Has Sin had Its Time?

Although d papjia occurs only three times in Revelation, its usage is significant: at the outset of the book we are told that Christ “freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom” (l:5b-6a), and in the depiction of defeated Babylon, God’s people are urged to flee the city in order not to participate in its sin and consequently share in the judgment for her sin (18:4-5). However, what Paul labels “sin” is more commonly depicted in Revelation as a rebellion of cosmic proportions.*"**" The arch enemy of God, the Devil, has been able to gain entrance to the earthly realm through the earthly powers who have the authority over human societies and structure them. The rest of humanity is culpable in this rebellion as they submit to its deception.*"*® This is the situation human beings need and can be redeemed from by shifting their allegiance to Christ who establishes them as “a kingdom to God” by his paradoxical and decisive victory on the cross. It is in the

Aulen 1970:159.

When Moltmann speaks of sin and death in Revelation, he only notes how it distinguishes between the first (physical death) and the second death (separation from death), and how it personifies death. (CoG, 82-83)

On d p ap ria in Paul, see Gaventa 2004, who suggest that he understands sin within an apocalyptic framework in which Death gains entrance into the world in human sin, and as such reflects a similar idea as found in Revelation.

Although Babylon is judged for deceiving the whole world (18:23), those deceived are culpable for their submission to the draconic order (14:9-10; cf. 18:4).

fulfilment of the history Easter is the centre of that the whole created order will be transformed in the arrival of God’s sovereign presence on e a r t h . I n the following discussion we will return to our earlier discussion on why Moltmann finds such a view insufficient and consider how Revelation may respond to these critiques.

a) Sin as the Fundamental Human and Pivotal Cosmic Problem

Moltmann’s first objection was the impossibility to trace death and suffering directly to sin in light of what we know today about ecological history. However, although a strict causal relationship between sin and suffering is perhaps but certainly not necessarily implied in Revelation, the point accented is not the possible state of creation before the fall nor whether transience in an absolute sense is necessarily problematic. What is pivotal for Revelation, as well as for Paul in Romans 8, is the

way in which human rebellion is the fundamental problem facing humanity, and how

as such it is the pivotal problem for the rest of the created order.*®®

As the fundamental problem of humanity, sin is a fissure in the relationship between God and humanity which corrupts all the relationship humanity stands in in history. In Revelation this is depicted as a fundamental and universal rebellion that has gained entrance in the human cosmos in and through the reign of the beast. Redemption is made possible precisely in a divine irruption, in the lamb’s purchase of a people who are to be a kingdom to God.

However, there is a close relationship between this histoiy of redemption and the transformation of creation. The fundamental problem in human history is also the pivotal problem in the history of creation. This is obvious in Paul, where the liberation of creation from its own bondage is dependent upon “the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” (Rom 8:21)*®* Although the consequences of the

This does not preclude that God may have other concerns, as the references to “sea” and “curse,” in 21:1-7 and 22:3 may indicate, only that the book focuses on the manifestation of the demonic rebellion in humanity and the radical implications this has for the whole cosmos.

See Gowan 1985 on how apocalyptic consistently discusses creation as it is related to the fate of humanity. Also, even Paul may not see as a strict relationship with transience as such and sin as often assumed. Although the term he uses for “decay” in Rom 8:21, <|)6opd, refers commonly in Greek literature to the mutability and eventual decay of all material things, Jonathan Moo (personal correspondence, February 2005) suggests that Paul rather is appealing to Isaiah 24:1, emphasising the devastation of sin on the material order but without necessarily making a statement on the nature of transience as such. Paul’s concern is not the metaphysical question of the origin of transience but the devastating effect human sin has had on creation and why God has allowed it. (Moo 2003)

So, the fundamental problem in creation is not the same as that of humanity but is contingent upon it, just as its liberation is.

corruption of human authority are not spelled out as in Rom 8:19-22, certain texts in Revelation imply a similar relationship: the displacement of God’s life-giving presence during the histoiy in which the draconic beast has usurped God’s rightful PaaiAsia on earth results in the devastation of earth. But when God finally takes the PaaiAeia that is rightfully his, not only is humanity reconciled but the whole created order is transformed in the life-giving glory of his presence.*®^

While this does not answer the origin of transience as such in creation, it makes a sufficient account for the pathologies of human existence in its relations before God within the realm of creation. What is significant for humanity is not the final cause of creation’s transience but how their own condition impinges on creation, what happens to creation, for better or worse, because of the way humanity interacts with it.

b) Sin as Social Structuring and Personal Internalisation

Moltmann’s second objection was that “suffering as punishment for sin” is only of limited value*®® and particularly inappropriate when considering the victims who suffer the violence of others.*®"* However, Revelation’s picture of sin as rebellion can both uphold the universality of human sinfulness and a differentiated understanding of how people, whether individually or coiporally, partake in and experience the consequences of sin.

First, since the centre and source of the rebellion is in the demonic and idolatrous usurpation of God’s position of sovereignty on earth, sin is logically a socio-political structural phenomenon before it is a personal and individual one. The blasphemous beast occupies the central structuring position in human society and as such corrupts the “social construction” of society.*®® As such, sin can be seen as the transpersonal power that is the systemic web that orders social practices, a web that “once ministered to life” but “now work for death.”*®® It is through the socio-political

While the geopolitical manifestation of the dragon results in the destruction of the earth (11:18; cf. 18:2), the creation made new in the descent of God’s presence (21:5) has a life-giving river and leaves that heal (22:1-2).

TKG, 49-50.

See CrG, 274-90, where Moltmann suggests panentheism as a response to Auschwitz.

It is the beast that blasphemes God that has received the authority of the dragon “over every tribe and people and language and nation.” (13:7)

web of the Beast that the Dragon can deceive the inhabitants of the world.*®*" However, second, unlike Moltmann, Revelation unambiguously sees a universal and culpable submission to this corrupting order.*®® All “the inhabitants of the earth” have submitted to the beast and as such have become like it, are marked by it.

Borrowing language from sociology, sin is both the objectified social order which the ruling elite have externalised but also the way in which everyone who lives under that

order has internalised it and made it their own.*®^ As we will consider in the next

chapter, this complex understanding of sin may be reflected in the two parallel statements on what Jesus accomplishes in his death (1:5-6; 5:9:10), in redeeming a people God both liberates them from their bondage to the corrupting order of the

Beast and forgives them for their own culpability in submitting to it.*®® Therefore, rather than “having a limited value,” as Moltmann claims, the atonement of the Lamb for the sin of all human beings as the Lamb “laid down his life in sorrow and love” gives an “awareness of the depth of love involved in the atoning sacrifice” that even exceeds Jesus’ identification with the sufferings of the victims in the world.*®*

Although this means all are sinners, it does not mean that this proclamation and call come in the same form to all. First, to those at the centre of the draconic order of the beast the gospel comes as a warning: The order whose injustice they enjoy is a historical aberration, and in order to avoid perishing with its destined

In 12:9 Satan is depicted as the Dragon that deceives the whole world (6 rrAavwv rqv oiKoupévqv oAqv; cf. 20:3, 8, 10), a deception which is accomplished through the earthly powers he works through (13:14; 18:23; 19:20).

While Moltmann is best ambiguous on the universality of sin as an individual phenomena (seen best in his reluctance in seeing the poor as sinners) and unclear about an individual’s responsibility for their own sin. Revelation strongly affirms that humanity as a whole has been corrupted and is culpable for its corruption. (14:9-10; cf. 13:3-4, 7-8, 14; 18:4)

See Berger 1967, ch. 1, on the dynamics of social construction as a process of externalisation, objectification and internalisation by which anomic chaos is held at bay by the construction of a social cosmos. However, in Revelation this logic is turned on its head. What is held at by is the cosmos as intended in the creative purposes of God while the order that is internalised is the chaos of the beast.

Such a dual emphasis may also be reflected in the books primary depiction of Easter as soteriological event. In 1:5b the Lamb’s act of liberation is depicted as A uaavri qpaç è k t w v àpapTuâv qpwv èv T($ a ip a xi auroO, reflecting the cultic need for forgiveness for personal defilement by sin. However, in 5:9b Jesus qyopaoag t w 0e<3 èv t w aip axi aou a people, reflecting language used for ransom paid in order to free people that have been taken by an invading army (Fiorenza 1985:74). If this is case, then the constitution of the redeemed people as a kingdom to God is established both by liberating them from the transpersonal structure they are enslaved by and the defilement of their own sin.

destruction, they must change their allegiance.*®^ If they do, they can expect suffering but also an inheritance among the redeemed who will “reign forever and ever.” (22:5)

Second, to those who occupy the peripheral location of the social realm of the beast, the gospel comes as the promise that the order whose injustice they suffer is coming to an end.*®® However, unlike Moltmann, Revelation unambiguously affinns that those who have persist in the rebellion of the beast, no matter whether great or small, will share in its destiny (14:9-10; 18:4). Unlike Moltmann, therefore, the community of the poor do not by definition constitute one of Christ’s two “congregations.”*®"* It assumes that even those who suffer under an unjust order are marked by its injustice, and that fundamental to their liberation is the repentance that reorders human thinking and praxis. This may, in the end, provide a better rationale to one of Moltmann’s own concerns, that the ‘counter-intuitive’ way of the Lamb goes beyond both accommodation to the order as it exists and the rebellion that merely reverses the positions of privilege and oppression but leaves the fundamental structuration of the order intact.*®®

Third, although not an emphasis in Revelation, the promise that God “will wipe every tear from their eyes” (21:4) suggests also how such a view of sin as the universal problem redemption responds to can account for suffering that cannot be reduced to perpetuating or suffering injustice. There is suffering, deep suffering, that cannot be traced to anything but the painful absence of God’s life-giving presence on earth. While the ultimate cause of this absence is humanity’s primordial rebellion, such suffering does not have its basis in any particular sin but rather the condition sin produced. Therefore, the church must resist tracing such suffering to individual or

This is a warning directed as much to those inside the ecclesial communities as those outside as is evident in the addresses to the churches in chs. 2-3.

In this, Moltmann’s pastoral concerns can accentuate what only exist in suggestive form in the text, how the promise of the gospel gives hope to all whose blood is found in Babylon. (18:24)

Moltmann’s discussion of the “congiegation of the poor” is heavily dependent on identifying the TOUTWv TWV à6eA<j)wv poo t w v èAaxiOTWv// t o u t w v t w v eAaxioTwv in Matt 25:40, 45 as the poor

in general. This of course is a debated issue, several commentators seeing it as referring to the disciples (so Gundry 1982:514-15; Kingsbury 1977:76; Luz 1995:129-30; but against them, Davies and Allison 1997:428-29) Acknowledging that this is “the weight of exegetical opinion,” Rowland (1997:188-89) nevertheless opts against this “exclusive” understanding since the letter of the text does not demand it and since crucial to the text is that “it does not allow the reader to be complacent in the face of judgment.”

Here, Christ’s command to the Laodicean community to buy wealth from him is suggestive: He calls them from their accommodation to the Roman way (3:17-18) by calling them to give place for the way of his messianic banquet (3:20), whose final fulfilment we find in the life of the New Jerusalem (note how 19:9 anticipates 21:Iff in the imagery of a wedding banquet), which is characterised by the free and giacious flow of resources. (21:6-7, 22-26; 22:1-5; cf. 22:17)

structural sin but simply walk with the sufferer, and in the darkness that suggests otherwise, hope for the eschatological verification of God’s goodness.

c) Transformation: Restoration and Maturation

The last objection Moltmann has to the traditional understanding is that it leads to a conservative vision of a pristine primordial state corrupted by histoiy. This, however, is not necessarily so; Revelation’s vision of the future is both restorative and transformative: In its use of creation imagery. Rev 21-22 expects a restoration of humanity to its intended role which results in a transformation of the whole cosmos.*®® Such a vision does not only counter the charge of conservativism but is also politically more open than Moltmann’s view. Since it contains both restorative and transformative elements it neither favours a return to an ideal past nor assumes that the new always bears the seeds of the preferable, which Moltmann tends to do since the old always inheres in creation’s fundamental contradiction. If one is bound by the expectation of the restoration of humanity’s relationship with God which will

transform all things, one is Tadically free when seeking to discern what mixture of restoration, preservation and innovation a particular situation calls for.*®*"