I routinely find myself in discussions with undergraduate and graduate students at Baylor about whether a figure like Jonathan Edwards was a “post-millennialist.” (That is, did he believe that Jesus would return after the conclusion of the millennial period referenced in Revelation 20?) I always caution them to note that, while you can find pre- and post-millennial tendencies among various Christian theologians prior to the 1800s, using these terms for earlier figures is anachronistic.
A brief search suggests to me that one of the earliest uses of the term “post-millennial” came in 1830 in a book review by the startlingly named American biblical scholar George Bush. (Later researchers tagged Bush as the author of this unattributed review.) Bush, an eccentric theologian who later became a Swedenborgian, believed that the “millennium” of Revelation 20 had already happened. The term “pre-millennial” and related words came into use right around the same time. For example, a book called The Sacred Calendar of Prophecy (1828) spoke of the “literal premillennian second advent.”
This is not the place to unpack the competing opinions circulating at the time about the nature and timing of the millennium, but it is notable that Bush twice in this review referred to the “post-millennial” advent of Christ as one extant opinion on the matter. Bush’s own view suggests the relative flexibility of positions regarding the millennium and Second Advent as of the 1830s.
Bush’s early mention of “post-millennial” theology (and please do comment if you know of earlier uses of this term) suggests a transition point that was emerging in British and American theology during the 1830s and 1840s, as “pre-millennial” and “post-millennial” camps became more formalized. Whether you believed Jesus would return at the beginning or end of the millennium, or preferred another option on how to understand the “millennium,” was a pretty straightforward question. But then as now, post-millennial and pre-millennial beliefs also entailed a whole range of related views on the fulfillment of prophecy, and how to interpret the Book of Revelation, Daniel, and other prophetic literature.
The 1830s and 1840s were brimming with controversial eschatological ideas, especially on the pre-millennial side. John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren were beginning to popularize dispensational pre-millennialism in Britain at that time. By the time of the Scofield Reference Bible (1909) and the founding of Dallas Theological Seminary in 1924, pre-millennial dispensationalism staked its claim as the most influential system of eschatology in America.
William Miller and the “Millerites” also took America by storm in the 1830s and 1840s. Using Miller’s understanding of Bible prophecy, they predicted that Jesus would come back sometime in 1843 or 1844. This bold prediction had the distinct disadvantage of being verifiable, so the Millerites scattered and fractured after the “Great Disappointment” that transpired when Jesus tarried.
The 1830s and 1840s were exactly the time you would expect the firming up of formal pre- and post-millennial camps. (As far as I can tell, the amillennial/spiritual view of the millennium remained an option, too, but became more prominent in the post-World War II era.) Before 1830, the alignments were just more flexible.
A modest recommendation, then: What if we simply did not use the labels “post-” and “pre-millennial” when discussing eschatological beliefs before 1830? Those labels presume firm theological camps that simply did not exist until then, at least not in their modern form.
