John Kleinig suggests in his commentary on Leviticus that 2 Cor 5:21 refers to Jesus’ fulfillment of the rites of Leviticus 4-5: “Even though Jesus was singless, God offered Jesus as the ‘sin offering’ for human sin. In this case Paul employs the term HAMARTIA alone, which the LXX also uses for a sin offering in Lev 4:21, 24; 5:12; 6:10 (ET 6:17). Influenced by the use of ASAH, ‘perform, make,’ as a ritual term in Leviticus, he maintains that... Read more
INTRODUCTION Ephesians is about the formation of Christian culture, or, in Paul’s terminology, a corporate Christian “walk.” Once, we walked, zombie-like, in death and sin (2:1), but God raised us in Christ to walk in good works (2:10). We are called to walk in a manner worthy of our calling to unity (4:1), avoiding the divisive ways of the Gentiles (4:17). In the first part of chapter 5, Paul exhorts us to walk so as to form a culture of... Read more
Duke University Press has just come out with a collection of essays edited by Creston Davis, John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek on political theology. As one might expect from the list of contributors (Milbank, Pickstock, Ward, Conor Cunningham, Kenneth Surin, Terry Eagleton and others) it’s a dense collection. It was a surprise to discover how little this volume intersects with other recent work in political theology. There are no index entries for William Cavanagh, only a single entry for Oliver... Read more
There are still, surprisingly, some classical scholars who minimize the influence of religion on Athenian democracy. Hugh Bowden’s recent Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle is a direct assault on this secular vision. As summarized by Joy Connolly in the TLS, “Dismissing studies of Athenian politics that ignore religion, Bowden contends that the democracy was ‘above all a system for establishing and enforcing the will of the gods.’ Far from relying on core liberal values of transparency and deliberative reason,... Read more
Lloyd P Gerson has just published a book entitled Aristotle and Other Platonists , an effort to show that the two great philosophical opponents of ancient Greece are not opposed at all. He points to the “Neoplatonic” writers of antiquity, who attempted to harmonize the two philosophers. The TLS reviewer, Christopher Shields, is unconvinced, acknowledging that “Plato’s influence on Aristotle was paramount,” but arguing that Aristotle rejects certain Platonic theses, both “positions central to Plato’s thought, as well as others... Read more
James Wood (TLS August 5) explores the Englishness of Saul Bellow, and particularly his indebtedness to the rhythms and sounds of the Authorized Version. Some of his suggestions are quite a stretch (“By the factory walls the grimy weeds grew” is quite distantly related to Psalm 137:1 – Wood says it “gently borrows from” the Psalm; though if the Psalm is being refracted through Eliot’s “By the waters of Leman . . . ” it becomes more plausible). Overall, though,... Read more
James Wood (TLS August 5) explores the Englishness of Saul Bellow, and particularly his indebtedness to the rhythms and sounds of the Authorized Version. Some of his suggestions are quite a stretch (“By the factory walls the grimy weeds grew” is quite distantly related to Psalm 137:1 – Wood says it “gently borrows from” the Psalm; though if the Psalm is being refracted through Eliot’s “By the waters of Leman . . . ” it becomes more plausible). Overall, though,... Read more
How does God’s covenant with Israel bind generations that did not consent to the covenant? asked Isaac Abravanel in his 15th-century Commentary on the Pentateuch . This problem was raised in particular by a rabbinic claim that “A person can be benefited without being present, but cannot be obligated without being present.” His answer to his question was that through the exodus Yahweh acquired Israel as His property, as His slaves. He acquired their bodies as slaves, their souls by... Read more
Ian McEwan’s Saturday is from one angle a novelization of Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” which also figures prominently (if improbably) into the plot. The book begins with neurosurgeon Henry Perowne looking out a window early on a February morning on a world where ignorant armies clash by night, and ends with him kissing his wife Rosalind’s neck and declaring “There’s always this, is one of his remaining thoughts. And then: there’s only this.” Come, let us be true to one another.... Read more
I recently came across the work of Daniel Judah Elazar, a political scientist at Temple University who has devoted much of his working life to tracing the impact of biblical ideas of covenant on the development of Western politics. This comes out most fully in a four-volume work on the covenant idea in politics, which begins with a solid survey of the biblical teaching on covenant, especially in regard to political life, and then traces the covenant political theology of... Read more
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