I found this small excerpt to be very interesting in a book I am reading for the third time:
I began my personal journey toward the eschatology of dominion one evening in church, about a dozen years ago. The pastor, a preacher famous for his expository method of Bible teaching, had just begun a series on prophecy. As he eloquently defended his eschatology of defeat, I was struck by the fact that he seemed utterly unable to develop his views organically from the Bible. Oh, he quoted some Scripture — a verse here, a verse there. But he was never able to show that his explanation of the future fit in with the overall pattern of the Bible. In other words, he was very adept at imposing his views of reality upon the Biblical text, making sure his verses were shuffled together in the proper order. But he could not show how his doctrines flowed out of Scripture; his eschatology did not seem to be an organic part of the Story which the Bible tells.
What I began to realize that night was that the way to recover the Biblical eschatology must be through an understanding of the Biblical Story. Instead of trying to fit the Bible into a prearranged pattern, we must try to discover the patterns that are already there. We must allow the Bible's own structure to arise from the text itself, to impose itself upon our own understanding. We must become accustomed to the Biblical vocabulary and modes of expression, seeking to shape our own thinking in terms of Scriptural categories.
This perspective sheds valuable light on the old debate about "literal" versus "symbolic" interpretations. To a great degree, that debate is beside the point; for the fact is that all interpreters are "literalists" on some points and "symbolists" on others.
For example, I am looking at a recent commentary on Revelation, written by a well-known evangelical scholar. The back cover boldly proclaims: This may be the most literal exposition of Revelation you will ever read! And yet, upon close inspection, the commentary actually teaches a highly symbolic interpretation of many items in the prophecy. Here are a few of them:
I began my personal journey toward the eschatology of dominion one evening in church, about a dozen years ago. The pastor, a preacher famous for his expository method of Bible teaching, had just begun a series on prophecy. As he eloquently defended his eschatology of defeat, I was struck by the fact that he seemed utterly unable to develop his views organically from the Bible. Oh, he quoted some Scripture — a verse here, a verse there. But he was never able to show that his explanation of the future fit in with the overall pattern of the Bible. In other words, he was very adept at imposing his views of reality upon the Biblical text, making sure his verses were shuffled together in the proper order. But he could not show how his doctrines flowed out of Scripture; his eschatology did not seem to be an organic part of the Story which the Bible tells.
What I began to realize that night was that the way to recover the Biblical eschatology must be through an understanding of the Biblical Story. Instead of trying to fit the Bible into a prearranged pattern, we must try to discover the patterns that are already there. We must allow the Bible's own structure to arise from the text itself, to impose itself upon our own understanding. We must become accustomed to the Biblical vocabulary and modes of expression, seeking to shape our own thinking in terms of Scriptural categories.
This perspective sheds valuable light on the old debate about "literal" versus "symbolic" interpretations. To a great degree, that debate is beside the point; for the fact is that all interpreters are "literalists" on some points and "symbolists" on others.
For example, I am looking at a recent commentary on Revelation, written by a well-known evangelical scholar. The back cover boldly proclaims: This may be the most literal exposition of Revelation you will ever read! And yet, upon close inspection, the commentary actually teaches a highly symbolic interpretation of many items in the prophecy. Here are a few of them:
- The "soiled garments" of the Christians in Sardis (Rev. 3:4);
- The promise that Christians will become "pillars" in the Temple (3:12);
- The "lukewarm" temperature of the Laodiceans (3:15-16);
- Christ's offer to sell "gold," "white garments," and "eye salve" (3:18);
- Christ's "knocking" at the "door" (3:20);
- The "Lion of the tribe of Judah" (5:5);
- The "Lamb" with "seven eyes" (5:6);
- The "olive trees" and "lampstands" (11:4);
- The "woman clothed with the sun" (12:1);
- The "great red dragon" (12:3);
- The seven-headed "Beast" (13:1);
- The "great harlot who sits on many waters" (17:1).
There are few "literalists" who would disagree that these pictures in Revelation are meant to be understood symbolically. What we must recognize, however, is that symbols are used throughout the rest of Scripture as well, right alongside very literal language. This is because the Bible is literature: it is divinely inspired and inerrant literature, but it is literature all the same. This means that we must read it as literature. Some parts are meant to be literally understood, and they are written accordingly — as history, or theological propositions, or whatever. But one would not expect to read the Psalms or the Song of Solomon by the same literary standards used for the Book of Romans. It would be like reading Hamlet's soliloquy "literally": "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune... to take arms against a sea of troubles... "
You see, we cannot understand what the Bible really (literally) means unless we appreciate its use of literary styles. Would we understand the Twenty-third Psalm properly if we were to take it "literally"? Would it not, instead, look somewhat silly? In fact, if taken literally, it would not be true: for I daresay that the Lord doesn't make every Christian to lie down in literal, green pastures. But we don't usually make such crude mistakes in reading Biblical poetry. We know it is written in a style that often makes use of symbolic language. But we must realize that the same is true of the prophets: they, also, spoke in poetry, in figures and symbols, drawing on a rich heritage of Biblical images which, as we shall see, actually began in the original Paradise — the Garden of Eden.