[Bible] Let's find something more boring than politics to discuss

I believe Revelations does refer to events which are yet to come. I would be interested to see @Rox>Mavs take on this subject.

 

I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with where this conversation is at. If you or anyone could distill it down to the primary topic or issue being discussed or debated that would ensure I’m not commenting on something that isn’t the issue.

as I understand it based off a very quick read this is a discussion between pre-millennial kingdom (Christ 2nd coming is before the 1000 year reign) vs post-millennial kingdom (Christ comes after the 1000 year reign) vs amillennial (there is no 1000 year reign and that Christ’s reign is spiritual in nature rather than physical).

most Eastern Orthodox and Catholics hold an Amillennial interpretation. Whereas literalists tend to hold a premillennial interpretation.

I will say I got a C in eschatology in seminary. It was by far my least favorite class. As my professor said, most end up being pan-millennial (in the end, it’ll all pan out). Because no one really knows.

FranchiseBlade, I will say when John wrote Revelation (no “s” at the end because it’s one big revelation), i don’t think he intend it necessarily to be instructional or for any specific church. But rather he was given a vision and chronicled that vision for a prophetic purpose without really knowing how it was to be applied. I doubt he had it in his mind that he intended it to be interpreted as pre/post/a millennial. He just saw the vision and wrote it down as led by the Holy Spirit. For the rest of us schmucks to debate over for the next 2000+ years.

 

Yeah I think you’re perspective feels more amillennial, meaning it’s not meant to be literal but more instructional for how we live in our spiritual lives. I will say I was trained and taught to be premil but I lean more amill these days as I get older and suffer this life more.

in terms of audience, I think my point is more that I don’t think John necessarily wrote it with any interpretation already in his mind. I’d assume he was more like “wtf” and just felt compelled to write it and send it out for God to do His thing with it.

 

I believe there is no real evidence as to who "John of Patmos" actually is. There are a bunch of educated guesses, and they know he was on Patmos at one point, but unless something has changed, nobody really knows who wrote it.

 

This could be said if every NT book.

 

My wife speaks fluent Eastern Aramaic and before med school majored in religion. She spent several years living in the Middle East.

The understanding of Christianity in the oldest areas of Christianity is VASTLY different than what is taught or understood in Evangelical Christianity.

The emphasis on particular parts of the “New Testament” (which is an absurd notion to begin with and extremely arbitrary) and the strict interpretation of the books in Evangelical doctrine is completely foreign to the early forms and practice of the faith. The way the religion is practiced in particular areas in Iraq and other Middle Eastern areas (most have been killed or marginalized by Islam) is more like Judaism.

The Evangelical interpretation has no understanding of the historical placement of the faith and the interpretation that existed early in the faith and the church. It has largely been “Westernized” and emphasis placed on many concepts and areas that were of minor or no concern to early Christians.

Based on what my wife learned through her reading of Aramaic and later Hebrew, the emphasis on “literal word of God” isn’t something that was of concern or discussed. While the resurrection of Christ was celebrated and is mostly consistent (although lots of sources did not include this) the stories were viewed more as parables and not absolutes like Evangelicals practice.

When I was living and raised by Jesuits they followed the largely traditional interpretation on a handful of points, but I will give them credit for acknowledging that their interpretation of the faith is not the absolute or necessarily the original Christianity.

The Book of Revelations was clearly not written in the same time period or the style or quality as other books. Yet it is in the New Testament when other earlier writings are not included and their inclusion or the exclusion of the Book of Revelations would DRASTICALLY change how Christianity and Evangelicalism in particular practice faith. The arbitrary inclusion and exclusion of a book based on the arbitrary whims of men many centuries ago calls into question the literal interpretation stressed by some.

 

this made me think of a book I read some 30+ years ago about the role of Paul as "myth-maker" . . . I remember being really impressed with this at the time:

 

I have read it. A Jesuit gave it to me in high school and I really liked it.

 

While I might disagree with how vastly different it is (I guess that's an arbitrary valuation), I would agree that much of evangelical christianity tends to lean a little too heavily or even blindly on the Bible and literal interpretation. Early Church (Catholic if you will) never nurtured faith and discipleship on readings of the text. Before the printing press, believers depended upon the clergy and priests to interpret the Bible/letters for them. The traditions of the Catholic/Orthodox Church served as the primary mechanisms for discipleship. I think evangelicals typically miss out on so much depth in their understanding of who God is and how we communion with Him by narrowing their understanding to only what is found in Scripture without an understanding of the traditions and expressions of the Early Church. But that said too, there are some serious failings of those early expressions as well that reformation and wrestling with the tension between tradition and bible has remedied over the centuries.

Personally though, I feel more drawn to High Church as I get older. The traditions make more sense to me and have more meaning for me today as I've matured in faith. But I can see how those who don't have that maturity can misunderstand or misapply those traditions. Evangelicals tend to think the traditions and rituals of Catholicism/Orthodoxy leads to legalism and idolatry. When in reality, Protestant churches are just a susceptible to such things as well in their own way.

 

The mind sets are very different and in many ways not compatible.

The outlook of early Christians (and those still in the Middle East) on what it means to be a Christian and what significants it holds is very different than Christianity in the West and especially Evangelists and Protestants.

Being around my wife, that is what Is most striking to me. They are almost two completely different religions. Those differences are largely based on the emphasis that the New Testament is the infallible word of God and largely the sole determinant of the word of God.

 

Is that exactly what it says in Greek? Is that what was said and presented in the original oral history? How many times did Revelations change in the 25 year span before 95 AD? How many different version were floated and lost to history? Is John even a real person or was a group of various authors of tales passed down verbally and compiled in one textual history? After all it was common in that time period to dedicate a single writer.

With all of these points are you really that confident it is about the future? Are you confident of this point and the concept of Rapture ( that is only 100 years old) but not open to the possibility that Revelations does not mean what you believe it means? Does the fact that there are multiple houses on what Revelations means (past/future) impact your view in the least?

 

I’ll just add this part as well in terms of my stance on the Bible. Issues such as what Revelation means, eschatology, even hermeneutical methods/inerrancy is not the hill I’d want to die defending. I say that having two degrees from perhaps one of the most conservative evangelical seminaries in the world. That is the vantage point that I start from. But I also know life isn’t lived from the ivory tower of academia where it’s easy to argue what must absolutely true and how many angels can dance upon a head of a pin. As a Christian, if you’ve ever lived on the front lines of the missions field or sat through or with those going through unimaginable grief, then you know some realities of life don’t always fit into nice neat boxes of what you think you know about God and the Bible. God, if you believe He is God, is by nature beyond any structure or confines that we can come up with to somehow define Him.

I have my own beliefs on what I believe to be true, but I’m open to the idea that I could be wrong. In my experience it makes debate and discovery of sound theology more possible when you’re open to the fact that what you think to be true might actually not be. I’m comfortable enough with my core doctrine to be open to that. If it’s not about the gospel of Jesus, it’s not a hill worth defending the fighting for imo.

 

Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ἣν ἔδωκεν αὐτῷ ὁ θεός, δεῖξαι τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ ἃ δεῖ γενέσθαι ἐν τάχει, καὶ ἐσήμανεν ἀποστείλας διὰ τοῦ ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ τῷ δούλῳ αὐτοῦ Ἰωάννῃ

This is the literal translation done by me :
Revelation of Jesus Christ, which gave to him God, to show to his slaves which things must will arise fast , and signified by having sent through his messenger(=angel) to his slave John.

Neither the future nor the soon (=in fast time) can be debated in this sentence.

Btw it is said that John was a foreigner who didn't have perfect command of Greek and it shows in Revelation.
However, when they say no perfect command it is for example better command than I have of the english language right now when I post in this forum. It just shows when he uses some syntax or in some phrases that he uses. It's not like Apocalypse was written in half wit Greek. He clearly knew how to distinguish between the past present and future forms of the verbs.

 

To be fair to both of these, the way Christianity is now in the Old world has been through a 2.000 year old process of blood and slaughter.
There were in fact many communities and churches who interpreted the New Testament word by word literally in similar ways how the Evangelicals do now.
But they had been already been either purged and slaughtered or ex communicated, exiled and isolated.

It is not like from the beginning all the Christians had the same process in their faith and interpretation of the Bible. Don't judge by what has been allowed to survive until the present.
There are countless examples
Many proto Christians thought that the Apocalypse was literal and lived like the end of the world would come tomorrow. They brought social unrest.

In the Eastern Roman Empire (what is called Byzantine) there was a huge civil war lasting almost 100 years involving even emperors and empresses between the iconoclasts and the iconophils. Those who wanted to be literal to the Bible and thought that the icons, the sculptures etc was a form of idololatry and those who wanted to keep the traditions and the rituals. (spoiler : the iconoclasts lost and the rituals, the icons and the liturgical was preserved).

So it isn't something new what the Evangelicals are doing. It's that the Old World has been all through that already and moved on.

 

Thanks for your contribution Malakas. I deeply appreciate your perspective coming from an Eastern Orthodox tradition. Years ago after my son passed I remember sitting down with a fellow pastor for lunch. We went to the same seminary and I respected his deep and wide thinking as it pertained to theology. In many respects God had broken all the “rules” of what I had expected of Him. He didn’t fit in my theology anymore and so I had to deconstruct everything and rebuild from scratch. He mentioned how Protestant Evangelicalism has a times failed the faithful into believing God is somehow knowable. That through education and study we could know the unknowable. And how Eastern traditions and other high church postures approach with more fear and reverence. That comforted me deeply. God became far bigger and more dangerous to me than what my training had prepared me for. That fit my understanding and experience much better. And I’d be interested in just understanding how you would describe your own posture if you’re comfortable with that at all.

 

The same battles occured in the West. It's just that the other side won and killed all the Cathars, and whatnot and then the Reformation happened and pushed things even further towards austere literal interpretation and any remaining Western mysticism was stamped out hard.

The modern evangelicals are very much the successors of Calvinists and Puritans.

Same fights, different winners.