Now that is interesting! I thought that chilaism had been condemned by that time! So Columbus was the prototype of "Left Behind".
Bump for later reading.
A very good thread, enjoyable reading, excellent conversation between literate, thoughtful, disagreeing people. Mostly devoid of pointless name-calling.
Campion: I always follow your posts. Learned, graceful.
dangus: fascinating discussion of Luther and would enjoy reading more, keeping in mind that deconstructing Luther's psyche -- deconstructing dead celebrity's psyches -- has long been a hobby among certian circles, and as long as we keep it a hobby only it can be interesting.
As a lifelong Protestant I say to the RC writers on the thread: thank you for your erudition, your graciousness, your patience. I enjoy and do ponder your arguments.
Apparently, Milleniarianism was never condemned at all; there's no mention of any ecclesiastical disapproval of it at all in the New Advent Encyclopedia article on it (although New Advent is a lousy source; it was written in 1911 and accepts as factual many false suppositions of American Protestantism.)
The RAPTURE, which suggests that virtuous Christians get a get-out-of-suffering-free card is probably condemned, since is nakedly antithetical to Christ's command that Christians all pick up their cross and follow him, and suggests that raptured Christians' righteousness gives them earthly benefits denied to the martyred apostles.
This passage is very relevant:
"The Middle Ages were never tainted with millenarianism; it was foreign both to the theology of that period and to the religious ideas of the people. The fantastic views of the apocalyptic writers (Joachim of Floris, the Franciscan-Spirituals, the Apostolici), referred only to a particular form of spiritual renovation of the Church, but did not include a second advent of Christ... an essential trait is again missing, the return of Christ and the connection of the blissful reign with the resurrection of the just."
This suggests the New Advent article is referring to what I have heard called "PREmillennialism*", the notion that there is a forthcoming rapture and BODILY return of Christ PRIOR to a cateclysmic war. This is NOT what Columbus believed in. His belief was that the resurrection of the just had already occurred in Heaven (Catholic belief is that the Saints are presently enjoying the beatific vision of eternal life with Christ), and that the reign of Christ is not one of the discrete being known as Jesus, but of the body of Christ, which is the church.
(Interestingly, if one defines the "reign" of the Catholic Church as the period between the fall of Rome and the Reformation, then there was a roughly 1,000 year reign. Columbus' error, then, would be the supposition that the subsequent battle against evil, described in the bible as simply lasting "for some time," would be a short battle, and not the five-century-long battle we are currently experiencing.)
(*And I'm sorry if my terminology is off; We Catholics don't study that sort of stuff. :^D)