Fragrance of the bride

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

Agapeic Trinity

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: . . . . Continue Reading »

Erotic Trinity

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

Can Hegel Count to Two?

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

Hegel’s Trinity

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 . . . . Continue Reading »

Stem cells

The news actually broke this summer, when Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka announced that he had found a technique to transform cultured mouse skin cells into cells nearly identical to embryonic stem cells. As Nature magazine pointed out, if something similar works in humans, a simple skin . . . . Continue Reading »

Marion and the gift

In his discussions of gifts, Marion takes both Heidegger and Derrida as interlocutor. In dialogue with Heidegger, he wants to show that the reduction that Heidegger performs does not necessarily reveal Being as the final horizon; he wants to argue that the reduction reveals givenness as the . . . . Continue Reading »

Heidegger and the gift

Marion works from both Husserl and Heidegger, and we’ll focus on the latter, as he is slightly easier to grasp. (I am summarizing Robyn Horner’s discussion.) Heidegger begins from Husserl, but seeks to go beyond him. Husserl’s phenomenology was an effort, Heidegger says, to . . . . Continue Reading »

Sermon Notes, First Advent

INTRODUCTION Isaiah is the great prophet of the incarnation, but Isaiah is a bit too large to cover during the four weeks of Advent. Micah, though, prophesied at the same time as Isaiah (Micah 1:1; Isaiah 1:1), and the prophecies overlap (Micah 4:1-3; Isaiah 2:1-4) and Micah includes a major . . . . Continue Reading »

Eucharistic meditation

Psalm 128:5-6: The LORD bless you out of Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel. We saw in the sermon this morning that the man who fears Yahweh can hope for a fruitful home, a home that . . . . Continue Reading »