Thoughts on Revelation 21

I have a slightly different way of interpreting Rev. 21, thanks to Dr. Stephen Bouma-Prediger of Hope College. The "new" in verses 1 and 2 isn't naios, the Greek word that would have been used to mean something absolutely, brand-spanking new, the result of completely starting over. Rather, it is kainos, which is used to refer to a thing which has been changed in the sense of "renewed," but not destroyed.

So as you can see I don't agree with the current Evangelical dispensationalist interpretation of John's vision. The images of fire in Malachi and Revelation seem to me to speak of a dramatic and dreadful refining/purifying rather than a total destruction, so that what God created and called good is finally "cleaned up," healed and restored to His original design.

This is important to me because I am fascinated by premodern philosophy (everything before Descartes), and a huge part of pre-modern philosophy is all about trying to understand the concept of "change." It seems to me that one of the big differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is in how they would define the change called "conversion" and the changes involved in sanctification. The former distinguishes between "nature" (physis) and "world" / "flesh" (cosmos/sarx); while the latter tends to conflate them. But this gets me into more Greek word studies which I won't bore you with. : )