Fra apokalyptik til science fiction. Jakob Balling in memoriam

In his book Poeterne som kirkelærere (The Poets as Theologians)Jakob Balling compares Dante’s Divine Comedy with Milton’sParadise Lost. He discusses similarities and differences between the twopoems and places them in a literary tradition that combines theologyand 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 discussionof the interrelationship between fi ction and religious message in Jewishapocalyptic, using the Apocalypse of Abraham and C.S. Lewis’ modernscience fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet as examples. The article’sdiscussion of the relationship between theology and fi ction raises thequestion of the apocalyptic as genre. Moreover, the demonstration ofthe fi ctional tendency in the apocalyptic is used to support and supplementthe traditional description of genre.