Cannons from Canon

INTRODUCTION

“And though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.” (G.K Chesterton, Orthodoxy).

Four Views on the Book of Revelation ed. by Stanley N. Gundry and C. Marvin Pate is a perfect example of what Chesterton was getting at with the above quote. No other book in the Bible shares such a variety of interpretations as does Revelation– at least not such a wide variety. There is no agreement on the genre, the date and place of writing, and how we should interpret the book. All of this makes it easy for some to say that eschatology is pointless or that we can never really know anything about the future. But that mindset won’t suffice for two reasons: 1) God gave us Revelation for a reason, “These words are faithful and true, and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his slaves the things which must take place in a short time,” (Re 22:6). 2) It is fallacious to think that just because there are multiple opinions about something therefore it is less likely that any of them be true.

With that said, in the next couple of pages I would like to summarize the four views represented in Four Views on the Book of Revelation and offer strengths and weaknesses of each position as I see them. Also, I would like to comment as to why I think there is such mayhem when it comes to interpreting Revelation and the end time drama.

IDEALIST

Approaching the views in a different order than the book, I will approach them weakest to greatest as I see them. Starting with the Idealist view I will borrow Grant Osborne’s definition: 

This popular approach argues that the symbols do not relate to historical events but rather to timeless spiritual truths (so Hendriksen, Hoekema, P. Hughes). As such it relates primarily to the church between the advents, that is, between Christ’s first and second comings. Thus it concerns the battle between God and evil and between the church and the world at all times in church history. The seals, trumpets, and bowls depict God’s judgments on sinners at all times, and the beast refers to all the anti-Christian empires and rulers in history. Thus the book describes the victory of Christand his people down through history. The millennium in this approach is not a future event but the final cycle of the book (so Hendriksen) describing the church age.

This view is argued by Sam Hastra Jr. in the book. The justification for interpreting the entire book symbolically and not connecting it to any real events (past or future) is the ‘apocalyptic’ genre of the book, “You approach apocalyptic literature differently than you would a letter or one of the Gospels. In Revelation words take the place of pigments and brushes to create a portrait designed to visualize great principles, not particular incidents.” In this view the book comforts all believers in all times that God is at work in the chaos to defeat evil and chaos.

Most would agree that the greatest strength of this view is that it gives the book relevance for all of church history. I agree that this is the greatest strength of the view but I do not think that it can hold any weight. It seems to me that stripping a book and prophecy from any sort of historical reality does not make it more relevant to people living outside of that time period. Nothing could be more relevant today than the historical events that took place from 30-33 A.D, the teaching, life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is all rooted to history and yet is extremely relevant to those who live outside of the first century. I submit that there is nothing that would be more catastrophic to the relevancy of the first advent than detaching it from its historical reality. I argue that the same applies for the second advent.

Not only does the relevancy argument fail in my estimation, the view also has many weaknesses. First and foremost, it is entirely subjective. The meaning of the text is stripped from the author (both God and John for that matter) and put in the hands of the reader. Therefore there is nothing that would make Sam Hastra’s interpretation any more right or wrong than my interpretation. The idealist view is not grounded in history or grammar and therefore it is not grounded at all. In my estimation this view is for those who do not wish to engage in serious exegesis. The view also overlooks the fact that the book refers to itself as prophecy and gives a blessing for those who keep its words. (Re 22:7).

PROGRESSIVE DISPENSATIONALIST

I was excited to read this view more than any others in the book but I was found to be pretty disappointed by the approach. C. Marvin Pate defended this view, “for the progressive dispensationalist, the hermeneutical key to Revelation (and for that matter, the New Testament in general) is the “already/not yet” eschatological tension.”

Respectablally, Pate shows his cards right away, however his presupposition is hermeneutically weak and to his own admission “the progressive dispensational point of view represents an eclectic approach, combining what it perceives to be the best in the aforementioned interpretations.” An eclectic approach can be admirable but more than likely just ends up being partially wrong everywhere. Essentially, this approach sees the book as a revelation of A.D 70, the imperial cult in the 90’s and the future Great Tribulation.

Another issue with this view is that it requires there to be two dates for the book, Pate sees the book as predicting events surrounding A.D 70 and also to churches suffering in the 90’s. The issue with this is that the whole book is written as a prophecy of future events, and if the book is written after the supposed events that it is prophesying, that would make it disingenuous and misleading.

I do appreciate Pate’s recognition of some of the intricacies of eschatology. The end times in scripture is not as clear cut as some might argue. There does seem to be a tension in the Olivet discourse and Revelation between the ‘birth pangs’ and the actual ‘birth’. Jesus taught, “you are going to hear about wars and rumors of wars. See to it that you are not alarmed, for this must happen, but the end is not yet. … but all these things are the beginning of birth pains.” (Mt 24:6–8). While there might be some “already/not yet” tension within eschatology, I do not think that the solution is trying to borrow a little bit from each position. Rather, I would have liked to see Pate agree with a position so far as the text of Revelation agreed with a position.

While there is value in progressing or refining a theological position, I am not sure if Pate has done that with his view of Revelation.

PRETERIST

The Preterist position sees the vast majority of prophecy as already having been fulfilled in the 1st century. The term comes from the Latin meaning ‘before’ and is used to describe the view that sees Revelation as a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D 70, hence the prophecy is “before” us today. There are two types of preterism, full and partial preterism. Full preterism sees all of scripture and prophecy as being fulfilled before the first century. This view denies a future resurrection and is thus heresy according to Paul and christian orthodoxy. Partial preterism is a view that sees most of prophecy as already fulfilled with still a future expectation of the resurrection and eternal state. This view is held within evangelicalism.

Kenneth Gentry defends the partial preterist view in this volume, “Preterism holds that the bulk of John’s prophecies occur in the first century, soon after his writing of them. Though the prophecies were in the future when John wrote and when his original audience read them, they are now in our past.”

Gentry starts his essay by making the claim that “Revelation is a highly figurative book that we cannot approach with a simple straightforward literalism.” and then goes on to attack a literal interpretation of Scripture. This was not appreciated. I would argue that a proper understanding of symbols is actually the literal interpretation. Here we must distinguish between literal and wooden literal. Interpreting Jesus’s “I am” statements wooden literally defies the rules of grammar and authorial intent. Understanding them literally does not demand that Jesus is actually a door but that He is the entrance to salvation.

Looking past Gentry’s distaste for dispensationalism, he actually makes some good hermeneutical points. The most powerful being Jesus’s own words: The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place.… Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. (Rev. 1:1a, 3, italics added)” The book ends in similar fashion (Re 22:6;10).

Gentry most emphatically states his point like this: 

How else could the New Testament express nearness more clearly? As these verses so evidently show, dramatic divine judgments are “soon,” “near,” “at hand,” “at the door,” “present”; “the hour has come”; “the time is short”; “the wrath of God is coming”; “the day is approaching” in “just a little while.” These events are to occur in “this generation,” before “some who are standing … taste death.”

I do think he makes a valid point, there is too much soon and nearness language to simply put all of the revelation in the distant future. The “soon” language is definitely his strongest point. Gentry’s main weaknesses are related to his ecclesiology. He fails to see the distinction between the church and Israel. His second issue is that he demands the judgment on Israel in A.D 70 is a coming of Christ. The issue with this however is that the Old and New Testament are clear that when Jesus comes back Israel will be repentant and “all Israel will be saved”. This definitely did not happen in A.D 70. There is also an inconsistency with his hermeneutics where obvious global and cosmic signs and disturbances are supposedly related to just the destruction of Jerusalem.

I am convinced that a faithful and unbiased interpreter of Scripture will not entirely throw out the partial preterist interpretation. I think that it can be approached with a literal hermeneutic and a dispensational ecclesiology and I hope someone paves that ground some day.

DISPENSATIONAL

Robert Thomas represents the dispensational view in this book. This view sees the book as mainly future and unfulfilled even today. This all comes from a strict hermeneutic, “Some recommend different interpretive principles because of the book’s alleged apocalyptic genre, but by its own claim the book is a prophecy and deserves a literal interpretation, just as other prophetic books do.”

Thomas sees the Revelation as an expansion of the Olivet Discourse. He also notes Revelation 1:7 as a blending of the prophecies of Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10. One of Thomas’s strengths in his chapter is pointing out the weaknesses in the other views, especially the preterist.

The main strengths of the Dispensational view is a consistent and literal interpretation of the letter. The weaknesses as I see them is that it might overlook the urgency and nearness of the letter. But Thomas did the best overall in my opinion.

CONCLUSION

While Revelation might be a confusing book at first glance, I believe that a serious student with a good hermeneutic and knowledge of the Old Testament can mine through the Apocalypse and find the gems that God has in His Word. No doubt Jerusalem was judged for killing their Messiah, but this was not a divorce or rejection of the promises. This world has yet to see the Great Tribulation, but we already know how it ends and that “God did not appoint us for wrath, but for the obtaining of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.”  (1 Th 5:9).

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

Four Views on the Book of Revelation (ed. Stanley N. Gundry and C. Marvin Pate; Zondervan Counterpoints Collection; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998)

Osborne, Grant R.. Revelation (baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament). None. Baker Academic, 2002.