Part 3 of 12 of the theme 'Lessons from Revelation ' by Gijs van den Brink
The book of Revelation is a difficult book. In previous blogs we saw that this is because, starting in chapter four, the book contains a succession of visions. The visions are often difficult to understand.
Another difficulty is how should we read the book? As a prophecy about what will happen in the future or purely spiritual and symbolic? We can mainly distinguish two main streams, the symbolic or idealistic interpretation and historical interpretations. We discuss the former here.
The symbolic vision, also called the Alexandrian one, the Church owes to Church Father Origenes of Alexandria (3e century). His follower, the aforementioned Dionysius of Alexandria (died 265), reads the book of Revelation as a succession of timeless allegories, a kind of symbols or metaphors. The idealists are not concerned with concrete events, but with principles.
One speaks of the battle between the Kingdom of God and evil. For example, the "Beast" in Rev. 13 is not a historical person or entity, but an image of Satan's power. And the battle at Harmageddon is not something that happens on earth, but an ideological conflict between faith and unbelief. Just as Origenes spiritualized the OT, the idealists spiritualize the book of Revelation.
After Constantine the Great in the 4th century A.D. when Christianity became state religion, this explanation became most popular in traditional state churches, for the church no longer needed consolation for difficult times. It no longer looked forward longingly to the imminent coming of Christ. And there was certainly no need for a vision where government represents evil!
With the majority of New Testament exegetes, we reject the rationale of idealistic interpretation. John is a prophet like the Old Testament prophets, and like them he speaks concretely about the history of God with His people and the world. As concretely as Jeremiah foresaw the exile, so concretely does John speak of the appearance of the antichrist (the "beast" Rev. 13) and the coming of Christ to judgment (Rev. 19). If the latter, the coming of Christ, is meant to be historical, wouldn't the penultimate be meant to be historical?
This is separate from the many symbolism that occurs in the book and that, of course, you cannot take the images from the visions literally. We have seen this before. This also applies to numbers like 144,000, 7 or 10. The key question is constantly how images and events relate.
Next time discuss historical interpretation.
Author: Gijs van den Brink
From: Study Bible Magazine
This is part 3 of 12 concise blog on the topic of "Lessons from Revelation" from Study Bible Magazine, Some of which we will be posting online in the near future. We hope this will help you understand the Bible better!
