Postmillennial Worldview

PMW 2025-072 by Ardel Caneday

Gentry Note:
This article on the Two-Age redemptive historical scheme is quite helpful. After reading it, I wrote to Dr. Caneday (my old Grace Seminary friend) to let him know that not all postmills agree with Wilson and Brito on the matter. In fact, I follow Bahnsen in subscribing to Vos’ Two-Age view while maintaining the posmillennial hope. I am currently working on a book on the topic. If you would like to financial contribute to this project, please see my final note below. Even if you would not like to contribute, I hope you will before my hitmen set sail towards your house. But now for Caneday’s article:

“Already But Not Yet”: When Does the “Already” End? When Christ Returns or When Jerusalem’s Temple Was Destroyed?
by Ardel Caneday

Within my lifetime, not only academics but lay people also have become increasingly familiar with “the already but not yet”—the biblical concept of the overlapping of two ages—the present age and the age to come. This became evident when “Progressive Dispensationalism” emerged with the publication of Dispensationalism, Israel and the Church (1992). A feature that distinguishes this newer form of dispensationalism is the belief that Christ Jesus already reigns, fulfilling the promise to David (Psalm 110), but not yet are all his enemies put under his feet. Hence, concerning Christ’s reign, “inauguration is present, but consummation is not.”[1] While distinguishing their view from “Classical Dispensationalism,” they also contended that their “formulation of ‘the already, not yet’ kingdom” was different from George Ladd’s.[2] Nevertheless, they set in motion rapprochement with non-dispensationalists that accelerated profitable conversations among scholars from both views throughout the past thirty years.[3]

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PMW 2025-071 by Oscar Cullmann

Gentry note: As I research my book on the Two-Age view of redemptive history, I have found an older work by Oscar Cullmann quite insightful and valuable. It was originally published in 1950, then as a third edition in 1962. The post below is from pages 81–84 of his book, Christ and Time.

Cullmann (pp. 81–84) We have seen that the Biblical time line divides into three sections: time before the Creation; time from the Creation to the Parousia; time after the Parousia. Even in Judaism we find interwoven with this threefold division, which is never discarded, the twofold division into this age and the coming one — a division that goes back to Parsiism. In this Jewish two-fold division everything is viewed from the point of view of the future. The decisive mid-point of the two-part time line here as the future coming of the Messiah, the coming appears of the Messianic time of salvation, with all its miracles. At that point we find in Judaism the great dividing point that separates the entire course of events into the two halves. This accordingly means that for Judaism the mid-point of the line which signifies salvation lies in the future. Continue reading →