The work of Biblical Horizons has played an inestimable role in the shaping and training of the teachers and students at Geneva Academy. Understanding education as part of God’s plan to mature His people, seeing the Church at the center of God’s mission in the world, being God’s people praying daily for the world, letting the gospel of Christ shape our reading of the Bible, and seeing through new eyes – Bible eyes – our math, science, history and literature:... Read more
Marc Bloch once wrote, “feudal Europe was not all feudalized in the same degree or according to the same rhythm and, above all, . . . it was nowhere feudalized completely” ( Feudal Society ). He added, “No doubt is it the fate of every system of human institutions never to be more than imperfectly realized.” In a landmark 1974 article, Elizabeth Brown quipped that the last comment was said “with regret only a confirmed Platonist could harbor.” Brown’s argument... Read more
In her revisionist Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (7-8), Susan Reynolds traces common notions of feudal society, feudalism, feudal system back to sixteenth century legal historians, from where they made their way into Montesquieu and Adam Smith’s historical evolution of political economy: “In smith’s description of feudal government the framework of the sixteenth century discussions is still clearly visible.” On the continent, these notions were put to political use: “To lawyers and intellectuals of the French Enlightenment [feudalism]... Read more
David Ganz (essay in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages , 21) quotes this from the decree of the Council or Synod of Macon, 585: “We have learned from the report of the brethren that some churches in some places have deviated from the divine command in not offering a host at the altar. Wherefore we decree that on every Sunday an offering of both bread and wine be made to the altar by all men and... Read more
A couple of lines from Auden’s The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue (W.H. Auden: Critical Editions) have been sticking with me: “Lies and lethargies police the world / In its periods of peace.” Start with the cynical substance of the lines. Lies and lethargies don’t corrupt or ruin the world. They instead keep the world orderly. If everyone knew the truth, and everyone acted on the truth, the world would apparently be in chaos. We need those uniformed lies... Read more
A student, David Henry, points out that the word “fish” is used three times in Jonah 1-2, and notes that twice it is masculine ( dag ; 1:17; 2:10) but once in a feminine form ( dagah ; 2:1). A gender-bending fish? Uncertainty on the part of the writer? Or a thematically significant variation? I choose door #3. Before Jonah enters the fish, it is masculine (1:17); when he is within the fish, it is feminine (2:1); when it expels... Read more
Next door at the “On the Square” yesterday ( http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/12/purify-her-uncleanness ), Orthodox writer Carrie Frederick Frost ponders the Orthodox traditions of churching women after childbirth. She points out that the rites are comparatively late: Not until the 12th century are there rites for purification of women. And she says that canon law is inconsistent about the practice. Frost argues that they ought to be altered. Partly it is for pastoral reasons: “these words are almost always the very first and... Read more
In a 2002 article on stem cell research in The Public Interest , Leon Kass offered a gruesomely memorable test for the claim that a human embryo is nothing but a piece of tissue. On the one hand, he noted, if an embryo dies “we are sad—largely for her loss and disappointment, but perhaps also at the premature death of a life that might have been. But we do not mourn the departed fetus, nor do we seek ritually to... Read more
James B. Jordan has been a friend of mine since his student days at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. I was his teacher there, but since then he has taught me many things. Jim is a Bible scholar who digs far below the surface of the text. He is an expert on literary symbolism and structure, and he has an amazing ability to connect the dots in Scripture, tracing themes from Genesis to Revelation. I don’t always agree with his conclusions,... Read more
Examining the contributions that the Abbey of la Trinite, Vendome, made to its local community, Penelope Johnson ( Prayer, Patronage, and Power: The Abbey of la Trinite, Vendome, 1032-1187 ,158-9) notes the abbey “was actively involved in providing sustenance to the hungry” and adds that “much of this monastic charity was woven into the liturgy.” She specifically speaks of the mandatum of the poor on Maundy Thursday: “After the morning chapter meeting, the poor were selected for the service. One... Read more
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