Revelation as Literal
Preparing for the Seven Seals (Pt 2)
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In my last post I made the case that much, if not most, of the imagery in Revelation is metaphorical.
The images are symbols for something or someone else.
Yet to say that all of Revelation is metaphor would be wrong.
In this post I want to talk about what is literal in Revelation.
John wrote Revelation with the fundamental certainty that some things were absolutely true concerning God, Jesus, redemption, the saints/Church, Satan, etc.
The metaphors in Revelation depend on literal correspondences at some level, whether spiritual, physical, or theological.
By literal I mean true statements about reality.
Otherwise Revelation is nothing but a fairytale.
(continued)
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The Literal and Metaphorical in the Gospel and Letters of John
To make this point I want to examine John’s other writings.
In the Gospel of John and in the letters of John we more easily see the literal—although the Gospel of John has plenty of thematic symbols too and uses plenty of metaphors.
These true statements may be carried by metaphor, but are explainable in clear non-metaphoric language (the task of the interpreter!).
Events in the Gospel of John are not metaphors. The wedding at Cana, the meeting with Nicodemus or the woman at the well, the feeding of the five thousand, the entire passion narrative: all are narrations of factual events.
John’s primary vehicle in the Gospel was biography—a chronological narration of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection based in eyewitness testimony.
The veracity of the facts comes in comparing John with the other Gospel accounts, despite the different perspectives of each.
The theological content of the Gospel is not metaphorical either, though metaphors are often used to convey the theology. John clearly has a Trinitarian understanding of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He has a theology of salvation, of sin—primarily as unbelief—of Satan, of judgment, etc.
But John time and again employs metaphor in his Gospel to convey the theology.
For example “born again” is a metaphor. When a person is “born again” it means God has redeemed that person and filled him with new spiritual life, aka “everlasting life.” The metaphor of birth points to theological reality: God delivers people from their sins and transforms them to what He desires—new spiritual persons. 1 John actually develops this metaphor of spiritual birth.
The “I am” statements are formal metaphors: “I am the Bread of Life.” “I am the Good Shepherd.” “I am the Vine and my Father is the Vinedresser.” “I am the Light of the World.” “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Even a statement like “My kingdom is not of this world” is a metaphor.
Of course, John the Baptist proclaimed, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Here we have a metaphor, “the Lamb of God,” and theology “who takes away the sin of the world.” The metaphor, “Lamb of God” increasingly gains definition as the Gospel narrative proceeds, with multiple Passovers culminating in the passion narrative, which took place on Preparation Day. As the Passover lambs were being slaughtered, Jesus was hanging on the cross. Jesus as “Good Shepherd” seems ironic in that the Lamb of God is the Shepherd of the lambs.
That John saw the “Lamb standing as slaughtered” in Revelation should not surprise us.
The metaphoric language in the Gospel of John is almost solely focused on the identity of Jesus. The theological fact is that Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus is God incarnate who has come to redeem the world. The “I am” statements carry this theological fact in their metaphorical images.
The letters of 1, 2, and 3 John are virtually all literal: the words in all three have a one to one correspondence with the events and theology John wants to convey. 1 John does have three metaphors, all from the Gospel of John: light, darkness, and birth by God, but these metaphors are so common for John their theological meaning is transparent.
Confusion of Literal and Metaphorical
In Revelation, the metaphorical is much more extensive because of the apocalyptic genre, which uses metaphorical imagery as its very vehicle.
The literal is there, but the vehicle of apocalyptic, metaphorical imagery is predominant.
Our task as interpreters is to separate the vehicle (the metaphorical imagery) from the literal (the actual meaning that John’s visions conveyed).
This is the place where so many interpreters make a key, even fatal, interpretive error.
They confuse the metaphor for the meaning.
They literalize the metaphor in some way and the actual meaning is obscured at best or at worst distorted beyond comprehension.
Think about the Gospel of John again: Jesus was not a physical lamb, not physical bread, not physical light, not a physical shepherd, not a physical vine, etc.
To argue that is not only non-sensical but confuses the theological meaning with the metaphoric vehicle!
This situation is absolutely the same for Revelation.
We cannot confuse the literal and the metaphorical: the latter serves the former.
(cont.)
What IS Literal in Revelation
So I want to briefly list what John counts as literal—the foundation of reality that the metaphors convey with their imagery.
There are several categories of literal in Revelation: spiritual reality, physical reality, and theological reality.
Spiritual/Supranatural:
God exists as creator and ruler of the universe.
God is Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit.
Satan exists as accuser and opponent of God and his people.
Angels exist.
Physical:
The earth/world and natural phenomena exist.
Jesus lived and died and rose again.
There are actual people of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.
There are Jewish people.
All types of humans exist: Kings, the great, the small, merchants, free people, slaves, etc.
There are believers and unbelievers.
Theological:
Jesus is the Messiah.
Jesus redeemed us from our sins by his blood.
The Holy Spirit is the omniscient presence of God.
The Church is composed of the redeemed people of God, both Jews and Gentiles (also physical reality).
The prayers of the saints are effective in the economy of God.
Jesus will return (realized as physical reality!).
God will make all things new.
These literal realities are the bedrock of Revelation.
I term them all literal because John does not use them as metaphorical images, but as the object of the metaphors.
None of the items I have listed above signify something else.
All of them are the something else.
For example, the bride of Christ and the New Jerusalem are the images (metaphors), but the people of God, the Church, is the reality.
When we separate the metaphorical images from the reality, we begin to see what John has done in conveying his visions.
All of the metaphorical language points to and is about these literal aspects, whether spiritual, physical, or theological.
Not that this separation of image and reality is easy!
Our task (and I invite you to join me in this task!) is to attempt to separate the two—at points the quest to do so seems near impossible—but when we do we can see clearly what Revelation is intended to convey to us.