Which is the Oldest Approach to Interpreting Revelation? Part 3

Originally published by Discern the Meaning.

Conclusion

The much contested question of which approach to Revelation is the oldest, has long been settled among mainstream modern scholarship. It is widely agreed that the Historicist approach was the earliest, and that the first proper Futurist and Preterist interpretations did not appear until the sixteenth century. Although the antiquity of a particular approach to Revelation is not necessarily a guarantee of its validity, given the fact that when delivering the Revelation to John Christ explicitly “made it clear” (Revelation 1:1), we would expect its contents to be at least basically understood by the earliest expositors.Similarly, although every commentator on their book has their own biases (and many Historicist interpreters throughout the ages have had a particularly strong bias against the Catholic Church), and although the personal religious views of a particular commentator are not necessarily grounds on which to dismiss their view, we must nevertheless acknowledge that interpretations which emerged at specific times with the aim of promoting specific theological, ideological, or political causes, are more likely to be influenced by bias and should be treated with far greater caution. The fact that the Futurist and Preterist interpretations were invented by Jesuit scholars specifically to defend the Catholic Church from the criticisms of the Reformation, definitely gives us ground for considering them suspect.