Rapture Hermeneutics No. 1
We began our look at the hermeneutics of The Rapture Question this week by reading Duffield’s and Van Cleave’s discussion in the Foursquare textbook, Foundations of Pentecostal Theology. Our first observations:Tangential Matters Often Obscure The Question
The Rapture Question is simply: Will the Rapture occur before, after or during the Great Tribulation? However, before the Foundations text treats this question under the subtitle, “Various Rapture Theories,” p. 529, it has already asserted that (1) The Rapture is an “any-moment occurrence,” p. 527, (2) the Rapture of the Church is the “blessed hope” of Tit 2.13, p. 528, and (3) the “falling away” of 2Th 2.3 is probably the “departure” of the saints in the Rapture, p. 529. The authors presumably intend to provide an objective presentation on The Rapture Question, but the above three assertions will have already begun to bias their readers toward the Pre-Trib perspective. We could wish that an unbiased author, of whichever perspective, would just take us straight to The Rapture Question, but normally we will have to wade through peripheral issues to get to that core question. Each of Duffield’s and Van Cleave’s three propositions above are important exegetical questions in their own right, and sooner or later we will have to return to them and examine their validity.
Subjective and Tentative Language Betrays The Lack of an Explicit Text
We noted Duffield’s and Van Cleave’s use of language like:
"If the Bible is to be taken in a natural sense, it seems that ..."Appealing to a subjective idea of what the “natural” reading of a text “seems” to say, and to "probable" or possible references and meanings, is not the authoritative teaching style to which we aspire. In fact, such appeals betray the elephant-in-the-living-room problem of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture teaching: it has no explicit text for its starting point. Our Hermeneutics Principle #14 tells us that the lack of an explicit foundational text indicates the proposition’s relative unimportance in the minds of the biblical writers. The Rapture was important (1Th 4.13-17) and The Great Tribulation was important (Mat 24.21), but the idea that The Rapture occurs before The Great Tribulation was either not important to the apostles, or it was contrary to their belief; either alternative explains their lack of explicit teaching on it.
"There is a probable additional reference ..."
"The Greek word translated 'falling away' may also have the meaning ..."
The Attempt To Reinterpret Apostasia To Mean Rapture
In an attempt to rectify the lack of an explicit Pre-Trib text, some Pre-Trib teachers have proposed that the Greek word apostasia in 2Th 2.3 refers to the Rapture. Here's what the re-translated verse would look like:
Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that Day [of the Lord] will not come until the Rapture occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.This re-translation makes The Rapture occur before the Day of the Lord and before -- or at least concurrent with -- the appearance of the Antichrist, and therefore, before the Tribulation.
However, is such a re-translation justified? No current English version of the Bible translates apostasia as anything but a "religious rebellion" or "spiritual falling away," and with good reason: we define biblical words by their usage. The NT uses apostasia here in 2Th 2.3 and in Act 21.21. In the Acts passage, apostasia clearly means a rebellion against the teachings of Moses. Two examples of a word's usage is not a lot to go on, but let's remember that the apostles learned their Greek vocabulary from the Septuagint. The LXX uses apostasia in Jos 22.22, 2Ch 29.19, 1Ma 2.15 and Jer 2.19. This OT usage consistently carries the meaning of a religious rebellion or spiritual falling away. The apostles would never have chosen the word apostasia to refer to The Rapture of the saints!
Nevertheless, regarding 2Th 2.3, Duffield and Van Cleave write on p. 528, 529:
There is a probably additional reference to the Rapture in the same passage ... The Greek word translated "falling away" may also have the meaning "departure" (see 2 Cor. 12:8, "depart").The appeal to 2Co 12.8 is amazing because it does not use our word apostasia but a cognate word, aphistamai. To thus shift a translation on the basis of a cognate word would be like saying that the word rebellion can mean "celebration" because the word revel can be interpreted that way! The words rebellion and revel are cognate words, but we would never use rebellion to mean “celebration”; the connotations of rebellion are contrary to such usage, just as the connotations of apostasia are contrary to the idea of The Rapture.
The attempt to redefine a word on the basis of a cognate word’s meaning is an interesting variation of The Root Fallacy discussed in ch. 1 of D. A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies (Baker, 1984). Carson puts the problem to rest by stating the rule: “The meaning of a word cannot be reliably determined by etymology” (p. 31). In this case, the meaning of apostasia cannot be determined by its etymological relationship to aphistamai, but must be determined by its usage in the apostolic literature.
posted by Roderick of TMin @ 2:44 PM
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