Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (20 page)

When Athanasius sought to overcome resistance from monastic establishments, he chose a more effective strategy than accusing their most respected leaders of demonic possession. Instead he effectively coopted the most famous of them—Anthony—by writing an admiring biography picturing Anthony as his own greatest supporter. Since Anthony had died, Athanasius had a
somewhat free hand, and his biography turned Anthony into a model monk—a model, that is, of what the
bishop
wanted monks to be. For in his famous
Life of Anthony,
the sophisticated and fiercely independent teacher known from his letters disappears, and Athanasius replaces him with his own vision of an ideal monk—an illiterate and simple man.
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So while Anthony’s letters show him to be educated in philosophy and theology, Athanasius pictures him as someone who despises educated teachers as arrogant men who are ignorant of God. And although in his letters Anthony never mentions bishops, clergy, or church rules, Athanasius pictures him instead as a humble monk who willingly subordinates himself to the clergy and “the canon of the church.” Athanasius also depicts Anthony as one who hates Christian dissidents as much as he did—and who, like the bishop himself, calls them not only
heretics
but “forerunners of Antichrist.”
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Far from acting as an independent spiritual mentor, Athanasius’ Anthony pleads with the bishop to not allow anyone to revere him, especially after his death. As the biography ends, Athanasius pictures Anthony bequeathing all that he has—his sheepskin cloak and his outer garment—to Athanasius and the bishop’s trusted ally, Bishop Serapion of Thumis, to show that Anthony regarded them as his spiritual heirs and trusted them to guard his memory.

Athanasius’
Life of Anthony
became hugely popular and widely read throughout the empire, even inspiring Saint Augustine and his friends, who read it in Italy long after Athanasius wrote it, to become monks themselves; it continues to influence people who choose monasticism even today. Athanasius did not stop with his
Life of Anthony,
but went on to take more active measures to influence, and finally control, the monasteries. When Pachomius died
of plague in 346, plunging the federation into a leadership crisis, Athanasius intervened. The dying Pachomius had surprised his followers by overlooking his protégé Theodore, perhaps suspecting that he might ally with the bishops, and named instead an older monk named Petronius to succeed him. When Petronius died three months later, he, too, bypassed Theodore and designated a monk named Horsisius as the monastery’s next “father.” But after four difficult years, Horsisius was forced to resign. We do not know exactly why. Some said he resigned voluntarily, in tears, after a monastery administrator had refused to obey him; others noted that his rival Theodore, who would succeed him, had sought and gained the support of Athanasius before taking over as leader.
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Unlike Pachomius, who had tended to avoid Athanasius,
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Theodore, widely regarded as more pragmatic, had maintained frequent contact with the bishop. When Theodore finally took charge as leader of the federation, he formalized connections between the monastic federation and the church hierarchy, deferentially addressing Bishop Athanasius, along with the deceased Pachomius, as “our father”—that is, as a respected mentor from whom he accepted direction.

A few years later, in 367, when Athanasius wrote a famous Easter letter telling Christians what henceforth they could hear, teach, and discuss—and what to censor—Theodore gathered his monks together and had the bishop’s letter read aloud. Recognizing that the bishop’s letter mandated major change, Theodore had it written out in large letters on the monastery wall. In that letter Athanasius first denounced “spiritual teachers,” especially those respected for their education. Then, declaring original human thinking to be evil, he ordered Christians to reject all “illegitimate
secret books” as “invention[s] of heretics,” full of “evil teachings they have clearly created.”
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What has made this letter most famous is what follows: Athanasius set out a list of sacred books that, he declared, Christians could keep, a list that turned out to be
the earliest known record we have of what would become—and remains to this day—the church’s New Testament canon.
After listing the twenty-two books of the Old Testament, Athanasius added twenty-seven books he called the only “
genuine …
books of the new testament,” adding that “these are the springs of salvation;
these alone
teach true piety.”

At a time when Christian leaders throughout the empire were discussing which books should be regarded as their “Scriptures,” Athanasius intended his list not only as a
canon
—that is, a standard of measurement—but one that he insisted was
unchangeable.
To emphasize that his canon must remain exactly as he wrote it, Athanasius concluded his list with a warning that ancient scribes often used to prevent anyone from changing what they wrote:
“Let no one add to (these words) or subtract anything from them.”
The biblical book of Deuteronomy repeats this formula to warn listeners not to alter any of “God’s words,”
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and John of Patmos had echoed these words as he ended his own book of prophecies.
⁸⁴

As we have seen, Athanasius concluded his own New Testament canon with that most controversial of books, John’s Book of Revelation, although he knew that it had ignited heated arguments ever since John had written it three hundred years earlier—arguments still ongoing.
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Had it not been for Athanasius, would Revelation be in the Bible? Christian leaders in earlier centuries—Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian—had championed it; but when bishops and Christian leaders among Athanasius’ contemporaries
composed
their
lists of “canonical books,” all others whose lists survive left out John’s Book of Revelation—and often
only
this book. Around 350
C.E.
, for example, when Athanasius’ younger contemporary Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem preached a famous sermon at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, listing for newcomers “the New Testament books,” Cyril named all of the books now in the New Testament
except
Revelation. When he finished his list, Cyril warned, “and whatever books are not read in the churches,
do not read them,
even by yourself.” About fifteen years later, in 363, a council of bishops in Asia Minor drew up a list of “the canonical books of the New and Old Testament,” which they decreed were the only ones to be read in church; and they, too, omitted only the Book of Revelation. When another of Athanasius’ contemporaries, the famous theologian Gregory of Nazianzus, wrote up a canon list, he, too, left this book out, and finished his own list by declaring that “if there is anything besides these,
it is not among the genuine books
.” Still another of Athanasius’ contemporaries, Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium, who also omitted John’s Book of Revelation, concluded his own list with sharp criticism of competing canons: “This is
the least falsified canon
of the divinely inspired Scriptures.”

Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, in Palestine, who forty years earlier had sparred with Athanasius’ mentor, Bishop Alexander, over the wording of the Nicene Creed and who later became a confidant of the emperor Constantine, shows in his enormously influential
History of the Church
how much controversy John’s book had aroused. Eusebius acknowledges that at the time he was writing (c. 325–340), there was as yet no officially accepted list of “canonized” New Testament books. Yet Eusebius expresses so
much ambivalence about the Book of Revelation that he actually places it both on the list of books he calls “universally accepted”
and
on the list of books he calls “illegitimate.”
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First, then, after listing twenty-two writings he says are “universally recognized” as “New Testament writings,” Eusebius tentatively adds that “in addition to these, one may add,
if it really seems righ
t, the Revelation of John, about which we shall give the different opinions at the appropriate time.” Later, when he lists the books he calls “illegitimate,” including the Acts of Paul, the Revelation of Peter, and the Gospel to the Hebrews
—none
of which are now in the New Testament—Eusebius includes John’s Book of Revelation as well, qualifying his inconsistency by repeating, “
if it seems right,
since, as I said, some reject [this book], while others count it among the recognized books.”
⁸⁷

In a later volume of his
History
, Eusebius quotes extensively from the writings of Athanasius’ famous predecessor Dionysius, whom he calls “the great bishop of Alexandria,”
⁸⁸
who presided over the city during earlier persecutions (c. 233–265). Dionysius reports how he personally had debated with Egyptian Christians he regarded as literal-minded, since they read John’s book as prophesying that Christ would reign for a thousand years
on earth
—a view that Justin and Irenaeus both shared. Dionysius dismisses this view as naive, and repeats what earlier critics had said: that the Book of Revelation was “unintelligible, irrational, and the title false … [that] it is not John’s, and is not a revelation at all.” Yet Dionysius cautiously adds that he does not share these negative views: “I take the view that the interpretation of the various sections is largely a mystery.… I do not understand it, but I suspect that some deeper meaning is hidden in the words.”
Dionysius says he agrees that the author’s name is John, “and I agree that it is written by a holy and inspired writer, but I am not prepared to admit that he was the apostle John, the son of Zebedee and the brother of James,” who, he believes, wrote the Gospel of John. Noting many differences between the two writings, Dionysius concludes that the author of the Book of Revelation must have been a different John. He points out differences that literary critics have noted ever since; for example, that John of Patmos often mentions his own name but never claims to be an apostle; that the tone of his writing, the style, and the language, which is “not really Greek” but uses “barbarous idioms,” are distinctly different from those of the fourth gospel. Yet Dionysius concludes by saying that “I have not said these things to pour scorn upon [the author of Revelation]—do not imagine that!—but only to show how different the two books are.”
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Given such a controversial history, why did Athanasius choose to place the Book of Revelation as the capstone of his New Testament canon? Although we have no simple answer, several suggestions emerge from what we know of its history and its use to this day. Many readers of the Christian Bible today say that its placement seems right, since, just as the Book of Genesis, which begins “in the beginning,” opens the Hebrew Bible, so John’s Book of Revelation closes the Christian Bible with his visions of the end of time, when the “new Jerusalem” descends from heaven to inaugurate the long-delayed kingdom of God.

Yet while Athanasius ended his list with Revelation, we do not know how his contemporaries placed it. And although Christians usually copied their sacred books into codices, some copied Revelation onto rolls, like an ordinary text. If we can clear our minds of
its traditional identification with an apostle, we might see other reasons that Athanasius included it. In the first place, Athanasius surely noted that Revelation is the only book in
any
New Testament collection that claims that its own writings are divinely inspired prophecy. And, as noted above, John concludes his prophecies by adding the scribal formula meant to prevent anyone from adding to or subtracting from “God’s words”—a formula to which John adds threats and promises that, he says, God will deliver:

Directly after Athanasius lists in his letter the books he calls “recognized,” he adds his own solemn warning—as if it applied not only to John’s prophecies but also to
his
list of “canonized” books. By concluding his canon with the Book of Revelation, which, in turn, closes with this warning against adding or subtracting anything, Athanasius encouraged Christians to read these words as countless believers have read them ever since. And because Athanasius believed that Jesus’ disciple John wrote the Book of Revelation, he apparently took these words to mean that John, or even God himself, whose spirit inspired John, endorsed his canon, sealing what the bishop intended—and successfully campaigned to have become—the
fixed canon
of the New Testament.

Even more important, perhaps, is how Athanasius reinterpreted John’s visions of cosmic war to apply to the battle that he himself fought for more than forty-five years—the battle to establish what he regarded as “orthodox Christianity” against heresy. Following the precedent set by Dionysius, his predecessor as bishop of Alexandria, who advised that Revelation not be taken literally, Athanasius, as we have seen, interpreted “the beast” not as
Rome
but as
demonically deceived Christians
who unwittingly “war against Christ,” and he interpreted Babylon, the “great whore,” as none other than
heresy
personified.
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In this way Athanasius succeeded in neutralizing any embarrassing indictment of Rome while reinterpreting John’s book in ways relevant to his own time, for those living in a
Christianized
empire.

Furthermore, having fought so long against Christians whom he called
maniacs
and
Satan’s disciples,
Athanasius approved the way John’s prophecies move swiftly toward the climactic vision of the last judgment. For John says that, after the sea, death, and Hades give up “all the dead that were in them,” everyone—the dead and the living—shall stand before God’s throne on that “great and terrible day.” Then the damned shall be cast into the lake of fire as the new Jerusalem descends from heaven to earth to receive the saved to dwell in glory, where God shall “wipe every tear from their eyes.”
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Like Irenaeus, Athanasius interprets Revelation’s cosmic war as a vivid picture of his own crusade against heretics and reads John’s visions as sharp warnings to Christian dissidents: God is about to divide the saved from the damned—which now means dividing the “orthodox” from “heretics.”
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