Critical Articles

Why idealist readings of Revelation which appeal to "double fulfillment" or "multiple fulfillment" don't work
(TD - Amen!)

David Field  2007

 

They ramble back and forth and you'd have to be pretty committed to reading them slowly a couple of times at least for them to make much sense but here are some thoughts on why idealist readings of Revelation which appeal to "double fulfillment" or "multiple fulfillment" don't work. That they started in email exchanges is clear from time to time.

A. Preterist criticism of idealist readings

We need to distinguish between:
a) referent
b) association
c) application

Take the fall of Babylon as an example.

A preterist would say

a) the fall of Babylon is / is about / has as its referent, the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70

b) this has many associations - like the tower of Babel, the Isaiah 13-14 material, the destruction of Tyre in Ezekiel etc. Because of this it can teach and reassure us in all sorts of ways - which have to do with how God works by patterns and habits

c) this is turn means that there will be many applications so that when Christians after A.D. 70 see false religion / covenant-breakers / proud Christ-rejecting privileged groups etc. giving the bride a hard time then they can declare with confidence, “God showed us in A.D. 70 with the fall of Babylon that this sort of thing will be dealt with”.

An idealist, in my view, collapses this so that the associations and applications are confusedly reckoned to be referents. The idealist says either

a) that the fall of Babylon is / is about / has as its referent two, five, five hundred distinct and separate occasions within history or

b) that the fall of Babylon is itself a higher level thing and that specific occasions (such as A.D. 70) are just manifestations or examples of the fall of Babylon.

The trouble with the first is that it means the answer to the question “has Babylon fallen in the Rev 18-19 sense?” is “yes and no” - and at the same level of discourse. But once you say that then how can you have prophecy and fulfillment at all?

The trouble with the second is that it is de-historicizing - it makes God’s realm of action supra-history rather than history. Some would even call this gnostic. Because it would say that “Babylon in x manifestation has fallen” but that this has not had the redemptive-historical impact which Revelation implies (it’s an event which leads to the overthrow of beast, false prophet, to the 1000 year reign, the great judgment etc). So then we wait for “Babylon in y manifestation” to fall - but this doesn”t do it either. So it’s not “Babylon” in any “manifestation” which makes the difference but rather something beyond history. It’s as though God’s real actions don’t take place upon the stage of history. (In a previous generation this was linked with “the scandal of particularity” - people were embarassed about the sheer once-off-ness and located-ness of God’s actions.)

To say this another way, if the fall of Babylon is about the supra-historical reality of which historical realities are merely particular manifestations, then you are NOT actually saying that it is about A.D. 70 and A.D. 300 and A.D. 1500 (or whenever). You cannot at the same time and in the same way say that Babylon refers to a supra-historical general reality AND that it applies (in the same way) to an intra-historical particularity.

Thus the “double-referent” idea is inherently unstable. And - again - this is because it fails to see that referent/ association/ application are distinguishable (though not ultimately separable).

Remember, also, the very specificity of much of the book
- has Jesus “come” in the way he promised or not?
- has the male child been born yet (or is this a timeless principle with multiple referents?)
- has the dragon been cast out of heaven?
- has the beast turned against the harlot? (has Babylon fallen?)

If this is going on through all history then has heaven been opened or not? Have the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ?

To say “in this manifestation, yes, but in this manifestation, no” is actually to say, “in terms stated by the text (unique, climactic, unrepeatable), no”.

Bottom-line:

If you are preterist (or indeed futurist) then you have single referent and multiple association and application.

If you are idealist and try to have multiple referent then you lose
a) ability to communicate about unique events
b) seriousness about historical particularity
c) ability to recognise that a prophecy has been fulfilled, and therefore
d) ability to declare a given interpretation (designation of referent) right or wrong.

The idealist’s desire to be inclusive and general results in incoherence. And, funnily enough, you’ve lost coherence in an attempt to gain something which you think the preterist/futurist lacks when in fact they (so long as they do their association/application thing seriously) not only have it but are the only ones who have grounds for having it and holding it stably and securely.


B. Question in response to the above

Here's a quote “Because of the typological character of history, one prophetic oracle may point to more than one future event, having a near “confirming” fulfillment and another fuller fulfillment in the New Covenant. A clear illustration of this is Isaiah 7:1-19, which is immediately fulfilled in Isaiah 8:3-4, but receives a fuller fulfillment in Matthew 1.” That is, there is a “confirming” fulfilment and a “fuller” fulfilment. Doesn’t that mean that the prophecy has two referents?


C. An attempted answer to the question in B.

I think I think (!) that while someone may rightly say that prophecy X “is about” or “points to” or even “is fulfilled by” two distinguishable things, the fact that this is so in different ways means that we’d do better to find a distinct way of describing each of them. Let me try to explain. Our options are

1) complex or extended single referent - which I think is wholly conceivable (“I will build my church” has a single referent but it it is realized each time someone becomes a Christian. The referent then is not to any one conversion but to the meta-reality of a growing church. The conversion of each individual is a fulfillment (instantiation) of the whole meta-reality prophecy - not a “partial fulfillment”.)
 

Why doesn't this fall foul of my criticism of idealist gnosticism above? Because that did not deny that a prophecy may been fulfilled within history over an extended period. There are "process-fulfillments". It denied that the referent of a prophecy which is a "point-fulfillment", (for example a prophecy which includes near time-markers and upon the single, completed fulfillment of which other, subsequent things depend) can be lifted out of earthly history into a supra-historical realm.
 

2) partial fulfillment - this would mean that after (to use our example) A.D.70 you could not say that the prophecy of the fall of Babylon had been fulfilled. You would say that it had been partially fulfilled. You could only say that it was really fulfilled once (e.g.) seductive religion had been destroyed with the return of Christ. The difficulty with this, as we have observed, is that if there is a unilinear / sequenced / once-off set of consequences which flow from the fall of Babylon then you won’t be able to start that until the prophecy is fulfilled (not partially fulfilled). If you move to saying, “well, fulfilled in this way (enough to kick-off the chain of consequences) , but not in that” then you are not talking about partial fulfillment but either about distinct prophecies or about 4) below.

3) double fulfillment in the same way at the same level - this is a non-sense because it is saying that in the same way and at the same level prophecy X has been fulfilled and has not been fulfilled

4) double fulfillment in different ways - this is what we are talking about above

So, I think that the sort of thing you raise in your question is 4). But if we are talking about double (or multiple) fulfillment in different ways then I think it is confusing to use the same word (fulfillment) to describe them. [No problem for Matthew because he’s not trying to use terms in a way that divides everything up as tightly as we try to do when striving for hermeneutical precision - though see here for what people make of plero-o in Matthew ]. But it's more of a problem for us. This is presumably why even in the quotation you give we have some sort of distinction – the qualifiers “confirming” and “fuller” fulfillment are introduced. I simply think that it’s less confusing to find even more distinct vocabulary than that.

Thus far I’ve kept to “referent” (and “association”) and “application”. Now I want to distinguish a little further by dividing “application” into two categories.

a) Application 1 – typological echo within Scripture history. This is an application insofar as it was not the referent of the prophecy and yet that typological echo may be a thousand times more important than the original referent and fulfillment. Think of 2 Samuel 7 or Isaiah 7 for example. The referent of each of these prophecies was located in the near future and thus the fulfillment of the prophecies also took place in that same near future. However, both of these prophecies, fulfilled within not many years of having been made, had a typological echo in Christ the importance of which far outweighed the importance of the actual “fulfillment”.

It is unsurprising if someone wants to say – in view of the fact that the Christ-centred typological echo is far more important than the actual near-time referent and fulfillment – that the prophecy is fulfilled in Christ. Furthermore, this is actually the way that NT writers sometimes word things. But in terms of precise understanding of how prophecy works, it would be misleading to talk about double or multiple “fulfillments”.

It is unsurprising if someone wants to say – in view of the fact that the Christ-centred typological echo is far more important than the actual near-time referent and fulfillment – that the prophecy was really “about” the massive typological echo rather than “about” the single initial referent. But in terms of precise understanding of how prophecy works, it would be misleading to say, without qualification, that the prophecy was “about” Christ.

And it is not only “unsurprising”, it is – in motivation, though not in choice of terminology – often highly desirable because it is stressing what the NT stresses and what all Christians should want to stress, namely that OT prophecy is always (in the loose sense) “about” Christ and “fulfilled” in Christ. I’d rather have someone asserting those things in terms which I think lead to confusion when turned into a theory of double or multiple fulfillment than missing the NT’s glorious obsession with Christ.

But let's get back to where this started – with a Revelation-preterist’s criticism of a Revelation-idealist. It remains the case that as soon as this theory of double or multiple fulfillment, which arises out of a failure to distinguish OT prophecies’ near-time referent and fulfillment from their Christ-centred climactic and glorious typological application, is applied to the book of Revelation, all sorts of silliness comes to the surface.

b) Application 2. – application by non-Scripture writers outside of Scripture-history. This is what we normally call “application”.

Incidentally, I’ve also come across this set of distinctions - and you may do so too:
a) “prediction” (my “referent”) and
b) “promise” (my “Application 1”, i.e. a typological echo within Scripture history, the importance of which far outweighs that of the actual referent and fulfillment.)

I wonder how much sense this all makes?

Response:  It is unfortunate that Idealism has basically become synonymous with a form of Futurism.  This has happened because of the tendency to see one historical event (say, AD70) as a type of yet another historical event (such as the events of the end of the world).  An illuminating example of how fully the Idealist views of the past have been subsumed by Futurist views can be seen in the following review of an "Idealist" book, which review was written by another Idealist:

"First, it is idealist. That is, it argues that the major visions of Revelation set out a general pattern of spiritual realities and spiritual war applicable throughout the period from Christ’s first coming until the Second Coming. " (Polythress reviews Beale)

In a sense, this form of Idealism is nothing more than a Historicist view, in that prophecy is seen as unfolding in successive centuries until the "final fulfillment."  The difference is that a Historicist would tend to see total fulfillment in particular events leading up to the end, whereas this type of Idealist sees fulfillment in particular events as being only typological of the end.

This Futurist form of Idealism is classified as "Historical Idealism" at IdealistArchive.com.

That is to be distinguished from "Modern Idealism," which doesn't see "double" or "multiple" fulfillments at all... but sees all historical events as commonly revealing eternal/spiritual realities which find their fulfillment personally in Jesus Christ.   A perfect example of this can be seen in Israel's "land promises" (see Israel's History a Type - From Beginning to End)

I am in complete agreement with Field as he exposes the weaknesses of "Historical Idealism" ; and, consequently, am in general agreement with the whole tenor of the article, as he never rebuts or refutes Modern Idealism.

So, in attempting to collar the Idealist view as "double fulfillment" or "multiple fulfillment" only works if that Idealist teaches that prophecy is to find its ultimate fulfillment in history... and not in Christ.

If prophecy was able to find fulfillment outside of Christ, then the Preterist or Futurist views would have more merit.  But by limiting the intent of the Bible's imagery to historical events and natural things -- as natural Israel did, to their disappointment -- the true power and glory of the gospel is lost. 

Field starts to head in the right direction with the following comment:

"complex or extended single referent - which I think is wholly conceivable (“I will build my church” has a single referent but it it is realized each time someone becomes a Christian. The referent then is not to any one conversion but to the meta-reality of a growing church. The conversion of each individual is a fulfillment (instantiation) of the whole meta-reality prophecy - not a “partial fulfillment”

In fact, he doesn't attempt a rebuttal of this Modern Idealist point.. and seems to favor it... only to immediately turn his focus back to "Historical Idealism."  The only real point Field makes against Modern Idealism is that he considers it "de-historicising" ; however, as he demonstrated in the quote above, this is simply not the case.   The spiritual work of Jesus Christ in the lives of His bride is certainly not of this world ; however, it is very much a part of history... such as when Jesus encouraged the church to return to their "first love."

The key point, though, is that fulfillment, though in the "world" and history, is not OF the world and history. 

Prophetic fulfillment is in history in Christ, but it is not in history as history itself.

The transition from darkness to light can truly come in Jesus Christ alone -- not in history.   Hence Paul's declaration that "if any man be in Christ he is a new creation.  Old things are passed away. Behold! all things are become new."   It is important to notice in this passage that the eschaton is in Jesus Christ.   The telos is in Jesus Christ.   And it is no accident that in the Book of Revelation Jesus refers to Himself as the telos and the eschaton a total of seven times!

There is an important message here... and that is that the true fulfillment is found in Jesus Christ personally, and spiritually.   All attempts to make the substance of prophecy about anything but the work of Jesus Christ misses the point.   II Cor 1:20 declares outright that all the promises of God find their fulfillment in Christ alone. 

I greatly appreciate Field's "bottom line" which shows that Preterism and Futurism are basically the same theology:

If you are preterist (or indeed futurist) then you have single referent and multiple association and application.

So, I am in agreement with the whole drift of Field's article -- in his rebuke of Historical Idealism, and in his appreciation of Modern Idealism (though disagreeing that it is "de-historicizing and therefore Gnostic).  It is not at all "double" or "multiple" fulfillment to see that the focal point of Bible prophecy is Christ's work in the world and in His Body.  Though this point of view may result from looking at the micro scale alone... this is their own problem.. and not that of Modern Idealists.  It is truly the macro scale that is the focal point of all Bible prophecy, and seen as such there is only one substance - the profound redemptive work of Jesus Christ.  As in Matthew 5:17, Christ is the fulfillment of the law.  However, for the individual, this must be personally received, and is not receivable in history alone.  To say that the law is fulfilled for all in history is nothing short of Universalism -- which is the ultimate hurdle that all "single referent" systems must overcome... regardless of the number of "associations" or "applications."