Stephen Morris's Blog, page 11

New Jerusalem

A Russian icon of the New Jerusalem, showing the apostles–the Twelve–surrounding the Mother of God in the midst of the city. She is the personification of Zion-Jerusalem-the Temple. Christ is immediately above the Holy Virgin, blessing the world. St. John the Divine is dictating to his disciple-secretary, who is writing down what St. John sees and the words of the angel speaking with him.

So [the angel] carried me away in the spirit … and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, possessing the glory of God. It had the radiance of a precious jewel…. (Apoc. 21:10-11)

The new heaven and the new earth are complete when the new Jerusalem descends from God. The city is described as being in a constant state of descending; it is always “coming down.” It is not static. It is always arriving. This movement indicates the city itself is alive. It is itself the Temple of the new heaven and new earth and therefore encapsulates the new creation which is intensely alive, just as the Temple built by Solomon was thought to encapsulate the world–the old world which, although it was currently alive, was always in the process of dying. The new Jerusalem is always coming down, always new, always becoming.

The new city has twelve foundation stones. Each is a precious jewel. These twelve stones are associated with the apostles, the Twelve; in Ephesians we read about the Church “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being himself the chief cornerstone.” (Eph. 2:20) If Peter is the rock (Matt. 16:17-19), the Twelve are the foundation.

The new city has twelve gates. Each gate is fashioned from pearl. Pearls in the ancient world were thought to be the result of lightning striking an oyster; the translucent pearl was born of fire and water, uniting these two opposite elements.

In Genesis 2, we are told that gold and jewels were found near the river Pishon. Often translated as “aromatic resin” or “pearls,” as well as “carbuncle” (a generic term meaning “a small, precious stone”), this is generally understood to refer to frankincense. (Frankincense was a particular resin/incense whose import and sale was a monopoly of the Franks in early medieval Europe, hence “the Frank’s incense.”) The resin was obtained by scoring—making slices in—the bark of certain trees. Sap would ooze from these wounds in the bark and congeal into the resin which would be scraped away and then these chunks of resin would be broken up to be used as incense. When the resin is sprinkled on hot charcoal, it melts and releases the fragrant smoke. The resins from various sorts of trees would produce a variety of fragrances which could be combined in different mixtures; myrrh, an especially bitter scent, was obtained in the same manner as frankincense but from another species of tree.

The particles of frankincense are customarily referred to as “pearls,” so that identifying Havilah–the land watered by the river Pishon–as the source of both frankincense and pearls is not necessarily a contradiction. There is also the later medieval Christian association of the round, white host at the Mass as a “pearl” as well as the eastern Christian practice of referring to the communion-particle as a “coal” (similar to the coal used by the seraphim to touch Isaiah’s lips to purify the prophet).

The jewels, pearls, and incense associated with the new city underscore its role as the temple of the new creation, the house of God in which the sacrificial worship of the Lamb is consummated.

There is a “New Jerusalem” monastery in Russia, built directly north of Jerusalem and an exact imitation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre for pilgrims who could not travel to the Middle East. It was closed by the communists and heavily damaged by the Nazis. I saw it in the early 1990s when it was still in ruins before the current restoration began.

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New Heaven and New Earth

Beatus of Liébana
Las Huelgas Apocalypse
Spain
1220

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. (Apocalypse 20:1-2)

St. John has seen Hell and Satan bound with Death. Now he sees a new world emerge, clean and free of all stain. It is all that Isaiah hoped for: “Behold, I create new heavens and new earth” (Is. 65:17 and 66:2). It is everything that Enoch described: “The first heaven shall depart and pass away; a new heaven shall appear” (1 Enoch 91:16).

Some say that “there was no more sea” because the sea is the primaeval abyss, the chaos out of which matter emerged and there is no more chaos when judgement is complete. Some readers point out that seven markers of the fallen world are “no more” in the concluding chapters of the Apocalypse: the sea, death, mourning, crying, pain, every accursed thing, night. In the City of God, St. Augustine favors the idea that “the sea” is a euphemism for Death–cold, dark, deep, where a crowd can still be a vast collection of individuals in isolation. It is this Death that is no more in the new world adorned like a bride for her bridegroom and so the sea is “no more.”

In the Old Testament, the city Jerusalem is both a mourning virgin and a glorious bride. Now the time of her mourning has passed and her final victory and beauty are revealed. The bride of the Song of Songs takes her place alongside her heavenly bridegroom; during the Middle Ages, most sermons about the Song were also sermons about the Apocalypse and most sermons about the APocalypse were also sermons about the Song. The two texts go hand-in-hand. The Old Testament dreams of her glory and her dazzling garments are commonly read in church at Epiphany and Holy Saturday: the two days that most clearly anticipate the coming End and ultimate triumph of God.

Epiphany (the revelation of God’s glory in the darkness, the baptism of Christ when he descends into the water to slay the dragons hidden there as a dress rehearsal of his Passion) and Holy Saturday (Christ’s descent into the dark land of the dead–the sea mentioned earlier–to shatter the darkness with light and break the chains of those in prison there) are reflections in time of the eternal reality that is now revealed at the conclusion of the Apocalypse.

Epiphany. Holy Saturday. The conclusion of the Apocalypse. Jerusalem is adorned like a bride for her groom, the old context and environment of death and sin being swept away as the new context and environment of God’s glory is hidden no longer but emerges clearly for all to see.

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Satan Bound for 1,000 Years

Satan chained and bound by the angel (Beatus Apocalypse illumination). Medieval illuminations often depict Satan as an African Muslim, similar to the Moors who invaded Spain; the Moors personify the Enemy, the Other.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is Devil and the Satan, and bound him for a thousand years…. When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be let loose from his prison. (Apocalypse 20:1-2, 7)

Satan is bound in prison for 1,000 years. This period of 1,000 years is taken by most early interpreters to mean the entire period of human history from the Crucifixion to the Last Days. Satan is bound in chains by Christ but not totally incapacitated–his minions still tempt and harass the human race. St. John describes each Christian’s victory over Satan, usually by martyrdom, as the “first resurrection;” the “second resurrection” is the General Resurrection of all the dead on Judgement Day.

Satan is loosed at the end of human history not so that he can unleash his anger any more against the human race; he is loosed so that he can be finally and definitively be cast down. Many early preachers used the image of a chicken or a snake beheaded to describe Satan: slain by Christ on the Cross, yet still able to make a mess and scare humans by spewing blood from the fatal wound but seeming to still be alive, running around–“like a chicken with its head cut off!”–or wriggling about.

Satan is often described or painted as having dark or black skin; often, a devil is described as looking like “an Ethiopian” by early Christian monks. Having black skin is not necessarily a dishonor in the Old Testament; the bride in the Song of Songs is “dark and beautiful.” Neither is appearing dark always associated with evil by other cultures: Clare Rothschild points out that “the Nile received its name from the Greek word νεῖλος (‘valley’). Since the river deposits black sediment after it floods, the Egyptians called the river ‘Ar’ (‘black’)…. Black is used of Egyptian gods and goddesses as an honorific: kmwr = ‘Great Black One’ for Osiris and km as epithet used with the name of the god (e.g. Hathor, Apis, Min, Thoth, etc.) or kmt, goddess (e.g. Isis)….” But the “counter-divine” is described as black by Sophocles.

Rothschild suggests that the devils and Satan were associated with Ethiopia because Ethiopia was outside Roman-Byzantine imperial control and was therefore associated with lawlessness. Several church fathers use the illustration that all humans were once Ethiopians (lawless) but have now been brought from lawlessness to righteousness by Christ. Pamela Patton suggests that medieval Spanish interpretations of the Apocalypse–such as the Beatus Apocalypse illumination above–align Satan and Ethiopians as a way to equate Satan with the Moors who invaded the Iberian peninsula and personified the Other, the Enemy.

Rothschild points out many fascinating associations with the color black that might also have influenced the depiction of Satan.

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A Rider Faithful and True

The rider Faithful and True on his white horse in the Tolkovy Apocalypse (Moscow, early 17th century).

And I saw Heaven wide open, and behold, a white horse; its rider’s name was Faithful and True and in righteousness he judges and makes war…. he was clothed in a cloak dipped in blood , and he was called the Word of God. (Apoc. 19:11, 13)

Christ, the Word of God, rides into battle and emerges victorious. The Word of God, the Logos, is the divine blueprint for the universe while the Wisdom of God is the practical application of that blueprint.

The New Testament tells us that the Word was made flesh (John 1:14) and the Old Testament tells us that Wisdom leaped down from the heavenly throne in the middle of the night to save the Hebrews in Egypt. This image of Wisdom coming to earth at midnight (Wisdom 18) to slay the enemies of Israel was first used by the Church to describe Christ’s descent into Hell and his Resurrection during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter morning but then the image of Wisdom’s descent to earth at midnight also suggested the birth of Christ at Bethlehem and eventually resulted in our celebrations of “Midnight Mass” on Christmas Eve.

The Word was made flesh. Wisdom came to earth. To say that “Wisdom built herself a house” on earth is the poetic equivalent of saying “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (Pope St. Leo the Great, Tome 2) The victory of the Word over the enemies of God is the victory of Wisdom over the enemies of God.

Christ is the Wisdom of God made flesh but because Wisdom—“Sophia” as she is identified in the oldest manuscripts of Proverbs—is a woman’s name, Wisdom has also been considered an allusion to Christ’s most pure Mother, the ever-blessed Virgin Mary. The victory of the Word-Wisdom is also the victory of the Mother of God, the Second Eve, treading on the head of the serpent that overcame the first Eve. Our Lady of Victory, although a feast to commemorate a victory over the Turks, is also an allusion to the victorious Mother of God who shares in the victory of her Son. She makes her Son’s victory possible by giving him flesh in her womb.

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Fallen is Babylon the Great

“A mighty angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying, “Thus will Babylon, the great city, be hurled down with violence, never to be seen again” (Apoc. 18:21). Images of the angel and the millstone from the Val-Dieu Apocalypse (left; from Normandy during the 1320’s and is part of a group of four manuscripts from northern France that were modelled artistically on a now-lost 13th century English manuscript) and the Las Huelgas Apocalypse (right; the Las Huelgas Apocalypse is the largest and latest [1220] of a five-hundred-year series of medieval illuminated commentaries on the Apocalypse by the monk Beatus of Liébana. The series is considered Spain’s most important contribution to medieval manuscript illumination).

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean and loathsome bird. For all the nations of the world have drunk the wine of her fornication…. ” (Apoc. 18:2)

The whore of Babylon is overthrown and the seer of the Apocalypse sings a series of dirges over the fallen city–both Babylon and Rome, capitals of the fallen world’s opposition to the Kingdom of God. The ruins have become the home of vile and loathsome monsters–some natural, some unnatural–as kings and sailors and merchants and those who grew wealthy from the imperial exploitation of the world mourn their losses.

It is easy–perhaps, too easy–to see the fall of Babylon-Rome as the condemnation of all economic systems that depend on the exploitation of the natural world or the labor of others. Certainly the “mark of the beast” and the refusal to let those who will not worship the Beast to participate in the economic life of society reinforces this interpretation. The Apocalypse seer insists–in many ways throughout the text–that Christians must segregate themselves from the larger society; he does not see how the Church and the fallen world can co-exist or cooperate in any way. He only sees persecution and conflict between the two, much as Augustine describes the “two cities” struggling against each other throughout human history in his classic City of God.

Another way to read the fall of Babylon is to see the city’s destruction as the overthrow of all false teaching, which is at the root of all exploitative systems. It is the misunderstanding of God’s relationship with the world, the human race and our misunderstanding of our relationship with each other that gives rise to all subsequent exploitation.

The fall of Babylon the great is the overthrow of Arius, Nestorius, and all the heresies that the Church has struggled against in the past and will continue to struggle against until the End of Days.

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The Whore of Babylon

Two depictions of the whore of Babylon: left, in the Beatus Apocalypse (an 11th century Romanesque illuminated manuscript); right, a 1532 hand-colored woodcut by Hans Burgkmair in Luther’s translation of the New Testament.

I saw a woman mounted on a scarlet beast…. the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup full of all obscenities and the filth of her fornication…. I saw the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s people and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Apoc. 17:3-4, 6)

This woman, the famous “Scarlet Woman” and the “Whore of Babylon,” is the antithesis of the woman clothed with the sun in Apocalypse 12. The woman clothed with the sun gives birth to Christ in her children; the Scarlet Woman is drunk with the blood of those children, now martyred. The woman clothed with the sun is attacked by the dragon, the Antichrist; now the dragon, the Antichrist, escorts the Scarlet Woman in her apparent hour of triumph. The woman clothed with the sun is a mother who remains forever a virgin; the Scarlet Woman is the mother of all abominations and prostitutions imaginable. If the woman clothed with the sun is Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (Proverbs 8-9, Baruch 3-4, Wisdom 6-8), then the Scarlet Woman is the “loose woman” whose house is the gateway to Hell (Proverbs 7, 9).

The icons of Novgorod used scarlet as the background of divine light, out of which the saints stepped to greet the faithful. It is also the color of the Hellmouth, the great beast who devours the damned in icons of the Last Judgement. Scarlet is the presence of God who can be accepted or rejected but never escaped.

The Scarlet Woman is at the moment of decision, capable of giving herself over completely to the destruction of beauty and light or of turning aside from that path of destruction. She can remain the Whore of Babylon or become the Virgin Mother of the faithful, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband” (Apoc. 21:2).

(For a fuller discussion of the woman clothed with the sun and the whore of Babylon, see my chapter “Clothed in Scarlet, Clothed with the Sun: Thoughts on the Women of Apocalypse 12 and 17” in Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil available here.)

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Armageddon

The sixth angel emptied his bowl, Angers Apocalypse tapestry, 1377-82, commissioned by
Louis I duke of Anjou, designed by Jean Bondol (Chateau d’Angers, France).

The sixth [angel] poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare a way for the kings…. Then I saw coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet three foul spirits like frogs…. “Behold, I come like a thief!” Blessed is he that stays awake and keeps his garments by him, so that he does not walk naked and his shame is seen. And they mustered them at the place which is called in Hebrew, “Armageddon.” (Apoc. 16:12-13, 15-16)

Almost everyone recognizes the place-name, Armageddon. It is imagined to be the location of the last battle–or maybe the nuclear war–that destroys the world. But very few people know anything more than that.

“Armageddon” means “the mountain of Megiddo.” This is a mountain pass in the north of Israel that makes possible passage from the coast to the plain of Jezreel. It is a geographic feature important for military-strategic reasons. Many battles were fought at Armageddon; it was especially associated with disaster after the death of King Josiah there (2 Kings 23:29-30).

Armageddon is also important in the Old Testament book of Judith, which is an extended parable about God’s deliverance of his Chosen People. (We think of parables as only a few sentences–or at most, a paragraph or two–because Jesus’ parables were all short. But there is no composition rule that insists that a parable has to be short.)

It is also interesting that the Old Testament readings generally called “prophecies” by Western Christians on Easter Eve or other significant occasions are called “parables” in Church Slavonic.

Judith lives in an imaginary town near the Armageddon pass. By placing the town there, the people hearing the parable would immediately know that the story of Judith was about the End of Days, the great Last Battle when they hoped that God would deliver his people from all their enemies. The people hearing the story of Judith knew that it was not history as we think of history. It was never meant to be understood as an historical record. It was a parable: a story told to make a point, to illustrate something true that was otherwise difficult to grasp or understand. The story of Judith at Armageddon is like the story of Moses at the Red Sea–God acts in a miraculous way to save his people through the intervention of his chosen servant. Judith is a female figure that represents the faithful of Israel, identified by the prophets as the Bride of God.

Because the enemies of Israel almost always have to come through the northern mountain pass at Armageddon to attack Israel, the direction North became associated with evil and the powers that oppose God or his people. That is why the medieval Western Christians would read the Gospel at High Mass facing north–both to proclaim the Gospel to the pagans living far in the north but also to proclaim God’s triumph over all the powers that oppose him. Reading the Gospel facing north was a kind of exorcism of the neighborhood, telling the devil to “Go away! You have no business here, devil! You have already been defeated by Christ–stop trying to avoid your inevitable imprisonment in Hell!”

When St. John described the battle at Armageddon, he might or might not have thought people would identify the earthly mountain pass as the place of the Last Battle. But they would certainly understand that wherever the Last Battle was to be fought would be “Armageddon” in a much more real and substantial way than the mountain in northern Israel.

See a talk I gave about Judith here. The passcode to view the recording is 2w$Pq&6e

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Sea of Glass

Russian icon depicting the victory of the Archangel Michael over the dragon, the beast, and Babylon the Great; Christ in the upper corner invites the faithful to the banquet of the heavenly Eucharist.

Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and astonishing: seven angels with seven plagues…. and I saw, as it were, a sea of glass mingled with fire and, standing beside the sea of glass and holding harps of God, were those who had been victorious against the beast and its image and the number of its name. (Apocalypse 15:1-2)

St. John sees another seven angels ready to unleash another seven plagues on the earth and then he sees the victorious martyrs standing beside a sea of glass and fire, holding harps and singing “the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.” (Apoc. 15:3)

We have encountered the sea of glass in Apoc. 4 — here it is described as a molten mix of glass and fire. This sea is an allusion to the Red Sea which was deliverance for the Israelites and doom for the Egyptians. Here, the victorious sing “the song of Moses” which is no vindictive triumph over enemies but solely a song of praise to the Lord and King.

St. Andrew of Caesarea thinks

The sea of glass is both the multitude of those being saved and the future condition–the brilliance of the saints-, who will shine by means of their sparkling virtue…. the fire will both burn the sinners and illuminate the righteous. Fire is both divine knowledge and the life-giving Spirit–for in fire God was seen by Moses and the Spirit descended upon the apostles as tongues of fire–and the harps indicate the mortification of members (Col. 3:5), the harmonious life of a symphony of virtues plucked by the musical pick (plectrum) of the divine Spirit. (Chapter 45, “Commentary on the Apocalypse”)

The sea is both salvation and condemnation, just as the incense in the bowls held by the angels:

We are the sweet fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: indeed, to some the fragrance of life and to others the stench of death. (2 Cor. 2:15-16)

Tyconius, in his classic commentary on the Apocalypse, points out that the prayers of the saints–the incense offered by the angels, an allusion to the liturgical intercessions of the Church on earth–lead to both the salvation of the world and the condemnation of the fallen order.

As with so much in the Apocalypse–as in life–the same events or experiences can lead to either salvation or damnation. How do we choose to react to these events?

The choice is ours.

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Harvest and Winepress

Detail of a miniature showing the Last Judgement from the “Queen Mary Apocalypse”, early 1300s (Royal MS 19 B XV, f. 40r).

Then I looked, and … another angel came out of the Temple and called in a loud voice… “Put in your sickle and harvest for the hour of the harvest has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe. (Apocalypse 14:14-15)

In much of the New Testament (Matthew 13) or the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 17, Jeremiah 51, Joel 3), the images or parables about the harvest use the image of “harvest” as a way to talk about the Last Judgment, the End of Days. Often, the idea of harvest includes the idea of condemnation: the wicked will be harvested and condemned to their eternal punishment. But in the Apocalypse, the idea of harvest is about salvation rather than condemnation. The righteous are ripe–they have withstood the test of persecution–and they are harvested in the Apocalypse, not the wicked; the righteous are harvested and gathered before the Throne of God as crops are gathered into a barn for safekeeping.

But after the righteous are harvested, the wicked are gathered into the divine winepress. The “great winepress of God’s wrath” (Apoc. 14:19) is outside the heavenly city, just as the Cross was erected outside the walls of Jerusalem. The winepress grinds up those flung into it and their blood pours out as the grape juice flows from a winepress on earth, ready to be made into wine. Christ is flung into the divine winepress on the Cross and his blood pours out into the chalice of the Eucharist; in the Apocalypse, the wicked are thrown into the divine winepress which is outside the city–outside the Church–and they are trodden as grapes are trodden. But they do not emerge from the winepress victorious, as the martyrs do. The wicked are destroyed in the winepress because they choose to align themselves with the dragon–all the powers that oppose God and the Lamb.

Harvest and winepress. Bread and wine. How we choose to prepare for (1 Cor. 11) or respond to these experiences results in our salvation or condemnation. Often in ways that we do not expect.

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Hymns in the Apocalypse

I was about to write my next entry on the Apocalypse when the new issue of Worship arrived in the mail. Worship is one of the leading academic journals about liturgy and liturgical studies; it always has essays and book reviews that fascinate and illuminate. There was an essay in this issue about liturgical hymnography and look what I discovered: a mention of liturgical hymns in the Apocalypse!

The portrayal of the heavenly liturgy in the Book of Revelation features many hymns that must surely reflect the worship experience of the author and intended audience. Again, they are clearly in a psalm style and their diction mines the Psalter extensively, but they would also have been immediately recognized as a “send-up” of the hymns commissioned for the imperial cult. Take, for example, Revelation 11:17-18.

We give you thanks, O Lord God, the sovereign over all (pantokrator) who are and who were, that you have taken your great power and begun to reign. (Rev. 11:17)

The Christians of the seven churches in the Roman province of Asia would have immediately recognized this as a parody of the acclamations of the divinized Roman Emperor sung at the imperial festivals that were a regular feature of life in their cities.

(Margaret Daly-Denton, “Instilling the Word” in Worship (July 2021), pp. 200-201.

In the Apocalypse, not only do we encounter the history of the Church and the wonderful works of God’s power (told over and over, from a variety of perspectives), we also encounter the Christians thumbing their noses at the imperial power hell-bent on destroying them.

We should remember that as St. Paul and other New Testament authors were urging the Christians to “obey the civil authorities” and “Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” it was those same civil authorities and the same imperial policies that were actively putting the Christians to death; the same authorities that were to be obeyed were making martyrs.

Modern Christians who urge cooperation with civil authorities when they think the authorities will legislate in their favor and resistance when they don’t care for the civil policies, quoting those New Testament authors, should remember that: submission to civil authorities was first and foremost given to civil authorities that oppose everything the Church stands for.

Early Christian political theory can be summed up in one sentence: Don’t give your enemies any more reason to arrest you than they already have.

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