It has often been noted that great ideas have the odd tendency of occurring independently to two separate individuals at exactly the same time. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace both worked out the theory of evolution simultaneously despite there being little contact between them. Had Elisha Grey been but a few hours quicker in filing his patent, he and not Alexander Graham Bell would be recognized as the inventor of the telephone. It is almost as though a truly transformative idea, when it wants to be born into the world, exerts such a powerful influence that more than one person cannot help but pick up on it.
Joachim’s idea of the Three Ages was as transformative in his own time as Darwin’s and Bell’s ideas have been for ours, so it is no surprise that scholars and researchers have attempted to find sources and antecedents—and if not those, at least intriguing parallels—for what he wrote and taught. Robert E. Lerner’s “Refreshment of the Saints,” which I have quoted before, was one such effort. Despite insisting that “Joachim’s position as one of the towering historical thinkers of the Middle Ages, perhaps of all ages, is unshakeable” (Lerner 101), Lerner does his best to shake it, attempting to explain away most of Joachim’s distinctive insights as inheritances from the thought of earlier theologians like Honorius Augustodunensis and Hildegard of Bingen and only barely acknowledging Joachim’s claim of new revelations and greater spiritual enlightenment as truly original.
Marjorie Reeves capably rebutted Lerner’s claims in her “Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore.” There, she demonstrates that while Joachim was certainly well-read in Catholic theology and near-contemporaries like Rupert of Deutz came close to his language, no one achieved the same level of originality and innovation that he did. What makes Joachim distinct from all the previous theologians Lerner cites is that, in Reeves’s words, “it is still a new stage of history which he envisions. It is not a supernatural millennium coming down from above; it is not just a ‘pause’ granted by God rather arbitrarily” (Reeves 293). It is this new sense of historical time that sets Joachim apart. He certainly made use of what had come before him. We have seen previously how his complicated reaction to Augustine in particular shaped so much of his thought. And his main source was, ultimately, the Bible; its influence on him cannot be overstated. I have previously discussed in detail how his astute attention to Revelation enabled many of his most remarkable insights. But he brought this same focus and attention to everything in the holy book. His knowledge of and engagement with the Old Testament were unparalleled among medieval theologians but he was no slouch when it came to the New Testament either. Every one of his writings, but particularly the Liber Concordie, testify to the importance he gave to every book of the Bible. And wherever he looked, he managed to rediscover long forgotten ideas that he could draw upon in his own thinking.
Perhaps he was thinking of Jeremiah’s promise of the new covenant that signifies a spiritually transformed humanity—“It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers … I shall set my law within them, writing it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:32-33)—when he spoke of the future “spiritual men” in whom God would work an incredible spiritual transformation. He certainly remembered Peter’s interpretation of Joel 2:28 in Acts, “In the last days, says God, I will pour out my Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy. ” (Acts 2:17) when he promised a new development of humanity’s spiritual faculties and the revelation of previously unknown religious truths, for he cited the exact same passage as Peter had when announcing the advent of the spiritual men:
Truly because the apostles were already baptizing, the same Lord and Redeemer said: “But you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit after not many days,” thereby revealing afterward the operation of the Holy Spirit in the spiritual men who are chiefly to be expected around the end of the world-age—even if some may have already come—when that will be completed in many which was begun in a few by the promise the Lord made through Joel, saying: “It will be in newest days that I shall pour out from my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy.” (Lib. Con. 2.1.7)
And the communal nature of the Jewish people in much of the Old Testament could have suggested ideas to him about the future people of God, just as it did to the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Indeed, the Old Testament as a whole has quite a number of eschatological notions that differ from later Christian thought (and often from each other). Joachim’s encounter with them probably moved him toward developing a broader millennial perspective. But whenever he found suggestive passages and ideas of this sort, he responded with creativity and innovation. As much as he was inspired by the biblical texts, the insights Joachim drew from them were invariably his own. He demonstrated a perspective unlike any that had been brought to biblical exegesis before. Even at his most attentive to Christian holy writ, Joachim’s conclusions were unique and unprecedented, as were the new concepts and ideas that flowed from them. No previous Christian theologian had come close to his understanding of history as a continually evolving process through which God works His ends. That this process could culminate in the future evolution of humanity’s spiritual understanding, in an era of time known as the Status of the Holy Spirit, was an idea that began entirely with Joachim and the novel methods of scriptural analysis that he pioneered.
Thus, with not much luck in finding a predecessor in the ranks of orthodox Christianity, scholars have had to look farther afield in order to find, if not a source for Joachim’s thought, at least a convincing parallel with which to compare it. Perhaps the trend began with Henrik Ibsen who, in his great Joachimist work Emperor and Galilean, put Joachim’s teachings in the mouth of a fourth-century pagan mystic named Maximus; despite the fact that the historical figure of that name never approached anything like Joachim’s thought. Norway’s great playwright was not the last to look for Joachimism’s origins in the early centuries of Christianity. Marjorie Reeves, for all her good work in establishing Joachim’s uniqueness within the main line of Catholic thought, was not immune to this impulse. She frequently credited an early formulation of Joachim’s Age of the Holy Spirit to the second-century heretic Montanus while also suggesting that Joachim’s contemporary Amalric of Bène had developed his own version of the idea independently of the Calabrian. Neither of these claims seems to bear much weight. More recent scholars agree that Montanus’s “New Prophecy” movement was an attempt to restore Christianity to the form it had in the time of the apostles rather than the avowed forerunner of a new spiritual age. As for Amalric, all the recent scholarship I have been able to find takes for granted that he knew and was influenced by Joachim’s thought in some form. Indeed, Amalric’s example seems to rebut Reeves’s own assertion that it took decades after Joachim’s death for his thought to spread beyond Italy and for its radical ramifications to be understood.
Other scholars have ventured even further afield, turning toward Zoroastrianism—particularly in its Zurvanite incarnation—and its descendent faith, Manichaeism. These scholars suggest that the two Persianate faiths possess a three-age system not unlike Joachim’s. Zurvanism, for instance, is said to have a first age when Zurvan begins creation, a second age when Ahriman rules a broken and imperfect world, and a third when Ahura Mazda triumphs and rings in the glorious new paradise. Manichaeism is said to have a first age when light and darkness a separate, a second age in which they intermingle to form our current world, and a third age when light will finally escape from darkness and return to its source in God. However, the first and third “ages” in both of these systems include the times before our current universe’s creation and after its end. These are the “first and last things” that fall outside the scope of history, properly considered. They are not historical ages within our own world, for our world and its history only cover the middle “period.” Indeed, they are not so different in this respect from the standard Christian narrative of the universe’s prelapsarian perfection, the tragic fall of man, and the restoration of all things at the end of time. Joachim’s three ages were all within this current world’s past and future history, bookended by but distinct from the moment of creation and the final glory of the New Jerusalem. Furthermore, both Zurvanite Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism present the middle “period” as a time of degeneration, a low point between the loss of the original perfection and its eventual return. There is simply no sense of steady progress and continued evolution—albeit with a few serious hiccups along the way—that gives the procession of Joachim’s ages its unique significance.
In a somewhat similar vein, Lenart Škof’s recent article, “The Third Age: Reflections on Our Hidden Material Core,” attempts to root Joachim’s Three Ages in traditional Jewish wisdom. To do this, Škof quotes the Babylonian Talmud, which states, “The world will continue for six thousand years, the first two thousand of which were a chaos (Tahu), the second two thousand were of Torah, and the third two thousand are the days of the Messiah” (qtd. in Škof 84). Škof further clarifies this in his own words, “The three ages, as propounded by the authors of the Babylonian Talmud, refer to the chaotic age before the Law, to the age of the Law of Torah, and to the future Messianic age which is still to come” (Škof 84). Relying heavily of Reeves and, through her, Lerner, Škof then tries to construct a tidy line of transmission from the Jewish sages of old to Joachim. But while Joachim’s familiarity with traditional Jewish wisdom is certainly well-known, Škof’s contention does not hold up to much scrutiny. For these three Talmudic ages seem to be largely identical with the three ages proposed by St. Augustine: ante legem (before the Law), sub lege (under the Law), and sub gratia (under grace, as provided by the incarnate Christ). Curiously, Škof seems to at least partially recognize this but places Augustine in the line of transmission between the Talmud to Joachim, despite dating the Babylonian Talmud to 600 A.D., nearly two centuries after Augustine’s passing.
For what it’s worth, Augustine’s system divided the lifespan of the world into three separate eras, but there was no sense of progression or improvement—as we have seen previously, Augustine was resolutely against such ideas. They were simply three separate ways in which God related to humanity over the course of time. Joachim knew the idea from Augustine but it did not make for a key part of the Calabrian’s own Three Ages doctrine. After all, in the earlier formulation, Joachim’s unique historical sense and his notion of each age as developing organically out of the one that came before are both absent. And, of course, Joachim would not, as the Talmud and Augustine did, identify the third age as the time of the messiah. For Joachim, the second age was the Status of the Son, ruled over by Christ as messiah. Though Christ as a central figure of the faith would not disappear from the Age of the Holy Spirit, that era was not about the figure of the messiah or His singular rule upon earth. It was a time of widespread spiritual growth where the locus of historical development would be in found not in any one single individual but in the collective body of the spiritual men (vires spirituales). This vision of the world being transformed through the collective effort of the many rather than the remarkable achievements of a single extraordinary figure was a new idea quite unlike anything either the Jewish sages or Augustine had envisioned.
It is important at this juncture to note that not every system or idea that divides time into three distinct periods is either a parallel of, source for, or inheritance from Joachim. After all, we see such divisions all around us. As noted above, orthodox Christian provides more than enough. So does our wider culture. And while I think it likely that the common manner in which we view history, with its division into the three periods of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity, owes much to Joachim, the form that idea most often takes in popular culture, with the Middle Ages treated as an era of darkness between two eons of light, is far more akin to the Zurvanite, Manichaean, and traditional Christian schemes. What is more, each of us makes a threefold division of time every day when we speak of the past, the present, and the future, without any debt to Joachim whatsoever. While the Three Ages are the most distinctive feature of Joachim’s thought, the uniqueness of his system was not in the mere fact that he perceived the existence of three ages, but what he did with them.
To illuminate this point, it is perhaps useful to turn back to the above-quoted statement of Marjorie Reeves. The full paragraph from which those sentences were taken offers several points worth remembering in discussions of Joachim:
The crucial point here is that—however mystically conceived—it is still a new stage of history he envisages. It is not a supernatural millennium coming down from above; it is not just a ‘pause’ granted by God rather arbitrarily. It is the logical climax of the whole historical process, but because it is still part of time it does not embody final perfection. A new experience will be given, and men will live on a higher plane of spiritual understanding, but Joachim never confuses this with the illumination of eternity in the full presence of God. The tribulation of Antichrist in the Sixth Age [of the church] is to be greater than but not different from those inflicted by the sequence of tyrants throughout the Church’s history. The agents of his overthrow are seen in the main as human, though divinely aided. Because the third status is still part of history, even its life must at the last deteriorate and a final persecution of Antichrist under the form of Gog and Magog must ensue. Joachim never confuses the Seventh Day with the Eighth Day of eternity. (Reeves 293)
Once again, it is the very historicity of Joachim’s thought that makes him distinctive. The Three Status are all within time. They are all a part of time. They make up the fabric of history; it is because of them that history can progress. The world advances and evolves as they themselves do. Each age is an outgrowth of its predecessor, not a wholly unrelated entity. And as they are within history, each of them is subject to immutable historical processes; even the glorious Third Age must end with the war of another Antichrist against the people of God. But these three periods are not, in Joachim’s system, merely units of time. They also correspond to levels of spiritual insight and illumination. Thus, the procession of the Three Status is a journey of ever-increasing spiritual enlightenment, with the Age of the Son representing an increase in spiritual knowledge and comprehension from the Age of the Father. In turn, the Age of the Spirit will represent a further increase in spiritual understanding. There will be new ways and means of understanding spiritual truths and these spiritual gifts will be, for the first time, potentially open to everyone, extending the light of truth far beyond what the first two ages allowed. It is this understanding of history as a historical process and the truly transformative nature of the coming era that makes Joachim’s thought so singular and unique.
With that in mind, we can dismiss most of the parallels that have been suggested for Joachim’s teachings. For all of his reliance upon the Bible and prior theologians like Augustine, he did create a complex of ideas truly unprecedented in the history of human thought. That being said, there is one parallel which I do find intriguing. It does not predate Joachim, so his status as the first to hold these ideas remains unchallenged. But it does come from a culture and a milieu in which he could not have had any influence, thereby making it the one example of similar ideas and symbols arising independently in the human mind. Until now, however, its likeness to Joachim has gone largely unnoticed, making a discussion of this particular system all the more urgent. For if Joachim’s particular conception of the Three Ages ever did have a true parallel, it was in the distinctive eschatology that emerged within Chinese popular sectarianism over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Works Cited
Acts of the Apostles. The Oxford Study Bible, edited by M. Jack Suggs, Katharin Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Meuller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 1394-1430.
Joachim of Fiore. Liber de Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti, edited by E. Randolph Daniel. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 73, no. 8 (1983): pp. 1-455. Translation mine.
Lerner, Robert E. “Refreshment of the Saints: The Time After Antichrist as a Station for Earthly Progress in Medieval Thought.” Traditio, vol. 32 (1976): pp. 97-144.
Reeves, Marjorie. “The Originality and Influence of Joachim of Fiore.” Traditio, vol. 36 (1980): pp. 269-316.
Škof’, Lenart. “The Third Age: Reflections on Our Hidden Material Core.” Sophia, vol. 59, no. 1 (March 2020): pp. 83-94.
The Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. The Oxford Study Bible, edited by M. Jack Suggs, Katharin Doob Sakenfeld, and James R. Meuller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. pp. 778-847.
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