The Bible first mentions “fragrance” in connection with Noah’s sacrifice following the flood. He offers up a pacifying (a “noachic”) fragrance by turning animals to smoke (Genesis 8:21). The next time there’s a fragrance, it’s Jacob dressed in . . . . Continue Reading »
Faustus doesn’t believe that the Old Testament provides testimonies of Christ, and Augustine sets out to prove him wrong: “The ark was three hundred cubits long so that, all told, it was six times fifty cubits, just as all the time of this world is stretched out over six ages, in all of . . . . Continue Reading »
In his lively recent study of creation, The Seven Pillars of Creation: The Bible, Science, and the Ecology of Wonder , William Brown uses the typical weapons to neutralize the historical claims of Genesis 1: ANE parallels, hermeneutics, a one-sided view of biblical authority. He takes . . . . Continue Reading »
John Paul II offers a profound and subtle analysis of the the sources of sexual deviance in his theology of the body. The steps are: 1. Lust is a disorder of the spirit, and breaks the natural bond between body and soul. Men no longer act as single simple beings, their bodily . . . . Continue Reading »
Why is it not good for man to be alone? John Paul II said it was because Adam needed an other in order to realize the relation of mutual self-gift that is the fullness of humanity’s imaging of the Triune life. In the process he suggests a kind of theistic proof from sexual . . . . Continue Reading »
No human being gets anointed in Genesis; only pillars (Gen 28:18; 35:14). The pillars represent the “house” of Yahweh, the cornerstones of the future temple. It’s not until Exodus 29 that we read of a human being anointed with oil. Aaron is the first Christ. He . . . . Continue Reading »
The odd Hebrew phrase “in the bone of the day” (translated as “the very same day”) occurs in Genesis 7 (Noah enters the ark), Genesis 17 (circumcision of Abram’s household), Exodus 12 (Passover), and Leviticus 23 (day of atonement). Though the phrase is used a few . . . . Continue Reading »
How do we know things? Experimentation, deduction, observation? In Genesis, knowledge is first associated with two things - with food and with sex. There is a tree of the knowledge of good and evil, whose fruit opens the eyes of Adam and Eve so that they perceive that they are naked. . . . . Continue Reading »
John Paul II suggests that Adam’s wedding song, celebrating Eve as “flesh of flesh” and “bone of bone” should not be understood merely as a statement of derivation. Even is “flesh of flesh” not merely because she was taken from flesh; the phrases are . . . . Continue Reading »
In one of the early meditations in his Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , John Paul II mused on the anthropological import of Adam’s initial solitude in the garden. He notes that the story of Adam’s naming the animals points to the fact that “self-knowledge . . . . Continue Reading »
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