The Millennium Revisited: A Revolutionary Reading of Revelation 20 (Part 2)

Within the narrative of John’s vision, the millennium is preceded by the judgment of the “beast” and the “false prophet” in 19:11-21. The implicit assumption behind the titles ascribed to each of the major millennial views is that the thousand-year reign of Revelation 20 should be defined by its relation to Christ’s second advent, which most readers have located in chapter 19. But is this a good assumption to make? Does Revelation 19:11-21 actually refer to the same event spoken of in other NT texts like 1 Thessalonians 4:18, i.e. the bodily return of Christ? I don’t believe so.

At this point even most amillennialists have been guilty of confusing the visionary and symbolical levels of the text with the referential level by their insistence that this scene portrays a more or less literal forecast of historical events. Clearly, the messianic portrait of 19:11-16 has a more direct correspondence to its referent than the vision of the slain lamb in chapter 5, since it describes Christ with the physical characteristics of a human being. But both descriptions are symbolic in the sense that they are visionary images written up with multiple echoes of biblical and post-biblical tradition, which means that we should not assume photographic realism as much as impressionistic and kaleidoscopic depictions of reality. John’s visionary experience contains images and narrative that represent, i.e. are symbolic, of things and events that existed, exist, or will exist in the real world. But his experience and the images themselves should not be confused with the realities which they represent.

On this note, R. J. McKelvey points out that many of the commonest features of the early parousia tradition, and the OT passages from which they came, are absent from Revelation 19, like the motifs of a cloud theophany, a great trumpet call, the gathering of the saints, and (most significantly) the restoration of creation (McKelvey 78-9). Instead, John’s portrait draws primarily from the “Divine Warrior” passages throughout the OT, a tradition expressed most often in connection with the judgment of nations within continuing history (e.g. 2 Sam. 22; Psalm 2; Isa. 63; Ezek. 1; Hab. 3). John has combined that Jewish tradition with the Greco-Roman portrait of a victory procession (e.g. the white horse and red robe) in order to parody the pomp of Rome and boldly proclaim its downfall (Fee 274).

But in the same way that John sees God’s victory over Satan in the sufferings of the crucified Messiah (Rev. 5:5-6; 7:9-10; 12:7-11), so also he sees God’s victory over Rome, Satan’s earthly representative, in the sufferings of those who “follow the lamb wherever he goes” and conquer “by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (12:7-11; 14:4; cf. 20:4). While the visionary image is of a messianic army dressed in white and conquering the enemy by a giant flying sword, the historical referent of the image is the triumph of Jesus’ testimony, borne out by the martyrs, over the idolatry of the Empire and the Imperial Cult. This passage forms the angelic response to the embarrassing episode of 19:10, in which John himself nearly succumbs to the lure of idolatry. As the seer, John stands as the representative of the churches which he addresses, and his stumbling thus stands as a warning for them; the vision of the rider on the white horse reveals how God will respond to those who do not repent of their idolatry (cf. 2:16).

Following John’s narrative into 20:1-3, we are warned once more not to confuse the visionary and symbolical levels with the referential level by simply picturing Satan himself bound in chains and imprisoned for a thousand years. To imagine this, and to thereby speak (as both amillennialists and premillennialists are guilty of doing) of the binding of Satan, runs the risk of a gross confusion of categories. Satan is not bound in Revelation 20; the dragon which represents Satan is bound. If we read the text historically, the binding and imprisonment of the dragon most naturally refers to the removal of the deceiving power which Satan held over the nations through the religion of Rome.

The dragon is called “the deceiver of the whole world” in 12:9 and 20:3, and according to 13:14 it is through the false prophet (who looks like a lamb but speaks like a dragon) that he “deceives those who dwell on the earth, telling them to make an image for the beast.” With the judgment of Rome and the end of the idolatrous Caesar Cult, therefore, Satan’s primary seat of authority is removed, his hands and feet tied, so that Jesus’ testimony can shine forth unhindered. Thus, with Daniel 7 as his backdrop, John is showing that the suffering of the saints carries greater weight in God’s court than the brutal strength of Empire, and that through their witness the case of their accuser is reversed so that he, and not they, will eventually suffer the sentence of imprisonment and death (cf. 13:10). This reading also makes for a coherent interpretation of Satan’s release at the end of the millennium (which, incidentally, the standard amillennial reading fails to do): the point is that once again, just like in the first century, there will be a unified, worldwide, systemic intolerance to the gospel of the Messiah, as well a virulent attack against the covenant community that bears and proclaims his name.

After the judgment of the beast and the imprisonment of the dragon, John then shows us the other side of the great reversal of fortunes: the vindication of the martyrs. One of the primary questions modern interpreters ask at this point is whether John has all the saints in mind or only the martyrs, but McKelvey is right to point out that this question probably never entered John’s head (82). The prospective martyrs are obviously the party in view here, but within John’s visionary world there are only two parties: those who worship the beast and those who don’t and thereby suffer under his hand (13:15). The martyrs are not presented here as a sub-group of the larger community of faith, but rather as representatives of the whole community portrayed in visionary juxtaposition with the followers of the beast.

But where does this vindication take place? Isn’t it obvious that the millennial kingdom is an earthly kingdom? For several reasons, I believe the answer is a most decisive no. We note first that all of the descriptions of earthly restoration in the closing passages of John’s vision are to be found in the “new heaven and new earth” of chapters 21-22, and not in the “thousand years” of chapter 20. There is no indication of a progressive restoration of the earth or of a return to the promise land in chapter 20, just as there is no rebuilt Jerusalem and no rebuilt Temple (Hill 237-8). Especially considering John’s many allusions to the OT—which constitute our single greatest aid in understanding the way that he, the seer, understood his own vision—it is remarkable that he does not allude to any of the OT passages which have long been labeled “millennial” by both premillennialists and postmillennialists in his write-up of the millennium. In fact, John consistently saves such earthly associations for the post-millennial and eternal new earth of chapters 21-22.

On top of this, we note that the heavenly courtroom scene of Daniel 7:9-14 stands behind the vindication of the martyrs in Revelation 20:4-6. In that famous passage, “one like a son of man” is escorted into the presence of the Ancient of Days and is given dominion over all the kingdoms of the earth. That scene largely forms the OT background behind the vision of Revelation 4-5 as well, where John sees the risen Christ enter the heavenly throne room and receive the authority to complete God’s eschatological plan (note also the parallel in 12:5-12, where the male child is “caught up to God and his throne” and, after the dragon is cast to the earth, a loud voice in heaven proclaims that “the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ have come”).

But the point is this: if the heavenly scene of Daniel 7 stands behind chapters 4-5, where Christ receives his kingly authority in heaven, then it stands to reason that the martyr’s vindication in 20:4-6 itself belongs in heaven. This is confirmed twice over; first, by the appearance of “thrones” in v. 4, which almost everywhere else in Revelation belong in heaven; and, second, by the parallel scenes of heavenly vindication in 7:9-17, 11:11-13, and 15:2-4.

One final point, which I believe puts the nail in the coffin of an earthly interpretation of Revelation 20:4-6, is the argument set forth by M. G. Kline in his article “The First Resurrection”. The crux of the argument is that throughout Revelation 20-21 the word translated “first” or “former” (protos) is consistently used to qualify things which belong to the pre-consummate order, in contrast to those things which are “new”, i.e. consummate.

In Revelation 21:1-5 the word “first”, or protos (πρῶτος), is employed in juxtaposition with “new” (καινός). The consummation of history brings “a new heaven and a new earth” (v. 1), and a “new Jerusalem” (v. 2); indeed, it is the time when the Creator God makes “all things new” (v. 5). And when the word “first” appears throughout the passage, it is used to speak of that which is superseded by the “new”. It may be good to see the words side by side to get the effect.

“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the first things have passed away… Behold I make all things new.”

In light of this contextual meaning of protos, Kline argues that we should not understand the “first resurrection” as denoting simply the first of the same kind in a temporal sequence of two, but rather a preliminary and inferior sort of resurrection to the ultimate bodily resurrection of the new order. Thus the “first resurrection”, or “proto-resurrection”, is the preliminary coming to life of the faithful souls in heaven, while their bodies remain in their graves until the consummation. It refers to life after death, not life after life after death. The point is not that death equals resurrection for the Christian, but rather that these souls are seen as being alive in spite of having been killed by the beast. Their fate is thereby contrasted with the fate of the beast, who ironically goes alive to the “second death”. If we do not bias the case a priori by the clumsy application of a literalist hermeneutic, then I think this reading clearly has the evidence in its favor.

Now, with all of the above in mind, we note that this passage looks back in fulfillment to the promise to the persecuted overcomers in 2:8-11. When John tells the saints in Smyrna to “be faithful until death” so that they will not be hurt by the “second death,” he is directly alluding to the later part of his vision in which the souls of the martyrs “come to life” and reign with Christ for a thousand years, thereby being exempt from the “second death” (20:4-6). In receiving this admonishment from Christ, the struggling saints in Smyrna would be uniquely comforted by the vision of the millennial reign and strengthened to stand fast in the face of persecution. The two passages belong together as promise and fulfillment, which points to at least one dimension of the numerical symbolism of the millennium.

We recall that the saints of Smyrna were told that Satan would be allowed to throw some of them into prison, in order to test them, for ten days (2:10). After the judgment of the beast, however, John sees the dragon himself thrown into the prison of the bottomless pit, not for ten days, but for the greatly multiplied number of a thousand years. Since the number ten represents totality or completion throughout Revelation (e.g., 12:3; 13:1; 17:3, 7, 12, 16), and because of the contextual relationship between the millennium and the promise to the suffering saints in Smyrna, the “thousand years” very likely represents an intensification or heightening of the imprisonment period of 2:10 according to the law of retribution in kind, or lex talionis.

In other words, the purpose of the numerical symbolism, in its immediate application to the suffering Christians in Asia Minor, is to strengthen the conviction that their momentary light affliction is working the far exceeding glory of resurrection life, a great reversal of fortunes to be rewarded at the throne of the risen Messiah, even prior to their being clothed with new bodies at his return. The number may carry further meaning, but this is its most explicit reference.

In light of all of the above, we conclude that John’s vision of the millennium presents the promise of life to the faithful and a powerful warning to those colluding with idolatry. It pulls back the curtain of history and shows the heavenly antitype to the tyrannous reign of Rome, the preliminary vindication of the suffering saints, and their participation in the priestly reign of the Messiah in anticipation of the day when he makes all things new. This view is thus markedly different from the classic expressions of the three main schools of thought. Instead of trying to create a synthesized eschatological timeline out of John’s vision, it focuses on the purpose of the vision itself in its original historical context. There can be little doubt that the suffering saints of Asia Minor would have received the vision as a promise of reward aimed directly at them, as they faced the prospect of imprisonment and possibly even of death for the sake of staying true to Christ. Whether the vision meets us now as promise or warning depends entirely on where we stand in relation to the testimony of Jesus.

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Fee, Gordon D. Revelation: A New Covenant Commentary. Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011.

Hill, Charles E. Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Millennial Thought in Early Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001.

Kline, Meredith G. “The First Resurrection.” WTJ 37 (1974/75): 366-75. Print.

McKelvey, R. J. The Millennium and the Book of Revelation. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1999.

The Millennium Revisited: A Revolutionary Reading of Revelation 20 (Part 1)

When Charles Ryrie wrote his doctoral thesis on the subject of the millennium for Dallas Theological Seminary in the late 1940s, he tellingly titled it The Basis of the Premillennial Faith, implying from the outset that other millennial views reflect a very different sort of faith. Of course, we find the idea of a thousand-year reign explicitly mentioned only once in Scripture. Like the creation narrative of Genesis 1, however, the millennium of Revelation 20 has often become a convenient staging ground for larger ideological battles which in fact have little or nothing to do with the exegesis of the chapter itself. My goal in this study is to try to move past some of the noise of those battles—which, I am convinced, have had a distorting effect upon the text by imposing their own interests onto it—in order to hear afresh what the vision would have meant both to the seer himself and to the seven churches which he addressed.

My contention is that the preoccupation of most interpreters with the goal of finding a synthesized eschatological timeline (whether premillennial, postmillennial, or amillennial) has only served to obscure the specific function which the passage holds in relation to the rest of John’s vision, which is something much more powerful and challenging than any timeline. I will argue that Revelation 20 must be read in the context of the struggling churches which comprised its original audience, and I will seek to demonstrate that for John and his first-century audience these verses promised the imminent, preliminary vindication of those who followed the Lamb unto death in resistance against the idolatrous and oppressive ideology of the Roman Empire.

Before engaging directly with the text, however, we must first address an underlying issue of hermeneutics. The way we read any text is defined to a large extent by the assumptions that we make about it. We don’t read a love song or a poem the same way that we read a biology textbook or a newspaper. So how should we read the book of Revelation? Is it mostly a literal description of history written in advance, a symbolic perspective on the battle between God and Satan throughout history, or something else?

In one of the most important studies on the subject in recent years, Vern Poythress has argued that a proper reading of Revelation must distinguish between at least four different levels of communication: (1) the linguistic level, consisting in what John wrote and thus involving his own interpretive perspective and authorial creativity; (2) the visionary level, consisting in what John experienced when he was “in the Spirit”; (3) the referential level, consisting in the actual historical realities that the various images speak of; and (4) the symbolical level, consisting in how the visionary images speak of reality and what meaning they give to it by describing it in the ways that they do. Thus, when we read the text of Revelation 5:5-8, for instance, we must distinguish between what John wrote (the interpretive description of his vision with its many echoes of the OT), what John saw (a slaughtered yet living lamb, with seven horns and seven eyes, standing on the throne), what that refers to (the crucified and risen Jesus exalted to God’s right hand), and what significance the imagery lends to its referent (that the cross of Christ is central to the advancement of God’s eschatological purposes).

Recognizing the presence of these four distinct levels of communication throughout John’s vision is imperative for understanding its meaning. Much confusion over the symbolism of Revelation and other apocalyptic literature stems from a more basic confusion over different types of “meaning” (Caird 37-61). When interpreters talk about the meaning of an apocalyptic prophecy, they rarely distinguish between “meaning” in terms of (1) intention, “meaning” in terms of (2) experience, “meaning” in terms of (3) referent, and “meaning” in terms of (4) significance. Of course, it’s simple enough to recognize those various levels with a text like Revelation 5:5-8, as we saw above, but it’s easy to forget when dealing with many other images throughout Revelation, not least the notorious thousand-year reign of 20:1-6.

When it comes to the millennium, futurists regularly collapse the second and fourth parts (the visionary experience and the larger meaning or significance) into the third part (what the experience refers to in the real world), and so they boldly proclaim that an image such as the binding of the dragon must speak of a literal, premillennial incarceration of Satan, as if Satan was actually a dragon and John was simply witnessing history in advance (Poythress 44-5). But if the genre of Revelation tells us anything, it is that John is less interested in giving reportorial precision on historical reality than he is in giving a heavenly perspective on its significance.

On the other hand, however, idealists are often guilty of collapsing the third part (what the experience refers to in the real world) into the fourth part (the implied meaning or significance that the experience carries), and so they often speak of the meaning of an image, like the “beast” of 13:1-8, as timeless and applicable to the church’s whole experience between Jesus ascension and his return, without any one specific referent. To this we must say, along with George Caird, that the “failure to identify the referent is bound to diminish our understanding of the sense, which is then left hanging in the air” (55).

But how do we identify the referent? By what guiding principle should our interpretations be anchored? Here is where the great appeal of futurism lies, for it gives the simplest answer to this question. Influenced by the wider modernist reaction to the allegorical excesses of medieval exegesis, futurists generally default to interpreting Revelation’s imagery in a more or less literal way. This “literal if possible” hermeneutic is made explicit by Robert L. Thomas, who says that the only approach that is “fair and consistent” is to assume that the images of Revelation “have a literal meaning unless otherwise indicated in the text” (35-7).

The underlying assumption behind the literalist argument is that if we allow the language of Scripture to be interpreted non-literally we will then lose all hope of ever getting at its true historical meaning, because we can make it mean virtually whatever we want it to. This assumption is expressed, to varying degrees, even by many non-dispensational premillennialists (Grenz 134-5). Thus Jack Deere, when considering various amillennial interpretations of Revelation 20:4-6, dismisses the idea of a symbolic resurrection with the assertion that “they use an allegorical technique which produces interpretations that are diverse and limited only by one’s fantasy” (Deere 66).

Granted, this fear is justified to some degree by the ahistorical way that many have interpreted the symbolism of prophecy throughout the history of the church (Clouse 117-41). But the literalist method is in fact an extremely ironic stance to take, for it often keeps interpreters from reading biblical prophecy in the way that it asks to be read, grammatically and historically. Like American tourists looking for French fries in France, modern readers often come to the book of Revelation with an entirely wrong idea of what to expect in a piece of literature calling itself an apocalypse. Interpreting Revelation, or any literature from a culture other than our own, takes great care and is always a matter of delicate subtlety.

But if we are sensitive to the text, we must admit that it contains many symbolic expressions that are never clearly explained as such. John never clearly indicates that the “lamb” is not an actual sheep, for instance, or that the “beast” is not an actual monster. But despite our modern predisposition towards literal interpretation, we all understand these expressions to represent something other than the images used to convey them. Why? Because they are obvious to us. But given the fact that these examples already force us to make exceptions to the rule of the literalist method, what basis do we have for insisting that there aren’t other instances of unexplained symbols in Revelation? In tested practice, the principle of “literal if possible” turns out to be an extremely blunt instrument which inevitably fulfills its own fears of subjectivity.

The biggest problem plaguing most popular interpretations of the book of Revelation is that they are not nearly as interested in understanding what the text means in its original historical context as they are in what it can be seen to mean for our own time. While most futurist interpreters assume that the meaning of Revelation will become clearer as the end times approach, generally with the implication we are now at the beginning of that period, the text itself is addressed to seven churches in first-century Asia Minor and intends to speak openly to their contemporary situation (Kraybill 26). Thus, the primary concern of the interpreter should be centered on the authorial intent and the public meaning which the imagery would have carried in the period in which it was given. The true interpretation is not necessarily the one which carries the most perceived value or spiritual application in the twenty-first century, but rather the one which best explains the text as it would have been understood by its original audience. It is the historical method, not the literalist method, that provides the guiding principle to which our interpretations must be anchored.

Two observations follow immediately from this approach. First, there is now a widespread agreement amongst scholars that the “beast from of the sea” refers to the Roman Empire, and that the “beast from the land” (also called the “false prophet”) refers to the religion of the Emperor which thrived throughout the cities of Asia Minor (McKelvey 67-8). The main issue at stake was whether John’s audience would continue to worship the crucified Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, or succumb instead to the mounting pressure and bow the knee to Caesar (Kraybill 23). If they refused to participate in the Caesar Cult then they would have to face the prospect of persecution, imprisonment, and perhaps even death (cf., 2:10, 13). Thus John writes in order to comfort and admonish them to stand strong in the face of this great pressure and to persevere through the coming “hour of trial” which he sees by the Spirit just over the horizon.

Second, once we recognize the contemporary situation of John’s audience, we can easily understand why the crisis envisioned throughout the book is repeatedly qualified as being “near” and “at hand”. We should not understand such statements in the weak and indefinite sense suggested by a doctrine of perpetual imminence, but in the very real historical sense that the original audience would have undoubtedly understood them. In 22:10 John is told not to seal the words of the vision which he received, because “the time is at hand”. This phrase forms an inclusio with the introduction, where John’s audience is told to keep the words of the prophecy “for the time is at hand” (1:3). On top of this, the phrase “do not seal the words” is an ironic allusion to Daniel 8 and 12, where the prophet Daniel is told to “seal up” the words of his own visions and “go your way” because they refer to a time “many days in the future”, i.e. beyond Daniel’s own generation (Dan 8:26; 12:4, 9, 13). The explicit point in Revelation 22:10 is therefore the exact opposite: unlike Daniel, John is told not to “seal up” the words of his prophecy, because they refer a great ordeal coming upon his own generation.

All of this context is necessary for an appropriate understanding of the millennium. Now that the ground has been cleared, we are ready to discuss the text of Revelation 20 and its place within the literary narrative of John’s vision. The proof of the reading for which I will argue in the next post will be how well it adheres to the principles discussed above.

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Caird, G. B. The Language and Imagery of the Bible. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Clouse, Robert G. The Meaning of the Millennium. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1977.

Deere, Jack S. “Premillennialism in Revelation 20:4-6.” Bsac 135 (1978) 58-73.

Grenz, Stanley J. The Millennial Maze: Sorting Out the Evangelical Options. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992.

Koester, Craig R. Revelation and the End of All Things. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001.

Kraybill, J. Nelson. Apocalypse and Allegiance. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2010.

McKelvey, R. J. The Millennium and the Book of Revelation. Cambridge: The Lutterworth Press, 1999.

Poythress, Vern S. “Genre and Hermeneutics in Revelation 20:1-6.” JETS 36 (1993): 41-54. Print.

Thomas, Robert L. Revelation 1-7: An Exegetical Commentary. Chicago: Moody Press, 1992.

This is what the kingdom of God is like…

It is like a man who promised to take his son out for pizza as a reward for mowing the lawn.

The boy took to the task cheerfully, but by the late afternoon he had yet to cut a single blade of grass—for he lacked the strength to even start the old gas mower, let alone to push it through the overgrown lawn.

So as evening arrived and the sun began to set, the father came outside, started the machine, and put his strength behind the boy as they worked their way together, row by row, throughout the yard.

Now when the sun had set and job was done, behold, the boy was dismayed; he knew his father to be a just man, and so he naturally thought the previous agreement no longer stood, since he failed to uphold his end of the deal.

But the father was both just and exceedingly generous. Instead of simply taking his son out for pizza, he threw a party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, inviting friends from all around the neighborhood—for where the son’s strength failed, the father’s love abounded.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

The Right Hand of Fellowship

Calvinist? Arminian? Charismatic? I’ve always had a hard time calling myself anything other than Christian. Those other labels are sort of like subgenres in music: it’s all jazz, but then there’s swing, bebop, free jazz, and a dozen other expressions of the form. We need the labels to help distinguish the diversity within the unity, to discuss the merits of each expression, and to help maintain the larger distinctions between jazz and, say, death metal. But unfortunately such labels often do more harm than good, when near-sighted watchmen get the idea that their subgenre is actually the only valid expression and thus build unnecessary barriers to fellowship.

John Wesley saw this tendency in human nature when he founded the Methodist movement, and so he made a point of not holding the Methodist gatherings on Sundays so that they would not be viewed as an alternative to the Church of England. In the following excerpt, taken from Character of a Methodist, Wesley brilliantly answers questions about the movement he founded, showing just as much concern for the unity of the faith as he does for its reform. The last two paragraphs are the best.

The distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his opinions of any sort. His assenting to this or that scheme of religion, his embracing any particular set of notions, his espousing the judgment of one man or of another, are all quite wide of the point. Whosoever, therefore, imagines that a Methodist is a man of such or such an opinion, is grossly ignorant of the whole affair; he mistakes the truth totally…

Neither are words or phrases of any sort. We do not place our religion, or any part of it, in being attached to any peculiar mode of speaking, any quaint or uncommon set of expressions…

Nor do we desire to be distinguished by actions, customs, or usages, of an indifferent nature. Our religion does not lie in doing what God has not enjoined, or abstaining from what he hath not forbidden. It does not lie in the form of our apparel, in the posture of our body, or the covering of our heads; nor yet in abstaining from marriage, or from meats and drinks, which are all good if received with thanksgiving. Therefore, neither will any man, who knows whereof he affirms, fix the mark of a Methodist here—in any actions or customs purely indifferent, undetermined by the word of God…

“What then is the mark? Who is a Methodist, according to your own account?” I answer: A Methodist is one who has “the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him;” one who “loves the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his mind, and with all his strength.” God is the joy of his heart, and the desire of his soul; which is constantly crying out, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee! My God and my all! Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever!”…

If any man say, “Why, these are only the common fundamental principles of Christianity!” thou hast said; so I mean; this is the very truth; I know they are no other; and I would to God both thou and all men knew, that I, and all who follow my judgment, do vehemently refuse to be distinguished from other men, by any but the common principles of Christianity—the plain, old Christianity that I teach, renouncing and detesting all other marks of distinction. And whosoever is what I preach, (let him be called what he will, for names change not the nature of things,) he is a Christian, not in name only, but in heart and in life. He is inwardly and outwardly conformed to the will of God, as revealed in the written word. He thinks, speaks, and lives, according to the method laid down in the revelation of Jesus Christ. His soul is renewed after the image of God, in righteousness and in all true holiness. And having the mind that was in Christ, he so walks as Christ also walked.

By these marks, by these fruits of a living faith, do we labour to distinguish ourselves from the unbelieving world from all those whose minds or lives are not according to the Gospel of Christ. But from real Christians, of whatsoever denomination they be, we earnestly desire not to be distinguished at all, not from any who sincerely follow after what they know they have not yet attained. No: “Whosoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” And I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that we be in no wise divided among ourselves. Is thy heart right, as my heart is with thine? I ask no farther question. If it be, give me thy hand. For opinions, or terms, let us not destroy the work of God. Dost thou love and serve God? It is enough. I give thee the right hand of fellowship.

The Olivet Discourse: Was Jesus Wrong?

Last summer I started a series on the Olivet Discourse (here and here) that I now have no intention of finishing, because I no longer agree with the premise. I still hold to essentially the same view of the relevant gospel texts, but I now feel that I was unfair in my representation of the alternatives (and I must thank my friend Casey Gorsuch for setting me straight). Following the brilliant but deeply flawed work of Albert Schweitzer, and the damaging responses of G.B. Caird and N.T. Wright, I framed the debate as a choice between two basic positions:

If we agree on the authenticity of Mark 13 and its parallels, then we can say either (a) that Jesus expected the actual end of history imminently over the horizon, and that he was embarrassingly wrong in that prediction [Schweitzer], or (b) that he was using vivid metaphors as a way of investing thoroughly historical events with their full theological significance, and that this prediction was in fact powerfully vindicated in the events which transpired after his death [Caird and Wright].

Siding with Caird and Wright, I then explained that the basic problem with Schweitzer’s view (a problem which it ironically shares with the futurist interpretations of conservative scholars) is that it fails to understand Jesus’ language in its own historical context, language which was regularly used to refer to events within continuing history. I believe Schweitzer was right to stress the timing of Jesus’ predictions in relation to his contemporary audience (on which, see this post), but he made the same modernist error as the futurist school by assuming Jesus’ language referred literally to the end of the world. I’ve dealt with the OT background of the “coming of the son of man” in this post, and with the OT background of the language of “cosmic collapse” in this post, so you can see why I’ve come to the same conclusion as Caird in his 1965 lecture Jesus and the Jewish Nation:

[W]hatever we may say about the Parousia or Advent of Christ in the epistles, there is a strong case for saying that the Day of the Son of Man in the teaching of Jesus remained firmly in the sphere of national eschatology. Here, as in the book of Daniel, from which the imagery is drawn, the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven was never conceived as a primitive form of space travel, but as a symbol for a mighty reversal of fortunes within history and at the national level… Supposing the prediction of the coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven really was an answer to the disciples’ question about the date of the fall of Jerusalem! Is it indeed credible that Jesus, the heir to the linguistic and theological riches of the prophets, and himself a greater theologian and master of imagery than them all, should ever have turned their symbols into flat and literal prose?

I still think Caird makes a powerful point against the literalism of both Schweitzer and the futurists. In Daniel 7 the “coming of the son of man” is a symbol for the vindication of the saints, not a literal description of some supernatural figure’s decent to the earth; and in passages like Isaiah 13:10 and Jeremiah 4:23-26 the language of cosmic collapse is figurative for the judgment of nations, not a literal description of the destruction of the universe.

And yet, there’s a problem here. The extreme literalism of Schweitzer’s position has been set up in such a way that it makes preterism look like the only sensible alternative: Because this language isn’t literal and Jews like Jesus didn’t believe in the end of the space-time universe, it must not refer to the final end but rather to some event of judgment and vindication within continuing history. But why is this the case? Granted the premise that such language isn’t literal and Jews like Jesus didn’t believe in the end of the world, they still believed in an end (read: consummation) to history. So how do we know Jesus wasn’t speaking of the “end of the age” in the same sense as the disciples’ question in Matthew 24:3, i.e. as the climactic, worldwide moment of judgment and deliverance by which God would establish his kingdom finally and fully?

In other words, just because the language isn’t literal doesn’t prove that it refers to something within continuing history as opposed to something at the end of history. Daniel’s “son of man” is symbolic, to be sure, but it still speaks of the final establishment of God’s kingdom and the end of all tyranny and injustice. Is there any indication that Jesus was predicting anything less? Is there any indication that Jesus envisioned a substantial gap between the destruction of Jerusalem and the final establishment of God’s kingdom, and that in the Olivet Discourse he intentionally spoke to only the first of those two events? What about Luke 21:25-26? Or Matthew 25:31-46? Are preterist interpretations perhaps just as guilty of avoiding the facts as futurist interpretations?

I don’t believe so. As I said before, I still hold to essentially the same view of the relevant texts that I set out to defend in those posts last summer. But I thought it was important, for honesty’s sake, to reframe the debate; because when we put the question this way, the answer appears substantially less obvious than I previously supposed. Of course this then puts us in the uncomfortable position of entertaining the possibility that some of Jesus’ prophecy simply didn’t come to pass. But unless we deal with such possibilities openly and honestly, our belief in the authority of Scripture becomes only a lame attempt at reducing our own cognitive dissonance.

Justification By Faithfulness Redux

Several years ago I started a series in which I argued against the traditional Protestant articulation of justification by faith. My understanding of Paul’s view of the law was still in a state of flux, however, so I never finished the series. At some point I want to go back and revise my argument in those posts, but until then I thought it would be helpful to put my current understanding in a series of short propositions.

Practically none of this is original, of course. My reading of Paul has been influenced most dramatically by N.T. Wright, as well as by E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and Richard B. Hays. But I don’t know that anyone has put all these points together into precisely the same shape that I have, so I’d love to hear any questions or critiques.

1) The starting point for Paul’s understanding of justification is that it is eschatological, referring to the declaration that God will make on the last day, and that it is by works, a verdict made according to the whole life lived. As Romans 2:13-16 goes, “For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified… in the day when will God judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.” This passage says Christ will be the one making the judgment, so it can’t be passed off as merely a law-based hypothetical. It’s a fundamental part of Paul’s gospel. What he goes on to show in Romans 3 is not that the basis of this verdict has changed, but that through the work of Jesus it has moved from the future to the present, so that God can justify his true people in advance of the final day.

2) Second Temple Judaism was not the religion of “self-help moralism” or “works-righteousness” that Protestant theology has long believed it to be. The Jews of the period believed that they were counted as members of God’s family more by their ethnicity than by their works per se, if by “works” one means moral achievements. Obedience to the law was seen as necessary, but the fact that God made covenant with Abraham, declaring that the whole world would be blessed through his descendants, meant that those descendants, by virtue of their relation to Abraham, must be in the covenant. This was why things like circumcision and dietary laws were so important; because they defined a Jew as a Jew, separate from the pagans and inalienably a part of “Israel,” God’s chosen people, those who would be saved on the last day. Even amongst the most extreme groups like the Shammaites and the Essenes, keeping the law was understood as responsive and confirming to God’s merciful covenant; it was not a matter of earning one’s own righteousness by climbing a ladder of merit. It is this ethnocentric sense of unconditional election which Paul deconstructs in Romans 2, not a proto-Pelagian belief in salvation by works.

3) When Paul refers to the “works of the law” in places like Romans 3:20, he is thinking in terms of the ethnic boundary-markers of Torah, practices which had become symbolic badges of membership, like Sabbath, circumcision, and dietary laws, things that defined a Jew as a participant of the covenant over against their pagan neighbors, or even a more observant Jew over a less observant Jew. This is the sense which the phrase also carries in the Qumran text 4QMMT. So when Paul contrasts “faith” and “works”, the negative side of that contrast involves those aspects of Torah which in first century Judaism had ironically become ways of avoiding moral effort (e.g. Rom 2:1-3, 17-24; cf. Matt 23:23-28).

4) The Greek word pistis, for Paul, does not refer to mere belief in God through either the cognitive acceptance of truths about him and/or a spiritual encounter with him. It actually has ethical content to it. This is especially clear in Romans 3:3: “For what if some were unfaithful (apisteo)? Will their faithlessness (apistia) nullify the faithfulness (pistis) of God?” Paul is here addressing directly the question of God’s righteousness related to Israel’s disobedience. If Israel has been unfaithful to the covenant, as Paul has shown they have (2:1-29), then what does this mean for God? Will he turn his back on them as they have on him, or will his arms remain outstretched to any who might return? Paul is resolute: God will remain steadfast, pistis. It hardly needs saying that Romans 3:3 sets the stage for Romans 3:21. But if Israel’s failure here is called their apistia, and God’s steadfastness is called his pistis, then why should the pistis of those who are justified later on in the chapter be defined as mere belief? God’s pistis is his commitment to his saving purpose, his faithfulness. Therefore human pistis (or lack thereof, as in 3:3) is a responsive commitment to that saving purpose, an answering faithfulness.

5) In the key passages on “justification by faith” like Romans 3:21-26, Galatians 2:16 and 3:22-25, the phrase most often translated “faith in Christ” should actually be translated “the faithfulness of Christ”. Thus, the sense of Romans 3:22 goes like this: “God’s righteousness, his covenant justice, has been unveiled through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah to all who believe”. This translation has three major advantages over the traditional rendering. First, it fixes the redundancy of Paul’s saying “by faith” and then adding again “to all who believe”. Second, it gives the apocalyptic unveiling of God’s righteousness a definitive historic content as a personal action of God, instead of defining it purely in terms of the belief of the saints. And third, it gives the responsive pistis of the saints its appropriate antecedent, the work of the Messiah, instead of letting it dangle without any controlling story in terms of the redemption which God had achieved.

6) In a verse like Romans 3:28, “justified by faith” is Paul’s shorthand summation for the whole story which he has just outlined: the redemptive justice of God, revealed by the pistis of Jesus, to all who respond in pistis. This is why, both in Romans 3:21-28 and in Galatians 3:22-25, Paul refers to “faith” as an event in history, an event to which the law and the prophets looked forward and which we now look back upon in joyful gratitude; because for Paul, the word refers first and foremost to the apocalyptic event of the Messiah’s death and resurrection.

7) From all of the above, we can see that the actual contrast between “works” and “faith” in Paul is not between (a) moral effort and (b) mere belief, but rather between (a) Israel’s unfaithfulness and the inability of the law to lift them out of their plight, and (b) the contrasting faithfulness of Israel’s Messiah, which has unveiled the covenant justice of God to any and all who will respond in believing obedience to his call, Jew and Gentile alike. And as Paul goes on to lay out in Romans 5-8, even our responsive faithfulness is the work of grace, by the power of the Spirit as the result of Christ’s own action on our behalf. So it all begins and ends with God. As he concludes in 8:3-4, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

Whose Understanding?

So I’m reading about various medieval approaches to the relationship between faith and reason for a class on the history of Christian thought, and I stumble upon an oddly familiar statement from Anselm of Canterbury. Developing the Augustinian method of “faith seeking understanding,” Anselm wrote that “The correct order is to believe the deep things of the Christian faith before undertaking to discuss them by reason” (Cur Dues Homo 1.2, emphasis mine).

This method should be relatively unproblematic for those who recognize only one authority for understanding the truth (e.g. the Catholic church). But for a Protestant like myself, who has heard Anselm’s method echoed by teachers with radically divergent interpretations of the “deep things” of the faith, the question naturally presses: Whose understanding? Which authority should I accept before applying reason? Moreover, how does this epistemology cohere with Paul’s admonition in 1 Thessalonians 5:21, or with the example of the Bereans in Acts 17:10-12?

What do you think? Is there a list of nonnegotiables for you, things that must be accepted by faith without reason? Or do you see the relationship between faith and reason differently?