Millennialism throughout History

1. Millennialism throughout History It’s Good to be Catholic CCRC ©2008 Benjamin Espen

2. A Brief Review Blake’s Great Red Dragon

3. What is the Millennium? • The Olivet Discourse (Mt 24, Mk 13, Lk 21) • Revelations, Ch. 20

4. Key Terms • Apocalypse • The Millennium • Millenarian • Millennialism • Pre-millennialism • Post-millennialism • Amillennialism (antimillennialism) • Rapture • Tribulation • Dispensation • Preterism

5. Now for something completely different • Belief in the Millennium is very common • People act on their beliefs • I’m interested in this primarily because it helps me to understand what people do, but it isn’t often discussed

6. Now for something completely awful • If you dislike algebra, now is the time to refresh your beverage…

7. The Structure of the Millennium • The point of all that mess is to explicate something very simple • Aristotle noted that most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end (Poetics Bk 1, Ch 7) • The Millennium, and indeed all of history, is in part a story we tell ourselves

8. The Structure of the Millennium CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0) (S/s)

9. Genesis • ‘CIR’ stands for Creation-Incubation-Release • Creation is obvious • Incubation is the Garden of Eden • Release is Original Sin

10. The Structure of the Millennium CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0) (S/s)

11. Transition • t1h • The next element in the paradigm, ‘t1’, represents “normal time” in a story • h represents a person who represents a great finale of normalcy, the Great Conservative

12. Transition • p/f/t2 • p is a time of false hope, The Emperor of Last Days. • f is when the lunatics have taken over the asylum. This is the time of the Antichrist • The element ‘t2’ is the most discussed of all the paradigmatic elements. It is the End Times, the Last Days, the Final Crisis and similar periods of apocalyptic expectation

13. The Structure of the Millennium CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0) (S/s)

14. The End • ‘!1/o/!2/0’. This is the end of history—a whole genus of functionally equivalent ideas. • There are two types of apocalypse (‘!1’ and ‘!2’) and two types of post-historical time (‘o’ and ‘0’). As to the notion of “apocalypse,” please note that I use the term rather loosely. Literally, it means “disclosure” or “revelation,” particularly of the circumstances attending the end of the world

15. Unity • o is the Millennium, a pause before the true end • Millennia show up everywhere, from the ‘Winter’ of Spengler to Mad Max • 0 represents eternity

16. The Structure of the Millennium CIR + t1h + p/f/t2 + (!1/o/!2/0) (S/s)

17. Linearity and Cyclicity • ‘S/s’, which deals with the question of linearity and cyclicity. ‘S’ stands for the great cyclicity, the belief that the world repeats itself in every least detail. The other major possibility is represented by ‘s’, which stands for the lesser cyclicity, the proposition that there are similar, but not identical, cycles in time. Pure linearity is represented by ‘( )’, the model of the Bible and of Marxism. In linear systems, all of history is a single narrative whose episodes are understandable only as part of a whole

18. Models of History • The 20th century has discovered that models of history are dangerous. The great totalitarian catastrophes of this period have been bound up with elaborate narratives that provided structure to the past and set out the form of an inevitable future. To state the thesis bluntly: given certain conditions, people will try to end the world. They do this through a sort of magical coercion, by telling stories in which the world (or the age, or the civilization, or the social system) is a character who dies. Sometimes the magic works.-John J. Reilly, The Perennial Apocalypse

19. The Standard Model CIR + t1 + p/f/t2 + !1/o/!2/ ( ) • Genesis is Genesis • Today is Transition • The End is Yet to Come

20. Let’s break that down • Let’s look at premillennial dispensationalism in detail. • Call it ‘the popular model’. This model starts crusades, prompts the poor to overthrow the rich, and inspires the learned to bring about a new age by intrigue. It posits a world history which consists of a series of ages or ‘dispensations’, chief among them being the dispensation of the Law during Old Testament times, and the dispensation of Grace announced in the New Testament.

21. Münster • 1534-5 • The city of Münster was ruled by a revolutionary commune • Jan Matthys and Jan Beukels, often referred to as John of Leyden, were the two rulers • A coup was staged by Matthys’ supporters • In response, the Bishop of Münster beseiged the city for 482 days

22. Jonestown • This all might seem remote and exotic, except that it keeps happening • Jim Jones and John of Leyden are similar • Despite the differences between them, this suggests that violent apocalyptic communities obey a logic of their own • Jones, like many a medieval millenarian, was a preacher to the poor who slowly evolved into a tyrant

23. The Alchemical Model • Sometimes called the ‘hermetic tradition,’ this includes such systems as alchemy, neoplatonism and pythagoreanism • Some alchemical models may be called ‘four sided’ for the simple reason that they tend to be represented diagrammatically as a circle divided into four quarters, representing the four ages which in some sense represent the whole of time.

24. Carl Jung • By his own account, his interest in myth grew out of the realization that certain symbols were showing up in his patient’s dreams which the patients had no business knowing about. But the symbols were familiar to Jung from obscure mythological and occult sources • Jung’s idea on alchemy is that alchemy had very nearly nothing to do with attempts to make gold, whether from lead or from anything else. True alchemy was the attempt to distill the philosopher’s stone out of gross matter. This material they sought to distill, the lapis philosophorum, is a reification of the pneumatic substance. It is a bit of God that has become trapped in the world. • There are five stages to the alchemical process, corresponding to the four elements, plus perfection.

25. The Five Ages of the World • Hesiod • Nebuchadnezzar’s dream

26. Aztecs • The Fifth Sun • Quetzalcoatl • 2012?

27. I speak to you of a Dark Age… • The Renaissance • ca. 1453 – 1564 • The world became, as it were, covered up by an elaborate web of signs • Tied up in alchemy and Rosicrucians • John Dee • Comenius • Giordano Bruno • Kabbalah

28. The Literary Model • Spengler – The Decline of the West • Toynbee – A study of History

29. Sometimes the End of the World is Clearly the Appropriate Option • H. G. Wells – The War in the Air • Robert Hugh Benson – The Lord of the World

30. Strategic Bombing • We see here a motif which appears in the Book of Revelation, but which in secularized form has also appeared in every debate about strategic bombing in the 20th century: there is no hiding from the Wrath. Defense is inherently impossible, and the bomber will always get through. • This was actually first articulated in the Smuts report of 1917, and further elaborated in The Mastery of the Air in 1921

31. Mutually Assured Destruction • Nuclear strategy considered as a millennial cult • The strangest thing about President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative is that many of his opponents reacted hysterically against something they didn’t understand • He had essentially proposed to eliminate the technological apocalypse, and thereby falsify a millennial belief

32. Harrapan • There is no evidence that the Indus Valley Civilization died in a fit of millennial ecstasy, but it does appear to have been a ‘fifth stage’ millennial society

33. The Raskol • The Raskolniki, the ‘Old Believers’ • Occasioned by a liturgical upheaval in the Russian Orthodox Church when the mass was retranslated Old Church Slavonic • A great mass of believers treated the change as a general apostasy • Mass suicide of whole villages by self-immolation or starvation was the result

34. References and Resources • http://www.johnreilly.info • The Perennial Apocalypse, by John J. Reilly