Are imprecatory prayers appropriate for the children of Abraham? If so, then they are appropriate for us, for Paul says in Galatians that we are all “sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus,” and that if we “belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, heirs according to promise.” Are imprecatory prayers appropriate for the anointed one? If so, they are appropriate for us, since we are all anointed in the Anointed one, christs in the Christ. Are they... Read more
Proverbs 15:26 contrasts plans that are “abominable” to Yahweh with words that are “pure.” Both terms are borrowed from the Levitical system, and suggest that speech and plans are always a form of sacrifice. There is a vertical dimension to all our talk, and God either spits our words from His mouth or receives them as a sweet-smelling savor. All speech is sacrifice, acceptable or not; all speech is praise. Read more
Proverbs 15:25 warns that “Yahweh will tear down the house of the proud” and promises “He will establish the boundary of the widow.” Though this proverb does apply to any proud man’s house and posterity, it has, coming from the pen of Solomon the temple-builder, specific reference to the Lord’s house in Jerusalem. When Israel turns the house into a den of brigands and it becomes a house of the arrogant, the Lord tears it down and sends the pieces... Read more
Todd Gitlin says we’re not, or we are in only specific ways. George Eliot complained already in 1859 that “Leisure is gone . . . even idleness is eager now,” and Nietzsche said that “Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time than someone else.” Actual physical movement has not increased much for the last fifth years. Gitlin writes, “The speed of a jet plane has barely increased in a half century, except for the handful who... Read more
Between 1948 and 1951, Sayyid Qutb was in the US, and his reflections on this experience, published as Signposts , has been called the “key text of the jihadist movement.” One of the things that particularly frightened Qutb was the freedom of American women, and the comparatively casual relations between men and women. If Islam was to be saved, female chastity and subordination had to be protected against the solvents of American popular culture. For us, it’s the war on... Read more
Of the antiquarians of his day, John Donne wrote: If in his study he hath so much care To hang all old strange things, Let his wife beware. Read more
Hebrews says that with a change of priesthood there is also a change of law, and these two are the main features of covenantal shifts. In context, “law” has specific reference to the rules of qualifications for priests. One might generalize: Fundamental cultural changes are changes in priesthood and changes in law: Priesthood as the elite, the guardians of the sacred, however the sacred is defined; law as the rules for qualification of elites, whether piety, university training, skill in... Read more
In his book, The Last Days of the Renaissance , Theodore Rabb notes that one sign of the fragility of the late medieval church was its inability to continue to absorb fresh movements. This was not relativism; there was recognizable unity throughout the church. Yet, there was also remarkable diversity: (more…) Read more
A book on the uses of the biblical story of Josiah would make a fascinating cultural history. The Reformers found inspiration for iconoclasm in Josiah. Bacon described his program as “instauration,” borrowing the Vulgate’s term for the renovation of the temple. Or, more broadly, the role of Solomon’s Temple in the Western imagination. Whitney remarks of Bacon’s “instauration”: “Augustine and Calvin as well as Bacon refer to it, and many Renaissance writers, including Bude, Rabelais, and such English divines as... Read more
Whitney (the book is Francis Bacon and Modernity , Yale, 1986) offers some additional meditations on the meaning of “modern” particularly as it relates to Bacon. He defines modernity in terms of the tension between innovation and tradition, the frustration that arises from the revolutionary’s effort to start afresh and his recognition (which he strives to conceal) that he is dependent on traditional sources for the innovation. Or, with respect to Bacon, “the subversiveness implicit in Bacon’s demand for total... Read more
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