{"id":906,"date":"2019-08-28T16:12:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=906"},"modified":"2019-08-28T16:47:07","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T21:47:07","slug":"apocalypse-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/08\/28\/apocalypse-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Apocalypse Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In the common vernacular, the term ‘apocalypse’ is used to refer to the end of the world or some imagined future in which the present world societal structures have been destroyed or ceased to exist.\u00a0 In fiction, this was typically some sort of nuclear or environmental catastrophe, though in recent years it has tended more toward disease outbreak in general and one which turns humans into zombies in particular.\u00a0 This popular usage has come through a particular interpretation of the final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, or the book of Revelation.\u00a0 Centuries of interpretation which holds that this text, or at least the greater part of it, describes events which will take place at the end of the world have connected its title to eschatological disaster.\u00a0 As the more common English name of the book demonstrates, however, the word ‘Apokalypsis’ in Greek identifies the contents as something which has been revealed.\u00a0 Certainly, the revelation of future events would fall into this category.\u00a0 Also, incontrovertibly, the very end of St. John’s text is describing future events.\u00a0 But there is nothing in the definition of the word which indicates that all of that which is revealed must be about the future.\u00a0 It can as easily refer to a revelation regarding the present or even the past.<\/p>\n

Biblical scholars in recent decades have defined apocalyptic as a genre of literature generally considered to have come into existence in the latter half of the Second Temple period in the Near East.\u00a0 It is not entirely confined to the Jewish milieu and due to certain thematic elements (such as dualism of light and darkness, etc.), many attempts have been made to associate its emergence with the Persian period of Judea’s history and the influence of Zoroastrianism.\u00a0 In this respect, however, it is important to distinguish between metaphysical dualism as it presents itself in Persian cosmology of good and evil (the god Ahura Mazda and his shadow self) or in Platonic philosophical schema which will emerge religiously in forms of Gnosticism and ethical dualism as it is present in Jewish literature.\u00a0 In Jewish literature, powers of light and darkness, good and evil, operate not directly in the world in contest or opposition to one another, but rather act through human agents, their children, to bring good and light into the world or, alternatively, death and destruction.\u00a0 The powers of evil are defeated by the defeat of their agents and their inability to then make their will a reality through their agents’ works.<\/p>\n

The core of what is considered to be apocalyptic literature is visionary literature.\u00a0 A usually human figure is taken to a heavenly realm and there receives revelatory visions about the past, present, and future which explain events by giving spiritual context.\u00a0 The primary Biblical examples of this type of literature are the Apocalypse of St. John and the central portions of the book of Daniel, though there are elements of it in other latter prophets.\u00a0 Fourth Ezra, part of the Slavonic canon of the Old Testament, is also in this form.\u00a0 In Second Temple Jewish literature, there is a broad range of such literature, the most famous example of which is likely 1 Enoch.\u00a0 First Enoch is a composite text, made up of several sub-books likely compiled over time.\u00a0 This literature continued into the early Christian period with texts such as the Apocalypse of St. Peter and the Shepherd of Hermas.<\/p>\n

Apocalyptic is treated, as mentioned, as a genre of literature.\u00a0 This is based on a particular set of presuppositions.\u00a0 The first, of course, is that these texts are literary fabrications.\u00a0 An author has certain ideas which he desires to communicate and can choose to do so in a variety of genres.\u00a0 He can tell a theological history.\u00a0 He can write a work of fiction playing out those themes.\u00a0 He can write a treatise exploring those themes.\u00a0 He can write a tale of some important figure of the religious past receiving a vision which symbolically conveys these ideas.\u00a0 This is not only a matter of presuming that there was no such vision, as even most Christian scholars would tend to think regarding the non-Biblical texts in this category.\u00a0 It separates the composition of these documents from religious experience.\u00a0 It assumes a modern, materialist mindset in which theology and religion in general are primarily intellectual exercises revolving around dogmatic principles or interpretations of same.\u00a0 The lived religious experience of the author is excluded from consideration because the reality of that experience, really of any experience, of a spiritual reality is excluded from consideration.<\/p>\n

If we listen to these texts seriously, however, they do not claim to be the revelation of certain ideas or principles of theology.\u00a0 They do not take the form of ‘seven secrets’ imparted to a chosen individual by a divine being.\u00a0 Rather, these texts purport to reveal the invisible spiritual world which is one element of the created order.\u00a0 Encounters with this spiritual realm were regular and accepted in the ancient world.\u00a0 These encounters happened at specific places, both in terms of geography and in terms of temple structures.\u00a0 Religious ritual, which is the primary means by which human persons interact with this realm, was the center of ancient human life, not only religious life.\u00a0 Religion was therefore not an intellectual exercise but a practical one consisting of concrete actions in the world and structures given to the life of human persons.\u00a0 The sum total of these encounters and interactions are what constitutes a person’s religious experience.<\/p>\n

Apocalyptic is neither an intellectual exercise of conveying meaning through symbolism nor a purported religious autobiography.\u00a0 Rather, it goes further to claim to be removing the cover or veil from the spiritual realm in order to fully reveal it to the reader.\u00a0 It purports to describe the reality behind religious experience, but also to fully reveal reality itself.\u00a0 Spiritual beings and events stand in cause and effect relationships with events in the material, physical world.\u00a0 Apocalyptic, therefore, claims to not only give religious truths or explain religious practices but to reveal the world, the created order, as it truly is in all of its fullness.<\/p>\n

When apocalyptic is treated as a genre, the genre is generally defined by scholars in terms of certain features.\u00a0 These include the aforementioned dualisms, visions, journeys to the heavens or the underworld, etc.\u00a0 It has become increasingly popular to then look for these features in other Biblical texts and describe apocalyptic elements in the Gospels, St. Paul’s epistles, and elsewhere.\u00a0 This understanding of apocalyptic literature has led to the Johannine literature, particularly St. John’s Gospel, moving from being considered the least Jewish of the Gospels to now being considered possibly the most.\u00a0 This is still, however, described in terms of apocalyptic features or apocalyptic influences being presented in the works of certain Biblical authors. because the presuppositions regarding apocalyptic authors are also held for Biblical authors.<\/p>\n

So, for example, St. Paul is understood as an interpreter of the Hebrew scriptures and theological thinker who makes certain intellectual connections based on interpretations gained through study.\u00a0 Scholars study St. Paul’s intellect to attempt to understand how he thinks.\u00a0 This is not, however, how St. Paul presents himself.\u00a0 St. Paul bases his self-understanding in his prophetic call, his direct encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.\u00a0 This was not an isolated incident.\u00a0 Twice more in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul directly interacts with Christ who appears to him (Acts 22:17-21; 23:11).\u00a0 He describes at least one more visionary experience (2 Cor 12:1-4).\u00a0 He is adamant that the gospel which he preaches, involving past, present, and future events in the life of Christ to which he was not an eyewitness, was communicated to him by Christ himself, not by men (Gal 1:11-12).\u00a0 For St. Paul, the gospel is a revelation of invisible spiritual reality grounded in his direct experience of the spiritual realm.<\/p>\n

What is true of St. Paul’s epistles is true for all of the scriptures.\u00a0 What are Genesis 1-11 if not visionary material revealed to the author regarding the spiritual realm at the creation of humanity and the beginnings of human civilization?\u00a0 Portions of Numbers and Deuteronomy, all of Joshua, and portions of Samuel\/Kingdoms describe the gigantomachy, the spiritual reality underlying ancient wars.\u00a0 The remainder of Samuel and Kings (Kingdoms) pays scant attention to many of the most historically important regents, pointing to other official texts which recount these things, in order to focus on the spiritual dimension, including a lengthy digression from the royal narrative to follow the lives of Elijah and Elisha, two itinerant prophets.\u00a0 The book of Acts recounts the appearances of Christ to St. Paul in some detail, but ignores the reign of terror of Caligula, even where that reign created controversy surrounding the Jerusalem temple.<\/p>\n

All of the scriptures are apocalyptic in that they describe the otherwise unseen spiritual realm as it encountered and interacted with the history of the people of God.\u00a0 It is this fact to which the Fathers refer in their mode of exegesis.\u00a0 When they speak of the spiritual and material levels of interpretation of the text, these correspond to the material and spiritual realms of reality.\u00a0 As they so often point out, if the material level of the text is read and the spiritual disregarded, as is de rigueur for modern interpretation, the text becomes incoherent.\u00a0 The spiritual interpretation of the text is not a flight from the text, an attempt to move away from or beyond it.\u00a0 Rather, it is an attempt to interpret and apply the text’s revelation of the spiritual realm, which is the primary level and focus of the text.\u00a0 What is often mistaken for allegory is, in fact, a literal reading of the spiritual sense of the text.<\/p>\n

Finally, it is for this reason that the text of scripture is treated as it is within the Orthodox Church.\u00a0 The one who is prepared to read scripture is not the one who has done advanced linguistic or historical study.\u00a0 Rather, the one who is prepared to read scripture, its reader par excellence, is the one who shares the religious experience of the authors of scripture in encounter and interaction with the spiritual realm.\u00a0 For those who do not share this experience, scripture is read and proclaimed within the structure of ritual as a central point of interaction with the spiritual realm.\u00a0 The Divine Liturgy is an apocalyptic act and the scriptures are there read as apocalyptic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the common vernacular, the term ‘apocalypse’ is used to refer to the end of the world or some imagined future in which the present world societal structures have been destroyed or ceased to exist.\u00a0 In fiction, this was typically some sort of nuclear or environmental catastrophe, though in recent years it has tended more toward disease outbreak in general and one which turns humans into zombies in particular.\u00a0 This popular usage has come through a particular interpretation of the final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, or the book of Revelation.\u00a0 Centuries of interpretation which holds that this text, or at least the greater part of it, describes events which will take place at the\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"Apocalypse Now - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/08\/28\/apocalypse-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apocalypse Now - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the common vernacular, the term ‘apocalypse’ is used to refer to the end of the world or some imagined future in which the present world societal structures have been destroyed or ceased to exist.\u00a0 In fiction, this was typically some sort of nuclear or environmental catastrophe, though in recent years it has tended more toward disease outbreak in general and one which turns humans into zombies in particular.\u00a0 This popular usage has come through a particular interpretation of the final book of the New Testament, the Apocalypse of St. John, or the book of Revelation.\u00a0 Centuries of interpretation which holds that this text, or at least the greater part of it, describes events which will take place at the\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2019\/08\/28\/apocalypse-now\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-08-28T21:12:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-08-28T21:47:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2019\/08\/2b193183287cc4df5eb0369bd41cbe2e-russian-icons-byzantine-icons-331x420.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. 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