Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Taxonomy of eschatological beliefs

Pastor Harry and Todd Strandberg are just two proponents of two of the many different eschatological views present in Christianity. There is a wide range of different views and interpretations of biblical sources. There are idealist, futurists, preterists, and historicists. This refers to whether the biblical prophecies are believed to be metaphorical, or if they are believed to describe literally events that took place in the past, or will take place in the future, or if they describe the entire history of the church, symbolically. Different views can also be classified as amilleniallists, pre-, mid-, and post-millenialists, and of course dispensational, covenantal, and theological.

If we abstract for a moment from details of biblical interpretation, we see that most interpretations have a negative view of the future - thing are going downhill before the second coming - while some expect humanity to gradually improve. Especially the first view combines the negative outlook with cataclysmic events or even a final battle of good versus evil.

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