At 08:40 AM 10/7/99 -0400, Tom Izbicki wrote:
>On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Bunbury wrote:
> > And perhaps in small measure because historicist apocalypticism no longer
> > served an institutionalized church that enjoyed increasing social
> dominance?
> >
> > Tom Long
> >
>Since Augustine wrote the City of God while the Western Empire was
>collapsing, and when the "barbarians at the gates" often were Arians, I
>am not certain that this line of reasoning applies. One might expect
>rather to see apocalypticism more prevalent in that period. Instead,
>Augustine transfers the focus to a higher plane, away from the
>sacralization of the imperial institutions failing to protect church and
>populace.
What I had in mind was that the original impetus for the Book of Revelation
(a real or perceived crisis among Jewish Christians in the late first
century) no longer pertained in the early fourth insofar as Christian
communities had been enjoying increasing legitimation over the preceding
century. One way of reading apocalyptic discourses is to understand them
as discourses about legitimation (and identity).
Tom Long
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