“Let us spend the night in the villages,” says the Bride to her lover in Song of Songs 7:11b. “Villages” is kefariym , from kapar , to cover in the sense of atonement. Lexicons tell us that the word is used for “village” in 1 Chronicles 27:25, which may be the case. I don’t think it works for the Song, though. The Bride wants to spend the night with her lover “in the coverings.” That points in a lot of... Read more
Most English translations render Song 7:5c as “The king is captivated by your tresses.” “Captivated” is not a felicitous translation, since the “capture” embedded in the word has been largely lost. The king might be captivated, but the Hebrew says that he is bound, help captive. “Tresses” is questionable for a different reason. The Hebrew rahat is used only four times in the Hebrew Bible, and all the other three times it refers to troughs or channels of water. Jacob... Read more
The bride’s eyes are like “pools in Heshbon, beside the gate of Bath-rabbim” (Song 7:4). Eyes are for inspection, organs of judgment. These are watery eyes that are like pools, and so there is a hint of a water-ordeal. And the eyes are like pools beside the gates, watching to see who enters. The church fathers are not wrong to see here a suggestion of baptismal entry into the city of the church, baptismal passage under the scrutiny of the... Read more
Two Psalms include polemics against idols, in almost identical language: “They have mouths, but cannot speak; they have eyes, but cannot see . . . ” (Psalm 115:5-8; 135:15-18). Both, importantly, follow on the heels of poetic recountings of the exodus. Psalm 114 is about the Jordan and mountains and earth trembling before the Lord “when Israel went forth from Egypt” (v. 1), and then the polemic against idolatry immediately follows. Psalm 135 praises God for smiting the firstborn of... Read more
In a New Yorker interview, Simon Critchley discusses his recent The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology , which raises fundamental doubts about the possibility of a secular political order: “Even if you look at things like social democratic forms of government, which would believe themselves entirely secular, they’re not. If you look at a country like Sweden, it has taken the moral teachings of Lutheranism and combined them with a form of utilitarian ethics into a form... Read more
1 Corinthians 10:16-17: Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one loaf, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one loaf. Today, the communion bread is being distributed in pre-cut cubes, but beginning next week, we will distribute the bread in small loaves. Instead of digging through the... Read more
Some of you may have noticed during the past week: Lent is controversial. It is controversial partly because Christians have long abused it, partly because some see Lent as a symbolic boundary between Protestant and Catholic. Most of the Reformers retained Lent, but gave it a dramatically new form. (more…) Read more
Barth described theology as “an act of penitence and obedience” that works through “an attitude of prayer.” And he kept that Lenten image of theology before him by hanging a copy of the Isenheim Altarpiece over his desk. Matthew Boulton explains this in his God Against Religion: Rethinking Christian Theology Through Worship (Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Liturgical Studies) : “the Isenheim Altarpiec e is a multilayered structure, with two sets of wider wings that close toward the center, like... Read more
The created things that are added to the choir in Revelation 5:13 are divided into four zones: Heaven, earth, under the earth, and sea: Angelic beings and sky creatures, the sun, moon, and stars; all humans and earth-creatures; all dead beings that have been inserted into the earth; and the sea as well. That also implies that both Jews of the land and Gentiles of the sea join in praise. The Bible sometimes speaks in terms of a three-decker universe:... Read more
One reads Bultmann on eschatology and thinks, How Kantian! Then one thinks: Or is it the other way round? Is Bultmann a Kantianization of Christian eschatology, or is Kant a philosophical riff on Lutheran or Pietist eschatology? One reads Bultmann on history and eschatology and hears Derrida whispering in the background. Then one thinks: Or is it the other way round? Is deconstruction just an heretical eschatology? Read more
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