Apc 12.1: woman robed with the sun
The interpretation of the woman as a
symbol of the church went back to Victorinus of Poetovio and was a commonplace
among Western commentators. Joachim of Fiore, Lambert, and Meyer all adopted
it, even though Lambert, following Rupert of Deutz, admitted the Marial
interpretation as a possibility. Du Pinet naturally followed the majority in
the general interpretation of the symbol but had already added his own details
in 1539. Alone of the Protestant commentators, he asserts that the church is
the wife of the Lord and that the marriage was concluded by the blood of Jesus
Christ, so that all those who place their hope in anyone or anything other than
Go violate that marriage. The 1543 addition is in fact a development of Meyer’s
exegesis, which considered that the apostolic church was apply compared to a
woman—fragile, small, and sterile by nature, she is made powerful and fecund
with multiple offspring by her spouse, Christ, Du Pinet paraphrased Meyer, but
added two further reasons to justify the aptness of the comparison between the
apostolic church and a woman. The church was aptly compared to a woman because
the church’s head is Christ in the same way that a woman’s head is her husband
(1 Cor. 11.3; Eph. 5.24) and because the church is in mystic union with Christ
through faith, just as a woman is joined to her husband.
In 1539, du Pinet insisted on the
church’s direct dependence on God, and on God only. I n1543, by a not very
original recourse to the metaphor of the Christian marriage, he specified the
relationship that should obtain between Christ and his church. She could be
totally dependent on him, and any power that she has, be it spiritual or
physical, must be due to him alone. As well as warning his readers against the
papacy, du Pinet thus also aimed to teach them the basic norms of the Chrisitan
marriage as he conceived it. The addition had little or nothing to do with the
biblical text; du Pinet simply used the text as a springboard for moralizing
about the nature of the church and the Christian marriage.
Apc 12.4: the dragon stood in front
of the woman
In 1539, du Pinet had already
basically adopted the exegesis of Bede (PL 93:166), who interpreted stood
to mean “attempt to put out the faith in Christ which the faithful have in
their hearts.” Lambert’s exegesis took up both the aspects of his
interpretation of the woman as the church and as Mary. The dragon, for
Lambert, wanted to stifle the word of God, but also, more specifically, he
tried to prevent the birth of Jesus or to make sure that he would be killed by
Herod after his birth. Eyer took over Bede’s exegesis but devoted only one
sentence to the interpretation of stood. Du Pinet’s exegesis of the word
in 1539 ran to a paragraph stating that Satan’s sole aim was the destruction of
Jesus Christ and his Word, and that he brought his aim about in various ways by
tyrannizing the faithful, by making them doubt the Word, and by distracting
them. However, whatever persecutions the church has to bear, it will carry on,
giving birth to the truth faithful and the aid of its ministers, he concluded.
As it stood in 1539, du Pinet’s
exegesis was no more than a paraphrase of Bede. In 1543, he suppressed this
interpretation and wrote a new one, adding to it an interpretation of 12.5: and
the woman gave birth, which, as we saw, he included in his comments on 12.4
in 1539.
The basic exegesis remained unaltered.
What changed was the tone. In 1543, Satan’s threat to the church and its
faithful was portrayed in extremely vivid terms, and the church’s successful
delivery of the “new man” was seen as all the more heroic. Satan tried to
“murder and annihilate” the church’s offspring. He “stalked” the church, his
jaws wide open, making sure that all her fruit—that is, God’s Word—was
stillborn. If any God of God came to be announced, Satan would immediately eat
it, thus murdering those who were weak in faith. He murdered not only by the
sword but also by promise of earthly rewards, such as benefices, bishoprics,
and so on. Du Pinet compares Satan to a crocodile that sweeps up with his tail
everything he want to devour, but, more important, he gives Satan an identity:
There is no doubt that the dragon of Apc 12 is the papacy of du Pinet’s time.
Similarly, the church, whose exact identity had been left open in 1539, was now
implicitly defined as the Protestant church. It alone had God’s support to
fashion Christ in the hearts of the faithful and so to produce the “new man”
who could bring about the destruction of the dragon. All in all, du Pinet’s
comments on Apc 12.4-5 triple in length between 1539 and 1543. Like the
addition in Apc. 12.1, this one too has very little to do with explaining the
text. What du Pinet very consciously set out to do was to apply the biblical
text in his own time and religious situation. (Irena Backus, Reformation
Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies
in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 46-47)