for 1509. He interpreted Revelation 17, the
Great Whore Babylon, as Turkey, and the beast as Mohammed (McGinn 274-275).
The Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) found it necessary
to issue a statement denouncing the popular apocalyptic tendencies of the day.
Church authorities warned preachers against overzealous efforts to interpret
Biblical prophecies.
The leaders of the Reformation,
however, agreed generally with Augustine that the Kingdom of God could never be
a worldly one. They therefore repudiated the millenarian hopes that had weighed
so heavily in late medieval prophetic speculations. Still, they were affected
by the eschatological excitement of the late middle ages (Barnes 31).
Martin
Luther. Protestant piety generally
turned its attention away from ritual toward prayer and prophecy, focusing on
the promise of salvation. Of all the leading reformers, Martin Luther was most
strongly influenced by apocalyptic concerns. He saw history as the record of
the decline of the church into corruption. Initially Luther was well received
among the chiliasts, who saw him as the harbinger of a new era and defender of
the "new age," the age of the Spirit and of peace. However, Luther's
reformation did not seek to transform society in preparation for the
millennium, so he proved a disappointment to many of the more militant
reformers such as Thomas Müntzer. Indeed, Luther rejected all endeavors to
establish a kingdom of God on earth.
Luther's view of the last days was shaped, not only by
Augustine, but also by Bernard of Clairvaux, who saw history since Christ as
going through three epochs: the epoch of the Holy Fathers and Martyrs, when the
church suffered bloody persecutions and martyrs gave their lives for the faith;
the age of the heretics, when Christian doctrine was threatened; and the last
days, when the grave threat to the church came from the corruption within.
According to Bernard, the force behind the corruption of the church in the last
days was "the Antichrist, the deceitful liar . . . whom only the Lord
Jesus can kill with the flaming spirit of His mouth, and whom He will destroy
at the time of His glorious return" (Oberman 69).
Luther came to see his own age as the last days, in terms
of Bernard's periodization of history. He found the signs of the last days
spelled out clearly in Jesus' prophecy of Matthew 24. "The way I see
it," he declared, "the Gospel of St. Matthew counts such perversions
as the sale of indulgences among the signs of the Last Days" (Oberman 71).
Luther increasingly understood his task to be that of preaching the gospel with
a sense of urgency that seemed to suggest a feeling that time was running out.
As Heiko Oberman observed,
The
unleashing of the Devil, which Augustine had expected in the distant future and
which had drawn close in the days of St. Bernard, has now come about. Once the
Church invokes canon law and papal might to put its full authority behind
indulgences, there can no longer be any doubt: the Antichrist is begotten, the
Last Days have begun. (71)
Luther's position,
therefore, was not the pursuit of a millennium, since the messianic kingdom is
heavenly. No human efforts could avail in bringing it to pass, only patient and
public proclamation of the Gospel, beseeching God to intervene.
"Thus," said Luther, "the only thing that can comfort you in
this last stage is the Day of Judgment and your faith that the lord rules in
Eternity--ultimately all the godless will vanish" (Oberman 72).
Therefore Martin Luther conceived of the consummation,
not as a new epoch in history in which the church would reign triumphant, but
as the Last Day, the end of history at Christ's Second Coming.
Concerning the Book of Revelation, at first Luther was
confused, and for a while he doubted its canonicity. But it was the one book he
insisted should be illustrated in his early editions of the New Testament. By
the end of the 1530s, Luther believed Revelation contained insights that were
necessary. He was especially motivated by the Turkish menace in 1529 to
formulate his interpretation of the Book of Revelation. During this period of
nervous apprehension he wrote a new and fuller preface to Revelation. In it
Luther described three kinds of prophecy that foretold future events not
otherwise mentioned. The first used only plain words without figures or images.
The second used both plain words and images together. The third type, which
were found in Revelation, used only images. Luther regarded most of Revelation
as difficult or impossible to understand, so he was reserved in his
interpretation.
John
Calvin. Calvin was less concerned
with the problem of the course of history, and proved to be more Augustinian
than any other reformer. He concentrated almost exclusively on personal
salvation. Like Luther, Calvin emphatically rejected millennialism as gross
vulgarization. He regarded the opinions of the chiliasts as falsifications
designed by Satan to confuse men. In the Institutes he wrote, "But
a little later there followed the chiliasts, who limited the reign of Christ to
a thousand years. Now their fiction is too childish either to need or to be
worth a refutation" (3.25.5). The number "one thousand" in Revelation
2:4 applied only to "various disturbances that awaited the church, while
still toiling on earth" (3.25.5). Calvin chastised millennialists for
casting reproach upon Christ and his Kingdom, and dismissed the doctrine as
"stupid nonsense."
Calvin, however, saw hope for the earthly future. He,
along with Zwingli and Bucer, were more influenced by Erasmian Humanism than
was Luther. Calvin was concerned now with establishing Christian discipline and
a truly Christian society. He did not share Luther's strong sense of an
imminent end of the world.
All of the major Protestant creeds of the Reformation era
followed Luther, Calvin and the rest of the mainline reformers in rejecting
millennialism. The Augsburg Confession of Faith, in Article seventeen, condemned
"certain Jewish opinions which are now making an appearance and which
teach that, before the resurrection of the dead, saints and godly men will
possess a worldly kingdom and annihilate all the godless" (Leith 73). The
Reformed Second Helvetic Confession states: "We also do reject the Jewish
dream of a millennium, or golden age on earth, before the last judgment"
(Gerstner 14). The forty-first of the Forty-Two Articles drawn up by Thomas
Cranmer in 1553, but omitted afterwards in the revision under Elizabeth in
1563, describes the millennium as "a fable of Jewish dotage" (Schaff
2: 619, n. 4).
Such condemnations as these
suggest that there were some who did teach millenarian doctrines. The
"Radical Reformation" is the name given to diverse groups and
individuals who were engaged not so much in a reformation of the church, but
rather in the restitution of the church. Modern historians of the Radical
Reformation define the movement in terms of three distinct groupings: Anabaptists,
Spiritualists, and Rationalists. The Radical Reformation differed from the
Magisterial Reformation in its impatience with mere reform. As George H.
Williams described it, "Instead, it espoused a radical rupture with the
immediate past and all its institutions and was bent upon either the
restoration of the primitive church or the assembling of a new church, all in
an eschatological mood far more intense than anything to be found in normative
Protestantism or Catholicism" (Radical Reformation 857).
Thomas
Müntzer and the Peasants' Revolt.
The "principal spokesman of Revolutionary Spiritualism" (Williams, Radical
Reformation 45) was Thomas Müntzer, a fierce fanatic who became the leader of
the rebellious peasants of Middle Germany in the 1520s. It was as a follower of
Luther that Müntzer first broke away from Catholic orthodoxy, and came to think
of himself as a chosen instrument of God. As a preacher in Zwickau, he
interpreted the Reformation movement in a socially radical way. In 1520 he
entered the circle of the three so-called "prophets of Zwickau",
preaching radical views characterized by direct revelations in dreams and
visions, Spirit-possession, the rejection of infant baptism, and the belief in
a millennium to be preceded by the ascendancy of the Turks as Antichrist. His
millenarian beliefs were learned from Niklas Storch, a fiery preacher of the
old Bohemian Taborite doctrine. What most appealed to Müntzer was the war of
extermination which the righteous were to wage against the unrighteous. After
he abandoned Luther, Müntzer thought and talked only on the Book of Revelation
and of such incidents in the Old Testament as Elijah's slaughter of the priests
of Baal and Jehu's killing of the sons of Ahab (Cohn 236). The elect would
prepare the way for the millennium, and in Müntzer's view the elect were those
who had received the Holy Spirit. As such they would be endowed with perfect
insight into the will of God. Only those so qualified would be able to carry
out the eschatological mission.
Perhaps the clearest statement of Müntzer’s
eschatological beliefs is found in a sermon on Daniel chapter two which he
presented before Duke John, one of the princes of Saxony. He identified the corrupt
imperial-papal Christendom of his day as the Fifth Monarchy, symbolized in
Nebuchadnezzar's dream by the feet of iron and clay. The stone made without
hands referred to Christ and the saints, and He was now ready to crush the
Fifth Monarchy that is ruled by the Antichrist to make ready for the
establishment of the millennium. Müntzer appealed to the princes to awaken to
their possibly predestined role and join the saints in punishing the godless
under Antichrist (Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers 47-70). The abortive
peasants' revolt which Müntzer exploited to further his eschatological dreams
ended as he himself was tortured and beheaded in May 1525.
Most Anabaptists were pacifists who taught respect for
the authority of the state, and most held no idea of social revolution. But
since most Anabaptists came from among the peasants, the authorities were
afraid of them; consequently the Anabaptists as a whole, including the most
peaceful, were ferociously persecuted and thousands were killed. This persecution,
ironically, led many Anabaptists to interpret their sufferings in apocalyptic
terms, as the last great onslaught of Satan and Antichrist against the saints.
These were the "messianic woes" which would herald the millennium.
Many of the Anabaptists became obsessed by imaginings of a day of reckoning
when they themselves would arise to overthrow the mighty and, under the
Messiah, establish a millennium on earth.
Hans
Hut. The first to propogate this new
form of Anabaptism was a bookbinder named Hans Hut, a former follower of
Müntzer. Perhaps influenced by the Taborites, Hut claimed to be a prophet sent
by God to announce that in 1528 Christ would return to earth and place the
two-edged sword of justice and revenge in the hands of the rebaptized saints.
The saints would sit in judgment on the priests and pastors for their false
teachings and the princes would be cast into chains for their persecutions.
Christ would then establish a millennium characterized by free love and
community of goods. While Hut expected this to take place only when Christ
returned, some of his less patient and more militant disciples wished to hasten
the process of setting up the Kingdom of God by force of arms (Cohn 255).
In August 1527 a synod was held in Augsburg, attended by
Hut and other Anabaptists. It is thought that "in some obscure way the
Anabaptists thought of the calling of a council, synod, or great disputation as
one of the foreseen signs of the last times (cf. Rev. 16:6; 19:19)"
(Williams, Radical Reformation 176). Just as the Spirit had descended on
the first apostles on Pentecost (Acts 2), so in the fullness of the
dispensations, the Spirit would come again in power, anointing the new apostles
for the last days before the millennium (Williams, Radical Reformation 176).
Christ was to establish His kingdom on Pentecost, 1528. The participants at the
synod discussed, among other issues, Seven Decrees already being promulgated.
The enemies of the Anabaptists in response drew up a series of articles
summarizing Anabaptist doctrines and errors, including "that God will
descend again to earth and a physical kingdom will be established"
(Williams, Radical Reformation 177).
Hans Hut was captured in 1527 and imprisoned at Augsburg.
He died, or was killed, in prison before his trial was over, but his body was
tied to a chair in court and formally condemned to be burned at the stake on
the following day (Williams, Radical Reformation 179). Still, before his
death he had succeeded in making other converts in the towns of southern
Germany.
Melchior
Hoffmann. Perhaps the most
influential preacher among the early Anabaptists in northwest Germany and the
Netherlands was a fur trader named Melchior Hoffmann. Hoffmann had become an
itinerant Lutheran evangelist by the early 1520s, but by 1529 he had fallen
into conflict with the Lutherans and joined the Anabaptist movement. During the
following year a new wing of the movement developed in the northern provinces
of the Netherlands, influenced by his ideas.
One of Hoffmann's most significant works was a tract on
the Revelation of John, published in 1530. In the tract he presented a glowing
description of the second coming of Christ. He declared that Paul was the angel
who bound Satan for 1000 years (Rev. 20:2). After that period, Christianity had
fallen into its current deplorable state, soon to be repaired. Many of the
Anabaptists regarded Hoffmann as Elijah, one of the two witnesses of Revelation
11:3. Hoffmann declared that Strassburg was the spiritual Jerusalem, the center
for the eventual 144,000 heralds of world regeneration (Rev. 14:1). After a
bloody siege of the city, the saints would rally under the righteous pastors
(Williams, Radical Reformation 262-263). The millennium was to begin in
the year 1533, which was supposed to be the 1500th year after the death of
Christ (Cohn 258).
Hoffmann visited Strassburg several times, attempting to
prepare for the return of Christ and the establishment of the millennium. By
1532 he declared that the descent of the New Jerusalem was being temporarily
interrupted, similarly to the interruption of the rebuilding of the ancient
temple by the Samaritans. Nevertheless, he continued to become more certain of
the nearness of the dawning of the New Age, and that he was the Elijah
presaging the Second Coming of Christ. In 1533 Hoffmann again returned to
Strassburg bareheaded and barefooted in testimony of his confidence of the
nearness of the Kingdom, and he ate only bread. In May 1533 he was arrested and
sentenced to life imprisonment inside a cage in a tower. Until his death in
1543 or 1544, Hoffmann continued to inspire many Anabaptists who believed his
teachings (Williams, Radical Reformation 263-264, 276-277, 292).
The
Münster Tragedy. The center of
attention soon shifted to the North German town of Münster, which was suffering
from social and political upheaval. By 1533 increasing numbers of Anabaptists,
especially from the Netherlands, were flocking to Münster. Leadership of the
Anabaptist movement in Münster fell into the hands of the baker Jan Matthys.
This changed the whole tone of the movement. Hoffmann was a pacifist who taught
his followers to await the millennium quietly and peacefully. Matthys was a
revolutionary who advocated that the righteous take up the sword and actively
prepare the way for the millennium by wielding it against the unrighteous (Cohn
260).
The events that transpired at Münster may remind us of
the recent debacle involving David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco,
Texas. The church in Münster was transformed into a militant commonwealth, in
imitation of the children of Israel in exodus from Egypt. The second coming of
Christ was seen as a kingdom of righteousness, and was based on the prophecies
of the Book of Revelation as interpreted by Melchior Hoffmann. Now Münster,
instead of Strassburg, was to be the New Jerusalem. Thousands more Anabaptists
streamed into the "holy city of Münster" to escape the impending
judgment of God. In 1534 Mathys ordered all Münsterites to submit to rebaptism
(infant baptism having been outlawed). At first all non-Anabaptists were to be
killed, but then they decided to expel them from the city. During the six weeks
of Mathys' rule, all property was held in common and military rule prevailed.
All books except the Bible were banned, and all other works were publicly
burned.
In April of 1534 Jan Mathys lost his life, and the
control of Münster was taken over by John Beukels of Leyden. John of Leyden led
the movement into even greater excesses. His first important act was to run
naked through the town and then spend three days in silent ecstasy. The old
government was abolished and replaced by twelve Elders, on the model of ancient
Israel. A new legal code was drawn up that called for the death penalty for
almost every kind of insubordination--of the young against their parents, of a
wife against her husband, of anyone against God's representatives, the
government at Münster. Polygamy was introduced, based on the Old Testament
patriarchs and upon the requirement to "be fruitful and multiply."
Hoffmann had taught this as an important eschatological requirement necessary
to fill out as speedily as possible the 144,000 elect saints for the kingdom of
God (Williams, Radical Reformation 511). By August of 1534, John of
Leyden had himself proclaimed king, but no ordinary king. He imposed himself as
King David, the Messiah of the last days. He was to inherit the throne of David
until God should reclaim the kingdom from him. Sermons were preached to show
from the Old Testament prophets that the promised Messiah was none other than
John of Leyden (Cohn 271f).
The Messianic reign of John of Leyden came to an abrupt
end early in 1535 when the city of Münster finally fell to the siege enforced
by the Bishop and the Imperial forces. In the final attack on the city, those
who had not fled were killed almost to the last man in a massacre that lasted
several days. The leaders of the Anabaptists in Münster, including John of
Leyden, were publicly tortured to death with red-hot irons. After the execution
the three bodies were suspended from a church-tower in the middle of the town,
in cages that are still to be seen there today (Cohn 280).
The militant, millenarian form of Anabaptism rapidly
declined after the fall of Münster. Many Anabaptist preachers even changed
their views on eschatology. Anabaptism survived in its original, more
pacifistic form in such groups as the Mennonites and Hutterites.
The Lutheran, Reformed, and
Anglican traditions remained basically amillennial or postmillennial. Premillennialism
did gain some standing within these traditions in the late- and
post-reformation period. During the devastating Thirty Years War of the early
1630s, there were occasional speculations about the beginning of the
millennium, as in the cases of the German Calvinists Johann Alsted (1588-1638)
Johannes Cocceius (1603-1669) (Gerstner 15-16). During the same period the
growth of the Puritan movement in England witnessed a flowering of millenarian
doctrines, as illustrated by the views of Puritan Presbyterian Thomas Brightman
and Cambridge scholar Joseph Mede. Both believed the events of Revelation were
taking place in their own time. The Thirty Years War was proof that the vials
of wrath were still being poured out, and the remaining vials symbolized the
final events before the dawning of the millennium--the destruction of the
Catholic Church and papacy, the destruction of the Turks, and the conversion of
the Jews (Clark 122-123). Many sermons of the period saw the outbreak of civil
war in England in the 1640s as the final struggle with Antichrist and evidence
of the approaching millennium (Hill 33-35, 96-97).
However, speculations such as these were exceptions
during the Reformation period. The Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican traditions
generally followed the views of the earliest reformers such as Luther and
Calvin, who relied heavily on Augustine. Most protestant churches remained
basically amillennial or postmillennial well into the 18th century.
Works Consulted
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Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium.
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Estep, William R. The
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Eerdmans, 1975.
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Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down:
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