THE WOMAN AS THE CHURCH
According to Hippolytus, the child is Christ, and the
woman giving birth means ‘that the Church, always bringing forth Christ, the
perfect man Child of God, … becomes instructor of all the nations’ (Antichrist 61, ANF v.217). This implies
that Christ’s incarnation, although a unique moment in history, is a continuing
event through which the church becomes the universal teacher. The
ecclesiological interpretation is also found in Tyconius, who suggests that the
Woman Clothed with the Sun is the mystical body of Christ, contrasted with the
company of the wicked in the mystical body of Satan, the Beast and Babylon (in
Bauckham 1978: 57). The battle in Rev 12, Tyconius believes, refers in general
to Christ’s ongoing struggle with the devil, and in particular to the struggle
going on in the church in his own time. The woman is an image of his own
Donatist Church, pregnant with the gospel but persecuted by the devil, acting
through the false (Catholic) Church (Balás and Bingham 1998: 114). Methodius
interprets Rev 12 both as a guide for the Christian virgin who would imitate
Christ, the ‘Archvirgin’, and as a symbol of the maternal Church, who is in
labour until Christ is born in every one (Banquet
1.5). To Victorinus the woman is the ancient church of ancestors and prophets
and saints and apostles, groaning with longing for the Christ. The sun points
to the hope of resurrection, whereas the moon under her feet suggests the
bodies of both Old and New Testament saints (1916: 106.1–4; 106.6–10; ANF
vii.355). Her crown of 12 stars is the choir of ancestors of the old covenant
(apparently an allusion to the choir of 24 elders in Rev 4:4, 10–11, of whom 12
are Old Testament figures (1916: 50.2–5). The devil’s attempt to devour the
child represents the temptation and passion of Christ (1916: 108.1–8).
For later Franciscan writers the woman is an image of the
age of the apostles (Breviloquium in
Lee, Reeves and Silano 1989: 133; cf. Brightman in Firth 1979: 169). Similarly,
Bullinger calls her ‘a figure of the faithful church’ (Bauckham 1978: 306).
According to the Geneva Bible, the
moon under her feet indicates the way ‘the church treadeth underfoot whatsoever
is mutable, and inconstant, with all corrupt affections and such like’. For
Newton, the woman is the primitive Church; when Constantine obtained control,
she became tainted, symbolized by her flight into the wilderness (Wainwright
1993: 71). Milton sees her attire as a sign of the bliss of the saints:
‘Attired with stars we shall for ever sit’ (‘On Time’ 21). In similar vein, the
singer of an African-American spiritual admonishes: ‘Don’t toucha my starry
crown,/Good Lord I’m gwine home’ (Johnson and Johnson 1954: ii.70). (Judith
Kovacs, Christopher Rowland, and Rebekah Callow, Revelation: The Apocalypse
of Jesus Christ [Blackwell Bible Commentaries; Malden, Mass: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004], 136–137)
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