THE EARLY CHURCH
Full-length commentaries from the first three centuries of the church have not survived for us to examine, with the exception of that of Victorinus of Pettau (d. 303), which seems to have come down to us in a form altered from its original state. Of this, Swete writes:
Of the commentary of Victorinus in general it is impossible to speak with confidence until it is before us in a form nearer to that in which it came from his pen. But the extract published by Haussleiter from what appears to be the original work confirms the statement that Victorinus held firmly by the chiliastic [premillennial] interpretation of Apoc. xx.30
We know that Melito of Sardis (170), Irenaeus (180), and Hippolytus of Rome (220) aft wrote complete commentaries on Revelation, but none of these have survived to Ihe present. There are fragments of exposition on Revelation to be found in Justin Martyr (d.165), Melito, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and other early fathers. In his writings, Tertulian (d. 220) quoted from eighteen of the twenty-two chapters.31 From these, we can know what these men believed about a number of the subjects in Revelation, and can extrapolate from them what their general view of the book must have been.
VIEWS OF THE PRE-NICENE WESTERN FATHERS
Papias (c.130), bishop of Phrygian Hierapolis, interpreted the Millennium as a future golden age on earth, and “embellished his description of it with features drawn from Jewish sources.”32 His millennial (then called chiliastic] ideas were followed, in the main, by Justin, Irenaeus and Tertullian, and Lactantius (d. 320). It is on this basis that premillennialists today often claim that the early church was uniformly premillennial. This conclusion, however, is not wholly trustworthy in light of the evidence.
We do not have access to much that was written in the first four centuries of the church, and a large variety of interpretations may have been held for which no documentation has survived. Justin Martyr (a premillennialist), writing on this very subject, left clear testimony to the presence in his day of alternative viewpoints in the church. In his Dialogue With Trypho, Justin wrote:
I am not so miserable a fellow, Trypho, as to say one thing and think another. I admitted to you formerly, that I and many others are of this opinion [premillennialism], and [believe] that such will take place, as you assuredly are aware; but on the other hand, I signified to you that many who belong to the pure and pious faith, and are true Christians, think otherwise.33
It is clear that there were “many” whom Justin regarded as “true Christians” and who belong to the pure and pious faith” who did not hold to his premillennialism. That he did not regard them as heretics serves to illustrate that the early church would not have agreed with dispensationalist John F. Walvoord’s assessment that premillenialism is of comparable importance to the doctrines of verbal inspiration, the deity of Christ, substitutionary atonement, and bodily resurrection.34 The evidence suggests that the development of eschatological systems was not a chief priority among the ear-iest Christians. Thus, many of the principal fathers neglected to say enough about their views on this subject to enable us to determine their exact sentiments. We are certainly at liberty to question the validity of sweeping statements of dispensationalists fke Charles C. Ryrie, when he asserts that “Premillennialism is the historic faith of the Church.”35 A more accurate statement of the case would be that the eschatological fragments of the few writers whose works we can examine bear witness to the premtillennial convictions of those particular writers.
In addition to his expectation of a terrestrial kingdom and a restored Jerusalem (based on Revelation 21), Irenaeus identified the first beast of Revelation with Paul’s nan of sin and considered a possible identification of 666 with the Greek Lateinos (Roman), suggesting Rome. Based upon 17:12, he believed that the empire would be divided into ten kingdoms and Rome reduced to ashes.36
In his tract, On Christ and Antichrist, Hippolytus identified the two witnesses of chapter 11 as Enoch and Elijah. The pregnant woman of chapter 12 was seen as the church, and the whore Babylon as Rome. He saw the first beast as the Roman Empire, to be wounded to death but restored under Antichrist. The second beast was seen as ten kingdoms that will replace the empire.37
In Rome, Tertullian understood the book similarly. To him, Babylon is Rome; the two beasts are the Antichrist and the false prophet who wage war with the church. There will be a bodily resurrection, followed by a kingdom of a heavenly order but having its seat on earth.38
Thus the western fathers of the Ante-Nicene church whose works have survived took a somewhat literal and eschatological approach to the Book of Revelation.
THE ALEXANDRIAN FATHERS
The Alexandrian fathers rejected millennialism. These fathers introduced a more spiritualizing approach to Revelation. Origen (c. 185-254) repudiated the literal interpretation of the chiliasts as “Jewish.”
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) interpreted the 24 elders as a symbol of the equality of Jew and Gentile in the church; locusts’ tails as the mischievous influence of immoral teachers; and the many-colored foundation stones of the New Jerusalem as the manifold grace of apostolic teaching.39
Origen interpreted the seven-sealed roll as Scripture, to which Christ alone has the key; the white horse rider, he believed, represents the opening of heaven by the Divine Word through the white light of knowledge which he imparts to believers.40
Methodius followed the Alexandrian approach as well. In his exposition, the male-child of 12:5 represents the baptized soul in which Christ is born; the dragon’s seven heads are the seven greater sins; his ten horns are intended to contrast with the ten commandments; the beast is a symbol of fleshly lust.41
This allegorizing method of interpretation, which did away with the expectation of specific historical fulfillments, eventually displaced the eschatological approach, though both are found together in the commentary of Victorinus in 303. Victorinus’ commentary followed the allegorizing approach. It appears that Augustinian editors may have altered it, however, because in its present form it champions amillennialism, whereas Jerome (c. 345-420) listed Victorinus with Tertullian and Lactantius as a chiliast (that is, a premillennialist).
Tyconius (c. 390), a Donatist, also followed the allegorizing method, though he did not rule out altogether the possibility of historical fulfillments. He applied the Millennium to the interval between the first and second advents of Christ. “His interpretation was taken over by Jerome and Augustine and became normative in the church for the next eight centuries.”42
Augustine (c. 354-430), in The City of God, interpreted Revelation 20 in the same manner as did Tyconius. The same general allegorizing method was followed in the commentaries of Primasius (c. 550), Alcuin (c. 735-c. 800), Rabanus Maurus (c. 775-c. 836) and Walafrid Strabo (c. 807-c. 849). Swete summarizes:
Primasius, Cassiodorius, Apringius, Bede, Beatus, and most of the writers on the Apocalypse who followed them in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, were content with a mystical exegesis which varied in its details according to the fancy of the individual expositor or the needs or ideas of his time.43
During this general period, two commentators stand out as exceptions to the trend of Tyconius:
Andreas of Cappadocia (early sixth century) produced the greatest of the Greek commentaries. Swete regards him as “perhaps the best known of ancient expositors of the Apocalypse, and certainly none of them is more edifying or, in his own way, more attractive.”44 This work blends the methods of Irenaeus, Origin, and Tyconius and makes its own contribution in suggesting some historical fulfillments alongside mystical interpretations. Andreas saw Babylon as the world opposing the church in general, but more specifically identifies the seven kings (17:10) as seven embodiments of the world power, the sixth being Rome and the seventh Constantinople. He remains, with Tyconius and Augustine, amillennial.
In the west, Berengaud (ninth century) also combined the mystical with the historical interpretation. Revelation is seen as covering the whole course of human history. The first six seals are applied to the period from Adam to the fall of Jerusalem; the first six trumpets represent the preaching of the word from times of patriarchs to the age of Christian martyrs; the two witnesses are Enoch and Elijah prior to the second coming of the Lord; the first beast is Antichrist with seven deadly sins as heads; the second beast is seen either as a follower of Antichrist or of all followers of Antichrist taken collectively; Babylon is pagan Rome, but as representing more generally the devil’s city; the ten horns are interpreted as the successive incursions of barbarians which broke up the Roman Empire; the 1000 years extend from the ascension of Christ to the end of the world; and the first resurrection is seen as the present condition of saints.45
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICISM
The development of a “more concrete historicism”46 can be seen in the works of Anselm of Havelberg (1129-1155) and Rupert of Deutz (1111-1129), though the later historicism emphasizing a chronological division of the book came from Joachim of Roris (1130-1201), who also originated the earliest forms of postmillennialism.47
Joachim’s historicism was taken over by most of the Franciscans, especially in Paris, and influenced many in Europe of the 13th and 14th centuries. Though Joachim was loyal to the church of Rome, many during this period who followed his system began to find in Revelation’s first beast a symbol of the Roman papacy. It was this element in historicism that later galvanized the Reformers in their resistance to Rome.
Martin Luther (c. 1500) was one of the first commentators to see Revelation from chapter 4 onwards as a prophetic survey of church history. The particulars of John Calvin’s interpretation are not known, since Revelation is the only New Testament book upon which he did not produce a commentary. However, Luther’s general approach to Revelation was followed by virtually all the Reformers and by Protestants well into the 19th century.
Coming to the defense of the papacy, Spanish Jesuits presented two alternative approaches to the historicism of the Reformers. One response was that of Francisco Ribera (1537-1591), a professor at Salmanca, who taught that John in Revelation only foresaw events of the near future and of the final things at the end of the world, but had none of the intervening history in view. The Antichrist was defined as a future individual who would arise in the end times. Babylon was seen as Rome—not under the popes—but in a future corrupted state. This was the beginning of many of the ideas that are now a part of the futurist approach to Revelation.
Another Jesuit scholar, Luiz de Alcazar (1554-1613), introduced a preterist approach to Revelation, in which chapters 4 through 11 were interpreted as depicting the church’s struggle against Judaism, culminating in the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; chapters 12 through 19 as the church’s struggle with paganism, ending in the fall of Rome in 476; and chapters 20 through 22 as the triumph of the church in papal Rome.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Protestant scholars further developed the details of Luther’s historicism. “In England Joseph Mede and two eminent Cambridge mathematicians, Sir Isaac Newton and William Whiston, found minute fulfillments of St. John’s prophecy from the days of Domitian to their own.”48 A similar system was followed on the Continent by Vitringa and Bengel.
THE RISE OF LITERARY-CRITICAL AND DRAMATC APPROACHES
In this same general period, the great Dutch Protestant theologian, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), introduced two departures from the general Reformed approach to Revelation: (1) He was the first Reformed exegete to give up the identification of the papacy with Antichrist; and (2) He understood some of the visions to reflect the period before and some the period after the fall of Jerusalem. Grotius, according to Bruce, “may ... be regarded as the pioneer of the literary-critical approach to the book.”49 He is widely regarded as a preterist, 50 and Swete says that he “trod generally in the steps of Alcasar.”51
At the end of the 18th century, a view was proposed by Eichhorn which would today be called the dramatic approach, and it is fundamental to the approach of many modern commentators who interpret Revelation spiritually. On this view, Revelation is a great poem, or drama, divisible into acts and scenes, having as its theme the progress and victory of the Christian faith.
The 19th century presented new challenges to those of the continuous-historical persuasion. Historicists had not expected history to continue quite so long, and now interpreters had to find room for the new historical data, like the French Revolution and its results.
THE RISE OF THE FUTURIST APPROACH
For approximately two centuries, Protestants had regarded futurism as a product of the papacy’s self-defense against the claims of the Reformers. Non-Catholics had generally shunned it, though a form of futurism was adopted by the Fifth Monarchy Men in the 17th century. “Their excesses brought it into disrepute, but it was renewed in the 19th century by the early teachings of the Plymouth Brethren and by the Bible Conference movement in the 19th and 20th centuries.”52 The official entrance of the futurist approach to Revelation into Protestant circles came through Samuel R. Maitland, librarian to the archbishop of Canterbury, around 1827. The Plymouth Brethren leader, John Nelson Darby, then incorporated it into his dispensational theology, for which he is most remembered. Other Protestant scholars who began to embrace futurism included Isaac Williams in England, and Stern, Bisping, and others on the continent.53
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SPIRITUAL APPROACH
Meanwhile, others like Auberlen were developing the modern spiritual interpretation that holds that the point of Revelation is to reveal a philosophy of history. Specific persons or events are referred to only when they were outstanding examples of a principle.
By the end of the 19th century a new attitude toward Revelation was developing amid the liberal scholarship in Germany, which soon spread to England and America. This was the literary-critical approach, mentioned earlier. This system of research concerns itself primarily (exclusively?) with the literary source materials of the Apocalyptic author and his method of utilizing them for his purpose. Historical or eschatological fulfillments of the visions are not looked for in actual time and space.
THE CONTEMPORARY CONSERVATIVE PROTESTANT SCENE
Conservative Protestant commentaries (those that do not follow the literary-critical approach) in the 19th and 20th centuries have been divided:
The historicist approach continued into the 19th century in the writings of E. B. Elliott (Horae Apocalypticae, 1847), A. J. Gordon, Albert Barnes, and others. To my knowledge, the only modern commentaries that espouse this view have not come from recognized scholars (not that this fact should condemn them), but from essentially self-published authors who are desirous to reintroduce this viewpoint to a modern readership.54 Eugene Boring would seem to be correct when he writes, “Although widely held by Protestant interpreters after the Reformation and into the twentieth century, no critical New Testament scholar today advocates this view.”55
The preterist approach was followed in the 19th century by Moses Stuart (1845), and in the early 20th century by James Snowden (1919). Preterism has had a recent resurgence in the writings of Christian Reconstructionists like David Chilton and Kenneth Gentry.
One of the first popular presentations of the futurist approach, and the most influential, was that of J. A. Seiss (Lectures on the Apocalypse, 1909). In the 20th century, the futurist approach to Revelation has become most common—especially since the publication of the phenomenally successful The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lind-Sey56—having its place almost in the very common stock of American pop culture. Futurism has been advocated by sound scholars, such as Walvoord, Mounce, and Ladd, as well as by innumerable cranks and eschatological faddists, who have often given it a bad name by their repeated speculations concerning the date of the Second Coming and their assigning of correspondences between the symbolic visions and specific developments in an ever-changing modern political milieu.
The spiritual approach has received wide acceptance in modern commentaries, though various labels have been attached to it. Since Eichhorn, in the 18th century, the dramatic nature of the book has intrigued many students of the book. In 1939, William Hendriksen popularized this view in his book, More Than Conquerors, though it was found in a number of works earlier in the 20th century as well. As I write, there appear to be more new commentaries published advocating a dramatico-spiritual approach to Revelation than there are advocating any of the other conservative approaches.
Nonetheless, the preterist, futurist, and spiritual approaches will all be with us for some time to come, and the historicist approach has an abiding voice in the classic commentaries of Matthew Henry, John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Albert Barnes, and others, which show no signs of vanishing from evangelical libraries. This fact gives all four evangelical viewpoints a right to be heard by a contemporary audience, and that is why they are afforded a comparison in this volume.