A Newer Jerusalem

Lund: Patristic Day 2026 Invited Paper

The event was part of the At the End of the World project, an exciting Lund-based trans-disciplinary project that looks into apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic thought from antiquity until today. A lot of the folks who form the core of the team were there--maybe almost all of them. All in all, the auditorium had I would guess about 50 people--from retired professors to current students. A lively atmosphere. It was in fact my fourth time presenting in that room (once virtually), so I'm coming to know it quite well now...

The program was excellent:

13.15 Jayne Svenungsson (Lund University): Introduction: At the End of the World – A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Apocalyptic Imaginary in the Past and Present. Jayne warmly and indeed energetically welcomed us and oriented us all to the nature of the project's program and the day's program. A rousing start!

13.30 Cecilia Wassén (Uppsala University): Apocalyptic Voices from the Judean Desert: John the Baptist and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Was a delight to hear in person someone who has been setting the agenda for this kind of work for the last few decades! 

14.00 Tobias Hägerland (University of Gothenburg): A Thousand Years in Jerusalem: The Earliest Interpretations of the Book of Revelation. Particularly interesting, since Tobias was presenting on precisely the same scope of my last book. His argument was an interesting one: that Hippolytus was seeking a middle way between the millennialist and allegorical approaches to the New Jerusalem of earlier and contemporary writers. Not so far from my own thinking, but I think he ascribes more intentionality to Hippolytus's view, whereas I view Hippolytus being one in a line of thinkers who gradually moved away from a strict literalist millennialist reading of the New Jerusalem while always maintaining the symbol's mystical core meaning. Conversation with Tobias continued with him throughout the evening, and the beginning, perhaps, of a more formal dialogue on the topic. 

15.00 Nathan Betz (Universität Regensburg): What’s the Point of Late Antique Apocalyptic Literature? Toward a More Coherent Theory of Early Christian Communication. See my comments above--and again, ask if you want a copy.

15.30 Katarina Pålsson (Lund University): ‘As the Day of Judgment Draws Near’: How to Prepare for the End According to Bede the Venerable. A nice peek into Katarina's more recent work on the overlap between "theological theology" and practical or pastoral theology.

16.15 Panel discussion: Apocalypse Then and Now – Historical and Contemporary Developments, with the speakers, Mårten Björk (Lund University), David Dunér (Lund University), Aaron James Goldman (Lund University), and Lena Liepe (Linnaeus University). Perhaps the most interesting section of the program in that we got to interact at length with the very learned audience, the members of which asked many questions both tightly focused on our papers and representing broader interests as well. Lively and fun dialogue.

Dinner followed, with very nice connections made with a variety of Lund-based and other Nordic scholars, including Samuel Rubensen (who strongly agreed with my paper's assertion that ancient Christian literature, esp. in a monastic context, was oriented and ordered fundamentally toward deification), Lena Liepe (with whom I had an engaging conversation about Roman apse mosaics as visually representing the underlying human telos of deiformity), Tobias Hägerland (see notes above), and Giovanni Bazzana, with whom I had a pleasant disagreement following one of his ever-engaging questions--he's the sort of scholar you want in every Q&A session, and not merely to keep things interesting and lively! 

Copenhagen: Manuscript Conference

The next day, before flying out of Copenhagen, I popped into the first half of a day-symposium on ancient manuscripts that was being held at the University of Copenhagen. Old friends were there: Daniel Maier (Copenhagen), Kelsie Rodenbiker (Copenhagen), Garrick Allen (Glasgow), and some new old faces, including Brent Nongbri (Oslo). I was only able to stay for a couple papers, the topicality of most of which was far outside my area of expertise; but stimulating and inspiring nonetheless. I don't often have need to look into manuscripts for my academic work at this point; hopefully this can change once I can start developing some lines of research I have up my sleeve...

Cambridge: Watchman Nee and Chinese Christianity conference

I desperately wanted to get over to Cambridge during the same period, but my Lund event precluded it. Even so, I'm putting this as a line item in this blog entry as with a "well, at least I wish I coulda" asterisk. My friend Paul Chang was launching his new Oxford University Press book on Watchman Nee--the first ever intellectual biography--at the Cambridge Center for Chinese Theology. 

Paul Chang's new book on Nee, just out from Oxford

It was happening during a symposium called Watchman Nee as a Mediator: British Theological Legacies in Global Chinese Christianity. Having long personal association with the local church movement, I've always respected Nee as an early and important theological influence on me (not least via his thoughts on the New Jerusalem), and I've also long been interested in investigating theological and intellectual influences on Nee's and Witness Lee's theologies--especially the pre-modern mystical influences. Looks like this Centre is receiving long-term funding, so hopefully they will be around long enough for us to hook up for some sort of collaboration. 

Arriving back to Bavaria

Abensberg: 4-day podcast recording session!

One of the reasons I couldn't go to Cambridge, aside from being booked in Lund, was that I had to get back home to get set up for four long-scheduled days of recording a new podcast! A few friends of mine, whose names will for now remain undisclosed, have been concepting a podcast designed to bring the best of Christianity, in all of its intellectual and mystical glory, to a skeptical but curious European audience. Not apologetics (otherwise I would have bowed out), but rather more of a conversational long-form series of podcasts designed to engage with questions that my friends have been asked by thoughtful European friends over the last years. A lot of research went into the episodes and questions, and an incredibly talented and professional team has been working on the concept and its execution for a while now. So when the producers asked if they could come from around Europe and the US to my house and interview me with another guest and, furthermore, to set up a recording studio in my home office, I answered with the only possible answer: a resounding YES, PLEASE. 

The home office in full podcast recording mode

I've long been a believer in "public science"--which is to say, bringing the fruits of research out of the ivory tower to the "the guy on the street"--so this project, and these questions, are something that I'm very excited to participate in. The five episodes we recorded are part of a much larger project which is still being recorded at various locations around the world, and there's already talk of doing some special episodes on the heart of the Christian faith, which, of course, is deification, which is central to my current DFG project, but also central to my general research agenda going back to my days at Oxford.

Annapolis: Paul Ludwig reconnection and conversation

I also had the great opportunity to connect with one of my old ancient Greek professors at St. John's College, Annapolis, where I earned an MA in Liberal Arts back between 2007 and 2009. Paul Ludwig actually wrote me some very helpful recommendations when I applied to Oxford back in 2016, so I'm particularly grateful to be back in touch with him. Over the years, he's been particularly interested in the question of civic friendship, especially as viewed through the lens of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, and it turns out the first time my name was mentioned in an academic book was in the Acknowledgements of his most recent book, where I was listed with the other students from his Aristotle/Sophocles seminar on friendship. 

It was also the first time he and I had talked since the death of our beloved Eva Brann, tutor (prof.) emerita at St. John's College. Eva (or Ms. Brann as we always called her there), died at the grand old age of ninety-something, still teaching and writing like a woman with fire in her soul. She also had a profound effect on me at St. John's, in ways that I will perhaps someday write publicly about. So connecting with Mr. Ludwig after the death of Ms. Brann was more bittersweet than I had earlier imagined. A particularly interesting part of the conversation with Mr. Ludwig was discussing the idea of fundamental human purpose in late antiquity, and how it is a topic whose time is very much now, given the rise of AI, various forms of political extremism, the general malaise long settled over the West, etc. Perhaps something will come of this.

Regensburg: Revelation Reception Network, Season Three Conclusion

Though I've posted about it separately, I thought I'd mention that the most recent season of the Revelation Reception Network came to a conclusion with an excellent and engaging paper from Colin McAllister (Colorado Springs) on Arnold Schönberg and apocalypticism. The paper carries on from a line of thought he developed already in a chapter of his recent edited volume from Brill, Music in the Apocalyptic Mode. Turns out that Colin and I have been cooking up some further ideas about music and apocalypse, so this paper was just the first step along a little path that looks to have some exciting way-stations, one of which will be a conference in Barcelona that, in time, I will write more about, though for now, a teaser...

Barcelona: New Jerusalem Conference

Namely, there will be a conference in April 2027 that we're entitling "The Heavenly (or: New) Jerusalem: The Origin and Reception of the Idea of a Heavenly City in Jewish and Christian Tradition." The conveners, along with myself, will be Marcos Aceituno (Barcelona), Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg), Armand Puig (Rome), and Jens Schröter (Berlin). Excitingly, an important part of the program will be a newly commissioned piece for classical guitar to be written by American composer Adam Greene and performed by Colin McAllister. Watch this space for more.

There was, of course, all this and then the typical activities on publications, collaborations, etc., which shall at this time remain close to my chest. Except to say that two publications should be showing up very soon, both on Revelation and it's reception in late antiquity. But for now, that's all, folks!