Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth
Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George’s Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. ‘You must break these men or they will break you’, Oliver Cromwell declared of the ‘lunaticks’. This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch – strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.
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Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth
Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George’s Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. ‘You must break these men or they will break you’, Oliver Cromwell declared of the ‘lunaticks’. This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch – strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.
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Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth

Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth

by Christopher Rowland
Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth

Radical Prophet: The Mystics, Subversives and Visionaries who Strove for Heaven on Earth

by Christopher Rowland

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Overview

Christianity began with the conviction that the old order was finished. The mysterious, elusive and charismatic figure of Jesus proclaimed that a new era, the Kingdom of God, was dawning. Yet despite its success, and the conversion of the empire which had executed its founder, the religion he inspired was soon domesticated, its counter-cultural radicalism tamed, as the Church attempted to control both its doctrines and its followers. Christopher Rowland here shows that this was never the whole story. At the margins, around the edges, sometimes off the religious map, the apocalyptic flame of the New Testament continued to burn. In 1649 the Diggers occupied St George’s Hill to put the egalitarianism of Christ into practice. ‘You must break these men or they will break you’, Oliver Cromwell declared of the ‘lunaticks’. This book argues that such revolutionaries had divined the true intent of the enigma who threw over the tables of the money-changers: to summon a new epoch – strange, iconoclastic, uncomfortable and otherworldly. It gives full weight to a remarkable strain of radical religion that simply refuses to die.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781786722386
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Publication date: 08/30/2017
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
File size: 21 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Christopher Rowland is Dean Ireland’s Professor Emeritus of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture in the University of Oxford. His many books include Blake and the Bible, Revelation (with Judith Kovacs), The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology, Christian Origins: The Setting and Character of the Most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism, and Radical Christian Writings: A Reader (with Andrew Bradstock).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Acknowledgements xi

Preface xiii

Part 1 The Roots of Christian Radicalism 1

Chapter 1 'Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets' 3

Chapter 2 Heaven on Earth: The Roots of Christian Radicalism in the New Testament 17

Part 2 Kairos: The Unique Moment and Apocalyptic Discernment 37

Chapter 3 Human Actors in the Divine Drama 39

Chapter 4 Subversive Apocalypse 57

Part 3 Contrasting Radical Prophets: Gerrard Winstanley and William Blake 77

Chapter 5 Gerrard Winstanley: Responding to a Kairos Moment in English History 79

Chapter 6 'From impulse not from rules': William Blake's Apocalyptic Pedagogy 99

Part 4 Christian Radicalism in Modernity: An Example and a Neglected Perspective 129

Chapter 7 Liberation Theology: How to Proclaim God in a World that is Inhumane 131

Chapter 8 Apocalypticism and Millenarian Eschatology: Recovering Neglected Strands 153

Epilogue: '… And here I end': Concluding Reflections 167

Notes 173

Bibliography 197

General Index 215

Index of Hebrew Bible, Old Testament References and Other Ancient Jewish Sources 225

Index of New Testament References and Other Ancient Christian Sources 227

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