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Revelation: Three Viewpoints

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There have been several books printed that give the various perspectives on the Book of Revelation (which our Catholic and Anglican friends often prefer to dub "The Apocalypse of St. John the Divine"). Inter-Varsity Press presented four views way back when. They included the amillennial, historical premillennial, dispensational premillennial and postmillennial. Zondervan more recently has presented a progressive dispensationalist (Dr. Craig Blaising), an amillennial and a theonomic postmillennial view (Dr. Kenneth Gentry). Zondervan is notoriously dispensational so their treatment of the viewpoints is weighted in favor of the dispensationalist view (especially Marvin Pate's forward and afterward). Ken Gentry does a valiant job defending the postmil position but those who go for literalism (especially of the wooden kind indulged in by the late Dr. Walvoord and Dr. Pentecost) will prefer Blaising while regretting his few departures from classic dispensationalism.

This book presents the three main views of the book as written by three eminent Southern Baptist scholars of a past generation. Herschel H. Hobbs is perhaps the best known. A well-known moderate, his views have fallen out-of-favor with the doyens of right-wing, theological correctness in the Convention today. Known for a more nuanced view of the thorny topic of Biblical inspiration, his rejection of party-line inerrancy would land him in hot water (and since we are Baptists, the water must be deep too!) today. Shortly before the Lord took Hobbs home, he chimed in on the rising tide of Calvinism in the Convention and was decidedly negative in his appraisal of it. He seems to have forgotten that the roots of the SBC were Reformed. His more nuanced view of Scripture made him distrust what he must have seen as easy answers such as premillennialism, five-point Calvinism, inerrancy, etc.

Beasley-Murray is best known for his book on the Ordinance of Baptism. Some of his "admissions" about the belief in the superstition of "baptismal regeneration" in the early church made many of us more typical Southern Baptists uncomfortable to say the least. But it is not the job of a scholar to hew a party line, whether about the Millennium, Predestination, the nature of Biblical inspiration or any other topic that is not absolutely essential to the faith. The Southern Baptist Convention, by not learning that fact and actually setting the clock back to 19th century orthodoxy, has come a great distance toward a Presbyterian if not an outright Romanist view of authority in the church local and universal (no I am NOT a Landmarker tempting as that might be at times).

They have gone back to the future and by doing so, have left only these few momentos of an earlier and better approach. It was not the current crop of SBC theocrats who gave the world the concept of Soul Liberty and separation of church and state, but it may very well be the generation that extinguishes these things both among Baptists generally and in a nation they have come to have an inordinate influence over in the political sphere through the southern wing of the Republican Party. That is a crying shame but, optimist that this author is, it may not just stand because the Lord may just have other priorities than these Religious Rightists.