In Dr. Waldron's most recent blog entries he makes a point that the two main proponents of Historic Premillennialism, Justin Martyr in the Patristic Era and George Eldon Ladd in the modern era had no place for a national restoration of Israel during the millennium. He states that for both Israel was to be understood as "the church" or "Spiritual Israel." In one sense this is true. Justin was the first to identify the church as the new or "spiritual Israel" (Dialogue with Trypho ANF 1:200). Ladd largely follows the same view. However, both affirm what is normative for the Historic Premillennial view, that there is a national and territorial future for Israel as well.
Justin, like most of the early Church Fathers borders on being anti-semitic, speaking of the Jews as "Christ killers" and other pejorative terminology. But even he states in relation to the last days when the Jews will repent and turn to Christ it will be in their own land:
And what the people of the Jews shall say and so, when they see Him coming in glory, has been thus predicted by Zechariah the prophet: "I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to bring them, and the south wind that it keep not back. And then in Jerusalem there shall be great lamantation, not the lamantation of mouth or of lips but the lamentation of the heart; and they shall rend not their garments, but their hearts. Tribe by tribe they shall mourn, and they shall loook upon Him whom they have piercedl and they shall say, Why O Lord, hast thou made us to err from Thy way? The glory which our fathers blessed, has for us been turned into shame (First Apology, ANF 1:180).
In his writings Ladd is never definitive, but clearly does allow for the Israel in the land as possible if not likely. In his Theology of the New Testament, he states:
After telling of the destruction of Jerusalem and the scattering of the people, Luke adds the words, "Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Lk. 21:24). Here Jesus clearly anticipates a time between the fall of Jerusalem and the parousia that he names "the time sof the Gentiles." Furthermore, it is possible that this implies a future repossession of Jerusaelm by Israel when the "times of the Gentiles are ended (Ladd, Theology of the NT, 200-201).
Also he notes later in the same work:
Whatever the means of Israel's eschatological salvation, it sppears to be an eschatological event in Paul's thought. It is impossible that Israel should be saved in any way but faith in Jesus as her Messiah. Saul of Tarsus was brought to faith by a special visions of the glorified Christ; yet he was saved by faith like any believer and was brought into the church. Literal Israel, temporarily rejected, is yet to come to faith and be grafted back into the olive tree--the true people of God (Rom. 11:23). Piper has suggested that in God's plan of redemptive history, converted Israel may become for the first time in history a truly Christian nation (p. 563, italics in the original. His entire discussion of Israel and salvation in relation to Rom 9-11, pp. 561-63).
In fact Ladd notes that the concept of the millennial kingdom in Revelation 20 is "rejected not on exegetical but theological grounds," and also states, "there should be no objection to the idea of such a temporal kingdom in principle" (629).
It is a fundamental misunderstanding of Historic Premillennialism to believe that it excluded a future for national Israel both in terms of salvation or actually in the land. The Restoration Movement championed by the British Puritans (and affirmed by the American Puritans). The strong belief in the salvation of the Jews in the last days was closely tied together with Israel being one of the actual nations in the millennial kingdom. This belief was also apparently largely held by the divines of the Westminster Assembly. Robert Baillie (1599-1662) a delegate to the Assembly from Scotland, wrote, as recorded in his three volume Letters and Journals, that the larger part of the divines in the assembly were "chilaists" (premillennial). This is noteworthy also because Baillie was not premillennial and was opposed to that position.
The great prophetic conferences of the 19th Century in both America and Great Britain were, contrary to popular anti-dispenational opinion, were dominated by adherents to the Historic Premillennial postition. Participants cross denominational boundaries and represented Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, and Baptist pastors and scholars. For example, E. Y. Mullins, who would be President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, at the International Prophetic Conference at the Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston (1901), stated:
May not the Jewish form [of the Book of Revelation] be due to the promise which He made to Abraham, and to emphasize that His purpose has not failed He maintains even the form and mould of the promise. God's decrees will reach their consummation (Prophetic Conference, p. 27).
Of course Mullins is often the favorite target of some so-called Reformed Baptists who view him as the one who led the seminary and by extension the SBC into the apostasy it was on the verge of in the 1960's. This is manifestly bad historiography and more agenda driven than an honest examination of his life and work.
The larger part of Historic Premillennialism has always held that there was not only going to be a general salvation of Jews in the millennial kingdom, but that the nation of Israel would once again enjoy a political and territorial reality in their land. Even Charles Hodge, while arguing against premillennialism and for postmillennialism, calls the future "national conversion" of the Jews a doctrine that is "according to the common faith of the Church" (Systematic Theology 3:805). He also states that the Scripture contains, "a promise of the restoration of the Jews as a nation."
The position that Israel, Biblically and Theologically, has no warrant to expect a national restoration in the land of Palestine (or a mass national conversion), as advocated by Waldron, is an approach that is outside "the common faith of the church" as it has been expressed from the beginning.
Posted by Narnia3 at May 7, 2008 12:30 PM | TrackBack