Episode 259: Robyn Whitaker - The Book of Revelation
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared are joined by Robyn Whitaker to discuss the themes, movements, and symbolism found within the book of Revelation, as well as the various ways it has been interpreted throughout Christian history. Join them as they explore the following questions:
What’s the general outline of the book of Revelation? What’s happening?
What are the prominent interpretations of Revelation throughout history?
What’s the purpose of writing the book of Revelation?
Does John have a specific intention in writing Revelation?
How does Revelation fit into the genre of apocalyptic literature?
Revelation is unique as a New Testament book. How did it get canonized?
Why is there so much violence in Revelation? What purpose does it serve, and how can modern readers interpret it?
What are some of the postcolonial critiques of Revelation?
Are there other resources (besides our own B4NP commentary authored by Robyn) people could use to dig deeper into the historical criticism of Revelation?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
I think one of the reasons people struggle with this book is the huge chunk in the middle is just a lot of scenes of violence and judgment. A lot of language of repent and wrath and people dying. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
Revelation, probably more than any other biblical book, has this really mixed and such extremely different modes of interpretation. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
This is a deeply historically located text addressing particular concerns for a minority Christian group in the Roman Empire who are trying to navigate their relationship with that empire, and what it means to be a Christian living in that kind of world. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
Prophetic visions are often about casting a way of thinking about what God's Kingdom might look like, or what the final end might look like. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
We can also read this quite symbolically as giving us some timeless truths. The book of Revelation gives us a way to think about good and evil, and how that's manifest in worlds and systems of injustice and oppression. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
We need to think of this as a type of rhetoric. And it does have a persuasive purpose. So this author, I think, really wants to persuade people to hold fast to their faith. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
In the history of interpretation of Revelation, it's a very us versus the world kind of idea. And part of this is the nature of apocalyptic literature which tends to work in strong dualisms to make a point. So there's good people and bad people, and you pick a team. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
A large part of the way these visions work is to show you what God is doing up in the heavenly realm—the things that might be hidden from ordinary view, we're getting a glimpse of. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
We can see the power of that rhetoric, even when we can't make sense of it necessarily, in the fact that Revelation lives on in all sorts of popular conspiracy theories. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
This author is trying to draw together Jewish biblical traditions, and Greco-Roman traditions, to communicate to a broad audience. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
Often the evidence we have for Christian communities accepting these texts is how many times they were copied and used and referred to. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
We've got extremes in Christianity between those who, perhaps, put too much stock in [Revelation] and then those who kind of ignore it because it's this weird book at the end of the Bible we'd rather pretend wasn't there. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
The violence that we find so horrific reflects an ancient culture in many ways, but it also holds up a mirror to our culture, and perhaps the dangers of a highly militaristic culture—the dangers of a violent society. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
Some of us are fortunate enough to live with a huge amount of relative peace. But there's violence everywhere in our modern world. And maybe this is a way to help us recognize that, to think about what God's response to that would be. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
The text itself is constantly playing with parallels between empire, and I think the historical work can help us recognize those for what they are. — @robynjwhitaker@theb4np
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: November class “Claiming the Promise Land: Dismantling the Doctrines that Shaped the World” taught by Sarah Augustine
Books:
Even the Devil Quotes Scripture by Robyn Whitaker
Revelation for Normal People by Robyn Whitaker
Unveiling Empire: Reading Revelation Then and Now by Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther
Revelation and the End of All Thingsby Craig Koester
Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple by Scot McKnight
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Pete
You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared
And I'm Jared Byas.
Intro
[Intro music begins]
Jared
Hey folks, it's time to tell you about our November class: "Claiming the Promise Land: Dismantling the Doctrines that Shaped the World," taught by Sarah Augustine.
Pete
Now it's happening live for one night on November 16th, from 8-9:30pm, Eastern Time.
Jared
And Sarah is going to lead us through unpacking the Doctrine of Discovery, which is a philosophical and legal framework dating back to the 15th century that gave Christian governments moral and legal rights to invade and seize indigenous lands and dominate indigenous peoples. Think Christopher Columbus.
Pete
Yeah. And we'll also explore a theological framework for decolonizing the Doctrine of Discovery, and identify concrete steps towards seeking repair.
Jared
And when you sign up for the class, you get access to the live one-night-only class, a live Q&A session, the link to the class recording so you can watch it back anytime, and downloadable class slides.
Pete
And as always, it's pay-what-you-can until the class ends, then it costs $25 to download.
Jared
And of course, if you join our online community SoNP, the Society of Normal People—
Pete
Woohoo!
Jared
—You get access to all of our classes for just $12 a month.
Pete
Now for information and to sign up, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/DoctrinesOfDiscovery.
On today's episode, we're talking about the book of Revelation with Robyn Whitaker.
Jared
Robyn is Associate Professor of New Testament at Pilgrim Theological College in the University of Divinity in Melbourne, Australia.
Pete
Australia. And her most recent book is "Even the Devil Quotes Scripture: Reading the Bible on its Own Terms," a really wonderful book, by the way. And also, spoiler alert, Jared, you probably didn't know this, but I know: She's also working on a commentary for us on the Book of Revelation.
Jared
Yeah, so it's a little bit of a sneak peek.
Pete
It's a sneak peek.
Jared
And, which is—I got more excited after talking to her about it.
Pete
Yeah, I can't wait to read it.
Jared
So hopefully you do as well.
Pete
Yeah, absolutely.
Jared
Alright, well, we hope you enjoy this conversation with Robyn Whitaker.
Robyn
[Highlight of Robyn speaking begins, playing overtop of music] “My sense of Revelation is that we do need to read it as leaving this up to God, but also recognizing that genuine critique that the way John imagines God is, in a sense, limited by how we can imagine power. We need to recognize what is God and what is human, where's our position in society, if we are participating in an empire whose systems are oppressive and unjust. Are we looking more like Rome, than team God?”
[Ad break]
Pete
Robyn, it's great to have you on the podcast.
Robyn
It's great to be here.
Pete
We're gonna talk about a book nobody's ever heard of and nobody cares about.
Jared
It's really obscure.
Pete
It's boring.
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
It's easy to understand and it's short.
Robyn
Yeah.
Pete
So, now the book of Revelation. [Chuckles] Let's just start—you know, I don't think this is too low level a question to start with—but can you just walk us through the book as a whole? I mean, not every sentence, but just maybe the big picture or maybe an outline of the book? What's happening? Because there's so many moving parts of this book.
Robyn
Yeah, this is not a children's story, right? It's a super complicated book.
Jared
I wish we could go back about 30 years and tell my parents that.
Pete
Yeah, right? [Laughing]
Robyn
[Chuckles] Yeah, sorry about that.
Pete
Yeah.
Robyn
It's traumatized millions of people, I'm sure. So Revelation, we might think of it in about five movements. The first three chapters give us the opening, the commission to John to write, and we get a vision of the risen Christ. And then these messages in chapters two and three to the seven churches of Asia Minor, this kind of sets up the whole tone of the book. We get a bunch of themes introduced here that we're going to see throughout Revelation, themes around worship and idol worship, so who you're allowed to worship; we get a lot of language of power, and conquering, so we can talk more about that, now that's going to be a dominant theme in the book; the promise of rewards for people who hold fast or are faithful, so we get calls to kind of allegiance, if you like. These are sort of deeply historically located messages that kind of set up the tone of what's to follow.
And then in chapter four, we start with this series of visions. And in chapter four and five, we kind of meet God, if you like. John takes us up into the heavenly realm where we get this vision of God sitting on a throne surrounded by weird creatures and angels and elders. There's cosmic signs, there's rainbows, and lightning, and all sorts of stuff going on. And we meet God and then we meet the lamb and there's also the seven spirits of God. So we've got something more like a Trinitarian concept going on, but all in the heavenly realm.
And then from chapter six, really through to about 16, out of heaven come a whole lot of judgments. These flow from heaven, these are seals, we get seven seals are broken and judgments are released. And then there's seven trumpets that are blasted and judgments are released, something happens each time the trumpet blasts. And then there are bowls, these incense bowls, that are coming from the heavenly altar. And again, each time a bowl is poured out, there is some kind of judgment poured out on the earth.
So I think this is one of the reasons people struggle with this book, is the huge chunk in the middle is just a lot of scenes of violence and judgment. A lot of language of repent and wrath and people dying and that kind of stuff. And then in chapter 17, the judgment becomes more specific. So instead of being over the whole earth generally, it is really targeted at Babylon, which is a codename for Rome. So we start to see a really specific type of judgment for Rome, personified in a number of ways through beasts and monsters like the dragon, and through the so-called horror of Babylon, the Great Prostitute of Babylon, which is how John imagines Rome to be. And there we see a description of the demise of Rome, of the merchants of the wealth pouring out of Rome, and the whole city in chapter 18 is imagined to be laid desolate, in very much the terms we see in Old Testament prophets of just the desolation of a city.
And then we get re-creation. So I always tell my students when I teach Revelation to try and read it all the way through in one sitting, but to keep reading to the end, because it's almost like the light comes on, and you get this kind "Aha" moment, where in chapter 21 and 22, we get this re-creation of both heaven and earth. And the dominant symbol there is of this new Jerusalem, so a new city that actually beams down from heaven. So this isn't about escaping earth and beaming up. This is God coming down to heaven. And that heavenly throne room that we saw earlier in the book is now located in Jerusalem, in this reimagined Jerusalem, which is like a garden city.
We get images from Eden here, there's a tree for the healing of the nations. So it's kind of like a combination of a city and the Genesis 2-3 Garden of Eden. And we get told that God dwells there with the people. So there's no need for a temple anymore, which is a nod to a Jewish tradition and the understanding of the temple as God's home. But there's no need for a temple anymore, because God is dwelling there and lives with people face to face. So again, that return to a kind of Genesis 2 idea of God walking around and talking to people, and having that really intimate relationship. So that's a brief romp through the book.
Jared
And maybe, can we have another brief romp through a history of interpretation? Because I think because of the way that Revelation is written, it is very prone to different takes. So what have kind of been the prominent ones? And maybe, where do you land on that?
Pete
I mean, because you mentioned Babylon is Rome. And that right there for a lot of people, Jared, right? Maybe in your background will say, "What are you talking about, Rome?"
Jared
Well, no-
Pete
"It's America," or something.
Jared
Right.
Pete
Or it's-
Jared
Right.
Pete
Or Russia?
Robyn
Or it's Russia, or the Middle East, or-
Jared
Or it is Rome, in some ways, but really, it's-
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
America.
Robyn
Yes, exactly. Yep.
Pete
So work all that out for us, Robyn.
Robyn
[Chuckles]
Pete
How are we supposed to do this?
Robyn
[Sarcastically] Yeah, it's obviously going to be really simple. No, Revelation has—I mean, probably more than any other biblical book, if I can make such a grand claim—has this really mixed and such extremely different modes of interpretation. Let me go through a couple of them, and then I'll tell you where I sit. The one sometimes called a kind of Preterist view, people might know this language, it doesn't really matter if that's familiar or not to you, is this idea that this is something John wrote, it was fulfilled in the past, it all happened in the past, and we're kind of looking back at something totally historical, but maybe with a little bit of a glimpse of a future reign of God kind of kingdom, but this is mostly John writing about things that were happening in his world.
There's a kind of, what's often called a Historicist view, which looks at this as describing periods in the church's history that we can kind of map on to the birth of Christianity in the period where the church grew like Christendom, and we can kind of look for parallels in the text with what's happened throughout what we know of our world and the two thousand years since. And depending where you sit in that worldview depends whether you think how much you think has already happened, and how much will yet happen, depending on when you locate yourself.
There is some sort of Literalistic camp, often a futuristic kind of way of reading this text is to say this is all about predicting the future. This is all about saying what will happen when Christ returns and there are signs and we've got to look for these signs in our culture. And so “when this war breaks out, we know it's this bit of revelation happening” and we can kind of predict the end. So one of the fun little conspiracies going around the world at the moment is apparently the Euphrates River is running dry because of drought and water collection practices and stuff. And there's a verse in Revelation 16 about when the wrath of God came, you know, the Euphrates dried up. And so people are mapping that on to well, this is this sign in Revelation. That stuff goes on still today.
And then there's a way of approaching the book sometimes called Idealism, I don't find that a particularly helpful term. But that is really reading it as kind of symbolic. So this is telling a classic story of the patterns of struggle between good and evil. And it's a mythical story that is told in different ways using different symbolism, and we can kind of let that speak to us. I sit somewhere between a kind of historical—I think the majority of scholars do today, I don't think there's any scholar, serious scholar, who would say this is all about predicting the future. That's a pretty extreme view. But with a strong history. I would say this is a deeply historically located text, and we have to read it as addressing particular concerns for a minority Christian group in the Roman Empire, who are trying to navigate their relationship with that empire, and what it means to be a Christian living in that kind of world. A world that is sometimes quite hostile to them. But I don't want to just leave it entirely in the past, I think it does have a future aspect, like most of the Bible does, where there are visions, grand visions of sort of hope, for what the ultimate future of God might look like. These aren't, again, predictive in that sense, but in the sense that prophetic visions are often about casting a way of thinking about what God's Kingdom might look like, or what the final end might look like.
And then I think we can also read this quite symbolically as giving us some timeless truths. And one of the things I think that's really important in the book of Revelation is it gives us a way to think about good and evil, and how that's kind of manifest in worlds and systems and systems of injustice and oppression. There are, of course, related to this—and tell me if you don't want too much detail—I mean, the other cluster of words we get with this is the whole "pre-millennial" "post-millennial" that people might be familiar with. "Left Behind," which is this Dispensationalist view of revelation that really came out of 19th century Plymouth Brethren, it's a very fundamentalist literalist way of reading the text.
Pete
Yeah, there are different ways of reading it literalistically.
Jared
Yeah.
Robyn
Yes, there are.
Jared
It's like a subset of the Literalist, futurist kind of, Second Coming reading.
Robyn
And the big debate there is whether Jesus comes before the thousand years of reign where satan is bound. And again, I think this is a misreading of the text, to be honest. There's a few verses at the beginning of chapter 20, that talks about “Christ bound Satan in the pit for a thousand years.” This is usually interpreted as therefore a thousand year reign of Christ, and there's huge debate whether Jesus comes before that, or after that, and therefore when is the period of tribulation and so on, which I think is just reading way too much into a few verses of kind of [Chuckles] a symbolic way of talking about the way that God has—
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
And to kind of summarize what I'm hearing you say from a scholarly standpoint is, it's historically located and you're going to find—the meaning of the text, it has to be situated within the historical context in which it was written, which shouldn't, that shouldn't surprise us, that's how we read historical texts. But there is a sense in which…I think of it like a song that's sort of written from the songwriters’ experiences, it's certain, it's definitely located within a historical situation. But the language that's used is such that it invites symbolism and reinterpretation and re-application in a way that transcends that historical context, which is not the same thing as saying that it's predicting the future.
Pete
Yeah. Right.
Jared
Is that a fair way of saying that?
Robyn
Exactly. No, that's a great summary.
Ad Break
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Pete
You alluded to something before, Robyn, I'd like to sort of return to that, because I think it's a question a lot of people have. But, you know, very basically, what's the book about? You know, what's the purpose? You mentioned, you know, addressing concerns of Jesus followers during the Roman Empire, which again, is that historical point of view. So let's, with that in mind, could you just flesh that out a little bit more to talk about, like, why would somebody even write a book like this? What's the purpose of it?
Robyn
Yeah, that's a great question. Because I think we need to think of this as a type of rhetoric. And it does have a persuasive purpose. So this author, I think, really wants to persuade people to hold fast to their faith. We see this language all through the messages to the seven churches, to stay faithful to God alone. So there's a question of allegiance, where your allegiance lies. And John represents a strand of early Christian theology that is, in a sense, quite separatist. He has no room for, kind of, negotiation with the world in some ways. And you can see that in the history of interpretation of Revelation where it's a very us and them, us versus the world kind of idea. And part of this is the nature of apocalyptic literature which tends to work in strong dualisms to make a point. So there's good people and bad people, and you pick a team.
So John, I think of this as the W’s of Revelation, he wants to call people to worship, to witness, and to wait. So worship only God, none of the other cultic activities, whether that's giving allegiance to the Roman Empire, Roman emperor, or participating in any other of the cults that were everywhere in the ancient world.
To witness to Jesus and what he's done, so the language in the text throughout is "Jesus, himself is the faithful witness." Antipas, who has died in one of the letters, been martyred, is also referred to as a "faithful witness." So there is the sense of witnessing even to the point of death, which might include martyrdom.
And then the waiting is a kind of wait, because God is doing something. So I think a large part of the way these visions work is to show you what God is doing up in the heavenly realm, the things that might be hidden from ordinary view, we're getting a glimpse of. And it's a way of this author saying, God knows what's going on on earth, God knows your struggle, your job is to wait and be faithful while waiting, because God's going to sort this all out.
Jared
These would be hallmarks of apocalyptic literature, which is often in these times of persecution or turbulence within a faith community. It is the "let's pull back the curtain though, and see what God is up to” and “hold fast to your hope because change is coming. Something's happening. And let me give you a picture of what's going on in the heavenly realm that is soon to come and change our station or change our lot in life."
Robyn
Yeah, exactly. There's a scholar at Duke called Anathea Portier-Young and she uses the phrase “resistance literature” for this kind of apocalyptic literature. She's mostly talking about Jewish or Hebrew Bible apocalyptic literature, but in the sense that it is about a minority, written from the perspective of a minority group facing hostility and persecution, often because of their faith. This is about how you resist the temptation to cave or to give up your faith in the face of that pressure.
Pete
But Robyn, why—Jared mentioned apocalyptic literature, and you have this weird imagery in the book. Like why? Why don't you just save everybody a lot of time, write five chapters, get your point across? Why have it go on for so long? And why have all this imagery that's just asking to be misunderstood? At least by modern people.
Robyn
Yes, yes. And maybe by ancients as well. I think there's two layers to this. One is the kind of rhetorical form, and that by using such vivid language, these layered symbols, I mean, these aren't simple symbols. John takes images from the Hebrew Bible, like from all over the place, and like slaps them all together—that's the technical term there—to create these kind of new hybrid images whether it's for Jesus or God. I mean, they're just so full on. And I think he does that to evoke imagination. And we can see the power of that rhetoric, even when we can't make sense of it necessarily, in the fact that Revelation lives on in all sorts of popular conspiracy theories.
So you know, the fact that during COVID, we had people talking about the number of the devil and the microchips in the vaccines and this, you know, and that throughout history, people have applied the number of the beast to all sorts of different figures, says that—that imaginative, the way that symbolism works is actually quite successful, even when it's blatantly wrong. [Chuckles] But the other thing I think is going on here, and we might use, say, the image of the Dragon as an example, who we meet in Revelation 12. This great red dragon that's got 7 heads, 10 horns, he's wearing 7 crowns, he's got a tail, and we get told later on he's also the ancient serpent, who's called the devil and satan.
So we have a cluster of terms that I think shows us the way that this author is trying to draw together Jewish biblical traditions, and Greco-Roman traditions, to communicate to a broad audience. So dragon is an unusual word in the New Testament, we only get it here. Although we have Leviathan and other kinds of dragon-like creatures in the Hebrew Bible. The ancient serpent is probably a reference to Genesis two and three, that serpent who deceives. Because evil in this book is something that deceives someone to do something God doesn't want.
And then we get language of devil and satan. "Devil" is quite a Greek concept, and the satan, of course, is again, a Jewish—comes out of the Hebrew Bible tradition. He conflates all of these into this one evil character called the deceiver of the world. And I think it's a way to draw on the Greek mythical traditions that have dragons and these mythical creatures as well as the Hebrew Bible things. And again, he's smashing them together to create this one creature that both kinds of audiences would recognize in their own mythologies.
Jared
Let's maybe, if we can, fast forward a little bit into the history of the church, because Revelation is unique amongst New Testament books. How does it get recognized to be part of the Bible? Do you have a sense of the history of the canonization here?
Robyn
Yeah, it seems that early on Revelation actually was accepted quite quickly. There's some evidence to suggest its use was widespread—and I mean, and I say "use" because often the evidence we have for Christian communities accepting these texts is how many times they were copied and used and referred to. One of our earliest lists of what we might call "canon," New Testament canon, is called the Muratorian Canon, it's late second century. And this lists both the apocalypse of John or Revelation, and the apocalypse of Peter, which will not ultimately make it into the canon. And if you've ever read that text, you could be very grateful for that.
And we also find reference to Revelation in canon lists by Origen and the second century, third century Tertullian, Irenaeus, Clement, all refer to this book. So these are the, kind of, what we might call the church fathers, these significant church leaders whose writings we have, all refer to Revelation as if it is part of this cluster of texts that would become canon. We see some objections to it in the third and fourth century as people start to question authorship, because apostolic authorship is quite an important category. But ultimately, it ends up in the fourth century canon list of 27 New Testament books. It would take a little bit longer to get accepted in Syriac or Eastern Christianity. Although we should fast forward to the Reformation. Luther famously hated the book of Revelation and James and thought they really shouldn't be in the canon. [Chuckles] So it has a later checkered history perhaps.
Jared
Yeah, I was just curious if—and maybe I've never thought about it this distinctly before—but I also wonder if it was adopted early on because of the historical context, it was very relevant at the time, in terms of persecution, the apocalyptic literature, there was a need in the community for standing firm, especially if you are a part of more of a separatist understanding of the faith and you need to sort of stay firm in the face of temptation with Rome and all of that. That's all very alive and well during the early time and less so during the fourth century for sure. And so I just wonder if that, the need kind of waned a little bit. Maybe also amidst, you know, questions of apostolic authorship.
But it is also makes me think of why mount today, we might read it and we sort of scratch our heads of like, "How did this make it?" But it just, in my mind, it speaks to the different contexts that we're in. Where it was so early—adopted so early, and seemed so, not only early, but like you said, copied a lot, used a lot early on. And now it's sort of I think, modern day Christians are often questioning like, "Why is this here? It doesn't seem to make sense."
Robyn
Yeah, I think that's right. And as once sort of, you know, Christendom came, whatever narrative you give that, and Christians became the mainstream or the dominant culture, at least in certain parts of the world, a text that really is pressing against empire and against, you know, you can read it as pressing against government and perhaps no longer tracks. And I mean, I know, I got interested in Revelation, partly because of the silence of my own tradition on it. We've got extremes in Christianity between those who, perhaps, put too much stock in it [Chuckling] and then those who kind of ignore it, because it's this weird book at the end of the Bible we'd rather pretend wasn't there.
Pete
You know, you mentioned something earlier, Robyn, that I, you know, I'm hoping we can get back to, so maybe we can do it now—is you mentioned the violence in the book. And you know, what, there's blood flowing down the streets as high as a horse's bridle, there's swords coming out of people's mouths. So how, [Sighs] let's just talk about that. Like, why is there so much violence in the book? What purpose does it serve? And maybe what advice can you give for modern readers of how to navigate that part of the book. Just accept it or maybe reinterpret it? Or what do we do with it?
Robyn
Yeah. The violence of revelation has really been a challenging thing for scholars. And there are some scholars who say we should just name it and recognize how problematic it is, and others who have tried to justify it as well as if it's about the justice of God. And again, the point of view from which you read makes the difference. If you're reading as a minority people who've been oppressed, I think the violence can have a cathartic or a helpful way of thinking about that God will wreak vengeance on your behalf when you've experienced such horrors.
I would say two main things about violence. The first is, I don't think the text calls for human violence. God doesn't speak directly in this text very much. But one of the few times that we hear God's voice is in Revelation 18 as Rome is being—or Babylon is being—completely destroyed, and the divine voice—this is 18:4—"come out of her, my people, do not take part in her sins, so that you do not share in her plagues," and so on. So there is the sense of calling Christians to withdraw from that which is evil and about to be judged rather than go to war. So I don't think there is any direct call for humans to take up violence. And in fact where violence happens in the text between people, and certainly the violence of Rome, you know, the Great Prostitute of Rome is depicted as having a cup full of the blood of the saints, this is harshly condemned, this militaristic kind of stuff.
The second thing I would say is, we still have to come to terms with divine violence. It is there. The judgments, these seven seals unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they come from the heavenly realm, they're sent with this "Go" language, "come-go" it's the same word in Greek. "Go out to the world," kind of thing. And I think we need to acknowledge it's there, we can't explain it away. So what do we do with that as contemporary Christians trying to make sense of this? I think we need to acknowledge there's a tension in the text, that Revelation actually celebrates violence, divine violence, at the very same time that it calls for an end to violence.
So in the power struggle that's depicted between God and God's people, and the Roman Empire and its agents, there really is a theology of "Well, our God is better, bigger and stronger, and therefore can win." So this is like, I guess, comfort maybe to a minority oppressed people. It can also, I think, the biblical text as a whole can hold up a bit of a mirror to our society. So one way to think of this violence is to think the violence that we find so horrific reflects an ancient culture in many ways. But it also holds up a mirror to our culture, and perhaps the dangers of a highly militaristic culture, the dangers of a violent society. And if we read this, and think, "Oh, it's all so gross and icky, and we somehow live in a peaceable society." Now, some of us are fortunate enough to live with a huge amount of relative peace. But there's violence everywhere in our modern world. And maybe this is a way to help us recognize that, even to think about what God's response to that would be.
Pete
And I think what's helpful is, you know, your comment earlier about how people who are oppressed or marginalized might hear this text differently. And, you know, people who don't experience that kind of violence or oppression, we might look at this book and say, "Oh, this violence, it's all bad." And I'm not advocating for violence. But what would I do if I were in Syria or something, and ISIS was breathing down my neck? Would I be evangelizing them? Or would I be asking God to smite them? And I probably would be doing the latter. Whether that's right or not, I have no idea. But it makes some sense, you know, when people living in privileged settings, where we're not really touched by the violence that you rightly said is all around us, we just might not experience it. We might have a different impression on the book that—maybe just—to me, it's a reminder it might not be written to me, and I just have to deal with it and try to understand it from different angles and hearing different voices.
Robyn
I think that's right. And where this book becomes really dangerous, and we have examples of this in our history, is when people with privilege and power, have read it in Literalistic ways as if the God doing vengeance in Revelation is doing it on their behalf, and yet they're actually the powerful. So yeah, we need to be really conscious.
Pete
That does tend to happen, doesn't, a lot?
[Robyn and Pete chuckle]
Robyn
Yes, it does.
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Pete
Can I ask another question, which is, in my mind, at least tied to what we've just been talking about. It might have been 15 or 20 years ago, Michael Gorman wrote a book "Reading Revelation Responsibly," and his main point in that book—and I just wanted to get your view on this—is that the book of Revelation is about being against civil religion. Being against, you know, maybe to use Paul's language or Jesus's language, it's against marrying the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man and not in merging those two. And you mentioned earlier how John's sort of black-and-white and non-compromising. Right? So the only reason I bring that up is because, you know, I think about at least in American politics and the temptation which has been part of our history, at least, to to bring God into politics in ways that might not be very healthy and is, in essence, you start recreating God in your own political image. So, I mean...Comment on that. What are your thoughts about all that stuff?
Robyn
Yeah, I think there's two ways you can go here. The strong, kind of separation and the call for allegiance to God alone, and this "come out of her, my people," you can interpret Revelation very much in that way that Gorman does as almost to kind of keep Christianity pure. And the way to do that is to—it's the opposite move to what we see in something like the Religious Right in America who actually, as far as I can tell from a distance [Chuckles], are quite deliberate about wanting to hold positions of power in the government. Right? So this would be almost a separate like, keep Christianity pure, don't participate in these sort of larger structures of empire because they are not of God, or they are not, you know, spiritually good, or they're morally compromised. I guess we might use that language.
Equally we could say—and this is where I think there's a failure of imagination on behalf of this author, if I dare to critique the author of a biblical text [Chuckles]—in that he can only kind of write within his own worldview, where his writing within empires that behave in certain kinds of ways. So the post-colonial critique of Revelation has been that in so strongly condemning empire, there's a danger that the empire he imagines, that's God's Empire, actually looks and behaves a lot like Rome, in terms of the use of power and that kind of stuff.
So you can see...I can see how out of Revelation, you can actually get two quite extremely different views. You can actually get one that says, well, the solution here is not to step away from empire, but to make sure it's a theocracy. Now, I don't think the text is calling us to do that, but that is a direction you can go in. But it does ask some hard questions of us. I preached a sermon—I used to live in New Jersey—and I preached in my, I did a series preaching in my church on this one year. I was preaching on Revelation and this critique of Rome, and somebody said to me afterwards, “it sounds a lot like you're critiquing America.” And I was like, "...Yeah, well, if that's what you heard the text doing, you know," [Laughs] it's always hard to critique America when you don't have an American accent.
Pete
[Laughs]
Robyn
But there is that sense that we could very much read this in the way that Gorman does, as against a kind of a civil religion that requires certain things of us that might not be of God.
Jared
Can you say more? Because I think—this may be a different paradigm for people to think about and I think you said it well. But I think there's more to unpack around the post-colonial critique of Revelation—I think some people can get reactive when we talk about kind of post-colonial critiques of the text. But what I heard you say is, the author is just going to do what an author would do in that context, which is, if you've never seen anything but a history of maybe learning about the Babylonian Empire, or Assyrian Empire, and then the Greek, you know, Alexander the Great, and then the Roman Empire, these have a certain structure and look to them, and if you're trying to think of God as powerful, then what else would you do but make God Emperor of an empire? Like, that is like what we mean by powerful or power.
And in some ways, the author of Revelation, it would be hard to imagine what it would look like for the author to avoid falling into the trap of making God out to be a little bit empire-like, if that makes sense. What do we do with that, in terms of, you know, as people who are trying to still have the Bible be a part of their faith expression in some way, how do we hold this? You know, I come from a tradition where we don't have a lot of nuance around this, it's sort of all or nothing. But how do we navigate the complexity of that reality? Of the post-colonial maybe recognition that the authors are part of their context, and are going to say, or express things in a way that maybe is problematic today?
Robyn
Yeah, I think one of the ways to do that is the work of the sort of historical analysis. So recognizing that when Christ comes out in chapter 19, riding this white horse, that image and the way it's described would have been recognizable to an ancient hearer of this text as something like the Commander General of the Roman military. And there are scholars who, you know, can trace those symbols quite specifically—that when hymns are sung, and crowns are cast before the throne, well, we have historical accounts of this being the way that senators approached the chair of the emperor in offering their obedience, bowing down, casting down their crowns, and this sort of stuff. So the text itself is constantly playing with parallels between Empire, and I think the historical work can help us kind of recognize those for what they are.
Again, I think we need to recognize what is God and what is human. So the question I would ask around, like—it all comes back to that power stuff we were talking about. Like where's our position in society? And if we are starting to behave like the empire, if we are participating in an empire whose systems are oppressive and unjust, are we looking more like Rome than team God?
So I think, yeah, the power and where we're located…my sense of Revelation is we do need to read it as leaving this up to God, but also recognizing that genuine critique that the way John imagines God is, in a sense, limited by how we can imagine power. One more thing I should say, though, the...maybe the redeeming bit in Revelation is this image of the lamb that we get in chapter five. Because there we get an image that's incredibly powerful. This lamb is more like a ram, it's got multiple horns, it's described as a lion, and yet is slaughtered. Which is a reference, obviously, to Jesus's death. But there is a vulnerability, it's also a martyr. So somewhere in the midst of all this power is an image of Christ that is both powerful and fungible, and that I think, also is a challenge for us to reimagine power as vulnerability, vulnerability as power. But I think we've got to hold that Christological image central to any discussion around this stuff as well.
Pete
Right.
Jared
Yeah, well put.
Pete
Well, maybe just one last brief question, Robyn, because we're coming to the end of our time here. But for people who are, you know, maybe they've been burned by the book, or they just want to know more; Do you, just off the top of your head, do you have a couple of resources that have already been written? I know, there's one that's going to be written.
Robyn
There's one that's going to be, yep.
Jared
[Laughs]
Pete
Yeah, and that's yours. Feel free to plug your book. But like right now, what resources might you suggest for people just just to get a handle on the book in a way that's really going to help them get a sense, let's say, of that historical sense?
Robyn
Yeah. So then, I'm going to start with something older, there's a 2005 book called "Unveiling Empire," that is by Wes Howard-Brook and Anthony Gwyther. It's very much written in an American context so I think, could be really interesting for American listeners. Where they really break down the myths of Revelation and the myths of empire and map that. It's quite a kind of a political justice reading of Revelation, but one I think that really holds up well and is really accessible for people to kind of get into quite how political this text was, and continues to be.
Craig Koester has written a number of very academic commentaries and things. But there's also a thing, I think it's called Zondervan, a little Bible study on Revelation that's really helpful for church groups to do. Scot McKnight has also written a quite recent little, sort of, introductory volume on Revelation. So there's quite a lot of stuff out there. But of course, I am writing the Bible for Normal People "Revelation for Normal People," volume, and that should be out by the end of the year.
Pete
Which will make all others obsolete.
Robyn
[Chuckles] Exactly. So that's all you need to read.
Pete
Go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com front slash—
Jared
Oh my gosh...
Pete
No, that's not what this is about, folks. This is about Revelation. But—
Jared
Oh, my goodness.
Pete
I know.
Jared
Well, Robyn, thank you so much for jumping on and laying it out in such a...it's a helpful, I think, introduction to the book in a way that a lot of folks maybe haven't heard before. There's so much buzz and mystery about it and sometimes I wonder if scholars play into that a little bit too much of like, "Yeah, it is very mysterious but just listen to me and I have the code figured out." And I feel like you were just, it just seemed scholarly and helpful around the contexts of where this comes from.
Pete
Yeah. Right.
Jared
Yeah. So thank you for that.
Robyn
Well, thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to be on your podcast.
Pete
Well, it's a pleasure to have you on here, Robyn, thank you.
Outro
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Jared
Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/Give.
Pete
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Jared
And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@TheBibleForNormalPeople.com.
Outro
You've just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can also catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Prescott, Steven Henning, Wesley Duckworth, Savannah Locke, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Natalie Weyand, Jessica Shao, and Lauren O'Connell.
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