Millenarianism

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Millenarianism , millennialism (from lat. Millennium "millennium") or chiliasm (from Greek χίλια chilia "thousand", adj. "Chiliastic") originally denotes the belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ and the establishment of his thousand year kingdom (called the thousand year kingdom or Thousand Years of Peace ), sometimes with Israel as the politically and religiously dominant world power . The term is also used broadly to denote belief in the near end of the present world , sometimes associated with the creation of an earthly paradise , or an apocalyptic fatalism related to the turn of the millennium.

Religious millenarianism

Messianism and Chiliasm

An eschatological messianism as an expanded term of millenarianism exists in Christianity as well as in Judaism , in Islam and in Zoroastrianism and other smaller religious communities.

Some Christian groups, such as the Mormons , believe that their own appearance equates with the coming of the millennium or is justified by the coming of the millennium. For the Christians of the Bible Students' Movement , the Millennium begins after Armageddon and is to be equated with the Last Judgment .

There is also secular millenarianism. In sociology , the term chiliasm is used for this (cf. Heiner Mühlmann, Chiliasmus und Nativismus ); It is assumed that all cultures (including tribal cultures ) tend towards chiliastic innovations in severe social crises , that is, they produce novel solutions to problems.

The four main views of the millennium

Millennial Concepts in Christianity Today

Premillenarianism and Dispensationalism

This conviction, which is widespread in evangelicalism , goes back to the early Christians, especially Rev 20 : 1–10  LUT . The expression says that Christ will visibly return before the millennium ( Latin prae "before"). Within premillenarianism there are originally the historical (also: "salvation-historical") and the futuristic schools of thought. The historical direction sees in the visions in the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John symbolic preceding sequences of church history. The futuristic direction puts the end times in the context of spiritually restored Israel . The spread of premillenarianism was promoted by the pessimistic worldview as a psychological consequence of industrialization , major economic crises , the world wars , the cold war and the six-day war (Israel).

Supporters of the more recent dispensationalism usually represent a model of the futuristic school of thought of premillenarianism. A special feature is the rapture of believers with Christ, which takes place before the time of tribulation .

The progressive dispensationalism , such as manufactured by Robert Saucy , Darrell Bock is represented and Kenneth L. Barker, goes one step further and approaching the premillennialism. Israel and the church will continue to be viewed as peoples with different promises and missions, but this difference will be abolished in eternity at the latest.

Postmillenarianism

This school of thought, widespread in Arminian Christianity, is a kind of realized millenarianism. The systematic processing of this direction goes back to the Anglican clergyman Daniel Whitby (1638–1726). He believed that the millennium would come when all people were converted to Jesus. Post-millennialists believe that the kingdom of God will be achieved through Christian preaching and teaching that leads to a better world. Christ comes after (lat. Post "after") the Millennium and only then begins his rule, d. H. the millennium has already dawned.

Amillennialism

This line of thought, which was widespread in Catholicism and Calvinistically influenced Protestantism , goes back to the early church fathers. It was only partially called into question by the Reformation . Amillenarianists see the number 1000 symbolically and believe that the kingdom of God is present in the world today as the victorious Christ rules his church by word and spirit. The demarcation to postmillenarianism is fluid. Amillennialists also hold preterist views.

history

Irenaeus of Lyon counted chiliasm among the ecclesiastical creeds and all non-chiliasts as " heretics ". Church fathers like Tertullian and Cyprian also proclaimed chiliasm.

From the middle of the 3rd century chiliasm was also fought within the Catholic Church. The expectation of an earthly kingdom of God became superfluous, because the Catholic Church was materially better and the political influence increased. This was interpreted as a sign that the kingdom of God had already begun. The alleged “endlessness” of the kingdom of Christ was emphasized and the contrary view - also represented by Paul - of a temporary ( aeonic ) messiah kingdom was officially declared heresy . The church endeavored to let the importance of the chiliastic literature take a back seat.

Augustine rejected millenarianism after initially advocating it in favor of a concept that equated the dawn of the millennium with the first appearance of Jesus Christ (amillenarianism). However, when Christ did not appear in AD 1000, it became necessary for the followers of amillenarianism to also interpret the duration of the 1000 years allegorically . Now the 1000 years should stand for an indefinite period between the two coming of Christ. Satan is bound, but not yet complete - the present age is, according to Augustine, to be seen as a battle between the (worldwide) Church of Jesus Christ (the Ekklesia ) and the non-Christian world, between the “city of Christ” and the “city of the devil” (Augustine, De civitate dei 20:11) . This allegorical view prevailed widely in Christianity.

According to Richard Landes , the year 6000 of the Jewish calendar in medieval Europe was considered the end of time for 500 and 801 AD respectively. In both cases, the clergy used this to first warn of the end of times and then to correct the chronology accordingly. In the year 500 the biblical calendar was corrected from 6000 to 5700. In 801 the counting of the years Anno Domini (abbreviated AD, "in the year of the Lord") was introduced. The end of the world was calculated for the year 1000 or 1033 after the birth or crucifixion of Jesus. Western Christianity received a lot of thrusts as a result: pilgrims, heretics , flagellants and barefooters received a boost. Research today doubts that there was really a broad millenarian expectation of the end of the world around the years 1000 and 1033, as has long been claimed.

Joachim von Fiore took up the topic again in the 12th century and developed a "three times doctrine". According to this - analogous to the doctrine of the Trinity - there are three kingdoms or three ages: The Age of the Father (Old Testament) lasted until the appearance of the Messiah Jesus of Nazareth , the second, the Age of the Son or the Christian Church, lasted until 1260 AD, the third age is the kingdom of the Holy Spirit . This third, happy age will be enlightened by the intelligentia spiritualis and offer all the joys of the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21). This historical theological model was linked to a clear criticism of the state of the church.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, premillenarianism revived among the Anabaptists and Taborites . Mostly in order to distance oneself from the Anabaptist movements for political reasons, the Reformation confessions ( Confessio Augustana 17; Confessio Helvetica posterior 11) rejected chiliasm as a heresy.

Chiliasm came alive again in the 17th century among persecuted communities in England and the Netherlands, such as the Quakers or the Fifth Monarchy Men , at the turn of the 18th century also in radical Pietism and later in the inspiration movement that emerged from it . There have also been currents of chiliasm in the Lutheran Church . At the beginning of the 19th century, chiliasm encouraged the emigration to Bessarabia , because the longing of the followers in southern Russia and especially in the Caucasus saw a "place of refuge". In 1817 in particular there was a large procession of chillies with 14 harmonies of around 400 people each, who embarked on the Danube on Ulmer Schachteln . In Bessarabia the population group of the Bessarabian Germans emerged from the emigrants .

The "Unification Sentences between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Old Prussia and the Evangelical Lutheran Free Church", which were drawn up in 1947 and in which only the points of difference between the two churches were resolved, have a section "Of the last things" (IV), in which the problem of chiliasm plays an important role.

Today's acceptance

The Catholic Church , Evangelical Lutheran Churches and Reformed Churches allegorize and spiritualize those passages in the Bible that are used to justify premillenarianism, and in practice they represent a mixture of postmillenarianism and amillenarianism. In 1944, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church rejected “moderate millenarianism”, according to which Jesus Christ would visibly return to earth before the Last Judgment and reign there, as not safely teachable. According to the Evangelical Church Lexicon, millennialism is “today largely discredited”.

With Adventists , Baptists , the Bible Students' Movement , the Christadelphians , the Jehovah's Witnesses , the Mormons , in Pentecostal churches , the New Apostolic Church and evangelical free churches, on the other hand, the millenarian doctrine, including an expectation of the Parousia , is widespread. So-called Christian Zionism is also chiliastic.

In the United States , millenarianism in its dispensationalist form became popular again after 1945. Evangelical and Christian fundamentalist publicists such as Hal Lindsey (* 1929), whose work The Late Great Planet Earth , published in 1970, became a bestseller , interpreted the Cold War and the establishment of the State of Israel as a sign of the approaching end of the world, whereby the United Nations , the European Union , globalization and modern communication systems have been interpreted as pioneers of the Antichrist. Since the end of the Cold War, the millenarian discourse has focused more on environmental disasters and Islamism . The American political scientist Michael Barkun estimates that the strength of dispensationalist millenarianism in the United States around the millennium , but also afterwards even exceeded that of the revival movements of the 1830s and 1840s.

Secular millenarianism

Outside of religion, millennialism describes the utopian striving to bring about a political-social break in history and a paradisiacal state or the historical-philosophical assumption that history is teleologically approaching such a final state. The German philosopher Karl Löwith in his 1953 published work describes world history and salvation to Marxism as secularized millenarianism:

“The whole process of history as presented in the Communist Manifesto reflects the general scheme of the Judeo-Christian interpretation of history as a providential salvation event towards a meaningful end. The historical materialism is history of salvation in the language of economics . What seems to be a scientific discovery [...] is filled with an eschatological belief from the first to the last sentence. "

In addition, various forms of integral nationalism and National Socialism , which propagandistically exaggerated its own rule as the “Thousand Year Reich”, are counted in secular millenarianism: They would promise collective redemption in this world if only certain conditions were met - the grouping of all relatives of the respective nation within wide borders, the breaking of the chains of the Versailles Treaty , the extermination of the Jews etc.

Secular millenarianism lost its importance with the end of the Cold War in the last third of the 20th century. Since then, Michael Barkun has seen a third form, “improvisational millenarianism” emerge. The improvisational millenarianism is not based on sacred or canonical texts, but makes use of various, even disparate beliefs and worldviews in a highly eclectic manner and combines heterodox religious beliefs ( esoteric , New Age ) with border science and radical political ideas, often with conspiracy theories . Barkun mentions the Aum sect and the UFO belief as examples of such “improvisational millennialism”, which could easily spread in the Internet age .

See also

literature

  • Claus Bernet : Built Apocalypse. The Utopia of the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Early Modern Age. Verlag Zabern, Mainz 2007, ISBN 978-3-8053-3706-9 .
  • Claude Carozzi: End of the world and salvation. Apocalyptic visions in the Middle Ages. 1996, ISBN 3-596-60113-4 .
  • Norman Cohn : The Struggle for the Millennium. Revolutionary messianism in the Middle Ages and its survival in modern totalitarian movements . (From the English The Pursuit of the Millennium ) Francke, Bern 1961.
    With afterword and changes: The new earthly paradise. Revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism in medieval Europe. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1988, ISBN 3-499-55472-0 .
    Longing for the millennium. Apocalyptists, chiliasts and prophets in the Middle Ages. Herder, 1998, ISBN 3-451-04638-5 .
    Apocalyptists and prophets in the Middle Ages. Hohe, Erftstadt 2007, ISBN 3-86756-032-3 .
  • Robert G. Clouse (ed.): The millennial kingdom: meaning and reality. Four articles from an evangelical point of view edited by Robert Clouse. Contributions by George Eldon Ladd (premillenialism), Herman A. Hoyt (dispensationalism), Loraine Boettner (postmillenialism), Anthony A. Hoekema (amillenialism), Marburg an der Lahn 1983
  • Klaus Fitschen et al .: Chiliasmus. In: Religion Past and Present . 4th edition, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-8401-5 , Vol. 2, pp. 136-144
  • Stephan Holthaus : Fundamentalism in Germany: the struggle for the Bible in Protestantism of the 19th and 20th centuries (= Biblia et symbiotica , Volume 1) Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-926105-06-2 (Dissertation University Leuven 1992, 531 pages).
  • Richard Landes (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements . Routledge, New York / London 2006, ISBN 978-0-415-92246-3
  • Richard Landes: Heaven on Earth. The Varieties of the Millennial Experience. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-975359-8
  • Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : “The end is near!” The mistakes of the end-time specialists (theological teaching and study material 24). Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Bonn, 3rd edition 2007
  • Martin Karrer : Chiliasm . In: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, vol. 1, col. 655 ff.

Web links

Wiktionary: Millenarianism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Stephan Holthaus: Fundamentalism in Germany. The struggle for the Bible in Protestantism in the 19th and 20th centuries. (Diss., Leuven 1992) Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Bonn 1993, ISBN 3-926105-06-2 , p. 66.
  2. Lothar Gassmann : What will come. Eschatology in the 3rd millennium. Wuppertal 2002, ISBN 3-87857-313-8 . See http://www.bible-only.org/german/handbuch/Dispensationalismus.html
  3. Hanspeter Obrist: God does not stick to our final schedule . In: whole foods. 05/2008. (accessed on: April 12, 2012).
  4. ^ Richard Landes: While God Tarried: Disappointed Millennialism from Jesus to the Peace of God 33-1033 .
  5. ^ Sylvain Gouguenheim : Les fausses terreurs de l'an mil. Attente de la fin des temps ou approfondissement de la foi? Editions Picard, Paris 1999; Reinhart Staats : Apocalyptic retrospect from the year 2000 to the year 1000 In: Manfred Jakubowski-Tiessen et al .: Turning the century. End times and future ideas from the 15th to the 20th century . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, pp. 369–376.
  6. Enchiridion Symbolorum 3839, entry from July 19 (22) 1944, online , accessed May 22, 2015.
  7. Martin Karrer : Chiliasmus . In: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1986, Vol. 1, Sp. 657.
  8. Hal Lindsey: The Late Great Planet Earth . Zondervan, Nashville 1970; german old planet earth where to? In the run-up to World War III . Hermann Schulte, Wetzlar 1973.
  9. ^ Paul S. Boyer: Chiliasm. IV. North America. In: Religion Past and Present . 4th edition, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8252-8401-5 , Vol. 2, Col. 140 f.
  10. Michael Barkun : A Culture of Conspiracy. Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America . University of California Press, Berkeley 2013, p. 15.
  11. Karl Löwith: World history and salvation events. The theological presuppositions of the philosophy of history. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1953, p. 48; quoted by Wolfgang Marienfeld: World history as a salvation event. The idea of ​​the final kingdom in history. Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Hanover 2000, p. 28 ( online ( memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on May 14, 2015).
  12. ^ Wolfgang Wippermann : Third Reich . In: Wolfgang Benz et al. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 5th, updated and expanded edition, dtv, Stuttgart 2007, p. 479 f .; Hans-Ulrich Wehler : German history of society , vol. 4: From the beginning of the First World War to the founding of the two German states 1914–1949 CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2003, p. 569; Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy. Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America . University of California Press, Berkeley 2013, p. 16 f.
  13. Michael Barkun: A Culture of Conspiracy. Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America . University of California Press, Berkeley 2013, p. 17 f. and passim.