Apocalyptic Beauty

A potent and formative text for a theological aesthetics faithful to the God revealed in the Scriptures is the Apocalypse of John (Revelation). An apocalyptic viewpoint is beautiful inasmuch as it observes the whole from within the part of time/space and inasmuch as the apocalyptic vision provides considerable unity of diverse theological themes with various expansions and enhancements, hence mimicking the very function of theological beauty to communicate the whole (God) in the part (here, in space-time). This essay traces major themes throughout Scripture, utilizing inter-textual interpretation en route, and seeks to clarify the Book of Revelation\u27s role in recapitulation, consummation, and consolation (i.e. beauty). Commenting on how the Apocalypse meets the criteria for being theologically beautiful, this essay then seeks to show how this role of beauty--and in particular, consolation--attracted the early Christian devotees visiting/dwelling-in the catacombs (A.D. 150-500) to make the Apocalypse of John one of the major contributors to their artwork

Till Jesus comes: origins of Christian apocalyptic expectation

Holman, Charles. Till Jesus comes: origins of Christian apocalyptic expectation. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1996

The Road to Post Apocalyptic Fiction: McCarthy’s Challenges to Post-Apocalyptic Genre

This presentation examines The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006) set in the United States after some undetermined apocalypse where an unnamed man and his son negotiate starvation and the devastated landscape. The novel presents several challenges to the Post Apocalypse genre. It foregrounds character development rather than plot and counterbalances horror with lyricism. The novel also confronts the more typical happy ending of a new family suggested by the religious imagery, instead predicting the inevitable approach of human extinction, but also promising a third, the long-term, rebirth of life (not necessarily human) through the mystery of re-evolution

Legalists, Visionaries, and New Names: Sectarianism and the Search for Apocalyptic Origins in Isaiah 56–66

This essay re-examines the difficult questions concerning the origins of apocalyptic literature and the rise of Jewish sectarianism. Since the publication of O. Plöger’s Theokratie und Eschatologie and P. Hanson’s The Dawn of Apocalyptic, the search for proto-apocalyptic origins in early post-exilic period sectarian conflict has generated a fair amount of debate. The most cogent and sustained response to Hanson’s and Plöger’s theories, S. Cook’s Prophecy & Apocalypticism (1995), attempted to purge the influence of “deprivation theory” from the field of biblical studies, and, more broadly, social anthropology. The present essay makes a fresh study of some central lines of thought in these works, especially as they relate to the issue of sectarianism and the social framework used for drawing exegetical conclusions. In particular, one prominent theory of the symbolic—in this case, textual—expression of sectarian groups, that of the anthropologist Mary Douglas, is applied to a series of enigmatic and highly debated texts in Trito-Isaiah in order to show the continued viability of the “sectarian” interpretation of these passages

Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic

Reviewed Book: Russell, D S. (David Syme). Divine Disclosure: An Introduction to Jewish Apocalyptic. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress; London: SCM Press, 1992

How to Survive the Zombie Reckoning

Associate Professor Paul Bender, an expert in post-apocalyptic fiction, shares insights from resourcefulness to group liability sure to be handy for any collapse of civilization

Post-Apocalyptic Geographies and Structural Appropriation

Excerpt from Routledge Companion to Transnational American Studies, edited by Nina Morgan, Alfred Hornung, and Takayuki Tatsum

James Nayler and the Lamb\u27s War

James Nayler was perhaps the most articulate theologian and political spokesman of the earliest Quaker movement. He was part of a West Yorkshire group of radicals who added revolutionary impetus to George Fox\u27s apocalyptic preaching of Christ\u27s coming in the bodies of common men and women. With other Quaker leaders, Nayler insisted upon disestablishment of the Church, abolition of tithes, and disenfranchisement of the clergy, in order that Christ might rule in England, through human conscience. For early Friends, Christ\u27s sovereignty in the conscience was less a principle of individual freedom to dissociate religiously than a basis for collective practices of revolutionary worship, moral reform, social equality, and economic justice. All these were features of the nonviolent struggle Nayler called the \u27Lamb\u27s War\u27. His meteoric career is outlined in this study, a movement from apocalyptic prophet, to stigmatized Christ-figure, to withdrawn quietist