The Christological Subversion of the Theme of Violence in the Book of Revelation (Part Two)
It is perhaps already plain that
the Last Judgment here to be described will not be quite the same as that which
has recently dominated popular piety and iconography. For Christians, expectations of the coming of
God’s lordship and the associated final transition of time into eternity takes
the concrete form of hope for the return of Christ,[1]
whose coming is not viewed as something extraneous to the coming of the
Kingdom, but as the “concrete medium,” of its arrival.[2]
Colin Greene notes that “the exalted
Messiah is now the new broker of the kingdom who possesses the power and
authority…the installation of Jesus as the Messiah instigates a radically new
understanding of the nature of the kingdom.”[3] Understood as the source of Risen life,[4]
the person of Christ, and “his cross and resurrection,” in a certain sense,
“give a new stamp to the message of the kingdom of God…the lordship of God
assumes the form of this event of the raising of the Crucified.” In this event the kingdom of God is represented.[5]
In
this manner it is understandable to view the book of Revelation as the perennial culmination of the
New Testament canon. It is a work of
profound theology, but specifically, it is the Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev.
1:1) and any commentary cannot neglect this fact; it pervades all understanding
in the book. To be sure many elements of
the book follow the prophetic and proto-apocalyptic schemas found in Daniel,
Isaiah, and Ezekiel,[6]
regarding the unveiling of that which was previously hidden in Heaven. But the content of John’s visions are not, as
it were, a vertical, revelatory interruption of normal knowledge sheerly as
such, which follow no previously discernable pattern. All are intrinsically related to the
character and person of Jesus of Nazareth, transcribed into the cosmological
schemas of Apocalypticism. The events
which unfold in Revelation are all laid out with Christology in mind.[7]
This follows the primitive Christian proclamation that the risen Lord is the
future messianic King whom God will send (Acts 3:20; 1 Cor. 15:23ff), and in so
doing, in that Christ is named as our judge, explicitly merged the second
coming of the Lord with the coming of the judgment of the Son of Man (Mark
14:62; c.f. Dan. 7:13) which is, Jesus notes, based upon assent or refusal of
His own message; the Son of Man will pronounce righteous those who now already
confess Jesus and his message (Luke 12:8).
It is no surprise then, that the relation of Christ to
the so-called “seal judgments,” is not merely an arbitrary or extrinsic
relationship like the relation of a human judge’s arbitration of a previously
ratified law. The judgments are executed
only on the supposition of the worthiness of the character and person of Christ
and his self sacrifice, as symbolized by the “lamb which stands slaughtered,”
(Rev. 5:6). The very fact that no other
is found worthy in the entire kosmos
to open the seals but the slaughtered Christ-Lamb suggests an ontological
relationship, so that the seals are intrinsically related both in their
inception, and their content, to the nature of Christ and His victory (Rev.
5:5). The judgments in their various
dispensations appear to be commentaries on the antithesis between the obedience
and piety of the Son to the Father, and the idolatrous, “self-sufficient,”
injustice of the world. More on this in
a moment. For now it suffices to say
that it therefore appears the standard of judgment is Christ himself, and not
merely a sort of abstract divine law.[8] To understand the judgments, therefore, and
the violence contained within them, we must view them through this particular
Christology of self-giving and obedience summarized in the image of the
slaughtered Lamb.
The necessity of a Christologically grounded exegesis
of the book of Revelation is, in part, the cause of an initial difficulty,
however. Summarizing the varied findings
of the various so-called “quests for the historical Jesus,”—and in stark
opposition to the Gnostic, docetic,
and monophysite controversies of the early Church over the truth of the actual
humanity of the Christ—Pannenberg remarks, “in the contemporary scene, it no
longer seems particularly remarkable that Jesus was a true man. This is…the self-evident presupposition of
all statements about Jesus...[that], if he lived at all…then he was a man like
us.”[9]
This
current intensification regarding sensitivity to Jesus’ true humanity can
create the impression that we are presented in the Apocalypse with a Christ of
an entirely different sort than the Gospels.[10] Rather than being one who
thirsted (Jn. 19:28), hungered (Mt. 4:2) and sweat blood (Luke 22:44), the
Christ of Revelation stands in the midst of the seven Churches,
Dressed in a
robe reaching down to His feet and with a golden sash around his chest. His head and hair were white like wool, as
white as snow, and His eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a
furnace, and His voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and
out of His mouth came a sharp double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its
brilliance (Rev. 1:13-16).[11]
Already in the
Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther is famous for rejecting the book of
Revelation because it did not clearly present Christ to him—that is, the Crucified Christ who was the man Jesus
of Nazareth.[12] This diastasis between the Jesus of the
Gospels and the exalted Christ of the Revelation can take either the form of
demythologization (again, Bultmann) in which the heavenly symbols are seen as
attempting to outline the significance of what is otherwise a human reality, or
it can take a pathway trod by the more traditional synthesis in naming the “two
Christs,” as one Christ in a simple linear sequence of humiliation and
exaltation, in which the exaltation is the overturning and negation of the
humiliation—the negation of negation—where a filling (plerosis) follows
simply after an emptying (kenosis). Both attempts, unfortunately, lead to a
perverted reading of the book of Revelation.
This
is not merely a scholarly esotericism, but rather our original question of the
significance and function of the violent images in Revelation hinges upon the
question of the identification of the Christ of the rest of the New Testament
with the “High,” Christology,” of John’s vision. If in the Apocalypse Christ is simply He who
has “passed beyond,” the humility of the crucifixion, so that the statement of
the risen Christ to John “I was dead, but behold, I am alive for ever and
ever!” (Rev. 1:18) is positing a simple antithesis—the culmination of an apparent
logic that Christ himself was too powerful to be kept under death—then power,
pure and simple, is the hermeneutical key to understand the violence of the
judgments. The crucifixion becomes
something perhaps necessary in the overall plan of God, but one which is
ultimately lost in the radiant effulgence of Christ’s now revealed Glory. The logic of obedience and humility “even
unto death on a cross,” (Phil. 2:8) is subjugated under the rubric of absolute
victory through the exertion of force.
If this is the case, then Nietzsche’s understanding of the final truth
as the “will-to-power,” is not too far off.
Combined with the Voluntarist[13]
tradition of the Church—which names the Good as that which God wills—the
“will-to-power,” is transposed to God, and is then seen as the solution of the
Apocalypse: the violence of the Judgments follow no logic other than that they
are willed by the same power with which Christ overcame death. And this is the power of power absolutely. Their violence, perhaps in its first glance
detestable, is beyond our understanding, and has holiness in no other way than
finding genesis within the secret eternal councils of God.
[1] Pannenberg ST vol.III p.608. C.f Gunther Bornkamm Jesus of Nazareth trans. Irene and Fraser Mcluskey with James
Robinson (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960) p.64ff
[3] Colin J. D. Greene Christology in Cultural Perspective: Marking
Out the Horizons (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s Publishing, 2003) p.363
[4] Moltmann Theology of Hope p.211
[6] Stanley Grenz The Named God and the Question of Being: A
Trinitarian Theo-Ontology (Westminster, WJK Press, 2005) pp.223-224 notes
“John reports that while he was ‘in the Spirit on the Lord’s day,’ he heard a
trumpet-like voice…Upon turning around John saw ‘one like a son of man’ but who
was in fact the resplendent, exalted Jesus…John immediately prostrated himself
before the heavenly visitor in a manner in keeping with the way in which other
biblical characters responded to similar visions (e.g. Ez 1:28; Dan 8:17;
10:15; Matt 17:6; Acts 26:14)…By being structured in this way the entire scene follows
the fourfold pattern evidenced in the book of Daniel (Dan. 8:15-19; 10:2-11:2)
in which the prophet sees a vision, prostrates himself out of fear, is
strengthened by the heavenly messenger, and then receives additional
revelation.”
[7] An immediate example of this
is the fact that the attributes outlined in Rev. 1:16-18 of Christ are each
used in turn to begin the statements to the seven churches. The attributes are reversed in order however,
creating a chiastic structure between the initial description of the exalted
Christ, and the words to the angels of the churches.
[8] Pannenberg ST vol.III pp.610-620. Robert Jenson Systematic Theology Vol. II: The Works of God (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999) p.326
agrees with Pannenberg that “Christ himself is the truth by which he
judges.” To do otherwise, according to
Jenson, would be to disassociate the Logos, who created the world correctly for
the Father, from the man Jesus. C.f Moltmann Hope
pp..203-229; Miroslav Volf Exclusion and
Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996) p.298: “God
will judge not because God gives people what they deserve, but because some
people refuse to receive what no one deserves; if evildoers experience God’s
terror, it will not be because they have done evil, but because they have
resisted to the end…the open arms of the crucified Messiah.”
[9] Wolfhart Pannenberg Jesus: God and Man 2nd Ed.
trans. Lewis L. Wilkens and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1977) p.191
[10] So D. Guthrie The Relevance of John's Apocalypse, (New
York: Paternoster Press, 1987) whose
description of the Apocalyptic Christ as “unparalleled,” perhaps overplays the
“High” Christology of the Apocalypse against the rest of the New
Testament. To be fair, Christ is
undoubtedly “unparalleled,” in the sense of his exaltation, but the inner logic
of the exaltation does not bypass, but resides precisely in, Christ’s
obediential humility to the will of the
Father. The image of the Lamb precisely
describes the glory of the one who sits upon the throne before the seven lamp
stands, and who holds the seven stars, and should not be read as a contrasted
image.
[11] This itself, however,
drawing upon similar imagery in Daniel 12:2-3, is an allusion to a resurrected state. Hence despite the supernatural construal of
Christ there is still the link to the Christ who was crucified and raised.
[12] Orr “Revelation of John,”
p.2587. Martin Luther’s specific
emphasis on a theologia crucis
(theology of the cross) especially led him to view with suspicion the theologia gloria (theology of glory)
which exalted Christ and treated his humiliation as an almost accidental, or
forgettable, event on the road to His kingdom.
The logic of Christ’s glory, for Luther, lay precisely in, and not in
opposition to, the self-giving humilation of the cross. Unfortunately, Luther’s noble attempt to
proffer the theologia crucis in
contrast to the standard theologia gloria
led him to some poor understandings of the book of Revelation.
[13] Summarized hastily,
Voluntarism, to the question “Does God will that which is good? Or is that which is good, good because God
wills it?” would answer the latter.
Voluntarism has always had a keen sense of God’s absolute
sovereignty. So powerful is God, that
his actions are conditioned by no prior logic other than that they are his
decree.
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