Docetism can take subtle forms. We can affirm that Jesus was truly human, with human hands and human eyes and human feet and human hair. But we fall into docetism if we fail to see how specific Jesus’ humanity is. The Son became human, but we need to be more specific if we are going to grasp more fully what Jesus is about. We need to remember the circumstances into which He intervened. We need to remember He became incarnate... Read more
Doctrine matters, and no doctrines matter more than the doctrines concerning Jesus Christ. We can test every other doctrinal concern this way: What does it say about Jesus? One of the earliest heresies was “docetism,” which comes from the Greek verb for “seem.” Docetists believed that Jesus was not truly and fully human, but only came in the appearance of man. He is God, but his humanity evaporates in a “cloud of divinity” (Braaten). Modern docetists think that Jesus embodies... Read more
Ruth Fox points out how the Roman Catholic lectionary deletes passages that have to do with heroic women. This happens so consistently that even the most anti-feminist reader has to get a tad suspicious. Among the more egregious examples is this one: “A survey of the lectionary reveals that the account of the two brave midwives, Shiphrah and Puah of the Book of Exodus, is omitted entirely from the lectionary. The weekday reading of Exodus 1:8-22 (lectionary #389, Monday of... Read more
Naomi is as central to Ruth as the title character. She’s the one emptied, then filled; bereft and restored; dead and risen again. The son of Boaz and Ruth is “Naomi’s son,” and this chiastically matches (as several of my students have pointed out) her loss of sons at the beginning of the book. Naomi is the Hebrew widow, and the story, for all its interest in the Moabite Ruth, is also about the redemption of Israel. Read more
Naomi is as central to Ruth as the title character. She’s the one emptied, then filled; bereft and restored; dead and risen again. The son of Boaz and Ruth is “Naomi’s son,” and this chiastically matches (as several of my students have pointed out) her loss of sons at the beginning of the book. Naomi is the Hebrew widow, and the story, for all its interest in the Moabite Ruth, is also about the redemption of Israel. Read more
The rhyming Hebrew phrase reyach niychoach (“soothing aroma”) is used frequently in Leviticus in conjunction with ishshah (“fire offering” or “food offering”; this combination found in Leviticus 1:13, 17; 2:2, 9; 3:5, 16). reyach niychoach is found without i shshah in Leviticus 4:31; 6:8, 14. Two things suggest that the phrase has a bridal connection. First reyach (aroma) appears repeatedly in the Song of Songs (1:3, 12; 2:13; 4:10-11; 7:8, describing the oil worn by the King and the fragrances... Read more
Hegel’s erotic Trinity seeks the other out of need and lack, an indeterminacy that the other determines. What, however, if we think of the Triune love as arising from plentitude rather than lack? One immediate result is that the other is affirmed: “is this not what agapeic love does: releases the other as other and for the sake of its otherness as other?” He expands on the love of fullness, plenitude, surplus, in paragraphs that deserve to be quoted at... Read more
Desmond suggests that when Hegel defines God as love, he has in mind God as erotic love, and God specifically as needy erotic love: “For Hegel . . . the movement up and the movement down seem not to be two different movements, but two expressions of a singular movement of eternally circular motion. Hegel’s God is an erotic absolute in this sense: the origin in itself, if taken for itself alone, is a lacking condition of being, all but... Read more
In a brilliant chapter of his book on Hegel’s God, William Desmond asks whether Hegel can count to two. He wonders if Hegel is capable of accounting “for the true otherness of creation as temporal and not as eternal?” More, “Let God’s self-movement be eternal, but the self-becoming in time is not thus eternal (even if endless). How account for the difference? Is it enough to see it as an eternally vanishing or sublated moment? How does this accord with... Read more
In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can know God. Pietists, he charged, escape into feeling; while the pietists are right to emphasize a moment of subjectivity in religion, they “wrongly come to oppose feeling to thought, with... Read more
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