Monday, October 16, 2023

German Lutheran Theologain Nikolaus Selnecker (1532-1592) on the “Woman” in Revelation 12

  

The Apocalypse contains, according to Selnecker, three important messages for him and his contemporaries. First, it tells them not to despair at seeing the godlessness and evil of the people and all the mighty rulers; second, it tells the to rejoice if they have an opportunity to suffer and shed their blood for the truth; third (and most important), it tells them that the Last Judgment is at hand. Among the sources he used, he mentions an apparently unpublished commentary by Michael Stifel and other contemporary works on the Apocalypse. However, he stresses, he only took form them things that would make the text easier to understand for the common man (“für den gemeinan Man”). (Daniel und Offenbarung, 1567, A3r)

 

The commentary is thus anything but learned. Selnecker dispenses with most of the sophisticated exegetical machinery, including the division into seen sections or visions. . . . Selnecker makes it represent the Lutheranism of his own day, that is, just before the Last Judgment, the date of which he never specifies, in contras to Chytraeus.

 

Thus the woman of Apc 12 is the true Chrisitan church of the last days. The twelve stars in her crown stand not only for the apostles but for all the teachers who, influenced by the apostles, honor the church in the last days. (Daniel und Offenbarung, 1567, [462]) The moon under the woman’s feet assumes a negative connotation. The moon, being the light of the night, is to be opposed to the true light (the sun, or Christ) and therefore represents philosophy, human reason, and false doctrine, which the woman does not allow to seduce her. Seeing as Selnecker considers the Apocalypse the book written expressly for his time, there is no question of the woman being pregnant with all the truth faithful from all periods in history or indeed with Christ. The male child denotes a powerful teacher of the latter-day church, indeed, no less a person than Luther:

 

From the true Church of God should come an excellent, highly spiritual teacher, such as Luther has been in our time. He should send out thunder and lightning and speak like a brave hero. But his beginnings should be difficult, as we saw. . . . (Daniel und Offenbarung, 1567 [463]) (Irena Backus, Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich, and Wittenberg [Oxford Studies in Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 130-31)