“When the Literal Makes Sense, Seek No Other Sense” – Why This Principle Isn’t the Best fit for Revelation

When I first saw the latest book from Andreas Köstenberger and Richard Patterson I was impressed with the 12+ pages of endorsements. It reads like a who’s who in Evangelical academia. I started browsing through it and stumbled across this part in chapter 11: Visions of the End: Apocalyptic (Revelation). The title is Invitation to Biblical Interpretation and it sure to become a standard text in the field of hermeneutics.

“What could be wrong with interpreting apocalyptic literature such as Revelation literally? The main problem with such an approach is that it inadequately considers that the literary genre of a given text establishes the rules for how it should be interpreted. Meaning is intrinsically bound up with genre. It follows that genre provides a context assigned by the author to communicate meaning. We have already shown that the genre of Revelation is prophetic-apocalyptic. The apocalyptic genre, by definition, is highly symbolic and not intended to be interpreted in a literal manner. For this reason, a rigid literal interpretation or literalism may actually obscure the author’s intended meaning rather than expose it. Kevin Vanhoozer correctly poses a distinction between the literal sense and literalism. If the interpreter is concerned with authorial intention, the literal sense must not be reduced merely to letters, langue, or locutions. Vanhoozer contends that ‘literalistic reading is less than fully ‘literal’–that it is insufficiently and only ‘thinly’ literal–insofar as it ignores the role of authorial intentions and communicative acts.’ What Vanhoozer means by this is that the literal–but not the ‘literalistic’–is especially true for figurative and symbolic language. In other words, if numbers, proper nous, and other images may actually prevent a proper understanding of John’s intended meaning. A more profitable hermeneutical approach is to reverse the interpretive order by placing the symbolic in the foreground while shifting the literal into the background. Thus, rather than positing the dictum ‘When the literal sense makes sense, seek no other sense,’ we suggest that a better maxim in interpreting apocalyptic is ‘Start out with the assumption that a given statement or image is figurative rather than literal.’”

“G.K. Beale makes a strong case for the primary of the symbolic over straight one-to-one literal correspondence. He argues that sēmainō in Revelation 1:1 conveys the idea of ‘communication by symbols,’ noting that the normal usage of sēmainō in Scripture implies some type of ‘symbolic communication.’ Since Revelation is a symbolic means of communication, the literal approach for interpreting the ‘plain sense’ of the image may actually distort the intending meaning of the text. Beale maintains, ‘Of course, some parts are not symbolic, but the essence of the book is figurative. Where there is a lack of clarity about whether something is symbolic, the scales of judgment should be tilted in the direction of a nonliteral analysis.’ For reasons such as these, the symbolic plane should be considered primary while care should be taken not to reduce the meaning of the symbols to something exclusively spiritual.” (550-51)

Invitation to Biblical Interpretation comes from Kregel Publications and is a hardcover with 880 pages and sells for $46.99. Put this one on your Christmas list!