The last four things

Hieronymus Bosch , The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things , Detail: Death

Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things , detail: judgment

Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things , detail: Heaven

Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things , detail: Hell

The four last things (Latin quattuor novissima ), also the last things (Greek ta eschata ) are the subject of the eschatology of Christianity . The last four things are named in the order in which they come: death - judgment - heaven or hell .

Theological sources and developments

The Apostles' Creed also names the last things, but in a different order and without explicitly mentioning hell. The second Article of Faith about Jesus Christ says: “Crucified, died and buried, descended into the kingdom of death, on the third day risen from the dead, ascended to heaven; [...] from there he will come , to judge the living and the dead. "At the end of the creed, belief in which is resurrection of the dead and eternal life known.

According to Hans-Martin Barth , Martin Luther was "more interested in the resurrection and the bliss of the individual believer than in the fate of humanity or even the future of the universe." done by justification . How the individual elements of eschatology relate to one another was not a problem for Luther.

In Friedrich Schleiermacher's presentation of the Christian faith , the doctrines of ultimate things do not have "the same value" as "the doctrines treated so far".

The Catechism of the Catholic Church deals in article 12 I Believe Eternal Life the points:

The special dish
The sky
The final purification - the purgatory
The hell
The last judgment
Hope in the new heaven and the new earth

Artistic reception

Visual arts

In the four corners of the work The Seven Deadly Sins by Hieronymus Bosch the four last things are shown (see pictures on the right)
The four last things by Raphael Sadeler , around 1600, series of copperplate engravings, each 17 × 11 cm, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München
Depiction on the Fürstenberg tomb in Paderborn Cathedral, around 1616 (H. Gröninger)
The Four Last Things in the Benedictine Abbey of Weltenburg near Kelheim by the Asam brothers (1745)
Josef Stammel depicted the last four things as larger-than-life standing figures. The group of figures, created around 1755–1760, is in the Admont Abbey Library ( Styria ), the largest monastery library in the world, and is one of the best works of Alpine Baroque sculpture.
Symbolic representation of the four last things on the choir stalls of the Abbey Church of Bronnbach Monastery (1778)

music

Joseph Leopold Eybler : The Four Last Things . Oratory (1810)
Louis Spohr : The last things . Oratorio (1826)
Barry Jordan : Last things (for large orchestra) (1990/91) for large orchestra
Horst Lohse : The Four Last Things (Quasi una Sinfonia da Requiem) (1996/97) for organ and large orchestra

Literary processing

Angelus Silesius : Sensual Description of the Four Last Things (1675)
FK Waechter : The last things in seventy-seven pieces . Play (1992)
Andrew Taylor : The Last Four Things (2002). ISBN 3-552-04987-8

"And don't think of your own debt book,
which you have to bring before the judge
, when it comes to the last four things?"

- Hugo von Hofmannsthal : The debt servant's wife in the play Jedermann

literature

Lutz Malke: On the iconography of the “Four Last Things” from the end of the Middle Ages to the Rococo. In: Journal of the German Association for Art History. NF Vol. 30, 1976, ISSN 0044-2135 , pp. 44-66.
Marius Reiser : The Last Things in the Light of the New Testament . Patrimonium-Verlag , Heimbach / Eifel 2013. ISBN 3-86417-018-4 .
Meinolf Schumacher : A wreath for the dance and a dash through the bill. To Oswald von Wolkenstein “I feel ain animal” (Kl 6). In: Contributions to the history of the German language and literature. Vol. 123, No. 2, 2001, ISSN 0005-8076 , pp. 253-273, doi : 10.1515 / bgsl.2001.2001.123.253 .
Meinolf Schumacher: Painted heavenly joys in the Last Judgment. On the intermediality of the last things in Heinrich von Neustadt. In: Michael Scheffel , Silke Grothues, Ruth Sassenhausen (Ed.): Aesthetic Transgressions. Festschrift for Ulrich Ernst on the occasion of his 60th birthday (= literature series literary studies. Vol. 69). WVT - Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Trier 2006, ISBN 3-88476-792-5 , pp. 55-80, digitized .

Individual evidence

↑ See e.g. B. Heinrich Schmid, The Dogmatics of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Represented and documented from the sources, Gütersloh 1983, 10th edition, ISBN 3-579-04101-0 , pp. 394-411.
↑ Hans-Martin Barth, Theology of Martin Luther. A critical appreciation. 1st edition, Gütersloh 2009, ISBN 978-3-579-08045-1 , p. 501.
^ Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith according to the principles of the Protestant Church presented in context , Volume II (1831), Berlin, 7th edition 1960, p. 559.
^ Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) vatican.va
^ Josef Stammel - Four Last Things stiftadmont.at
↑ Sculptures and reliefs in the Admont Abbey Library stiftadmont.at

Web links

Commons : The last four things - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

[1] See e.g. B. Heinrich Schmid, The Dogmatics of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Represented and documented from the sources, Gütersloh 1983, 10th edition, ISBN 3-579-04101-0 , pp. 394-411.

[2] Hans-Martin Barth, Theology of Martin Luther. A critical appreciation. 1st edition, Gütersloh 2009, ISBN 978-3-579-08045-1 , p. 501.

[3] Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith according to the principles of the Protestant Church presented in context , Volume II (1831), Berlin, 7th edition 1960, p. 559.

[4] Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997) vatican.va

[5] Josef Stammel - Four Last Things stiftadmont.at

[6] Sculptures and reliefs in the Admont Abbey Library stiftadmont.at