Theological Point Research Articles

Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism and the Mystery of God

Anselm said that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, but he believed that it followed that God is greater than can be conceived. The second formula—essential to sound theology—points to the mystery of God. The usual way of preserving divine mystery is the via negativa, as one finds in Aquinas. I formalize Hartshorne’s central argument against negative theology in the simplest modal system T. I end with a defense of Hartshorne’s way of preserving the mystery of God, which he locates in the actuality of God rather than in the divine existence or essence. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.

"Be my inscape, be my lyre": The Hymnody of Albert Stewart

FEATURED AUTHOR—ALBERT STEWART "Be my inscape, be my lyre": The Hymnody of Albert Stewart________ Marianne Worthington To read the poems of Albert Stewart is to consider his organic religiosity, a blended spiritual view or his own making. Stewart mixes Greek mythology, Biblical free verse, medieval mysticism, British Romanticism, American Transcendentalism, and the folkways of his Knott County, Kentucky neighbors like a great stew, flavored with a pantheistic theology and a fervor for the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions of nature. Stewart's poetry is not always easy or forthcoming; his early work often contains indirection and veiled allusion, inverted syntax, and obtrusive, sentimental descriptors that make for a stilted and distant voice. Generally, however, it's worth the dig because Stewart is a poet with a keen eye and an inquisitive nature; a poet who celebrates and laments the human condition; a poet dedicated to the medieval notion of finding the sacred while in the midst of the profane. In many ways, Stewart's poems can be likened to hymns in that they are lyric offerings that express a theological point of view, a heightened imagination, and passion and reverence for the sublime. We may not be able literally to sing his poems, but Stewart was aware of the need for congregational song: "I am looking / For the one to whom it must be told," he writes in "The Holy Season." We might think of Stewart's poetry as lyric containers for his invocations, confessions, praises, petitions, litanies, and creeds. Albert Stewart was 86 years old when he died in April, 2001. He left us only three volumes of poetry, but many Kentucky writers name him as their literary mentor in one way or another. No doubt, his classical training at the Settlement School and his education at Berea College and the University of Kentucky offered him opportunities beyond Yellow Mountain, his home place in Knott County. He served three years in the navy during World War II and taught at high schools in northern Kentucky and southern Ohio and at Morehead State University, University of Kentucky and Alice Lloyd College. Yet he always returned to Yellow Mountain, and most of his poems are rooted there. 25 In 1962, Morehead State College Press published Stewart's first collection, The Untoward Hills. Twenty-five years later, it republished a facsimile edition. In 1993, Berea College Press published Stewart's second collection, The Holy Season: Walking in the Wild. In 1996, Limited Editions Press published A Man of Circumstance & Selected Yellow Mountain Poems 1946-1996. The Untoward Hills is marked in obvious and subtle ways as a spiritual journey. The first section, "The Hills of a Child" features poems where the solitary and lonely childhood on a mountain farm is centered around loss. The poet begins to look to nature as a substitute for parental guidance (Stewart was sent to live at the Hindman Settlement School at age five after the death of his mother) and as a way of knowing the world. The title poem of this section is a representative example of Stewart's epistemology of nature and of his poetic style. It is reprinted on page 8 of this magazine. Here we see not only the poetic tension of the bright "little lives" of insects and children being contrasted with the coming dark, but also some of the hallmarks of Stewart's early style and influences: the use of end rhyme but with irregular meter, allegiance to the Romantic notion of human activity conditioned by nature, and a fondness for Biblical cadence, as in the second stanza above. The knowledge of "bright things gone away" is emphasized in the next section of this collection. "The Outlying Hills" contains elegies and tributes that are pensive and sensitive responses to death and the passing of time. In "Mountain Funeral," for instance, a family prepares a coffin that Stewart describes in a hymn-like meter: Of curly pine from off the height This coffin shall be made To house the frugal shade Of one who fled into the hills of light. They praise with zeal the morbid shade In weeping and in psalm And have the bitter coffin made To guide the...

How does a non-ionic hydrophobically modified telechelic polymer interact with a non-ionic vesicle? Rheological aspects

The association between hydrophobically modified polyethylene glycol, HM-PEG, and non-ionic vesicles of tetraethylene glycol monododecyl ether, C12E4, was investigated. HM-PEG is in a triblock form, with an alkyl chain attached to each hydrophilic polymer-end. Such polymer structure is denoted as telechelic. The vesicle average radius was measured by self-diffusion measurements. The system exhibits both a monophasic gel and biphasic regions. The monophasic region was characterized from a theological point of view. We argue that the gel formation is due to the presence. of polymer crosslinks between different surfactant aggregates, once the polymer's hydrophobic moieties may adsorb into the vesicle bilayer. This association is strongly concentration dependent which is reflected in the monotonic increase of the storage modulus, relaxation time and shear viscosity with the addition of surfactant and/or polymer. (Less)

Specifics of theological questions in literature: sin in the texts of Aidas Marčėnas

The problem of this article arise from the challenges of interdisciplinary study of literature and theology – how to find a scientifically acceptable way of representing theological questions in literature, preserving the autonomy and at the same time highlighting common dialogically-based points of view of these two fields. The theological point of view to literature is based on its interest in the metaphorical, symbolical and image-based language of literature, which can express the deepest existential questions and transcendental dimensions of human essence. Literary theory deals with its autonomy and its connections with other fields of humanities: ethics, politics, and religion. Theological questions in literature might be viewed as individual religious experiences expressed in text and understood as representations of feelings and views that might be understood and perceived as common experience. Theological questions in literature are based on the specifics of the literary language of images and poetic language. Theological questions in literature also arise from its esthetic value and esthetic language. One of the methodological possibilities to deal with challenges of this interdisciplinary field might be to research what theological questions are, and how these questions arise in literature. Sin and guilt in the poetry of Aidas Marčėnas is reflected as individual and subjective theological question very much related with the understanding of human existence and creative nature.

The Starting Point of Systematic Theology

The article proposes that Bernard Lonergan's four-point hypothesis linking the four divine relations with four created participations in divine life can join with the theory of history proposed by Lonergan and developed by the author to form the unified field structure and so the starting point of a contemporary systematic theology. The hypothesis allows for a new form of the psychological analogy for the divine processions, one that is related to but distinct from the analogy found in Aquinas and the early Lonergan.

The Way of Aquinas: Its Importance for Moral Theology

This essay argues that, for Thomas Aquinas, nature always points in the direction of Christ. Therefore, moral theologies that proceed by way of nature in order to move beyond the confines of confessional traditions fail to read Aquinas well. Because Jesus is the Second Person of the Trinity, the exemplar in whom all things are made, nature cannot be a more universal category than Christology. Karl Barth critiqued Roman Catholic moral theology for failing to honour this essential theological point, wrongly attributing the error to Aquinas. However, many contemporary Catholic moral theologians have adopted the very understanding of nature Barth critiques, and are using Thomas to do so. This loses the ecumenical character of Aquinas’s work.

Strange Calling: A Theological Approach to Larkin

This essay inquires into Larkin's understanding of poetic vocation, a major theme of his work, and a fruitful starting point for an inquiry into his relationship to Christianity. He is deeply preoccupied with the question of whether his life and work should be understood as the response to a call. He often mocks this high Romantic idea, yet cannot get away from it. This open question is the key to the pathos of his work. The attempt to settle this question, to identify the source of his calling, leads to a flirtation with nihilism: vatic gloom offers the poet a suitably grand role. His pursuit of ‘undeceived’ honesty becomes a personal myth that entails a sort of anti-faith, a refusal of hope. But this is not to say that his work is essentially nihilistic, or anti-Christian. His pessimism includes a substantial interest in the idea of the Fall. From a theological point of view there is more wisdom in Larkin's gloom than in secular optimism.

Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology. By Gregory W. Woolfenden. Pp. xii + 326. (Liturgy, Worship and Society series.) Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. isbn 0 7546 1600 2 and 1601 0. Hardback £55; paper £16.99

As the title of the book implies, this work is as much an exercise in theology as in history. Indeed, whereas there is much history in this work, little in the work may properly be described as a discussion of the origin of daily liturgical prayer, as the main historical emphasis is laid on the period after Constantine, extending well into the medieval period. The theological point made is that the times of prayer in the daily office are not arbitrary, as is sometimes assumed, but convey a sacramentality, that in particular the vigil office is the key to this sacramentality, as the days and nights are alike marked out as times of looking for the presence of God, the offices marking a daily movement out of darkness into light, reflecting the resurrection of Christ as the dawning of a new day upon God's people. As already noted, the section dealing with the origins of daily liturgical prayer is brief. This is followed by more extended chapters dealing with developed offices in a vast range of eastern and western communities. It is in these chapters that the detailed historical scholarship within the book is to be found, as each tradition is investigated in detail, both employing and building on earlier works of specialist scholarship (including Woolfenden's own contribution to the study of the Spanish office) and essaying suggestions regarding the possible developments of these offices. The tables setting out the structures of all these offices are also extremely useful. Throughout these chapters, however, we do not lose sight of the author's fundamental theological conviction, which he attempts to demonstrate through reference to the psalmody, Scripture, and structure employed.

W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy (review)

Reviewed by: W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy Phyllis D. Airhart W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy. A. Donald MacLeod. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. Pp. 402, illus. b&w, $29.00 A. Donald MacLeod opens his biography of W. Stanford Reid with the image of a granite boulder in rural Quebec. It marks the site of Reid's church, where members of the family worshipped until it closed in 1952. Although students still recreate the area's past as a tourist attraction, MacLeod finds what remains 'strangely alien'; the cairn's inscription is an 'epitaph for a way of life irretrievably gone.' One wonders after reading this book if the same can be said of Stanford Reid's brand of Calvinism. The core of the book deals with Reid's confessional evangelicalism, which was rooted in Calvinist doctrine as presented in the Westminster Standards. MacLeod deftly analyses how it differed from related varieties, notably the dispensationalist theology of fundamentalism and the narrow morality of pietism. It differed as well from the liberal evangelicalism of those who founded the United Church of Canada in 1925. Church union divided not only the Presbyterian Church but Reid's own family, with his father and uncle taking different sides. He remained a critic of the doctrinal ambiguity he associated with the United Church's founding, but was just as dogged in confronting those in Presbyterian circles who were wandering toward the same slippery theological slope. This suspicion of ecumenism was reinforced by an ongoing relationship with Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he studied soon after it was founded by fundamentalist leader Gresham Machen. MacLeod is at his best as raconteur, presenting in graceful prose Reid's family life, academic accomplishments, theological battles, and complicated relationships. Along the way he attends to Reid's work as a historian at McGill, his witness to the end of Anglophone influence in Quebec higher education, and his move to Guelph to launch the Scottish Studies program. Although MacLeod uses words well, one occasionally wishes for a few less of them. Details such as the particulars of the purchase of a boat in a chapter on life at McGill may be an effort to [End Page 133] match the rich texture of the sections on church affairs (which sometime have the feel of 'family gossip' in their juicy tidbits). But occasionally words get in the way of effective analysis. For example, a blow-by-blow account of the dismissal of a Westminster Theological Seminary professor accurately portrays the defence of fine points of theology that set Reid apart from his Presbyterian co-religionists. But Reid himself tends to become lost in the minutiae of correspondence and board minutes. There are a few organizational slips as well. Reid's professional and religious activities are separated into chapters that overlap more or less chronologically, a strategy that is not always effective. Chapter 7 is a case in point. The title refers to the period 1951–62 and purports to deal with 'McGill during and after Duplessis.' It concludes with Reid's resigna- tion – in 1965. Meanwhile there is no significant analysis of the significance of Duplessis's defeat, and the situation of Anglophones in higher education in Quebec in that era is highlighted in a later chapter that covers (again) the period from 1958 to 1965. MacLeod suggests that Reid paid a professional price for his religious observance, but received little thanks for it in evangelical circles: They respected him as a 'secular' historian but declined to hire him when church history positions came open. His is also a cautionary tale of cultural and generational change – bruised by political wrangling time and again, considered too conservative for most of the next generation, and yet too liberal for some younger confessionalists. Those he mentored, including a group led by his biographer (who oddly refers to himself in the third person as 'Donald MacLeod' when describing events in which he was involved) moved in directions he could not support. Particularly intriguing is MacLeod's role in a Presbyterian renewal movement that Reid saw as a challenge to his own leadership of...

The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology ed. by David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz

BOOK REVIEWS The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology. Edited by DAVID BAGCHI and DAVID C. STEINMETZ. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. x + 298. $70.00 (cloth), $25.99 (paper). ISBN 0-521-77224-9 (cloth), 0-521-77662-7 (paper). This well-conceived volume of introductions makes clear the breadth and vigor of theological thought and writing in the sixteenth century in Europe. Sixteen scholars offer introductory accounts for nonspecialists of the main figures and schools, beginning with late medieval systematic theology, Lollardry, and the Hussite reformation. Some chapters are outstanding. E. Rummel is solid on Erasmus's genuinely theological contribution. S. Hendrix is concise but splendidly informative on Luther's teaching through the phases of his incredible productivity. R. Kolb charts well the movement of Lutheran theology through the controversies leading to the Formula of Concord (1577). D. Steinmetz surveys Calvin surehandedly, R. Muller exudes vigor and mastery on Reformed theology after Calvin, and W. 0. Packull clears a path through the maze of Anabaptist theological works. D. Bagchi is informative and thoughtful on early Catholic controversialists. Other chapters seem to have less to offer theologically, for example, on Cranmer and on writing in Reformation Scotland. The volume begins with the editors' introduction, emphasizing how a knowledge of theology is essential to understanding the world-historical event ofthe Reformation. They tell quite well how present-day scholarship situates the era's theology, that is, in relation to the wider sixteenth-century culture, to early modern confessionalizing drives in cities and principalities, and to the interaction between elites and the ordinary lives of believers. The bibliographies are generally good (for critical comments, see below). The volume's conclusion is accurate on directions for ongoing research, leading to an engaging final word to an intended student-reader. An index will serve well anyone wanting to study how the main figures handled major theological topics, such as baptism, the meaning of the Old Testament, the church, eucharist, God, justification, predestination, and sacraments. Problems and defects in the volume come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Some small flaws escaped editorial oversight, as when the author of the chapter on the Hussites speaks of "observation" where "observance" is meant (23) and of "conservation" for "consecration" (24). The Formula ofConcord is 289 290 BOOK REVIEWS wrongly dated in 1579 on page 135. Also, Steinmetz erroneously promotes Johann Gropper to be archbishop of Cologne (240). In the medium range of problems, the structure ofthe volume leads it to omit reference to valuable recent studies that treat significant areas of life (and death) in the Reformation era by studying topics across multiple authors and taking up the same issue in different confessional settings. One thinks of C. Eire, The War against the Idols (1986), on iconoclasm, and of B. Gregory, Salvation at Stake (1999), on martyrs and martyrological literature. Some lacunae limit the value of the bibliographies, beginning with omissions of some primary texts available in English, such as Jan Hus's "On Simony," in M. Spinka, ed., Advocates ofReform (1953); Martin Bucer's "The Kingdom of Christ," given in large part in W. Pauck, ed., Melanchthon and Bucer (1969); and Willam Tyndale's Answer to More in the critical edition by A. O'Donnell and J. Wicks (2000), in which this reviewer offered a concise account of Tyndale's impressive theological tenets. W. P. Stephens's chapter on Zwingli, which digests his Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (1992), notes the importance for the Zurich reformer of his reading of "Hoen's letter" (89), but then offers no help to one wanting to learn more about Hoen or even locate a copy of the letter. For this, one should consult H. A. Oberman, ed., Forerunners of the Reformation (originally 1966, newly released by James Clarke, 2003). Later in the volume, Packull presents the SchleitheimArticles as a good expression ofAnabaptist faith and community life, but offers no help toward finding the text of the Articles, which are given in M. G. Baylor, ed., The Radical Reformation (1991). Secondary studies deserving but not receiving mention in the Companion are R. Rex, The Lollards (2002) and G. Tavard, The Starting Point of Calvin's Theology (2000...

Memoir of Leo Baeck College

I entered Leo Baeck College in September 1979 as 50 percent of the Class of 1984; my co-student was William Wolff. It would be hard to conceive of two less similar people, yet we hit it off like a house on fire and remained close mates throughout our College years. I came from an academic background; my general Jewish knowledge was almost nil, but I'd already mastered Biblical Hebrew. Willie, a tabloid journalist, was steeped in Yiddishkeit but couldn't differentiate between a s h va na ' and a s h va nach. Our lecturers that first year must have been in hysterics over us. In those days, as now, entry to the College was by interview. But what an interview! It was divided into three parts: a general discussion with the full College Board, a psychological assessment and a financial review. The College was then housed in the schoolrooms of the West London Synagogue. The interview with the full Board was held in the Council Room of WLS. We were surrounded by portraits of the good and the great who had ruled over WLS for several decades. Despite the somber setting, I've rarely, if ever, attended such a nonchalant interview. Most of the time I sat bemused, listening to the rabbis on the Board debating an abstruse point of theology that had been unearthed by my innocent reply to some question or other. When Jonathan Magonet asked me why I wanted to become a rabbi, I said that I'd received a great deal from my Judaism as a child and adolescent, and I wanted to give something back to the community. Evidently, this was sufficient back then to get me into the course. My psychological assessment was with Wendy Greengross. Knowing that I'd come from several years as a lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Bristol, Wendy pointed to the pock-marked and graffiti-covered school desk between us and asked me whether I would honestly consider leaving the University, with all its wonderful facilities, for this (I recall that her voice italicised the word 'this'). I'm sure that my affirmative answer was evidence of

The Kiss of the Shekhinah: Narratives of Human and Divine Motherhood in the Holocaust

During the Holocaus Jewish mothers and their children were treated by the Nazis not as non-combatants but as enemies posing a direct racial threat to the Reich. This paper will use the recent research into gender and the Holocaust and oral histories of mothers and daughters who survived the Holocaust to show how woment experienced and resisted that status as "enemies" of the Reich. And more to the theological point, this paper will explore how those mothers' suffering and resistance to their own and their children's suffering signals towards another model of convenantal relation between God and Israel where God's promise to Israel in Leviticus 26: "I will be ever in your midst; I will be your God, and you shall be My people" need no longer be figured in terms of loyality and obedience to the commandment of an overbearing Lord.

Keats's Way of Salvation

Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering in order that they may have existence.--Leon Bloy (1) KEATS WAS AN INVETERATE SEARCHER AFTER TRUTH RATHER THAN ONE who ever felt he had firm grasp of it. As he wrote to Benjamin Bailey, have not one Idea of the truth of any of my speculations. (2) He lived, if any poet ever did, in Negative Capability--in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason (Letters 1: 193). For all this, though, he never stopped searching; just weeks after his remark to Bailey he wrote to his publisher: find I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge (Letters I: 271). As Dennis Haskell writes, like all poets he was implicitly concerned with questions of Unlike most poets he was also often explicitly concerned with the question of truth. (3) It is curious, then, that the critical view of Keats that has reigned virtually unchallenged through much of the twentieth century, at least since the 1940s, sees him as kind of modern skeptic, fully in tune with the values of post-Christian era. The work of Hoxie Neale Fairchild and Edward Bostetter may be cited as symptomatic, and Ronald Sharp's important study, Keats, Skepticism, and the Religion of Beauty, articulates the case fully and impressively. (4) It was not until the publication of Robert Ryan's Keats: The Religious Sense in 1976 that this orthodoxy came to be seriously questioned. (5) Since then, however, there has been relatively little study of issues in Keats. As Robert Prescott wrote in splendidly wide-ranging review of this question, because Ryan's work is so thorough, critics have made little more of the nature of Keats's more private thought. (6) When Ryan published Keats: The Religious Sense, over twenty-five years ago, my review in the Keats-Shelley Journal noted that one of the most remarkable things about this book is that it hadn't been written before. And yet it was perhaps only after it was written that one realized how much it had been needed. We do not, after all, commonly think of Keats as religious poet. And yet Ryan's book made convincing case that religion and speculation played far greater role in Keats's life, and in the forming of his imagination, than we had allowed ourselves to believe. Keats: The Religious Sense is not study of Keats's poetry. Ryan chose rather to focus on his life--and especially his letters--as means of determining the shape and evolution of Keats's personal creed. Because he finds the elements of Keats's poetry to be in large measure untraditional, Ryan suggests that it is helpful first to come to some understanding of Keats's basic theological point of view outside the poetry. He offers his study, therefore, as a sort of prolegomenon or preface to any further examination of the aspects of Keats's verse, as well as to the study of his most important pronouncements on the nature of poetry (6). The purpose of this essay is to apply Ryan's reading of Keats's life to the poet's great letter of spring 1819 to George and Georgiana Keats--notably the vale of soul-making passage--and to the poems most intimately linked with it: the Ode to Psyche and The Fall of Hyperion. In approaching dimensions of Keats's poetry, I suggest that middle path may be taken between, on the one hand, thoroughgoing skeptical and secularizing view and, on the other, view that would baptize Keats into something approaching Christian orthodoxy. As Prescott justly observes, we must pay serious attention to the deep ambivalence evident in Keats's (22), and sedulously avoid the error of militantly secularist critics in their imposition of subtle exclusion principle: the idea that since the poems and letters voice in places skeptical secularism, that the content of the same letters should therefore be ignored or devalued (23). …

The Matriarchs and the Torah of Hesed (Loving Kindness)

The Matriarchs and the Torah of Hesed (Loving-Kindness) Einat Ramon (bio) Dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers Rivkah Kahanov-Alpern and Ada Neubauer-Ramon, of blessed memory Introduction Like most of the ideological movements that have left their mark on Judaism over recent centuries, the feminist spirit, alive in Judaism for several decades, has introduced additions and changes to the liturgies used in Jewish worship. The most prevalent liturgical change, which is slowly filtering into egalitarian synagogues around the world and thence into the language of the modern siddur, is the addition of an invocation of the matriarchs (imahot) alongside that of the patriarchs (avot) in the opening blessing of the central prayer in the Jewish service, the Amidah: Blessed are you Adonai, God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel and God of Leah, the great, mighty and awesome God, the supreme God, Who bestows acts of loving-kindness and is Master of all, and Who recalls the loving-kindness of the Avot [patriarchs] and brings a Redeemer to their children's children, for the sake of His name, with love.1 Nevertheless, an interpretive-theological vacuum surrounds the meaning of the expression "God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel, and God of Leah," even among congregations that include it in their liturgy. In what follows, I shall argue that the invocation of the matriarchs should be seen as a reference to divine loving-kindness (hesed) as embodied in the personal example of the acts of loving-kindness that the matriarchs of the Israelite [End Page 154] nation brought to bear on their surroundings. These acts of loving-kindness are perceived in the midrash as an ultimate expression of the monotheistic-ethical perspective, in which loving-kindness is viewed as the epitome of the covenant between humans and the Divine.2 From a theological point of view, the version of the Avot blessing brought down in the traditional siddur emphasizes the memory of the acts of loving-kindness that God bestowed upon the patriarchs and of those that the patriarchs bestowed upon others. As we shall see below, this emphasis apparently reflects a theological-liturgical development in the understanding of God's covenant with the patriarchs. Where an earlier version of the blessing had emphasized God's granting of the land as an inheritance to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the later version implies that the essence of the blessing is to direct the consciousness of the person at prayer to the deeds of loving-kindness that lead to an encounter with the Divine. Simultaneously with this liturgical move, if not overtly related to it, beginning in the tannaitic period and particularly from the talmudic period onwards, a rich midrashic tradition developed that widens and magnifies the place of the matriarchs and gives their relationship with God a central place, sometimes one even more expansive than that described in the biblical text. This tradition, which until recently has remained marginal in Jewish consciousness, compares the status of Sarah, matriarch of the nation, to that of Abraham, the patriarch. It is occupied with the question of who the matriarchs were and discusses how God was revealed in their lives, often by way of expressions of personal piety that are characterized as deeds of loving-kindness. In some of these texts, the matriarchs' exemplary performance of such deeds leads God to prefer their merits over those of the patriarchs. These texts, which offer a different, sometimes revolutionary perspective regarding the status of the matriarchs in the shaping of Jewish religious consciousness, do not lessen the weight of the Sages' patriarchal worldview, on account of which the matriarchs were not mentioned in the patriarchal blessing and are largely absent from the siddur. Indeed, it would be inaccurate to attribute the Sages' interest in the religious experience of the matriarchs to an increasing appreciation for women or an aspiration to redress their inferior status; rather, their intention was to emphasize the presence of God in the small details of the matriarchs' everyday lives.3 The midrashim express a profound admiration...

THE MATRIARCHS AND THE TORAH OFHESED(LOVING-KINDNESS)

The Matriarchs and the Torah of Hesed (Loving-Kindness) Einat Ramon (bio) Dedicated to the memory of my grandmothers Rivkah Kahanov-Alpern and Ada Neubauer-Ramon, of blessed memory Introduction Like most of the ideological movements that have left their mark on Judaism over recent centuries, the feminist spirit, alive in Judaism for several decades, has introduced additions and changes to the liturgies used in Jewish worship. The most prevalent liturgical change, which is slowly filtering into egalitarian synagogues around the world and thence into the language of the modern siddur, is the addition of an invocation of the matriarchs (imahot) alongside that of the patriarchs (avot) in the opening blessing of the central prayer in the Jewish service, the Amidah: Blessed are you Adonai, God and God of our ancestors, God of Abraham, God of Isaac and God of Jacob, God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel and God of Leah, the great, mighty and awesome God, the supreme God, Who bestows acts of loving-kindness and is Master of all, and Who recalls the loving-kindness of the Avot [patriarchs] and brings a Redeemer to their children's children, for the sake of His name, with love.1 Nevertheless, an interpretive-theological vacuum surrounds the meaning of the expression "God of Sarah, God of Rebecca, God of Rachel, and God of Leah," even among congregations that include it in their liturgy. In what follows, I shall argue that the invocation of the matriarchs should be seen as a reference to divine loving-kindness (hesed) as embodied in the personal example of the acts of loving-kindness that the matriarchs of the Israelite [End Page 154] nation brought to bear on their surroundings. These acts of loving-kindness are perceived in the midrash as an ultimate expression of the monotheistic-ethical perspective, in which loving-kindness is viewed as the epitome of the covenant between humans and the Divine.2 From a theological point of view, the version of the Avot blessing brought down in the traditional siddur emphasizes the memory of the acts of loving-kindness that God bestowed upon the patriarchs and of those that the patriarchs bestowed upon others. As we shall see below, this emphasis apparently reflects a theological-liturgical development in the understanding of God's covenant with the patriarchs. Where an earlier version of the blessing had emphasized God's granting of the land as an inheritance to the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the later version implies that the essence of the blessing is to direct the consciousness of the person at prayer to the deeds of loving-kindness that lead to an encounter with the Divine. Simultaneously with this liturgical move, if not overtly related to it, beginning in the tannaitic period and particularly from the talmudic period onwards, a rich midrashic tradition developed that widens and magnifies the place of the matriarchs and gives their relationship with God a central place, sometimes one even more expansive than that described in the biblical text. This tradition, which until recently has remained marginal in Jewish consciousness, compares the status of Sarah, matriarch of the nation, to that of Abraham, the patriarch. It is occupied with the question of who the matriarchs were and discusses how God was revealed in their lives, often by way of expressions of personal piety that are characterized as deeds of loving-kindness. In some of these texts, the matriarchs' exemplary performance of such deeds leads God to prefer their merits over those of the patriarchs. These texts, which offer a different, sometimes revolutionary perspective regarding the status of the matriarchs in the shaping of Jewish religious consciousness, do not lessen the weight of the Sages' patriarchal worldview, on account of which the matriarchs were not mentioned in the patriarchal blessing and are largely absent from the siddur. Indeed, it would be inaccurate to attribute the Sages' interest in the religious experience of the matriarchs to an increasing appreciation for women or an aspiration to redress their inferior status; rather, their intention was to emphasize the presence of God in the small details of the matriarchs' everyday lives.3 The midrashim express a profound admiration...

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

The Search for Idols and Saints in Colonial Peru: Linking Extirpation and Beatification

'In die begin ...': oor vertrekpunte en die verstaan van tekste

'In the beginning ...': on points of departure and understanding texts This article renders a contribution to the discussion on evolution from a theological point of view. It is interested in laying bare the epistemological points of departure that are reflected in studies related to the creation-evolution debate, especially those behind recent interpretations of Genesis 1 and 2. In an argument mirroring Ricoeur’s central thesis, examples of a first naivete when reading the creation texts in the Bible are given. Next, a few examples of recent interpretations of the creation texts are given in order to indicate the present state of knowledge in the field. Lastly, one example is given in which these results were taken serious within a faith context, that led to what can be viewed as the development of a second naivete.

Des porte-parole protestants au chevet de l'édit de nantes moribond

L'article montre comment l'édit de Nantes (1598), qui avait été critiqué par les protestants français au moment où il fut promulgué, devint peu à peu pour eux le symbole de leur appartenance à la communauté nationale française et de la reconnaissance de leur spécificité religieuse. Mais c'est en définitive après sa révocation (1685) que cet édit prend, aux yeux des porte-parole huguenots, toute sa valeur. Réfléchissant d'un point de vue théologique, mais aussi historique, juridique et philosophique, ils y voient le symbole de la liberté religieuse. Cependant, c'est en faisant le deuil de leur statut perdu depuis la révocation de l'édit de Nantes qu'ils parviennent à développer une pensée originale à propos des rapports entre l'État et l'individu. Ils doivent pour cela distinguer le sujet ou Je citoyen d'une part, et Je croyant d'autre part. Or cette distinction impose de renoncer à la nostalgie d'un corps protestant, reconnu comme tel, au sein du royaume de France.

Preaching the Spirit: The Liberation of Preaching

AbstractThis article attempts to make a case for preaching as theological method for testing the veracity of systematic projects. Pneumatology is offered as a case study, especially for theologies where it is under-represented. More specifically, pneumatology is offered as a grounding point for Black Theology, which began as a ‘church project’ that needs to return to the church to offer and receive critique.

Die Auferweckung des Lazarus. Joh 11,1–44 als Zeugnis narrativer Christologie Die Auferweckung des Lazarus. Joh 11,1–44 als Zeugnis narrativer Christologie

In the detailed and carefully formulated text of John 11:1-44 there are two levels which are closely connected and which refer to one another continuously: the narrative level of the miracle story and the theological level, which expresses the true meaning of the reported event. Accordingly, the text has two points of major significance between which there exist not only clear parallels but a deep inner connection as well. The narrative high point is in the verses 38b - 44, and the theological high point in the verses 23-27 The exegetical analysis of these passages as well as that of the text as a whole shows the extent to which the story of the raising of Lazarus is a central document of Johannine Christology and of the soteriology which is based on it.