“You are My witnesses,” Yahweh says to Israel (Isaiah 43:1). Then again, “You are my witnesses” (43:12) And a third time, “You are my witnesses” (44:8). Israel is Yahweh’s Servant, and as Servant a witness. Israel’s history provides a witness in Yahweh’s defense against the accusations of the nations (Isaiah 44:7–8). He declares things that are going to take place. He announces things that are not yet real. He told Abraham that his descendants would go down to Egypt, be... Read more
Romans 8:31–39 is better sung than commented upon. It’s a thrilling, ecstatic hymn of boisterous assurance that God’s purposes will be accomplished. Yet, I will attempt to comment on them. If we sing Paul’s hymn, let’s make sure we sing with understanding. Given the character of these verses, it’s easy and understandable that they, like Romans 8:28–30, are often cited apart from their context. But these verses form the climax of Paul’s discussion of the gift of the Spirit and... Read more
Responding to a piece defending utilitarianism by one O. P. Q. in the Morning Chronicle, Coleridge writes: He is for the greatest possible happiness for the greatest possible number, and for the longest possible time! So am I; so are you, and every one of us, I will venture to say, round the tea-table. First, however, what does O. P. Q. mean by the word Happiness? and, secondly, how does he propose to make other persons agree in his definition... Read more
In his opening essay in Christian Dogmatics, co-editor Mike Allen quotes George Hunsinger’s claim that Jurgen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Eberhard Jungel are all guilty of historicizing eternity and subjecting it to eschatology. They all start from what Allen calls a “hard” or “ontological” interpretation of Rahner’s Rule that “The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” In the view of these theologians, Allen says, “the eternal Trinity is constituted by and coterminous with the... Read more
A TLS review of two books of the Cambridge Companion to Cormac McCarthy notes the hints of holiness in his novels: Often in his work . . . there are residual glimmers of the numinous. McCarthy, who was raised a Roman Catholic, is often read as an unconventional religious writer, or Christian existentialist, even if his is a decidedly negative theology. ‘The Priest’s Tale,’ a mock-scholastic section of The Crossing . . . dedicated to saying what God is not. The Road can be... Read more
Jane Austen has been in the news this week, what with the 200th anniversary of her death on July 18, 1817. To mark the day, the TLS republished a 1913 review of an Austen biography by Virginia Woolf. Woolf has some very insightful things to say about Austen, but this isn’t one of them: However modest and conscious of her own defects she may be, the defects are there and must be recognized by readers who are as candid as Jane... Read more
Raphael is, we might think, a painter of abstract and ethereal scenes. Andrew Butterfield says in a review of a recent showing of Raphael’s drawings that this impression is due to our lack of direct exposure to Raphael’s work. Looked at up close, Raphael’s drawings reveal an artist obsessed with the depiction of emotion. Butterfield admits that the emotional intensity in Raphael “has not always been easy to see before, given the bland paintings of the Madonna and saints he produced... Read more
Nineteenth-century radical Henry Hunt was once offered a clerical post worth a thousand pounds a year. His duties? Nothing “for six days out of seven but to hunt, shoot, and fish by day, and play cards, talk scandal with the old maids of the parish, and win the money of the wives and children of your parish at speculation. . . . All that would be expected of you is to read prayers and preach a sermon, which will cost you... Read more
In his book, The Silent Revolution and the Making of Victorian England, Herbert Schlossberg sums up the career of the Cambridge Evangelical leader, Charles Simeon. He emphasizes Simeon’s role as trustee of “Simeon’s Trust,” a project that depended on “the peculiar nature of the right to appoint church rectors and vicars” (63–4). Specifically: “As a property right, the ‘advowson’—the power to nominate incumbents to parishes—was owned and, like any other piece of property, could be sold or passed on to heirs.... Read more
Two weeks after watching, I’m still thinking about Paterson the film and the poem. A few notes: 1) Internal rhymes thicken the fabric of the film. Paterson meets several sets of twins (reflections of Paterson the driver and Paterson the city?). When his bus breaks down, several people worry that it might become a “fireball”—the repetition amuses Paterson. He meets a girl poet who has a “secret notebook” just as he does. 2) Williams’s poem too is about poetry. He settles... Read more
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