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Christ for All of Life and the Lordship of Jesus Christ Theology : Bestial but Legitimate, Legitimacy Not Sanctity

Kline on Multiperspectivalism At the forum I stressed the importance of starting with something that is indisputably held by theonomists and is, moreover, a distinctive and climactic tenet for them, namely, their contention that it is a function of the state to suppress and eliminate those who practice false religions . In my judgment, to impose such a role on the State would be in effect to countermand the great commission . As I see it, this reconstructionist program contradicts the essential biblical ethos and ethic of the church in this present world.  Theonomists disagree – they see this program as the fulfillment of their millennial aspirations.  One can take a stand with one side or the other in this dispute but what one cannot do is pass off the conflict as just a matter of varying emphases, as just a relative difference of position on some continuum. Clearly the difference is substantive, a difference not of degree but total contrast. It is not simply a matter of min...
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Must we then go back to the old doctrine of Papias, Irenaeus, Tertullian: and interpret the Millennium literally?

 We have already said that, although many in the early Church accepted the belief in the Millennium as a part of orthodoxy, many did not. The historian Eusebius almost contemptuously dismisses Papias’ report. ‘I suppose he got those ideas’, he says, ‘through a misunderstanding of the apostolic records, not perceiving that the things said by them were said mystically in figures. For he seems to have been of very limited understanding’ William Barclay, Revelation of John, vol. 2, The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 213–214. And Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he received the words of the apostles from those that followed them, but says that he was himself a hearer of Aristion and the presbyter John. At least he mentions them frequently by name, and gives their traditions in his writings. These things, we hope, have not been uselessly adduced by us. But it is fitting to subjoin to the words of Papias which have be...
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Blessed and Holy are Those who Share in the First Resurrection

 The question respecting the time when the Apocalypse was written affects the interpretation     A majority of the older critics have been inclined to adopt the opinion of Irenaeus , viz., that it was written during the reign of Domitian, i.e. during the last part of the first century, or in A. D. 95 or 96. Most of the recent commentators and critics have called this opinion in question , and placed the composition of the book at an earlier period, viz. before the destruction of Jerusalem .  Better ground has another report, which may be here and there found among the ancients , viz., that John wrote the Apocalypse during banishment to Patmos under the reign of Nero. From A. D. 64 to the time of his death (in June A. D. 68), Nero carried on a furious persecution against Christians, and banishment was a very common thing under the Roman government. It might therefore have been inflicted upon John, the leading teacher of Christianity at Ephesus, the capital of As...
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