John Walvoord writes: “Augustine is, then, the first theologian of solid influence who adopted amillennialism.” Walvoord also acknowledges the negative influence of Augustine, when he notes that Augustine “in fact, occasioned the shelving of premillennialism by most of the organized church.”[1]
Example of Augustine’s allegoricalism
Here is an example of where the wrong hermeneutic can lead a Bible student. Augustine allegorizes Noah’s Ark to find Christ in the Ark in The City of God, xv. xxvi:
Moreover, inasmuch as God commanded Noah, a just man, and, as the truthful Scripture says, a man perfect in his generation,—not indeed with the perfection of the citizens of the city of God in that immortal condition in which they equal the angels, but in so far as they can be perfect in their sojourn in this world,—inasmuch as God commanded him, I say, to make an ark, in which he might be rescued from the destruction of the flood, along with his family, i.e., his wife, sons, and daughters-in-law, and along with the animals who, in obedience to God’s command, came to him into the ark: this is certainly a figure of the city of God sojourning in this world; that is to say, of the church, which is rescued by the wood on which hung the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus. For even its very dimensions, in length, breadth, and height, represent the human body in which He came, as it had been foretold.
For the length of the human body, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is six times its breadth from side to side (the ark was 300 cubits in length and 50 in breath and so the length was six times greater).
The length was ten times greater than its depth or thickness, measuring from back to front as he is high from the ground (the ark was 30 cubits in height or so the length was ten times longer).
And it’s having a door made in the side of it certainly signified the wound which was made when the side of the Crucified was pierced with the spear; for by this those who come to Him enter; for thence flowed the sacraments by which those who believe are initiated.[2]
Augustine illustrates that the sky is the limit when it comes to allegorizing and finding Jesus in a text. What is the historical/grammatical interpretation of the ark?
The theme of Genesis is God blesses us to be a blessing. This theme is developed in two parts.
The first part states that God’s blessings were on mankind in Genesis 1-11.
First God blessed man in Genesis 1-2 and
Then God blessed man despite his sin in Genesis 3-11.
Because mankind sinned God determined to judge the planet in 6:1-8.
But God also provided a means of escape for Noah and his family in the ark in 6:9-7:1. The dimensions of the ark were given to show that God’s provision of escape was large enough for all who would come. Matching the dimensions of the Ark with the dimensions of Jesus’ body was not in Moses’ mind nor does the New Testament make this comparison. This interpretation was the figment of Augustine’s fertile imagination.
Next, the theme that God blesses us to be a blessing is developed with God blessing Israel in Genesis 12-50.
The historical-grammatical method of interpretation
There are two conflicting methods of interpreting Scripture: The historical-grammatical method and the allegorical method. The grammatical-historical method is the method Roy Zuck explains in his book Basic Bible Interpretation (click to open). This method interprets Scripture in the normal sense of language.
The allegorical method of interpretation
The contrasting and conflicting method is the allegorical method. I say conflicting because as Roy Zuck highlights in chapter two where he traces the history of interpretation, “the reformation was a time of social and ecclesiastical upheaval but as Ramm points out, it was basically a hermeneutical reformation, a reformation in reference to the approach to the Bible.”[3]
I say contrasting because the allegorical method of interpretation does not take language in the normal sense but as John Bright defines allegory, the allegorical interpreter finds “hidden, mystical meanings in the words of the text itself”[4] as was just illustrated with Augustine’s fanciful interpretation of the Ark.
The history of the allegorization
Allegorization was a Greek idea that had been passed on to the Jews by Jewish philosophers who had been trained in Greek philosophy. The Greeks allegorized Homer’s writings to get rid of morally objectionable passages. Homer’s writings were esteemed sacred and necessary for moral training. Herodotus put Homer living four hundred years before he lived, which would place Homer living around 850 BC. “Homer I suppose were four hundred years before my time and not more.”[5] All morally offensive texts had to be allegorized. For example, Apollo, the god of the sun, was seen as immoral when he murdered men with his arrows. So to clear Homer of impropriety, those passages were allegorized. Edwin Hatch provides an example. “Apollo is the sun; the ‘far-darter’ is the sun sending forth his rays: when it is said that Apollo slew men with his arrows, it is meant that there was a pestilence in the heat of summer-time.”[6]
Jews trained in Greek philosophy used allegorization to remove the moral difficulties in their sacred book: the Old Testament.
Philo, (30 B.C.– 45 A.D.) the Greek-trained Alexandrian Jew and philosopher, took the Greek method of allegorization and interpreted the Old Testament. He entitled his work on Genesis: Allegories of the Sacred Law. According to Philo, the Old Testament passages had a literal or moral interpretation and a symbolical or hidden meaning.
Because Origen (184-253 AD) had studied Greek methods of interpretation and Greek philosophers, he applied allegorization to Christian exegesis. Eusebius records that Origen learned from the books of Cornutus “the figurative interpretation, as employed in the Greek mysteries, and applied it to the Jewish writings.”[7] Origen defines his system of interpretation in his On First Principles, which was “a comprehensive investigation of Christian doctrine on a scale never before attempted.”[8]
Origen describes his three bases of interpretation: “Just as man, therefore, is said to consist of body, soul, and spirit, so also does the Holy Scripture, which has been bestowed by the divine bounty for man’s salvation.”[9]
1. The body of Scripture is the literal interpretation,
2. The soul is for those who have made some spiritual progress
3. The spirit of Scripture, which is allegorization, is for the spiritually mature. So by implication, the literal interpretation is for the spiritually immature. An example of Origen’s allegorization is his famous interpretation of the Good Samaritan in a homily he preached on Luke ten. Origen in Homily 34 refers to the interpretation of an unnamed elder with whom he approved:
One of the elders wanted to interpret the parable as follows. The man who was going down is Adam. Jerusalem is paradise, and Jericho is the world. The robbers are hostile powers. The priest is the Law, the Levite is the prophets, and the Samaritan is Christ. The wounds are disobedience, the beast is . . . the Church. And further, the two denarrii mean the Father and the Son. The manager of the stable is the head of the Church, to whom its care has been entrusted. And the fact that the Samaritan promises he will return represents the Savior’s second coming. All of this has been said reasonably and beautifully.[10]
Augustine’s The City of God
Augustine (354- 430 AD )in his The City of God continued the allegorical method of Origen. When Rome fell in 410 AD to the Goths under Alaric, Christianity had been the state religion for 100 years. Christianity was blamed for the defeat of the so-called Eternal City. Augustine who was bishop of Hippo in North Africa came to the defense of Christianity in his The City of God. He wrote: “Rome having been stormed and sacked by the Goths under Alaric their king, the worshipers of false gods, or pagans, as we commonly call them, made an attempt to attribute this calamity to the Christian religion, and began to blaspheme the true God with even more than their wonted bitterness and acerbity. It was this which kindled my zeal for the house of God, and prompted me to undertake the defense of the city of God against the charges and misrepresentations of its assailants.”[11]
In the first ten books of The City of God, Augustine proposes to refute two ideas:
Of these, the first five refute those who fancy that polytheistic worship is necessary to secure worldly prosperity and that all these overwhelming calamities have befallen us as a consequence of its prohibition. In the following five books, I address myself to those who admit that such calamities have at all times attended, and will at all times attend, the human race and that they constantly recur in forms more or less disastrous, varying only in the scenes, occasions, and persons on whom they light, but, while admitting this, maintain that the worship of the gods is advantageous for the life to come.[12]
Augustine seeks to defend Christianity in the last twelve books:
“Of these twelve books, the first four contain an account of the origin of these two cities—the city of God, and the city of the world. The second four treat their history or progress; the third and last four, of their deserved destinies. And so, though all these twenty-two books refer to both cities, yet I have named them after the better city, and called them The City of God.”[13]
Augustine describes The City of God: For there it is written, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.” And in another psalm we read, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in the mountain of His holiness, increasing the joy of the whole earth.” And, a little after, in the same psalm, “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God. God has established it forever.” And in another, “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of our God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved.” From these and similar testimonies, all of which it were tedious to cite, we have learned that there is a city of God, and its Founder has inspired us with a love which makes us covet its citizenship.[14]
Next, Augustine describes the city of the world: To this Founder of the holy city the citizens of the earthly city prefer their own gods, not knowing that He is the God of gods, not of false, i.e., of impious and proud gods, who, being deprived of His unchangeable and freely communicated light, and so reduced to a kind of poverty-stricken power, eagerly grasp at their own private privileges, and seek divine honors from their deluded subjects.[15]
Augustine in Book XX: Argument Concerning the Last Judgment, and the Declarations Regarding it in the Old and New Testaments, reveals his amillennial beliefs about the future resurrection, Revelation 20, and the 1000-year millennium all of which are based on an allegorical interpretation of Scripture.
The allegorizing of the first resurrection
Augustine in Chapter 6 “What is the first resurrection and what is the second?” states his belief based on John 5:24-29 that there are two regenerations “the one according to faith, and which takes place in the present life by means of baptism” and “the other according to the flesh, and which shall be accomplished in its incorruption and immortality by means of the great and final judgment.” He also declares his belief in “two resurrections,—the one the first and spiritual resurrection, which has place in this life, and preserves us from coming into the second death.” Augustine states that the first resurrection is referred to by Jesus in John 5:25 when Jesus stated “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.”
The second resurrection is referred to by Jesus in 5:28 when Jesus says “the hour is coming” not “and now is.” Augustine describes “the second, which does not occur now, but in the end of the world, and which is of the body, not of the soul, and which by the last judgment shall dismiss some into the second death, others into that life which has no death.”[16]
Augustine employs the principle that similarity means sameness.
Because there is a spiritual resurrection first in John 5:24
Followed by a physical resurrection of life for believers and condemnation for unbelievers in John 5:28-29,
Then the same must be true in Revelation 20:4-6.
So the general physical resurrection in Revelation 20 must include both believers and unbelievers.
John in Revelation 20:6 states that only believers are involved in the first resurrection at the beginning of the millennium and are “blessed” and those in the second resurrection at the end of the 1000 years experienced “second death.” Similarity does not mean sameness.
The allegorizing of the millennial as only spiritual now
Augustine writes in Chapter 7. “What is written in the Revelation of John regarding the two resurrections, and the thousand years, and what may reasonably be held on these points.”[17] Augustine quotes Revelation 20:6 which refers to the first resurrection and the thousand years.
Augustine refers to “Chiliasts” or the “Millenarians” as those who believe in a literal future 1000 years enjoyed by those who are raised in the first resurrection. Augustine rejects this view because the “Chiliasts” and “Millenarians” have a carnal and not a spiritual view of the 1000 years: “They assert that those who then rise again shall enjoy the leisure of immoderate carnal banquets, furnished with an amount of meat and drink such as not only to shock the feeling of the temperate.”[18] Charles Ryrie counters this false accusation: “Since when is the church only spiritual and the kingdom only carnal?”[19] In 1 Corinthians 3:3, Paul accused the church at Corinth of being “carnal.”
Anthony Hoekema in 1979 revealed that he believed similarly to Augustine about allegorizing the one thousand years: “This millennial reign is not something to be looked for in the future, it is going on now and will be until Christ returns. Hence the term realized millennialism is an apt description of the view here defended – if it is remembered that the millennium in question is not an earthly but a heavenly reign.”[20]
Sam Storms also agrees with Augustine on the nature of the millennium today: “The millennium, however, is now: the present age of the Church between the first and second comings of Christ in its entirety is the millennium.”[21]
See post Is the future millennium “carnal”? Click to open
Walvoord’s refutation of Augustine’s allegorization
Walvoord refutes Augustine’s allegorizing of Revelation 20:4: The context in Revelation 20:4 makes it perfectly clear that as far as this passage goes those who are “raised” are those who “were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads.” The subject of the passage is not the living but the dead; not the church as a whole, but the martyrs only. To spiritualize this portion of Scripture to make it conform to the course of the present age is to destroy all its plain literary meaning.[22]
[1] John Walvoord, Millennial Series: Part 4: Amillennialism from Augustine to Modern Times Volume: (BSAC 106:424 (Oct 1949) 420).
[2] Saint Augustine, The City of God (Translated with an Introduction by Marcus Dods) (xv. xxvi, 312). Digireads.com Publishing. Kindle Edition, 434.
[3] Roy Zuck. Basic Bible Interpretation, 44.
[4] John Bright, The Authority of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967), 79.
[5] Herodotus. The Histories (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents (Kindle Location 2091). Wilder Publications, Inc.. Kindle Edition).
[6]Edwin Hatch, The Influence of Greek Ideas on Christianity (New York: Harper, 1957), 62.
[7] Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, trans. Kirsopp Lake vol. 2, (London: Heinemann, 1926), 59.
[8] Origen, On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1973), xxiv.
[9] Ibid., 276.
[10] Ibid., 138.
[11] Saint Augustine, The City of God (Translated with an Introduction by Marcus Dods) (p. 5). Digireads.com Publishing. Kindle Edition.
[13] Ibid., 5.
[14] Ibid., 5.
[15] Ibid., 296.
[16] Ibid., 296.
[17] Ibid., 597-598.
[18] Ibid., 598.
[19] Charles Ryrie, Basic Theology (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 521.
[20] Anthony Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 235.
[21] Sam Storms, Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative. Christian Focus Publications. Kindle Edition.
[22] John Walvoord, Millennial Series: Part 4: Amillennialism from Augustine to Modern Times Volume: (BSAC 106:424 (Oct 1949), 425.