Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of

Bible and Theology

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Wrestling With Revelation

James J. Megivern
Biblical Theology Bulletin: A Journal of Bible and Theology 1978; 8; 147
DOI: 10.1177/014610797800800402

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 Wrestling With Revelation
James J. Megivern, University
In the course of introducing college
students to the New Testament last
semester, I was struck by the fact that
I encountered more resistance to my
presentation of the Book of Revelation
than to that of any other New
Testament work. They had followed
me willingly, if a bit gingerly, through
text-criticism and form-criticism and
redaction-criticism and even a little
structural analysis of the Gospels, and
then tagged along for the dismantling
of Acts and the letters of Paul as well
as &dquo;deutero-Paul.&dquo; Reservations arose
about II Peter and Jude as well as
about Hebrews and James, but nothing
serious. Then came Revelation,
however, and the fundamentalism that
had previously been latent among them
suddenly came to the fore with a
vengeance. This was a book that was
self-evident, that required no research
or background study. It said what it
meant and it meant what it said.
Revelation -
Troublesome
I mention the experience because it
sparked a number of reflections,
which
I will here try to elaborate on. One does
not have to read very much to discover
that Revelation has been the most
troublesome New Testament book in
Christian history. In the early Church it
was especially in the East that it was
questioned, but even after its
canonicity was assured, its in-
terpretation was not. As Caird puts it:
&dquo;From the time of the millenarian
Papias to the present day it has been
the paradise of fanatics and sectarians,
each using it to justify his own peculiar
doctrine and so adding to the mis-
givings of the orthodox.&dquo; Martin
Luther was so bewildered by it that he
says in his 1522 preface: &dquo;My spirit
cannot accommodate itself to this
147
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of North Carolina, Wilmington N.C.
book. There is one sufficient reason for
the small esteem in which I hold it -
that Christ is neither taught in it nor
recognized.&dquo; And Ladd, in his com-
mentary, observes that &dquo;Revelation is
the most difficult of all New Testament
books to interpret, primarily because
of the elaborate and extensive use of
symbolism. How are these strange,
often bizarre, symbols to be under-
stood ?&dquo;
So, one can take some consolation in
knowing that the problem is not a new
one and that generations upon
generations of Christians have largely
ignored the book or given it very short
shrift. Any illumination that one can
provide is thus something of a windfall,
all to the good, but perhaps the
prerequisite for reading anyone who
writes about Revelation ought to be an
honest disclaimer by the author
acknowledging most assertions as
tenative.
Meaning Remains Hidden
To illustrate what I mean, take the
1919 work of Shirley Jackson Case.
After describing the endless wild-
goose-chases of earlier commentators,
he sings the praises of the newly dis-
covered historical method. Waxing
lyrical he proclaims: &dquo;With this
method in hand the long-misunderstood
mysteries of Revelation are easily
solved.&dquo; Such early optimism was to be
tempered by fifty years of continued
controversy, so that Feuillet in 1965, in
a much more sober mood, would
acknowledge little likelihood of ever
solving some of those very problems.
&dquo;We remain convinced that some
whole sections of the Apocalypse
remain closed to us.&dquo; Its original
readers may have caught the allusions
and understood the references, but for
later generations guesswork is the only
road open. When this kind of admission &dquo;Terminal Generation&dquo; and &dquo;Late
is kept in mind, one is much less inclin- Great Planet Earth,&dquo; and C. C. Ryrie’s
ed to brand particular approaches as &dquo;The Living End,&dquo; with their frantic
&dquo;the one and only right way&dquo; or &dquo;the dispensationalism, hook the curious
totally wrong.&dquo; As Feuillet concludes, and the superstitious, giving the im-
&dquo;all the various methods have
...
pression that Orson Welles has nothing
something to offer.&dquo; on the New Testament. There ought to
Nonetheless, scholarship and be a way of letting people know that
research should count for something. these penny-thrillers have nothing to do
Because a conjectural element with God’s Word.
remains does not mean that all The most disconcerting instance of
approaches are of equal value or this genre is the 1977 book, &dquo;The Rap-
validity. Rissi, for example, in 1972 put tured,&dquo; by two priests who teach
it this way: &dquo;Though a consensus of in- (physics & psychology) at Seton Hall in
terpretation has not yet been reached New Jersey. After discoursing at
concerning either the overall con- .

length on Catholic reverence for the

ception or the details, the time of a
bizarre world-history and church-
history interpretation which dis-
covered the fulfillment of the Johan-
nine visions in specific historical
events ought to have passed.&dquo; As in
other areas, it ought to be possible
often to say what is not meant, even if
one cannot always affirm precisely
what is meant. In this context it is es-
pecially the &dquo;calendarizing approach&dquo;
that is most objectionable. As
Elizabeth Fiorenza remarks, &dquo;contem-
porary scholars no longer dream of
finding predictions for history or the
future in the Apocalypse. They correct-
ly reject those interpretations main-
taining that it treats of the history of
the Church, of the world and of the final
times.&dquo; .
&dquo;literal sense&dquo; of Scripture, they
launch into an incredible fantasy that
outdistances the most imaginative of
Jehovah’s Witnesses. The &dquo;male son&dquo;
of chapter 12, we learn, is the Pope; the
Church is going to be &dquo;raptured&dquo; in the
midst of a Papal election; the 10
Nations are the European Common
Market; Gog and Magog are modern
Russia, about to invade Israel, where
they will be decisively defeated by
God’s intervention. I suppose there is
an outside chance that the whole thing
is meant to be a gigantic put-on, but the
book throbs with that singular kind of
pessimism that characterizes
apocalyptic-without-Gospel. The
authors seem so obsessed with sex and
violence in describing the cataclysm

that awaits us all that one is readily

reminded of Nietzsche’s famous
Contemporary Publications analysis of &dquo;resentment.&dquo; First one
But if the history of interpretation senses deep hostility toward the
forces one to be cautious, contem- changes that have taken place in the
porary publications raise another Church since Vatican II. The logical
question. What responsibility do outcome of the renewal process is then
serious students of the Bible have in projected as apocalyptic disaster (a la
the face of the present rash of Lefebvre ) . Since modern Biblical
&dquo;apocalyptic pornography&dquo;? Every studies played so large a role in produc-
time one approaches an airport news- ing Vatican II, the best way to express
stand, it seems that a couple more one’s resentment toward it is to adopt a
have appeared, raucous paperbacks method of interpretation that is
proclaiming imminent catastrophe as repudiated by such studies and which
the Biblical message. Hal Lindsey’s allows ample venting of spleen. One
114A
148

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can only hope that there is enough con-
sciousness among Catholics at large to
realize what they are here confronted
with. It is a giant step backward,
embracing an outmoded method that
has been repudiated by every serious
Christian scholar, and which serves
only to obscure the real message of the
New Testament.
Ecumenical Dimension
Another present concern has to do
with the ecumenical dimension. In
Biblical studies generally it has
become commonplace to disregard
denominational labels. The RSV and
the NEB, the NAB and the Jerusalem
Bible are viewed as functionally in-
terchangeable. The very notion of
&dquo;Protestant&dquo; and &dquo;Catholic&dquo; Bibles
seems antidiluvian in the face of
modern scholarship. Yet, when it com-
es to Revelation, too much of that
euphoria seems to evaporate. Maybe it
is because of the way that dispen-
sationalism has been tied to anti-
Romanism in sectarian theorizing in
the past, but it is disheartening to see
the Moody Press as late as 1972 putting
out such a publication as &dquo;Revelation
Visualized.&dquo; It is the work of Gary
Cohen, described as &dquo;a born-again
Jew,&dquo; and Salem Kirban, &dquo;a born-
again Arab,&dquo; and combines the worst
of dogmatic calendarizing, acid dis-
missal of other views, and total iden-
tification of the modern Vatican with
&dquo;
&dquo;Babylon.
Even if one chooses to ignore that
kind of bigotry as unworthy of note by
serious students of the Bible, there is
still a disturbing lack of dialogue
among many who deal with Revelation.
Take, e.g., the 1977 Broadman
publication &dquo;Revelation : Three View-
points.&dquo; It is the text of lectures given
by three Southern Baptist scholars:
George Beasley-Murray, Herschel H.
Hobbs, and Ray F. Robbins. It is a
remarkable example of serious dis-
149
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cussion on a high level that deserves a
broad hearing. Yet there is not a single
Catholic author included in their
bibliography: not Allo, Boismard,
Comblin, Feuillet, Ford, Harrington,
Richards, Wikenhauser or anyone else.
The reason certainly is not that there is
some great chasm in understanding; on
the contrary, some of the parallels are
remarkable. I think Robbins especially
has much in common with Feuillet and
others who see the vital necessity of
stressing that Revelation preaches the
Gospel, that its basic import is to
reveal Jesus as the Christ, not to give
some titillating timetable of cosmic
calamities. Of course, it may be that
these men are aware of the broader
field, but restricted themselves to
familiar Protestant authors in view of
the particular Baptist conference they
were addressing. If so, it was simply a
missed opportunity for broader under-
standing, since Biblical scholarship to-
day has a responsibility to be inter-
national and ecumenical.
Scholarly and Popular Outlooks
The gap between scholarly and pop-
ular outlooks is one that must always
be lamented in a community that views
the pastoral as a necessary dimension
of the scholarly. David George, in a
summary essay at the end of this book,
describes the situation in one Christian
community that is certainly paralleled
in others: &dquo;Southen Baptist treatment
of Revelation has generally taken two
directions, one popular and the other
scholarly. Popular interpretation has
tended to be premillenial and has been
strongly influenced by the dispen-
sational theories of the &dquo;Scofield
Reference Bible&dquo; What is distinc-
...
tive about the dispensationalists is
their insistence on a future literal
fulfillment of all the promises made to
literal Israel. This makes it important
to assign each biblical statement to its
proper dispensation and leads to a
sharp distinction between Israel and
the church as two different peoples of
God. Revelation is assigned largely to
a time when the church will be rap-
tured (caught up) into heaven and God
will continue his purpose on earth with
the restored nation of Israel
Because dispensationalism offered a
systematic, literal interpretation of the
Bible and because it was readily
available, it has appealed to many
devout Southern Baptists, including
many pastors ( But ) Southern Bap-
...
tist scholars have usually taken a
different direction ...
College and
teachers have
seminary (more
recently) tended to be amillenial, i.e.,
they have not taught the occurrence of
millenium,
a or earthly kingdom,
between the return of Christ and the
final consummation. They have also re-
jected other features of popular, dis-
pensational premillenialism. &dquo; (In view
of the above-mentioned work of
Tombler & Funk, one might ask if it is
not an instance of ecumenical garbage-
picking, where these Catholic authors
have picked up what has been discard-
ed by Baptist scholars.)
Conclusion in Contemporary
Studies
Contemporary studies seem to be
converging on a conclusion that does
not make the exposition of Revelation
any easier. I refer to the growing con-
viction that none of the varied
categories formulated in the past is
adequate to describe how the book
should be approached. In the words of
Beasley-Murray, &dquo;most interpreters
now recognize that each of the (four
classical) approaches (preterist,
futurist, historicist, and symbolic) has
elements of truth which need to be
taken into account for its right under-
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standing, and at the same time that
each taken by itself is seriously want-
ing. &dquo; Mounce says virtually the same:
&dquo;each approach has some important
contribution to a full understanding of
Revelation no single approach is
...
sufficient in itself.&dquo; Ladd is a bit more
restrictive in calling for &dquo;a blending of
the preterist and the futurist
...
methods.&dquo; Harrington, while seeing
the preterist as the necessary starting-
point, goes on to conclude that &dquo;there
is much that we do not fully understand
and there is scope for different in-
terpretations of the writing.&dquo;
Anchor Bible
Perhaps that is the setting in which
J. M. Ford’s 1975 commentary in the
Anchor Bible series ought to be placed.
She brings a wealth of information and
insight to particular texts, especially
by pointing out parallels from other
sources such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
reviewers have amply
But, as
remarked, her main thesis involves so
startling an assumption and so many
nagging questions that the whole work
is thereby vitiated. She contends that
chapters 4 to 11 originated with the
revelations given to John the Baptist
before the public ministry to Jesus;
that chapters 12 to 22 were written
before 70 A.D. by a disciple of the Bap-
tist who had an imperfect knowledge of
Jesus; and that chapters 1 to 3 (plus 22:
16-17a and 20-21) were added by a later
Jewish-Christian redactor. In its basic
form, therefore, she sees the work as a
primitive Christian writing that
probably appeared before any of the
written Gospels.
Place of
Baptist
hardly knows where to begin in
One
responding to such contentions, but
what strikes me as among the most
problematic issues is her uncritical use
of the Fourth Gospel material
regarding the Baptist. Unless one dis-
150
misses as invalid the entire enterprise
of redaction-criticism, which shows
how each evangelist has modified and
reinterpreted the Gospel traditions, it
is simply inconsistent to think that the
presentation of the Baptist is not an ex-
pression of the theology of the Fourth
Gospel. To use it as a journalistic ac-
count of the actual encounter of Jesus
and John is not a move calculated to
win much of a following among con-
temporary scholars. In maintaining
thatt Revelation is really a Jewish
apocalypse with &dquo;a block of Christian
material ... grafted onto the beginning
and four Christian verses ...
grafted
onto the end,&dquo; Ford provokes con-
troversy on two other issues: the
Christology and the unity of that book.
The two are in fact closely related.
Those who conclude that it is a unified
work are also those who find a most
powerful Christology, as can be seen in
Holtz and Comblin.
Unity of Revelation
Of course, to maintain the ultimate
unity of the work does not rule out the
possibility of various sources and
stages in its &dquo;prehistory&dquo;. Boismard
has held for thirty years that canonical
Revelation is the combination of two
primitive apocalypses, and when he
reviewed Henri Stierlin’s work in 1975,
he acknowledged that he was persuad-
ed by Stierlin’s analyses (which he
found &dquo;beaucoup plus pouss6es que les
miennes&dquo;) that it consists not of two,
but of three, apocalypses, all composed
by the same author at different times
from the reign of Nero to that of
Domitian. These were supposedly fus-
ed together at the beginning of the
second century by a different author
who added the letters to the seven
churches. Boismard did not expect
many to be convinced, but between
them Stierlin and Ford have certainly
kept the pot boiling on the question of
the origins of Revelation.
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Disagreements
The upshot of all this can be con-
siderable frustration. The disarray of
scholars on basic issues allows the fun-
damentalist to ignore it all and con-
tinue in the crassest literalism.
Feuillet thought that, as a result of
modern studies, &dquo;it should become
possible for ever increasing numbers of
Christians to benefit from the hidden
riches of this sacred and inspired book,
and to be free of the erroneous and mis-
guided explanations of it which the un-
prepared have put forth, to the harm of
many.&dquo; But that presupposes some
consensus on which explanations are
&dquo;erroneous and misguided,&dquo; and such
consensus simply does not exist once
you get past the extravagances of
calendarizing dispensationalism.
Fiorenza would probably designate
Hopkins’ historical interpretation as
erroneous, and Hopkins would probably
consider Fiorenza’s eschatological in-
terruption as misguided. Allo was sure
that the order of the visions was not
chronological, but that rather the
&dquo;theory of recapitulation was substan-
tially true.&dquo; Feuillet concluded that
&dquo;most authors are now opposed to the
theory of recapitulation and admit a
more or less rigorous chronological
succession,&dquo; while the position of
Mounce is that &dquo;the visions of John
neither follow in a strict chronological
sequence nor do they recapitulate one
another. &dquo;
Millenium
Treatment of the millenium shows no
more consensus than the above
questions. Beasley-Murray remarks
that &dquo;the opposition of Catholics,
Lutherans, and Calvinists to the
millenium has made it difficult to
approach the book of Revelation, and
above all this particular passage (20: 4-
6), without the noise of battle in our
ears,&dquo; but he is convinced from his
study that &dquo;John’s vision is intended to
teach that the coming of Christ will
usher in the kingdom of God in
history.&dquo; Hobbs, on the other hand, is
persuaded that &dquo;the millenium sym-
bolizes the period from the ascension of
Christ until his return.&dquo; Barclay is
even stronger in rejecting the &dquo;literal
interpretation,&dquo; observing that
milleniarianism &dquo;is a doctrine which
has long since been left behind by the
main stream of Christian thought and
which now belongs to the eccentricities
of Christian belief.&dquo;
Jacques Ellul
Is there then &dquo;no balm in Gilead?&dquo;
Can we end on no more positive note
than chronicling the controversies that
continue to characterize the study of
Revelation? Since I began subjectively,
perhaps I can get away with ending
subjectively. For, after viewing a good
bit of the current literature on
Revelation, I would like to say a few
things about a book not as yet men-
tioned. In 1977 Seabury published the
English translation of Jacques Ellul’s
&dquo;Apocalypse : The Book of
Revelation.&dquo; Parts of it will probably
come in for criticism from various
quarters. His contentions are
sometimes strained, his assertions too
sweeping, his analyses too neat, his ex-
egesis too whimsical, his conclusions
too sudden. He has read the commen-
taries but left most of them aside, he
has listened to the debates, but gone on
to other interests. He makes no claim
to Biblical scholarship and finds little
use for the historical, critical method
that is so central to it today. Any yet, if
I had to recommend just one book on
Revelation, this would be it.
Perhaps it is because he brings so
much to the text that he gets so much
out of it. He will thus be suspected of
eisegesis instead of exegesis, but he
brings the book of Revelation to life in
a more compelling, intelligent,
relevant way than anyone else on the
market. The basic reason is that Ellul
1KO
152
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,,
is a radically Biblical Christian
Ellul,
who for forty years has continued to
astonish all by his relentless dialectic,
ever bringing modern society under the
judgment of God’s Word. His first
statement is that &dquo;Presuming to write
on the subject of the Apocalypse is am-
bitious, rash, and unacceptable ...
there never has been a book provoking
more delirium, foolishness, and
irrational movements, without any
relationship to Jesus Christ, as if this
book contained the possibility of a
temptation actually demonic.&dquo;
The
depth of the Historical
One need not agree with him on all
points in order to benefit from his con-
tribution. For all his dismissing of the
trappings of scholarship, he is rigorous
in applying intelligence to the text.
Basic convictions come out almost in
passing, sparking insights time after
time. &dquo;I maintain that the Apocalypse
must be read as a whole, of which each
part takes its import by relation to the
whole_; in other words, the Apocalypse
cannot be understood verse by verse.&dquo;
The French sub-title of the. book is
&dquo;architecture in movement,&dquo;
suggesting that one reason the work is
so often misunderstood is that it is too
often approached statically. &dquo;The
Apocalypse does not describe a
moment of history but reveals for us
the permanent depth of the historical
... Most works insist upon destroying
the Apocalypse by reducing it to simple
unities. &dquo;
Methodology
The importance of Ellul, it seems to
me, lies precisely here in the realm of
methodology. His success in making
sense of the book results from his use
of his beloved dialectical method, and
his most trenchant criticism of modern
commentators is for &dquo;a monumental
error of m.ethodology. I maintain that
all the exegetical studies on the
Apocalypse written in the last fifty
years in applying this so-called scien- Comblin, J. 1965. Le Christ dans
tific method are scientifically inexact l’Apocalypse. Paris.
because they have applied a method 1968. "The
D’Aragon, J.L.
completely inappropriate to the ob- Apocalypse," in The Jerome Biblical
ject. &dquo; No one can accuse Ellul of minc- Commentary. 467-493.
ing words. He has thrown down the Eller, Vernard. 1974. The Most
gauntlet to others and he has Revealing Book of the Bible. Grand
demonstrated in his own work what he.
Rapids, Michigan.
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his challenge is accepted, we should all Book of Revelation. New York.
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in which he has restored relevance to St. John the Divine. Oxford.
Revelation. &dquo;In reality we ought not to Feuillet, Andre. 1964. The
read the Apocalypse as the book of
A pocalypse. Staten Island, New York.
Judgment and Calamities; its sole pur- Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1968. "The
pose is to manifest ... all that has been
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successively revealed in Old and New Apocalypse," CBQ 30: 537-569.
Testament history about the Lord Ford, Josephine M. 1975. Revelation.
p
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Source Material New York.
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I: 306-325. Paris. standing the Apocalypse. Washington.
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