Several times, Revelation identifies God triadically, triunely as the one “who is and who was and who comes” (1:4, 8; 4:8). He is the present God, the God who reaches back beyond the origins of all things – the God of whom it could always be said “He is” – and the God whose coming we anticipate. As Father, Son, and Spirit, He doesn’t stand aloof from time, but overarches and embraces all time. The brief speech of the “angel... Read more
In his contribution to Church, Identity, and Change, David Carlson offers an honest assessment of the entanglement of Lutheran Eucharistic theology with German Ethnicity. Friedrich Wyneken, “a key architect of confessional Lutheranism in America” (266), came to American intent on preserving Lutheran fellowship. As he understood it, “fellowship . . . was both ethnically German and doctrinally Lutheran” (268). This, more than opposition to revivalism, determined his agenda. Through Wyneken and others, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod developed liturgical forms that provided... Read more
In his 1972 Denominational Society, the late Andrew Greeley sketches the shape of the denominational society. It is a masterly portrait that captures the energies and contradictions of American religion. He notes, for instance, that “most American religious groups have accepted the existing social order and served as integrators of American society.” American religion is “basically conservative; ad the overwhelming majority of Americans do not like to be disturbed by their religion more than they deep appropriate” (103-4). At the same... Read more
In an address to Congress in 1826, Charleston’s Catholic bishop John England declares his allegiance, and the allegiance of his church, to the American polity: “I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside the Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box. He has no right to such interference. You must, from the view which I have taken, see the plain distinction between spiritual authority and a... Read more
The exalted martyrs sing “the song (ode) of Moses the slave of God and the song of the Lamb” (Revelation 15:3). That could mean that the martyrs sing the song about or even composed by Moses and the Lamb. It could also mean that they sing a song sung by Moses and the Lamb. Is the genitive objective or subjective? Steven Grabiner (Revelation’s Hymns) thinks the latter. He points to the link with the song at the Red Sea in... Read more
Conflict has its uses. A form of social interaction, it seems nearly essential to maintaining the structures of society. Georg Simmel writes that “the positive and integrating role of antagonism is shown in structures which stand out by the sharpness and carefully preserved purity of their social divisions and gradations. Thus, the Hindu social system rests not only on the hierarchy, but also directly on the mutual repulsion, of the castes. Hostilities not only prevent boundaries within the group from... Read more
For a long time, opponents of the ecumenical movement have charged that it was an attempt to arrive at a doctrinally-light, lowest-common-denominator, man-made organizational unity. The slightest investigation would have demonstrated that this is untrue. The World Council of Church’s New Delhi 1961 statement “On Unity” may be imperfect in many ways, but in no sense does it suggest that the WCC was trying to construct a unity of their own devising. The statement says clearly (section 3) that “We all... Read more
The neatly structured song of the martyrs (Revelation 15:3-4) is a turning point in the book. The first four lines are set up in two pairs. The first line describes the Lord’s works as “great and marvelous,” like the sign that John sees in heaven (v. 1). This is exodus and conquest language. The Lord exerts His power, and the titles that follow in the second line are consistent with this. He is Lord, God, Almighty (pantokrator). The second two lines... Read more
Both Old and New Testaments, writes David Martin (Pentecostalism, 12) include principles that “by persistent extension and deepening . . . can divest systems of authority of their justification and turn law into a matter of inward judgement and sincerity rather than external observance.” “Rend your heart and not your garments,” for instance, or Paul’s contrast of inner and outer circumcision. More generally, “to make human solidarity as such the criterion of sympathy, caritas, and right action, in accordance with... Read more
After John introduces the new scene – “I saw another sign in the heaven, great and marvelous” – the sign is described with two clauses (Revelation 15:1). The first is, woodenly translated, “angels seven having plagues seven the last”; and the second it “in them finished the passion of God.” In Greek, both clauses have seven words. The first contains the word “seven” two times, as well as the word eschatos, “last,” and the second clause has the word etelesthe,... Read more
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