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Home Justin Martyr | Irenaeus | Hippolytus | Cyprian | Victorinus Victorinus (d.c. 304)Jerome described Victorinus as one of the pillars of the church and regarded his Biblical commentaries as being sublime in content and sense if not altogether impressive in style. Victorinus was probably a Greek by birth and by profession an orator in some Greek city before his conversion to the Christian faith. He wrote, however, in Latin and was in fact the first exegete to do so. He was the Bishop of Pettau on the River Drave in the now Yugoslavian part of Steiermiark. Although he was a prolific writer, nearly all his works are lost. He is said to have argued against most of the heresies which threatened the Church in his day in a treatise of which he may have been the translator and editor rather than the author. Victorinus was first and foremost an expositor of Scripture and covered numerous books of the Bible in his commentaries. Only the one on the Book of the Revelation has survived, in a fifteenth century Ottobonian manuscript now housed in the Vatican. Victorinus also wrote a short treatise on the week of creation which was published by William Cave in 1688 from a Lambeth codex of the ninth century. Professor Berthold Altaner in his Patrology informs us that the original text of Victorinus’s commentary on Revelation ‘Clearly shows the chiliastic mood’ (or millennial emphasis) which evidently marked all his writings. It may well be that it was on account of this factor that most of his commentaries were suppressed and even destroyed in a period when it was unfashionable and unacceptable to believe in an earthly Kingdom to be established by the returning Christ at the end of the age. Victorinus thus not only paid the price of his faithfulness by forfeiting his life in martyrdom: the bulk of his compositions were likewise silenced. Interpreting the ApocalypseIn his fascinating treatment of History Unveiling Prophecy Dr. Henry Grattan Guinness supplies a remarkable tabulation compiled from the indices of the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. The Book of the Revelation was so frequently and thoroughly explored by the early fathers of the Church that it is possible to reproduce almost even’ verse of it from Christian writings in the first three centuries. Victorinus was far from being an isolated figure in concentrating attention on the Apocalypse although his is the earliest extant consecutive commentary on it. It is homiletical rather than technical in method, as Dr. Merrill C. Tenney has noted. Victorinus seems to have been the first to recognise and lay down a distinctive principle of interpretation in relation to the Apocalypse. He detects an element of recapitulation in what John wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is therefore important, he thinks, for the reader to follow the apostle’s disclosures ‘diligently; and with the utmost care’ and to understand what the Spirit from the Father both announces and anticipates, and how, when He has gone forward to the last times, He again repeats the former ones’. As in our Lord’s apocalyptic discourse as recorded in Mark Thirteen and Matthew twenty-four, there is certain oscillation between what has happened already and what is yet to take place. Because of this feature, it must not he assumed that everything is necessarily arranged in strict chronological order. Victorinus thus anticipated later expositors of the Apocalypse who find in it a combination of preterist and historical references alongside its main futurist thrust. However, like other pioneers of prophetic witness, he did not envisage the long interval that would elapse before the Lord’s Return. As we now know Christian history was destined to run its course over a much more extended period than Victorinus and his contemporaries realised. In our previous studies in this series we have tried to summarise the teaching of each author concerned as it has been drawn from a range of varied writings. In the case of Victorinus we only have his commentary on Revelation as a source and therefore propose to follow him through his chapter by chapter exposition and pick out the salient features of his prophetic interpretation. Christ’s Coming for JudgementCommenting on Revelation 1:4, Victorinus immediately focuses attention on the Return of Christ as a major theme of the Apocalypse. "He is" because He endures continually; "He was", because with the Father He made all things, and has at this time taken a beginning from the virgin; "He is to come", because assuredly He will come again for judgement.’ And with reference to verse 7, Victorinus explains that "He who at first came hidden in the manhood that He had undertaken, shall after a little while come for judgement manifested in majesty and glory.’ The certainty of future judgement at the Second Coming of Christ is underlined as Victorinus reaches Revelation 4:3, with its description of the One seated on the throne of heaven whose appearance is like a jasper and a sardius or carnelian stone. "Jasper is the colour of water, the sardius of fire. These two are thus manifested to be placed as judgements upon God’s tribunal until the consummation of the world, of which judgements one is already completed in the deluge of water, and the other shall be completed by fire.’ The six wings of the four living creatures in 4:8 are regarded as symbolising the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. The allegorical connection may well be doubtful, but the conclusion Victorinus draws from it nevertheless expresses an important truth, namely, that "the announcement of the New Testament gains no faith unless it have the fore-announced testimonies of the Old Testament by which it is lifted from the earth and flies. For in every case, what has been told before, and is afterwards found to have happened, begets an undoubting faith.’ Moreover, if the New Testament acquires credence on account of the evidence it contains of fulfilled prophecy the Old Testament is similarly vindicated and confirmed as its predictions are seen to be accurate. ‘For unless what the prophets foretold had been consummated in Christ, their preaching was in vain.’ The Seven Sealed ScrollThe white horse in Revelation 6:2, with its crowned rider sallying forth bow in hand conquering and to conquer’, is interpreted by Victorinus in terms of the Christian Church embarking on its victorious mission, after Pentecost, and triumphing over rampant paganism. For our Lord Himself declared: ‘This gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come. (Matt. 24:14). Whereas Victorinus sees Revelation 6:2 as related to the spread of the gospel over the centuries until the Return of Christ, other students of prophecy nowadays prefer to regard it as an allusion to the Antichrist who before the end will launch a counterfeit crusade. The fiery red horse of Revelation 6:4 signifies, according to Victorinus, the coming wars’ which will precede the winding up of all things, whilst the black horse of verse 5 points to a great famine in the days of the Antichrist. The pale horse in verse 8 foreshadows the destruction and death which will mark the same dreadful period of tribulation. The fifth seal, with its vision of the martyred saints crying out beneath the altar, is a reminder that in the last time the righteous will be relieved and the wicked condemned (vv.9-11). The sixth seal — the devastating earthquake —relates to the final persecution, so Victorinus thinks, and the cosmic disturbances described in verses 12 to 17 are treated allegorically rather than literally and applied to the Church. The angel with a seal at the beginning of Revelation Seven (v.2) is identified as representing Elijah the prophet, ‘the precursor of the times of Antichrist,’ as attested in both the Old and New Testaments. The seventh seal (Rev. 8;1) signals ‘the beginning of the everlasting rest’ and the flying angel (v.13) issues a warning that in the last times ~a great wrath of plagues’ will befall. The AntichristThe kingdom of the Antichrist is to last for seven literal years, according to Victorinus, since, like others of his time, he did not conceive the possibility that in prophetic calculations a day might stand for a year. The least that ascends out of the bottomless pit’ (Rev. 11:7) is none other than the Antichrist himself, whom Victorinus took to be of Roman origin. The ‘great, fiery red dragon’ of Revelation 12:3 stands for Rome and the seven heads with seven diadems are the Roman rulers from which line Victorinus believes that the Antichrist is to spring. In this, of course, he is a child of his times and subsequent history was to render his theory scarcely probable, unless it is argued that the Antichrist will arise from a source which represents the continuation of the Roman Empire in a different guise. The war in heaven, mentioned in Revelation 12:7, heralds ‘the beginning of Antichrist’. Yet before that Elijah must fulfil his preaching mission during a period of peace for the space of three and a half years. It is when Satan has been rejected from heaven, with the apostate angels, that the reign of terror under the Antichrist commences. The beast from the sea in Revelation 13:1, according to Victorinus, signifies the kingdom of the Antichrist ‘and the people mingled with the variety of nations’. The beast from the land in verse 11 is the pseudo-prophet who is to be responsible for ‘signs, and portents, and falsehoods,’ calling fire from heaven (v.13) and placing a golden image of the Antichrist in the temple at Jerusalem. Like Hippolytus, Victorinus speculates about the number of the beast (v18) and finds that the letters comprising teitan, antemos, and gensericos all add up to 666 when reckoned by Greek gematria-. If the first of these is turned into Latin it produces the antiphrase DICLUX which again totals 666. This is the name of the Antichrist ‘who, though he is cut off from the supernal light, and deprived of it, yet transforms himself into an angel of light, daring to call himself light.’ Such juggling with letters and numbers seems somewhat bizarre to many today. Babylon and RomeThe seven plagues of Revelation 15:1, Victorinus explains, ‘shall be in the last time.’ then he adds, most significantly, ‘when the Church shall have gone out of the midst,’ indicating that he knows about the rapture and that it is to precede the Great Tribulation. The scarlet woman in Revelation 17:5 is taken to represent Rome, a city seated on seven hills. She is intoxicated with the blood of saints and martyrs (v.6). Her name is Babylon and Victorinus recalls that Rome is addressed as Babylon not only in Revelation but in Isaiah also (Is. 13). In the prophecy of Ezekiel it is Sodom’ (16:46-59). Thus what is uttered against Sodom in Ezekiel and against Babylon in Isaiah and Revelation is one and the same so far as the target is concerned. The seven kings (Rev. 17:10), according to Victorinus, are seven Roman emperors, the sixth being Domitian who reigned when John wrote. Those before him are Titus, Vespasian, Otho, Vitellius and Galba. These five had fallen, but Domitian was still in power. The last, who ‘has not yet come,’ is Nerva whose regime was brief. The eighth is Nero, who is regarded as a type of the Antichrist. In line with his hermeneutical principle of recapitulation, Victorinus refers Revelation 17:10 to the period when the Apocalypse was composed. Others today would consider that the whole passage is related to the eschatological future and has to do with ecclesiastical Babylon — apostate Christianity at the end of the age. The MillenniumThe original text of Victorinus’s commentary on the Apocalypse was not published until 1916. Before that date scholars and translators had to rely on an earlier edition in which the crucial section covering Revelation 20:1-10, with its description of the Millennium, as well as the remainder of Chapter Twenty and Chapters Twenty One and Two, has been replaced by a spurious interpolation. In it a post-millennial interpretation is advanced which runs counter to all that we know of Victorinus’s views. The authentic version, however, is now available and reveals Victorinus as a convinced pre-millennialist. Indeed, Professor Johannes Quasten refers to ‘the unmistakable millenniarism’ of this final section of the commentary, which is in line with what has preceded it. Sadly, this contrary post-millennial approach to prophecy was to undermine much of the sound foundation laid in the first three centuries. In the period after the Council of Nicaea, largely under the influence of Origen and then Augustine, it challenged the earlier pre-millennialism we have been examining in this series. That, as they say, is another story. But we can thank God for these prophetic witness pioneers who blazed a trail that reaches us with profit to this very day. May we continue to hold fast the faithful Word, as we have been taught (Titus 1:9). YT 10/91
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