Fra apokalyptik til science fiction. Jakob Balling in memoriam

Abstract

In his book Poeterne som kirkelærere (The Poets as Theologians)
Jakob Balling compares Dante’s Divine Comedy with Milton’s
Paradise Lost. He discusses similarities and differences between the two
poems and places them in a literary tradition that combines theology
and poetry, a relationship that has had a decisive influence on the development of literature in Europe. The present article expands this perspective both backwards and forwards in time by including a discussion
of the interrelationship between fi ction and religious message in Jewish
apocalyptic, using the Apocalypse of Abraham and C.S. Lewis’ modern
science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet as examples. The article’s
discussion of the relationship between theology and fi ction raises the
question of the apocalyptic as genre. Moreover, the demonstration of
the fi ctional tendency in the apocalyptic is used to support and supplement
the traditional description of genre.