Gairney Bridge

I stumbled across this article by Richard Gaffin (Dr. Gaffin spoken at Erskine Seminary a few years ago while I was a student there, and I got him to sign a couple of books for me; one was his book on Calvin and the Sabbath, and he remarked that he was surprised that students were required to read this in class, and I commented that they weren’t, but I was reading it on my own!). While I usually refer to myself as a postmillenialist, and while I tend to agree with many of the things I find written by Theonomists, I can’t help but find myself in agreement with much of what Gaffin says here, concerning the amillennial view of eschatology. Gaffin writes:

The church today will remain impoverished in understanding its true identity and its task in the creation, until it is grasped by the fully eschatological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection and embraces the “realized” or “inaugurated” eschatology taught in the New Testament—what [Geerhardus] Vos, for want of a better term, calls the “semi-eschatological” nature of Christian existence in the period between Christ’s resurrection and return. What will challenge and activate and sustain the church (and give it “optimism”) in its present calling is its perception not of a presumed promise of future dominion before Christ’s return but of the real victory it already possesses in the exalted Christ.

I’m all about optimistic eschatology. The risen Christ, our eternal King, reigns forever! May the victory be forever His!