PROVERBS 22:8 Solomon uses agricultural imagery to describe realities of life. Like Paul and Jesus, he says that we reap as we sow. Our actions are always a kind of planting. We are always sowing seed that will come to fruition later on. If we sow righteousness, we will reap eternal life; if we sow iniquity, we reap “vanity,” that is to say, insubstantial nothing. (more…) Read more
The iconodules staked their argument on the incarnation, but Besancon notices that after the iconoclast controversy, figures in icons became less carnal rather than more: “In the few primitive icons, which come for the most part from Egypt . . . , Christ or the saints have stocky, thick-set, vigorous, extremely carnal physiques . . . . But, after the crises, the forms become more elongated, the faces more holly. Even though the victory of orthodoxy in 843 was a... Read more
In his history of iconoclasm ( The Forbidden Image ), Alain Besancon describes some of the artistic features of Russian iconography: “Nature is stylized in such a way that trees, rocks, and houses defy gravity. The buildings are not represented within a unified space: each floats in its own perspective. The colors have a symbolic value. Light casts no shadows. The perspective is generally reverse: the line of force extends from the icon toward the beholder’s eye. Through the icon,... Read more
Another lectionary meditation at The Christian Century : http://www.theolog.org/blog/2008/06/blogging-towa-4.html Read more
INTRODUCTION Jesus again withdraws from Israel (cf. 14:13 ), and this time, following the trail of Elijah (1 Kings 17:9), goes into the notorious region of Tyre and Sidon ( 15:21 ). There He heals a Canaanite woman’s daughter and feeds four thousand. THE TEXT “Then Jesus went out from there and departed to the region of Tyre and Sidon . And behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, “Have mercy on... Read more
Matthew 15:2: The Pharisees asked, Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread? Matthew 15 and the first part of chapter 16 return again and again to the subject of food. The Pharisees ask Jesus about washing before a meal. When Jesus responds to the Canaanite woman, He says that He cannot take the children’s bread and give it to the dogs. He feeds four thousand, and... Read more
1 Corinthians 6:9-11: Do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? . . . Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God. The washing rites of the Old Covenant that Jesus talks about in the sermon text were effective. A man who had a seminal emission had to wash himself and afterward... Read more
Fabian links the ocularcentrism and spatialization of Ramism with the social science tendency to regard its object of study as, well, objects: “Once the source of any knowledge worthy of that name is thought primarily to be visual perception of objects in space, why should it be scandalous to treat the Other – other societies, other cultures, other classes within the same society – comme des choses ?” He acknowledges that Durkheim, from whom the French phrase derives, didn’t want... Read more
Anthropology, Fabian says, is border control: “It patrols, so to speak, the frontiers of Western culture. In fact, it has always been a Grenzwissenschaft , concerned with the boundaries: those of one race against another, those between one culture and another, and finally those between culture and nature.” Fabian thinks that this “liminal” preoccupation makes it difficult for anthropology to settle “in any one of the accepted domains of knowledge” other than the catch-all of “social science.” Two comments: First,... Read more
After summing up Ong’s work on Ramus, Johannes Fabian ( Time and the Other ) suggests an analogy between Ramist pedagogy and anthropology: “Having learned more about the connections between printing and diagrammatic reduction of the contents of thought, one is tempted to consider the possibility that anthropological kinship theories (at least the ones that take off from data collected with River’s chart) are actually determined by the presentability of whatever knowledge they may contain in terms of diagrams that... Read more
Leithart
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