Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) provides a superb summary of Paul’s teaching concerning baptism, starting with the essential point: “Baptism is a community-marking symbol, which the individual then receives, not first and foremost as a statement about him- or herself, but as . . . . Continue Reading »
God created and organizes time, and as His image we do the same. Some notes toward a biblical theology of time at the Trinity House site. . . . . Continue Reading »
Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) says that the “insubstantiality of the priest, in which ontology and praxis, being and having-to-be enter into an enduring threshold of indifference, is proven by the doctrine of the character indelebile that confirms priestly ordination starting . . . . Continue Reading »
Agamben cites Rudolf Sohm ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty , 9), who argued that “the primitive church [was] a charismatic community, within which no properly juridical organization was possible.” There was no “legal power to rule” but instead “the organization of . . . . Continue Reading »
Giorgio Agamben writes that Christianity produced a “new ontological-practical paradigm, namely that of effectiveness, in which being and acting enter into a threshold of undecidability. If, in the words of Foucault, Plato taught the politician not what he must do but what he must be in order . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy points out that “we” is not simply a plural, not simply “one plus one plus one,” not a plural as “10 chairs or 10 apples are.” “We” is a fundamentally liturgical pronoun: “It was not 10 oxen who first shouted ‘Te Deum . . . . Continue Reading »
In his encyclical Quam Singulari (August 1910), the remarkable Pope Pius X comes very close to endorsing paedocommunion. He quotes the gospel passages about Jesus welcoming children, and observes that, following the example of Jesus, the church “took care even from the beginning to bring the . . . . Continue Reading »
Giorgio Agamben notes in the preface to his recent Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty that “The word liturgy (from the Greek leitourgia , ‘public services’) is . . . relatively modern. Before its use was extended progressively, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, we find . . . . 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 »
James Jordan discusses various “liturgy traps” with Pastor Ralph Smith at the Trinity House site. . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
