John-Revelation Project

For anybody interested in St. John’s Revelation or eschatology in general, I would highly recommend the John-Revelation Project. I’ve only read a little, but the central thesis is that the Revelation of St. John is best understood interpreted through a study of its literary connections with the Gospel of St. John.

One bit that was of particular interest was a foot note directed at recent attempts to responsibly study the book of Revelation, postmillenialists in particular:

“There have been several valiant attempts by postmillennialists to exposit Revelation. But postmillennialists have largely approached the book with a literary literalism similar to the hermeneutic of the premillennialists, having failed to appreciate the ironic character of the biblical understanding of victory (cf. Paul’s claim that “we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us,” Rom 8:36-37). This hermeneutical oversight is caused, as we shall argue, by the loss of a classical understanding of the possibilities of irony, the heart of the comedic imagination.”

I’m intrigued by this critique. It is a challenge, in my mind, much needed. It is a challenge for a theological aesthetic, for seeing and understanding “the comedic imagination” of God, of which theology is always concerned, but to which theologians are not often quick to admit.