Though the issue of Abraham’s sinfulness is not immediately in view in the “justification” text of Gen 15, it is a crucial issue in the deeper context and structure of Genesis. This is true in two ways: First, Abraham is suffering under the curse of barrenness and death, and the promise will be fulfilled only if that curse is overcome, only if God raises the dead. Second, the promise that Abraham believes in order to be reckoned righteous is a... Read more
Luke Timothy Johnson points out that Luke 19:45 uses ekballo to describe Jesus casting out the money-changers from the temple. This is the same verb used throughout Luke’s gospel to describe exorcism. Jesus has come to the temple, found it infested with demonic “brigands,” and exorcises the house so that it can become a place of teaching. Similar to the opening miracle of Mark, where a demon-possessed man appears in a synagogue. Read more
Why do the disciples put their garments down in front of Jesus as he comes into Jerusalem? Why did Jehu’s soldiers do the same for him in 2 Kings 9? A couple of answers are possible: 1) Perhaps there is some sort of parallel between this practice and the scene in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon , where Clytemnestra welcomes Agamemnon home from Troy and tempts him to walk over a fabric. This is taken as a kind of blasphemy, Agamemnon in some... Read more
A remarkable statement of Calvin’s, from Institutes 4.14.18: speaking of the tree of knowledge and of the rainbow, Calvin says that these are given new being by the word of God that designates them as signs or testimonies. Then this Et antea quidem arbor erat arbor, arcus arcus; ubi inscripta fuerunt verbo Dei, indita est nova forma, ut inciperent esse quod prius non erat . That last clause translates, roughly, “when they have been inscribed by the word of God,... Read more
In Nussbaum’s treatment, “tragic” and “Aristotelian” conceptions of moral luck and the fragility of the good life are at one. In excluding poets, Plato not only kept certain forms of literature at bay, but was protecting against the tragic potential of life. For Plato, “the best and most valuable things in life are all invulnerable,” and thus Plato gets a kind of revenge against the demand for risk and the potential for tragedy. Plato enables us to “effectively get the... Read more
Nussbaum’s problematic of moral luck is quite intriguing: A good man is like a tree, she says at the beginning, quoting Pindar. But that means that the good man is dependent for his flourishing on all kinds of things beyond his control ?Erainfall, winds, sun, and so on and on. Greek philosophy was an effort to find some ground for the good life that was not dependent on such moral “luck,” some ground for the good life rooted in reason... Read more
Should theology agree with the sophist critique of nomos ? It would seem so, as Thomas would say: The institutions of society are the product of human construction, and the claim that they are rooted in “nature” is a rhetorical device. It is human all the way down. If it is argued that the constructs of nomos are rooted in man’s inherent sociability, so be it; and if it is argued that natural explanations can be provided for social institutions... Read more
Years ago, I read David Landes’s Prometheus Unbound for a class in economic history, and I can still remember the fascination I experienced at his descriptions of the steel industry (though details are sadly forgotten). In his recent Wealth and Poverty of Nations , Landes, among many other things, spends a few pages defending Max Weber’s much-criticized theory about the relation of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Here are a few salient quotations: “most historians today would... Read more
There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness . In a discussion of Euripides’s Hecuba , Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba’s daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by the Greeks to appease the shade of Achilles, goes to her death with great dignity and great confidence in the conventions of society, the NOMOS whose distinctions structured life, whose guidance pointed to the society’s chief values, and... Read more
There is further evidence concerning the meaning of nomos in Greek culture, coming from Martha Nussbaum’s Fragility of Goodness . In a discussion of Euripides’s Hecuba , Nussbaum points out that Polyxena, Hecuba’s daughter who is offered as a human sacrifice by the Greeks to appease the shade of Achilles, goes to her death with great dignity and great confidence in the conventions of society, the NOMOS whose distinctions structured life, whose guidance pointed to the society’s chief values, and... Read more
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