Life, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy says, is suffering, battle, pain, shock, failure, elation. Human beings are always torn, always riven. Much of human life, individually and collectively, is an effort to deal with suffering and death. By being the first Man, Jesus establishes the possibility of a different stance toward suffering and death. Life after the cross, and life in the cross, is a life in which death never has the final word, but where death is a path toward new, more... Read more
Hearing the hearing of Solomon (shema is both verb and object in 2 Chronicles 9:1), Queen Sheba visits Israel’s king with an impressive retinue (“very glorious strength”). She discloses everything that is on her heart. Solomon has a “hearing heart” (1 Kings 3:9), ready to receive others’ words. Queen and king speak heart-to-heart. Their whole encounter is an “apocalypse,” a disclosure of hidden things. She comes with “riddles” (chiydah), and Solomon proves himself a riddler on par with Samson (chiydah used eight times... Read more
Second Chronicles 8:11 (NASB) reads: “Then Solomon brought Pharaoh’s daughter up from the city of David to the house which he had built for her; for he said, ‘My wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel because the places are holy where the ark of Yahweh has entered.’” This comes in a passage emphasizing Solomon’s building projects (banah, “build,” appears eight times in chapter 8), and Solomon’s conformity to the statues of Moses (v. 13) and... Read more
The Beginning of Politics by Moshe Habertal and Stephen Holmes is a study of politics in the book of Samuel. Unlike other commentators, they don’t believe that the author is a partisan, either of a pro- or an anti-David faction. That line of interpretation “can distract from the book’s theoretical significance.” In their view, “Its author didn’t write a political book . . . but rater a book about politics” (1–2). The result is a remarkably insightful study of the political... Read more
In his commentary on Chronicles, Mark Boda notes that joy is a key theme in Chronicles. Commenting on 2 Chronicles 7:10, he observes that “proper attention to worship legislation is not seen as dutiful drudgery, but rather joyous celebration” (271). The passages he cites fill out the role of joy in the life of Israel. 1 Chronicles 12:40: Warriors and leaders gather in Hebron to make David king, A caravan from Issachar, Zebulun and Naphtali brings flour, figs, raisins, wine,... Read more
“There is a fundamental difference,” John Milbank writes (Future of Love), “between the Biblical and the Greek attitude to labor. The latter supposes that the gods have hidden from human beings the sources of abundant provision, and that these must be sought out by cunning, Promethean labor.” The aim is to “disguise this labor and enjoy its fruits, which alone give it point.” Aristotle brings this Greek attitude toward labor and leisure into the Christian tradition, which flourishes among Thomists like... Read more
The church’s stance with regard to civil order is neatly articulated in Romans, provided we read chapters 12-13 together. Romans 13 makes it clear that God has given rulers the sword, and that they are to use it for just vengeance. They bear the sword to punish evildoers and to advance the good. Some men and women are authorized to use the sword, ultimately by God. Because they are authorized by God, they are responsible to carry out His vengeance as... Read more
In David’s final speech (1 Chronicles 29), he offers a fivefold praise of God’s perfections (v. 11): Yours is . . . 1. Greatness (gedolah) 2. Power (giburah, related to gibbor, “mighty man”) 3. Glory 4. Victory 5. Majesty He adds an expansive note (6. Yours is . . . everything in heaven and earth), and then ends with two clauses: 7. Yours is dominion (mashal) 8. You exalt yourself as head over all. This eightfold praise is followed by... Read more
Despite its claims to the contrary, Patrick Deneen writes in a 2014 piece in The American Conservative, “liberalism was never about ‘limited’ government” or curbing absolutism. Rather, liberalism is about “the pursuit and exercise of potentially limitless power toward seemingly ‘limited’ ends of securing Rights.” The limitation on liberal government is the limitation of its ends: “securing rights, and general non-interference in influencing people’s various ‘pursuits.’” But these ends “necessarily becomes expansive.” This is true because “liberal government aims to expand the... Read more
Patrick Murray’s essay in Culmination of Capital lays out sixfold aim of Marx’s Capital: to present and examine in the form of a systematic dialectic the social forms constitutive of the capitalist order, beginning with the (generalized) commodity; to expose capitalist society, in its enlightened secularism, to be idolatrous and fetishistic; to reveal that the social egalitarianism of capitalist society harbours class domination; to examine and critically evaluate representations and theories of capitalism; to show how capitalist social forms naturally... Read more
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