I was recently skimming through The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, the massive, two-volume magnum opus of Greg Boyd. The work, published in 2017, was highly anticipated as a new defense for identifying God as thoroughly non-violent and that God’s followers must likewise abstain from violence. Boyd prioritizes carefully selected pacifistic texts from the New Testament—a sort of canon within the canon—which he then uses to interpret the rest of the Bible. Conventional interpretations contrary to this Jesus-mandated pacificism must be discarded and replaced with new, ‘cruciform’ interpretations. Boyd may be described as arguing that while the parts of the Bible which attribute violence to God are ‘inspired’, they nevertheless reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of who God is by his followers, on both the Watsonian and Doylist levels.
When I read books or articles which survey a broad range of biblical and parabiblical literature, regardless of the topic, I often keep an eye out for what the author has to say regarding apocalyptic literature. Especially so the Revelation of John, due to its status as a controversial document which has resisted consensus among the religiously devout. In Boyd’s volume, the final chapter—what he calls his ‘Postscript’, a section between the book’s primary twenty-five chapters and its final six appendices—begins with the following paragraph touching on the Revelation of John:
When John looks at the OT’s militant image of the Messiah as “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah” (Gen 49:9), what he sees is a slain lamb that battles foes by offering up his life on their behalf (Rev 5:5–6). So too, when John looks at the OT’s image of Yahweh as a warrior returning from battle, covered with the blood of the enemies he has slain (Isa 63:3), what he sees is Yahweh covered by his own blood prior to a battle, signifying that this warrior engages in battle not by slaying enemies but by being willing to be slain by his enemies out of love for his enemies (Rev 19:11–13). And finally, when John looks at biblical images of Yahweh as a sword-wielding warrior (e.g., Isa 34:6, 66:16), what he sees is Yahweh holding a sword in his mouth, for this warrior engages in battle not by slaying “flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12) but by vanquishing the lies that imprison people and by speaking the truth that sets people free (Rev 19:15, 21; cf. John 8:32).
I have seen these same arguments put forward by several ‘progressive’ Christians over the last couple of decades. I genuinely admire the intention of rejecting violence as a legitimate form of religious expression. However, I think such arguments often leave out vital context, both within the Revelation itself as well from relevant contemporary literature. And, unfortunately, I have seen proponents deliberately ignore these contexts when it is provided to them, intentionally closing their eyes to avoid seeing information which compromises their argument.
The above paragraph encapsulates several of these hermeneutical errors, and I wanted to touch on why I find them so unconvincing.
When John looks at the OT’s militant image of the Messiah as “the Lion of the Tribe of Judah” (Gen 49:9), what he sees is a slain lamb that battles foes by offering up his life on their behalf (Rev 5:5–6).
In the very next chapter (Rev 6), John also sees the slain lamb unleashing violence, famine, and death on the world. The violence is so severe that the social elite literally beg lifeless rocks to hide them from ‘the lamb’s anger’. According to the text, the violence is the manifestation of the wrath of Jesus.
So too, when John looks at the OT’s image of Yahweh as a warrior returning from battle, covered with the blood of the enemies he has slain (Isa 63:3),
Revelation 19 gives no indication whatsoever that the warrior should be identified as Yhwh. Earlier in his book, Boyd acknowledges that literature from later in the Second Temple period rewrote stories from the Hebrew Bible so that Yhwh’s literal presence was replaced with a mediating agent, usually an angel who acts on Yhwh’s behalf (cf. page 1146ff). While Rev 19’s echo of Isaiah 63 does situate this warrior-mediator in place of Yhwh, such would hardly be unusual for the time period. Rev 19.15 identifies the warrior-mediator with traditionally messianic imagery taken from Psalm 2. He is the Messiah.
what he sees is Yahweh covered by his own blood prior to a battle, signifying that this warrior engages in battle not by slaying enemies but by being willing to be slain by his enemies out of love for his enemies (Rev 19:11–13).
In Psa 2, Yhwh enables ‘his anointed’ (i.e. the Messiah according to Rev 19) to conquer his enemies. The psalmist warns these enemies to ‘kiss his [the Messiah’s] feet’, otherwise ‘his wrath will be quickly kindled’. In the psalm, the Messiah wields an iron rod to accomplish this violent conquest of nations, ‘breaking’ and ‘dashing’ them ‘to pieces’. In the Revelation, this is phrased as the Messiah ‘striking down’ the nations in order to rule them with the iron rod.
Further, the blood on the Messiah’s robe comes not from himself, but from his enemies. This is not based solely on a general appeal to the original context of Isa 63 (and likely also Joel 3.13), but to an earlier passage of the Revelation itself. Rev 14 states that those who participate in idolatry and murder will suffer ‘God’s wrath’, and ‘torture in fire and sulfur’ with ‘no rest day and night’. The chapter then shows sinners being ‘thrown’ into the ‘winepress’, the same winepress which Rev 19 directly says the Messiah stomps in.
Rather than subverting the violence of Isa 63, Rev 14+19 reinforces it. The warrior-mediator is the Messiah, and the blood on his robes came from crushing his enemies underfoot in ‘the winepress of God’s anger’.
And finally, when John looks at biblical images of Yahweh as a sword-wielding warrior (e.g., Isa 34:6, 66:16), what he sees is Yahweh holding a sword in his mouth, for this warrior engages in battle not by slaying “flesh and blood” (Eph 6:12) but by vanquishing the lies that imprison people and by speaking the truth that sets people free (Rev 19:15, 21; cf. John 8:32).
The origin of the picture of a sword hanging from the Messiah’s mouth does not come from Yhwh as warrior, but from the ‘suffering servant’ (Isa 49.2). Apocalyptic expectations in the late Second Temple period sometimes had the Messiah embody Israel, mantling the nation as a whole. Boyd is accurate that the ‘sword’ in Rev 19 likely symbolizes speech, but it is not speech which ‘sets people free’ without bloodshed.
In broad strokes, Rev 19 paints a scene in which the Messiah conquers the ‘beast’ through his speech, and so prepares for the annihilation of the beast’s armies, devoured by carrion birds. We see this same scene in literature immediately contemporary with the Revelation of John. In 4 Ezra 11–12, the Messiah’s speech is symbolized as a lion’s roar, and in 4 Ezra 13 as fire. In 2 Baruch 40, symbolism is dispensed with, and the Messiah’s speech is bluntly stated to convict his enemy in order to ‘kill’ him. The common structure of all three apocalyptic texts suggests they drew on a common tradition, one in which the Messiah was expected to violently defeat or destroy a world-ruling empire and its emperor.
It is difficult to understate just how severely disingenuine the pacifistic interpretation of Rev 19 suggested by Boyd and others really is. This does not mean Boyd et al misread the text deliberately. They read to me as sincere in their approach to the text. Yet their preferred reading is so contrary to the text of Revelation, and the evidence around it, that there is no legitimate foundation for their interpretation apart from an appeal to a purely abstract, theological level. The language of Revelation 19 is thoroughly saturated with violence, allusions to violent passages in the Hebrew Bible, and parallels to violent texts in parabiblical literature. The apocalypse does not subvert this violence, but embraces it.