Who's the dragon?

A quick sequel to this:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/10/is-mary-woman-in-revelation.html

Catholic apologists argue that since the child in Rev 12 is an individual (Jesus), and the dragon is an individual (Satan), then in consistency, the woman is an individual (Mary). But let's take a comparison:

2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended (Rev 20:2-3).

It's the same dragon we find in Rev 12. So who is the dragon in Rev 20? Suppose you say it's Satan/the Devil. After all, the text explicitly identifies the dragon/serpent as Satan/the Devil. And Satan is an individual. So that supports the Catholic argument, right?

Not really. Certainly the Satanic identification is true as far as that goes. But is that the only referent?

Consider this: would it make sense for God to bind Satan to prevent him from deceiving the nations while God allows billions of demons to continue deceiving the nations? (I don't know how many demons there are, but there doesn't seem to be a shortage.) 

Why would God bind just one fallen angel (Satan) but let all the other fallen angels have free rein to deceive the nations? So I understand "the dragon/serpent" in this vision to be a synecdoche for all the fallen angels, using the leader of the pack to illustrate the principle. The binding includes Satan, but he's being used as a representative figure for demonic and diabolical deceivers in general. 

If that's correct, then the same holds true for the dragon in  Rev 12. The referent isn't restricted to one individual in particular, but functions as a synecdoche for angelic adversaries of God, Jesus, and the people of God (faithful Jews and Christians). 

Problems in the Amillennial Interpretation of the Binding of Satan

The following problems that J. Webb Mealy raise are never dealt adequately—or at all—in Amillennial literature.

“[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).

Vampire hunters

Alan asked me to comment on Mealy's statement:

https://www.alankurschner.com/2018/07/23/the-irreconcilable-contradiction-within-amillennialism/

1. In traditional Augustinian amillennialism, the Millennium spans the entire church age or interadventual age. It is, however, illicit to take a single incident in a long narrative and stretch it to cover the entire plot (Rev 4-19).

2. A more recent version of amillennialism appeals to recapitulatory parallelism. I don't know the first scholar to use that analysis. Warfield uses that analysis. It was popularized by Hendriksen, in his classic, anti-Dispensational commentary. And that's developed by more recent amil commentators like Beale and Poythress. 

From what I can tell by the excerpt, Mealy is shadowboxing with that analysis. He doesn't think the two battle scenes (Rev 19-20) overlap. 

3. I do think Revelation has some overlapping scenes, although we need to avoid rigidly schematizing that feature.

4. The Apocalypse is a record of a vision or series of visions John had one day on Patmos. God showed him things in the vision. It's important to draw a conceptual distinction between:

i) Only shown something once

ii) Something happening only once

The fact that this is the only time John sees an incident doesn't necessarily mean this is a one-time incident. If he was only shown it happening on one occasion, that doesn't imply that it only happens once. Maybe it's an unrepeatable event, or maybe it's a repeatable kind of event that John saw just one time. Is the relationship between events in Revelation and the real world a one-to-one or one-to-many correspondence? 

5. The Apocalypse belongs to the narrative genre. The question is how the plot maps onto reality. Consider dream sequences. To some extent, Revelation is like a recurring dream or inescapable nightmare, where bad things keep happening. You think you put it behind you, but it's waiting for you around the next corner. It circles back to pounce. The plot in Revelation is characterized by alternation. 

6. What's the significance of Satan's binding? What narrative function does that serve? How does it correspond to reality?

It reminds me of a cinematic trope. In the horror genre, monsters like vampires, werewolves, and zombies personify a contagion. If they bite the victim, that turns the victim into one of them. So they multiply exponentially. This has science fiction counterparts with aliens that incubate a human host, then replace it. In real life, this is similar to parasitoid wasps–as well as rabies, where a rabid animal infects a human, making the human rabid. 

A variation on the vampire mythos is the master vampire who's the patriarch for a family tree of vampires. They all descend from him. He turned them directly or indirectly. If you kill the master vampire, all his descendants revert to human. If you can track down the progenitor, you don't need to destroy all his progeny, one-by-one. Kill multiple birds with one stake. 

Because these monsters are so contagious, public safety requires total eradication. A single surviving carrier will recreate an outbreak all over again. 

I think that's the point behind oscillating events in Rev 19-20. There are times and places in church history where Christians enjoy a respite from persecution. But that can lull them into a false sense of security. Because evil is infectious, like a communicable disease, you can never be sure if you put it behind you once and for all time. So you dare not drop your guard. Eventually, Satan and his minions are permanently quarantined, but you don't know ahead of time where you are in church history. 

Why Amillennialism Disrupts the Unity of the Narrative by Starting at "Revelation 20:1"

http://www.alankurschner.com/2014/08/27/when-does-the-binding-of-satan-for-a-thousand-years-begin-revelation-1911-203-supports-premillennialism-not-amillennialism-ep-3/