Nicole Ruane offered an intriguing discussion of the red heifer purification law (Num 19) as an “anti-sacrifice” or “inverted sacrifice.” At a number of points, the actions and concerns of Num 19 overlap with those of the sacrificial texts. The heifer is called a HATTAT (purification offering), and the animal is killed, burned, and its remnants distributed as in a normal sacrifice. (This is in contract to the non-sacrificial procedures for the animal in Deut 21.) Yet, the rite for... Read more
Naphtali Meshel of the Hebrew University gave an interesting paper on the dietary laws of Lev and Deuteronomy. He noted that Deut 14 divides animals simply into two categories – pure and impure. Impure animals are both ritually defiling (their corpses are) and are prohibited for consumption; pure animals are not ritually defiling and are permitted for consumption. Lev 11, however, presents a more complex taxonomy, Meshel argued. First, it divides its concerns between consumption and contact, rather than treating... Read more
Reformed writer Andrew Sandlin is taking on Jane Austen: “I first saw with Jim West the 1995 theatrical permutation of Sense and Sensibility (starring Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson) at its initial release. I disliked it then and deplore it now. In seeing this movie again on TV yesterday I was reminded how I’ve come increasingly to abominate much of the Victorian era — its conventions, sleights, artificialities, prejudices, scientism, formalism, class structure, hypocritical morality, and sublimated ferocity.” (more…) Read more
David Tracy gave a long lecture on the “tragic unconscious of the West.” He summarized the tragic vision as including a) necessity; b) intense suffering and c) an active response to suffering that is not necessarily heroic. One of the intriguing points he made was that tragedy’s necessity is often a contingent necessity. A “contingent necessity” is a fact that is strictly contingent but that once factual becomes necessary. He cited Socrates who argues that a man sitting down is... Read more
David Hart responded to several critiques of his book, The Beauty of the Infinite , in an AAR session this morning. Gerard Loughlin defended Nicholas Lash against Hart’s assaults on his endorsement of a tragic reading of the gospels. Hart responded by saying that he had not misread or misrepresented Lash’s views, and that Lash claims that the resurrection of Jesus says nothing about the question of life after death. Hart affirmed that the resurrection of Jesus has everything to... Read more
James Jordan suggests that the reason the Son enters the world to take the bride has to do with the structure of the Triune life and with the factor of time. History is about the human race growing from the daughter of God into the bride of God; humanity is daughter to the Father and is destined to grow to be the bride of the Son. The Spirit in this picture is the One who prepares the daughter for her... Read more
A couple of interesting lectures on Music and Theology in the Christian Systematic Theology group of AAR. Nick Adams offered a very detailed and technical discussion of Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecote in order to explore some issues in doctrinal change and continuity. He noted that Messiaen employed plainchant and Hindu rhythms in the piece, and raised the question of when a stretch in a tradition becomes a break with tradition. Messiaen is not simply quoting plainsong, but it’s deliberately... Read more
A few notes from the ever-stimulating James Jordan, who spoke at a conference in Lancaster, PA this weekend: 1) He connected the opened eyes of Adam and Eve after the fall with the Lord’s seeing in Gen 1, where sight is associated with evaluation and judgment. To say that their eyes were opened means that they became adults, with some kind of capacity to judge but without the maturity to judge rightly. They looked at themselves and judged themselves naked... Read more
Reviewing David Hart’s recent book on the tsunami in The Christian Century, Willis Jenkins writes, “Curiously underplaying the resources of his own Eastern Orthodox tradition, Hart only vaguely affirms that creation must be an ‘ecstasy of spiritual intelligence and desire.’ Because he spends himself impugning nature’s vicious ways, he leaves readers unsure how the verdant earth simultaneously expresses the ‘yearning of all things for the goodness of God’ and grotesquely spasms after a ‘blind, thrusting, idiotic heliotropism.’ Knowing this would... Read more
John Milbank gave a very long, very dense lecture (amusingly interrupted by microphone problems and a fire-alarm evacuation of the hotel) on Sophiology and theurgy, drawing mainly on Bulgakov. I can’t say that I understood all that was going on, but I resonated to one respondent who asked why Sophia was necessary at all. As Milbank unpacked Bulgakov, Sophia is many things. Sophia is a principle of mediation that does not stand “between” the two poles that it mediates but... Read more
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