Apocalypse stained glass window (Bourges Cathedral, France)
The prospect of Fatima centred on the idea of a punishment for mankind, and that of de Montfort of the Reign of Mary based on the idea of an age of triumph of the Church, are at times erroneously defined as “apocalyptic” and “millenarianist”.
Today with the term apocalyptic there is a tendency to define every eschatological prospect that foretells a more or less imminent catastrophe in history; whereas the word millenarianism refers, in a generic manner, to the forecast of a “golden period” in the future of mankind. With such a broad meaning, the two terms end up by including every prospect relative to the end of an era of mankind and the establishment of a new civilization, to generally indicate a psychological attitude to the radical change and the expectation of a “new age”.101
These accusations are extended by some people to the theology of history of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, which in the school of Fatima and of St Louis de Montfort foresees a great triumph of the Church and of Christian civilization, after a crisis that was metaphorically defined in the daily language of the TFP as a “bagarre” (confusion). The terms of apocalyptics and millenarianism, so inexpertly used, should be therefore clarified in their authentic meaning in the light of Catholic doctrine.
Millenarianism,102 or chiliasm, is, in fact, the eschatological doctrine according to which Jesus Christ will visibly reign on earth with his chosen people for a period of a thousand years, between a first resurrection of the Saints and the second, universal, resurrection, at the end of the world. This theory, based on the literal interpretation of a passage of the Book of the Apocalypse,103 was upheld during the early centuries of the Church by such Greek and Latin Fathers as St Ireneus,104 St Justin,105 Tertullian,106 Lactantius.107
St Augustine, who confesses to have been fascinated by the attraction of Millenarianism, decidedly rejects its system in De Civitate Dei,108 just as St Thomas does in Summa Theologica.109 “Although chiliasm was not catalogued as a heresy” affirms Father Allo “the common feeling of theologians of all schools is to see it as an ‘erroneous’ doctrine to which some early Fathers had been drawn because of certain conditions of the early ages.”110
The Holy Office, with the decree of 19-21 July 1944, affirmed that millenarianism, even if moderated, understood as the system according to which “Christ the Lord, before the universal judgement, whether it precedes or not the resurrection of the majority of the just, will come visibly, to reign over this earth, (…) cannot be taught without danger (‘tuto doceri non posset’).”111
Any Catholic who is minimally familiar with the history of the doctrine of the Church can easily understand how “millenarianism” constitutes an unmistakable and well defined doctrine, very different from the message of Fatima and from the theory of St Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort and of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.
We can however legitimately speak of Catholic apocalyptics, if by this term we mean theological speculation on the Book of the Apocalypse which is, for every Christian, the prophetic and inspired book that closes the New Testament.112 It describes, in connection with the present, the history of the future, embracing the conflict of every age between Jesus Christ and his eternal adversary, until the “last persecution, occurring while the final judgement is imminent, which shall be endured by the holy Church throughout the world, the whole city of Christ being assailed by the whole city of the devil”.113
“For there shall be then great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. And unless those days had been shortened, no flesh should be saved: but for the sake of the elect those days shall be shortened.”114
The history of mankind will not end with an apotheosis following an irreversible historical ascent, but with a catastrophe, a universal tyranny of evil. “In the tradition of the philosophy of the history of the West” observes a famous contemporary Catholic philosopher “even the end of time itself bears the name: reign of the Antichrist”.115 The Antichrist, comments Mgr Antonino Romeo, “is the capital enemy of Christ” who at the end of time “will seduce many Christians with satanic marvels and cunning” before being destroyed by Christ in his Parousia.116
Christian life is, in this dimension, an invocation and “expectation” of the Parousia,117 described in the Book of the Apocalypse: the second coming “with much power and majesty”118 of the Lord to fulfil his Messianic Kingdom, with the defeat of the Antichrist and the establishment of the heavenly Jerusalem. The liturgy of Advent, like that of Easter, expresses the pleading expectation of this coming that urges Christians to “be always ready”.119
“Actually,” comments Cardinal Billot “it is sufficient to barely open the Gospel to acknowledge that the Parousia is truly the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and last word of the preaching of Jesus, who is its key, its solution, its explanation, its reason for existence, its confirmation: indeed that it is the supreme event to which all the rest refers and without which all the rest collapses and disappears.”120
This Catholic apocalyptics, always preached by the Church, has nothing in common with ancient millenarianism, neither with the modern version whose origins according to certain scholars may be found in the thinking of Joachim of Fiore, nor in its distortion.
Much has been said about the figure, still surrounded by a veil of mystery, of the abbot from Calabria.121 He elaborated a theology of history in which, by following the Trinitarian plan, he distinguishes between an age of the Father, begun with Adam, an age of the Son, which has its fulfilment in Christ, and a third age of the Holy Spirit, announced by St Benedict. What is heterodox, in him or in his “posterity”122, was not however the Trinitarian division of history, nor the expectation of a “new age”, but the denial, if there was one, of the divine unity of the Persons, of the perennity of the Gospel of Christ and of the saving mission of the Church in the “third age”. According to some scholars, Joachim would have given birth to a process of “immanentizing” escathology destined to animate the modern utopia of a self-redemption of man.123
What is certain is that the fourteenth century sees the beginning of an apocalyptics that is the antithesis of the theology of Christian history. Modern millenarianism develops with the left wing of the Protestant Revolution, starting from Thomas Müntzer and from the Anabaptists, and proposes an earthly revolution aimed at establishing the Kingdom of God in the purely temporal order. The humanist idea of “Rebirth”,124 such as the Protestant one of “Reformatio”,125 express the eschatological expectation of a new age characterized by the end of the Catholic Church and of the Papacy, often identified with the Antichrist. Rather than of millenarianism, it is a question of “Messianism” that characterizes the sects of the Anglo- Saxon and Germanic environment, permeates the origins of modern philosophy, and results in the French Revolution.126 The nineteenth-century myth of progress, that of the Marxist society without classes, the National Socialist society of the “Third Reich” and the ecological society of the “greens”,127 can be traced to this line of lay Messianism: it presupposes the denial of original sin and of the mission of the Church and the “self-redemption” of mankind in history and through history.128
The contrast could not be more clear: Christian eschatology wants to sacralize society and history by ordering it for God; lay Messianism wants an implicit deification of man and social structures to achieve the “Kingdom of God” on earth, in its absolute perfection.129
The idea of an historical age when Catholicism reaches its fullness, bringing about the motto and hope of St Paul and of the great pontiffs of this century: “Instaurare omnia in Christo”130 has nothing in common with millenarianism.
Notes:
101. Cf. for example Jean Séguy, “Millénarisme”, in Catholicisme, vol. IX, 1982, coll. 158-65; ID., “Sur l’apocalyptique catholique”, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, no. 41, 1978, pp. 165-72.
102. On millenarianism: cf. the entries by H. Lesêtre, in DB, vol. IV, 1908, coll. 1090-7; Gustave Bardy, in DTC, vol. X, 1929, coll. 1700-63; Antonio Piolanti, in EC, vol. VIII, 1952, coll. 1008-11; Maurilio Adriani, in ER, vol. IV, 1972, coll. 383-7. Cf. also Ted Daniels, Millennialism: An International Bibliography, New-York-London, Garland, 1992; Il Millenarismo. Testi dei secoli I-II, edited by Carlo Nardi, Fiesole, Nardini Editore, 1995.
103. “And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations, till the thousand years be finished. And after that, he must be loosed a little time (…)” (Apoc. 20:1-4).
104. St Ireneus Adversus Haereses, V, 32-5, in PG, vol. VII, coll. 1210-21.
105. St Justin, Dialoghi con Trifone, 80-1, in PG, VI, coll. 664-9.
106. Tertullian, Adversus haereses, 5, 32, 1.
107. Lactantius De Divinis Institutionibus, VII, 24, in PL, vol. VI, col. 808.
108. St Augustine, De Civitate Dei, book XX, chap. 7, in PL, vol. XLI, coll. 667-8.
109. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, q. 77, art. 1, ad. 4.
110. E. B. Allo O.P., Saint Jean, L’apocalypse, 3rd edn., (Paris, J. Gabalda et C., 1933), p. 323.
111. AAS, vol. 36, 1944, p. 212; Denz-H, no. 3839. “The decree affirms therefore that millenarianism (or chiliasm), even if mitigated or spiritual, according to which Christ would return visibly on earth to reign there, before the final judgement, preceded or not by the resurrection of a certain number of just people, this doctrine cannot be taught without imprudence with regard to the faith”. Gilleman, S.J., “Condamnation du millénarisme mitigé”, Nouvelle Revue Théologique, t. 67, May-June 1945, p. 240.
112. Mgr A. Romeo, Apocalisse, in EC, vol. I, 1948, coll. 1600-14.
113. St Augustine De civitate Dei, book XX, chap. 11.
114. Mt. 24:21-22.
115. Josef Pieper, Über das Ende der Zeit, München, Hochland-Bücherei, Sulla fine del tempo, It. tr. (Brescia, Morcelliana, 1959), p. 113. At the end of history, according to Pieper, looms the image of a “pseudo-order maintaned by the use of force” (ibid, p. 121). The world state of the Antichrist will be a totalitarian state in the extreme sense. ibid, p. 123.
116. A. Romeo, Anticristo, in EC, vol. I, 1948, col. 1433, coll. 1433-41. Cf. also A. Arrighini, L’anticristo, la venuta e il regno del vicario di Satana, Milan, Fratelli Melita, 1988. For a recent meditation on the subject, cf. Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, Attenti all’Anticristo! L’ammonimento profetico di V. S. Solovèv, Casale Monferrato, Piemme, 1991.
117. J. Chaine, Parousie, in DTC, vol. XI (1932), coll. 2043-54; A. Romeo, Parusia, in EC, vol. IX, 1952, coll. 875-82.
118. Mt. 24:30.
119. St Bernard of Clairvaux, In adventu Domini sermones VII, in PL, vol. 183, coll. 35-56.
120. Cardinal Louis Billot S.J., La Parousie, (Paris, Beauchesne, 1920), p. 10.
121. On Joachim of Fiore (1130-1202) and Gioachimism the bibliography is vast. the numerous studies dedicated by Mgr Giovanni Di Napoli to the abbot from Calabria: “La teologia trinitaria di Gioacchino da Fiore”, Divinitas, no. 3, October 1976; ID., “L’ecclesiologia di Gioacchino da Fiore”, Doctor communis, no. 3, September-December 1979; ID., Teologia e storia in Gioacchino, in Storia e messaggio in Gioacchino da Fiore, Acts of the International Congress of Gioachimite Studies (19-23 September 1979), (S. Giovanni in Fiore, Centro di Studi Gioachimiti, 1980), pp. 71-150. Cf. also Marjorie Reeves, Beatrice Hirsch-Reich, The Figure of Joachim of Fiore, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972; Delno C. West and Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, Joachim of Fiore: a Study in Perception and History, Bloomigton, Indiana University Press, 1983; Bernard McGinn, L’abate calabrese. Gioacchino da Fiore nella storia del pensiero occidentale, Genoa, It. tr., Marietti, 1990.
122. It is necessary to distinguish between the abbot from Calabria and his “posterity”, whose philosophical and literary itineraries have been traced to our days. Father de Lubac who tried to follow the traces of Gioachimism through the centuries, states that “the story of the spiritual posterity of Joachim is also, and for the greater part, the story of betrayals of his thinking” (Henri de Lubac S.J., La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, (Paris, Dessain et Tobra, 1979), vol. I, p. 67). Cf. also Marjorie Reeves-Warwick Gould, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987.
123. Thus for example Eric Voegelin, The New Science of An Introduction, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1974 (1952); ID., Il Mito del mondo nuovo. Saggio sui movimenti rivoluzionari del nostro tempo, Milan, It. tr., Rusconi, 1970.
124. Cf. Harry Levin, The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance, London, Faber & Faber, 1969; Gustavo Costa, La leggenda dei secoli d’oro nella letteratura italiana, Bari, Laterza, 1972.
125. On Protestant apocalyptics, especially among the English sects of the seventeenth century, cf. Bernard S. Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men: a Study in Seventeenth Century English Millenialism, Totowa, Bowman and Littlefield, 1972; Eric Russel Chamberlin, Anti-Christ and the Millennium, New York, Saturday Review Press, 1975; William B. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1975; Paul Christianson, Reformers in Babylon: English Apocalyptic Visions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1978; Catherine Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530-1645, New York, Oxford University Press, 1979; Robin Bruce Barnes, Prophecy and Gnosis: Apocalypticism in the wake of the Lutheran Reformation, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1988.
126. Renzo De Felice, Note e ricerche sugli “Illuminati” e il misticismo rivoluzionario (1789-1800), Rome, Storia e Letteratura, 1960; Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly Millenarians and the French Revolution in France and England, London, John Hopkins University Press, 1975, on which D. Menozzi, “Millenarismo e rivoluzione francese”, Critica Storica, vol. 14, 1977, pp. 70-82.
127. Cf. Romolo Gobbi, Figli dell’Apocalisse, (Milan, Rizzoli, 1993), pp. 264-81.
128. On the modern utopia cf. Walter Nigg, Das ewige Reich, Zürich, Artemis, 1954; Gilson, Les métamorphoses de la cité de Dieu, Paris, Vrin, 1952; T. Molnar, Utopia. The perennial heresy; Bronislaw Baczko, L’utopia, Turin, It. tr. Einaudi, 1979; Cf. also Alexander Cioranescu, L’avenir du passé. Utopie et littérature, Paris, Gallimard, 1972; Massimo Baldini, La storia delle utopie, Rome, Armando, 1994.
129. Cf. Father Reginald Grégoire, Rapporti tra apocalittica medievale e messianismi laici odierni, in Storia e messaggio in Gioacchino da Fiore, pp. 225-44. Lay Messianism, observes Father Grégoire, “creates a sentiment of satisfaction, of admiration for the man capable of creating his own happiness in the innermost part of that same humanity. Absolute no longer possesses any meaning. It is the apogee of naturalism” ( ibid, p. 237). This naturalism is destined to find its expression not only in Marxist and Nazi political atheism, but also in some forms of “liberation theology” which seek the purely historical realization of the Kingdom of God. On postmedieval millenariarism, cf. also the entry, Chiliasmus IV of Richard Bauckham in TRE, vol. 7, 1981, pp. 737-45.
130. Eph. 1:10.