Below I will look at 4 of the methods of interpreting the book of John's Revelation that developed over church history. To flesh this out, click here.
1) The oldest and probably most influential view is the Past View or Preterist View. Essentially, this says that most of the book of Revelation refers to the Roman Empire: perhaps the most logical view. That is, it can easily be demonstrated from the history of the time it was written. For instance, the "7 kings" can be shown to be directly related to the Imperial Cult of the day.
It seems there can be little doubt this view is valid. The style of the book is "Jewish Apocalyptical" and the imagery corresponds to Rome, the fourth Beast of Daniel's visions. It was under Roman domination that the church was born.
2) The next method of interpretation of the Apocalypse was basically popularized by Augustine. Augustine grew weary of the prognosticators that preceded him: the endless sea of predictions for Jesus' return that he saw as injurious to the church. In order to squelch these fancies, Augustine explained Revelation as Symbolic history.
In other words, Augustine saw Revelation as a proceeding vision. One-thousand year references were not to be taken literally, but applied to the whole of Christian history. That is, Revelation images could be applied to any time in history. But they were to be handled as just that, imagery. This has been the dominant interpretation in Catholicism, so heavily influenced by Augustine.
3) Despite Augustine's efforts, literalists still abounded. These interpreters saw the millennial imagery as pertaining to the current age of the church. They developed means of interpretation now known as the Continuous Historical view. That is, the imagery of Revelation could be applied literally to whatever period of time in which the church found itself.
This method of interpretation persisted from the time of Joachim of Fiore in the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Joachim used the 42 generations of the Gospel genealogies to calculate 1,260 years from the birth of Jesus to his own day as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, ending with Saladin who defeated the Crusaders. In other words, one could apply scriptural clues to present situations. These methods came to be known as "postmillennial." This mode persisted through the Reformation even until Cotton Mather's time in the Colonial era.
4) The final method of interpretation is the Futurist mode, basically emerging from Calvinist and Reform theology. This was popularized in the late 19th century by the dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and popularized by the successes of the Scofield Bible marginal notes after 1909. It arose because it became difficult to see how the thousand years, if taken literally as in the Continuous Mode of interpretation, could be in the past. Thus developed "premillennialism". That is, everything in Revelation, from chapter 4 on, needed to be interpreted as predictive of future events.
With a literal 1,000-year period posited in the future, the imagery of Revelation needed to be interpreted as "end-time" events surrounding the return of Christ and placing him as reigning during an actualized millennium on the earth. Once again, this urged many inquirers to refigure old guesses as to the dating of the return of Christ, all of them wrong, obviously.
The point is, Revelation is very enigmatic and compels us to desire to unlock its secrets. Even Columbus sailed the ocean blue in response to his millennial interpretations. And still, today, we find there are biblical scholars who tend to fit themselves into one of the four above-mentioned groups of interpreters.
Perhaps it is the frustation we feel with unsolved mysteries. It is the riddle that won't quit. And, of course, there are those who just leave the thing alone. But I never could. It is the most fascinating book of the Bible.
I wonder then if the answer lies in all 4 of the above modes and not in any single one. That is, the document refers definitely to its day, contains mystical reference to the developing age of the church, and culminates somewhere up ahead of us. Again, we are left to spar over literal and figurative interpretations.
May the best man win?
1) The oldest and probably most influential view is the Past View or Preterist View. Essentially, this says that most of the book of Revelation refers to the Roman Empire: perhaps the most logical view. That is, it can easily be demonstrated from the history of the time it was written. For instance, the "7 kings" can be shown to be directly related to the Imperial Cult of the day.
It seems there can be little doubt this view is valid. The style of the book is "Jewish Apocalyptical" and the imagery corresponds to Rome, the fourth Beast of Daniel's visions. It was under Roman domination that the church was born.
2) The next method of interpretation of the Apocalypse was basically popularized by Augustine. Augustine grew weary of the prognosticators that preceded him: the endless sea of predictions for Jesus' return that he saw as injurious to the church. In order to squelch these fancies, Augustine explained Revelation as Symbolic history.
In other words, Augustine saw Revelation as a proceeding vision. One-thousand year references were not to be taken literally, but applied to the whole of Christian history. That is, Revelation images could be applied to any time in history. But they were to be handled as just that, imagery. This has been the dominant interpretation in Catholicism, so heavily influenced by Augustine.
3) Despite Augustine's efforts, literalists still abounded. These interpreters saw the millennial imagery as pertaining to the current age of the church. They developed means of interpretation now known as the Continuous Historical view. That is, the imagery of Revelation could be applied literally to whatever period of time in which the church found itself.
This method of interpretation persisted from the time of Joachim of Fiore in the 12th century to the mid-19th century. Joachim used the 42 generations of the Gospel genealogies to calculate 1,260 years from the birth of Jesus to his own day as the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, ending with Saladin who defeated the Crusaders. In other words, one could apply scriptural clues to present situations. These methods came to be known as "postmillennial." This mode persisted through the Reformation even until Cotton Mather's time in the Colonial era.
4) The final method of interpretation is the Futurist mode, basically emerging from Calvinist and Reform theology. This was popularized in the late 19th century by the dispensationalism of John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) and popularized by the successes of the Scofield Bible marginal notes after 1909. It arose because it became difficult to see how the thousand years, if taken literally as in the Continuous Mode of interpretation, could be in the past. Thus developed "premillennialism". That is, everything in Revelation, from chapter 4 on, needed to be interpreted as predictive of future events.
With a literal 1,000-year period posited in the future, the imagery of Revelation needed to be interpreted as "end-time" events surrounding the return of Christ and placing him as reigning during an actualized millennium on the earth. Once again, this urged many inquirers to refigure old guesses as to the dating of the return of Christ, all of them wrong, obviously.
The point is, Revelation is very enigmatic and compels us to desire to unlock its secrets. Even Columbus sailed the ocean blue in response to his millennial interpretations. And still, today, we find there are biblical scholars who tend to fit themselves into one of the four above-mentioned groups of interpreters.
Perhaps it is the frustation we feel with unsolved mysteries. It is the riddle that won't quit. And, of course, there are those who just leave the thing alone. But I never could. It is the most fascinating book of the Bible.
I wonder then if the answer lies in all 4 of the above modes and not in any single one. That is, the document refers definitely to its day, contains mystical reference to the developing age of the church, and culminates somewhere up ahead of us. Again, we are left to spar over literal and figurative interpretations.
May the best man win?
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