Question
How we can understand the later chapters of Revelation (15-17 for example) where John is shown the bowls of wrath, etc. How does this fit with our understanding of a loving God who is not wrathful?
Response
I'm not an expert on Revelation, but I have two connected thoughts on reading the passages related to responsibility and causation (which are possibly the two dynamics necessary to untangle when interpreting what is meant by divine wrath):
1. The wrath poured from the bowls seem more a revelation of the "wrath" embedded in our systems and underpinning human failings (that's what the symbols reflect anyway). The third bowl (vv.4–7) is, for example, revealing the bloodshed from our human violence ("...because they shed the blood of saints and prophets...") that is so excessive it flows into our streams and rivers.
2. The wrath poured from the sixth bowl calls into question a literal divine causation, since if we contend that God causes the evil of the king, he must also have been the cause behind the demonic spirits in v. 14. We rightly have a difficult time attributing divine causation to evil spirits or demons, but for some odd reason are okay with divine causation of evil people.
The real tension in terms of causation and responsibility that's difficult to resolve occurs in Rev. 17:17, but of course, those who favour retributive justice and violence must take into consideration their own internal logical tension between the apparent divine causation that would absolve any evil king (or anyone) of responsibility, thus calling into question whether they have any actual guilt that warrants our retribution.
Richard Bauckham also offers the following in his The Theology of the Book of Revelation:
"The judgments of chapters 16–19 are primarily aimed at destroying the systems — political, economic and religious — which oppose God and his righteousness and which are symbolized by the beast, the false prophet, Babylon, and the kings of the earth. But those who support these systems, who persist in worshipping the beast, heeding neither the call to worship God nor the threat to those who worship the beast (14:6–11), evidently must perish with the evil systems with which they have identified themselves." (Bauckham, p.102)
Bauckham also writes of the grace of warnings in the progressively severe judgments from the seal-openings affecting a quarter of the earth, the trumpets affecting a third, and the bowls finally offering total destruction. I would, along with Bauckham, suggest that these are progressive warnings that the systems that humans created, are entangled in, and experience — the wrath reflected in the progressive severity of our systems that escalate until total self-annihilation. This description is also with that caveat from Bauckham that "the highly schematized portrayal of the judgments depicts their theological significance. It cannot be meant as a literal prediction of events."
Since the focus and target of wrath are the political, economic, and religious systems, it is ultimately the systems that destroy those entangled in them ... especially since it's these same systems that ultimately targeted the slain Lamb. His death was caused by these expressions of death in order for him to access death and ultimately destroy death.
But ultimately, I would suggest that the repentance that these expressions of judgment are meant to induce are warnings for those of us who also need to repent (all of us) — i.e., cultivate an inner transformation or change in our nous — of our allegiance and entanglement in these same systems, systems that compel us to read these passages irresponsibly as justifications for our own violence in this world based on a skewed understanding of God's character. An inner transformation is always needed as our posture to the text.
I would recommend Bauckham's entire book as well as Gorman's Reading Revelation Responsibly, but especially the section, "Divine Holiness in Judgment" (pp. 40ff.) in Bauckham's book and Chapter 8 in Gorman's book. Bauckham especially connects this wrath/judgment to God's holiness and worship in ch. 4 and Is. 6 as necessarily and ineluctably overwhelming all evil and death in the world; this "judgment" is therefore a (super)"natural" consequence of the juxtaposition between God's holiness and our participation in death, much like judgment as Light in Jn. 3.
Comments