Translating the Apocalyptic Literature of Revelation: The Defeat of the Pagan Empire of Babylon

Revelation, the Book of, and the defeat of pagan empire

http://www.postost.net/lexicon/revelation-book-defeat-pagan-empire

 

by Andrew Perriman

May 18, 2012

 

We had a very interesting session on the Book of Revelation in Harlesden last Tuesday evening. The big hermeneutical question it raised, in my view, is whether we live in the story it tells or after the story it tells. Barney suggested that we live in it and compared its complex allusive discourse cleverly and engagingly to the Meatrix. In many respects the analogy works well: it certainly helps us to understand the coded nature of the Book of Revelation better. But there is a critical point, I think, at which the analogy breaks down. Factory farming is a contemporary issue for us. Is that true of the issues addressed in the Book of Revelation? I don’t think so. We live in the Meatrix allegory. We do not live in the main story of that is being told in largely Revelation. We live after it, and have to learn from it, in rather different ways.

 

So what is the main story that is being told here? One way to make sense of the Book of Revelation is to see it as a rampant extemporization on the judgment scene in Daniel 7, in a heightened apocalyptic key. It has the same sort of meaning and frame of reference as Daniel 7, but Daniel’s motif has been gloriously elaborated upon, richly embroidered, with evocative, elusive snatches of melodies from other Old Testament compositions, and perhaps from more obscure Jewish pieces, woven into it. What follows is based on the two chapters on Revelation in my book The Coming of the Son of Man. It is no more than an outline. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered and a lot of answers unquestioned. That can’t be helped.

 

The defeat of pagan empire in Daniel 7

 

Daniel 7 is a critical Old Testament text for interpretation of the New Testament. It is not a difficult passage to understand—at least, not if we take its historical setting seriously. The four symbolic beasts which emerge from the sea of chaos are four successive empires. The fourth beast is especially vicious and destructive. For Daniel it represents the Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great, and the little horn which appears among ten others on the beast’s head is the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, whose violent campaign to suppress Jewish worship and identity in the second century BC led to the Maccabean revolt. This context can be readily demonstrated from later chapters of the book.

 

The little horn, shrieking its outrageous blasphemies, makes war against the saints of the Most High, but thrones are set up on the earth and judgment is passed. The fourth beast is destroyed, and the faithful saints of the Most High, represented in Daniel’s vision as a figure in human rather than beastly form—”one like a son of man”—are brought before the throne of God. They are given authority to rule over the nations. As Tom Wright says in How God Became King:

 

This is not… simply about the rescue, or salvation, of God’s people from their present plight. It is about their being rescued in order to be enthroned. (192)

 

This is what I have been saying all along. The Bible is not primarily about salvation. It is primarily about kingdom. But Israel could not get to kingdom other than by a narrow and difficult way of salvation.

 

Daniel’s story of faithfulness, suffering, judgment, eventual vindication, and the defeat of empire is retold in the New Testament. It is retold by Jesus with particular reference to God’s judgment against Jerusalem. In the later chapters of Daniel it becomes apparent that the crisis provoked by Antiochus Epiphanes caused a division in Israel between the apostate and the faithful. Jesus’ disciples were to be vindicated, therefore, by the catastrophe of AD 70. The same story is retold by Paul in order to encourage the churches in the Greek-Roman world as they encountered sometimes violent opposition from paganism. John tells both stories in Revelation: [of Israel's demise (Jesus) and of the church's persecution (Paul)].

 

Chapter 1: John’s vision of Jesus as “one like a son of man”

 

The importance of Daniel’s motif for the Book of Revelation is immediately apparent from the description of Jesus as “one like a son of man”, the “faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth” in Revelation 1. Jesus suffered, died, overcame death and was vindicated first, and therefore holds the “keys of Death and Hades” (1:18). John identifies himself as one who shares with his readers “in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus” (1:9). He reassures them that Jesus is “coming with the clouds”, and that as a result both Jews and Gentiles will “see” that God has given “kingdom”—the right to judge and rule—to his Son Jesus Christ (1:7). That is, they are participating directly in the suffering and vindication of the Son of Man who represents them.

 

Chapters 2-3: Letters to struggling communities of the Son of Man

 

The letters to the seven churches (Rev. 2-3) are an exhortation to communities that are having in different ways to go through “tribulation” to remain faithful in the hope of finally conquering or overcoming death, just as Jesus overcame death. Those who do “conquer” will share in the vindication and rule of Jesus as Son of Man: they will eat of the tree of life, they will not be hurt by the second death, they will rule over the nations, and they will sit with Christ on his throne. So the relation between Jesus and the churches to which he dictates these letters corresponds to the relation between the symbolic “son of man” figure and the saints of the Most High against whom the little horn makes war in Daniel 7.

 

Chapters 4-5: Only Jesus is worthy to open the scroll of divine judgment

 

In chapters 4-5 we have, first, a vision of the worship of God in heaven. In the right hand of the God who “created all things” is a scroll, sealed with seven seals, and an angel proclaims loudly, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” At first no one is found who is worthy, and John weeps because his own fate at this time of tribulation is bound up with the opening of the scroll. But then we learn that Jesus is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll because by his death he “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation”, who will come to “reign on the earth”.

 

Chapters 6-9: The opening of the seals sets the stage for the coming judgment against Israel

 

As the seals on the scroll are opened the conditions for judgment against Israel are set in place: the four horsemen of judgment are unleashed, the righteous Jewish dead are assured of eventual vindication, righteous Jews in Judea are sealed against the coming destruction, the multinational church that will emerge from this period of tribulation praises God for his salvation. The opening of the final seal introduces half an hour of calm before storm. The prayers of the persecuted saints for vindication are about to be answered. The seven trumpets in chapter 9 present in symbolic Old Testament language the coming of the armies of Rome as the means by which God will judge his unjust, immoral and idolatrous people.

 

Chapters 10-14: Jesus as “Son of Man” will judge the nations

 

The opened scroll is now given to John as the period of judgment against Jerusalem gets under way, and he is told that he “must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings” (10:11). What he will say, essentially, is that the pagan power which destroys the land of Israel will also be destroyed by God (11:18). The allegory of Revelation 12-13 narrates the beginning of the conflict between the Jewish-Christian community in Judea and churches of the Greek-Roman world and the destructive and blasphemous beasts that represented hostile pagan imperialism.

 

The narrative of judgment against Rome begins, however, with a vision of the faithful martyrs who have overcome the beast and who, therefore, stand alongside the Lamb as “firstfruits for God and the Lamb”. Three angels then proclaim the coming judgment against “Babylon the great”, the city which has corrupted the nations of the earth with the “wine of the passion of her sexual immorality” (14:8); and in view of the coming eschatological turmoil John calls for the “endurance of the saints” (14:12). We are then explicitly reminded again of the connection with Daniel 7:

 

Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand. And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped. (14:14-16)

 

Chapters 15-19: Beastly Rome is destroyed and kingdom is given to the martyrs

 

Jesus has not only proved himself worthy to open the scrolls of judgment against Israel; he has also been given authority as the “one like a son of man” to judge the nations. The seven plagues then depict, again in fitting Old Testament language, the coming judgment against both the beast of aggressive Roman imperialism and the prostitute of Rome’s debased culture, culminating in the exultant declarations of God’s victory over the supreme enemy of his people in Revelation 18-19. At this point the satanic power behind Rome is confined to the abyss. The martyrs are raised to life and reign with Christ throughout the coming ages. The kingdom of God and of his Christ has finally come.

 

Chapters 20-22: And last but not least…

 

John is not greatly interested in what happens in the history of the world—in the thousand years—following the overthrow of pagan Rome. But it is important to him that the immediate historical crisis faced by the churches is set in the larger context of the renewal of all things. Israel’s God will have the last word. There will be a final judgment. All that is evil and immoral will be thrown into the lake of fire, which is an image of final destruction, not of eternal conscious torment; and God will dwell in the midst of his new creation.

 

 

 

Translating the Apocalyptic Literature of Revelation: The Woman and the Dragon and the People of God

The woman and the dragon

http://www.postost.net/2013/11/woman-dragon

 

by Andrew Perriman

November 6, 2013

 

Preparing some lectures on Revelation, I came across Ian Paul’s very helpful introduction to the book in Exploring the New Testament: Letters and Revelation v. 2. With Revelation, probably more than with any other New Testament text, it is difficult to deal with its meaning apart from its form. How we understand its literary character—as some sort of apocalyptic text—inevitably determines how we make sense of what it has to say about the future of God’s people.

 

The point can be illustrated nicely from the visionary allegory of the woman and the dragon in Revelation 12. Ian highlights the significance of both the mythological and the Old Testament backgrounds for interpreting the passage. I want to explore this a bit further here, not least because it lends support to my general contention that the New Testament is fundamentally about how the God of Israel comes to judge and rule the nations, not in some abstract theological sense but [as it occurs] in history.

 

“The Great Gig in the Sky”

 

A woman appears in heaven. She is pregnant, crying out in the agony of giving birth. A red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on its heads, stands before her, waiting to devour the child. A boy is born—“one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron”—but is caught up to the throne of God. The woman flees into the wilderness. The dragon is cast down from heaven by Michael and his angels. The achievement of those who “have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony” is celebrated—the “kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ”. But it means trouble for people on earth, “for the devil has come down to you in great wrath”.



Woodcut from Luther Bible 1534



On earth the dragon pursues the woman, but she is given the wings of a great eagle so that she can escape into the wilderness to be “nourished for a time, and times, and half a time”. The dragon attempts to sweep her away in a flood, but the earth swallows up the flood. This enrages the dragon, which goes off “to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus”. It stands on the sand of the sea, from which a beast “with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on it heads” is about to emerge.

 

The story prefigured in the Old Testament

 

Much of the substance of the story comes from the Old Testament, and we arrive at a good approximation of its meaning simply by stringing these texts together.

 

1. Jerusalem is pictured by the prophets as a woman in labour:

 

Before she was in labour she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she delivered a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment? For as soon as Zion was in labour she brought forth her children. (Is. 66:7–8)

 

Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labour (Jerusalem in exile) has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel. (Mic. 5:3)

 

2. The pagan empire that makes war against Israel is drawn as a devouring dragon or a destructive, blasphemous multi-headed beast:

 

King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has devoured me (Jerusalem); he has apportioned me; he has seized me, a slim vessel; he has swallowed me like a dragon... (Jer. 28:34 LXX = 51:34)

 

Then I desired to know the truth about the fourth beast…, and about the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn that came up and before which three of them fell, the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke great things, and that seemed greater than its companions. As I looked, this horn made war with the saints and prevailed over them, until the Ancient of Days came, and judgment was given for the saints of the Most High, and the time came when the saints possessed the kingdom. (Dan. 7:19–22)

 

3. The king is YHWH’s son, who is given the nations as his heritage to rule with a rod of iron:

 

I will tell of the decree: The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” (Ps. 2:7–9)

 

4. The angel Michael will fight on behalf of Israel at a time of extreme political-religious crisis:

 

At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. (Dan. 12:1)

 

5. God saves his people from the pagan oppressor by bearing them into the wilderness on eagles’ wings:

 

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. (Ex. 19:4)

 

The [Old Testament] already gives us an outline interpretation of Revelation 12. At a time of severe political-religious crisis a righteous Jewish community in Jerusalem painfully gives birth to a Son, who is immediately caught up to the throne of God. This “birth” is not the incarnation of Jesus but his resurrection. The king is “begotten” on the day that he is given the nations as his heritage, eventually to judge and rule over them (cf. Ps. 2:7-9). The community then comes under attack from the aggressive pagan empire but gains victory over it “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:11). The realistic victory of the persecuted Jewish-Christian community over Rome is prefigured in heaven by the defeat of the dragon by Michael—the “great prince who has charge of your people”. Such a political-religious event - [some say, Constatine's Ottoman Empire; other's say all the ages of man where Jesus is worshipped as Savior and Lord, R.E. Slater] - not the final renewal of all things—is the coming of the kingdom of God (Rev. 12:10).

 

The [Greek] Python myth

 

The shape of the story, however, appears to reflect a type of “combat myth” that is evidenced widely in the ancient world. David Aune writes:

 

The legendary narrative pattern of a combat between a hero and his adversary or the mythic narrative pattern of a primordial cosmic struggle between two divine beings and their allies for sovereignty was widespread throughout the ancient world. In mythical combats the antagonist is often depicted as a monster, serpent, or dragon; the protagonist typically represents "order and fertility," while the antagonist represents "chaos and sterility".1



The serpent Python is killed by Apollo



Perhaps the closest parallel to Revelation 12 is the version of the Python myth found in the Fabulae of the 1st century AD Latin writer Hyginus. A dragon known for issuing oracles is threatened by the birth of a divine child. He pursues the woman in a remote region, but she is carried off by a god to an island, which disappears beneath the waves. The woman gives birth to Apollo, who quickly kills Python. It is commonly understood as a mythical account of how Apollo took control of the oracle at Delphi. This translation comes from Ian Paul’s very helpful chapter on Revelation in Exploring the New Testament: Letters and Revelation, v. 2:

 

Python, son of Terra, was a huge dragon. He was accustomed to giving oracles on Mount Parnassus before the time of Apollo. He was informed by an oracle that he would be destroyed by the offspring of Leto. At that time Zeus was living with Leto. When [Zeus’ wife] Hera learned of this, she decreed that Leto should give birth at a place where the sun does not reach. When Python perceived that Leto was pregnant by Zeus, he began to pursue (her) in order to kill her. But, by order of Zeus, the North Wind (Aquilo) lifted Leto up and carried her to Poseidon; Poseidon[(Zeus' brother)] protected her, but in order not to rescind Hera’s decree, he carried her to the island Ortygia and covered the island with waves.

 

When Python did not find Leto, he returned to Parnassus. But Poseidon returned the island Ortygia to the upper region, and it was later called the island of Delos. There, holding on to an olive tree, Leto gave birth to Apollo and Artemis, to whom Hephaestus gave arrows as a gift. Four days after they were born, Apollo avenged his mother. He went to Parnassus and killed Python with arrows.2

 

Refracted light

 

What we appear to have, then, in literary terms, is a reconstructed Old Testament narrative about Israel, empire, and the future rule of YHWH’s king, refracted through the prism of the Python myth [(or, around the general idea of an apocalyptic story, in its general construction, and socio-political implications at that time, rather than its more usual reconstruction as a "one-for-one corollary" with concrete historical events by modern evangelists - RE Slater)]. This is how John transposes the biblical argument into a form that more directly challenges, if not specifically the ideology of emperor worship, then certainly the power of Rome as a political-religious force violently opposed to the people of God. His brightly coloured dragon myth expresses the conviction of the persecuted churches that the God of Israel would sooner or later take control of the empire.

 

 

Footnotes

 

1. D.E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (WBC 52B, 1998), 667.

2. Translation from M. Grant, The Myths of Hyginus (1960).

 

 

 

From Old Creation to New Creation - The Story of Redemption and Mankind

The long, difficult story of new creation
http://www.postost.net/2013/10/long-difficult-story-new-creation

 

by Andrew Perriman

October 30, 2013

 

I had a long conversation over the weekend with an Asian friend who is engaged in conflict-resolution projects in her war-torn country. She was particularly interested in the importance of inter-faith conversations and practices, and we got round to talking about the difference between Christian and Buddhist worldviews or cosmologies.

As she put it, she is driven in her work by a desire to serve life, perhaps rather loosely sustained by the awareness that everything participates in the divine—I think she might describe herself as a secularized Buddhist, but I’m not sure.

I suggested that although the modern church has often appeared more inclined to bicker over beliefs and boundaries than to make the world a better place, in principle the same desire to affirm and serve life is there. But it is mediated necessarily through the story of the strained relationship between a distinct people and the Creator God, which is all the way through a story of new creation.

I have tried to tell that story on a number of occasions, not least in Re:Mission: Biblical Mission for a Post-Biblical Church. My view is that there is little point in replacing a simplistic gospel of personal salvation with a simplistic gospel of life affirmation. No doubt it would be an improvement in some respects, but it still fails to do justice to the biblical narrative and is therefore likely to miss its central dynamic, which is the struggle of concrete communities fully to embody the presence of the good Creator God, in the midst of the nations and cultures of the world, through real—not mythical—history.

Anyway, here we go again. Feel free to take issue with it. And keep in mind that telling the story is not an excuse for doing nothing….

~

The foundational premise of the Judaeo-Christian narrative is the belief that the cosmos is the work of the one true Creator God.

The actual narrative then arises out of the contradiction between the goodness of the Creator and the self-evident corruption of the good creation.

The “original” sin—at the level first of the individual and then of human society—is the ambition to “be like God” or to usurp the place of God in the scheme of things (Gen. 3:5; 11:4). Inequality, injustice, wickedness and violence are the consequence of this act of rebellion.

~

The response of the Creator God at this point is to “choose” Abraham, in the shadow of self-aggrandizing empire, to be the father of a new creation in microcosm, grounded in a seminal act of trust and obedience (Gen. 15:6; 22:15-18). The promises made to him by the Creator undergird the whole ensuing narrative.

The descendants of Abraham are eventually given the good land of Canaan in fulfilment of the promises. The terms of their loyalty to the Creator God are set out in the Law of Moses. This is how they will be a new creation. They have received the original “blessing” of created life—albeit in a constrained, localized form—and are expected to mediate that original blessing to a world that has repudiated the Creator.

The success of the “new creation” project, however, hangs on the continuing trust and obedience of the people of Israel. The Law carries the dire warning that failure to walk in the ways of the Creator—the failure to be a good, new creation—will sooner or later result in invasion, destruction, exile and oppression by foreign powers.

~

From the Assyrian invasion of the northern kingdom (722 BC) onwards, the story becomes one of continual conflict between Israel and the surrounding pagan empires—invasion by the Babylonians, exile, Hellenistic tyranny, Roman occupation.

During this period the hope is conceived by the prophets not only that the people of the one true Creator God will be delivered from this cycle of conflict and restored, but also that the hostile nations, with their fabricated gods, will eventually come to acknowledge the rightness and sovereignty of Israel’s God.

The Judaeo-Christian narrative divides in the first century AD over the question of how the God of national Israel intended finally to resolve the political-religious crisis faced by his people—how the prophetic hope for salvation and kingdom will be fulfilled.

~

Jesus proclaims the coming of the kingdom of God as a decisive moment both of judgment and of salvation for Israel.

He presents his people with a stark choice between a broad road leading to destruction and a narrow road leading to life. He calls his disciples to follow him down the narrow road of rejection and opposition for the sake of the future existence of God’s new creation people.

They will be messengers of the coming kingdom event, first to Israel, then among the nations. But they will also be the nucleus of a renewed people of God.

Jesus is condemned as a false “saviour” by the Jewish authorities and executed by the Romans.

Appearances of Jesus to the disciples after his death convince them that the God of Israel has vindicated his “Son” by raising him to life. More than this, they come to believe that God has exalted him to a position of authority at his right hand to act as judge and ruler of the nations.

In this way, through his trust and obedience Jesus has become God’s decisive answer to the political-religious crisis faced by the descendants of Abraham.

~

Empowered and inspired by the Spirit of Jesus the disciples continue to proclaim the “good news” to Israel. Jews, both in Roman-occupied Judea and in the diaspora, mostly refuse to believe, but many Gentiles, remarkably, find this story of judgment and renewal, crisis and kingdom, God and history, compelling. Their response is to worship the God of Israel in the same Spirit and they become de facto members of the same movement.

As a result communities of radical hope and faithfulness emerge across the Greek-Roman world, formed of people—both Jews and Gentiles—who believe not simply that Jesus died for the sins of Israel and was raised from the dead, but that his resurrection points to a day when the old idolatrous system will be overthrown and the nations of the empire will confess Jesus as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

So through this long period of historical transition the God of Israel achieved two things through the faithfulness of Jesus. First, he saved his people from the problem of their innate disloyalty and sinfulness—the flesh—so that they could exist as new creation according to the Spirit rather than according to the Law of Moses. Secondly, he gained recognition from the nations of the empire that he alone is God, and there is no other (cf. Is. 45:21).

~

Historically speaking, European Christendom represented this extraordinary new political-religious arrangement for perhaps fifteen hundred years, until the God of Israel was in turn overthrown, in a momentous modern coup-d’état, by secular-rationalism. The western church is having a hard time coming to terms with this latest “catastrophe”, but we deal with the problem, nevertheless, as a sign of new creation, as mediators of the original blessing for the sake of life.

 

 

 

How Paul Saw the Future: The "Day of the Lord" For Saints and Sinners

How Paul saw the future

http://www.postost.net/2013/10/how-paul-saw-future

 

by Andrew Perriman

October 15, 2013

 

Paul had a sharp and vivid understanding of what the future held. It took the form of a prophetic narrative that would affect his own people Israel, the nations and the churches. It was not a matter of peripheral interest, an appendix to his theology. The narrative is pervasive in his letters and determinative for faith. People were converted to a new belief about the future. They believed, for example, that a day of wrath was coming from which they would be delivered by Jesus:

 

"...you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come." (1 Thess. 1:9–10; cf. 1 Cor. 1:7–8)

 

They believed that they would sooner or later inherit, as a community, as a nascent culture or civilization, a radically new political-religious order when the God of Israel would be acknowledged as sovereign over the nations.

 

he expectation, moreover, was that the coming Day of the Lord (1 Cor. 5:5; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 2:2), when this vision of the future would be fulfilled, was not far off. The apocalyptic narrative overlay and reinterpreted the immediate historical experience of the synagogues and churches in the ancient pagan world. Its climax would come within a foreseeable and relevant future.

 

The point to stress here is that biblical “theology”, even at its most exotic and speculative, always addresses or has reference to the concrete, historically determined condition of the people of God amidst the nations.

 

For convenience the landscape of Paul’s eschatology can be mapped in two parts—what it meant for the “saints” to whom Paul addressed his letters and what it meant for everyone else. Please note that the biblical references are not proof-texts. They are pointers to whole arguments and narratives.

 

What the Day of the Lord would mean for everyone else

 

 

1. The overarching intention of the God of Israel was to judge the pagan system that had for so long opposed him and to install his own “Son” as king on his behalf above all rulers and powers (Rom. 1:18-32; cf. Acts 17:31).

 

2. He would punish those who had persecuted the churches (2 Thess. 1:4-10). Paul has no concept of “hell”.

 

3. The “man of lawlessness”, who appears to be a blasphemous pagan king in the mould of Antiochus Epiphanes, would be brought to nothing by the Lord Jesus at his coming (2 Thess. 2:3-8).

 

4. Righteous Gentiles would be “justified” when YHWH judged the Greek-Roman world and would even condemn unrighteous Israel (Rom. 2:6, 14-16).

 

5. For God to judge the pagan world with integrity, however, he had first to judge his own people, who had brought the name of God into disrepute among the nations (Rom. 2:24; 3:6). They would not be justified by their works of the Jewish Law on the day of God’s wrath. Rather, the Law would hold them to account (Rom. 3:19-20). Nothing short of a new creation would remedy the situation.

 

6. Paul does not expect his people to escape the catastrophe of divine judgment, but he retains the hope that after judgment the nation of Israel would repent of its disbelief and so be saved (Rom. 11:26).

 

What the Day of the Lord would mean for the saints

 

 

1. The inclusion of Gentiles in the family of Abraham pointed to the fact that YHWH would demonstrate himself to be God not of the Jews only but also of the nations (Rom. 3:29-30).

 

2. The churches were communities of eschatological formation—that is, they were designed for an eschatological purpose. Practically speaking, they were the means by which the new future would be brought about.

 

3. If they were to fulfil that purpose, they would have to be righteous communities—the unrighteous would not inherit the kingdom of God (eg. 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Eph. 5:5; 1 Tim. 6:14).

 

4. The churches could expect to face considerable opposition and persecution in the period leading up to the Day of the Lord. To the extent, however, that the saints were conformed to the image of the first martyr and re-enacted the story of his suffering and vindication, they had the assurance that they would overcome even the last enemy, death (Rom. 8:16-39). They are communities of the Son of Man, against whom the pagan empire made war, but who remained faithful and were ultimately vindicated and awarded the kingdom (cf. Dan. 7:21-22).

 

5. The Day of the Lord would be a day of battle—of intense persecution. The churches needed to prepare themselves for this in advance by putting on the armour of God (Rom. 13:11-12; Eph. 6;10-20; 5:6-8).

 

6. Paul was very conscious of the fact that it was the responsibility of the apostles to ensure that the churches were fit for eschatological purpose (1 Cor. 3:10-15). They would be his crown and ground for boasting on the Day of the Lord (Phil. 2:16; 1 Thess. 2:19).

 

7. Because the authority to judge had been given to Jesus, the Day of the Lord would be the day when Jesus, not YHWH, came to judge and save.

 

8. For the saints this would at last mean deliverance from their persecutors (2 Thess. 1:5-10) and resurrection for the dead “in Christ” so that they would have a share in the age to come (1 Cor. 15:23; 1 Thess. 4:16); the saints would be judged and vindicated and rewarded if they were found to have been faithful (Rom. 14:10; 1 Cor. 4:5; 2 Cor. 5:10).

 

9. These communities of the saints would then inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50; Eph. 1:14; 5:5; Col. 1:12; 3:24), when Jesus would be confessed as Lord by the nations (Phil. 2:11), and the martyrs would reign with him throughout the coming ages.

 

10. The reign of Jesus at the right hand of God is to continue until the last enemy, death, has been destroyed, at which point the authority to rule will be given back to God, the Father, Jesus himself will be subjected to God, and God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:24-28).

 

11. Finally, creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:21).

 

This is roughly the story that Paul tells about the future, as I see it. It is not an unprejudiced reconstruction of that story. It is as I see it. It is shaped by a number of assumptions that I make regarding i) how Paul has used his source material, the Old Testament in particular; and ii) how he understood the relation of such material to history. It is the sort of narrative that emerges when we read Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic as an attempt to redescribe future historical events as the outworking of the intentions of Israel’s God. Or to turn it around, Paul has constructed a narrative of judgment and kingdom that demands an eventual historical outcome having to do with the real-world, political-religious relation between Israel and the nations.

 

 

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Either Paul got the timing wrong or we’ve got the end wrong

http://www.postost.net/2013/10/how-paul-saw-future#sthash.lKYchqD9.dpuf

 

by Andrew Perriman

Sat, 05/10/2013

 

Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, which some would argue was his second (Wanamaker), or his first and second combined (Murphy-O’Connor), was written to encourage a novice community of mostly Gentile believers to stand firm in the face of persecution until the parousia of the Lord, when the wrath of God would come against the world and they would be delivered from their suffering and united with their Lord. This is the narrative—or eschatological—frame of the letter, and it controls Paul’s argument at every point.

 

The same can be said of his first letter to the Corinthians. They “wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:7–8). The rulers of the present age are doomed to pass away (2:6). The quality of the apostles’ work will be revealed when a day of fire comes (3:13). The Lord is coming to “bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and… disclose the purposes of the heart”, when everyone will receive his or her commendation from God (4:5). A “day of the Lord” is coming, when “the saints will judge the world”, and the righteous will inherit the kingdom of God (5:5; 6:2, 9). A time of distress is approaching; the “present form of this world is passing away” (7:26, 31). In the Lord’s supper they proclaim his death “until he comes” (11:26). The world will be condemned (11:32). The dead in Christ will be raised at his coming and will inherit the kingdom (15:23, 50-56). Paul prays that the Lord will come (16:22).

 

In fact, with the exception of Philemon, the same can be said of every one of Paul’s letters—even Romans. They are all written explicitly and intentionally in the light of an impending day of the Lord, a day of God’s wrath, which will entail severe affliction for the churches but also deliverance and vindication. Paul’s churches faced a more or less imminent “end”.

 

There are two basic interpretive strategies open to us:

we can reinterpret “imminent” or we can reinterpret “end”.

 

How are we supposed to deal with this, given that the world did not end imminently? We have the same problem, of course, with Jesus. There are two basic interpretive strategies open to us: we can reinterpret “imminent” or we can reinterpret “end”.

 

 

We could say that the traditional understanding of the “end” is correct but that Paul got the timing wrong. He expected the world to come to an abrupt end in the foreseeable future—perhaps even before he himself died—but he was wrong about that because in fact one day is as a thousand years with the Lord, even the Son was kept in the dark about the timing, etc. That would allow us to keep our traditional “end” intact—the whole package of second coming, rapture, resurrection, final judgment, inheritance of the kingdom, new heaven and new earth, lake of fire. But it can be postponed indefinitely.

 

 

Or we could say that Paul was more or less right about the timing but that we have misunderstood his “end”. We could argue that he shared a Jewish-apocalyptic narrative in which YHWH, as creator of the whole earth, asserts his right to judge and rule over the idolatrous pagan nations, which have for so long refused to acknowledge him and oppressed his people. We would then suppose—once we have understood how apocalyptic discourse works—that his eschatology mostly addresses the historical crisis that would mark the transition from an old age of pagan hegemony to a new age in which Jesus is confessed as Lord by the Gentiles. I have developed this argument in The Coming of the Son of Man: New Testament Eschatology for an Emerging Church.

 

This approach would mean that Paul has much less to say about our eschatological circumstances. The coming storm fills his horizon and he cannot see what lies beyond—except that he is certain that the creator God will have the final victory over the evil that has corrupted his creation (1 Cor. 15:24-28; Rom. 8:20-22). But it would mean that he has much more to say about the historical experience of the communities under his care. That makes him a much more responsible prophet and apostle. And I’m sure we can learn something from that.

 

 

 

Out of the Archives: Perriman & Mobsby on Emergent Theology

What (again) is an emerging theology?

http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/943

 

by Andrew Perriman

Posted 5 July, 2006

 

The whole idea of an ‘emerging theology’ is nebulous, which is probably unavoidable and probably a good thing. But every now and again I feel the need to sketch some boundaries, contours, intentions, commitments - if only to help us keep in view the stated purpose of this site, which is to ‘assist the development of a transparent, community-driven theology for the “emerging church”’. There have been good discussions along these lines in the past: ‘Outline of an emerging theology’, ‘What is the relationship between emerging and evangelical theologies?’, ‘The marks of a renewed theology’. This is simply another personal attempt to give some definition to the phrase ‘emerging theology’.

 

So here, very briefly stated, are what I feel to be some of the leading characteristics of an emerging theology. It reflects my biases and blindspots. If people want to suggest additions or corrections, I would be happy to take them into account and republish the list as a more collective statement.

 

1. A theology for a community that is in self-conscious continuity with the biblical people of God and the calling of Abraham to be blessed and be a blessing to the nations of the world.

 

2. A theology done under the lordship of Christ.

 

3. A theology that gives priority to narrative in order both to define its core and to contextualize the content of biblical teaching.

 

4. A theology that seeks to understand the intimate relationship between text and historical narrative.

 

5. A theology that at its heart is a reading of scripture.

 

6. A theology that as a matter of methodological commitment celebrates, reinforces, and exploits community: an emerging theology is strongly relational, conversational, interactive.

 

7. A theology that is strongly aware of, and responsive to, the locality in which these conversations take place.

 

8. A theology that attempts to resist certain distortions of modernism.

 

9. A theology that is broadly  - but not slavishly - postmodern in its epistemology, wary of absolute formulations, tolerant of diversity and plurality, sensitive to the social manipulation of texts.

 

10. A theology that places a high value on intellectual and critical integrity - ‘integrity’ being, I think, the ‘postmodern’ word in that sentence.

 

11. A theology committed to the renewal of its own discourse, understood not only as speech but as the whole spectrum of means (artistic, communal, activist) by which we communicate.

 

12. A theology that fosters an open, inquisitive, probing mindset.

 

13. A theology that endeavours to integrate rather than dissociate modes of thought, analysis, and practice, that draws on the mind of the whole community of faith.

 

14. A generous theology that is inclined to discover meaning and truth outside of itself.

 

15. A theology with an eschatological orientation towards the renewal of creation - humanity within a comprehensive ecology; therefore a public rather than a private theology. 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Ian Mobsby [Moot : London, UK]

 

Is there a distinctive approach to theologising for the emerging church?

 

[October 2005]

 

For too long the emerging church has been viewed by some as a trendy shop front to more traditional forms of church. We too have been guilty of putting the emphasis on being ‘cool’, providing slick services and using the best movie clips and multimedia environments. The danger is that some think that there is little depth or substance to what we are doing. This article aims to introduce some evidence of some of the thinking in fresh and emerging expressions of church coming out of my as yet uncompleted MA research dissertation entitled “Fresh and emerging expressions of church: how are they being church and Anglican?”

 

Whilst the traditional church continues to battle between the conservatives and the liberals, and between the catholics and the evangelicals, the emerging church has been emphasising the need for right engagement in context – or what has been called orthopraxis (right action) rather than orthodoxy (right thinking). It has avoided getting involved in this tennis match over orthodoxy. The emerging church has been focusing on ‘doing’ church in a post modern context, which is all about being and doing church in our liquid modern times, which has created a new context of a culture of the spiritually restless and spiritual searching, or the openness of many to be spiritual tourists. Many emerging churches, have sought to draw on the best of the old and reframe it for our current post-modern context, in what has been called ‘an ancient-future’. But what does this have to do with theology?

 

Well, I am arguing that the emerging church has been creating a significantly new approach to doing contextual theology, which is about living out being Christian and church in a post modern culture. Contextual theology has been defined as:

 

A way of doing theology in which one takes into account: the spirit and message

of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one

is theologising; and social change in that culture.

 

Traditionally, there is a continuum in the Church roughly defined at one end as being ‘conservative evangelical’ and at the other, ‘catholic’ which take very different views of how you do contextual theology, see chart 1 where I want to build a bit of a typology. Yes this will hold over-generalisations, but I think in essence, the following analysis stands.

 

Conservative Evangelical	v	Catholic
Redemptive theology		Incarnational theology
High regard towards God and Scriptures		Low regard towards God & Scriptures
Low regard toward Human Culture		High regard towards Human Culture

 

So to summarise, for sometime now, the Church has been largely divided into two outlooks. Evangelical and Catholic. Evangelicals have stressed personal salvation, and the need for God-centredness and personal piety, but have paid very little regard to social, economic or ecological injustice, or the sense of God’s presence in human culture and the world. This has resulted in a neglect of what is good in human nature, or the sense of God’s involvement in the world. Strong on sin and repentance, low on grace. So when thinking about the significance of Jesus (both man and God), the emphasis is on Jesus as God and his ministry regarding repentance and redemption.

 

At the other end of the continuum, is a Catholic and incarnational theology, which focuses more on the significance of Christ as a human being and the love of God. Focus of this approach is on God’s love and the call for social, ecological and economic justice not just for salvation, but for here and now. This approach therefore neglects the significance of Christ as God, and in having a high regard to the scriptures.

 

These two approaches have been battling it out for sometime, believing that one was right and the other was wrong, which has split the church catholic and protestant for centuries.

 

So what has this got to do with the emerging church? Well to start with, the emerging church tries to hold to the tension of having a high regard towards God and the scriptures AND having a high regard towards culture and being human. In other words, it is trying to hold onto a ‘both and’ scenario, on holding both an incarnational and redemptive theology simultaneously.

 

Why, because it attempts to hold onto the best of all traditions, and live with the tension and inconsistencies of this position. Why – because in the above analysis of the significance of Jesus, we have to live with the tension of Jesus being fully human and fully God. From the beginning, the Church had to live with this synthetic approach or fuzzy thinking, which it seemed to jettison in modernity, only to be refound in postmodernity.

 

So the Emerging Church, does have a distinctively new, or can I say old theological approach to what it does, modelled on a synthetic model of doing contextual theology. This model attempts to listen to culture for basic patterns and structures, analyzing culture in order to discover its basic system of symbols. Out of such a “thick description” will emerge basic themes for the local theology. At the same time, however, these themes need to be in dialogue with the basic themes in gospel and tradition, which has a mutually transforming effect. This form of emerging contextual theology, holds to a sense of “ancient future” faith worked out with a synthetic model of contextual theology.

 

So going back to the chart, the emerging church attempts to position itself at the ‘V’ point on the continuum in its attempt to ‘both and’.

 

So why is this signficiant. Well firstly, because it opens up the possibilities to significant encultured approaches to being a ‘missionary church’. To my own shock, I found a book dating back to the 1970’s that summarised a vision for the ‘Emerging Church’ which resonates with this position and outlook, and therefore I will state it in full.

 

Larson & Osborne themes (1970!)

 

Rediscovering contextual & experimental mission in the western church.

 

1 - Forms of church that are not restrained by institutional expectations. Open to change and God wanting to do a new thing.

 

2 - Use of the key word…”and”. Whereas the heady polarities of our day seek to divide us into an either-or camp, the mark of the emerging Church will be its emphasis on both-and. For generations we have divided ourselves into camps: Protestants and Catholics, high church and low, clergy and laity, social activists and personal piety, liberals and conservatives, sacred and secular, instructional and underground.

 

3 - It will bring together the most helpful of the old and the best of the new, blending the dynamic of a personal Gospel with the compassion of social concern. It will find its ministry being expressed by a whole people, wherein the distinction between clergy and laity will be that of function, not of status or hierarchical division.

 

4 - In the emerging Church, due emphasis will be placed on both theological rootage and contemporary experience, on celebration in worship and involvement in social concerns, on faith and feeling, reason and prayer, conversion and continuity, the personal and the conceptual.

 

5 - In this way, the emerging church has a distinctive approach to theology to aid it as it engages in a world and culture, which is complex, multifaceted and fluid. So there is depth and substance to what is going on…..

 

For further info on this subject and the significance of the emerging church, watch out for my research dissertation, which I hope to release in book form next year.

 

Ian Mobsby is an ordained NSM Anglican priest licensed to work with the Moot Community, an Anglican Church of England Fresh Expression of Church Project in Westminster, Central London. Ian is completing a research dissertation for the award of an MA in Pastoral Theology at Cambridge. Moot can be found at www.moot.uk.net and www.mootblog.net

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

What is 'emerging church'?

http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/229

 

by Andrew Perriman

Posted 22 November, 2003

 

The phrase ‘emerging church’ will undoubtedly mean different things to different people and I will only offer a tentative definition here, chiefly for the benefit of those to whom it means next to nothing. If you disagree with the points made, by all means add your views below.

 

1. Emerging church is certainly a reaction against the forms of evangelicalism that have flourished in the West over the last fifty years or so – hence the popularity of the term ‘post-evangelical’. People have reacted in different ways: there has been a range of experiments in alternative forms of worship; groups have decamped from traditional church premises into public venues such as bars, cafés and leisure centres; and many Christians have simply opted out of organized church altogether (see the review of Alan Jamieson’s book A Churchless Faith).

 

2. This reaction has been driven largely, I think, by dissatisfaction with evangelical church culture at various levels – a dissatisfaction that has often been explained in terms of a perceived shift in the wider culture from modernism to postmodernism: from objectivism to relativism, from certainty to doubt, from singularity to plurality, from Story to stories. Emerging church is an attempt to replot Christian faith on this new cultural and intellectual terrain.

 

3. Emerging church is beginning to acquire the coherence of a ‘movement’, but it probably cannot yet be said to have a strong sense of its own identity and certain tensions are apparent. There has been tension, for example, between an inward and an outward dynamic: for some the motivation has been the desire to find more congenial modes of worship and community, whereas others have been attracted by the missional potential of an escape from the cultural dead-end of evangelicalism. There has been a further tension between new ways of doing and new ways of being: do we just do congregational life differently or should we abandon structured religious life altogether in favour of simply being followers of Jesus in the world?

 

4. Emerging church is characteristically postmodern in its suspicion of the controlling structures of religious life and thought: church hierarchy, dominant cultural forms, doctrinal formulations, and so on. So the life and practice of emerging church are marked by a resistance to these structures, but also by a desire to develop positive alternatives. There has been a good discussion thread on this site, for example, about the nature of ‘emerging authority’.

 

5. Considerable emphasis is placed on relational paradigms as the basis for all forms of Christian activity. In many instances this has encouraged a shift away from ‘concentric’ or ‘solid’ towards decentred or ‘liquid’ expressions of community (see, for example, the review of Pete Ward’s Liquid Church). This has also led, inevitably, to a blurring of boundaries, both between church traditions and between believers and non-believers. Emerging church is more willing to be ‘inclusive’ (the word obviously needs definition), less concerned with defining and safeguarding the boundaries of membership, than ‘modern’ forms of evangelicalism.

 

6. In place of what is perceived as the rather narrow agenda of mainstream evangelicalism, emerging church is looking to develop a more holistic spirituality and to pursue a wider engagement in the public sphere. So, on the one hand, we see a willingness to explore different patterns of Christian life and to draw upon a broader spectrum of religious traditions – Celtic Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy, for example, have had a strong appeal. On the other, we see a new social activism that is both critical and creative: mission is understood to encompass a much wider set of activities than just evangelism.

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Index to past articles on "An Emerging Theology"