Three Traditional Options
1. Preterism: Relevance to author's time.
2. Futurism: Relevance to reader's future.
3. Historicism: Relevance to Christian history.
Three Recent Developments
4. Liberation Theologies: Relevance to fighting oppression.
5. Aesthetic/Liturgical: Relevance to experiencing beauty in sight, sound and worship.
6. Reader Participation: Relevance to reader's direct and immediate experience of the letter's vitality.
A Very Recent Development
7. Cosmic Conflict ("Great Controversy" motif without Historicism): Relevance to Understanding the Character of God. *
*There are several different ways of expressing the conceptual creativity as well as the attention to detail of Sigve Tonstad’s commentary "Revelation " (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2019). This is one of the better ones.
It is Doubly Nontraditional: On the one hand, it provides a partial and congenial alternative to many traditional “Great Controversy” interpretations. On the other hand, it provides a partial and congenial alternative to many traditional (within the last century) scholarly interpretations.
As three threads running through to whole of it, it explores whether the letter is violent or nonviolent, Roman or cosmic and retributive or revelatory.
The reader cannot be a bird flying over it. He or she must be a worm inching through it.
It is well worth the effort it takes to read it and the $35.00 dollars it takes to purchase it.