In a well-known passage in De catechizandis rudibus , Augustine explains the purpose of the whole Scripture and of redemptive history: “Thus, before all else, Christ came so that people might learn how much God loves them, and might learn this, so that they would catch fire with love for him who first loved them, and so that they would also love their neighbor as he commanded and showed by his example – he who made himself their neighbor by... Read more
As Robert Jenson and Michel Rene Barnes have emphasized, Gregory of Nyssa’s theology (in, eg, Against Eunomius ) centers on a meditation on God’s infinity. Greeks were reluctant to say that God is infinite, since an infinite thing cannot, by Hellenic lights, have a nature. A nature is what defines, limits, circumscribes something. An infinite something cannot be anything at all. The problem is epistemological too: If something is note defined and delimited, it cannot be known. Knowledge grasps a... Read more
RA Markus points out in his classic study Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St Augustine that in Augustine’s view “what prevented the Christian from being at home in his world was not that he had an alternative home in the Church, but his faith in the transformation of the world through Christ’s victory over sin and death and his hope in the final sharing of this victory in his kingdom.” The church is not a counter-polis, but... Read more
Jesus threatens to spew the Laodiceans out of His mouth (Revelation 3:16. The OT background is in Leviticus 18 and 20, where Yahweh says that the land vomited out the Canaanites and will vomit out Israel if they defile the land as the Canaanites did. Jesus is the land. If Jesus is the land, though, then the “inhabitants” are being conceived as Levitical priests. The tribe of Levi received no inheritance in the land because Yahweh was their inheritance. If... Read more
Augustine’s argument against the Athanasian use of 1 Corinthians 1;24 is that if Christ is the Wisdom and Power of God in the fullest sense, then the Father has no wisdom or power of His own. The Son would not be “wisdom from wisdom, power from power,” and that might imply too that the Son is not even “God from God.” Athanasius would perhaps swallow the reductio , and reconstrue “God from God” rather than concede Augustine’s point concerning 1... Read more
At the beginning of Book 6 of de Trinitate , Augustine begins to examine 1 Corinthians 1:24: Christ is the Wisdom and Power of God. Throughout Books 6 and 7, he asks whether this means that the Father possesses His Wisdom “relatively,” that is, in the Son, or absolutely in se . At the outset of the discussion, he makes clear that he is aware of the use of the passage in earlier writers, like Athanasius. In response to teh... Read more
Augustine is often charged with a quasi-unitarian, quasi-modalistdoctrine of God. The one substance so dominates the three Persons that the latter are reduced to inflections or operations of what amounts to a single divine Person. Augustine’s discussion of substance, accidents, and relation goes in precisely the opposite direction, however. Augustine deals with the Arian argument that, given God’s simplicity, all terms about God must be understood substantively, and therefore the “ingenerate” Father cannot be the same substance as the “generate”... Read more
INTRODUCTION Beginning in chapter 13, Isaiah proclaims a series of “burdens” against the nations. He begins with Babylon (13:1; 14:4), and in chapter 21 he returns to Babylon, now called the “wilderness of the sea” (21:1). In these oracles, Yahweh shows that He is Lord of all nations. THE TEXT “The burden against the Wilderness of the Sea. As whirlwinds in the South pass through, so it comes from the desert, from a terrible land. A distressing vision is declared... Read more
1 Corinthians 11:18-20: when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper. The Corinthian church was a mess. There were factions. One group sided with Paul, another with Peter, another with Apollos. Some claimed... Read more
The men of Babel set out to make a great name for themselves, and after them Achilles, Alexander, Caesar, and countless others sought an everlasting name on the battlefield, by sexual conquests, or by political success. Making a name is what ancient heroism was all about. We have not outgrown this impulse. What used to be the cult of the warrior is now the cult of celebrity, and many of us aspire to become celebrities or, failing that, to bathe... Read more
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