Category Archives: Byzantium

New Heaven and New Earth

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Beatus of Liébana
Las Huelgas Apocalypse
Spain
1220

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready like a bride adorned for her husband. (Apocalypse 20:1-2)

St. John has seen Hell and Satan bound with Death. Now he sees a new world emerge, clean and free of all stain. It is all that Isaiah hoped for: “Behold, I create new heavens and new earth” (Is. 65:17 and 66:2). It is everything that Enoch described: “The first heaven shall depart and pass away; a new heaven shall appear” (1 Enoch 91:16).

Some say that “there was no more sea” because the sea is the primaeval abyss, the chaos out of which matter emerged and there is no more chaos when judgement is complete. Some readers point out that seven markers of the fallen world are “no more” in the concluding chapters of the Apocalypse: the sea, death, mourning, crying, pain, every accursed thing, night. In the City of God, St. Augustine favors the idea that “the sea” is a euphemism for Death–cold, dark, deep, where a crowd can still be a vast collection of individuals in isolation. It is this Death that is no more in the new world adorned like a bride for her bridegroom and so the sea is “no more.”

In the Old Testament, the city Jerusalem is both a mourning virgin and a glorious bride. Now the time of her mourning has passed and her final victory and beauty are revealed. The bride of the Song of Songs takes her place alongside her heavenly bridegroom; during the Middle Ages, most sermons about the Song were also sermons about the Apocalypse and most sermons about the APocalypse were also sermons about the Song. The two texts go hand-in-hand. The Old Testament dreams of her glory and her dazzling garments are commonly read in church at Epiphany and Holy Saturday: the two days that most clearly anticipate the coming End and ultimate triumph of God.

Epiphany (the revelation of God’s glory in the darkness, the baptism of Christ when he descends into the water to slay the dragons hidden there as a dress rehearsal of his Passion) and Holy Saturday (Christ’s descent into the dark land of the dead–the sea mentioned earlier–to shatter the darkness with light and break the chains of those in prison there) are reflections in time of the eternal reality that is now revealed at the conclusion of the Apocalypse.

Epiphany. Holy Saturday. The conclusion of the Apocalypse. Jerusalem is adorned like a bride for her groom, the old context and environment of death and sin being swept away as the new context and environment of God’s glory is hidden no longer but emerges clearly for all to see.

A Rider Faithful and True

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The rider Faithful and True on his white horse in the Tolkovy Apocalypse (Moscow, early 17th century).

And I saw Heaven wide open, and behold, a white horse; its rider’s name was Faithful and True and in righteousness he judges and makes war…. he was clothed in a cloak dipped in blood , and he was called the Word of God. (Apoc. 19:11, 13)

Christ, the Word of God, rides into battle and emerges victorious. The Word of God, the Logos, is the divine blueprint for the universe while the Wisdom of God is the practical application of that blueprint.

The New Testament tells us that the Word was made flesh (John 1:14) and the Old Testament tells us that Wisdom leaped down from the heavenly throne in the middle of the night to save the Hebrews in Egypt. This image of Wisdom coming to earth at midnight (Wisdom 18) to slay the enemies of Israel was first used by the Church to describe Christ’s descent into Hell and his Resurrection during the night between Holy Saturday and Easter morning but then the image of Wisdom’s descent to earth at midnight also suggested the birth of Christ at Bethlehem and eventually resulted in our celebrations of “Midnight Mass” on Christmas Eve.

The Word was made flesh. Wisdom came to earth. To say that “Wisdom built herself a house” on earth is the poetic equivalent of saying “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” (Pope St. Leo the Great, Tome 2) The victory of the Word over the enemies of God is the victory of Wisdom over the enemies of God.

Christ is the Wisdom of God made flesh but because Wisdom—“Sophia” as she is identified in the oldest manuscripts of Proverbs—is a woman’s name, Wisdom has also been considered an allusion to Christ’s most pure Mother, the ever-blessed Virgin Mary. The victory of the Word-Wisdom is also the victory of the Mother of God, the Second Eve, treading on the head of the serpent that overcame the first Eve. Our Lady of Victory, although a feast to commemorate a victory over the Turks, is also an allusion to the victorious Mother of God who shares in the victory of her Son. She makes her Son’s victory possible by giving him flesh in her womb.

666 is the Number of the Beast

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Dragons and beasts abound in the Apocalypse and always attack the Church in some way, whether by martyrdom or financial and economic constraints. The number 666–which is used to impinge on Christian economic activity—has been interpreted in a variety of ways.

Then I saw another beast rising out of the land; it had two horns like a lamb’s but spoke like a dragon…. This calls for wisdom. Let anyone who has intelligence figure out the number of the beast for it is the number of a human being; and it’s number is six hundred and sixty-six. (Apocalypse 13:11, 18)

“This calls for wisdom.” That’s probably one of the greatest understatements ever! The debate about the identity of the Beast and the meaning of the number 666 is ongoing and seemingly endlessly fascinating.

One beast arises from the sea. Another beast arises from the land. The sea monster Leviathan and the land-monster Behemoth are a team, symbolic of a nation-state or political system-regime intent on destroying the Church. Some preachers say that the first beast is the political system that wants to destroy the Church while the second, land-based monster is the religious opposition to the Church: it is a mockery of the Lamb as it attempts a masquerade, looking like the Lamb but speaking with the voice of the dragon who attacked the woman clothed with the sun.

The land-monster causes all the people under the dominion of the first beast to “have a mark put on the right hand or on the forehead and no one was allowed to buy or sell unless one had the mark, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (Apoc. 13:16-17) In order to participate in economic and social life, people had to be marked with the number or the name of the beast–the beast commonly identified as Nero as the numeric value of the letters in his name add up to the infamous “666.” This mark is an official stamp. Perhaps a tattoo. Certainly a travesty of the sign of the cross marked with chrism on the hands and forehead of the newly baptized.

Some modern evangelicals say “the mark of the beast” is a certain credit card or identification card. In the ancient and medieval world, membership in business guilds was an important–sometimes necessary–aspect of economic life and in the Roman world such guilds often expected members to participate in pagan religious rites. Ancient commentaries say the mark of the beast were the coins issued by the emperor with his image on them. If the early Christians could not use coins in the market, they would be effectively marginalized and exiled to rural communes where they lived “off the grid” and supplied all their own goods. But that was just as highly unlikely to be a functional way to live in the first century AD as it is in the twenty-first century AD.

How to navigate the demands of mainstream culture is a constant question in the Church, even if that mainstream culture has been formed in large measure by the Church–the most superficial study reveals that Byzantium or Holy Russia or Christian Europe were societies that often opposed the most basic Christian teachings and practices. The most overtly Christian regimes were often the most oppressive, rigid, and cruel. How to avoid receiving the mark of the beast today?