John Drury begins his book on George Herbert, Music At Midnight, with Herbert’s “Love (III)”: Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back, Guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack From my first entrance in, Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning If I lacked anything. “A guest,” I answered, “worthy to be here”: Love said, “You shall be he.” “I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, I cannot look on thee.” Love took my hand,... Read more
Christians today often think that the church needs to be powerful and well-ordered to attract notice. This is nothing less than unbelief. Think of Ruth the Moabitess, who attaches herself to Naomi when Naomi has nothing (Ruth 1:15-18). Naomi went out of Israel full — with husband, two sons, everything she needed. While in Moab, she lost everything. The Lord has made her life bitter. But precisely at that moment, when Naomi has nothing and can produce nothing, when she’s... Read more
In The Premodern Condition, Bruce Holsinger examines the influence of medieval studies on some of the major figures in the 1960s French avant garde. By “medieval studies,” he means both scholarship on the Middle Ages (Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, the Annales school, Denis de Rougement’s Love in the Western World) and also archival research that some of the main postmodern theorists engaged in. Holsinger finds precursors to theory’s interest in the medieval world in Heidegger, Max Weber, Hegel, Croce, Bergson, and... Read more
It has been common in the Christian West, particularly in the modern era, to define the image of God in terms of rationality or some other intellectual capacity. Confronted by a madman, Christians will no doubt say “Oh, they’re human too,” but by this definition they are clearly defective humans. In his little book Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality, Michael Downey takes a different tack. While he doesn’t hold up mentally handicapped persons as models of human nature, he suggests that... Read more
Let me begin with two starting points, too rapidly explained and defended. First: It is clear from the New Testament’s handful of uses of the phrase that ta stoicheia tou kosmou are connected with the regulations of the Torah. During her childhood (Galatians 4:3), Paul says, Israel was enslaved to the stoicheia (v. 9), and to illustrate the danger he expresses his worries about the Galatian observance of days, months, and seasons (vv. 10-11). Observing Torah’s festive calendar amounts to... Read more
In her 1959 study of Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroes, Lily Campbell treats the four main tragedies of tragedies of passion. Shakespeare places characters of different humor in similar circumstances, and depicts how the characters react. Hamlet is a tragedy of grief, Othello of jealousy, Lear of old-age wrath, Macbeth of fear. To see how this works in Hamlet, it’s necessary to realize that Hamlet is not the only son who has lost a father. Laertes and Fortinbras do as well: “each is... Read more
Tomoko Masuzawa was startled to discover that one of the “precepts” of modern religious studies was “Thou shalt not quest for the origin of religion” (In Search of Dreamtime, 2). This was odd on a couple of fronts. For starters, “every one of the ‘founding fathers’ of our discipline stunningly violated this rule and indulged and jubilated in the forbidden act.” As a result, those founding fathers (the origins of the discipline) are both celebrated and denounced. They can be... Read more
The description of the angels on Jacob’s ladder has long been a puzzle: They are “ascending and descending” (Genesis 28). Since angels come from heaven to earth, shouldn’t it be the opposite? Shouldn’t they come down before they go up? Yitzhak Pegel suggests a solution in his Going Up and Going Down. He suggests that sullam, often translated as “ladder” and understood as a ziggurat, can also mean a road or way. It hints, he argues, at “the way connecting Israel... Read more
Moses’ blessing of Levi (Deuteronomy 33:8-11) includes a curse against Levi’s enemies: “Yahweh, bless his substance, and accept the work of his hands; shatter the loins of those who rise up against him, and those who hate him, so that they may not rise” (v. 11). Levi’s substance consists of sacrifices and gifts brought to the Lord’s house. The work of Levi’s hands is the work of the sanctuary. The blessing is a blessing on the specific priestly vocation of... Read more
Members of the Corinthian church were filing suits against one another before the Roman courts, and Paul was livid. Saints will judge the world. Saints will judge angels. Since the saints are destined for that level of judicial authority, “are you not competent to constitute the smallest law court?” (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Is there, Paul asks, “not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren, but brother goes to law with brother, and that... Read more
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