Blood Of Christ Research Articles

Discerning the Body of Christ: A Retrieval of Thomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic Theology by Way of the Spiritual Senses

AbstractThomas Cranmer’s Eucharistic theology has been the source of no small amount of scholarship and dispute. I argue that these disputes are in part due to the fact that Cranmer wavers between describing two distinct realities and that these realities are not necessarily coincidental. There is the reality of the consecrated elements, which he understands figuratively as being the body and blood of Christ. But Cranmer also describes a second reality, which is the direct connection between the soul of the recipient and the actual body and blood of Christ. I highlight the latter reality by recourse to recent work on the notion of the spiritual senses in the Christian theological tradition.

Catholic Theological Union

Robert J. Schreiter is one of today's most important and influential theologians. This essay suggests that the key to Schreiter's thought is his identity and spirituality as a Missionary of the Precious Blood. It is this identity and spirituality that moves him to do theology in the context of today's globalized and polarized world, offering reflections on the possibility of reconciliation and peacemaking as effective ways of engaging in mission today. The theology that results from such reflections is grounded not only in theological method, but also in the content and method of social philosophy and the social sciences.

The Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Evolution of the Catholic Church, written by Cindy Yik-Yi Chu

The Chinese Sisters of the Precious Blood and the Evolution of the Catholic Church, written by Cindy Yik-Yi Chu

Augustine’s Eucharistic Spirituality in his Easter Sermons

This article studies Augustine’s Eucharistic Spirituality as it emerges primarily from his preaching, in his catechesis during the Easter Season. It investigates how the bishop of Hippo explains to the neophytes the transformation that makes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in order to ignite their awareness about what it is that they receive at the Altar. It further considers what Augustine indicates as the spiritual disposition necessary for the reception of the sacrament and its effects in the life of those who worthily share in it. Finally, the article explores the link Augustine establishes between the Eucharist and the Church to demonstrate the importance of Unity among those who approach the Altar of the Lord and the need to continuously become what we receive even today as we perpetuate the memorial of the Lord in our Eucharistic celebrations.

Нормирование в авраамических религиях потребления алкогольных напитков

The article presents a comparative review of the attitude to wine drinking of followers of Abrahamic religions. The article reveals the traditions and norms of alcohol consumption in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Wine as a product was of great cultural and economic importance for the peoples in which Abrahamic religions were formed. The article takes as its basis the attitude to wine, since it, as one of the most ancient alcoholic beverages, was familiar to the followers of Judaism, Christianity and Islam from the beginning of the formation of their formation. In Judaism and Christianity, wine was used in both everyday and religious practice, with different attitudes in these two areas of life. However, Judaism, already in antiquity, tried to remove the practice of drinking alcohol from sacred space, and eventually established a certain framework of permitted alcohol consumption. Christians made the wine, symbolically representing the blood of Christ, one of the elements holding the Christian community together. At the same time, Christianity in the early period did not approve the abuse of wine. Subsequently, in Christianity, as well as in Judaism, norms of alcohol consumption are created. The attitude towards the wine drinking in Islam was completely different. At the very beginning of the existence of Islam, strict prohibitions were imposed on the consumption of wine, and particularly prohibitions were imposed on the performance of rituals while intoxicated. Modern Abrahamic religions continue and develop in the tradition of regulating the use of alcoholic beverages.

Critical audit of fresh frozen plasma transfusion practices in obstetric and gynecology departments in a tertiary care hospital – Where and what needs to be improved?

Introduction: Fresh frozen plasma (FFP) prepared from whole blood contains plasma proteins and all the coagulation factors including factor V and factor VIII. Many FFP transfusion guidelines have been published till now. However, the administration is inappropriate without any scientific basis or clinical indication in many hospital settings. Aims and Objectives: A retrospective study was carried out between February 2016 and August 2016 in the regional blood transfusion center of our institution to assess the appropriate usage of FFP in obstetrics and Gynecology. It was done using the FFP transfusion guidelines based on the British Committee for Standards in Hematology and College of American Pathologists. Materials and Methods: Blood bank requisition forms received from patients of obstetrics and gynecology department during this period were screened. Indications for transfusion requests were studied and further divided into appropriate and inappropriate requests. Results: A total of 901 units of FFP were issued to 250 patients during this period. Appropriate usage of FFP was found in 67% and inappropriate usage in 33% of the 250 patients evaluated. Bleeding related to surgery with deranged coagulation profile constituted the most common appropriate indication for FFP infusion, and severe anemia was the most inappropriate indication for FFP use. Conclusion: The usage of FFP requires a proper understanding and knowledge about the appropriate and inappropriate usages. It also involves training and supervising the medical staff at regular intervals. Computerized audit programs are required to do a prospective monitoring of the FFP issue and usage in any clinical setting. Further studies are required on the usage of FFP specifically in obstetric and gynecology patients to improve the utilization of this precious blood product.

Remember the greatest: Remaining in love and casting out fear in 1 John

This article argues that the confusing admonition in favor of “love” and “casting out fear” in 1 John 4 is clarified when read in light of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The commands to love God and love neighbor from Deut 6:4–5 and Lev 19:18b were ubiquitous in Second Temple Jewish contexts, and were a prominent part of Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels (Mark 12:29–31; Matt 22:37–40; Luke 10:27–28). Although often unrecognized, or at least unexplored, these Old Testament texts also influence the Gospel and Letters of John (e.g., John 5:39–47; 13:24–35; 1 John 4:16b–21). First John, in particular, can be read as an interpretation of Leviticus 19 that rearticulates and expands on traditions of Jesus’ instructions reflected in John 13–17. The author of 1 John uses these traditions to explain how the purifying blood of Jesus the Advocate enables believers to have boldness rather than fear. In this way, 1 John calls on believers to remain in the love who is God so that they can act with confident love regardless of the fear that threatens them.

Hic et Haec: The Feast of Corpus Christi, the Myth of Jewish Male Menstruation, and Allegoresis

Hic et Haec:The Feast of Corpus Christi, the Myth of Jewish Male Menstruation, and Allegoresis Justin Hastings It has been more than three decades since Sander Gilman posited that so central was Jewish alterity to the collective identity of medieval Christendom that the Jewish male body was believed quite literally to have menstruated.1 Since that time—and thanks to the internet—this topic has slipped the bonds of scholarly discourse to become a part of popular culture.2 In the intervening years, highly competent scholars have taken up this topic with rigor. This essay seeks to argue that the myth of Jewish male menstruation that coalesced in the late Middle Ages must be understood as the natural and even necessary counterpoise of the feast of Corpus Christi and that both Christ's body and the Jewish male body as constructed discursively must be understood within the contours of scholasticism and its dominant hermeneutic mode of allegoresis. Necessary to the feast of Corpus Christi is the doctrine of transubstantiation; this is the belief that while the wine and bread of the eucharist may retain the outward appearance of their terrestrial material, through the sacerdotal intervention of the sacrament, their essential substance becomes actually the body and blood of Christ. The doctrine establishes that regardless of the accidentals by which the wafer might retain its bread-like physicality or the wine its viniferous qualities, they were in fact—not symbolically or metaphorically but in fact—the total body and blood of Christ. Transubstantiation became doctrinally infallible and authoritative at the Fourth Lateran Council convened in November 1215. The decisions made at this ecumenical council were promulgated as seventy canons; the doctrine of transubstantiation was established within the first of these canons.3 The exclusionary and sacerdotal emphasis is worth noting: the Catholic church through its ministers was the only vehicle for salvation, which happened through the body of Christ as both high priest and sacrifice simultaneously present at the eucharist.4 [End Page 39] The last four of these seventy canons promulgating the decisions made at the Fourth Lateran Council, however, are concerned with interactions between the Jews and Christendom. Canon 67 exposes the church's concerns about the potential for the usury of which the Jews were regularly accused to decrease tithing and thereby to diminish church coffers.5 Canon 69 expressly forbids Jews from holding municipal offices of any kind by arguing that the Jews, as blasphemers of Christ, should have no political authority over Christians; it further specifies that any pecuniary emoluments a Jew might have obtained previously from any such office were to be immediately forfeited.6 Canon 70 expressly states that any Jew who had received the sacrament of baptism must not be permitted to profane the sacraments by reverting to any Judaic rites.7 The sixty-eighth canon, the most important of these four for my argument, expressly decreed that Jews—and also Muslims—publicly announce the alterity of their bodies by dressing in distinctive garb.8 It also commanded that the Jews remove themselves corporeally from the public sphere between sunset on Holy Thursday and Easter.9 In other words, at the very time of the annual celebration of Christ's passion that the doctrine of transubstantiation holds is literally present in the liturgical reenactment of the eucharist, the physical body of the Jews that is the "other" against which the Catholic community defined itself was banished as a spectral absence. In short, the very document that authorized the doctrine of transubstantiation simultaneously othered the Jewish male body by formally excluding it from a role within the administrative faculty of the body politic while also banishing physical Jewish bodies from the public sphere at Eastertide. Consequently, the collocation of the Jewish body and the doctrine of transubstantiation are doctrinally intertwined ab initio. Aquinas refined the doctrine of transubstantiation and promoted it as the only truly tenable and coherent explanation for the Real Presence in the eucharist.10 It was he who would also eventually formulate the liturgy for the feast of Corpus Christi, which was established as a celebration of the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist...

Produire et consommer le sang du Christ. Matérialité et christianisme en Chine contemporaine

Producing and Consuming the Blood of Christ among Chinese Protestants Today. This article explores the ways in which five Chinese Christian denominations produce and consume the liquid presented as the ‘ blood of Christ’ in Nanping City (Fujian). It presents the various means of production and concerns about proper use that inform the Chinese Christians’ practices and discourses. The study shows that while the spread of Christianity in China relies on material objects, it operates not so much by promoting claims about the Christian God as by questioning the nature of things and beings.

Jewish Bodies in Divine Form: Jewish Difference and Historical Consciousness in Medieval Kabbalah

Jewish Bodies in Divine Form:Jewish Difference and Historical Consciousness in Medieval Kabbalah Hartley Lachter (bio) Introduction The struggle over the place of Jews in Christian society, especially as it developed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, was a negotiation over the religious meaning and political place of the Jewish body within the body politic. This cultural tension created the space and the need for the development of a religious discourse of Jewish bodily otherness by both Jews and Christians. The first section of this article considers how kabbalistic discourses of the Jewish male body constructed in the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth century were inversions of Christian depictions of Jewish maleness. Kabbalistic constructions of Jewish male identity are in this sense counter-theologies formulated in light of Christian anti-Jewish arguments. The second section explores the counter-histories found in two kabbalistic texts written in the wake of calamitous historical events that took place in Spain in 1391 and 1492. Each of the texts addressed in both sections advance, in their own way, a notion of Jewish distinctiveness that responded to challenges faced by Jews. By claiming secret knowledge about the hidden power of Jewish male bodies and Jewish ritual observance, and about the salvific role of the Jewish historical experience, kabbalists made an important contribution to the ongoing redefinition of the Jewish self in relation to, and in terms of, the Christian other. Redefining Boundaries and Bodies The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an important shift in the way that Jewish difference was articulated in Christian discourse in Western Europe. While Christian men, and especially Christian male clergy, were frequently described as rarefied spiritual beings in Christian texts, Jewish men were often characterized as overly carnal, sensual, and feminine. Christian art in the High Middle Ages depicted increasingly grotesque images of male Jews [End Page 123] who, through their attachment to the physical practice of the law, refuse to see the spiritual message of the Hebrew Bible revealed by Christ. As Sara Lipton points out, male Jewish ugliness in medieval Christian art is constructed to "proclaim his [the Jew's] misunderstanding of the law and consequent carnality and perfidy, even fiendishness."1 And while Jewish women were rarely depicted as being physically different from Christian women, Jewish men were often described in polemical as well as medical literature as somatically distinct from Christian men, suffering a monthly bloody flux similar to menstruation as punishment for shedding the blood of Christ.2 The strategy of feminizing Jewish men in Christian polemical and medical literature signifies more than a denigration of Jewish masculinity. The association of Jewish men with feminine characteristics,3 especially that of menstruation, was connected to a broader demonization of Jews.4 The introduction of scientific medical ideas and terminology into the Latin West during this period contributed to the characterization of women's bodies as a site of danger and impurity. This in turn contributed to a new discourse regarding Jews, according to which the punishments they suffer for rejecting Christ entail feminization. Take, for instance, Jacques de Vitry's comment in the early-thirteenth century that the Jews are those: … whose fathers cried, as the Gospel says, "The blood of Jesus Christ be on us and on our children," who are scattered throughout the world, serfs and vassals, and so it is as the prophet says, "Their strength has turned to ash." And so they do not make use of arms and also like women every month they suffer, and for this it is written, "The Lord struck them in [their] posteriors and gave them eternal opprobrium"—which is to say God struck them in [their] shameful parts and gave them perpetual reproach—because since they killed their brother, the true Abel, Jesus Christ, they are made vagabond and broken throughout the lands like the cursed Cain, they have a trembling head, which is to say, a fearful heart, shaking night and day, and they do not believe at all in their own lives.5 In this passage de Vitry brings together well-worn notions regarding the collective bloodguilt of the Jews for the death of Christ and their subsequent suffering as part of their...

The Death of Judas in Matthew: Matthew 27:9 Reconsidered

The account of Judas's death in Matthew's Gospel yields opposite readings. In the traditional reading, Judas's death is damning: his suicide enacts his self-exclusion from the salvation promised in Jesus. More recently, scholars have sought to rehabilitate Judas. Far from cementing his condemnation, Judas's death is a sign of his repentance, even heroism, and points toward redemption. Matthew's use of Scripture is, I propose, illuminating for the debate. Matthew 27:9 applies to the episode a quotation from Zechariah attributed (famously) to Jeremiah. Scholarly attention has focused on the problem of (mis)attribution. I argue, rather, that the "mistake" is useful: in calling up both Zech 11 and Jeremiah, Matthew sets the death of Judas within a particular scriptural history. A close reading of Jer 19 together with Zech 11 reveals a dense interweaving of vocabulary and themes, an intertextuality that informs Matt 27. Themes of innocent blood and defilement emerge in all three, and Judas's problematic "repentance" finds in LXX Zechariah's use of [inline-graphic 01] a precursor that opens up the debate. Against this scriptural background, Judas's death unfolds as a story not of one man only but of a people and a land, a story set within Israel's larger story in which both devastation and hope—indeed restoration—may, in the blood of Jesus, be true.

The Second Birth

The Second Birth Monica Boothe (bio) From the day I was born, my parents wanted me to ask Jesus into my heart. It was their number one dream for me. The only thing they ever really wanted for my life. Dreams are funny things. So I slept in a crib under a framed cross stitch, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," and I was given a pink Baby's First Bible and then later The Bible for Little Ones which had colorful pictures, and my mom read to me every night little fantastic stories, brief and simplified, stripped of all real theology. And at church every Sunday and Wednesday, I sat in classrooms with little plastic chairs just my size and watched the Bible unfold in felt cartoons and sang songs with King James words that sounded like a foreign language. But when I was five I did it: I asked Jesus into my heart. At least that's what I was taught to call it. But that doesn't really describe what happened at all. It sounds too domestic. Like I was a suburban two-story home with a tire swing in the backyard, and He moved in some Ikea furniture and settled in for a comfortable middle class life. But really Jesus was more of a forest fire, the kind that spreads through a cracked skeleton of a forest after years of relentless summer drought, where the trees are mostly dead, and the fire flashes through them in seconds, leaving the whole place flat, with nothing but ash. But then there's room for real life again, not just old dying trees, and little blades of grass pierce the ashes one by one, and they're all tiny and frail, but they're alive and new. So the next Sunday at church, when they were passing around the body and blood of Jesus, I tried to take my share, assuring my mom that I had asked Jesus into my heart. But she wouldn't let me, and she didn't believe me. I kept asking for weeks, and finally she relented. So I began to eat and drink Jesus every week with a ravenous appetite that unnerved my parents in spite of all they had hoped for. The very thing they craved for me was the one thing that could take me from them, the one thing that usurped their role in my life as primary authority and caretaker. [End Page 71] Pretty soon I was asking to be baptized, and that was where they drew the line. "Not until you're old enough," they said. But there was already a new wilderness growing inside me that could not be trimmed and mowed and weeded into something clean and manageable. And then the conflicts really began. When I tried to purge the house of secular music because it was only holding us back. When I tried to stay home from school some days saying I just wanted a day with God. When I planned a trip to Arizona to spend forty days fasting in the desert because Jesus had done it and it must be invigorating. When I insisted that we should sell our house and give the money to the poor because that was what Jesus had said to do. When I kept talking about Jesus on the playground at school until the teacher told me to stop and I wouldn't and she called my parents and my parents demanded that I keep my mouth shut and respect everyone's religious privacy. I wanted to scream at them "You're not my real dad!" but I didn't because I knew it would only hurt them even though it was true and it was what they had always wanted. Dreams are funny things. So when I was eleven and the church announced a baptismal Sunday coming up, I asked again if I could be baptized. They agonized over the question as they did every time I asked saying that it was a "sweet thought" and that they were "touched" that I was thinking about these things but talked about it being...

The Death of Judas in Matthew: Matthew 27:9 Reconsidered

The account of Judas’s death in Matthew’s Gospel yields opposite readings. In the traditional reading, Judas’s death is damning: his suicide enacts his self-exclusion from the salvation promised in Jesus. More recently, scholars have sought to rehabilitate Judas. Far from cementing his condemnation, Judas’s death is a sign of his repentance, even heroism, and points toward redemption. Matthew’s use of Scripture is, I propose, illuminating for the debate. Matthew 27:9 applies to the episode a quotation from Zechariah attributed (famously) to Jeremiah. Scholarly attention has focused on the problem of (mis)attribution. I argue, rather, that the “mistake” is useful: in calling up both Zech 11 and Jeremiah, Matthew sets the death of Judas within a particular scriptural history. A close reading of Jer 19 together with Zech 11 reveals a dense interweaving of vocabulary and themes, an intertextuality that informs Matt 27. Themes of innocent blood and defilement emerge in all three, and Judas’s problematic “repentance” finds in LXX Zechariah’s use of μεταμέλομαι a precursor that opens up the debate. Against this scriptural background, Judas’s death unfolds as a story not of one man only but of a people and a land, a story set within Israel’s larger story in which both devastation and hope—indeed restoration—may, in the blood of Jesus, be true.

Wilhelm Löhe und Bildung/Wilhelm Loehe and Christian Formation ed. by Jacob Corzine

Reviewed by: Wilhelm Löhe und Bildung/Wilhelm Loehe and Christian Formation ed. by Jacob Corzine Mark Mattes Wilhelm Löhe und Bildung/Wilhelm Loehe and Christian Formation. Edited by Jacob Corzine. Neuendettelsau: Freimund-Verlag, 2016. xxiii + 295 pp. Wilhelm Loehe, a nineteenth-century Bavarian Lutheran pastor, was a standout in developing a strong parish catechetical program which focused on sacramental piety, individual confession and forgiveness, and daily prayer. He also trained deaconesses who would serve hospitals, parishes, and schools, and missionaries who evangelized in North America and other mission fields. This volume presents fifteen papers originally delivered in July 2014 at the Fourth Loehe Theological Conference in Neuendettelsau, Germany. They deal with Loehe's philosophy of and methods for Christian formation of laity, deaconesses, and missionaries. Given the fact that many contemporary Christians advocate the need to recover discipleship, these essays are most welcome. Seven essays are in German and eight in English. This review highlights some of the most important points. For Wolfhart Schlichting, Loehe's sacramental piety indissolubly intertwines doctrine and life, theology, and spiritual formation (7). Specifically, Holy Communion offers not only forgiveness of sins, but also empowerment for Christian living since it conveys the mystical union of the believer with Christ, a "blessed communion" of the [End Page 112] believer with God (18). As David Saar puts it in his essay: "Not only does the Sacrament benefit the body and soul of the communicant, but in eating the body and blood of Christ, the communicant receives not only Christ's body, but also his soul … this encourages the formation of a sacramental piety by linking an aspect of Christ: his soul, his body, his wounded side, and his passion to the communicant" (102–3). In regard to worthy reception of the sacrament, Jacob Corzine shows that for Loehe confession prepares one for this "blessed communion" because in it sinners come clean and own up to their sin (124). Given his high valuation of the Supper, Loehe naturally prioritizes public worship. He desired that laity know the liturgy from the inside out. Thomas Schattauer shows how Loehe's Laienagenda, an abbreviated summary of the worship service, helps laity to understand and participate in the worship service (54). Indeed, in contrast to both Rationalism and Pietism, Loehe's Agenda, his formulation of the worship service, based on traditional Lutheran and ancient settings, pre sents the worship service as centered on both word and sacrament (55). Rudolf Keller describes how Loehe's catechetical aid "Haus-, Schul- und Kirchenbuch," which reprints Luther's Small Catechism along with Loehe's explanations, and with psalms arranged for singing, was designed to assist families, both in Germany and abroad, to learn the faith. Similarly, John Pless shows how Loehe's prayer manual, Seed Grains of Prayer, seeks to sanctify all of time and life since the prayers are so encompassing of the week and the church year (134f.) Australian theologian Jeff Silcock discusses how Loehe influenced Australian Lutheran spiritual life indirectly through the work of Hermann Sasse. Sasse had read Loehe's Three Books on the Church in the late 1920s while on sabbatical in the USA, and through that book was converted to an orthodox Lutheran position. Silcock appreciates that the Loehe tradition refuses to split intellect and emotion, head and heart (62). In an era where more Australians (and others) "love Jesus" but dislike the church ("churchless Christianity," as he calls it), Silcock notes just how much we need community if our faith is to stay alive (65). [End Page 113] Matthias Honold and Judith Böttner each describe deaconess training in Neuendettelsau which often accepted women from the educated classes (and not just from the underclass) and trained them for public service and thereby fostered Loehe's spiritual ideals more widely (170). Craig Nessan analyzes the dogmatics texts used at the mission training school in Neuendettelsau showing that they not only exhibited Lutheran confessional orthodoxy but also took stands important in the nineteenth-century, especially arguing for "open questions" and the anticipation of a "greater perfection" for a future Lutheranism. At first glance, Loehe might not seem relevant for contemporary Christianity, but when his quest for a vital practice...

Corpus Mysticum: Transubstantiation and the Poetics of Ecstasy

Corpus MysticumTransubstantiation and the Poetics of Ecstasy Adam Glover (bio) In one of the eucharistic poems that lie at the heart of his 1986 collection Libro de la pasión (Book of the Passion), the Chilean poet José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois (b. 1936) recounts the events surrounding the Last Supper and the Institution of Holy Communion. Toward the middle of the poem, as the narrative slowly approaches the decisive moment of consecration, the focus turns to Christ: take and eat this is my bodythis is my blood of the eternal covenant that will be poured out on the crossrenew this sacrifice in my memory he says and taking himself in his own handhe distributes his communionand after the body victim is consumed it disappears into his twelve lovesand the voice of the high and eternal priest after the sacrifice oh Goddisappears into the love of God for a few minutesit is the deep prayer that follows communiontwelve inner Christs gaze with astonishment upon outward Christ . . . 1 [End Page 98] This passage is rich and complex, and I will return to it in more detail later in the essay. For the moment, I simply want to notice that Langlois’s suggestion that as the disciples consume Christ’s sacramental body they are transformed first into “twelve loves” (line 10) and then into “twelve Christs” (line 14) reflects an insight about the Eucharist that goes back at least to Augustine’s Confessions. There Augustine argues that unlike ordinary food, which is converted into the substance of the one who consumes it, the Eucharist has the effect of converting the communicant into Christ himself.2 This idea would prove enormously influential for subsequent Christian thinkers.3 In his commentary on the Gospel of John, for instance, Aquinas draws out its implications by suggesting that if the Eucharist is indeed capable of transforming those who consume it into Christ, it is therefore also capable of “inebriating man with divinity” (divinitate inebrians) and “making him divine” (hominem divinum facere).4 In a later commentary on the Psalms, Aquinas picks up the motif of “divine inebriation” and carries the point further still. Identifying the “inebriating chalice” (calix inebrians) of Psalms 23:5 (Vulgate 22:5) with the blood of Christ, he contends that just as one who is drunk is not “in control of his faculties” (non est in se), so likewise those who receive the Eucharist are so “full of divine love” that they are “made to be in ecstasy” (in extasim factus).5 It is at precisely this intersection of Eucharist, ecstasy, and deification that Langlois situates not only the poem cited in the opening paragraph, but also his broader account of the Eucharist in Book of the Passion. It is also here that the Chilean poet articulates an account of the relationship between poetry and Eucharist for which I will have to justify the phrase a poetics of sacramental ecstasy. Although largely unknown outside the Spanish-speaking world, Langlois is easily contemporary Chile’s most eminent religious poet, as well as a distinguished theologian and literary critic, an active Roman Catholic priest, and a former member of the International Theological Commission (1986–1990).6 A theologically conservative “anti-modernist” and a fierce critic of liberation theology, Langlois is often classified [End Page 99] as an “orthodox,” even a “dogmatic,” poet, and much of his verse reflects a commitment not only to an unapologetically traditionalist brand of Roman Catholicism,7 but also to a conception of poetry and poetics as potential sources of spiritual and theological insight.8 Despite his own theological predilections, however, Langlois’s verse also reveals the unmistakable influence of his staunchly atheistic and emphatically non-traditionalist compatriot Nicanor Parra (1914–2018), whose so-called “anti-poetry” sought, among other things, to dislodge the “vatic” or “prophetic” conception of poetry associated with the Chilean “creationist” poet Vicente Huidobro (1893–1948) and, preeminently, with Pablo Neruda (1904–1973).9 Both aspects of Langlois’s intellectual heritage are on full display in Book of the Passion, where the poet mixes a theologically orthodox reimagining of the central events of Christ’s passion...

Scribleriana Transferred, Printed Materials for Sale, 2017–2018

Scribleriana Transferred, Printed Materials for Sale, 2017–2018 James E. May • This column attends often to unrecorded editions and issues on the market, and I begin with one. George Bayntun of Bath illustrates and describes John Haywood’s The Precious Blood of the Son of God (for Robert Gifford, in Old Bedlam, without Bishops Gate, 1706), 12mo (152 × 89 mm.): woodcut frt “with three biblical images”; pp. [vi], 114, in cont. sheep with blind double fillet borders, signed “Robert Beck His Book 1706” (c. $404). This “Eighteenth Edition” is not in ESTC, where seven editions are recorded 1696–1731, Gifford’s 10th edition appearing in 1699 and his 29th in 1717. (North American editions occurred in at least 1703 and 1712). [End Page 84] • Blackwell’s of Oxford lists Sir John Hartopp’s copy of John Owen’s Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ, in his Person, Office, and Grace; with The Differences between Faith and Sight (by A. M. and R. R., for Benjamin Alsop, 1684); ESTC R32196; 8vo: portrait frt; pp. [xxxii], 247; cont. black morocco with gilt panels; with bookplate of nineteenth-century “evangelical activist” John Poynder (c. $675). Hartopp has signed the flyleaf, and probably he or the author was responsible for MS corrections in the text. Blackwell’s notes that “Hartopp worshipped at the Leadenhall Street congregation of the Independent minister Dr. John Owen . . . . [and] made shorthand notes of Owen’s sermons and as a result thirteen were published for the first time in 1756 (ODNB).” • Meyer Boswell offers a copy of George Meriton’s A Guide to Surveyors of the High-Way (Printed by W. Rawlins and S. Roycroft, for A. & J. Churchill, 1694), R23533, 8vo: pp. [24], 167, [1], which has appended an unrecorded catalogue for a substantial book-seller: Books Printed for, and sold by W. Crooke, at the Green-Dragon without Temple-Bar, 1693; 8 pp., with more than a hundred titles, the first being “The London Practice of Physick” (bottom edges trimmed with some text lost). ESTC records only two different Crooke catalogues: A Catalogue … Sold by William Crooke (Printed in the Year 1683), 8vo: pp. [2], 14; and Books Printed for William Crook [sic] at the Green Dragon without Temple Bar, no date, 4to: 8pp., with first entry for “Greek Testament.” • Robert S. Brooks on Abebooks lists Giles Jacobs’s An Historical Account of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent English Poets … Adorned with Cutts. The Second Edition [woodcut of eagle with wings up looking right] (“Printed for E. Curll, in Burghley-Street, in the Strand, 1733. Price 6s.”), 8vo: A8 a8 B-X8 Y8 (Y8 + 1, errata leaf): pp. [xxvi], [6], 326, [8 index] [2, errata leaf] + 6 plates; the listed copy, in full leather, has title page stamped with the seal of “Beloit College” and a frt. ($225). No 1733 edition is in the ESTC, though OCLC records a copy at the National Library of Art (LVA). This bio-bibliographical work is a reissue of the first Curll edition in 1720 (as revealed by photographs shared by Brooks). Though it is Curll’s first variant-title reissue, he might have miscalled it the fourth edition, for the edition had been reissued as Vol. 2 of Jacobs’s Poetical Register in 1723 (A. Bettesworth, et al.) and by itself as Historical Account in 1724 (by W. Mears). All these issues share such features as the misnumbering of p. xiii as “xii”; the British Library (BL) copies of earlier issues on ECCO have the errata list last, as well, but some copies place it after the contents and before p. [1]. Copies have survived with varying plates; this copy lacks the frt with multiple portraits but has inserted plates with portraits of Broome, Butler, Gay, Howard, Milton, and Montagu. By contrast, the BL copy of the 1719 issue has the frt with Chaucer at the center of five medallion portraits and then plates of Devonshire, Creech, Croxall, John Philips, Pope, Prior, and John Duke of Buckingham, most cut by J. Clark. The BL copy on ECCO of the 1723 reissue has the frt with Shakespeare in the center of seven medallion...

Eucharistic symbols: Other emerging meanings in the Anglican Church of Kenya

This article is set to argue that for a long time Eucharistic symbols have been interpreted in different contexts, with a universal understanding as the body and blood of Jesus Christ. However, recent studies in the Anglican Church of Kenya, diocese of Thika, reveal other emerging meanings of these symbols among Christians. Such meanings include foreign food product, prohibited product, symbol of modernity and finally symbol of neo-colonialism. This article is informed by qualitative data obtained from adherents in the diocese of Thika between 2013 and 2014.

Discipleship Transforming the World: A Coptic Orthodox Perspective

AbstractDiscipleship is the core of Christianity, based on the work of the Holy Spirit, in fulfilment of the Lord's command. True discipleship is capable of transforming the world, so that in the end all kingdoms and reign shall be to the Lord and his Christ. Therefore, discipleship is linked with evangelism, missionary, teaching, and social work. With the emerging hostile trends all over the world, faith is endangered. So it is important to remind ourselves of the aim of Christianity for humanity, for which so great a price was paid by our Lord (his precious blood) to bring the world into the knowledge of the truth. We have the privilege and honour to bear the precious name and to declare it to the whole world, even if we suffer for that. Even though this means that we have to bear his cross, to face the challenges, and to resist the powers of evil in the world. The church is aware of its mission, to reveal to the world Christ the lover of humanity, and for this end to serve them – to warn, teach, and guide them – through our behaviour, our acts, and our words. Copts are keen on serving their communities and everywhere they go, are always ready to teach others about the cause of our hope, that they also may enjoy the fruit and the deserts of the blood of Christ. This article honestly records the experience of the Coptic Orthodox Church regarding discipleship in practice throughout its history up to the present day.

Invocations of the Blood of Christ in Greek Magical Amulets

The author analyses the meaning and function of the invocations of the blood of Christ in Greek magical amulets by exploring their theological and liturgical contexts and the points of contact between the discourse of the church leaders and the language of ‘Christian magic’. The apotropaic power of the blood of Christ, to which the magical texts appeal, is rooted in the Christian teaching, promoted by the Fathers. It is argued that the special attitude to the blood of Christ reflected in the magical texts is to be explained by its soteriological connotations, which could be borrowed by the producers of the amulets from sermons preached in the church as well as from liturgical contexts of both baptism and eucharist.

Most Precious Blood: pilgrimage and veneration of the relic in Weingarten and Mantua

This contribution reflects on the indissoluble connection between Christ and the Church which becomes tangible in his redeeming blood. It gives an overview of the papal teaching on the veneration of the Precious Blood and explores what the connections, parallelisms and differences are that exist between Mantua and Weingarten regarding the devotion to parts of the same relic.