The Theology, Christology, and Pneumatology of the Book of Revelation are highly reflective of the social, political and religious context in which the book was written. Within the text, we find expressed the views of an author, and Christian community in general, challenged by the power and ideology of Rome, as well as having to re-imagine and re-comprehend their God, and divinity in general, in light of the revelation of Jesus Christ and the work of the Spirit among them.
Before beginning this investigation it is important that we define as much as possible what is meant by ‘how God, Christ and the Spirit are portrayed’. The exploration of these figures holds an established set of names within Christian thought, specifically Theology, Christology, and Pneumatology. In this circumstance, Theology, which in general convention may contain all of these distinction, is defined more precisely as the way John understands God, or what Trinitarian Christianity would identify as God the Father. If we then use the base definition of Theology as ‘talk about God’, and extend this to both Christology and Pneumatology, we assemble a clearer idea of what we intend to do in this essay. Through examining the way in which John describes these three entities, God, Christ and the Spirit, as well as what they say and do, we will elicit the way in which John understands the heavenly realm and the divine being, as well as where Christ and the Spirit fit within it.
Having clarified the matters of Theology, Christology, and Pneumatology, let us now move on to explore the Theology of the Book of Revelation, that is, the way in which John, and so the book, understands God. The Theology of Revelation, according to Bauckham, is highly context...
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—. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
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Bredin, Mark. Jesus, Revolutionary of Peace. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003.
Bucur, Bogdan G. "Hierarchy, Prophecy and the Angelomorphic Spirit: A Contribution to the Book of Revelation's Wirkungsgeschichte." Journal of Biblical Literature 127, no. 1 (2008): 173-194.
Carrell, Peter R. Jesus and the Angels: Angelology and the Christology of the Apocalypse of John. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
McGrath, Alister E. Theology: The Basics. 2nd. Oxford : Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
Woodman, Simon. The Book of Revelation. London: SCM Press, 2008.
The medieval theologian Julian of Norwich was a mystic, writer, anchoress and spiritual director for her time. She is gaining in popularity for our time as she provides a spiritual template for contemplative prayer and practice in her compilation of writings found in Revelations of Divine Love. The insightful meditations provide the backdrop and basis for her Trinitarian theology’s embrace of God’s Motherhood found in the Trinity. Her representative approach of the all-encompassing unconditional love of a mother who nurtures, depicts Christ as our Mother ascending to the placement of Second hood within the Trinity while giving voice to the duality of God.
LaHaye, Tim, and Ed Hindson. The Popular Encyclopedia of Bible Prophecy. Eugene, OR.: Harvest House Publishers, 2004.
He objects to a view which argues that John is speaking of God’s timing rather than ours by pointing out the concrete historicity of Revelation including churches and expressions used are “emphatic-declarative.” Regarding an objection which states that the events will ...
This paper is written to discuss the many different ideas that have been discussed over the first half of Theology 104. This class went over many topics which gave me a much better understanding of Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible. I will be addressing two topics of which I feel are very important to Christianity. First, I will be focusing on the question did Jesus claim to be God? This is one of the biggest challenges of the Bibles that come up quite often. Secondly, I will focus on character development.
Unlike the Eastern Orthodox Church, the “truly Trinitarian framework [of] our worship and life has rarely been found” in the Western Church (pg. 6). Possibly due to the early church’s Hellenistic influence, emphasis has always been placed on worshiping the ONE high God. So much focus on one God created an irrelevance to the requirement of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. Similarly, when the doctrine was attacked by reason in the enlightenment period, Christians st...
Stanton, Graham. Gospel Truth?: New Light on Jesus and the Gospels. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995. Paperback.
New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Anthony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, London, S.C.M. Press, 1955, p. 152.
Revelations of Divine Love is a 14th century masterpiece written by Julian of Norwich. This book is an account of St. Julian’s sixteen different mystical revelations in which she had encountered at a time of great suffering and illness. St. Julian focussed on the many “mysteries of Christianity.” Through her many revelations she encountered God’s vast love, the existence of evil, God’s heart for creation, the father and mother-heart of God, and the need to obey her Father in Heaven. Amongst these revelations the most powerful was the revelation of God’s love and character. Revelations of Divine Love is a wonderful source of revelation to connect a reader to the Father.
This essay will argue that the eschatology of the Book of Revelation forms an integral part of John’s attempt within the pages of his book to form a literary world in which the forms, figures, and forces of the earthly realm are critiqued and unmasked through the re-focalization of existence from the perspective of heaven. It will attempt to show that, in response to the social, political, religious, and economic circumstances of his readers, the Book of Revelation forms a counter imaginative reality. Through drawing upon an inaugurated sense of eschatology and evocative imagery, John is able to pull the reader in and show them the true face of the imperial world and consequences of its ideology, forcing the reader allegiance to fall with either ‘Babylon’ or the New Jerusalem.
...s distributed in Theology 101 at the University of Notre Dame, Fremantle on 22 April 2008.
The first two parts of the book discuss the kind of theological-historical perspective and ecclesial situation that determines the form-content configuration of Revelation. The first section attempts to assess the theological commonality to and differences from Jewish apocalypticism. Fiorenza focuses of the problem that although Revelation claims to be a genuinely Christian book and has found its way into the Christian canon, it is often judged to be more Jewish than Christian and not to have achieved the “heights” of genuinely early Christian theology. In the second part of the book, Fiorenza seeks to assess whether and how much Revelation shares in the theological structure of the Fourth Gospel. Fiorenza proposes that a careful analysis of Revelation would suggest that Pauline, Johannine, and Christian apocalyptic-prophetic traditions and circles interacted with each other at the end of the first century C.E in Asia Minor. She charts in the book the structural-theological similarities and differences between the response of Paul and that of Revelation to the “realized eschatology”. She argues that the author of Revelation attempts to correct the “realized eschatology” implications of the early Christian tradition with an emphasis on a futuristic apocalyptic understanding of salvation. Fiorenza draws the conclusion that Revelation and its author belong neither to the Johannine nor to the Pauline school, but point to prophetic-apocalyptic traditions in Asia Minor.
LaHaye, Tim F., and Edward E. Hindson. The Popular Encyclopedia of Bible Prophecy. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2004.
Peacocke, A. R. Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming--natural and Divine. Oxford, OX, UK: B. Blackwell, 1990. Print. (BL 240.2 .P352 1990)
As defined by Migliore, Revelation means an “unveiling,” uncovering,” or “disclosure” of something previously hidden. Today, Community of Christ affirms the Living God is ever self-revealing to the world through the testimony of Israel and Jesus Christ. Revelation provides important decisions about who God is and how we are to understand the world and ourselves. In seeking to understand, as a member of Community of Christ, we must explore the historical and contextual response of the leaderships to revelation within the setting of the Restoration and the Reorganization era.
Corley, Lemke and Lovejoy (2002) agree with the importance of the two contexts defining theological hermeneutics as, the process of thinking about God, thinking after the event of revelation in the...