He Shall Have Dominion

ism’s standard is the written revelation of Almighty God in Scripture; humanism’s
standard is autonomous human reason or mystical illumination.
Evangelical postmillennialism and some forms of evolutionism expect historical
progress. Yet the nature and results of this progress are radically
different.
This leads to the next objection.
“Liberal Tendencies Govern Postmillennialism”
A more popular and simpler exception to postmillennialism is that it
contains the seeds of liberalism within it. Dallas Theological Seminary
professor Robert Lightner writes: “Postmillennialism found it almost
impossible to stem the tide toward liberal theology. The nonliteral
method of prophetic interpretation that both postmillennialism and
amillennialism rest on, leaves the door wide open, hermeneutically at
least, for the same kind of interpretation to be applied to other biblical
69
matters, such as the deity of Christ, and the authority of the Bible.” Ice
believes that “evangelical postmillennialists believe that many
nineteenth-century postmillennialists went astray by adopting humanistic
70
liberalism.”
Walvoord argues similarly when he complains that postmillennialism
cannot resist the tendency to liberalism in that it “lends itself to
71
liberalism with only minor adjustments.” Pentecost agrees that there is
“the trend toward liberalism, which postmillennialism could not meet,
72
because of its spiritualizing principle of interpretation.” This argument
equates theolo-gical liberalism with optimism, a very questionable assumption.
Neo-orthodox theology, existentialist to the core, was a reaction to the
optimism of the older liberalism. It is nonetheless equally hostile to an
orthodox view of biblical revelation.
Jay Adams notes the temptation of this sort of argument for
premillennialists, while disavowing its helpfulness: “But side-by-side with
[the postmillennialists], liberals began announcing similar expectations,
69. Lightner, Last Days Handbook, 84.
70. PEBP, 307.
71. Walvoord, The Millennial Kingdom, 35; also 34. This is an incredible and indefensible
assertion. Postmillennialists believe in the visible, glorious return of
Christ to cause the physical resurrection of the dead and to hold the Great
Judgment of all men, assigning some to heaven and others to hell. I know of no
liberal theologian that holds any of these fundamental assertions.
72. Pentecost, Things to Come, 386.