Jonathan Kirsch - A History of the End of the World

Tyconius himself has been mostly written out of Christian tradition because he was a so-called Donatist, a member of the schismatic faction within the early church that refused to accept the authority of bishops whom they regarded as having been too quick to compromise with the pagan magistrates during the periods of persecution under imperial Rome. The Donatists condemned any Christian who complied with an order to turn over his Bible for burning as a traditor— the Latin word that originally meant “one who hands over” but soon acquired the meaning that is associated with its English equivalent, “traitor.” In that sense, the Donatists and the author of Revelation were kindred spirits: both were Christian radicals who ruled out any compromise with pagan Rome and detested above all any fellow Christian who collaborated with the Roman authorities.

When it came to reading the book of Revelation, however, Tyconius advocated a restrained and sensible approach, thus “liberating it from the embarrassments of a literal interpretation,” as Paula Fredriksen explains. 66But it fell to someone whose Christian credentials were in better order to elevate the “spiritual” reading of Revelation to the status of a church doctrine—Augustine (354–430), bishop of Hippo in the Roman province of Africa, and perhaps the single most influential theologian in the early church. He urged the readers and hearers of Revelation to regard the battle between God and Satan, so luridly depicted in Revelation, as an allegory for the “moral conflict within each person and in the Church in general”—and he insisted that anyone who did otherwise was merely succumbing to “ridiculous fancies.” 67

Augustine, who is famous for his quickness in confessing his own failings, admits in City of God that he, too, was once tempted to engage in what he calls a “carnal” reading of Revelation. 68That is, he was willing to entertain the thrilling and consoling idea that flesh-and-blood Christians would, sooner or later, see Jesus Christ descend from the heavens on a cloud and reign as king on earth for one thousand years. But Augustine declares that he later realized the error of his ways, and he calls on his fellow Christians to do the same. Indeed, he derides the popular belief that the resurrected saints would be permitted to resume the pleasures of the flesh during the millennial countdown to the final destruction of the world.

Based on a few spare lines of text in the book of Revelation that describe the thousand-year reign of Christ and the saints, some wishful thinkers painted an elaborate picture of the earthly paradise that resembles nothing to be found in Revelation itself or anywhere else in the Christian scriptures. They insisted, for example, that the dead would awaken in flawless bodies of the approximate age of Jesus at the time of his crucifixion—“thirty-something,” as Paula Fredericksen wryly puts it. 69Fat people would be given slender bodies, and amputees would get back their missing arms and legs. According to Irenaeus, who claims to possess knowledge of divine secrets that John taught but did not write down in Revelation, the millennium will resemble something out of a fairy tale.

“The days will come in which vines will grow, each having ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in each twig ten thousand shoots, and in each shoot ten thousand clusters, and on every cluster ten thousand grapes,” he imagines in Against Heresies. “And when any of the saints shall lay hold of a cluster, another cluster will cry out, ‘I am a better cluster, take me.’” 70

For ordinary men and women who struggled from day to day to put food on the table—and who lived in constant fear of famine—it is hardly surprising that paradise is imagined as a place where there is plenty to eat. But Augustine finds these fantasies to be naive and infantile, and he openly ridicules the notion that the resurrected saints would spend a thousand years gorging themselves at “immoderate carnal banquets, in which there will be so much to eat and drink that those supplies will break the bounds not only of moderation, but also of credibility.” 71

Augustine insists that the millennium as described in Revelation refers to a celestial paradise rather than an earthly one: “The joys of the saints in that Sabbath shall be spiritual,” he insists. 72And, contrary to the feverish imaginings of men like Montanus, he scoffs at the idea that the heavenly Jerusalem will be seen by human beings in the here and now. Rather, Augustine regards the new Jerusalem as depicted in Revelation as the symbol of “a glory so pervading and so new that no vestige of what is old shall remain”—that is, a phenomenon that is reserved until the world itself is gone. 73No one will actually witness the thousand-year reign of Christ with mortal eyes, because the millennial kingdom, according to Augustine, is yet another symbol. “The Church,” declares Augustine, “is the Kingdom of Christ.” 74

Indeed, Augustine prefers to see all the spooky and scary details in the prophecies of Revelation as a series of elaborate metaphors for a divine truth so ineffable that John is compelled to reduce it to concrete words, numbers, and images because the ordinary human mind could not otherwise comprehend them. John puts the reign of Christ at one thousand years not as a literal measurement of time, according to Augustine, but as “an equivalent for the whole duration of this world”: one thousand, Augustine writes, is “the number of perfection.” And when John describes how Satan will be bound in chains and cast into an abyss during the thousand-year reign of Christ, Augustine understands “abyss” to mean “the countless multitude of the wicked whose hearts are unfathomably deep in malignity against the Church of God.” 75

Nor is Augustine willing to concede that the final battle between God and Satan, as described so vividly in the book of Revelation, can be recognized in the troubles that were, even as he wrote, afflicting Rome. Some of his contemporaries, for example, argued that when John sees visions of the armies of Satan at war with the armies of God, he is predicting the invasion of the Roman Empire by various “barbarian” peoples, including the Goths and the Moors, who were dubbed Getae and Massengetae in some ancient sources. But Augustine insists that John is only speaking metaphorically about the enemies of the church wherever they may dwell on earth. “For these nations which he names Gog and Magog,” writes Augustine, “are not to be understood of some barbarous nations in the some part of the world, whether the Getae and Massangetae, as some conclude from the initial letters, or some other foreign nations not under the Roman government.” 76

Above all, Augustine strikes a stance that one modern scholar calls “radical agnosticism” and another scholar dubs “the eschatological uncertainty principle.” 77Augustine piously affirms the inner truth of the scriptural account of the end-times—but he insists that “the manner in which this shall take place we can now only feebly conjecture, and shall understand it only when it comes to pass.” 78Since Jesus has already cautioned all good Christians that no one knows when the end will come, Augustine suggests, the book of Revelation must be consulted only for its “spiritual” instruction and not as a source of eschatological thrills.

Augustine’s strict and narrow reading of Revelation was embraced and enforced by church authorities, and thus served to discourage any open speculation on the colorful details of the Second Coming. “Augustine glowered on Christian millennialists,” explains historian Robert E. Lerner, “and made them guard their words.” Apocalyptic speculation was so effectively suppressed by the church that, between 400 and 1000, “there is no surviving written product that displays an independent Western millenarian imagination.” 79And those self-styled soothsayers who were audacious enough to fix a certain date for the end of the world, such as the doomsayers who announced with perfect confidence that the Second Coming would take place in the year 500 C.E., were denounced by more cautious Christians as deliri et insani —that is, “insane crazies.” 80