Theopedia

Postmillennialism

“For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

— 1 Corinthians 15:25 (ESV)

Definition

Postmillennialism is the view that Christ returns after (“post-“) the “millennium”: an extended era, not necessarily a literal thousand years, in which the preaching of the gospel gradually subdues sin and unbelief across the nations under Christ’s present, spiritual reign.1 Evil is reduced, not eliminated, before Christ’s bodily return, which then brings the single, general resurrection and last judgment (1 Cor. 15:23-26). It is one of three positions Reformed Baptist theologians have held on the timing of Christ’s return relative to the “thousand years” of Revelation 20:1-6, alongside amillennialism and premillennialism.

Confessional Contrast

Postmillennialism is a live dispute within Reformed Baptist confessional Christianity that the confession itself does not settle.

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession describes Christ’s return as a single, undivided event. At the appointed day, “such of the saints as are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies,” the just to honor and the unjust to dishonor.2 On that same day, “God hath appointed a day wherein he will judge the world in righteousness, by Jesus Christ; to whom all power and judgment is given of the Father,” and “all persons that have lived upon the earth shall appear before the tribunal of Christ.”3 The confession names one resurrection and one day of judgment, coincident with Christ’s return, without addressing whether an era of gospel prosperity precedes that return, as postmillennialism holds; whether the millennium of Revelation 20 names Christ’s present reign, as amillennialism holds; or whether it names a future earthly reign that follows his return, as premillennialism holds.

Arguments

Postmillennialism’s case rests first on Old Testament texts describing an eventual, worldwide extent to the Messiah’s kingdom. God gives the Son “the nations” as his “heritage” and “the ends of the earth” as his “possession” (Ps. 2:8); “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9); the nations stream to “the mountain of the house of the LORD” to be taught his ways, and “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” (Isa. 2:2-4). Postmillennial exposition reads such texts as describing history’s own future, not the eternal state alone.

The New Testament supplies the same expectation in miniature. Christ compares the kingdom to a mustard seed that grows from the smallest of seeds into a tree, and to leaven that works through a whole batch of dough (Matt. 13:31-33), pictures of gradual, pervasive growth rather than sudden arrival. Paul teaches that Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet,” the last enemy being death itself (1 Cor. 15:25-26). Bavinck locates this reign in the present: since his resurrection Christ “reigns until he has completed the kingdom and put all his enemies under his feet,” a kingship of power exercised now over “all things” for the sake of his people.4 Postmillennial exposition reads Christ’s present kingly session as already advancing toward, not merely awaiting, the subjection of “all his enemies,” with the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) as its ordinary means.

Charles Hodge, describing what he called “the common doctrine of the Church,” held that Scripture teaches the kingdom of Christ “is to extend over all the earth; that all nations are to serve Him,” in a coming “state of…spiritual prosperity” prior to Christ’s return, marked by the outpoured Spirit, abounding knowledge, and the cessation of wars, though not the disappearance of sin: “the tares are to grow together with the wheat until the harvest.”1 On this reading, the apostles’ own commission to “go teach all nations” suited the gospel for exactly this success, since it is offered to “all classes of men,” Jew and Gentile, learned and unlearned alike, as “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.”5

Historical Development

Reformed orthodoxy’s “common doctrine” (nineteenth century)

Nineteenth-century Reformed theologians did not typically distinguish amillennialism from postmillennialism as later systematicians would. Charles Hodge (1797-1878) presented the expectation of a coming era of worldwide gospel prosperity, without a personal, bodily reign of Christ on earth, simply as “the common doctrine of the Church.”1 His son, Archibald Alexander Hodge, correspondingly named only the minority, opposing view by its own distinguishing mark: those who held that Christ would reign personally on earth for a thousand years before the resurrection and judgment were called “premillenarians.” He judged that this view had prevailed generally in the church only from about AD 150 to 250, advocated by Irenaeus and Tertullian, and that since then “the doctrine taught in this chapter has been the one generally recognized by the whole church, while Millenarianism or Chilianism has been confined to individuals and transient parties.”6

A Particular Baptist alternative: John Gill (1697-1771)

The Baptist tradition that produced the confession did not speak with one voice on the question. John Gill, the most extensive Particular Baptist systematician after the confession’s own century, devoted a chapter of his Body of Doctrinal Divinity to the “spiritual reign” of Christ, a future season of unusual gospel prosperity in which “the kingdoms of this world shall become his,” drawing on the same kingly-office texts (Ps. 2:6-9; 45:6-7) postmillennial exposition uses.7 Gill treated this “spiritual reign” as only “a branch of Christ’s kingdom,” distinct from, and prior to, a further “personal reign” of Christ with the saints on a renewed earth, which he held would not begin until after the second coming, the first resurrection, and the dissolution of the present heavens and earth.8 Arguing from England’s own history that no past era answers to the “millennium” of Revelation 20, Gill cited the Marian martyrdoms and a massacre of some two hundred thousand people in Ireland as evidence that “Satan was not bound,” concluding that “Christ’s kingdom is not yet come” and that these things “are not to be expected in the present state.”8 Gill’s scheme, an intervening “spiritual reign” followed by Christ’s own future personal reign, stands closer to premillennialism than to postmillennialism.

Twentieth-century restatement: Loraine Boettner (1932)

Writing within a defense of Reformed soteriology against Arminianism, Loraine Boettner argued that “the true universalism of the Scriptures” is not the salvation of every individual but “the universal Christianization of the world and the complete defeat of the forces of spiritual wickedness.”9 History, on this reading, ends not in defeat but in “the glorious spectacle of a saved world,” a hope Boettner tied to Benjamin B. Warfield’s expectation that through Christ “the race of man, though fallen into sin, is recovered to God and fulfills its original destiny.”9

Opposing Views

Amillennialism holds that the millennium of Revelation 20 describes Christ’s present reign, exercised from heaven throughout the whole period between his first and second comings, rather than a future golden age on earth preceding his return. Bavinck reads the Old Testament’s kingdom prophecies as already finding a non-literal fulfillment: Scripture itself, he argues, spiritualizes the very categories (circumcision, sacrifice, temple) those prophecies use, teaching that “true circumcision is that of the heart” and that God “will pour out his Spirit on all” under a new covenant (Deut. 30:6; Jer. 31:31-34), so that a literal, earthly, future kingdom “breaks with Christianity and lapses back into Judaism.”10 On this reading, good and evil coexist within history until Christ’s single return ends it directly. See Amillennialism.

Premillennialism holds that Christ returns before, not after, the millennium, to raise the righteous dead and reign with them personally on earth for a thousand years, followed by a final apostasy, the resurrection of the wicked, and the last judgment.6 Ronald Heine traces the doctrine, called chiliasm in the early church, to Papias, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, who read Revelation 20 literally, while Origen’s disciple Dionysius of Alexandria judged that such a reading made “simple Christians view the kingdom of God” in unworthy, carnal terms, and Augustine came to treat the millennium figuratively rather than as a future earthly reign.11 Bavinck traces the same view’s later Christian history from Cerinthus through the Anabaptists at the Reformation, noting that even “some Reformed theologians, Piscator, Alsted, Cocceius, Brakel, and others, tended toward a moderate form of chiliasm.”10 John Gill’s own distinction between a future “spiritual reign” and a later “personal reign” of Christ places him within this camp among Particular Baptist theologians.8 See Premillennialism.

Objections and Responses

Predictions of increasing apostasy before Christ’s return conflict with postmillennialism’s expectation of improving conditions. Even the “common doctrine” Hodge describes as generally received by the church anticipates that the era of gospel prosperity is followed, not perpetuated, by “the great apostasy which is to follow” before the consummation.1 Postmillennial exposition, on this account, expects a final falling-away rather than uninterrupted improvement.

No era of church history has yet matched Scripture’s picture of a world subdued to Christ, so the texts describing it must name the eternal state rather than a future stage of history. Gill presses a version of this objection from England’s own history: citing the Marian martyrdoms and a massacre of some two hundred thousand people in Ireland as evidence that “Satan was not bound” even in periods of apparent reformation, he concluded that the fuller gospel prosperity such texts describe still lies ahead of “the present state.”8 This stands, from within the Particular Baptist tradition itself, as a caution against locating postmillennialism’s expected era of gospel triumph in any period of history already past, though Gill’s own answer, a future personal reign of Christ after his second coming, differs from postmillennialism’s account of what follows that era.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “The Concomitants of the Second Advent,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), 855-856. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 31, “Of the State of Man after Death and of the Resurrection of the Dead,” para. 2. ↩

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 32, “Of the Last Judgment,” para. 1. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality.” ↩

  5. Hodge, “Second Advent,” in Systematic Theology, Volume III, 799-800. ↩

  6. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 39, “Second Advent and Judgment,” 569-570. ↩ ↩2

  7. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book 5, chap. 13, “Of the Kingly Office of Christ.” ↩

  8. Gill, book 7, chap. 8, “Of the Millennium, or Personal Reign of Christ with the Saints on the New Earth.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  9. Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 216. ↩ ↩2

  10. Bavinck, chap. 24, “The Return of Christ.” ↩ ↩2

  11. Ronald E. Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine: Introducing the Essentials of the Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), chap. 15, “And They Came to Life and Reigned with Christ a Thousand Years,” 166-177. ↩