Author Kevin Timothy O’Kane sent me a response to my review of Jonathan Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World. I wrote a review of O’Kane’s Instigators of the Apocalypse last month, and O’Kane’s book engages with Kirsch’s book. See here, here, and here for background information.
O’Kane has given me permission to post his response to my review. Here it is:
James, I found your take on Jonathan Kirsch’s A History of the End of the World worth considering. But let me expand a little on what you wrote about it in relation to my book.
First, let’s look at the discussion around literal and symbolic approaches to Revelation.
You wrote: “That raises questions in my mind about what is a literal and
what is a symbolic or allegorical approach, and how that fits into
O’Kane’s thesis. While O’Kane does have problems with the allegorical
approach to Revelation and does well to argue that it contributed to the
idea of a church triumphant (with the persecutions that would accompany
that), not all of the eschatological views that O’Kane critiques are
necessarily allegorical, for they believe in a literal Antichrist. They
may not be entirely literal, either, for they do not appear to take what
Revelation says about the millennium at face value, at least not
entirely.”
Actually, none of the interpretations I define as Hyper-symbolic are
completely symbolic, just as literal interpretations are never
completely literal. Postmillennialism, for example expects a literal
return of Christ in the flesh, but only after a symbolic reading of the
millennium which places Christ’s return at the end of the millennium.
Amillennialism expects a literal, physical day of the resurrection of
the body. Historicism accepts the notion of a literal Antichrist, but
symbolizes the reign of the Antichrist to last 1260 years and further
symbolizes that whoever sits on the papal throne is the Antichrist at
any given moment. While I believe historicism is a false interpretation,
it was historicism coupled with symbolic views of the millennium that
initiated a great deal of violence. As I indicated in my book, it was
the symbolizing of the millennium which is most at fault in leading the
church to embrace physical force against its enemies.
Next, in discussing Kirsch, I define his overall thesis by this one statement:
“When they cautioned good Christians to engage in a spiritual rather
than carnal reading of Revelation, they were struggling to make it safe
for human consumption-and thus began the long, ardent, but failed
enterprise that one scholar calls the ‘taming’ of the apocalyptic
tradition,” A History of the End of the World, p.118.
In context, Kirsch was referring to the allegorist fathers of the
fourth and fifth centuries, for he follows the statement with
discussions of Tychonius and Augustine. This implied that the
literalists (futurist premillennialists) of the first three centuries
made the Revelation “unsafe” for human consumption and inspired the
church down the road to violence. You will notice, however, that Kirsch
can give no primary sources from the early literalists that advocate
violence. In fact, it’s just the opposite; the documents we possess,
including what we know of the Montanists, advocate pacifism in relation
to persecution. However, what I find most astonishing in Kirsch is that
he completely ignored the fourth century allegorist, Eusebius of
Caesarea. Eusebius, along with Augustine, was, perhaps, the biggest
culprit in pushing the church to accept the notion of Christian holy war
when he wrote that Constantine won his civil wars by having the symbol
of the cross painted on his army’s shields before going into battle. One
can only surmise that Kirsch’s failure to engage Eusebius in any
discussion at all is because he didn’t do the proper research, or worse,
he purposely left Eusebius out because the allegorist contradicts his
thesis. This brings me to my final point and complaint about Kirsch’s
book.
You wrote: “I appreciated how Kirsch interacted with critical
scholarship about the distinction between eschatology and
apocalypticism, and also the Book of Revelation itself: John Collins,
Adela Yarbro Collins, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, and J. Massyngberde
Ford are scholars with whom Kirsch interacts.”
In reality, this is one of the glaring weaknesses of Kirsch’s book.
Kirsch relies too heavily on secondary sources and spends too little
time in the primary. This leads him into a number of errors on history
that are less than correct. An example of this is in his treatment of
the Fifth Monarchists, where the author insinuated that the Monarchists
expected a return of Christ in the flesh to lead them into battle:
“Church and government alike . . . would be replaced once and for all by
a biblical theocracy under King Jesus himself” (p. 176). Sharan Newman,
who followed up on Kirsch’s book with her own in The Real History of
the End of the World, was even more direct: “While most who take part in
a rebellion think God must be on their side, few expect him to bodily
lead an army. The Fifth Monarchists did.” (p. 169) The fact is, most of
the secondary sources on this subject got it wrong. If either of these
authors bothered to read the actual sources written by Fifth Monarchy
members, they would have understood that the Monarchists’ eschatology
was in line with postmillennial theology where Christ returns in the
flesh only after the spirit of “King Jesus’ had indwelt the monarchists
and given them the ability to conquer all Catholic monarchies.
Within the weakness of relying mainly on secondary sources, Kirsch
painted the Book of Revelation’s influence in history with a broad
brush. While he mentions the existence of various interpretations, he
failed to show what interpretation led to what war or revolution. This
leaves the reader with misperceptions and portrays the book itself as
the villain of western civilization rather than the interpreters. I
assume this was in keeping with his agenda and why readers should take
new theories about history with a certain grain of salt: always look for
the primary sources and look them up on your own when feasible. And
half-quotes of the primary taken out of secondary sources should also be
looked upon with suspicion, which are prevalent in Kirsch’s book. This
is part of what I set out to correct in writing my own book. I placed an
emphasis on the primary whenever possible, and in some cases, gave
fuller quotes than Kirsch.
Regards, Kevin Timothy O’Kane