Earthly Career Research Articles

Struggling with christology: Apolinarius of Laodicea and st Gregory of Nyssa

The argument in the 380s between Gregory and Apolinarius, as set out Gregory’s Antirrheticus adversus Apolinarium, can be seen as a significant step in the development of the Church’s Christological teaching. Apolinarius’s no­tion that the eternal Logos took the place of Jesus Christ’s human mind is de­signed to establish the unity of his person, by providing a basis for the ontic con­tinuity between the Second Person of the Trinity and Christ in his two natures. Commendably, he wants to counter any suggestion of separation between the hu­man and divine natures (“two Christs”), which he sees as inevitably leading to an “adoptionist” view of Christ as a “God-filled man”; that would put Christ on the same level as the Old Testament prophets and could not form the basis of an adequate soteriology. Gregory argues convincingly however that Apolinarius’s “enfleshed mind” Christology would mean that Jesus Christ was not fully hu­man and could not therefore save humankind. But in the face of Apolinarius’s challenge he cannot give an adequate account of Christ’s unity during his earthly career. He remains open to Apolinarius’s charge of a “divisive” Christology by in effect postponing the complete unity until after Christ’s glorification, when his divinity overwhelmed his humanity and removed all his human characteristics, in the same way as the water of the sea overwhelms a drop of vinegar dropped into it. On this basis he has, anachronistically but not unreasonably, been accused of taking a Nestorian view of Christ before his glorification and a monophysite one after it. Both Apolinarius’s stress on the unity of Christ and Gregory’s on the no­tion that ‘what is not assumed is not healed’ (Nazianzen’s phrase) were essential elements in what emerged seventy years later in the Chalcedonian definition.

The Poetics of Distance: Kierkegaard's Abraham

Soren Kierkegaard's existential identification with the story of Abraham in Genesis 22 is well known. In 1852, Kierkegaard imagined himself waking one morning to the thought: ‘What you are experiencing is similar to the story of Abraham’, only to add almost in the same breath: ‘But he did not understand Abraham or himself’. The correct rhetorical name for this uncanny act of identification, which attributes the incomprehensibility of the present to something in the distant past, is metalepsis. In this article I claim that Kierkegaard thereby presents Abraham in Fear and Trembling as the metaleptic figure par excellence. Kierkegaard's Abraham, I argue, denominates a special type of figurative substitution in which the inconsolability of the present is expressed via a poetics of distance.It is no small sacrifice to part with the assurance that life and immortality have been brought to light, and to be reduced to the condition of the great spirits of old who looked yearningly to the horizon of their earthly career wondering what lay beyond: but I cannot think the conviction that immortality is man's destiny indispensable to the production of elevated and heroic virtue and the sublimest resignation. -- George Eliot, The Letters, 1842

Le Jésus de Luther, de Calvin... et de quelques autres protestants

The writing of Lives of Jesus was for two centuries a Protestant monopoly, with a limited contribution of non-religious scholars like Renan and his followers. Is that state of affairs a consequence of the Reformation ? Indeed not, as the mainstream Reformers took little interest in the earthly career of Christ. Only 18th century protestantism, confronted with the philosophy of the Enlightenment, launched itself into a re-reading of the Gospels that led to the writing of Lives of Jesus. Today, in the last half-century, everyone has taken to writing Lives of Jesus and the contribution of Protestant scholars, even if it is still important, differs little from that of Catholic, Jewish and non-religious critics.

A twelfth‐century Muslim biography of Jesus

Abstract The biography of Jesus as it appears in Ibn ‘Asakir's Tarikh madinat dimashq comprises material which originated from the Qur'an and from the Bible (the Old and the New Testaments). It also comprises material that is neither qur'anic nor biblical: material reflecting an image of Jesus whom the Sūfi order in the medieval period was using as the prophetic authority for its ascetic teachings, and whose purpose was to make him a prototype of the ascetic (al_zahid). Furthermore, Ibn ‘Asakir, writing at the time of the Crusades, believed in the imminent qiyama of Jesus to lead the Muslims to victory and to defeat the invaders. Ibn ‘Asakir's biography of Jesus reflects the extent to which literature about the earthly career of Jesus had developed in Muslim lore by his time.

The Earthly Career of Al-Hallaj

On the 24th of Dhu-al-Qa'da in the Islamic year 309, the 26th of March in the Christian year 922, a man was executed for religious crimes in the city of Baghdad in Iraq. Baghdad at that time had been the seat of Muhammad's political successors, the caliphs, since the middle of the eighth century and was the capital of much of die Islamic community. As a political institution, the caliphate was sunni, modeled on the surma, or path, of Muhammad— at least in theory.

The Marcan Framework

In 1932, Professor Dodd published in the Expository Times an article on ‘The Order of Events in St. Mark's Gospel' which broke fresh ground in the Study of that Gospel. Dr Dodd then stated that in planning the first ten chapters St. Mark had a skeleton outline of our Lord's earthly career which he broke up into what now stand as editorial summaries. This outline he suggested was in the nature of a summary of the kerygma and approximated to the Petrine speech of Acts 10.37–41 or the Pauline speech in Acts 13.23–31. Into this outline were inserted the pericopae Mark collected sometimes on a historical, and at other times on a topical basis. This hypothesis held the field for a considerable time but it has recently been questioned by Professor Nineham in an examination of Dr Dodd's hypothesis in his contribution to Studies in the Gospels published in 1955. Indeed Professor Nineham takes the line that the presupposition of such a skeleton outline of our Lord's ministry which Mark used in the way Dr Dodd suggests is ‘highly improbable’.1 He questions the probability of such an outline having been preserved by the early Church. Referring to the changes in the Marcan pattern which both Matthew and Luke felt free to introduce when using St. Mark's Gospel as a basis, and to the difference in outlook between St. John's Gospel and the Synoptics, he concludes: ‘It does not appear that the precise order in which the saving events occurred seemed to the early Christian mind a very vital element in the saving proclamation or kerygma.'2 Professor Nineham is of course prepared to admit that the Passion narrative is in a class by itself and does not appear to question the accepted opinions of scholars that it was an early compilation of the primitive Church. But he rightly contends that there is no cogent evidence that the Church quite early agreed on ‘a formal outline account of the progress of the Lord's earthly ministry’.3

Some Statistics of Recidivism among Misdemeanants in Boston

The existence in this community of a numerous class of misdemeanants, men and women, who not infrequently begin and generally end their earthly career in some public institu? tion, is painfully evident. They infest the minor courts like a plague and swarm in the prisons. When the cold of winter, or sickness, or old age comes upon them, they flock to the almshouses. They are constant beneficiaries of med? ical charity both within and outside hospitals and asylums. In largest part they subsist upon some form of public bounty, not by labor. Some are distinctly of a criminal type and have criminal records in various penal institutions. Others belong to the rounder class, while still others have but one institution home ? the house of correction. All, however, have this in common that they are inebriates of a pronounced type. What to do with these misdemeanants, and what to do for them, are questions which daily perplex the courts, heads of institutions and other officials. Our knowledge concerning them is very inadequate. Even their number in this city can only vaguely be approximated. Neither has much effort been made to ascertain the results of present methods of dealing with this class, in order to determine whether these

EUTHANASIA—A MEDICOLEGAL STUDY.

The last moments of our earthly career, the moments of transition from life to death, present a solemn and direful spectacle. To employ means to keep the dying individual a little longer on life's shore, or to hasten his "shuffling off this mortal coil," is a question which frequently confronts the physician. We are aware that death does not always come gently, "as light winds, wandering through groves of bloom, detach the delicate blossoms from the tree." Most men die from violence or disease; euthanasia is a rarity. Indeed, it is so rare that the afflictions of only a few organs or structures may bring about this kind of dissolution. We refer to organic cardiac diseases and cerebral apoplexy. The term "euthanasia" has been variously defined, and is still a word of considerable controversy; so much so that "euphoria" was taken to be its synonym, and in a measure, perhaps,

DR. JAMES FANNING NOYES—1817-1896; MEMORIAL REMARKS.

Dr. James Fanning Noyes began his earthly career in a modest farmhouse adjacent to the town of Kingston, R. I., on Aug. 2, 1817, and closed it Feb. 19, 1896, at Providence, R. I., in the elegant home of his honored and loved nephew, Dr. Robert Noyes. Between these two dates and places Dr. Noyes wrought his part in the drama of human life. In the pursuit of knowledge and doing of work he wandered far from his beloved Rhode Island, but when the end of life drew near he returned to his kindred and left his earthly body near the spot where it was given him. It was his to live in a period of human history surpassing all previous periods. In it the practice of medicine entered upon fields of conquest heretofore undreamed of. Accurate scientific knowledge was multiplied in all directions, and its application to medicine gave