Does Amillennialism have Roman Catholic Roots?

A friend writes: "It has been claimed from a booklet published in 1996 that Amillenialism is rooted in Roman Catholicism. In defense of his view, the author quotes from the Reformers, Calvin, Augustine, Grier, Berkhof, Hoeksema, Boettner, and many others, trying to prove that their teaching is only a popish heresy."

The booklet referred to is by Paul A. Bailey and is titled The Supreme Irony: An exposure of the Roman Catholic Roots of A-millennial Calvinism, published by Penfold Book and Bible House. That the booklet is not only an attack on amillennialism, but also on Calvinism (which gets the first slap) is evident from the title.

In so far as the booklet deals with milleniallism it is an attempt to answer the long-standing charge that a futurist (the author is a dispensationalist) view of prophecy, particularly the idea of pre-tribulation rapture, has roots in Roman Catholicism and Jesuitism through the efforts of Ribera and Lacunza. Along the way the author takes a few swipes at Calvinism and paedobaptism as well.

Most of the book is simply an ad hominum attack which attacks the persons involved without addressing the issues. For example, amillennialism must be wrong because Calvin taught it and Calvinism comes from Augustine who "started what is now called Roman Catholicism" (p. 4). Calvin himself must be wrong because he taught "that all children of believers are regenerate in the womb and are to be sprinkled as a sure sign of the regeneration that has already taken place" (p. 22).

Calvin, according to him, also taught "that Christ is present in the emblems of the bread and wine at the Lord's Supper, and that spiritual life is communicated through partaking of these" (p. 22). Anyone who knows anything of Calvin's teaching will see that the author of the booklet does not even have his facts right.

One of the most laughable things in the booklet is the fact that author argues that amillennialism(along with Calvinism) must be wrong because Augustine taught it (this, by the way, is all the "proof" he has for its Romish origins), while arguing at the same time that "the whole system of futurist interpretation," to which he holds, was taught by early church fathers (pp. 8, 17).

In the same way, he admits on page 8 that futurism was "promulgated" by the Jesuits "in an attempt to lift the symbols of Babylon and the anti-Christ out of contemporary history" (the charge that futurism has Jesuit roots also suggests that the Romans Catholics took it up to disprove the charges of the Reformers that the Pope was Antichrist - i.e., if Antichrist is wholly future the Pope cannot be he). Having made this admission and himself denied that the Pope is Antichrist, Bailey proceeds to prove that amillennialism is popish by tracing it back to Augustine.

The booklet is mass of misrepresentations, outright lies, misunderstandings, and unproved assertions and not worth the paper it is written on. Be warned against the company that publishes this sort of stuff!