Tea at Trianon: Apocalypse When?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Apocalypse When?

From Emmett O'Regan:

During the first three centuries of Christianity, some of the Early Church Fathers did hold to the theory of Chiliasm, stemming from a chronologically linear reading of the events described in chapters 19 and 20 of the Book of Revelation. According to this interpretation, Jesus would physically return to reign on earth for a thousand years, along with the saints who would be raised from the dead during the “first resurrection” of Revelation 20:4. As St. Justin Martyr points out in chapter 80 of his Dialogue with Trypho, the Chiliast interpretation of the Apocalypse was by no means universally accepted during the first centuries of the Church. In fact, this teaching was actively opposed from the very earliest days of the Church, by influential figures such as Origen. At the Council of Constantinople (381), the Nicene Creed of 325 was revised to emphasise the fact that Christ’s kingdom would have no end, thus rejecting the idea of a temporal millennial kingdom which would be interrupted by the rise of “Gog and Magog” at the end of the thousand years of Revelation 20:
“He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.”
After St. Victorinus of Pettau had established that the structure of the Apocalypse was recapitulatory rather than linear, the amillennialist interpretation of the Book of Revelation was further developed by Tyconius and St. Augustine of Hippo. In City of God 20:7, St. Augustine argued that the binding of Satan had already taken place during the sacrificial death of Christ, and that the “first resurrection” of the just represented the immediate resurrection of the souls of individual believers during the Sacrament of Baptism. According to St. Augustine, Christ’s reign had already been established in the Church, and would last until Jesus returns in Glory at end of the world. Chiliasm was thus rejected and condemned by the Early Church as a dangerous heresy, which places regard for the material world over the quest for a spiritual perfection which will only be rewarded in the afterlife. In his Commentary on Daniel, St. Jerome famously railed against the idea of the future establishment of a terrestrial paradise, stating that “the saints shall never possess an earthly kingdom, but only a heavenly. Away, then, with the fable about a millennium!” (St. Jerome, Commentary on Daniel, Chap 7 v 17).
Following the errant version of eschatology presented in Fr. Joseph Iannuzzi’s book The Splendor of Creation: The Triumph of the Divine Will on Earth and the Era of Peace in the Writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors and Mystics, the authors of Countdown to the Kingdom falsely claim that the Early Church Fathers who taught the doctrine of Chiliasm actually believed in a “spiritual” Middle Coming of Christ to establish a millennial reign. They erroneously assert that before St. Augustine devised his amillennial interpretation of the Apocalypse, he held to this mooted “spiritual” Middle Coming, which he apparently regarded as an acceptable version of Chiliasm:
“And this opinion would not be objectionable, if it were believed that the joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual, and consequent on the presence of God; for I myself, too, once held this opinion.” (St. Augustine, City of God, Book 20, Chap.7)
The idea that St. Augustine taught that a “spiritual” version of the Chiliast heresy was an acceptable teaching passed down from the Church Fathers is patently false, however. St. Augustine clearly suggests that Chiliasm would not be objectionable if the joys of the saints were spiritual rather than carnal in nature and consequent on the presence of God—i.e. the physical return of Christ in the Flesh. As such, St. Augustine most certainly does not suggest that it is acceptable to espouse the Chiliast doctrine if the coming of Christ to establish a millennial reign was said to be spiritual in nature, rather than a physical return to rule in the Flesh. (Read more.)