Terrance Lindall's Revelation

Apocalyptic Visions of St. John the Divine

Painting by Terrance Lindall

(Image from Terrance Lindall's Paradise Lost)

As regular readers know, I like the surreal, absurd art of Terrance Lindall (b. 1944), whose style and subject matter recall those of Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516). Lindall, an intellectual artist who has illustrated John Milton's Paradise Lost and takes Milton's ideas seriously, recently called our attention on the Milton List to "the first Western Christian version of Paradise Lost"

To my mind, the first Western Christian version of Paradise Lost was The Revelation of St. John the Divine. A lot of visionary obscurity as opposed to Milton's Appolonian approach, but inspiring nonetheless. Here's my version as a gold mounted tryptich (14 inches tall) done for Brian Offie in Montana.

The Revelation of St. John the Divine, of course, is another name for The Book of Revelation, sometimes mistakenly call Revelations. In case you want to go looking for it, just turn to the last book of the Bible.

Anyway, if you've read both books -- St. John's and Milton's -- you'll see what Lindall means by his remark about Revelation being the first Paradise Lost.

Though I'm unsure which one has more aerial warfare, a point still subject to debate by literary critics . . .

Bibliophagi: Book-Eaters

Apocalypse of St. John

Orthodox Icon (16th century)

Note Angel Offering Book

(Image from Wikipedia)

Speaking of men becoming books, I ought to also note that Holbrook Jackson speaks similarly of books becoming men . . . through being ingested, but the proof in the pudding at times fails to agree with the bibliophage:

Books (argues the Critic in Petrarch's treatise on Fortune) have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest; for sometimes the best of them are sweet in the mouth but bitter in the belly, as St. John the Divine found after he had ate up that little book which he took from the open hand of the Angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. (Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania, 162)

Perhaps a closer reading of St. John's 'own' words is necessary, and since this is a literary entry, let's quote the Authorized Version of Revelation 10:

1 And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow [was] upon his head, and his face [was] as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: 2 And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and [his] left [foot] on the earth, 3 And cried with a loud voice, as [when] a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. 4 And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. 5 And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, 6 And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: 7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. 8 And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go [and] take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 9 And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take [it], and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. 10 And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. 11 And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.

With the multiplicity of voices, this passage can rather readily overwhelm the reader. We overhear an angel crying out, seven thunders uttering their voices, a voice from heaven speaking, John narrating it all, and a little book about to make John prophesy. A bit noisy, actually, almost cacophonous!

The intriguing point is that John has to eat the "little book" (βιβλαριδιον, i.e., biblaridion), which tastes like honey (manna?) but makes his stomach bitter (πικραινω, i.e., pikrainō), in order to prophesy! Or so it seems. Apparently, he will vomit forth the little book of God's words -- the Book of Revelation itself, perhaps? -- even if merely metaphorically.

That might explain the many, many half-digested interpretations of this bitterly baffling book . . .

Vertiginous Acrophobia and a Return to Paradise

Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893)

Depicting JK's Visceral Abhorrence of Evil!

(Image from Wikipedia)

After yesterday's debacle -- the poem from my juvenilia that so grated on the nerves of poor, longsuffering JK -- perhaps we had best return to the Paradise Lost and learn to distinguish good (e.g., the good poem by John Milton) from evil (e.g., the bad poem by yours truly).

The Milton List has an ongoing discussion about Adam and Eve's knowledge of good and evil prior to eating from the tree of knowledge. A distinction has been drawn between an abstract, conceptual knowledge of evil and a concrete, experiential knowledge of evil. In their prelapsarian state, Adam and Eve have the former but not the latter. On this point, the Milton scholar Jim Rovira appears to disagree with the Milton scholars Michael Gillum and Harold Skulsky:

Jim Rovira wrote:

"My argument is that for Adam and Eve there is only one possible prohibition: do not learn about evil. So what is a multitude of rules for us is only a single rule for them."

Michael Gillum has already responded to this in his remarks about the natural law to which Adam and Eve are attuned through their reason -- "in all things else, our
reason is our law" -- but I will agree and also quote the precise lines from Paradise Lost in their larger context:

Serpent, we might have spar'd our coming hither,
Fruitless to mee, though Fruit be here to excess,
The credit of whose vertue rest with thee,
Wondrous indeed, if cause of such effects.
But of this Tree we may not taste nor touch;
God so commanded, and left that Command
Sole Daughter of his voice; the rest, we live
Law to our selves, our Reason is our Law.
(Paradise Lost 9.647-654)

(Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room, July, 2008.)

There is only one explicit command (the Bat Qol, "daughter of a voice," as Harold Skulsky has noted), a rule that would otherwise be unknown and therefore has to be revealed, but there is also reason to guide Adam and Eve, enabling them to freely choose good over evil based on their abstract (as opposed to experiential) knowledge of evil. Eve emphasizes: "our Reason is our Law." I take this to mean that Adam and Eve follow moral 'rules' discoverable by reason, 'rules' that need not be made known through revelation -- and thus not explicitly formulated as rules but nevertheless rules.

The revealed command is arbitrary, for God could instead have chosen some other command to test Adam and Eve, and as an arbitrary rule, this command falls outside the bounds of reason in the sense that Adam and Eve would never be led to it by rational thought.

Satan, incidentally, is able to make use of the arbitrariness of God's command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. This is the one rule opaque to reason, a rule not discoverable through reasoning. By reason alone, Eve cannot defend herself against Satan's seemingly plausible arguments. There is no rational defense of the command not to eat of the tree of knowledge; on this point, Eve (via Adam) must rely upon trust in God's revelation beyond reason, and on this, she pointedly fails. Trust in God would be reasonable in Paradise, of course, and Eve 'knows' that eating the fruit leads to 'death' . . . but as to why it leads to something called 'death'? Reason fails because the command is arbitrary.

This arbitrary command, however, is not the only law; it is simply the only arbitrary law.

In yesterday's poem, "Nocturne Eternal," poor JK had a close encounter with the 'experience' of evil but chose to reject it as 'bad' -- trusting in some inner voice of an arbitrary but true revelation -- and thereby remain in his prelapsarian state.

By his good example, JK thus reminds us about the fact of acrophobia, the real and present danger of vertigo, and the cautionary principle of not straying far away toward but of staying far away from edges.

Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth: A Question on Reason and Violence

Ecce Homo (Behold the Man!)
Antonio Ciseri, 19th Century

Violence: Submitting, not Committing?
(Image from Wikipedia)

I should first clarify that I haven't read this book Jesus of Nazareth (Doubleday, 2007), which the Pope has authored under his personal name, "Joseph Ratzinger," to emphasize that the work is a personal rather than ecclesial view.

I am reporting only on a review written by Jack Miles for the Catholic magazine Commonweal: A Review of Religion, Politics and Culture. Miles, as some may know already, is the author of God: A Biography and Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God, neither of which I have read.

To be succinct, I haven't done my homework. Still, one can ask a question, perhaps receive an answer.

Commonweal has been sending me emailed copies of its magazine ever since I firmly defended Pope Benedict XVI during the Regensburg Controversy concerning the Pope's statement about rationality, violence, and Islam. Here is the official, Vatican translation of the offending passage:

In the seventh conversation (διάλεξις - controversy) edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: "There is no compulsion in religion". According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat. But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur'an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the "Book" and the "infidels", he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he says, "is not pleased by blood -- and not acting reasonably (συν λόγω) is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...". (Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections, paragraph 3)

Interesting, by the way, is the fact that the official Vatican translation still quotes Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos as saying:

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached" (italics mine).

The Pope's German text reads:

"Zeig mir doch, was Mohammed Neues gebracht hat, und da wirst du nur Schlechtes und Inhumanes finden wie dies, daß er vorgeschrieben hat, den Glauben, den er predigte, durch das Schwert zu verbreiten." (Pope Benedict XVI, Glaube, Vernunft und Universität: Erinnerungen und Reflexionen, paragraph 3) (italics mine)

As I had noted during the controversy, the words "Schlechtes und Inhumanes" could better have been translated as "bad and inhumane" instead of "evil and inhuman," and since the latter sounds worse (to my ear), I don't know why the Vatican stayed with that translation -- unless it better reflects the literal Greek words of Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos himself (though the Pope didn't quote the Greek).

Anyway, a dispute over translation is not my issue today.

Rather, I wish to remind us of the Pope's Regensburg words on reason and Christianity:

Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, συν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word -- a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. (Pope Benedict XVI, Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections, paragraph 5)

In the same Regensburg address, the Pope goes on to defend the Hellenization of Christianity, the Church's intellectual synthesis of Greek philosophical reason and Jewish divine revelation that makes Christianity a reasonable religion and its theology a rational undertaking because it insists that God is intrinsically rational.

Note that this view depends upon philosophical assumption about God's nature being rational.

I therefore wonder what Ratzinger means about a new synthesis between historical and theological exegesis, as Miles explains it, anyway:

Key to this synthesis is his [i.e., Ratzinger's] assertion that events can be meaningful prior to, and even without, human interpretation. When God enters human history, the resulting events are meaningful in and of themselves and therefore deserve to be heard as history, and humbly. They require no completion by anybody's overweening literary creativity, even an evangelist's. To the properly prepared hearer, in short, the events are capable of speaking for themselves, just as they did for the evangelist, but exegetical preparation is indeed the key. The exegete "should not approach the text with a ready-made philosophy, nor in accordance with the dictates of a so-called modern or scientific worldview, which determines in advance what may or may not be." (Jack Miles, "Between Theology & Exegesis," paragraph 8)

Yet, approaching the biblical text with a "ready-made philosophy" is precisely what the Pope seems to have been advocating in his Regensburg lecture, for he interprets the Johannine logos as including -- or perhaps even primarily meaning -- "reason," "rationality" (and not merely "word"). In his Jesus of Nazareth, however, Ratzinger would appear to be exalting the text, revelation, over reason.

If so, then this can present problems, if I may use another quote from Miles:

Jesus of Nazareth generally is content to repeat, again and again, that the Incarnation is an act of ongoing divine revelation. As for what the Incarnation reveals about God's character that the Old Testament did not know, this we are never quite told, nor does this book ever confront the unsettling ways in which God as we encounter him in the Old Testament seems decidedly unlike God incarnate as we encounter him in the New. In the scriptural index to the book that I prepared for my own use, I note not a single quotation from the Book of Joshua, though Jesus was named for the warrior hero of that book. At issue, I submit, is the relative importance, within Christian revelation, of God's incarnation and his renunciation of violence. God might have become a man without renouncing (or suffering) violence. He might have renounced violence without becoming a man. What matters more: the metaphysical wonder or the categorical reversal? (Jack Miles, "Between Theology & Exegesis," paragraph 11)

Without getting into the personal theology of Jack Miles as expounded in his books (for I'd then have to read them), I think that I can nevertheless borrow this thought:

[Why does Ratzinger] note not a single quotation from the Book of Joshua, though Jesus was named for the warrior hero of that book[?]

Is Ratzinger avoiding a difficult issue that he had earlier raised with respect to Islam, the use of violence against unbelievers? The question is a pressing one even for Christians since, as Miles notes, Jesus (Yeshua) was named for Joshua (Yehoshua), the Prince of Peace for the warrior hero.

I think that whether we place primacy upon the text (revelation) or upon theology (reason) makes a great difference in how we understand this problem of violence even within Christianity, and I'd like to know how Joseph Ratzinger -- or Pope Benedict XVI -- treats this issue.

Perhaps the Pope already has, somewhere in his voluminous writings, and I'm depending upon secondhand information from Jack Miles and my own speculative propensities.