John on the Island of Patmos and William on the Island of Block

This enchanting title to William Stringfellow’s book could be twice misleading. First, it is not a text on moral philosophy or Christian ethics in the usual sense. There is little help here for those looking for advice on abortion, ecology, employment, social planning, or foreign policy. The moral philosopher must look elsewhere for a discussion on metaphysical or empirical justification for ethical decisions, or for a treatment of situational ethics and ethical absolutism. Stringfellow’s interest lies in informing moral decision-making with a biblical and social critique of a fallen nation: “The task is to treat the nation within the tradition of biblical politics to understand America biblically ….” First the Christian must understand the comprehensive and pervasive character of the Fall as it may be seen in the American social and political situation, and then he may dare to act however “ambiguous and inconsistent, extemporaneous and transient, paradoxical and dialectical.” Stringfellow is asking himself and all of us: “How does one live humanly in the Fall?”

Second, the title may be misleading in that the book is far more sober than might at first be expected. Stringfellow’s “strange land” is not Narnia, Middle Earth, Lilliput, Shangrila, or Disney Land—it is the United States, for Stringfellow, an incarnation of Babylon, a haunt of the demonic. Many a Christian will read this book with a healthy discomfort, not only because of his critique of American society, but also because he exposes the corners of the biblical witness that we would sooner rationalize or repress. It is a book of the Fall, judgment, principalities, the Antichrist, the demonic—and death. And it is fitting that it finds its inspiration in the New Testament book that is the most enigmatic and embarrassing to the modern Christian—the book of the Revelation to John.

John the prophet, exiled in a Roman penal colony on the island Patmos “on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus,” reported a vision in which the Risen Christ was seen to win the ultimate victory over the Roman Empire and emperors who were arrogating to themselves divine titles and prerogatives. The vision portrayed the Empire as a whore with whom the international businessmen had fornicated, as a beast at whom the world marveled, and as a new Babylon. This last image was far more powerful for post-exilic Judaism than for us, for Babylon was the home of the deported southern tribes, the city of idolatry, astrology, humiliation, and exploitation. Babylon was the city of the impassioned 137th psalm:

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

… O daughter of Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who requites you with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

This, no doubt, was the source of Stringfellow’s title, and it is in his redefinition of Babylon that he makes his most valuable and profound contribution to our understanding of John’s Apocalypse.

Some commentators understand Babylon correctly as having been an image for the Roman Empire but fail to apply the characteristics of Babylon to any modern phenomenon. On the other hand, others busy themselves nominating candidates for the eschatological bad guy as if Babylon never referred to the Roman Empire at all. (Hal Lindsey is presently campaigning for the Common Market.) But Stringfellow sees in the early church’s struggle an analogy to our own. The Babylon of the Apocalypse was a city of violence, economic and military imperialism, lies, idolatry, and death, and as such it is a cipher (he calls it a parable) for all principalities whose “social purpose is death.” Institutions, like humans, have fallen and are no more benign in their fallen state than the individual; in fact, because institutions so often enslave, manipulate, and overpower, they become forces of the demonic. The state is the most fearsome of all such principalities because it arrogates to itself the prerogatives of life and death, of peace and war, and so often demands allegiances idolatrous for the Christian. Here, Stringfellow shows his appreciation for Paul of Tarsus and Ellul of France.

Since this book was written before Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago flooded our bookstores and thoughts, I can imagine many would fault Stringfellow for focusing too much attention on the United States, as if he were guilty of inverted national arrogance (we are worse than anyone else), as if he were blind to the powers of death elsewhere. On the contrary, I believe the Gulag only underscores Stringfellow’s basic thesis that Babylon is not just Rome, nor just America, but that it is a cipher for any principality, especially for a state whose purpose is death. Keeping in mind the universality of this principle and remembering Stringfellow’s firsthand knowledge of American injustice and violence, one should have no reason, other than naked nationalism, to fault his frequent references to the American situation. The United States is not the eschatological Babylon, in competition with Hal Lindsey’s Common Market, but it is one present analogy to the historic Babylon of the Jewish exile and the Roman “Babylon” of the Christian persecution.

Although he is helpful in interpreting Babylon for us, he is not so helpful in teaching us what we should do about it. Somehow phrases like “living humanly in the midst of the Fall,” “singing the Lord’s song in a strange land,” “coping with death,” “living biblically” are not too specific or helpful (even though he does give some exciting suggestions from his early knowledge of the German confessing church under Hitler).

Christian ethicists will criticize him for this sweeping treatment of ethics, but it is at another point that he might be faulted with more justification. Although he uses the book of Revelation extensively, Stringfellow seems to have missed or evaded two elements found in the Apocalypse that might have been most helpful for us. First, John encouraged the churches of Asia Minor to faithful, suffering nonviolence. Second, this suffering nonviolence was made reasonable because of the promise of final vindication in and beyond history.

Stringfellow is not a pacifist, even though he is sensitive to the horror of violence, which he says is always an instrument of death. But, for him, the Christian is not a purist concerning nonviolence, and he appropriately refers to Bonhoeffer in this regard. Here two rather obscure passages in the Apocalypse deserve attention: First, in the letters to the seven churches in chapters two and three each ends with a blessing to him “who conquers.” This is not a military reference, as if inspired by the numerous instances of religious zealotism at the time; on the contrary, it is a reference to those who have died, were martyred for their resistance to emperor worship. For instance, in 3:21, where Christ promises that as he conquered through death nonviolently and now sits with the God on God's throne, so too the Christian who conquers in this very way will sit with Christ on his throne. And again in 13:10:

If any one is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes; if any one slays with the sword, with the sword must he be slain. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.

One sees here a somewhat veiled reference to the famous dominical saying in Matthew 26:52, “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” Suffering nonviolence, therefore, was apparently an important element in the modus operandi of the earliest Christian resistance, and deserves our attention if not our emulation.

Stringfellow also makes a point of rejecting ideas of “afterlife” and heaven as fanciful and irresponsible.

In any sanctuaries—I fear there are many of them—where the preaching and teaching is about a fancied “afterlife” instead of this life; about some indefinite “hereafter” instead of the here and now; about immortality (which is actually an elaborate synonym for memory) instead of resurrection (which means living in emancipation from the power of death); about “heaven”—as if that name designates a destination in outer space—instead of participation in a moral estate or condition; or about “eternal life” as a negation of this life instead of the temporal fulfillment of life: where these or similar doctrines prevail, there is patent distortion of what the author of Hebrews calls “the elemental doctrines of Christ” (Hebrews 6:1-2) …. there are no other places for which to search or yearn of hope—no utopia, no paradise, no otherworldly afterlife; and no limbo either.

Certainly one must agree that escapist notions of transcendence are to be deplored, but the Christian idea of transcendence is not "pie in the sky" as it is so often caricatured, not an opiate to present injustice, hate, and hurt. Christian transcendence, properly understood, allows the Christian to move ethical decision-making out of the realm of pragmatism and utilitarianism into the realm of daring, sacrificial obedience. It gives strength to those who can see no results for their faithfulness, no hope for their efforts other than a final vindication by a just and sovereign God. Instead of being an opiate, the ideas of heaven, judgment, and eternal life are some of the most radical elements of the biblical witness, and this is precisely how the images of heaven and afterlife function in John’s vision.

John is emphatic about the presence of another reality beyond the present and mundane, for it is the certainty of this reality that makes nonviolent, suffering obedience and martyrdom possible—even glorious. In chapter one he describes a vision of the Risen One who held the keys of Death and Hades (1:18). In chapters two and three, those "who conquer" through martyrdom are promised food from “the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (2:7), salvation from the “second death” (2:11), power over the nations (2:26), white garments and a name in the book of life (3:6), a permanent place in the temple of God (3:12), and a throne with Christ (3:21). Chapter four describes a vision of the heavenly council, and so it goes throughout the book, with references to a new heaven and new earth, a new Jerusalem, etc. It must be remembered that in the Johannine Apocalypses, as in the Jewish Apocalypses, the idea of an afterlife, a new heaven and earth, judgment and vindication were all intended to give courage and confidence to the oppressed faithful. This element is missing in Stringfellow.

Although An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land was written before the resignation of Richard Nixon, it has much to say to the present situation. In reading it one becomes aware that the real culprit in the American political situation is not Richard Nixon, as detestable as his actions and policies have been, but the state itself, a principality that has manipulated Nixon as much as Vietnamese peasants. This critique demythologizes the present euphoria that the American system is fundamentally good and has purged itself of the problem. Stringfellow does not permit Democrats the luxury of washing their hands of corporate culpability, nor does he allow Christians the comfort of passivity and loyalty now that the Watergate caper is closed. This book deserves careful and sober reading now more than ever.

William Stringfellow lives on Block Island, Rhode Island.

Dennis MacDonald was pursuing a Ph.D. in New Testament at Harvard University and was a contributing editor of the Post American when this article appeared.