Calvin O. Schrag has this helpful critique of what he calls the “foundationalist paradigm”: It “profeers a theoretical construct of mind that is designed to determine in advance the criteria for what counts as knowledge, both knowledge of oneself and knowledge of the world. It is as though one were required to know how to swim before one swims, or to know grammatical rules of language before one knows how to speak, or to master the criteria for proper etiquette... Read more
The magi come searching for Jesus from the east, from Persia, moving west toward the promised land, as Israel did following the Babylonian exile. As they travel, they follow a star, as Israel followed the pillar of cloud and fire from Egypt. They bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh to worship at the place where God had pitched his tent in human flesh. Meanwhile, Herod the king of the Jews reacts with horror at the thought of Jesus’ birth, and tries... Read more
The Israel that the Son of God entered in the incarnation was not some pristine, sinless Israel. God took on a genealogy that included harlots, adulterers, murderers, and idolaters. God did not keep his distance from his bride, but came near to rescue her. Though initially intending to put Mary away, he obeyed the angel’s instruction and took Mary as his wife. The scandal of this should not be underestimated. We can imagine the family talk, speculating either that Joseph... Read more
Matthew 1:24-2:1: And Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called his name Jesus. Now . . . Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king. By his very name, Joseph the adoptive father of Jesus brings to mind the Joseph of Genesis, and, as we... Read more
Joseph is often a neglected character in the Christmas story. In paintings and crèches, he politely stands to the side so that the Madonna and child can be at the focal point. In medieval mystery plays, he was often a comic character, a doddering old man more marginal even than the shepherds and magi who adore his wife’s holy child. By contrast, Matthew puts Joseph at the center of the Christmas story, and depicts him as a faithful, obedient, righteous... Read more
This is not a paper, and that is not an ironic self-referential comment like Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe . This really is not a paper. It is a gesture toward a paper, a collection of fragments and notes. There is a goal here, a telos and trajectory: These pages contain bits and pieces of a larger project dealing with the doctrine of justification. I am heading toward the conclusion that the doctrine of justification, particularly as formulated by... Read more
1 John 1:1-3 describes how those who never saw, heard, or handled the incarnate word of life can come to have fellowship with the Father through Jesus. First, the apostles (“we”) witnessed the Word in flesh directly. Second, they proclaim that testimony. Third, through believing their testimony, we come to have fellowship with the Father and with His Son. Two points are worth emphasizing. One: That John emphasizes that knowledge comes through reliable testimony – an important epistemological point. Two,... Read more
John Kleinig suggests that Luke’s account of the Transfiguration alludes to the feast of booths: Luke “alone of the Gospel writers relates that the transfiguration occurred on the eighth day after Peter’s confession of faith (Lk 9:28). The transfiguration was the epiphany of Jesus as God’s Son. It showed Peter, James, and John that the age of the Messiah ahd come when the righteous would be overshadowed by God’s presence and dwell with him in ‘heavenly shelters’ (cf. Lk 16:9),... Read more
Zygmunt Bauman, in the book mentioned above, traces the shifts in Western cultural imagination from the ancient hero through the Christian martyr, to the revival of the ancient heroic ideal in the early modern period, to our current cult of celebrity. According to Bauman, the modern hero was born “or should we say reborn, mindful of the invocation/resurrection by the French Republic of the ancient Roman formula pro patria after centuries when the Christian notion of the ‘martyr’ ruled over... Read more
An etymology of “conservative” from the online Dictionary of the History of Ideas (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html): In Latin conservare means to protect, preserve, save; the noun of agency, conservator, appears as a synonym for the substantives custos, servator. Just as the Greek S?ter (“Savior”) was adopted from the religious realm by the Hellenistic cult of the ruler, so too conservator is found among the Romans beginning in the Augustan era (as an epithet of both Jupiter and Caesar). Augustus appears as Novus... Read more
Leithart
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