Augustine in his The City of God 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 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.”[1]
Dr. Alva J. McClain in The Greatness of the Kingdom devoted chapter XXVII to this subject: The “Spirituality of the Kingdom. [2] McClain notes that the dualism of Plato has influenced opponents of a literal future kingdom on Earth. Plato’s metaphysics distinguished the reality of the material and the reality of the ideal world. This Greek dualism drew a dichotomy between the material which is evil and the immaterial which is spiritual. This led Augustine and others to reject an earthly material kingdom as carnal.
Alva J. McClain countered with what he called a parable [to] illustrate the point: During a church banquet, a group of preachers were discussing the nature of the kingdom of God. One expressed his adherence to the premillennial view of a literal kingdom established on earth among men. To this a rather belligerent two-hundred-pound preacher snorted, “Ridiculous, such an idea is nothing but materialism.” When asked to state his own view he said, “The kingdom of God is a spiritual matter. The kingdom of God has already been established and is within you. Don’t you know the kingdom is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost?” And then the speaker reached hungrily across the table and speared another enormous piece of fried chicken. Nobody tried to answer him. As a matter of fact, no answer was necessary; he had answered his own argument …. If the Kingdom of God can exist now on earth in a two-hundred-pound preacher full of fried chicken, without any reprehensible materialistic connotations, perhaps it could also exist in the same way among men on earth who will at times be eating and drinking under more perfect conditions in a future millennial kingdom.[3]
Another version of this “carnal” view of the future reign of Christ on earth was stated by Louis Berkhof who objects to Christ and resurrected believers in their glorified bodies living among believers in their natural bodies: Jesus Christ, the glorified Lord will be seated upon the throne at Jerusalem. And the risen and immortal saints will reign with him “the thousand years.” And besides these, there will be also men in the flesh, both of the Jewish and of other nations, some converted and others unconverted. They will all share in the glory of the Kingdom, and all enjoy the one vision of Jesus Christ. Berkhof concludes: “What a mongrel state of things is this! What an abhorred mixture of things totally inconsistent with each other.”[4]
McClain answered Berkhof by referring to “the risen Christ appearing over and over to men and women in the flesh, mingling with them, eating with them, and teaching them for the space of forty days.”[5]
[1] Saint Augustine, The City of God (Translated with an Introduction by Marcus Dods). Digireads.com Publishing. Kindle Edition, 598.
[2] Alva J. McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom (Winona Lake: BMH Books, 1959, 519-520
[3] Ibid., 519-520].
[4] Louis Berkhof, The Kingdom of God (W.B. Eerdmans; First Edition (January 1, 1951), 176.
[5] Alva J. McClain, The Greatness of the Kingdom, 523.