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capacity for both cruelty and compassion. Those who championed John’s Revelation finally succeeded in obliterating visions associated with Origen, the “father of the church” posthumously condemned as a heretic some three hundred years after his death, who envisioned animals, stars, and stones, as well as humans, demons, and angels, sharing a common origin and destiny. Writings not directly connected with Origen, like The Secret Revelation of John, the Gospel of Truth, and Thunder, Perfect Mind, also speak of the kinship of all beings with one another and with God. Living in an increasingly interconnected world, we need such universal visions more than ever. Recovering such lost and silenced voices, even when we don’t accept everything they say, reminds us that even our clearest insights are more like glimpses “seen through a glass darkly” 8 than maps of complete and indelible truth.
    Many of these secret writings, as we’ve seen, picture “the living Jesus” inviting questions, inquiry, and discussions about meaning— unlike Tertullian when he complains that “questions make peopleheretics” and demands that his hearers stop asking questions and simply accept the “rule of faith.” 9 And unlike those who insist that they already have all the answers they’ll ever need, these sources invite us to recognize our own truths, to find our own voice, and to seek revelation not only past, but ongoing.

NOTES
     
    CHAPTER ONE: John’s Revelation:
Challenging the Evil Empire, Rome
    1 Ernest L. Tuveson,
Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). For a recent and challenging view, see Kathryn Gin,
Damned Nation: The Concept of Hell in American Life, 1775–1865
(New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2012). I am grateful to the Rev. Tony Campolo for pointing out, in his letter of March 21, 2011, that many Evangelical Christians today see in the Book of Revelation “a description of what is going on in America” and, especially in Revelation 18 and 19, an indictment of political and economic systems built on military power and consumerism.
2 Note Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza’s perceptive discussion of several strategies often used for reading this book, in her
Revelation: Vision of a Just World,
ed. G. Krodel (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), “Reading Revelation in and from the Margins,” 6–20, as well as 117ff. See also
The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment,
2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), especially her article “
Apocalypsis
and
Propheteia:
Revelation in the Context of Early Christian Prophecy,” 133–158. See also Brian K. Blount, “The Witness of Active Resistance: The Ethics of Revelation in African American Perspective,” in David Rhoads,
From Every People and Nation: The Book of Revelation in Intercultural Perspective
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 1–27, and also his recently published commentary,
Revelation
(Louisville: John Knox Press, 2009).
3 Eusebius,
The History of the Church,
VII, 24.1–27; for discussion, see chapter 5 , pages 162–163.
4 See the passage cited in note 3 for the fullest extant account of Dionysius’ views on the Book of Revelation.
5 For an overview of the use of this book, including that by Luther and his critics, see, for example, Arthur W. Wainwright,
Mysterious Apocalypse: Interpreting the Book of Revelation
(New York: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 55ff; and Judith Kovacs and Christopher Rowland,
Revelation: The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ
(Madden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 19–20, 44–45.
6 The term as used here is not intended to indicate genre. For although the term “apocalypse” is used in the Nag Hammadi library more often than terms like “gospel” or “apocryphon,” various terms are used for writings that claim to offer “revelation,” as David Frankfurter notes in his article “The Legacy of Jewish Apocalypses in Early Christianity: