From dffe624c1f707ade00b82fd6a28650a6bc0c93c4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Joe Carstairs Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:09:10 +0100 Subject: reading log: revealed wisdom --- reading-log.md | 26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+) diff --git a/reading-log.md b/reading-log.md index 567e630..d7d2a83 100644 --- a/reading-log.md +++ b/reading-log.md @@ -6,6 +6,32 @@ author: Joe Carstairs ## 2026-04-27 +### @{revealed-wisdom} + +A collection of nice but mostly irrelevant academic essays on apocalyptic. It +might be worth checking out Christopher Rowland's book output: he was evidently +influential. + +Andrew Chester brought out the cosmic extent of threat in Revelation which I +hadn't fully appreciated. He observed that the visions in Revelation unwind +Creation, ending the separation between the heavens, plucking the stars from +their place, darkening the sun and moon, destroying the land, threatening a +complete end to creation. But Jesus shines like the sun and holds seven stars in +his hand, and in the New Jerusalem, God's permanent light abolishes the light of +the heavenly bodies. The old world was made chaos by evil, and the new world is +re-created out of the chaos made of the old. He raised a difficult concern: does +John's New Jerusalem ending appear like a _deus ex machina_? I wasn't convinced +by his own solution. This issue bedevils green rhetoric as well: placing hope in +a distant, improbable salvation over which we have little or no control, taking +away the urgency for action now and making us feel alienated from the world. + +John Barton said that apocalypse encourages the ethics of setting-apart over the +ethics of fitting in (he used jargon words which I forgot). Apocalyptic ethics +is distinct from other Jewish ethics because it has a pessimistic view of human +power and human prospects, but promotes disinterested submission to God anyway. +I think this is similar to what I've seen described before as 'martyrdom +ethics.' + ### @{oxford-handbook-apocalyptic} I finished skimming the chapters today after starting last Friday. -- cgit v1.2.3