Augustine

Thoughts on Revelation
AUGUSTINE

Augustine (of Hippo) thought that the “first resurrection” in Revelation 20:4-5 was the resurrection of sinners to life in Jesus Christ. It would be in line with Ephesians 2:1-6, Colossians 2:12-13, John 5:25, Romans 6:3-7 and other such texts.

Augustine thought of two resurrections. One that began the Christian experience of life in Jesus and the final bodily resurrection which completed the Christian experience. Both resurrections would be the experience of Christians but only the first one, he thought, was in Revelation 20:4- 5.

Because Augustine was so influential that view became popular and remains popular today. But the truth of those texts, like Romans 6:3-7, is not the truth Revelation 20:4-5 is telling. In those texts we have people who are outside of Christ entering into a saving union with Christ. Prior to their believer’s baptism they are not united with Christ and then by faith they are baptized into Christ and are identified with and enter into union with His death and resurrection.

That is not the setting of Revelation 20. The people who “come to life” in a resurrection in Revelation 20 are already in Jesus Christ. They had earlier experienced the “resurrection” into Jesus. In this setting they had laid down their lives for Jesus Christ in the battle against the Beast and his armies. These are not passing from death outside of Christ into life in Jesus Christ – this had already been accomplished before they were martyred for Christ.

Whatever the image in Revelation 20:4-5 is saying (and it is an image), it is saying it about those who already belonged to Jesus Christ and who had therefore experienced a “resurrection” such as is spoken of on Ephesians 2:1-6. The “first” resurrection in Revelation is not dealing with a spiritual resurrection when one becomes a Christian in contrast to the final glorious bodily resurrection.

The Revelation 20 imagery presents “two” resurrections. One, the resurrection of those martyred for Jesus and the resurrection of those killed in the service of the Dragon and the beasts.

In a lengthy and broader-ranging article, Garlington takes the view that the “first resurrection” is written to tell us something about the after-life situation of those who have died in Jesus Christ. He suggests that it speaks of a new intimacy. The martyred believers, as it were, enter the very throne-room of God. He goes with Augustine in saying it is a spiritual resurrection, but makes it an extension of Augustine’s view. Since he thinks it speaks of an after-life experience prior to the final coming of our Lord and the bodily resurrection, he feels compelled to see a resurrection of “souls.” In his presentation, he stresses that it is souls that John sees resurrected and not bodies. This he feels will make the point that the resurrection imaged is not a bodily resurrection. (It would also weaken a premillennial view, which requires a literal resurrection that would then, of course, involve bodies.)

This unduly complicates matters and over-interprets the words (so we judge). John is not saying he saw the “souls” come to life. If he had said that we would have to conclude that the “souls” (that is, “the spiritual side” of humans, in this case, the Christians) had been killed. This would require “dead souls” – a strange idea indeed.

John said he saw “the souls of those that were beheaded because of their testimony for Jesus.” He goes on to say that “they” came to life. He is not isolating the souls from the persons of the martyrs. He is talking about “those” whose souls he saw. “They” came to life and not just their “souls.”

A resurrection in Scripture, whether figuratively of a nation (as in Ezekiel 37) or an individual in a “spiritual” resurrection (as in Ephesians 2) involves the entire person or persons. The idea of the abstracted “spirit” (or soul) of an individual being resurrected is a concept altogether foreign to the Biblical witness.

No, John sees martyrs for Jesus coming to life. The picture he is looking at is a bodily resurrection. But it is an image, a picture that rehearses a truth. As surely as the chaining and imprisonment of Satan was an image and not a literal truth, just that surely the resurrection of the martyrs was an image and not a literal truth.

The coming bodily resurrection in passages like 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Corinthians 15 remain as true and as expected as it ever has been, but that is not the truth John is conveying in Revelation 20.

However, it remains true that the image John sees is a bodily resurrection rather than a resurrection of “dead souls.”

Still, in the Book of Revelation, with its welter of images we are to see what he saw and then work at its meaning. When the seven-headed beast rises from the sea we are supposed to say, “That’s what he sees, now what does it mean?” We are supposed to look at Satan being chained and imprisoned for a thousand years and say, “That’s what he sees, now what does it mean?” When he sees a bodily resurrection and a thousand year reign with Christ we are supposed to say, “That’s what he sees, now what does it mean?”