ETS Paper: The Hermeneutics Of The Revelation: A Canonical Approach

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Abstract

To write a paper on the hermeneutics of the Revelation is an ambitious and daunting task. Much has been written and will continue to be written on this topic. To arrive at a correct hermeneutical approach to the last book in the biblical canon is a difficult task because, as one reads the works that have written on the topic, one begins to feel that there are as many hermeneutical approaches as there are interpreters. Still, these approaches are usually able to be categorized according to four basic interpretive camps: the historicist, preterist, idealist and futurist approaches.1 There are also interpreters who embrace some combination of these four views,2 or even believe that all are in some sense correct.3 As attractive as these mediating positions are, they run the risk of gaining the weaknesses of the views while losing their strengths. To lay the cards on the table, as it were, let me state up front that I am a futurist. I believe that the Revelation describes actual events and individuals in a time yet future. The purpose of this paper is to introduce you to one of the reasons I hold this to be the case, namely,