Approaches to Interpreting the book of Revelation
The book of Revelation is often very hard to understand because of its "visions and elaborate symbolism" (Mounce, 1992, p. 39). Because of the many visions and symbols that come from the book of Revelation there are several different approaches to interpreting it including the idealist view, the preterist view, the historicist view, and the futurist view. This paper will discuss the four main approaches to interpreting the book of Revelation and the approach that is most consistent with my personal beliefs of the book of Revelation.
Methodologies
Idealism
Idealism, also known as the nonliteral or allegorical approach (Walvoord, 1989, p. 16), interprets the book of Revelation by stripping away "the symbolic language of any predictive value and reduces the prophecy to a picture of the continuous struggle between good and evil, the church and the world, and of the eventual triumph of Christianity" (Gundry, 2003, p. 508). An......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 1893
Approximate Pages: 8 (260 words per double-spaced page) |