Seven Bowls of Wrath: the ecological relevance of Revelation

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2008 by Richard Woods

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