Fall Of Satan Research Articles

Рене Жирар среди теологов

This essay explores the influence of René Girard on the study of religion, and in particular the disciplines of theology. Some commentators have described Girard as a theologian; however, it is more accurate to see his work as “theologically-inflected anthropology.” The implications of this are explained with reference to Girard’s first two books, and a later text, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. Two factors are important in assessing Girard’s significance for theology: firstly, his conversion, both intellectual and spiritual, at the beginning of his career, and secondly, his collaboration with the Swiss Jesuit theologian, Raymund Schwager. Girard’s contribution becomes evident, as the link between his theological anthropology (or “anthropophany”) and the doctrine of salvation (soteriology) comes into view. The essay concludes with an overview of Girard’s reception by theologians, both sympathetic and critical, and some examples of how mimetic theory is being applied to issues of contemporary Christian living.

Fabricating the Fall of Satan: Revelation 12:7–9 and its Interpretation in Early Christianity

Abstract Some interpreters understand Rev. 12:7–9 as a depiction of (1) a primeval literal war between Michael and Satan that resulted in the subsequent expulsion of Satan from heaven or (2) Satan’s defeat (represented metaphorically as an expulsion) at Jesus’ death. Although these interpretations are common in contemporary exegetical works, early interpreters of Revelation explained these verses differently. This prompts the question of who were the innovative interpreters who first read the texts as we do today? Accordingly, tracing a history of interpretation of the passage, in this article I will argue that (1) Oecumenius was the first interpreter who understood Rev. 12:7–9 as a portrayal of a primeval war between Michael and Satan which resulted in the expulsion of the devil from heaven because of his pride and apostasy. (2) Oecumenius did not reach this conclusion by exegeting Rev. 12:7–9. Rather, he connected traditional patristic exegesis and reflection on Satan—condensed mainly from interpretations of texts like Ezek. 28:11–19, Isa. 14:12–15, and Luke 10:18—with Revelation 12. (3) Andrew of Caesarea not only replicated Oecumenius’ exegesis of the pericope but argued that this passage also portrayed Satan’s defeat at the cross of Jesus, due to the influence of the patristic exegesis of John 12:31. (4) Given that Andrew’s commentary was widely copied (whereas Oecumenius’ was not), Andrew is ultimately the catalyst for the dissemination of Oecumenius’ exegesis of this pericope as well as his own. (5) Therefore, Oecumenius and Andrew are the originators of the explanations of Rev. 12:7–9 present in many contemporary exegetical works.

The Nonviolent Character of God, Evolution, and the Fall of Satan

The evolutionary creation model of origins best matches the scientific evidence for evolution with common descent. However, the violence and harm associated with the evolutionary history of life may be viewed as incompatible with religious traditions such as Anabaptist that understand God to be nonviolent as revealed in the life and teaching of Jesus. This article argues that malevolent wills such as fallen angels opposed God's will in the evolutionary process and that explanations for natural evils that do not recognize the corrupting activities of fallen spirit-beings make God culpable for evil and non-Christlike in moral character. In this light, the rejection of the angelic-fall thesis by many writers is surprising. Consequently, a number of common objections to the thesis are examined. The angelic-fall approach to natural evil has biblical support, a long history in the church, support of some current-day theologians, the ability to resist objections, and many useful outcomes.

“The creature was made subject to vanity not willingly”: The controversy over the influence of the Fall on living nature and the rise of paleontology

This paper deals with discussions sparked by the scientific advances of paleontology in the first half of the 19th century on whether predation and animal death should be linked to the Fall of man. The history of the belief in paradisiacal vegetarianism and animal peace, which could be traced back to the writings of Early Church fathers, is briefly discussed. The paper discusses the argumentation of W. Buckland, E. Hitchcock, H. Miller, and other men of science and theologians, who accepted the fact, which became evident from the fossil record, that death and predation prevailed in the living nature from the beginning, and struggled to conceive it in the Christian terms. Light is shed on the early pictorial representations of prehistoric life, which accentuated ferocity of the primeval world in stark contrast to the traditional view on the prelapsarian harmony between animals. The attitudes of those who persisted in defending the belief in peaceful animal relationships in paradise despite of findings of paleontology are explored. The main exponents of the latter view could be found among the “scriptural geologists”, the early predecessors of presentday Young Earth creationists. The attempt by the Scottish theologian W. Gillespie to explain the existence of predation in prehistoric animals by the Fall of Satan is reviewed. It can be concluded that the revision of Christian doctrine of the earthly paradise had been well underway in the pre-Darwinian age and was accomplished with the triumph of evolutionism.

Richard Raiswell and David R. Winter, The Medieval Devil: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022, xviii, 397 pp.

Abstract This compilation collects primary source materials on the history and representation of the devil in ancient and medieval Christianity. Over the course of eleven chapters, the ninety-eight excerpts included in this book chart the development of the character of Satan and the activities of his demonic minions among humankind from Jewish antiquity to the fifteenth century. The chapters follow a roughly chronological order, but some of them present specific themes over the course of time. Chapter 1 (Sources for the Medieval Devil) primarily comprises excerpts from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament with two exceptions: samples from Plato on the nature of pagan daemones and from the medieval Aggadah on rabbinic interpretations of the fall of Satan (nei­ther of which actually informed medieval Christian views of the devil). As the editors make clear, biblical texts do not present “a coherent narrative” about Satan, but only “sparse clues” about this “exceptionally elusive and contingent creature” (3). Chapter 2 (Development of a Narrative) focuses on the first three centuries of Christianity with excerpts from Philo of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Lactantius, as well as apocryphal stories like the Gospel of Moses and the Testament of Solomon. Although Origen of Alexandria is present in two excerpts, his important contribution to the doctrine of universalism, according to which all rational creatures obtain salvation, including the devil, deserves a fuller treatment than it receives here.

Философские основания фундаментальной антропологии Рене Жирара

Rene Girard (1923–2015) – French philosopher, professor of Stanford University, the member of Acadamie Francaise, the author of numerous works, some of which have recently become accessible to the Russian audience. His most popular books: "Resurrection from the Underground", "Violence and the Sacred", "Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World", "Job, the Victim of His People", "I See Satan Fall Like Lightning", "The Scapegoat". However, Rene Girard's conceptual heritage has not been properly appreciated by philosophers due to the diversity of creative aspirations of the thinker. Most often, he is called a professional philologist, religious scholar, cultural scientist, and his work as an innovator in the field of social and humanitarian sciences is associated with the creation of fundamental anthropology and the theory of culture based on it. Studying the works of Rene Girard is an exciting activity, supposing the immersion in the literary texts and biblical stories analyzed by him. These texts serve the author as a basis for solving the questions of vital importance for human existence and being. The search for answers to vital questions has always concerned both philosophers and theologians. Above all those are the questions related to the grasping of spiritual truths. Not always Girard formulated their meaning directly but through the introducing concepts that reveal the deeper aspects of socially directed human actions, providing these actions with a new categorical meaning. Thus, in the book "The Scapegoat", which will be analyzed in the given paper, the philosopher shows that the human ability to perceive own misery as the punishment for the specific misbehavior or sins is just the superficial point of view and it witnesses of the introvert character of the man/woman. But any personal catastrophe is also a sacrifice – precisely such point of view according to the biblical story of Job not only reconciles the man with life circumstances but raises him over them. Girard shows that the search for external causes that explain human misfortunes or catastrophes on a larger scale runs through the entire history of mankind is reflected in literature, historical and cultural monuments from Sophocles to Jesus. This article is devoted to the interpretation of the main conceptual ideas of Girard from the position of philosophical hermeneutics in order to clarify the philosophical foundations of fundamental anthropology.

I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, by Rene Girard

I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, by Rene Girard

The Fall of Satan, Rational Psychology, and the Division of Consciousness: A Girardian Thought Experiment

This paper proposes a revision of Girard’s interpretation of Satan, along traditional theological lines. Appreciating the essential correctness of the Girardian characterization of mimēsis, it is an argument, contra Girard, that (1) Satan cannot be reduced to a mimetic process but is a hypostatic spiritual reality and, following from this, that (2) the origins of mimetic rivalry go back before the emergence of humankind and provide a model for human rivalry. Employing concepts drawn from Husserlian phenomenological psychology, Thomist theology, and psychoanalysis, it hypothesizes Satan’s psychological state, prior to his fall, as metastable anxiety and trauma and his state, afterwards, as a narcissistic, malicious, self-induced pathology in order to explain Satan’s impossible rivalry with God, a rivalry that precedes hominization and has always endangered human existence.

Locating the Devil “Her” in MS Junius 11

This article focuses on the images and texts on page 3 of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, in which Lucifer foments rebellion, falls, and, as Satan, is bound to the mouth of hell. The bottom third of the page contains an image of falling angels, Satan, and the hellmouth. Above that image and to the left is written “hER SE,” Old English for “here that” or “here the.” We contend that this fragmentary textual note exaggerates both the linguistic function of other here x did y formulae in the manuscript and the interaction between these formulae and the visual images. Such exaggeration in the textual note at the very space and moment between the representation of rebellion and that of the completed transformation of Lucifer into Satan locates that metamorphosis in the act of reading-viewing itself. We consider the composition of the image and its inscriptions and set them into the context of Richard Drew’s Falling Man. Viewing the fall of Satan as part of a sequence of images and texts, we argue for the collaborative role of the viewer in sequential art and contend that Satan, as he appears in this depiction, is not safely distant from the reader-viewer but rather becoming through the active engagement of the viewer and reader in the creation of the world of image and language.

A Quotation from the Questions of Bartholomew in an early Medieval Latin Sermon

The Questions of Bartholomew, originally composed in Greek probably between the second and fourth centuries, describe how the titular apostle questions Christ, Mary, and the devil about various topics after Christ’s resurrection. Relatively few signs of the possible influence of this text have been discovered in later works, and its reception has consequently been difficult to study. The present article identifies a significant borrowing from the Questions in a seventh- or eighth-century Latin sermon now surviving in two ninth-century manuscripts. The sermon’s account of the fall of Satan and his angels draws heavily on the fourth chapter of the Questions. This discovery should encourage a renewed interest in finding possible borrowings from the apocryphon in the medieval West.

Anselm's Metaphysics of Nonbeing

In his eleventh century dialogue De Casu Diaboli, Anselm seeks to avoid the problem of evil for theodicy and explain the fall of Satan as attributable to Satan’s own self-creating wrongful will. It is something, as such, for which God as Satan’s divine Creator cannot be held causally or morally responsible. The distinctions on which Anselm relies presuppose an interesting metaphysics of nonbeing, and of the nonbeing of evil in particular as a privation of good, worthy of critical philosophical investigation in its own right. Anselm’s concept of nonbeing does not resolve the philosophical problem of evil implied by Satan’s fall from grace, but is shown perhaps more unexpectedly to enable Anselm’s proof for the inconceivable nonexistence of God as the greatest conceivable intended object of thought to avoid Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason objection to the general category of ‘ontological’ arguments.

The Jewish Vaccine against Mimetic Desire: A Girardian Exploration of a Sabbath Ritual

The Jewish Vaccine against Mimetic DesireA Girardian Exploration of a Sabbath Ritual Vanessa Avery (bio) In Violence and the Sacred (henceforth, V&S), Rene Girard remarks that when we think of siblings, we often think of affectionate relationships.1 He then proposes, however, that the stories that have come down to us through mythology and sacred scriptures often tell us otherwise. Warring siblings are embedded deeply in history, religion, and literature: Girard lists Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Eteocles and Polyneices, Romulus and Remus, Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland as just a few examples of the fraternal rivalry in our collective consciousness. We might add the biblical Isaac and Ishmael and Joseph and his brothers to this list. The rivalries are so pervasive that Girard declares: “the theme itself is a form of violence.”2 In both V&S and I See Satan Fall like Lightning (I See Satan), Girard demonstrates how the biblical voice is groundbreaking in its exposure of mimesis and the sacrificial mechanism. Alongside this assertion, in Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World (Things Hidden), Girard states: think it is possible to show that the texts of the Gospels manage to achieve what the Old Testament leaves incomplete. These texts therefore serve as an extension of [End Page 19] the Judaic bible, bringing to completion an enterprise that the Judaic bible did not take far enough, as Christian tradition has always maintained.3 The Hebrew Scriptures, however, are the writings of a religious community in their nascent state. They are the ideas and prescriptions that were only later to be formed into what we now call rabbinic Judaism. Jesus and the New Testament writers had the benefit of knowing these scriptures, and it is important to look at the Jewish writings that developed alongside the writing down of the New Testament as both Judaism and Christianity were maturing. The two religions were mutually influencing each other in this nascent stage, and this can be seen in many of the theological ideas that they were generating.4 Using both the Tanakh and the early rabbinic midrash, I will demonstrate in this essay that, contra Girard, ancient Judaism did indeed “reveal,” address, and even attempt to provide an antidote for mimetic rivalry. I will demonstrate this specifically through an analysis of Genesis 48, in which Jacob blesses his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh, and its corresponding ritual of the Birkat Ha-Banim (“Blessing of the Children”).5 Particularly because they are a sibling pair in the Book of Genesis, two sons of Joseph, the brothers Ephraim and Manasseh, are deserving of a Girardian analysis, although Girard does not offer one. These brothers are blessed by their grandfather, Jacob, as 2 of the future 12 tribes of Israel. But despite their historical import, these brothers play a very minor narrative role in Genesis. Indeed, after Jacob blesses them, the book ends (possibly because there is no conflict to drive the tale!). Ephraim and Manasseh are the only peaceful brothers we encounter in Genesis, and it may be no coincidence that they arrive on the scene at the tail end of this book; they do not engage in the mimetic competition of the brothers that came before them. Did Girard overlook this absence of rivalry? This, I assert, is precisely why this story is of Girardian import and needs to be addressed. Perhaps not coincidentally, these brothers also occupy a central role in Jewish ritual: Jews bless their children every week on the Sabbath, asking that God make their sons “like Ephraim and Manasseh.” This ritual, I propose, is the weekly Jewish vaccine used to keep mimetic inclinations in check. The structure of the Book of Genesis invites such a conclusion; the rabbinic explanations of Ephraim and Manasseh and the purpose of the Sabbath underscore it (as I will demonstrate). My ultimate goal is to determine to what extent this text and its ritual can really be effective in releasing humans from the sacrificial mentality. I will examine how it operates, on one hand, as sustenance for Jewish identity in particular; and, on the other hand, how it is intended to operate universally for the transformation of...

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”1 Illness as demon possession in the world of the first Christian ascetics and monks

The late antique world was particularly conscious of malevolent supernatural power constantly laying in wait to attack and enslave humans. Demons incited vices; they could persuade both their unsuspected and suspected victims to venerate them, and to persecute Christians, and to feel an overwhelming attachment to material things. However, what demons seemed to enjoy the most was taking total control by retiring into a human soul. Today our Western civilisation would not easily recognise anti-social behaviour, mental disorder and a strange illness as signs of demon possession, as it was often the case in late antiquity. Christian ascetics and monks were generally considered a very powerful antidote to demonic possession and they managed to enhance their power and to build great reputations, and attract considerable numbers of admirers (even from the upper classes) and converts to Christianity by successfully handling demons.

The Fall of Nebuchadnezzar

This paper examines the relationship of verbal expression, political engagement, and historical progress in a poem which has traditionally been labelled undramatic and read as an allegory of Milton's post-revolutionary resignation to quietism. While "Paradise Regained" consists primarily of a debate between two speakers and thus appears hostile to multivocality, the verbal combat, E. Sauer contends, transforms the poem into a historically engaged, politically charged text in which the Son challenges the oppressive homogeneity of Satan's opposing discourse and reemplots the events of his master-narrative. In part 2, the author argues that Satan's fall from the temple pinnacle-Nebuchadnezzar's reconstructed tower of Babel, the site of contending voices and contested identities in "Paradise Regained"-represents the silencing of the monological, negating voice and the symbolic collapse of monarchy (Prose, 3: 405).

A post-Byzantine creation: The archangel Michael triumphant and psychopomp

This paper deals with a specific iconographic type of Archangel Michael: he is shown bearing a soul in the form of a swaddled infant, while subduing an old man who is wearing only a loincloth. Who is Michael subduing? Three possible answers are considered: 1) the figure can be identified with Satan the fallen angel who, like Michael, has an immaterial nature and is commonly considered as his enemy par excellence; 2) he can also be an anonymous sinner, whose soul is depicted in Michael's hand; 3) finally, one could identify him with Hades, the god of the Underworld and personification of death, because he is depicted as an old man, semi-nude with a pronounced musculature, as well as because of the assimilation of Michael to God. Rather than making a single choice, the author proposes a combined interpretation of the image, which allows for the integration of all the aspects of Michael's cult (military, triumph over Satan, psychopomp, archangel of the Last Judgment) and unifies the past (the fall of Satan), the present (death of a sinner) and the future (Last Judgment).

The struggle between the ‘image of God’ and Satan in theGreek Life of Adam and Eve

AbstractAccording to a tradition in theGreek Life of Adam and Eve(GLAE), Seth and his mother Eve were confronted by a wild beast that attacked Seth. This article asserts that Seth's battle with the beast should be understood as a struggle between the ‘image of God’ and Satan, and viewed in a Christian context. The claim is based on three aspects of the story: how the beast is described, why it attacked Seth and onlyhecould control it, and why the beast was confined to its dwelling place until the Day of Judgement. The struggle between Seth and the beast/Satan should be seen as a link in the chain of struggle between the image of God and Satan. It begins in Paradise between Adam, the image of God, and Satan, as recounted in the story of Satan's fall from heaven, continues on earth between Seth, Adam's descendant, and Satan, and will culminate with the final victory of Jesus, the ultimate image of God, over Satan at the end of times.

The Third English Civil War: David Peace's "Occult History" of Thatcherism

The Third English Civil War:David Peace's "Occult History" of Thatcherism Matthew Hart (bio) Published to wide acclaim in 2004, David Peace's GB84 is "a fiction . . . based upon [the] fact" of the 1984–85 miners' strike, when Margaret Thatcher's government defeated a strike action by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), long recognized as the militant vanguard of the trades union movement.1 My goal in this essay is to show how the political vision of GB84 informs its generic and formal qualities. The first and longer section of what follows therefore deals with the novel's paranoid ambience and its status as a work of historical fiction, reading Peace's self-described "occult" style as an intensifying device [End Page 573] through which he foregrounds the existential nature of the struggle between the miners and the state. The final section considers more abstract political questions. It explores GB84's representation of the cruel paradoxes of government in the Orwellian year of 1984—a critical moment in Britain's transition between welfare-corporatist and neoliberal versions of statehood, when Thatcherism's characteristic oscillation between liberal and authoritarian modes was especially visible. What GB84 does, in its poetic but brutal way, is work at the contradiction in what Stuart Hall dubbed Thatcher's "authoritarian populism"—that is, the way that while Thatcherism represented itself as antistatist "for the purposes of populist mobilization," it nonetheless remained "highly state-centralist" in its orientation toward power ("Authoritarian Populism" 117). GB84 deals with this history, I suggest, by showing us a world full of political combat but bereft of meaningful parliamentary activity. It therefore presents the miners' strike as a betrayal of the political agonism that, in the language that Chantal Mouffe has appropriated from Carl Schmitt, is the best guarantee that violent conflict does not overwhelm the pluralist values and institutions of democratic states like the United Kingdom. GB84 begins with a short prelude, "The Argument," the title of which alludes to the introductory glosses to the twelve books of John Milton's Paradise Lost.2 Like Milton, Peace writes in the wake of civil strife and mortal sin; unlike Milton, he doesn't give us a summary of Satan's fall from grace and a premonition of "man's first disobedience" (Milton, line 1). It's hardly needed. The world of GB84 has long since fallen; we need no abstract to grasp its darkness. We enter it through the malnutritious space of a motorway service-station café, a place of transit and assignation in which a man and woman have come to share secrets. But although this seems like a modern and wholly material world, its difference from Milton's [End Page 574] "place of utter darkness" (l. 5) is as small as the fluorescent tubes that light the scene. And indeed, those lights are crucial. The first sentence of "The Argument" is one word long, cut off by an emdash so that everything we are about to read, the passage that follows and all the routine and terror of Britain circa 1984, is concentrated in the incandescence of a single word: Electricity— Harsh service station light. Friday 13 January, 1984—She puts a cigarette to her lips, a lighter to her cigarette.A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate—He waits.She inhales, her eyes closed. She exhales, her eyes open.He picks at the solid red sauce on the plastic ketchup bottle."Early March," she says. "South Yorkshire."He rolls the solid red sauce into a soft bloody ball.She stubs out the cigarette. She puts an envelope on the table.He squashes the ball between his fingers and thumb—Predicts the ruin of the State.She stands up.He shuts his eyes until she's almost gone. The stink still here—Power. Power is the subject of GB84: the electrical power that in 1980s Britain was largely generated by burning domestic coal, and the political power that came from controlling coal extraction and therefore the production and distribution of energy. Such are the stakes of this brief encounter beside a highway, when an unnamed woman tells an equally anonymous spook when to expect the onset...

Maternal Compassion in the Thought of René Girard, Emil Fackenheim, and Emmanuel Levinas

MATERNAL COMPASSION IN THE THOUGHT OF RENÉ GIRARD, EMIL FACKENHEIM, AND EMMANUEL LÉVINAS Ann W. Astell Purdue University l;ike empathy, compassion is a word that seldom occurs in the /writings of René Girard,' who prefers to answer to Martin Heidegger's "anxiety" [Die Sorge] before death by speaking instead of a "concern for victims" [le souci des victims].2 Maternal corn-passion does enter Girardian analysis directly, however, in his discussion ofthe biblical good harlot, a compassionate mother whom Girard calls "the most perfect figura Christi that can be imagined" (1978, 241). In this paper I focus on the neglected theme of maternal compassion in the writings of Girard, letting them enter into conversation, first, with Emil Fackenheim's reflections on the plight and actions of Jewish mothers during the Holocaust and, second, with themes sounded in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas. I argue that maternal compassion is actually central to Girard's understanding of the unveiling of the victimage mechanism, because it sees goodness in the very life of every potential victim, regardless ofwhat that person has done or is capable ofdoing, simply because he or she exists, has a face. The "innocence" of every victim is reducible to the innocence of the infant, because an infant within a sacrificial system can substitute for every other possible victim. The infant and, even more, the unborn bring us back to the very origins of life, to the Creator. There 1 On empathy and Girard, see my "Saintly Mimesis, Contagion, and Empathy." " See James William's comment on this topic in René Girard, ISee Satan Fall Like Lightning (177, note 4). The locus classicus for Martin Heidegger's "anxiety" is his Being and Time, sections 39-42. 16Ann W. Astell is, as Plato asserts and Lévinas reminds us, a "Good beyond being" that, on a transcendent plane, constitutes the "innocence" ofevery human being that lives, protesting against any one's murder. To illustrate the triangulation of desire, the rivalry of doubles, the mimetic crisis, and its possible outcome in victimage, René Girard turns to the famous biblical story ofthe judgment of Solomon in 3 Kings 3:16-28. In that story two women, two harlots, approach the king, each claiming to be the mother ofa single, living infant, over whom they are fighting. "The symmetry is obvious," Girard writes, "and it represents the very essence of human conflict" (1978, 238). Unable to determine the truth ofthe case on the basis of their conflicting testimonies, the wise king tests them by proposinga sacrificial solution that parodies distributivejustice. He decides to cut the baby in half, giving each woman an equal share, the symmetrical division ofthe victim mirroring the symmetry between the litigants. "The Latin word decidere," Girard notes, "mean etymologicalIy to divide by the sacrificial knife, to cut the throat of a victim" (1978, 238). The proposed sacrifice is averted because its horrific promise of an equal apportionment of parts of the baby's body—a sameness that would confirm the two as doubles—reveals a significant difference between the two women. According to the usual reading of the passage, one of the mothers, having (either deliberately or accidentally) killed her own baby by smothering him, lacks any genuine love for the other woman's infant. As Girard explains, "The only thing that counts for her ispossessing what the other onepossesses. In the last resort, she is ready to accept being deprived ofthe child as long as her opponent is deprived of it in the same way.... All that counts is her fascination with her hated model and rival" (1978, 239). The other woman, however, filled with yearning for the life ofthe child to whom she has given birth, reveals herself to be its true mother by renouncing her maternal rights in a passionate plea: "I beseech thee, my lord, give her the child alive, and do not kill it" (3 Kings 3:26). Commenting on the passage, Girard characterizes the values of the false mother as sacrificial, those ofthe good mother as anti-sacrificial. With reference to the child whose fate hangs in the balance, the distinction is clear enough. The true mother begs for the baby...

Reviews

Books reviewed:Freda Matchett, Krsna: Lord or Avatāra? The Relationship Between Krsna and VisnuPeter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics: Foundations, Values and IssuesDamien Keown (ed.), Contemporary Buddhist EthicsWilliam G. Dever, What did the Biblical Writers Know and When did They Know it? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient IsraelJohn Dancy, The Divine DramaJames C. VanderKam, An Introduction to Early JudaismJacob Neusner, The Aggadic Role in Halakhic DiscourseStephen J. Davis, The Cult of Saint Thecla: A Tradition of Women’s Piety in Late AntiquitySiegmar Döpp and Wilhelm Geerlings, Dictionary of Early Christian LiteratureAshley Null, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of Repentance: Renewing the Power to LoveAvery Dulles, S.J. and Rabbi Leon Klenicki, The Holocaust, Never To Be Forgotten: Reflections on the Holy See’s Document, We RememberChristopher H. Evans (ed.), The Social Gospel TodayPhilip W. Butin, The TrinityPhilip Endean, Karl Rahner and Ignatian SpiritualityIlse Bulhof and Laurens ten Kate (eds), Flight of the Gods: Philosophical Perspectives on Negative TheologyRené Girard, I See Satan Fall Like LightningGarth L. Hallett, A Middle Way to GodGordon Graham, Evil and Christian EthicsFrank G. Kirkpatrick, The Ethics of CommunityStephen Pattison, Shame: Theory, Therapy, TheologyRosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and the Making of the Modern FamilyJohn W. de Gruchy, Christianity, Art and Transformation: Theological Aesthetics in the Struggle for JusticeStephen Conway (ed.), Living the Eucharist: Affirming Catholicism and the LiturgyAndrew Purves and Charles Partree, Encountering God – Christian Faith in Turbulent TimesT. Richard Snyder, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Punishment

The Exaltation of Adam and the Fall of Satan

The Exaltation of Adam and the Fall of Satan