Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: “This Mystery Is Profound”: The Eschatological Marriage In Revelation, Isaiah, And Ephesians 5, With Implications For The Church’s Witness And Human Gender Identity
Author: Joshua David Blount

WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023) p. 323

“This Mystery Is Profound”: The Eschatological Marriage In Revelation, Isaiah, And Ephesians 5, With Implications For The Church’s Witness And Human Gender Identity

Joshua David Blount

This dissertation is divided into two parts: a set of scriptural case studies examining the eschatological marriage between Christ and his church, and two positive theological proposals that examine first the relationship between this “eschatological horizon” of marriage and the church’s witness; and second, some implications of this eschatological horizon for developing an understanding of human gender identity.

Part 1 begins by considering marriage imagery in the book of Revelation, which uses a series of corporate images to depict the people of God in its vision cycles. The nature and strategic deployment of these images is studied, especially the significance of what might be called the “bridal city” imagery clustered in the last chapters of Revelation. This bridal city, though properly belonging to the consummation, has a stable existence and present function in the text. I discuss this existence and function as the figure of “ideal Jerusalem.”

The next chapter examines the book of Isaiah and its use of gendered imagery to portray God and his people. As Isaiah’s literary structure unfolds, marital imagery plays a vital role in its eschatological vision. Parallel to Revelation’s use of “ideal Jerusalem,” the figure of “ideal Zion” emerges in the second and third sections of the book.

These two chapters suggest a typological significance to human marriage in relation to the consummation, in which the former institution reveals or points to the latter future reality. The final chapter in Part 1 asks whether this reading of the marital figure can be sustained by appeal to a didactic text on the nature and purpose of marriage. Ephesians 5:32 speaks directly of marriage and its relationship to the Christ-church bond, and so this text is studied in detail. Three common readings of this text are explored, and a modified version of a typological reading is suggested. Two sets of paired terms, archetype-ectype and type-antitype, appropriately describe complementary perspectives on the

WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023) p. 324

relationship between the eschatological marriage between Christ and his bride and the institution of human marriage. The archetype-ectype distinction points to the theological priority of the eschatological marriage in defining the institution of marriage in God’s providential unfolding of history. The type-antitype distinction points to the historical priority of the type of human marriage in preparation for the antity...