Faithful Reading Research Articles

Inheritance Indifferent to Legitimacy

This essay seeks to establish the sense in which Derrida’s stated indifference to questions of legitimate descent can function as an ethical or political principle, as he argues in “Marx and Sons.” We track Derrida’s response to accusations of a lack of fealty in texts such as “Marx and Sons,” “Biodegradables: Seven Diary Fragments,” and “Limited Inc a b c … ” alongside his problematization of a certain sense of inheritance or heritage. We argue that Derrida reveals the necessity of troubling established legitimate inheritances as an ethical and political first principle. As such, we argue that Derrida’s reading of Marx is not just one faithful reading among others, but an indifference to the paradigm of fealty in inheritance.

Aristotle, Contract Law, and Justice in Transactions

This article sheds new light on Aristotle’s conception of voluntary corrective justice through an engagement with Peter Benson’s theory of transactional justice as expounded in his new work, Justice in Transactions: A Theory of Contract Law. Benson relates his theory of transactional justice to Aristotle’s conception of voluntary corrective justice. He also states that his theory “engages some fundamental themes and outstanding questions arising from Aristotle’s account” (2019: 30). The article provides a faithful reading of the nature and working logic of voluntary corrective justice as envisaged by Aristotle to argue that Benson neither thematizes the link between his theory and Aristotle’s conception of voluntary corrective justice, nor sheds new light on Aristotle’s thought on justice more generally. In fact, the article shows, Benson’s views on justice are incompatible with Aristotle’s. This is unfortunate, the article concludes, for Benson’s contract law theory is otherwise fascinating and analytically coherent. Keywords: contract law; transactional justice; Aristotle; corrective justice; Peter Benson.

The Psychology of Christian Nationalism

ABSTRACT This paper was presented at the Society for Pastoral Theology annual study conference, Montgomery, AL, June 10, 2022. It is based on the author's book The Psychology of Christian Nationalism: Why People Are Drawn In and How to Talk Across the Divide (Fortress Press, 2022). Cooper-White defines Christian nationalism as a social and political movement with the goal of restoring the US to a fictional origin as a ‘Christian nation’ with a not-at-all fictional origin in white, masculinist supremacy. Christian nationalism is a fanatical, radical departure from the teachings of Jesus and any faithful reading of the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament, and it is also dangerously anti-democratic. The paper offers an overview of current sociological research on Christian nationalism and its adherents; a discussion of conscious and unconscious motivations that draw people into extremist beliefs, including individual and group psychodynamics and the role of narcissistic demogogues (citing Freud); and how and under what circumstances to talk with people across this current extreme divide in American religion and politics without resorting either to disrespectful dialogue or to superficial appeals to unity.

The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions

The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning

Michael L. Raposa Plays with Peirce, Love, and Signs: Review Essay on <i>Theosemiotic: Religion, Reading, and the Gift of Meaning</i>

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Thomas Aquinas and Contemplation by Rik Van Nieuwenhove, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, pp. viii + 220, £65.00, hbk

Mortificatio et Vivificatio: The Baptismal Shape of Scriptural Reading in John Webster

AbstractFor John Webster, faithful reading of Holy Scripture occurs in the wake of the mortifying and vivifying grace of the triune God. This baptismal movement from death to life is doubly characterized: it refers to, first, the missions of the Word and Spirit to slay and make alive, and, second, the mortifying and vivifying readerly activity of human creatures. As the extension of baptism into the Christian life, the ecclesial task of reading Scripture is a moral‐spiritual undertaking, forming an integral part of the covenantal fellowship between God and creatures. The burden of Webster’s teaching, however, calls the significance of Scripture’s contingent origins into question; that is, the intrusive, initiatory character of divine grace risks undermining the historicality of Holy Scripture and so the faculty of historical‐critical methods. This article first outlines Webster’s theology of scriptural interpretation. Next, it responds to the recent criticism that Webster fails to integrate sufficiently Scripture’s theological function as an instrument of divine speech with its contingent, historical character. I show that, far from suspending hermeneutical activity, the baptismal shape of exegesis underwrites a ministerial use of historical and literary tools. Furthermore, the ascetic character of scriptural reading thwarts phenomenalism and naturalism, which, on Webster’s view, are forms of idolatry.

Mary’s Slave Song: The Tensions and Turnarounds of Faithfully Reading Doulē in the Magnificat

This article traces the enduring legacy of slavery in the United States and its biblical foundations that create interpretive tension around the Greek words doulos/doulē for readers and translators. Following Clarice Martin’s lead, I advocate for a faithful reading of doulē as “slave” in Luke 1:38, 48 and draw parallels between African-American slave songs and Mary’s Magnificat. I then explicate the tensions inherent in reading Mary as “the slave of the Lord” and “his [God’s] slave” against the socio-historical backdrop of U.S. slavery and explore how Mary’s slave song and narrative depiction by Luke “turns around” Mary’s slave language by reversing Orlando Patterson’s three constituent elements of slavery. When using this model, Luke transforms Mary’s slave language into a homeopathic practice and Mary into the embodiment of an African- American woman’s slave song.

The Uncopyrightability of Edicts of Government

This amicus brief filed in the Supreme Court appeal of Georgia, et al., v. Public.Resource.Org., explores the interplay of copyright law and the edicts of government doctrine. The “edicts of government” doctrine was first validated by the U.S. Supreme Court in a series of nineteenth century cases. Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. (8 Pet.) 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Meyers, 128 U.S. 617 (1888). While the doctrine has never been directly recognized in the express wording of the copyright statute, it is nevertheless firmly rooted in foundational copyright principles that are themselves reflected in the text of the statute. Three foundational copyright principles buttress the doctrine. First, copyrightable authorship does not extend to official announcements of law, the hallmark of edicts of government. Authorship as requires personalization, an attribute that is antithetical to official pronouncements of law, which are generated in an impersonal and ex officio manner. Second, all edicts of government, as legal texts, are methods of operation, rendering them uncopyrightable. Third, authentic statements of law entail the merger of idea and expression insofar as the expression underlying edicts of government are capable of being expressed in only a limited number of ways in order to preserve its authenticity. Consequently, the Official Code of Georgia (O.C.G.A.) is not copyrightable. Petitioners concede that the statutory content of the O.C.G.A. is uncopyrightable. The annotations incorporated into the O.C.G.A. by the state legislature bear the imprimatur of the state and are therefore produced under the ostensible authority of the state, which renders them an edict of government. Contrary to Petitioners’ argument, an edict does not need to have the force of law to qualify as an uncopyrightable edict of government. The Supreme Court’s precedents contradict this position. Instead, faithful reading of these precedents suggest that something becomes an uncopyrightable edict of government when it is produced under the ostensible authority of the state and thus receives a presumptively official status, owing to its endorsement by the state. The process by which the annotations contained in the O.C.G.A. are adopted and merged with the statutory content therein constitutes the exercise of such ostensible authority, rendering the O.C.G.A. an uncopyrightable edict of government.

DNA Adduct-Directed Synthetic Nucleosides.

Chemical damage to DNA is a key initiator of adverse biological consequences due to disruption of the faithful reading of the genetic code. For example, O6-alkylguanine ( O6-alkylG) DNA adducts are strongly miscoding during DNA replication when the damaged nucleobase is a template for polymerase-mediated translesion DNA synthesis. Thus, mutations derived from O6-alkylG adducts can have severe adverse effects on protein translation and function and are an early event in the initiation of carcinogenesis. However, the low abundance of these adducts places significant limitations on our ability to relate their presence and biological influences with resultant mutations or disease risk. As a consequence, there is a critical need for novel tools to detect and study the biological role of alkylation adducts. Incorporating DNA bases with altered structures that are derived synthetically is a strategy that has been used widely to interrogate biological processes involving DNA. Such synthetic nucleosides have contributed to our understanding of DNA structure, DNA polymerase (Pol) and repair enzyme function, and to the expansion of the genetic alphabet. This Account describes our efforts toward creating and applying synthetic nucleosides directed at DNA adducts. We synthesized a variety of nucleosides with altered base structures that complement the altered hydrogen bonding capacity and hydrophilicity of O6-alkylG adducts. The heterocyclic perimidinone-derived nucleoside Per was the first of such adduct-directed synthetic nucleosides; it specifically stabilized O6-benzylguanine ( O6-BnG) in a DNA duplex. Structural variants of Per were used to determine hydrogen bonding and base-stacking contributions to DNA duplex stability in templates containing O6-BnG as well as O6-methylguanine ( O6-MeG) adducts. We created synthetic probes able to stabilize damaged over undamaged templates and established how altered hydrogen bonding or base-stacking properties impact DNA duplex stability as a function of adduct structures. This knowledge was then applied to devise a hybridization-based detection strategy involving gold nanoparticles that distinguish damaged from undamaged DNA by colorimetric changes. Furthermore, synthetic nucleosides were used as mechanistic tools to understand chemical determinants such as hydrogen bonding, π-stacking, and size and shape deviations that impact the efficiency and fidelity of DNA adduct bypass by DNA Pols. Finally, we reported the first example of amplifying alkylated DNA, accomplished by combining an engineered polymerase and synthetic triphosphate for which incorporation is templated by a DNA adduct. The presence of the synthetic nucleoside in amplicons could serve as a marker for the presence and location of DNA damage at low levels in DNA strands. Adduct-directed synthetic nucleosides have opened new concepts to interrogate the levels, locations, and biological influences of DNA alkylation.

A Hermeneutic of Hope—and Faith and Love

ABSTRACT The early church bequeathed us two rules for interpreting Scripture: the rule of faith and the rule of love. This paper argues that these should be complemented with a rule of hope. It uses Thomas Aquinas to suggest how a hopeful reading might complement a loving and a faithful reading, and it suggests that we see this sort of reading in contemporary liberation theologians.

Exploring the Qur’an

Exploring the Qur’an: Context and Impact is a highly perceptive, technicalstudy of the Qur’anic text that seeks to exonerate the Qur’an from claimsof extremism, intolerance, or incoherence. This is accomplished throughcontextualizing the content and highlighting the impact of the Qur’anicmessage as applied throughout history. The underlying premise of its approachis that a perceptive and faithful reading of the Qur’an will resultin the Qur’an exonerating itself through consistency in its own messages,rhetorical devices, and norms. In essence, it is a specific way of applyingtafsīr al-Qur’ān bil-Qur’ān (explanation of the Qur’an by the Qur’an). Thisbook is unique in the field of Qur’anic coherence in that it presents a consistentmethod of interpretation that is applied to a diverse range of Qur’anicsubjects, not simply a study of the Qur’an’s structure nor primarily of itsArabic. It builds on previous efforts, such as Mustansir Mir’s summary ofHamid al-Din ‘Abd al-Hamid al-Farahi’s work on Qur’anic oaths, Majmū‘ati-Tafsīr-i-Farāhī, yet advances its own distinctive premise. The book hasthree sections, each consisting of several chapters, five of which are originalto this book. This does not detract from the cohesiveness of the book. AbdelHaleem’s technical yet accessible style pervades throughout and consistencyin his chosen axioms of interpretation tie the book’s parts together ...

God Without God: A Divine Limit to “The Phenomenon”

Abstract The background concern of this paper is the well-rehearsed debate on the “theological turn” (or “veerings”) in French Phenomenology that was ignited by Dominique Janicaud some 25 years ago in his vociferous critique of several leading French thinkers. It also responds to subsequent contestations against Janicaud by numerous scholars defending these thinkers radicalising of phenomenology in their attempts to account for what Emanuel Levinas had “stirred up in the phenomenological field” by re-posing the question of the philosophical status of the idea of God. What is pivotal to Janicaud in his exclusionary critique and drawing of phenomenological boundaries is to hold dearly to the method as Edmund Husserl intended. In doing so, only describable phenomena that appear (or are logically subtended to appear) provide the litmus for a bona fide phenomenology. In opening and broadening the method to include experiences of a transcendent, religious nature as the French thinkers do, orthodox Husserlian thinking places these projects into question. The purpose of this paper is to question these post-Husserlian thinkers with a more faithful reading of Husserl. I analyse three key areas to suggest a ‘divine limit’ to phenomena: first, the concept of “the phenomenon” as developed in Husserl’s project; second, the ‘status of the idea of God’ in Husserl’s writings; and third, the relevant philosophical discourse on God that emerges from the Janicaud-led debate through critical commentary on the phenomenology of the “inapparent”. As a consequence, God is argued to be a divine limit to Husserlian phenomenology, but not religious belief itself.

Sights to make an Alexander? Reading Homer on the early modern stage

Focusing primarily on Thomas Goffe's 1618/9 university play, The Couragious Turke, and Thomas Heywood's popular cycle of five Age plays (c.1609-13), this article investigates early modern readings of ‘Homer' onstage – where Homer stands for text, character, source-material and critical authority. Traditionally dismissed as only superficially or remotely engaged with Homer's text, Goffe's and Heywood's Homeric stagings are considered here as significant commentaries on a period in which Homer's authority, and the battle for authority over Homer's text, is being vehemently contested. A proliferation of vernacular English books promoting humanist ideals collides, at this time, with the inherited medieval traditions of the consistently popular, yet vociferous ‘anti-Homeric', English Troy Books. The article contextualises Heywood's and Goffe's dramatic engagements with Homer and his Iliad against this wider literary backdrop. By explicitly playing with the audiences' awareness of competing versions and revisions, dramatically charged intertextual moments not only subvert the humanist ideal of a faithful reading of the Homeric text but also, crucially, assert the importance of such plays to the discussion of the reception of ancient Greek texts in early modern England.

The Fiftieth Anniversary of Nostra Aetate

After the Holocaust, Christian scholars, challenged by Jules Isaac, became aware of the anti-Jewish bias of Christian preaching. They met at Seelisberg, Switzerland, in 1947, to offer a more faithful reading of the New Testament. More than a decade later, the Second Vatican Council produced the Declaration Nostra aetate, which redefined the Church’s relation to the Jews, recognized their religion as source of grace, and expressed its respect for all the world religions

Transcendentny sens Szlaku św. Jakuba – Camino de Santiago

When we are celebrating the Year of Faith, which invites us to confess, celebrate and witness our faith, we must make a faithful reading of the current situation with the light of the mysterious lamp of faith. History records the unusual breadth of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela from its beginnings in the ninth century, during the Middle Ages until today. Important cultural elements, such as ideas, institutions, legends, were brought by the Jacobean pilgrims. Pilgrims brought to the Spanish kingdoms new forms of artistic expressions, symbols, beliefs and ways of life, which joined the places they crossed, even at the end of the way in penitential attitude, they loaded limestone to contribute in building the basilica of Santiago. The Way to Santiago has been a journey of faith and a journey of culture from the beginning, the most important event in shaping the medieval Europe as Western Christianity.

THE PROBLEM OF THE FINALITY OF WORSHIP AND THE STANDARD THOMISTIC ACCOUNT

Este artículo introduce el tema de la finalidad del culto divino dentro la tradición llamada ‘tomismo analítico’. Tiene como meta desarrollar una respuesta, basada en un análisis textual de Santo Tomás, a las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cuál es el fin del culto? ¿Para qué le damos culto a Dios? ¿De qué le sirve a Dios nuestro culto? ¿O acaso no es Dios, sino nosotros mismos, quienes somos los beneficiarios del culto? El artículo intenta desarrollar lo que se podría llamar “la solución estándar tomista” a este problema. En la primera parte (I), el artículo examina el problema de la finalidad del culto dentro del contexto del teísmo clásico. La parte II expone el status quaestionis según se encuentra en la literatura contemporánea. En la tercera parte (III), el artículo se enfoca en la solución estándar tomista, según la expone Cayetano, y demuestra en qué aspectos a la misma le falta ser más matizada para incluir la solución completa de Santo Tomás. Y finalmente, la parte IV propone una cuidadosa y fiel lectura de los textos y expone los fundamentos de una nueva y matizada solución al problema.

“Then Their Eyes Were Opened”: Pentecostal Reflections on the Church’s Scripture and the Lord’s Supper

Abstract This paper explores the relationship of Scripture to the Lord’s Supper in and for Pentecostal theology and praxis, drawing on a figurative reading of the story of the Emmaus disciples (Luke 24) as a paradigm. The paper’s central claim is that faithful eucharistic participation is indispensable to the faithful reading of Scripture — and vice versa. It is just as our lives are consumed by the Eucharist event that our eyes are opened to see the Jesus of whom the Scriptures testify and that we are made apt for the transforming work of the Spirit. On this basis, a call is made for a robust and authentically Pentecostal sacramentality to orient and ground uses of Scripture in and by the Pentecostal ecclesial community. In addition to fellow Pentecostals, dialogue partners from the wider Christian tradition are also engaged, including, most prominently, Rowan Williams, Jean-Luc Marion, and Robert W. Jenson.

A Treacherous Subject: An Introduction

A Treacherous SubjectAn Introduction Richard Block (bio) and Michael du Plessis (bio) I Betrayal Is a Treacherous Subject There are as many ways of telling a story of betrayal as there are points from which to tell it. Let’s begin with a beginning, perhaps not quite the very beginning, but a beginning nonetheless—which, as beginning, then inevitably involves an ending. In other words, let’s begin with Babel. We will begin with the beginning of multiplicity, the differences of and in languages, the betrayal of God’s distance by human hubris (itself repeating a motif from Eden), and the end, seemingly, of a common or universal language. Jacques Derrida observed via Voltaire the duplicity of the word Babel quite some time ago: I do not know why it is said in Genesis that Babel signifies confusion, for Ba signifies father in the Oriental tongues, and Bel signifies God; Babel signifies the city of God, the holy city. The Ancients gave this name to all their capitals. [End Page 1] But it is incontestable that Babel means confusion, either because the architects were confounded after having raised their work up to eighty-one thousand Jewish feet, or because the tongues were then confounded.... (Voltaire, “Babel” in his Dictionnaire philosophique, quoted in Derrida 1985, 166) Derrida continues to tease out the intricacies of this treacherous name, since Babel can mean both “city of God” and “confusion” and can serve simultaneously as a proper name and a generic noun: The city would bear the name of God the father and of the father of the city that is called confusion. God, the God, would have marked with his patronym a communal space, that city where understanding is no longer possible. And understanding is no longer possible when there are only proper names, and understanding is no longer possible when there are no longer proper names. (1985, 167) At the convergence-divergence of these oppositions (proper/generic, divine/human, error/truth, comprehension/misunderstanding, fidelity/betrayal), lies, of course, the question of fidelity (one that appears impossible) in translation. Not surprisingly perhaps, the discussion of Babel makes way, in Derrida’s essay, for a faithful reading of Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator,” the gist of which, if it can be summarized or translated, is that translation can only translate its own betrayal to both its original language and its target language, but that this betrayal speaks to and of that which otherwise cannot be communicated in language—language itself as pure as transmission, its un-selfsame essence as the medium of media, as transmissibility as such. (After all, there is no theory of the sign that would not also be a theory of the betrayal of the sign or a theory of the lie.) If betrayal is, in a sense, the essence of language—to betray that which (communication, understanding) language nevertheless transports or transposes, hands over or hands down—one might wonder about betrayal’s links to Latin, since “betrayal” comes from the Latin tradere, one might say, colloquially, to hand over, an origin it shares with “tradition,” which likewise comes from tradere, which one might render here, colloquially, as handing down—and it is this activity, a handing, whether over or down, in Latin, that betrayal shares with tradition.1 All of which may very well let us [End Page 2] recall what Derrida has written on a much later occasion about an unbreakable tradition of Latin, for the very name and notion of “literature” hand down an unavoidable Latinity: Literature is a Latin word. This belonging has never been simple: it is a belonging that travels, emigrates, works, and is translated. The Latin filiation is exported and bastardized beyond its boundaries and affinities but always within the vicinity of its borders. And it does not travel under just any condition. It does not use just any vehicle or figure of transportation. Whatever the diversity of our mother idioms here, when we say literature, if it can be supposed that we understand each other, we speak and make ourselves understood on the basis of a Latin root, in the constraining hospitality or the violent reception of a...

Not Another ‘Adequate Remedy’: The Constitution and Judicial Review Under the APA

To err is human – and also administrative. Federal agency action gives rise to hundreds of suits each year, in which plaintiffs bring claims under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. §§ 701-706. Before federal agency action undergoes APA review, however, federal district courts must determine that “no other adequate remedy in a court” exists. 5 U.S.C. § 704. But courts looking only to these seven simple words might be lead astray. This Article demonstrates that, despite the plain language of § 704, a faithful reading of the APA’s statutory text reveals courts may not withhold APA review on the ground that constitutional review would provide “[an]other adequate remedy in a court.” Part I argues that Congress intended for a court to allow plaintiffs to bring APA and constitutional claims simultaneously, as evidenced by the text and structure of the APA. Part II argues that courts should interpret § 704 in light of the principle of constitutional avoidance. The “canon of constitutional avoidance” is shorthand for a series of distinct jurisprudential principles, one of which, the “order-of-battle” canon, has important implications for a court’s reading of § 704. This Article advances the novel argument that the policies underlying the order-of-battle canon have interpretive implications for judicial review provisions, such as Chapter 7 of the APA – namely, courts ought to interpret such provisions so as to avoid constitutional holdings when a statute may resolve the case. In light of congressional intent, as evidenced by the text and structure of the APA, and jurisprudential principles of constitutional avoidance, courts should not preclude plaintiffs from bringing APA and constitutional claims simultaneously – no matter how plain the § 704 language may be.