INSTITVTE
by Fr Thomas Crean O.P.
I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks, that stand before the Lord of the earth.
Who are these two witnesses? Many Catholics down the centuries have assumed them to be Enoch and Elias. We find this identification already in St Hippolytus, who was born around AD 170, in his work Antichrist. St Andrew of Caesarea, writing in AD 611, says that “many of the doctors” have understood them in this way. A thousand years later, Cornelius à Lapide reports that this was the dominant opinion in his time.
That Elias will indeed appear again, whether to be seen by many or by few, is suggested by Ecclesiasticus 48:10, and seems certain from our Lord’s words in St Matthew 17: Elias shall come and restore all things. That Enoch will appear is suggested at least by the Vulgate rendering of Ecclesiasticus 44:16, and supported by the belief of many saints. St Robert Bellarmine even held that it was either heretical or close to heresy to deny that these two would appear again one day in their own persons (Controversy on the Roman Pontiff, book 3, ch. 6). But this does not mean that the two witnesses mentioned in Apocalypse 11 must be exclusively so identified.
In the third century, St Victorinus thought that one of these two witnesses might be Eliseus, or else Jeremiah. St Hilary and St Ambrose mention Moses. St Bede, in his commentary on the Apocalypse, takes them as typical figures, suggesting that they are the two races, that is the Jews and Gentiles, or else the two testaments. Joachim of Fiore took them to be priests and monks. Cornelius, as well as recording the common belief of his time, recounts a large number of other opinions that have been held by Catholics: that they are teachers and preachers; or the great wisdom and holiness of the early Church; or Christ and St John the Baptist; or Pope St Silverius and St Mennas of Constantinople, twin opponents of Monophysism; or saints Dominic and Francis; or even the Dominicans and the Jesuits!
Probably, like other symbols in the Apocalypse, this one is intended by its divine author to be polyvalent, that is, realised in many ways. But it may still have a primary sense; and what it evokes above all is a vision of Zacharias in the Old Testament. An angel showed this prophet two olive trees, one on either side of a seven-branched golden candlestick: And I answered and said to him: What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick, and upon the left side thereof? […] And he said: These are the two sons of oil who stand before the Lord of the whole earth (Zach. 4:11, 14).
In Zachariah’s time, the two ‘sons of oil’, or anointed ones, were the high priest Joshua and the prince Zorobabel. They were the two olive trees that stood before the Lord of the whole earth. Given the unity of Holy Scripture, as a single utterance of God, it is natural to suppose that the two olive trees that stand before the Lord of the earth in St John’s vision continue this symbolical meaning, and hence that the high priest and prince of the old covenant foreshadow a high priest and prince of the new. Not, in this case, our Lord Himself: Apoc. 11:8 explicitly distinguishes these two witnesses from their crucified Lord. Shall we say, with the Ignatius Study Bible, that “they represent the twofold mission of the Church to be a royal and priestly witness to the gospel”? That is not quite satisfying. As Newman remarks in his Letter to Pusey, Scripture does not love abstractions. These two figures surely represent something more concrete than “a mission to be a witness”.
At the very least, they represent some definite offices manned by identifiable persons; or, which comes to much the same thing, they represent the persons by whom these offices are successively filled. They are, therefore, the series of anointed persons who bear spiritual and temporal power in the new covenant: Catholic bishops and Catholic princes, and at the apex of the symbolism, the pope and the Christian emperor in their conjoined witness to the word of God. The pope corresponds to the type of Joshua, highest of the priests of the earth, while the Roman emperor corresponds to Zorobabel, since from the time of Constantine’s conversion the emperor was the highest temporal prince within God’s people.
This identification is confirmed by the contrast of these two witnesses with the two beasts of Apocalypse 13. These latter evoke the perversion of temporal and spiritual power. The seven-headed beast from the sea represents seven successive empires that use temporal power to persecute God’s people, culminating in the person and empire of antichrist. The sea in Scripture is a common image for the nations. The beast that rises up out of the earth represents those who use the spiritual power in service of this first beast, and probably one such ‘false prophet’ above all others. The land in Scripture is a common image for the Church.
The supposition that the two witnesses are Enoch and Elias has led some commentators to mistake what St John says of their work. He does not say that their task is to confront the antichrist come in person; they do their ‘prophesying’ freely, before the beast arrives on the scene:
If any man will hurt them, fire shall come out of their mouths, and shall devour their enemies. And if any man will hurt them, in this manner must he be slain. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and they have power over waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with all plagues as often as they will.
Why are the pope and the emperor said to prophesy? To prophesy is to declare and uphold the word of God. In the divine plan, the pope, where possible united with his brother bishops, declares the contents of revelation, and the emperor, where possible united with his brother rulers, expels false Christians from the temporal community. The edicts by which they do this, guaranteed by the Holy Ghost, are the fire that comes from their mouths to destroy their enemies. St John repeats himself here, saying that this must be: Scripture thus insists on the Church’s need of a coercive power, since this is something that men have been repeatedly tempted to deny.
Not only can the two witnesses bring destructive fire from heaven, but they can also prevent life-giving water from falling to the earth. Water, in Scripture, is often an image for the grace of the Holy Spirit, as we are told in the gospel of St John: The water that I give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting (Jn. 4:14); Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. Now this he said of the Spirit (Jn. 7:38-39). The apostolic hierarchy can impose excommunications, suspensions and interdicts upon unworthy Christians, so that they lose the right to receive the sacraments, and the temporal power can enforce this verdict. What if these sinners attempt to receive sacramental grace nonetheless? They will find that the waters turn into blood, since by their presumption they call down judgement upon themselves. And since neither of the two witnesses has an earthly superior in his own sphere, who might limit his exercise of power or choice of means, they are said to strike with all plagues as often as they will.
They do their work for twelve hundred and sixty days, which is paradoxically equivalent to the period for which the woman is in exile in the desert: a time, times, and half a time (Apoc. 12:14). The first way of speaking suggests continuance in activity, the second, endurance. The Church exercises the plenitude of her powers whilst also being a suffering exile on earth.
When they shall have finished their testimony, the beast, that ascendeth out of the abyss, shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which is called spiritually, Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord also was crucified. And they of the tribes, and peoples, and tongues, and nations, shall see their bodies for three days and a half: and they shall not suffer their bodies to be laid in sepulchres.
This passage might seem to refute my interpretation. Granted that the Roman emperor is no more, whether we see the final one as passing away in 1453 or 1806 or even 1922 with the death of Blessed Charles of Austria, the papacy continues to the end: “Jesus Christ appointed Peter to be that head of the Church; and He also determined that the authority instituted in perpetuity for the salvation of all should be inherited by His successors” (Leo XIII, Satis cognitum). But we need to look closely at what St John wrote. The Vulgate, and most modern versions, speak of the bodies of the two witnesses lying in the great city. St John, however, uses a singular noun in verse 8: πτῶμα (ptōma), meaning ‘that which has fallen, a (dead) body, corpse, ruin’. The body of the two witnesses will be in the street. He does the same in the first half of verse 9: people from the various tribes and nations will see their body for three days and a half. Only in the second half of this verse does he use the plural: they shall not allow their bodies to be buried.
One commentator notes this use of the singular, and writes that “the two fallen in one cause are considered as one.” But this is not quite enough to explain it. We do not talk of two bodies as one simply because they are the bodies of two friends or allies. Rather, what has been destroyed is precisely the unity of the spiritual and temporal power, and supremely, of the pope and emperor. It is not just that they had one cause, defending the same principles, but that their power to devour their enemies lay in this union. The teaching of the pope was effective to repress heresy when it was upheld by the emperor and other Catholic rulers; and these rulers in turn acted as prophets, bearers of the word of God, only insofar as they kept themselves and their realms united to the see of Rome. But the beast has waged a lengthy war against this unity, and now the corpse of Christendom lies plainly on the street.
This great city, I presume, is none other than the city of man, formed inevitably in every age by the con-spiratio of all who love themselves even to the point of contempt of God, thus crucifying Him. The street, singular, again, in the Greek, comes from a word meaning ‘broad’ and perhaps suggests the world’s broad-mindedness and tolerance for everything but the word of God. This city is spiritually Sodom and Egypt, because when Christendom is no more, sexual deviance and injustice multiply, and God’s people are oppressed.
In what sense do they of the tribes and peoples and tongues and nations not allow these bodies to be put into a tomb? This signifies dishonour; those made powerful by the overthrow of Christendom wish its corpse to remain visible for their own greater glory. Hence the elaboration and maintenance of a black legend from the Reformation and the Enlightenment to our own day, of which one small but telling part is the use of ‘mediaeval’ to mean simply ‘bad’. And since it is the papacy and Catholic rulers not only in their union but also separately whom this legend execrates, while the body has fallen, it is the bodies that are left on display.
Why for three days and a half? This evokes a prophecy of Daniel: in the half of the week, the victim and the sacrifice shall fail: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation. When the last echo of the voice of the two witness shall have fallen silent, the suppression of the Church’s sacrifice and the time of the antichrist will be at hand. Meanwhile, an apparently fraternal world order of ‘united nations’ comes into being:
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry: and shall send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.
Yet it is not to last:
And after three days and a half, the spirit of life from God entered into them. And they stood upon their feet, and great fear fell upon them that saw them.