The recent release of a statement by the Illinois Conference of Catholic Bishops on the mega-selling Left Behind books was a mildly surprising, but welcome event.
The Heart of the Matter
Surprising, because such an official statement, directed at Fundamentalist proselytizing and theology, is not common. Welcome, because it highlights the dangers presented by Fundamentalist beliefs about the “end times” and draws a firm and necessary line in the sand.
Since 1998 I have been writing articles and giving talks about premillennial dispensationalism (i.e., the “left behind” theology) and the belief in the “Rapture,” better described as the “pretribulation Rapture.” My interest in the topic comes from my upbringing in a Fundamentalist, dispensationalist home and my conviction that the Left Behind books have created a significant amount of confusion among Catholics about eschatology, interpreting Scripture, the essential nature of the Gospel, and the meaning of suffering.
At the heart of this complex issue is an essential question: what is the Church and what is her mission? This may appear, on the surface, to have little to do with a future antiChrist, a coming tribulation, and the salvation of the Jews — all topics that the Catholic Church teach are essential elements of the last days of earth (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, 668-82). But, as I explain in detail in <a href="http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/2452/affiliate/catholicexch4132
“target=blank>Will Catholics Be “Left Behind” (Ignatius, 2003), the core issue remains the Church and the Kingdom.
The Church's Rejection
The Illinois bishops highlight this key fact when they write:
Responding to similar fundamentalist agendas back in 1937, Pius XI, in Divini Redemptoris said any such speculations about a period when a remnant of the Church progresses towards its own ultimate victory might of themselves be a sign of the Antichrist:
The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism…
The Catechism of the Catholic Church continues:
The kingdom will be fulfilled then, not by a historic triumph of the church through a progressive ascendancy, but only in God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil… (676-677)
In other words:
1. The Catholic Church has rejected the belief that the Kingdom will be a future time of earthly utopia and peace. One reason is that man, within history, will always have the chance, as an agent of free will, to reject God, making such a time impossible.
2. The Church will not overcome by escaping from tribulation, but by going through it, being ultimately saved by God’s victory over evil in the End.
The Final Passover
This final point is brought home in a powerful way in the opening sentence of paragraph 677 of the Catechism, which states: “The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.” The Body of Christ, so intimately bound to her Head, does not seek to escape from trial and tribulation, but willingly endures pain and suffering just as the Savior did. It would be difficult to overstate just how radically different this belief is from a Fundamentalist view of the Church.
The difference can be traced back, historically and theologically, to the views of the man who created the “left behind” theology, ex-Anglican priest John Nelson Darby (1800-1882). Darby’s unique — and seriously flawed — premise was that Jesus Christ had offered the Jews an earthly, Davidic Kingdom — The Kingdom — but was completely rejected by them. This meant that Christ had to form a second people of God, the Church, a “spiritual” people having no relationship with the “earthly” people of God, the Jews. Darby was convinced the Rapture was the proper conclusion of this dichotomy between Israel and the Church:
It is this conviction, that the church is properly heavenly, in its calling and relationship with Christ, forming no part of the course of events of the earth, which makes its rapture so simple and clear; and on the other hand, it shews how the denial of its rapture brings down the church to an earthly position, and destroys its whole spiritual character and position. Our calling is on high. Events are on earth. Prophecy does not relate to heaven. The Christian’s hope is not a prophetic subject at all. (Darby, Collected Writings, 11:156)
Darby believed that the Old Testament promises of land and prosperity for the Jewish people had never been fulfilled, meaning God one day will have to focus again on the earthly people. In order to do so, He will remove the Church, the heavenly people, from the Earth via the Rapture. The Tribulation will be, in large part, a time of severe trial that will cause the Jews to recognize their need for God and embrace the original offer of the Kingdom. The Kingdom will be realized in the thousand-year reign following the Second Coming, during which Christians will dwell in the New Jerusalem, a large “satellite city” (according to dispensationalist theologian John Walvoord) orbiting around the earth.
Very well, you might say, but does this belief system, as odd as it might be, really deserve to be labeled as “anti-Catholic”? Is it fair to use such a term just because someone disagrees with Catholic doctrine? Are the bishops correct in writing, “The Left Behind series is anti-Catholic in content and form, consistent with Mr. LaHaye’s other writings, in which he associates the Church with ‘Babylonian mysticism’”?
That is the issue we will take up in part-two of this article, which will appear tomorrow in this space.
(Carl E. Olson is the editor of Envoy magazine, a leading journal of Catholic apologetics. This article, adapted from his new book, is reprinted here with permission.)
His book critiquing the Left Behind phenomenon and premillennial dispensationalism, titled <a href="http://www.aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/2452/affiliat
e/catholicexch4132
” target=blank>Will Catholics Be Left Behind? A Catholic Critique of the Rapture and Today's Prophecy Preachers, is now available from our online store.
