Jerusalem As An Allegory For The Church
See also: SupersessionismIn Christianity, Jerusalem is sometimes interpreted as an allegory or type for the Church of Christ. There is a vast apocalyptic tradition that focuses on the heavenly Jerusalem instead of the literal and historical city of Jerusalem. Christians have not controlled the actual city of Jerusalem since the time of the Crusades (except for a brief period in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Battle of Jerusalem) and have mostly relied on biblical symbols and metaphors that describe the Church as if it were the true living Jerusalem. This view is notably advocated in Augustine's City of God, a popular 5th century Christian book that was written during the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Read more about this topic: Jerusalem In Christianity
Famous quotes containing the words jerusalem, allegory and/or church:
“Comfort, comfort ye my people, speak ye peace, thus saith our God;
comfort those who sit in darkness mourning ‘neath their sorrows’ load.
Speak ye to Jerusalem of the peace that waits for them;
tell her that her sins I cover, and her warfare now is over.”
—Johann G. Olearius (1611–1684)
“A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)