Position Paper: Ecclesiology and Eschatology

The following is the fifth and final position paper for my systematic theology class, on ecclesiology and eschatology.

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I affirm, with the Nicene Creed, that the Church is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.[1] In the first place, this means the Church is one, a unity. I believe this unity is visible and organic, not just invisible and spiritual. That is, the Church, the Church Christ founded in the first century, has not split into pieces or grown into multiple "branches", all of which can be considered to be part of the true Church, over time. This unity is based on the unity of God and of those who are in Christ. In Christ, the many members of the Church are reconciled to God and each other, united into one body (Rom 12:4-5, Col 1:18-20) by the mystery of the sacrament of communion, by which we all become partakers in the singular body and blood of Christ (1 Cor 10:16-17), as well as by baptism and the indwelling of the one Holy Spirit. (1 Cor 12:12-13) So the apostle is able to say of the Galatians that "in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. ... you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:26-28 RSV) I define the Church by this biblical teaching rather than by empirical observation which suggests that it is diverse and divided.

The understanding of the unity of the Church as being merely spiritual in nature is thus unacceptable. It does not do justice to the incarnational nature of the church as both a divine and a human institution, just as the Lord, while fully God, also became fully human for our sake. Instead, it creates a division between the Church's two natures and holds that unity applies only in its invisible nature. In this it is an echo of the old heresy of Nestorianism, which imposed a sharp distinction between Christ's human and divine nature.[2] Bishop Timothy (Kallistos) Ware explains that the separation between the visible and invisible church is only a reflection of our limited human perspective; the body of Christ is a single, incarnational reality just like Christ himself.[3] The unity of the Church is not merely an ideal to strive after; it is a promised and ever-present reality. Through historical study and a long period of spiritual seeking, I have come to identify the Orthodox Church as the same church that Christ founded.

Second, the Church is holy. This holiness is based on God's perfect holiness and is not dependent on the holiness of its members, least of all its imperfect earthly members. This view has been firmly established at least since the fourth-century Donatist controversy, when it was argued by Augustine.[4] This holiness is very much an "already-not yet" reality; mysteriously fully present and yet not fully realized in us. The apostle John says something similar: "Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." (1 Jhn 3:2) We are already God's children, but what we will ultimately become in him is not yet clear. Just as we partake in the body and blood of Christ through the Church, we also participate in his holiness through the worship, sacraments, fellowship, and prayer life of the Church. Titles for the Church like the people of God (2 Cor 6:16), bride of Christ (2 Cor 11:2), and temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16-17, 6:19; Eph 2:21-22), as well as the body of Christ, all hint at the holiness in which all in the Church have a share.

Third, the Church is catholic. This is a frequently-misunderstood term, and not just because it is often seen as synonymous with "Roman Catholic" (as I used to think). It is often taken to mean "universal", as referring to the nature of the one Church as extending through time and space. While this is true of the Church, the word "catholic", as originally used, means "full and complete, all-embracing, and with nothing lacking.[5]" This can be seen from its Greek composition from the roots kata and holos, meaning roughly "according to the whole". This means, among other things, that the local church is not simply a piece of the true Church; the fullness of the entire Church is found in every single local church; nothing is lacking for its members to participate in the richness of the faith. As Paul says, the Church "is [Christ's] body, the fulness of him who fills all in all." (Eph 1:23, see also Col 2:10).

Fourth, the Church is apostolic, in at least three ways. Most simply, it began with the apostles. It is the Church established by Christ on the apostles' testimony to him. Second, it preserves the apostolic teaching of Christ, which was originally received from Christ (Mat 28:18-20) and is especially expressed in the New Testament. The Church receives, treasures, and passes on the apostolic tradition as described in the NT (1 Cor 11:2, 2 Thess 2:15, 2 Tim 2:2). In this way it is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth." (1 Tim 3:15) Third, like the apostles themselves, the Church is sent into the world with a mission (the Greek word apostolos means "sent one"), "to bear witness to His Kingdom, to keep His word and to do His will and His works in this world."[6] In this respect, the Church, and we individually as members of it, continues the work that Christ commissioned the apostles to do.

Related to the second meaning, the continuity of the faith of the Church with the apostles' teaching can be seen in the process of apostolic succession, by which the teaching is passed down in an unbroken chain of leadership stretching from the apostles to the present. This idea was argued by the pre-Nicene church fathers to rebuke false teachers who based their ideas on their own reading of Scripture or a "secret tradition" that Christ passed on apart from the apostles. Irenaeus, the most revered theologian of the second century, was a prominent spokesman for apostolic succession, writing in his work Against Heresies, "It is within the power of all ... to contemplate clearly the tradition of the apostles manifested throughout the whole world; and we are in a position to reckon up those who were by the apostles instituted bishops in the Churches, and [to demonstrate] the succession of these men to our own times; those who neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about."[7] Like the early Church, I see the episcopal model of church polity as normative, since the role of bishops (overseers) was and is crucial to the preservation and articulation of orthodox Christian teaching.

I affirm the infallibility of the Church—the whole Church. "This again follows from the indissoluble unity between God and His Church. Christ and the Holy Spirit cannot err, and since the Church is Christ's body, since it is a continued Pentecost, it is therefore infallible."[8] Again, the apostle teaches that the Church is the "pillar and bulwark of the truth." (1 Tim 3:15) As well, Christ promised the Spirit to guide the Church into all truth. (Jhn 16:13) This teaching is frequently misunderstood. It does not mean that any individual within the visible Church is infallible, as Roman Catholics would claim. It also does not mean that the Church cannot hold mistaken points of view or opinions; for example, the Orthodox Church is currently considering the possibility that it may have been mistaken about the heretical status of the Oriental Orthodox churches for the past 1500 years. (That is, that they may not actually hold the view on Christology that was condemned by the council of Chalcedon) It also does not mean that large portions of the Church cannot fall into false teaching, as was seen in the Arian controversy. The infallibility of the Church pertains to dogma, particularly the canons of the seven ecumenical councils as well as lesser councils or other teachings that are later accepted by the whole Church. In matters like these, I believe that according to the promises of Christ and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is impossible for the whole Church to embrace error.

I affirm the function of the Church, as a place where the salvation of the gospel of Christ is made manifest. This occurs through the worship of the Church directed to God, the participation of its members in riches of God's grace, and the outward-oriented ministry of the Church to the world. In worship which transcends time and place, the Church joins the angels and "the spirits of just men made perfect", the Church of all ages and places, in their unceasing praise of God (Heb 12:22-24). Through the Church, we enter communion with both God our father and our brothers and sisters in Christ; again, we all become part of the one body of Christ. "We are members one of another" (Eph 4:25); it is in the Church, not individually, that we receive salvation and are transformed into Christ's likeness. "The church thus serves not only as a signpost of the coming fulfillment of divine purposes with and for the whole creation but as a manifestation of that fulfillment 'ahead of time', as it were—already in this age, yet fully to come in the eschaton."[9] Though salvation is a lifelong journey, through the Church we experience it in eschatological fullness, so that Paul is able to speak of the whole path of salvation in the past tense. (Rom 8:29-30) And again, the Church is apostolic in that it is sent out into the world both to witness to Christ (Acts 1:8) and to demonstrate the love of Christ through practical action as well as words. (1 Jhn 3:17-18)[10]

I affirm that the Church is the continuation and fulfillment of national Israel as the people of God. Through Christ it inherits the promises made to Israel. Paul argues extensively for the Church's continuity with Israel repeatedly in Romans (2:28-29, 3:28-31, 4:11-12,16,18, 9:7-8, 10:12); elsewhere he says "There is neither Jew nor Greek ... for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal 3:28) It is not that God's covenant with Israel has been revoked (Paul argues this extensively in Romans 9-11); rather, this covenant is fulfilled in all that it set out to accomplish in the new covenant in Christ's blood, plus the promised salvation of the gentiles. (Isa 52:10) Therefore, since Christ is the one mediator between God and man (1 Tim 2:5), it is advisable to interpret Paul's words about the continuing future of Israel in Romans 11 as presaging a large-scale conversion of Jews into the Church.[11] There is no other way leading to salvation.

I deny that the Church consists essentially of a collection of individuals who are "saved", have an "authentic relationship with God", are "true Christians", etc. My definition of "Christian" is dependent on the Church, rather than the other way around. The Church is the incarnational institution established by Christ, which preserves the apostolic faith truly witnessing to him, and they are Christians who belong to it. There is definitely a sense in which Christians are seen as constituting the body of Christ, but as members of it. (1 Cor 12:27) In other words, when we become Christians, the Church does not expand to include us; we become part of its unity. The unity of the Church amid divisions among its members depends on there being something recognizable as the "Church" that continues whole even after schism, which is not possible if the Church is nothing more than a collection of individuals.

It is frequently said that "outside the church there is no salvation." Does this mean that everyone who does not formally belong to the "true church" is not saved? By no means! Just as those who are formally members of the Church can still be living according to the law of sin and death, dead to the life of the Church,[12] "there may be members of the Church who are not visibly such, but whose membership is known to God alone."[13] I do not claim that God's grace is limited to those within the Orthodox Church; I don't fully understand the mysteries of his love. But this does not mean that the "true" Church is invisible or discontinuous from the visible Church, or that it is not necessary to seek salvation through it. "What God may do should not become the outer perimeter of what humans should do."[14]

I affirm (again with the Creed) that Jesus will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. He will return the way he left the disciples (Acts 1:11) to judge the nations (Mat 25:31-33). The kingdom of God, currently present only within the Church, will triumph over and succeed the kingdom of this world (Rev 11:15), and this kingdom, Christ's kingdom, will be eternal. (Luk 1:32-33) Everything beyond the creedal statement is opinion. One of my opinions of this judgment (shared widely by Orthodox theologians) is that I don't interpret Matthew 25:31-33 literally, that we will wait in line with everyone who has ever lived to be sorted by Christ as judge. Rather, "the very presence of Christ as the Truth and the Light is itself the judgment of the world."[15] As Jesus teaches in Matthew 25, we will be judged based on how we have fulfilled the law by loving and serving others (Rom 13:10), or, equivalently, by how we have loved and served him. (Mat 25:40,45)

I deny that God actively imprisons or tortures people in hell. The judgment is our response to Christ's return in glory, not a literal proclamation by him of our individual fate. We are not "sent" to heaven or hell by any external power, but by our own hearts. Thomas Hopko explains: "Now men can live without the love of Christ in their lives. They can exist as if there were no God, no Christ, no Spirit, no Church, no spiritual life. At the end of the ages this will no longer be possible."[16] I believe that the essence of hell is not being banished from the presence of God (which would be a relief for those who hate him, appears to consider God's presence in quasi-spatial terms, and which, if applied consistently, would simply be annihilation), but continuing to exist eternally in the presence and knowledge of God. For the righteous, this is heaven, for the wicked; it is the torment of hell. The fire of hell is none other than our God, the consuming fire. (Heb 12:29)

I affirm that we cannot know when Christ will return, as he makes clear. (Mat 24:36, 25:13; Mar 13:32; Luk 12:40; Acts 1:7) Though much about the eschatological day of the Lord is obscure, the Scriptures make very clear that Jesus will return at an unexpected time. (How this will work when one group or another always seems to be expecting his imminent return, I don't know!) Any teacher or sect that claims to have knowledge of the day of Christ's return is either lying or deluded, and refuses to listen to the teaching of Scripture about this. The truth is, Christ could return tomorrow or he could return in centuries. We cannot know one way or another. Hence, Jesus teaches us to be ready (Mat 24:42-51), to live in a state of readiness. This readiness does not look like stocking up and preparing for an imminent and expected disaster, but like actively practicing the teachings of Christ, living the life of the Church in a constant vigil so as to greet the Lord at his return.

I affirm (once more with the Creed) the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, as especially taught by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection will be the completion of the salvation from sin and death that Christ purchased for us. It will be a bodily (not just spiritual) resurrection, but not a return to our mortal bodies. Rather, our once-weak bodies will be raised imperishable, glorious, powerful, and spiritual (rather than physical, whatever that means. (1 Cor 15:42-44) In this, as in the rest of salvation, we will follow the example of Christ, "the first-born from the dead". (Col 1:18) The resurrection of the dead will be the Lord's ultimate victory over death (1 Cor 15:54-55) and will also be accompanied by the perfection of the rest of the creation (Rom 8:21). The world will become the paradise that God created it to become; the kingdom of heaven will fill the whole earth. (Rev 11:15) God's good purposes for his wayward creation will be completed, for all eternity.

I deny that the goal of eschatology is to discern a hidden schedule of events that will take place in the "end times". The subject of eschatology may be described with language like an "eschatological agenda"[17] or even "God's timetable".[18] This linear kind of thinking, which risks over-focusing on the order of events a the exclusion of their deeper meaning, simply misses the point of eschatology. The point is Christ, who is the true End we look to. (Rev 22:13) "Wherever He is present, there the End is also present."[19] In other words, the End is not some series of events to look forward to in the future—for those in the Church, the End is already here!

Thus Paul is able to speak of our deliverance to the kingdom of the Son in the past tense (Col 1:12-13), and our resurrection with Christ and elevation to the heavenly places. (Eph 2:4-6) As he says elsewhere, "behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation." (2 Cor 6:2) The End is not simply waiting at the conclusion of history for us; for Christians, it is an eternal now, as if intersecting with every point on our time line at a right angle from the transcendent beyond, calling us out of the linear succession of moments that seems so natural to our existence and into eternal life. Thus, I disagree with the tenor of eschatological theories about the "rapture" the tribulation, the millennium, and the nature and relative ordering of these things, especially inasmuch as they are presented as what the study of eschatology is "really about". They are highly speculative (sometimes approaching conspiracy theories) and needlessly distract from the fact that the End has already come. Glorify him!

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1. "The Nicene Creed" in The Orthodox Study Bible (eds. Jack Norman Sparks et al.; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1791.
2. Patrick Barnes, The Church is Visible and One: A Critique of Protestant Eschatology (12 January 2015), 30.
3. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 243–245.
4. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978), 311.
5. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, (12 January 2015), I.2.16.
6. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, I.2.16.
7. Irenaeus, Against Heresies (Kindle Edition: Veritatis Splendor Publications, 2012), III.3.1.
8. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 248.
9. James R. Payton Jr., Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press Academic, 2007), 150.
10. Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 972–974, 978–979.
11. Erickson, Christian Theology, 965.
12. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV.1.9.
13. Ware, The Orthodox Church, 248.
14. Payton, Light from the Christian East, 171–172.
15. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, I.2.14.
16. Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, IV.8.2.
17. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1119.
18. Erickson, Christian Theology, 1095.
19. Stephen Freeman, "Is There a Christian Theory of History?", Glory to God for All Things 7 November 2014, < http://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2014/11/07/christian-theory-history> (16 January 2015).

Animal Suffering and the "Cosmic Fall"

Last Sunday night at my interchurch small group, beginning from the subject of the end of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life, the question was raised: "Why is there death? Why does God allow death, pain, and suffering in His 'good' creation? And why do these things affect not only sinful humans, but uncomprehending and morally neutral animals, and even the forces of nature?" The question, it turned out, was one of those Pandora's boxes that simply cannot be put away once it is asked. The result was some of the most heated discussion we've ever had in that group. (I'm thankful that we managed to keep it mostly charitable)

The discussion was basically most of the group espousing and defending the idea that part of the "curse", God's just punishment for Adam and Eve's terrible sin in Genesis 3, was a "cosmic fall" that caused not just humans but also the rest of creation to become subject to death and decay, myself strongly opposing this thesis, and another friend with lots of questions trying to adjudicate between these views. Given that I express myself much better in writing after a few days to process, I decided against trying to persuade people then and there in favor of writing this post. (Which, incidentally, contains much that I was going to write about in my Gospel series)

In a way, this discussion on animal suffering and "natural evil" was perfectly timed as it came shortly after I got a long-desired book on just this subject, Death Before the Fall by Ronald Osborn. (Previously quoted here) The longer first part of the book is his somewhat heavy-handed answer to biblical literalists who refute evolution and an old earth using a strictly literal, scientific reading of Genesis 1-2 (which contained some interesting points but was not overall terribly useful for me), but the second part was his honest meditations on the problem of animal suffering. Given the magnitude of this question and its close relation with the "problem of evil", it's understandable that he doesn't try to state many firm conclusions, but he takes the discussion in a healthier direction that I overall agree with.

In structuring my own thoughts on animal suffering, and the "cosmic fall" hypothesis often used to explain it, I'm deliberately avoiding any discussion of the age of the earth and the truth of evolution (which I am planning on addressing later anyway). I'm instead trying to get into an "inner-biblical" understanding (that is, what the biblical authors and their contemporaries would have thought) as much as I can.

A note on Hebrew ontology/cosmology

Though many Christians would deny the reality of evolution (see how I promised not to mention it again?) as an unjustified encroachment of modern, scientific thinking on the truth of Scripture, scientific thinking can also affect our take on Scripture in more subtle ways. Consider, for instance, our generally rational view of the universe as operating by mathematically describable natural laws. The laws of mechanics explain everyday motion; the law of gravity explains why things fall, why the earth is round, and why it orbits the sun; the laws of electromagnetism account for much of our modern technologies; and so on. Of course most Christians are on guard against naturalism, or the view that these laws and the matter they describe constitute the whole of reality. We confess the existence of an immortal, invisible God who wrote these laws, is not controlled by them, and can suspend them as He wishes to accomplish His purposes. But these laws describe the way things "normally" behave. If we desire a strictly "biblical" ontology (philosophy of being), this will not do.

To begin with a point I make often, ANE ontology was not material (that is, something "existing" did not mean its consisting of a set of atoms with a position, orientation, and velocity) but functional; something "existed", to quote John H. Walton in his helpful description, "by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system", namely the well-ordered cosmos. ANE creation myths aren't concerned with the material origins of the cosmos so much as the functional origins. They primarily consist of a creator deity creating lesser deities (often by birth or other such analogues of human life) and giving them functions; to be the sky, the storm, the water, the fertile earth, etc. Again, these things are not thought of in material terms but in terms of their functions, their contributions to the working, ordered system of society.

Of course, we can't assume the ancient Hebrews thought just like their contemporaries; we know for a fact that they did not. I don't think they defined Yahweh strictly in terms of his functions (except maybe, circularly, the function of existing: "I AM WHO I AM." [Exo 3:14]), nor did they view Him as creating sub-deities to govern the functions of the cosmos. But it is more likely that the Hebrews did think of God as creating functionaries, not matter in the modern sense (albeit impersonal functionaries that totally obeyed His word). If we read Genesis 1 and 2 as an explanation of where the material sun, moon, earth and stars came from, why life exists on earth, etc., we are missing the precise point the text is trying to make: God created all that was created not to follow scientific laws that govern the universe, but to serve an ordained function in His ordered cosmos. It's a much more personal view of the universe than we have today.

Besides this, in the ancient Near Eastern cultures from which the ancient Hebrews arose, there was no distinction between the "natural" world in which we live, and the "supernatural" plane in which the gods lived. Walton explains how this works for the sun/sun-god:

The cosmic deities were manifest in that element of the cosmos with which they were associated, and they had some jurisdiction there. Sun gods were active in and through the sun—but they did not create the sun, at least in the material terms that we are used to thinking in. ... Existence is much more closely bound with function and role. Consequently, that the sun and sun god function together and that their roles coincide suggest a modified "creative" role. The birth of the sun god is coterminous with the origin of the sun(neither functions/exists without the other), thus explaining the oft-mentioned correspondence between theogony and cosmogony. Though the god is the controlling party in the functioning partnership, the god has no existence separate from, or outside, the sun. The sun is the manifestation of the god and the expression of the god's attributes. The god is the power behind the sun. ... In the ancient world the origins are inseparable from operations. Hence cosmogony, cosmology, theogony, and theology are all inextricably intertwined.

Again, there are big differences between the ANE and Hebrew views. Yahweh was seen, in stark contrast to the gods of the surrounding nations, as transcendent, not confined to any particular function, but the creator of all the functions. The second commandment (Exo 20:4-6) is not simply an application of the first but a rebuke to the absurd pagan notion that the true God who created everything could be depicted and contained in a figure created by creaturely hands. But there are also similarities: the modern, scientific view in which mathematical laws describe how the universe "normally" is unless God steps in bears little resemblence to the ancient notion of an immanent God "in [whom] we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Or the God who displays the knowledge of Him in the stars and makes the sun run its course like a man on his wedding day or a champion runner. (Psa 19) Or the God of Psalm 104 who makes the clouds His chariot, waters the mountains, grows grass for the cattle, and so on. Perhaps the great tragedy of the modern, scientific worldview is that it threatens not our capacity to believe in miracles, but the premodern sense of divine wonder that permeated all things.

The upshot (no, I wasn't just rambling): in the Hebrew cosmological view, the creation is not some semi-independent entity that normally runs "on its own" when God doesn't reach in. He doesn't have to reach in because He is already very much at home in governing His creation. Even man's exercise of his God-given free will is subject to this government, for sovereignty does not mean crowding out every other agent. Based on this, I assert that it does not make biblical sense to think about death the way we tend to—as an alien entity with a life of its own that somehow broke into the creation to "change the rules", cause havoc, and subvert God's dominion, outside His control, and that needs to be slain. To do so is to confuse biblical metaphor with the reality it describes.

Death (physical death) is described in the Old Testament more simply (and Augustinian-ly). It is simply the absence of life, specifically, the breath of life. Ishmael and the patriarchs each died by "breathing his last" and being gathered to his people (Gen 25:8,17; 35:29; 49:33; RSV, see also Jesus' death in Mar 15:37,39; Luk 23:46). God brings Adam to life by breathing the breath of life into him (Gen 2:7), and states man's mortality by saying, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh" (the words for "spirit" and "breath" are interchangeable in Hebrew, as in Greek). In Psalm 104:29, speaking of the animals, the Psalmist says, "when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust." In the Old Testament view, the only thing separating living creatures (man and the animals) from dust is the life-giving breath (Spirit) of God.

The "cosmic fall"

With that said, it should be a bit clearer why I think reading a "cosmic fall" into the Old Testament, before which everything was perfect, is nonsense. There is simply no way to interpret such an event as being a consequence of human sin—to blame it on us. There is no logical way to argue that the first sin could have somehow radically altered the physiological structure of lions, edited biological processes to allow for disease, changed meteorological and geological patterns to make natural disasters possible, and so on. It's nonsense. It simply does not follow at all.

The alternative (and the view my friends were arguing) is that God made such changes in response to Adam and Eve's sin. These changes accompanied His curses pronounced on them in Genesis 3:14-19; because of Adam's role as the representative head or God-appointed ruler over creation, and because of the awful seriousness of their sin, God was entirely just in imposing such a punishment. Man's fate became the fate of all creation; it was "subjected to futility" by God (Rom 8:20) so that all of creation would be redeemed along with sinful man (8:21). So the whole creation groans in travail along with us, (8:22-23) waiting for this redemption from the grievous evil wrought by the sin of Adam.

This is where expressing myself in writing helps; I disagree with this view so strongly and for so many reasons that they get jumbled up and become incoherent when I try to argue against it verbally.

First, this view, though justifying God's action in cursing the creation by invoking His "justice", forgets an extremely basic axiom of all justice: justice only punishes the guilty. No matter how much you play up the seriousness of Adam and Eve's sin, no matter how guilty you make them out to be (a separate matter that I won't get into here), this still in no way justifies punishing uncomprehending, morally neutral animals (much less plants and forces of nature) for the sins of the first humans, no matter how bad those sins were. There is not some threshold of "bad"-ness after which the punishment of a sin is justly allowed to spill over to others. The sheer obviousness of this makes it hard for me to understand how anyone could question it. You may protest (as theologians have done) that God struck the creation to teach man a moral lesson about his sin, but this in no way lessens the infraction of justice. It's like a father who, to teach his son a lesson about obedience and the combustibility of fire, throws the family cat into the furnace. The son will learn a lesson, of course; but what will he learn about his father?

Further, even besides this basic misunderstanding, this view depends on the misconception of "God's justice" as basically being His necessity to punish sin. it is not. As I have previously argued, God's justice is not something negative (opposition to sin and a determination to repay it) but something positive that is compromised or destroyed by sin and which God desires to restore. It is the fair, righteous, and compassionate administration of authority, of which dealing with wrongdoing is only one piece. God's justice is not "in tension" with His mercy; they are both blessings that He wants to bestow on His people and restore in His creation, but which require punishment for those who oppose them. God's "justice" is terrible for those who continue to rebel against Him, but it is so much more sweet for those who are His. We must not allow ourselves to forget this positive picture of justice as something to be desired and sought after, not just something Jesus saves us from so we don't have to experience it.

The upshot of this is that God's justice is not simply a license to take arbitrarily harsh measures against sin or the basis of divine voluntarism (the view that whatever God does, no matter how awful it seems to us, is automatically right because God is the one who does it). It does not stand on its own in conflict with His "nice" attributes like this. It is a part of His plan to redeem all things, so that Amos, in calling Israel to repent and turn back to God, can say that "But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." (5:24) The same Isaiah who prophesies that the Messiah "will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth" (42:4) gives one of the most beautiful passages linking the work of this Messiah to an act of restoration that goes beyond humans to the animal kingdom (emphasis added to this part):

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the girdle of his waist, and faithfulness the girdle of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse shall stand as an ensign to the peoples; him shall the nations seek, and his dwellings shall be glorious. In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant which is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. He will raise an ensign for the nations, and will assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth. The jealousy of E'phraim shall depart, and those who harass Judah shall be cut off; E'phraim shall not be jealous of Judah, and Judah shall not harass E'phraim. [Isa 11:1-13 RSV]

This is the background to my biggest objection to any divinely mandated "cosmic fall". God promises a redeemed "natural" world without predation, existing in harmony with humans rather than existing as a danger (as it did in the Old Testament) or as a resource to be exploited (as it all too often is today). These promises, however, are meaningless if the reason the natural world is in need of redemption is because God "broke" it. He would only be promising to undo what He did in the first place. The deep biological changes that would have to take place to allow the lion to eat straw would only be the reverse of the ones God made in bringing the lion into its present state. If our hope for the restoration of the created world is simply for God to return it to the way it was before He cursed it, what kind of a hope is that?

You may claim (with biblical justification) that God is not restoring the creation to exactly the way it was before; it will be better somehow, to His greater glory. But this still fails to answer how, exactly, it's to God's glory to arbitrarily afflict His creation only to restore it later. Sure, it's a display of His power, but if the ideal is a world without "natural evil", why would He actively move the creation away from this ideal? How does this enhance His glory? This is roughly analogous to answering Paul's question in Romans 6:1, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" with a resounding "Yes!", and the additional caveat that God is the one making us continue in sin so that His grace may abound. One of the rules for interpreting Scripture in the early church was that any interpretation must be worthy of God's character, and I contend that this interpretation is supremely unworthy of Him.

At this point, I'm reminded of another book I read recently, a chronicle by Austin Fischer about his journey into and out of Calvinism. It was a nice little read, and I like how he clearly explained his (still-valid) reasons for being a Calvinist to help show how Calvinists are not simply pretentious, joyless exegetes obsessed with God's sovereignty. He made clear that Calvinism is not a horrible heresy; it is a good way of understanding God's sovereignty and grace, but not the best way. I hope to do something similar with the "cosmic fall" view. Yes, it has its merits, both in how it portrays God as sovereign over creation and deeply concerned about sin, but it is not the best way to explain natural evil.

Fischer's central critique of Calvinism is a more sophisticated version of the old objection that it portrays a God who is no longer good. In response to Calvinist objections that God gets to define what 'good' is and that we are bound to listen and obey, Fischer asks, essentially: if God's definition of 'good' is, in the case of the reprobate, so completely foreign (that is, diametrically opposed) to our definition, how can we be sure that His definition of His other attributes, for instance His truthfulness or trustworthiness, are not also the opposite of our definitions? How can we be sure that His "truthful" speech in Scripture is not lies to us? How can we have any meaningful relationship with Him?

I think this critique applies equally to the doctrine of the "cosmic fall". If, in this instance, God's definition of "justice" is so completely contrary to ours, punishing the innocent for the sins of the guilty, how can we trust this justice? And, as Fischer objected, how can we know His Word is really trustworthy for us, etc.? Again, if God somehow gains greater "glory" (for this view also calls our understanding of His glory into question) by cursing creation and then restoring it, how can we hope that the restoration of all things will really be permanent? Why not continue breaking and fixing the cosmos for ever-greater glory, if God's glory is such an abstract and mathematical notion?

Understanding natural evil as being ordained by God also undermines any incentive we may have to act as "stewards" of creation; after all, God is the one who placed the animals in their plight of mortality, predation, and disease in the first place, and He is the only One who can do anything about it, so why should we try to improve it? Why not make the created world serve our interests with deforestation, pollution, factory farms, and the like and focus on the only thing that really matters, loving our neighbor and the salvation of souls? (I think that such instances of humans failing as stewards and denigrating creation are the only way in which human sin does negatively affect animals, and it is quite obviously our fault, not God's)

Finally, and perhaps most devastatingly, is the fact that not only is this "cosmic fall" never spelled out anywhere in Scripture; in much of the Old Testament, God Himself does not seem sorrowful about "natural evil". There is no hint that it is not the way things are supposed to be, or that it is God-wrought. Psalm 104's beautiful description of the natural world in all its "wild"-ness, including God providing meat for lions and sea monsters, is how Osborn opens his book.

Thou makest darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep forth. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they get them away and lie down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until the evening. O LORD, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teems with things innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan which thou didst form to sport in it. These all look to thee, to give them their food in due season. When thou givest to them, they gather it up; when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things. When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed; when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground. [Psa 104:20-30 RSV]

Likewise in Job:

"Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy the appetite of the young lions, when they crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert? Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones cry to God, and wander about for lack of food? [Job 38:39-41 RSV]

"The wings of the ostrich wave proudly; but are they the pinions and plumage of love? For she leaves her eggs to the earth, and lets them be warmed on the ground, forgetting that a foot may crush them, and that the wild beast may trample them. She deals cruelly with her young, as if they were not hers; though her labor be in vain, yet she has no fear; because God has made her forget wisdom, and given her no share in understanding. When she rouses herself to flee, she laughs at the horse and his rider. ... Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high? On the rock he dwells and makes his home in the fastness of the rocky crag. Thence he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it afar off. His young ones suck up blood; and where the slain are, there is he." [Job 39:13-18, 27-30 RSV]

And of course, the whole of Job chapter 41 about the "leviathan" (probably the crocodile), who is portrayed as the proud, terrible king of of the creatures, rather than man. In all of God's descriptions the tone is one of a proud parent giving a glowing description of his progeny, not of regretfully describing necessary measures taken in response to human sin. Likewise in Psalm 104 the tone strongly suggests that the Psalmist's description of the created world is working just as God intends it to, even the cycle of life and death in v. 29-30. The only suggestion that things are other than they should be is in the last verse, which is directed solely at human sinners and is distinct from the discourse on the harmonious creation.

Death before the Fall?

Osborn's thesis, as the title of his book suggests, is that death could have existed before the Fall. In other words, the pre-Fall creation was not the golden age of perfection that Augustine and later interpreters made it out to be. I have come to cautiously agree with this, fully acknowledging that it leaves much unanswered (but doesn't have the horrible implications of a divinely decreed cosmic fall).

First, the creation in Genesis is never called "perfect". It is called "good", or "very good". The Hebrew for these are tob and tob me'od. These words are elsewhere used to say that Rebekah was "very fair to look upon" in Gen 24:16, that God meant Joseph's brother's mistreatment of him "for good" in 50:20, that the promised land was "exceedingly good" in Num 14:7, that man should "take pleasure" (or "see good") in his toil in Ecc 3:13, and that "it is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." (Lam 3:27)

If Moses (or whoever wrote Genesis, depending on your theory) had wanted to say that the creation was perfect, he most likely would not used tob and tob me'od, for there is a Hebrew word for "perfect", tamim. So, using this word, Noah was "blameless in his generation" (Gen 6:9), the sacrificial offerings in Leviticus are to be "without blemish" (Lev 1:3,10; 3:1; 4:3; 5:18; 14:10), and in Deu 32:4 God's work is said to be "perfect". If the author really did view the pre-Fall creation as existing in a state of ontological perfection, why didn't he say so?

Or again, if the creation was perfect and exactly "the way it's supposed to be" before the Fall, how do you explain the presence of the snake (later interpreted as being Satan) in the garden? How did he get there? If he really was a fallen angel, who let him in? It's hard to argue that the creation was "perfect" if it contained this lying figure, whatever his identity.

In God's charge to the first humans in Genesis 1:28-29, He tells them to "subdue" the earth and "have dominion [rule] over" it. These are not nice words that describe the work of a gardener; they are militaristic words. The word for "subdue", kabash, is used to describe how the land of Canaan lay subdued before the advancing Israelites, King David's conquests (2 Sam 8:11), people being subjugated into slavery (2 Chr 28:10, Neh 5:5, Jer 34:11,16), trampling or treading down an opposing force (Zec 9:15), Haman "assaulting" Esther in the king's presence (Est 7:8), and God treading our iniquities underfoot. (Mic 7:19) In no other place in the Old Testament is kabash used to mean anything nice.

Likewise with the word for "rule" or "have dominion", radah. At best, it is used to describe the Lord or a prevailing nation exercising dominion over a subjugated nation; at worst, it is used to describe especially harsh rule in Leviticus 25:43,46,53 or the mission of Christ to "Rule in the midst of your foes!" (Psa 110:2) The picture of human's mission here in Genesis 1 is not merely a dignified, representative role as the "head" of a perfect, harmonious creation, but conquerors appointed to subdue an unruly creation (likewise the word for "helper" in Gen 2:18 does not simply mean a personal assistant, but usually speaks of God's much-needed support against a superior force, even enemy armies). In light of the tension between the garden and the land outside (was only the garden perfect?), it's quite possible to see Adam's mission as the expansion of the garden, the subjugation of the untamed earth.

The scope of the "curse" in Genesis 3 is much smaller than what we commonly present as the consequence of sin. The only animal cursed is the serpent, but even it is not forced to become a predator, but only told, "upon your belly you shall go, and dust [not mice] you shall eat all the days of your life." Eve's pain in childbirth is "greatly multiplied", leaving open the possibility that pain did exist before. (There is also the fact that no one has to explain to Adam and Eve what pain and death are, but this is only an argument from silence)

Finally, it is worth remembering, as I often say, that nowhere in the Old Testament do we find any mention of a generalized curse affecting all humans (much less all creation) reverberating from Adam's sin. Isaiah 43:27 does mention him, saying "Your first father sinned, and your mediators transgressed against me", but even here Adam is merely being used as a bad example for the later Israelites, not as the origin of "original sin" common to all.

Neither is death universally presented as the direct consequence of sin; says Osborn, "Death in classical Jewish thought is at times seen as a divine punishment and the consequence of sin, but at other times it is seen as the God-appointed fulfillment of full lives", as seen in the above-mentioned deaths of the patriarchs. Again, going back to the cosmological note, death in the Hebrew understanding is not some alien force that Adam unwittingly introduced to creation, but simply the withdrawal of God's Spirit, the breath of life. It is quite feasible that Adam and Eve were not created immortal intrinsically, but immortal conditionally on their continuing to eat from the tree of life (see Gen 3:22-24). Without continuing access to this tree, man went the way of all flesh, back to the dust from which he came. God's curse to Adam in Gen 3:19, "you are dust, and to dust you shall return", could be God merely reminding him of his finite, creaturely nature and dependence on God's active, sustaining grace for life rather than editing his biological makeup to make him start aging.

I'm not claiming that this case is airtight. There is still plenty that doesn't make sense to me. My goal is that you would, if only for a moment, remove your current interpretive lenses and try on some different ones. This different, admittedly more difficult and ambiguous view of the creation is, at least, one possible way to read the Old Testament—and, in my view, closer to the beliefs of the ancient Jews than our Augustinian reading of a perfect, deathless paradise destroyed by both human and divine action. It draws a closer parallel between creation and redemption (at least for the non-human world), seeing the latter as a continuation of the former to a state of completion that never was in the past.

And yet...

At this point, you are probably just about ready to throw your New Testament at my head. I have been sticking to the Old Testament in an effort to show how we can piously introduce later ideas into it. It is to those later ideas that we now turn. But before getting to Paul, it's worth noting, as I mentioned earlier, that God promises a redemption of all of creation not just in the New Testament, but also through Isaiah. Quoting the relevant passage again:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The sucking child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea. [Isa 11:6-9 RSV]

A similar theme is found later in Isaiah:

"For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be the offspring of the blessed of the LORD, and their children with them. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent's food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the LORD." [Isa 65:17-25 RSV]

These passages both describe a plan of redemption that goes beyond human sin to encompass all of creation, including what we would call "natural evil". Interestingly, you'll notice that people are still subject to death in the second passage, just at a good old age. (Was death per se a problem to Isaiah and his audience, or just untimely death? That is, does this passage describe an "intermediate state" of redemption, as is commonly supposed, or an earlier vision of the eschatological paradise?)

But, of course, it's primarily in the writings of Paul that death itself is revealed to be a great enemy of mankind, which Jesus defeated (or at least defanged) on the cross. In Romans 5 Paul typologically compares and contrasts Adam, the man through whom death came, with Jesus, the man through whom life comes. This passage is also the basis for a doctrine of "original sin".

Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned-- sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous. Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. [Rom 5:12-21 RSV]

Again, pay attention to what Paul does and does not say. He does say that death came into the world through Adam's sin, and that it "spread to all men". He does not say anything about whether it also reigned over animals through Adam, or whether "death" is some kind of dualistic spiritual power or simply the loss of man's conditional immortality made possible by perfect communion with God in the garden. The strong parallel Paul draws between sin and death makes it hard to believe he could also have meant his words to apply to natural evil.

Later in Romans, Paul makes clear that the promised redemption and glory which Christ will bring extend not just to us but to all creation, which was "subjected to futility" by God in hope of this redemption.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. [Rom 8:18-25 RSV] 

"Futility" here cannot be the same as "bondage to decay", or we again read Paul as saying, absurdly, that part of God's plan of redemption is simply fixing what He broke.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul makes very clear that death is "the last enemy to be destroyed", and destroyed it will be at the resurrection.

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. "For God has put all things in subjection under his feet." But when it says, "All things are put in subjection under him," it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one. ... Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. [1Co 15:21-28, 51-57 RSV]

In his great Christological hymn in Colossians 1, Paul speaks of how, through the cross, God reconciled to himself "all things, whether on earth or in heaven". As many as were created through Christ will be reconciled through Him.

He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities--all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. For in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. [Col 1:15-20 RSV]

And in his vision of the final victory, John sees the final destruction of death, and the future hope of eternal life without any death.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; [Rev 20:14 RSV] 

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." [Rev 21:1-4 RSV]

Reading these passages together, it seems pretty obvious that they share some common themes and promises. Paul draws close parallels between sin and death; they both entered the world through Adam, they were both decisively defeated (but not done away with) by Jesus' death and resurrection, and they will both be destroyed forever when Jesus finishes what He started. To Paul, they work together closely; the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23), the sting of death is sin (1 Cor 15:56), death came through sin (Rom 5:12), sin reigns in death (5:21)... Furthermore, given Paul's emphasis in 1 Cor 15 on both the physical and spiritual implications of Christ's resurrection, it seems unjustified to say that Paul drew a distinction between physical death and spiritual death, as I used to do. As with Isaiah, Paul envisions a redemption not just of human sinners, but of all creation to its creator.

In this light, it's easy to see how, reading the Old Testament through the lens of the New, an interpreter could extend Paul's dynamic of "death through Adam's fall, life and redemption through Christ's rise from the grave" to all creation: the whole cosmos "fell", in some sense, with sinful man, and now awaits redemption along with us. This view is based not so much on a specific text as on the desire for consistency; animals age, get sick, and are subject to the same kinds of dangers we are, so shouldn't they have the same source? Yet, as I tried to show earlier, such a "cosmic fall" could not be the direct consequence of Adam's sin, but only God's free response to it. But if the Old Testament perspective I argued for is correct and what we see as "natural evil" is part of God's original, intended creation, the "way things are supposed to be", why are we promised that it will be redeemed? Something doesn't add up...

Picking up the pieces

A few words on methodology. I'm not claiming for a moment to have the solution to the problem of evil, or even of natural evil. If Job is any indication, it lies beyond the human capacity to fully understand. So any solutions that we attempt to come up with are doomed to be both fragmentary and speculative. Fragmentary because they will not be ultimately conclusive or satisfying (I think Jesus Himself is the only truly satisfying answer to these questions), and speculative because in trying to assemble the biblical evidence into a coherent picture, it must add something. What the Bible tells us underdetermines a sure, complete conclusion about God's purpose in allowing sin and suffering. This is why throwing favored proof-texts back and forth doesn't get us anywhere; both parties try to go beyond what God has revealed while thinking theirs is the truly "biblical position".

I think something like this was going on in my small group. As I hope I have showed by this point, the Old and New Testaments (and even different parts of the Old Testament) don't provide a single, neatly cohering viewpoint. Job and some of the Psalms seem perfectly fine with animal suffering and natural evil; Isaiah and Paul promise an end to it. The Old Testament doesn't see Adam's sin as having a global, spiritual effect on his progeny; Paul does.What was happening in our discussion was that I was placing the Old Testament position more centrally, while my friends were emphasizing the New Testament position.

So what is the answer? Does the Old Testament take precedence because it came first? Does the New Testament view supersede the Old by virtue of being more recent? I hope you are as dissatisfied with either of these options as I am. Prioritizing the NT leads to the "cosmic fall" theory and all of its problems, whereas continuing my focus on the OT might have led to a passive acceptance of the creation as it is now, with all its imperfections. The Bible is the work of human authors, but in light of the Christian belief that "all Scripture is theopneustos" (2 Tim 3:16), we rightly expect God to communicate a single message rather than a list of options.

The way I do this is by looking for a progression from the earlier to later views, rather than simply saying that Paul gets to control how we read Isaiah, David, Moses, and Job. Currently, this progression looks something like this:

Job is probably the earliest book of the Old Testament to be composed, despite not having the earliest chronological setting. As I mentioned before, in God's speech to Job in chapters 38-41 we get a very positive view of the created order in all its wild-ness. The sea (associated in the ancient world with danger, monsters, and the unknown) is given boundaries, but still allowed to exist. God asserts knowledge of the gates of death and deep darkness (38:17; probably Sheol); mastery over hail, torrential rain, and thunderbolts; providence of food for both plant and meat-eating animals. Much of chapters 40 and 41 are taken up by what can only be described as God boasting in two particularly spectacular creatures, behemoth and leviathan, on whose identities we can only speculate. On hearing all of this, Job does not question the wisdom of any of it but only falls silent before the great Creator who ordains and sustains the cosmos, and provides for everything in it. Again, there is no hint of a "curse" that has fallen on the natural order, or that any of it is other than it should be.

Genesis, by its third chapter, makes clear that all is not as it should be in the creation. Humans, created to bear God's image and exercise His sovereign rule over His creation, sin against their creator and descend into self-destructive rebellion. This all happens in the first 11 chapters. But through the increases of sin, a glimmer of hope is preserved, first through Noah, and then Abraham and his line. The patriarchs become the main characters throughout most of Genesis as the recipients of God's promises to deal with sin and extend His blessing not just to their line but to "all the families [nations] of the earth". (Gen 12:3) God's promises to Abraham become the vehicle by which He will solve the problem of Genesis 3.

Moses, and Joshua afterwards, lead Abraham's descendants, now a large nation, to claim the promises given to him. Yet even before the Israelites reach the promised land of Canaan, we have to wonder whether they're really the solution God intended or just part of the problem. The big question through the subsequent books of history is whether Israel will remain faithful to God, who gave them the promises, or join with Adam in rejecting Him. Unfortunately they do not, and the curses promises in Deuteronomy 27 and 28 come true as the promised land is taken over by Assyria and Babylon, and the people taken into exile. All seems lost; Israel has failed in her faithfulness to God, and as a consequence lost both her land and the temple their God's presence dwelled among them.

The prophets, however, remind Israel that even if she has been unfaithful, God is still faithful to her, though displeased with her sin and determined to cleanse it. So they prophesy both of punishment at the hands of other nations (either beforehand, as it is happening, or in retrospect) and of God's future redemption of His people. But through the prophets we are also reminded that God's plans aren't just for Israel, but for all nations, as He said to Abraham. And, even more surprisingly, where Genesis and Job seemed to accept the created order, Isaiah foresees a coming redemption that goes beyond humans, to the animal kingdom and even the whole earth. Regardless, even after returning home, Israel senses that her exile is not over. They still live under foreign pagan rulers; the temple has not been rebuilt; her people still don't keep Torah faithfully.

Jesus, of course, is the ultimate fulfiller of the promises made to Abraham, the "faithful Israel" who demonstrated perfect obedience when no one else could. He ministered to both Jews and Gentiles—the promises were coming true for all nations! His death fulfilled Israel's conception of her continuing exile serving as an atoning and purifying sacrifice, and in His resurrection He showed the destiny of the redeemed Israel, the enjoyment of eternal life. He was the Messiah, though not the one Israel expected.

Paul, then, does much of the work of interpreting Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, showing how He fulfilled God's promises. He identifies Israel's continuing exile with the "curse" promised by Moses and presents Jesus as the one to break it, but more than that, to bring the promises of Abraham to all nations. This inheritance of redemption extends not just to the Jews, not just to humanity, but all of creation (Rom 8:19-23); Jesus is truly the savior of all. He never states it explicitly or expounds on it, but it is hard to deny that he saw this redemption extending even to animals and natural evil.

The way I put these viewpoints together, roughly, is that through the Bible, the hope for redemption remains ever since Genesis 3. But the expected scope of that redemption increases, from Israel to all the nations to the whole creation. Since the means by which the whole creation came to be in need of redemption are never spelled out, we seem to be faced with a dilemma. We can either say that God created the world "just right" (assuming that tob me'od really does mean "perfect") and, by implication, is the one who "broke" it, or that He created the world imperfect, with mortal animals, disease, natural disaster and such, so that the promises of a global creation are not a return to the way things were but something totally new.

The first option, that God made the creation perfect but caused it to fall in response to human sin, begs the question of why God would do such a thing and then reveal His master plan to redeem it, that is, to undo what He Himself did. But the second option, that God made the world imperfect, with death, disease, disaster and the like already there, runs into similar difficulties: if it was all the same to Him, why make the world worse than He could? Each explanation for natural evil is beset with such troubling implications.

But is there a third way?

Notice that neither of these patterns fits humans, at least in regard to sin. In the Jewish account we were created sinless, but no one would argue that God "caused" us to fall into sin. Rather, Adam and Eve were created with free will, the powers of self-choice and self-direction, and it was through the abuse of these God-given powers that they sinned. Even after the Fall, the fact that we have free will is not a bad thing, only that we misuse it to sin. Free will is assumed to be a unique gift to humans, and so the blame for the Fall of man can truly be placed on our shoulders, not God's. It's easy to see how God's creation of a self-directing, self-creating people can be to His greater glory than a world of automatons, but also how this freedom creates the possibility for creation to autonomously rebel.

What if the fate of man is analogous to the fate of the rest of creation? That is, what if the animal kingdom and even the forces of nature were also created with a degree of limited autonomy from their Creator? And the misuse of that freedom, rather than God's direct fiat, is the reason for natural evil? In other words, what if there was a "cosmic fall" of some kind, but it was not God's doing but the misuse of creaturely freedom, just like the human condition? It's crazy on its face, not highly supported by the biblical evidence and totally outside the scope of modern science, but then, so is the notion that God edited the biological structure of animals, introduced disease and decay, and even reorganized plate tectonics in response to human sin and then blamed it on us—and this explanation is much more consonant with God's character.

This is the view that Osborn finally, tentatively, settles on, and he explains it better than I can. (Underline = emphasis added)

In Genesis 1, there are implicit and explicit distinctions made between domestic and wild animals, or cattle and "beast[s] of the earth" as well as "creeping thing[s]". ... So there is a still-untamed and wild aspect to the creation. Adam and Eve must wrestle with this side of the created world and bring it more completely under God's dominion without overriding or exploiting its freedom. This is their high calling, and it may be a formidable task. The language of "subduing" in Genesis does not suggest pruning hedges. It suggests doing battle. Put another way, Adam's role is not simply that of a caretaker but of a redeemer. The pressing question is: Might this wildness in the creation that still needs to be "subdued" or redeemed, emerging from principles of freedom or indeterminacy built into the creation, have included death as well? Could God ever have looked at a world that included death or pain of any kind and pronounced it "very good"? And could an untamed and very good creation have included elements of ferocity and even predation? 

The first unmistakable death is recorded in Genesis 3:21—and it is by all accounts God who is responsible for it. ... Readers who hold to a high view of Scripture's authority must be very careful, then, about projecting their own notions of perfection and goodness onto the text and onto nature in the name of defending God's character. These readings may in fact pose far greater theological and moral perils than the idea of death of a kind before Adam's rebellion. To say that seasonal change and cycles of birth, life, and death in nature are, without qualification, "satanic", "evil", and things we will someday escape by leaving this veil of tears and illusion behind, may actually be an expression, in Jewish perspective, of ingratitude if not contempt for God's good creation and the earthiness of material existence.

Whatever its difficulties, the only position that makes any moral, religious or rational sense of human moral evil to my mind is the one that declares that the divine will wills human free will, and is both powerful enough and self-giving enough to create beings with the capacity to make meaningful, self-defining choices that are morally and spiritually significant. And in the same way we speak of moral evil as resulting from human free will, we should now somewhat analogously speak of natural evil and animal suffering as emerging from free or indeterminate processes, which God does not override and which are inherent possibilities in a creation in which the Creator allows the other to be truly other. "The Creator wills that his creation itself should affirm and continue his work," writes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "he wills that created things should live and create further life." And God continues to create in and through these processes while still allowing the creation to be as it is, each element and organism working out its inner principles according to its kind. 

Or as Terence Fretheim writes of "natural evils" such as earthquakes and floods, "the created moral order" is best grasped as "a complex, loose causal weave." God "lets the creatures have the freedom to be what God created them to be." At the same time, "the looseness of the causal wave allows God to be at work in the system in some ways without violating or (temporarily) suspending it." This opens the door to the possibility of suffering, whether from the sheer randomness of plate tectonics and bolts of lightning that set forests ablaze or from the rise of adaptations in some creatures that are harmful to others. We might summarize this view of the natural world ... by saying that God's way of creating and sustaining primarily takes the form of divine providence working within history, including natural history, rather than absolute miracle radically interrupting history from without.

Building off C.S. Lewis' speculations on animal sufferings in The Problem of Pain, Osborn looks at the situation in a slightly different way, drawing another parallel between the human and animal plights. Man did not fall on his own, but after the temptation of the serpent, traditionally identified with Satan. Could animal suffering and death, like the human Fall, be a result of the influence of a preexisting spiritual principle in opposition to God's good, creative purposes?

[quoting Lewis] "it is also worth considering whether man, at his first coming into the world, had not already a redemptive function to perform. ... It may have been one of man's functions to restore peace to the animal world, and if he had not joined the enemy he might have succeeded in doing so to an extent now hardly imaginable."

Nevertheless, there is a clear sense throughout the New Testament that we are living in a time of temporary dualism in which God has permitted parts of his creation—and not humans alone—the autonomy of radical freedom and even defiance, which God himself not must in some sense struggle against.

If we take this language not only of human but of cosmic redemption seriously, we will see that the gospel is not only good news to people—it is good news for creation in its entirety, including suffering and stupefied animals, subjected to chaos, cruelty, and death not by their own sinfulness, not by Adam's disobedience, nor again by God's design, but potentially before the arrival of humanity in a universe of unequal but mysteriously conflicting spiritual realities. ... Human as well as natural history now appears as the stage for a drama that has involved opposing principles of freedom and sovereignty for vastly longer than we may have first imagined. 

The advantages of Lewis' in some ways highly literalistic but at the same time nondogmatic speculations include the following: (1) he emphasizes competing principles of freedom rather than postfall miraculous refashioning of matter (whether demonic or divine) to account for the physical universe we now see before us—an approach that seems to this reader to offer greater theological and moral (not to mention scientific) coherence; (2) he offers a nondefensive and open approach to what scientists have to tell us about the evidences of the "book" of nature, without giving away to philosophical naturalists the conceit that they possess the full story; and (3) he exhibits a humble recognition that there is much we simply do not know or understand on both the scientific and biblical sides of the problem.

Lending credibility (if not support) to this hypothesis, remember that Paul does not say that Adam created or begat sin in Romans 5:12, but only that it came into the world through him. John teaches that Satan is the one who has "sinned from the beginning" (1 Jhn 3:8). And, of course, Satan is said to have been cast from heaven (Luk 10:18, Rev 12:7-9) and has (somehow) been given great power and authority over the world (Luke 4:6, Eph 2:2), traditionally identified as the "god of this world" (Jhn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4).

Conclusion

This view removes (or at least softens) the line we tend to draw between man and the rest of creation. Instead of making it a hapless casuality of (God's response to) Adam's fall, it sees their situations as more analogous. Both were created with a limited degree of freedom of self-direction; both were influenced by an opposing spiritual force that (for reasons entirely beyond our present scope) has been allowed access into, and even a degree of authority over, this world. This hypothesis of the origin of animal suffering and natural evil may be wrong; there may be a reading of the biblical evidence that does greater justice to both the Hebrew viewpoint and our modern concerns. But I am content with it for now, in part because it puts me in a place similar to that of Job; in the scope of these grand questions I now see myself as a mere extra on, in Osborn's words, "the stage for a drama that has involved opposing principles of freedom and sovereignty for vastly longer than we may have first imagined." It allows me to see God's mystery as it truly is, not as an excuse for behavior unworthy of His character but as the impossibility of the finite trying to comprehend the mind of the infinite.

The Bible's dual role as a divine and human book means that we can trust it to reveal not only truth about God, but also to reveal the true God, and we rightly keep it at the center of our discussion of natural evil, for it is, I'm convinced, something that God cares about. But at the same time, it is not a magic book or answers or 8-ball that gives us a neat answer to any question we may think to ask of it; it may turn back and question us and our questions. The question "why is there animal suffering and death?" is simply not directly answered anywhere in Scripture, so evidently God did not consider it crucially important to clarify. We can search for a composite answer, in the end, answer or no, we must adopt Job's silence and not make a bigger issue of this question than is warranted.

A (not so) quick guide to finishing Revelation less confused than when you started

For the final paper in my master's biblical hermeneutics class, I was tasked with writing a paper exploring and interpreting Revelation 12. (The following is a dramatization of real events in the style of Jewish apocalyptic literature) When I saw this assignment, I fell down before the whole assembly of my peers and professors and wailed. The earth split open, the mountains quaked and crumbled, and the stench of burning sulfur poured up from the depths; a third of the world suffocated at the sulfur. The angels holding back the waters of the deep were commanded, "No more!", and they let the waters roll up over the great cities of the world, and a third of them were flooded. Then I was in the Spirit and heard a voice saying, "Fear not." I looked, and there before me stood an angel in front of an open door. He took me through the door into the sixth heaven and told me the true meaning of Revelation 12, saying, "You must teach this to students, and professors, and kingdoms, and nations." Then I saw coming down from heaven the perfect paper on Revelation 12, and I took it and submitted it.

A most troublesome book

Well, writing that was surprisingly fun. I can see why apocalypse was such a popular genre among second-temple Jews. But it probably reminds you of why Revelation might just be the most difficult book in the Bible for modern audiences. Chances are you either steer clear of it as much as possible, or you take an unhealthy level of interest in it. If you do pay a healthy amount of attention to it, it's probably to the letters to the churches in chapters 2-3 (which can be interpreted and applied more like the epistles), the exaltation of Jesus as the slain-and-risen lamb in 4-5 (which is a depiction of the glory of God similar to Isaiah 6 and acts as a nice illustration of Philippians 2:9-11), or the defeat of evil and the ultimate restoration of all things in 20-22 (to which my church frequently turns for the ending of the "gospel story"), skipping all that confusing stuff in between.

Unfortunately, Revelation 12 was right in the middle of all that confusing stuff in between, so I had to address it. As my description indicates, I was pretty nervous about this paper, so I checked out three commentaries from rather diverse viewpoints to help me make head or tail of it. Heavenly vision or no, the paper went well and is on this blog if you're interested. Before I have to return the commentaries, I wanted to share some of the things I learned from my study of Revelation.

When I thought in the past about the rather colorful sequences of events depicted in most of Revelation, I assumed they were all describing, in some confusing symbolic way, "the end times", and it was our job as interpreters to try to understand how they would play out, like figuring out the best way to put together a really difficult puzzle. As I learned in one of the commentaries, though, this is just one of four ways to read most of Revelation, called futurism. (Wikipedia has a good summary of the diversity of viewpoints this book has led to) Those four main views are:

Preterism: Revelation 1-19 describe events that happened shortly after the writing of the book (probably around the end of the first century AD).
Historicism: They describe events that took place (or still are taking place) in church history. This view was popular among Reformers who thought the Pope was the Antichrist/false prophet and the Roman Catholic Church was "Rome"/"Babylon".
Futurism: They describe events that will take place in the "end times", a period of history future to the apostle and still future for us.
Idealism: They don't describe historical events, but allegorically represent spiritual truths that are fulfilled continually.

A mixture of these views is also possible (preterism/idealism, futurism/historicism, etc.). Somewhat better-known, there are three views regarding the "millennium" described in Revelation 20, when Satan will be imprisoned and the faithful will reign with Jesus, and its relative ordering with other events that are supposed to take place.

Premillennialism: After a gradual deterioration of the world, Jesus will bodily return to rule with His followers for a thousand years. This is further divided into subviews regarding the relative timing of this return with the "great tribulation" mentioned in Revelation 7:14. This, again is the view expressed in the Left Behind books.
Postmillennialism: Jesus' thousand-year reign with the believers will be only spiritual in nature, preceded by an improvement in conditions and response to the gospel in the world by the work of the church. The millennium may have already begun. After the thousand years, Jesus will come bodily to judge everyone.
Amillennialism: The "thousand years" is to be interpreted symbolically or nonliterally, and doesn't correspond to an actual period of history.

My journey through Revelation

From the options I listed, it should be clear that Revelation is a book with a lot of possible latitude for interpretation in many places (i.e. most of the book). Many of the conclusions we draw from studying it should be considered theories, not doctrines. So while I would now describe my reading of John's last book as amillennial and preterist/idealist and can provide reasons for seeing it as I do, I can't dismiss futurism, premillennialism, or any of these other readings offhand as "unbiblical". I know and respect far too many people who would disagree with me to do that.

Still, the commentary I read with which I now agree most felt to me like a breath of fresh air. Looking back, I think I had gotten very tired of how futurist readings of Revelation seem to produce more heated debate, speculation, and theological platform-building (which I really don't think John was going for). Maybe your experience with Revelation has been different; maybe you have found reading it in a futurist way to be fruitful. I'd love to hear about how. I was simply searching for a way to read this book that did it justice, and I couldn't seem to find it in the traditions I grew up with.

So I stayed restless about this book because read properly, Revelation has the potential to be the most awesome book in the Bible (I really mean that). It's full of scenes that would be over-the-top even for Michael Bay, the ultimate cosmic battle between good and evil at the end of the age, and depicts Jesus as the awesome, evil-destroying Prince of Peace who fulfills all of God's promises of faithfulness and wins the battle for the fate of the cosmos. I want to read Revelation and get hit in the face with all that until I can't help but worship the God who authors it all.

With that said, I was able to identify seven guidelines to reading Revelation in a way that is more helpful than confusing; hopefully they'll work for you even if you don't come to the same conclusions as me.

1. Mind the genre (and context) of Revelation
Or rather, genres; it incorporates elements of the prophetic, epistle, and apocalyptic genres. The one of these that gives us the most trouble is apocalyptic ("apocalypse" is just the transliteration of the Greek for "revelation"). Apocalyptic literature is a distinctly Jewish genre that usually involves dreams and visions set on both heaven and earth, bizarrely symbolic language, and formal stylization such as the symbolic use of numbers and sequences. It had a similar goal to the Old Testament prophets (hailing from the age after the "true" prophets had stopped speaking) of looking forward to God's ultimate deliverance and redemption of His people, but unlike the prophets was written instead of oral. Gordon Fee says:

Part of the reason for this was that apocalyptic was born during the time of powerful world empires, which was often a time of persecution for the Jewish community. These writers, therefore, were engaged in a kind of subversive literature, prophesying cataclysmic judgments on their persecutors—God's own enemies—who at the time of writing appeared so powerful that there was no hope for their collapse except by divine intervention. Thus these writers no longer looked for God to bring about their redemption within history; rather, they pictured God as bringing a cataclysmic end to history, which also ushered in a redemptive conclusion for God's people.

John J. Collins defines it:

"Apocalypse" is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.

If possible, reading some other Jewish apocalypses helps greatly to give a larger sample of this genre. Its closest peer in the Bible is the ending of Daniel, which Revelation repeatedly references.

Most apocalypticists, to add credibility to their vision, would write under the name of a famous Old Testament figure and mention how they had been commanded to "seal up" their words until the age of the actual author, but John speaks not in the guise of an established prophet but as a Christian prophet contemporary to his audience. His revelation differs from others in two key ways: John (we think, with support from textual evidence) does not write under a pseudonym, and John is not commanded to "seal up" his vision for a later age (he is explicitly commanded not to in 22:10). Says Fee: "John is not simply anticipating the End, as were his Jewish predecessors and contemporaries; rather, he knows the End to have begun with Jesus, through His death, resurrection, and ascension."

Considering the context of Revelation (historical, cultural, literary) is also important. Though writing in the style of Jewish apocalypticists, John's immediate literary context is unquestionably the Bible (that is, the Old Testament), which he references almost constantly in his imagery. Many of the characters and symbols he uses are from Daniel; some of the plagues he describes are from the Exodus, and that's just scratching the surface. Lots of his depictions of the Father and Jesus are also from the Old Testament, to emphasize the ultimate fulfillment of God's promises therein. Others of his symbols were rooted in his culture, from the obvious (Rome, the city set on seven hills, becomes a woman on a beast with seven heads) to the obscure (the hordes described in 9:16-19 might be mounted Parthian archers?). In any case, it's important to ask ourselves what John's imagery would have meant to his original audience, rather than simply what it seems to mean to us (more on that later).

I'll try not to make the other items this long...

2. Keep in mind the purpose of Revelation

As I hinted above, I seriously doubt that John wrote Revelation to incite bouts of debating, disagreement, and speculation. I hope we can all agree on that, at least. I see the first few verses as a mission statement: John does say that God gave it to him "to show to his servants the things that must soon take place" (1:1), but in 1:3 says "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near."

So in other words, while part of John's purpose is to tell his audience about what will take place, simply knowing what John is saying, much less fitting it into a theological grid of some kind, is not the point. Rather, he intended his letter to be read aloud, understood, and kept. This means he intended this letter to spur a certain action or attitude in his audience, which (from the rest of the book) seems to be an increased, steadfast faith that loves Jesus and hopes in His coming even unto death. I believe John wrote the book to encourage the believers in these first-century churches by setting their lives and their persecution in the context of the cosmic battle between good and evil, and by showing them the eventual outcome that their faith is leading them to

So, even though we aren't the target audience of Revelation, we should still seek to fulfill John's purpose in writing it. I believe John wrote in order to be understood by his audience, not to set a puzzle for later generations of interpreters to "figure out".

3. Focus on what is clear

Rather than what is unclear or obscure. (Of which there is plenty) This calls for epistemological humility, realizing that a great many people smarter than you may disagree with (say) your interpretation of the locusts in Revelation 9 as Apache helicopters. Attach a degree of uncertainty to your conclusions. Be especially careful about staking too much or building any doctrine on top of unclear passages (let alone textually disputed passages).

4. Consider John's theological perspective

I also refer to this as the prophetic "God's-eye view". John places a high value on depicting the events of Revelation as God's doing, either directly or through the "theological passive", a common device for pious Jewish authors wishing to avoid using God's name explicitly. For example, in Revelation 12:14: "But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle". The implied giver here is probably God Himself.

I think this kind of prophetic speech has a different effect on us in our more intellectual, dualistic culture than it did in John's day. We see all these seals being broken, trumpets being blown, plagues being sent, cosmic battles being fought, and assume that these events, if they are fulfilled physically, will be obviously miraculous or supernatural. In other words, we view God "doing" something exclusively from something being done by humans. Or, more mathematically, divine agency and human agency are mutually exclusive. I disagree with this assumption.

A helpful example: the ministry of Jesus. God chose to come to earth as a human, to live, breathe, eat, grow, and feel as a human. While Jesus didn't shy away from doing miracles, this is quite different from saying His whole life was one continuous miracle, or that He was some kind of energy being in the sky beaming peoples' sins out of them, or some kind of giant hand sticking out of the sky. This kind of imagery is much more like we see in the apocryphal gospels than in the genuine ones. In the life of Jesus we see the Father most clearly (Jhn 14:9), but we also see divine agency and human agency coming together perfectly and beautifully.

If I may analogize for a moment, I think a better explanation is found in the world of theater (or literature). For example, the plot of Hamlet is driven by greed, ambition, revenge, love, grief, and an intricately woven tapestry of human actions and passions. People have spent centuries analyzing it. Yet on another level, the events of the play can be understood as driven not by the actions of the characters, but by the writing of Shakespeare, and his own thoughts and intentions in writing the play. So, John's prophetic writing is written to his fellow players to lift their eyes from their immediate surroundings, to pull aside the curtain, to remind them that they stand on a vast cosmic stage, and that ultimately God is in control of the plot. What is, on one level, a human action is, on another, part of God's script. Our actions aren't free or divinely determined. They are both. If we bifurcate our everyday human perspective from John's theological one, we are like actors debating the motivations of the playwright instead of saying their lines.

One example from Revelation where I found this helpful is in what is sometimes referred to as the "Great Tribulation", beginning in chapter 6. Previously I saw this as God arbitrarily killing people with natural disasters of all kinds that might still be referred to today as "acts of God". As one commentary offered the possibility that, for instance, the four horsemen might be describing the persecution of Christians by human (perhaps Roman) persecutors who would later face justice themselves, all under the sovereignty of God. That the parts of Revelation that previously seemed random or bizarre might be theologically oriented descriptions of human actions is a very compelling theory to me.

5. Remember our bias as modern readers of an ancient document
I think of two ways this plays out especially in our reading of Revelation: we generally assume that the most faithful interpretation of Scripture is a literal one, and we believe that a crucial part of "understanding" a passage is figuring out its informational content. By the first, I mean that we can feel almost bound to read passages literally and concretely, feeling as though we're somehow evading God's word if we don't. The frequent debates you may hear on "whether to read the Bible literally, or metaphorically, etc." are an example of this. Not only are we looking for a simple rule to follow in blanket fashion for interpreting scripture (another trademark of modern thought; everything proceeds from simple laws and rules), we consider a strictly literal reading to be plausible. I can assure you that before the enlightenment, people didn't wonder whether to read the Bible literally or metaphorically: they chose both ways, and threw in a moral and anagogical sense to boot!

How this plays out, especially in a book like Revelation, is that we discern a literal reading for some bit of apocalyptic imagery, like that exactly 144,000 celibate Jews will be saved in the Tribulation in chapter 14, or that the faithful will reign with Christ bodily for 1,000 calendar years, and then turn believing it into this macho test of faith, even if it raises far more questions and concerns than it answers. We assume that details that look concrete must be concrete, even if they are serving a very different purpose for John, like numerical symbolism or a citation of an Old Testament prophet for continuity.

The other way is that we focus on the informational content of Scripture. We ask what it can tell us, what we can learn from it, maybe view it as "biblical data" to add to our body of biblical knowledge. The result is that we keep thinking about theology without getting around to living it. I know of no one more guilty of this than myself. What this means for Revelation is that John's original purpose of exhorting and encouraging churches in their faith all too often gets drowned out in the quest to figure out what all of his apocalyptic storytelling is really about. We do very well to remember 1 Corinthians 8:1b, which I think certainly applies here: "This 'knowledge' puffs up, but love builds up."

The problem with both of these assumptions is that they are anachronistic. They read our modern ways of thinking back onto ancient people who didn't share them. We think about how the cosmic signs in 6:12-17 are possible according to modern science, or whether the 24 elders in ch. 4-5 are angels or elect humans and the implications of either for pretribulationism, when these concerns were simply not on the radar of John or anyone in his audience. We must be willing to set aside our assumptions about what the Bible says when they keep us from it. Which leads right into the most important point...

6. Read with an incarnational hermeneutic
I am truly indebted to Peter Enns for tackling the questions that were undermining my faith, and for transforming how I approach the Bible. Central to his approach is the incarnational hermeneutic: the idea that Scripture is fully human and fully divine, just as Jesus was. Neglecting either side of it will lead to problems. In general, and especially in a book like Revelation, evangelicals tend to neglect the human side.

Here's how this question of the nature of Scripture applies with Revelation (this summarizes several of the previous points): Revelation, like the rest of the Bible, is "God's word" written "for all believers everywhere", and since God's words will never pass away (Mat 24:35, Mar 13:31, Luke 21:33), it must be speaking to us just as it did to its late first-century audience. (This is part of the reason the futurist reading is so compelling) Therefore, we feel justified in reading Revelation in anachronistic ways because it speaks the same eternal spiritual truth to us as it did to the churches in Asia Minor, and the same Spirit will guide us into all truth (Jhn 16:13) just as He guided them.

But, applying the incarnational analogy, we recall that the human side of Revelation: that it was given to first-century Christians in a specific cultural and historical context, through a uniquely second-temple genre of literature that we are largely unaccustomed to today. It does not speak independently to us, but rather through this cultural lens. Whatever we do with it today must take into account the "situated" form in which it was written and what it meant to its original audience, not just what it means to us. We must follow what John does with its details to the conclusions he draws before we can apply them to our own context. This will go a long way towards alleviating the anachronistic ways we approach Revelation.

7. Consult multiple commentaries
This point is probably the simplest, but is also the most important (I lied about the last one). Revelation is probably the book of the Bible for which commentaries are most necessary. Whatever you do, if you want to seriously study Revelation, don't go it alone, or even with a single commentary. Ideally, get several that express a variety of views and positions to weigh. I did this as a happy accident in my own study.

Postscript
It's "Revelation", not "Revelations". Or, if you like, "The Apocalypse of Saint John".