The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 1

V. Loss and Recovery of Historical View

1. INTERPRETATION REMAINS STATIC AFTER AUGUSTINE

We have seen how in the wake of Tichonius and Augustine prophetic interpretation became static. The exposition of Daniel stood just where Jerome had left it, and the understanding of the Apocalypse remained in a state of arrested develop—The historical approach to the Apocalypse had been clearly indicated before Tichonius, but now men no longer looked to events for the fulfillment of the prophecies. The series of empires had already been passed, the stone kingdom of Daniel and the millennium of the Revelation were regarded as already in progress, and there was nothing yet in tight to fulfill the popular concept of the terrible Antichrist and his hordes of Gog and Magog. Perhaps there were popular forebodings about the Mohammedans and the like, but the writers of prophetic exposition were following in the footsteps of Tichonius and largely ignoring the historical meaning for the allegorical and spiritual application. PFF1 900.1

Walafrid Strabo’s Glossy in the ninth century (or perhaps even later, if Walafrid was not the author) enumerated the seven seals but only the mention of Antichrist under the sixth gives any hint of historical sequence; as was presented in the early church, here was a hint in the trumpets of successive periods, but the picture was not filled out. The Glossy was long quoted as authoritative. Haymo a little later followed the same scheme. PFF1 901.1

2. HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS DEVELOP GRADUALLY

Then Berengaud, late in the ninth century, launched out a little further into historical interpretation when he made the seals, the trumpets, and the seven heads of the beast refer to periods beginning with the creation—a sort of harking Back to Augustine’s seven ages of the world—and he named and located the ten horn kingdoms as the already—existing divisions of Rome. PFF1 901.2

Otherwise prophetic interpretation slumbered on as before, until Arnulf, almost at the end of the tenth century, started the echoes with his Antichrist epithet flung at the pope. But silence fell again until the twelfth century, when things began to stir. PFF1 901.3

In half a century we find Bruno of Segni quoting Ezekiel’s year-day principle for the three and one-half days of the Two Witnesses, Rupert of Deutz working out historical sequences (in the Old Testament again) for the seven heads and seven seals; the two Bernards pointing respectively to the present church as Babylon and a present papal claimant as Antichrist; Richard of St. Victor suggesting that the seven churches, seals, trumpets, et cetera, cover the Christian Era five times. PFF1 901.4

Then carne Anselm of Havelberg, forerunner of Joachim’s three ages, filling in Walafrid’s outline with historical fulfillments. Before the century closed we have Joachim’s three monumental works, which completed the reversal of the Tichonius Augustine tradition and began the extension of the year-day principle and the historical view of prophecy, through which the next advances in prophetic interpretation were to come. PFF1 902.1

It is true that between Augustine and 1100 there had been some writer on prophecy in practically every century. But these, for the most part, merely reflected the departures from the early positions, introduced by Augustine, and added little to any understanding of the times. They were simply echoes. PFF1 902.2

3. THE DAWN OF PRE-REFORMATION VIEWS

Thus we may say that in the twelfth century the early gray light that heralds the first approach of dawn appeared, following the somber black of the Dark Ages. Men began dimly to see again the faint outlines of larger prophetic truths that had now been shrouded in darkness for hundreds of years. Slowly the gleams of day appeared, a streak here and a streak there, as men still groped in the shadows and stumbled in their walk while anxiously, awaiting the day. Familiar prophetic landmarks were seen again, looming hazily in the shadows. Details became clearer as the dusky gray turned to the early white light of day; and while the lowlands were yet in partial shadow, the earliest beams of the yet unseen sun began to touch the distant peaks with roseate hue in promise of the full sunlight yet to come. The night had passed and the early dawn of day had come. PFF1 902.3

Too much must not be expected of these men of the Middle Ages, living before even the gray light of the Renaissance had broken upon the world. All the greater honor, then, to such stalwarts whose spiritual restlessness sought out the revealing light of the Word on the times, and searched for a reliable understanding of their day. Their spirits chafed under the perverseness of the times and the corruptions of the church. To them the prophecies promised light and hope and understanding. Without the fuller perspective and knowledge of later students of prophecy, some of them pointed the way ahead to clearer understanding. PFF1 902.4

So we enter the second. epochal period of prophetic emphasis and exposition that was soon to expand and grow luminous under Wyclif and his pre-Reformation contemporaries in Britain, and under Milicz and Huss in Bohemia, and those who succeeded them, but which was to reach its fullness of influence, power, and glowing, guiding light only under the Reformation. ⁷ PFF1 903.1