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Review: “Another Look at Chilton’s Days of Vengeance, Journey 3:2 (March-April,
1988)
The revival
of Biblical postmillennialism which we are witnessing in our day will be sustained
only if it is fueled and fortified by diligent attention to the
Scriptures. That is what makes so
noteworthy a major publication of a commentary on the book of Revelation, such
as David Chilton’s The Days of Vengeance
(Ft. Worth: Dominion Press, 1987). The author devotes nearly 600 pages to
exposing the text and theology of this “closed book,” and we must appreciate
his labors—as well as the generosity of Dr. North in subsidizing them.
Since the
study of Revelation is a special interest of mine, I am often asked for a brief
evaluation of David Chilton’s commentary.
This issue of Journey affords
the opportunity to reply once in writing (saving personal repetition). Because the author and I are friends,
because we share a common eschatological perspective, and because he sat
through a year of my sixty-five lectures on Revelation (delivered a decade
ago), many assume that his approach to Revelation is something I would
commend. The reviewer in Journey (Nov-Dec 1987) saw it as “sound”
biblical interpretation, indeed “a brilliant work.” Reluctantly, I cannot share either assessment. Here let me suggest another look.
There are,
unquestionably, many encouraging and helpful things about David’s
commentary. First, it is a modern
restatement of a preterist and postmillennial interpretation of
Revelation. Second, specific comments
on a number of particular verses are accurate and insightful (e.g., 7:10, where
the ascription of salvation to the Lamb is contrasted to claims of the Roman
state). Third, in terms of “packaging,”
the book is aptly titled, beautifully illustrated, and clearly written. Nevertheless, the hermeneutical excesses and
errors of the commentary will prove far more detrimental to postmillennialism
than any of its isolated virtues can redeem.
Consider three fatal flaws.
A
commentary on holy Scripture must be appraised, not only for what it concludes
(its harmony with the Bible’s system of doctrine), but likewise for the way it handles the word of God (its interpretive
method). This is the cardinal area of
offense in Days of Vengeance. David admits to consciously trying to
simulate the hermeneutical style of James Jordan’s designated
“interpretive maximalism” (IM).
IM
claims to be in tune with patristic hermeneutics, holding that “everything in
Scripture is symbolic.” Those benefited
with “sufficient imagination” can allegedly see the significance in the
“literary architecture” of particular Biblical texts—the way the story is told, even its minor details, what its imagery has
in common with other stories, the number of times words are repeated, etc. (pp.
36-37). For instance, because doorposts
could be likened to legs, Jordan claims that the passover blood smeared on
doorposts corresponds to the blood of circumcision—which in turn is equivalent
to the tokens of virginity from the wedding night (I am not kidding; cf. The Law of the Covenant, pp. 82-83,
252-258). Jordan finds esoteric meaning
in the fact that the word “another” is used exactly six times in Judges
17:1-6. Karl Hubenthal’s book review of
Jordan’s commentary on Judges in Journey:
May-June, 1987) duly criticized this as allegorizing
the text. Jordan’s “defense” in the
Nov-Dec Journey was two-fold: (1) Cassuto also reasons in this way [so what?],
and (2) this was an ancient literary devise.”
Well, the ancient world certainly did sport many heretic, esoteric, and
especially allegorical works (e.g., Philo), but I find it strange that Jordan
makes the Bible one of them! IM leaves
the interpreter with an unsure game of “guessing” (as the end of Jordan’s
letter admits), rather than a confident “Thus saith the Lord.”
David’s
commitment to the imaginative guesswork of IM renders his commentary on
Revelation unsound. Take as one example
his treatment of Rev. 7;1-8 (the revealing of the 144,000). The text says that winds are inhibited from
hurting “the earth, the sea, or the trees” (vv. 1, 3). David mistakenly claims that the change from
genitive to accusative case for “tree” in v. 1 is meant to draw “special
attention” to that word. In fact, the
change of case simply pertains to the use of the Greek preposition epi: the wind blows “upon” the earth and
sea (epi with genitive), but blows
“against” the trees (epi with
accusative). What makes this more than
an embarrassing error in Greek grammar is the “special attention” David now
gives the word “trees.”
He
suggests that, since trees are figures for righteous men elsewhere in
Scripture, the protection of trees in Rev. 7:1 symbolizes the protection of
God’s people. The suggestion is open to
obvious criticism. (1) We may not take
for granted that figures of speech have the same referent in every Bible
occurrence (e.g., both Jesus and Satan are called “lions”; cf. the multiple use
of “stars” in Revelation). Why don’t
trees represent the monarchs (Dan. 4:10, 22) or—“maximally”—all of the
above? (2) David’s “maximal
interpretation” of Rev. 7:1-3 is plainly arbitrary. Not only trees, but also “earth and sea,” are there
protected. He tells us elsewhere that
the sea symbolizes heathen nations who hate the Lord (pp. 318, 327). Following his logic, should we infer that
Rev. 7 speaks of God protecting not only the righteous (trees), but also the
heathen (sea), from judgment?
(Actually, David also takes the sea to represent ethnic Gentiles and the
abyss of hell: pp. 251, 317. Are either
being protected from the “wind” of God’s judgment according to Rev. 7:1-3?)
David’s
IM moves from the arbitrary to the outrageous when, in explaining the “seal”
placed upon the foreheads of the 144,000 (Rev. 7:3-4), he alludes to the
protective marking of Ezekiel 9:4 and claims that it symbolized “the sign of
the cross”! Error is laid upon error to
reach this height of imagination. (1)
the philological error (exposed by Fairbairn: Ezek. 9:4 speaks of an indefinite
“mark,” not the Hebrew letter tav. (2) the orthographic error: if the ancient tav was different from what we recognize today, it was shaped more
like an x, not an upright t(cross). (3)
the historical error: Jews of Ezekiel’s
day would have in mind a form or shape associated with Roman crucifixions of a
later age. (4) the hermeneutical
error: there is no legitimate category
of “quasi-prophecy”; this is simply Tertullian’s reading something back into the text. (5) the liturgical error: the Bible does not condone the “sign of the
cross” as having religious (superstitious) significance for Christians anyway.
Example
after example of IM’s “imaginative” approach to biblical interpretation could
be given. The heavenly Woman of Rev. 12
is taken as “astrological symbolism” for zodiacal Virgo, with the sun
mid-bodied and the moon under foot, thus pinpointing the birth of Jesus as
sundown on September 11, 3 B.C. Matthew
is said to have used three sets of 14 in his genealogy of Jesus because 14 is
the numerical value of David’s name.
The “bowls” of Rev. 15:7 are treated as chalices (despite the word being
the same as in 5:8 and different from “cup” in 14:10) to make them appear as
“negative sacraments.” These kinds of
flaws and misreading make the commentary unreliable for the reader. Hermeneutical excesses like those of Hal
Lindsey (whom David roundly ridicules) are not less serious when they stem from
the other end of the eschatological spectrum.
We must all realize that, while creativity is a virtue in an original
author, it is a crime in an interpreter.
Pandemonium of Literary Structuring Devices
Has David understood the
book of Revelation as a literary whole?
It would not appear so since he cannot decide what kind of structure or
outline it follows. “Maximalizing” his
interpretation, he claims (pp. 13-24) that the book is patterned according to
all of the following: (1) a five-part
covenant scheme, and (2) the four sets of seven curses in Leviticus 26, and (3)
the Olivet Discourse of Matthew 24, and (4) the prophecy of Ezekiel, and (5)
the early church’s paschal liturgy! By
no stretch of the imagination does this make literary sense. The conflicts and complexities would have
produced chaos in John’s mind and proved nothing but confusing to his hearers
(to whom the book was read). The way
one interprets a text is strongly influenced by the context within which he
perceives it, and David has no clear conception (or, alternatively, far too
many conceptions) of the literary pattern of Revelation. In this connection there are also a host of
detail mistakes made by David:
(1) the
monumental error is his artificially imposing “the covenantal structure
advocated by Ray Sutton (That You May
Prosper, Tyler: I.C.E., 1987) upon the text of Revelation like a
Procrustean bed. Sutton’s thesis is
anything but convincing. He holds that
the biblical covenant has “five parts” dealing successively with principles”
pertaining to (1) transcendence/immanence,
(2) hierarchy, (3) ethics, (4) sanctions, and (5) continuity. Sutton sees this five-point pattern
repeatedly set forth in Scripture like a master principle of organization:
allegedly the ten commandments are really two sets of these five “principles”
[commands #3 and #8 being the “ethical” portion?], books of the Bible
(Deuteronomy, Psalms, Matthew, Romans) follow this same five-point outline, and
Biblical teaching on the family, church and state each fall into this same five-point
scheme. But anyone with a modicum of
imagination can devise other “ways to cut the cake” (some with “Trinitarian”
threes, some with “perfect” sevens, etc.) and then filter Biblical material
through the preconceived grid—with an artificiality and adequacy equal to
Sutton’s. You see, Sutton’s five-point
outline does not arise inductively from a study of the text of Scripture
itself. Moreover, it is not even clear
what each of five “parts” (or principles”) represents in his scheme: are they literary genres, successive
portions of a document, theological topics, specific theological theses, or
just what? Sutton is so vague here that
his position is simply untestable. If
the five “principles” are an ordered scheme of specific doctrinal assertions that outline a discourse, they are
certainly not repeated as such throughout Scripture even in passages explicitly
dealing with the “covenant”); you can be sure somebody before Sutton would have
noticed anything that clear. If they
are only vague theological themes
which might be touched upon in a wide variety of ways, there is nothing
important or unique about Sutton’s five-point scheme. And to hold that the five-part succession of these broad themes
outlines books of the Bible is almost silly—as we see when Sutton makes the
whole fourth “part” of Romans to be only two verses in chapter 16! It is a shame that David tried to squeeze
Revelation into this artificial five-part outline.
(2) But David
also has a four-part outline for Revelation!
He finds a pattern of “sevenfold judgment coming four times” in
Leviticus 26 and says it is “fully developed” later in Revelation—a lamentable faux pas. What occurs four times in Lev. 26 is not seven-fold judgment itself, but rather the statement of God that He will punish seven-fold. But even overlooking that, how can David
reconcile his five-part and four-part outlines for Revelation? Can the same pie be completely divided into
four and completely divided into five pieces?
For an advocate of IM, yes!
David claims (pp. 17-18) that John actually “combined” the four-part
curse outline and the five-part covenant lawsuit—because, after all,
restitution in the law of God is both four-fold and five-fold. Is that clear? Well, there is another step.
According to Jordan’s incredible symbolism, four-fold for restitution
was for oppressing the poor (Christ as sheep) and five-fold for rebellion
against authority (Christ as Lord).
Therefore, to everyone’s surprise, Revelation is actually structured to communicate a combination of the multiple restitutions
in Ex. 22:1 for Jesus in both his
capacities as poor and royal. This is
too bizarre to be taken seriously by any literary critic.
(3) David’s
pandemonium of structuring devices leads him into embarrassing
contradictions. (What else would one
expect?) Consider the letters to the
seven churches in Rev. 2-3. One the
Lev. 26-pattern, David makes them to be one of the four sets of seven-fold judgment in Revelation. On the covenant-pattern, David makes them
the “historical prologue” part of the covenant document—the statement of gracious blessing historically enjoyed
by the vassals under the lord of the covenant!
Well, then, how should we interpret Rev. 2-3, as curse or as
blessing? They are hardly the same
(theologically or as literary genres).
(4) Here is
another example of an amazing chain of dubious reasoning (pp. 20-24). Revelation follows Ezekiel “step by step”
[as well as Lev. 26 and Matt. 24?].
Such “level pegging” is a feature of lectionary use. Both Ezekiel and Revelation can be divided
into “about fifty units” [fifty? Previously it was five, then four]—which is
also about the number of Sabbaths in the years. Therefore, Revelation
was intended for lectionary use as a series of liturgical readings in the
church through the year, accompanying the reading of Ezekiel! Even if we
forgive the mathematical inaccuracies (52 sabbaths per year) and arbitrariness
(why 50 units instead of 40 or 55?), how does it follow from the rough
numerical correspondence of literary units to weeks in a year that Revelation
is a liturgical lectionary? This may be
suggested by the interpreter’s personal interests and life-setting, but it is
not suggested by the text of Revelation itself! There is quite a logical leap from saying Revelation was read
aloud in church (Rev. 1:3, like Colossians, cf. 4:16 to saying it was read as a liturgical lectionary!
(5) Sadly,
David dismisses the book of Revelation’s own
internal indicators of how it is structured:
the three-fold outline in 1:19 (past vision, present situation, things
to occur hereafter: cf. 4:1) and the literary devise of two prophetic
“scrolls”—the seven-sealed scroll about the fall of Israel (5:1ff.) then the
small scroll about the fall of the Roman Empire (10:2, 9:11; cf. 13:7). It is simple, clear, and found inductively.
Finally, any commentary on
Revelation which incorrectly interprets major figures in the book cannot be
condoned or commended to others. This
is the bottom-line failure of David’s book.
It is a misreading of God’s book.
For
instance, who is “Babylon, the harlot” about whom John “wondered with great
wonder” in Rev. 17? God apparently
wanted us to get this right; His angel undertook to “tell the mystery” of the
woman (v. 7). Yet David’s commentary
still misses the obvious. The angel
identifies the harlot as “the great city which reigns over the kings of the
earth,” a city set on seven hills (17:9, 18); she is the international
commercial center of the ancient world (chap. 18). Given historical context, this is clearly a reference to
Rome. But because David comes to these
passages with a preconceived interpretive scheme, he awkwardly tries to make
Babylon the harlot out to be Jerusalem!
David’s strange rejoinder to the objection that the description of the
harlot-city does not historically fit Jerusalem is that Revelation “is not a
book about politics; it is a book about the Covenant” (p. 442). (David
sure gets a lot “about politics” from this book when he wants to!) But the facts remains that “Covenant”
literature does not, as such, justify historical error. Jerusalem never “reigned over the nations
(even given the contrived reference to Ex. 19:6) and certainly was never—even
“covenantly”—the principal importer of goods (even slaves) indispensable to the
wealth of international merchants (Rev. 18:3, 11, 14:9). This is a major blunder.
Similarly,
David interprets the “second beast” or “false prophet” who enforces worship of
the Emperor (Rev. 13:11-18) as the leaders of Israel, despite the historical
inaccuracies involved and with no compelling exegetical argumentation. This too comes from preconceived
interpretive notions. The second beast
is the pagan Emperor-cult itself (pagan ecclesia
which stood behind the pagan “polis” or political structure), involving a crass
idolatry (13:15) and delegated political power (13:12, 16-17) which were never
characteristic of the Jews in Roman era.
So
then, I cannot recommend my friend David’s commentary on Revelation. (1) It embodies an unsound, imaginative hermeneutic. (2) It is confused about the book’s
structure and meaning. (3) It is guilty
of considerable errors in history and interpretation.
But
then, to be fair, I should alert the reader that the publisher, Dr. North, has
already dispensed in advance with criticisms of the commentary. His preface warns that the commentary will
take some heat, not because of its
shortcomings, but because critics are “infected” with disdain over not
discovering the “Tyler theology” themselves (pp. xviii-xix). I will let the reader decide “on the merits”
of my critique whether Gary here commits the logical fallacy of “poisoning the
well” or not. Printed words are easier
to read than human hearts.