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(Begin with
overview slide)
This particular view originated with a “historicist” perspective as applied
by the early church fathers. They
correctly concluded that it prophesied that the Roman Empire had to fall. In short, they took the book to be
prophetic of the future and went from there.
Liberal scholars have picked this up and (with a little magic on the
dates) have turned it into a “non-prophetic” work. The original view, however, still retains
much of its validity; it’s just that
the passage of time has rendered the interpretation obsolete due to new evidence
(i.e......., more history).
You can see why it’s popular with liberals;
it denies the existence of prophecy about the future (as they
interpret it). It’s popular with some
(but by no means all) Roman Catholics because it uses the “historicist”
method but eliminates the Roman Church from being any of the evil
portrayals so clearly linked with Rome in the text. (This desire to avoid attacking the Roman
Catholic Church is also a major factor in the popularity of the futurist
approach).
I will not be covering this approach in this class for these reasons:
• As defined by modern liberals, it
denies the inspiration of the Scripture .
• As defined by the church fathers,
it lacks the knowledge of the last 1000 years of history -- history which
would have been important to them. In
this sense, it is largely superseded by the historicist approach.
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