Barth famously describes the incarnation as the Son’s journey into a far country, borrowing a phrase from the story of the Prodigal Son. Is Jesus the Prodigal? The parable of Luke 15 doesn’t completely work as an allegory of Jesus; it’s an allegory of Israel in the first instance. But Jesus is Israel and His journey is the journey of His people. He goes to a far country; He spends time with harlots; He feeds swine; He was dead and... Read more
Israel, heaven and earth, the islands are to “rejoice and be glad” in Yahweh (Psalms 14:7; 16:9; 31:7; 32:11; 97:1, 8). The combination of terms is used in liturgical contexts; rejoicing and being glad is an act of worship. Then Proverbs 23:24-25: Father and mother rejoice and are glad in a wise son. Father and mother offer a kind of “liturgical” praise to their wise children. And so in the fellowship of the Trinity. The Father rejoices and is glad... Read more
2 Thessalonians 3:13-15: But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good. And if anyone does not obey our word in this epistle, note that person and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet do not count him as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians not to “associate” with disobedient brothers. What does he mean? The verb “associate” means “to mix together,” as ingredients in a recipe. It can have sexual... Read more
The exodus is the paradigm of salvation in the New Testament. Like Moses, Jesus escapes from murderous Herod, saves us from our enemies, and on the Mount of Transfiguration He discusses His coming “exodus” with Moses and Elijah. Jesus dies as the Passover Lamb, baptism is our exodus, and we follow the cloud of the Spirit through the wilderness, dependent on the food and drink that Jesus provides. Jesus is a greater Moses who inaugurates a ministry of righteousness rather... Read more
Did Alexandrian Jews support the Arians? Athanasius charged as much, and his assessment has been found convincing to more than one modern historian. Victor Tcherikover wrote, “Jews became openly hostile to the new rulers” after Constantine’s conversion, “and proffered assistance to any group of persons or to any social or religious movement in opposition to the official Church. Thus they certainly supported the Arians, and the Fathers of the Church classed Jews and Arians together as the fiercest enemies of... Read more
Jews settled in Alexandria as soon as it was Alexandria, that is, in 332 BC. In the first century AD, they were a powerful and sizable minority of the city. Between 66 and 117 AD, however, they suffered a massive reversal. Robert Louis Wilken ( Judaism and the Early Christian Mind: A Study of Cyril of Alexandria’s Exegesis and Theology ) writes: “many Jews were cruelly murdered, their homes destroyed, synagogues demolished, and their leaders tortured. During this period the... Read more
James Miller reviews John Yates’s The Spirit and Creation in Paul (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 2.Reihe) in the latest Review of Biblical Literature . Like John Levison, Yates places Paul in the context of Judaism; on Paul himself, Miller summarizes Yates’s argument: “Yates contends that when Paul speaks of the Spirit giving life, he does so within the field of discourse generated by the texts from Genesis and Ezekiel. In 1 Cor 15, Gen 2:7 serves as the linchpin of Paul’s... Read more
Pierre Bourdieu defined ” doxa ” (originally, “opinion” or in the NT, “glory”) in a variety of ways, but a couple are illuminating. Doxa is “the world of tradition experienced as a ‘natural world’ and taken for granted,” the set of practices and beliefs that “goes without saying because it comes without saying,” and, more formally, “a particular point of view, the point of view of the dominant, which presents and imposes itself as a universal point of view... Read more
Traditionally, “Arian” was believed to apply to a homogenous and well-organized heretical movement that arose in the fourth century, which took its theological cues from Arius. Recent scholars doubt most of that. Arius was a conservative, not a deviant. Arius was a lesser figure than he has been made out; Athanasius made him central and, influenced by Marcellus and others during his Roman exile, labeled everyone he opposed “Arian.” Those labeled “Arians” different among themselves. Rowan Williams and Maurice Wiles... Read more
In the aforementioned book, Burrus several times cites Nancy Jay’s ( Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity ) arresting observation that “birth by itself can never provide sure evidence” of paternity, yet evidence of paternity provides the “crucial inter-generational link.” That is: Watching a birth, you can tell who the mother is; the mother is the one from whom the child emerges. Until very recently, there is no similarly reliable empirical way to test paternity. Yet, paternity is... Read more
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