In his biography of Bach, Martin Geck quotes a number of notes that Bach penned in the “Calov Bible,” a copy of Luther’s translation that belonged at one time to the theologian Abraham Calov. On Miriam and her singing women, he writes, “First prelude to be performed in two choruses to the honor of God.” Regarding the Levitical chorus and orchestra in Chronicles: “This chapter is the true foundation of all church music pleasing to God.” (Unfortunately, Geck doesn’t tell... Read more
Studying African independent churches, David Barrett concluded that the single most important factor in dividing independent churches from missionary-founded churches was the vernacular translation of the Bible. As soon as the Bible was available in the native tongue, readers could check the teaching and practice of the missionary churches against the Scriptural standard. Many found the older missionary churches wanting, and set out to found churches that matched the Bible more closely. No doubt many acted schismatically and immaturely. No... Read more
Mbiti laments that often “African Christians feel terribly foreign within the doors of the churches to which we belong. Lutheran missionaries have made us more Lutheran than the Germans; Roman Catholic missionaries have made us feel and behave more Roman than the Italians; Anglican missionaries have made us more Anglican than the English.” He cites a personal experience that brought this point home. He attended worship at a Anglican cathedral in a large African city: “For the service, which was... Read more
Mbiti’s vision of the impact of the gospel on culture justifies Philip Jenkins’s description of Southern Hemisphere Christianity as “the next Christendom.” For Mbiti, Christianity is “a total way of life, a world view, a religious ideology (if one may phrase it that way), an existence and a commitment – by individuals, peoples, cultures and nations. It involves reflection and practice; institutions and attitudes; and the creation and adoption of traditions. It means an eventual domestication of the gospel, in... Read more
John Mbiti, a Kenyan African theologian, describes the impact of a vernacular translation of the Bible: “When the translation is first published, especially that of the New Testament and more so of the whole Bible, the church in that particular language areas experiences its own Pentecost. The church is born afresh, it receives the pentecostal tongues of fire. As in Acts 2, the local Christians now for the first time ‘hear each of us in his own language . .... Read more
As Caputo explains it, the Cartesian description of God as causa sui entails an important re-definition of cause. The sort of redefinition is important. Modernity prides itself on its embrace of movement and dynamism, and portrays the pre-modern world as insufferably static. The change in the meaning of cause tells a different story. For medievals, Caputo says, “a cause communicates something to the effect that the effect of itself does not have (like being or motion), so nothing can be... Read more
Jean-Luc Marion sees a fateful change in theology proper when Descartes describes God as “causa sui” rather than as “uncaused cause” (which was the scholastic description). What’s the deal? Marion says that talking about a self-caused God makes no sense. As John Caputo summarizes the point: “It makes no sense to say that God can do things that make no sense, not when God is the very height of sense and meaning and truth. It pays God no real compliment.... Read more
It’s nearly midnight, and nineteen-year-old Mari Asai sits reading a thick book in a lonely Denny’s in central Tokyo. Tall, lanky, long-haired Takahashi enters the restaurant carrying a trombone case, walks by her table, recognizes her, and introduces himself as a friend of Mari’s sister, the beautiful teen model Eri Asai. He sits uninvited across from Mari, and orders chicken salad. That conversation at Denny’s begins Haruki Murakami’s After Dark (trans. Jay Rubin; Knopf, 2007), which traces the interconnected lives... Read more
The history of conversos , Jews forced to convert to Christianity, is filled with horrific tragedy and irony. In 1506 in Lisbon, Christians played Simeon and Levi to “Shechemite” Jews (cf. Genesis 34) as mobs slaughtered a couple of thousand conversos . One would have thought that baptism might provide a modicum of protection for Jews. More ironically, in order to keep newly converted Jews in their place, Spain and Portugal passed statutes requiring “purity of blood,” statutes that prevented... Read more
In 1665, one Sabbatai Tsevi of Smyrna announced himself to the world as a Kabbalistic messiah who would bring in the final restoration ( tiqqun ). Yet, a year later, under a threat of execution from the sultan of Turkey, Tsevi converted to Islam. Instead of giving up their support for Sabbatai, his followers reconceived his messianism in a way that incorporated his apostasy. According to Kenneth Gross’s summary: “Tsevi’s conversion was interpreted as a knowing act of self-sacrifice, an... Read more
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