The subtitle to Peter Andreas’s tells it all: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America . America is a product of its long borders and frequently illicit border crossings. In his TLS review of the book, Eric Rauchway sums up Andreas’s thesis: “Washington made a new nation at . . . . Continue Reading »
The latest issue of The New Yorker published a series of prayers that Flanner O’Connor put into a journal beginning in early 1946 when she studied at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Several describe her distance from God, and the way her ego prevents her from knowing God as she would like: . . . . Continue Reading »
During the week of December 16-20, James Jordan will lecture on the book of Genesis at Trinity House. Registration for the class is now open . . . . . Continue Reading »
What was the Reformation about ? Following David Yeago and others, I argue that it was centrally about idolatry, and that the Reformers’ response to idolatry was centrally about Christology and sacramental theology. . . . . Continue Reading »
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 »
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