Discussions in Science and Religion - Week 5: "A Theory of Consciousness"

A map of neural circuits in the human brain. Image: Human Connectome Project

A Neuroscientist’s Radical Theory of How Networks Become Conscious

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/11/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness/all/

by Brandon Keim, Wired Magazine

November 14, 2013

It’s a question that’s perplexed philosophers for centuries and scientists for decades: Where does consciousness come from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves. But how it arises from chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery.

Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer. According to Koch, consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system. All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the internet could be. That’s just the way the universe works.

“The electric charge of an electron doesn’t arise out of more elemental properties. It simply has a charge,” says Koch. “Likewise, I argue that we live in a universe of space, time, mass, energy, and consciousness arising out of complex systems.”

What Koch proposes is a scientifically refined version of an ancient philosophical doctrine called panpsychism — and, coming from someone else, it might sound more like spirituality than science. But Koch has devoted the last three decades to studying the neurological basis of consciousness. His work at the Allen Institute now puts him at the forefront of the BRAIN Initiative, the massive new effort to understand how brains work, which will begin next year.

Koch’s insights have been detailed in dozens of scientific articles and a series of books, including last year’s Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist. WIRED talked to Koch about his understanding of this age-old question.

WIRED: How did you come to believe in panpsychism?

Christof Koch: I grew up Roman Catholic, and also grew up with a dog. And what bothered me was the idea that, while humans had souls and could go to heaven, dogs were not suppose to have souls. Intuitively I felt that either humans and animals alike had souls, or none did. Then I encountered Buddhism, with its emphasis on the universal nature of the conscious mind. You find this idea in philosophy, too, espoused by Plato and Spinoza and Schopenhauer, that psyche — consciousness — is everywhere. I find that to be the most satisfying explanation for the universe, for three reasons: biological, metaphysical and computational.

'What is the simplest explanation? That consciousness extends to all these creatures....'

WIRED: What do you mean?

Koch: My consciousness is an undeniable fact. One can only infer facts about the universe, such as physics, indirectly, but the one thing I’m utterly certain of is that I’m conscious. I might be confused about the state of my consciousness, but I’m not confused about having it. Then, looking at the biology, all animals have complex physiology, not just humans. And at the level of a grain of brain matter, there’s nothing exceptional about human brains.

Only experts can tell, under a microscope, whether a chunk of brain matter is mouse or monkey or human — and animals have very complicated behaviors. Even honeybees recognize individual faces, communicate the quality and location of food sources via waggle dances, and navigate complex mazes with the aid of cues stored in their short-term memory. If you blow a scent into their hive, they return to where they’ve previously encountered the odor. That’s associative memory. What is the simplest explanation for it? That consciousness extends to all these creatures, that it’s an imminent property of highly organized pieces of matter, such as brains.

WIRED: That’s pretty fuzzy. How does consciousness arise? How can you quantify it?

Koch: There’s a theory, called Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin, that assigns to any one brain, or any complex system, a number — denoted by the Greek symbol of Φ — that tells you how integrated a system is, how much more the system is than the union of its parts. Φ gives you an information-theoretical measure of consciousness. Any system with integrated information different from zero has consciousness. Any integration feels like something.

It's not that any physical system has consciousness. A black hole, a heap of sand, a bunch of isolated neurons in a dish, they're not integrated. They have no consciousness. But complex systems do. And how much consciousness they have depends on how many connections they have and how they’re wired up.

WIRED: Ecosystems are interconnected. Can a forest be conscious?

Koch: In the case of the brain, it’s the whole system that’s conscious, not the individual nerve cells. For any one ecosystem, it’s a question of how richly the individual components, such as the trees in a forest, are integrated within themselves as compared to causal interactions between trees.

The philosopher John Searle, in his review of Consciousness, asked, “Why isn’t America conscious?” After all, there are 300 million Americans, interacting in very complicated ways. Why doesn’t consciousness extend to all of America? It’s because integrated information theory postulates that consciousness is a local maximum. You and me, for example: We’re interacting right now, but vastly less than the cells in my brain interact with each other. While you and I are conscious as individuals, there’s no conscious Übermind that unites us in a single entity. You and I are not collectively conscious. It’s the same thing with ecosystems. In each case, it’s a question of the degree and extent of causal interactions among all components making up the system.

WIRED: The internet is integrated. Could it be conscious?

Koch: It’s difficult to say right now. But consider this. The internet contains about 10 billion computers, with each computer itself having a couple of billion transistors in its CPU. So the internet has at least 10^19 transistors, compared to the roughly 1000 trillion (or quadrillion) synapses in the human brain. That’s about 10,000 times more transistors than synapses. But is the internet more complex than the human brain? It depends on the degree of integration of the internet.

For instance, our brains are connected all the time. On the internet, computers are packet-switching. They’re not connected permanently, but rapidly switch from one to another. But according to my version of panpsychism, it feels like something to be the internet — and if the internet were down, it wouldn’t feel like anything anymore. And that is, in principle, not different from the way I feel when I’m in a deep, dreamless sleep.

A map of the internet, circa 2005. Image: The Opte Project

WIRED: Internet aside, what does a human consciousness share with animal consciousness? Are certain features going to be the same?

Koch: It depends on the sensorium [the scope of our sensory perception —ed.] and the interconnections. For a mouse, this is easy to say. They have a cortex similar to ours, but not a well-developed prefrontal cortex. So it probably doesn’t have self-consciousness, or understand symbols like we do, but it sees and hears things similarly.

In every case, you have to look at the underlying neural mechanisms that give rise to the sensory apparatus, and to how they’re implemented. There’s no universal answer.

WIRED: Does a lack of self-consciousness mean an animal has no sense of itself?

Koch: Many mammals don’t pass the mirror self-recognition test, including dogs. But I suspect dogs have an olfactory form of self-recognition. You notice that dogs smell other dog’s poop a lot, but they don’t smell their own so much. So they probably have some sense of their own smell, a primitive form of self-consciousness. Now, I have no evidence to suggest that a dog sits there and reflects upon itself; I don’t think dogs have that level of complexity. But I think dogs can see, and smell, and hear sounds, and be happy and excited, just like children and some adults.

Self-consciousness is something that humans have excessively, and that other animals have much less of, though apes have it to some extent. We have a hugely developed prefrontal cortex. We can ponder.

WIRED: How can a creature be happy without self-consciousness?

Koch:: When I’m climbing a mountain or a wall, my inner voice is totally silent. Instead, I’m hyperaware of the world around me. I don’t worry too much about a fight with my wife, or about a tax return. I can’t afford to get lost in my inner self. I’ll fall. Same thing if I’m traveling at high speed on a bike. It’s not like I have no sense of self in that situation, but it’s certainly reduced. And I can be very happy.

Neural pathways in the brain of a fruit fly.

Image: Hampel et al./Nature Methods

WIRED: I’ve read that you don’t kill insects if you can avoid it.

Koch: That’s true. They’re fellow travelers on the road, bookended by eternity on both sides.

WIRED: How do you square what you believe about animal consciousness with how they’re used in experiments?

Koch: There are two things to put in perspective. First, there are vastly more animals being eaten at McDonald’s every day. The number of animals used in research pales in comparison to the number used for flesh. And we need basic brain research to understand the brain’s mechanisms. My father died from Parkinson’s. One of my daughters died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. To prevent these brain diseases, we need to understand the brain — and that, I think, can be the only true justification for animal research. That in the long run, it leads to a reduction in suffering for all of us. But in the short term, you have to do it in a way that minimizes their pain and discomfort, with an awareness that these animals are conscious creatures.

WIRED: Getting back to the theory, is your version of panpsychism truly scientific rather than metaphysical? How can it be tested?

Koch: In principle, in all sorts of ways. One implication is that you can build two systems, each with the same input and output — but one, because of its internal structure, has integrated information. One system would be conscious, and the other not. It’s not the input-output behavior that makes a system conscious, but rather the internal wiring.

The theory also says you can have simple systems that are conscious, and complex systems that are not. The cerebellum should not give rise to consciousness because of the simplicity of its connections. Theoretically you could compute that, and see if that’s the case, though we can’t do that right now. There are millions of details we still don’t know. Human brain imaging is too crude. It doesn’t get you to the cellular level.

The more relevant question, to me as a scientist, is how can I disprove the theory today. That’s more difficult. Tononi’s group has built a device to perturb the brain and assess the extent to which severely brain-injured patients — think of Terri Schiavo — are truly unconscious, or whether they do feel pain and distress but are unable to communicate to their loved ones. And it may be possible that some other theories of consciousness would fit these facts.

WIRED: I still can’t shake the feeling that consciousness arising through integrated information is — arbitrary, somehow. Like an assertion of faith.

Koch: If you think about any explanation of anything, how far back does it go? We’re confronted with this in physics. Take quantum mechanics, which is the theory that provides the best description we have of the universe at microscopic scales. Quantum mechanics allows us to design MRI and other useful machines and instruments. But why should quantum mechanics hold in our universe? It seems arbitrary! Can we imagine a universe without it, a universe where Planck’s constant has a different value? Ultimately, there’s a point beyond which there’s no further regress. We live in a universe where, for reasons we don’t understand, quantum physics simply is the reigning explanation.

With consciousness, it’s ultimately going to be like that. We live in a universe where organized bits of matter give rise to consciousness. And with that, we can ultimately derive all sorts of interesting things: the answer to when a fetus or a baby first becomes conscious, whether a brain-injured patient is conscious, pathologies of consciousness such as schizophrenia, or consciousness in animals. And most people will say, that’s a good explanation.

If I can predict the universe, and predict things I see around me, and manipulate them with my explanation, that’s what it means to explain. Same thing with consciousness. Why we should live in such a universe is a good question, but I don’t see how that can be answered now.

Index to past discussions -

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

The Oracles of Postmodern Theology Must Reinterpret Scripture...

Olson's article on the state of modern theology pretty much repeats what we have been voicing here for the past several years. That it is the job of postmodern theology to reinterpret Scripture and to bring our Christian understanding of its content in line with, and re-integrated to, today's sciences. To let go of the church's many past millennia's of out-dated, pre-scientific, biblical interpretations, and at the last begin questioning ourselves, our traditions, our orthodoxies, and dogmas, with the hard truths of postmodern discoveries. Its deconstructions and reconstructions. Its harsh glare of our antipathies and quizzical stares of incredulity.

The modernistic church has been obfuscating the lines and demarcations of theology for far too long and must now "pay the piper" his due to the bewilderment and stupefying of its congregations and society-at-large. It is time to declare that what we think we know as Christians must be re-examined in the cold, cruel light of scientific facts against our errant religious fictions which have so pleasantly entertained, amazed, and comforted us. When in fact the church continues to promulgate its own ruin and destruction by maintaining its religious idols of who God is, who we are, and what this world is. Christianity has become more-or-less a man-made religion rather than a godly faith broken upon the altars of its mirrorless self.

However, to act bravely, even self-critically, would be salvation itself against the bankruptcy of the Christian faith caught out along the lines of spiritual mysticism and magic, fanciful ideologies, and the squalor of human ignorance lying-everywhere-about its sacred, gilded pages of church doctrine and legalistic pride. Certainly it can be done reasonably, and without lost of God, sin, grace, and salvation. But let us be all the more certain that it must be done rather than not at all. Nor refused. Nor dis-allowed for fear of blasphemy. For the only blasphemy occurring at this point is the blasphemy of not understanding our Lord's revelation by being content upon the baseless fictions and fantasies we cry so assuredly about in our ignorance and zeal of Scripture's pages. If we're going to declare God's Word than let us do so without first declaring our lines and boundaries in which to do such a task. Otherwise we coddle ourselves and unnecessarily protect our beliefs which, if true, should need no protection at all.

It is not for naught that so many weary theologians have turned to postmodernism's critical thinking to rediscover the guiding truths of Scripture lost in the myriad unenlightening fictions of folklore religion loudly proclaiming misleading theological declarations by our brightest and best pulpiteers of recent years. The most golden voices, and stentorian speeches, so gladden our tin-leaden ears in its cacophonous man-made noise as to mislead from the hallowed truths of Scripture's subtler testimony attested to by the myriads of scientific disciplines and academic minds. And should such a preacher or theolog be so bold as to say, "Nay, but look here against your certainties," then one-and-all seeks that preacher's, or theolog's, rapid dismissal from the ranks of Christendom by pax and anathema.

 

Woe be to such a generation of vapid prophets whose vaporous flocks flee to their own wisdoms and falsehoods misunderstanding the hand of God in these surer times demanding relevancy, insight, and connectedness. Surely such self-ordained false prophets guide the flocks of God to their own valleys of the shadow of death declaring good bad, and bad good, all for the sake of maintaining unreflective church traditions and dogmas for their name's sake. Nay, let us be rid of such miscreants and learn to look again to those we hitherto decried so easily. To hear again the words of Jesus lost in the political scandals and derelict policies of a non-Christian ethos we have proclaimed in the name of God... so certain we have been of our own non-reflective, uncritical biases. It would be better that we tear down our own religious idols of mammon and greed than to stand against the Lord and declare His revelation bankrupted by our own private interpretations. Since when do the words of religious men resist his Maker? Or stand against his Redeemer's blood-bought world? Or seek to tear down brothers and sisters testifying of the Lord's beauty?

Today's postmodern generations can do better than this. Especially when we look at the cruelty and sufferings of man so abundant about us; committed against each other - and upon this good earth - all in the name of faith and religion, by both Christian and non-Christian alike. Man-made religion but protects our greed and pride without protecting the rights and liberties of those we so easily oppress without thought or regard. But true Christianity is selfless. Sacrificial. Service-oriented. It looks outwards towards others in its upward gaze to the God above who is present within our midst. And it looks away from ourselves, our petty needs and pleasures, our need for certainty and security, our private lusts and hatreds, jealousies and self-absorptions. If not, than the Christian faith is useless and become but an empty banner of patriotic zeal and nationalism wrapped in a religious blanket of Christianized humanism. A pantry of evils best walked away from and uneaten lest its worm continues to rot both gut and head, heart and soul.

So then, what say you on this Veteran's Day set to honor the lost and the dead, the living and the oppressed, of all nations? For what truths did they die if not for peace, righteousness, hope, and salvation of the dispossessed and ruined? Even so must we humbly turn to our Lord and say, "Forgive us, Lord, and help us to hear your Word again with ears and hearts that are opened to your Spirit's counsel and guidance. To show tolerance and wisdom in listening to our enemies and protagonists everywhere about, shaking their fists at our God and Bible." They have their arguments, and it would be best to listen again lest we miss God's voice in the rumble of our own words with its accompanying clouds of delusion and apostasy. The Christian faith is a humble faith. Meek, and meekly led, by the Christ-of-the-Cross, who is our only sure Hope-of-contrite renewal and repentant resurrection. Let this humility guide us even now within this frail life that we mercifully possess onto the Lord's surer counsels which at present seem to speak from without - since they no long seem to come from within - our self-annointed, fracturous, faith and its congregations. Amen and Amen.

 

R.E. Slater

November 11, 2013

 

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Christianity and Science: How They Relate to Each Other in Modern Theology

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/christianity-and-science-how-they-relate-to-each-other-in-modern-theology/

 

by Roger Olson

November 9, 2013

Comments

 

The unifying theme of my newly published book The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (IVP) is Christian theological responses and reactions to modernity. Modernity is, of course, that cultural ethos stemming from the Enlightenment and the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries especially. (One could extend the era of modernity’s cultural dominance in the West into the twentieth century.) Toward the end of the book, beginning with the chapter on liberation theologies, I discuss postmodernity, but, of course, postmodernity, whatever else it may be, is a response and reaction to modernity.

 

My study of modern theology, from the deists (Toland, Tindale, et al.) to deconstructionists (my case study is John Caputo), led me to believe that much of it is driven by desire to extricate Christianity from conflicts with “the sciences” (broadly defined, not just the so-called “physical science”). The book begins with the “Galileo affair” which, I believe, still haunts thinking Christians. Both the majorities of Protestants and Catholics rejected Galileo’s discoveries in astronomy (as they had ridiculed and rejected Copernicus’s before him). And yet, in the end, he proved his heliocentric universe idea to be true so convincingly that everyone had to agree. The Catholic Church leaders of his time knew he was right, but wanted to suppress his discovery. His persecution by the church was for not obeying its order not to publish his proof.

 

Other scientists discovered facts and promulgated theories that conflicted with traditional Christian reliance on Aristotle, and a non-scientific cosmology based on misinterpretation of the Bible. For at least two centuries it seemed that in every conflict between “science and Scripture” or “science and theology” Scripture and theology lost to science. This added up to a humiliation for orthodox theology (as it was understood then) and the established churches. Two extreme reactions set in among Christians. One was to reject everything science says. “Science” became the sphere of evil and deception. The other, opposite, extreme was to accept whatever seemed to be the prevailing scientific mood and theory at any given time and totally capitulate to it, trimming Christianity down to an “essence” that could not conflict with science.

 

But many Christians worked in the middle ground between those extremes. Galileo himself carved out a compromise approach in his “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” (of Tuscany). According to him, theology reigns in matters of salvation whereas science reigns in matters of physical reality. The approach was something like “Christianity is not about how the heavens go but how to go to heaven.” That’s oversimplifying, of course, but it pretty well describes his general method of handling conflicts between traditional Christianity and science. To be more precise, Galileo denied any errors in Scripture but said that whenever science proves something that seems to conflict with Scripture, theology must reinterpret Scripture. Twentieth century evangelical theologian Bernard Ramm took this approach in his classic The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954). Between Galileo and Ramm, Charles Hodge advocated much the same approach in his Systematic Theology (1872/1873). Of course, neither Hodge nor Ramm advocated adjusting theology to every theory of scientists. Ramm stated that traditional biblical interpretation should accommodate only to the “material facts” of science—what has been proven beyond serious doubt.

 

It seems to me (and I have described this in Journey) many modern Christian theologians have adopted a different approach than Galileo’s, Hodge’s or Ramm’s. Much modern theology seems to be intent on rescuing Christianity from conflicts with science, where theology usually loses, by redefining “Christianity” such that it cannot conflict with science. Wolfhart Pannenberg fought against this “ghettoizing” of theology and spent much of his later career attempting to establish dialogue between science and theology with an eye toward re-integration of the two. His goal was mutual transformation of science and theology, not capitulation of theology to science or antagonism between them.

 

However, from Friedrich Schleiermacher on, the general “drift” of modern theology was to separate Christianity from science so that conflict is impossible. If Schleiermacher is right, if Albrecht Ritschl is right, if Rudolf Bultmann is right, if Paul Tillich is right (and one could name many more), Christianity’s “true essence” has nothing to do with what science studies, so conflict between them is impossible. Christianity’s true essence came to be seen as either “God-consciousness"  (Schleiermacher) or ethics (Ritschl) or “authentic existence” (Bultmann) or “ultimate concern with Being Itself” (Tillich). Many other modern theologians, in their own ways, attempted to reinterpret Christianity so that it could not be undermined by science.

 

But, according to Pannenberg and others, all this came at great cost. For one thing, it helped fuel the “Atheismusstreit” (the atheism struggle”) in the European universities. Especially, but not only, atheists wanted theology expelled from the universities as it was considered not a science at all. (It is usually taught as one of the human sciences.) It also, Pannenberg argued, reduced theology’s voice to irrelevance in the “public square,” the market place of ideas, making it esoteric.

 

One serious problem with these many theological attempts to rescue Christianity from “the acids of modernity” (Walter Lippman’s phrase) and especially science by subjectivizing it (using Romanticism or existentialism, etc.) was that science kept expanding its territory to include the human subject and his or her consciousness. Schleiermacher did not foresee Freud. Tillich struggled with depth psychology, attempting to integrate it with theology and vice versa, without much success. Sociobiology appeared on the scene to argue that religion itself is an adaptive behavior. In other words, redefining Christianity to avoid conflicts with science while retaining any reliance on “God of the gaps” thinking does not seem to work. Science seems intent on closing all the gaps—even subjective consciousness and self-understanding.

 

This is the pathos of modern theology—how to avoid repetitions of the Galileo affair.

 

One wrong approach is to trim “Christianity” to fit whatever “science” seems to be saying. This is the accommodationist approach. It appears in all versions of “naturalistic theisms” including process theologies. As one pundit put it, theology was so afraid of being kicked into the ditch by modernity that it jumped there to avoid the pain of being kicked.”

 

Another wrong approach is to resist science to the point of rejecting even its material facts. Most conservative Christians have long accepted the truth of the heliocentric system and that the earth is round so that heaven is not “up.” (Although I once heard a Christian evangelist argue that heaven is truly “up”—from the north pole because all maps show that as “up” from anywhere on the planet.) But many Christians seem simply to want to stick their heads in the sand and ignore science (if not demonize it)—except for its technological creations (e.g., cancer treatments).

 

A very common wrong approach, however, is to redefine “Christianity” so that its “essence” cannot be undermined or supported by science. Theology and science exist in water tight, separate compartments. This results in theology’s irrelevance to public truth and its reduction to an esoteric “science.”

 

Finally, some Christians wrongly take the “two truths” approach. For them, scientific facts can contradict Christian beliefs but somehow both are to be embraced.

 

Probably no single issue has caused as much consternation and confusion and loss of credibility for theology as its various approaches to science.

 

For now, anyway, I hold to the common sense approach of Hodge and Ramm. It’s not that Christianity is only about “how to go to heaven” and not at all about “how the heavens go.” Christian theology needs to have a cosmology informed by the best science. However, theology need not adapt to every passing theory of scientists. But when something is established as material fact beyond a reasonable doubt theology must accept it and adjust to it. An example, more recent than Galileo, is the age of the earth. Only people who refuse to face material facts still think Bishop Ussher’s dating of the creation is even close to correct.

 

Recently even some orthodox Christians, evangelicals among them, have sought a “non-interventionist” view of God’s providence [(sic, the sovereignty of God)]. I would dare to say that this is quickly becoming a major trend among even moderate theologians. (To be sure, not all are seeking this, but more are than make me comfortable.) The whole concept of “miracle” is becoming problematic, even among theologians who adamantly deny being “liberal.” They do not deny “acts of God,” they simply do not think they include anything like “interventions” in nature or history which are ruled by laws. God acts, they say, through natural laws which are under his control.

 

The question this raises, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus. How does one express the bodily resurrection (which many of these non-interventionist theologians affirm) in non-interventionist terms?

 

One of my questions for non-interventionist theologians (and here I’m talking only about those who still believe God acts in nature and history outside the individual’s consciousness) is how did God bring about the resurrection of Jesus Christ “non-interventionally?” What model of “act of God” can be called non-interventionist while still affirming the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

 

Now, if someone says, well, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead bodily, my response is “Here I’m not talking to you or about you.” What I’m seeking to know is how an orthodox Christian, one who believes in God’s providential activity in the world, including (even if only) the bodily resurrection of Jesus, can explain the miracle of the resurrection non-interventionally.

 

For now, anyway, I still do not see any conflict between believing God sometimes intervenes in nature and history with genuine miracles and belief that normally nature is uniform. Scientists studying nature should practice methodological atheism, but I don’t see how believing in the normal uniformity of nature (everything we normally observe has a natural cause) excludes miracles if God is conceived as omnipotent—”big enough” to “fix” whatever problems an intervention might normally cause in the universe.

 

- Roger Olson

 

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*Lest Dr. Olson be misunderstood, he does in fact believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus as the incarnate God, even as I do (cf, the sidebar under "Virgin Birth"). What he wishes to know is how God can, and will, "intervene" in this world without breaking his own primodial counsels when decreeing creation's evolutionary existence (sic, think Stephen Hawking's statements of creation not needing its God once set in motion; against the Christian understanding that one-and-all needs God's very breath to move forward). In an evolutionary understanding of Scriptures what then does this mean? How then may God "intervene" without breaking His earlier decrees? Even so have we made a few attempts in the science and sovereignty sections of this website. But for now, I would suggest some further research along the lines of the univocity of God, and especially in the area of "essential kenosis and freewill theism" in a more recent article lately posted - How Does God Move and Act in the Universe? - "Eight Positions of Divine Sovereignty."

 

And lest anyone gets the wrong idea, this website does indeed intend to continue its research and investigations into process theology by comparing its insights in combination with relational theism and open theology. As well as to further understand the continental philosophies of existentialism, phenomenology, and even radical theology (which is an even more radical form to that of liberal theology). As thinking Christians we should know and understand what we are talking about rather than avoiding (or decrying) every "-ism" that comes our way. Know your subject. Take what you can. And learn from it. Every area has something to say. Even atheism. For instance, I think its contrasts gives support to theistic structure making itself in the process unsupportable.... But you wouldn't know that if you don't know the subject (John Caputo: Towards a Radical Theology, Not a Radical Atheism: A Review of Modern Atheism, Atheology, and Divine Inexistence) or the many reasons for its attractiveness (sic, Peter Rollins commentaries)

 

The trick is to not get lost. Too many have begun pure-in-heart only to lose their way in the dark wildernesses of man-made religion or wisdom (sic, both within the church's own dogmas as well as without its walls and indoctrinations). Those few of us who have found good counsel along our heavy roads of doubt and uncertainty are the more fortunate for the Lord's kindly grace. For this was my own testimony when breaking past the borderlands of my own churched Christianity to the broader lands of a Jesus-centric faith fraught against the religious legalisms so readily at hand  (ever the seeker's temptation and unwanted foundling). But thanks be to the Lord for Christ His Son, ever my Guide and Savior. At the last, my definition of Christianity is a simple one. It is Jesus. Only Jesus. And all of Jesus. Around Him must the Christian faith and its hope most assuredly revolve. He is our best Shepherd, Guide, and Counselor. The God of all creation. Who is the Alpha and Omega of our faith. Not its rules. Not its styles and preferences. Not its alarmisms and protestations. Nor its religious lifestyles and presumed rags of self-righteousness without blood or stain of our Savior and Lord. Our faith must be in Jesus alone. He is our Amen and Verity. Forever and ever. Amen and Amen.

- R.E. Slater


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My Note to Dr. Olson:

"Not sure where to begin... for myself I began with Lippman's idea of rescuing Christianity from the "acids of modernity" and its secularity... which has since led me to a form of postmodern, post-evangelic, expression of theology. Mostly holding to its evangelic roots but more willing to now examine them under the outside scopes of non-evangelic thought. I continue to investigate process theology both thru the lens of relational theism and open theology; to think that continental philosophy can be helpful where reasonably applied; and even that radical theology has a thing or two to say about our apocalyptic faith, the weakness of God, and doubt and faith. Science is much less problematic for me as I was trained in it from both the physical and socio-biological streams of thought, and quite enjoy working it back into theological discussion.

Overall I am determined that postmodern theology (or its succeeding forms) must re-interpret the Bible in order to restore it back to the mainstreams of thought and life. However, short of this monumental effort, it seems to me that the one good reason for the Lord to return is that He must. If I were to neglect the many good men and women that He has used over the past 2000 years of church history, this age has been barren of its OT-like prophets, priests, and kings... 2000 years has been a long time for God to not intervene... however this "divine silence" does perfectly fit in with the realization that He has died, and has quite literally left in His place His many servants to speak His good word by His prevailing Spirit. Even so, my brother, continue to declare God's Word.

- Russ
 

continue to -

 

Roger Olson, "The Journey of Modern Theology:

From Reconstruction to Deconstruction"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index - Kingdom Eschatology

King of Kings and Lord of Lords

INDEX TO KINGDOM ESCHATOLOGY

  

Kingdom as Reconciliation and Peace

Repost: Let Us Dance!

Let Us Dance!

Coming Home to Phillip Phillips "Home," Arcade's "Wild Thing's," & Guetta's "Titanium"


The Presence of the Kingdom of God

(mcknight) Church and Kingdom as Inaugurated Eschatology in Process of Finality

(res) The Presence of the Kingdom of God Now

(res) Kingdom as a Participatory Eschatology

(res, cook) What is Heaven? The Kingdom of God Come NOW to Earth...

(hauerwas) Interview & Vid Links: Stanley Hauerwas, "Cross-Shattered Christ"


Kingdom as a Social Ethic in Postmodern Theology

(res) Pluralism, Tolerance and Accommodation: In You, the Kingdom of God Has Come

(olson) Justice in the Kingdom of God

(ecological) Renewing God's World: The Redemptive Renewal of Creation

(pluralism) The Emergent Spectrum of Evangelicalism

(res, mcknight) The Ethical and Redemptive Aspects of the Kingdom of God

(mcknight) The Failure of Christianity is a Modern Myth


Kingdom Theology

(res, olson) Is God Always In Control?

(res) What Is Narrative Theology? It is the "Grander Story of God and Creation"

(wright) N.T. Wright - How God Became King

(res, mcknight) Book Review: "How God Became King," by N.T. Wright

(wright) N.T. Wright asks: Have we gotten heaven all wrong?

(jwh) How God Became King: Putting Creed and Canon Back Together Again

(olson) The Kingdom of God as Premillennial

(mcknight) Misunderstanding "Kingdom"

(evans re mcknight) The Gospel as the Story of Jesus

(mcknight) Review: Matt Chandler's "Explicit Gospel" misses on many fronts...


Radical Theology

Kevin Corcoran's Critique of Derrida and Caputo


Covenantal Kingdom Theology

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

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

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

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


Historic Premillenialism v. Rapture Theologies

(olson, res) Leaving Behind "Left Behind"

(res) Of Blood Moons & Prophecy: "What Kind of God Leaves People Behind?"

(res) Kingdom Theology (Stay & Work) vs. Rapture Theology (Wait & Leave)

Is "Left Behind" Really A Christian Movie? (podcast)

Why the Rapture isn’t Biblical… And Why it Matters

Debunking "Left Behind" Theology - Resources for Shaping A "Raptureless" Theology

Thy Will be Done



The Last Judgment





The Eschatological Unfolding of the Kingdom of God



 

The Kingdom of Christ our Lord

Jesus as the Midpoint of Redemptive History

Kingdom of God as Promise

Past, Present, and Future

An Old Schema of Kingdom

(Old Dispensational Chart by Clarence Larkin)

An Old/New Schema of the Church

as an Eschatological Community

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).