The Theology of the Book of Revelation Read online

  From John’s prophetic perspective Rome’s evil lay primarily in absolutizing her own power and prosperity. Consequently she pursued and maintained them at the expense of her victims. According to 18:24, it is not just for the martyrdom of Christians, but for the slaughter of all her innocent victims that Rome will be judged: ‘in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who have been slain on earth’. There is therefore a sense in which Revelation takes a view from the ‘underside of history’, from the perspective of the victims of Rome’s power and glory. It takes this perspective not because John and his Christian readers necessarily belonged to the classes which suffered rather than shared Rome’s power and prosperity. It takes this perspective because, if they are faithful in their witness to the true God, their opposition to Rome’s oppression and their dissociation of themselves from Rome’s evil will make them victims of Rome in solidarity with the other victims of Rome. The special significance of Christian martyrdom is that it makes the issue clear. Those who bear witness to the one true God, the only true absolute, to whom all political power is subject, expose Rome’s idolatrous self-deification for what it is.

  This means that the power of resistance to Rome came from Christian faith in the one true God. Not to submit to Roman power, not to glorify its violence and its profits, required a perspective alternative to the Roman ideology which permeated public life. For John and those who shared his prophetic insight, it was the Christian vision of the incomparable God, exalted above all worldly power, which relativized Roman power and exposed Rome’s pretensions to divinity as a dangerous delusion. This is why the critique of Rome in Revelation follows, in the structure of the book, from the vision of God’s rule and justice in chapter 4. In the light of God’s righteousness Rome’s oppression and exploitation stand condemned, and in the light of God’s lordship over history, it becomes clear that Rome does not hold ultimate power and cannot continue her unjust rule indefinitely. Thus, if there is a sense in which Revelation adopts a perspective from the ‘underside of history’, it is the heavenly perspective, given in the vision of God’s heavenly throne-room, that makes this possible.

  DIVINE HOLINESS IN JUDGMENT

  The whole of Revelation could be regarded as a vision of the fulfilment of the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Your name be hallowed, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6:9–10). John and his readers lived in a world in which God’s name was not hallowed, his will was not done, and evil ruled through the oppression and exploitation of the Roman system of power. But in chapter 4, he sees in heaven, the sphere of ultimate reality, the absolute holiness, righteousness and sovereignty of God. From this vision of God’s name hallowed and God’s will done in heaven, it follows that his kingdom must come on earth. This is what makes the vision of chapter 4, along with its christological continuation in chapter 5, foundational for all that follows. A wide range of literary and thematic connexions link chapter 4 with the visions that follow. In particular they link chapter 4 with the visions of judgment on the world and the powers of evil. The holiness and righteousness of God require the condemnation of unrighteousness on earth and the destruction of the powers of evil that contest God’s rule on earth, so that their rule may give place to the coming of God’s kingdom on earth.

  There are three series of judgments: the seven seal-openings (6:1–17; 8:1, 3–5), the seven trumpets (8:2, 6–21; 11:14–19), and the seven bowls (15:1, 5–21). As seven is the number of completeness, in some sense each series completes God’s judgment on the unrighteous world. In other words, the seventh of each series portrays the final act of judgment in which evil is destroyed and God’s kingdom arrives. But the three series are so connected that the seventh seal-opening includes the seven trumpets and the seventh trumpet includes the seven bowls. Thus each series reaches the same end, but from starting-points progressively closer to the end. This is why the three series of judgments are of progressive severity: the judgments of the seal-openings affect a quarter of the earth (6:8), those of the trumpets affect a third (8:7–12; 9:18), but those of the bowls are unlimited. Warning judgments, restrained in hope that the wicked will be warned and repent (cf. 9:20–1), are succeeded in the last series by judgments of final retribution (cf. 16:5–7). Of course, the highly schematized portrayal of the judgments depicts their theological significance. It cannot be meant as a literal prediction of events.

  What is of interest to us at present is the way these series of judgments are connected with the vision of God’s throne-room in chapter 4. Each series is portrayed as in some way issuing from the throne-room. It is the four living creatures who summon the four riders of the first four seal-openings (6:1, 3, 5, 7). The seven trumpets are blown by the seven angels who stand before God in heaven (8:2, 6). Most elaborate is the way the seven last plagues, with which ‘the wrath of God is ended’ (15:1), are portrayed as issuing from the throne-room depicted in chapter 4. The heavenly temple is open (15:5); the angels who are to pour out the bowls of wrath on the earth come out of it (15:6); and one of the living creatures gives them the ‘bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever’ (15:7). This last phrase is an allusion to the way God is described in 4:9–10 (cf. also 10:6). He is the only eternal one: evil must perish under his judgment. Finally, in 15:8 (‘the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues … were ended’) there is an echo of Isaiah 6:4 (‘the house filled with smoke’). This completes an allusion to Isaiah’s vision of God on his throne which began in chapter 4 with the song of the living creatures (4:8: ‘Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God the Almighty’, echoing Isaiah 6:3). It is the God whose awesome holiness the living creatures sing unceasingly who manifests his glory and power in the final series of judgments.

  Even more significant, however, is the literary link between 4:5a and the seventh of each series of judgments. In 4:5a (‘coming from the throne are flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder’) John has developed a feature of Ezekiel’s vision of the divine throne (Ezek. 1:13) into an allusion to the phenomena of the thunderstorm that accompanied God’s self-manifestation on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:16; 20:18). This feature of John’s vision therefore represents the One who sits on the throne as the holy God of the Sinai covenant, who demands obedience to his righteous will. But the formula used in 4:5a is then echoed at the opening of the seventh seal (8:5), the sounding of the seventh trumpet (11:19) and the pouring out of the seventh bowl (16:18–21), in the following way:

  4:5:

  ‘flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder’

  8:5:

  ‘peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake’

  11:19:

  ‘flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunders, an earthquake, and heavy hail’

  16:18–21:

  ‘flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake … and huge hailstones’

  In 4:5 the formula indicates a manifestation of God’s holiness in heaven. The expansion of the formula in the other instances indicates that judgment on earth is now in view (as the context of each makes quite clear). God’s holiness is manifested in judgment on evil. The progressive expansion of the formula corresponds to the progressive intensification of the three series of judgments. In this way the whole course of the judgments is depicted as the manifestation of the same divine holiness which is revealed in the theophany in heaven in 4:5.

  In all these connexions between the vision of God’s throne in chapter 4 and the three series of judgments it is notable that the transcendence of God is protected and the absence of anthropomorphic representation, so notable a feature of chapter 4, is preserved. God is not directly depicted as judge. The living creatures who belong to God’s throne (4:6) commission the judgments (6:1, 3, 5, 7; 15:7) and angels carry them out. God’s glory, power and holiness are manifested in smoke, thunder
-storm and earthquake – the traditional accompaniments of theophany – but God himself is not seen or heard. Even when John refers to the great voice, which at the pouring out of the seventh bowl declares the completion of the judgment (‘It is done’), he adopts the kind of indirectness with which Jewish writers commonly avoided the anthropomorphism of reference to God’s own voice. The voice is not said to be God’s, but comes ‘from the throne’ (16:17). Thus the way John portrays the judgments is as far as possible from the image of a human despot wielding arbitrary power.

  This point is of the greatest importance when we remember that John’s purpose is certainly not to compare the divine sovereignty in heaven with the absolute power of human rulers on earth. Quite the contrary: his purpose is to oppose the two. Absolute power on earth is satanic in inspiration, destructive in its effects, idolatrous in its claim to ultimate loyalty. Though it claims divinity, it is utterly unlike the divine sovereignty. Thus it would subvert the whole purpose of John’s prophecy if his depiction of the divine sovereignty appeared to be a projection into heaven of the absolute power claimed by human rulers on earth. This danger is averted by a kind of apophaticism8 in the imagery which purges it of anthropomorphism and suggests the incomparability of God’s sovereignty. His judgments are true and just (16:7; 19:2; cf. 15:3). In other words, they correspond to the moral truth of things. He is sovereign as the only holy One (15:4). In other words, he alone has righteousness as his very nature. The absolute sovereignty which should be attributed to the Creator, the source of all value, who is truth and righteousness in his very being, is not at all the same thing as the absolute sovereignty claimed by finite creatures on earth. No writer of Scripture shows himself more aware of this difference than John.

  DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY AND TRANSCENDENCE

  The image of God as transcendent ruler and judge has been frequently and severely criticized in much recent theological discussion. Feminist theologians have not been alone in rejecting it, but have often been particularly vehement in castigating it as a religious projection of patriarchal domination.9 This image, as we shall see especially in our next two chapters, does not exhaust Revelation’s understanding of God, but it does play a prominent part in that understanding, and so it is relevant to ask whether Revelation’s use of this image of God would justifiably incur the kinds of criticism that are levelled at it by feminist and other contemporary theologians.

  Two types of criticism are worth considering. The first is that images of God as sovereign function as religious sanction for authoritarian structures of power and domination in human society. Of course, this has very often been the case. It is one of the deepest ironies of Christian history that, when the Roman Empire became nominally Christian under the Christian emperors, Christianity came to function not so very differently from the state religion which Revelation portrays as Rome’s idolatrous self-deification. The Christian emperor’s rule was seen as an image of God’s own sovereignty, and while this did include the notion of the emperor’s responsibility to God, it also provided religious justification for absolute monarchy. However, this is the exact opposite of the way the image of divine sovereignty functions in Revelation. There, so far from legitimizing human autocracy, divine rule radically de-legitimizes it. Absolute power, by definition, belongs only to God, and it is precisely the recognition of God’s absolute power that relativizes all human power. The image of God’s sovereignty functioned rather similarly in seventeenth-century England, where it played a part in the religious origins of modern democracy. Because God is king, it was said, all men and women are equally his subjects, and no man should arrogate to himself to rule over his fellows.10

  We have already noticed how Revelation, by avoiding anthropomorphism, suggests the incomparability of God’s sovereignty. In effect, the image of sovereignty is being used to express an aspect of the relation between God and his creatures which is unique, rather than one which provides a model for relationships between humans. Of course, the image of the throne derives from the human world, but it is so used as to highlight the difference, more than the similarity, between divine sovereignty and human sovereignty. In other words, it is used to express transcendence. Much of the modern criticism of images of this kind seems unable to understand real transcendence. It supposes that the relation between God and the world must be in every respect comparable with relations between creatures and that all images of God must function as models for human behaviour. It is critical of images of transcendence, such as sovereignty, but it takes transcendence to mean that God is some kind of superhuman being alongside other beings. Real transcendence, of course, means that God transcends all creaturely existence. As the source, ground and goal of all creaturely existence, the infinite mystery on which all finite being depends, his relation to us is unique. We can express it only by using language and images in odd ways that point beyond themselves to something quite incomparable with the creaturely sources of our language and images.

  Once we recognize the need for God-language that points to transcendence, we can recognize that John is remarkably successful in finding religiously evocative language that expresses transcendence. His distinctive interpretations of the divine name – the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is and who was and who is to come – attempt to name the one who precedes and surpasses all infinite existence, while being intimately related to it as its source and goal. These designations for God are also notably non-anthropomorphic, suggesting that God’s relation to the world transcends human analogies. As for the image of the throne the way John uses it not only evokes transcendence, but does so polemically against the deification of human power. Finally, John’s vision draws the reader into worship of the One who alone is holy and who alone is Creator, awaking those forms of perception of God which are the recognition of transcendence. It is in the kind of genuine worship that John portrays in his vision of heaven that we know ourselves to be finite creatures in relation to the transcendent mystery of God. False worship, such as John portrays in the worship of the beast, is false precisely because its object is not the transcendent mystery, but only the mystification of something finite. Hence the capacity of the visions of Revelation to evoke divine transcendence is indispensable to its prophetic purpose of distinguishing true worship from idolatry, the true God from the false.

  A second type of criticism of the image of God as sovereign ruler over his creation is that it represents God as distant from the world, rather than involved in and with his creation.11 This criticism is misconceived when it is made against transcendence as such. Transcendence requires the absolute distinction between God and finite creatures, but not at all his distance from them. The transcendent God, precisely because he is not one finite being among others, is able to be incomparably present to all, closer to them than they are to themselves. This point is relevant to Revelation, because it explains how the God whose transcendence is so emphasized can in the new creation make his home with human beings (21:3). His nearness to his creation in the language of 21:3–4 is as striking as his transcendence in the vision of chapter 4. Moreover, even the image of the throne becomes, in the New Jerusalem, an expression of God’s closeness to his people (22:3–4; and cf. already 7:15–17).

  We become aware then that the visions portray a difference between the present and the eschatological future. God as the One who sits on the throne is at present in heaven and acts on earth only through angelic intermediaries. Only in God’s eschatological coming to his creation at the end, only in the New Jerusalem which comes down out of heaven and abolishes the distinction between heaven and earth, will God’s dwelling be with his people on earth. The impression that God is in some sense now absent from the earth is confirmed by the difference between the song of the living creatures (4:8) and the Old Testament original on which it is modelled: Isaiah 6:3. Isaiah’s seraphim sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ In John’s vision, the last clause is replaced by the designation of God: ‘wh
o was and who is and who is to come’. We recall that chapter 4 portrays in heaven the rule of God which is yet to come on earth. God’s glory is not yet manifested in a world dominated by injustice. But this is not an other-worldly dualism, which rejects this world in favour of another. It is a recognition of the evil which obscures God’s glory in the world as it is, but it is also the hope that, rescued from evil, this world will be indwelt by the splendour of God.

  It is part and parcel of the apocalyptic outlook to portray the present and the eschatological future in starkly black and white terms. No doubt most modern Christians would prefer to recognize the traces of God’s glory even within a world where human injustice looms large. But Revelation deals in images which cannot say everything at once. The point here is an overwhelming concern with the absence of God’s righteousness from God’s world, a concern John shares with the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. While the beast holds sway, God cannot be said to be present in his glory. True, even the beast has power only by divine permission (13:7), but only when God’s will prevails over all evil can his kingdom be said to have come on earth (11:15). Only then will he make his dwelling in his creation (21:3).

  Yet, if the One who sits on the throne is in some sense removed from the world in heaven, Revelation does portray God’s presence in the world as presently dominated by evil. As we shall see in the next two chapters, the image of the Lamb represents God’s sacrificial, suffering involvement in the world and the Spirit his presence in the church’s sacrificial witness to the truth.