Genesis 6:8 says that Noah “found favor in the eyes of Yahweh.” In the following verse, we’re told that Noah was a righteous man (tzadiyq), blameless in his generations,” and this assessment is reiterated in 7:1, which records Yahweh’s statement, “you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time.” How does all thing hang together? Does Noah find favor because He is righteous? Was Noah Good? is the question that Carol Kaminski explores in her recent monograph... Read more
Jenson gives a wonderfully curmudgeonly riposte to the critics of critics of Augustine (The Theology of Colin Gunton, 11-12). “Whether long books or short articles, all display the same pattern: ‘But just look at these other things that Augustine said about God’s triunity . . . and aknowledge that he was a great Trinitarian both in his pastoral practice and his personal piety.’ To all of which one must simply say: ‘Well – sure – or course he was .... Read more
Social trinitarianism has been on its heels in recent years, but in a bracing article in IJST, Gijsbert van den Brink of the Free University of Amsterdam thinks it can respond to the varied criticisms. It needs to be chastened and modified at points, but for van den Brink social Trinitarianism has not been refuted. The objections are various: questions about the usefulness of social trinitarian theology, historical questions about the relation of social Trinitarianism to patristic theology, the purported... Read more
John O’Malley’s The Jesuits tells the complex story of the author’s order in a brief 160 pages. The small space lends focus, and O’Malley highlights the innovations and contributions of the Society of Jesus. Ignatius’s decision to focus on education for lay students gave the Jesuits a profile unlike any other Catholic order: “Through the schools they were drawn into aspects of secular culture in ways and to a degree unprecedented for a religious order. Jesuits became poets, astronomers, architects, anthropologists,... Read more
As the title suggests, Miles Unger’s Michelangelo: A Life in Six Masterpieces tells the life story of Michelangelo through six of his great works, including his Pieta, the David statue, the Sistine chapel. As masterful as those works were, and as much as the impressed themselves on the future of art, his most lasting contribution to art may have been his success in cultivating a new portrait of the artist. According to Unger, “In the face of the skeptics and the... Read more
Defending the possibility of innovation in doctrine is just another way of asserting sola Scriptura. It’s a way of saying that the church is accountable to the Word of God, and that the Scriptures have yet more to teach us as the church encounters new challenges. Protestantism is at stake. But not just Protestantism. Asserting the possibility of innovation is also, as Barth understood, a way of insisting that Christ is the Lord of the church, and that the church... Read more
According Thomas Laqueur’s 2004 Solitary Sex, masturbation wasn’t a major concern in sexual ethics until fairly recently. Stephen Greenblatt summarized the argument in a 2004 review in the NYRB: “Medieval Christian theologians . . . did have a clear concept of masturbation as a sin, but it was not, Laqueur claims, a sin in which they had particularly intense interest. With the exception of the fifth-century abbot John Cassian, they were far more concerned with what Laqueur calls the ethics of social... Read more
According Thomas Laqueur’s 2004 Solitary Sex, masturbation wasn’t a major concern in sexual ethics until fairly recently. Stephen Greenblatt summarized the argument in a 2004 review in the NYRB: “Medieval Christian theologians . . . did have a clear concept of masturbation as a sin, but it was not, Laqueur claims, a sin in which they had particularly intense interest. With the exception of the fifth-century abbot John Cassian, they were far more concerned with what Laqueur calls the ethics of social... Read more
Encyclopedic Isidore of Seville was one of the most widely-read early Christian writers. His analysis of ancient mythology in Etymologies summarized and extended a tradition that combined several components: Etymologies of the names of gods; euhemerist interpretation of myths as enhanced accounts of historical events; and moral indignation at the crimes of the gods. For instance, of Jupiter, he writes: “Jupiter (Iuppiter) is as if the name were iuvans pater (“helping father”), that is, providing for all. They also called him, with... Read more
Typically, wings in the Bible are appendages of birds (Genesis 1:21), so much so that “winged-thing” (substantive of kanaph) becomes a synonym for bird (cf. Genesis 7:14; bird is ‘oph). Bird wings are mentioned in the rite for the ascension offering from birds (Leviticus 1:17). The earth’s four corners are sometimes described as “wings” (Isaiah 11:12; 24:16; Ezekiel 7:2). Perhaps the world itself is being pictured as a four-winged flying thing. Human beings have “wings” when they put on clothes.... Read more
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