Facing Apocalypse (Catherine Keller) -- A Review

 

FACING APOCALYPSE: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances. By Catherine Keller. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. Xxii + 218 pages.

                The word apocalypse has many uses and meanings. For many, it is a rather frightening word that conjures in the minds of many a sense of destruction and doom. When you hear this word, you might think of Armageddon or the end of the world. The word apocalypse comes from a Greek word that means revelation or the unveiling of something, often religious in nature. Thus, we have the Book of Revelation, which is a good example of apocalyptic literature. While Revelation is the only true apocalypse in the New Testament apocalyptic elements can be found throughout the New Testament. You will find apocalyptic elements in the Gospels, in Paul, other letters including 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude. For example, Paul speaks in 2 Corinthians of a new creation and 1 Thessalonians of Jesus’ return in glory. Paul assumed that Jesus would soon bring an end to the old world so that the world could be established. Thus, Jesus is pictured as an apocalyptic figure. It is, however, the Book of Revelation that comes to mind when we think apocalyptically. What stands out to many readers of apocalyptic literature are the visions of judgment and destruction. The question is, is there more here than meets the eye?

                It was with my current interest in eschatology in mind that I agreed to review Catherine Keller's book Facing Apocalypse. Keller teaches constructive theology at Drew University and brings an eco-feminist-process perspective to her reading of the Book of Revelation that is found in this book. FacingApocalypse is not a commentary in the usual sense. It is instead a theological interpretation of the Book of Revelation that seeks to apply the visions found in the book to our present time. What you find here is very different from what you might read in a Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey book. There’s no gloating here about the impending destruction of the earth and its denizens. Rather, she seeks to read the Book of Revelation as a warning to modern folks about our own responsibility for the world we live in.

                Keller uses the concept of "dreamreading" to describe what John is up to. What we encounter in John’s book is a dream, a vision, that is not to be taken literally. However, it is to be taken very seriously. She insists, rightfully, that the text of Revelation speaks to its own time and is not to be read by us in a predictive sense. Nevertheless, "it discerns certain patterns in its own world deep enough to persist, dangerously, and perhaps disclosively, into our own. To mind those patterns without literalizing them means to dreamread collective crisis now, by way of the metaphors—the metaforce—of the Apocalypse then” (p. 3).

                So, we join Keller in traveling through the Book of Revelation, moving back and forth between the past and the present, though always with the present foremost in mind. Revelation offers the lens through which we can envision what is happening in our world, from ecological crises to economic ones. As she looks back at the story told in Revelation, she notes that "any honest apocalypse faces the future. It does not close it down—it pries it open. But what is thereby disclosed? I have been at pains to insisted with old John and without him, that the future does not already exist; it cannot, therefore, be faced as though it were a fact" (p. 195). What we can do, and she does, is look for patterns, which John reveals and that can be spotted in our world, like the damage done by climate change. This is all in line with her Process orientation, which conceives of an open future.

                It is difficult to fully explain what one will find here. Keller is an intriguing theologian who brings a vast understanding of the world and the Christian faith together to explore the relationship between an apocalyptic vision and our world. In other words, she doesn’t reject apocalypticism but instead repurposes it in a way far different from a dispensationalist might. At the same time, the book can be frustrating due to her use of language. She seems to create words whole-cloth that seem to work for her but which the reader might not understand. Unfortunately, this is often true of much Process-oriented theology. It has its own vocabulary that has to be learned before one can truly understand what the author intends to share. As I am not as well-versed in Process language as some of her readers, at points, I struggled to stay with her. Nevertheless, if one is willing to persist with the book there is much to be gained. She offers us a way into this rather cryptic book of the Bible that is easily misread and misused. That has led many progressive Christians to write it off, but with her as a guide, one may find a helpful lens to view the world in which we live and find ways of making a difference in this world so that the destructive side of things does not take place. After all, prophecy isn't prediction; instead, it offers us a warning about what the future might look like if nothing changes.

                Returning to my own interest in eschatology, I appreciate books like this, written from a liberal/progressive perspective that doesn’t reject eschatology or apocalyptic elements. Yes, apocalyptic theology can be dangerous, but as she shows us, it can also be interpreted and applied in ways that call our attention to important considerations like climate change and the fate of democracy, both of which seem to be imperiled at the moment. What she does here is not predict the future but point out patterns in the present that can be seen in Scripture and thus they give us a lens through which to view the present and the future. That is, as she writes in her closing chapter of Facing Apocalypse, as we dreamread these texts  “clouds of dark uncertainty keep rolling in, bearing a double-edged disclosure of both the planetary destructiveness of our civilization and the chance—if together we grieve, struggle, and rage out creatively for justice, for transformation social, economic, and ecological—of a festive renewal of our common earth-life” (p. 195).