In his unjustly neglected work on Medieval Institutions and the Old Testament (1965), Johan Chydenius notes the fateful shift in the logic of interpretation during the course of the middle ages: “According to the typological outlook, not only the mystery of Christ taken by itself but also the . . . . Continue Reading »
Bede ( Bede: On the Temple (Liverpool University Press - Translated Texts for Historians) ) knows that the temple is a type of Christ, and a type of the church. But he doesn’t stop with that generic identification. Specific details of the temple construction foreshadow specific features of . . . . Continue Reading »
De Lubac ( Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, Vol. 1 ) answers with a catena of quotations from the church fathers: “Scripture is like the world: ‘undecipherable in its fullness and in the multiplicity of its meanings.’ A deep forest, with innumerable branches, . . . . Continue Reading »
In Augustine’s version of Psalm 8, the title refers to wine-presses. That leads him into an extended meditation on how wine presses and threshing floors symbolize the church: “We may then take wine-presses to be Churches, on the same principle by which we understand also by a . . . . Continue Reading »
The notion that Greek culture is derivative from the East is an ancient one. Eusebius made the claim in his Praeparatio Evangelica . As summarized by Raoul Mortley ( The Idea of Universal History from Hellenistic Philosophy to Early Christian Historiography , 65), Eusebius claimed: “In a . . . . Continue Reading »
In a contribution to Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire on Eusebius’s “construction” of Constantine in his Vita Constantini , Averil Cameron draws an illuminating comparison between Eusebius’ intentions and those of . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrew Bacevich has written a series of blunt, scouring assaults on American foreign policy and the way we use our military. By the sound of Rachel Maddow’s NYTBR review , he was soft-pedaling. Now the gloves are off, in his latest, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and . . . . Continue Reading »
In his study of Pietas from Vergil to Dryden (73-5), James Garrison describes how Prudentius depicts the conversion of Rome to Christ while maintaining its fundamental Romanitas . Pietas , that original Roman virtue transferred from Troy, indicates both the continuity and discontinuity. “To . . . . Continue Reading »
The Hebrew word translated as “contrite” ( dakka’ ) in Isaiah 57:15 means “crushed” as in “crushed to powder.” In Psalm 90:3, it means “dust.” The word has a history in Isaiah. In Isaiah 3:15, Yahweh charges Judah with “crushing my people . . . . Continue Reading »
Isaiah 57:15’s declaration of Yahweh’s compassion for the lowly is memorable, and a good bit of its power comes from the structural and rhetorical patterning of the verse. It begins with a standard prophetic “thus says,” but quickly deviates from expectation. The speaker is . . . . Continue Reading »
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