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To: HarleyD
This caveat makes me wonder if the premillennialist view of Calvin's day wasn't different than the view of today? If so, then Calvin's comment may have been accurate for its day and the premillennialist's view was modified to negate Calvin's argument. Once modified, it could be claimed that Calvin was in error which would be a bit disingenuous.

I strongly suspect that's the case.

The Charles Hill book I've been recommending looks at millennial interpretations in the first centuries. One of the interesting things he finds is that pre-millenialism in that era tended to be tied with a view of the intermediate state that we would find unusual -- that all but a special subset of special Christians, spent the intermediate state in the "good part" of Hades.

The old guys didn't always fit our modern categories well.

(More apropos to the dispensational eschatology question, I think, is Calvin's pair of chapters in the Institutes on the differences between the testaments and the similarities. There he's dealing with an opponent (Servetus, I think) who held that the OT only promises material, this world and this life, blessings. Not a position you see these days.)

9 posted on 07/06/2014 4:40:03 PM PDT by Lee N. Field ("He shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." Isaiah 27:1)
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To: Lee N. Field; wmfights
According to Theopedia, premillennialism existed as historical premillennialism between 100AD-325AD. This belief was never prominent in the church. During the Reformation the Anabaptist and Hugenots helped revived it. Later, in the late 1800s, it was refashioned as dispensational premillennialism with the rise of fundamentalism.

This is what Theopedia states:

Based upon the timeline, Calvin must have disagreed with the historical premillennialists. His arguments have no bearing on the dispensational premillennialists who came along 300 years later.
10 posted on 07/06/2014 6:09:13 PM PDT by HarleyD ("... letters are weighty, but his .. presence is weak, and his speech of no account.")
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