Canter Bridge

For the very sensitive, the sages’ reflections on the paradigmatic foreign woman make for tough reading.

‘It just goes to show you’—the vocabulary of offended morality leaps too easily to the lips—’how bigoted, sexist, and self-excusing religious men can be.’ (more…)

Read Full Post »

It is easy to grow too comfortable with Paul’s body metaphor of the Christian community.

We are all unique. Each has his own gift, every one her individual perspective. Let each go his own way without fussing about or—more conveniently—being messed with for the individual slant of the ego one adds to the mob.

If these are Paul’s words, they are not his meaning. Only an intoxication with four centuries of individualism in the West allows us to slouch to the conclusion that this is the apostle’s teaching. (more…)

Read Full Post »

It ain’t easy gettin’ smart.

Nor does wisdom come gently to the passive. On the contrary, moving from naiveté or even foolishness to wisdom is, from the perspective of the Bible’s wisdom tradition, an athletic accomplishment. It requires the same consistent, self-denying discipline that takes an athlete to the competition level. (more…)

Read Full Post »

The biblical psalmists possess the uncanny ability to counterpose the joy of the righteous to the desolation of the wicked without actually inciting anyone to slaughter. Engaging Israel’s soul in ideological self-definition relieves her of the need to carry out vengeance on those who love evil or, in some cases, those who hate Zion.
(more…)

Read Full Post »

It is difficult to know what pleases God.

Religions the world over have diverse opinions about how to achieve divine felicity. Often the prescription involves some measure of intentional human suffering, as though celestial happiness were a zero-sum game that demands the shrewd balancing of joy and misery in order that everyone should have his barely adequate share. As with most negotiated settlements, everybody ends up grumpy. But at least the worst extremes of heavenly ire can be stopped by this means. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Psalms 77 and 78 both peer intently into the past, even to the point of employing the same vocabulary to access it, to render it recoverable by defining it with words.

Yet the two poets see a different picture. The author of the seventy-seventh psalm views a glorious past from within the painful longings of a present in which God has absented himself. Indeed, his pathos-filled language dares to suggest that God has changed. The deity of those good years no longer dwells with his people:
(more…)

Read Full Post »

Few selections of Paul’s written discourse with his followers cause as much consternation as the seventh chapter of his letter to the Romans. The latter portion of this chapter is taken up with the struggle of an ‘I’, the identity of which is one of biblical interpretation’s great conundra. (more…)

Read Full Post »

Theologians would eventually invent the term ‘mystical union’ to describe the solidarity between Christ and his follower that the apostle Paul is at pains to describe in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Roman believers. Others would talk about ‘covenantal solidarity’, a way of underscoring that God the Father views believers in the same terms by which he assesses the beloved son, since the former have seen their identity inseparably and even juridically joined to that of Christ. (more…)

Read Full Post »