“The End of Historicism? Reflections on the Adventist Approach to Biblical Apocalyptic– Part One”


Jon Paulien

Andrews University


Published in Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 14/2 (Fall, 2003): 15-43.



            The Seventh-day Adventist Church derives its unique witness to Jesus Christ from a historicist reading of the apocalyptic prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Historicism understands these prophecies to portray a relentless march of God-ordained history leading from the prophet’s time up to a critical climax at the end of earth’s history. Footnote The interpretation of biblical apocalyptic was at the center of Adventist theological development in the formative years of the Adventist Church and its theology. Footnote

            There were many reasons for this emphasis on apocalyptic. 1) Daniel and Revelation provided much of the content that makes Adventist theology unique in the Christian world. 2) These apocalyptic books furnished the core of Adventist identity and mission, leading to the conviction that the Advent movement was to play a critical role in preparing the world for the soon return of Jesus. 3) The apocalyptic sense that God was in control of history supplied confidence to go on even when the movement was small and difficulties were large. 4) The sense of an approaching End fostered by the study of Daniel and Revelation supplied the motivation to take the Adventist message to the world in a relatively short period of time. While many Christians, including some Adventists, Footnote disagreed with the conclusions that the Adventist pioneers drew from Daniel and Revelation, few in the early years challenged the historicist pre-suppositions Footnote behind those conclusions, as they were widely held within Protestant scholarship in North America through at least the mid-1800s.

            In the 20th Century, however, the historicist approach to apocalyptic has been increasingly marginalized in the scholarly world. A book that charts that marginalization was written as a doctoral dissertation by Kai Arasola, an Adventist church administrator in Sweden. Footnote Arasola points out that before the time of William Miller (1782-1849), the founder of the movement that spawned the Seventh-day Adventist Church among others, nearly all protestant commentators on apocalyptic utilized the historicist method of interpreting prophecy. In his book Arasola discusses the excesses of Miller’s historicist hermeneutic that caused historicism to be generally discredited among scholars. Within a few years of the Great Disappointment Footnote the “centuries-old, well-established historical method of prophetic exposition lost dominance, and gave way to both dispensationalist futurism and to the more scholarly preterism.” Footnote Extremely well-written and carefully nuanced, the book is not a diatribe against historicism, as some have suggested from its title, it is rather a historical documentation of the process by which historicism became sidelined within the scholarly debate on apocalyptic.

            According to Arasola, historicism as an interpretive method became generally discredited in large part because the followers of Miller shifted, in 1842 and 1843, from a general anticipation of the nearness of the Advent to an attempt to determine the exact time. Footnote With the passing of the time set by the “seventh-month movement” under the leadership of Samuel Snow, the methods of Millerism and Miller himself became the object of ridicule, Footnote a ridicule that continues in some scholarly circles to this day. Footnote

            In conclusion, Arasola soberly suggests that Miller’s heritage is two-fold. “On the one hand, he contributed to the end of a dominant system of exegesis, on the other he is regarded as a spiritual father by millions of Christians who have taken some parts of the millerite exegesis as

their raison d’etre.” Footnote While historicism has been replaced in the popular consciousness by preterism and futurism, it is not, in fact, dead. It lives on in a modified and partly renewed form in the churches that built their faith on Miller’s heritage.

            The purpose of this article is to take a candid look at the current scholarly debate over apocalyptic and its implications for Seventh-day Adventist study of Daniel and Revelation. The particular focus is the degree to which the historicist approach is still appropriate to the biblical apocalypses of Daniel and Revelation. I begin with a brief look at how the process Arasola described is beginning to erode confidence in historicism among the “millions” of Miller’s spiritual descendants. I will then review the current state of the scholarly debate over apocalyptic and how that impacts the Seventh-day Adventist (hereafter SDA) perspective. After suggesting some guidelines for appropriate interpretation of biblical apocalyptic, I will argue that a historicist approach, in spite of the scholarly consensus against it, is in fact the most appropriate approach to certain passages within biblical apocalyptic.

 

Recent Developments Within the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Speculation

            Within the last generation, a number of challenges have damaged the SDA consensus that the historicist understandings of Daniel and Revelation offer a solid foundation for Adventist faith. One source of damage, ironically, arises from among those who are most committed to the method. As various interpretations put forth by the SDA pioneers fail to connect with today’s generation, some supporters of historicism have tried to update the relevance of historical apocalyptic to connect various prophecies with recent history or even the current world scene. Footnote An example of the kind of interpretation I have in mind here is where some SDA evangelists have tried to see the fifth trumpet of Revelation as a prophecy of the Gulf War, with the locusts of 9:7-10 corresponding to the Marine helicopters with their gold-tinted windshields! Others, usually on the fringes of the SDA Church, have sought to use apocalyptic as a basis for determining the date of Jesus’ Coming or of other end time events, mistakenly focusing on dates such as 1964, 1987, 1994 and the year 2000. Footnote Even the SDA pioneers were not always attentive to the biblical text in making applications to history. Footnote Awareness of these speculative tendencies has caused many thoughtful SDAs to question the entire validity of historicist interpretation of apocalyptic. Such SDAs have found two other interpretive options increasingly attractive. Footnote

 

Alternative Approaches

            Preterism. A number of SDA thinkers, particularly those educated in religion and history, have seen increasing light in the preterist approach to biblical apocalyptic. This approach, the primary one among professional biblical scholars, treats books like Daniel and Revelation as messages to their original time and place, not as divinely-ordained chains of future historical events. According to this approach, believers can benefit from these books, not by seeing where they stand in the course of history, but by applying spiritual principles drawn from the text to later situations.

            This approach should not be automatically treated as an abandonment of faith. It is, in fact, the approach that believing Jews and Christians (including Adventists) take to the bulk of the biblical materials. The letters of Paul, for example, must be understood as the products of a human writer’s intention reflecting a specific purpose and aimed at a particular audience. To read such letters as if they were philosophical treatises with a universal purpose is clearly inappropriate. Footnote Nevertheless, in recognizing God’s purpose in including these letters in the Bible, believers feel free to draw principles from Paul’s letters and apply them to their own time and place as the Word of God. When done with sensitivity to the original context, this is entirely appropriate for Paul’s letters and also for parts of Daniel and Revelation. Footnote

            What preterism as an approach to apocalyptic does is treat all of Daniel and Revelation as if these books were little different than Matthew or Romans. While such an approach is certainly appropriate to the narratives of Daniel and the seven letters of Revelation 2 and 3 (Rev 1:11; 2:1,7,8.11, etc.), I will argue below that preterism alone is not an adequate approach to the symbolic visions of Daniel and Revelation. I will offer evidence in a future article that certain texts in Daniel and Revelation belong to the genre of historical apocalyptic and should, therefore, be interpreted in terms of historical sequence. I believe that to ignore this evidence on philosophical or other grounds is to impose an external system on the exegesis of the text.

            Futurism. A very different alternative to historicism sees apocalyptic as concerned primarily with a short period of time still future from our own day. In my experience this alternative has attracted a larger number of SDAs than the preterist one, particularly those educated in law and various branches of medicine, or those who have not had the opportunity of higher education. While rejecting the dispensational form of futurism popularized by the Left Behind series, such SDA Bible students are seeking end-time understandings in every corner of Daniel and Revelation.

            A major motivation toward a futurist approach is “relevance.” Many SDAs feel that both the preterist and historicist approaches confine interpretation to the dusty past. They are seeking cues in the text that would enable them to speak more directly to current issues in the world than traditional SDA applications or scholarly exegesis appear to do. And it seems clear that many aspects of Daniel and Revelation were intended to portray events that the biblical authors perceived as distant from their time (Dan 8:26; 12:13) or directly concerned with the final events of earth’s history and beyond. (Dan 2:44-45; 7:26-27; 11:40; 12:4; Rev 6:15-17; 7:15-17; 19:11-21; 21:1-22:5). So an examination of Daniel and Revelation without an openness to a future understanding would be an inappropriate limitation on the divine supervision of these books.

            Approaches to Daniel and Revelation that limit the meaning of most of the text to end-time events, however, have consistently proven to claim more than they can deliver. In my experience Adventist forms of futurism tend toward an allegorism of dual or multiple applications that loses touch with the original meaning and context of these apocalyptic works. The futurist applications are of such a nature that they tend to be convincing only to a limited number who share the same presuppositions as the interpreter.

 

Post-Modernism

            Another challenge to historicist understandings of Daniel and Revelation arises from a major philosophical shift in Western experience, sometimes called post-modernism. Footnote Beginning with “Generation X” most younger people have had a tendency to reject sweeping solutions to the world’s problems. They question both the religious certainties and the scientific confidence of their elders. The apocalyptic idea that there could be a detailed and orderly sweep to history seems hard to grasp and even more difficult to believe. While post-modernists are more likely to believe in God than their baby boomer elders, they have a hard time imagining that anyone has a detailed hold on what God is actually like. While everyone, to them, has some handle on “truth,” no one has a full grasp of the big picture. The confidence Adventist pioneers had about their place in history seems, therefore, out of step with the times.

            Post-modernism raises some valid concerns about the “modernistic” confidence with which SDA evangelists and teachers have trumpeted questionable interpretations of prophecy in the past. Many have been all to quick to promote personal viewpoints as absolute truth. But while it is healthy to acknowledge that everyone, including SDAs, are ignorant about aspects of the “big picture” there is no reason to deny that a big picture exists. While we may never grasp truth in the absolute sense, the Bible teaches that absolute truth was embodied in Jesus Christ and revealed sufficiently in His Word that we can have a meaningful relationship with Him. I will argue below that one aspect of that revelation is apocalyptic of a historical variety.

 

Conclusion

            As a result of these and other challenges SDAs today are paying less and less attention to the historic Adventist approach to apocalyptic. Liberal, conservative, old and young alike are experimenting with alternative approaches and questioning traditional ones. But this lack of attention is not a neutral matter. It is creating a radical, if unintentional, shift in the core message of the Adventist Church. Prophetic preaching and interpretation is increasingly left to the evangelists, while weekly sermons focus more on social scientific insights and story telling. The result is, in my opinion, a crisis in Adventist identity.

            Biblical interpretation is often subject to pendulum swings. The excesses or mistakes of those who follow one approach may cause the next generation of interpreters to swing to the opposite extreme, albeit for good reason. But balanced biblical interpretation draws its impetus from the biblical text rather than fashion or external assumptions. Historicism has been prone to excesses. It has been applied to texts where it probably doesn’t belong (like the seven churches of Revelation). But I will nevertheless argue that it offers the best way to read many texts in Daniel and Revelation, texts supportive of the historic Adventist identity. Totally abandoning the method would cause us to misinterpret these portions of the biblical message.

            In the next section of this article I will examine some recent trends in apocalyptic scholarship, in general first, and then with particular focus on Adventist concerns and issues. I conclude the section with a proposal for re-invigorating Adventist interpretation of Daniel and Revelation.

 

Recent Developments in Apocalyptic Scholarship

The Definition and Genre of Apocalyptic

            Over the last three decades apocalyptic scholarship has focused intently on issues of genre and on the definitions of terms like apocalypse and apocalyptic. Footnote The leading figures during this period of study are John J. Collins and his mentor Paul Hanson. Footnote Working with a team of specialists under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature, Collins helped shape the definitions that are in working use today. Footnote

            The term “apocalypse” is drawn from the introductory phrase of the Book of Revelation (Rev 1:1) and means “revelation” or “disclosure.” Footnote From the second Christian century onward it became increasingly used as a title or “genre label” Footnote for extra-biblical works of a character similar to Daniel and Revelation in the Bible. As modern scholars took note that a whole collection of similar works existed in ancient Judaism, they applied this later label also to books like Daniel, Ethiopic Enoch, 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and other works produced before and contemporary with Revelation. Footnote

            Paul Hanson was among the first to distinguish between the terms apocalypse, apocalyptic eschatology, and apocalypticism. Footnote For him as for most others, “apocalypse” designates a literary genre, which has since been given a scholarly definition (see below). Footnote Hanson defines apocalyptic eschatology, on the other hand, as the world view or conceptual framework out of which the apocalyptic writings emerged. Footnote Apocalyptic eschatology was probably an outgrowth of prophetic eschatology. Footnote “Apocalypticism” occurs when a group of people adopt the world view of apocalyptic eschatology, using it to inform their interpretation of Scripture, to govern their lives, and to develop a sense of their place in history. Footnote

            There is a general consensus among the specialists that the genre apocalypse should be defined as follows: Footnote

“An apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.” Footnote


            As I understand this definition, an apocalyptic work like Daniel or Revelation is revelatory literature, which means it claims to directly communicate information from God to humanity. This is accomplished in the form of a story, a “narrative framework,” rather than poetry or some other form. The revelation is communicated to a human being by “otherworldly beings” such as angels or the 24 elders of Revelation. The revelation discloses “transcendent reality,” that which is beyond the ability of the five senses to apprehend, about the course of history leading up the God’s salvation at the End, and about the heavenly, “supernatural” world. Footnote

            While this definition is general enough to seem a fair description of books like Daniel and Revelation, I find what it does not say extremely interesting. For one thing, it does not insist that pseudonymity is a necessary component of apocalyptic literature. Footnote This is significant for Adventists, whose view of God-ordained prophetic history is dependent on the possibility of predictive prophecy. Footnote

            While not present in the above definition of “apocalypse,” scholars also distinguish between two types of apocalyptic literature, the historical and the mystical. Footnote The historical type, characteristic of Daniel, gives an overview of a large sweep of history, often divided into periods, Footnote and climaxing with a prediction about the end of history and the final judgment. Footnote Historical apocalyptic visions tend to be highly symbolic; the images themselves are not intended to be literally true, but they refer to heavenly and earthly beings and events. Footnote While the prophetic visionary views this symbolic sweep of history, he does not usually play a role in the visionary narrative itself. Footnote

            The mystical type of apocalypse, on the other hand, describes the ascent of the visionary through the heavens, which are often numbered. Footnote This journey through the heavens is usually a sustained and straightforward narrative involving the author or the implied author of the apocalypse. Footnote While symbolism may be used in mystical apocalyptic, there is more of a sense of reality in the description, the visionary ascends into a real place where actions take place that affect the readers’ lives on earth. Footnote

            There is some debate among scholars whether these two types of apocalypses should be viewed as distinct genres. Both types, however, can clearly occur in a single literary work. Footnote Both types, the historical and the heavenly, convey a revealed interpretation of history, whether that history is past, present (heavenly journey) or future. Footnote For SDAs, as we have seen, the historical type of apocalypse has traditionally been of primary interest.

            Some scholars believe that the historical type of apocalyptic thinking began with Zoroaster, a pagan priest of Persia, but the relevant Persian documents are quite late and may be dependant on Jewish works rather then the other way around. Footnote It is more likely that the “dawn of apocalyptic” can be traced to the prophetic works of the Old Testament, like Isaiah 24-27, 65-66, Daniel, Joel and Zechariah. Footnote When the prophetic spirit ceased among Jews during the Persian period (6th to 4th century BC), Footnote pseudonymity became a way that uninspired writers sought to recapture the spirit of the ancient prophets and write out what those ancient prophets might have written had they been alive to see the apocalyptist’s day. Footnote How the book of Daniel fits into this larger historical picture will be taken up below.

 

The Apocalyptic World View

            The term “apocalypticism,” as noted earlier, Footnote designates the world view that is characteristic of early Jewish and Christian apocalypses, such as Daniel and Revelation. Footnote The world view of apocalypticism centered on the belief that the present world order is evil and oppressive, and under the control of Satan and his human accomplices. The present world order would shortly be destroyed by God and replaced with a new and perfect order corresponding to Eden. The final events of the old order involve severe conflict between the old order and the people of God, but the final outcome is never in question. Through a mighty act of judgment God condemns the wicked, rewards the righteous and re-creates the universe. Footnote

            The apocalyptic world view, therefore, sees reality from the perspective of God’s overarching control of history, which is divided into a series of segments or eras. It expresses these beliefs in terms of the themes and images of ancient apocalyptic literature. Footnote Although this world view can be expressed through other genres of literature, Footnote its fundamental shape is most clearly discerned in apocalypses.

            While many consider the apocalyptic world view inappropriate for a post-scientific world, many fundamental SDA beliefs are grounded in biblical apocalyptic. In other words, for Adventists the books of Daniel and Revelation are not marginal works, they are foundational to the Adventist world view and its concept of God. Rejecting the apocalyptic world view would inaugurate a fundamental shift in Adventist thinking. The purpose of this article is not to settle whether such a shift would be a good thing, but to examine whether careful biblical scholarship is capable of sustaining the biblical basis for the Adventist world view.

 

Recent SDA Scholarship on Apocalyptic

            In reaction to the work of Desmond Ford, Footnote an earlier generation of Seventh-day Adventist scholars sought to distinguish the genres of prophetic and apocalyptic eschatology. Footnote “Prophetic” literature was divided into two major types; 1) general prophecy, represented by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and others, and 2) apocalyptic prophecy, represented by Daniel and Revelation. Footnote General prophecy, sometimes called “classical prophecy,” was seen to focus primarily on the prophet’s own time and place, but with glimpses forward to a cosmic “Day of the Lord” culminating in a new heaven and a new earth. Apocalyptic prophecy, on the other hand, was seen to focus on history as a divinely-guided continuum leading up to and including the final events of earth’s history. Footnote William Shea, for example, felt that general prophecy focuses on the short-range view, while apocalyptic prophecy includes the long-range view. Footnote

            It was argued that general prophecy, because of its dual dimension, may at times be susceptible to dual fulfillments or foci where local and contemporary perspectives are mixed with a universal, future perspective. Footnote Apocalyptic prophecy, on the other hand, does not deal so much with the local, contemporary situation as it does with the universal scope of the whole span of human history, including the major saving acts of God within that history. The greater focus of general prophecy is on contemporary events, the greater focus of apocalyptic prophecy is on end-time events. Footnote While general prophecy describes the future in the context of the prophet’s local situation, apocalyptic prophecy portrays a comprehensive historical continuum that is under God’s control and leads in sequence from the prophet’s time to the End.

            General prophecies, which are written to affect human response, tend to be conditional

 upon the reactions of peoples and nations. Footnote On the other hand, apocalyptic prophecies, particularly those of Daniel and Revelation, tend to be unconditional, reflecting God’s foreknowledge of His ultimate victory and the establishment of His eternal kingdom. Footnote Apocalyptic prophecy portrays the inevitability of God’s sovereign purpose. No matter what the evil powers do, God will accomplish His purpose in history. Footnote The above distinctions are summarized in the box below:

Characteristics of General and Apocalyptic Prophecy