I was finally able to fulfill a longtime dream of mine to visit Germany. Bavaria, in particular. Me and my travel companions, of course, visited Neuschwanstein castle like the tourists we are, and then the small town of Fussen not far from it. As we walked around the old town, a time capsule of an older world, I noticed things here and there that continued to affirm some thoughts I had been having concerning the push for a new Christendom
Reformed Christians are a lot less likely to take seriously the first Christendom as it actually was and the things that made it. Reformed Christians tend to believe that Geneva was the epicenter of the Christendom which we should emulate. There is nothing wrong with liking Geneva, but the older Christendom was something different. I want to point out the three images that are seen throughout the old town. Images which, in a way, are symbols of the town itself and are theological explanations of the Christian town. These images are the Crucifixion, Mary, and Saint George.
The Crucifixion
The Crucifixion is at the center of every town because the cross is the intersection of heaven and earth in the mission of God on earth and therefore of human society. The cross also symbolizes the communion of the saints in heaven and on earth. It is the sedation and submission of the will of a community to a higher will. It is called “the holy and life-giving cross” in the eastern church and they are accurate to call it that as it is the event that deals with death and life which are both integral to the understanding of a culture and a town.
It is not entirely necessary that the town has a visual crucifix, though most have them in every corner. The town itself is a crucifix in a metaphysical sense. The church steeple reaches up to the heavens and the town spreads outward and the graves of loved ones reach down into the earth.
It is only because the town or city exists that Christ could be cast outside of its walls to die. So, the image of the crucifix at the center of the town is to say that the town is constituted by the one who was willing to go out and protect it. To give himself for it. To serve it. It is the king, or the highest ruler, who is treated with both admiration and love at his triumphal entry and who also must bear the penalty or burden of going out to redeem his people. The importance of Jerusalem was not in its status as a city, as if God loved or hated cities for some peculiar reason. The importance of Jerusalem, even as a city, is found in its role as the center of religion. It was the place that the temple was. It was the place of sacrifice. The importance of Jesus dying outside the city was the destruction of the sacrificial system and its flowing out to all the world. Just as every water blessed is the water of baptism and was made holy by Christ’s baptism in the Jordan river, so every city is now Jerusalem.
When the writer of Hebrews is talking about the city, it is the heavenly city where the sacrifice of Christ is the reality. This is painfully clear when reading verses ten through fourteen.
“We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
Commentaries on Hebrews 13 corroborate the relation of camp and city. “[S]uffered without the gate; that is, of Jerusalem: the Syriac version reads, “without the city”; meaning Jerusalem; which answered to the camp of Israel, in the wilderness; without which, the bodies of beasts were burnt, on the day of atonement: for so say the Jews; “as was the camp in the wilderness, so was the camp in Jerusalem.” (John Gill, Commentary on Hebrews 13:12).
“He proves that this servile adherence to the Jewish state is a bar to the privileges of the gospel altar; and he argues thus:-Under the Jewish law, no part of the sin-offering was to be eaten, but all must be burnt without the camp while they dwelt in tabernacles, and without the gates when they dwelt in cities: now, if they will still be subject to that law, they cannot eat at the gospel-altar; for that which is eaten there is furnished from Christ, who is the great sin-offering.” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on Hebrews 13).
The author of Hebrews gives this image of going into the Most Holy Place and going outside of the city. There is sacrifice and making holy. A submission of will and a bonding together as a peculiar people, a holy people.
Mary and Child
The second image to decorate the doorways and towers of the town was the image of Mary and the Christ Child. Above doors, on steeple bases, on house walls, this image covered the town. The role of Mary in salvation history is far more multifaceted than often realized by Protestants. She has been called the new Ark of the Covenant and is an image of the church itself.
Assuming a Protestant will not just accept that Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, an incredibly typological doctrine which requires effort to understand, I will provide scriptural evidence for the belief and from there assume it as the explanatory basis of the usage of the image in the town. (This is, after all, an assessment and not necessarily an endorsement.) Hebrews presents the list of the objects that were contained in the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant. “Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place, which had the golden altar of incense and the gold-covered ark of the covenant. This ark contained the gold jar of manna, Aaron’s staff that had budded, and the stone tablets of the covenant. Above the ark were the cherubim of the Glory, overshadowing the atonement cover.” (Hebrews 9:3-5). Within the Old Testament Ark there lay the Word of God, the High Priest’s Staff and the Bread of Heaven. Considering our confession that Jesus is in fact God and He was not later adopted at His baptism, the things we do believe about Him apply to Him in the womb. So, while He was in the womb of Mary, He was the Word of God, High Priest and the Bread of Heaven.
The next scriptural indicator is in Revelation 11 and 12. Read without reference to chapter and verse what the passage says. “The seventh angel sounded his trumpet…Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm. A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.” (Revelation 11:15, 19-12:2). The woman clothed with the sun is announced by the seventh trumpet just as the Ark was announced at the battle of Jericho in Joshua 6:13. But is the woman Mary? In Revelation 12 John says. “She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.” (Revelation 12:5).
Mary is the bearer and mother of Jesus the Bread of Heaven and the Life of the World. Which is directing us to the reality of the church on earth. Jesus brought the temple to the whole world. What dwelled within the temple? The Ark and the Bread of Heaven. So, the role of images of Mary and Jesus throughout the town is not just a reminder but a clarification. The Old Testament Ark remained in one place for most of the time. The presence of the new Ark in all corners of society is then the presence of God’s temple in all of society. God with us, Emmanuel, is the name of a person not a thing. Society is God’s temple and the Ark and the Bread of Heaven are present throughout.
The Christian town is, again, the reestablishment of the order of the tabernacle and camp, the temple and Jerusalem. Now it is the church and town. God is the same in the new and old testaments, which means He designs things the same way now as He did before. Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. God does not change and so the proper structure of human society also does not change because it was instituted by God.
Saint George
The imagery of Saint George is a quintessential fairytale. The hero fights and defeats the evil dragon and saves the woman. It is a symbol of triumph over evil and exhibition of the virtues of honor and courage. A town can only be established when evil is oppressed or defeated. When duty is performed. When the men lead their people against corruption. Yet the cult of Saint George as it was before and after the reformation in England is important to know in order to understand what the image was for and what it can be for today. Any such image of Saint George invokes a larger story wherever it is found.
Henry VIII, during the Reformation, restricted the cult of the saints to only New Testament saints and Saint George, showing the importance of his role in English identity by that time. Prior to that, particularly in the fifteenth century, the cult enjoyed much popularity. The primary difference between the pre and post reformation Saint George is that he was said to have married the princess he saved. In the pre-Reformation Saint George had consecrated himself to the Virgin Mary and thus remained celibate for her. This even further cemented his role as an Englishman because England was considered to be the Virgin’s dowry. After the Reformation and the renouncement of a celibate priesthood, Saint George is seen marrying the princess.
We cannot understand the role of Saint George either then or now without realizing the importance of the intercessory nature of his image to the pre-Reformation world. Compare briefly these pre-and-post-Reformation prayers.
“O God, who causest us to rejoice in the good deeds and intercession of St George Thy Martyr, mercifully grant that by the gift of Thy grace we may obtain the benefits we ask of him…We humbly pray Thee, Almighty Father, that we who are satisfied with the sweetness of the Heavenly Table may at the intercession of Thy Martyr St George also be partakers of His resurrection by whose death we are redeemed.” (Sarum Missal).
“O Lord God of Hosts, who didst give grace to Thy servant George to lay aside the fear of man and to confess Thee even unto death, grant that we, and all our countrymen who bear office in the world, may think lightly of earthly place and honour, and seek rather to please the Captain of our Salvation who has chosen us to be his soldiers, to whom with Thee and the Holy Spirit be thanks and praise from all the armies of Thy saints, now and evermore. Amen.” (Bishop John Wordsworth, After the Third Collect: Prayers and Thanksgivings for use in Public Worship).
Saint George clearly moves from one role to another. He is now an exemplar of faith. He is not removed from the cloud of witnesses in heaven, but he is not called upon in any personal way.
As a person Saint George has a very obscure beginning, but he is often synthesized with another George from the Roman empire who defied the emperor. In that myth the emperor is symbolized by a dragon. The implication being that George was standing in defiance of the power of a tyrant who sought to bind the conscience of George to worship another god. Defiance to tyranny. Defiance to the beast system symbolized by the dragon. The role of Saint George as the defender of the town is the common denominator in all the images. He is a town’s man. A multi-faceted image of what men as the leaders of a Christian town are to do. That includes self-mastery and celibacy when called to it. Defiance of tyrants, which could include any leader within their own town. Heads of their households who marry and lead and fight to keep the marriage bed pure.
In essence he is the town as exemplified in headship. This can be seen finally in the reward George commands in the legend according to Voragine. Rather than ask for gold he calls the people of the town to be baptized. The most interesting part of this is that it is the King’s daughter, Elizabeth, who leads the captured dragon into the town for the people to see. This is the image of man and woman being the head and helper of the town and getting the town baptized. The family is being born.
Conclusion
Towns are not established in the way they once were. But the images of the town do not lose their symbolic and theological explanation on what beauty lies behind the old towns. I have become a firm believer in the necessity of a deep history and symbolic presence for Christian society. A town based on reason will be fine, but a town based in a deep longing will be beautiful.
Image Credit: Unsplash
