Watch the gyrovagi, Benedict says in the first chapter of his Rule . You know the type: “wanderers, who travel about all their lives through divers provinces, and stay for two or three days as guests, first in one monastery, then in another; they are always roving, and never settled, giving . . . . Continue Reading »
Commenting on Isaiah 60:17, Cyril of Alexandria describes the alchemical transformation that Christ brings: “all things are to be transformed to something better in order to distinguish the first [dispensation] from the second. The paideia of the law will certainly end with the paideia of . . . . Continue Reading »
A “Well, duh” moment. Yahweh regularly charges Israel with harlotry. This is not just serial adultery, though it is that. It is also commercialization. Yahweh loves His bride and calls her to intimate love. She wants to buy him off with sacrifices and trinkets. . . . . Continue Reading »
In his latest book ( Migrations of the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning of the Church ), William Cavanaugh offers an intriguing analysis of the liturgy of war memorials. Drawing on Marvin and Ingle’s Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge . . . . Continue Reading »
The similarities between religious and nationalist rites are often noted. But this is no mere analogy. Francis Bellamy, who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, intended the Pledge to function as catechesis through repetition: “It is the same way with the catechism, or the Lord’s . . . . Continue Reading »
The title of Jason David BeDuhn’s The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual is, the author admits, surprising: Manichaeanism was a intellectualistic gnostic movement that saw salvation as liberation from the body, right? The subtitle is also a surprise, since many scholars suggest that . . . . Continue Reading »
In the article mentioned in my last post, Kloos argues that Augustine moves beyond allegorical and figural exegesis in the process of writing the Contra Faustum . Figural exegesis plays into Faustus’s hands: If the Old Testament physically figures spiritual realities, why not dispense . . . . Continue Reading »
The late Colin Gunton argued that Augustine’s refusal to follow the earlier tradition of interpreting Old Testament theophanies as a revelation of the Son was a move away from a fully Trinitarian theology toward a semi-modalist Unitarianism. In her article in Augustine and History (Augustine in . . . . Continue Reading »
The name of God in the greeting in Revelation 1:4-7 is triads on triads: A triple source of grace and peace; the Father is given a triadic name; and the Son is not only given three titles but His work is described in three phrases. As Joseph Mangina has put it, God is a fractal: He is Triune at . . . . Continue Reading »
The Father is the One who “is, was, comes” (Revelation 1:4), and that same phrase is a name for the “Lord God” in 1:8. What we see in the Father we see in the whole Trinity. John inverts that name a few times in Revelation. To the church church at Smyrna, Jesus speaks about . . . . Continue Reading »
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