Revelation between Protestant and Catholic

The Reformers read Revelation as a prophetic outline of history, and so identified the beast and harlot with the Catholic church of their time. In response, Catholics developed “preterist” and “futurist” readings of the book, which viewed the Apocalypse as a prophecy of fulfilled events of the distant past, of the history of the church prior to Constantine, or events that will be fulfilled only at the end of all things.

According to Craig Koester (Revelation, 56-57), “Francisco Ribera (d. 1591) said that the messages in Rev 1-3 pertained to Christians of John’s time, while the first five seals pointed to the preaching of the apostles, Nero’s persecution, the rise of false apostles, and persecution under Trajan (6:1-11). All of that was in the past. But the rest of the book relates to the end of the age, with the cosmic signs of the sixth seal anticipating Christ’s second coming (6:12–17; cf. Matt 24:29) and the trumpet plagues prophesying eschatological tribulations. Most importantly, the visions of the beast and whore in Rev 12–19 point to future persecutions by the Antichrist.”

Similarly, “Jesuit Luis de Alcázar (d. 1613), who dedicated his work to Pope Paul V and presented Revelation as a vision of the triumph of the Catholic Church. For him, the first half of the book depicts the early church’s struggle against Judaism. He thought the sixth seal depicted the Jewish revolt against Rome (6:12–17), a time when the church was protected (7:7–17) and Jews suffered disasters (8:1–9:21). An angel called for the extension of the gospel to Gentiles (10:1–11), and then Jerusalem fell under siege (11:1–14). In the second half of the book, the woman symbolizing Jewish Christianity bears a child, who is the Gentile church. Threats from imperial Rome are symbolized by the beast and whore, until Babylon falls, signifying the end of paganism when the empire converted to Christianity in the fourth century (Rev 13–19). Only the final part of Revelation remains to be fulfilled, when there will be persecution by the Antichrist and the church will defeat all false religion through the Spirit, symbolized by heavenly fire (20:7–10). In New Jerusalem, Alcázar sees a vision of the church’s final perfection.”

Revelation can’t be about a corrupt papacy, they argued, because it’s about events that already happened or events that won’t happen for a long time. That doesn’t solve the problem, though, since it could be argued that events of the first century foreshadow analogous events in church history, or that events of church history anticipate events of the end.