THE ANNUAL MONSIGNOR PATRICK J. CORISH LECTURE (11 March 2020) - Prof. David Morgan, Duke University (original) (raw)
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in: The Oxford Handbook of Divine Revelation, edited by Balázs M. Mezei, Francesca Aran Murphy and Kenneth Oakes, 622-640. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021
ABSTRACT. This chapter deals with visual artworks as media of divine revelation. Since the third century, Christianity as a religion of revelation is using images to transmit knowledge of God and His action in history. These pictures rate among the oldest communication media of revelation. Apse mosaics of late antique churches served anagogical purposes leading beyond the pictorial work to transcendent realities. Placed intentionally above the altar, Christ’s sacramental presence was given a visual form through his pictorial presence. In the Middle Ages, the perception of images could represent the beginning of anagogical ascent towards the transcendent divine. In the Renaissance occurred a rhetorical shift. Gazes and pointing gestures of the figures in a perspectival space draw the viewer’s attention to the stage-like performance of the divine. The Baroque rhetoric of visionary revelations deployed theatrical and illusionistic features. In contemporary history, the issue of revelation in art became frequently controversial because the concord between artistic self-expression and the Judeo-Christian understanding of revelation was no longer a given. Many vanguard artists shaped their work as aesthetical expression of their spiritual ideas (Kandinsky, Newman). At present, the individual responses to divine revelation continue (Lüpertz, Pawson).
Interdisciplinary re-imagining of the concept of revelation
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2009
... Journal Title: HTS : Theological Studies; Volume: Volume 65; Issue: Issue 1; Publication Date: 2009; Pages: 1 - 6; Authors: Daniel P. Veldsman; ISSN: 02599422; Abstract: For the postfoundationalist Wentzel van Huyssteen, the James I McCord Professor of Theology and ...
In this handout for the Revelation Consultation group at ETS 2021 (Ft. Worth, TX), I build upon my previous work by demonstrating how Revelation’s structural organization implicitly reinforces Jesus’s claim of imminence relative to the parousia (1:3). My overall argument is that the first five Seals (6:1-11; a.k.a., “the last days”; cf. Acts 2:16-18) reflect recurring events throughout human history, with only the 6th Seal (6:12-17) reflecting the eschatological “timeframe” of the “Last Day” (6:17, “great day of their wrath”; cf. Acts 2:19-21). The rest of Revelation’s visionary content (7:1—22:20), then, simply re-visits/reiterates the same eschatological “timeframe” of the 6th Seal. Through this structural strategy John implicitly communicates to his 1st century addressees that: (1) the events of the first five Seals have already unfolded, and, thus, (2) there are now no longer any prerequisite historical events yet to be fulfilled prior to the start of the eschaton (the 6th Seal)—the parousia is imminent. My claim that 7:1—22:20 reiterates the eschatological 6th Seal builds out from the insight of some (e.g., Loenertz, Thomas) that the 7 Trumpets and 7 Bowls (8:6—16:21) telescope linearly, yet progressively, out of the “empty” 7th Seal (8:1). I differ on one key point, however. I do not accord with their claim that the “empty” 7th Seal occurs after the 6th Seal. Rather, I suggest that the 7th Seal is a synonymous “umbrella term” for the 6th Seal. As an “umbrella term,” the 7th Seal encompasses the seven telescopic Trumpets and Bowls, of which the seventh element in each includes events that reiterate 6th Seal descriptors (e.g., earthquake [11:19; 16:18]; mountains and islands removed [16:20]). I call this interpretive approach “telescopic reiteration.” In other words, “telescopic reiteration” re-describes expansively, and reiterates from different perspectives, the same eschatological “timeframe” as that of the 6th Seal (6:12-17). John creates his telescopically reiterative structure by using three visionary literary devices that occur throughout Hebrew and Jewish visionary texts (prophetic and apocalyptic). These three literary devices are: (1) the space/time referent (1:9-11) and (2) the two clauses “kai eidon/and I saw” and “meta tauta eidon/after these things I saw” (and their variations). Altogether, these literary devices demarcate six major vision blocks (“after these things I saw” occurrences) and 40 minor visionary segments (“and I saw” occurrences). John adds a distinctive literary twist, however. Unlike other visionary texts, the resultant structure of his vision episode (1:9—22:20) allows one to re-organize the six major vision blocks into a reiterative format. John also is distinctive in his creation of a chiastic micro-structure for a number of his vision blocks through his placement of “and I saw” clauses. The centrally located “and I saw” clause(s) form a chiastic centrepoint/“peak” within four vision blocks (4:1—22:20). If one “skim reads” each chiastic “peak” in order, then this essential message unfolds: the Lamb, who is the only one worthy of opening the seven-sealed scroll (6:1a, vision block 2), is thus worthy of unleashing cataclysmic judgment upon (1) the Sea and Land Beasts (13:1-10; 13:11-18; vision block 4), (2) Babylon (16:12-21; 17:1-5; vision block 5), and (3) Satan (20:1-3; 20:4-10; vision block 6) at his parousia as the Lion of Judah.
Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia
2015
Revelations, Meaning and Interpretation 1. The Angel of the Apocalypse 2. The Lamb 3. The Four Horsemen 4. The Seven Seals 5. The Woman Clothed with the Sun 6. The Satanic Trinity 7. The Whore of Babylon 8. Armageddon, Millennium, and the Last Judgement 9. The New Jerusalem 10. The Apocalypse in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries Revelation: Artistic Reception and Relevance Glossary Suggestions for Further Reading Bibliography
Seeing is Feeling: Revelation's Enthroned Lamb and Ancient Visual Affects
Most scholarship of the last few decades on the book of Revelation has focused on its colonial conditions and heated, even forceful, political engagement, making conflicting conclusions about to what extent it “reproduces” or “resists” imperial ideology. Of particular focus has been the striking image of the lamb on the throne, an image that ambiguously imparts both conquest and victimhood. This essay builds on and steps to the side of this work by addressing the image of the lamb on the throne as an expressive and emotionally, rather than ideologically, ambivalent image. Placing this image alongside other affectively rich spectacles in Revelation’s context, I suggest that the enthroned lamb gives voice to conflicted feelings about imperial life: attachment and loss, extravagant dreams of sovereignty and victory, as well as the painful realities of vulnerability and subjection, all in complex inter-implication.