The Development of an Allegorical Interpretation of the Book of Revelation: Saint Augustine and Early Patristic Apocalyptic Thought
By: Angela Hummel
Saint Augustine was a central figure in the development of Western and subsequently apocalyptic thought at a time in Christian history when the world as it was known was changing with “such convincing and intimate momentum.” As a theologian, biblical scholar and bishop in North Africa , Augustine built on the ideas of the Donatist theologian, Tyconius, to introduce a distinctive reading of the Book of Revelation in the late fourth century. This interpretation of the Book of Revelation acknowledged its historical realism, while liberating it from the embarrassments and limitations of a strictly literal interpretation. With the assistance of Tyconius’s method of allegorical interpretation of scripture Augustine was able to produce an analysis of Revelation that was innovative. Although Augustine’s contemporaries were not convinced of his allegorical interpretation and continued to prophesize, speculate and preach about hypothetical dates for the end of the world, his exegetical innovation had a powerful and lasting effect on subsequent Latin Christianity.
To understand the originality of Augustine’s interpretation and Tyconius’s influence on this, one must first examine some of the characteristics of religious life in the early Patristic period. The Patristic period was a time of growth and change for early Christianity. During the fourth and fifth centuries a central focus for many Western Christians was their preparation for the final Day of Judgment. The anticipated return of Christ and the need to prepare for it, was present throughout religious life in sermons, literature and art. Millenarianism was prominent in this culture as Christians looked forward to the approaching kingdom of God on earth and announced that time and history were about to end. The most revealing expression of this occurred in the Apocalypse of John, also known is the Book of Revelation. As history persistently failed to end on time, the Church had to come to terms with this fundamental prophecy and reexamine the literal interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Saint Augustine of Hippo’s work became critical in this growing need of the Western Church to explain why Jesus had not returned.
Historians of Christian thought and students of apocalypticism have tended to divide the history of the apocalypse into three major epochs. Primarily, there was Jewish apocalyptic thought, which flourished in the period of enthusiasm following the death and resurrection of Christ. Augustine of Hippo pioneered the rejection of this literal, millenarian vision of the end and began to interpret apocalyptic texts in a spiritual ecclesiological sense. Augustine saw the forecast of the end taken as an allegory of the church in his present day. With the Edict of Toleration in 312 and the appointment of a Christian emperor, Augustine lived in a period during which Christianity’s place in the world was changing dramatically. The establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire elevated the Christian community into a status of power where believers were no longer being persecuted. The result of this transition in Christianity’s position of power created a contentious environment in Augustine’s diocese in North Africa . The rejection of the Christian Roman Empire’s authority in North Africa was one of the complex caused of the schism within the Catholic Church that produced the Donatist church of North Africa .
An influential member of this rival Donatist Church was Tyconius, a lay Donatist theologian. Tyconius was the author of Commentarius in Apocalypsin, in the closing decades of the fourth century. Tyconius’s thoughts were mostly known through later summaries and extracts since none of his original work survived. In this book, Commentarius in Apocalypsin, Tyconius explained in allegorical fashion the seven-sealed aspect within Revelation. This is significant because Tyconius’s reading of scripture emphasized the historical realization of prophecy, while denying the sort of social and temporal transparency to the text that encouraged a millenarian interpretation. Tyconius firmly believed neither persecution nor relative peace indicated God’s ultimate timetable and that “the time of the End is unknowable in principle.” Consequently, he interpreted the sixth seal in Revelations as a symbol of the troubles of the church, affirming that the Church must contain a mixture of both sinner and saint until the end of time.
Tyconius insisted that the important distinction to be made in Revelation is moral and spiritual rather than temporal, and he was the first to see salvation history as an interior process, rather than a linear course. At times, this resulted in him being labeled as an “anti-apocalypticist”, which is not an entirely accurate reflection of his writings. Tyconius advocated a typological reading of Revelation that avoided the historicism of allegory while insisting, against earlier Western apocalyptic commentary, that the time of the End and the identity of the saved could not be known. This fundamental belief of Tyconius provided the point of departure for what is considered distinctive in Augustine’s own theology.
Even though Tyconius was not widely known in his time outside of North Africa, it would appear that Augustine of Hippo most likely had access and made use of Tyconius’s works. Historian Paul Harvey theorized Tyconius’s greatest impact on Augustine was Tyconius’s typological approach to the Book of Revelation. This work was believed to have taught Augustine how to approach John’s Apocalypse and made the New Testament book accessible for Augustine to preach to his congregation. Tyconius offered a method for making sense of difficult text through symbolical explanations. Augustine’s use of the Book of Revelation in his work, City of God, implied that he did not follow Tyconius blindly While Tyconius offered a method for comprehending Revelation within a recent historical framework, Augustine preferred less historical specificity in his reading of the Book of Revelation, thus allowing greater effectiveness of Revelation to any Christian community, present or future. Tyconius’s critical position in this hermeneutical apprenticeship contributed to the development of Augustine as a biblical scholar and led him to formulate ideas on time and history “which radically altered the terms in which he would discuss traditional Christian millenarianism.”
In the beginning of Augustine’s career he accepted much of the contemporary theology of history and it’s linking of the destinies of Rome and the Church. Surprisingly, Augustine himself was once a millenarian. Later, some suggested that after his reading of Tyconius, Augustine argued that there was no essential relationship between God’s plan for salvation and the destinies of secular kingdoms and empires. Augustine maintained this notion against the popular belief of the time, which proclaimed the end of the world was approaching since the emperors had become Christian and most of the signs of the ‘parousia’ had been accomplished. Using the arguments that a “specifically named deadline invites disappointment and lack of faith once it is past” and “inferences cannot be drawn from wars and portents because these things occur constantly and Christians might be mocked”, Augustine fought profusely against the desire to calculate the date of the end of the world. On many occasions he cited numerous passages from the bible such as “It is not for you to know the time which the Father hath put in his own power.” Statements from scripture such as this one led Augustine to conclude “human calculation was worse than dangerous: it was actually forbidden”.
Augustine developed a strong belief that only God knows the historical time frame and history cannot serve as the prime medium of salvation, despite the existing themes of Christian millenarianism. Augustine’s most important historical belief is that the historical process is teleological and he vigorously rejected any form of millenarian interpretation of Chapter 20 in Revelation. He had no hope in the emperor; as his ambitions were entirely spiritual and otherworldly. This shift in understanding of history created a new attitude toward the interpretation of apocalyptic texts for Augustine, particularly Chapter 20 in the Book of Revelation.
Rather than refuting in detail the materialistic projections of the millennearists, Augustine concluded that the thousand years symbolically meant, “the present time of Christ’s first coming”, which closely followed Tyconius’s teaching. He suggested one thousand was a perfect symbolic number and therefore might stand simply for totality or all generations. With this in mind, Augustine proceeded to “wrench all temporal reference away from the seventh world age”, especially John’s thousand-year reign of the saints in Rev 20. The six previous world ages, he believed were historical, but the eschatological seventh day was “the saints themselves”. His proof for the present period reign of the saints was the miracles their powers had performed. This groundwork formulated his famous statement in his well-known work, The City of God : “After this present age God will rest, as it were on the seventh day; and he will cause us, who are the seventh day, to find our rest in him.”
One of Augustine’s primary concerns was with distinction between the first and second resurrections referred to in Revelation Chapter 20. The first resurrection is of the soul, which Augustine theorized happened through baptism and life in the Church. Augustine argued “the first resurrection has already been accomplished by the coming of Christ and establishment of his Church”. He saw the second resurrection as the resurrection of the body and believed it would only occur at the end of the world. Defiant toward the scientific thinking of his day, Augustine believed this raised corporeal body would not dwell on a transformed earth. Instead, he insists that these corporeal bodies would dwell in the heavens and the Kingdom of God would not come to earth.
Augustine found no indication of who or what the Antichrist would be after studying John’s Apocalypse. Instead, Augustine believed that the “Antichrist is present within the church now, as the body of potential schismatics, as much a he will come in the future as a historical figure”. His interpretation of this apocalyptic aspect prompted him to shy away from discussing the Antichrist as a historical figure and Augustine concluded it was better not to speculate the ‘who’ or ‘when’. Throughout Augustine’s career, particularly after his exposure to Tyconius, most of his comments intentionally discouraged any speculation on the future coming of the Antichrist and the end of the world.
Despite Augustine’s attempt to suppress speculation on the date and events of the end of the world, one cannot say Augustine’s position is “anti-apocalyptic”. Unlike Tyconius, Augustine never seemed to totally deny or ignore the literal and realistic sense of the eschatological events; instead Augustine remained cynical about the events of the end and our ability to predict its timing. In response, Augustine diverted theological attention toward the “spiritual reality of Antichrist within the Church of the present”. Given this consideration, Bernard McGinn is incorrect to group Augustine under the titled section, “ Opposition to Apocalypticism” in his book Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. He does, however, clarify this categorization somewhat when talking about Augustine , naming him the “most incisive opponent of the apocalyptic interpretation of history in the patristic period.” McGinn’s stance makes it clearer that the aim of Augustine was not to deny the historical veracity of scriptural message concerning the Antichrist and the End, but to reject the millennial and imminent style of interpretation of the early patristic period.
Augustine’s allegorical interpretation demonstrated a clear denial of strict millennialism. Although as a whole, Augustine’s works were extremely influential throughout the early medieval world, theologians did not as heavily embrace his apocalyptic theories. This is evidenced by the imminent commentaries on the end of the world by authors such as Primasius, Bede and Gregory the Great. These authors, and many similar writers, never allowed Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Revelation to diminish their faith in the imminence of the Second Coming. In terms of empirical verification, the essence of Augustine’s argument was strengthened by the simple passage of time. Despite the rational thinking and scriptural basis to discourage imminent apocalypse expectations, allusions to active millenarian expectations appeared constantly. Problematic sources such as “false christs, famine, earthquakes and assorted terrestrial and celestial disturbances” continue to send populations into panic.
One can still, however, identify traces of Augustine’s exegetic innovations on subsequent Latin Christianity. The cosmic drama of the ‘parousia’ became less a focus for sacramental theology and other areas of theological speculation as a result of Augustine denial of the imminence of this event. His strong belief that persecution and corruption by the unrighteous does not indicate the coming of the End has provided a strong foundation for the Church to prevent fanatical apocalyptic thinking in times of struggles and tribulations. The strong respect Augustine awarded his rival and theological opponent Tyconius was also a reflection of Augustine’s compelling perspective. The esteem Augustine held for his biblical hermeneutical teacher was reflected in Augustine’s description of Tyconius as “a man endowed with sharp intellect and copious eloquence, even though a Donatist”. Augustine’s apprenticeship in allegorical biblical interpretation should rightfully be linked to Tyconius’s work, which pioneered the way for Augustine’s symbolic explanation of the Book of Revelation. This figurative understanding also helped Augustine to develop his famous book The City of God, which continues to influence Christianity today.
Paula Fredriksen explains the current state of apocalyptic Western thought most effectively. She states the culture lays “between the twin poles of the Christian message “the now/not yet” of a Messiah who has come and a Messianic Age yet to arrive”. Reflections of apocalyptic realism in this century are always balanced or supplemented by the Augustinian position, allowing to some degree a peaceful co-existence between the literal and the spiritual. Despite Augustine’s rejection of imminent expectations, Christianity’s texts and its doctrine will always continue to present the pursuit of the millennium as a perpetual possibility, and thus John’s vision of the End will continue to inspire those who hope to live to see the coming of God’s kingdom. This suggests that even the powerful and lasting allegorical interpretation of the Book of Revelation and the denial of an imminent apocalypse by authoritative theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo, cannot suppress the natural desire for human beings to speculate and prophesize about the end of time.
WORKS CITED
Peter Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine. (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1972), p. 9.
Paula Fredriksen, “Tyconius and Augustine on the Apocalypse,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (New York: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 21.
Kevin L. Hughes, “Augustine and the Adversary: Strategies of Synthesis in Early Medieval Exegesis.” in History Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New essays on Augustine’s City of God. ed. Mark Vessey, Karla Pollman and Allan D. Fitzgerald. (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1999), p. 221.
Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 26.
Paul B. Jr. Harvey, “Approaching the Apocalypse: Augustine, Tyconius, and John’s Revelation.” in History Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination: New essays on Augustine’s City of God. ed. Mark Vessey, Karla Pollman and Allan D. Fitzgerald. (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1999), p. 145.
For further information, see R.A. Marus, Saeculum
Writings of St. Augustine (New York: Fathers of the Church Inc, 1955) p. 357. (citation from Acts 1:7)
G.L. Keyes, Christian Faith and the Interpretation of History: A Study of St. Augustine’s Philosophy of History. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966) p. 35.
Charles Kannengiesser, Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. The Bible in Ancient Christianity. ( Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2004) p. 1181.