The M+G+R Foundation
Introductory Notes
To the Book of the Apocalypse
A guest document
by
Msgr. Juan
Straubinger [1883 - 1956]
Doctor Honoris Causa by the University
of
Müenster, Germany
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Apocalypsis, that is, Revelation of
Jesus Christ, is called this mysterious Book, because in it the idea of
the Second Coming of Christ dominates (cf. 1,1 and 7; I Peter 1, 7 and
13). It is the last of the whole Bible and its reading is the object of
a special beatitude and hence the great veneration in which the Church
had it (cf. 1, 3 and note), no less than the tremendous warnings which
he himself fulminated against anyone who dared to distort sacred
prophecy by adding to or taking away from his own words (cf. 22:18).
Its author is John, servant of God (1, 2) and banished for the sake of
the Gospel to the island of Patmos (1, 9). There is no doubt today that
this John is the same John who also left us the Fourth Gospel and the
three Letters which in the Canon bear his name. "The ancient Christian
tradition (Popes, Justin, Irenaeus, Theophilus, Cyprian, Tertullian,
Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, etc.) recognizes by author
of the Apocalypse the Apostle St. John" (Schuster-Holzammer).
Vigouroux, in refuting rationalist criticism, notes how this
recognition of Revelation as the work of the beloved disciple was
unanimous until the middle of the third century, and it was only then
that the divine Book "began to become suspicious" because of the
writings of his first opponent Dionysius of Alexandria, who dedicated
the entire chapter 25 of his work against Nepos to sustain his view
that the apocalypse was not of St. John. John "alleging the differences
of style which he pointed out with his Alexandrian subtlety between the
Gospels and Epistles on the one hand and the Apocalypse on the other.
At that time "Dionysius' opinion was so contrary to the general belief
that he could not even take foot in the church of Alexandria, and St.
Athanasius, in 367, pointed out the need to include among the holy
books the Apocalypse, adding that "there are the sources of salvation".
But the influence of that opinion, supported and spread by the
historian Eusebius, was great in the future and it is due to her that
authors of the importance of Theodoreto, St. Cyril of Jerusalem and St.
John Chrysostom in all their works have not taken into account even
once the Apocalypse (see in the note to 1, 3 the complaint of the 4th
Council of Toledo).
The weakness of this position of Dionysius Alexandrinus is pointed out
by the same author quoted showing not only the "skinny" exegetical work
of the former, who fell into the allegorism of origins after having
fought against it, but also that, when the schism of Novacian abused
the Epistle to the Hebrews, the bishops of Africa also adopted as a
solution the rejection of the authenticity of the whole Book and
Dionysius was among them (cf. Introduction to the Epistles of St.
John). "S. Epiphany, says Fr. Durand, was to call them sarcastically
(these impugglers) the Alogos, to express, in a single word, that they
rejected the logos (divine reason) they were deprived of human reason
(a-logos)". The same author adds that the saint also reproached them
for having attributed the fourth Gospel to the heretic Cerinth (as they
had done with the Apocalypse), and that later his maneuver was repeated
by the Roman presbyter Gaius, "but the attack was soon rejected with
advantage by another much more competent Roman presbyter, the famous
St. Hippolytus martyr".
S. John wrote the Apocalypse in Patmos, one of the Aegean islands that
form part of the Dodecanese, during the exile he suffered under Emperor
Domitian, probably around the year 96. The addressees were "the seven
Churches of Asia" (Minor), whose names are mentioned in 1, 11 (cf.
note) and whose existence, Gelin says, could be explained by the
irradiation of the Jewish Christians of Pentecost (Acts 2, 9), just as
Paul found in Ephesus some disciples of the Baptist (Acts 19, 2).
The object of this Book, the only prophetic of the New Testament, is to
console Christians in the continual persecutions that threatened them,
to awaken in them "the blessed hope" (Titus 2:13) and at the same time
to preserve them from the false doctrines of various heretics who had
been introduced into the flock of Christ. Secondly, the apocalypse
tends to present a picture of the frightful catastrophes and struggles
that are to move the world before Christ's triumph in his Parousia and
the definitive defeat of his enemies, which the Father will make his
feet a footstool (Hebr. 10:13). This does not prevent that, as in the
Old Testament predictions and even in those of Jesus (cf. e.g. Mat. 24
and parallel), the prophet may also have thought of his contemporary
events and take them as figures of what is to come, although we find
unacceptable the tendency to see in these announcements, whose
supernatural inspiration and prophetic scope the Church acknowledges, a
simple expression of the yearnings of a distant historical epoch or an
echo of the hatred against the Roman Empire that may have been
expressed in Jewish apocalyptic literature after the fall of Jerusalem.
In this regard, Pirot's recent Bible, in its introduction to the
Apocalypse, rightly warns us that "Catholic authors have presented it
as the work of a disgruntled genius... whom external circumstances have
forced to free publicity, so to speak, from its draft" and that in
Patmos John lacked "a secretary whose calamus would have corrected the
principal errors that came out of the mouth of the master who
dictated". Is this not a further test of the faith of sincere believers
in the face of visions of their own that are obscure and mysterious by
God's will, and which have also been the object of such diverse
interpretations, historical and eschatological, literal and
allegorical, but whose reading is a bliss (1, 3) and whose meaning, not
closed in the main (10, 3 and note), will be fully clarified when the
god who reveals to the little ones what he hides from the wise, wants
it? (Luke 10:21).
For the soul "whose faith is also hope" (I Peter 1:19), such
difficulties, far from being a reason for discouragement in the study
of biblical prophecies, show on the contrary that, as Pius XII says,
the more intricate the questions appear, and especially in times like
these, which the Supreme Pontiffs have so often compared with
apocalyptic announcements, the greater the efforts must be made (cf. 3,
15 s. and note) and in which souls, more than ever in need of the word
of God (cf. Am 8, 11 and note), feel the yearning for mystery and seek
as if by instinct to take refuge in the spiritual consolations of
divine prophecies (cf. Ecli: 39, 1 and note), in the absence of which
they are at risk of falling into the easy seductions of spiritism,
sects, theosophy and all kinds of magic and diabolical occultism. If we
do not believe God," says St. Ambrose, "whom do we believe?"
There are three main systems for interpreting the Apocalypse. The first
one takes it as the author's contemporary history, exposed with
apocalyptic colors. This interpretation would take away from St. John's
announcements all their prophetic transcendence and consequently their
spiritual value for the believer. The second theory, called
recapitulation, seeks in the book of St. John the various phases of
ecclesiastical history, past and future, or at least of the first
history of the Church up to the fourth and fifth centuries, without
excluding the end of time.
The third interpretation sees in the Apocalypse exclusively an
eschatological prophetic book, as did its first commentators and
interpreters, i.e. S. Irenaeus, S. Hippolytus, S. Victorinus, S.
Gregory the Great and, among the later modern ones, Ribera, Cornelius
to Lapidus, Fillion, etc. The third interpretation sees in the
Apocalypse exclusively an eschatological prophetic book, as did its
first commentators and interpreters, i.e. S. Irenaeus, S. Hippolytus,
S. Victorinus, S. Gregory the Great and, among the later modern ones,
Ribera, Cornelius to Lapidus, Fillion, etc. This concept, which does
not exclude, as we said before, the possibility of allusions and
references to the historical events of the early times of the Church,
have been imposed today on others, as if, according to Sickenberg, the
prophecy that Jesus reveals to St. John "is an explanation of the main
concepts of the eschatological discourse of Jesus, called the little
Apocalypse".
We must also bear in mind that this sacred prophecy also means an
exhortation to be firm in faith and joyful in hope, aspiring to the
mysteries of the happiness promised for the Wedding of the Lamb. St.
Jerome says: "The Apocalypse of St. John contains as many mysteries as
words; and I say little with this, because no praise can reach the
value of this Book, where each word by itself encompasses many
meanings". As for the importance of the study of such a high and
definitive prophecy, she convinces us by telling us, both in her
prologue and in her epilogue, that we must preserve the things written
in her because "the time is near (1, 3; 22, 7). Cf. I Thess. 5:20;
Hebr. 10:37 and notes. "I Thess. 5:20; Hebr. 10:37 and notes. What I
say to you I say to all: Sail! (Mark 13:36 f.). The richness of the
supernatural life of early Christianity has been attributed to "this
vigil that awaits and this hope that watches" (cf. James 5, 7 and note).
In the 404 verses of Revelation there are 518 Old Testament quotations,
88 of which are taken from Daniel. It is not easy to understand how in
visions that St. John received transported to heaven (4, 1 s) it can be
supposed that he has already left us, in the 24 elders, "an angelic
transposition of the 24 Babylonian divinities of the constellations
that presided over the seasons of the year", nor how in the locusts of
the 5th trumpet "the imagery of the centaurs" etc. could be present. We
confess that, esteeming without restrictions the scientific and
critical work in everything that can bring elements of interpretation
to the service of the divine Word, we do not understand how the
respectful veneration that is due to it can be compatible with the
judgments that attribute to the author incoherencies, exaggerations,
artifices and flaws of style and method, as if the inspiration had not
also assisted him in the writing, if it is true that, as the Vatican
Council declares, confirming that of Trent as first author.
