Rethinking St Augustine's Millennium
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Yes, in the end, God will triumph over sin and death at the end of time. I would like, however, to comment, that I think there are two of the best possible layers of apocalypse that have fallen by the wayside in modern Catholicism: spiritual historicism and idealism; that is, on the one hand, the phases of Church history from beginning to end characterized by spiritual conditions, and then, on the other hand, imagery that evokes aspects and types of things that occur repeatedly in the times of Salvation history. Most Catholic scholars today just relegate most of apocalypse to the first century, preterism, or how the book speaks to the immediate audience of the Christians suffering persecutions at the hands of the diabolical Roman Empire, and the situation of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, making it effectively the opposite extreme of the conservative Protestant view of futurism, which relegates apocalypse to the very end of the world, the other side of Church history.
But, honestly, what about this great parentheses, as it were, between pagan Rome and Antichrist? Why would God give us what is, in many cases, useless, arbitrary data about first century temporal affairs (literal five months of fall of Jerusalem, seven roman emperors in the first century, a mere temporal kingdom of Parthians as threat to Rome from the literal East) and leave the whole plethora of spiritual ages beyond pagan Rome for the Church in obscurity as just one vague "Millennial Eucharistic Reign of Christ"?
Why wouldn't the phases of Church doctrinal development be in apocalypse?
Islam
Great Schism
Moral fall of Catholic hierarchy in late Middle Ages
Protestant Rebellion
Age of Worldly Reason (Enlightenment, etc)
...and the Modern Secular Apostasy,
...not to mention the presumed coming dress rehearsal for the end, imminent to our time, per Akita, Fatima, and many other approved apparitions (not just the ones of the last two centuries)--this minor tribulation--followed by the apocalyptic Reunion of Christians, and the glorious renewal of the world to Catholicism, the fullness of the Gentiles, all before the final apostasy of the end.
I suppose scholars will say, there has been no rigorous way to partition the ages of the Church, so that previous spiritual historicism before the Jesuits in the time of the Protestant Revolt (when preterism was introduced), were indeed arbitrary eisegesis, or not rigorous.
What if rigor is now possible? What if a far more profound understanding of human history is upon us, and we can lay aside applying the apocalypse merely to the first century, and stretch it out over the entire age of the Church?
With the remainder of spiritual history of the Church now most likely fully known, I believe that time has come.
I am a Catholic revert. I desire to share deeper theology about the Catholic Church that is admittedly speculative but that makes perfect sense from Catholic doctrine and church teaching.
The Catholic Church shows us that we are all priceless regardless of what anything the world may say about us. We can hold our heads high and know that God loves us no matter what and desires us to be with him forever if we but persevere in love with him unto the end.
To know these things gives me great joy and I am just a poor sinner striving to become holier little by little.
May God bless all writers and readers on this site in all ways, amen!
