Nathan Betz is a research fellow at the University of Regensburg. In this conversation, we talk about how the early fathers saw the heavenly Jerusalem not as a mansion in the sky, but as the point of everything. We discuss why the earliest apse mosaics in Rome stack paradise beneath the heavenly city, how churches came to be built after Revelation instead of just the old temple, and why the texts we have today are only small window into a much richer life.

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Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:55 Introducing Nathan Betz 3:32 How a library visit became a career 5:59 Paradise and the city: the bookends of Scripture 7:32 "You will be gods in the city of God" 8:22 Not a mansion in the sky 9:43 Not just eschatology, but teleology 10:12 Apophatic theology and the language of symbol 12:33 The heavenly Jerusalem in early church art 13:53 Paradise and the city in Roman apse mosaics 15:56 The liturgy as the heavenly Jerusalem 16:25 Is the church an image of the heavenly Jerusalem? 17:14 Origen's Russian nesting dolls 18:46 The jeweled cross 20:27 The missing creative briefs 22:25 How the garden is nested in the city 24:03 Methodius's Symposium: from paradise to Zion 25:34 Monasteries as little New Jerusalems 26:30 Sinai, Ezekiel, and the heavenly pattern 29:29 Are churches modeled on the heavenly Jerusalem? 31:18 The earliest evidence: Zeno of Verona and Eusebius 34:48 Hymns of the heavenly city 37:36 Revelation in the East 39:18 How the imagery survived without Revelation 41:32 Texts are traces, not sources 43:56 The life of the church as an eternal instant 44:57 How this research shaped Nathan's faith 48:18 Why everyone is talking about theosis now 52:08 Closing

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