Babylon, the Rudiments of the World, and the Glory of Christ: A Theological-Historical and Psychological Interpretation of Revelation 17 and Colossians 2
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60787/ojps/vol2no3/53-88Keywords:
Babylon, Revelation 17, psychological formation, social identity, moral injury, Christic counter-formationAbstract
This article offers an interdisciplinary theological-historical and psychological interpretation of Revelation 17 and Colossians 2. It argues that Revelation’s “Babylon the Great” has a strong first-century Roman referent while also functioning typologically as a recurring religious-political configuration in which power, prestige, wealth, sacred legitimacy, and imperial authority shape human allegiance. Rather than claiming an unbroken migration of a Babylonian priesthood from ancient Babylon to Rome, the study explains cultural continuity through diffusion, adaptation, syncretism, institutional continuity, and ideological transformation across Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Christianized Roman contexts. Psychologically, Babylon is interpreted as a symbolic representation of how systems of domination may form identity, belonging, moral perception, conformity, trust, fear, desire, and collective memory. The study uses contemporary psychological constructs as analytic resources, not as claims about the original intention of the biblical writers or diagnoses of ancient or modern institutions. Colossians 2 is read as a complementary theological text in which the contested term stoicheia tou kosmou refers to elemental principles and/or cosmic powers associated with the present world order rather than merely “Greek philosophy.” Against Babylonian formation and subjection to the stoicheia, Christ is presented as the embodied fullness of God and the source of Spirit-mediated transformation. The glory of Christ is therefore understood as revealed, shared, ethical, participatory, and transformative, not as a transfer of divine essence or physical energy. The article concludes that the Christian alternative to Babylon is not domination but Christic counter-formation: moral agency, humility, service, truth, accountable community, freedom from coercive domination, and transformed identity in Christ.
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