The Gnostics rejected this eschatology as in their view the enlightened
spirit already possessed immortality. Marcion expected that the Church
would be assailed by Antichrist; a visible return of Christ he did not
teach, but he recognized that human history would issue in a separation
of the good from the bad. Montanism sought to form a new Christian
commonwealth which, separated from the world, should prepare itself for
the descent of the Jerusalem from above, and its establishment in the
spot which by the direction of the Spirit had been chosen in Phrygia.
While Irenaeus held fast the traditional eschatological beliefs, yet his
conception of the Christian salvation as a deification of man tended to
weaken their hold on Christian thought. The Alogi in the 2nd century
rejected the Apocalypse on account of its chiliasm, its teaching of a
visible reign of Christ on earth for a thousand years. Montanism also
brought these apocalyptic expectations into discredit in orthodox
ecclesiastical circles. The Alexandrian theology strengthened this
movement against chiliasm. Clement of Alexandria taught that justice is
not merely retributive, that punishment is remedial, that probation
continues after death till the final judgment, that Christ and the
apostles preached the Gospel in Hades to those who lacked knowledge, but
whose heart was right, that a spiritual body will be raised. Origen
taught that a germ of the spiritual body is in the present body, and its
development depends on the character, that perfect bliss is reached only
by stages, that the evil are purified by pain, conscience being
symbolized by fire, and that all, even the devil himself, will at last
be saved. Both regarded chiliasm with aversion. But in the 5th century
there were rejected as heretical (1) "the doctrine of universalism, and
the possibility of the redemption of the devil; (2) the doctrine of the
complete annihilation of evil; (3) the conception of the penalties of
hell as tortures of conscience; (4) the spiritualizing version of the
resurrection of the body; (5) the idea of the continued creation of new
worlds" (A. Harnack, _History of Dogma_, iii. p. 186).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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