Dread and Hope

Theology and Pop Culture

Series Editor: Matthew Brake

The Theology and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and
popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies, sequential art, and genre
fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of reli-
gious literacy in the public square, Theology and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate
and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds
in common: love for popular culture.

Titles in the Series

Dread and Hope: Christian Eschatology and Pop Culture, by Joshua Wise
Theology and the Game of Thrones, edited by Matthew Brake
Theology and Spider-Man, edited by George Tsakiridis
René Girard, Theology, and Pop Culture, edited by Ryan G. Duns &
T. Derrick Witherington
Theology and Horror: Explorations of the Dark Religious Imagination, edited by
Brandon R. Grafius and John W. Morehead
Sports and Play in Christian Theology, edited by Philip Halstead and John Tucker
Theology and Westworld, edited by Juli Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld
Theology and Prince, edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins
Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson
Dread and Hope
Christian Eschatology
and Pop Culture

Joshua Wise

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Wise, Joshua, author.

Title: Dread and hope : Christian eschatology and pop culture / Joshua Wise.
Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2022] | Series: Theology
and pop culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Dread
and Hope brings early Christian hopes concerning the consummation of the cosmos
and modern apocalyptic pop-culture into dialog. Drawing from a wide range of
research and media, Joshua Wise examines how figures like Antiochus IV, Damien
from The Omen, the Emperor Nero, and Winston Smith from Orwell’s 1984 inform
each other”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021047101 (print) | LCCN 2021047102 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781978708167 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978708174 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Eschatology—Biblical teaching. | Eschatology. |
Popular culture—Religious aspects—Christianity.
Classification: LCC BS680.E8 W57 2022 (print) | LCC BS680.E8 (ebook) |
DDC 236—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047101
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021047102
∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
This book is dedicated to Professor Michael Root, whose guidance,
humor, and insight have helped me immeasurably, and allowed
me to give my father one final gift. And to that group of scholars,
friends, and aficionados of popular culture that gathered to debate,
play games, and laugh. You who journeyed a little while through
the Juniper House made difficult years shine with golden light.
 Contents

Acknowledgmentsix

Introduction1
1 The Collapse of All Things 15
2 The Evil One 35
3 When He Appears 55
4 The Living Dead 71
5 The Dread Judge 89
6 Hell105
7 Kingdom Come 123

Conclusion139
Appendix: The Rapture 149
Bibliography151
Index159
About the Author 163

vii
 Acknowledgments

When assembling a work that references so many different elements of

human effort, it is impossible to thank every person whose efforts have made
such a thing possible. I owe unpayable debts to those who have been and
remain my betters in academic and creative endeavors.
This work in its current form would not be possible without the guidance
of my professors throughout my educational career. As an undergraduate, my
path away from an untenable interpretation of scripture was lit by the work
of Mark Smith, Allen Kerkeslager, and Kenton Sparks. Their focus on sharp,
crucial, and kind academic insight has remained with me. If there is anything
good in this work with regard to the field of biblical studies, it is to their
credit. The errors are solely mine.
John Hoffmeyer and J. Jayakiran Sebastian pointed me firmly in the direc-
tion of a broader theological tradition and a willingness to engage with the
culture at large. They pulled me away from the assumption that the scholar
must sit alone in his office or tower and think great and lofty thoughts. That
this work includes both vampires and video games is due, to some great
degree, to their call to be a theologian in the public sphere.
I owe an immeasurable debt to Michael Root, who pointed me in the direc-
tion of eschatology and modeled for me what it looks like to be a theologian
of humor, humility, and generosity. Much of what I know about eschatology
I learned sitting in his discussions, tracking the traditions from Athenagoras,
through Augustine, to Aquinas and beyond.
Without the scholarship and generosity of these academics and many oth-
ers, this work would not have been possible.
And, in every work of this type, I must give thanks to my friends and long-
time collaborators, Fr. Benjamin Gildas, AF, and Fr. David Swantek. These

ix
x Acknowledgments

men have seen me much farther down these paths of inquiry than I could have
ever gone by myself.
As well, I owe much good language and gratitude to Matthew Brake for
being willing to give me so many chances to wrangle my own particular
brand of academic nonsense and put it to paper. So too for the good people
at Lexington Books, including Neil Elliott and Gayla Freeman, who have
shepherded this project along, and deigned not only to go forward with this
book, but with my next volume as well.
And finally, such a book cannot be done only with the work of colleagues.
And so, I must acknowledge yet another unpayable debt to my wife, Sarah,
whose continued love, humor, and support made this work not only possible
but worthwhile.
To all, my goodwill and hope that on the last day we shall greet each other
with gladness.
 Introduction

Popular culture is relentlessly concerned with the driving forces of fear and
aspiration. Every story of heroism, every romance, every comedy, every
popular song touches us at some level at the points where we fear or long
for something. More often than not, they come together. The deadly danger
is met by courage, and we both fear the danger and admire the courage. The
poor schlub is alone and down on his luck, but he has the courage to go after
his love interest anyway, and perhaps we laugh with him or at him along the
way. We fear loneliness; we long to be loved. Or, on the other hand, we fear
the pressures of society and we long for a quiet place to be left alone, to pur-
sue our own goals. All popular culture expresses these simple driving forces,
the things we flee from and the things we desire.
This, of course, may be self-evident, for it is the pairing of fear and desire
that drives us physically, emotionally, and mentally. It is the heart of the leth-
argy of ennui to neither want nor fear. Thus, as creatures driven by these two
motivations, it is not surprising that our popular culture should be saturated
with these ideas. One need only look at the number one Billboard songs of
each year to find both fear and desire at the center of our popular music. From
Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” in 1956 and “All Shook Up” in 1957, to
“Surfin’ U.S.A.” by the Beach Boys in 1963, 1964’s “I Want to Hold Your
Hand” by the Beatles, to Oliva Newton-John’s 1982 hit “Physical,” all the
way to “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber in 2016 and “Shape of You” by Ed
Sheeran in 2017, hits play on our fears, often of being alone, and our desires,
either to have the one we want, or just to go out and have a good time.
These natural desires and fears are often the easy material of popular cul-
ture. To pit the hero in a novel, video game, film, or television series against
a representative of our fears is exciting. That hero might, like Lara Croft,
be incredibly physically capable, and we aspire to be like her. She might

1
2 Introduction

be brilliant like Veronica Mars (or, also like Lara Croft), and we desire that
attribute as well. We would all like, very much, to be fit, brilliant, beautiful,
and capable. Whatever the hero’s task, we consume their adventures and are
touched only lightly by the danger in them, except perhaps when a beloved
character dies.
While this book is about popular culture, it is not largely about this kind
of popular culture, which touches lightly on the desires and fears of normal
human life. Instead, this book is about those moments when popular culture
touches on human fears and desires that go beyond the natural realm to
engage with ultimate concerns. These ultimate concerns, the collapse of our
reality, the rise of ultimate and final evil, the arrival of God, the restitution
of humanity, its final judgment, and everlasting life or death, fall under the
theological category of eschatology.
As a rule, popular culture does not generally deal in such matters. It likes
to avoid offending, taking sides, or closing a story for good, especially in
today’s market-driven artistic world. How could you bring about the end of
your world for good when there are more books to be sold? How could you
take a stand and say, “In this world, Allah is the only true God, everyone else
is wrong,” when you want to be able to sell your books to people of all belief
systems?
But now and then, popular culture does embrace, interpret, or uncon-
sciously represent these ultimate ideas. This book is a look at those rare occa-
sions where popular culture genuinely confronts these issues. These issues
are not merely issues of fear and desire, but ultimate concerns that participate
to some degree in the supernatural: dread and hope.
It is a book concerned with the development of these ideas in Christianity.
I am a theologian, but my areas of study are deeply rooted in the history of
Christianity and Second Temple Judaism and the development of the ideas
of both, especially the ideas that fall under the category of eschatology. So,
along with popular culture, this is a book about those ideas that largely,
though not entirely, grow out of the Jewish engagement with Antiochus IV
in the second century BCE1 and a Jewish text called 1 Enoch. It is about how
those ideas shattered and reformed in various ways.

THE SETTING OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL

Christian eschatological expectations have deep roots in the complex world-

views of Jewish people during the Second Temple period (516 BCE–70 CE).
Reconstructing both the origins of these views and their specific formations
during the early and middle Second Temple period is exceptionally difficult
due to a dearth of extant sources. However, while the specifics of certain
 Introduction 3

developments can elude us, important touchstones along the way have been
identified. The two most important of these, at least in the current state of
scholarship, appear to be the oldest section of the work 1 Enoch, known as the
Book of the Watchers, and the second-century BCE Jewish conflict with the
Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV “Epiphanes.” The relevance of 1 Enoch will
be addressed throughout the book, as will that of the second half of Daniel.
However, it is useful to give a general overview of the state of scholarship
concerning the book of Daniel, which purports to be written by a Jewish
person captive in Babylon in the sixth century BCE. The book is divided into
two main sections, chapters 1–6 and 7–12. The second half, which features
visions and prophecies as well as early apocalyptic literature, perhaps draw-
ing from the Book of The Watchers, features many of the eschatological ele-
ments that Judaism of the first century and early Christianity held in common.
The prophecies in this section focus on the rise of the Seleucid emperor
Antiochus IV (216 BCE–164 BCE), his suppression of the Jewish religion,
and the war fought against him by Jewish freedom fighters. The prophecies
regarding Antiochus IV are especially detailed and shockingly accurate.
However, since as far back as the third century of the Christian era, it has
been noted that the prophecies in Daniel 11 are strikingly correct only until
they come to the death of Antiochus IV.2
The author of the book of Daniel is aware that Antiochus IV suppressed the
people of Jerusalem after his representatives were killed by an uprising in 167
BCE. The book demonstrates awereness that Antiochus entered the city of
Jerusalem and dedicated the Temple of YHWH to Zeus and that the religion
of Judaism was outlawed. Indeed, the auth seems to be aware of all things
that took place until a few months before the death of Antiochus. And for this
reason, among a few others, such as the supposed length of the persecutions,
the second half of the book has been strongly dated to between the end of 167
BCE and the beginning of 164 BCE.
Immediately following the death of Antiochus IV in Daniel, Michael
arises, and the age comes to its end with the resurrection of the dead. This,
however, did not come to pass, leaving an intellectual and identity problem
for those who read the book of Daniel as prophecy.3 Many things that had
been predicted had come to pass, but some did not. Thus, the groundwork
was laid for an unresolved tension in the eschatological landscape of Second
Temple Judaism. This tension includes an oppressive king, a judgment, the
resurrection of the dead, the destruction of the enemies of the holy people of
God with fire, and the desecration of the Temple in Jerusalem.4
This unresolved tension rooted in the construction and historical set-
ting of the book of Daniel, combined with the influence of the Book of the
Watchers, as well as potentially several other factors known and unknown,
created the general eschatological landscape of first-century Judaism. This
4 Introduction

landscape formed a significant part of the worldview of Jesus and his

followers.

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIAN

ESCHATOLOGICAL INQUIRY

This book takes the perspective that the first followers of Jesus were struck
with an existential threat to this relatively formalized structure of expectation
regarding the end of the current age and the beginning of a future age.5 First
oppression would come, perhaps with a particularly malevolent ruler at its
head. Then the anointed one (or ones) of God would rise up and go to war
with the kingdoms of the world. When the war was concluded, and victory
belonged with the people of God, then a heavenly figure would appear, the
dead would be raised, and judgment would fall upon the whole world. The
enemies of God would be destroyed with a terrible fire (very likely in a val-
ley), and the people of God would live in a world of peace forevermore.
This rough framework, as depicted in the book of Daniel and as gleaned
from other evidence, is very likely that held by Jesus and his followers dur-
ing his earthly ministry. It is this framework that explains Jesus’ “Gehenna”
statements, for the fire that can destroy both body and soul is the same fire
depicted in Jeremiah, Enoch, and Daniel, a destroying fire that removes the
enemies of God.
This general worldview was, however, set into radical disarray6 for a multi-
tude of reasons by the resurrection of Jesus. The first was that the intellectual
category of the resurrection, perhaps first hinted at in the book of Ezekiel,7
but more explicitly noted in the Book of the Watchers,8 encompassed all of
the dead, not just one person. However, the signifying and approving mark
of the resurrection placed on Jesus sets him aside as undeniably the anointed
of God. Hence the first break in the assumed eschatological framework. The
second break also concerns the resurrection. For the death and resurrection
of the anointed of God was not predicted. Certainly, some sense that the
anointed of God might have to suffer was at least latent in the scriptures. But,
that an event of such magnitude and portent was absent from the accepted
narrative would have been hard to fathom. The third break is the entire lack
of militaristic accomplishment by Jesus against the enemies of the people
of God. Indeed, Jesus’ entire character and teaching as depicted by the New
Testament stands in opposition to the mainstream view of the Messiah as
warrior-king. Finally, the fact that the kingdom did not break in to end the old
age and initiate the new age is deeply problematic.
Thus, the old narrative is put asunder. Messiah has come, but no military
victory was won; in fact he was slain and then was the only one resurrected,
 Introduction 5

and things seem to be going on as they had before. Three options remained
open then to those who were both Jewish and believed in the resurrection
of Jesus. The first is to reject the role of Jesus as Messiah and leave the
framework of expected eschatological events intact. How many people opted
for this route, we cannot say. There is clearly tension in the early Jerusalem
church, especially with regard to the role of the apostle Paul and his message
to the Gentiles. But there is no evidence at all in the writings of Paul that
those who opposed him in the Jerusalem Church rejected the fact that Jesus
was Messiah. The second option was to reject the eschatological framework
in its entirety. There is some evidence of this happening in the Gentile
churches planted by Paul.9 However, this appears to be more of an issue of
a lack of proper instruction than an outright rejection. We see here a tension
that will be evident throughout this work, which is the transmission of the
Jewish context, worldview, and assumptions of the first Christians to their
new Gentile siblings. Where we find expressed eschatological thoughts in
the New Testament, we do not find a wholesale rejection of the old structure.
The third option is, as far as I can tell, the predominant reaction of the
early Christian church. The elements of the old narrative, now blown asun-
der by the resurrection of Jesus, require reassembly with the life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus at their very core. It is this attempt to restructure the
elements of the above narrative around the figure of Jesus that we see in
almost every eschatological text in the New Testament, with the exceptions
of the particularly Jewish sayings of Jesus about the fires of Gehenna. These
alone represent either the pre-resurrection or immediately post-resurrection
worldview that has not yet had to wrestle with the undermining of the old
eschatological structure.
The restructuring of the old narrative takes several different forms in the
New Testament. We see the figure of the Son of Man from Daniel, whose
criterion for judgment has to do with the nation of Israel, transformed into
the figure in Matthew 25 and in the book of Revelation. The fire that burns
the foes of God appears in 2 Peter, 2 Thessalonians, Revelation, and, perhaps
most radically transformed, in 1 Corinthians. The enemy of the people of
God appears in the letters of John, 2 Thessalonians, and the Revelation, and
is hinted at in the “Little Apocalypse” of Mark 13 along with its parallels in
Matthew and Luke. The resurrection of the dead is reframed in light of Jesus
throughout the New Testament.
We are therefore dealing with a widespread and varied community’s
attempts to reconfigure the old pieces of the eschatological narrative in light
of a seismic shift. These attempts are neither all saying the same things, nor
are they all at the same point in the process. The earliest post-resurrection
material we have on this reconfiguration is in 1 Corinthians where Paul
transforms the fire that destroyed the enemies of God into a fire that will
6 Introduction

save. As with much of Paul’s radically transformed Jesus-centered theol-

ogy, revisions and reversions occurred over the next century. As Paul’s
revolutionary equality in Christ is challenged by later texts insisting on old,
established power structures, so too does his eschatology of the saving power
of Christ get pulled back into the shape of the old narrative, especially in 2
Thessalonians.

The Earliest Christian Eschatology

The earliest Christological eschatologies that we encounter in the New
Testament are those of Paul and perhaps of the Q-Source.10 The Q-Source
may have a Christological eschatology that identifies Jesus as the Son of Man
based upon the disappearance of his body from the tomb.11 This disappear-
ance/assumption understanding of what happened to Jesus after his death saw
the events through the lens of figures like Enoch and Elijah, both of which
took on eschatological roles. This view disrupts little of the eschatological
framework, allowing the old model to retain its general structure.
The resurrection interpretation of what happened to Jesus, ascribed to by
Paul, and, from Paul’s testimony, ascribed to by Peter, the twelve, James, the
Apostles, and the disciples in Jerusalem,12 maintained first that Jesus rose, and
then was taken up into heaven. This interpretation of events restructures the
eschatological framework more radically, disrupting more intellectual space,
and demanding more effort to rebuild. It does all of this by relocating the
expected eschatological resurrection of all people into the individual person
of Jesus.
It may be that the assumption interpretation is older and that the resurrec-
tion narrative is a mythological development of this less troubling narrative.
It is fairly easy to explain away an empty tomb that gives birth to an assump-
tion story. It may be, as one New Testament professor I know suggested to
me, that Paul is the origin of the resurrection story, and that the Jerusalem
church had no such belief about Jesus beyond that he was assumed into
heaven and that he had a part to play in the coming eschatological events as
the heavenly Son of Man.
The difficulty with this narrative is the material in 1 Corinthians 15 which
appears in no way contradicted by those who challenged Paul’s authority.
Nowhere did Paul argue against those who deny the resurrection of Christ.
Nowhere do we find Paul saying that there are rumors that Jesus was not
raised. Paul makes it very clear what his opponents are saying about him and
what they are teaching. They reject the essential idea that a person might be
a follower of Jesus without first becoming Jewish. The idea that Paul and the
other pillars of the Jerusalem church might disagree about whether or not they
saw the resurrected Jesus and it is never mentioned in the New Testament,
 Introduction 7

despite the fact that other heated disagreements are evident, seems incredibly
unlikely.
So, what then of these two earliest interpretations of the post-mortem vin-
dication of Jesus, as Daniel A. Smith calls it? If we take Paul’s narrative in
1 Corinthians 15 as accurate, which nothing in the New Testament disputes,
then the two positions may be fairly easy to harmonize. Some portion of
the followers of Jesus, perhaps in the Galilean region,13 did not experience
the resurrected Christ. They knew of the empty tomb, and perhaps heard
tell of the appearances of Jesus, but did not experience these phenomena
themselves. Christ was gone, his tomb empty, and his sayings remained for
them. To these, the life, death, and vindication of Jesus fit within the intel-
lectual framework of the prophet assumed into heaven. For those who had
experienced the resurrection of Jesus, the narrative and interpretive lens were
different, and more cataclysmic to the eschatological worldview.
Taking this narrative track solves the interpretive problem from the per-
spective of eschatology, though it flies in the face of inductive intuition. Such
an intuition would contend that surely, as people do not rise from the dead, it
is easier to historically reconstruct a simple narrative of the missing body of a
prophet that translates into a later story of resurrection. But such a reconstruc-
tion must contend with the weight of an eschatological narrative that, while
not systematically formalized such as to be homogenous across all expres-
sions of Judaism at the time, was robustly in place in its general structure.
A modification to the narrative that a missing prophet had been raised from
the dead does not merely make the story more elaborate, but it overturns this
weighty, entrenched eschatological worldview. In other words, it would not
have been a simple intellectual move to go from a narrative that included the
assumption of Christ, which may even include some heavenly appearances
of the assumed Christ afterward, to the resurrection of Christ, as the move
into that second narrative would have met significant intellectual resistance.
Indeed, it is not difficult to conceive of a move in the opposite direction
from unexpected solitary resurrection to assumption. This move would have
allowed for the empty tomb, the ascension into the clouds (at least imagina-
tively), and the expectant return of Jesus as the final judge. Such a narrative
would resist the disruptive nature of the resurrection, and all would be well
as these events could slide into the already accepted category that both Elijah
and Enoch fit into.
Here then we come to the point. The earliest Jewish followers of Jesus had
their eschatological framework torn asunder. The primitive church worked
for perhaps three generations putting forward bits and pieces of a new escha-
tology. They struggled with the central disruptive fact of the resurrection of
Jesus when another, less intellectually disruptive, mode of understanding
what happened to Jesus was available.
8 Introduction

Christian Eschatology in This Work

Christian eschatology as a whole, then, is the result of this struggle between
two competing forces: the early Jewish expectations about the coming end of
the age, and the central role of Jesus Christ in a Christian worldview. From
this struggle, multiple interpretations arose. Some of these interpretations
cleaved more closely to the old model by merely placing Christ in one or
more of the roles in the upcoming drama, leaving the overall picture largely
unchanged. Others reworked the whole eschatological narrative around the
person of the Resurrected Christ, conforming the eschatological elements to
fit his character.
The development of these ideas throughout Christian history brought
into focus a number of “last things” or topics of eschatological reflection
and inquiry. Different traditions handle the topics somewhat differently,
and I have based my schema to some great degree on the old Jewish apoca-
lyptic expectation. Therefore, the topics that I will address here will be as
follows:
The Collapse of All Things: This is the expectation that near the end of the
current age, society, or the church, or both will collapse.
The Evil One: This is the expectation that the collapse will largely be
orchestrated, or helped along, by a figure known variously as the Man of
Lawlessness, the Beast, or the Antichrist.
The Parousia/Second Coming: The return of Jesus Christ to the world. This
is his glorious appearing before all people.
The General Resurrection: This is the expectation that all people who have
ever lived will rise in their bodies to new life.
The Final Judgment: This is the expectation that all people will be judged
by God together and publicly.
Hell: This is the expectation that evil will be judged and destroyed forever.
Heaven: This is the expectation that the righteous will live forever in the
life of God in a recreated cosmos without suffering or death.
Each of these categories will be approached with a brief introduction to
their origins, a short overview of their role in Christian theology, and then a
consideration of how these topics have been imported into and interpreted by
popular culture.

Popular Culture
This is a book about Christian eschatology and popular culture, and it is worth
defining here the scope and shape of the popular culture that will be consid-
ered here. In her Life magazine article “The Outs of Pop Culture,” Gloria
Steinem wrote,
 Introduction 9

Pop Culture–although big, mercurial, and slippery to define–is really an

umbrella term that covers anything currently in fashion, all or most of whose
ingredients are familiar to the public-at-large. The new dances are a perfect
example because they came from the public in the first place–from the Negro
subculture via the teen-agers.
A pop item must also pass the test of currency. Whether it is a dance or
a dress style or a serious socio-political event, it has to be new and exciting
enough to capture the popular imagination and /or appeal to the young.14

What Steinem could not have predicted in 1965 was the manner in which
youth culture would endure for generations beginning with those raised in the
1960s. The music of their youth would continue to capture popular imagina-
tion as the 1960s rock returned time and time again through other media. So
too would the movies and television shows of the decade have a long and
enduring life in the years that followed. Popular culture that belonged to pre-
vious generations would become the popular culture of the re-run generations
of the 1980s and 1990s. The encoding of popular culture in material goods,
especially with the revolutionary branding and marketing of Star Wars in
the late 1970s into the 1980s, would keep elements of popular culture in the
forefront of people’s imaginations. The repackaging, reimagining, and simple
re-presentation of older popular culture through the exploitation and cultiva-
tion of nostalgia would cycle older popular culture time and time again to the
surface of people’s awareness and interest.
This state of affairs creates a situation in which elements of the popular
culture of the last six decades are, to greater and lesser degrees, always part
of the current popular culture. Indeed, with the rise of the popularity of super-
hero films, the popular culture of the 1930s and 1940s is also present with
us. Both Superman and Batman, massive pop-culture icons even today, are
representatives of that earlier era.
No book, especially a book that must also consider the role of Christian
theology, could deal with an appreciable amount of this massive cultural
deposit. Therefore, this book will not attempt to do so. Instead, it will deal
with those parts of popular culture that the author is most familiar with, a
particular slice of popular culture which includes a hefty helping of what
has often been considered “Geek Culture.” Given the current pop-cultural
climate, Geek Culture is reigning supreme, and thus it is a worthwhile time
for such a perspective. Another work, considering the same theological con-
cepts, might easily be written which considered entirely different elements of
popular culture.
The Geek Culture that I can speak to in this book largely consists of mov-
ies, books, comic books, television shows, and video games that fall within
the realms of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. That isn’t to say that every
10 Introduction

cultural reference in this book will be limited to these elements, but the
majority will. I have endeavored to learn as much as I can about elements of
popular culture outside of my own experience in order to take those things
into consideration. But, once again, popular culture is so massive that no
success at true representation in a work of this length could be achieved,
especially by one author.
One weakness to this approach is that, by and large, the popular culture that
I was exposed to as a child and as a teen was created mainly by Caucasian
men. This doesn’t create much in the way of diversity. I have attempted to
accommodate for that weakness by including, where I can, popular culture
created by people other than just Caucasian men. However, as only a subsec-
tion of popular culture is relevant to the category of eschatology as I’m using
it in this book, the results are somewhat limited.
One element worth noting here is that I will not be especially considering
Christian popular culture. There is a vast and, to this author’s mind, some-
what troubling industry that produces Christian media which might fill up
a book about eschatology. However, I am far more concerned in this work
with how traditional Christian eschatological topics have been absorbed,
interpreted, and represented through popular culture than I am with how
Christianity, especially Evangelical Christianity, has reinforced its own ideas
about the Last Things in their material culture. Thus, I shall mention such
works as the Left Behind series and other popular Christian works concerning
the end-times only sparingly.
There is so much popular culture now that any attempt to be comprehen-
sive must fail. Where a pertinent work has been missed, or where there has
been a particular blind spot in my considerations, I can only be open to cor-
rection and instruction about these things. And so, this work should be taken
in that spirit, a limited contribution to a massive consideration.

Format
The format of this book will be fairly simple. In each chapter I will first give
a brief introduction to the topic, then a history of the concept’s development
in general overview form. I will begin with the biblical foundations of cer-
tain eschatological beliefs and move on to broadly outline how that doctrine
has been understood in the history of the church. For this I will largely rely
on touching lightly on the four major periods of church history: the patristic
period, the medieval period, the early modern reformation period, and the
contemporary period. Following this I will outline how the concept has been
used in popular culture, once again focusing on movies, television, video
games, tabletop games, and books. Where other forms of popular media are
relevant, they will be brought in.
 Introduction 11

Often, though not always, I will juxtapose two particularly interesting

expressions of the teaching in popular culture. I will look at these a little
more closely than the general overview. Finally, I will conclude with a con-
sideration of the doctrine and how it has been or might be used in popular
culture to great effect. My hope is that by considering these things, we can
speak about how things have been done already, as well as how they might
be done in the future and how popular culture and the concepts in Christian
eschatology might work together going forward.

Intention
By focusing heavily on the origins of Christian eschatological belief and how
those beliefs function in popular culture today, I hope to achieve two things.
First, to show with sharp contrast the differences between how these ideas
have begun, and where they have come and how they are understood by the
popular culture of the day. Such a contrast helps to demonstrate that often
what is considered appropriation, critique, or agreement is only, in the very
slightest way, related to the material being referenced.
But, perhaps more importantly than this, is to show the strong linkages
between the dread that people of the ancient world felt for the world and its
future, and our own. While they might be expressed differently, the fears
at the heart of Orwell’s 1984 and the fears of the people of the first century
under the Roman Empire are not, at bottom, very different.
But so too were their hopes very much alike. It is not in the strengths of
humans that our hopes are surely placed, but in truth, and transcendent goods.
As the Psalmist proclaims,

Some trust in chariots and some in horses,

but we trust in the name of the LORD.

NOTES

1. In conformity with this series, I am using the shorthand of BCE/CE as opposed

to BC/AD. This is done with reservations, as this book is a work of theology. As
theology is primarily a work of faithful intellect, and not primarily an “academic”
work in the sense of belonging to that subset of people who populate “the academy,”
I resist a theological conformity to these terms. While many works of theology adhere
to this standard, as does this current work, it is my belief that a work of theology
stands within the tradition which it expounds, and may confidently speak of the period
“before Christ” and then of those years that follow as “the year of our Lord” when that
tradition is Christian. Theology should not apologize for what it is, which is the work
of a faithful people from within their own tradition, even when they speak to those
12 Introduction

outside of that tradition. But, as stated earlier, this series adheres to this standard, and
so shall this work.
2. See John J. Collins, Daniel with an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature
(Grand Rapids, MI, 1984).
3. This problem remains for many who hold that the book of Daniel remains an
accurate prediction of the end of the world.
4. Indeed, this unresolved tension in which expectation of a king like Antiochus
and the resolution of the prophecies presented in the book of Daniel undermine the
insistence that Mark must have been written after the destruction of the Temple.
There was an expectation that some kind of calamity would befall the Temple, much
as there was an expectation of one like Antiochus. To insist that someone could not
predict the destruction of the Temple before its destruction is foolhardy. As well,
to insist that the followers of Jesus would not record such a prophecy until it was
already fulfilled stands in opposition to the evidence of prophecies both fulfilled and
unfulfilled in the Hebrew Scriptures, including the book of Daniel. Should the Temple
not have been destroyed, and the followers of Christ had held it to be important, they
would have simply waited for a future date in which the Temple would have been
removed. Christ’s own apparent prediction that his coming would come soon after
was unfulfilled, and yet it remains.
5. See George W. E. Nickelsburg, Ancient Judaism and Christian Origins:
Diversity, Continuity, and Transformation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003),
121ff. as well as Kim Papaioannou, Geography of Hell in the Teaching of Jesus:
Gehenna, Hades, the Abyss, the Outer Darkness Where There Is Weeping and
Gnashing of Teeth (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2013).
6. It should be noted that the devastation to this worldview would not have been
created by the death of Jesus. If the followers of Jesus were expecting him to be the
Messiah and he was slain, the worldview would remain. They would simply look for
another to fill the expected role.
7. Ezekiel 37.
8. I Enoch 24:2–27:5.
9. See 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4.
10. The Q-Source is a theoretical collection of the sayings of Jesus that were used
as supplementary material to the Gospel of Mark in the compositions of the Gospels
of Matthew and Luke. Those places where Matthew and Luke share common tradi-
tions and language that are not contained in Mark are considered, generally speaking,
to be from the “Q” source. Vast debates rage over what is and is not a valid saying
of Jesus, and rivers of ink have flooded journals concerning the development of Q.
See, for example, William Farmer, The Synoptic Problem (Mercer University Press,
1964), and more recently, John S. Kloppenborg and Joseph Verheyden, Theological
and Theoretical Issues in The Synoptic Problem (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2020).
For a more accessible approach, see Stanley E. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer, eds., The
Synoptic Problem: Four Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016).
11. See, for example, the work of Daniel A. Smith, “Revisiting the Empty Tomb:
The Post-Mortem Vindication of Jesus in Mark and Q,” Novum Testamentum, Vol.
 Introduction 13

45, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 2003), 123–157 and the longer book version The Post-Mortem
Vindication of Jesus in the Sayings Gospel Q (New York, NY, 2006).
12. 1 Corinthians 15:5–8.
13. For a discussion of whether or not Q is actually from Galilee, see Nicholas H.
Taylor, “Q and Galilee?” Neotestimentica, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2003), 283–311.
14. Gloria Steinem, “The Outs of Pop Culture,” Life, Aug 20, 1965.
 Chapter 1

The Collapse of All Things

INTRODUCTION

In a book about the end of things, one must begin not at the beginning, but
at the beginning of the end. That peculiar beginning is here taken to be the
tumultuous upheaval of human society which appears to be predicted by
Jesus, first in the Gospel of Mark in the section sometimes called the “little
apocalypse,” then expanded upon in Luke and Matthew, and then hinted at
in other New Testament texts that refer to the coming of a period or spirit of
lawlessness. This upheaval predicted by Jesus finds its shape in the apoca-
lyptic imagination that appears in its then-contemporary form in the acts and
person of Antiochus IV.
The upheaval has been the subject of extensive imaginative reflection,
although by no means has it been universally assumed to be necessary.1 In
this chapter I will first consider the sources of the concept of the coming
upheaval. Then I will briefly look at a few patristic, medieval, and early
modern depictions of this upheaval. I will then consider the central opponent
and foil of the Christian conception of the collapse: the myth of progress.
Throughout, I will take into consideration popular cultural formulations of
the collapse that resonate with each element. I will conclude with a closer
look at two major works on the collapse in popular culture: Stephen King’s
The Stand and Bethesda’s Fallout 3.
Along the way, I will draw parallels to numerous other cultural construc-
tions of the collapse. In each case, the pattern of natural hope being extin-
guished, often in a classically tragic way, will be evident. As a prime example,
I want to consider the 1996 DC comic book series by Mark Waid and Alex
Ross, Kingdom Come. The story, set within the interpretive context of the
book of the Apocalypse of John of Patmos, considers what happens when the

15
16 Chapter 1

hope and trust that humanity placed in its heroes falls apart. Readers, with the
point of view character, a minister named Normal McCay, are led from scene
to scene by the Specter, the embodiment of God’s wrath in the DC universe.
Norman and the reader observe a world fallen into darkness because most of
the great heroes have abandoned humanity to their own bloodthirsty versions
of heroism and justice.
In many ways, the story of Kingdom Come is a story about all human insti-
tutions. They begin, or at least many of them do, with the best and most noble
of intentions. But, being noble, they don’t satisfy the recurring baser desires
of our fallen nature. And so, eventually, the institutions corrupt and are cor-
rupted. However, there is some hope that the original ideals of the institution
can be restored, and thus there is a conflict between the new corrupted ver-
sion of the institution and the older ideals. In the end, the older ideals win,
but they have to be recontextualized. It is, to some degree, what is usually
called a “Hegelian” encounter of the thesis, its antithesis, and the resulting
new synthesis then moves forward.
Ultimately, the Christian understanding of the collapse of all things is an
encounter of thesis and antithesis, at least within the context of the natural
realm. It is the final coming together of being and non-being, order and dis-
order. And, if it were not for the cutting off of time, it would either result in
the final collapse of order, or simply start the cycle anew. It is this cyclical
character, which must either continue or collapse into final destruction, that
we can observe in almost all of the stories we will consider in this chapter,
and many in this book. It is, to some great degree, the lie in the idea of
“post-apocalyptic.”
That, in the end, unless there is some kind of external intervention, all good
things must collapse under the weight of destructive forces, seems written into
the very life of the universe. Where the Christian eschatological observation
and the natural observation of this entropic principle disagree, it is first for
the reasoning behind this tendency, and second on how it must be resolved.
What we see in this chapter is the sense that it must be so that the forces of
destruction will get the upper hand, and that order must once more descend
finally into chaos. It is the observation that order in our society, in the world,
and even in the realms of the gods, is transitory. Christianity’s response, as
we will see later, is that this transitory order prefigures a permanent and com-
ing order established by God.

Sources of the Collapse

The First Collapses
As with nearly all elements of Christian eschatology, there are Jewish ante-
cedents. Perhaps the earliest promise of destruction is the warning of the
 The Collapse of All Things 17

destruction of the “Day of Yahweh” in the book of Amos. First mentioned

by Isaiah, the “Day of Yahweh” was to be a day of hope, in which Yahweh
would defeat his enemies in combat. But Amos corrects this for his hearers by
insisting that it will be a day, not of light, but of darkness (Amos 5:18). For
the nation of Israel, Amos’ audience, the day of darkness came in 722 BCE,
when the armies of Assyria destroyed the northern nation. The next day of
destruction was prophesied in the late seventh century and early sixth century
BCE by prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The pacification of the rebellion
in Judah by the forces of Babylon in 596 BCE and again in 586 BCE laid
waste to the city of Jerusalem, destroyed its temple, and stripped it of the ark
of the covenant.
Conquest followed conquest. The Babylonians were followed by the
Persians, and the Persians followed by Alexander the Great whose empire
was divided among the Diadochi. In the early second century BCE a new
calamity befell the Jewish people under the rule of Antiochus IV (the self-
proclaimed Epiphanes). According to Jewish sources, Antiochus outlawed
Judaism, persecuted the Jews, and desecrated the Second Temple of God in
Jerusalem. Against Antiochus, Jewish patriots fought a successful revolt.2
This Maccabean War creates the context for the writing of the second half
of the book of Daniel. This text and the memory of these events create the
backdrop for the apocalyptic statements attributed to Jesus in the Gospels of
Mark, Matthew, and Luke. It is the desecration of the temple by Antiochus
that stands behind Jesus’ words about the desolating sacrilege in Mark 13 and
very likely behind the predictions of 2 Thessalonians to which we will now
turn, respectively.

The Gospel Accounts

The Gospel of Mark’s thirteenth chapter presents a future in which all manner
of things will take place. The discourse on the great destruction that is coming
is often seen by scholars as pointing to the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Roman army in 70 CE. Assuming that the Gospel of Mark is the first Gospel
written, the discourse there is the first rendition of Jesus’ prediction of the
end. He predicts great calamity coming to the world, but only as a precursor
to the final consummation.
Then Jesus began to say to them,

Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I
am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumors of
wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For
nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be
earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning
of the birth pangs.3
18 Chapter 1

Our contemporary setting has found easy consonance with these predic-
tions in popular culture. The great calamities of wars, earthquakes, famines,
and other forms of natural disasters have all been the subjects of great swaths
of fiction. I am not suggesting that all works of fiction that focus on natural
disasters are making even oblique references to the words of Jesus, or even
to the secularized offspring of those fears. But, when we consider movies like
The Day After Tomorrow4 that strongly link natural disasters and the ending
of human civilization as we know it, then the correspondence of these two
ideas is perhaps too strong to write off as coincidence. However, I will say
more about the secularization of the idea below.

Other NT References
The other New Testament references to the upcoming disaster before the
end of all things are mainly in 2 Thessalonians and the Revelation of John.
2 Thessalonians is almost certainly a work of pseudepigrapha written in
perhaps the third or fourth generation of Christianity, depending on how one
counts such things. The context of the book is a largely Hellenized church
that is coming to grips with an established narrative of eschatology after the
upheaval in the first few decades of predominantly Jewish Christianity. The
author of 2 Thessalonians is following a pattern set up in the first epistle to the
Thessalonians which was written by Paul. First Thessalonians seeks to inform
its audience that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night and that
they must always be ready. However, by the time the second letter is written,
the suddenness of Jesus’ coming has been replaced by a restructured eschato-
logical narrative. We see that a period of rebellion must come first, and with
it the “lawless one.” This period of rebellion is an outworking of this original
period of catastrophe and collapse, though without significant explanation.
The period of destruction in the book of Revelation is depicted through
the great tribulation, which John of Patmos believes has already begun. The
persecution of the church will increase until there is a final battle between the
powers of good and the powers of evil in which all evil will be defeated. Once
again, the collapse takes the form of evil forces oppressing the people of God.

The Collapse in Church Tradition

Persecutions against Christians in the ancient church were far more present
in the early days of Christianity than they were in the post-Constantine era.
However, the memory of persecution as well as the predictions of coming
persecutions under the Antichrist remain present throughout church tradi-
tion. For St. Augustine, the persecutions were both present and coming. In
the twentieth chapter of his City of God, he writes concerning the coming
collapse of things,
 The Collapse of All Things 19

For this persecution, occurring while the final judgment is imminent, shall be
the last which shall be endured by the holy Church throughout the world, the
whole city of Christ being assailed by the whole city of the devil, as each exists
on earth.5

Indeed, when persecutions were experienced, many believed themselves

to be in the end times. As Daley relates, “Popular expectation of an immedi-
ate end of the world seems to have reached fever pitch in many areas of the
Western Roman Empire, especially during periods of persecution.”6
In the medieval period we find Peter Lombard, the master of the sen-
tences, considering the future collapse of society that he sees predicted in
2 Thessalonians and associated with the fall of the Roman Empire. Marcia
Colish notes that in his work In Epistolam II ad Thessalonicenses, Peter’s
solution is to associate Rome, in 2 Thessalonians, not with the political impe-
rium of Nero but with the spiritual imperium of the Roman Church, and to
turn Paul’s argument around by 180 degrees. The fall of Rome cannot mean
the future political collapse of an empire that has not been in existence for
centuries. Rather, it means the falling away of the churches from the Christian
faith and from obedience to Rome. The sense of Paul in 2 Thessalonians
would thus be that Christ will not return to judge the world until all Christians
have apostatized and all churches have fallen into schism.7
Protestant considerations of the collapse, especially as a sign of the
impending end, include both more recent speculations that echo early
Christian expectations of the imminent end of all things, to the more stayed
and conservative expressions that reserve the coming of the collapse to the
wisdom of God. Especially with the rise of dispensationalism under John
Darby in the nineteenth century, a fervor around the coming collapse under
the rule of the Antichrist has arisen and remained culturally relevant.
C.C. Goen recounts a 1743‒1744 correspondence between Jonathan
Edwards and Rev. William M’Culloch of Scotland in which Edwards holds
an unconventional view of the collapse of all things.

The present spiritual drought, he opined, is likely sent “to humble us ere God
return with greater mercies.” But—and here again he departs from conventional
beliefs—the worst of our troubles is already past. In reply, M’Culloch cites the
common expectation that before the overthrow of the Antichrist and the dawn-
ing of the millennial day, the church will face extremely severe trials resulting
in its almost total extinction and requiring direct divine intervention to save it
. . . Edwards’s answer of 1744 rejects this view.8

In the contemporary age, the collapse of society and final persecutions have
been largely absent from Catholic and mainline Protestant constructions of
20 Chapter 1

eschatology. This may be due to a reticence to associate with the interpretations

by evangelical Christianity’s adherence to an established schema of Rapture,
Antichrist, Persecution, and Glorious Appearing. This absence has left a gap
in the imaginative landscape of many in Western culture that has largely been
filled by other, more popular and secular, constructions of these ideas.

THE SECULAR COLLAPSE:

PRELIMINARY DISCUSSION

When considering the secularization of the Christian eschatological frame-

work, it may be immediately said that the events that gave rise to the
eschatological imagination of Israelite religion, Second Temple Judaism,
and Christianity, are themselves natural and secular events that were reinter-
preted through religious and theological lenses. Framing these events, such
as the Babylonian Captivity and the oppression of Antiochus IV, as anything
other than secular events seen through religious lenses, is contrary to certain
academic commitments. However, if we take seriously that the predictions
of the prophet Amos came before the destruction of Israel by Assyria, and
the predictions of Jeremiah and Ezekiel came before the invasions and
captivities of Jerusalem by Babylon, then we must admit that the religious/
theological interpretation of the events was an already established interpre-
tive lens before, during, and after the events BCE that lay the foundations for
eschatological speculation. In other words, the theological interpretation of
the events was contemporaneous with the events themselves and there was
no destruction of Israel or Jerusalem outside of the worldview that included
the hand and purpose of Yahweh in the event.9 There is, therefore, no first
secular reading of the events which the theological overthrew. Instead, as far
as we can tell, it is the period of the Enlightenment that first strips historical
events of all divine involvement, and thus removes their theological potency.
Before the Enlightenment, there is a shocking continuity in the widely
accepted worldview of the ancient, medieval, and early modern period that
history would end in disaster by the interference first of the enemy of the
church, the Antichrist, and then by the direct intervention of the divine. Post-
Enlightenment, these long-established categories remained in almost pristine
form in some sectors of society, but underwent secular reconstructions in
others.

The Secular Collapse

These secular reconstructions of collapse have reframed the end largely in
terms of natural actors and consequences, leaving out supernatural entities
 The Collapse of All Things 21

such as angelic powers and the divine. It drags the lofty spiritual realities
down, stripping them of their potent identities and replacing them with
largely meaningless natural causes. Even so, the mythical and religious
frameworks have remained powerful and ubiquitous.
We are not here concerned with the development of these ideas in detail
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but a brief observation
may suffice. With the advent of the Enlightenment and humanity’s growing
obsession with the product of formalized, recorded, inductive reason in the
form of science, a sense of natural hope appeared. If humanity might master
the material, then its nobler nature might rise and conquer all enemies, want,
sickness, crime, and death. The so-called rational spirit, more properly called
the inductive-obsessive spirit, observed that if there were natural causes for
realities that humanity once ascribed to the divine, so too might there be for
all such realities. Indeed, humanity’s very future might be snatched from
the likely imaginary mitts of that persnickety God of Christianity, and all
possible roads might be opened. What bounding wall might there be for a
humanity that, having conquered nature, stood as master of its own destiny?
And so, scientific utopianism sought with one sword to slay two enemies:
The necessity of personal destruction and the necessity of species-wide
destruction. Yet, as has often been told, the blue-skies mentality of nine-
teenth-century optimism was darkened first in World War I and blotted out in
World War II and under the shadow of atomic threat.
What replaced this wide-eyed optimism was a cynical interpretation of
the new pantheon. For the God of Abraham, and indeed, the God of Jesus
Christ, had been replaced by those that new hierarchy that included the state,
scientific progress, psychology, and their mighty monarch, humanity itself.
No longer did they seem to promise the demise of death, but they had been
revealed to be the bearers of it.
Such a view gave rise to the great dystopian narratives of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries. In tales such as The Time Machine,10 1984,11 and V
for Vendetta,12 humanity takes up its divine role as destroyer and destroyed,
oppressor and oppressed, savior and saved. The secularization of the escha-
tological narrative draws every role down to natural level, and thus there are
the people, the great enemy, and the warrior savior. In some versions the hero
is triumphant to greater or lesser degrees. In others, like Orwell’s 1984, the
oppressor state is too powerful and all encompassing.
The reframing of the players in the age-old tale serves to not only demon-
strate the great skepticism we have for our own self-governance, especially
in the age of the omnipotent state, but to turn the narrative on its head. The
ancient narrative of the collapse is set against the horizon of a just, mighty,
and loving God, always working toward the good ends of that transcendent
figure. There might be destruction now, but a remnant will remain, and
22 Chapter 1

Israel will be established once again because Yahweh is faithful. There

might be persecution now, and indeed, it may grow worse, but the Son of
Man will appear, and all will be set right. The dystopian narrative offers
no such comfort, even if there is a momentary triumph of good over evil,
for decay will set in once more and the powers will grow until they are all
encompassing.
A common theme of the dystopian collapse story is that humanity has some
kind of longing to transcend its purely animal and material existence. Such a
longing, which corresponds to the divine loving condescension to humanity,
is the root of the eschatological hope that permeates the Hebrew scriptures
when considering the collapse. God remains good despite the horrors that
have come upon God’s people. And that goodness, which transcends the evil
of a person’s plight, is cause for hope.

The thought of my affliction and my homelessness

  is wormwood and gall!
My soul continually thinks of it
  and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
  and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

  his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
  great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
  “therefore I will hope in him.”13

This longing to transcend the merely material and animal is the longing for
divine restoration, a supernatural restructuring of all things. The dystopian
story, which retains the idea of persecution apostacy, and collapse, but largely
removes the hope of divine restoration, often addresses the human desire for
transcendence through the application of some form of sedative.
The technological dystopian story, “The Machine Stops,” by E.M.
Forester, is a 1909 story about the collapse of human society into a techno-
cratic subterranean stupor. The majority of humanity the world over lives in
secluded rooms with their media and social interactions delivered by means
of technology. The people subsist on secondhand information and have few
in-person encounters. Indeed, Forester’s story is a secular-collapse narrative
par excellence, as the machine which supplies all human media and needs
itself becomes the object of human worship. The proper object of worship,
the divine, has been replaced by something within the cosmos. It is as if,
 The Collapse of All Things 23

having been reduced to merely material realities, the people turn to a material
god, which contributes to their self-approved oppression.
The domestication of the traditionally supernatural is seen as well in
Huxley’s A Brave New World,14 in which the population is drugged into hap-
piness using “soma” which is named for the cultic drink used in ancient Indo-
Iranian worship of the gods. The Rig Veda describes those who have drunk
Soma as those who have “become immortal” and who cannot be harmed.15
The drink, which was to allow one to commune with the divine, now func-
tions in a collapsing world in which there is no divine but happiness. Once
again, a transcendent reality, joy, is reduced to the emotion of happiness
induced by a substance named for the supernatural.
In George Orwell’s 1984, once more, the desire for the transcendent is
frustrated and replaced. In Orwell’s story, it is not through the sedative of
media or drugs, but in the confounding of thought. Big Brother assaults pre-
cisely that in humanity which images the Logos of God. With double-speak,
and phrases like “Freedom is Slavery,” Big Brother neuters the intellectual
transcendent component of humanity by confounding its rational capacity.
Perhaps the most profound line in Orwell’s work is “Freedom is the freedom
to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows.”16
Without the freedom to affirm the transcendent truth of something as neutral
as mathematics, humanity is shown to be merely the slave of animal power.
In opposition to these bleak images, other dystopian stories present heroic
figures who manage to embrace the transcendent, and, struggling, come to
steer humanity away from its doom. One, the movie Equilibrium, which bor-
rows heavily from both A Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451, depicts a
society whose emotions are removed by a drug which all people are required
to take. Emotion and art are outlawed, and the ruling council is known as the
“Tetragrammaton Council,” a reference to the divine name YHWH. Law offi-
cers who support the Council are known as Clerics. Once again, the theme of
the domestication of the transcendent is present and obvious. However, John
Preston, a Cleric who misses one of the doses of his emotion-deadening drug,
begins to feel emotion. He undertakes both an internal and external struggle
with his identity as a human and as a Cleric, leading him to eventually over-
throw the council.
More famously, and more culturally impactful, is the dystopian story pre-
sented in V for Vendetta. In Alan Moore’s comic book series, a dystopian
England is tyrannically ruled by a racist, xenophobic, and Christofascist
group known as the Norsefire political party. Human freedoms, especially
“dangerous” expressions of freedom that do not conform to the imposed
interpretation of Christianity, are forbidden and severely punished.
However, from the ashes of a failed experiment, the figure known as
“V” arises and challenges the power of the government. Speaking in poetic
24 Chapter 1

verse, V triumphs through the transmission of the transcendent values of

nobility, beauty, and hope. He is himself a product of the bestial practices
of the Norsefire party, and he knows that he cannot be the true harbinger
of a better world, and so he trains the young Evey17 Hammond to take up
his role and spread the hope and revolutionary spirit. The limitations placed
upon humanity’s ability to reach for the transcendent are seen as well in the
Cyberpunk genre. Transcendence as an object of human pursuit is largely
replaced by technological and material goals. Some of this is purely oppres-
sive, and some of it may be seen as an attempt to strive toward the virtual-
material-transcendent created by human ingenuity and imagination. Humans
and other creatures in cyberpunk worlds, often struggle under the repressive
omnipotence of corporations that claim human identity largely under the
umbrella of techno-capitalism. The Mega-corps of the cyberpunk future
replace the omnipotent city-state with its natural, though limited, claim on
human identity, with the radically unnatural claim of organizations centered
around profit making transcendent claims about human identity. It is this
kind of dystopia that we see in the movie Idiocracy,18 as well as in the fic-
tion of Neuromancer,19 and more recently in the nearly ubiquitous commer-
cial human experience in the video game The Outer Worlds20 by Obsidian
Entertainment. The last is especially interesting in that it imagines a universe
in which corporations have had unchecked reign to claim more and more of
human life, to the point that corporately sanctioned religion, a kind of mixture
of stoicism, materialism, and deism, functions to inform people that the only
true happiness in life is to understand your part of the great mechanism of the
universe and to do your work for the corporation to which you are indentured.
Such dystopian pictures of the future are even a step further removed from
the darkness of the all-powerful state. For, as said above, the state, at the
very least having its roots in the tribe, has at least some natural connection
to human goods. The cyberpunk future presents a new nightmare on top of
the All-Seeing all-knowing state that is discordant with our natures. It places,
not the extension of the tribe, which is itself an extension of the family, as
a primary good, but instead the collective acquisition of wealth. This further
corruption of natural goods, coupled with the terrible power of all-controlling
corporations, fashions an even more monstrous vision of human existence
and the destruction of what is good in society.

DYSTOPIA AND COMEDY

Dystopian societies, like many of the eschatological elements I will consider

in this book, are not above the treatment of humor. Two insightful and enter-
taining dystopian movies stand out: Demolition Man21 and Idiocracy. In both
 The Collapse of All Things 25

movies, classic dystopian tropes are the subject of humor, with Demolition
Man cleaving more closely to the traditional formula of an all-controlling
government that permits no activities that might allow for true personal
expression. The controlling state is overturned by a scion of the past, John
Spartan, a police officer wrongfully put into a cryogenic prison for a crime
he didn’t commit. Spartan, played by Sylvester Stallone, exists as a walk-
ing, talking, cursing, and violent anachronism in a world where even foul
language is the subject of a fine. His bravery and bravado help to defeat the
villains, and to inspire others in the society to break free of their oppression.
Idiocracy depicts a dystopian anti-intellectual society that has, by default,
devolved into a society bereft of nearly all understanding and ubiquitously
corporately branded. In a future that has intellectually regressed from a fear
of education, entertainment has replaced understanding, and the world stands
in danger of final collapse. Once again, only a traveler from the past can undo
the mistakes made by a befuddled future. While both movies are played for
laughs, the potency of their social critique remains.

TWO READINGS OF THE COLLAPSE

I have chosen two very different depictions of the collapse for consideration
here in order to consider how the fundamental elements of the collapse func-
tion in popular culture. Fallout 322 is, by all accounts, a depiction of the purely
secular perspective. It shows one version of the culmination of the natural
account of humanity’s self-destructive tendencies. It here stands in for that
expression of destruction in fiction that has no use for the great myth of the
Day of Yahweh or its intellectual descendants. An extremely brief example of
some stories in this vein are H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, E.M. Forester’s
“The Machine Stops,” The Planet of the Apes,23 The Walking Dead,24 and
recent video games such as Rage/Rage 225 and ATOM RPG.26 Set against this
is Stephen King’s tour de force, The Stand,27 which is far less secular, and
involves the battle of the forces of good and evil on a trans-natural level. It
is part of an overarching reality woven into his The Dark Tower series that
connects with many worlds and struggles between light and shadow. Each
of these works connects in distinct ways to the concept of the final collapse.

Fallout 3
Fallout 3, a first-person open-world Role Playing Video Game (RPG) by
Bethesda Games, released in 2008, offers a rich, detailed, complex, and often
sardonic world that is slowly reassembling itself from the ruins of a nuclear
war between China and America in the year 2077. The third entry in the
26 Chapter 1

main series of games takes place in the year 2277 when the player’s character
emerges from an underground shelter called a “Vault” that served to protect
the remnants of human society until the world was inhabitable again. The
series, heavily influenced by the short story “A Boy and His Dog”28 and the
movie Mad Max,29 both of which are post-apocalyptic tales, examines with a
sardonic approach, how humanity might try to rebuild after destruction.
The brave new world of post-nuclear America is a pastiche of 1950s style
and period-appropriate retro-futurism. Cars run on atomic power, but sport
large tail-fins and bubble dome windshields. The ruined Capital Wasteland
presents a strangely pleasing aesthetic of destruction. The America in ruins
is an idealized America, one that has retained the trappings of a post–World
War II boom, but has shed the darker elements of sexism and racism.
In this post-nuclear world humanity has also shed quite a bit of its religious
identity as well. In all the Capital Wasteland there is only a single active
chapel. In the next main entry in the series, Fallout 4,30 there is, again, only
one active house of worship. Both are woefully innocuous and non-specific.
Indeed, religion seems relegated almost entirely to those mad-persons who
have joined various cults like The Children of Atom. These worshippers of
the atomic bomb are largely sick with radiation poisoning and exhibit all of
the worst traits of fundamentalist religious expression.
The reasons for this lack of religion might be entirely practical. Perhaps
there was a desire to not offend anyone playing the game. Of course, fascinat-
ing presentations of religions both real and fictional have appeared in many
video games, including other Bethesda games. Perhaps the desire was akin to
Gene Roddenberry’s view of the future in Star Trek who believed religion to
be deeply harmful and needed to be excluded from humanity’s future.
The shape of this Great Collapse is purely nationalistic and its aftermath is
almost entirely secular. Here we find only the barest traces of the apocalyptic
vision of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. There are no greater
powers at work, no mythological forces playing themselves out in the mate-
rial world. This post-apocalypse is, strictly speaking, very non-apocalyptic.
The player’s tasks are not part of a grand struggle of good against evil, but
instead merely one set of natural forces against another. Or, put another way,
one social organization against another. Social organizations are, ultimately,
the main concern of the Fallout games. They are the source of destruction and
the locus of survival and hope after the destruction. A social organization,
VaultTech, preserves humanity in small social groups hidden underground,
but also subjects these groups to strange experiments while they wait out
the world’s recovery. In Fallout 3 the player goes from a smaller society
in Vault 101 to the larger society of the Capital Wasteland. The manner in
which people organize themselves appears to be of utmost concern. That
those social organizations might either conform themselves to a transcendent
 The Collapse of All Things 27

reality, either good or bad, is hardly considered. Their roles in a larger, at least
partially, supernatural narrative are potentially laughable or only the mate-
rial for cultists and mad-people. Indeed, the apocalyptic interpretation of the
world of Fallout 3 is so actively eschewed that no character dares consider it
except those clearly intellectually undermined.
In summary, Fallout 3 presents a world that has undergone a final collapse
for its existing societies as a consequence of purely natural forces resulting in
a world in which purely natural forces are at odds. Perhaps this serves a ludic
end, allowing the player to choose for himself or herself what path he or she
will carve out of the wasteland without feeling as if the game is pressuring
him or her in one direction or another. But narratively it unmoors the collapse
from its theological-historical roots in such a way that causes its interpreta-
tion to both be wide-open but also shallow. There are, as far as I can tell, not
even very many social organizations that make transcendent claims, except-
ing the clearly unhinged Children of Atom.

The Stand
On the other hand, Stephen King’s The Stand (Doubleday, 1978), perhaps
one of the most influential and enduring contemporary depictions of the end,
is replete with transcendent claims on human identity. The book’s influence is
not, I believe, because King does anything particularly original with his story.
He does not, like The Book of Eli, propose a clever scenario with an unex-
pected reveal about the main character at the end. Nor is his picture of the end
particularly bleak when compared with something like the Mad Max series.
Instead, what King brings to the table in his sprawling story of the end of con-
temporary culture is a blending of the apocalyptic and the personal. He tells
us the old story: the coming of the dark figure, the rising up of heroes of faith,
and the confrontation between these archetypal trans-historical realities. But
when he tells it, he cuts immediately to the quick of that strange intersection
between Christian metaphysics and ethics, that the individual and her com-
munity is the location of all moral responsibility and God’s dwelling-place.
King doesn’t present us with two-dimensional characters, or even predict-
able characters. Instead, he gives us plausible figures upon whom the burden
of faithful obedience might fall. He delivers a simple God-fearing man and a
formerly selfish and drug-abusing rockstar as the analogs for the two prophets
slain in the book of Revelation. He puts the weight of gathering the com-
munity of faith on the shoulders of a woman, Mother Abigail, who is 108
years old and allows her to fall through pride like Moses. King often paints
his subordinate villains as sympathetic figures who find themselves trapped
by their choices. Multiple times characters observe that the community that
has accreted around Randal Flag, the dark man or “the walking dude,” isn’t
28 Chapter 1

particularly different from the community that has gathered around Mother
Abigail, except that those who follow Flagg live in fear of their leader.
King’s brilliance in The Stand is that he remembers that every great myth,
even one about the future, is ultimately about people who need things greater
than themselves. All of King’s characters are oriented toward self-transcend-
ing realities. For those who have gathered around Randal Flag there is a
diabolical servitude reminiscent of J.R.R. Tolkien’s observation that Sauron
was, while serving Morgoth, less evil than his master because he served
another.31 Those who gather around Mother Abigail, first in Hemingford
Home, Nebraska, and then in Boulder, Colorado, tend to focus on society.
It is Mother Abigail who must direct them past their natural inclinations to
rebuild society and into the confrontation between themselves and Flagg. She
must draw them from the natural to the supernatural so that they might stand
in the power of God against evil.
King does not follow the track of the myth all the way to its end. He gets
off the train just before the glorious Second Coming of Christ. Humanity
gets to start again; the story goes on. In this way, King’s interpretation of
the eschatological myth, its Great Collapse and even its Antichrist, tips in
the scale toward the secular. The confrontation between humanity and evil
is ultimate for some who participate, but not for humanity as a whole. The
Lord does step in, much as He is predicted to do in the book of Revelation,
but King chose to remove the great ending of time and the final judgment.
However, within the aforementioned prophetic origins of the idea of the
“Day of Yahweh” this read of the end may be interpreted as just one more
moment when the prophetic eye saw farther than it thought. Just as the proph-
ets of the Hebrew Scriptures incorrectly thought that the coming of the day of
the Lord meant the break between the present age of darkness and the coming
age of light, in a process that charitable reads of these errors call “telescop-
ing,” so too it might be that the author of Revelation saw farther along the line
of time than he anticipated. Perhaps the confrontation with Flagg is merely
one of those wars and rumors of wars that must come before the end of things.

Fallout 3 and The Stand Compared

These two versions of the Great Collapse are archetypal of how the ancient
myth of the Day of Yahweh, first presented in its recognizable form in the
book of Amos, has been consumed and interpreted by our culture. On one end
of the spectrum, the observation that optimism in our current order will very
possibly be confounded with destruction, has been detached from its religious
expression. At the other of the spectrum, the concrete and mundane have
been brought to the forefront of the myth while retaining the trans-human
elements.
 The Collapse of All Things 29

What the two stories share with each other, but not with the myth, is a sense
that the cause of the Great Collapse will be intrinsic to the society. In Fallout
3 nuclear war between America and China destroys the world. In The Stand,
the plague “Captain Trips” is created by the American government and gets
accidentally set free. The prophetic vision of the Day of the Lord, however,
presents the destruction of the society as the result of an extrinsic power
directed by God in response to internal moral decay. Assyria destroys Israel
and Babylon carries Judah off into exile. As the myth evolves, the extrinsic
external oppression is unmoored from the sins of the people and is associated
with the essential and spiritual evil of foreign power. Thus, Antiochus IV
is not sent specifically to punish the people in the way that the Babylonian
Empire was.32 Instead, the Day of Yahweh once again is transformed into the
day of salvation from evil. The savior from this evil, the Anointed of Yahweh,
will rise from within the people to destroy the external oppressive evil.
Despite the mobility of the source of the destruction and salvation, there is
no clear organic development from sinful society to its own collapse.

THE COLLAPSE CONSIDERED

From the traditional Christian perspective, it is the renewal of persecution,

and ultimately a final and devastating persecution that stands behind the fear
of collapse. The first form that the expected persecution takes in Christian
imagination is drawn from the early governmental persecutions enacted by
the Roman Empire. But later, when the church had come out from under
Roman persecution, fears arose that the persecution would come from
within the church, or some future apostacy. The fear of coming persecution
expanded, especially in the American context with the rise of dispensational-
ism and its restructuring of Christian eschatology.
In all of this, the disastrous ending of the world forms the background to
one of the most important elements that contributes to the rise of the dysto-
pian projections of popular culture: evil in the form of governmental power at
the beginning of the twentieth century. It is the wanton destruction of human
life in World War I, the death camps of Nazi Germany, the rise of fascism
and Soviet-style communism, of McCarthyism, and the increase of the tech-
nological capacity in, from the machine-gun, to the airplane, to the atomic
bomb, the hands of systems of power that bring about the end of the nine-
teenth-century scientific optimism, and dovetail into the old Christian fears
of coming persecution and collapse. Their horror is, perhaps, all the more
affecting to the human imagination due to the stark contrast between what
Western culture expected of humanity, and what it enacted.33 This monstrous
dissonance between what we expected and what we enacted as a species
30 Chapter 1

drove some back to a more fundamental/evangelical reliance directly on the

divine as interpreted in some Christian traditions, and eschewing what the
scientific and technological had to offer. Others, unable to cast off the obvi-
ous uses and advances of the scientific and technological, saw instead their
darker side. These and other reactions to the great human failures of the early
twentieth century then fueled new interpretations of the old eschatological
categories present through the ubiquity of the Christian religion in the West.
I will not claim here that the modern conception of the final collapse, or
at least massive social collapse, is drawn from Christian tradition. However,
I believe that the connections found between the two are rooted in two sig-
nificant elements of Christianity. The first is the Christian observation that
humanity is badly damaged by sin. The species’ operations are always and
everywhere suspect because of the infestation of non-entity into our already
finite beings. We go wrong, especially when we are given power. Thus, in
the nineteenth century two views stood juxtaposed to each other. On the one
hand, much of the West was swept up in an ecstatic optimism regarding the
progress of science as much of it is now. On the other hand, the Christian
observation that human beings remain broken, no matter how many amazing
inventions we create, stood as a counterpoint to culture’s hopes. When those
hopes were so radically dashed by the inconceivable loss of human life in
World War I, and then again in the monstrosities of World War II, modern
culture came to a realization that perhaps technology and social powers will
not overcome evil but will themselves be overcome by evil.
Whether this observation led some to conclude that Christianity and its
anthropology were right is hard to know. However, what can be seen is that
culture, not taking recourse to shape itself around its radical need and depen-
dence on transcendent goodness, started the process of advancing again in the
hopes of building a better world. But, as this was happening, so too was the
threat of nuclear holocaust. It was hard to rebuild the great utopian vision of
the nineteenth century when the immanent extinction of the human race was
perpetually only one mistake away, like a global sword of Damocles.
The second element of Christianity that allows this dovetailing of the com-
ing persecution and the coming collapse is the tendency of large portions of
Christianity to focus on the ancient history of the church. Significant elements
of Christian reflection and life are rooted in the lives, writings, and insights of
those who lived under persecution, or within living memory of it. Christianity
values the past in a way that modern society does not. It finds its identity rooted
there, and understands that the voices of those who have come before are relent-
lessly relevant. Its reliance on tradition, as opposed to the modern eschewing of
tradition, gives it both a longer memory and a farther view toward the future.
Our current climate crisis, technology wars, global pandemics, and social
divisions may, for the moment, function to remind us of the fragility, broken-
ness, and error-laden ways of humanity. And each of these will fashion for
 The Collapse of All Things 31

creators the material for stories about the collapse. But, if we overcome these
problems, we may enter into a new age of progress, and with that the hope
of genuine freedom from our brokenness supplied by some new power in the
form of medical or computer technology. Such an age, like the Enlightenment
and periods of relapse into similar material hopes that have followed, would
continue to see human power as its ultimate savior. The more power human-
ity has, the more free it must be.
However, one of the great observations of the dystopian story, and one
which Christian eschatological concerns can agree with, is that the more often
society looks back to its own inventions to solve the problems of its nature,
the more likely it is to bring about the dystopian realities that it fears. The
more we rely on gene editing, drugs, or new philosophies of education to fix
our minds, the more we drift toward the worlds of Huxley and Orwell.

A Necessary Synthesis
In the book of Daniel, we observe the angel Gabriel coming to Daniel in
answer to prayer. Gabriel tells Daniel that he would have come sooner, but
the prince of Persia had contented with him, and he was restrained until
Michael appeared. In the book of Ephesians, the author says that the Christian
struggle is “not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers,
against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). When
Jesus casts out the demons from the Gerasene Demoniac in Mark 5, Jesus
asks the demon for his name. He says, “My name is Legion, for we are many”
(Mk. 5:9). Here, of course, the name “Legion” does not itself mean “many”
but is the name of a Roman military-political device of domination.
In these and other examples, the connection between the political and the
spiritual is evident. The powers of this world and the powers of heavenly
places are not two possible sources of evil, but instead are overlapping reali-
ties. In the Inductive-Obsessive Spirit of the Enlightenment, these two reali-
ties were exploded and pushed into self-contained realities that resulted in the
dismissal of spiritual as either extraneous or ridiculous.
With this explosion, a false dichotomy was created, one which is largely
expressed in the “science-vs-religion” debate which sees the world through a
mono-causal lens. Either God or nature may claim to be the author of events,
but never both. So too with the currents of good and evil in the world: If soci-
ety is the cause of man evils, then demons are not. If technology is the author
of personal good, then the angelic or divine is not.
But such a view must, in the end, be reduceable either to pure materialism
on one side, or pure supernaturalism on the other. With materialism, one can-
not logically escape determinism, and with pure supernaturalism one cannot
rely upon a fixed natural world. In neither case does the free-willed human
32 Chapter 1

being come to the forefront of the historical narrative, nor does she bear on
her shoulders the weight of glory which calls humanity to stand against evil
both diabolical and technological. It is only the synthetic view which sees the
state as a battleground for the natural and supernatural good against natural
and supernatural evil. The state, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is nothing good
or bad, but persons make it so, both human and non-human.
In fiction, a paragon of this synthetic thinking is that often-overlooked
work of C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength. In this work great spiritual
powers stand behind an organization called The National Institute for
Co-ordinated Experiments (NICE). At the head of those who resist NICE is
a man transfigured by his spiritual adventures, and the angelic hosts of the
heavens (here, outer space). Lewis presents a picture of synthetic thinking
that allows humans and their institutions to be as wicked or as good as any
dystopian or utopian novel might conjure with the additional note that great
evil is also diabolical, and great good is also, as James Moriarty was wont to
say on the recent BBC series Sherlock, “on the side of the angels.”
It is perhaps also for this reason, along with Christianity’s understanding of
human brokenness and its long memory, that may account for the similarities
between the Christian expectation of final persecutions and dystopian narra-
tives. For, perhaps, the cause of both is the same, spiritual powers manifest-
ing as worldly political powers. The powers that have oppressed the church
at various times throughout the world are those same powers that oppress
the poor, the outsiders, and those who will not simply fall in line. They are
powers that draw the human mind away from its appropriate object, the mind,
love, and will of God, and, consequently, their neighbor. Such powers, for
whatever their reasons, wish to quiet those transcendent elements in human-
ity, those elements which image God and reveal God to all of creation. If
such powers exist and are, as St. Paul believed, present in the functioning of
the pinnacles of human power, then they will continue to lead humanity into
forms of self-slavery, belittlement, and destruction.

NOTES

1. Take, for example, the rather optimistic view of the coming age by St.
Bonaventure as a reworking of the writings of Joachim of Fiore. See Joseph
Ratzinger, The Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan Herald
Press, 1971).
2. See introduction.
3. Mark 13:5–8 NRSV.
4. Roland Emerich, The Day After Tomorrow, 2004.
5. St. Augustine, Marcus Dods, trans., The City of God (Peabody, MA:
Hendrickson Publishers), 658 (XX. xi).
 The Collapse of All Things 33

6. Brian E. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic

Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1991), 33.
7. Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard: Volume I (New York, NY: Brill, 1994), 206.
8. C.C. Goen, “Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology,” Church
History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), 30.
9. It may be that Yahweh’s part in the destruction of Israel was purely a south-
ern theological perspective, rooted in the religious systems and temple worship of
Jerusalem. However, even if we claim that this interpretation was extrinsic to the
people experiencing the destruction, the same cannot be said for the destruction of
Jerusalem by the Babylonians.
10. H.G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1895.
11. George Orwell, 1984, 1949.
12. Alan Moore, V for Vendetta, 1982–1983.
13. Lamentations 3:19–24.
14. Aldous Huxley, A Brave New World, 1932.
15. Frits Staal, “How a Psychoactive Substance Becomes a Ritual: The Case of
Soma,” Social Research, Vol. 68, No. 3, Altered States of Consciousness (FALL
2001), 745–778.
16. George Orwell, 1984 (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 84.
17. Evey is, like Eve, taken from her predecessor, for her name, like “wo-man,” is
“e-vey,” as she is “from V.”
18. Mike Judge, Idiocracy, 2007.
19. William Gibson, Neuromancer (New York, NY: Ace, 1984).
20. Obsidian Entertainment, The Outer Worlds, 2019.
21. Marco Brambrilla, Demolition Man, 1993.
22. Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 3, 2008.
23. Franklin J. Schaffner, Planet of the Apes, 1968.
24. The Walking Dead comic book series by Robert Kirkman (Image Comics, Oct.
2003–Jul. 2019), multiple television series from AMC from 2010 until the present,
and video games by Telltale Games.
25. id Software, Rage, 2010 and Avalanche Studios, Rage 2, 2019.
26. AtomTeam, ATOM RPG, 2018.
27. Stephen King, The Stand (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1978).
28. Harlan Ellison, “A Boy and His Dog,” New Worlds, 1969.
29. George Miller, Mad Max, 1979.
30. Bethesda Game Studios, Fallout 4, 2015.
31. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, “Of the Enemies” in Valaquenta.
32. See reference to the people’s sin in 2 Macc. 7, “The Woman with Seven sons”.
33. It is interesting to note that the self-inflicted wounds that humanity suffered in
the early twentieth century leave a similar effect on the cultural imagination as that
suffered by a person who has committed a sin he did not think himself capable of.
Shame, self-hatred, and a conviction of one’s own fundamental wickedness can all
follow from such an event. In neither case is the obsession with one’s failure healthy,
but the similarity is perhaps telling.
 Chapter 2

The Evil One

INTRODUCTION

All great heroes have their opposite, their shadow self. For Sherlock Holmes,
it is the capable Professor Moriarty. For Batman, the Joker. For Arthur, it
is his son, Mordred. So it was, and remains, for the eschatological figure
known as the Messiah. The great Jewish king who was to, or still must, rise
to destroy the enemies of the children of Israel has his opposite, the figure
known generally as the “Antichrist.” For many Christians, this figure is
understood as a particularly Christian phenomenon. He is constructed from
the ideas of the “man of lawlessness,” the “beast,” and from the hints in the
letters of John that “Antichrist must come first.”
But the concept is older. It is shaped, as many concepts in Christian
eschatology are, by the struggle of the Jewish people against the oppressor
Antiochus IV. But other figures contribute to the myth, including Pompey
Magnus and Nero. The figure who stands in opposition to God’s anointed
has captured the imagination of Christians from the earliest times, with a
multitude of speculations being offered about his parentage, life, deeds, and
eventual appearing. In the second half of the twentieth century, the figure
took on new pop-culture significance with the rise of Satanism in America
and burgeoning changes in the horror movie industry.
This chapter will briefly trace the formation of the idea of the Antichrist
during Second Temple Judaism and through the New Testament, Patristic,
Medieval, and modern periods. It will then consider the Antichrist in popular
culture and how contemporary constructions of the figure resonate with the
vast tradition regarding this figure.

35
36 Chapter 2

THE BIBLICAL SOURCES OF THE EVIL ONE

Zoroastrianism and Satan

In his groundbreaking work The Origins of Biblical Monotheism,1 Mark
Smith has argued that what we now understand as true monotheism arose
quite late in what Christianity has called “salvation history.” Smith argues
that the earliest Israelite religion was something called monolatry or heno-
theism, the belief in many gods, but the worship of only one. Yahweh was
the greatest of the Gods but not the only God. It is not until the conquest
of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the exile in Babylon, that the Jewish
people encounter an idea that revolutionizes their religion.
In the Persian religion of Zoroastrianism, the idea of a universal, creator
God (Ahura Mazda) is set either against a co-equal or subordinate evil figure
(Ahriman/Angra Mainyu). It appears that during Jewish exposure to Persian
religion, Ahura Mazda, God of fire and creation, lent his attributes to the
great God of Israel, Yahweh. The local God of the Israelites then, elevated
to ruler of the universe, leaves behind his retinue of children, servants,
and messengers, relegated to the role of helpful and antagonistic heavenly
figures.
In this process the seemingly ever-present element of misfortune in the
history of Israel takes on personification. Either as an adaptation of Ahriman
or as the answer to a theodicy, or perhaps both, an antagonistic figure appears
in Jewish thought during the Second Temple period. The development of
this figure’s identity is not wholly clear to us, but the Book of the Watchers,
preserved in 1 Enoch, gives us a glimpse into that process. As an expansion
on the brief, strange opening verses of Genesis 6, the Book of the Watchers
depicts the fall of angels due to their lusting after human women. Their
leader, Shemiyaza, binds his fellow angels in a kind of cursed vow that unites
them in a commitment to do evil to the world, and they descend on the world
to sate their lusts, have children, and teach humanity hidden knowledge.
While this incarnation of the leader of the fallen angels has appeared in
various forms in popular depictions from Final Fantasy XII,2 El Shaddai:
Ascension of the Metatron,3 and the Shin Megami Tensei4 games, as well as
in other strains of fiction, including the movie Noah,5 the figure’s career in
ancient extant texts appears limited to this one work.
Shemiyaza is replaced, by the time of the New Testament, by the much
better-known figure of Satan. It isn’t clear how this transmission of identity
happened, as our knowledge of the structure of Jewish thought, especially
with regard to eschatological development during this period, is notoriously
lacking. It may be that the figure of Shemiyaza and the figure of Satan, as
he’s known in the New Testament have little to do with each other. However,
 The Evil One 37

the ways in which Satan reflects characteristics of Shemiyaza, in that he is

the chief of fallen spirits, a tempter, a liar, and will suffer a similar fate to
Shemiyaza as depicted in 1 Enoch and the book of Revelation, it seems much
more likely that there is a strong link between the leader of the fallen angels
in 1 Enoch and in the New Testament. If this is the case, the personification
of evil found in Ahriman through contact with the Persian religion continues
as a subordinated figure in Judaism throughout the Second Temple period.
Identifying, even to this limited degree, the chief agent of spiritual trouble,
gives us one of the foundational elements of the figure of the Antichrist. The
other is, perhaps, more mundane.

The Maccabean Revolt, Antiochus

The only non-Israelite/Jewish figure in the Bible to be referred to as Messiah
is Cyrus,6 ruler of the Persian Empire. It is the saving act of Cyrus, after
defeating the Babylonians, that sends the Jewish people back to their homes
in the regions of Judah, that earns him this epithet. The author of Deutero-
Isaiah writes, “Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand
I have grasped to subdue nations before him and strip kings of their robes, to
open doors before him—and the gates shall not be closed.”7
Cyrus excepted, the concept of the anointed of Yahweh included the right-
ful kings of Israel, priests, and prophets. The development of the idea of a
heroic king-figure from the line of David appears to have its roots in pre-
exilic prophecy, but the concept comes to the forefront perhaps only in light
of the repeated conquests of the land of Judah under Alexander the Great, the
oppression by Antiochus IV, and later the Romans at the hand of Pompey
Magnus. These figures represent a type that will sit in opposition to the theme
of the Messiah: the Antichrist.
Positing a more complex history, G.W. Lorein, in his work, The Antichrist
Theme in the Intertestamental Period, links the burgeoning concept of the
Antichrist to the legend of Goliath as a kind of anti-type of the Davidic
Messiah. He finds traces of the Antichrist theme in Psalm 152 and the book
of Ben Sira. Other works from the intertestamental period display elements of
the Antichrist theme, including The War Scroll from Qumran, the Testament
of the Twelve Patriarchs, and The Treatise of Shem.8 Lorein also identifies
the development of the idea of the Antichrist independently from Antiochus
IV and later, Pompey Magnus.9
Whether Lorein’s interpretation is correct or not, it appears clear that
the concept of the Antichrist well predates the Christian use of the con-
cept. It is therefore the case that when we consider the figures of evil in
the New Testament, both the devil and the Antichrist, that we are dealing
with Christian interpretations of preexisting concepts. Our knowledge of
38 Chapter 2

these concepts is limited, but what we can glean from what little we have,
can shed light on the uses of these ideas in the earliest stages of Christian
development.

THE CHRISTIAN ACCEPTANCE OF THE ANTICHRIST

It is not immediately evident that the earliest Christians would have necessar-
ily imported the figure of the Antichrist into their eschatological schema. It
might have been that the radical reinterpretation of the figure of the Messiah
in light of Jesus’ character, work, death, and resurrection, led them to reject
the category. However, the expectations of the early church concerning the
figure like Antiochus were perhaps cemented and confirmed by the perse-
cutions that the people of Christ experienced under the rule of the Roman
Emperor Nero. His wanton murder of Christians, the fear that he would
return after his death, and the identification of him with the Beast through the
numerology of the book of Revelation, cemented him as the prime candidate
for the eschatological role of the Antichrist from perhaps as early as the third
century. This identification would remain through at least the first Christian
millennium. Indeed, the myth that Nero would return, resurrected, as the
anti-type of Christ, appeared within various writers across this time period.
Except for these persecutions and myths, it may have been that the figure of
the Antichrist, known to the earliest Jewish Christians, might have disap-
peared from Christian eschatology. And, though a kind of broad agreement
was formed in Christianity across the centuries, the New Testament is not
unanimous in its representations of the Antichrist. Instead, it demonstrates a
community, or communities, wrestling with how to import an idea into their
newly configured worldview.

The Implied Evil One in Mark’s Little Apocalypse

The so-called “little apocalypse” of the Gospel of Mark, which is essentially
the entirety of the thirteenth chapter, offers an apocalyptic view of the coming
catastrophe. Much ink has been spilled over the importance of this chapter,
especially regarding its role in dating the composition of the Gospel. While
that discussion is fascinating, the main issue for our concerns is whether there
is an implication of a figure of oppression within the text.
We may dispense with the false prophets and false Messiahs from verse 22.
These are general classes of deceivers and Mark’s Gospel makes no warning
about a particular figure. Instead, our focus here is with verses 14 and 26.
“But when you see the desolating sacrilege (βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως) set up
where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must
 The Evil One 39

flee to the mountains”; and “Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in
the clouds’ with great power and glory.”
The term “desolating sacrilege” or “abomination that desolates” appears
three times in the book of Daniel.10 Its usage points to the desecration of the
Jewish Temple by Antiochus IV in 167 BCE. Both I Maccabees and Josephus
reference the desecration of the temple and the subsequent cleansing of the
temple by Judas Maccabeus.11
This, coupled with the appearance of the heavenly figure of the Son of
Man, gives us clear reason to hold Daniel as one of the more significant back-
ground documents for this text. Indeed, the phrase “let the reader understand”
points to the necessity of observing intertextuality here. The reader is asked
to make a connection that isn’t explicitly spelled out in the text. Thus, given
the strong link between Daniel and Mark 13, we find that the “abomination
that desolates” suggests strongly that there is one who will perform a similar
abomination to that of Antiochus IV. However, no new information about this
figure is given. We may take only the following implied information from this
passage: First, that before the appearing of the Son of Man, a desolation will
occur similar to that which was perpetrated by Antiochus IV, and second, that
this will be a significant sign of the coming end.
Beyond this, we may not gather anything from this text about the figure
of the coming evil one. However, this is enough to point to a strain of belief
about this figure within early Christian apocalyptic thought, even if that
belief had yet to develop into a clear and explicit teaching. We may be seeing
here simply an unexamined importing of the existing Jewish eschatological
landscape.

The Johannine Letters

In the first and second letters of John, the Antichrist is mentioned. However,
unlike other references in the New Testament, the letters of John tell us abso-
lutely nothing about the expectation except that there is one. “Children, it is
the last hour! As you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many anti-
christs have come. From this we know that it is the last hour.”12 The author
of the letter of John identifies any Antichrist as one who denies the Father
and the Son.13 In 2 John 7, the author says, “Many deceivers have gone out
into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the
flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the Antichrist!”
It seems clear that for the author of the letters of John, the myth of the
Antichrist is now to be reinterpreted in light of the church and its teachings.
The author is not looking for a single Antichrist, but sees many. Their appear-
ances are sufficient to indicate that it is the “last hour” as many believed that
the appearance of the Antichrist proper would signal the “last hour.”
40 Chapter 2

These references don’t tell us anything about the Antichrist myth itself.
Instead, they show us evidence of the reworking of the old schema in light of
the new community that takes its identity from Christ. Within the Johannine
corpus, the communication of Christic identity that we see in the Gospel of
John may be functioning here as well. If this is the case, the author is not
alone in making this kind of move.

2 Thessalonians
2 Thessalonians presents a more complete picture of the coming oppressor
than the Johannine letters. Whereas the Johannine letters first assume an
already-known motif and both spiritualize and perhaps democratize it, the
author of 2 Thessalonians gives us a general outline that demonstrates once
more the continuity between the coming figure and the eschatological depic-
tion of Antiochus IV as depicted in the second half of Daniel.
The author of 2 Thessalonians shares the view of the letters of John that
there is a figure that must appear before Jesus returns. This is the “lawless
person” (ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἀνομίας) who “opposes and exalts himself above
every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the
temple of God, declaring himself to be God.”14
The author goes on to say,

And you know what is now restraining him, so that he may be revealed when his
time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, but only until the
one who now restrains it is removed. And then the lawless one will be revealed,
whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth, annihilating him
by the manifestation of his coming.15

Some of the elements here are mysterious. Who is the one who is restrain-
ing the mystery of lawlessness? When or how could he be removed? Is this the
church? Will it be a final apostacy that removes the church? It can’t really be
known from this text. However, once again we see elements of the eschatologi-
cal schema reworked around Christ. The lawless person will be destroyed by
Christ’s fire, an idea, differently contextualized, that we will see in the book of
Revelation. The author here is taking a well-known idea and re-presenting it to
his readers. He, like the author of the Johannine letters, is reworking an existing
tradition in light of the disruption caused by the resurrection of Jesus.
Therefore, I cannot agree with Kevin L. Hughes in his assertion that, with
2 Thessalonians, “A mysterious personification of human evil has entered the
apocalyptic scenario and, in effect, initiated a new strand in the tradition of
apocalyptic thought.”16 Instead, the author of 2 Thessalonians is drawing on an
established motif of an eschatological persecutor and reinterpreting this figure
in light of the paradigm shift of Christ’s resurrection. To suggest otherwise is
 The Evil One 41

to maintain that 2 Thessalonians was universally applied across the differing

Christian communities that brought the New Testament into being, and that,
without mention of Antiochus, the author of 2 Thessalonians has summoned
a figure strikingly like Antiochus whole-cloth into the tradition.

The Beast
In the book of Revelation, there are three, or perhaps four, figures of evil.
The first, the Dragon, stands for Satan. The second, the Beast from the Sea,
appears to take the same role as the figure of the Antichrist in the rest of the
tradition. The Beast from the Sea appears somehow like Christ, and this may
have a connection to the little apocalypse in Mark in which Jesus says that
some will come and say, “I am he.” Perhaps a modification to the Antichrist
theme appeared in the Christian community that included the possibility that
the Antichrist would imitate Christ. The Beast from the Sea is supported by
the beast from the earth (and perhaps by the scarlet beast, or is perhaps the
same as the scarlet beast). The beast rules the earth, oppresses, and kills the
people of God, in keeping with the traditions regarding Antiochus IV, and
will ultimately be overthrown by the appearing of God, much as in the book
of Daniel. He, along with Satan, will then be destroyed by eschatological fire,
a theme similar to what we saw in 2 Thessalonians.
The interpretation of the Beast as Nero Caesar is both highly likely and
ancient. And it is therefore in that particular vein that the book of Revelation
uniquely reveals how the early Christians reinterpreted the Antichrist myth.
The other examples that we have seen have been shaped either by a simple
reception of tradition, as in Mark 13, or by reinterpretation around the person
of Jesus. However, in the book of Revelation, we see the myth shaped strongly
around another person. As the first conceptualization of the Antichrist was
patterned on the person of Antiochus IV, so then, for Christianity, the figure
who stands as the second major archetype for the myth is Nero.
As each of the examples given here was written at a different point and
from a different perspective within the early Christian world, it is clear that
not every community or person in the early church had exactly the same idea
about the Antichrist. The idea appears to have developed along a number of
different tracks. It is within later church tradition that these different tracks
are harmonized into an authoritative picture.

THE ANTICHRIST IN CHURCH TRADITION

Having surveyed the concept of the final enemy as it developed and appeared
in the pre-Christian and first-century Christian writings, we might summarize
by saying that a number of different, and perhaps novel, traditions regarding
42 Chapter 2

the enemy of the people of God were interpreted through the disruptive event
of Jesus’ resurrection. The resulting array of interpretations, while having a
kind of genetic relationship, offered distinct views not reducible to a single
narrative description of the expectation of evil.
This organization of the fractured elements of the awaited Evil One in light
of Jesus’ resurrection begins with Irenaeus in the second century. Irenaeus,
who frames much of his organization of Christian theology within the con-
cept of recapitulation, sees the Antichrist as recapitulating the rebellion of
humanity.17 Irenaeus attempted to identify the Beast, using the number 666,
and came close to indicting Rome. Hippolytus, student of Irenaeus, writes the
first treatise on the Antichrist, De Christo et Antichristo, and the first known
commentary on a biblical book (Commentary on Daniel).18 Hippolytus,
following Irenaeus, posits that the Roman empire will be split before the
Antichrist returns, and that the Antichrist will reunite the empire, rebuild the
temple in Jerusalem, and that he will be of Jewish origin.19
It is interesting to note that the concern, or perhaps expectation, that the
Jewish Temple might be rebuilt by the Antichrist, dovetailed for a brief
moment with the flow of history during the reign of Julian the Apostate
(330–363).20 Julian, formerly Christian, challenged Christianity with his writ-
ings, laws, and plans to rebuild the Jewish Temple. All of this was cut short
when he was mortally wounded by Persian forces at the Battle of Samarra.
The hiddenness of the Antichrist was commented on by the fourth-century
donatist, Tyconius, who observed that the struggle between the Antichrist
and the church was typologically already in place, and that “Until Tyconius’
own time, the Antichrist has been persecuting the true Church of Christ in an
oblique way . . . When his time comes, however, the Antichrist’s true identity
and all his hypocritical adherents will be revealed[.]”21
A particularly imaginative interpretation of the coming Antichrist that also
holds to the idea that he is or has been already at work in the world is that
of the Latin poet Commodian. Commodian himself is a mysterious figure as
scholars about whether he was a Syrian in Rome in the late second century
or in northern Africa or southern Gaul in the mid-fifth century.22 In his anti-
Semitic poem Carmen de Duobus Populis, he posits that Rome will be over-
come by Goths who will be kind to Christians. The Romans will be restored
by a “Syrian King” following which Nero will be raised from the depths of
Hell to continue his persecution of the church. A second Antichrist will fol-
low and outlive Nero. In his other poem, Instructiones, Commodian predicted
only one Antichrist, the resurrected Nero.23
Medieval authors took the concept of the Antichrist and brought forth
new interpretations. As Emmerson explains, “The numerous features of the
medieval Antichrist legend . . . [are] based on identifications of the many
 The Evil One 43

types and symbols of Antichrist.”24 These included synthetic readings of

explicit Antichrist references, as in the letters of John, and the “man of law-
lessness” text in 2 Thessalonians. But it also included commentaries on the
Apocalypse.25 They attempted to interpret prophecies from the book of Daniel
as well as make allegorical links to understand precursors and “types” of
the Antichrist. Authors like Berengaudus, Rupert of Deutz, and Joachim of
Fiore, debated the meaning of the first six heads of the seven-headed beast in
Revelation, but all agreed that the seventh head was the Antichrist.26
In the medieval period, the myth of the Antichrist developed and took on a
kind of canonical shape which was summarized in the Libellus de Antichristo
by a tenth-century monk named Adso. Richard Emmerson notes that the
Libellus organizes for the first time the many widespread early medieval
comments concerning Antichrist found in the Fathers, in numerous commen-
taries, and in such Sibylline works as the Apocalypse of pseudo-Methodius.
It structures the popular tradition around Antichrist’s life—from his birth to
his death—rather than, as is typical before Adso, as a commentary upon such
important scriptural sources of the tradition as Revelation 11 and 13 and 2
Thessalonians 2. As a life of Antichrist, an anti-legend of one of the most
discussed anti-saints of the Middle Ages, the Libellus greatly influenced later
medieval theological, literary, and artistic versions of the tradition.27
Buck summarizes Adso’s description of the Antichrist:

He told the story of the Evil One who would be conceived by the devil, born in
Babylon, and tutored by wizards. As a young man he would go to Jerusalem,
circumcise himself, and pretend to be the Son of God. He would proselytize by
performing signs and wonders, and would persecute those whom he could not
convert. Finally, Jesus would intervene and slay him.28

Kevin Hughes summarizes this period of the Antichrist’s development,

observing that “the early Middle Ages saw the integration of apocalyptic
traditions into a synthetic eschatological vision, ambiguous about the end, but
powerful and pervasive in its ambiguity.”29
Along with developments of the myth of the person of the Antichrist, the
medieval period saw a refinement of concomitant elements of Antichrist nar-
rative, such as the roles of Elijah and Enoch. The two prophets from the book
of Revelation, identified with the two prophets from the Hebrew Scriptures
who did not die, were predicted to return and preach against the Antichrist
for 1,260 days, after which the Antichrist will kill them.30 It is also clear that
some in the medieval period believed, as many do now, that the coming of
the Antichrist was imminent.31 Bernard of Clairvaux writes about Norbert of
Xanten’s opinions about the Antichrist,
44 Chapter 2

When I asked him what he thought about the Antichrist, he declared himself
quite certain that it would be during this present generation that he would be
revealed. But upon my asking, when he wished to explain to me the source of
this same certainty, I did not think, having heard his response, that I ought to
take it for certain. He concluded by saying that he would live to see a general
persecution of the Church.32

During the Protestant Reformations, the figure of the Antichrist was put to
extensive use in polemical arguments of the day. Central to the expression of
the Antichrist for many reformers was the concept of the Antichrist as Pope.
Lawrence P. Buck observes, “By the end of the Middle Ages, the idea of the
papal Antichrist had developed as a complex concept with multiple layers of
meaning and with its own vocabulary and rhetorical trope.”33
This trope was used famously and extensively by Martin Luther in
his works. Among his references to the Pope as Antichrist is his reply to
the 1520 Papal bull “Exsurge Domine” of Leo X, Adversus execrabilem
Antichristi bullam (Against the excretable bull of the Antichrist). Luther’s
response opens,

I have heard that a bull against me has gone through the whole earth before
it came to me, because being a daughter of darkness it feared the light of my
face. For this reason and also because it condemns manifestly the Christian
articles I had my doubts whether it really came from Rome and was not rather
the progeny of that man of lies, dissimulation, errors, and heresy, that monster
John Eck. The suspicion was further increased when it was said that Eck was
the apostle of the bull. Indeed the style and the spittle all point to Eck. True,
it is not impossible that where Eck is the apostle there one should find the
kingdom of Antichrist. Nevertheless in the meantime I will act as if I thought
Leo not responsible, not that I may honor the Roman name, but because I do
not consider myself worthy to suffer such high things for the truth of God. For
who before God would be happier than Luther if he were condemned from so
great and high a source for such manifest truth? But the cause seeks a worthier
martyr. I with my sins merit other things. But whoever wrote this bull, he is
Antichrist.34

Emphasizing the discontinuity of the protestant identification of the Antichrist

with both the papacy and Catholicism in general from the prior medieval
tropes, Richard Kenneth Emmerson states:

[T]he Protestant identification of Antichrist with the papacy and Catholicism in

general is much more revolutionary. It represents a change in doctrine in which
not merely some specific papal problem, but the papacy itself, is repudiated. As
 The Evil One 45

Hans Preuss points out, Luther attacked the teaching and beliefs, not just the life
and actions, of the pope.35

Modern Protestant considerations of the Antichrist abound. However, while

there has been a kind of obsession with the figure of the Antichrist in evan-
gelical circles, seen especially in the fictionalized future account given in the
Left Behind series, more conservative perspectives prevail in other corners
of the Western non-Catholic tradition. In the whole of Heppe’s 1861 collec-
tion of Reformed theological teachings, Reformed Dogmatics, the Antichrist
appears only twice in over 700 pages.

The day of this reappearance of Christ on earth, which will be manifested when
all the elect are introduced to the enjoyments of the covenant of grace, is known
only to God; but its near approach will certainly be announced by signs. To this
sign especially belongs the spreading of the Gospel over all the earth, the rise
in the Church of Antichrist, who arrayed in great power will try quite directly
to destroy the work of the Lord, before its final completion and the conversion
of Israel.36

From a Lutheran perspective, a distinction is found “between the Eastern

and Western Antichrist.”37
More recently, the Antichrist has received much attention both in popu-
lar Christian speculation and in academic research. Perhaps, in theological
circles, the most famous use of the term “Antichrist” lies in Karl Barth’s
statement that the theological idea of the “Analogy of Being” maintained by
Przywara was an “Invention of the Antichrist.”
As such, the topic of the Antichrist in modern theological discussion
is divisive. Certain strains of Christianity have continued to focus on the
Antichrist as he was constructed in the medieval and reformation periods
and others have pursued an approach that focuses more on the spirit of the
Antichrist as depicted in scripture.
In the first category, the influential American preacher Jonathan Edwards
continued to see the Antichrist as existing within the papacy.38 Edwards
believed that the Antichrist would both rise and fall gradually, and that his
reign would last 1,260 years.39
Joseph Ratzinger drew heavily on the idea of the spirit of the Antichrist in
his assessment of the teaching.

As far as the antichrist is concerned, we have seen that in the New Testament
he always assumes the lineaments of contemporary history. He cannot be
restricted to any single individual. One and the same, he wears many masks in
each generation . . . the antichrist is one only in the multiplicity of his historical
46 Chapter 2

appearances, each of which threatens in its own way the period in which it
occurs.40

A contemporary theological interpretation of this state of affairs can allow

for this diversity of viewpoints to exist as a promising, open, revelatory
tension which forms both a boundary and a field of exploration. However,
though the church has long maintained a multifaceted approach to reading the
scriptures, such a tension was largely not part of the intellectual landscape of
its influential interpreters. Instead, a desire to harmonize, organize, and cre-
ate an authoritative narrative arose less than a century and a half after Jesus’
death and resurrection.

TERMINOLOGY

Drawing a cohesive picture of the evil figure expected by the authors of the
New Testament may be an intellectual error. It is by no means certain that
Jesus, the authors of the Gospels, the Epistles of John, 2 Thessalonians, and
the Apocalypse, all were working from the same intellectual category that
could be collapsed into the figure of “the Antichrist.” However, despite this,
the church produced just such an amalgam that has endured. Therefore,
when considering this figure in popular culture, it is perhaps less useful
to continue to harp on both the dearth of our knowledge about this first-
century intellectual category and the inappropriateness of the conglomerate
picture that the early church produced. Instead, it is both more expedient
and clearer to acknowledge this difficulty and then move on by adopting
a practice of using the terms Antichrist, beast, and man of lawlessness
interchangeably.

POPULAR CULTURAL FORMULATIONS

OF THE ANTICHRIST

In the Anglophonic world, the 1960s saw a resurgence in occultism and espe-
cially the explicit practice of Satanism. Two churches of Satan were founded,
one by Anton LaVey in 1966, which he declared Year One, Anno Satanas.
Among LaVey’s followers were figures such as Susan Atkins who would go
on to be part of the Manson Family. In 1967 Ira Levin wrote and published
his masterpiece of satanic horror, Rosemary’s Baby,41 which was made into
an extremely faithful screen adaptation the following year.
In Levin’s story, a young woman is unwillingly and unknowingly pros-
tituted out to Satan by her husband in a reverse Faustian bargain. Guy,
 The Evil One 47

Rosemary’s husband, loans his wife to the devil in exchange for fame and
fortune. In the movie the child, Andy, is never shown on screen, but his
identity as the Antichrist is made clear. The book, like the movie, leaves the
reader there, with a coven of witches raising their glasses to the child and
crying out “Hail Satan!”
Yet, until 2010, Levin did not give his readers any explanation of the
activities of the son of Satan. This left the imaginative field wide open for
others to explore what horrors might unfold during the life of the Antichrist.
Levin’s story about Satan, a witches’ coven, and the birth of the Antichrist
was shocking, not only in its content, but in its overwhelming domesticity.
Rosemary leads a sheltered life, and her encounters with the supernatural are
played down as the possible result of mental illness. It is a classic example of
satanic fertilization mingled with a heaping of gaslighting.
The successor to the popular Antichrist story was far less subtle, less
critically well received, and far more profitable. In 1976, 20th Century Fox
released The Omen,42 a story about the birth and childhood of the Antichrist.
Where Rosemary’s baby concerned itself with how a modern woman might
be manipulated by evil forces both supernatural and domestic into becoming
the mother of “the Beast,” The Omen begins with the birth of a child who dies
quickly and is replaced with another, whose mother is apparently a jackal.
Directed by Richard Donner, The Omen is located in the world of politics
and involves satanic conspiracy, packs of dogs, murder, and, appropriately,
omens about the future. In this film, Damien, the son of Satan, is destined to
rule the world and bring about the end of all things. He is susceptible to full
and final destruction only if slain on holy ground with the seven daggers of
Meggido. His father, portrayed by Gregory Peck, is killed by police as he
attempts to perform a strange echo of the Akedah.
The Omen series contains five movies: The Omen, three sequels, and
a remake. In the third movie, Damien is slain with one of the daggers of
Meggido, only to have his spirit come back in perhaps one of the most
convoluted horror plots ever written for the made-for-television movie The
Omen IV: The Awakening.43 I will return to Omen III: The Final Conflict in
the chapter on the Glorious Appearing. However, what is notable about the
Omen series is that the figure of the Antichrist is largely depicted as an agent
of localized and petty evil. His identity as world-ruler is only a potentiality
in the third movie.
In stark contrast to this is the bringer of the Anti-Life Equation, Darkseid,
in DC Comics’ 2008 series Final Crisis. Here Darkseid, the embodiment of
evil, takes on characteristics similar to those of the expected figure from the
New Testament. He exists both as a physical being and as spirit. He marks
the people of the world with his sign (the Anti-Life Equation) and has been
killed before and returned. However, Darkseid is an amalgam, bringing
48 Chapter 2

together both the figure of the Antichrist and the spiritual agent behind the
Antichrist, Satan.
Here we see a blending of Enochic and semi-Enochic concepts that is
not particularly uncommon in fiction. For in Enochic Judaism, the specific
identities of angelic beings are important, and their interaction with human-
ity is the field of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. The theology
of the book of Daniel, which may or may not be Enochic, since it features
two angelic identities we meet first in the Book of the Watchers, Michael and
Gabriel, places a great significance on the faithful people of God as the place
of this cosmic conflict. The Christian apocalyptic interpretation of these two
areas of conflict as presented in the book of Revelation, retains the distinction
between the angelic figure of Satan and the human figures of the Beast and
the False Prophet.
Darkseid, as interpreted by Grant Morrison in Final Crisis, blurs this line
between the heavenly and the earthly. The categories of the angelic and
the human blend result in incarnations of Darkseid’s spirit such as “Boss
Darkseid.”
Another Antichrist figure who blends the trans-human and the human is
Stephen King’s Randal Flagg. Flagg exists, not only as a trans-human figure,
but as a trans-dimensional demonic figure whose task it is to bring about the
destruction of great civilizations. In The Stand, Flagg’s past is unclear, even
to him. He understands himself to be human but experiences a growing power
that is described as an ability to do magic.
It is worth returning for a moment to our original observation in this chap-
ter that the expected figure of evil in the New Testament is not homogenously
depicted as having the power of Satan behind him. Indeed, in the four main
points that we have referenced, only two make a strong connection between
the coming evil one and Satan. In the book of Revelation, the Dragon, Satan,
gives his power to the Beast. The whole world then follows the Beast and
worships the Dragon. 2 Thessalonians also makes the connection strong,
saying, “The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan,
who uses all power, signs, lying wonders, and every kind of wicked decep-
tion for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and
so be saved.”
Echoes of Antiochus IV resound through these passages. For it is
Antiochus’ sacrilege at the Temple of Yahweh and his persecution of the
Jewish people that forms the bedrock of the figure of the expected Evil One.
Much as there is an expected prophet “like Moses” and a king who is com-
ing who is descended from David, so too will there be one who embodies the
spirit of Antiochus. And it is in this foundational layer of the eschatological
myth that we find the cause of this blurring of categories. For when Antiochus
desecrates the Temple of Yahweh, he sets up a statue of Zeus and rededicates
it to the worship of foreign gods. It is this “sacrilege that desolates” that
 The Evil One 49

stands behind Revelation 13, Mark 13 and its descendants, and the affirma-
tion of 2 Thessalonians that “He opposes and exalts himself above every
so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of
God, declaring himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:4).
Of course, most explicitly we find the Antichrist present, parodied, and
humanized in Neil Gaiman’s and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens. Here the
Antichrist is a child who is a mixture of an eminently pragmatic lad with a group
of friends and something of a blowhard. He is not a tormenter of innocents, but
instead a natural-born leader of his companions—a bit of a free-thinker. Adam,
the Antichrist, is given to the wrong family and raised in the wrong environment.
The story functions as a send-up of a spiritual bureaucracy that wants the world
to go through the literal motions of the book of Revelation. It undermines the idea
of the Antichrist as Antichrist. Indeed, one imagines that Gaiman and Pratchett’s
Adam might have much to converse with Christ about.
In Good Omens, the position of Antichrist then is not one which a person
fulfills through their actions but by meeting some kind of pre-set prophecy.
He has the right father and is born at the right time. One might read Good
Omens with something of the same spirit as reading the cultural expectations
about the Messiah in Jesus’ own day. Christ fulfills very little of what the
people hoped for from a Messiah, despite humanity’s relentless insistence
that we must praise him with “hosannas.”
Perhaps most disturbing of all representations of the Antichrist is the one
presented in the real-time strategy series, Left Behind, based on the popular
evangelical Christian book series. In at least some of these games, the player
may direct the forces of Jesus against the forces of the Antichrist (as depicted
in the Left Behind series in the figure of Nicholas Carpathia). On the side of
Jesus, they are determined to convert as many people to Christianity as pos-
sible. If, however, a person won’t convert, or the player is unable to convert
them, they must be killed as they serve the Antichrist.
What is most disturbing about the Left Behind games is that they turn the
followers of Jesus into essentially self-righteous warriors who will kill people
over ideological differences. This is not a matter of Christians living peace-
fully and being attacked by outside forces. Instead, the two sides are equally
aggressive in the Left Behind world. Beyond the trappings of characters who
say “praise the Lord” when you click on them, and the color coding of white
instead of red, there is no fundamental difference between the ways in which
the followers of Jesus function and those of the Antichrist.

THE ANTICHRIST CONSIDERED

Multiple interpretations of the Antichrist phenomenon in pop culture exist.

Robin Wood offered a Marxist critique of the use of the Antichrist in cinema
50 Chapter 2

in 1986.44 Richard Walsh offered a perspective that the Antichrist narrative is

deeply embedded in American identity and civil religion as a form of anxiety
of overweening governmental power and the fear of being possessed by an
external supernatural power.45 Neil Gerlach offers a social interpretation of
the Antichrist phenomenon from the sociological view of ontological uncer-
tainty in a culture of technological risk.46
Like other foci of this work, the Antichrist is a partial remnant of the
complex eschatological narrative of the early Christian community derived
from its Jewish roots. The synthesis and codification of the concept of the
Antichrist allowed for a firm mythological framework to structure itself
around a fundamental human concern: the role of evil in humanity.
The Antichrist functions as a second step in a two-step process that per-
sonified evil in the larger Judeo-Christian intellectual landscape. The first step
occured post-exile with the personification of transcendent evil first in the
figure of Shemiyaza and then, more canonically, in the figure of Satan. The
second step is the personification of evil in the realm of humanity as a mir-
ror figure to the person of Jesus. This mirroring is evident perhaps from the
earliest New Testament reference to the legend of the figure like Antiochus,
in Mark 13. When Christ speaks of the sacrilege that desecrates, there may be
a double reference. The first, is, of course, an allusion to the act of Antiochus
IV, but the second may be to the opposite act of Christ, a sanctifying sacrifice
that makes holy. The very name “Antichrist” in the letters of John suggests
this mirroring. So, too, in the Apocalypse of John is the trinity of Dragon,
Beast, and False Prophet, meant to mirror the Trinity.
The unmooring of the figure of the Antichrist from the theologically
informed imagination of the church results in somewhat trite representations
of human or demonic evil. The Antichrist is perhaps charismatic, perhaps
astute, perhaps political. When used in this way, the figure simply stands in
for ultimate human evil as we already understand it.
However, theologically, the figure of the Antichrist is one that fundamen-
tally is related to the concept of a religious people with a political identity.
The Antichrist is positioned against the Jewish people in their identity as a
political structure and a society dedicated to the God of Israel. The concept
enters Christianity largely untransformed. While some of the trappings
change around Nero, especially with the added element of a kind of diaboli-
cal resurrection, and some elements of the Antichrist figure contort in order
to mirror the life of Jesus, the essential teaching of the Antichrist remains
political and social. Little has been done to the teaching about the Antichrist
in light of the essential character and person of Jesus Christ. Thus, the trans-
formation of eschatology in general in light of Jesus has been only partial. It
is the reconfiguration of Jewish eschatological ideas in St. Paul and in the let-
ters and Gospel of John where we most see a radical reinterpretation of what
 The Evil One 51

the end of things must be after Jesus has been raised from the dead. For some
New Testament writers and for many of the Church Fathers the transforma-
tion of eschatological concepts is unnecessary. One need only slot Jesus into
the old categories and go on with things. However, Jesus’ consistent rejection
of every possible Messianic category with the exception of religious reforma-
tion should indicate that his person cannot be easily slotted into preexisting
religious molds. He is the transformative reality by which the new categories
must be defined. It is the rethinking of these concepts in Paul and parts of the
Johannine corpus that offers the most promising and authoritative reworking
of these old ideas. The idea that Jesus is the Son of Man who will come to
judge the world is challenged by the Johannine insistence that the Son of Man
has not come into the world to judge the world. John’s insistence that this
is not the role of the Son of Man is a clear indication that the author of the
Gospel sees Jesus as the new measure and standard of eschatological insight.
It is because of this radical transformation that we see with the fire at the end
of the age in St Paul and the reworking of the concept of the Son of Man in
the Gospel of John, that we can observe that the category of the Antichrist
requires a strong Christological reworking.47
The beginnings of this transformation for the Antichrist can be seen in the
New Testament. In the letters of John, and to some degree in 2 Thessalonians,
there is some sense in which the figure of the Antichrist has been reworked
around the figure of Christ. Just as Christ’s Spirit has gone out among the
people and given them the power to be called the children of God, so it is that
the identity of the Antichrist has also gone out among the people and branded
them with his name. It is perhaps in this direction that contemplations of the
Antichrist, both in theology and popular culture, should venture. For to par-
ticipate in a great destructive spirit, a terrible human expression of the same
darkness that poisons the spiritual malevolence of Satan, is possible of many
people, not just one superlative evil human.
Indeed, if evil truly is a corruption of the good, then no person could ever
be as truly evil as Christ is good. For to be so corrupted would be to give up all
good elements, and one would have to propose that the greatest evil humanity
will ever encounter will be weak, unintelligent, uncharismatic, spiteful, hate-
ful, and devoid of all things that might lead anyone to follow them. We must
imagine a Hitler without his moving speeches, a Stalin without his strong will
and intellect, a Genghis Khan without his military brilliance.
If, instead, each shares a bit of that spirit of the Antichrist, and each, in his
own way, denies that Christ has come in the flesh, which is perhaps to say that
Christ is human and therefore all humanity is blessed with an imperishable
value, then the spirit of the Antichrist may continue to strive until it is finally
eradicated by the coming of Christ to finally reveal that God has blessed cre-
ation in the Incarnation.
52 Chapter 2

CONCLUSION

The Antichrist in both Christianity and in many popular presentations func-

tions as both a shorthand for ultimate human evil as well as a justification for
the demonization of certain human figures. Rarely are these figures anything
more than a mere projection of whatever particular fear arises at the cur-
rent time, whether it is the resurrection of Nero, apostacy in the church, the
papacy, or malevolent political figures. Our description of the Antichrist is
often an imaginative blend of where we see great power and the possibility of
its corruption. When ultimate power is blended with ultimate evil, we despair
of any solution to the problem. Christianity has maintained that, to some
degree, such a marriage of power and evil is perennial and inevitable. Indeed,
it is ultimately the fate of humanity to fall under the thrall of this blending
of what C.S. Lewis calls the “omni-competent state” and moral evil. At the
head of this great persecution is the pinnacle of human wickedness. Against
these things, no natural good will, in the end, prevail. A final darkness will
fall. Against this there can only be one power triumphant: the Risen One who
returns to make all things new.

NOTES

1. Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel’s Polytheistic

Background and the Ugaritic Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2. Square Enix, Final Fantasy XII, 2006.
3. Ignition Tokyo, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, 2011.
4. Atlus Games has developed and published several games in this series begin-
ning in 1992.
5. Darren Aronofsky, Noah, 2014.
6. Lisbeth S. Fried, “Cyrus the Messiah,” Bible Review, Vol. 19, No. 5 (Oct.
2003), 24–31, 44.
7. Isaiah 45:1.
8. Geert Wouter Lorein, The Antichrist Theme in the Intertestamental Period
(London: T&T Clark International, 2003), 220.
9. Ibid., 229.
10. Daniel 9:27 (βδέλυγμα τῶν ἐρημώσεων), 11:31 (βδέλυγμα ἠφανισμένων),
12:11 (βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως).
11. Flavius Josephus, William Whiston trans., Jewish Antiquities, Book XII
(Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2006), 485ff.
12. 1 John 2:18.
13. 1 John 2:22.
14. 2 Thessalonians 2:4.
15. 2 Thessalonians 2:6–8.
 The Evil One 53

16. Kevin L. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist: Paul Biblical Commentary, and

the Development of Doctrine in the Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2005), 14.
17. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist, 30.
18. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 39.
19. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist, 31.
20. Ibid.
21. Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 129.
22. Ibid., 162.
23. Ibid., 163. Commodian was not the only one to believe that Nero would rise to
take his place at the end of time. See also Daley 8, 126.
24. Richard Kenneth Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, A Study of Medieval
Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press,
1981), 37.
25. Ibid., 39.
26. Ibid., 32.
27. Richard Kenneth Emmerson, “From Epistola to Sermo: The Old English
Version of Adso’s Libellus De Antichristo,” The Journal of English and Germanic
Philology, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), 1–10.
28. Lawrence P. Buck, “Anatomia Antichristi: Form and Content of the Papal
Antichrist,” Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. XLII, No. 2 (2011), 353.
29. Hughes, Constructing Antichrist, 177.
30. Emmerson, “From Epistola to Sermo,” 41.
31. See, for example, Sabina Flanagan, “Twelfth-Century Apocalyptic Imaginations
and the Coming of the Antichrist,” The Journal of Religious History, Vol. 24, No. 1
(Feb 2000), 57–69.
32. Ibid., 58, from Trans. B. McGinn, “St Bernard and Eschatology,” in Bernard
of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclercq (Washington, DC: Cistercian
Studies Publications, 1973), 169.
33. Buck, “Anatomia Antichristi,” 349–368.
34. Roland H. Banton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville, TN:
Abingdon Press, 1978), 155.
35. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages, 206f.
36. Amandus Polanus a Polansdorf, Syntagma Theologiae Christianae, Hanover
1624 (VI, 66) in Heinrich Heppe, Ernst Bizer, Ed., G.T. Thomson, Trans., Reformed
Dogmatics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1950), 697.
37. Heinrich Schmid, Charles A. Hay and Henry E Jacobs, trans., The Doctrinal
Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock,
2008), 648.
38. C.C. Goen, “Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology,” Church
History, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), 25–40.
39. Ibid., 27.
40. Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 199–200.
41. Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby (New York, NY: Random House, 1967).
54 Chapter 2

42. Richard Donner, The Omen, 1976.

43. This may be one of the most convoluted horror plots in history: Damien’s
daughter and her twin brother, Alexander (who are born years apart due to the activi-
ties of a satanic doctor who did some embryo trickery) are the heirs to his spirit that
now lives in Alexander.
44. Wood, 1986, 88.
45. Richard Walsh, “The Horror, The Horror, What kind of (Horror) Movie is the
Apocalypse?” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 22, No. 3, (2010), 1.
46. Neil Gerlach, “Narrating Armageddon: Antichrist Films and the Critique of
Late Modernity,” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 24, No. 2,
217–229.
47. While not Christological, a kind of natural reworking of the Antichrist figure
began very early on, as the expectations of the book of Daniel did not come to pass
(see the introduction). When the Son of Man did not appear to receive dominion from
the Ancient One at the end of Antiochus IV’s reign, the figure of the great eschato-
logical enemy went from a particular person in the present to a figure in the future.
First Pompey Magnus, then Nero, appeared and were slotted into the role. What had
been a contemporary going concern of the early second century became a prediction
of the future, much like the prediction of the Messiah.
 Chapter 3

When He Appears

INTRODUCTION

There aren’t many movies in which the popular Christian idea of the return
of Christ takes place unless they are made by Christians. But the 2013 movie
This Is the End,1 directed and written by Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg,
embraces the destructive madness that a literal reading of the book of
Revelation can evoke. Movie stars, at a house-warming party of James
Franco, find themselves swallowed up by earthquakes, killed by monsters,
possessed by demons, and confronting cannibals and Satan. Instead of the
night of drinking, drugs, and sex that they had hoped for, they find themselves
facing the ultimate crisis completely unprepared and in need of a complete
ethical turnaround. The movie is a send-up more of the vapid public personas
of Hollywood’s famous actors than it is of the belief that the world will end
with a mythical and outlandish destruction before people are brought into
Heaven. The appearing of God at the end of all things, met by a total chaotic
dissolution of the natural order, forms the background for stories of friend-
ship and self-realization along with plenty of low-brow humor. That this
setting could be so glibly used demonstrates its pervasiveness in our culture.
This chapter will consider where the idea of the second coming stems from,
how it has been understood in the Christian tradition, and how it has been
used in popular culture.

55
56 Chapter 3

The Biblical Sources of the Second Coming

The Maccabean Revolt, the Son of Man

The identity of the figure in the book of Daniel who is referred to as “one like
a son of man” (Hebrew: ‫שנא רבכ‬, LXX: ὡς υἱὸς ἀνθρώπου) has been debated
extensively in the last century. Three main interpretations have emerged as
contenders for the nature of this figure: The corporate, the semi-divine, and
the Messianic.2 Does the Son of Man stand for all of the people of Israel? Is
he a heavenly figure? Is he the king from the line of David? Each position has
been put forward and defended. Indeed, as scholarship is wont to do, the lines
between these categories have themselves been blurred, at times allowing for
the Messianic to be considered semi-divine, or the corporate to intertwine
with the Messianic.
Whether the figure, who I will here simply call “The Son of Man” after
the New Testament’s usage (ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου), was originally intended
to be Messianic or not, there is evidence in the first century that the figure
was interpreted in this vein. Indeed, the New Testament certainly interprets
the figure as Messianic.3 This may be because the categories of both the Son
of Man and the Messiah were applied to Jesus of Nazareth, and, having been
so applied to the same figure, they began to blend. In any case, the idea that
Jesus would return in glory, like the Son of Man who first appears in the book
of Daniel, became prominent in the first century of Christianity.

The Second Coming in the New Testament

The specific belief in what is called the Parousia, a term used to describe a
king visiting one of his provinces, is rooted in, but distinct from the scene
presented in the book of Daniel. The origins of the concept of the Parousia
are among those strange elements of fallout from the problem of Jesus of
Nazareth. This seems evident from the fact that in the original construction
of Jewish apocalyptic and eschatological expectation, no second advent of
any figure, with the possible exception of Elijah, was expected. When the
Messiah appeared, he would appear once to conquer. If two Messiahs were
expected, they would appear only once in order to cleanse Judaism of foreign
powers and religious corruption. There was no expectation that there would
be some kind of significant gap between the appearing of the Messiah and
the coming of the new age, except insofar as a war must be fought against the
nations, and that war must be concluded.
Once again, the resurrection of Jesus in the eschatological imagination of
the early Christians was something of a destructive bombshell. Their previ-
ously held structure of expectation neither included the Messiah being mur-
dered by the Romans, nor his individual resurrection, nor his disappearance
 When He Appears 57

after resurrection. Indeed, none of the central elements of the passion/resur-

rection narratives presented in the Gospels were expected by Jewish people
of the day.
This disruption of the old picture leaves the early church with the task
of reassembling the image of the coming end. What pieces must stay, what
pieces must go? And, to our point in this chapter, what new pieces must be
added and melded with formerly existing elements of the eschatological
landscape?
The Parousia is that one element which seems entirely novel in the biblical
eschatological narrative. The man Jesus, murdered and raised, is no longer
present among the people. What happened? Will he come back? The earliest
answer present in the letters of Paul is a resounding “Yes, and soon!”
A skeptical view of this situation might read the data and respond that, as
there was no resurrected Christ, only either a delusion by his followers (or
only Paul), or a conspiracy, that the teaching regarding Christ’s ascension
and immanent return is a convenient way of first explaining why no one else
has seen Christ, and second, why they should continue in faith despite the
clear lack of Christ’s physical presence. From this perspective, the idea of the
glorious appearing is essentially a creative melding of a ruse and the figure
of the Son of Man from the book of Daniel and perhaps the expectation that
Elijah would return.
As this is not a work of apologetics, I will not here mount a defense against
this position. It is, however, worth noting that such a position is entirely pos-
sible given the evidence that we have. On the other hand, the faith in Christ’s
return is present in our earliest witness to the new mode of relationship with
God through Jesus. And, that the figure of Jesus is melded with the figure of
the Son of Man is clear both through the letters of Paul, who does not use
the term directly, but employs the same intellectual categories that the Son of
Man occupies, and from the Synoptic Gospels who employ the Son of Man
language from Jesus’ own lips, either in a way faithful to Jesus’ own teach-
ings, which appear to fall generally within the accepted schema of eschato-
logical expectation, or in a way that assigns to Jesus the identity of the Son
of Man: a move that was perhaps unlikely for Jesus himself to make. It seems
that Jesus’ own teachings about the coming end would likely have employed
the term “Son of Man” in a way consonant with the picture from the book of
Daniel, while his followers, believing that he had been raised, ascended into
Heaven, and would return, saw his identity as the one who was revealed in
the book of Daniel.
This melding then of the figure of Jesus with the Son of Man brings about
the Christian eschatological expectation of the glorious appearing. Here is the
one who was killed and raised, he has gone away, but he will return from the
clouds. And surely then, he will judge the nations. But the precise nature of
58 Chapter 3

each of these coming events is unclear to the early Christians in a way that
certain readings of the Bible might find troubling. For there is not agreement
in the New Testament about how this glorious appearing will take place. Will
Jesus come like a thief in the night4 or with signs and portents?5 Will he come
so that God might be all in all,6 or will he come with destroying fire?7 In what
manner will He judge? Will it be by works of mercy or by a person’s name
being in the book of life, or, ultimately, will he call all into his kingdom, both
the fullness of the Gentiles and the fullness of Israel so that God might be
merciful to all?8
An attempted harmony of these pictures presented in the New Testament
smooths over the genuine difficulty presented to first- and second-generation
Christians who retained connection to their Jewish identity, though to an ever
lessening degree as the first generation of Christians died off. The old picture
of Judaism had genuinely been exploded by Jesus’ resurrection and ascen-
sion, and the reassembly was a confusing and difficult one. As outlined in the
introduction, three general methods were used for this reassembly. The first,
chronologically as best we can tell, was a total reimagining of this coming
day. Paul, especially by the end of his life and ministry, has retained only the
barest elements of the old picture. There will be fire of some kind, though it
may be a fire that saves. There will be a gathering up of the people of God
and a resurrection, though they will meet Christ in the air, not in a gathering
like that of the book of Daniel. Finally, demonstrating the centrality of his
Christology in the construction of his eschatology, Paul even reconstrues the
coming “Day of Yahweh” as the “Day of Christ.”9
The second method is to take the old picture and insert a Christological
core to it, reinterpreting the old model in a new light, which may be seen
in Matthew 25. The judgment of the nations is coming, much as Daniel had
prophesied, but in a vastly different manner. Christ, the minister of God’s
peace, especially to the poor, judges not by whether someone was an ally or
enemy of God’s people Israel, but whether they were an ally of God’s people,
the needy.
Finally, one might simply reissue the old schema with some Christological
trappings. This model is most evident in 2 Thessalonians and the book of
Revelation. Little has been removed from the old eschatological schema; only
some minor rearranging has taken place.

THE SECOND COMING IN CHURCH TRADITION

Perhaps the most debated aspect of the Second Coming of Christ is its
timing. While other issues certainly abound, and one might ask about the
nature of this appearing, its concomitant effects, or even who shall appear
 When He Appears 59

with the Lord immediately, it is the timing, a thing that scripture is both
reticent and suggestive about, that people have most speculated on. Paul
O’Callaghan, in his book Christ our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology,
notes the immanence of the coming of Christ in the minds of early Church
Fathers.

It would seem that several of the Apostolic Fathers understood the Synoptic
texts (and others) announcing the Parousia as referring to the imminent end of
time. Ignatius of Antioch openly said that “the last days are here.” So did Justin
Martyr, although he added that the end will not come until the number of the just
has reached completion. Likewise Irenaeus was of the opinion that the end-time
is near at hand . . . Cyprian often expresses his conviction that human history has
reached its sundown. . . . Lactantius . . . also said that the earth would come to an
end after six thousand years, and that in the present moment we are witnessing
the “extreme old age of a tired and crumbling world.”10

Expectations that the end of the world were near at hand seemed to come in
moments of persecution, which dovetails with the expectations of the coming
collapse spoken about previously.11
While it was the tendency to look for the second coming of Christ in the
near future in the patristic age, and in our own, this was not always the case.
In the medieval context, a sense that the Second Coming of Christ was not so
immediate was perhaps more the rule.12
Peter Lombard does not consider the issue of the timing of the Parousia to
be worth much discussion. He has only one comment that I could find about
the second coming itself.

He is said to be coming in the middle of the night, as Augustine says, not because
of the actual time, but because he shall come when he is not looked for. And so
he will come in the middle of the night, that is, “when it will be very dark, that
is, hidden.” (Augustine, Epistola 140) . . . It would not be unsuitable to think
that he will actually come in the middle of the night because, as Cassiodorus
says, “It was at this time that the first-born of Egypt were struck down, when the
bridegroom will also come.” (Cassiodorus, Expositio in Ps. 118)13

In the Victorine School of thought, some minor comments can be made

regarding the coming of Christ. Achard of St. Victor spoke of Christ coming
“like lightning with his saints.”14 Beyond this, little is said.
Joseph Ratzinger identifies a resurgence in the belief in the imminent end
of the world in the later middle ages.15 During the protestant reformation,
the doctrine of the second coming was not particularly debated, nor did
either Luther or Calvin seem particularly focused on predicting the ending’s
60 Chapter 3

imminence. However, Calvin, taking a different tack than many before him,
saw the second coming as instrumental toward human salvation.

[H]e terms the final advent of Christ our redemption. It is true, indeed, that all
the parts of our redemption are already accomplished; but as Christ was once
offered for sins (Heb 9: 28), so he shall again appear without sin unto salvation.
Whatever, then, be the afflictions by which we are pressed, let this redemption
sustain us until its final accomplishment.16

In the modern period the second coming has been hotly debated. Paul
O’Callaghan notes several modern views including Hegel who saw no need
for a literal Second Coming and transcendent Parousia.17 As well, process
philosophy also rejected the concept of the Second Coming.
Authors such as Alfred Whitehead and John Cobb held that the world, in
the inner development of which God is the prime protagonist, will continue to
develop forever, in that the world is as eternal as God is. As a result, just as
the Divinity will never reach its culmination or end, but will continue devel-
oping indefinitely, there will be no common or collective end for the world,
for “the creative action of God will never come to an end.”18
Karl Barth drew a strong connection between the doctrine of the Parousia
and the revealing of Christ that already took place in his Incarnation and
post-resurrection.

It is always unity in variety. If the Now cannot be separated from the Then in
which it is grounded, nor the One Day from the Now, nor the Then from the
Now and the One day or vice versa, each of these different forms of the one
parousia of Jesus Christ maintains its individuality and is inseparably bound to
the others in this individuality. To this there corresponds the individuation of the
being and attitude of the Christian in his relation to Jesus Christ in the different
forms of His parousia. . . . The one parousia of the one Jesus Christ in its first
and second forms is like an arrow pointing to the third. It moves irreversibly in
the direction of his final coming. Its Word is in every respect a promise of His
not yet manifested universal, exclusive and ultimate glory, of His appearing as
Judge of the quick and the dead.19

On the Roman Catholic side, Joseph Ratzinger notes that the calculation of
the end could never be successful for any and all calculations must come from
within time’s own logic.

Christ’s coming is quite incommensurable with historical time and its immanent
laws of development, so it cannot in any way be calculated from the evidence
of history. In so calculating, man works with history’s inner logic, and thereby
 When He Appears 61

misses Christ, who is not the product of evolution or a dialectical stage in the
processive self-expression of reason, but the Other, who throws open the portals
of time and death from the outside . . . Christ’s coming is thus at one and the
same time a pure act of God without precedent in history and which no peri-
odization of history can attain, and also the liberation of man, a liberation not
achieved by man, yet not achieved without him either. And in this latter respect,
while the Parousia does not permit of being calculated, it does allow the pos-
sibility of signs.20

THE SECOND COMING IN POPULAR CULTURE

At the end of Omen III: The Final Conflict, Damien, the Antichrist, is finally
killed by one of the daggers that his father attempted to use in the first movie
in the series. As he dies, something unusual in the “antichrist” genera of hor-
ror films happens: Jesus actually comes back. Damien, of course, ends his life
by telling Jesus that he’s won nothing, but the claim appears weak. Jesus is
gloriously returning and Damien has a knife in his back. So it goes sometimes
when you’re the Antichrist.
Compared with the destruction of human society, the rise of the Antichrist,
and the return of the dead, the glorious appearing makes very few appear-
ances in popular culture. Perhaps the reasons for this are obvious. Jesus, and
therefore the particularly Christian element of the Second Coming, or the
Parousia, are difficult to extract and generalize. Even the Antichrist, who has
the word “Christ” right there in his name, is a concept that can be used in
popular media without having to conjure up the man from Nazareth. Further,
if, as Johnny Cash sang, “The man comes around,” then that’s genuinely the
end of the story. There’s little room for a sequel, little room for interpretation,
and little room for objection.
Finally, there are few larger deus ex machina solutions to the end of a story
than “and then God showed up and said, ‘Good enough!’” To end a story with
the return of Jesus usually means that either the author has been writing an
explicitly religious story or is planning quite the surprise for characters and
readers alike.
There are, of course, numerous popular songs that reference the second
coming of Christ. Probably, the most famous is Joy to the World, which
though sung at Christmas time, is a song about Christ’s return. Likely fol-
lowing this is When the Saints Go Marching In. Beyond these, which many
people in the English-speaking world might have at least a passing familiarity
with, popular Christian music, as opposed to music specifically written for
worship, has references to the glorious appearing such as TobyMac’s Break
Open the Sky.
62 Chapter 3

Other direct references to the glorious appearing outside of specifi-

cally Christian fiction and speculation are rare. However, the theme of the
Parousia, like many of its fellow themes from Christian eschatology, has
been absorbed into popular culture with varying degrees of secularization.
The idea of the returning hero, the second advent of a former king, and even
the new instantiation of an old identity each draw from the classical theme of
the Second Coming of Christ. In this chapter I will consider three instances
of this theme by considering Neo from The Matrix, the themes of return in
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and the second advent of King Arthur.
The appearance of Jesus at the end of time is, like many elements of Christian
eschatology, a tough pill for an audience to swallow. It is, as stated above, the
ultimate Deus Ex Machina. God appears and ends all troubles. Few works,
besides those of the Omen III and the overtly Evangelical/Dispensationalist
work Glorious Appearing21 by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins actually dare to
have Jesus return. One, which is played for irreverent laughs is the appearing
of Jesus on a white horse in the movie Rapture-Palooza.22 In this film about
the world after the rapture, Jesus appears in the sky, mounted on a white horse
as in the book of Revelation, but is accidentally shot with a rocket by people
trying to kill the Antichrist. Christ’s return is also averted in both The Seventh
Sign23 and in Gaiman and Pratchett’s Good Omens.24
Beyond the literal return of Christ, we find that the abstracted concept of
the second coming is often powerfully used in popular culture. The second
coming, or glorious appearing of a hidden hero, a missing friend, or a badly
needed companion who has gone away, is a trope that has been used to great
effect.
In the long history of comic book returns, one perhaps stands above the rest
due to its masterful combination of Christic imagery and American folklore.
In Mark Waid’s and Alex Ross’ 1996 series Kingdom Come, the world is in
turmoil. The world is careening toward collapse, and the biblical images of
Gog and Magog have appeared. The great heroes of old have mostly either
moved on or have restrained their efforts to limited areas, such as Gotham
and Keystone Cities. The Man of Steel has gone into seclusion, for the world
seems to have moved on from his brand of Truth, Justice, and the American
Way. Roving bands of “heroes” battle each other the world over, causing
havoc and leaving destruction in their wakes. Common people are the casual-
ties of this new generation of super-powered beings.
During one battle at a bridge, things seem hopeless. A tram car is endan-
gered when two opposing forces of metahumans duke it out without regard to
the people who are nothing more than collateral damage. While this reckless-
ness takes place, the perspective character of the story Norman McCay yells
at the Specter, the embodiment of God’s wrath, telling him that humanity
 When He Appears 63

needs hope, and that the Specter himself is a sign of faith. Immediately fol-
lowing this, a page shows a blur moving over the panels, disarming the super-
powered hooligans, and saving the people in the tram car. McCay narrates,

And suddenly . . . there was a wind. No. Not a wind. A blur of motion . . . bend-
ing the steel of their weapons . . . and changing the course of the mighty river
below. Even before the bystanders freed themselves from the cablecar, they
knew. We all did. We knew . . . and remembered.25

The next panel shows people gazing up in wonder, and one person says,
“Look!” and the next, “Up in the sky!”
The following full-page panel is of the Man of Steel, having overcome
his foes without a fight. He is Superman, the great hero returned in the hour
of greatest need. Waid and Ross here capture the spirit of the Parousia. The
whole work is rooted in the Apocalypse of St. John and this scene embodies
the text of Revelation 6:9–10.

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had
been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; they
cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be
before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?”

This is the writhing, begging, pleading of the Church in persecution longing

for its Lord, its savior to come to them. It is the cry of the early Christians,
Maranatha! The appearing of Superman in Kingdom Come is so powerful
because it draws on the cultural memory of the Superman legend in ways
similar to how Christians often interpret the second coming of Christ. The one
who showed himself to be either the antithesis of the expected Messiah, or
its new definition, is often thought of in the old terms of the Davidic warrior
Messiah. He is often remembered in this way in Islam, as one who will come
at the end of time to slay the Antichrist.
Earlier, and sharing in many of the same cultural traditions, is Tolkien’s
use of Gandalf in a similar vein. Here I am not mainly speaking of Gandalf’s
rebirth from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White. That I will deal with
in the chapter on the resurrection. Instead, I am here thinking of Gandalf’s
appearance at the battle of the Hornburg at Helm’s Deep in The Two
Towers.
All hope seems lost to Aragorn and Theoden, King of Rohan, as the forces
of Saruman surround the gates of the Hornburg. Theoden decides that this
must be the end for them, but that they will not die penned in like animals.
He declares that he will ride out to face the enemy in the morning and asks
64 Chapter 3

Aragorn, the rightful king of Gondor to ride with him. Aragorn agrees, and
they, with their companions, go out in the morning to a nearly certain death.
But as they ride out, they find that the world has changed. Their enemies
flee before them, unable to stand against them and a strange transformation
has taken place in the landscape. “Where before the green dale had lain, its
grassy slopes lapping the ever-mounting hills, there now a forest loomed.”
Saruman’s forces fell about themselves, terror on every side. It is to this
tumult the white rider appears.

There suddenly upon a ridge appeared a rider, clad in white, shining in the
rising sun. Over the low hills the horns were sounding. Behind him, hastening
down the long slopes, were a thousand men on foot; their swords were in their
hand. . . . “Behold the White Rider!” cried Aragorn. “Gandalf is come again!”
“Mithrandir, Mithrandir!” said Legolas. “This is wizardry indeed!”26

Gandalf, having already returned from death, comes once more in an hour
of great need. Once again, we see the theme of overwhelming destruction,
chaos, and despair. Like in Kingdom Come, the hero appears at the right
moment in order to bring salvation. Indeed, in the whole of The Lord of the
Rings trilogy, the concept is used broadly at least twice more, with the com-
ing of Aragorn to Gondor, and with the destruction of the ring at the end
of the story. In each instance the hero comes to the aid of the people in the
moment of their most dire need. There is no question that the Arthurian myth,
which has its own theme of a returning king, which we will consider in the
chapter on resurrection, has heavy influence on the Lord of the Rings. Even
the name of the third book of the series, The Return of the King, references
the long tradition of the Parousia.
Examples of this sort abound in popular culture. A minor, but important
example can be seen in the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hallows.27 While Hogwarts is surrounded by the
forces of Voldemort, the situation is dire for the members of the Order
of the Phoenix. At a pivotal moment, Harry’s two best friends, Hermione
and Ron disappear. People ask where the two have gone, and someone
mentions that they went off looking for a bathroom. This is questioned,
implying that perhaps the young couple has stolen off to consummate a
love in the last moment before their final, likely fatal, battle. But, true
to their heroic character, Hermione and Ron have not fled the battle to
enjoy a final roll in the hay, but instead to retrieve weapons to help defeat
Voldemort. Their return with basilisk fangs from the Chamber of Secrets
is not the central moment of the story, but it enables Harry to ultimately
defeat his foe.
 When He Appears 65

The return of the hero does not need to be a return that is predicted or
even expected based on the characters’ previous actions. It may even be in
contradiction to the characters’ stated goals. A prime example of this is found
in the 1977 movie Star Wars, when one of the three main characters, Han
Solo, leaves his temporary companions as they are about to fight a seemingly
unwinnable battle. Solo is a smuggler and largely out for his own profit. In
the final moments of the battle between the rebels who Han Solo who he has
abandoned and the forces of the Empire along the surface of the Death Star,
Luke Skywalker is in the sights of the evil Darth Vader and his wingman.
In their imperial tie fighters Vader and his allies are set to destroy the young
Skywalker before he is able to exploit the weakness in the huge battle station
that is coming into position to destroy the secret base of the rebel alliance.
All once again seems lost. Vader is a master of the mysterious force which
Luke Skywalker has only just been initiated into. He is a wizard of monstrous
power and ruthless determination who must triumph in any contest with the
inexperienced youth. It is in this moment that the previously selfish Han Solo
appears once more firing the guns of his ship the Millennium Falcon, disrupt-
ing Darth Vader’s attack, and freeing Luke Skywalker to make his daring and
finally successful attack against the Death Star.
A similar story is told at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In a simi-
lar moment of need, when the Resistance (a rebranded Rebellion) is at the
moment of its destruction, the fabled hero Luke Skywalker appears to over-
come their foes. Luke has shown himself to be disenchanted with the whole
of the struggle, and has resisted the request of Rey, the new hero of the fight
against the First Order (a rebranded Empire), to return to the fight. Against
this stated rejection, Luke returns at the end to defend his friends and pass
into legend.
In our popular culture, the return of the hero comes time and time again
as it fashions perhaps the greatest narrative tension and pay-off. If the stakes
were not very high, if the difficulty was not very great, then the return of a
hero would be less necessary. The absence of the hero allows the powers of
evil to have their chance and puts the truly heroic nature of the character in
question. Their return and triumph serve both to defeat evil and to reassure
the reader/viewer of the fact that the character really is a hero.
It is perhaps worth noting how and when this element of storytelling
can fail. In Christopher Nolan’s third Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises,
Batman is put out of commission by Bane and sent to a prison to languish
while Bane takes over Gotham city. Bane has imprisoned the entire police
department underground and is threatening the detonation of a nuclear
weapon in the city if the government interferes. Accordingly there is no one
to defeat Bane. Batman, showing that he is the hero that the world really
66 Chapter 3

needs, fights his way back to health and returns to Gotham to defeat Bane
once and for all.
However, to make Batman triumphant, everyone else in the world of the
movie must be rendered a complete fool. The police, for whatever reason,
were stupid enough to dedicate literally every member of their force to an
underground search (what about the people who were off-duty?). As well,
during the entire occupation of Gotham city, the whole of the United States
Special Operations forces were incapable of thinking through an operation
that Bruce Wayne and Alfred come up with in a fifteen-second conversation.
He may be the world’s greatest detective, but other people do understand
how radio signals work, and three teams of SEALS could have accom-
plished the task neatly well before Batman got his back knocked back in
shape.
The return of the hero in dire times only genuinely works when every-
one else is heroic. Ron and Hermione’s return with Basilisk fangs is great
because it shows brilliance and courage supporting other heroic people fight-
ing against terrible odds. Aragorn and Theodin are noble and are worth sav-
ing. So too are the innocent people on the tram car in Kingdom Come. The
knuckleheads who run everything in Nolan’s third Batman movie might not
actually have the hero that they deserve.

THE SECOND COMING CONSIDERED

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind about the Parousia is that
Christ’s return is a revelatory event. It is not revelatory of essentially new
information or new characteristics of God. Instead, it functions as a further
unpacking of the already revealed character of God which has been largely
obscured by human interpretation and sin. The revelation of Jesus at the end
of time will not be essentially different than the revelation of Jesus in his
earthly life, in his crucifixion, or in his resurrection. It is the son of Mary
killed by the Roman Empire who returns at the end of time full of justice
and mercy. It is the one who cries out from the cross “Father forgive them
they don’t know what they’re doing,” who comes to judge the world. His
return reveals this character to the world once again. He is no longer clothed
in weakness but mantled in ultimate power and yet unchanged. He does not
come to culminate the temporal revolutionary dream of weakness now mar-
ried to power that will destroy the old power that oppressed, only to begin
the cycle of oppression again. Instead the Parousia is the revealing of the
essentially same character of Jesus who comes to the world not as military
conqueror but as son and brother and friend. This theme of revelation of char-
acter in the Parousia is seen especially in stories where characters who return
reveal about themselves something we may or may not have known before.
 When He Appears 67

It is especially true for characters like Han Solo who were always essentially
good but perhaps didn’t realize it themselves.
Juxtaposed to this are returns that are essentially motivated not by charac-
ter development or revelation but by external needs. The return of Sherlock
Holmes is a good example of this. Nothing new is learned about Holmes
when he returns.28 We already know that he is a master of disguise and a mas-
ter manipulator and a genius already. No new element of his already estab-
lished character is given new light. On the other hand, when Gandalf returns,
he is not only revealed to be different than our previous conceptions of him,
but genuinely transformed. The glorious appearing of Gandalf shows him to
be not just a master of the wise and secret ways of the world, but also as a
great lord. Here is the Gandalf who shall lead the forces of the West against
Sauron. Indeed, he is so changed that Legolas’ call “Mithrandir” at the battle
of Helm’s Deep is strikingly inappropriate. He is no longer Mithrandir, he is
now the White Rider. The grey pilgrim is gone.
The return of Superman in Kingdom Come is this same kind of rev-
elation that stands in continuity with what we know about Superman but in
discontinuity with what Superman says about himself in his conversation
with Wonder Woman earlier in the book. He says he is done, just as Luke
Skywalker does in The Last Jedi. But he is Superman and when he reap-
pears all that has been said about him to the contrary is proven wrong. Even
the things he has said about himself. The revelation of glory, albeit a finite
glory, that is the last son of Krypton is put forth again so that we can behold
the same truth that had been before us in the past. Here is Kal-El a mighty
defender. The old revelation of Superman and his character are directly ref-
erenced by Wade and Ross in the scene depicted above. Characters quote the
old radio show whose lines included “look, up in the sky‒‒is it a bird? Is it a
plane? No! It’s Superman!” This mixture of nostalgia and a shorthand for a
noble icon indicates that nothing new is being said here, but that what is being
repeated is so virtuous, vital, and good that it might go on being repeated
again and again without losing its power. Here is a myth in red and yellow
and blue. It is in this kind of expression that the second coming of Christ is
portrayed with a great resonance with what Christianity hopes is coming. The
old myth, the Word of God in the flesh, the Lamb slain before the foundations
of the world, comes again once more only as himself the visible image of
the invisible God. It is both a new and old revelation, matching Augustine’s
observation that God is “ever ancient, ever new.”

CONCLUSION

Like many topics in this work, a real rendering of the second coming of
Christ is both difficult and unlikely in most popular culture. Instead, stories
68 Chapter 3

must take some element of the narrative of the return and utilize them to their
best effect. As discussed in the chapter, it is perhaps the narrative given in
which heroic forces stand against overwhelming odds, ready to die bravely,
only to be rescued at the last moment by the return of some figure who stands
for divine goodness that best captures our imaginations and embodies the
spirit of the Parousia. This is perhaps because the greatest narrative tension
is created in these situations. But perhaps it is also because we know that
if goodness is to genuinely triumph in a broken cosmos, it must be that the
great divine goodness will break into our reality and rescue us from our own
mounting evil.

NOTES

1. Seth Rogan, This is the End, 2013.

2. See, for example, among many others, Collins, Daniel (1984), 78, 82; Daniel
a Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 309–
310, and more recently, Michael B. Shepherd, “Daniel 7:13 and the New Testament
Son of Man,” WTJ, Vol. 68 (2006), 99–111, Maurice Casey, The Solution of the
“Son of Man” Problem (London: T&T Clark, 2007), and Markus Zehnder, “Why the
Danielic ‘Son of Man’ is a Divine Being,” Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 24,
No. 3 (2014), 331–347.
3. See Shepherd, “Daniel 7:13,” 108ff.
4. Matthew 24:43, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, Revelation 16:15, 2 Peter 3:10. The
repetition of this phrase in such diverse texts suggests that this was a somewhat wide-
spread shorthand for the revealing of Christ.
5. Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21, 2 Thessalonians 2, 2 Peter 3.
6. 1 Corinthians 15:28.
7. 2 Thessalonians 2:8, 2 Peter 3:7.
8. Romans. 11:32.
9. Philippians 1:6, 10, 2:16., 1 Corinthians 1:8.
10. Paul O’Callaghan, Christ Our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 64. See also
Ignatius of Antioch, Ad Eph., 11:1; Ad Mag., 5:1, Justin, Dialog cum Trypho, 28,
32:40, Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. V, 28:3, Cyprian, Ep. 63:16, and Lactantius, Div. Instit.
VII, 14.
11. O’Callaghan, Christ Our Hope, 65.
12. Robert Anthony Laures, “Heavenly Visions—Earthly Realities: An Attempt to
Replicate the Heavenly City through Municipal Legislation,” in Imagining Heaven in
the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays, ed. Jan Swango Emerson and Hugh Feiss, O.S.B.
(New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 2000), 189.
13. Peter Lombard, Giulio Silano, trans., The Sentences Book 4: On the Doctrine
of Signs (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2010), 235.
 When He Appears 69

14. Hugh Feiss, O.S.B., “Heaven in the Theology of Hugh, Achard, and Richard
of St. Victor,” in Imagining Heaven, ed. Emerson and Feiss, 150.
15. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 8.
16. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III​.25​.​ii. The “he” in this sec-
tion is Paul, who Calvin, with much of the tradition, credits with the writing of the
book of Hebrews.
17. O’Callaghan, Christ Our Hope, 42f.
18. Ibid., 43f. See also J.B. Cobb, “Pannenberg and Process Theology,” in The
Theology of Wolfhardt Pannenberg, ed. C.E. Braaten and P. Clayton (Minneapolis,
MN: Augsburg Press, 1988), 60.
19. Karl Barth, G.W. Bromily, trans., Church Dogmatics IV The Doctrine of
Reconciliation Part 3.2 (New York, NY: T & T Clark International, 2004), 911, 915.
20. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 194f.
21. Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Glorious Appearing: The End of Days
(Carol Steam, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004).
22. Paul Middleditch, Rapture-Palooza, 2013.
23. Carl Schultz, The Seventh Sign, 1988.
24. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate
Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (London: Gollancz, 1990).
25. Mark Waid and Alex Ross, Kingdom Come (New York, NY: DC Comics,
1997), 49–55.
26. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers (New York, NY: Ballentine Books,
1994), 158.
27. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (London: Bloomsbury,
2007).
28. I will discuss the return of Holmes in more depth in the chapter on Resurrection.
 Chapter 4

The Living Dead

INTRODUCTION

As for many heroes at the end of a good story, things seem pretty desperate
for Neo toward the end of the first Matrix1 movie. Three of his friends have
been killed by the traitorous Cypher, and he has been cut off from an escape
route from the Matrix while deadly agents pursue him. Aided by his friends,
he seeks a doorway out. But just when he is about to escape, a door is opened
and he is face to face with one of the agents. A gunshot. Neo looks down
at his wound, stunned, and then is shot several more times, collapsing back
against a dingy hallway wall. This is the end for the supposed “One” who
would free the people from their enslavement to the massive virtual world
of the Matrix.
But then, unlooked-for and inexplicably, except by the intervention of the
hand of fate, Neo rises and is now even mightier than before. His already
exceptional abilities within the Matrix have been exponentially increased,
and he is now master. The agents can’t touch him, and he destroys them with
ease.
While many heroes die in stories, and many do not remain dead, few so
closely parallel the concept of the resurrection in Christian theology as Neo.
This is, of course, intentional on the part of the Wachowskis who wrote the
series. Greek philosophy and Christian theology were clear major influences
on the Matrix. And while many heroes may come back to life, and some, like
Neo, resurrect in a manner similar to Jesus, it is rare that their resurrections
function as the foundation for many others’ resurrections. That all people
shall rise, like Christ and because of Christ, is the doctrine of the Resurrection
of the Dead for Christianity. This chapter will consider the history of that
doctrine as well as how it has been expressed in popular culture.

71
72 Chapter 4

JEWISH SOURCES OF THE RESURRECTION

It was believed for some time that the idea of the resurrection of the dead
appeared during the persecution of the Jewish people under the rule of
Antiochus IV.2 The narrative told us that, in the past, Jewish people could
explain their suffering under foreign powers by the justice of Yahweh.
However, under Antiochus IV, they found themselves persecuted, not for
being unfaithful to the Law of Moses but for being faithful to it. This situation
raised the question of God’s justice in the other direction: how will God be
just to those who are faithful? The answer, we believed, came in the form of
the resurrection of the Dead on the coming Day of the LORD.
However, further research has dispelled this narrative, and the precise
moment at which the idea of the resurrection came into focus is now a matter
of debate. What does appear clear is that the first mention of the concept of
the resurrection of the flesh comes in the Book of the Watchers.3 The date of
the book is unclear, ranging from the fourth to the third century BCE and,
unlike the attested belief in the resurrection in the book of Daniel, the belief
in the resurrection does not appear to have first been attested in the context
of persecution.
Despite the shadowy origins of the idea of the resurrection of the body in
Judaism, it seems clear that the particular concept of the resurrection most
familiar to the Jewish people of Jesus’ time was heavily shaped by the Book
of the Watchers, which makes up the first part of I Enoch, and the book of
Daniel.
The belief was that the dead would rise and judgment would be delivered
to them. In the animal judgment of the book of 1 Enoch, humanity is returned
to an Adamic state. The resurrection is a moment between the old order,
overwhelmed with sin, and the new order free from it. The book of Daniel
describes this somewhat less, and gives little attention to the nature of the
bodies raised except that there seems to be an inherent assumption that death
is past.
That the resurrection was taken as an important tenet for many in dif-
ferent expressions of Judaism in the centuries leading up to the ministry of
Jesus seems evident from the testimony of the New Testament, the writings
of Josephus, and from the Dead Sea Scrolls. That it took on a special and
transformed role within the growing Jesus movement of the mid-first century
also is evident. Further, that significant elements of this early community’s
interpretive lens for the resurrection have been sublimated to later Christian
symbols seems evident. Certainly, before the rise of the Cross as the sym-
bol of Christianity under Constantine in the fourth century, a predominant
symbol, especially in Christian grave art, was that of Jonah.4 It is the story
of Jonah that controls and interprets the mystery of the resurrection of Jesus
 The Living Dead 73

himself. It is through this lens that the waters of baptism are transformed from
John’s baptism for the remission of sins to the baptism understood by St. Paul
as the waters into which we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection.
A whole matrix of intellectual, symbolic, and imaginative categories function
in the first century to reinterpret the concept of the general resurrection as we
first encounter it in the Book of the Watchers and again in the book of Daniel
in light of the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth.
For Christianity, the resurrection of the dead took on an added aspect, not
wholly alien to the White Bull of 1 Enoch. Humanity will not only rise, but
it will rise “like Christ.” Christ’s resurrection was a traumatic event in the
eschatological imagination of the early Jewish Christians. But that trauma,
upon reflection, brought about a radical reworking of the idea of the resur-
rection. No longer merely a theoretical future event, in Christ’s physical
resurrection a foretaste had been given, though its character was shrouded
in mystery. The stories of the resurrected Christ blended meals with ghostly
characteristics. He could appear and disappear at will, like a ghost, and is
often not recognized. But then, he also is known through his sharing of meals
and his ability to continue the work for which he was known in his pre-death
life: unpacking the scriptures, revealing God, and dispensing mercy.
The early Christian reflection on Jesus, as the place where God was met,
was both confirmed and expanded in the resurrection. Not only was the
divine presence made available in the new and unique way that Jesus offered
but now his humanity was transformed as well. This transformed humanity
formed for the early Christians the germ of a new reflection upon what their
own resurrection might be like.

THE RESURRECTION IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

The struggle between a material understanding of human identity and a

spiritual understanding of human identity was already existent in second
Temple Judaism. Our data is scarce, but it appears that the platonic ideas
of humans as spirits, perhaps even preexisting spirits, had started to influ-
ence Jewish thought. By the time Christianity began to form an intellectual
defense against pagan attacks, it was deeply embroiled in this debate. In
the second century, three important texts were written that staged a strong
Christian defense against the idea that human identity was essentially spiri-
tual. The first, written by Athenagoras,5 defended Christianity against attacks
by pagan authors which sought to disparage the resurrection of the body at
the end of time. Athenagoras’ work, through St. Augustine, would have far-
reaching effects on Western Christian eschatology. It is Athenagoras who
first asks what happens to our bodies in the resurrection if we are consumed
74 Chapter 4

by cannibals.6 This question will be repeated by Augustine7 and Aquinas.8

Similarly, Justin Martyr writes a treatise,9 in the second century, defending
the idea of the physical resurrection. These two works form the first founda-
tion of Christian defense against a purely spiritual anthropology.
The third work of the second century that draws a strong line in the sand
between Christian doctrine and non-Christian spiritual beliefs about human-
ity is Against Heresies by Irenaeus of Lyons.10 Irenaeus’ work is aimed
against the beliefs of the groups that have been classified under the category
“Gnostics.” The Gnostic beliefs, as Irenaeus outlines them, involve humans
preexisting as souls in pairs of male and female souls. Souls are trapped in
the material world and struggling to become free. Irenaeus argues against this
view both theologically and biblically. It is his dictum that God has become
what we are so that we might become what God is,11 that lays the groundwork
for the strong Christian theological defense of the goodness of not only the
physical body, but of the whole of nature.
These two viewpoints, however, continue to wrestle. Origen, the great
third-century theologian, believed, with Plato, that souls preexisted the cos-
mos.12 However, for Origen, souls are not trapped and punished by the mate-
rial world, but that the world is a classroom of virtue. Indeed, all creation is
a hierarchy of education, with Hell being the lowest corporeal punishment
of sin designed to draw souls back up toward God. The soul, however, does
ascend to eventually be free.
Juxtaposed to this is the Augustinian view that the material body is essen-
tial to human identity. Augustine is wildly concerned with the necessity of a
full reconstruction of the human matter that once made up a person, including
even the lost hair and fingernails from our lives.13 Of these two, Augustine’s
view largely wins the day in the patristic period.
In the medieval period, Peter Lombard takes a somewhat different approach
to the question of the resurrection. He considers some of Augustine’s ques-
tions, by looking at Augustine’s Enchiridion. Then, somewhat idiosyncrati-
cally, he states that the actual cause of the resurrection will be the last trumpet:

For the cause of the resurrection of the dead shall be the sound of the trumpet,
which will be heard by all at the coming of the judge, and by the power of which
the dead will be awakened and rise again from their tombs.14

Thomas Aquinas considers human resurrection at the end of time in his

work Summa Contra Gentiles.15 Here he sees the effect of Christ’s resur-
rection as our resurrection, but it won’t be achieved until the end of time.
“[T]he effect of the resurrection of Christ in regard to our liberation from
death we shall achieve at the end of the world, when we shall all rise by
the power of Christ.”16 Aquinas further sees the resurrection as the natural
 The Living Dead 75

outcome of the fact that our souls are both immortal and naturally united
to our bodies.
It is, then, contrary to the nature of the soul to be without the body. But
nothing which is contrary to nature can be perpetual. Perpetually, then, the
soul will not be without the body. Since, then, it persists perpetually, it must
once again be united to the body, and this is to rise again. Therefore, the
immortality of souls seems to demand a future resurrection of bodies.17
During the Protestant Reformations, John Calvin, in his Institutes of
Christian Religion, treats the question of the general resurrection in chapter
25 of the third book. He begins with the following:

There are four principal heads in this chapter,—I. The utility, necessity, truth,
and irrefragable evidence of the orthodox doctrine of a final resurrection—a
doctrine unknown to philosophers, sec. 1-4. II. Refutation of the objections to
this doctrine by Atheists, Sadducees, Chiliasts, and other fanatics, sec. 5-7. III.
The nature of the final resurrection explained, sec. 8, 9. IV. Of the eternal felic-
ity of the elect, and the everlasting misery of the reprobate.

Calvin is interested in refuting objections to the resurrection of the flesh and

of emphasizing the unity of and conformity to Christ by His body the church.
In the contemporary period, Barth,

With special ardor . . . sought to uphold human corporeality. In an age when it
would have been easy to defer to a more generic Christian hope, he professed
the resurrection of the flesh. With increasing frequency and adamancy over the
course of his career he affirmed the special, physical, historical nature of Jesus’
identity in His resurrection, and with it, the special, physical, historical nature
of our own identities in the coming resurrection.18

Others in the modern period have left behind the idea of the physical
resurrection, or left the question shrouded in mystery.19 Others, like John
Polkinghorne have insisted on the full reconstitution of the cosmos physi-
cally as well as full reconstitution of all natural realities like relationships in
order to bring about the physical resurrection. We see in these two views the
vestiges of the Origen/Augustine debate.

THE RESURRECTION IN POPULAR CULTURE

There are few tropes in novels, television, comic books, movies, and video
games more common than the return of a character believed to be dead. There
was, at one point, a well-known saying among comic-book fans that went,
76 Chapter 4

“No one stays dead in comics except Bucky Barnes, Jason Todd, and Uncle
Ben.” True to form, of course, both Bucky and Jason20 have come back in
comics, proving that the sentiment of the statement is essentially true. It is,
perhaps, only a matter of time before Peter Parker once more meets the man
who raised him. In the video game World of Warcraft, multiple major villains
that players have fought throughout the game’s history have returned from
death only to cause more problems. So it is also with the wizard Ganon in the
Legend of Zelda series.
The return of the hero or villain is an event that is meant to bring the reader/
viewer/player up short. In a moment of dire trouble, or a moment of certain
triumph, the reappearance of an old ally or enemy is often meant to turn the
tides or reframe how the story is to be understood.
As well, in pop-culture history, death and resurrection can occur, not
because the author wishes to make a dramatic re-introduction of a charac-
ter, but because fans demand it. As mentioned in the last chapter, this is
the case for one of the first modern cultural icons, Sherlock Holmes. After
many popular stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had decided to end his famous
detective’s career. The December 1893 issue of The Strand Conan Doyle has
Sherlock Holmes locked in a deadly physical battle with his arch-nemesis
Professor James Moriarty “offscreen” as Watson pursues a false-lead given
to him by Holmes in the story “The Final Problem.” Upon realizing that he’s
been duped, Watson rushes to Reichenbach Falls where he finds the signs of
a struggle between Holmes and Moriarty. Two sets of footprints lead off the
edge, and none back. Watson concludes, as Conan Doyle had intended, that
Holmes died with Moriarty at the falls.
However, public pressure brought Holmes back, first in The Hound of the
Baskervilles, which takes place before “The Final Problem,” and then, finally,
in the story “The Adventure in the Empty House.” Holmes reveals himself
as alive to Watson during the story and recounts his three-year adventure fol-
lowing his apparent demise. The hero, no longer dead, is able to be the fodder
then of many other authors’ stories that follow both the career and retirement
of the great consulting detective. In the recent television show, Sherlock, the
same story beat is used, but in the show by Steven Moffat and Mark Gattis,
Holmes’ survival from an apparently fatal fall is never fully explained. The
writers of the show used the reversal of Holmes’ seeming death to poke a
little fun at fans who thrive on thinking up complex theories to solve plot
holes in stories.
At times, it is not the return itself from death that is the main story point.
Instead, there can be a promise or expectation that a character will return from
death that becomes the central issue at hand. It is hard to think of a legend
in Western culture that has had a longer and more influential life than that
of King Arthur. Rooted in the potentially historical works of a local warlord
 The Living Dead 77

who fought the battle of Badon Hill during the late fifth or early sixth centu-
ries, defeating invading Saxon incursions into Britain, the legend of Arthur
changed, blended with Celtic mythology, and eventually took on the well-
known form that appears first in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur
and has been handed down in the twentieth century through T.H. White’s,
The Once and Future King.21 This version of the Arthur myth includes the
sorcerer Merlin, Arthur’s wife Guinevere, his knight Lancelot, and their
adultery, as well as the sword Excalibur, and the quest for the Holy Grail. In
this popular rendition, Arthur is wounded at the end of his reign in battle by
his son Mordred. Arthur is then taken from the battlefield and brought to the
hidden island of Avalon where his wound is treated, and where he remains
hidden until he will return. This return, far from being a simple plot device,
functioned as a kind of national hope for the Welsh in the medieval period.22
Finding its roots in the Celtic story of a descent into the land of the Fey23
with a future return, the legend of Arthur’s hiddenness also is clearly heavily
influenced by the Christian story of Christ’s death and resurrection.
Arthur does not begin as a Christian hero, and indeed is seen as a foe of
the church in some early texts. But after centuries of retelling, Arthur’s story
is shaped around central Christian symbols and themes. He seeks the cup of
Christ, has a group of disciple-like knights who serve him, and is betrayed by
a close friend. That he should also die and be hidden away before his return
is in keeping with the Christic form that his legend would eventually morph
into. His return is first referenced by William of Malmesbury in 1125 and has
widespread influence from that point onward.
However, rarely is a character’s resurrection so closely associated with the
pattern of Christ. Before considering two major resurrected figures in popular
culture, I will consider two constructions of those raised from death in popu-
lar culture: The Zombie and the Vampire.

The Undead
The most obvious expressions of the raising of the dead in popular culture
are the two popular versions of the undead: zombies and vampires. Neither
of these representations are consonant with the Christian understanding of the
raising of the dead at the end of time, but it’s worth considering them to help
draw distinctions and similarities.
The zombie, which has its roots in Haitian and possibly West African
beliefs, entered into Western popular culture through various means. The
first movie to explicitly feature a zombie was Victor Halperin’s 1932 film
White Zombie,24 which was based on the book The Magic Island by William
Seabrook.25 The film starred Bela Lugosi as an evil practitioner of Voodoo
who enslaves a young woman named Madeleine Short, played by Mage
78 Chapter 4

Bellamy. A sequel, Revolt of the Zombies,26 was made but didn’t create the
massive cultural phenomenon that a later, non-zombie film, Night of the
Living Dead,27 would.
However, Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is not the only major source
for the zombie phenomenon that followed. His film, which grossed in excess
of 250 times its own budget, was partially inspired by Richard Matheson’s
novella I am Legend, which has, in turn, been the direct source for three dif-
ferent films.28
The rise of the zombie in prose, television, movies, and even audio-
dramas,29 has dovetailed with the concept of the social collapse, such that the
genera of “zombie apocalypse” were created. Here, the social collapse is not
created, or at least not directly created, by governmental powers. Instead, a
massive outbreak of zombies overruns society and lays it low. This may, of
course, be the result of governmental meddling, but the cause of society’s
destruction is not the same as in a dystopian story.
Zombies, like all other elements of popular culture considered in this work,
have been the subject of both dramatic and humorous takes. They also form
part of the quartet of enemies in gaming, both video games and tabletop
games, that are safe to kill. Along with robots, demons, and Nazis, zombies
may be handily dispatched without a modicum of thought given to one’s con-
science. Games like Left 4 Dead, Back 4 Blood, Dead Island, Dead Rising,
State of Decay, Call of Duty, 7 Days to Die, House of the Dead, and Dying
Light, all use zombies as targets, often massive, swarming targets, for players
to mow down with a variety of weapons. In the tabletop space, Zombicide,
Dead of Winter, Hit Z Road, and Zombie Dice,30 all use zombies as foes in
one form or another. Role Play Games, like Dungeons & Dragons, feature
zombies as potential enemies as well.
In comic books, both Marvel and DC have had zombie-based side-stories,
with Marvel Zombies turning all of the characters in the Marvel universe
either into zombies or zombie food.
In nearly all representations, though there are exceptions, zombies function
as mindless reanimated corpses. They are driven almost universally by a need
for brains or flesh. They are a far cry from the figures of Voodoo lore, who
serve as instruments at the will of a sorcerer. In most of the video games listed
above, zombies function only as a mindless, need-driven horde that serves no
purpose and has no will. Only in the House of the Dead, do the undead serve
a master directly.
This distinction between the zombie as servant and the zombie as mindless
manifestation of an unnatural physical need highlights particular elements
of the concept of the resurrection of the flesh in Christianity that will be
discussed below. However, here it is worth saying that zombies in general
function as an unnatural expression of humanity in a Christian anthropology,
 The Living Dead 79

whether we have a view of humanity that includes an immaterial soul or not.

Humans are primarily beings who image God in a multitude of ways, includ-
ing their capacities to reason and love. Zombies are physically similar to
human beings but lack both capacities.
The zombie also stands as a kind of potential critique of the soul-focused
anthropology of certain traditions within Christianity. The body risen without
the soul is an unnatural expression of the physical image of God in the world.
This unnatural attribute is most clearly expressed in the rotting, stinking, can-
nibalistic depiction of the zombie. However, even a less grotesque depiction
demonstrates the wrongness of a human body without its spirit. On the other
hand, elements of the Christian tradition not only celebrate, but revere to the
extreme, the state of being a soul without its body. To be a soul, and to be
in the intermediate state of “heaven,” is to directly and immediately see the
essence of God, according to Benedictus Deus.31 While, as we saw earlier,
Thomas Aquinas insists that the division between the soul and the body is
unnatural, the same kind of grotesqueness is not applied to a disembodied
soul. Instead, that soul is perfectly fine without the body and can see the
essence of God. If, as the church has long maintained, the human person is
a combination of body and soul, why is it that the body is grotesque without
the soul, but the soul is perfectly blessed? Such a view certainly leans toward
a crypto-Platonism/Origenism with regard to the real identity of humanity.
Of course, it’s not overly hidden, as Aquinas’ view is that the soul is, in fact,
the seat of human identity.
Juxtaposed to the zombie, and at times even commanding figures that are
very similar to zombies, is the vampire. A combination of different mytho-
logical categories, the modern vampire was, of course, made most popular
by Bram Stoker’s nineteenth-century novel Dracula. Stoker’s novel was not
the first vampire novel but its influence remains strong since its writing. The
figure of Dracula not only creates the prototype for vampires but also creates
an anti-type against which many authors have positioned their interpretation
of the vampire.
The vampire as that which is undead, but retaining all of its human capaci-
ties, including love and rationality, gets closer to the Christian understanding
of the resurrection than the zombie does. Indeed, the enhanced life of a vam-
pire, in the sense that it is often portrayed as stronger and more capable, with
greater skill and subtlety than a regular human being, makes this comparison
even more apt. However, the vampire, as undead, is in an unnatural state as
opposed to the supernatural state of the resurrection.32
In popular culture vampires have been part of every kind of media. They
are mentioned in song, have had their own television shows as both protago-
nist and antagonist, have had myriad movies, and are present in gaming of
both the tabletop and digital varieties.
80 Chapter 4

From relatively early on in 20th century pop-culture the vampire as a

comic figure is present. Certainly, by the mid-twentieth century the pres-
ence of Dracula in an Abbott and Costello film and then with the figure of
Grandpa in The Munsters, reveals the vampire as perhaps seeming passé or
not of particular seriousness in the minds of public. In recent years, comedic
vampires have appeared in many forms, with perhaps the pinnacle of vampire
humor being the film What we do in the Shadows,33 which has also become
a television series.
The vampire, like the zombie, has been used in conjunction with existing
cultural realities in order to point at elements of current society, though with
less frequency. Movies like The Lost Boys, and elements of the show Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, have taken existing social fears and combined them with
the vampire myth.
The two main themes that I want to highlight here from vampire popular
culture are the themes of romance and brutality. From very early on, the
vampire has been a romantic figure in the strict sense of the word. Rooted
in the French romance in which erotic love is often never consummated, the
vampire is an unattainable love, or a love that if consummated comes at a
ghastly price. It is the great sin of Lancelot and Guinevere to consummate
their love. Their sin was never to be in love, for it was appropriate that a
knight should admire and love his Queen. Courtly love was in many ways,
idealized to be that which was experienced but never attained. So too, the
vampire is seen as an enticing love that must never be. In Bram Stoker’s
epistolary novel, Dracula,34 the titular character sees a picture of Jonathan
Harker’s fiancé Mina and falls in love with her, or at the very least desires
her. In the process he creates a thrall of her friend Lucy through several erotic
encounters that cause her to become a vampire like himself. In Francis Ford
Coppola’s version of the story, Dracula is reluctant when it comes time to
turn Mina into a vampire, because he loves her too much. He does not want
to curse her with the half-life that he experiences. So too, in Anne Rice’s
Interview with the Vampire,35 the vampiric life is romantic and attractive, and
in it love is created between the vampires, but all of it comes at a very high
price.
In popular culture as well, the vampire is presented in the last twenty
years with two highly significant series. The first is the movie and televi-
sion series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires here are presented with wit,
desire, intelligence, and humor. But, the essential difference between a vam-
pire and a human is that vampires do not have their souls. Because they do
not have their souls, they are able to perform the horrific deeds necessary to
their continued survival. The exception to this is the character Angel, who is
morally good because he has a soul. Angel does not remain the only vampire
with a soul in the series, as the 1980s punk-rocker Spike purposefully seeks
 The Living Dead 81

out the ritual to have his soul restored so that his love for Buffy might be
reciprocated.
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, vampires follow the essential tropes of the
genre. Crosses will drive them back, stakes will kill them, and holy water
hurts them. Juxtaposed to this are the vampires from the series Twilight. In
the Twilight series, it seems that nothing but another vampire or werewolf
could actually harm the seemingly omnipotent creatures. Sunlight does
not harm them, stakes certainly wouldn’t kill them, and crosses and holy
water have no effect. They are, for all intents and purposes, not exactly
vampires except that they drink blood, live forever, and fall for humans
sometimes.
The vampire’s comedic figure has already been mentioned, but it is worth
noting that at times the vampire may be portrayed in comedic situations and
yet remain a source of fear and true danger. In Abbott and Costello Meet
Frankenstein, Dracula is a genuine threat. Even more so, in the 1980s take
of the same general concept, The Monster Squad,36 Dracula is one of two
genuinely terrifying elements in the movie along with the wolfman. He is
undercut slightly through the strategic and ingenious use of a slice of pizza
with garlic on it as a weapon, but for the most part he is a true horror and
danger.
In gaming, the vampire has often been seen as a villain whose power
rates higher than that of other undead. In Dungeons & Dragons, the power-
ful figure of Strahd von Zarovich is an analog of Dracula in the Advanced
Dungeons & Dragons module Ravenloft37 and the D&D 5e book Curse of
Strahd. Strahd has also been featured in four novels and a short story and is
easily one of Dungeons & Dragons most popular villains.
It is perhaps the vampire’s similarity to the Christian hope of the resur-
rection, as well as its shadowy differences, that makes it so popular. Here is
a worthy adversary for humanity, excepting the Twilight vampires who are
immune to all things. They are corrupted humanity but, instead of being made
weak by their corruption, they are stronger, more capable, and often objects
of human desire.

Two Resurrections: Gandalf and Superman

This section considers two stand-out expressions of resurrection in popular
culture, those of Gandalf and Superman. In popular culture, the prototype for
the closest thing to the Christian understanding of the resurrection is perhaps
the figure of Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. After a pro-
longed battle with a Balrog, a fire-demon from the ancient world, Gandalf
perishes. However, in the second book of the trilogy, he returns unexpectedly.
The return is a genuine one, he has not merely been hidden and gathering his
82 Chapter 4

strength. Tolkien affirms this in a letter, saying: “Gandalf really ‘died’, and
was changed: for that seems to me the only real cheating, to represent any-
thing that can be called ‘death’ as making no difference.”38
Gandalf’s return is, among all that we will look at in this chapter, the
most like the resurrection in Christian thought. This is so with the excep-
tion of the lion Aslan in C.S. Lewis’ story The Lion, The Witch, and the
Wardrobe,39 which will be discussed below. Patterned on the resurrection
of Christ, it is not merely a restoration of the same life that was held
before death. Death, as Tolkien points out, must make a difference. It is
not merely an interruption in the consistent flow of life. Other kinds of
material life after death that will be considered here, both vampires and
zombies, have lives different than their previous existence. However,
their lives are less human than before, as opposed to more eminently
human. Gandalf is not human, but his death and resurrection are indica-
tive of the kind of change that is expressed in Christian theology about
the resurrection.
Opposed to this is the death of Superman, the much-touted comic-book
event of 1993.40 In the story Superman faces off, with the help of the Justice
League, against the seemingly unstoppable figure of Doomsday. Convinced
that Doomsday, a bone-spike adorned monster of incredible power, must be
stopped at all costs, Superman lays down his life in the last moments of the
book, defeating the beast.
The death of Superman then was followed by a prolonged series of stories
involving the “Four Supermen,” who were either impostors or homages to
the Last Son of Krypton. By the time the series was over, Superman had
returned41 and, despite a new haircut and a few temporary bumps in the road,
Superman returns to his status quo.
In the Superman story, we find that Tolkien’s rule above, that it’s a cheat
to have something called “death” not matter at all, is proven true. Superman’s
death didn’t matter, at least to the character in the long run. There’s no ongo-
ing PTSD for Superman, there’s no radical shift in his mode of existence.
Instead, he dies, sales go up, he comes back, and sales go up again. It’s the
event and spectacle that are the central element of the death and resurrection
of Superman.
Interestingly, the deaths of these two heroes are similar. Both stand against
an enemy whose strength is insurmountable for their allies. Only they can
overcome their foe, but it will cost them every last bit of their life-forces
to do it. In both situations, the heroes strike down their enemy and then,
having seen their task complete, they die. The differences truly come in the
sequels to their deaths. Gandalf goes into the secret world behind the world
and is sent back, transformed as a lord of hope and war against darkness.
Superman returns with a long haircut and, well, not much else. There’s relief
 The Living Dead 83

and happiness that Superman has returned, but there’s no new mission for the
Man of Steel. He just keeps on keepin’ on.

THE RESURRECTION CONSIDERED

Having looked at these representations of the resurrection, a few things are

worth reflecting on to clarify our thoughts about the resurrection. In the first
place, beyond the potential critique of a spirit-based anthropology that zom-
bies might offer, the two main expressions of zombies in culture allow us to
clarify elements of the resurrection in Christian thought. Farthest from the
Christian conception of the universal resurrection is the idea of the zombie
as a mindless physical expression of unnatural desire. In this expression of
the zombie, not only is the physical being ruled by its desires, but the desires
are not natural to it. It longs for human flesh or brains. The zombie is so
controlled by its lusts for the unnatural, that it is essentially a physical mani-
festation of these desires. Conversely, in the resurrection, Christianity has
maintained that the resurrected will not be subject to their desires. We will
master our desires and perhaps enjoy them as we choose, not, as we often
experience them now, as our masters.
The zombies as servants to the will of a master, however, are less dissimi-
lar, though by no means close, to the Christian concept of the resurrection.
The idea that the dead rise at the command of a master is common to both
some version of the zombie story and the Christian hope of the resurrec-
tion. However, where the zombie rises as a thrall to the will of its master,
Christianity has often maintained that the wills of the redeemed are at their
freest in Heaven. Unchained from the slavery of sinful impulse and desire, the
human will is free to do all good things in the resurrected state.
In considering the vampire and the Christian community of the resurrected,
the similarities are of course greater than those between zombies and the
resurrected community. The resurrection of the dead in Christian tradition
is largely concerned with continuity of identity. The vampire is in many
representations the same person who died, but with enhancements and modi-
fications to their abilities, and perhaps their personality. While the zombie is
no longer the same person from life to death, both the vampire and the resur-
rected person retain their true selves.
The vampire rises to new, quasi-unending life, and must, by and large, feed
on blood. They are stronger, more subtle, often with command of elements of
nature, and with the ability to spread their form of life. Here again we see sim-
ilarities between this and the resurrected community. From one perspective,
the comparisons are obvious. Both live because of the special significance
of blood, both will never die (or, need not die in the case of the vampire),
84 Chapter 4

and both live because of the identity of another. For the Christian, this is, of
course, Christ. For the vampire, it is often the vampire’s maker or sire.
Both the vampire and the resurrected person have a greater length of life
and are now impervious to natural human death. Both have greater power and
a new relationship to nature but the vampire helps us clarify what those rela-
tionships look like by creating an anti-type. The vampire’s life is only quasi-
immortal. It is far more robust than natural human life, but certainly subject
to destruction under the right circumstances. Indeed, in many vampire stories
simple sunlight will destroy them. They have the ability to command nature
in new ways, an ability that Christianity has at times assumed the resurrected
will have because the incarnate Christ had it, but vampires are often bound by
nature in new and different ways. In some legends they cannot cross running
water. They cannot enter a home unless invited. Indeed, they are warded by
the four simple walls of a small shack if someone happens to live there. Their
antipathy to religious symbols, especially the cross, is perhaps the most tell-
ing anti-type element.
In the resurrection the blessed rise to a life that is permeated by the
divinity of Christ such that their humanity is elevated to a perfection that
has become eternally blessed. The term eternal here means specifically
that the God who is outside of all space and time conforms space and time
in a supernatural way to God’s own way of being. Humans participate in
God’s divinity in precisely that way which humanity was designed for.
The crowning of nature that is divinization in the resurrection is both con-
gruous, in that humanity was designed for it, and incongruous, insofar as
nature does not require or demand it. The vampire rises to new life that is
congruous in the sense that it takes on many of the forms of old human life,
and incongruous in that it is counter to nearly all natural functions of the
human creature. It lives primarily on a form of cannibalism, it abhors the
sources of the source of human life—both food and the sun—and it abhors
the supernatural source of human life, God.
An interesting thought experiment suggests itself in the meeting of even
the very least of the resurrected, with Dracula himself, the king of vampires.
In such a meeting, the resurrected person has no cause for fear, and only cause
for pity and mercy. The vampire poses no threat to the resurrected, for they
are full of divine life and conformed to that eternal love that transcends all
fear. The resurrected person is not just perfected nature but divinized nature.
They also need no food or drink, and they are beyond all possible harm.
But the resurrected transcend these needs as the heavens do the earth. The
vampire is beyond these things as something that has become other than its
original human nature. Indeed, all that is present in the cross and other reli-
gious symbols that cast fear into the heart of a vampire, is present immacu-
lately in one of the resurrected. The vampire might feed from the resurrected,
 The Living Dead 85

but only in the way in which the resurrected might offer themselves as true
food and true drink, as participants in their master who is himself true food
and true drink. What the vampire has in pride in his great abilities the res-
urrected express in humility. Indeed, both the vampire and the resurrected
person might understand that the resurrected person is there for the vampire,
though the vampire might understand them primarily as an instrument to the
vampires’ needs in the sense of blood and perhaps servitude. The resurrected
person would understand themselves as there for the vampire in the form of
God’s enfleshed mercy and justice. Such a meeting could not help but show
that the resurrected life of the blessed is of an entirely different type then the
“resurrected life” of the vampire.
As a final note, any consideration of the resurrection in popular culture
would be remiss without mentioning C.S. Lewis’ figure of Aslan. In The
Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Aslan is slain by the White Witch on
the Stone Table. After this unjust killing, Aslan, who Lewis intends to be
the Second Person of the Trinity, incarnate as a Lion in a world of talking
animals, rises from death and begins to roll back the spell of the White Witch
which has placed Narnia in a perpetual winter, evoking perhaps one of the
most melancholy lines ever written in English, “always winter, but never
Christmas.”
What is odd about Aslan’s rising, is that there seems to be no difference
between pre-death Aslan and post-death Aslan. He has not been raised to a
divinized flesh. It is true that the magic of the White Witch has been broken,
but the change is not substantial. Of course, we don’t see much of Aslan
before the death at the Stone Table, at least not in this book. But we are told
in other books that Aslan has been in this form since the beginning of Narnia.
It is not clear what Lewis intends here with his incarnation theology, nor his
resurrection theology. Indeed, when the resurrection has already happened
in The Last Battle, those who have died and been raised are not graced with
divinized flesh. They are, instead, wholly unaware that they have died. This
lack of a robust theology of resurrection in his fiction, including in The Great
Divorce, is perhaps indicative of Lewis’ overemphasis on Platonism through-
out his work.

CONCLUSION

The resurrection of all people is, of course, a difficult thing to instill in a work
of fiction of any kind. We must make do with individual returns, reconstruc-
tions, and resurrections. Few are the places where a character dies and then
truly transforms into a new, more perfected version of themselves. Many
comic book characters die and return, few are ever really changed in the way
86 Chapter 4

that we see in the figure of Jesus who stands as a promise of what Christians
expect from the coming resurrection. Such a transformation must take place,
however, if we are to stand before the terrible love of God that comes to have
its final say about what we have done in this world. We turn now to consider
that final divine judgment.

NOTES

1. The Wachowskis, The Matrix, 1999.

2. See, for example, George E. Mendenhall, “From Witchcraft to Justice: Death
and Afterlife in the Old Testament,” in Death and Afterlife: Perspectives of World
Religions, ed. Hiroshi Obayashi (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1992).
3. George W E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch Vol 1 A Commentary on the Book of
Enoch, Chapters 1–36; 81–108 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2001). Cf. I Enoch
24:2–27:5.
4. Jeffrey Spier, Steven Fine, Mary Charles-Murray, Picturing the Bible: The
Earliest Christian Art (United Kingdom: Yale University Press, 2007), 10; Robin
Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge,
2000), 10.
5. Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians: The Resurrection of the Dead
(Longmans, 1957).
6. Ibid., 4.
7. Augustine, City of God, 21:12.
8. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV​.lxxxi​.​13.
9. Justin Martyr, On the Resurrection.
10. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies.
11. Ibid. V, Preface.
12. Origen, On First Things.
13. For more on Origen and Augustine, see the chapter on Heaven.
14. Peter Lombard, The Sentences, IV.XLIII.2.
15. The third part of the Summa Theologiae, which deals with such matters, was
not written by Thomas.
16. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 79.4.
17. Ibid., 79.10.
18. Nathan Hitchcock, Karl Barth and the Resurrection of the Flesh: The Loss of
the Body in Participatory Eschatology (Cambridge: James Clarek & Co, 2013), 183.
19. Karl Rahner and Katheryn Tanner, for example.
20. It is a well-known theory among comic-book fans that the popular Batman
story Hush was originally written to feature the long-dead character Jason Todd as
the antagonist. However, fans figured out the plot from very early on and the writers
of the series had to change course mid-stream. A similar prediction happened with
the video game Arkham Knight, in which a new character, the Arkham Knight, was
introduced before the game’s launch. Once more, fans pointed to the character and
 The Living Dead 87

immediately figured out that the character was Jason Todd. However, unlike with
Hush, no change was made by Rocksteady Studios.
21. T.H. White, The Once and Future King (Glasgow: Collins, 1958).
22. See Loomis’ essay in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative
History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959).
23. See Roger Sherman Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (Chicago,
IL: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1997).
24. Victor Halperin, White Zombie, 1932.
25. William Seabrook, The Magic Island, 1929.
26. Victor Halperin, Revolt of the Zombies, 1936.
27. George Romero, Night of the Living Dead, 1968. Nowhere in Romero’s film
are they called “zombies.” They are, instead, ghouls. Others made the link between
the undead in the film and the concept of the zombie, and Romero eventually
embraced the designation for his creatures.
28. Richard Matheson, I Am Legend (New York, NY: Gold Medal Books, 1954).
Sidney Salkow and Ubaldo Ragona, The Last Man on Earth, 1964. Boris Sagal, The
Omega Man, 1971. Francis Lawrence, I am Legend, 2007.
29. See, for example, the influential audio-drama, We are Alive.
30. Of course, the lists for both video games and tabletop games go well beyond
these.
31. Benedict XIV, Benedictus Deus, 1336.
32. The distinction between unnatural and supernatural for theology is clear. An
unnatural state is one which is out of continuity with a thing’s essential nature. To
replace human eyes with fish eyes, or to replace human eyes with machines is unnatu-
ral to a greater or lesser extent based on whether those machines replicate human eye
function. This is not a value judgment, merely a description. The supernatural, on the
other hand, crowns nature and elevates it. Participation in the life of God is seen as
the supernatural culmination of God’s intention for humanity, the very thing that God
made human nature for.
33. Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, What we do in the Shadows, 2014.
34. Bram Stoker, Dracula (London: Archibald Constable and Company, 1897).
35. Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire (New York, NY: Knopf, 1976).
36. Fred Dekker, The Monster Squad, 1987.
37. Tracy and Laura Hickman, Ravenloft (Lake Geneva, WI: TSR, Inc., 1983).
38. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 156 To Robert Murray, S.J. (Draft).
39. C.S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (London: Geoffrey Bles,
1950).
40. Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, Superman, Vol. 2, 75, Jan 1993.
41. Ordway, Grummett, Hazlewood, et al., The Adventures of Superman, Vol. 1,
500, June 1993.
 Chapter 5

The Dread Judge

INTRODUCTION

Movies, novels, and comics are full of judgment scenes. Characters judge
each other consistently, finding each other worthy or wanting, righteous or
evil. Rarely, however, do characters encounter a final judgment, one that
gives a final, summarizing account of their character and life. One author
who has excelled at creating scenes that express the idea of final judgment,
especially judgment that flows from a person’s character to meet ultimate
reality, is J.K. Rowling. Rowling’s characters, when they meet their ends
often meet them with a full expression of their own life choices. This is true
of Dumbledore and Snape, who both die as heroes. It is also true of the final
confrontation between Harry Potter and Voldemort. Harry and Voldemort
face off in a Wizard’s duel, and both use the spell that expresses their inner-
most personhood. Voldemort uses the deadly Avada Kedavera spell, while
Harry simply seeks to disarm Voldemort with an Expelliarmus spell. The two
spells collide, and Voldemort’s killing blow rebounds back on him, killing
him. Harry is both triumphant and unstained by the hate that one might have
thought necessary to defeat someone like Voldemort. Judgment has come to
both characters, and both have experienced the natural outcome of their own
choices.
Judgment is a complex and intricate idea. In Christian theology, the last
judgment has been used to condemn everyone from unbaptized babies to
political enemies to Popes. In this chapter we’ll consider the history of the
idea of the last judgment and how it has appeared in popular culture.

89
90 Chapter 5

THE BIBLICAL SOURCES OF THE LAST JUDGMENT

Judgment, like many other eschatological concepts, has its origins in the
prophetic Day of Yahweh put forward in the eighth century by prophets like
Amos and Isaiah. Originally thought to be a day of victory for Yahweh in
battle, the prophet Amos reworked the idea into a day in which the people
would be punished by Yahweh.

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!

  Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light;
  as if someone fled from a lion,
  and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
  and was bitten by a snake.
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
  and gloom with no brightness in it?1

This coming day of judgment, first experienced in 722 BC at the destruction

of the northern kingdom of Israel, was likely imported into the theology of
the southern kingdom of Judah as exiles from the north brought with them a
stricter religious devotion to Yahweh than that practiced in the polytheistic
southern kingdom. This theology of judgment saw the root cause of Israel’s
destruction as unfaithfulness to the god Yahweh. The same theology of judg-
ment is used to interpret the destructive events of the early sixth century BC
as Jerusalem suffered defeat twice at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar II in 597
BC and 586 BC. In the second defeat of Jerusalem, the temple of Yahweh
was destroyed, and the people were taken into exile.
The Day of Yahweh’s judgment, then, was twice experienced against the
people of Israel and Judah. However, after the exile, at the beginning of the
religion we can clearly identify as early Judaism, the Day of Yahweh was
once again reinterpreted. Now understood as the day on which the creator of
the universe would judge all people based on his special covenantal relation-
ship with the children of Israel, the Day of Yahweh was once again something
the people of the land of Judah longed for.
This is especially true during times of persecution. The judgment scene
depicted in Daniel 7 shows the Ancient One, God, opening the books and
proclaiming judgment. He slays the powers of the world and destroys them
with fire.

As I watched,
thrones were set in place,
 The Dread Judge 91

  and an Ancient One took his throne;

his clothing was white as snow,
  and the hair of his head like pure wool;
his throne was fiery flames,
  and its wheels were burning fire.
A stream of fire issued
  and flowed out from his presence.
A thousand thousand served him,
  and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.
The court sat in judgement,
  and the books were opened.
I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was
speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed
and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion
was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.2

The second half of the book, written in the mid-second century BC, is com-
posed in the context of a great struggle against Antiochus IV of the Seleucid
Empire. Antiochus’ persecution of the Jewish people clearly was viewed by
the author as the precursor to the eschatological moment of God’s final judg-
ment on the world and especially on those who have persecuted the Jewish
people.
A similar scene is found in the book of Revelation.

Then I saw a great white throne and the one who sat on it; the earth and the
heaven fled from his presence, and no place was found for them. And I saw the
dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also
another book was opened, the book of life. And the dead were judged according
to their works, as recorded in the books. And the sea gave up the dead that were
in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and all were judged
according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the
lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and anyone whose name
was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.3

Judgment is also found in 2 Thessalonians:

For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to
give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from
heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who
do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.
These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction (ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον), sepa-
rated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he
92 Chapter 5

comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at on that day among all
who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.4

And, while other mentions are made of judgment here and there throughout
the New Testament, the only other prolonged discussion is in Matthew 25
where the judgment scene of Daniel is reproduced, but the criteria of being
among those sent into the life of the coming age or the punishment of the
coming age has been changed from those who oppress Israel to those who do
not care for the weak.
The development of the idea within the history of the Scriptures is, as far as
we can see, one that involves four stages. The first is the belief that the Day
of Yahweh would be a day of victory in battle over the enemies of Judah and
Israel. The second is the understanding that the Day of Yahweh would be a
day of victory over iniquity in Israel and then in Judah. The third stage is the
belief that the Day of the LORD would reestablish Judah and Israel as the
center of the world with the destruction of those who oppressed the chosen
people. The fourth stage, particularly Christian, is the belief in the final judg-
ment of the world by Jesus, or by Jesus and his Father. This last stage informs
how the Last Judgment has been interpreted in Christian tradition.

THE FINAL JUDGMENT IN CHURCH TRADITION

In the patristic period, a general (though not universal) agreement was held
among early Christian thinkers. As Brian Daley observes,

Following the expectations of both the Jewish Scriptures and the New Testament,
early Christian writers also agreed on the prospect of God’s universal judgment.
The God who created the human person capable of self-determination stands
also in judgment, for the whole Patristic tradition, over each of our histories and
all history together; and it is Christ, God’s Word made flesh, wo will embody
and execute that judgment by coming to be visibly present in the world again at
the end of history. It is this sense of ultimate accountability to a God who sees
all things, Patristic apologists constantly remind their readers, that is the founda-
tion of Christian moral earnestness.5

For some in the patristic period, the idea that the last judgment should contain
any mercy at all was foreign. Aphrahat, the “Persian sage” (d. after 354),
believed that at the last judgment the age of mercy was over.6 For others, like
Origen, mercy and justice were one.
In the medieval period, we find Peter Lombard considering the last
Judgment and Christ’s role as judge.
 The Dread Judge 93

To these matters, we must add that there is a twofold meaning to the assertion:
Christ will come to judge the living and the dead. For either the living are taken
to be those who shall be found alive at his coming, even if they may die in the
rapture, and the dead, those who have died before, or the living and the dead are
taken to be the just and the unjust.7

As well, Lombard considers the sentence of the judgment as an angelic act

that divides the good and the wicked.
The judgment by which he will judge in the future is understood as the
sentence by which the threshing floor will be winnowed, that is, the good will
be separated from the wicked at the ministry of angels and placed in different
places; the former shall lead to life, the latter will be sent to torment, who now
are mixed together.8
Thomas Aquinas’ view of the final judgment is shown in juxtaposition to
the particular judgment of each person:

But the second retribution will be made to all and at the same time in that all will
rise at the same time. Every retribution, of course, wherein different decisions
are rendered according to differing merits demands a judgment. Necessarily,
therefore, the judgment is twofold: There is one, regarding the soul, in which
separately and one by one punishment or reward is determined; there is another
common one, however, regarding the soul and body-in it there will be deter-
mined for all at the same time what they have earned.9

Gregory Palamas, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, preached a homily on the

judgment of Christ:

Mercy and forbearance precede the divine Judgment. God Himself is the first pos-
sessor of every virtue and embraces them all. He is both just and merciful. But as
mercy does not go with judgment, as it is written, “Thou shalt not be merciful to a
poor man at judgment” (cf. Prov. 24:23), God rightly allotted a proper time to each,
appointing the present for forbearance, the future for retribution. The grace of the
Spirit so ordered the rites of the Holy Church, that when we learn that we receive
forgiveness of sins from what happens here and now, we may press on while still
in this present life to attain everlasting mercy and make ourselves worthy of the
divine love for mankind. For that Judgment is without mercy for the unmerciful.10

Like other eschatological concepts in the medieval period, the last judgment
was not particularly controversial. However, the extreme predestinarian
views of the reformed church did displace the idea of justice according to
one’s deeds for some Christians with the idea of God’s predestination of souls
unconditionally.
94 Chapter 5

In the modern period, the last judgment has been a topic of debate largely
around the question of universalism. Who will be judged to be worthy of
everlasting death, if anyone? Barth largely places the last judgment in the
crucifixion of Christ, with God’s final judgment on humanity as sinner expe-
rienced and executed already.

THE FINAL JUDGMENT IN POPULAR CULTURE

God’s final universal judgment is, understandably, largely absent in popular

culture. There is a radical finality to the universal judgment of the whole cre-
ation past which we cannot see far. It is the end of all sorrow, the last word
on evil, and the restorative word for all created good. It may be, as George
MacDonald conceived, the awakening of latent goods as well.11 It may be, in
fact, that the coming of the final judgment is the beginning, not the ending, to
all adventure, and that we have only just had our foretaste of stories, legends,
myths, and grand epics.12 But in a world in which the occasion for adventure
is fashioned by the presence of suffering, death, evil, and calamity, our stories
find their roots in these conflicts. We find it difficult to conceive of adventure,
heroism, and stories, in general, without these terms.
How are we then to tell stories that include the final judgment? If we con-
sider the Left Behind series, the Final Judgment is used to end the epic; it func-
tions in similar ways to how it does in apocalyptic literature. The divine breaks
into space-time, proclaims judgment on the world, and evil is destroyed. The
story is over. A similar, though less literal read of the final judgment can be
seen in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, in which Aslan proclaims judgment on
the failing Narnia. But Lewis here is better than LaHaye and Jenkins. For
Lewis the last judgment is only the beginning of an endless ascending romp
upward into the every more real Narnia that has been made new.
With these and other explicitly Christian expressions of the Last Judgment
considered, we must ask how it might be that the Last Judgment has found its
way into popular culture in other forms. We might be tempted to simply give
any expression of judgment at all a broad examination here. Everything from
the judgment that Fafherd and the Gray Mouser lay on the Thieves’ Guild of
Lankhmar in Fritz Leiber’s “Ill Met in Lankhmar”13 to the death of Saruman
at the hands of Grima.14 Each of these, and many other similar moments,
share something in common with the Final Judgment. Each brings a kind of
justice with it and might be compared and contrasted with the final judgment.
But here I am mainly concerned with two forms of judgment in popular
culture. The first are those judgments in popular fiction which bring about a
real shift in the paradigm from ages of evil to ages of goodness. Such judg-
ments must not only show evil and goodness for what they are but bring
 The Dread Judge 95

goodness into the dominant position. Such changes may not be permanent,
for then they would really be final, and thus the end of all stories as we know
them. But at the very least, they must bring about robust change that does not
merely perish in the next chapter of the story.
The second kind of judgment is a kind of evaluation between the standard
of a person’s character and value, and their actual character and value. The
justification for this view will be demonstrated at the end of the chapter in the
consideration section.

Judgments That Conclude an Age

Not all shifts from one age to the next are genuinely judgments in the terms of
this chapter. Thus, one of the mainstays of this book, The Lord of the Rings,
ends with a major shift in ages, from the third age to the fourth, but it does
not end with a judgment in either sense of the word that we are using in this
chapter. However, Tolkien does present two images of judgment in his story
about the War of the Ring that meet our standards. Both concern the ending
of the dominion of the wizard Saruman, and in both situations, it is Gandalf
that proclaims the judgment.
The first is the appearance of Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn at the
court of King Theoden of Rohan. Gandalf and his companions enter the court
of the king who has been poisoned by the sorceries of Saruman though the
advisor Grima Wormtongue. Wormtongue has transformed the character of
the king, weakening him, and through him, the kingdom of Rohan. All of this
is done to clear the way for Saruman’s rise to ultimate power.
However, Gandalf’s appearance draws the influence of Grima from
the King, purifying the monarch’s mind and spirit, and ending Saruman’s
influence. A period of foreign manipulation and rule is broken as Gandalf
proclaims the true character of the king, frees him from a destructive influ-
ence, and restores his strength. Here Gandalf proclaims judgment on Grima
Wormtongue, telling the king that it would be just to slay Wormtongue, but
that he had not always been a snake, he was once a man. And that Grima
should be given a horse to go wherever he pleases. Gandalf levies judgment
against the evil done, and against the man who did it, but also shows mercy.
Gandalf’s second judgment comes when the white wizard comes to
Isengard, the fortress of Saruman. There Gandalf proclaims judgment on the
fallen wizard, breaking his staff, and ending his poisoned dominion. The age
of Saruman ends with defeat and the undoing of his power. It is not a com-
plete reversal of his actions, for they leave much death and scarring on the
world. But the rule of Saruman of the many colors is done.
Here judgment comes in two forms. There is the proclamation of Gandalf
against Saruman, and the unmaking of his power, which bring about a
96 Chapter 5

paradigm shift. But there is also a judgment of measuring Saruman against

the ideal, which Gandalf has become. We learn as much when Gandalf
meets his companions Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas for the first time after his
resurrection. They mistake him for Saruman, and his reply is “Indeed I am
Saruman, one might almost say, Saruman as he should have been.”15 Gandalf
has returned not only to pronounce an external judgment on Saruman’s
actions, but to stand as judgment in himself as the figure that Saruman should
have been. This judgment belongs, therefore, to this category and the next,
Judgment as Personal Evaluation. The era of Saruman’s rule, which coincides
closely with the end of the third age, is a transition into the new fourth age in
which Aragorn rules as king.

Judgments as Personal Evaluation

Not all judgments end one era and begin another. Often, judgment is essen-
tially a kind of truth-telling about how a person measures up to a particular
standard. Our concern here is not the kind of judgment that compares some-
one to an arbitrary, legal, or extrinsic standard. Instead, in keeping with the
idea of the Last Judgment that we will consider below, the comparisons that
best depict the Final Judgment are those that measure a member of a com-
munity with that community’s leader or ideal. In these kinds of judgments,
a person is found either worthy of the community by measuring up to the
standards set by the head or idea of the community or is found wanting as
they do not measure up.
An excellent example of this in popular culture is a scene from Joss
Whedon’s television show, Firefly.16 In the episode “Ariel,” the character
Jayne Cobb betrays two members of the ship’s crew who are wanted by the
government. Brother and sister, Simon and River Tam, have a bounty on their
heads and Jayne decides that the money is just too good, so he alerts the gov-
ernment to their presence during a highly complicated robbery. The betrayal
comes to nothing as the entire crew is able to avoid capture and escape with
the job well done. However, when the captain of the ship, Mal, and Jayne are
alone, Mal knocks Jayne unconscious and drags him into the rear air lock of
the ship, leaving him a handheld communicator. When Jayne wakes up, he
and Mal converse over the radios, and Mal reveals that he knows that Jayne
betrayed them. The back of the air lock is open and when they reach space,
Jayne will die. This conversation follows:

Jayne: Aw, come on, Mal! That ain’t no way for a man to die. You wanna kill me,
shoot me! Just let me in!
Mal: You know, I hear tell they used to keelhaul traitors back in the day. I don’t
have a keel to haul you on, so...
 The Dread Judge 97

Jayne: O-Okay! I’m sorry, all right?

Mal: Sorry for what, Jayne? I thought you’d never do such a thing.
Jayne: The money was too good. I got stupid. I’m sorry, okay? Be reasonable.
What are you taking it so personal for? It ain’t like I ratted you out to the Feds.
Mal: Oh, but you did! You turn on any of my crew, you turn on me! But since
that’s a concept you can’t seem to wrap your head around, then you got no
place here. You did it to me, Jayne, and that’s a fact.

This last from Mal is striking, as it expresses the identification of the leader
of the community with the members of the community. The comparison with
Matthew 25 is difficult to deny.

You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire (τὸ πῦρ τὸ αἰώνιον)
prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food,
I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not
welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and
you did not visit me.

Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry
or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of
you?” Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it
to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.”17
An example of where this kind of judgment is expressed, but perhaps
doesn’t entirely work, is given at the end of Avengers: Endgame.18 In one
of the final moments, an aged Steve Rogers appears and sits down with Sam
Wilson, whose hero name is Falcon, and talks to him about where he’s been
while traveling through time. He then hands his shield over to Sam, suggest-
ing, though not outright saying, that Sam should be the next Captain America.
The scene is meant to be powerful and is meant to communicate the idea that
Cap, arguably the greatest of the Avengers, and certainly the first, is choos-
ing his worthy successor. However, nothing here is said of Sam’s character,
his devotion to the ideals that make America, and therefore Captain America,
great. There’s nothing clearly said about Sam’s virtue as living up to the vir-
tue required of Captain America. Instead, in a nod to comic-book fans who
are aware that in the comics both Sam and Bucky, Cap’s former side-kick,
have taken up the mantle of Captain America. In fact, Bucky even gives Sam
an approving nod, once more, perhaps, saying to fans, “This has my bless-
ing.” The scene might have worked as a genuine judgment of the kind being
considered here, if there had been any discussion at all about what makes Cap
worthy of the shield. But, instead, it’s left without comment.
Conversely, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie Black Panther19
sees a far better judgment of a person’s ability to live up to the community
98 Chapter 5

ideal. T’Challa, the Black Panther and rightful king of Wakanda, is challenged
by his cousin Erik “Killmonger” Stevens. T’Challa is defeated by Killmonger
and presumed dead. Killmonger then takes control of both Wakanda and
the mantle of the Black Panther. He then orders the weapons of Wakanda,
far more powerful than any others in the world, to be sold and shipped to
other nations. The history of Wakanda is one of isolation, knowing that the
material they possess, Vibranium, is powerful and dangerous. Killmonger’s
expression of the identity of both king and Black Panther is unworthy of the
ideal put forward by King T’Chaka and his son, the current Black Panther,
T’Challa. T’Challa, nursed back to health, battles Killmonger for both the
right to be Black Panther and King of Wakanda. Killmonger is found want-
ing in battle, and dies, unwilling to be healed and live with the results of his
actions. The true Black Panther has judged and found the pretender wanting.
As well, in the movie Into the Spider-Verse,20 Peter Parker has died in
one universe, fighting to defend reality from the reckless plans of Kingpin.
A young Miles Morales has received powers similar to Peter’s and struggles
to figure out how to be the new Spider-Man of his world. He’s assisted by a
team of other Spider-Folk including Spider-Gwen, Spider-Man Noir, Spider-
Ham, SP//dr, and a Peter Parker from another dimension. Together they work
to stop Kingpin’s plot, as well as train Miles to be the best Spider-Man they
can. When the final confrontation comes, however, Miles doesn’t seem up to
the task, so the team leaves him behind. He, however, claims his right to be
called Spider-Man and goes into battle as an equal to his friends and mentors.
In the end, the group’s final judgment on Miles is that he is Spider-Man, and
he will live up to the great power and great responsibility.
There is one example of the judgment as personal evaluation worth men-
tioning from popular culture that reverses the paradigm. In this example, it
is not the leader who evaluates the members of the community, but instead,
the community that proclaims themselves to be devoted to the character of
the leader without either consent or knowledge of the leader. It is a group
judgment of the worthiness of their ideal, and their dedication to his char-
acter. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix, Harry,
Hermione, and Ron found a society called Dumbledore’s Army. Dumbledore,
the headmaster of Hogwarts, knows nothing of the society, and when he
learns about it, he’s clearly touched by the students’ judgment of him.
“See what they’ve named themselves?” said Fudge quietly. “Dumbledore’s
Army.”
Dumbledore reached out and took the piece of parchment from Fudge. He
gazed at the heading scribbled by Hermione months before and for a moment
seemed unable to speak. Then he looked up, smiling.21
Not only is the judgment of Dumbledore a positive one, but it is also a judg-
ment in the negative on the regime of Dolores Umbridge, the representative
 The Dread Judge 99

of the Ministry of Magic. Her rule, oppressive and fear-mongering, stands

in opposition to Dumbledore’s stance of virtue and freedom. The decision
by the students to name themselves after Dumbledore is a clear statement,
not only of the aged wizard’s goodness, and the Ministry’s failings, but a
declaration of the students’ desire to emulate and live up to the standard set
by Dumbledore.

THE LAST JUDGMENT CONSIDERED

When thinking about eschatological judgment, we must distinguish between

five possible realities: (1) The Universal Last Judgment of God on the whole
of creation, (2) Particular judgment of each person at death, (3) The judgment
of God in the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ, (4) God’s continual
judgment as manifested by the church in the age between the Resurrection
and the second coming of Christ, and (5) A possible expression of communal
judgment on sin that lasts throughout the unending eschatological age.22
If God is external to time and is, as Boethius, St. Augustine, and St.
Thomas Aquinas all agree, outside of time and in full possession of God’s
own eternal being without discrete experience that limits God’s existence off
into that which has already taken place, that which is happening, and that
which has not yet taken place, then we need not assume that these four dis-
tinct meaning of the last judgment are sharply distinct for God. Each of these
“moments” participates, as does much of the history of Israel, as seen through
the lens of the prophetic strain of Hebrew religion, in God’s eternal action of
self-diffusive Good that, when encountering evil, takes the form of judgment.
Lest judgment be seen only as God’s response to evil, it must be remem-
bered that it is central to the revelation of scripture that God’s primary action
of judgment is to describe things justly. God calls each thing Good in the
creation myth of Genesis 1, and the whole of creation ‫דֹואְמ בֹוט‬, “very good.”23
Each of the five categories above, while we may have an inclination toward
seeing God’s judgment on evil as the primary focus, is first geared toward
God declaring what is good. Only secondarily is it the case that God judges
things to be less than good.
Insofar as this book is focused on the eschata, or “last things” of humanity,
our focus here must be specifically on meaning 1 above: the Universal Last
Judgment of God on the whole of creation. This is for two reasons. The first
is that the scope of this work is limited and must be kept manageable. Entire
books can be written on the judgment of God. The second is that, within the
popular imagination and consumption of the idea of the judgment of God, two
realities are foremost, and only one of them is truly eschatological: particular
judgment and universal judgment.
100 Chapter 5

The particular judgment, the experience of the individual person after

death in which God judges them to either be worthy of Heaven or destined
for Hell, is not itself an eschatological reality. While it is true that traditional
constructions of the “four last things” have included human death, this is
ultimately an error. The error is easy enough to make if one maintains a static
afterlife in which, post-purification, the human soul, and then perhaps resur-
rected body, stands in an overwhelmed stasis of what one might, perhaps
harshly, call a divinely drug-addled addiction from which there is no escape.
If this is the destiny of humanity, then death is the last meaningful moment of
each human’s existence. All of the New Testament promises of resurrection,
perfected cosmos, and heavenly community are simply null.
If, on the other hand, God’s universal judgment on creation, both the good
and the bad, is to come to pass, then it strictly stands as part of the last things
of humanity. It forms part of the boundary between this age and the coming
age. It is the shift from the age of “wheat and tares” to the age of goodness
when the whole creation is once more “very good.” Indeed, better than very
good: good with a goodness that doesn’t just reflect God’s goodness but
participates in it. The particular judgment stands only as a foretaste, a pre-
figuring, a proleptic participation in the coming judgment.
It is to the universal judgment that we will look in this chapter, therefore.
We will consider its origins, looking into both the prophetic tradition of the
Hebrew people and the apocalyptic tradition starting with 1 Enoch and Daniel
7. We will then see how this image of the heavenly judgment was changed
by the New Testament by looking at Matthew 25 and the book of Revelation.
Then we will move on to some treatments of the Last Judgment in the theo-
logical reflections of the church before treating two major areas of how the
concept of the last judgment have been drawn into and adapted by popular
culture.
Like all aspects of Christian eschatology, the last judgment is primarily
a doctrine related to mystery. That God will judge the world is irrefutably
taught in both scripture and tradition. It does not resist the function of deduc-
tive reason and it seems to have a fittingness to it that appeals to our narrative
perception of the world. That the author and director of the play should come
out onto the stage and judge the performance is compared to how they were
written seems right. But we must ask what the central reality or hidden mys-
tery of the last judgment actually is for Christian eschatology. It is a picture
that comes to us first in the book of the prophets in the Day of Yahweh. Then
it comes to us after the exile in the forum of judgment in 1 Enoch. Then it
appears in the book of Daniel. For Christianity, the judgment is most explic-
itly adopted in the imagery of Matthew 25 and in the book of Revelation.
In each of the depictions of the last judgment in the canonical scriptures the
criteria for being accepted into the paradisal life of the resurrection and the
 The Dread Judge 101

criteria for being cast out into the destroying fire are different. In the book of
Daniel, it is the nation of Israel that is accepted in and its allies, those who
are destroyed in the fire are those who are the enemies of the people of God.
In the Gospel of Matthew, it is a question of what the church has come to call
the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy; in the book
of Revelation, it is whether or not one’s name has been written in the Book
of Life. At first glance one may take one of two tracks. The first may be to
see the continuity between Daniel and Revelation and focus on that as the
primary understanding how the judgment will go. In this case the Matthew
25 scene is a kind of superscription or explanation about how those sorts of
people act. Those whose names are written in the Book of Life also perform
the works of mercy. One may take the other track and insist that ultimately
all three mean the same thing. To be part of the nation of Israel is to be part
of the church which is the same as doing works of mercy. The approach that
this book has taken is to affirm that a preexisting eschatological framework,
complex and variegated throughout Judaism but generally recognizable in a
rough outline, was disrupted for the followers of Jesus by his Resurrection.
This disruption required reinterpretation which generally went in one of two
directions, the first being a simple reacceptance of the old schema while plac-
ing Jesus somewhere within it. The second being a reworking of the schema
with Jesus at the center of it. I am here arguing that the book of Revelation,
at least in its judgment scene, has largely imported the old eschatological
schema without much change. There is no particularly Christological focus
to the judgment scene that distinguishes it from the book of Daniel’s identity
judgment. On the other hand, the judgment scene in the Gospel of Matthew
is entirely Christ centered. Christ himself is the measure of judgment, and
neither nationality nor some kind of predestination are called upon for the
judgment.
It is, therefore, the judgment of living up to the measure of the stature of
Christ, that is, the heart of the Christic transformation of the last judgment. By
this measure then, we find that the scene in Firefly between Malcolm Reynolds
and Jane is a particularly poignant reflection of the last judgment as under-
stood in Matthew 25. Not only is Jane judged for his actions because they
personally attacked Malcolm Reynolds, but because Jane’s actions do not live
up to the captain’s character. The community of the ship Serenity is to a great
degree and extension of Malcolm Reynolds himself. They are not simply
automata, of course. All persons, in community, are malleable and open to all
other persons in that community; otherwise they are not in community. But it
is the captain’s personal character that expresses ultimately an ideal. When he
himself doesn’t live up to that ideal, or threatens to not live up to that ideal,
the good members of his crew pull him back toward his center. But when
Jane betrays two members of his crew, the captain must either excise a part of
102 Chapter 5

himself in order to allow for the betrayal, or he must excise the malignant part
of his crew. What is fascinating about the scene is that the captain ultimately
has mercy on Jane. Jane, in the best way that the character perhaps knows
how, performs a genuine act of contrition. He’s okay with dying as long as
the crew doesn’t know that he was a traitor. He knows enough to be ashamed,
and that shame saves him. It’s enough for Mal that Jane sees the shame in his
action. He doesn’t curse Mal, or the crew, or justify his actions once Mal has
made it clear how traitorous Jane’s actions were. Jane simply doesn’t want his
shame to grow. It seems likely that he would go to his grave in peace if Mal
promised that he would never tell anyone what happened. This acceptance of
Mal’s judgment is enough to repair the relationship with his captain enough
that he does have to be cast into the outer darkness.
It’s in this scene, in particular, that we find the great hope of theologians
like George MacDonald and Origen. Judgment must come, it cannot be put
off. But perhaps judgment will be complete when we realize that our evil
deeds were truly evil. Shame, like any drug, has proper and improper uses.
As C.S. Lewis has George MacDonald say in The Great Divorce,

Don’t you remember on earth there were things too hot to touch with your finger
but you could drink them alright? Shame is like that. If you will attempt it—if
you will drink the cup to the bottom—you will find it very nourishing; but try
to do anything else with it and it scalds.24

It is perhaps then that judgment is ultimately confronting God’s truth. For

a creature this must be the coming together of the great extrinsic truth of God
as creator, and the great intrinsic truth of that Creator’s character expressed
in the natural laws of creation. In Matthew’s judgment scene, we see this har-
mony of the character of God, three-personal love giving without withhold-
ing, written both into the intrinsic identification of the Son with “the least”
and the extrinsic judgment both for those who have conformed to self-gift and
against those who have not.

CONCLUSION

The final judgment, as God’s authoritative word about history, human per-
sons, and the cosmos, is both God’s affirmative and God’s negative appraisal.
God tells the truth in the Last Judgment, calling the good “good” and the bad
“bad.” God’s yes will be yes, and no will be no, just as Christ commands, not
as some extrinsic arbitrary rule, but as a revelation of the secret truth of God.
From this judgment comes one of two outcomes, the result of God’s affirma-
tive truthful appraisal, or of God’s negative truthful appraisal. What has come
 The Dread Judge 103

about from human free will will either be in accordance with God’s creative
will, or it will not. If it is, then it may be taken up, drawn from the realm of
obedience into the realm of participation. If it is not, then perhaps it will be
stripped even of its very existence. But if not, if some existence remains to
that which God rejects, the result is most certainly Hell. To this, we now turn.

NOTES

1. Amos 5:18–20.
2. Daniel 7:9–12.
3. Revelation 20:11–15.
4. 2 Thessalonians 1:6–12.
5. Brian Daley 220.
6. See Daley 73.
7. Peter Lombard, The Sentences, IV.XLIII.7.
8. Ibid., IV.XLVI.2.2.
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 96.
10. Gregory Palamas, “Homily on Christ’s Second Coming,” 2.
11. George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, Series I,II,III in one Volume
(Whitehorn: Johannesen, 2011).
12. I propose something along these lines in “The Call to Endless Adventure:
The Dynamic Unending Ascent into God and Virtual Worlds,” Dialog, October
2019; 1–9.
13. Frizt Leiber, “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, April, 1970.
14. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (London: George Allen & Unwin,
1955).
15. Tolkien, The Two Towers (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1954), 119.
16. Firefly, “Ariel,” Directed By Allen Kroeker, Written By Jose Molina,
November 15, 2002.
17. MT 25:41–45.
18. Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame, 2019.
19. Ryan Coogler, Black Panther, 2018.
20. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, Spider-Man: Into The
Spider-Verse, 2018.
21. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Pottermore
Publishing, Kindle Edition), 290.
22. I am here specifically not including the category of eschatological judgment
that exists within the framework of Liberation Theology except insofar as it fits
within category 3, the church’s sharing in the judgment of God upon evil in the con-
temporary age. The rejection of traditional eschatological categories by Liberation
Theology in general is not an enrichment of theological engagement.
23. Genesis 1:31.
24. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2001), 61.
 Chapter 6

Hell

INTRODUCTION

Few elements of Christian eschatology have received as elaborate or as influ-

ential expression in popular culture as the doctrine of Hell. With the elaborate
and often dramatically ironic depictions of the torments of those consigned
forever to endless suffering, Dante Alighieri sparked the imaginations of
countless thousands in Western culture. It is this picture of torment in the
Inferno that has largely set the standard for future popular presentations of
everlasting punishment.
But torment, especially the endless variety, is not the primary biblical
picture of God’s wrath against God’s enemies. Instead, the story of eschato-
logical fire begins in a valley in the eighth century BCE, with the sacrifices
of children to foreign gods. This chapter will consider those origins and how
the picture of eschatological fire was both reinforced and disrupted by the
man Jesus. It will then consider how those images of final punishment have
gone in two largely different directions, and how Hell has been received in
popular culture.

THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

In the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, the prophet Jeremiah prophesied
against the kings of Judah, and against their practice of sacrificing children
with fire at Topheth to other gods.

For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have
set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And

105
106 Chapter 6

they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son
of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not
command, nor did it come into my mind.1

In vengeance, God declares that the valley of the Sons of Hinnom will be
made a place of slaughter and destruction.

Because the people have forsaken me, and have profaned this place by making
offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their ancestors nor the kings
of Judah have known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of
the innocent, and gone on building the high places of Baal to burn their children
in the fire as burnt-offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor
did it enter my mind; therefore the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when
this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the valley of the son of Hinnom,
but the valley of Slaughter. And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah
and Jerusalem, and will make them fall by the sword before their enemies, and
by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food
to the birds of the air and to the wild animals of the earth. And I will make this
city a horror, a thing to be hissed at; everyone who passes by it will be horrified
and will hiss because of all its disasters.2

The same valley is referenced in Jeremiah 31:40 as the valley of dead bod-
ies and ashes. The fire connection here is plain. The kings of Judah and the
people of Judah have offered their children up with fire, and fire will be their
punishment.
In his work The Geography of Hell in the Teaching of Jesus,3 Kim
Papaioannou traces the development of the idea of the valley of slaughter
through the period between Jeremiah and Jesus. The name of the valley
drops out in the intervening centuries, but the idea of a valley in which God
will destroy God’s enemies at the end of the age remains and can be seen in
numerous other works.4The association with the destruction of God’s enemies
at the end of the age with the valley of the sons of Hinnom is revived by Jesus
in the first century.5 The words of Jesus as preserved in the gospels share the
essential picture of the destruction of God’s enemies in a consuming fire. It
is not a picture of endless torment, but instead of a fire that eradicates those
who oppose God. Jesus emphasizes the ability of Gehena to destroy: “Do not
fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can
destroy both soul and body in Hell (Gehena).”6 There is no single picture of
an afterlife in the New Testament.7 It is, however, drawing on the general
eschatological framework that we have discussed throughout this book.
Between a person’s death and the resurrection, there was largely nothing.
While there may have been some beginning ideas of spiritual intermediate
 Hell 107

places, overall, death was the end for the person until resurrection. After
resurrection, the enemies of God would be destroyed by a final conflagration.
However, as has been repeatedly noted, the death and Resurrection of Jesus
threw the eschatological picture, rough and ready as it was, into disarray. The
destruction of the enemies of God at the end of this age, and at the beginning
of the next, which was to follow after the appearance of the Son of Man in
the sky, had to be reinterpreted.

RESITUATING THE ESCHATOLOGICAL FIRE

We can observe two possible routes that the first-century Christian communi-
ties took to reinterpret the coming fire that will destroy God’s enemies. The
first path was the path of least resistance. This path understood Jesus as the
coming Son of Man who could come and do precisely what the Son of Man
was meant to: destroy the enemies of God with fire. This option can be seen
in Matthew 25, 2 Thessalonians, and in the book of Revelation. In these pic-
tures, Jesus simply fulfills the role of the Son of Man as seen in the book of
Daniel, though with some character tweaks.
The other route is to reinterpret the eschatological fire in light of Jesus. We
can see traces of this in Pentecost, where the fire of the new age comes and
gives the church its gifts. But, the earliest, and most mysterious, is the refer-
ence in 1 Corinthians 3.

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood,
hay, straw—the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will
disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort
of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the
builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss;
the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.8

An eschatological fire is presented here, not as destroying the enemies of

God, but the worthless works of those who have labored.
What is particularly interesting about the most egregious examples of
the old model being imported into the new eschatological situation, 2
Thessalonians and Revelation, is their focus on the sufferings of the martyrs
of Christ. We can see in both works the desire for God to take vengeance on
those who have persecuted the church.
Indeed, as such a context is lacking in Matthew 25, one might argue, as
have many universalists, that the punishment seen in Matthew 25 is ambiguous
enough that it is unclear if it is the old model of the destruction of God’s ene-
mies, or if the Pauline influence has given a new meaning to “Kolassis Aionios.”
108 Chapter 6

ESCHATOLOGICAL FIRE IN CHURCH TRADITION

In any case, both ideas, the destruction of God’s enemies and the purifying
fire, made their way into the Christian imagination. The history of both can
be traced through the earliest Christian texts. But a significant milestone is
reached with the writings of Tertullian. First, Tertullian’s writing in Latin
is one of the establishing foundations of the Roman misunderstanding of
the Hebraic two-age structure of reality. As I have mentioned earlier in this
book, the Jewish idea of the day of the LORD was that the current age and
order would end, and a new age, or “the age” would be initiated. This struc-
ture of age following age is lost in the Latin tradition in which the Greek
“aionios,” which represents the age structure, is replaced with the concept
of eternity. It is true that the endless punishment of God’s enemies is not
foreign to the New Testament, especially in Revelation, however, the lin-
guistic and cultural change from the two-age Semitic cosmology represented
in the Greek NT, to the time-eternity cosmology seen in Latin, is a radical
change.
The second element of Tertullian’s writing on Hell, especially seen in the
last chapter of his work “The Spectacles,” is the need for divine vengeance
against the enemies of God. Hell here functions as the tool for divine wrath
against the torment and martyring of Christians. Tertullian longs to see the
destruction of the enemies of the Church, and he anticipates that it will be a
spectacle of such intense joy that few things could compare. He even desires,
through his imagination, to participate in that vision in the present.
In opposition to the idea of Hell as vengeance is Origen’s understanding
that the fires of Hell are those that purify the wicked and reclaim them for
God. This leads to Origen’s famous universalism, a trait he shared with the
apostle Paul in Romans 10.
The long history of the development of these two ideas is beyond the scope
of this work, but it is worth saying that the idea of Hell as purifying fire was
largely absent from the church for approximately a millennium. After the
Protestant Reformations, however, the idea returned, and has been gaining in
acceptance ever since. That Hell might be a tool of salvation, indeed, much
as Origen described it, will be seen below as presented in popular culture.
In the Medieval period, Augustine’s picture of Hell rules the day. It is
Augustine’s Enchridion that seems to be the main text used by scholastic
scholars like Peter Lombard in the West. Lombard draws on Augustine to
insist that the damned will have all of their deformities when they rise, that
their bodies will not be consumed by the fire, that demons are punished with
a physical fire despite being spirits, Hell, as such, does not seem to have
received much special attention during the Protestant Reformations. As
Tarald Rasmuss notes,
 Hell 109

Hell is not an important theme in Reformation theology; at least it is not the first
line topic of theological debate during the Reformation. The existence of Hell as
part of the topography of the other world was hardly questioned by anyone, and
at a first glance, the reformers of the sixteenth century did not seem to change
very much in this part of theology.9

However, Purgatory was an issue of debate and with Purgatory removed

from the protestant view, Hell took on a new or “restored” role in theology.
Through this rearrangement of the topography of life after death, Hell gained
a new importance—though not in the sense that it became a central topic in
Reformation theology and preaching. Sin is a much more fundamental concept
than Hell as a possible consequence of sin, and the main focus is on salvation
from sin, not on the threats of Hell.10 In modern Christianity, the early church
division over the presence of Hell has reappeared. In the twentieth century, Karl
Barth’s nearly universalist theology (reserving a space for God’s sovereignty)
stood against traditional formulations of Hell. Another strain of universalism
entered Christian thought and popular culture through the immensely popular
and then-nearly entirely forgotten works of George MacDonald. MacDonald’s
theology and imagination returned with the rise of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien,
and Madeline L’Engle. These strains of universalism have marched forward,
drawing on the same observations that can be found in Origen.
Set against these strains are both the traditionalist view of Hell, represented
by Augustine and Aquinas, and reiterated by many in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, such as Ralph Martin11 in his response to what he sees
as a rise of universalism in the Catholic Church. And, far less represented,
is the position of Annihilationism suggested as a possibility by both Pope
Francis in a private interview,12 and by Paul Griffiths.13 Indeed, the positions
across the history of the church have scarcely changed on Hell: there either
is a Hell or not, that Hell is either permanent or not. If there is a Hell, its
pains are the result of our sin. The arguments for or against Hell relentlessly
revolve around the questions of how to interpret passages in scripture, and
how one understands the divine aspects of perfect Love and Justice. How one
prioritizes or synthesizes these two attributes of God says much about where
one will fall within a debate that is nearly 2 millennia long. And while these
questions obsess saints, theologians, and biblical scholars, they generally do
not make their way into popular representations of Hell.

HELL IN POPULAR CULTURE

Hell, as a place either of endless punishment or as a place of spiritual cleans-

ing is a perhaps endlessly fruitful resource for imaginative writers. One
110 Chapter 6

need only consider the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch to see, in cameo, the
strange variety of both torment and depravity that we might imagine waits
for those in Hell.
One essential element of the popular depiction of Hell is the addition of the
idea that Hell is more like an earthly torture chamber or demented prison than
it is a world awash in divine love which results in the torment of wicked souls
that cannot stand divine goodness. Such a torture chamber or prison requires
a detachment of tormentors or guards to carry out the endless sufferings of
their charges. And these roles are, of course, filled by demons.
It is the role of the demon in Hell that lends to Hell the appeal of much of
its popular depictions. Indeed, both Dante and Milton draw the reader’s atten-
tion to the fallen angels who dwell in the infernal realms. In contemporary
media, it is the devil, that lord of Hell, and his under-devils, that provide the
greatest fodder for the imaginative writer.
Further, Hell may be also a matter of humorous reflection. There is cer-
tainly something of the satire in some of Dante’s depictions of the damned.
Given these three facets of Hellish expression, I will consider Hell’s treatment
in popular culture under three main categories: Hell as the home of demons,
Hell as a serious concern for the afterlife, and Hell as the subject of humor.

Hell as the Home of Demons

In Appendix IV of the outer planes in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
Player’s Guide,14 there are seven realms associated with evil. They are
divided by the famous cross-alignment system of Good, Neutral, Evil, and
Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic. Thus, there are lawful evil realms, like Acheron
and Gehenna, and chaotic evil planes like Pandemonium and Tarterus (sic).
The epitome of lawful evil, however, is the realm of the Nine Hells, also
known as Baator, and the crown of chaotic evil are the 666 layers of the realm
of the Abyss.
In the Dungeons & Dragons system, devils, which live in Baator, are law-
ful evil creatures, while demons are chaotic neutral beings. Each of these
powers plays a different role and interacts with the rules of the game in
different ways. Their roles, as well, have changed over the years. Recently,
in September 2019, Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Dungeons &
Dragons, released a new adventure for beginner players that takes them into
the first of the nine realms of Baator, Avernus. The adventure, aptly titled
Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus,15 features enemies for players to battle
such as Hellwasps, cultists, and a Baphomet.
Similarly, in the video game series Diablo16 by Blizzard Entertainment,
players descend through the different layers of the nether realms called
The Burning Hells in order to reach one of the three Prime Evils at the
 Hell 111

bottom, Diablo. The series that has, as of the writing of this book, spanned
three main games has explored the other two Prime Evils, Mephisto and
Baal. Players combat demonic powers as they descend through the Burning
Hells in order to collect money, experience, and better equipment. In many
ways, Diablo is the video game expression of a Dungeons & Dragons
adventure that descends into Baator. Demon bosses are provided as tests
of one’s skill, experience level, and equipment throughout the explora-
tion of the realms of Hell. Unlike Dante in his famous poem, characters
are capable of returning to a realm of safety for a time to sell their spoils,
upgrade some of their equipment, and prepare for another run at the darkness
below.
The landscape of Hell as a place for game players to combat demonic pow-
ers has clearly drawn much from the Italian poet. However, none so much as
the strikingly titled Dante’s Inferno.17 In this game, players play a fictional-
ized warrior version of Dante Alighieri as he descends through the levels of
Hell, doing battle with diabolical enemies. Dante, a knight of the crusades,
is led by the ghost of Virgil down into the depths in order to rescue Beatrice
from Satan. One of the more controversial elements of the game is that it
allows players to specialize either in holy or unholy powers. Experience for
these powers is obtained by either punishing/dismembering damned figures
found in Hell, or by absolving them of their sins.
As a final example from video games, the popular series Doom18 presents
Hell as a dimension which human beings have accidentally accessed through
attempting to use teleportation technology. A doorway is opened to the
demonic realm and demons pour out into our dimension. The player, control-
ling the figure known as the Doom Marine, combats the demons of Hell as
they spread out over the world. Invariably, in each of the games, the Doom
Marine then takes the fight through a portal and enters Hell to battle demonic
powers on their own turf. Eventually the Doom Marine stems the tide of evil
powers and returns home again.
In each of these gaming experiences, Hell functions as a kind of combat
playground. It is, perhaps, the perfect field for battle against forces that raise
absolutely no ethical quandary. Despite reactionary responses in the 1980s
and 1990s, who could object to fighting off demons? Indeed, in the hierarchy
of video game enemies that are relatively safe to kill (zombies, robots, Nazis,
and demons), demons likely top the list as ethically non-problematic.
Demons and devils also allow artists to let their imaginations run wild, to
draw from the rich tapestries of demonic representations from across cul-
tures, and to let grotesquery flourish without consequence. Further, there are
no rules when it comes to these Hellish foes. We can kill them and they can
come back, split into three, or damage our souls as they disappear. For all of
these reasons and more, it’s no wonder that Hell is a favorite battlefield for
112 Chapter 6

gamers who enjoy pitting themselves like Gandalf against fire demons of the
ancient world.

Hell as Serious Concern for the Afterlife

There aren’t many serious popular-culture examinations of Hell as a serious
concern for the afterlife. Hell is often merely seen as a punishment for the
truly wicked according to society’s standards, and little thought is given to
the question of real subjective experience of final punishment. Among the
few genuine contemplations of Hell in popular culture is the episode “A
Nice Place to Visit”19 from The Twilight Zone. In the episode, a thief and
general bad-guy, Rocky, is shot by police and comes to a place where his
every whim is immediately met. He assumes right away that he’s somehow
made it to Heaven, and the idea perplexes him. However, as the episode
develops, Rocky finds himself endlessly bored by always getting what he
wants immediately. By the end of the episode, Rocky is told by Pip, a figure
he believed to be his guardian angel, that he’s not in Heaven at all, but in “the
other place.”
Like many depictions of Hell that take final punishment seriously, The
Twilight Zone’s story is ultimately about human nature. Can our natures be sat-
isfied by the immediate gratification of our desires? Isn’t it struggle that makes
us noble? Is, therefore, the old picture of Heaven in popular imagination really
a lie? What does real justice look like for both a good and a bad person?
Another tale that takes this question seriously is Richard Matheson’s What
Dreams May Come?20 In Matheson’s imaginative exploration of Heaven and
Hell, he posits that both realities are constructions of the human psyche, and
thus natural outcomes to particular choices. The protagonist of the novel,
Chris, dies from injuries received in a car accident. He goes to “Summerland,”
a kind of psychic manifestation of Heaven. His wife, Ann, however, dies of
suicide and is consigned to the “lower realms” or “Hell” for a period of time.
This is seen as the natural outcome of her choices, not an extrinsic punish-
ment. Chris, with the help of his cousin Albert, travels down into the lower
realms in an attempt to save Ann. After several failed attempts to rouse her
from the dark and solitary depression that she finds herself in, Chris decides
that he will stay with her. As he begins to fade into the darkness of the lower
realm, she is roused and rescued from her own Hell.
Matheson’s depiction of Hell as a natural consequence of human actions
is not buoyed by much of a theological structure. More briefly, though more
robustly, is C.S. Lewis’ depiction of Hell in The Great Divorce.21 Here Hell
is understood as a combination of divine punishment and natural outcome, for
how should it be that the divine intention should be divorced from the natural
laws that God has made? Indeed, those consigned to Hell are moving farther
 Hell 113

from the natural laws of creation, falling back almost into nonexistence. They
are thin, ghostlike entities that have identified with their vices, leaving behind
the question as to whether or not there are people left at all, or just their grum-
bling echoes. More will be said about Lewis’ vision below.

Hell as the Subject of Humor

About as far from the serious reflection of Matheson and Lewis is the far
more common use of Hell as a joke in fiction. In the Discworld series, Hell
is explored by Terry Pratchett in his novel Eric.22 Here, Hell has been reorga-
nized based on a kind of boredom bureaucracy. People in Hell are subjected
to watching other people’s vacation pictures. A similar send-up of Hell is
seen in The Simpsons Episode “Treehouse of Horror IV” when Homer sells
his soul to Satan and then goes to Hell. There he is punished in a manner
similar to those in Dante’s poem, being fed every doughnut in the world.23
Another example is the memorable and humorous depiction of Hitler in Hell
in the movie Little Nicky.24 Somewhat more elaborately Hell was presented
as a place of tongue-in-cheek punishments following Dante’s model in the
Lucasarts game Afterlife.25 The city-building mode of SimCity was applied
with good humor to both a heavenly and Hellish afterlife. Players created
places for souls to enjoy either rewards or suffer punishments based on the
kinds of sins and belief systems that were prevalent on earth at any given
moment. The seven deadly sins and the seven cardinal virtues each demanded
corresponding types of amusement-park-style experiences. The goal of the
game was to balance pleasures and punishments using hints given by an angel
and demon, each advising the character about the make-up of their projects.

Two Extended Views of Hell: The Good Place and C.S. Lewis
A fascinating exception to the trend of ignoring Hell as an actual place of
punishment for characters in prolonged stories, is the television series The
Good Place. The Good Place revels in discussing the philosophy of good,
evil, and justice as well as the question of how human beings might be cre-
atively punished.
Focusing on six main characters, the series begins with the pretense that
four human beings have been sent to a heavenly realm. They are inundated
with material pleasures, as well as other people that are designated to be
their soulmates. During the first season it is revealed that the main character,
Eleanor, has been sent to the good place by mistake. Another person with
the same name birthday and death date was supposed to take her place, and
Eleanor, incredibly selfish, vapid, and at times grotesque in her unethical
behavior, has received an everlasting reward by mistake. Her soul mate,
114 Chapter 6

an ethics professor who was so afraid of making choices that he did deeply
unethical things in life, does not seem to be a good match. As well, the couple
that they make friends with are also inappropriately placed in the good place
and deeply unequally matched. All of this comes to a head at the end of
the first season in the reveal that, in fact, their colorful, brightly lit, frozen
yogurt providing environment is not the good place at all. Instead this seem-
ing Heaven is a Hell designed by Michael, an intrepid architect demon who
thought that he could get human beings to torture themselves, a job usually
reserved for demons. However, instead of creating an ingenious torture para-
dise, he finds that he has facilitated his charges into become better humans. In
fact, he has also, in the process, become a better being. This presents deeply
problematic situation for him and his bosses, the lowerarchy of Hell, as C.S.
Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters.
The second season finds Michael trying and failing repeatedly to reset
Hell for the characters who unendingly discover that they are not in the good
place. This leads to despair for Michael, a demon, which eventually turns into
a burgeoning morality and hope.
The series continues to evolve its premise, but the main point here is
the depiction of Hell in The Good Place is twofold. In the first place it is a
send-up of contemporary culture, as many of the standard material goods
that human beings experience in our present culture exist in the good place
fabricated by Michael. Endless frozen yogurt stands and other fad food and
dessert places that people visit as part of their cultural virtue-signaling are
standards for Hell. As well, in Hell proper, which is visited for the first time
in season 2, many liberal social nit-picks are present as damnable offenses.
Depictions of demons harp on these social contemporary comments, such as
a demon telling a woman to smile more in season 1.
Second, the show addresses the concept of Hell with regard to the question
of genuine human goodness. What does it mean to waste a human life? What
does it mean to harbor resentment at others or to be so insanely self-centered
and unreflective that one has genuinely destroyed one’s own goodness?
Can a person study the nature of good and evil all one’s life and never once
participate in it, never once making a choice that would save another person
because they are so afraid of all the possible consequences? Are such things
damnable? If so, are the people possibly redeemable? The evil depicted
among the main characters of the show is often small, mundane, boring evil.
Again, C.S. Lewis’ observation that the evil of the twentieth century took
place, for the most part, in boardrooms, and was enacted by men with clean
shirts and trimmed fingernails, is apt.26 It is the banality of evil that The Good
Place considers and condemns. But, it also proposes that such banal evil can
be cured. Indeed, there is much of Origen in The Good Place, for even the
demons might be made better and healed of their evil.
 Hell 115

The other depiction of Hell that I will here focus on is that given in the
popular fiction of C.S. Lewis. Hell is depicted to some degree in at least three
of Lewis’ works of fiction, with minor references given in at least two more.
The main references to Hell in Lewis’ fiction are in The Last Battle,27 The
Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters. The allusions to Hell can be found
in the space trilogy in Perelandra28 and That Hideous Strength.29 One might
argue that Lewis’ work ’Till We Have Faces30 is a meditation on Hell, though
I believe that it is fundamentally a meditation on Purgatory and Heaven.
In The Last Battle, the last book in the Narnia series, Aslan judges the
world in the process of its recreation. Among those judged are a group of
dwarves who find themselves, not in the glorious, renewed beauty of Narnia,
but in a dark enclosure. The enclosure is not visible to anyone else and seems
to be an illusion created by their own greed. It may be that they will come
out of their cave eventually, though none can be sure in this new Narnia.
They are bidden to come out, but they will not. The enclosure isn’t real and
they might leave it at any time, turning to see the glory of the new creation.
But while they are turned in on themselves, the new beauty is hidden from
them.
The idea of Hell that is not particularly real and is something of a state of
mind is expressed far more fully in the work The Great Divorce. In this tour
of Hell and Heaven, Hell is as close to unreality as possible. Lewis here dem-
onstrates his Platonism in his understanding of the hierarchy of reality. The
most real thing is God, and Heaven is a participation in that reality. Our world
as it exists now is the “Shadowlands,” a reference made in The Last Battle
to Plato’s myth of the cave. But even less real than shadows is the world
of Hell.
In Hell, one can have anything that one wants as long as one thinks of it,
similar to The Twilight Zone episode mentioned above. The quality isn’t very
good, the food doesn’t actually satisfy, and imaginary buildings don’t actu-
ally keep rain out. But there is some sense, an illusion of safety that people in
Hell greatly desire. Lewis’ characters make it very clear that there is some-
thing to fear in the darkness, especially with the final coming of night. There
are hungry things in the darkness we will learn from Lewis’ other works, The
Screwtape Letters and “Screwtape Proposes a Toast.”
Lewis imagines that those who live in Hell dwell upon their own pride and
the wrongs that have been done to them. They are most concerned with other
people’s responsibility for their damnation. All of this is very tiny, it exists
like the cave from The Last Battle, within the context of Heaven. But it’s so
infinitesimally small that it has barely any existence whatever compared to
Heaven. Indeed, the suffering of Hell is both quantitatively and qualitatively
different than the joy of Heaven. George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis’ guide in
Heaven, comments on the comparison.
116 Chapter 6

And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies and itchings that it contains, if
rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment
of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be
registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
If all Hell’s miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird
on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop
of ink had been dropped into that Great Ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific
itself is only a molecule.31

Complimentary to this picture is C.S. Lewis’ description of Hell in

Perelandra, in which a person’s identity slips away under the surface of
reality. It is a picture of madness; a depiction of what it means to be cut off
from reason and the Logos that orders the universe and gives it meaning.
Lewis’ understanding of Hell resonates with the picture of Hades as seen in
The Odyssey when Professor Weston, who has been possessed by a Satanic
spirit, describes the darkness under the surface of reality while he and Elwin
Ransom ride sea creatures across an open fresh-water sea on the planet
Venus. Hell is the disintegration of the mind, a great distancing from reason
itself. In other words, it is the epistemological and rational expression of the
ontological reflection in The Great Divorce.32
In the Screwtape writings, which focus on the professional lives of demons,
Hell is seen as a kind of hierarchical business organization what is held together
by greed and fear. Lewis believed that it could never be as Milton thought, that
“devil with devil damned firm concord holds.”33 Instead, the demonic are bound
simply by desire and fear. This is the opposite of Lewis’ understanding of Heaven
where the people love each other for their own sake and not for what they can do
for each other. In other words, Heaven’s love is disinterested in the sense that no
one is actually needed by anyone else for their own purposes, everyone is simply
loved for who they are. In Hell, each demon wishes to consume all other demons,
but does not because they are not strong enough. They adhere to a strict protocol
that protects them to some degree from stronger demons and limits consumption
of weaker demons. It is an incredibly skeptical understanding of society, but one
that perhaps rings true where Hell obtains in our own world.
One must ask, in a truly nihilistic world, what would keep the strong from
simply killing the weaker and taking what they want? It would not be moral-
ity, but only the desires and decrees of those even stronger. In such a society
the stronger would likely look at the weaker and consider what use they are.
If they are of no use, they might be removed at the whim of the strong. This
is Lewis’ picture of Hell: a society of domination, strength, and consump-
tion. The devils in Hell long to feed on the souls of the damned and prepare
them on earth like a succulent meal. But so too do the demons feed on other
demons when they prove to be no longer useful. It is only with a perfect
 Hell 117

track record of providing food for the other demons that one remains off the
infernal menu.
Lewis’ idea, whether drawn directly from him or from other sources, is
present in some depictions of Hell. The Good Place mentioned above has
some sense of this antagonistic hierarchy. As well, recently, the podcast “Me,
My demon, and I,” a humorous depiction of possession, also demonstrates a
kind of antagonistic relationship between demons and the demons desire to
feed off of the suffering of human souls.
When considering Lewis’ and The Good Place’s pictures of Hell there
are striking similarities. Both Lewis and The Good Place understand Hell
as a kind of feeding ground for devils. Damned souls are handed over to
demons for their personal uses; human beings have become purely objects for
demonic use. Their value as persons is stripped entirely away. For a popular
show like The Good Place this is not surprising, but for Lewis to understand
God in the terms of perfect love, such a state of affairs seems very difficult.
That souls should not merely reject Heaven, but that they should be subject
to such degradation by other identities, seems out of step with Lewis’ under-
standing of reality.

HELL CONSIDERED

In popular culture, the central idea of Hell has largely been ejected for its
trappings. That there should be a state of affairs for human beings that con-
forms them to a universal, objective justice after their death, either as purely
punitive or both punitive and restorative, has largely been left out. Instead,
the accidents of Hell have become a useful trope in games, movies, and com-
ics. Hell has far less to do in popular culture with questions of justice, God,
humanity, and moral evil, and much more to do with providing a location for
nonhuman villains to call home.
Gone from nearly all of the popular representations of Hell is the possibil-
ity, seen in the thought of Origen, George MacDonald, C.S. Lewis, and in
Richard Mattheson’s work, that Hell might function to reform a soul lost to
moral evil. Perhaps in video games, Dante’s Inferno is unique in this manner,
allowing souls to be absolved of their sin despite being already confined to
the world of Hell.
As well, in popular culture, the ancient distinctions between realms of
punishment are both blurred and redefined. As Papaioannou observes, Hades,
Gehenna, Tartarus, and the Abyss all exist as distinct places in the religious
imaginations of the first century. These realms have been distinguished as
well in games like Dungeons & Dragons, but not in a way that preserves their
original cultural meanings.
118 Chapter 6

One place where the question of justice does seem to enter into popular
expression of Hell is the idea that Hell fashions punishments that are particu-
larly appropriate to specific sins. This idea has a strong resonance with even
the earliest ideas of eschatological punishment. In the seventh century BC,
we find prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah condemning the destruction of children
in the valley of the sons of Hinnom. Where children were offered in fire to
foreign gods, the prophets declare that God will destroy those who have made
themselves the enemies of God. The tool of their destruction will be fire.
God, in this way, fights fire with fire. And, while the valley of fire remains
in the eschatological landscape of Jewish imagination after the exile, and the
particular name of the Valley of Hinnom is revitalized by Jesus (Gehenna) we
don’t see this idea of ironic punishment in the teachings of Jesus. Jesus does
not predict the destruction of the enemies of God in particular ways accord-
ing to their individual sins. In fact, we see almost nothing of this in the New
Testament. However, from the second century onward with both Tertullian
and Origen, we find the idea that punishment conforms to the nature of the
sin. For Tertullian there is a dramatic irony involved in the punishment of
sins as a public spectacle. The people have created public spectacles which
are offensive to God, and they have made spectacles out of Christians and
Christ. So, at the end of time they shall all be made a spectacle of torment
for the Children of God to enjoy.34 Less viciously, Origen proposes that the
punishment of a sinful soul involves the conforming of its body to the nature
in which it must learn virtue. Souls that are weighed down by particular
kinds of sins are given weighty heavy bodies.35 The soul must learn virtue
in this new context that reflects its weaknesses. Once again, we do not find
the particularly direct punishments of sins according to the specific nature of
those sins in Augustine, but we do find in Aquinas the insistence that if we
have been virtuous or wicked in the body we must be rewarded or punished
in the body.36 The thought does not originate with Aquinas, but it is as close
as it seems as he comes to this idea of appropriateness of the punishment
to the sin. The most influential version of this, of course, is Dante. Dante
systematized has this appropriateness in such a way that Western culture has
never fully been without the idea. We see it in The Simpsons, in C.S. Lewis,
in the video game Afterlife, and in The Good Place. We even see it in the
comments of Shepherd Book in Firefly when he tells Malcolm Reynolds
that there is a special Hell reserved for people who take advantage of young
women.
As well, in Richard Matheson’s What Dreams May Come we see the
punishment of the damned in their particularity in a way that resonates with
Origen’s idea of damnation. The punishment of suicide is the result of sui-
cide. It is intrinsic to the sin itself and not an extrinsically imposed wrath.
Origen, drawing on a line from Isaiah,37 viewed our punishment in Hell as
 Hell 119

primarily the overflowing of our conscience against our wickedness. We

kindle our own fires of sorrow. For Matheson, there is a natural outcome of
certain actions that produce certain kinds of afterlives. However, Origen’s
model is superior in that he places it against a strong objective external reality
which is created by God around a person in order to educate them and elevate
them and goodness. Matheson’s afterlives are purely created by the minds of
the people within them. They are a projection of internal realities. In that way,
they are less appropriately understood as punishments or rewards and more
simple natural processes.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps the most concerning element of Hell in both Christian theology and
popular culture is that it can easily become the justification for our prejudices
and hatreds. By claiming that God will finally consign any human persons,
or persons of any kind, into everlasting torment justifies our hatred of such
persons. They are ultimately objects of wrath, destined to give God glory
only in their destruction, as Jonathan Edwards believed. Such treatment of
human persons by God allows us to consign such people to the “dustbin of
history” and to decline the divine challenge to love even our enemies. Why
love someone if they are merely rubbish to be burned at the end of the age?
The great danger of Hell in popular culture is that it canonizes our particular
hatreds, nit-picks, and boogiemen.
It is far safer, and far more challenging, to consider those we would con-
sign to the outer darkness as the beloved of God. We need not think that evil
is not evil, but that God is greater than all human evils, not merely as one
person is stronger than another, to wrestle them down in the end, but more
fundamentally real than all evil. If this is the case, then God may overcome
all evil in the end, and Hell as a place for persons may be no more. Or, at the
very least, we must consider the possibility that Hell will not come for those
we have consigned to that rubbish pile of history. It may be that for those
who we think worthless, something far better will come when the Lord claims
them as belonging to His Father. And then, against all of our prejudices and
hatreds, we may find that that person has entered into the love between the
Three Persons of God, the very real world of Heaven.

NOTES

1. Jeremiah 7:30–31.
2. Jeremiah 19:4–8.
120 Chapter 6

3. Kim Papaioannou, Geography of Hell in the Teaching of Jesus: Gehena,

Hades, the Abyss, the Outer Darkness Where There Is Weeping and Gnashing of
Teeth (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2013).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Matthew 10:28.
7. The New Testament’s use of other terms, such as Tartarus, the Abyss, and
“those imprisoned,” which each have their own distinct meanings, was later conflated
and confused by early and influential Latin Church Fathers like Tertullian into a
single image of everlasting punishment. The transition from the Hebraic idea of two
ages, the current and the coming age, into the Latin “aeternas” created many misun-
derstandings and misinterpretations.
8. 1 Corinthians 3:12–15.
9. Tarald Rasmussen, “Hell Disarmed? The Function of Hell in Reformation
Spirituality,” Numen, Vol. 56 (2009), 366–384.
10. Ibid., 373.
11. Ralph Martin, Will Many Be Saved?: What Vatican II Actually Teaches and its
Implications for the New Evangelization (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012).
12. See, for example, https://www​.nytimes​.com​/2018​/03​/30​/world​/europe​/pope​
-francis​-Hell​-scalfari​.html
13. Paul Griffiths, Decreation: The Last Things of All Creatures (Waco, TX:
Baylor University Press, 2014). Griffiths also proposes the possibility of Universal
salvation.
14. Gary Gygax, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook (Random
House, 1980), 120.
15. Wizards of the Coast, Baldur’s Gate: Descent Into Avernus (Wizards of the
Coast, 2019).
16. Blizzard North, Diablo, Blizzard Entertainment, 1996, Blizzard North, Diablo
II, Blizzard Entertainment, 2000, and Blizzard Entertainment, Diablo III, Blizzard
Entertainment, 2012.
17. Visceral Games, Dante’s Inferno (Electronic Arts, 2010).
18. id Software, Doom, id Software, 1993, id Software, Doom II: Hell on Earth,
GT Interactive Software, 1994, id Software, Doom 3, Activision, 2004, and id
Software, Doom, Bethesda Softworks, 2016.
19. The Twilight Zone, “A Nice Place to Visit,” Season 1, Episode 28, Directed by
John Brahm, Written by Charles Beaumont.
20. Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1987).
21. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945).
22. Terry Pratchett, Eric (Gollancz, 1990).
23. The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror IV,” 1993.
24. Steven Brill, Little Nicky, 2000.
25. LucasArts, Afterlife (LucasArts, 1996).
26. C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Preface.
27. C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (London: The Bodley Head, 1956).
 Hell 121

28. C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (London: The Bodley Head, 1943).

29. C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (London: The Bodley Head, 1945).
30. C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1956).
31. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2001), 138.
32. Lewis does comment slightly on the epistemic breakdown of those in Hell in
The Great Divorce, but it isn’t a central focus of the work.
33. John Milton, Paradise Lost, 496.
34. Tertullian, The Spectacles.
35. Origen, On First Principles, II.10.
36. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, IV​.lxxix​.​12.
37. Isaiah 50:11.
 Chapter 7

Kingdom Come

INTRODUCTION

In a book on eschatology, one must distinguish between the hope of “heaven”

and the hope of the resurrection into the new creation. The popular under-
standing of Christian belief that has predominated since the Middle Ages has
been one that has found the original teaching of Christian hope, that of the
resurrection into a remade cosmos, generally superfluous under the assump-
tion that the fullness of heavenly reward will be doled out to the faithful
immediately after death. Or, barring the immediate reception of heavenly
bliss, at least after a period of purgation.
Indeed, the proclamation of immediate perfect beatitude by Pope Benedict
XII in 1336, in the document Benedictus Deus, essentially obviates the need
for the physical resurrection in all but the most academic terms. If one enjoys
the full blessed vision of God immediately at death, what possible good can
come from the restoration of the flesh?
Indeed, if there is no need of the resurrection of the flesh, then what call
is there for the remaking of the universe? And yet, many of the teachings of
Jesus, and indeed the hope of the New Testament and the early church, make
no sense if the ultimate goal of humanity is found in what might be boiled
down to an angelic nature for humans.1
This popular acceptance of the final disembodied heavenly state has led
to a popular imagination of the heavenly context for that state. Few are the
Christians who know that the hope of the church is the remaking of the uni-
verse and the resurrection of the body. Far fewer even are those who have
drawn on Christian concepts who have taken to heart the genuine anthropo-
logical commitments of the Christian doctrine of the new heavens and new
earth.

123
124 Chapter 7

THE ORIGINS OF HEAVEN

That the ancient Israelite religion held no hope of an afterlife is a generally

accepted truism. However, in light of the work done on the early worship of
the gods El and Yahweh as distinct figures in a Western Semitic context, it
is not entirely clear whether the beliefs of other similar cultures at the time
shed light on the afterlife beliefs of early polytheistic, and then-henotheistic
Israel.
What is certain is that by the fourth or third century BCE, a belief in a para-
disal world and resurrection of the flesh of some kind had entered the eschato-
logical imagination of some Jewish people.2 In the Book of the Watchers, as
we have it in 1 Enoch, the belief that the righteous dead will rise to a place of
glory is evidenced in 22:13. The affirmation is made in the context of Enoch’s
apocalyptic tour of unseen realities. He is shown by an angel, perhaps Uriel,
four hollows under a mountain. Two are for the wicked, one for the murdered,
and one for the righteous.
The origins of this belief are shrouded in mystery. As mentioned ear-
lier, there was a time when scholars believed that the hope of resurrection
appeared during the Jewish struggle against Seleucid oppression (167‒160
BC).3 A theological framework for the emergence of the belief was fairly eas-
ily sketched out: faithful Jewish people were being murdered for their adher-
ence to the Law of Moses. So, where is God’s justice? The older view saw
the origins of the concept as the solution to theodicy. However, Nickelsburg
has convincingly argued that the context of the passage from I Enoch comes
from more than a hundred years before, in a period of the region’s history that
we are not especially clear on.
This belief in the resurrection of the body is clearly attested in the book of
Daniel and in 2 Maccabees. It is this belief that at the end of the current evil
age, a new age will be established, and in that age the dead will be raised in
the flesh to new human life.
Such a belief testifies to the essentially corporeal nature of the human
being. It is a view that is in opposition to the Platonic ideas of human
identity which will permeate the church, eventually coming to the forefront
in the twelfth century with Thomas Aquinas’ concept of the soul as the
substantial form of the body. This view of human identity, rooted in the
spiritual instead of the corporeal, is already attested in some late antique
Jewish writings.
But for Christianity, the essential centrality of the resurrection of the body
is immovable. It is the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus which forms the
basis of all Christian hope. That Christ was raised in the flesh is understood as
the first fruits of the coming universal resurrection. Heaven, or the Kingdom
of Heaven, is to be experienced primarily on earth when it is made new.
 Kingdom Come 125

HEAVEN IN CHURCH TRADITION

In the patristic period, the two most dominant positions were those of Origen
on one side and Augustine on the other. Origen, heavily influenced by
Platonic thought, understood the resurrection as a kind of metempsychosis,
or a moving of the soul between bodies. It is in Origen’s On First Principles
that we find the idea that each body that a person receives is appropriate to
the nature to which they have attained. In Hell, the body is heavy, dark, and
immobile. On earth, it is appropriate to its current natural environment.4 In
the heavens, it will be a heavenly body, appropriate for the kind of subtle and
airy movement necessary for those climbs. Indeed, in the final Heaven, we
will be revealed to be pure spirit once again, for we shall be in the presence
of God. Indeed, we are revealed to have been there before, pure spirit that fell
from God’s presence, caught in the world of matter in order that we might
be reeducated.
Origin’s view of the preexistence of souls that all journey in lower realms
until they are all once again reunited with God, was condemned. Oddly,
though it was particularly this structural preexistence and universal reuniting
that was condemned, the church treated the ruling as if all universal salvation
claims were condemned. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that this is in
error.
Opposed to Origen is the tradition of St. Augustine. Augustine, drawing
arguments from predecessors like Athenagoras and Justin Martyr, held the
view that it will be precisely this body that rises on the last day, concerning
himself even with the restoration of each piece of matter, including hair and
fingernails, that had been lost to us in life. Augustine’s view was material-
centric, seeing our bodies, neither as changing patterns, nor as the material
structure accompanying a spiritual form, but as their particular physical
components.
Of the two, Augustine’s view ruled the Western Church, and reigned until
the twelfth century when Thomas Aquinas proposed a slight modification to
the Aristotelian hylomorphic view of form and matter. Aquinas argued that,
while most forms/souls dissipate the moment that the material they form
takes on another form, the human soul is different. It has its own kind of
substance, being a rational form. Aquinas argued that all other forms/souls
that bring about particular things in the world have no function of their own
that goes beyond the material function of the object. However, since human
rationality could not be attributed to the material world, the soul must have
this capacity on its own, and therefore does not dissipate the moment that it
is no longer associated with matter. In other words, the soul survives death.
Aquinas argued that it was the soul that guaranteed a continuity of identity
across death and resurrection and placed far less emphasis on the role of
126 Chapter 7

the material in the human body. Indeed, in the resurrected world itself, the
material elements of humanity function to almost no end at all except justice.
Humans sinned and did virtue in the flesh, and thus they should be punished
and rewarded in the flesh.
Before Thomas, however, in the medieval period, Peter Lombard considers
holds that there will be hierarchy in Heaven,5 that all people shall know the
same things about God, but know them in different ways,6 that there will be
differences in the amount of joy in Heaven,7 and that the blessedness of the
dead will be greater after the judgment than before it,8 a point which the Papal
bull, Benedictus Deus would contradict.9 The last question that Lombard con-
siders is whether or not the sight of the punishment of the wicked will dimin-
ish the glory of those in Heaven. His answer is that it will not, for Gregory
teaches on Luke that in Heaven we will lose our compassion for misery.10
During the Protestant Reformations, Heaven was not a matter of strong
debate, barring the idea of what happens before one goes to Heaven. As
the concept of Purgatory was considered non-biblical and, therefore, non-
Christian by many of the reformers, its inclusion in the heavenly process was
excised. In Purgatory’s place was the total transformation of the person at the
moment of death so that they would be fit for Heaven. The general teaching
of Justification by Faith alone and forensic justification pushed the union
of sanctification and justification apart. One might be justified before God
without yet being sanctified in this new view. Instead of a more dynamic rela-
tionship with God that the earlier Catholic and Orthodox structures allowed
for, now a person was merely declared in a right relationship with God that
depended, not on their own virtue, nor on their conformity to Christ’s virtue,
but solely on Christ’s.
This view was taken to its extreme in Reformed theology and its mainte-
nance of the TULIP principles. The concepts of Total Depravity, Unconditional
Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Preservation of the
Saints resulted in theologies like those found in Jonathan Edwards in the
modern period.
Edwards’ view of Heaven, and ultimately of humanity, is entirely instru-
mental. Human beings are to give God glory.11 If they will not give it volun-
tarily, they will give it in Hell. In Heaven, a person’s purpose is entirely to give
God glory. Those who give it are chosen from before all time and have no say
in the matter. Heaven, for Edwards, is not a sharing in the divine freedom of
God, a noble race of free creatures crowned with even greater noble glory by
sharing all the more in God’s freedom, as Augustine would have it, but simply
an instrument of God’s will, never to ascend past the realm of obedience.
Opposed to Edwards is George MacDonald, who saw Edwards’ theology
as diabolical. In MacDonald’s Heaven, all persons are free and, indeed, all
persons will eventually be present. Each person will be a prophet for the
 Kingdom Come 127

whole people, standing both for themselves and their God with whom they
have a special and hidden relationship. Heaven for MacDonald is an ever-
ascending glory into the personhood of God which God shares with the peo-
ple. Here MacDonald has far more in common with the Church Fathers, with
the exception of Tertullian, than Edwards. The Greek idea of Epektasis, in
which Heaven is an unending ascent into God, is present both in MacDonald
and his intellectual and imaginative pupil, C.S. Lewis.
More recently in the modern period, the question of the resurrection has
taken new turns. Proposals have been made that have addressed new ways of
seeing human identity. Ratzinger put forward the idea that our identities are
held in place by the permanence of the divine address to us.12 The question
has been asked as to how we should conceive of mental health in the resurrec-
tion, with current awareness and critique of different expressions of human
consciousness.13 John Polkinghorne has conceived Heaven as the remaking
of the cosmos such that all relationships are included.14

HEAVEN IN POPULAR CULTURE

Despite the theological concern for the restoration of the body, it has largely
been the view of Origen that has won the popular imagination. This view,
which is seen in Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso, is perhaps the easiest for
the human imagination to both communicate and grasp. While not the same
physical human body that has experienced an earthly life, humans are given
some kind of heavenly body that they use to do all purgative and heavenly
activities.
Certainly, the attempt to communicate an imaginative landscape that is
mediated by no sensual data would be very difficult for any author to accom-
plish with any great success. Indeed, Dante, one of the greatest geniuses of
Western literature, avoids the problem all together. Others, while not explic-
itly accepting the resurrection of the dead as required for a robust human
nature necessary for the reception of heavenly life, provide some manner of
physical manifestation in their presentations of Heaven, even if Heaven for
many authors is not rooted in the physical world.
In general, here, I will be focusing on presentations of Heaven that at least
use this stop-gap of presenting Heaven as a kind of physical place, even if it
is not within the biblical and patristic understanding that the world must be
remade for Heaven to obtain for humanity.
In video games we find an interesting expression of the concept of
Heaven in the game Fable 2.15 Before the main villain is defeated, the
player is presented with a scene reminiscent of the Elysian Fields. After a
long difficult journey, the hero returns to an idyllic moment on a farm with
128 Chapter 7

his sister where they play, once more, as children. It is a call-back to the
hero’s childhood, which the player plays early in the game. However, the
memory is far better than the reality., or you begin the game in poverty with
your sister, struggling to survive. Soon after, your sister is killed, her child-
hood cut short. In this paradisal scene, the game’s hero has been reunited
with her. The scene has a strong sense that in this place, at least, all tears
have been wiped away. But it is also fleeting and is not the final Heaven,
for there is still work to do.
What is especially interesting about Fable 2’s Heavenly scene is that it is
very much like the biblical concept of Heaven: It is the world that we knew
made perfect. The old lost things are restored to us and we have gone beyond
suffering into joy. But in Fable 2 it is only a foretaste, there is still a life to
live and more trouble to experience. There are more dangers to overcome.
Fable 2 shows how the concept of Heaven can be effectively applied within
a video game setting by evoking a good world, lost loved ones, and a peace-
ful scene in which there are good chores to perform. The problem, of course,
is that in Heaven there is no more struggle, or at least that is how we have
pictured it, because we associate struggle with sorrow. If sorrow goes, so
must struggle, and thus if we allow players to engage with Heaven, they will
become bored quickly.
But Fable 2 demonstrates the effectiveness of allowing players to enter
into that heavenly realm for a moment. Doing so allows the player to reex-
perience childhood as it should have been. Having experienced the hero’s
younger years with all of their tragedies, the idyllic version of “should have
been” allows the player to engage in a non-competitive area in order to evoke
strong emotion. Beyond the love, joy, and peace of reunion experienced in
this part of the game, there is a strong sense that it will end. The rest is not
permanent; the enemy still has to be defeated. But, while running through that
golden farm, it is hard not to think of and long for a future day when such
fields will be permanent.
A similar agrarian image of the heavenly world can be seen in the movie
Gladiator.16 Throughout the film, the image of a hand passing over and touch-
ing the tops of ripe grain is repeated. It is a vision that punctuates the story
and, until the end, it is unclear if this is a memory or a premonition. The
images culminate at the end when the hero finally dies and is found walking
through a field to reunite with his wife and child who were murdered. The
grain under his hand is the grain of a far-off country where they wait for
him. Once again, the earthly imagery is the most comforting. The idea that
the hero should enter into some realm of light and music is unfitting. Ridley
Scott understands in the film that we must be able to know those whom we
love, and that Heaven is a return to the good earth with good people to live
good human lives.
 Kingdom Come 129

Juxtaposed to the intense solidity of Heaven in Fable and Gladiator and

other presentations of earthly paradises, we have Richard Matheson’s depic-
tion of Summerland in What Dreams May Come.17 For Matheson, Heaven is
a pure construct of the mind. Both Heaven and the lower realms are created
by a kind of necessity that emerges from human consciousness. We make
our Heaven, Heaven does not make us. It is not, as in Dante, the transforma-
tion of the human being into the virtues which Heaven embodies. Instead it
is the shaping of a paradise old world as the corollary to a healthy human
consciousness. As we have seen in the chapter on Hell, the same is true there
as well. Matheson’s Heaven is entirely psychological projection. The inner
world manifests itself as an outer world. Heaven reflects the ordered interior,
but has no real substance of its own.
Depictions of Heaven can serve many purposes in popular culture. One
trope of using Heaven is to allow a character to enter paradise only to pull
them back out. In comic books, perhaps the most famous and controversial
choice to do this is with the character Barry Allen. In 1986, Barry Allen, the
Flash, ran the race of his life. A particle had been sent back in time by a fig-
ure known as the anti-monitor. That particle was sent to destroy the universe.
The Flash ran so fast that he chased the particle backward through time, but
in doing so he shed his material body and traveled through his own history
merging with the lightning bolt that originally gave him his powers. This act,
one of the most poetic and impactful deaths for a superhero in comics, was
explained later as Barry Allen entering into the Speed Force, a kind of trans-
cosmic energy that gives speedsters in the DC universe their powers. Entering
into the Speed Force is a kind of pantheistic kind of Heaven. When one
merges with the Speed Force, there is power, speed, life, and peace. Years
later, when he was needed, Barry re-emerged from the Speed Force in order
to help stop Darkseid. A kind of Heaven was offered to this character as a just
reward for his heroism and self-sacrifice. But, such a fate for a hero seems
unworthy of their heroism while there are still great dragons to slay. And so,
Barry returned from the realm of peace to the realm of combat.
Another comic book character to enter Heaven and then leave it due to
his sense of right and wrong is Marvel’s Nightcrawler. The character, both
a Catholic and the son of the devil, died and went to his heavenly afterlife.
However, the X-Men came to Heaven through a dimensional doorway due
to an impending attack on the heavenly realm. Nightcrawler chose to join
them and leave Heaven forever, knowing that he could never return. It is
perhaps this kind of story that demonstrates a basic dichotomy between how
Christianity fundamentally understands the concept of Heaven and how
popular culture has received it.
A twist on this fate was written for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At the end
of season 6 Buffy closes a gate into Hell by jumping into it. At the beginning
130 Chapter 7

of the next season, her friends assumed that she was in a hell dimension and
suffering terrible torments. Needing to save her from what they believed
was unending suffering, they brought her back using magic. Buffy returns,
but she is despondent and standoffish. Her friends, confused as to why she’s
acting this way, believe that she likely suffered great trauma in the hell
dimension and needs time to overcome the terrible experience. However,
contrary to their assumptions, Buffy actually was in a heavenly dimension
at peace. Her war was over; she could finally rest. Her strange behavior and
resentment resulted from being brought back into the war with evil. Unlike
Barry Allen or Nightcrawler, who were not done fighting, Buffy needed to
rest. The burden of heroism never rested easily on her shoulders. However,
after some time, she finally finds her footing and re-engages with the world
of the living.
One of the most prolonged visits to the heavenly realm in popular culture
can be found in the medium of video games in the last act of Diablo III18
by Blizzard Games. At the end of the popular action-RPG, players visit the
heavenly realm in order to foil the plans of demonic forces. Heaven is, for
Diablo III, merely Hell with a different paint-job. The world is overrun by
things to fight and kill. There is no sense that in this Heaven there is anything
particularly holy, peaceful, or ultimately stronger or deeper than those things
which are in Hell. Instead, there is only a sense that the angelic host is as
culpable for the waste that has been laid by their holy wars as the hordes of
Hell. A similar picture of the angel/demon tension and shared guilt for war
can be seen in Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens19 and in the
1995 movie The Prophecy.20 As such, Diablo III presents Heaven as merely
one more place, one more location that is embroiled in the wars of reality
instead of that state of existence which stands outside of the terrible mess of
conflict and suffering.

Two Heavens: Tolkien and Lewis

The idea of Heaven as understood by Christianity is perhaps best seen in
popular culture in the inestimably influential works by Tolkien including
The Lord of The Rings and The Silmarillioin. In the Silmarillion, before the
cosmos was made, the angelic powers sang the whole history of the world
into being, and then they descended into the world to participate in their co-
creation. The chief of the angelic powers was Manwë, who made his home
in Aman, the Undying Lands. In those lands, the Ainur, or greater angelic
powers, dwelt and cultivated the land. From Aman they ruled the world and
made new things in it. They called the elven people to the land to dwell with
them, though only some of the elves came there.
 Kingdom Come 131

Aman, the Undying Lands, is the world itself transformed into the
Heavenly life. It is a place of great crafting, and therefore great struggle,
though not necessarily struggle against evil. It is in Aman that Fëanor crafted
the Silmarils, and to Aman that Bilbo and Frodo went after their long travail
against the powers of Sauron. Aman is both of the world and not of the world.
Indeed, at one point in history, Manwë even moves Aman out of the world
and away from the natural state of things.
In Tolkien, the Undying Lands are those lands in which the divine beings
live, and by virtue of their presence, the world is made into paradise. It is to
these lands that the wounded ring-bearer goes to receive healing. The land
is marred once by the lies and treachery of Melcor, and by the pride of the
house of Fëanor. But otherwise, the lands of Aman are blessed and righteous
because the blessed and righteous dwell there and share their virtue with the
land. Yet the direction of the blessing goes both ways. From the land return
many of the elves, including Galadriel, who is pure and untouched by the
shadow. In her still dwells some of the light of Aman and the trees that grew
there.
It is no surprise, of course, that Tolkien’s picture of a Heavenly paradise
is one that involves the virtuous rule of angelic powers over the world. His
Catholicism is present and evident throughout his work. In grand fantasy and
popular culture in general, few other works have managed to depict Heaven
as such an unshakable presence of divine goodness in the material world.
Juxtaposed to Tolkien’s angelic paradise in the world, we have another
depiction of the Heavenly world by an Inkling. Tolkien’s friend, C.S. Lewis,
presents a number of pictures of Heaven throughout his works of fiction. The
first, and most obvious, is the image we find at the end of the Chronicles of
Narnia in The Last Battle.21 There, Narnia has undergone its Antichrist and
False Prophet as well as its destruction and remaking. The children from the
first book, less one Susan who has gone after the cares of the world and lost
her love of Narnia, have passed into the new Narnia through a surprising turn
of events on a train. The world has been made new and more real than it ever
was before. It now participates in the divinity of God, and, as such, draws
the children in an endless romp, “further up and further in” to the reality of
God in the material Narnia. This image of an ever more real heavenly earth
into which the people of Heaven ascend the mountain of God is seen in more
detail in Lewis’ fictional account of Hell and Heaven, The Great Divorce.22
Here the people of heaven are far more real and robust than the people of
Hell. Heaven is reality itself, while both earth and Hell are less substantial.
We find something of Origen’s view here, where an actual resurrection is not
present, but only a transmutation of the soul from one realm to the next with
a body appropriately fitting the soul’s state in that realm.
132 Chapter 7

Elsewhere in Lewis’ writing, we see the idea of proto-Heaven displayed

in his Space Trilogy. In Out of the Silent Planet, the main character, Elwin
Ransom, is taken to Mars and finds a planet unmarred by sin and evil. Here,
like in Tolkien, the world is ruled by angelic powers. The heavenly is cor-
poreal, lived out in sentient life among three distinct species. Harmony,
good humor, bravery, and charity are the rule here. Truth is the very air they
breathe. So, too, on Venus in the sequel, Perelandra. Here, Ransom must
help to preserve the paradisal planet by aiding the first woman against the
temptations of Satan who has come to Venus from earth. A deep harmony
is seen between the woman, her world, and the animals of her world. Lewis
here presents the Edenic picture of creation with masterful good sense and
imagination.
This same harmony can be seen in what may be the series’ last depiction of
Heaven. In the final book, That Hideous Strength, Ransom has become a kind
of new “fisher king,” wounded from his battle against the devil on Perelandra,
he receives in his country home constant heavenly visitants. But, as well, he
has brought something of the heavenly life with him back to England. Here,
in his little home, he plays a little whistle, and the mice come running to do
his bidding. Angels consult with him, and the power of those angels can rule
the hearts and minds of those who live there by divine influence, as seen in
one of the last scenes of the book when Venus comes to the house.
In both Tolkien and Lewis, Heaven is a kind of kingdom, a rule or way of
life that has made its place among the living in the world. It is neither escape,
nor simple rest, nor solely a transcendent reality. Instead, it is the lived life
of the divine in the world. In Tolkien, and in Lewis’ The Great Divorce and
Space Trilogy, angelic powers are deeply involved with the heavenly world.
It is no wonder, of course, that their pictures of Heaven should be so robust
and close to the Christian ideal of Heaven, as both took the orthodox tradi-
tions of the Church very seriously on the matter and translated these ideas
into powerful fiction that was not merely a propaganda piece for their own
religious views.

HEAVEN CONSIDERED

Heaven is, perhaps, one of the most difficult concepts to communicate within
popular culture, since the vast majority of our media present narrative in one
form or another. Narrative is, at least as we know it, most engaging when
there is conflict. Heaven has been largely understood as that place or state
of existence where all conflict has been left behind for good. Our concep-
tion of Heaven as, at the least a state of peace, or, in the extreme, a state of
pure ecstatic stasis, makes the idea of telling stories about Heaven nearly
 Kingdom Come 133

impossible. Indeed, even the denizens of Heaven, if removed from their

peaceful environment, tend not to be particularly interesting unless we muddy
them up a bit as with the angels in Diablo III.
One possible point of inspiration is to draw from Tolkien and Lewis and
bring Heavenly figures into the world who are not, as in Diablo, damaged by
evil, but instead flushed with that great heavenly life which may make the
character unpredictable and strange. Gandalf is an excellent example of this
kind of being who is both deeply caring for the world, and clearly other than
it. As well, the angelic powers in C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy are other than
humanity, they are pure intelligence and love, but they are therefore both bet-
ter and more severe than fallen humanity. Humans may, in their small way,
participate in this heavenly life, but it is very difficult.
It is this idea of participation that runs through Lewis and Tolkien that
shows the sharp dichotomy between how popular culture has received the
idea of heaven and how Christianity fundamentally must speak of Heaven. In
the Christian understanding of the world, there must be four definitions for
Heaven, with three being descriptions of the primary meaning of Heaven, and
one being a secondary and ancillary meaning. The sharp distinction between
how Christianity and popular culture, even popular Christian culture, under-
stand Heaven comes from the fact that the fourth meaning, the one that is
secondary, has become central in the popular expression of Christian religion
and therefore the culture that takes inspiration from it.
That fourth, ancillary definition is the intermediate state between death and
the coming world, or what people usually call “the afterlife.” It is the place
where there will be “pie in the sky when you die.”23 It is where people believe
the dead go when they pass on, the “better place” where our loved ones have
gone to when we are grieving. For many people, it is the end of labor, the end
of earthly concerns, and the ability to just be happy forever.
Such a place could never be, for a Christian, Heaven unless the primary
meaning of the word in one, or more likely all three of its expressions were
present. For Christianity, the primary definition of Heaven must be the triune
life of God. Most properly, Heaven is God. Heaven is, of course, a synonym
for God in the Gospel of Matthew. Christ has come to preach the kingdom
of God (or Heaven), the rulership and life of God in the world. Heaven is
God’s own life and being, the place of all goodness, love, mercy, joy, and
unshakable life. In the Latin tradition Thomas Aquinas expresses this when
he rightly states that God is God’s own eternity.24 Heaven is, and must be,
essentially and unconditionally God.
The second expression of the primary meaning of Heaven follows from the
first. If Heaven is primarily God, then all of God’s self and identity is Heaven.
In the Christian belief in the hypostatic union of the Second Person of the
Trinity with human nature, we find that God is present as a self in human
134 Chapter 7

history and nature. Heaven exists in history, therefore, as the man Jesus of
Nazareth. Here Heaven is expressed both in perfectly divine and perfectly
human terms. Christ is Heaven as much as the Father and Spirit are Heaven
because Christ is Truly God. But, as well, Christ is Heaven in specifically
human terms, as he is also truly human. Here we see one of the many appli-
cations of the Chalcedonian formula at work. To be both truly God and truly
human is to be perfectly Heaven in both of those terms. Christ’s humanity is
claimed perfectly by his divinity. During his natural life, his humanity shares
perfectly in Heaven in the terms of obedience, after the resurrection it shares
perfectly in Heaven in the terms of participation.
During Christ’s life, he taught and enacted Heaven in the midst of fallen
nature. It is here then that we find the third expression of the primary mean-
ing of Heaven. Heaven is the community of people who have conformed
themselves to the life of the Trinity in human terms. In other words, it is
the community of Jesus, who is himself perfect Heaven in perfectly human
terms. Before death, this means a community of people seeking to obey the
life of God as best they can, but not in terms devoid of the full participation
that will come after resurrection. Instead, the life of the community now is
led toward participation through obedience and reception of the Gospel and
the Sacraments.
In all of this a kind of Dionysian understanding of Divine self-sharing is
seen throughout. God, by character/nature shares God’s self with all things
because God is essentially Heaven. It is by participating in God that all other
things become Heaven according to their own natures. The resulting expres-
sion in humanity is a realm of peace, love, joy, and unshakable life. But these
elements are the effects of participation in God, not, in and of themselves the
meaning of Heaven. Or, put another way, it is not simply peace, love, joy, and
unshakable life in the abstract that is Heaven, but the peace, love, joy, and
unshakable life that is the participation in the Trinity.
However, it is the abstract resulting reality that popular culture, and in
many ways popular Christianity at large, has identified as Heaven, and there-
fore drawn upon to create popular expressions useful for storytelling. Any
place of peace, love, joy, life, and knowledge might be considered a kind of
paradise. But the essential character of Heaven, participation in the very life
of God, has been almost entirely missed. It is here that Lewis and Tolkien,
deeply rooted in the primary understanding of Heaven, cleave most closely
to the meaning of Heaven found in Christianity in their own popular writings.
Gandalf, the angelic host, and Elwin Ransom, all participate in the Heavenly
because they participate in God. It does not mean that they are beyond trials,
nor does it mean they have had done with all sorrows. Even Gandalf, after
his death and return, is not free of trouble and sorrow. But it does mean that
they are not mired in the mere finitude of this world.
 Kingdom Come 135

It is because of this essential divide between the apparent effects of the

Heavenly state and their divine cause, that depictions of Heaven in popular
culture are largely discordant with the Christian understanding of Heaven.
Most of the depictions of Heaven seen here, as well as many others in popu-
lar culture, are relentlessly interested in a state of affairs that is essentially
bereft of all that might make it Heaven. Take, for example, Nightcrawler’s
experience of leaving the heavenly realm in order to help his friends, and the
rule that he may never return. From the perspective adopted in this chapter,
Nightcrawler left the outward accidents of paradise in order to search more
deeply into the mystery of Heaven itself, patterned on the God who descends
to save. The Heaven that he left, one that would lock him out for pursuing
virtuous love and self-sacrifice, is a Heaven not worth remaining in, and any
Christianity that proclaims such a Heaven is unworthy of the name. Heaven
can no more expel the heavenly than Satan can drive out Satan.
As well, Heaven for Christianity must involve the second primary defini-
tion of Heaven to enact the third definition. The resurrected Christ must be
present for the community of people to be a heavenly community. Heaven’s
people are conformed to the goodness and glory of Christ, not merely an
abstract or philosophical goodness and glory. Christ, the Second Person of
the Trinity in the flesh is the one who makes Earth into Heaven. Such par-
ticular presentations, however, especially in popular media can be alienating
to those who are not Christian. Or, on the other hand they may simply not
conform to the imagination of the person who is writing. This means that
heavenly realms in the popular media tend to be far more like a generic
heavenly spiritualized realm than the Christian understanding of capital “h”
Heaven. We can see such a generalization at the end of the series Lost. The
characters, reunited in an afterlife, are in a distinctly Christian looking house
of worship, but which has a stained-glass window with the symbols of many
different religions.
Because Heaven is most often depicted by its effects, an important and
interesting exploration of Heaven has been largely absent from popular cul-
ture. When we think of Heaven merely as peace and the end of all sorrow and
difficulty, it seems clear that no good story with any tension in it could be
achieved when set in such an environment. However, an internal journey into
Heaven, one which confronts the goodness and otherness of God can provide
a significant amount of character development and tension. Conflict can arise
between a person and their internal struggles with the character and good-
ness of God. In movies, we can see this journey in films like A Dark Song.25
In this movie about occult magic, there is a kind of journeying through Hell
that leads to the very threshold of Heaven. Indeed, the last line spoken by the
main character in her journey is, for a sinner, the first step into Heaven itself.
136 Chapter 7

The journey to be purified from within can fashion the setting for a video
game, or role-play game by situating the player in confrontation with their
own guilt. While not used to this particular effect, the Silent Hill games by
Konami are well known for using this trope. Especially in the second game,26
the guilt and shame of the main character James Sunderland is manifested
in monstrous shapes and creatures in the town of Silent Hill. Many of these
monsters take on simply grotesque forms, but some take on shapes specifi-
cally related to his guilt. For example, the grotesque nurses that have highly
sexualized bodies but monstrous and hidden faces, represent James’ guilt for
lusting after nurses at the hospital while his wife was dying.
The difference between a simple redemption story and what I am here pro-
posing is that in a simple redemption story the main focus is a person turning
back to some standard of goodness. For a story to be truly about Heaven in
the manner in which I’m describing, the central element must be the character
of God who is always present in some form drawing a person forward and
convicting the evil in them and drawing them into ever deeper growth. In
some ways, this process could be described as an extracting of the evil from
the person by condemning what is evil and vivifying what is good. Heaven
proper is the completion of this process, and some degree this can be seen
as Purgatory. However, Purgatory itself, depending on the depiction, can be
understood simply as a part of Heaven. While many later medieval depictions
treated Purgatory as a kind of Hell, earlier depictions and some more recent
modern depictions understand Purgatory as existing within Heaven and work-
ing on a person until they are fully conformed to Heaven.
Another application of Heaven that is rarely used in popular culture is the
same process described above, except externalized so that other people func-
tion as the place where God extracts the evil and brings the good to fruition.
In such a story the process of Heaven works on more than one person in a
community such that their resulting relationships are a heavenly one. In video
games this is rarely seen, as reconciliation and recognition of personhood in
the other is rarely incentivized. However, in the role play game Undertale,
players are invited to try numerous approaches to “defeating enemies.” A
player may play the game traditionally, by fighting and subduing different
enemies, or they may figure out how to talk to and befriend each enemy and
bring them into their community. We do not here have a strict depiction of
Heaven, for while the community is considerate and healthy, it is not centered
around the very life of the Trinity. However, the idea that persons are better in
community and in prosperous relationships of equal personhood is far closer
to the idea of Heaven than the relationship of domination and destruction seen
in most video games.
Finally, the teaching of Heaven as a place of continual progress, as seen
in Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses,27 a view called Epektasis, fashions the
 Kingdom Come 137

possibility of continual and ever-growing adventures put before readers,

watchers, and players in new and exciting ways. I have explored this pos-
sibility in another place. But it is here worth mentioning the idea that Heaven
need not be a place where we lose all fear, but only all fear of the natural. But
when the natural becomes translucent with the light of God, so too then do
we confront the Great God who is entirely other than us, the God who is, far
more than Hell, to be dreaded, for He is Good. Before such a God we tremble,
not because we know too little of God, but because we know God better, and
we shall not lose such a dread in Heaven. Though we participate in God, we
can never fail to know how terrible the ancient beauty is to mortals, and how
wonderful it is to transcend that dread into even deeper mystery. Our great
treasure for our adventures will be more of that great love that sinks down
into us so that we might know the mystery of the God who is near who is the
God who is ancient and terrible beauty. And, infused with that divine light,
we shall venture deeper, slay greater dragons, and plumb darker caverns in an
endless adventure. Such a journey has only been hinted at in the fiction of our
culture and remains largely heavy on the vine for harvesting.

NOTES

1. One, of course, sees the irony here in which the very church that condemned
Origin’s concept of the preexistence of souls and the apokatastasis that came from
it, embracing in all but technicality, the essential error of his position: the denial of a
robust and realistic anthropology.
2. Here I am distinguishing three general phases of religion: the polytheistic Israelite
religion, the henotheistic Israelite religion, and the Monotheistic Jewish religion.
3. See article on C.D. Elledge, “Future Resurrection of the Dead in Early
Judaism: Social Dynamics, Contested Evidence,” Currents in Biblical Research, Vol.
9, No. 3 (2011), 394–421, as well as article from book on afterlife as example of this
understanding.
4. Origen, On First Principles, II.10.
5. Peter Lombard, Giulio Silano, trans., The Sentences Book 4: On the Doctrine
of Signs (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies), XLIX​.1​.​ii.
6. Ibid., XLIX.2.
7. Ibid., XLIX.3.
8. Ibid., XLIL.4.
9. Benedict XII, Benedictus Deus, 1336.
10. Lombard, Sentences Book 4, XLIX.7.
11. Jonathan Edwards, Heaven, A World of Love.
12. Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of
America Press, 1977). For a fuller evaluation of these different views on resurrection,
see Joshua Wise, “The Self across the Gap of Death: Some Christian Constructions
138 Chapter 7

of Continued Identity from Athenagoras to Ratzinger and Their Relevance to Digital

Reconstitutions,” Gamevironments, Vol. 9 (2018), 222–249.
13. Amos Yong, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late
Modernity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007).
14. John Polkinghorne, The End of the World and the Ends of God (Trinity Press
International, 2000).
15. Fable 2, Lionhead Studios, 2008.
16. Ridley Scott, Gladiator, 2000.
17. Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1978).
18. Diablo III, Blizzard Entertainment, 2012.
19. Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate
Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (London: Gollancz, 1990).
20. Gregory Widen, The Prophecy, 1995.
21. C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle (London: The Bodley Head, 1956).
22. C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945).
23. Joe Hill, “The Preacher and the Slave,” 1911.
24. Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I​.10​.​ii.
25. Liam Gavin, A Dark Song, 2016.
26. Silent Hill 2, Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, 2001.
27. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses.
 Conclusion

I might here conclude with a summary of popular culture’s use of Christian

eschatological concepts, looking at how broadly those ideas have permeated
American culture’s self-expression. Instead, I want to consider the idea that,
for the most part, Christian eschatology, in its essential form, has remained
outside of popular cultural expression. It is largely the ejecta, the rubble of the
Christian eschatological impact, that has come in to pepper the expressions of
contemporary culture. The heart of Christian eschatology, which is the union
of the historical and transcendent identities of the man Yeshua of Nazareth,
the Second Person of the Trinity, has been almost entirely missed.
It is in the hypostatic union, the belief that the Second Hypostasis of
God has taken on human nature to Himself in his own self, not as a mask
or temporary economic expression of God’s love for the world, but in true
permanent union, that all Christian eschatology must take as its starting and
ending points. That God has come close and put on nature, and even said
“I” in and through nature, is the foundation for the eschatological endeavor.
The culmination of the great eschatological act of God is that all of creation
should be resituated into the context of the resurrected Christ. Eschatology
therefore primarily studies the self-sharing of God throughout creation as the
consequence of the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus, Son of Mary. The
true “end” will come when God has said to every atom, “Come and dwell
in me as is appropriate to your nature, and in me you will be divine and yet
yourself.” Heaven will obtain when the whole cosmos has been vivified with
the spirit of God, and when all of the dark places of the universe have been
purified and transformed. When the ground seeded with the blood of inno-
cents has been once more made holy, and those innocents walk again with
the immortal life of God given to them as befitting their human nature, then
will the “end” have come.

139
140 Conclusion

Much of popular Christianity, and thus much of the popular cultural

expression influenced by that popular religion, has seen the whole process in
reverse. Instead of Heaven reconciling us to our cosmos through a divinizing
love appropriate to our nature, Heaven is too often seen as an escape, not
from evil, but from the world. It is this reversal of the Christian eschatologi-
cal hope which results in pictures of Heaven that are essentially contrary to
Christian doctrine. Far from understanding the “last things” from the starting
point of the man murdered by the Roman Empire and raised by God, popular
expressions have largely left the man behind and read the wrong message in
what remains.
Such readings lead to ultimately petty expressions of the great mystery that
transforms the world. Even those things which are very difficult to wrench
away from their Christian settings, such as the Antichrist, miss the mark
almost entirely. The Antichrist of popular culture both in the medieval and in
the modern periods is something of a human expression of demonic reality
which is juxtaposed with a shallow reading of Jesus. This, of course, misses
the fact that no parallel can be created between the divine and the demonic.
Something radically different happens in Christ than could happen even if
Satan himself took on flesh. The Word of God and the fallen angel are not
of the same type, and therefore their human expressions would not be sim-
ply mirror images of each other: one good and one bad. Even less so, if the
Antichrist is merely the pinnacle of human evil. For the merely natural and
the Incarnate God are not parallels. For an understanding of the Antichrist to
be truly Christian, the old myth, rooted in Antiochus IV, must be reworked
with Christ at its center. As we saw earlier, the letters of John show us in what
way this might begin.
So too, with the last judgment. We find that Matthew 25 and Paul’s under-
standing of those saved by fire are reworkings of the old traditions, with both
authors placing Christ at the center. Indeed, as it is with the hypostatic union
that no part of Christ is at the periphery of the union between the divine and
the human, so too is that there is no area of the eschatological hope that is at
the periphery. No element may be plucked from Christian thought in anything
like its original form when its center is left behind. If Christ is taken out of
any part of eschatology, it ceases to be Christian eschatology, no matter how
many Christians have adhered to the view.
What is unfortunately seen even in Christian cultural expressions of escha-
tology is that the popular ejecta of the Christian eschatological form becomes
the center and Christ is simply inserted into the accidents to which he then
conforms. Again, one may look to 2 Thessalonians for an early example of
such practice. It is only those popular cultural expressions of Christian escha-
tology which first put Christ at the center and then tell a new story around that
center, which genuinely express the end things from the Christian worldview.
 Conclusion 141

Of all the works considered in this book, it should be no surprise that it is the
works of Tolkien and Lewis which express these ideas best. An honorable
mention, of course, can be given to Stephen King who at least places some
semblance of God at the center of his understanding of the final collapse and
the Antichrist. But even so, the man Jesus, as King likes to refer to him in his
Dark Tower series, is not the center. King misses the fact that the sacrifice
of Jesus, which he understands as the necessary sacrifice that God always
requires, is actually simply Christ’s refusal to do anything but the good, even
in the face of an evil world. God requires precisely this of Christ: that he
should not do evil nor cede any ground to evil. King, when presenting his
heroes’ sacrifice at the end of The Stand, can give no justification for their
presence in Las Vegas except a blind divine requirement. They have been
sent without explanation, they accomplish nothing, and they do not need to be
there. It is this failure to understand that the sacrifice that God asks for is to
be good in the face of evil, that brings about this rather superfluous sacrifice
by some of Kings heroes. On the other hand, King comes closer to Christ’s
goodness with Father Callahan in the Dark Tower series whose death far
more closely mirrors Christ’s, despite its suicidal nature.
If all of this is the case, then what might we suppose is the future of the
relationship between popular culture and Christianity? The farther away
culture gets from Christian doctrine, the less likely it is to import the central
transformative image and reality of Christ into its eschatological pictures.
The more likely it is that the shadows of shadows will become the central
mythological images. When used in a particular way, Superman images
Christ effectively. But that image is only partial and remains closer to the old
idea of the Messiah than it does to Christ himself. We will get more figures
like the main character from The Book of Eli who is like Christ in only the
most peripheral ways, and yet is clearly protected by God because he pos-
sesses something associated with Christian religion the perfect memory of
the King James Bible. Here we have a Christ figure who looks nothing like
Christ, but has been passed through numerous filters of reception such that in
this post-apocalyptic world one element of the savior is barely recognizable:
he dies for his mission that has something to do with the Bible.
This creeping transformation of Christ in the popular imagination from
the central theandric mystery that defines all existence into a figure wholly
recognizable by culture is not a novelty. It is a perpetual struggle between the
transcendent transformative God and the world broken by sin which seeks
to colonize the divine. It is a struggle between God who wishes to say “I”
in all things by giving them their true identities, and the great nothing which
“wishes” to say “I” in all things by removing their identities. C. S. Lewis
saw this in his work the Screwtape Letters in which either God or Satan in
the end will say “I” in all things. Such transformations of Christ co-opt the
142 Conclusion

poor man who sought to teach all people to love each other with the power
of God, put him into the box of the earthly Messiah, the colonial conqueror,
and the gun-toting flag waving capitalist. The same impetus makes Jesus into
a hippie, or a communist, or socialist. These transformations seek to define
the transcendent Lord who in his humanity expresses the life of the trinity
perfectly as a human mystery in wildly limited terms of that nature. By iden-
tifying the man Jesus with any one system of thought, any one philosophy, or
any one governmental system, we do great evil and neuter the purpose of the
Incarnation. If instead, we allow the Incarnate One to be the center and defin-
ing element of all concepts, then our cultural expressions will be transformed
to be in line with him.
One might then ask whether or not I am calling for more Christian cultural
expression such as the Left Behind series. I am not. It seems to me that as
long as there are authors like Tolkien, L’Engle, Lewis, King, Due, Gaiman,
and others who have absorbed the Christian story and message in a substan-
tial way and translate what they have received into fiction, then all shall be
well as far as that goes. But, as we have seen with works like Dungeons &
Dragons, even those with a religious background, as Gary Gygax had, are apt
to encode only the accidental elements of religious experience and expression
in their work.
Indeed, what is genuinely needed is the clear appraisal of both Christian
doctrine and popular expressions of doctrine. Popular expressions are inesti-
mably useful in understanding how people interpret the ancient doctrines of
the church. For, in all doctrine there are three things, the Mystery that lies
at its core, which is the Eternal God, the doctrine itself, which states simply
and plainly what is believed, and the expressions of that doctrine which seek
to explain the doctrine to a particular place and time. Cultural expressions
of doctrines are no less valuable than official expressions of doctrines, for
they can show clearly how the official expressions are being understood. A
cultural expression that understands Jesus’s Resurrection as “zombification”
is intensely useful to the theologian, pastor, and parishioner, not for its inher-
ent message, but for its ability to be used as an example of precisely what
Christians do not believe.
Cultural expressions of Christian teachings also reveal what desires, needs,
hopes, and fears are present in a culture. Are people genuinely concerned
that society will collapse? Are they hopeful that some elements will survive?
What are they afraid will come after? Each of these concerns is radically
important to the theologian and pastor in order to express the doctrines of
Christian theology in a way that is relevant to the needs and thoughts of the
current world.
Both an understanding of how doctrine is received and cultural concerns
encoded into popular culture are especially relevant when considering the
 Conclusion 143

topic of eschatology. Human fears and desires are, broadly speaking, the
same across time and culture. However, different moments emphasize dif-
ferent aspects of what we aspire to or shrink from. After the considerations
made in this work, it seems evident that of all of the eschatological areas of
focus for Christianity, our current age is most obsessed with the possibility
of the collapse. There seems to be far less concern about what happens when
we die, or our continued material existence, or even the final judgment for
good and evil. We seem to rely, like many ages have, on our own judgments
of good and evil and have an implicit expectation that God will agree with
us in the end.
It is, therefore, the theologian’s task, in looking at this concern, to perhaps
address it from the position of Christian theology. There are two main sources
of fear with regard to the collapse of society, whether that society is a small
village or a global community. The first is that humans, by their actions, will
subvert the established order and induce chaos that ultimately destroys all that
they have built.1 The second fear is that nature will encroach and destroy human
endeavors. These, of course, need not be entirely separate fears, for, as we
have seen with stories like 28 Days Later, The Stand, and many more, it can be
humanity’s tinkering with nature that brings about the collapse.2
At the core of this fear is perhaps the observation not far from that of
Athanasius in his magisterial work, On the Incarnation of the Word of God.
Written in the fourth century, Athanasius observes that creation is made from
nothing and is poised to slip back into nothing if given a chance.

For if, out of a former normal state of nonexistence, they were called into
being by the presence and loving-kindness of the Word, it followed naturally
that when men were bereft of the knowledge of God and were turned back to
what is not (for what is evil is not, but what is good is), they should, since they
derive their being from god who IS, be everlastingly bereft even of being; in
other words, that they should be disintegrated and abide in death and corruption.
For man is by nature mortal, inasmuch as he is made out of what is not, but by
reason of his likeness to Him that is (and if he still preserved this likeness by
keeping Him in his knowledge) he would stay his natural corruption, and remain
incorrupt; as Wisdom says: “The taking heed to His laws is the assurance of
immortality,” but being incorrupt, he would live henceforth as God . . . [.]3

Athanasius here binds ethics and ontology, noting as well that our wills,
which are created and rooted in the nothing, are capable of swaying away
from the good. So it is that God placed a law in creation so that we could
remain aimed toward the good. But, that same law, once transgressed, bound
us in death. What was meant for our good became our master in sorrow and
destruction.
144 Conclusion

Athanasius’ observation of this link between being and ethics demonstrates

how fragile both creation and that special location of God’s image in cre-
ation, humanity, are. The world falls apart because it is rooted in non-entity.
It is only by the natural world being conformed to the patterns of the life of
God that the essentially fragile creation can conform to anything like perma-
nence. Athanasius, as a member of the “school of Alexandria” in which the
Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity is largely understood as a
meeting of Logos (Word/Reason/Ordering or Distinguishing Principle) and
Sarx (Flesh), sees that the essential element that orders the universe is the
same that allows humans to both exist and be good. It is this creating, order-
ing, and self-giving principle that takes—

especial pity, above all things on earth, upon the race of men, and having per-
ceived its inability, by virtue of the condition of its origin, to continue in one
stay, He gave them a further gift, and He did not barely create man, as He did
all the irrational creatures of the earth, but made them after His own image,
giving them a portion even of the power of His own Word; so that having as it
were a kind of reflexion of the Word, and being made rational, they might be
able to abide ever in blessedness, living the true life which belongs to the saints
in paradise.4

The image of the Word in humanity gives it special privilege, but also special
peril. It is precisely this attribute, the ordering reason of humanity, that cre-
ates both the ability to create society, but also the ability to order the world
into oppression and destruction. The reason that makes all of the wonders of
modern medicine and transportation that the people of Stephen King’s The
Stand so desperately need after the plague hits also creates the massively
destructive Captain Trips. For finite beings, participation in the Logos is
dreadful in every meaning of the word. It is supernatural, transcendent, and
therefore can excite numinous awe. But it also may transform the face of the
world into a malediction of horror. The same pattern of accomplishment and
collapse is seen in almost every other dystopian nightmare story. The omni-
capable society of Orwell’s 1984 and the omnipresent corporate control of
cyberpunk dystopias and video games like The Outer Worlds are both feats
of great achievement and the instruments of sorrow, oppression, and death.
What must be true is that unless the broken natural world is conformed to
the Logos of God, it must always corrupt and collapse. It is only the Logos,
the Spirit, and the Father that are truly permanent. All else is, as Ecclesiastes
tells us, “passing away.” If we live in those days in which our society is on
the rise, we live in the great danger of the deception that this time, unlike all
others, the work of our hands will be successful. If we live during the seem-
ing stability of the society, the temptation is perhaps even greater, for the
 Conclusion 145

world appears stable and permanent. And for many generations, birth, life,
and death, societies can be stable. But, in the formation of all structures is
the seed of collapse, for the creation is shot through with the cracks of the
great nothing from which it was made. We have seeded it with these pits and
fissures through sin, and, like a great machine with cracked gears, it may run
for some time, but in the end entropy will overcome.
This must always be the witness of Christianity to culture. Much of what
is made might be good, much of what is made might display the beauty,
joy, effulgence, and love of God. Much might last for millennia. But none is
permanent. All things pass away. As King rightly quotes W. B. Yeats in The
Stand,

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.5

We must measure our societies, our constructed realities of any kind, by their
participation in the great goodness of God. If we are confused about what this
goodness looks like, the goodness that is the very foundation of all existence,
then Christianity must relentlessly point to the presence of that goodness in
the flesh. There, we must say, stands Goodness Himself, Lord of all, stooping
to lift all things up. For this is Athanasius’ observation. God descends into
creation to re-root it, not in the nothing, but in God’s own eternal being. And
that re-rooting is the man Jesus, Son of Mary. He is Jesus, teacher of Peter,
James, and John. Jesus, the object of imperial torture and execution. Jesus,
whom God raised, not to crush his foes, but to whisper the secret of life to
those who believe: Come and be lovers of God, ministers of reconciliation,
and breakers of the old dividing walls. It is by this man that we measure our
societies. And by this measure, my own society is deeply broken.
It is perhaps ironic to finish a book on popular culture with a fatalist stance
on culture. But, even without a particularly pessimistic view of culture, one
must admit that nature is, on its own at least, futile. Nature either will perpetu-
ally cycle, or it will come to an end. In the first case a perpetual existence
devoid of participation in ultimate meaning is itself ultimately meaningless.
A nature that comes to an end without a supernatural sequel is also ultimately
meaningless. All value of any kind that can be objective must come from
above. If culture is to have meaning, or popular culture to have meaning,
146 Conclusion

then it must be infused with meaning from above. Without such a blessing,
all human endeavors are simply relative.
Even if we admit the supernatural, it is entirely reasonable that we should
fear that our culture will collapse, that our civilization should come to noth-
ing, or that evil should overcome our civilization and co-opt it. In the first
place, all nature, in that it is finite, will fail in one way or another. In the
second place, nature that is corrupted by the great nothing, which expresses
itself in moral sin, epistemological darkness, and ontological decay, is host
to evil which spreads and undermines the good. Unless goodness stands up
against evil, evil will have its insatiable way. While some popular expressions
of the great fear of collapse are made purely for entertainment, among these
one might point to the Fallout and Mad Max series as being somewhat thin in
the social commentary area regarding the actual cause of the collapse, many
dystopian or collapse are meant to gird us against a complacency toward evil.
1984, A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, V for Vendetta, Idiocracy, and
Equilibrium, among many others, point to social problems that will bring
about our destruction if left unchecked. Such expositions of the nature of dif-
ferent means by which evil spreads and destroys are not to be ignored if we
wish to halt evil’s relentless consumption of culture.
As noted in chapter 1, the collapse that each of these dystopian stories
points to is the collapse of humanity due to some removal of our access to
the transcendent. They warn against replacing the transcendent with the finite,
often in the form of government, or society, or a drug. In the case of corpo-
rate center dystopian societies, the transcendent is replaced by the concept of
profit as an organization. Understanding that nature is finite and that it is, by
itself, meaningless, will allow us to make one final distinction with regards to
the collapse that we all fear. It may be that some people will see the solution
to the collapse in a better, more efficient, organization of nature. It may be
that others will see the solution to the collapse only as the intrusion of super-
nature and the removal of nature entirely. Ultimately, however, the cycle of
rise and fall must be solved by the supernatural transformation of the created
order into the new cosmos rooted in the resurrected body of Jesus Christ. No
other solution will do. For the reorganization of nature will simply fall prey
to either the same or new destructive inroads for evil. The removal of nature
may work to remove evil as well, but it also removes humanity, which does
not solve humanity’s problem, it merely nullifies it. This second option, it is
worth mentioning, is, as far as we know, truly impossible now that the Logos
has taken on flesh. For humanity now stands in the very heart of the Trinity,
eternally real and irrevocable. And so, to finally remove evil from culture, we
must wait for the final transformative act of God in the remaking of all things.
However, in the meantime, the first option offers us the best possibility of
temporary success if pursued with the final end of the new cosmos in mind.
 Conclusion 147

The reorganization of creation, specifically our world and culture, toward

natural good which is oriented toward the transcendent good can often suf-
fice to stave off the rise of evil. However, unless the natural order aligns
itself with the good that transcends the natural order, evil will triumph in
our cosmos. For nature is not essentially neutral, it is ordered toward the
transcendent good. It has been made to be good and can be turned more
easily toward good than evil. However, when it seeks to serve itself, instead
of the transcendent, it falls. The Reformation idea of the absolute deprav-
ity of nature is simply wrong and stands in opposition to the Incarnation
of the Word of God, in which God speaks the eternal goodness of human
nature and created things. If nature is really so bad as they say, so must
the incarnate flesh of Christ be, or we must become either Nestorians or
Eutychians to deny that the Word of God has genuinely become human.
What we cannot be, if we genuinely believe nature to be evil, is ortho-
dox Cyrillians who affirm a true Incarnation in which God becomes
flesh.
We must then, in order to stand against evil, leverage nature in its essential
goodness against the corruption that would overtake it. This, among other
things, is the great benefit of much of popular culture. It is the encoding of
the imagination of virtue in the face of darkness. It is bravery that stands
against oppression in figures as heroic as Captain America, Wonder Woman,
Iron Man, Spider-Man, Batman, and the Flash. It is the great shining symbol
of Superman and Captain Marvel. But it is also the figure of Winston Smith
in 1984 who makes the brave heroic statement in the face of great evil, that
“two plus two make four.” These great figures help us to “stand and be true”
as Stephen King insists we must in The Dark Tower series. J. K. Rowling is
both right and wrong when she has Dumbledore say that the time is coming
for Harry when people must decide between what is easy and what is right.
She is right, for that is the choice laid before us all. She is wrong, because
those times are always present. It is the consistent choice that stands between
humanity and a final darkness, the great collapse which we will ourselves
either make or stave off. To stave it off, we must orient ourselves toward
that which is truly right. Culture is a great tool in this endeavor of humanity
to climb toward that which can only be achieved by grace, to be finite and
yet partakers of infinity. For it is by conforming ourselves, our relationships,
our culture, to the transcendent Good, that grace finds a hospitable home
within us. Grace will come regardless, perhaps as a burning transformation,
if Origen and George MacDonald are right. But far less suffering will come,
and far more joy will be ours if we would conform our nature to the divine
and to pursue the climb up the endless stair into mystery. For it is then that
our cultural symbols will shine with a greater light to lead us forward like
the Mother of Exiles and like Columbia, toward a greater goodness. Such a
148 Conclusion

culture could be peopled with those receptive to the transforming grace that
gives people the power to be called the children of God.

NOTES

1. As this book is being edited, these fears are being expressed in parts of my own
culture in response to some of the rioting and looting that is happening of a subset
of the much larger peaceful demonstrations protesting police violence against black
people in America.
2. This fear also is starkly relevant as this book is being edited. The Covid-19 out-
break in 2020 has led many to question the source of this worldwide pandemic, to the
extent that a more than a hundred nations are calling for an independent investigation
into the origins of the virus. The implication, of course, is that the Chinese govern-
ment might have had a hand in either its creation, or the suppression of life-saving
information early on in its outbreak. https://www​.businessinsider​.com​/120​-nations​
-support​-un​-investigating​-coronavirus​-origin​-china​-angry​-2020-5
3. Athanasius, “On the Incarnation of the Word,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers Second Series, Volume V Athanasius: Selected Works and Letters, ed. Philip
Schaff and Henry Wallace (New York, NY: Cosimo Classics, 2007), 38. Here, and
in all quotes from Athanasius in this chapter, I have neither endeavored to correct
gendered language that would no longer be appropriate, nor peppered the text with
[sic] at every instance. Where the word “man” is used for the human race, it is here
acknowledged that such use is archaic and not representative of current standards and
practices in academic work.
4. Ibid., 37.
5. W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919; in the public domain.
 Appendix
The Rapture

In a book on eschatology, especially one written from an American per-

spective, it is hard to know what to do with the idea of the rapture. Strictly
speaking, the rapture is not a Christian doctrine; it is essentially a heresy. It
is contained nowhere in scripture, nor anywhere in church tradition before
the improper teachings of Darby and dispensationalism. Rooted in a deeply
anti-Semitic worldview, the dispensationalist position mangles scripture and
Christianity’s relationship to Judaism as well as Christianity’s difficult but
ultimately good burden of participating in the sufferings of Christ. The rap-
ture, as a teaching in which the church will escape the world at the world’s
most dangerous and dire moment, is not only laughable but damnable. That
the people of God should abandon the world, when the world most needs
the love of Christ in the flesh of the church, is monstrous and satanic. It is
wishful thinking of the most cowardly sort. It is true that no one should long
for suffering, but we should far more long to stand fast and be good no mat-
ter what will come, than to desire to be simply snatched away and leave the
world to its own troubles. This is why this brief address toward the rapture
is an appendix and not a chapter, though the rapture has appeared in a sig-
nificant amount of popular culture. It is not, in any sense of orthodoxy, a part
of Christian eschatology. It stands in opposition to very heart of Christianity
itself. So, I will give no concluding consideration of the rapture and how it
might be approached in popular culture. As an academic, as a Christian, and
as a simple citizen, I consider it a teaching that should be buried and con-
demned to the pits of Hell from which it came.
That being said, the rapture is a teaching that, before the return of Christ,
those who have been accepted into Christ will simply disappear from the face
of the earth to spare them from the final tribulation, has appeared sparsely
in non-Christian-specific popular culture, especially in the last twenty years.

149
150 Appendix

Made popular by the fever-pitch excitement around the Left Behind series, the
rapture has been largely panned by non-Christian popular stories. In 2004, in
the HBO series, Six Feet Under,1 a woman mistakes helium-filled sex-dolls
that float into the sky as a sign of the rapture and leaps from her car, only
to be killed by another vehicle. The HBO series The Leftovers deals with an
event in which 2 percent of the population of the world disappears suddenly,
without explanation. While not directly identified with the rapture, the idea
that the event is part of the return of Christ is a possibility raised in the first
season. In the 2015 video game Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, the player
explores a mystery that centers around everyone in a small English town dis-
appearing (an event called “the rapture”).2 The rapture is an element as well in
the movies This Is the End and Rapture-Palooza which have been discussed
earlier in this book.
Beyond the central event of the Left Behind series, which posits the rapture
as a kind of global catastrophe leading into the final seven years of human
history, there appear to be no serious takes on the particular and heterodox
Evangelical Christian teaching of the gathering of Christ’s followers at the
end of time. Instead, the view is either mocked or used as a simple plot device
that doesn’t go deeply into the specifics of the belief. We are, perhaps, leaving
the time when the idea is a curious and prevalent-enough aspect of popular
American religion that popular culture finds it a relevant topic.

NOTES

1. Six Feet Under, “In Case of Rapture,” directed by Daniel Attias, written by Alan
Ball and Rick Cleveland, 2004.
2. The Chinese Room, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, 2015.
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 Index

Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Babylonian Captivity, 3, 17, 20, 29,
80–81 33n9, 36–37, 90
Achard of St. Victor, 59 Back 4 Blood, 78
Adso, 43 Barnes, Bucky, 76, 97
Afterlife, 113, 118 Barth, Karl, 45, 60, 75, 94, 109
Alexander the Great, 17, 37 Batman, 9, 35, 65–66, 147
Alighieri, Dante, 105, 110–11, 113, 118, beast, the. See Antichrist
127 Benedictus Deus, 79, 123, 126
Antichrist, 8, 18–20, 28, 35–54, 61–63, Bernard of Clairvaux, 43
131, 140–41 Black Panther, 97–98
Antiochus IV, 2–3, 12n4, 15, 17, 20, Boethius, 99
29, 35, 37–41, 48, 50, 54n47, 72, 91, The Book of Eli, 27, 141
124, 140 Book of the Watchers, the. See 1
Aphrahat, 92 Enoch
apocalyptic: literature, 3, 43, 94, Bosch, Hieronymus, 110
100, 124; worldview, 8, 15, “A Boy and His Dog,” 26
26–27, 38–40, 43, 48, A Brave New World, 23, 146
56 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 80–81,
Aquinas, Thomas, 74–75, 79, 93, 99, 129–30
109, 118, 124–25, 133
Arkham Knight, 86n20 Call of Duty, series, 78
Athanasius, 143–45 Calvin, John, 59–60, 75
Athenagoras, 73, 125 Captain America, 97, 147
ATOM RPG, 25 Captain Marvel, 147
Augustine, 18, 59, 67, 73–75, 99, 108– City of God, 18
9, 118, 125–26 Commodian, 42
Avengers: Endgame, 97 Crisis on Infinite Earths, 129

159
160 Index

Croft, Lara, 1–2 Final Fantasy XII, 36

Cyberpunk, 24, 144 Firefly, 96, 101–2, 118
Cyrus the Great, 37 Flash, the, 129–30, 147

Daniel, book of, 2–4, 12nn3–4, 17, 31, Gaiman, Neil, 49, 62, 142
39, 41, 43, 48, 54n47, 56–58, 72–73, Gandalf. See The Lord of the Rings
90–92, 100–101, 107, 124 Gehenna, 4–5, 106, 110, 117–18
Dante’s Inferno, video game, 111, 117 Gladiator, 128–29
The Dark Knight Rises, 65–66 Gnosticism, 74
Darkseid, 47–48, 129 Good Omens, 49, 62, 130
A Dark Song, 135 The Good Place, 113–14, 117–18
The Dark Tower, 25, 141, 147 The Great Divorce, 85, 102, 112, 115,
The Day After Tomorrow, 18 131–32
Day of Yahweh, 17, 25, 28–29, 58, 90, Gygax, Gary, 142
92, 100
Dead Island, 78 Hades, 91, 116–17
Dead of Winter, 78 Harry Potter, series, 64, 66, 89, 96,
Dead Rising, 78 98–99, 147
Dead Sea Scrolls, 72 heaven, 6–8, 55, 57, 79, 83, 91, 100,
Demolition Man, 24–25 112–17, 119, 123–40
devil, the. See Satan Hell, 8, 42, 74, 100, 103, 105–21, 125–
Diablo, series, 110–11, 130, 133 26, 129–31, 135–37
Doom, series, 111 Hippolytus, 42
Dracula, 79–81, 84 Hit Z Road, 78
Due, Tananarive, 142 House of the Dead, 78
Dungeons & Dragons, 78, 81, 110–11, Hush, 86n20
117, 142
Dying Light, 78 I am Legend, 78
Idiocracy, 24–25, 146
Edwards, Jonathan, 19, 45, 119, 126–27 “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” 94
Elijah, 6–7, 43, 56–57 Inferno, 105
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, Interview with the Vampire, 80
36 Into the Spider-Verse, 98
Enoch, apocalyptic figure, 6–7, 43, 124; Irenaeus, 42, 59, 74
for pseudepigraphal book. See 1 Iron Man, 147
Enoch
Epektasis, 127, 136–37 Joker, the, 35
Equilibrium, 23, 146 Julian the Apostate, 42
Eric, 113
Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, 150 King, Stephen, 142. See also works by
title
Fable 2, 127–29 King Arthur, legend, 35, 76–77, 80
Fahrenheit 451, 23, 146 Kingdom Come, 15–16, 62–64, 67
Fallout, series, 15, 25–29, 146
False Prophet, the, 48, 50, 131 The Last Battle, 85, 94, 115, 131
Final Crisis, 47–48 Last Judgment, the, 89–102, 140
 Index
LaVey, Anton, 46
Left 4 Dead, 78
Left Behind, series, 10, 45, 49, 62, 94,
141, 150
The Leftovers, 150
L’Engle, Madeline, 109, 142
The Legend of Zelda, series, 76
Leo X, pope, 44
Lewis, C.S., 32, 52, 85, 94, 109, 112–
18, 127, 130–35, 141–42. See also
works by title
Liberation Theology, 103n22
The Lion, The Witch, and The
Wardrobe, 82, 85
Little Apocalypse. See Mark Chapter 13
Little Nicky, 113
Lombard, Peter, 19, 59, 74, 92–93, 108,
126
The Lord of the Rings, 28, 62–64, 67,
81–82, 94–96, 112, 130–31, 133–34
Lost, 135
The Lost Boys, 80
Luther, Martin, 44–45, 59
Maccabean Revolt, 17, 37, 56
MacDonald, George, 94, 102, 109, 115,
117, 126–27, 147
“The Machine Stops”, 22, 25
Mad Max, 26–27, 146
The Magic Island, 77
Malory, Sir Thomas, 77
Manson Family, 46
Mark Chapter 13, 5, 17–18, 38–39, 41,
48, 50
Mars, Veronica, 2
Martyr, Justin, 59, 74, 125
Marvel Zombies, 78
The Matrix, series, 62, 71
Matthew 25, 5–6, 25, 58, 92, 97, 100–
102, 107, 140
“Me, My Demon, and I,” 117
Messiah, 4–5, 12, 35, 37–38, 49, 54n47,
56, 63, 141–42
Michael, angel, 3, 31, 48
Milton, John, 110, 116
The Monster Squad, 81
161
Mordred, 35, 77
Moriarty, James, 32, 35, 76
The Munsters, 80
Nero, 19, 35, 38, 41–42, 50, 52, 54n47
Neuromancer, 24
Nightcrawler, 129–30, 135
1984, 11, 21, 23, 144, 146–47
Night of the Living Dead, 78, 87n27
Noah, 36
Norbert of Xanten, 43
Nyssa, Gregory, 136
The Odyssey, 116
The Omen, series, 47, 54n43, 61–62
1 Enoch, 2–4, 36–37, 48, 72–73, 100,
124
Origen, 74–75, 79, 92, 102, 108–9, 114,
117–19, 125, 127, 131, 147
Orwell, George. See 1984
The Outer Worlds, 24, 144
Out of the Silent Planet, 132
Palamas, Gregory, 93
Paradiso, 127
Parousia, 8, 55–69
Paul, Apostle, 5–7, 18–19, 32, 50–51,
57–58, 73, 107–8, 140
Perelandra, 115–16, 132
Persian Empire, the, 17, 37
Persian religion, 36–37
The Planet of the Apes, 25
Plato, 74, 115
Platonism, 73, 79, 85, 115, 124–25
Polkinghorne, John, 75, 127
Pompey Magnus, 35, 37, 54n47
Pratchett, Terry, 49, 62, 113, 130
predestination of souls, 93, 101
The Prophecy, 130
pseudo-Methodius, 43
Purgatorio, 127
purgatory, 109, 115, 126, 136
Q-Source, 6, 12n10
Rage, series, 25
162 Index

rapture, the, 20, 62, 149 Tartarus, 110, 117, 120n7

Rapture-Palooza, 62, 150 Tertullian, 108, 118, 120n7, 127
Ratzinger, Joseph, 32n1, 45, 59–60, That Hideous Strength, 32, 115,
127, 137n12 132
resurrection: of Antichrist, 50, 52; at This is the End, 55, 150
the end of the age, 3–5, 8, 71–87, ‘Till We Have Face, 115
100, 106–7, 123–27, 131, 134; of The Time Machine, 21, 25
Jesus, 4–7, 36, 40–42, 46, 56–59, 66, TobyMac, 61
85–86, 99, 101, 139 Todd, Jason, 76, 86n20
Revelation, book of, 5, 18, 27–28, 37– Tolkien, J.R.R., 28, 63, 82, 95, 109,
38, 40–41, 43, 48–49, 55, 58, 62–63, 130–35, 141–42. See also The Lord
91, 100–101, 107–8 of the Rings
Revolt of the Zombies, 78 28 Days Later, 143
Rig Veda, 23 Twilight, series, 81
Rosemary’s Baby, 46–47 The Twilight Zone, 112, 115
2 Thessalonians, 5–6, 17–19, 40–41, 43,
Satan, 19, 35–37, 41, 43, 46–48, 50–51, 46, 48–49, 51, 58, 91–92, 107, 140
55, 97, 110–11, 113, 116, 129, 132, Tyconius, 42
135, 140–41
Satanism, 35, 46 Undertale, 136
The Screwtape Letters, 114–15, 141 universalism, 94, 107–9
“Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” 115 Utopianism, 21, 30, 32
Second Coming, the. See Parousia
7 Days to Die, 78 vampires, 77, 79–85
The Seventh Sign, 62 V for Vendetta, 21, 23, 146
Shemiyaza, 36–37, 50
Sherlock, series, 32, 76 The Walking Dead, 25
Sherlock Holmes, character, 35, 67, 76 Watchers, book of the. See 1 Enoch
Shin Megami Tensei, 36 werewolves, 81
Silent Hill, series, 136 What Dreams May Come, 112, 117–19,
SimCity, 113 129
The Simpsons, 113, 118 What We do in the Shadows, 80
Six Feet Under, 150 Whitehead, Alfred, 60
Son of Man: Apocalyptic Figure, 5–6, White Zombie, 77
22, 39, 51, 54n47, 56–57, 100, 107; World of Warcraft, 76
as name for Jesus, 6, 51, 57, 107
Spider-Man, 98, 147 Yeats, W.B., 145
The Stand, 15, 25, 27–29, 48, 141,
143–45 Zombicide, 78
Star Trek, 26 Zombie Dice, 78
Star Wars, 9, 65, 67 zombies, 77–80, 82–83, 87n27, 111
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 65, 67 Zoroastrianism, 36–37
Steinem, Gloria, 8–9
Superman, 9, 63, 67, 81–83, 141, 147
 About the Author

Joshua Wise is one of the founders of the All Ports Open Network. He
holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology (2016) from the Catholic University
of America, writes the horror series, Weeping Cedars, and is author of No
Avatars Allowed: Theological Reflections on Video Games (2019) and editor
of Past the Sky’s Rim: The Elder Scrolls and Theology (2014). He lives with
his wife Sarah in Pennsylvania.

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