The honor of serving God before his throne is the first honor for the people of the New Jerusalem (22:3). Further honors occur in Revelation 22:4-5. Revelation 22:4 says, “And they will see his face, and his name will be…
Revelation 22:3 says, “And there will no longer be any curse. And the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will serve him.” The term priests occurs three times in Revelation, all with…
In John 1:51, Jesus says, “Amen, Amen, I say to you (plural), you (plural) will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” Jesus’ words here are somewhat mysterious. What exactly is…
In light of the Ephesian church’s significant strengths (Rev. 2:2-3), it is surprising that she has allowed herself to slip into an area of weakness that could be her undoing. Revelation 2:4 says, “But I have this against you, that…
When we think of “I am” in the Gospel of John, we generally think of expressions with a predicate after the “I am,” like “I am the good shepherd.” In that sentence, “the good shepherd” is the predicate that completes…
Like Chrysostom, John Calvin (d. 1564) is a proponent of typology and a critic of the allegorical interpretation of Origen. Calvin looks to the New Testament to help him to interpret the Old Testament (Puckett 178). In the long quote that…
John Chrysostom (d. 407) came from Antioch and was such a great preacher that he earned the name “Chrysostom” (golden mouth). Chrysostom was influenced by the so-called Antiochene school, because he sat under the teaching of Diodore of Tarsus, a…
In this post, we will look at some more examples of the confusion of typology and allegorical interpretation. As we saw in the previous post, some Church Fathers encourage the confusion by using the terms “allegory” or “allegorical” for interpretations…
There are interesting modern consequences of the widespread use of allegorical interpretation in the history of hermeneutics. In Protestant circles, poor interpretations of the Bible are now often labelled as “allegorical” or “allegory,” even if they are not properly examples…
Typology and allegorical interpretation. One of the important trends in early Christian interpretation (or hermeneutics) of the Bible is the practice of allegorical interpretation, especially of the Old Testament. Scholars today commonly debate whether one can distinguish between typology and…