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Interpreting Bible Prophecy (Part 1 of 2)
In this lecture from the amillennialism 101 series, Riddlebarger explains some of the differences held between Christians with regard to prophetic interpretation, based largely on our pre-suppositions, whether we like to admit that we hold them or not. Possibly related posts: 2 comments to Interpreting Bible Prophecy (Part 1 of 2)Leave a Reply
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He makes some really good points (particularly about Iron sharpening Iron and the result of hermeneutics). What I have difficulty with is
a) he assumes that the claim “made by dispensationalists” to always use a “literal” interpretation is somewhat incorrect. What most dispensationalists claim to use is an historical grammatical interpretation. This means that if the text lends itself to symbolic language then this is the correct thing to do. To highlight his point Riddlebarger then uses a dispensational extremist to justify his argument on literal hermeneutics! He fails to exegete the text he quotes. The fact is that when most dispensationalists / prog dispensationalists / prog covenentists arrive at Revelation 9 they see the language that John uses about locusts as clearly symbolic. We know that he is using symbolic language because he tells us that he is doing so. Therefore, the historical-grammatical interpretation isn’t to see locusts as locusts but to see the language as symbolic!. Another text he quotes is Daniel 9 and claims that dispensationalists find a gap between the 69th week and 70th week, but that there is not one in the text itself. Again there is no exegesis of the text, and had there been I suspect he would have come to the conclusion that there is indeed a gap in the text, highlighted by verse 25′s omission of that final “week”. This is not a “literal” view but an “historical-grammatical” view.
b) he claims that Covenant theologians use the “Scripture interprets Scripture” hermeneutic. And I would support this but we have to distinguish this from his idea of re-interpreting Scripture (as he talks about in his book). For example, Genesis 17:6 says “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you”. What does this mean? Well I think we’d all agree that from Abraham would come real kings. no? That is fairly straightforward. Daniel prophesied about the coming of the Persian, Greek, and Roman empires. Are these actually the Persian, Greek and Roman empires? I think, again, we would agree that they are. What about when we look at Christ’s incarnation? As the first reader (no NT) of Micah 5:2, you would gather, using an historical-grammatical interpretation, that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. You would also gather that he would be born of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10). You would also conclude that Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead (Psalm 22, Isaiah 55:3). The NT text doesn’t make this true. It was already true. It is simply confirmed by the NT text. Riddlebarger re-interprets Israel’s future as the church. This isn’t scripture interpreting scripture but re-interpreting it.
Thanks for you comments Eli. I’m not being ignorant or anything, just simply busy with family and stuff, so hopefully I’ll get back shortly.
Merry Christmas everyone, without all the hyped up trappings if that were possible!