Babylon the great city appears in Revelation as a prostitute, offering her wine of passion to the nations (Revelation 14:8; 17-18). She resembles the prostitute from the book of Proverbs, Lady Folly. Both offer illicit love and the wine of passion (cf. Proverbs 7:1). Both try to seduce simpletons. Both are deadly. Those who drink the wine that Babylon offers fall with her, and end up burning in the fiery passion of God. Lady Folly’s house leads down to Sheol,... Read more
Augustine argues that certain hierarchies are built into the creation (City of God 11.16). There is, for instance, a natural hierarchy of sentient, intelligent, immortal souls. In addition to these natural hierarchies, he suggests that there are hierarchies of “use.” Hierarchies of use are often the reverse of natural hierarchies. In nature, animate things are better than inanimate; but we’d rather have bread to eat than a mouse. Intelligent are naturally better than unintelligent, but sometimes we’d rather have a... Read more
Music intersects with all theology and all culture. Scripture is full of “data” about music, and possesses a musical quality in its composition. Christian worship is musical worship, and is itself a through-composed symphony. As an art form, music raises questions about our relationship to the material world (instruments and vibrations), about our use of symbols and the role of the imagination, about how we know and what we know, about our making. Music has this sort of breadth because... Read more
The first angel in Revelation 14 announces what most translations calls an “eternal gospel” (v. 6; Gr. euaggelion aionion). David deSilva prefers to translate it “an age-long accession announcement” (279). The picture in view is this: “this angel in the role of herald of a great ruler, a supra-mundane emperor,making this announcement ‘over’ or ‘upon’ (epi) the audience, a spatial preposition again implying hierarchical superiority. We see the audience at a vast scale—the people living . . . on the... Read more
Paul describes the church as a body animated by the Spirit – one body with many members, each member necessary to the health of the body, each making its unique contribution to the common good. It would be consistent with Paul’s ecclesiology to use musical rather than somatic images. Each member of the church is a voice that contributes to the beauty of the whole. Each voice enhances all the others. The church is a chorus. The church is a... Read more
David Goldman (“Spengler”) is suitably appalled by the revelations of Peter Schweitzer’s Clinton Cash. But he seen enough of global corruption to put the onus where it belongs: “What kind of people are we Americans, that we allow these kleptocrat’s hirelings to persist in public life? The answer, I fear, is that we have become corrupt ourselves.” There’s the fact that so many of us are paid off by the government. Goldman quotes Nicholas Eberstadt: “From 1940 to 1960, entitlement transfers accounted... Read more
When John goes into heaven (Revelation 4-5), he enters a worship service. Four living creatures and twenty-four elders are engaged in a cycle of praise, including a version of the Sanctus and a proclamation of the worthiness of the Creator. When the Lamb appears and takes the book, the worshiping angels kick it up several notches: They break out the harps and begin to sing of the worthiness of the Lamb. Later in Revelation, the saints sing the songs of... Read more
Culture is formed by cult. The liturgy is the first form of culture. What happens in the sanctuary shapes what happens outside. Rivers flow from Eden’s garden to the four corners. A spring starts from the throne of God and flows to the Dead Sea, refreshing as it goes (Ezekiel 47). Is this anything more than metaphor? Is this just a trade in word-pictures? It might seem so, but the history of Western music shows just how concretely historical these... Read more
In an article on Revelation 14, David deSilva summarizes recent biblical work that employs a social-rhetorical mode of interpretation. He draws on Vernon Robbins’s notion of “rhetography,” the ways in which texts create mental pictures in hearers and readers. This is not to dismiss the more common idea of verbal rhetoric (rhetology) but only to note that pictures as well as words can persuade. Socio-rhetorical critics look for the conceptual domain into which particular pictures fit, and which those pictures... Read more
Raymond William Baker (One Islam, Many Worlds of Muslims) wants to reassure his Western readers. Islam’s resurgence isn’t mainly driven by extremists and terrorists, but by mainstream Islam of the Islamic renewal: “The source of Islam’s power derives from the far broader al Tagdid al Islami (Islamic Renewal). First stirring in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Renewal has swept across Islamic lands. Those who respond call for revitalizing and rethinking the heritage. At the same time, they resist... Read more
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