Beautiful Justice

Thomas says that Christ merited exaltation. In each of teh fourr senses that His humiliation merited exaltation, there is the same poetic symmetry: His passion and death merited exaltation; His descent merited ascent; his shame merited exaltation; and His submission to human judges merited an . . . . Continue Reading »

Incarnation and sacrifice

Christ’s sacrifice was a sacrifice of flesh, Thomas admits, but he goes on to say that it was a suitable sacrifice because it was God’s own sacrifice. The thought appears to be this: The Son takes our flesh, and by His sacrifice (which includes death and resurrection for Thomas) He . . . . Continue Reading »

Theology and the birth of Ethnology

In her The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity , recently republished by Baylor, Debora Shuger examines, among other things, how Renaissance writers attending to biblical texts spread out in all directions: “In the Renaissance, discussions of Christ’s agony in . . . . Continue Reading »

Priesthood and Sacrament

In his recently republished New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that “there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other . . . . Continue Reading »

Just war and natural revelation

In his Karl Barth and the Problem of War, and Other Essays on Barth , Yoder examines places where Barth’s views on pacifism and war conflict with Barth’s insights in other areas of theology. Yoder gives us a Barthian critique of Barth. One crucial point concerns natural revelation: . . . . Continue Reading »

Iron in the fire

Theologians have long been fascinated by the way iron takes on the properties of fire, and have used the analogy for all sorts of things. Luther said that the Word confers its qualities to the soul He indwells as the fire confers heat to iron; some church fathers use the iron in the fire as a . . . . Continue Reading »

Standing reserve

The heart of Heidegger’s critique of the technological society is his notion of “standing reserve,” the idea that matter is just there, without an inherent order or qualities, plastic to whatever shapes the whims of human will want to impose on it. He says, “Everywhere . . . . Continue Reading »

Temple and world

It’s obvious that, in Heidegger’s terms, human art remake earth -stone is remade into sculpture, the components of paint into a scene or a portrait. Heidegger also insists that art remakes world, reshapes the human environment by redrawing boundaries of earth and world. Heidegger . . . . Continue Reading »

Earth and world

In his essay on the “Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger attacks the traditional metaphysics of form and matter. There is no formless matter, he insists, and human beings must take account of the particular forms in which matter comes to us in order to make use of it. The essential . . . . Continue Reading »

Art or certainty

Brian Brock writes of Heidegger’s essay on “Nietzsche’s Word”: “The concept of ‘art’ as a replacement for Descartes’s ‘certainty’ attracts Heidegger not least because a public and social horizon is built into it: truth grows from an . . . . Continue Reading »