Tyconius adopts a relentlessly ecclesiocentric reading of Revelation. Every positive symbol, it seems, is just one more way of describing the church. Heaven, angels, stars, mountains, and everything else, it seems, means “one and the same thing,” one of his favorite phrases.
It creates some odd interpretations, to say the least. The birds that devour the kings of the earth at the end if chapter 19 are the saints who drink the blood of the wicked brothers who have been slain by the sword from the mouth of Jesus. In all times the church eats the flesh of their enemies, just as their enemies have devoured them. At the end, though, the saints will be fully avenged and visible birds will devour the wicked once and for all.
It is difficult to know what Tyconius is up to here, though perhaps there is a hint of Eucharist: In eating Christ’s flesh and drinking His blood, the church is perhaps also devouring her enemies.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
