About St. John Letters to Seven Churches
St. John and Letters to Seven
Churches
One of the most remarkable parts of that strange and difficult book,
the Revelation of St. John, is the passage 2:1 to 3:22, containing
the Seven Letters. The Apocalypse as a whole belongs to a large and
well-known class of later Jewish literature, and has many features
in common with previous Apocalypses of Jewish origin. St. John was
using an established literary form, which he adapted in a certain
degree to his purposes, but which seriously fettered and impeded him
by its fanciful and unreal character. As a general rule he obeys the
recognized laws of apocalyptic composition, and imitates the current
forms so closely that his Apocalypse has been wrongly taken by some
scholars, chiefly German, as a work of originally pure and unmixed
Jewish character, which was modified subsequently to a Christian
type.
In this work, Jewish in origin and general plan, and to a great
extent Jewish in range of topics, there is inserted this episode of
the Seven Letters, which appears to be almost entirely non-Jewish in
character and certainly non-Jewish in origin and model. There must
have been therefore some reason which seemed to the author to demand
imperatively the insertion of such an episode in a work of diverse
character. The reason was that the form of letters had already
established itself as the most characteristic expression of the
Christian mind, and as almost obligatory on a Christian writer.
Though many other forms have been tried in Christian literature,
e.g. the dialogue, the formal treatise, etc., yet the fact remains
that--apart from the fundamental four Gospels--the highest and most
stimulating and creative products of Christian thought have been
expressed in the epistolary form. This was already vaguely present
in the mind of St. John while he was composing the Apocalypse. Under
this compelling influence he abandons the apocalyptic form for a
brief interval, and expresses his thought in the form of letters. In
them he makes some attempt to keep up the symbolism which was
prescribed by the traditional principles of apocalyptic composition;
but such imagery is too awkward and cumbrous for the epistolary
form, and has exerted little influence on the Seven Letters. The
traditional apocalyptic form breaks in his hands, and he throws away
the shattered fragments. In the subsequent development of St. John's
thought it is plain that he had recognised the inadequacy and
insufficiency of the fashionable Jewish literary forms. It seems
highly probable that the perception of that fact came to him during
the composition of the Revelation, and that the Seven Letters,
though placed near the beginning and fitted carefully into that
position, were the last part of the work to be conceived.
It must also be noticed that the book of the Revelation, as a whole,
except the first three verses, is cast in the form of a letter.
After the brief introduction, the fourth verse is expressed in the
regular epistolary form:--
John to the Seven Asian Churches:
Grace to you and peace, from him which is and which was and which is
to come; and from the Seven Spirits, etc.
Such a beginning is out of keeping with the ordinary apocalyptic
form; but the pastoral instinct was strong in the writer, and he
could never lose the sense of responsibility for the Churches that
were under his charge. Just as the Roman Consul read in the sky the
signs of the will of heaven on behalf of the State, so St. John saw
in the heavens the vision of trial and triumph on behalf of the
Churches entrusted to his care. All that he saw and heard was for
them rather than for himself; and this is distinctly intimated to
him, 1:11, What thou seest, write in a book, and send to the Seven
Churches.
The expression just quoted from 1:11, write in a book, and send,
obviously refers to the vision as a whole. It is not an introduction
to the Seven Letters: it is the order to write out and send the
entire Apocalypse. This the writer does, and sends it with the
covering letter, which begins in 1:4. Hence 1:11 explains the origin
of 1:4. The idea of the letter as the inevitable Christian form was
firmly in the writer's mind. He must write an Apocalypse with the
record of his vision; but he must enclose it in a letter to the
Churches.
The Apocalypse would be quite complete without the Seven Letters:
The Seven Letters spring from the sense of reality, the living
vigorous instinct, from which the Christian spirit can never free
itself. An Apocalypse could not content St. John: it did not bring
him in close enough relation to his Churches. And so, as a second
thought, he addressed the Seven representative Churches one by one;
and, as the letters could not be placed last, he placed them near
the beginning; but the one link of connection between them and the
Apocalypse lies in the words with which each is finished: he that
hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith to the Churches,
i.e. not merely the words of the Letter, but the Apocalypse which
follows.
It is also not improbable that St. John had received a greater share
of the regular Jewish education than most of his fellow-Apostles,
and that, through his higher education, the accepted Jewish forms of
composition had a greater hold on his mind, and were more difficult
for him to throw off, than for Peter, who had never been so deeply
imbued with them. However that may be, it is at least evident in his
later career that a new stage began for him at this point, that he
discarded Hebrew literary models and adopted more distinctly Greek
forms, and that his literary style and expression markedly improved
at the same time. Proper consideration of these facts must surely
lead to the conclusion that no very long interval of time must
necessarily be supposed to have elapsed between the composition of
the Revelation and of the Gospel. The change in style is indeed very
marked; but it is quite in accordance with the observed facts of
literary growth in other men that a critical and epoch-making step
in mental development, when one frees oneself from the dominion of a
too narrow early education, and strikes out in a path of
originality, may be accompanied by a very marked improvement in
linguistic expression and style.
The Seven Letters are farther removed from the type of the "true
letter" than any other compositions in the New Testament. In their
conception they are strictly "literary epistles," deliberate and
intentional imitations of a literary form that was already firmly
established in Christian usage. They were not intended to be sent
directly to the Churches to which they were addressed. They had
never any separate existence apart from one another and from the
book of which they are a part. They are written on a uniform plan,
which is absolutely opposed to the spontaneity and directness of the
true letter. At the stage in his development, which we have supposed
the author to be traversing, he passed from the domination of one
literary form, the Jewish apocalyptic, to the domination of another
literary form, the Christian epistolary. He had not yet attained
complete literary freedom: he had not yet come to his heritage,
emancipated himself from the influence of models, and launched forth
on the ocean of his own wonderful genius. But he was just on the
point of doing so. One step more, and he was his own master.
How near that step was is obvious, when we look more closely into
the character of the Seven Letters. It is only by very close study,
as in the chapters below devoted to the individual letters, that the
reader can duly appreciate the special character of each. To sum up
and anticipate the results of that closer study, it may here be said
that the author of the Seven Letters, while composing them all on
the same general lines, as mere parts of an episode in a great work
of literature, imparts to them many touches, specially suitable to
the individual Churches, and showing his intimate knowledge of them
all. In each case, as he wrote the letter, the Church to which it
was addressed stood before his imagination in its reality and its
life; he was absorbed with the thought of it alone, and he almost
entirely forgot that he was composing a piece of literature, and
apostrophised it directly, with the same overmastering earnestness
and sense of responsibility that breathe through St. Paul's letters.
The Seven Churches stood as representative of seven groups of
congregations; but the Seven Letters are addressed to them as
individual Churches, and not to the groups for which they stand. The
letters were written by one who was familiar with the situation, the
character, the past history, the possibilities of future
development, of those Seven Cities. The Church of Sardis, for
example, is addressed as the Church of that actual, single city: the
facts and characteristics mentioned are proper to it alone, and not
common to the other Churches of the Hermus Valley. Those others were
not much in the writer's mind: he was absorbed with the thought of
that one city: he saw only death before it. But the other cities
which were connected with it may be warned by its fate; and he that
overcometh shall be spared and honored. Similarly, St. Paul's letter
to Colossae was written specially for it alone, and with no
reference to Laodicea; yet it was ordered to be communicated to
Laodicea, and read publicly there also.
This singleness of vision is not equally marked on the surface of
every letter. In the message to Laodicea, the thought of the other
cities of the group is perhaps apparent; and possibly the obscurity
of the Thyatiran Letter may be due in some degree to the outlook
upon the other cities of its group, though a quite sufficient and
more probable reason is our almost complete ignorance of the special
character of that city.
To this singleness of vision, the clearness with which the writer
sees each single city, and the directness with which he addresses
himself to each, is due the remarkable variety of character in the
whole series. The Seven Letters were evidently all written together,
in the inspiration of one occasion and one purpose; and yet how
different each is from all the rest, in spite of the similarity of
purpose and plan and arrangement in them all! Each of the Seven
Churches is painted with a character of its own; and very different
futures await them. The writer surveys them from the point of view
of one who believes that natural scenery and geographical
surroundings exercise a strong influence on the character and
destiny of a people. He fixes his eye on the broad features of the
landscape. In the relations of sea and land, river and
mountains--relations sometimes permanent, sometimes mutable--he
reads the tale of the forces that insensibly mould the minds of men.
Now that is not a book which he that runs may read. It is a book
with seven seals, which can be opened only by long familiarity,
earnest patient thought, and the insight given by belief and love.
The reader must have attuned himself to harmony with the city and
the natural influences that had made it. St. John from his lofty
standpoint could look forward into the future, and see what should
come to each of his Churches.
He assumes always that the Church is, in a sense, the city. The
local Church does not live apart from the locality and the
population, amid which it has a mere temporary abode. The Church is
all that is real in the city: the rest of the city has failed to
reach its true self, and has been arrested in its development.
Similarly, the local Church in its turn has not all attained to its
own perfect development: the "angel" is the truth, the reality, the
idea (in Platonic sense) of the Church. Thus in that quaint
symbolism the city bears to its Church the same relation that the
Church bears to its angel. For the present we shall only review in
brief the varied characters of the Seven Churches and the Seven
Cities, constituting among them an epitome of the Universal Church
and of the whole range of human life.
The note alike in the Church and in the history of Ephesus has been
change. The Church was enthusiastic; but it has been cooling. It has
fallen from its high plane of conduct and spirit. And the penalty
denounced against it is that it shall be moved out of its place,
unless it recreates its old spirit and enthusiasm: "I have this
against thee that thou didst leave thy first love. Remember
therefore from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first
works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy lamp out of its
place." And, similarly, in the history of the city the same note is
distinct. An extraordinary series of changes and vicissitudes had
characterized it, and would continue to do so. Mutability was the
law of its being. The land and the site of the city had varied from
century to century. What was water became land; what was city ceased
to be inhabited; what was bare hillside and cultivated lowland
became a great city crowded with a teeming population; what was a
harbor filled with the shipping of the whole world has become a mere
inland sea of reeds, through which the wind moans with a vast volume
of sound like the distant waves breaking on a long stretch of
sea-coast in storm. The distinctive note of the letter to Smyrna is
faithfulness that gives life, and appearance bettered by reality.
The Church "was dead and lived," like Him who addressed it: it was
poor, but rich: it was about to suffer for a period, but the period
is definite, and the suffering comes to an end, and the Church will
prove faithful through it all and gain "the crown of life." Such
also had the city been in history: it gloried in the title of the
faithful friend of Rome, true to its great ally alike in danger and
in prosperity. The conditions of nature amid which it was planted
were firm and everlasting. Before it was an arm of the vast,
unchanging, unconquerable sea, its harbor and the source of its life
and strength. Behind it rose its Hill (Pagos) crowned with the
fortified acropolis, as one looks at it from the front apparently
only a rounded hillock of 450 feet elevation; but ascend it, and you
discover it to be really a corner of the great plateau behind,
supported by the immeasurable strength of the Asian continent which
pushes it forward towards the sea. The letter is full of joy and
life and brightness, beyond all others of the Seven; and such is the
impression the city still makes on the traveler (who usually comes
to it as his first experience of the towns of Asia Minor), throwing
back the glittering rays of the sun with proportionate brightness,
while its buildings spring sharp out of the sea and rise in tiers up
the front slopes of its Pagos.
Pergamum stands before us in the letter as the city of authority,
beside the throne--the throne of this world and of the power of
evil, where the lord of evil dwelleth. And to its victorious Church
is promised a greater authority, the power of the mighty name of
God, known only to the giver and the receiver. It was the royal city
of history, seat of the Attalid Kings and chief center of the Roman
Imperial administration; and the epithet "royal" is the one that
rises unbidden to the traveler's lips, especially as he beholds it
after seeing the other great cities of the land, with its immense
acropolis on a rock rising out of the plain like a mountain,
self-centered in its impregnable strength, looking out over the
distant sea and over the land right away to the hills beside far off
Smyrna.
Thyatira, with its low and small acropolis in its beautiful valley,
stretching north and south like a long funnel between two gently
swelling ridges of hill, conveys the impression of mildness, and
subjection to outward influence, and inability to surmount and
dominate external circumstances. The letter to Thyatira is mainly
occupied with the inability of the Church to rise superior to the
associations and habits of contemporary society, and its contented
voluntary acquiescence in them (which was called the Nicolaitan
heresy). Yet even in the humble Thyatira he that perseveres to the
end and overcomes shall be rewarded with irresistible power among
the nations, that smashing power which its own deity pretends to
wield with his battle-axe, a power like but greater than that of
mighty Rome itself. In the remnant of the Thyatiran Church, which
shall have shown the will to resist temptation, weakness shall be
made strong.
The letter to the Sardian Church breathes the spirit of death, of
appearance without reality, promise without performance, outward
show of strength betrayed by want of watchfulness and careless
confidence. Thou hast a name that thou livest and thou art dead...I
have found no works of thine fulfilled...I will come as a thief
comes; and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. And
such also was the city and its history. Looked at from a little
distance to the north in the open plain, Sardis wore an imposing,
commanding, impregnable aspect, as it dominated that magnificent
broad valley of the Hermus from its robber stronghold on a steep
spur that stands out boldly from the great mountains on the south.
But, close at hand, the hill is seen to be but mud, slightly
compacted, never trustworthy or lasting, crumbling under the
influences of the weather, ready to yield even to a blow of the
spade. Yet the Sardians always trusted to it; and their careless
confidence had often been deceived, when an adventurous enemy
climbed in at some unguarded point, where the weathering of the soft
rock had opened a way.
Philadelphia was known to the whole world as the city of
earthquakes, whose citizens for the most part lived outside, not
venturing to remain in the town, and were always on the watch for
the next great catastrophe. Those who knew it best were aware that
its prosperity depended on the great road from the harbor of Smyrna
to Phrygia and the East. Philadelphia, situated where this road is
about to ascend by a difficult pass to the high central plateau of
Phrygia, held the key and guarded the door. It was also of all the
Seven Cities the most devoted to the name of the Emperors, and had
twice taken a new title or epithet from the Imperial god, abandoning
in one case its own ancient name. The Church had been a missionary
Church, and Christ Himself, bearer of the key of David, had opened
the door before it, which none shall shut. He Himself "will keep
thee from the hour of trial," the great and imminent catastrophe
that shall come upon the whole world. But for the victor there
remains stability, like that of the strong column that supports the
temple of God; and he shall not ever again need to go out for
safety; and he shall take as his new name the name of God and of His
city.
The Laodicean Church is strongly marked in the letter as the
irresolute one, which had not been able to make up its mind, and
halted half-heartedly, neither one thing nor another. It would fain
be enriched, and clad in righteousness, and made to see the truth;
but it would trust to itself; in its own gold it would find its
wealth, in its own manufactures it would make its garments, in its
own famous medical school it would seek its cure; it did not feel
its need, but was content with what it had. It was neither truly
Christian, nor frankly pagan. This letter, alone among the Seven,
seems not to bring the character of the Church into close relation
to the great natural features amid which the city stood; but on the
other hand it shows a very intimate connection between the character
attributed to the Church and the commerce by which the city had
grown great.
The second half of this letter gradually passes into an epilogue to
the whole Seven; and this proves that, in spite of the individual
character of each letter, they form after all only parts in an
elaborate and highly wrought piece of literature. It is hardly
possible to say exactly where the individual letter ends and the
epilogue begins; in appearance the whole bears the form after which
all the letters are modeled; but there is a change from the
individualization of the letter to the general application of the
epilogue.
To comprehend more fully the individuality of the Seven Letters one
should compare them with the letters of Ignatius to the five Asian
Churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Magnesia, Tralleis, Philadelphia, or with
the letter of Clement to the Corinthian Church. Ignatius, it is
true, had probably seen only two of the five, and those only
cursorily; so that the vagueness, the generality, and the lack of
individual traits in all his letters were inevitable. He insists on
topics which were almost equally suitable to all Christians, or on
those which not unnaturally filled his own mind in view of his
coming fate.
But it is a remarkable fact that the more definite and personal and
individual those old Christian letters are, the more vital and full
of guidance are they to all readers. The individual letters touch
life most nearly; and the life of any one man or Church appeals most
intimately to all men and all Churches.
The more closely we study the New Testament books and compare them
with the natural conditions, the localities and the too scanty
evidence from other sources about the life and society of the first
century, the more full of meaning do we find them, the more strongly
impressed are we with their unique character, and the more wonderful
becomes the picture that is unveiled to us in them of the growth of
the Christian Church. It is because they were written with the
utmost fullness of vigor and life by persons who were entirely
absorbed in the great practical tasks which their rapidly growing
organization imposed on them, because they stand in the closest
relation to the facts of the age, that so much can be gathered from
them. They rise to the loftiest heights to which man in the fullness
of inspiration and perfect sympathy with the Divine will and purpose
can attain, but they stand firmly planted on the facts of earth. The
Asian Church was so successful in molding and modifying the
institutions around it because with unerring insight its leaders saw
the deep-seated character of those Seven Cities, their strength and
their weakness, as determined by their natural surroundings, their
past history, and their national character.
This series of studies of the Seven Letters may perhaps be exposed
to the charge of imagining fanciful connections between the natural
surroundings of the Seven cities and the tone of the Letters. Those
who are accustomed to the variety of character that exists in the
West may refuse to acknowledge that there exists any such connection
between the character of the natural surroundings and the spirit,
the Angel, of the Church.
But Western analogy is misleading. We Occidentals are accustomed to
struggle against Nature, and by understanding Nature's laws to
subjugate her to our needs. When a waterway is needed, as at
Glasgow, we transform a little stream into a navigable river. Where
a harbor is necessary to supply a defect in nature, we construct
with vast toil and at great cost an artificial port. We regulate the
flow of dangerous rivers, utilizing all that they can give us and
restraining them from inflicting the harm they are capable of. Thus
in numberless ways we refuse to yield to the influences that
surround us, and by hard work rise superior in some degree to them.
Such analogy must not be applied without careful consideration in
Asia. There man is far more under the influence of nature; and hence
results a homogeneity of character in each place which is surprising
to the Western traveler, and which he can hardly believe or realize
without long experience. Partly that subjection may be due to the
fact that nature and the powers of nature are on a vaster scale in
Asia. You can climb the highest Alps, but the Himalayas present
untrodden peaks, where the powers of man fail. The Eastern people
have had little chance of subduing and binding to their will the
mighty rivers of Asia (except the Chinese, who regulated their
greatest rivers more than 2,000 years ago). The Hindus have come to
recognize the jungle as unconquerable, and its wild beasts as
irresistible; and they passively acquiesce in their fate. Vast
Asiatic deserts are accepted as due to the will of God; and through
this humble resignation other great stretches of land, which once
were highly cultivated, have come to be marked on the maps as
desert, because the difficulties of cultivation are no longer
surmountable by a passive and uninventive population. In Asia
mankind has accepted nature; and the attempts to struggle against it
have been almost wholly confined to a remote past or to European
settlers.
How it was that Asiatic races could do more to influence nature at a
very early time than they have ever attempted in later times is a
problem that deserves separate consideration. Here we only observe
that they themselves attributed their early activity entirely to
religion: the Mother-Goddess herself taught her children how to
conquer Nature by obeying her and using her powers. In its
subsequent steady degradation their religion lost that early power.
But among the experiences which specially impress the traveler who
patiently explores Asia Minor step by step, village by village, and
province by province, perhaps the most impressive of all is the
extent to which natural circumstances mould the fate of cities and
the character of men. The dominance of nature is, certainly, more
complete now than it was of old; but still even in the early ages of
history it was great; and it is a main factor both in molding the
historical mythology, or mythical explanations of historical facts
that were current among the ancient peoples, and in guiding the more
reasoned and pretentious scientific explanations of history set
forth by the educated and the philosophers. The writer of the Seven
Letter has stated in them his view of the history of each Church in
harmony with the prominent features of nature around the city.
About St. John
St. John and The Seven Churches
Letters to Seven Churches
Map of Seven Churches
The Book of Revelation
The Early Christians
The Gospel of St. John