The fact that some in the early church were non-premills is a kind of tentative vindication of the amill position.
But what the premills don't seem to realize is that the fact that premillennialism was the majority position of the Visible Church in its early days means NOTHING. We are PROTESTANTS. We follow Sola Scriptura. It's Sola Scriptura or nothing.
As you already realize, my Reformed Baptist convictions include a righteous irritation at all Protestants who merely use tradition to resolve doctrinal or interpretive controversies.
So, although I think it was important for you to expose xzins' lie, I think it is even more important for us to hammer on the fact that the majority position of the early church ultimately does nothing to resolve a doctrinal controversy for a consistent Protestant.
Anyone who tries to introduce church tradition into an argument as though it were somehow "admissible evidence" for a given position is actually a kind of closet Romanist.
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There is a systematic-theological reason for the stance which I have taken above.
Ephesians 4 teaches that the Body of Christ is undergoing a maturation process. This means that modern Christians certainly should understand the Bible a lot better than the early Church, on the whole, understood it.
Ah, but there are lot of professing Christians who do not understand the Bible even as well as their saved forefathers did. This points up the fact that the professing Church will NOT mature in the way that the TRUE Church will. As a matter of fact, the Church age is largely an age of straying from sound doctrine--and even entails a horrible, final apostasy by the VISIBLE Church--i.e., by the majority of professing Christians.
Putting these two phenomena together in a way which respects the Scriptures' own synthesis, the thoughtful amill would point out that IF we are living near the end of the Church age ( and I personally believe that we are) and IF eschatology is acknowledged to be a somewhat (at least) difficult area of doctrine, then the very history of premillennial doctrine could be used to fashion an argument against premillennialism!
My point is that premillennialism was a very popular position when the professing Church was largely immature, and it is a very popular position again, at a time when the professing Church is largely apostate. (You don't find much premillennial theology in the Sixteenth Century Reformation, of course. Most of the Reformers were amills.)
The above "interpretation" of doctrinal history will probably anger premills, but I can't help it. What I am really saying is that the premills need to take my warnings seriously. We need to follow Sola Scriptura. The rest is trash. Satan is a dangerous deceiver. And God Himself has ordained the deceptions.
Hey doc YOU are teaching the Rominist position...not xzins...
We need to follow Sola Scriptura. The rest is trash. Satan is a dangerous deceiver. And God Himself has ordained the deceptions.
Impossible ..satan is bound he can not deceive the nations..all we have around us is TRUTH
Anyone who tries to introduce church tradition into an argument as though it were somehow "admissible evidence" for a given position is actually a kind of closet Romanist.
< snip >
(You don't find much premillennial theology in the Sixteenth Century Reformation, of course. Most of the Reformers were amills.)
So just to make sure I understand what you are saying, we should not even consider those men who learned their doctrine sitting at the Apostle's feet, but we should consider those men who had just come out of an apostate religious system, i.e. Roman Catholicism.
Are you sure it has nothing to do with the fact that the men who learned directly from the Apostle's support the Pre-Mill position, while the men still tainted from Romanism support the Amill position?