The dominant eschatological expectation in the second century was what the Fathers themselves called chiliasm — a literal thousand-year reign of Christ on earth following the resurrection. Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian all held this view, and Justin explicitly described it as the mark of orthodox Christianity in his day. The decisive shift came with Origen's allegorical hermeneutics and especially Augustine's spiritual reading of Revelation 20 in "The City of God," which became the dominant Western position and shaped medieval and Reformed eschatology alike.
"I and many other right-minded Christians feel certain that there will be a resurrection of the dead and a thousand years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged as the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah and others declare." Justin notes that not all Christians held this view, but calls those who deny it heterodox.
Augustine reinterprets the first resurrection as spiritual regeneration and the millennium as the present age of the Church — "this thousand years" signifying the whole period between the first and second comings of Christ. His reading displaced chiliasm as the dominant Western view.
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