Postmillennialism
Loraine Boettner wrote,
“Postmillennialism is that view of the last things which holds that the Kingdom of God is now being extended in the world through the preaching of the Gospel and the saving work of the Holy Spirit, that the world will eventually be Christianized, and that the return of Christ will occur at the close of a long period of righteousness and peace commonly called the Millennium.”1
Notice about this definition that there is room left between the success of the gospel per se and a definitive commencement in a glory age, or “a long period.” To put it in Greg Bahnsen’s terminology, there is a Concrete “Glory-Days” postmillennialism versus a “Gradual-Victory-Whole-Age” postmillennilism.2
Whether one agrees with the view or not, there is no doubt that postmillennialism has been most maligned on the issue of the nature that it gives to the kingdom. What it envisions is a gospel transformation, but one that is not politically neutral. This is not actually difficult to comprehend. What gets in the way are the several traditions and tendencies that cannot conceive of Christian talk of politics or cultural transformation without it being a matter of idolatry. However, the many Reformed titans who held this position were neither dunces nor insensitive to questions of idolatry.
Liberal theology birthed a different “kingdom now” emphasis that was naturalistic with respect to causality and statist with respect to primary instrumentality.3 By contrast, the postmillennial view had more historically been articulated along the lines of supernatural efficient cause, but never without all of the secondary causes that we expect in every other area of life. Boettner makes this qualifier: “This view is, of course, to be distinguished from that optimistic but false view of human betterment and progress held by Modernists and Liberals which teaches that the Kingdom of God on earth will be achieved by a natural process by which mankind will be improved and social institutions will be reformed and brought to a higher level of culture and efficiency.”4
So as to dispel the usual myths surrounding the view, Gentry offers three distinctions by saying
“I must note again what postmillennialists do not assert: (1) universalism (not all will be saved at any point in history); (2) perfectionism (the saved are never perfect on earth); (3) satisfactionism (we do not prefer earthly dominion over consummational glory).”5
Implications of Postmillennialism
According to Bahnsen, postmillennialism incorporates the best of the other two views, namely amillennialism’s holding to the reality of the kingdom being inaugurated at the First Advent, and premillennialism’s commitment to cosmic promises for the future of the kingdom.6
If the gospel is the change agent, then “discipling the nations” is the program from the church’s side (cf. Mat. 28:19-20). This is arguably the central passage, and all the more so when it is rooted in what Jesus says about the inauguration of his rule in verse 18.
“And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The Great Commission is utterly successful. Bahnsen’s summarizes: “This is really what it means to be a postmillennialist.”7 So that this commission is not merely an imperative, but a promise. If I could put it in this way—the basic charge that the postmillennialist would lay at the feet of both the premillennialist and the amillennialist is this: Do you believe that Christ will accomplish the whole of the Great Commission through the church in this age, or don’t you? The whole of it encompasses discipling the nations.
Antichrist falls prior to the millennium. This makes all the more sense if one takes the traditional Reformed view that the Pope of Rome is that antichrist, a subject we will return to. So Edwards preached,
“And he will yet far more gloriously triumph over Satan and all his instruments in all the mighty kingdoms that have been set up in opposition to the kingdom of Christ at the time of the fall of antichrist, and the beginning of those glorious times so much spoken of in Scripture prophecy.”8
The conversion of the Jews at the end is also prevalent among Postmillennialists. Hodge uses the expression “national conversion” to refer to a mass ingathering of ethnic Jews (not to be confused with the more modern notion of geo-political-national), and argues for it along four Scriptural lines:
1. “From the original call and destination of that people (e.g. Gen. 12, 17, etc.); 2. “from the general drift of the Old Testament … [namely when] punishment has been inflicted, and the nation brought to repentance, there uniformly follow promises of restoration and favor”; 3. “express predictions of their national conversion to faith in Him whom they had rejected and crucified (cf. Zech. 12); 4. “the most decisive passage” (Rom. 11), God’s rejection of Israel “was not entire, so neither was it to be final … Thus ‘all Israel shall be saved.’ Whether this means the Jews as a nation, or the whole elect people of God including both Jews and Gentiles, may be doubtful. But in either case it is, in view of the context, a promise of the restoration of the Jews as a nation.”9
Because of these distinctives, there is a more explicit denial of the immanent return of Christ, since both the Great Commission and salvation of the Jews have to occur first. Bahnsen views the “thief in the night” passages (1 Thess. 5:4, Mat. 25:1-8) as speaking of the error of those who are unprepared—not that there are no precursory signs that Christians ought to be aware of.10
Important Texts
There are the many passages on the nations coming to the Lord and to Zion—for instance the nations flocking to God’s people for wisdom from God’s law (Isa. 2:2-3). Of course the meaning of Zion terminates on the church in the new covenant (cf. Heb. 12:22). The glory of the Lord will one day cover the earth. That is, it will both gradually and universally do so (Num. 14:21; Hab. 2:14). Peace is to spread to all the nations (Zech. 9:10); and the nations will turn to God for salvation (Ps. 22:27).
In the clearest, most central passages to the postmillennialist, there are two key elements to all this: (1) it is a process, (2) yet universal.
Psalm 110. Note that the action of sitting on the throne of the kingdom is at the right hand, rather than on earth; and that the subduing of His enemies occurs from that position—“until I make your enemies your footstool” (v. 1). The execution of justice “among the nations” (v. 6) seems to occur after a decisive judgment “on the day of his wrath” (v. 5), all of which fits the postmillennial view and not premillennial.
Matthew 13:33. Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
1 Corinthians 15:26. A Postmillennialist can say: “Amils are correct that “He must reign until …” but in addition to that, Paul says “until” what? What is Christ doing in the interim? He is subduing all of His enemies.
Daniel 2:34-35. “As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, all together were broken in pieces, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, so that not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”
Revelation 11:15. “Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.” Now it is true that this HAS BECOME can be all in an instant, at the trumpet blast; but the postmillennialist is focusing on the continuity element—What has become what? The nations were converted, in other words.
Proponents
In the early church Origen certainly believed that the gospel would eventually triumph over the earth. Most would not want to claim Origen because of some aberrant views of his. Nonetheless, in him there are traces of postmillennialism. Likewise with Eusebius, Athanasius, and many medieval theologians of lesser note. Many postmillennialists will claim Augustine because he also believed that the church would exert its gospel influence across the whole earth. That is true, but Augustine was equally clear in The City of God that the time given for the millennium in Revelation 20 was figurative.
The Savoy Declaration of 1658: “so according to his promise, we expect that in the latter days, antichrist being destroyed, the Jews called, and the adversaries of the kingdom of his dear Son broken, the churches of Christ being enlarged, and edified through a free and plentiful communication of light and grace, shall enjoy in this world a more quiet, peaceable and glorious condition than they have enjoyed” (XXVI.5).
Reformed tradition. Thomas Brightman (1562-1607) was one of the first to give detailed expression of it among the Reformed. Most of the Puritans who wrote on it were postmillennial. Others included Wilhelmus a Brakel, Jonathan Edwards, R. L. Dabney, James Henly Thornwell, Charles Hodge, W. G. T. Shedd, B. B. Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, John Murray, and Loraine Boettner.
Reconstructionists. Rousas J. Rushdoony, Gary North, Greg Bahnsen, Kenneth Gentry, Douglas Wilson, James White, and Gary Demar.11
Non-reconstructionists. Iain Murray and Keith Mathison.
R. C. Sproul changed his view at least once over the course of his life and ministry, and because he was not dogmatic about this issue, it is not crystal clear what his final position was.
Criticisms and Responses
1. Postmillennialism is another “kingdom now” (or without its King) theology!
This criticism often joins postmillennialists to the hip of Modernism. So the arch-social-gospeller, Walter Rauschenbusch said, “We need a restoration of the millennial hope.”12 Of course, unless other evidence is presented, the objection becomes a false analogy.
The criticism usually has Postmillennialism not only being an over-realized eschatology, but holding to a “full realization” of the kingdom. Gentry replies to this: “No postmillennialist — not even one — believes that temporal history will experience ‘the full realization’ of divine blessings before Christ returns.”13
Bahnsen pushes back against Jay Adams’ criticism of postmillennials seeing “a golden age just around the corner,” in other words, “it is popularly taught that postmillennialism maintains that there is an unbroken progression toward righteousness in history.”14
2. Even if postmillennialists clarify the first point, there is still a creeping naturalism and accommodationism.
In other words, even if the Postmillennialist avoids externally entangling alliances, it is still the case that kingdom progress is difficult to conceive of apart from a synergy with the progress assumed by the cultures around us. There are tendencies and there are temptations.
If one avoids a liberal version of this in Socialism or Liberationism, there is still a conservative version in Nationalism.
3. The postmillennialist proof-texts prove too little.
Boice cited the Kingdom Parables of Matthew 13 as a strike against a worldwide success of the gospel. But also 2 Peter 2:1-2, Jude 18, 1 Timothy 4:1, and 2 Timothy 4:3-4, where “None of these verses envisions an increasingly successful expansion of the gospel message.”15 Asserting the “healing of the nations” imagery from Ezekiel’s temple vision runs into the problem that the fulfillment in Revelation is clearly of the eternal state. Premillennialists appeal to many of the same texts, and it is often not made clear why the ideal state being described cannot also be of a period after the rapture, or in many cases, why it absolutely cannot be typological.
4. The “optimistic” element defines duty down to the present appearance of victory.
No doubt, there is a psychological relationship between optimism and ethics; but the postmillennialists very often submerge all ethics—all motive or ground of moral action—in the levels of certainty one has that the kingdom will grow in the way expected. Dominion is essentially equated to conquest, rather than as a stewardship that all Christians are called to regardless of how successful they feel in terms of the culture around them. In spite of Gentry’s measured distinctions above, postmillennialists will often speak as if such a global expanse of Christian influence cannot run side by side with a global intensification of persecution against Christians.
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1. Boettner, The Millennium, 4.
2. Engelsma pins Boettner as saying the millennium could last as long as “2,000 or 200,000 years” (The Church’s Hope, 87), but in fact all Boettner was addressing was the remainder of this age (The Millennium, 135-36).
3. Bahnsen, Victory in Jesus, 33.
4. Boettner, The Millennium, 4.
5. Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion, 83.
6. Bahnsen, Victory in Jesus, 48-49.
7. Bahnsen, Victory in Jesus, 48.
8. Edwards, from the sermon “Christ Exalted” in Altogether Lovely (Orlando: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1997), 75.
9. Hodge, Systematic Theology, III:805, 806, 807.
10. Bahnsen, Victory in Jesus, 81.
11. Gary Demar should have an asterisk by his name at least to signify his now more official commitment to the heresy of hyper (or full) preterism.
12. Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan Co., 1917), 224.
13. Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion, 38.
14. Bahnsen, Victory in Jesus, 75.
15. Boice, The Last and Future World, 21-22, 23.
