1 Peter 5:14: Greet one another with a kiss of love. We have said it often before, but it bears repeating: The command to greet one another with a kiss is one of the most frequently repeated commands of Scripture. Paul says it at the end of Romans, and then at the end of 1 Corinthians, and 2 . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter closes his first letter with exhortations to two generations within his churches. He exhorts the elders who lead the church to shepherd the flock not as lords but as examples, following the Chief Shepherd, Jesus Christ. To the younger people, he says “submit yourselves to . . . . Continue Reading »
Deleuze and Guattari chide Lacan for assuming, with most of the Western philosophical tradition, that desire expresses a lack. They suggest instead that desire is productive, that we are “desiring machines.” Why would everyone think that desire expresses lack? Calvin would . . . . Continue Reading »
John Paul II argues from Genesis 1-2 that the human body is a “sacrament” of humanity’s status as image of God. It is the visible manifestation of the invisible truth, and it is a source of assurance How could Adam know he was image? It was his body, “the . . . . Continue Reading »
In his recent book on Dostoevsky: Language, Faith, and Fiction (Making of the Christian Imagination) , Rowan Williams notes Dostoevsky’s “diagnosis of the pathology of fantasies of absolute freedom” that he likens to those of Hegel’s Phenomenology : “‘the freedom . . . . Continue Reading »
Jenson, again in the Song of Songs commentary, arrestingly described beauty as “realized eschatology.” He begins, of all places, with Kant. For Kant beauty is “the unlaborious coincidence of the actual and the ideal, the way in which some things show forth what they ought to . . . . Continue Reading »
In his commentary on the Song of Songs 4, Robert Jenson raises a question about the Bridegroom’s declaration that the Bride is “beautiful” and “without blemish.” He links this to justification, but then notes the problems that often arise from exclusively . . . . Continue Reading »
R. Michael Allen’s The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic Account (T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology) fill out the notion of the faith and trust exercised by Jesus Christ in relation to His Father. He doesn’t deal with the exegetical issues, but instead sets out to show . . . . Continue Reading »
The Bridegroom of the Song celebrates the physical beauty of his Bride. For most of church history, this was seen as a human type of Yahweh’s love for Israel and Christ’s for the church. Christ too has a bride, who is one-flesh with Him, the bride who is His body. And the . . . . Continue Reading »
Plowing is sometimes used as a sexual metaphor in Scripture (Judges 14:18), but, as Walsh points out, in the Song these metaphors are absent, and instead we have metaphors of vineyards, orchards, gardens. This is partly explained by the facts of Israel’s agri-economics: They were not, . . . . Continue Reading »
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