Rushdoony

Molly Worthen has an interesting piece on Rushdoony and Reconstructionism in the June issue of Church History . She is hardly uncritical, but also notes that even while “journalists have made too much of reconstructionism’s grip on mainstream evangelicalism, they ahve also overlooked . . . . Continue Reading »

Living out sonship

Kruger again, speaking of the incarnation of the Son of God as a carpenter in Nazareth: “For at least a moment in history, human laughter, human sharing, human compassion, human love, human fellowship and comaraderie and togetherness were all more than human. For at least one moment in . . . . Continue Reading »

Adam, Jesus, and Tragedy

In his invigorating The Great Dance , C. Baxter Kruger asks which Adam we think is greater: “If the human race fell in a mere man named Adam, what happened to the human race in the death, resurrection and ascension of the incarnate Son of God? Why is it that the Church has been so quick to . . . . Continue Reading »

Theology and meaning

Gracia’s entry is very good - a clearly written, thorough, stimulating summary of philosophical and literary debates about the meaning of meaning. He ends with the claim that theology “establishes not only textual meaning, but also the degree to which other factors play roles in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Cultural Function and Meaning

Gracia ultimately argues for a “cultural function” view of meaning. Cultural function goes beyond other factors that play a role in determining meaning “in that it establishes which of those factors take precedence over the others, and whether they are given any role in the . . . . Continue Reading »

Essential/Accidental Meaning

Gracia’s own suggestion is that we can make sense of the determinateness and indeterminateness of meaning by distinguishing between “essential” and “accidental” meanings: “although texts may have a well-delimited core of meaning (an essential meaning), they may . . . . Continue Reading »

No Smoking

In the entry on meaning in the Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Baker), Jorge Gracia responds to the view that textual meaning has no limits with this: It is true that “texts are understood by different persons, or even by the same person at different times, to mean . . . . Continue Reading »

Tallis

Joel Garver writes, in response to several posts from Raymond Tallis’s Not Saussure : “Most post-structuralist authors I’ve read aren’t dealing with things such as cups or trees or rocks, but rather things such as rationality, madness, criminality, virtue, etc. Foucault, for . . . . Continue Reading »

Bible and poetry

Fisch yet again: After reviewing the influence of the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, on prose writing in the seventeenth century, he adds: “it is worth bearing in mind that this is not only a matter of the seventeenth century. It is found earlier in the antiphonal plain-song of the . . . . Continue Reading »