Who are the “Four Living Creatures” of Revelation?

Today’s First Reading is from Rev. 4:1-11, in which St. John presents a heavenly vision. There are many strange details, but one of the ones that has captured the imagination of Christians for the last two millennia is of the “four living creatures.” Here’s what John describes (Rev. 4:6-8):

And round the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

So what on Earth (or in Heaven) is going on here? Here’s a sample of the way that many Protestants explicate the passage:

The texts that describe these creatures do not indicate that they are figurative—they are real, actual beings. The four living creatures (literally “beings”) are a special, exalted order of angelic being or cherubim. This is clear by their close proximity to the throne of God. Ezekiel 1:12–20 suggests that they are in constant motion around the throne.

This is an unsatisfactory reading of the passage, and (as we’ll see) very different from the way that the earliest Christians understood it.

The Ezekiel Connection

The first thing to point out is that Revelation isn’t the first time that “four living creatures” make an appearance in the Bible. What the above exegesis gets right is seeing a connection to the Book of Ezekiel. In the first chapter of that book, the prophet Ezekiel describes seeing “a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually,” and from the midst of the fire “came the likeness of four living creatures” (Ezek. 1:4-5). Each of them “had the form of men, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings” (vv. 5-6). The four faces were “the face of a man in front; the four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle at the back” (v. 10).

So the Book of Ezekiel and the Revelation of John line up, with one exception: whereas Ezekiel sees four angelic beings which each have four faces (man, lion, ox, eagle), John sees four beings (one resembling a man, one a lion, one an ox, and one an eagle). But these descriptions are so similar (and so unlike anything else that we read about) that people rightly connect the two. Nevertheless, the fact that they are different in this one regard (four faces each vs. one face each) suggests that something different is also going on. This is where the Protestant exegesis falls short. Are we to understand that the four living creatures literally had four faces each in the time of Ezekiel, but then only had one face each in the time of John?

The Liturgical Connection

You might be wondering what the “four living creatures” are associated with the cherubim, given that Ezekiel never calls them that, despite mentioning cherubim elsewhere; and the fact that the cherubim depicted in Ezekiel have two faces, not four (cf. Ezek. 41:18); and the fact that the four living creatures in Revelation are proclaiming the “holy, holy, holy” associated with the seraphim (Isa. 6:2-3).

Taken at a literal level, then, these four creatures don’t seem like cherubim. But there’s one detail that points us to both the cherubim, and to the Liturgy (Ezek. 1:22-23):

Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of a firmament, shining like crystal, spread out above their heads. And under the firmament their wings were stretched out straight, one toward another; and each creature had two wings covering its body.

This is another slight difference from John’s Revelation (two wings vs. six), but it’s pointing us towards something else… the Ark of the Covenant. Here’s a description of the Ark of the Covenant from Exodus 25:20-22:

The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark; and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you of all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

When Hebrews 9:5 speaks of “the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat,” this is what’s being referred to: the liturgical center of worship in ancient Israel. And Ezekiel makes this liturgical connection more explicit later on, describing the mystical Temple that it to come, and how “on all the walls round about in the inner room and the nave were carved likenesses of cherubim and palm trees, a palm tree between cherub and cherub” (Ezek. 41:17-18).

What John is describing is no less liturgical. The “four living creatures” are “each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints; and they sang a new song…” (Rev. 5:8-9). So if we want to understand the revelation of John, we need to be thinking liturgically. The four living creatures should evoke for us the worship of the people of God, both in the past (the Ark) and in the future (the Temple described by Ezekiel). But what about in the present?

The Gospel Connection

When the earliest Christians read Revelation, they saw in it a description of Christian worship. If, like many of us, you had the idea that the earliest Christians were basically Fundamentalists (taking everything very literally, and ignoring or rejecting anything that appeared symbolic), this might be a surprising thing to learn. But it’s true. Take, for instance, St. Irenaeus, writing around 180 A.D.:

Such, then, as was the course followed by the Son of God, so was also the form of the living creatures; and such as was the form of the living creatures, so was also the character of the Gospel. For the living creatures are quadriform, and the Gospel is quadriform…

Irenaeus reads the four living creatures as representing the four Gospels, and specifically the four ways that Christ is represented:

As also David says, when entreating His manifestation, “You that sits between the cherubim, shine forth.” For the cherubim, too, were four-faced, and their faces were images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For, [as the Scripture] says, “The first living creature was like a lion,” [Rev. 4:7] symbolizing His effectual working, His leadership, and royal power; the second [living creature] was like a calf, signifying [His] sacrificial and sacerdotal order; but the third had, as it were, the face as of a man,— an evident description of His advent as a human being; the fourth was like a flying eagle, pointing out the gift of the Spirit hovering with His wings over the Church. And therefore the Gospels are in accord with these things, among which Christ Jesus is seated. For that according to John relates His original, effectual, and glorious generation from the Father, thus declaring, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [John 1:1]. Also, “all things were made by Him, and without Him was nothing made” [John 1:3].

In other words, the earliest readings of Revelation weren’t that John was primarily trying to tell us details about the angels, but that he was telling us something about Jesus Christ and the Four Gospels through these descriptions.

So Who Do the Four Living Creatures Represent?

This connection between the four living creatures and the four Gospels was so well-established in the early days of the Church that the Early Church Fathers tended to speculate as to which Evangelist was associated with which creature. There are differences of opinions, but the prevailing one (and the one you’ll most often see depicted in church art) is the opinion held by St. Victorinus in the third century, and popularized by St. Jerome and Pope St. Gregory the Great. Here’s how Gregory explains it:

For that these four winged living creatures would designate the four holy Evangelists, the’ beginnings ‘of each one of the Evangelic books testify. For because he began with [Christ’s] human begetting, Matthew by right [is signified] by the human. Because of the crying in the desert, Mark is rightly designated by the lion. Because he commenced with sacrifice, Luke is well signified by the calf. Truly, because he began with the Divinity of the Word, John was fittingly signified by the eagle — he who stretched [upward], saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” [John 1:1] while… in the same substance of Divinity; as if he fixed his eyes on the Sun in the manner of an eagle.

Let’s unpack that a little bit. In Jewish tradition, the books of the Bible were known by their openings (the Hebrew names of the Biblical books tend to just be the book’s first words). So how would you depict each Gospel, based on its opening?

• Matthew’s Gospel begins “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. 1:1). That is, is traces the human origins of Christ. So this Gospel is associated with the man.

• Mark’s Gospel begins by recalling the prophecy of Isaiah about “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Mark 1:3), and connecting this to the prophetic ministry of John the Baptist. In the Old Testament, one symbol for the prophetic voice was the roaring lion: for instance, Amos 3:7-8, “Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

• Luke’s Gospel begins with the story of the angel Gabriel’s appearance to Zechariah, who “was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, according to the custom of the priesthood” when “it fell to him by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense” (Luke 1:8-9). And the Old Testament priesthood was inaugurated with the slaying of the sacrificial bull calf and an ox (Lev. 9:3-4, 8).

• John’s Gospel begins “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). That is, he doesn’t begin on Earth but “flying like an eagle toward heaven,” to quote Prov. 23:5.

What I find so beautiful about this interpretation, especially St. Gregory’s reading, is how deeply Scriptural it is. That is, the early Christians didn’t read about angels with ox-faces, and conclude that angels are weird looking. Angels are spiritual beings, after all – they don’t literally have bodies. So why are they being presented this way to Ezekiel and then to John? So the early Christians seem to have asked a couple of much better questions: namely, where do we see each of these creatures (man, lion, ox, and eagle) in the Old Testament, and what might God be telling us in presenting them like this?

And it was in asking those better questions (rather than settling for a simple surface literalism) that let them realize that Revelation is actually a book that has a lot to say about the Liturgy, and that the “four living creatures” are the four Gospels.