“[Amillennialism believes since] Satan’s
release from prison and destruction (Rev. 20:7–10) is connected with the
parousia, then the time of his imprisonment “so that he should deceive
the nations no longer” (20:3) seems to be coterminous with the career of
the beast (which also ends at the parousia). But this is impossible,
since the beast’s career is portrayed in Revelation as the time of
Satan’s greatest success ever in deceiving the human race (fn. In Rev.
12:9, Satan is characterized as the one who “deceives the whole world.”
In context, the events of ch. 13 graphically picture the full outworking
of this deception, and by no means its limitation).
Further, it does no good for this view to
over-interpret the report of Satan’s release from the abyss in Rev.
20:8 to mean that the only sense in which Satan had previous been bound
was that he could not then deceive the nations in such a way as to
“gather them together for the war.” For to do this is not only to ignore
the explicit cosmological import of such passages as Rev. 12:9–17, but
it is also to forget the fact that “Har-Magedon” is but the last episode
in Satan’s “war” with the saints. In Rev. 13:7 it was the beast
himself who was given authority throughout his career and who was, in
concert with Satan, to “make war with the saints and to overcome them.”
The beast’s career, in other words, far from being the time of Satan’s
binding in this regard, is undeniably the time of his power par excellence to
deceive the nations into making war on the “camp” of the saints.” It is
thus only at the parousia that the power to practice even this
particular kind of deception is taken away from Satan.
What is taken away for the first time at the parousia is however, given back a
thousand years later, when Satan is released from the abyss, and is
permitted once again to instigate an attack on the people of God (Rev.
20:7–10). Thus a completely lucid and coherent sequence is established
between Rev. 19:11—20:3 on the one hand, and 20:7–10 on the other: the
power to deceive is first removed from Satan, and then subsequently
restored. This means that the battle described in 20:7–10 can in no way
be identified with the battle of Har-Margedon, since in spite of any
similarities between the two scenes, what happens to Satan in the one
manifestly precedes what happens to him in the other” (Mealy, After the Thousand Years, 20–21).
1. As I've often remarked, that argument only works, at best, on the assumption that Revelation is a linear historical narrative set in the future.
ReplyDeleteEven then, it's often impossible to write a linear narrative about complex events. Take a historian writing about the Civil War or WWII. Because so many things are happening at once on different fronts, or with so many overlapping events, the account will have to circle back from place to place.
2. If, in addition, Revelation is more like historical fiction or an allegorical dream, then the narrative sequence doesn't necessarily or even presumptively parallel the sequence of events outside the narrative which it points to. Take nonlinear narration in certain films.
So you need to include a preliminary argument for your presupposition regarding the genre of Revelation.
Regardless if Revelation is taken to be fiction, allegory, or historical, there is narrative logic in discourse of Revelation.
DeleteIt should be noted that virtually all _non-temporal_ interpreters, be they mythological, thematic, or idealistic, recognize narrative logic, such as in Rev 19-20 where the eschatological battle (ch. 19) is the _setting_ for the binding of Satan. I.e. Non-temporal interpreters recognize (contra amillennial interpreters) a cohesive link between 19:11–21 and 20:1–6, which they view as a sequential-logical thematic link. Thus, 20:1–6 develops the Parousia event of ch. 19, rather than construing it as a recapitulation. See for example, Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy, 5; Schüssler Fiorenza, Vision of a Just World, 103–9; Michaels, Book of Revelation, 68, 147; Yarbro Collins, The Apocalypse, 133–34; Wall, Revelation, 227, 234–35, Mathewson, “Re-Examination,” 237–51. To name a few.
1. The amillennial interpretation views the career of the beast occurring in the present, yet Satan's (assuming) present influence on the beast is incongruent with his so-called present binding activity. This was Mealy's point.
While I do not think there is a literalistic historical narrative in Revelation, there certainly is a progressive outworking of three cohesive chains of topics in the discourse: (1) the “three adversaries of God,” (2) Satan’s progressive banishment, and (3) the saints’s vindication.
E.g, The depiction of the martyred saints under the altar crying out for vindication in the fifth seal are progressed to a new, elevated, resurrected-vindicated status in Rev 20:4.
For many more examples of progression (contra recapitulation) in the discourse of Revelation, see ch. 6 of my "The Millennial Binding of Satan: A Linguistic Approach to Revelation 19:11—20:6.” Ph.D. diss. McMaster Divinity College, 2019. (I interact with Beale the most in respect to the issue of recapitulation).
i) I didn't appeal to the principle of recapitulation, so that's a red herring.
Deleteii) To take a comparison, the plot of The Pilgrim's Progress has dramatic or narrative logic. And it has a certain progression. For instance, once they cross the river of death, there's no going back.
The plot has a symbolic geography, with various sites along the journey representing obstacles to completing the journey. Yet the arrangement is somewhat arbitrary. Bunyan could rearrange some of these temptations/symbolic locations without disrupting the overall flow.
It's meant to allegorize spiritual awakening, followed by a treacherous pilgrimage to heaven, with temptations along the way that threaten to prevent Christians from crossing the finish line. So the allegory is meant to parallel real life. Indeed, it has an autobiographical elements. But it's a spiritual roadmap or travelogue, not a literal roadmap. The sequence is artificial to some degree.