Tracing the Jerusalem Code

Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750–ca. 1920)

Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati, Anna Bohlin, Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati, Anna Bohlin

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783110634884
• eBook ISBN: 9783110636567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: European History

With the aim to write the history of Christianity in Scandinavia with Jerusalem as a lens, this book investigates the image – or rather the imagination – of Jerusalem in the religious, political, and artistic cultures of Scandinavia through most of the second millennium. Volume 3 analyses the impact of Jerusalem on Scandinavian Christianity from the middle of the 18. century in a broad context.

Tracing the Jerusalem Code in three volumes
Volume 1: The Holy City Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1100–1536)
Volume 2: The Chosen People Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536–ca. 1750)
Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750–ca. 1920)

Part I: The Promised Land: Awakenings

Chapter 2 Apocalypticism, Chiliasm, and Cultural Progress: Jerusalem in Early Modern Storyworlds

Walter Sparn

Professor Emeritus, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Fig. 2.0: Adolph Tidemand, Haugianerne [Low Church Devotion], 1848. Oil on canvas, 98,8 x 123,3 cm. © The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. Foto: Jacques Lathion.

This chapter deals with the early modern transformation of the Jerusalem code in the Christian storyworld of “salvation history,” and the consequences it had in configuring human behavior on the pilgrimage towards the heavenly Jerusalem. The transformation became visible primarily in the outlook on the future, i.e. on the time span between the (respective) Now and the Second Advent of Christ. It implied a change from traditional apocalypticism to chiliasm (Greek root) or millenarianism, respectively millennialism (Latin root). The inner logic of salvation history inferred that this change deeply influenced the understanding of the present situation and its fatalities or potentialities. Moreover, it modified the view of the past as a basis of what happens now and will happen in the future.

Fig. 2.1: The Main Building of the Waisenhaus in Halle, 1749. Engraving by Gottfried August Gründler.

The new chiliastic interpretation of biblical apocalypticism, developing in sixteenth- and, on a new level, in seventeenth-century early modern Europe, is a groundbreaking change in the Christian worldview and in the socio-political activities asked for or allowed in it. This change was a pivotal aspect of “modernization,” for two reasons. First, traditional apocalypticism assumed a spatially finite world, and a finite order of time, i.e. that is a “near” catastrophic end. Early modern chiliasm still referred to a Second Advent, but prolonged the time span from now to that end more and more. Modern chiliasm is reached, when the link between the view of the future and an end of time either becomes vague or non-existent. The presumption of an open future of the world was after all successful in the Enlightenment, also in its Christian strand. Second, chiliasm, which at the outset referred to the Second Advent, was open to “secularization” and able to move from the Christian storyworld over to a civil, religious or secular storyworld (or a “philosophical” paradigm) proclaiming the religious, moral, and cultural progress in “world history.”¹

“Jerusalem”: Normative Icon in the Apocalyptical Storyworld

Since the biblical “Jerusalem cluster” of meaning had its original and canonical seat in the Old Testament including apocalypticism (mainly in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Fourth Ezra), the Christian concept of salvation history necessarily had to adapt the Jewish narratives and the role of Jerusalem in its own apocalyptic scheme.² The earthly place of Jesus Christ’s activity, passion, death, and resurrection was now crucial in a new sense: Jesus Christ fulfilled the prophetical promises for salvation centered on Mount Zion; not only for Israel but also for all humankind and the whole creation. Therefore, the Christian understanding of “Jerusalem” (and of the Old Testament in general) from the very beginning developed a hermeneutical tool connecting a plurality of meanings with the biblical texts. This was the metaphorical or allegorical interpretation of biblical words or concepts.

Hermeneutical Setting

Concerning Jerusalem – the city in Palestine which was destroyed several times – we find a metaphorical understanding already in the Old Testament; even more in the New, where the relation of continuity and break with the first Covenant are explained by a typological or allegorical interpretation of persons, events, and prophetical predictions. Allegorisation of biblical texts became inevitable when the Christian community emigrated from the Synagogue, and when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed in 70 C.E. Very early, too, the hermeneutics of allegory was successfully systematized, and the “fourfold sense of the Scripture” became a common hermeneutical rule for many centuries. The four senses connected (or presumed to connect) three allegorical meanings with the literal meaning; namely, an allegorical (in a narrower use), a tropic or moral, and an anagogic sense. “Jerusalem” was good for all four senses and was often used as an illustration for the well-known distich “Littera gesta docet, quid credas allogoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas [quid speres] anagogia.” The three allegorical uses clearly expressed normative intentions; to a certain extent, the literal use had a normative meaning, too.

Here, the Reformation took a position different from the mainstream tradition. All reformers claimed that the literal or “historical” sense of a biblical concept is the most important and, what is more, in matters of justifying faith, it is sufficient and the only basis of religious conviction. The “historical” sense, however, was not everywhere historical in the modern understanding, because biblical hermeneutics was based on the belief that Jesus Christ is the actual content of all Scripture. Therefore, the exegesis of the Bible in the analogia fidei Christi (following the distinction of Law and Gospel, respectively) degraded allegorical interpretations (if not indicated by Scripture itself as such) as not necessary for salvation. Nevertheless, this did not at all exclude allegorisation from theological practice, but restricted it to the application of Scriptural testimonies to the practice of faith, morals, and hopes. Scriptural proof of theological positions, however, was restricted to the literal sense and the explication of biblical texts, and did not rely on any allegorical interpretation or on non-biblical tradition. Nota bene, this Sola Scriptura necessitated the innovation of a general philosophical hermeneutics in seventeenth-century Lutheranism.³

“Jerusalem” (often named “Zion”) demonstrates the varieties of allegorical interpretation also in Protestantism: in the practical dimensions of theology, in religious literature (flourishing in Early Modern times), in poetry, and in the visual arts; in particular within religious iconography. Corresponding to the fourfold sense of Scripture there were four dimensions of the use of “Jerusalem” expressing normative standards. First, it was the spatial structure of the earth with Jerusalem in the middle position; second, it named the self-interpretation of the faith and that of the church; third, the moral practice in society, in particular education and diakonia; fourth, the temporal order of the world including the imminent appearance of New Jerusalem. This fourfold understanding of “Jerusalem” was quite common throughout the centuries; until the Reformation introduced varieties. One of them arose in the second sense of “Jerusalem” (in the self-interpretation of the faith and of the Church): In Roman Catholic theology this sense was primarily the Church, who perceived itself as the anticipation of the Kingdom of God. Since Augustin, Revelation 20:1–7 had mostly been understood as fulfilled in the spiritual reign of the una sancta catholica et apostolica ecclesia [one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church]. In addition, monastic communities and church buildings counted among the terrene prefigurations of the New Jerusalem. Aptly, the Papal bull announcing the Council of Trent, November 30, 1544, began with Laetare Jerusalem! [Rejoice Jerusalem!] Protestant theologies did not deny the ecclesial sense, but developed much more emphatically the culture of an “inner” New Jerusalem, i.e. the pious soul, in which Christ resides even now, in the worldly life. In particular, Lutherans explicitly characterized and praised faith as unio mystica cum Christo [a mystical union with Christ].⁴

The Eschatological Role of “Jerusalem”

More important than the soteriological use of “Jerusalem,” in connection with individual salvation, is the broad eschatological use in connection with the future and the end of this world. Early modern Protestant theologians invented – like other technical terms in theology had been invented – also a term comprising the (temporal) novissima, Eschatologia. These “last things” were: Individual Death; Second Advent; Resurrection of the Dead; Last Judgment; End of this World; Eternal Death, respectively Life. Again, Lutherans were most eager to elaborate these topics in correspondence with the apocalyptic texts in the Bible and in the analogia fidei Christi; therefore, quite a number of commentaries on the Revelation of St. John were published,⁵ and “positive” (later called “systematic,” or “dogmatic”) theology was intensely preoccupied with apocalypticism.⁶ Johann Gerhard, the most influential theologian in the first half of the seventeenth century, known also in Scandinavia, published Loci theologici (multiple editions: 1610–1625, ²1657, ³1776); here eschatology fills two (of nine) volumes in folio and consists of six tr...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Editorial comments for all three volumes
• Prelude
• Introduction: Jerusalem in Modern Scandinavia
• Part I: The Promised Land: Awakenings
• Part II: The Promised Land: Renewal of the National Church
• Part III: The Promised Land: Science and Travel
• Part IV: The Promised Land: Realisation and Secularisation
• Bibliography and References
• Index