Studying Revelation has to begin with the fact that it made it into the canon because early Christians read it and recognized in it what was happening around them. It then has to remember that it is apocalyptic literature where any given thing is more likely than not symbolic, from names to numbers.
To the comment that how we regard the nature of reality as a whole: I wrote an entire book on how different divinity beliefs control theories of reality, and how theories of reality, in turn, control scientific theories. That does not mean it controls what postulates a thinker may make, but the nature of whatever postulates he makes. The Myth of Religious Neutrality.
Agreed. I was speaking of the God revealed in scripture - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not the God of the philosophers. (Tip of the hat to Pascal)
This is exactly my view. I had a course on the book in seminary, and came out favoring what is called the Recapitulation interpretation. It takes all the 7s and other major parts of the book to go over and over the time from Christ’s first coming to his second with respect to the church’s experience… Each of those periods ends with the triumph of his second coming, but nothing in the book goes beyond that point. It does not, for example, predict the history of the world or even much detail about the 2nd coming ( and interestingly it contains nothing about a rapture in which all believers disappear from earth - but then, neither does the rest of the NT).
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Great podcast! I got a chuckle when the guy said he’d never heard anyone preach on Revelation because I have, from a Lutheran pastor/priest, a Roman Catholic priest, and a Greek Orthodox priest. The Lutheran pointed out that one big reason John’s Revelation made it into the canon was that Christians back then read it and saw it describing what they were living through – which is enough by itself in my opinion that it totally destroys the whole “prophetic schedule” silliness. The Roman Catholic explained that the book is apocryphal literature of a type such that if you take any item in the book as literal you’re probably doing it wrong. The Orthodox priest cited church Fathers who considered the book to be describing their times, right up into the eighth century.
I love the point about Babylon; in a New Testament readings (in Greek, of course) in grad school the professor made the same point that Babylon was Rome but that Babylon was always with us (he was very conservative/reactionary and he saw Babylon in the branch of the church that accepted the historical-critical method).
A pastor I worked under for a year or so boldly said that Babylon could be found in Washington, D.C., but not only there. It prompted a lot of discussion! So there are preachers willing to call the U.S. on its evil.
Now I’m listening to a different interview with McKnight.
How’s that supposed to flesh out with events in time?
This might be too political for the forum, but a recurring joke among family members is that most political slogans containing “America” could have the word swapped out with “Babylon”, and the intent would remain unchanged. Also to wish that one could start singing the Hallelujah chorus about them (“Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the Great.” “Hallelujah, Hallelujah, etc.”).
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Got a book recommendation on that?
Okay, I think I see how Peter is optimistic, but I don’t get calling Paul “naive”.
Actually the Greek, αἰῶνας αἰώνων (eye-OWE-nas eye_OWN-own) is a Hebraism. To make a superlative Hebrew doubles a word with the second in the genitive case. There’s a passage I recall getting a laugh from, which literally read “thing of things”, which is translated “great things”; the most ‘famous’ example is in Genesis where it literally says “dying you shall die”, which best translates as “you will definitely die”.
So here we have “ages of ages”; which is more than merely emphatic: “Ages” already expands the concept from merely “age” by making it plural; “ages of ages” raises it another notch – but it still isn’t “forever” (I’d like to see a reference for Augustine on this), since “age” still retains its meaning of a (long) period of time until something is complete, so “ages of ages” is probably emphasizing both concepts, so it comes out as “a really very long time until X is really, really complete”. And in this context X is “the torment of them”, or in better English “their torment”; alternatively it could be the entire phrase “the smoke of their torment”, though that doesn’t change the sense of it.
This is why even in this passage some of the Fathers found an end to things, though some held that the end was annihilation and others that even these folks would eventually repent; it sort of depends on what you think makes the torment complete, either it ends because it was sufficient to match their iniquity or it ends because they finally surrender to God and can be saved. [I tend to favor the latter here, but that’s mostly because I can’t picture God keeping people in torment for eons just to erase them at the end.]
I have argued for the view (held by many church Fathers) that the sentences handed down at the Last Judgment are primarily redemptive and restorative. There is punishment too, but they are aimed at making their recipients fit for the God’s Kingdom.
This sort of thing baffles me. It’s like something I encountered the other day in a criticism of Dr. Michael Heiser: basically the argument was that he was wrong on some things because they didn’t match doctrine, and I kept thinking, “Guys, this is what the text says!” It’s a dangerous mindset to force the scriptures to fit some idea whether that idea has been handed down in the church for generations or arose from a modern worldview; that has led to more false teaching than just about anything else down through the centuries and we see it still with the YEC insistence that in order to be true the scriptures have to be 100% scientifically correct. Seeing it make me SOOOO glad that my biblical language instructors insisted that always, always, always you go with the text however bizarre it might seem to our modern ears.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
I never found the devices frightening; they were fascinating – it was the idea of them being poked into my mouth that was frightening!
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
An anecdote from a friend who was in the Army: in boot camp there was a guy who from his words and actions was clearly anti-God, and when some of the recruits would join in prayer he would mockingly say, “Amen!” with them. This went on for most of boot camp, but somewhere near the end the guy broke down, and as the group stared at him wondering what to do he managed to tell them that he just realized that he was saying “Amen!” because he believed.
So somewhere in there a mocking “Amen” turned to a real “Amen”. And the cap on top was that he said that when he got to boot camp, if he’d ever thought that saying “Amen” mockingly would lead to him saying it in faith he would have stayed away from that group and kept his mouth zipped.
I think that trying to pin the Spirit down to timelines is a wasted enterprise.
I winced at this:
Therefore, this scripture should not say in English “their torment ascends for ever and ever.” It should say “their torment ascends for the ages of the ages.”
There’s no definite article there in the Greek; it’s just “ages of ages”.
Though the biggest problem is he is forcing the passages to fit a specific notion of time v eternity – one that is possible but not found in the text.
I got a chuckle from this:
There is persuasive evidence that “hell” is something the Catholic Church invented
since no, there isn’t; the church sort of stumbled into it by failing to filter out pagan ideas, eventually turning them to doctrine.
Other than those quibbles it’s pretty good.
This confuses spatial extent with time. An infinite number of past events is possible if the universe started out a certain way, but only because there is no limit to spatial extent; it has nearly nothing to do with time.
And “forever and ever” is not a good translation, in fact it probably came down to us through a poor Latin translation and was cemented as a concept that later translators just went with.
BTW, it ends up referring to eternity in some contexts since an “age” is a time period for something to be accomplished, a period suitable to something, and so in the case of “age-wise life” with God an age will have no end.
I certainly agree!
I blame Augustine. 
The problem is, as Mark noted, a matter of forcing modern concepts into the text. When we think of a period of time, we think clock and calendar, but the dominant concept of time back a few millennia was of seasons, and a season was something that lasted until it was done, till a thing was complete. So in terms of torment, an age – a season – would be however long until the penalty matched the violation(s), but in terms of life with God the age/season would have no end.
Conceivably some sin could theoretically require punishment that lasted without end, but given that humans are limited and mortal I can’t imagine what it would be (I have my own uniquely hated sins, but even for those I can’t see the penalty lasting infinitely).
Similar to Lewis in The Great Divorce where the sin increases and the person decreases until only the sin remains.
As has been said at least once very generation, though, scholars (and those pretending to be) can get in the way!
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I kept getting distracted by his crisp fingerwork.
I know it this way:
I’d forgotten that it was St. Patrick who set it in the version we have today.
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Bell’s is the first and only version I’ve ever heard of, until just now. Thanks for sharing this one.
I got Bell’s cd from a coworker, who was clearing out a lot of music. Glad he was done with it. Bell’s fingerstyle playing is gorgeous. Somewhere in a video on his channel he tells about learning to play guitar from prisoners where his dad ministered, and Steve came along to help. I didn’t find that video just now, but I did see that he has guitar courses available somehow. (Tempting. Would require commitment to practice again!)
The number of past events can proceed to infinity like the number of future events, I have no argument against this