In a 1996 Communio article, Joseph Ratzinger argues that the child in the womb is the basic model of human existence: “For what is at stake here? The being of another person is so closely interwoven with the being of this person, the mother, that for the present it can survive only by physically being with the mother, a physical unity with her. Such unity, however, does not eliminate the otherness of this being or authorize us to dispute its... Read more
I have some reflections on the political character of liturgical music at http://www.firstthings.com/ this morning. Read more
In his lecture at the Biblical Horizons Summer conference this morning, Jim Jordan pointed out that the rivers that flow out of Eden are connected with commerce and economy. The rivers flow from the garden, where there are good things to eat, to the outer lands where there are minerals and gems. This can serve as a further gloss on my discussion of Psalm 24 earlier today: Rivers are the “foundations” of the humanly organized world, and more particularly rivers... Read more
The third trumpet blows, and a star named Wormwood poisons the rivers and springs (Revelation 8). Since the trumpet sequence is following the sequence of creation days, we would expect a judgment on the land or the grain and trees at the third trumpet. Instead, we get a judgment on rivers. The third bowl also strikes fresh water sources. What gives? Psalm 24 provides a clue. Verse 1 contains an obvious parallel, but, like most poetic parallelisms in the Psalter,... Read more
A few epistemological reflections on John Paul II’s meditations on Genesis in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body . John Paul makes much of the fact of Adam’s original solitude. In that state, before he found a helper corresponding to him, he came to know himself in the naming of the animals, in his self-differentiation from the animal world. Having examined and named the animals and finding none among them suitable to him, his isolation... Read more
Lewis Hyde ( The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World ) traces the history of modern economics by recounting a history of usury in the Western world. In the Torah, Hyde argues, a boundary is drawn between the brothers within Israel and strangers; within Israel, there is no usury but Israelites were permitted to take usury from strangers. He characterizes the distinction as one between the internal gift economy and external commerce. In any case, by the... Read more
The New Testament writers use two closely related Greek words for “salvation”: soteria and soterios . The former is common, used 45 times throughout the New Testament, mostly in the epistles. Soterios is used only a handful of times (Luke 2:30; 3:6; Acts 28:28; Ephesians 6:17; Titus 2:11). My question: Why would it be used at all? One possibility is that it can be used substantively to refer to a Savior and not to the event or condition of “salvation.”... Read more
When Hebrews 13:15 exhorts believers to offer a continuous sacrifice of praise to God, we naturally think of a continuous offering of verbal or sung praise. That is how the verse ends: “the fruit of lips that confess His name.” The sacrifice of praise is verbal, but I suspect that Hebrews alludes to something else as well. “Sacrifice of praise” translates thusia aineseos , a phrase that has a technical sense in the LXX translation of the Leviticus. A “sacrifice... Read more
Many OT scholars emphasize the commonalities between Ancient Near Eastern and biblical cosmologies. While recognizing a similarity, Guthrie rightly points to the radical difference in this comment on Psalm 82 and Genesis 1 ( Theology as thanksgiving: From Israel’s Psalms to the church’s Eucharist , p. 36): These passages “are asserting that Yahweh, the God of Israel, has done away with the divine beings that figured so prominently in the world view of the ancient Near East, and that Yahweh... Read more
Harvey Guthrie’s Theology as thanksgiving: From Israel’s Psalms to the church’s Eucharist has multiple problems, but I think he gets the meaning of zedek (“righteous”) just right (p. 9): “the original meaning of zedek may have been been connected with the action of a protector god toward a devotee who called upon that god. Zedek , or zedekah , was what took place when the desperate cry of a human being was heard and responded to by the god to... Read more
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