Objections
I would like now to deal with what would be common objections to the theology that argues that the dragon scenes of apocalypse image the entire divine plan with special focus on the Church age, and that the Millennium of Apocalypse 20 can image the coming Age of Peace of Our Lady.
Objection 1: The Vatican’s official Scripture position on Apocalypse is effectively preterism. How can you give interpretations not in line with this layer?
Answer: Admittedly, the formal, literal sense that the Church sees at this time, although non-dogmatically, is effectively the preterist mode, or at least the view that ties most of the book to the first century of Church history. We should note, however, that the Church, in saying that this is most likely the literal sense, is not condemning other earlier layers of meaning.
Admittedly, futurism is the least valuable layer of interpretation since there is no way of knowing, at least now, that we are at the very end of history (and, in fact, in light of the approved revelations we have looked at, we are most likely not at the end of the world at this time.) And this is even beyond the point, namely, that the type of data that fundamentalists concoct from the text regarding this mode of interpretation through sensationalist eisegesis is laughable since it misses the end of the text: nations, kingdoms, wars, earthquakes, literal time periods of known duration, and helicopters are not the subject of divine revelation. “It is not for you to know times or seasons.” (Acts 1:7) “ And you shall hear of wars and rumours of wars. See that ye be not troubled. For these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be pestilences, and famines, and earthquakes in places: Now all these are the beginnings of sorrows.” (Mt 24:7–8)
Toward this end, I have endeavored to show that the meaning of human history does not really depend on petty details of any specific time period—whether beginning, middle, or end history—but the ages themselves that are governed according to spiritual characteristics, as in, but not limited to:
Each of these ages is governed by spiritual characteristics of negative or, sometimes also, positive elements that form the prima causa for the essential history of the age, barring minor exceptions. What the minor temporal history is within these ages is of no avail, as we see above with the testimony of our Savior.
For example, to get at a clear item of objection implied above, the beast kings of Apocalypse 17, suppose we have many parallel worlds like our own, worlds that have fallen and received an Old Covenant, and, after their respective Incarnations, have a persecuting worldly power on the New People of God. We have analyzed our beast kings as ages of sin, but by the Vatican estimate, they are Roman emperors in the first century. Toward that end, does it really matter that there were five emperors who fell before St. John wrote, that one reigned while he wrote, and that one or possibly two came later? What is the meaning or wisdom in that? In each of these parallel worlds, there could be endless possibilities of how the emperors are laid out in this first age of darkness for the worlds, but it wouldn’t matter. For example, if we let 5 | 1 | 2 denote “five have fallen, one is, [and so forth]”, we could have 4|2|9, 3|1|3, 8|3|6, and what would be the difference? For, regardless of how long any one emperor reigns to help contribute to the emperors’ chronological delineation, is not his spiritual condition the same: to consider himself divine and want to put to death anyone that does not recognize it? How then would the trajectory of major history for any of these worlds be any different, since, in the end, we know that the same spiritual principle will apply: the love and heroic courage of the martyrs will progressively move the empire to conversion, casting out the dragon as ruler above of this Gentile world forever and ushering in the first great victory of the Church: “And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying: Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: because the accuser of our brethren is cast forth, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of the testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death.” (Rv 12:10–11)
Similar arguments can be made against the five months of the first great woe. (Rv 9:5,10) In preterism and common evangelical futurism, the five months are taken literally in either case; in the case of preterism, it is the time that it took Roman soldiers to destroy Jerusalem; in the common futurist view, it is the time that it takes for helicopters to try and kill Jews; either way, if, again in our parallel worlds, we had the old place of worship under attack, knowing that it will destroyed by divine chastisement on the old people for rejecting the time of their respective Messiah. So again, what if the durations of time for the destruction of this edifice or such, however measured in each world, varied widely. Would just variances cause a radical change in the greater historical ages of those worlds? Obviously not, since, in the end, the place of old worship, or “temple,” is destroyed. The worldly persecution of the Church will follow, regardless of how many emperors reign and to what length, and in the end, the empire will still be converted, all without regard for these minuscule, inconsequential details.
This, consequently, brings us to the reality that it really wouldn’t make sense if many of the details of not only futurism but also preterism would ever be defined dogma, since they are useless data in and of themselves. On the other hand, the meaning and the theology of the ages, which we have pursued here in this writing, do provide profound meaning for the development of God’s plan, to the degree that this is speculative theology. As a consequence, I ask the reader to ask himself which is more appropriate from the traditional Catholic wisdom: largely temporal details of the very beginning or very ending of Church history, or a theology of the great phases of divine redemptive activity in all history, that is, spiritual historicism?
Objection 2: The interpretation of the millennium of Apocalypse 20 as the Catholic age of peace is condemned. The only permitted meaning of that text is what Protestants call amillennialism. See the Catechism.
Answer: Let us cite the Catechism:
The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.30
Now, it is true that since St. Augustine gave us the perennial understanding of the millennium, one of a few ways that he suggested, this view that is called by heretics “amillennialism” is effectively the standard view that the Church takes down through the centuries. It is also true that, per the quote above, any view that takes the literal, bodily return of Our Lord as anytime within human history, that is, at any time prior to the end of time, is condemned. It is also true that the Church condemns any permanent realization of a civilization of love and peace, even if by Christ’s merits, such that the age of love would persist right up until the parousia. And even if a period of love might be attained before the end but not persevere, the Church would condemn any view, per above, that would have such civilization of grace having been attained progressively. Finally, and most importantly, the Church decisively and virulently condemns any age of peace that should be attained on merely secular means, as if the powers of this world should secure an age of human brotherhood, whether temporary or permanent.
Good. But the age of peace does not fit any of these. Firstly, in the age of peace, Jesus has in no wise come again in the sense of the dogmatic reality of the Second Coming. Jesus still remains, in terms of a revelatory presence, in heaven; the reign of Jesus is spiritual in the age of peace, just like Augustine’s time between the two comings. Secondly, the age of peace is not permanent, for, as we have seen, it eventually, at some point, disintegrates into the great apostasy, so that Public Revelation of the state of great lack of faith at the very end is not abrogated. Thirdly, it is not attained through a progressive ascendancy of the Gospel but rather an epic crisis of faith, morals, and chastisement. Indeed, the last 500 years have been anything but an upward mobility of the Gospel but rather three great woes, steps down to the pit: Protestantism, age of solo-ratio, and secular apostasy. And finally, we have gone out of our way in this discourse to show that the only means that such age of peace is attained and maintained is by the grace of God, through His Church, showing, definitively, that a world without God perishes, the despicable futility of secular messianism.
The reality, rather, is that the age of peace interpretation is pretty much the same as St. Augustine’s typical view, sparing a detail: the age of peace is a proper portion of the whole age of the Church, instead of the whole age of the Church itself, as with St. Augustine. That is, in the Augustinian view, the millennium is the entire age of the Church, whereas in the age of peace view, it is a partial age toward the end of history, that period of light between the two apostasies of the end, the minor and the major.
It should also be noted that the resurrections on either end of the thousand-year reign are spiritual. In the typical view, the Christian rises to new life through baptism, and the Church comes to life again through the martyrs’ reign in heaven. Too, in the age of peace version, the resurrection of the just can image the glorious rising of the Church back to life spiritually after the horror of the minor apostasy and tribulation. Here, she draws back to herself the separated Christians and renews the whole world. Also, in both views, the resurrection of darkness at the end of the millennium symbolizes the resurgence of apostasy at the end of the world, when, after having renewed the Gentiles to maturity, humanity rebels in the great apostasy.
Objection 3: But, since in the millennium Jesus is reigning, and the age of peace view places this reign merely in that time of history, and not the whole age of the Church, it attacks the notion that Jesus’ kingdom is present from the outset, at Pentecost, through to our own age, into the age of peace, and beyond. Jesus’ kingdom is present because of the Eucharist from coming to coming.
Answer: Admittedly, Jesus Christ, the God-Man, reigns from the tomb to his ending of the human drama at the close of time. Too, the Eucharist means that from Pentecost unto the last breath of the last human, Jesus Christ is literally on earth in full presence—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. So, the age of peace interpretation would indeed be heretical if it confined Jesus’ kingdom to Our Lady’s reign.
Here, I would appeal to the dragon scenes as a whole and the places where the Christ dwells in the context of the entire drama with the dragon, and not merely the millennium. Toward that end, we see that Jesus also reigns in Apocalypse 12 from above, or heaven, starting from the very point of his Ascension. (Rv 12:5) Toward that end, for all the subsequent scenes of the dragon until the chaining of chapter 20, Jesus, or the Christ-child, is reigning in heaven, yet we would never question in all these moments that Jesus’ Church is not in fact also present on earth, which is the very expression of his reign. Indeed, and in fact, after this very Ascension, the woman goes on to have several interactions of activity with the dragon, and we know from Catholic theology that the woman is not merely the Virgin Mother Mary but also the Church. In this precise view, then, we can view the collective scenes of the dragon in Apocalypse, from chapter 12 to, sporadically, chapter 20, as an image, if it were possible, of the entire age of the Church, and not merely idealistic pieces of recurrence. Then, without being able to fully lay out the interpretation for now, the sequence can be a revelation of the degree that Christ’s truth, grace, and Church reign in humanity at any one age, so that, in particular, whereas the dragon causes much trouble for the Church in Apocalypse 12, 13, 16, and such, he is brought into great subjection through his chaining in the abyss in chapter 20, symbolizing, again, that sin and iniquity are greatly diminished in the age of peace.
Objection 4: Isn’t this dispensationalism? Or chiliasm? It is one thing to say that there were five ages of the Old Law. But what we are to do with your supposed three ages of the New? St. Augustine omitted seven and eight for a reason: “It is the last hour.” (1 Jn 2:18) The age of the Church is the final age to end all ages. There are no other ages. It is the seventh that is eternity, not the eighth, which is an allegory. There are two dispensations, that is it: Old and New.
Answer: Admittedly, there are only two dispensations, the Old and the New. Yet, by the very theology of St. Augustine, the Old dispensation can be broken into five lesser ages. Are these five lesser ages themselves dispensations? Obviously not. But they are a way to divide up the Old Testament into lesser phases of redemptive activity on the part of God. God is still dealing with the Jewish People according to the same principles of charity: he expects the person of the Old Testament to try his best to find and keep the religious and moral truth that has been given to him or is available, so help him God. This is the same criteria God uses in New: the implicit desire for Baptism is the way that God expects, and so forth for those who have access to Baptism and know of its obligation. Yet, again, the Old Way still had five sub-periods. So why can there not also be sub-periods for the New? Yes, the New is the final dispensation, but are there not also sub-ages? For, is not the world of pagan Rome different from the world that saw the empire fall, which is different from the world of the Middle Ages, which is different from the world of Protestantism, which is different from the world of Enlightenment and French Revolution, which is different from the world of the modern godless irrationality, which will be different from the world of peace coming, a wondrous renewed Catholic Christendom?
Therefore, if the Old dispensation can have sub-ages, even five, and yet be such that the sub-ages are not dispensations but just a way to theologically partition the divine redemptive activity within that overall Old dispensation itself, and since the New dispensation has also exhibited phases of spiritual development that still remain confined to this self-same New dispensation and yet are not dispensations themselves, then we can argue that there is no reason to reorient the interpretation of the creation days or beast kings in a way that eliminates the seventh or eighth, especially considering that, in our analysis, the age-of-peace scenario that gives us eight total phases of darkness for human history in God’s plan perfectly fits the symbolism of the same creation days and beast kings.
Also, as an addendum, in our Joyful Mysteries analogy discourse above, at the close of the writing proper, it was not made explicit but implied by the entire argument that the full eight day, or sixteen part, layout for human history was used, so that the model in question is vindicated by the self-same Joyful Mysteries. That is, the only way to work out the Joyful Mysteries analogy is to assume the new, renewed view of the ages of New rather than using the current Augustinian model. Here, also, since all other data in the pregnancies fits wonderfully for the Old Law, and considering that there is no way to allegorize away any particular month or months, it is fitting to argue that since the completion of the model absolutely requires the new eight-day scenario, the Joyful Mysteries provide powerful argumentation for our analysis of history.
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.
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To know these things gives me great joy and I am just a poor sinner striving to become holier little by little.
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