In his The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy , Schmemann notes the importance of the anomaly of Constantine’s unbaptized condition. In Byzantine liturgical tradition, the conversion of Constantine is compared to that of Paul - both encountered Christ directly, without mediation of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Schmemann ( Church, World, Mission: Reflections on Orthodoxy and the West ) admits that in the east the church “surrendered” its “juridical” and “administrative” independence to the empire. But he claims that this is not a betrayal of the church’s true . . . . Continue Reading »
1 Corinthians 3:9-10a: We are god’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it. Paul sees himself as a builder of God’s house, equipped . . . . Continue Reading »
Henri Lefebvre was a firm believer in the Marxist dictum that “the criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism,” though he dissented from Marx’s prior claim that the criticism of religion is essentially complete. He includes a vicious, sarcastic diatribe against the . . . . Continue Reading »
A splendid Dostoevskyan passage from Bonhoeffer’s ethics speaks for itself. “The place where this recognition of guilt becomes real is the Church . . . .If my share in this is so small as to seem negligible, that still cannot set my mind at rest; for now it is not a matter of . . . . Continue Reading »
Like all Trinitarian theologians, Jenson is finally ecstatic: “Our enjoyment of God is that we are taken into the triune singing. Perhaps we may say that we are allowed to double the parts. And here too we must insist on concreteness. That the proclamation and prayer of the church regularly . . . . Continue Reading »
Some scattered notes on Books 1-5 of City of God , dependent to a large degree on Gerard O’Daly’s Augustine’s City of God: A Reader’s Guide . 1) Book 1 is the book most focused on the particular circumstances of the fall of Rome and the sufferings of Christians in that . . . . Continue Reading »
The New Testament frequently turns prophetic texts inside out. In Revelation 3, for instance, Jesus applies prophecies that originally promised that Gentiles would bow to Jews to Jews bowing to the (largely Gentile) church of Philadelphia (3:9; cf. Isaiah 60:14). In one respect, the import is . . . . Continue Reading »
Near the beginning of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism , George McKenna observes how the slavery issue put pressure on Southern evangelicals to adopt a more privatized piety: “Southern evangelical Protestantism had always been more personal and individualistic than that of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Between Time Toward Home and his last book, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile , Neuhaus converted to Catholicism. Whether as cause or result or some of each, the latter book gives ecclesiology a much higher and more satisfying profile. Neuhaus’s final work is marked by a recurring . . . . Continue Reading »
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