In an 1873 article in the Mercersburg Review, E.V. Gerhart, a professor at Mercersburg seminary, argued that nineteenth-century views of baptism had departed radically from the viewpoint of the Protestant confessions:“Claiming to be the faithful representative of Reformational ideas, the . . . . Continue Reading »
E.V. Gerhart argues in his 1873 Mercersburg Review article that the Heidelberg Catechism teaches that “Baptism makes the sinner a new man.”He explains: “The word ‘renewed’ in this connection . . . is to be taken as affirming a new organic relation of the subject of . . . . Continue Reading »
At the beginning of her The Philosophical Question of Christ, Caitlin Smith Gilson sketches the multiple dilemmas of historicism.Historicism “takes the historicist out of history,” which is not only paradoxical but, on historicist terms, impossible, since outside history . . . . Continue Reading »
Frank Kermode summarizes Alain Robbe-Grillet’s experimental novel, In the Labyrinth, in his The Sense of an Ending:“the soldier who is the central figure only slowly emerges (in so far as he does emerge) from other things, the objects described with equal objectivity, such as . . . . Continue Reading »
In a contribution to Women and Water: Menstruation in Jewish Life and Law, Leslie Cook helpfully traces the differentiations of Leviticus back to the divisions of creation. In the creation accounts, God is differentiated from human beings and human beings from nature by “body, blood, . . . . Continue Reading »
To be accounted clean, land animals have to “chew the cud.” The Hebrew for “chew” is alah, to bring up or to ascend.That’s quite literal. Animals that chew the cud swallow, and then regurgitate the food back to the mouth to chew.By the time we get to Leviticus 11, . . . . Continue Reading »
In a recent PhD dissertation from Florida State, Margaret Armstrong traces the connections between the Oxford movement and Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion.Harrison “practiced a wild, emotional brand of High Churchism and that its traces linger in her . . . . Continue Reading »
I reflect on the political potency of symbolism at Canon and Culture, the web site of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty . . . . Continue Reading »
Klawans (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple) is disturbed by the gap between studies of biblical purity and studies of sacrifice. Mary Douglas proposed that Levitical purity was not primitive, but systematic, symbolic, and socially functional. Even those who are unconvinced by her proposals has . . . . Continue Reading »
Klawans helpfully reminds us of the pre-preparations for sacrifice (Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple). To offer an animal, an Israelite has to have one, and it has to be unblemished. Worshipers begin by being shepherds and herdsmen, and they have to be careful ones.Careful like Yahweh: . . . . Continue Reading »
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