The Hejnał continues the 5-part series on the Rapture, with an article by Carl Olson that first appeared in Inside Catholic. Olson presents five myths about the Rapture which Catholics should know in order to refute this false teaching.
MYTH 2: "Catholic beliefs about the end times are quite similar to those of Fundamentalists such as Tim LaHaye."
Studying dispensationalism (as in studying almost any theological system) is like exploring an iceberg -- the vast majority lies beneath the surface, out of sight and unnoticed by the casual observer. On the surface, dispensationalists and Catholics appear to agree about the Second Coming, a future Antichrist, and an impending trial and time of apostasy. And, in fact, common beliefs about aspects of these teachings do exist. Although it comes as a surprise to many Fundamentalists, the Catholic Church clearly believes in the Second Coming, "a final trial," and a "supreme religious deception... of the Antichrist" (Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], 675).
As noteworthy as these agreements are, the differences between premillennial dispensationalism and Catholic doctrine are even more striking. Stripped to their bare essentials, these include three premises about the past and present, and two beliefs about the future.
The first dispensationalist premise is that Jesus Christ failed to establish the kingdom for the Jews during His first coming. Dispensationalists believe that Christ offered a material and earthly kingdom, but the Jews rejected Him. John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), the ex-Anglican priest who formed the dispensationalist system, wrote, "The Lord, having been rejected by the Jewish people, is become wholly a heavenly person." This dualistic notion was echoed and articulated by Darby’s disciples, including Cyrus I. Scofield (editor of the Scofield Reference Bible), Lewis Sperry Chafer, and many of the popularizers of the system. Leading dispensationalist theologian Charles C. Ryrie, in his systematic Basic Theology, gives this convoluted explanation: "Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus’ Davidic kingship was offered to Israel (Matthew 2:2 and 27:11; John 12:13), but He was rejected.... Because the King was rejected, the messianic, Davidic kingdom was (from a human viewpoint) postponed. Though He never ceases to be King and, of course, is King today as always, Christ is never designated as King of the Church.... Though Christ is a King today, He does not rule as King. This awaits His second coming. Then the Davidic kingdom will be realized" (Matthew 25:31; Revelation 19:15 and 20).
This supposed failure leads to the second premise that the Church is a "parenthetical" insert into history. Put another way, the Church was created out of necessity when the Jews rejected Christ. Lewis Sperry Chafer (1871-1952), whose eight-volume Systematic Theology is the dispensationalist Summa, wrote, “The present age of the Church is an intercalation into the revealed calendar or program of God as that program was foreseen by the prophets of old. Such, indeed, is the precise nature of the present age."
The Church is not, in dispensationalist theology, the new Israel spoken of by St. Paul (see Galatians 6:16) but is utterly separate from Old Testament Israel. So long as the "Church age" continues, the Old Testament promises made to Israel are on hold, waiting to be fulfilled.
The third premise, so vital to dispensationalism, is the existence of two people of God: the Jews (the "earthly" people) and the Christians (the "heavenly" people). This is the language and theological vision established by Darby and taken up by leading dispensationalists ever since. In Rapture Under Attack (Multnomah, 1998), LaHaye notes that the pretribulational dispensationalist view is the "only view that distinguishes between Israel and the church," and then remarks that "the confusion of Israel and the church is one of the major reasons for confusion in prophecy as a whole.... Pre-Tribulationism is the only position which clearly outlines the program of the church."
As LaHaye’s statement indicates, these premises result in the belief of the pretribulation Rapture. This event is necessary because the heavenly people (Christians) must eventually be taken from the earthly stage so that the prophetic timeline can be "restarted" and God’s work with the earthly people (Jews) resumed. That work will involve seven years of tribulation, which dispensationalists believe will be a period of God’s chastisement on the Jewish people, resulting in the vast majority of Jews being killed, but also in the conversion of those remaining.
This, finally, leads to the second belief about the future: an earthly, millennial kingdom established by Christ for the Jews. Based on passages such as Revelation 20 and Ezekiel 40-48, this includes the claim that animal sacrifices will be renewed in a rebuilt Temple. Some dispensationalists think these sacrifices will be symbolic; others believe they will have salvific value, befitting a theocratic government.
All five of these points are incompatible with Catholic doctrine. Christ did not offer an earthly kingdom, nor did He fail, nor was He rejected by all of the Jews; His mother, the apostles, and the disciples were all Jews who accepted Him as the Messiah. The Church is not a sort of "Plan B," but is, according to the Catechism, the "goal of all things," reflecting the Catholic recognition of how intimately Christ has joined Himself to the Church (cf. Ephesians 5). The Old Covenant is fulfilled in the New, and there is only "one People of God of the New Covenant, which transcends all the natural or human limits of nations, cultures, races, and sexes: ‘For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body’" (CCC 1267).
Flowing from incorrect, flawed premises, the idea of a pretribulation Rapture is foreign to Catholic theology. Based largely on St. Augustine’s City of God, the millennium has long been understood (if not formally defined) to be the Church age -- a time when the King rules, even though the Kingdom has not been fully revealed (cf. CCC 567, 669).
No comments:
Post a Comment