Seven Bowls of Wrath: the ecological relevance of Revelation.

Abstract

Catastrophic effects of climate change invite comparisons with the "plagues" or wounds of the earth described in chapters 15 and 16 of the Book of Revelation. The seven Bowls of Wrath can be interpreted as an ecological parable for the decades ahead, as the impact of several centuries of human exploitation of natural resources and the effects of pollution threaten to result in a number of global calamities in the areas of human and animal health, environmental decline, habitat destruction, population displacement, and physical suffering caused by increasingly violent and frequent storms. Although symbolic admonitions, the "bowls of wrath" demonstrate an unusually sophisticated insight into the organic connection that exists among biologica) and geological systems and also the consequences of wantonly disrupting this balance through human greed, oppression, and malice. Finally, the compensating divine response to ecocatastrophe ends not in ultimate punishment, but the renewal of the cosmos and the healing of the nations. Revelation is a message of hope as well as warning and a summons to repent.

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From Ireland to Finland the summer of 2007 was the wettest in living memory. Swollen rivers flooded large areas of the English midlands, an unpallelled disaster that wreaked billions of pounds worth of damage. Similar floods devastated southern China, Northern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In southern Europe, by contrast, more than 500 people died from extreme heat. Drought and wildfires raged in Greece, Crete, Spain, Portugal and in areas of the United States and Australia. Earlier in the year, two reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change detailed not only virtual scientific unanimity regarding global warming, but repeated predictions of severe disturbances in weather patterns, an effect of global warming that has been a major concern to climatologists for over a decade.

With increasing frequency one hears the present situation of global climate change and unprecedented natural disasters described as "apocalyptic," a term which while perhaps technically inaccurate captures the sense of catastrophic urgency that typifies much of the literature of the intertestamental period and early Christian writings. Generally for Christians, however, the word "apocalypse" and its cognates bring to mind the Book of Revelation (known for centuries by its Greek name, which of course simply means "revelation"). This is hardly surprising to anyone familiar with its contents, which detail the calamities that presage the end of the world (so it seems) with increasing urgency and violence.

Cataclysmic events on earth and in the heavens were stereotypically employed in ancient texts to convey the drastic consequences of humanity's rebellion against God. Comets, earthquakes, volcanic upheavals, flood, drought, infestations of locusts, other "natural" disasters, and disease, famine, strife, and war all figure in the metaphorical catalogue of apocalyptic writings. But such events were not mere metaphors. Natural disasters occurred with sufficient frequency for the mention of them to evoke a sense of apprehensive terror well into the modern era, as seen in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79, the great plagues of 165, 541, and the Black Death of the fourteenth century. In the great Lisbon earthquake of November 1755 as many as 60,000 people perished, about two-thirds of the population, most within the first minutes of the earthquake. The Great Influenza of 1918 killed more people worldwide than the combined total of all the above. The global warfare of the twentieth century took more lives, both civilian and military, than all the wars of the preceding millennium.

Destructive events of the recent past, especially natural disasters, have sometimes called into question divine providence and benevolence much as they did for Voltaire following the Lisbon earthquake, as witnessed after the Great Tsunami of 2004, Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma (the strongest hurricane ever recorded to date) in 2005, as well as the 2007 summer floods and heat waves. Revelation, "the" Apocalypse for Christians and many others, is thus not only relevant to today's situation but has begun to attract increasing attention, and not only because of its toll of eco-disasters. Greg Carey, for instance, cites David Joy's 2001 study published in India which "appropriates Revelation to articulate 'a human based value system and eco-friendly trade and development' over against the postcolonial global economy" (Carey: 239). The most recent work I have seen on Revelation and its significance in regard to global climate change and environmental catastrophe is Megan McKenna's Harm Not the Earth (2007.)

The ecological and socio-economic meaning and implications of Revelation have been profoundly enriched by the publication of David Aune's exhaustive three-volume commentary (1998) and the equally prodigious one-volume encyclopedic commentary by G. K. Beale (1999). Astonishingly erudite, both works are meticulously researched and finely balanced. Both Wilfrid Harrington's compact commentary (1993) and that by Pablo Richard (1998) offer similar insights into the ecological significance of Revelation. The present article is indebted to all four authors.

In it I intend to focus primarily on the imagery of the natural world that the author employs in regard to the eschatological distress that precedes the final assault on the People of God by the forces of evil and the triumph of the Lamb of God. I will address the fall of Babylon/Rome only obliquely. I believe that while the planetary wounds (plegai) from the "seven bowls of wrath" function as symbolic admonitions, they evince a sophisticated insight into the organic connection that exists among biological and geological systems, the consequences of disrupting this balance through human greed, oppression, and malice, and, finally, the compensating divine response to ecocatastrophe. From this perspective, the Seven Bowls of Wrath comprise, in effect, a powerful ecological parable for the twenty-first century. (While it does not fundamentally affect my thesis, I also believe that the events depicted in Revelation have less to do with "the end of the world" than the ultimate and inevitable conflict between the Kingdom of God and imperialistic forces of economic, religious, and political oppression, as well as the destructive impact such sinfulness has on the earth and all its living creatures.)

Ancient Ecocatastrophe: The Seven Bowls of Wrath

Over the centuries, the Book of Revelation has gained as much as or possibly more attention than any work in the New Testament canon, except perhaps the Epistle to the Romans. Much of it was unwarranted, some of it unwanted, for example the commentaries by radical apocalypticist reformers in the Middle Ages such as Gerard of Borgo San Donnino, Peter John Olivi, and later Reformation-era polemicists. Revelation appeals to a wide range of readers for all sorts of reasons. So far as I know, the only scriptural commentary by D. H. Lawrence (1995) was on Revelation. While Lawrence was both fascinated and appalled by Revelation, it may safely be said that he failed to understand much of the work. Nevertheless, some of his insights are predictably incisive.

The Text, its Structure, and Its Meaning

Following the introductory sections from the beginning to the end of chapter 3, the major part of Revelation, 4:1 to 22:9, consists of a long section unified structurally by the recurring pattern of sevens: the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls of wrath (4:1 to 16:21) and a shorter, concluding portion which consists of two explanatory revelations, 17:1-19:10--a more detailed and highly dramatised account of the fall of the Great City in the person of the Great Whore--and the account of the final confrontation between Christ and the forces of Satan (19:11-21:8). The entire work concludes with the astonishingly beautiful description of the New Jerusalem, the epilogue, and final benediction (21:9-22:21).

Between the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath, the author inserts three textual units that introduce the dramatis personae of his saga: the Woman, her Child, and the Dragon (chapter 12), the Beasts from the sea and the land (chapter 13), and, at the heart of the work, the Lamb of God, his virginal army, and the angels of the harvest (chapter 14). Significantly, at the very apex of chapter 14, an angel announces proleptically that Babylon the Great has already fallen (14:8). Everything that follows details the working out of what has been eternally decreed.

Structurally, the "plot" of Revelation employs two interlinked "story lines," the assault of the Dragon and the two Beasts on the followers of the Lamb, and the rise and destruction of the city of "Babylon," arguably the Roman Empire as the chief instance of imperialistic hubris. Both stories end in defeat for the enemies of God and victory for Christ and his followers. Ultimately, the linked stories are aspects of a single great struggle (the Great Whore rides, after all, on the back of the Beast), but each is given its own climax and denouement in reverse order, the second in chapters 15-17, and the first in 18-20. The Seven Bowls of Wrath provide the narrative structure of chapters 15-16. (See Aune: II, 882-91; Beale: 812-46.)

In those two chapters, seven angels with seven bowls pour out God's wrath in the form of "plagues," "which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended" (Rev 15:1). The first causes festering sores on those who bear the sign of the Beast. The second bowl is poured into the sea, which becomes like the blood of a corpse, so that "every soul" associated with the sea dies. The third is poured over the rivers and fountains of fresh water, and they also become like blood. The fourth causes the fierce heat of the sun to scorch people like fire. With the fifth, darkness falls over the throne of the Beast and his kingdom. At the sixth, the waters of the great Euphrates River dry up, preparing a path for the invasion from the East. Finally, the air is affected--lightning, thunder, and earthquakes proliferate, islands and mountains disappear, and great hailstones fall. At this moment the destruction of Babylon is repeated, as "the great city" is split into three parts by the earthquake. The following chapter expands and adds detail to this first great climax. The drama then moves immediately to the final confrontation, God's triumph over the Beasts and the Dragon (chapters 19-20), followed by the renewal of Creation (chapters 21-22).

Like the structural format of the seven seals and the seven trumpets, that of the seven last plagues is regular and generally stereotypical, although there are three variations (Aune: II, 867-68). Each angel receives a libation bowl from one of the four "Living Creatures" followed by a commission by a voice from the heavenly temple. The angel pours out the contents of the bowl on a selected target. There follows a description of the effect on humanity. In only three instances (the fourth, fifth, and seventh), the refusal of the people to repent is mentioned, but their obstinacy can be inferred in the other instances. The cancelled seven thunders (10:4) would most likely have followed the same pattern, culminating in total destruction, an outcome of human impenitence that God mercifully forestalls by rendering judgment immediately.

The essential features of the seven last plagues specifically recall the seven seals and the seven trumpets. This is attributable to (and indicative of) reduplication of motif: the eschatological catastrophes of Revelation are not compounded incrementally, but intensified. Their model is, by and large, the ten plagues of Egypt prior to the Exodus (see, e.g., Aune: II, 883-91 and passim; Beale: 814-45 and passim; and Harrington: 107-08).

The Context and Content of the Bowls of Wrath

In ancient Hebrew scripture and later apocryphal writings, disturbances of the natural world accompanied divine manifestations, such as the appearances of God on Sinai, to Elijah on Mount Carmel, and other theophanies--storms marked by dense cloud, darkness, thunder, lightning, earthquake, volcanic eruptions, and torrents of hail, all symbolic of the majesty and danger attendant on the coming into the presence of God. Earthquakes were of particular significance, as major seismic calamities registered vividly in the memory of peoples of the Middle East and were greatly feared. The ultimate manifestation of the presence of God, the eschatological "Day of the Lord," which in later thought brought the history of the world to a dramatic conclusion, was accompanied by especially catastrophic upheavals on the earth, in the sea, and in the sky, which is to say, the whole universe. The eschatological sections of the Synoptic Gospels portray such events in brief but powerful imagery.

Later apocryphal writings of the intertestamental and post-apostolic periods amplify the terrifying and destructive aspects of the Day of the Lord, elaborating over pages of lurid description the signs of God's judgment. Revelation, by contrast, cuts short the plagues of destruction with the cancellation of the proclamations of the seven thunders, moving directly to the climax of judgment, as the sixth and seventh trumpets also fail to move the kings of the earth and their followers to repentance.

The author of Revelation, John of Patmos, selected his images carefully and not unrealistically to convey the maximum dramatic impact of planetary and even cosmic disturbance. The first three bowls affect natural systems--the earth, sea, rivers and springs--three members of the "earth quadrature" (see 14:7). The fourth bowl targets the sun. The fifth and sixth bowls have a more political objective: the drying of the Euphrates (an unheard of phenomenon in the ancient Middle East) prepares a way for invasion by the kings of the East. The sixth bowl is emptied on the throne of the Beast himself, bringing darkness but also instigating the release of the three deceptive froglike spirits. The final bowl is poured onto the air, the fourth member of the quadrature, which unleashes the full fury of nature against imperial Babylon and the cities of the world--violent storms, the great earthquake that shatters the city into pieces, the displacement of islands and mountains, and a horrendous fall of hailstones.

Angels of Destruction

For John, the physical cosmos in Revelation consists of the heavens, basically the sun, moon, and stars, and the earth, with its seas, rivers, and springs of fresh water. Another, more classically-attuned Mediterranean quadrature-earth, air, fire, and water--occasionally operates as a kind of default system (see Aune II, 889). Within their compass, the full range of the wounds (plegai) of Creation are administered by a team of "avenging angels."

For late Judaism and early Christian circles, angels mediate the presence and action of God, preserving both the divine transcendence and also God's sovereign freedom, only a portion of judgment being revealed or enacted in each intervention. Angels figure not only more prominently in Revelation than any other work of the New Testament, they find in it their most detailed treatment. (The Greek word aggelos and its cognates appear 175 times in the New Testament, 66 times in Revelation alone.) The angelus interpres usefully serves to illuminate obscure visions for the seer. Seven great angels (the term "archangel" does not appear in Revelation) stand in the presence of God and proclaim sentence. The four "Living Beings," sometimes but gratuitously called Cherubim in commentaries (Aune II, 868, 879, Beale 812), deliver the libation bowls of God's anger to the seven administering angels. The destroying angel, Apollyon or Abaddon, who is the only named angel other than Michael (Rev. 12:7) has custody of the Abyss (Rev 9:1 I). Other angels charged with carrying out the will of God exercise a multitude of tasks, not least being jurisdiction over various portions of the natural world--water, air, the winds, etc. Ultimately, however, the bowls of wrath are full of the anger of God, not of angels, whether or not one interprets that anger and its effects as permissive (as do for instance, Aune, and Harrington).

Libation Bowls of Wrath

The image of the golden libation bowls, Gr. phialai (paterae in Latin), evokes images of sacrifice and oblation. But primarily in Revelation these vessels contain the anger of God, a theme from ancient Hebrew scripture (Aune II, 879-80, 883; Beale, 813). A large shallow bowl, Heb. mizraqot or Gr. phialai (although other terms were used inter changeably in either language) were used to pour or splash offerings of wine or blood in Temple ceremonies (Exod 27:3, 38:3, Num 4:14, 1 Chr 28:17, etc.). In Revelation, however, the image is blended with that of the cup, Heb. kos, Gr. poterion, of the anger of God (Pss 11:6, 75:8; Is 51:17, Jer 25:15, Rev 14:10, etc.), with the seven angels acting as cultic ministers. These terms indicate that for John, what we know as chapters 15-17 is part of a great liturgy of destruction, a sacrificial ceremony enacted in the presence of God and the court of heaven.

"Plagues" as the Wounds of Creation

The immediate effect of the pouring of the contents of the libation bowls is physical and spiritual hurt to the natural systems of the world but especially its human inhabitants. It is worth noting that plege, the Greek word for "plague," means much more than "a deadly contagious disease," its modern connotation. In classical Greek as well as the New Testament, it meant, first of all, a blow, wound, or beating (see Luke 10.30 and Acts 16.23, 33, etc.). Elsewhere in Revelation, it refers to a lethal wound (see Rev 13.3, 12). Despite the incomplete parallels with the Ten Plagues of Egypt, the Seven Plagues of Revelation could more accurately be called "the Seven Wounds of Creation."

The term is first used in Rev. 9:18 in reference to the Sixth Trumpet and the charge of Four Horsemen. Parallels with the Seven Seals and Seven Trumpets indicate that John envisions one great set of calamities, each aspect intensified as sinful humanity refuses to repent and reform. (As with the Plagues of Egypt, the parallels between the Seven Seals, the Seven Trumpets, and the Seven Bowls are not exact, but John is never slavishly consistent in his imagery. See in this regard the analysis of Harrington, 107-08.) It should be noted that Beale, among others, insists that the plegai are to be understood as metaphors rather than literal events (Beale, 814 and elsewhere).

The Wrath of God and the Lamb

Despite the generously benign impression many contemporary Christians have of the divine attitude toward human malfeasance, mention of the wrath or anger of God is hardly absent from the New Testament. As the Epistle to the Hebrews states, "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God!" (Heb. 10:31). Revelation is by no means the only work in Christian Scripture to describe the "wrath of God," but it is the most thorough. It is hardly surprising that one of the most difficult problems in the Christology of Revelation is the portrayal of Jesus in terms of military and actually violent imagery (see especially Rev 6:16 and 19:11-16), which seems so contrary to the image of Jesus in the rest of the New Testament. The theme is sufficiently vexing to have an entire book devoted to it--A. T. Hanson's The Wrath of the Lamb (1957).

In the New Testament two terms are generally used to convey anger, rage, or fury. In classical Greek thumos ("passion") refers to the inner emotion of anger and orge ("desire, violent passion" to its expression. The terms are used interchangeably, however, in the Septuagint and in Revelation, as David Aune shows (Aune: II, 834). Thumos is used ten times in Revelation out of 18 times in the whole New Testament (all in Luke and Paul) and often of God. Orge is used six times in Revelation out of 36 times in the New Testament. The "anger of the Lamb" The "anger of the Lamb" [orges tou arniou] is found only in Revelation 6:16, but thumos is not used of the Lamb.

But what is the "anger of God"?

Divine Punishment: Willed or Permitted?

Mention of God's anger, wrath, or even fury is hardly an infrequent occurrence in Hebrew and Christian scripture. But it is well to remember the overriding insight of the First Epistle of John, "God is Love" (1 John 4:8). In this respect, it may help to recall a saying of Paul Ricoeur's that I heard in one of his public lectures, "The anger of God is only the love of God experienced by sinners." It is the blaze of divine energy created by wilful resistance to overwhelming love.

In this light, the punitive character of the plagues, indeed of all the calamities related in Revelation, has been nuanced if not contested by Harrington and others. Harrington cites Sweet in particular: "The plagues are not God's primary will but the fruit of its rejection" (Sweet: 165, cited by Harrington: 108).

   John has modeled his plagues of trumpets (and bowls) on the plagues
   of Egypt. One must assume that his plagues, like the Egyptian
   plagues, are not the vindictive punishment of human sin but rather
   the result of human rejection of God's invitation. The plagues of
   Egypt were not punishment of Pharaoh; they were designed to procure
   the liberation of God's people: "Let my son go" (Exod 4:23). Just
   as the appeal to Pharaoh was vain, so, John believes, God will
   continue to encounter human intransigence [Harrington: 108].

Beale and Aune are less reticent than Harrington to employ the language of punishment, even given the repetitive "divine passive" construction that shifts agency at least slightly towards the permissive will of God. It is worth noting, however, that the typical NT vocabulary of punishment is lacking in Revelation. Of the half-dozen terms routinely used by Christian writers, only one, ekdikeo, finds its way into John's Greek, and that only in two verses, 6:10 and 19:2, where it is usually translated as "vengeance." Overall it may be granted that the blows of Revelation are primarily meant to move people to repentance, not to harm them or Creation. That they do so results from human impenitence, not divine malice.

On this reading, God intends to transform, renew, and heal Creation. At the finale of Revelation, God does not obliterate the present world and create a different one, as seen in the appearance of familiar features such as Jerusalem itself, purified and renewed. There is no more warrant to posit that the images of the "first" heavens and earth passing away, the sea vanishing (21:1), or the mountains and islands "fleeing" from the presence of God (6:14, 16:20) mean the annihilation of the cosmos or the "universal destruction of the earth" (Beale: 842,844) than there is to accept a literal reading of the plagues of the first six bowls or, for example, the geographical reality of "Har Megiddo" (see especially Beale: 838-41). After all, the angel takes John to the top of a great and lofty mountain to witness the descent of the Holy Jerusalem (21:10). Nations, sick people, even sinners still walk the earth (see Rev. 21:27 and esp. 22: 15), even if the latter are not allowed entry into the New Jerusalem. Neither literalism nor a foolish consistency are traits of the author of Revelation!

As for the location of Armageddon (16:16), the site of the final confrontation between the followers of Christ and the forces of Satan, it must be taken as a symbol of ultimate conflict, not a specific geographical locale. John is sufficiently generous in his descriptions to banish any prospect of locating it outside the walls of Jerusalem (20:9), as Megiddo lies about 60 miles north by northwest of the Holy City. As Beale remarks, "The battles in Israel associated with Megiddo and the nearby mountain became a typological symbol of the last battle against the saints and Christ, which occurs throughout the earth." (Beale: 838.)

Generally, the calamitous events of the final plagues, metaphorical or not, are characteristic of the apocalyptic imagery common to Christian and late Jewish writings of the period, including violent storms, wars, and disturbances in the heavens--the "birth pangs" of the new world (see Matt 24.6-8, 24:29; Mark 13:24-26; Luke 21:25-27; Acts 2:19-20 = Joel 2:10, 30-32. Cf. also 4 Esdras 5:5, 7:39-40). As a hundred generations of Christians have believed in one way or another, such omens are applicable in every age, including--perhaps most especially--our own.

Apocalypse Now: Ecocatastrophe as a Call to Repentance and Reform

In the eight years since I first wrote about the ecological implications of the Book of Revelation, there has been some progress in coming to grips with the "destroyers of the earth" (Rev 11:18). Reducing the production and emission of chlorofluorocarbons throughout much if not all of the industrial world has proportionately lessened the thinning of the ozone layer over Antarctic and Arctic regions. The use of low sulphur-content coal and oil to power electrical generation plants has also reduced the incidence of acid rain. Such progress is noteworthy, but far less than what is required to assure that fundamental deterioration of global life-supporting systems is halted or even reversed. The concentration of "greenhouse gases," notably carbon dioxide and methane, continues to increase in the atmosphere, despite efforts to curtail their emission. Most of these efforts came too late and accomplished too little. According to James Lovelock, the scientist-engineer who first called the world's attention to the depletion of the ozone layer, the world has about thirty years remaining to reverse global pollution of the atmosphere before a "runaway" greenhouse effect results, a catastrophe that could literally spell the end of the natural and human worlds as we know them.

Even a casual reading of Revelation suggests that while the catastrophes of the three-fold "plagues" need not and should not be misunderstood (or dismissed) as a literal prediction of events either in past history or yet to come, they are profoundly and prophetically apt as a metaphorical catalogue of the disasters humankind brings upon itself and the planet through greed, oppression, cruelty, exploitation, and indifference to the suffering of the innocent. For John these included unjust restrictions on trade and commerce based on religion or power politics, the rapaciousness and waste of war, the exploitation of ever scarcer resources (including the importing of rare species of animals) to satisfy the cravings of citizens of more prosperous nations or the elite in poorer nations for luxury items (one of the "crimes" for which John particularly taxed the empire of his day), trafficking in human lives for whatever purpose, and, with special point, slavery (see especially Rev 18:12-13). Our contemporary "crimes against nature" are strikingly similar. As Pablo Richard observed, "Today the plagues of Revelation are rather the disastrous results of ecological destruction, the arms race, irrational consumerism, the idolatrous logic of the market, and the irrational use of technology and of natural resources" (Richard: 86).

Just how apt the descriptions are of the inevitable consequences of such attitudes and behavior becomes clear when one considers the contemporary effects of the woes that, like those enumerated in Revelation, call for repentance and remedy. Succinctly, they can be summarized as our own "bowls of wrath."

Global Health Hazards

The dire effect of the first bowl is an outbreak of festering sores on those who follow the Beast. Perhaps the most underestimated consequence of global climate change will be its adverse effects on the health of people worldwide, especially the poor, and among them the very young, the elderly, and those already infirm.

More than a decade-long series of reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international agencies have warned with increasing urgency that global warming poses serious risks to human health. Wealthy developed countries such as the United States and most of Europe are better able to cope with environmental deterioration, but poor countries, especially those in Africa and tropical areas of Asia and Oceania, are much less so according to health experts. The elderly, sick, and poor are most at risk (Balbus & Wilson). A very recent report from the World Health Organization indicated that each year almost four million children under the age of five, particularly those in the poorest areas, die from the effects of environmental factors such as exposure to air and water pollution and toxic chemicals. Poisoning, respiratory diseases, diarrhoea, and malaria are the chief factors in these preventable deaths (Louis et al.).

During the past 25 years, at least 30 new diseases have emerged to threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people, including variants of viruses such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and avian influenza. Malaria, the greatest killer of all time, is increasing in incidence and location, as disease-bearing anopheles mosquitoes move northward. Other tropical diseases will likewise begin to affect hitherto unlikely northern latitudes as the climate warms. Even diseases once almost epidemic in northern latitudes and thought in recent times to be on the verge of eradication have staged a vigorous return in recent years--tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria, cholera, typhoid fever, and whooping cough among them. Several extremely infectious and deadly, often incurable "new" diseases are almost certainly related to environmental disturbance, especially as humans penetrate deeper into areas uninhabited for millions of years. Among them are multi-symptom diseases such as AIDS and hemorrhagic fevers caused by the Ebola virus and other virtually immune agents of infection.

Bacterial and viral pneumonia, two of the biggest childhood killers in the world today, are increasingly resistant to drugs. According to the World Health Organization, however, tuberculosis is the world's greatest killer of adults, killing three million people a year. It is expected to result in a mortality of more than 100 million people within the next fifty years. A half-billion persons could become ill with tuberculosis in the same period. As an opportunistic infection, it is the leading cause of death among HIV-positive persons, killing one out of three.

According to a recent United Nations report based on five years of international study,

   The health status of "millions of people" will be affected by
   climate change in the years ahead.... These range from major water
   shortages and migration from coastal regions as sea levels rise to
   hunger and the potential disappearance of up to 30% of plant and
   animal species.

According to Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change, "The poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people in prosperous societies, are going to be worst hit and are the most vulnerable" (Watson). A recent report of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change concurs: "Whereas chronic, noninfectious diseases account for the vast majority of deaths in the developed world, climate-sensitive infectious diseases are among the leading causes of death in the developing world ..." (Balbus & Wilson: 6).

Deathly Seas and Rivers

The second and third bowls cause the seas, rivers, and fountains to turn to blood, destroying human lives and most likely other forms of life dependent on water. The contemporary equivalent, one that threatens both the livelihood and protein supply of a majority of people on the planet, is the destruction of the seas, lakes, and rivers as habitat by pollution and overfishing. The collapse of the cod industry in the North Atlantic is only one example. The destruction of coral reefs around the world is another. Less noticeable but perhaps far more worrisome is the danger posed to plankton by ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere, as ultraviolet radiation sterilizes the upper reaches of the southern seas. All marine life ultimately depends on plankton, which occupies the great base of the food chain.

Scorched by the Sun

Although the severe heat of the desert sun was well known to the ancient Hebrews, Jews, and early Christians (Ps 121:6, Is 49:10, Jonah 4:8, Matt 13:6, Jas 1:11, etc.), a lethal scorching by the sun is a feature virtually unique to the fourth bowl of wrath in Revelation. According to Aune, the only classical myth to deal with the subject of solar searing is the story of Phaethon (Aune: II, 889). He cites Ovid and Lucian, but the myth is also found in Euripides, Nonnos, Plato, and other ancient sources. (For a discussion of the origins and probable celestial referents of the myth, see de Santillana & von Dechend: 250-62.)

Of our contemporary plagues, sun-related illness and environmental deterioration are lethally conjoined. A recent research study reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres shows that since 1880 the mean temperature in Western Europe has risen 1.6 degrees Celsius, more than had previously been thought. Heat waves have doubled in length during the same period with a proportionate increase in heat-stroke, sunburn, and heat-related illnesses. As a result of increased ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the planet because of the thinning of the ozone layer, skin cancer and eye diseases are increasing in many parts of the world. But other factors are involved as well. A recent study by the World Health Organization has noted the increase in skin disease related to both natural and artificial sunlight:

   Worldwide, one in three cancers is skin-related. By WHO estimates,
   132,000 cases of malignant melanoma (66,000 deaths) and more than 2
   million cases of other skin cancers occur annually. In the U.S.,
   one in two cancers is skin-related (estimated skin cancers in the
   U.S. annually, 1.1 million). These figures are on the rise, and the
   WHO expects the skin-cancer epidemic to accelerate: The annual
   incidence rate for melanoma is estimated to have more than tripled
   in the last 45 years in Norway and Sweden and to have doubled in
   the last 30 years in the U.S. The WHO attributes some of this
   increase to the growing use of artificial-tanning facilities
   [Ferguson].

At present, skin cancer annually kills more people in England than in Australia, and the rate of incidence is increasing (Eaton). But other effects of increased UV radiation are also worrisome, among them an increasing rate of cataract formation and actual blindness in both humans and animals. Plankton are also weakened and destroyed as increased radiation penetrates the upper levels of the seas, as noted before (World Health Organization).

Global Dimming 

When the fifth angel pours his bowl over the throne of the Beast, darkness descends over his kingdom; in effect the nations of the world under the sway of Satan. "Global dimming" was stereotypically associated with spiritual calamity in scripture, from Exodus to Isaiah and the Gospels (Exod 10:21, 1 Sam 2:9, Is 8:22, 59:9, Matt 4:16, Mark 15:33, Luke 11:34, John 3:19, 1 John 2:11, etc.). It figures prominently in the opening of the sixth seal (Rev 6:12), as the sun turns black and the moon blood-red, and after the fourth trumpet sounds:

   The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was
   struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that
   a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept
   from shining, and likewise the night [Rev 8:12].

Smoke and dust in the form of aerosols literally darken the skies of earth following major volcanic eruptions and in the wake of wide scale conflagration, particularly the burning of vast expanses of rainforest in Brazil and Indonesia. Industrial pollution and even jet exhaust (the so-called "contrail effect") also contribute to global dimming.

Ironically, global dimming may diminish global warming by deflecting solar rays back into space, but this seemingly beneficent side-effect only masks the symptoms of a much deeper malaise. The earth's atmosphere may be warming faster than predicted (NOVA, 2006).

Falling Stars

Mentioned in chapter 6 and again, twice, in chapter 8, stars falling from the skies are associated with the third and fourth trumpets, and also in regard to the fury of the Dragon in 12:4, but the event is not listed among the effects of the bowls of wrath. The theme is nevertheless tangentially relevant to the present discussion.

   When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great
   earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became
   like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig
   tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale [Rev 6:12-13].

Associated in this verse with global dimming, the appearance of "falling stars" or comets in the night sky has been associated with earthly calamities from ancient times. For a comet or meteor actually to strike the earth would be catastrophic. In geological periods of the remote past, such events have in fact occurred and brought devastation to the planet. That similar events will happen at some time in the future is a virtual certainty, according to astronomers (Clube & Napier).

While such a future impact with a "heavenly body" could hardly be construed as the result of human sinfulness, the failure to prevent it or, failing that, to launch a "space Ark" to preserve human, animal, and plant life either under the earth or beyond it could reasonably be accounted the greatest moral failing in the history of the planet.

While this notion of a "space Ark" has also been the stuff of science fiction novels and films, serious scientists (including Nobel laureate Stephen Hawking) have proposed such a project as an essential priority for the preservation of life and civilization as we know them--and, to date, they are the only forms we know (Hui). But securing the vast wealth and resources the venture would require will be highly improbable should be great nations of the world continue to waste both wealth and resources at an alarming rate on the follies of war and unbridled consumerism. The window of opportunity is narrower than we think. The divine logic of John of Patmos is highly relevant in this regard.

Frogs: It's Not Easy Being Green

The prominence of frogs in chapter 16 of Revelation merits at least brief attention. Clearly the three frog-like spirits that emanate from the mouths of the Dragon, the First Beast, and the False Prophet (Rev. 16:13) evoke the infestation of frogs that plagued the Egyptians (Exod 8:2-6) and are alluded to in later Scripture and commentaries, inevitably in a pejorative sense (Beale: 832-34). Yet by contemporary standards, the ecological value of batrachians is ironically opposite. Their welfare has come to be recognized as an index of the health of the ecosystems they inhabit. Recent declines in frog populations and health have added to the apprehensions of scientists concerning global environmental failure. (see "Global Frog Crisis"). On the ecological and theological significance of the order of batrachia (frogs, toads, and tree toads), see DeWitt.

Stormy Weather

The final episodes of destruction instigated by the seventh and last bowl of wrath culminate in a sequence of deadly storms and a devastating earthquake followed by an unprecedented hailstorm. Late in the twentieth century expectations on the part of the general public that "global warming" meant a gradual, moderate, and perhaps not unpleasant increase in temperatures contained some degree of initial optimism despite unprecedented heat waves in the mid-1990s that have continued to the present. In fact, what global climate change entails, as climatologists warned us very early, is an increase in the number and violence of storms as weather patterns are disturbed across the planet. Wild fluctuations in temperature, wind patterns, and rainfall rather than a steady rise in temperature will most likely typify global conditions for decades to come.

In fact, there is growing evidence that tropical storms in both Atlantic and Pacific regions have increased in both number and intensity over the past century. The 2005 hurricane season in the North Atlantic surpassed all previous records. For the first time since the practice of naming tropical storms was introduced, the alphabetical list of names was too short by five. "For the first time since 1851, three storms in one season--Katrina, Rita, and Wilma--reached category 5 status, with winds exceeding 249 km/hr (155 mph). Wilma was the strongest storm ever recorded in the North Atlantic" (Perkins).

Events from such a relatively short period of time, geologically speaking, can be dismissed as an aberration, a ploy used by government officials and others to confuse and in effect diminish public response to global climate change. Long-term studies reveal, however, that the general pattern is consistent with predictions of increasing violence and frequency (Emanuel; Moreira). Tornadoes and other storms have also demonstrably increased in both number and intensity over more than a forty-year period. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Storm Prediction Center,

   Counts of the annual total number of observed tornadoes from the
   database suggest an almost linear increase in tornado frequency,
   especially in weaker tornadoes, within the period of record. Annual
   totals increase from about 200 tornadoes in 1950 to about 1000 by
   the early 1990s [Menne].

Earthquakes, on the other hand, seem to manifest a decrease in frequency and intensity over a hundred-year period despite claims to the contrary by Lindsey and other apocalyptic catastrophists (Austin & Strauss).

Making an End of It: Summary and Conclusion

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the "divine office" or daily prayer of the Roman Catholic Church, the seven great canticles of Revelation find place among the weekly psalms and hymns of Vespers and on special occasions: the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Common of Martyrs, the Feast of the Guardian Angels on Oct. 2, and the Feast of All Saints, Nov. 1. The hymn sung on Thursdays is a compilation of the fourth and fifth canticles, 11:17-18 and 12:10b-12a. Curiously, the concluding phrase of the fourth canticle is omitted. The Church's long-standing inattention to the ecological relevance of Revelation is epitomized in that omission, for 18b is one of the most telling verses of the entire book, arguably the pivot on which the action of the great panorama turns:

   We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were,
   that you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The
   nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be
   judged, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and
   those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying
   the destroyers of the earth.

It is at this moment that God responds to the prayers and pleas of the martyrs and saints and begins to act decisively to end the assault of evil forces on the followers of Christ and the earth itself.. (Whether or not one accepts the thesis that the structure of Revelation is chiastic, focusing on the enthronement of the Lamb in chapter 14, the point remains the same.) This important passage anticipates the final chapters of Revelation, where, expressed positively, God's intention is revealed to be not only "destroying the destroyers of the earth," but healing the nations and transforming and renewing the cosmos (22:1-3).

As Christians committed to a primary understanding of God as love, a love so powerful that God gave his only Son to save it, how can we reconcile this dire vision of Revelation to our concern for the world and particularly for protecting and preserving the environment as God's beloved Creation? The endorsement of or at least indifference to environmental destruction by extreme evangelical writers such as Hal Lindsey, Tim LaHaye, and John Walvoord because, like the nuclear holocaust so feared in the 1960s and 1970s, it will somehow usher in the Parousia is doubly and sadly ironic. For it misinterprets or at least ignores the essential caveat in Revelation itself that the wanton exploitation of the natural world, like that of the social, political, and religious world, is a sin that cries out to heaven for redress. It also fosters the very attitudes and behavior that Scripture reprobates, effectively aligning proponents of ecocatastrophe with the minions of the Dragon, the Beasts, and their false prophets. Conflating the so-called "Rapture" of 1 Thess 4:17 with Revelation in order to spare the elite of the elect the tribulation of the ecological wrath of God does not begin to address the real issues confronting this generation. It is, simply speaking, an unwarranted misuse of scripture dating from the late nineteenth-century ruminations of John Nelson Darby and his followers. As Wilfrid Harrington reminds us,

   Here we have not only gross misinterpretation of Revelation (and
   other biblical texts), but something unsavory and even dangerous.
   The idea of an elect minority being shunted to the safe regions of
   the upper air while a vengeful Lamb destroys the inhabitants of the
   earth is scarcely Christian. Politically, it could be maintained
   that world-wide nuclear war is really part of God's plan for his
   world. All of this is far removed from the theology of John of
   Patmos [Harrington: 15-16].

In fact, the response of the author of Revelation could hardly be more opposite, as the seer testifies: "And he who sat upon the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new'" (Rev 21:5). After the fall of the Great City, and the final destruction of God's enemies, the last act of the drama opens on a new heaven and a new earth, not replacements for the old ones, nor a mere restoration of what once was, but a world purified, transformed, and, especially, renewed.

   Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and
   the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw
   the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God,
   prepared as a bride adorned for her husband ... [Rev 21 : 1-2].

The scriptural source of this immensely positive vision of re-creation is clearly the Book of Isaiah:

   For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former
   things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and
   rejoice for ever in that which I create; for behold, I create
   Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. I will rejoice in
   Jerusalem, and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it
   the sound of weeping and the cry of distress (Isa 65:17-19].

Nor is Revelation the only beneficiary of this great and hopeful vision: "But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home" (2 Pet 3:13).

Conclusion: The Home of Righteousness

Regardless of how one feels about credal emphases on the return of Christ in glory, the resurrection of the body, the final judgment, and "life everlasting," drastic environmental changes can be planet-wide, and the great plagues of Revelation, the seven bowls of wrath in particular, invite all of us to consider the implications of God's judgment regarding the human world for the natural systems of that world itself--the animals, the plants, the air, the sea, the weather, all of which became focal topics for the author of Revelation.

The dilemma already facing this generation and even more acutely the next is no different from that portrayed in Revelation: will the "kings, magnates, and generals" who rule by might and money repent of their folly before the escalation of disasters brought about by this wanton foolishness ends in global catastrophe?

Reversing the present direction of developmental "globalization" might well begin by recalling Genesis 1:31, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." The planet and its resources are not merely useful commodities to be exploited and discarded, but as works of divine benevolence, simply good in themselves. The Divine order of the world, ho kosmos tou theou, consists originally in the harmony between heaven and earth, between the human and animal realms, among human beings, and even among animals and plant life. On this point, as Robert Murray has shown, John of Patmos echoes the ancient tradition and its more recent exposition in works such as 1 Enoch:

   Connections with the Enoch tradition are strongest and most
   pervasive in the book of Revelation.... As we saw in ch. I, I Enoch
   begins with a contrast (similar to that briefly sketched in Jer
   5:21-25) between the order and harmony shown by the forces of
   nature and the moral disorder of humankind (1 Enoch 2-5). This
   remained a powerful theme both in Jewish and in early Christian
   literature; but here too a similar tradition from Greek philosophy,
   in particular from Stoicism, joined with the stream from the
   biblical source [Murray, 132].

This divinely intended order of the world has been repeatedly disrupted by a violation of the covenantal harmony between human beings and God, resulting primarily from a breach among human beings themselves and expressed in the breakdown of harmony between human beings and animals, the earth, and even among animals. Repeatedly, however, God restored the broken covenant, faithfully promising to restore the original harmony in an ascending order of excellence. As Robert Murray has demonstrated, the covenantal promise does not diminish over the millennia, but expands.

In the vision of both Isaiah and Revelation, God can and will restore the original harmony of the world when human beings return to the Way of the Lord, particularly by acts of justice and mercy extended especially toward the oppressed and poor, but also by re-establishing proper relationships with animals, plant-life, and the earth itself. But for John of Patmos, the restoration of all things in Christ is not a reversal to some pre-existing order of the world, but a transformation and renewal that is in effect an entirely new creation.

Ultimately, the dilemma facing the present generation is not new, but it is deadly serious: can we reverse the direction of planetary violation and strive for a profound and sustainable harmony among all creatures of the earth, or will we inevitably invoke further bowls of wrath by our refusal to repent?

Works Cited

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Austin, Steven A., & Mark L. Strauss. 1999. "Earthquakes and the End Times: A Geological and Biblical Perspective," Institute for Creation Research, unpublished manuscript of January 14, 1999, http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_sa_r06/.

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Beale, G. K. 1999. The Book of Revelation, Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans/Carlisle, PA: Paternoster Press.

Carey, Greg. 2005. Ultimate Things: An Introduction to Jewish and Christian Apocalyptic Literature, St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press..

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de Santillana, Giorgio, & Hertha yon Dechend. 1969. "The Fall of Phaethon," Pp. 250-62 in Hamlet's Mill Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge and And Its Transmission Through Myth. Boston, MA: Gambit.

DeWitt, Calvin B. "Behemoth and Batrachians in the Eye of God: Responsibility to Other Kinds in Biblical Perspective." Pp. 291-316 in Hessel & Ruether.

Emanuel, Kerry. 2005. Divine Wind: The Hurricane in History Art, and Science (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Ferguson, James. 2005. "WHO Says Skin Cancer Incidence Is Rising," Journal Watch Dermatology, 26 April 2005. http://dermatology.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2005/426/1.

"Global Frog Crisis: Silent Spring Deja vu," Churchill, VA: Hudson Institute, Center for Global Food Issues, 1/14/05. http://cgfi.org/materials/key_pubs/ rachel-carson-syndrome-silent-spring.htm

Harrington, Wilfrid J. 1993. Revelation (Sacra Pagina 16), Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press.

Hessel, Dieter T., & Rosemary Radford Ruether (eds.). 2000. Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth and Humans, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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McKenna, Megan. 2007. Harm Not the Earth, Dublin, Ireland: Veritas Publications.

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Woods, Richard. 1999. "The Seven Bowls of Wrath: An Ecological Parable." Ecotheology, No. 7:8-21.

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Richard Woods, Ph.D. (Loyola University, Chicago) is professor in and former chair of the Department of Political Science, Theology, and Pastoral Ministry at Dominican University, 7900 Division St., River Forest, IL 60305-1066 (e-mail [e-mail]). Recent publications include Christian Spirituality (Orbis Books, 2006), The Spirituality of the Celtic Saints (Orbis Books, 2000), Mysticism and Prophecy: The Dominican Tradition (Orbis/DLT, 1998), Eckhart's Way (Liturgical Press, 1990), and a number of articles on environmental issues, the mystical tradition, health, and global spirituality.