Think Wink.

Before actually getting to the text of Revelation 20:1-6, I feel I must address a major issue: how to read Scripture. There are two things that most people forget to do when they come to the book of Revelation. First, they don’t realize and take into account the type of literary genre they are reading. They say they are reading the passage literally but they don’t know what it means to read something in the sensus literalis or the literal sense. Secondly, they start their prophecy study with the Old Testament in the events concerning the Parousia instead of the New Testament. I want to take a few moments to talk about why it is important to understand these two principles correctly when interpreting Scripture, let alone eschatological passages.

First, what is sensus literalis? The phrase was first popularized by Martin Luther before and during the Reformation years in the 16th century. Basically he meant the intended sense of the text, or what the author literally meant. Listen to what he said about interpreting Scripture in his debate with Erasmus and Diatribe in The Bondage of the Will,

No ‘implication’ or ‘figure’ may be allowed to exist in any passage of Scripture unless such be required by some obvious feature of the words and the absurdity of their plain sense…Everywhere we should stick to just the simple, natural meaning of the words, as yielded by the rules of grammar and the habits of speech that God has created among men…Our question is, whether we may with safety and certainty suppose that we are correct in invoking it [figures, implications, analogies, and other allegorical interpretations] to explain this passage, and whether Paul meant to use it here. We do not want to know how a strange reader might use it, but whether Paul himself, the writer, used it (Martin Luther, “Bondage of the Will,” 191-194).

What he is saying is that we must seek to endeavor what the author of our text was trying say. We cannot put our own spin on it. Even if we could through the literal meanings of the words themselves, the author who wrote the text might not have meant the words to be construed as we have construed them. Luther was trying to warn us from that.

I like how RC Sproul wrote about this subject in connection with the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21). In The Last Days According to Jesus, Sproul writes, “One should interpret the Bible according to the manner in which it was written, or in its ‘literary sense’…To interpret the Bible ‘literally’ in the classical sense requires that we learn to recognize in Scripture different genres of literature” (Sproul, Last Days According to Jesus, 65). That means we read poetry in the Bible as poetry and narrative as a narrative. We read prose as prose and we read apocalyptic as apocalyptic.

Sproul goes on to say, “Part of the confusion concerning biblical interpretation stems from the contemporary usage of the tem literal. Literal today usually refers, not to the technical sense in which Luther used it, but to the interpretation of poetic images and the like as straightforward didactic or indicative language. To take the text ‘literally’ in this sense is not to interpret it according to the genre in which it is written, but to interpret it in a plain indicative sense” (Sproul, 65-66).

We must take the author in the sense that he intended us to take him. Otherwise, we overstep our hermeneutical bounds. While working on this paper, I heard a woman declare on a Christian radio show hosted by a Christian lawyer that the Lebanon-Israeli Conflict (Summer 2006) is fulfillment of Scripture. Her support for such a declaration is that one day, she was reading Psalm 83 during breakfast. She then a short time later (I don’t remember the exact time frame but it seemed to be no longer than a few days) she heard that in Scotland (or Ireland) an archaeologist found an ancient copy of the Psalms. The text that it was opened to was Psalm 83. She took a news headline and made the Bible fit that. She did not even attempt to exegete the text or give a text to support her statement. We must keep in the sensus literalis that Luther so boldly preached when we look at any text.

Secondly, we must remember who we are and what it is that defines us. What I mean is that are we Israelites under the Mosaic Covenant, or are we Christians under the covenant of Christ’s blood? To answer that question, I turn to Loraine Boettner in The Meaning of the Millennium, ed. Robert Clouse, when he makes this observation,

A most remarkable phenomenon in the science of Bible study is that only a very few of those who call themselves evangelical Christians take any notice of the fact that the Old Covenant, which we have in the first part of our Bibles in the Old Testament, was made exclusively with the nation of Israel and that it has now been replaced by the New Covenant, which we call the New Testament, which was made exclusively with the Church…The New Testament, which alone is the authoritative document for the Christian church, should be called he New Covenant. Testament, as in “last will and testament,” means dying counsel or final disposition of property. But the New Testament is not the dying counsel of Jesus. Rather it is the New Covenant which was given in fulfillment of the promise that came through Jeremiah [31:33-34]. That was what Christ announced when he instituted the Lord’s Supper. “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). (Boettner, “Millennium,” 97)

What Boettner is saying is that our primary source of theology is that found in the New Testament. George Eldon Ladd, an Historic Premillennialist, says this in The Meaning of the Millennium,

Here is the watershed between dispensational and a nondispensational theology. Dispensationalism forms its eschatology by a literal interpretation of the Old Testament and then fits the New Testament into it. A nondispensational eschatology forms its theology from the explicit teaching of the New Testament (Ladd, “Millennium,” 27).

Our theology, not just a single branch, must start with the New Testament. The Old Testament is no longer upon us. Boettner goes on to say, “No requirements from the Old Covenant are binding on the Christian except the moral principles that are repeated in the New Covenant. The Old Testament is our history book. It is not our law book” (Boettner, “Millennium,” 98). The apostle Paul echoes this in 1 Corinthians 10:11 where he says, “Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.”

The author of Hebrews speaks of this authority of the New Testament over the Old Testament in terms of covenants. Hebrews says of the new covenant prophesied by Jeremiah 31:33-34, “For if that first covenant [Mosaic Covenant] had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second…In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” The old covenant did vanish when Titus conquered Jerusalem and sacked the Temple Mount. Christ was left vindicated and the church was God’s only covenant body left. With the old out of the way, the New was left to prosper, which it indeed did. The New covenant is a better covenant and by default and necessity makes the Old Covenant obsolete and unnecessary. What is needed is what is repeated by the New Covenant writers. Therefore, to interpret our text, we must remember these principles of interpretation.

Bibliography
Clouse, Robert, ed. The Meaning of The Millennium: Four Views. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1977).

Luther, Martin, trans. Packer, Johnston. Bondage of the Will. (Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revel, 1957).

Sproul, R C. The Last Days According to Jesus. (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Baker Books, 1998).

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My Millennial Views Pt. 1

This Time Next Year…

The Lord Is Moving