Hermeneutical Obstacles to Revelation
(avg. read time: 8–17 mins.)
If God is willing, something I hope to write before the end is a multivolume commentary on Revelation. Ideally, it would be at least three volumes to address each of the following matters. One, the first volume would concern hermeneutical obstacles readers face in engaging with Revelation or with appreciating it as part of God’s word to us (with extensive citations from teachers/preachers and scholars to this effect). Two, though I am not sure if it would be better as the second or third in the set, a volume would address the reception history of Revelation in a way that is something in between a comprehensive history (which might be nearly impossible to write) and a simple breakdown into the “four views” of preterism, futurism, historicism, and idealism. Three, of course, one volume (or multiple volumes if I did it like David Aune) would be the commentary proper addressing the text itself, its links to the OT and NT, and so on. Of course, there is a lot of work to be done between now and the hypothetical then, much of it not even to do with the commentary (as other projects are further along), and a lot of “ifs” that would need to be met (like if I have a profession that would allow me to undertake such a massive venture), so this is something you are not even going to see completed in the next decade, if God is willing that it should be completed.
But as a pledge of the work I would like to do, I wanted to start today with reviewing some of the hermeneutical obstacles—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say “walls”—that people encounter when faced with the book of Revelation. As this is a small preview of a publication I hope to work on later, and it is not something I already had written, the full version will be an exclusive. For those of you who do have access to the full version, I would also like to hear from you what obstacles you face when engaging with Revelation. And I do not just mean what gets in the way of your understanding. I am primarily referring to what has kept you or is keeping you from engaging with the text like you do other biblical texts. What prevents you or what do you think prevents others from reading it? What diminishes your appreciation of it or what do you think diminishes others’ appreciation of it? Why do you not preach about or why do you think it is not preached about nearly as often as most other books of the NT? Do you think these factors have anything to do with certain preachers, teachers, and movements that do emphasize Revelation? If that is so, why do you think that is a problem? These are the kinds of questions I am engaging with and that I would like to hear more from you about.