This study investigates the claim that the divine violence in Revelation may be metaphorical (Argument is War: Relevance-Theoretic Comprehension of the Conceptual Metaphor of War in the Apocalypse). Since Irenaeus and Dionysius, the apocalyptic war presented there has been taken as God’s judgment or punishment (Beale) of the earth. This is a metonymy (rather than a metaphor), comparing two things within the same domain, such as “war” and “judgment.”
That metonymical reading has created several, well-known logical and narratival problems for the text, such that it is scarcely now considered to be one narrative (Aune, Ford). For example, the seals-sufferers name the Lamb as their aggressor (6:16) and then go on to praise him for his “salvation” (7:9–10, 14)–a narratival inconsistency. They make this claim in a series that the altar-souls and God agree are not “judgments” (6:10)—a logical inconsistency. The trumpet-sufferers die even more readily than those in the bowls (9:15, 18), but it is only the blasphemous that survive them (9:20–21). And, here again, it is happening in a series that cannot be described as judgment (11:15, 18). Both inconsistencies. The bowls-sufferers, in contrast, are being judged (16:5–7) in the one series in which no one dies (16:2, 9–11, 21), a reverse inconsistency. God seems to “kill” the Great Adulteress (18:8) as another of the (very few) women actresses is washed clean (19:8), with heaven celebrating her “salvation” (19:1, cf. 7:10). And, of course, Bauckham’s slain nations and kings (19:17–21) process into the kingdom of God (21:24).
All inconsistencies. If there is one narrative (as the book itself seems to claim; see Bauckham, “Structure and Composition”), death doesn’t seem to be acting as a metonymy for judgment. Too many of God’s friends die, and too few of his enemies (all of whom go alive into the lake of fire; 14:11, 20:10). Bluntly, God seems to be both killing and preserving the wrong people. And, because this dynamic spans the entire war in the Apocalypse, from chapter 6 through chapter 20, it can’t simply be explained by fault lines in the compilation and editing of the text.
But, if the war is a metaphor, the violence is drawing from a different domain than judgment (as the text predicts). These apparent textual “inconsistencies” may be resolvable. There are metaphors for death in the New Testament which might give new meaning to God’s violent activity in Revelation (Gal 2:20, 6:14–15; Col 2:12, 20, 3:1–3; Rom 6:3–6; Mark 8:34–35 parr.) and a new coherence to an historically troubling text.