In the second chapter of William Stringfellow’s An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, he continues to contrast the two cities mentioned in the latter half of Revelation: Babylon and Jerusalem. The Babylon of Revelation, he says, “is archetypical of all nations.” Those nations are principalities that, Stringfellow argues, by their very nature are anti-human; they serve themselves and work against that which is good. Jerusalem, on the other hand, is representative of Christians as “an embassy among the principalities” or as “a pioneer community”. (These phrases remind me instantly of N. T. Wright’s similar description of the Church in Surprised by Hope.)
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