The similarities between religious and nationalist rites are often noted. But this is no mere analogy. Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, intended the Pledge to function as catechesis through repetition: “It is the same way with the catechism, or the Lord’s Prayer.” Read more
The title of Jason David BeDuhn’s The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual is, the author admits, surprising: Manichaeanism was a intellectualistic gnostic movement that saw salvation as liberation from the body, right? The subtitle is also a surprise, since many scholars suggest that Manichaeanism was anti-ritual as well as anti-body. BeDuhn thinks the standard accounts are wrong, not in details but in the conclusions it draws from them. Drawing on the pragmatist tradition, especially Mead and Foucault, BeDuhn answers... Read more
In the article mentioned in my last post, Kloos argues that Augustine moves beyond allegorical and figural exegesis in the process of writing the Contra Faustum . Figural exegesis plays into Faustus’s hands: If the Old Testament physically figures spiritual realities, why not dispense entirely with the figurae and embrace the res ? The category of “witness” or “testimony” does multiple things for Augustine. On the one hand, it is a way of describing the continuing present significance of the... Read more
The late Colin Gunton argued that Augustine’s refusal to follow the earlier tradition of interpreting Old Testament theophanies as a revelation of the Son was a move away from a fully Trinitarian theology toward a semi-modalist Unitarianism. In her article in Augustine and History (Augustine in Conversation: Tradition and Innovation) , Kari Kloos offers an alternative explanation. For Augustine, the issue was not to identify the theophanies with a particular person of the Trinity, but rather to show that the... Read more
The name of God in the greeting in Revelation 1:4-7 is triads on triads: A triple source of grace and peace; the Father is given a triadic name; and the Son is not only given three titles but His work is described in three phrases. As Joseph Mangina has put it, God is a fractal: He is Triune at every level of magnification. 1:8 also uses triads. That verse repeats the “is, was, coming” of verse 4. Plus, the Lord... Read more
The Father is the One who “is, was, comes” (Revelation 1:4), and that same phrase is a name for the “Lord God” in 1:8. What we see in the Father we see in the whole Trinity. John inverts that name a few times in Revelation. To the church church at Smyrna, Jesus speaks about some who claim they “are” Jews but “are not.” The irony is pointed: The Jews who confess adherence to Yahweh, to “He who is, was, comes”... Read more
Isaiah 8:21-22: They will pass through it hard-pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness. The Word of God is the sword of the Spirit that tears into Judah and divides her in two. From the people who walk in... Read more
Isaiah 8:6-8: Inasmuch as these people refused the waters of Shiloah that flow softly, and rejoice in Rezin and in Remaliah’s son; now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up over them the waters of the River, strong and mighty— the king of Assyria and all his glory . . . He will pass through Judah, he will overflow and pass over, he will reach up to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings will fill the breadth of... Read more
Christmas is unique. Ancient gods appeared in human form, but no other religion, ancient or modern, teaches that the Creator of heaven and earth was born of a woman, grew as an infant and toddler, and reached manhood. No other religion teaches that because no other religion wants the eternal God of heaven to be so tightly bound to earth and time. Christmas is unique; Lent is an offense. It’s vulgar enough to confess that the eternal God spent nine... Read more
Further reflections on Revelation 1:4. First, Eugene Boring emphasizes that the three participles in the name of the Father are not all from the same verb. Some Jewish texts expound on the “I am” in a similar triadic fashion, and some Hellenistic texts apply a similar temporal triad to Zeus. Yet, these typically use three forms of the verb “to be.” John doesn’t. “The one who comes” is part of God’s name, part of what it means for God to... Read more
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