Commentators sometimes suggest that 1 John 4:1-6 marks a rupture in John’s argument. 3:23 speaks of love as a commandment of God, but there is no mention of love in 4:1-6, which discusses testing the spirits and the warfare between the Spirit of God and the spirits of the world. John resumes the discussion of love in v. 7. Some have gone so far as to say that 4:1-6 is a later interpolation. If we take the text as it... Read more
INTRODUCTION John frequently exhorts his readers to love one another (2:10; 3:10, 11, 23), and speaks of God’s love for us (3:1). Here, he connects these two loves inseparably. The noun or verb “love” is used 27 times (3 x 3 x 3) in this chapter, and twice he addresses his readers as “beloved” (vv. 7, 11). This is one of Bible’s great passages on love. THE TEXT “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and... Read more
Nothing seems as anti-gnostic as the contemporary obsession with bodily perfection. We can remold our bodies in any way we want – tuck in here, enhance there, replant hair and remold biceps, remove wrinkles and signs of aging. In fact, this obsession is completely gnostic. It attempts to side-step the effects of time. We want to grow old without any bodily traces of aging. And we break the links that bind our actions to bodily consequences. Time was when gluttony... Read more
1 John 4:2: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Why do we have this meal? The simple answer is that Jesus commanded it. But why did He command it? After all, aren’t we in the New Covenant, which is a Spiritual covenant? Wasn’t the Old Covenant the covenant of flesh? Why do we still have these physical fleshly things, bread and wine, in the new covenant? Why do we continue to... Read more
Yesterday, January 6, was Epiphany, the beginning of one of the traditional seasons of the church year. The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Advent celebrates the coming of the Lord; Epiphany, His revelation. We need both. If God comes to us, but remains veiled and incognito, we will never know Him. If we are to be saved, He must show Himself. (more…) Read more
In a 1980 essay, Richard Rorty offers a quick overview of the development of European thought from idealism through romanticism and pragmatism to what he calls textualism. The two ends of this development, idealism and textualism, are similar in various ways: both are antagonistic toward science, both claim that we never have unmediated contact with reality. and both use this point to undermine the mastery of science and to exalt the role of art. Rorty’s goal is to show describe... Read more
Lubac is by all accounts one of the great Catholic theologians of the past century, and one of the most influential. He never worked on a dissertation, and because of the disruptions of war never went through a great deal of the formal training expected of Jesuits. He was eventually given a doctorate from the Gregorian University, necessary for him to teach, but he never had visited the Gregorian and he never submitted a thesis. His theological work was as... Read more
Few people today work at the same job throughout their 40 or so years of working life, and many economists and sociologists have pondered the effects of this development. No doubt there is something lost. But there is also gain. Rosenstock-Huessy suggests that, due to technical efficiencies, doctors can stuff what used to be a lifetime of medical work into a decade. No wonder they have to take a break. After a decade of work, it’s time to retire. Rosenstock-Huessy’s... Read more
When the young Yves Congar visited Lutheran theologians and pastors in Germany in 1930, he learned that Lutheran perceptions of Catholicism were largely shaped by Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, of which Congar had never heard. Today, it would be impossible for a sophisticated theologian like Congar to reach his mid-20s without at least having heard of Ivan Karamzov’s “poem.” But in 1930, the text had not yet become universal. It is certain that many contemporary texts that seem to be permanent... Read more
Menand offers a useful summary of Peirce’s views on signs, in a way that highlights both similarities and differences with Derrida. Peirce taught a notion of differance : “The meaning of a representation,” he wrote, “can be nothing but a representation. In fact, it is nothing but the representation itself conceived as stripped of irrelevant clothing. But this clothing can never be completely stripped off; it is only changed for something more diaphanous. So there is an infinite regression here.... Read more
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