What is apocalypse? A straightforward answer is that it is a genre of writing. The best examples in the Bible are the book of Daniel in the Old Testament and the book of Revelation in the New Testament. It was a very influential genre from around 200 BC to 200 AD and it had its roots in political events going on at that time, in particular the rule of the Roman Empire in the Promised Land, and the sense within the Hebrew people that things were not going as they had been promised. There are frequently visions involving specific symbolism, for example beasts with heads and horns, but these are political allegories: the beasts are normally gentile kingdoms, and the horns coming out of the beasts are the rulers of the different gentile kingdoms. Much of the symbolic language in the book of Revelation can be mapped on to the political environment of the first century.
Apocalypse as a genre has different forms and a useful distinction between different forms of apocalyptic is that they can be vertical or horizontal. Vertical apocalypses are where someone is lifted up into the realm of the angels, into the cosmic heaven and they are enabled to see the truth. Gnostic apocalypses are like this, for Gnosticism is all about gaining access to the heavenly realm through understanding the truth and leaving this world behind. Alternatively there is also a horizontal realm of apocalypse which is much more biblical; for example, Isaiah 24, where God brings the present structures of the world to destruction in order to accomplish his purposes within the world. Vertical apocalypses, then, are about leaving this world behind, whereas horizontal apocalypses are about the change and reform of this world. The vertical involves travelling up and beyond; the horizontal is about travelling through time.
The language of horizontal apocalyptic is that history is coming to a close: there is a cosmic cataclysm and a consummation of God's purposes, and then a recreation, and this has its roots in the prophetic criticisms of the status quo. Isaiah 24 to 26 is a good example. Biblically, apocalyptic is concerned with criticising unjust political arrangements and seeing God's activity as breaking into the world to bring about His purposes, not about leaving the world behind and being lifted up into the heavens: “...within the mainline Jewish writings of this period, covering a wide range of styles, genres, political persuasions and theological perspectives, there is virtually no evidence that Jews were expecting the end of the space time universe. There is abundant evidence that they knew a good metaphor when they saw one, and used cosmic imagery to bring out the full theological significance of cataclysmic socio-political events” (Tom Wright).
One of the ways in which the asophism of our culture manifests itself is through a misplaced apocalypticism – the way in which particular problems become magnified and used as a basis for preaching imminent doom. This is echoing the cultural legacy of apocalyptic. Even if we are not aware of it, we are interpreting events and information through the lens of apocalypse. Someone might say “Hang on I cannot be influenced by apocalyptic because I'm not a Christian, I do not believe in it.” This is a little bit like saying, “I've never read any Greek literature, I've never read Plato, and therefore my thinking is not shaped by it.” These thought forms are diffused throughout our civilisation. They are the bedrock of our thinking, the river bed through which our thinking flows like the water, and apocalyptic is very influential in the way that our culture understands the world. There is an historical memory of this promise that the world is going to come to an end, and so, inevitably, part of our community fastens on to alarming portents and starts to replay this process of apocalyptic.
This thinking has a common shape: (i) the world is wicked; (ii) God's wrath is coming to destroy it through doom and apocalypse; (iii) the righteous will be redeemed and the wicked will be punished; and then (iv) there is a new creation. There are many contemporary examples of this. So for peak oil, the perspective would read: (i) we are reckless in our consumption of oil; (ii) peak oil will cause a never-ending recession; (iii) those who are unprepared will suffer; (iv) those who have prepared will manage. There are also some remarkably sub-Christian forms, possibly the most prominent being the 'Left Behind' series. It is the common shape which is important to grasp, for this is not the Christian vision.
The root problem of apocalyptic thought, as compared with a genuinely Christian understanding, is that it is dualist. It is about making divisions, and there are three primary splits:
a split between the righteous and the unrighteous;
a split between heaven and earth; and
a split in time between now and the future.
What does Jesus say about the end of the world? He was living in the midst of the time when this language was prevalent, when everyone accepted this apocalyptic framework, but the essential point is that Jesus subverts it. Jesus' ministry is centred upon an overcoming of each of these dualisms. With respect to the first He comes to sinners, not to the righteous; He spends his time having meals with the prostitutes and the tax-collectors and the religious authorities criticise him for it. He is trying to overcome the division between those who keep the purity laws, and those who get excluded for various reasons, because they have not got the right number of limbs, or they cannot walk. Jesus spends his time with those who are wounded, not with those who are righteous.
The second split, the great division between the realm of heaven and the realm of earth, is symbolised by the curtain in the temple which gets torn in two. The heart of Christian faith is that Jesus is God incarnate, that the barriers between heaven and earth have been overcome. Jesus' very existence is a refutation of this second split. The one word rejection of that is incarnation, and you cannot get more fundamental to the Christian belief.
Yet it is the third split which is most important for our purposes here…
Hmm ... Barn Door like Christianity? To my mind. if one thinks 'hostile' / 'opposition'. But, had a very old colleague / wise friend, and met good people of his Pakastani community. Met similar when working for lengthy periods in very tense FYROM now N. Macedonia. At one remove I also know a little about trad. Morocco. We all live in dangerous times, satanic forces on the prowl not least in our 'Western' mind? I look for friends. Nate & Helen gave of their best.
I can barely keep up. The news of the horrific rain of bombs in Gaza does not allow for much discussion.
There was long discussion way back in peak oil's early days on JM Greer's site of those days when he pointed out the popular American habit of thinking of the future as material Progress as advertised (sort of Star Trek) and the sudden end of functional life (American, that is). Quite where this duality lies on the psychological or indeed spiritual spectrum I cannot guess. (Greerhappened at the time to be leader of an American Druid Order, but that did not invalidate his shrewd comments.
I wonder if in these deficient days the old-fashioned millenarian Christian movements of previous centuries can no longer show up? I seem to remember a lot off them went to America. Do we happen to know whether countries without that historical background entertain similar apocalyptic visions in these dangerous times? I don't know how industrialised civilisation, sort of halfway in its global rollout might extricate from the overall mess. There are and will be horrors, but it could string out over a long period like civilisations have done in the past, which I seem to remember was Greer's thesis back then.
best wishes anyway