Attridge, Harold W I am honoured to be with you this evening for this year's Knox lecture. When Master Shane McKinlay, and Associate Dean Rosemary Canavan invited me for tonight's lecture they indicated that during these fiftieth anniversary years of the Second Vatican Council the Knox lecturers are being asked to reflect on the significance of that watershed event in the life of the Church. I shall do so this evening from both scholarly and personal vantage points, since my experience (...) as a student of scripture was shaped in fundamental ways by the spirit of Vatican II. My study of Scripture has developed in a context and among a fellowship of scholars who have pursued the vision sketched by the Council's document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum. We have also worked very much in the spirit of a subsequent document, the Pontifical Biblical Commission's paper, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church presented in 1993. I shall come back to both of those texts. But first, remember where we were fifty years ago. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on sacrifice in the context of Jewish and Christian scripture and is inspired by the thought and writings of Rene Girard. The contributors engage in a dialogue with Girard in their search for answers to key questions about the relation between religion and violence. The book is divided into two parts. The first opens with a conversation in which Rene Girard and Sandor Goodhart explore the relation between imitation and violence throughout human history, especially (...) in religious culture. It is followed by essays on the subject of sacrifice contributed by some of the most distinguished scholars in the field, including Bruce Chilton, Robert Daly, Louis Feldman, Michael Fishbane, Erich Gruen, and Alan Segal. The second part contains essays on specific scriptural texts. The authors explore new ways of applying Girardian analysis to episodes of sacrifice and scapegoating, demonstrating that fertile ground remains to further our understanding of violence in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. "In increasing numbers, scholars are turning to the mimetic theory espoused by Rene Girard in their research for answers to key questions about religion and violence. For the first time, the editors of this volume place in conversation with each other scholars who, from the perspective of Christian and Jewish traditions and scholarship, engage from the perspective of mimetic theory the sacrificial and antisacrificial features of ancient Judaism and early Christianity and explore their subsequent trajectories." --_Martha Reineke, University of Northern Iowa _. (shrink)

From Greco-Roman antiquity through to European enlightenment, philosophy and religious thought were inseparably interwoven. This book explores intellectual worlds of Abrahamic religious traditions, their approaches to scriptural hermeneutics, and their interaction over many centuries on common ground of inheritance of classical Greek philosophy.

Leading Particular Baptist theologian Benjamin Keach came to prominence just as an antitrinitarian theology native to England gained a stronghold. What had previously been deemed off-limits by the Establishment became a commonplace by the end of the seventeenth century based on a strict biblicism that eschewed the extra-biblical language of trinitarian orthodoxy. As one who considered himself a strong biblicist, Keach deftly maneuvered his theological writings between what he saw as two extremes: the one that refused to consider any language (...) that moved beyond the mere words of scripture, represented by many of his General Baptist contemporaries and the other that over-emphasized the role of tradition with no eye toward biblical truth, represented by the Roman Catholics. Keach’s explication of trinitarianism demonstrated that these two extremes did not have to be seen as competing with each other. Instead, the correct understanding of the Bible included ‘the just and necessary consequences’ that could be deduced from Scripture, and the ‘universal tradition’ aided the pastor theologian in ascertaining the truth. The result, for Keach and his audience, was an ancient view of trinitarianism that offered a way of peace between the the two extremes vying for the public ear in the late seventeenth century. (shrink)

For more than 30 years, historians have rejected what they call the ‘warfare thesis’ – the idea that there is an inevitable conflict between religion and science – insisting that scientists and believers can live in harmony. This book disagrees. Taking as its starting point the most famous of all such conflicts, the Galileo affair, it argues that religious and scientific communities exhibit very different attitudes to knowledge. Scripturally based religions not only claim a source of knowledge distinct from human (...) reason. They are also bound by tradition, insist upon the certainty of their beliefs, and are resistant to radical criticism in ways in which the sciences are not. If traditionally minded believers perceive a clash between what their faith tells them and the findings of modern science, they may well do what the Church authorities did in Galileo’s time. They may attempt to close down the science, insisting that the authority of God’s word trumps that of any ‘merely human’ knowledge. Those of us who value science must take care to ensure this does not happen. (shrink)

It may seem a bit perverse to argue that pluralism is a kind of dogmatism, since pluralists invariably define themselves as antidogmatists. Indeed, the world would seem to be so well supplied with overt dogmatists—religious fanatics, militant revolutionaries, political and domestic tyrants—that it will probably seem unfair to suggest that the proponents of liberal, tolerant, civilized open-mindedness are guilty of a covert dogmatism. My only excuse for engaging in this exercise is that it may help to shake up some rather (...) firmly fixed ideas about dogmatism held by those who advocate some version of pluralism. Dogmatism, I want to argue, has had a very had press, some of it deserved, some of it based in misunderstandings and ignorance. Much of that bad press stems, I will suggest, from the dominance of pluralism as an intellectual ideology since the Enlightenment. If “dogmatism” is a synonym for irrationality, infelixibility, and authoritarianism, the fault lies as much with pluralism as it does with any actual dogmatism. I’d like to begin, therefore, with a definition of dogmatism that comes, not from its pluralist foes, but from a historian of religion who treats it as a fairly neutral term, describing a complex and ancient feature of social institutions. This definition comes from E. Royston Pike’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Religions:DOGMA . A religious doctrine that is to be received on authority—whether of a Divine revelation, a Church Council, Holy Scripture, or a great and honoured religious teacher—and not, at least in the first instance, because it may be proved true in the light of reason. Almost always there is associated with dogma the element of Faith. The term comes from the Greek word for “to seem,” and it meant originally that which seems true to anyone, i.e. has been approved or decided beyond cavil. In the New Testament it is applied to decisions of the Christian church in Jerusalem, enactments of the Jewish law, and imperial decrees, all of which were things to be accepted without argument. A little later it had come to mean simple statements of Christian belief and practice; and it was not until the 4th century, when the heretics were showing how far from simple the basic Christian beliefs really were, that it acquired the meaning of a theological interpretation of a religious fact. Then came the division of the Church into a Western and an Eastern branch, and never again was it possible to frame a dogma that might be universally held. The 39 Articles of the Church of England, the principles deduced from Calvin’s “Institutes” and John Wesley’s “Sermons,” and the items that compose the Mormon creed may all be classed as dogmas.1 W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry, is professor of English and a member of the Committee on Art and Design at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. (shrink)

The role of witness is a recurring theme in the work of Stanley Hauerwas: it is through enacting the truth in a world of lies, through seeking peace in a world of violence, that witnesses show who God is, who we are, and what the world is like. The Necessity of Witness is a study of Hauerwas and his fascinating but complex understanding of witness. Ariaan W. Baan argues that Hauerwas's approach makes a significant contribution to current debates in systematic (...) theology on the relation between truth and life. Reading Hauerwas can be a precarious adventure. His rhetoric is overwhelming, but his argument is not always crystal clear and carefully formulated. With the help of semiotic and philosophical analysis and biblical exegesis, Baan articulates Hauerwas's intuitions, fills some of the gaps in his argumentation, and discloses hidden biases. The results of this analysis sometimes surprise. Baan notes that unexpected pericopes in Scripture such as Isaiah and Revelation support Hauerwas's account of witness, and concludes that his work offers insight into how in our late modern society such diverse groups as martyrs and pop stars offer implicit witness through their lives. (shrink)

A common Christian belief is that God loves universally, and that the Christian believer ought, likewise, to love universally. On standard analyses of love, loving universally appears unwise, morally suspect, or even impossible. This essay seeks to understand how the Christian command to love could be both possible and morally desirable. It considers two scriptural examples: Matthew’s trilogy of parables, and the Feast of the Tabernacles in the Gospel of John. I argue that God shows love to humanity through revealed (...) disclosure of vulnerability. In particular, God is universally willing to engage in collaborative action with human agents. I suggest that the Christian command can be satisfied by adopting an analogous willingness to share intentional actions with others. (shrink)

The results of Vatican II for the study of Scripture produced both expected and unexpected fruits. Those combined fruits provide the opportunity for some reflection on the current status of biblical scholarship in relation to the Church. This current status helps identify what we must appreciate and celebrate, but also helps identify remaining gaps to be filled. By assessing some of the gaps, the fruits of the second Vatican council are used to provide one way of approaching these remaining (...) gaps, and charting a hopeful way ahead. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Earthquake of 1906, the Christian Anarchy of Dorothy Day, and the Opened “Tomb” of René GirardAnn W. Astell (bio)The autobiographical writings of Dorothy Day (1897–1980) feature a childhood memory of catastrophe and conversion, her traumatic experience at age eight of the earthquake that rocked San Francisco and Oakland in 1906, leaving half of San Francisco in ruins and sending 50,000 refugees in flight from the burning city, many (...) of them in ferries across the bay. Day’s observations of the spontaneous behavior of people who helped one another at that time of crisis guided her later in dealing with the great crash of 1929 and the subsequent economic depression, during which, in 1933, she cofounded with Peter Maurin (1877–1949) the Catholic Worker Movement and its many Houses of Hospitality.Day’s experience of an anti-sacrificial civilization of love emerging spontaneously out of a chaotic situation of social crisis seems to challenge René Girard’s theory of the scapegoat-mechanism as the normative way of restoring order and peace to a community whose very existence is threatened by anarchy. A closer examination of Day’s experience and social thought in conversation with Girard’s reveals that Girard and Day agree about the violent origins of all culture, which Day envisages as revealed by an earthquake, Girard as concealed by a tomb—related foundational images that, as we shall see, Scripture scholars [End Page 19] find collocated especially in the final chapters of the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The difference between the two images—one natural and one man-made—should not, and indeed cannot, be overlooked, however. The earthquake and its social effect as observable phenomena force the consideration that Girard’s early formulations of his theory, which explicitly distanced it from naturalistic explanations of myth, need to be revised in a way that accords more closely with his own later, apocalyptic thought.In an article published recently in Contagion, Matthew Pattillo has shown that Girard’s writings parallel, and to some extent directly affected, those of Jacques Ellul,1 the noted Christian anarchist who cites Girard explicitly on occasion and whose many books, according to Mark and Louise Zwick, “influenced the later Catholic Worker Movement.”2 In this article, I follow Pattillo’s lead, going back in time in order to examine ways in which the mimetic theory of Girard illumines the early thought and practice of Day, highlighting the originality of Day’s Christian anarchism as a remedy for a culture founded on violence. Whereas Girard posits a prereligious phase of anarchic, contagious violence, to which the rituals and prohibitions of religious societies responded (thus distantly preparing the way for a secularized modernity in which “law and order” stand opposed to an ever-threatening “anarchy”), Day finds a freely chosen Christian anarchy the best cure for anarchic destruction and totalitarianism alike, thus forging what Pattillo calls a “‘third way’ beyond law, beyond morality, beyond chaos.”3 In the end, the prolonged crisis within which the Catholic Workers shape their anarchistic “new society” against an eschatological horizon confirms Girard’s apocalypticism, even as it serves to place it in conversation with the apocalyptic philosophy of history of the Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev (1874–1949), whose thought influenced Maurin and Day.4The Earthquake and the TombFor Girard, the tomb is the real and metaphoric evolutionary origin of human civilization. “Culture,” he writes,always develops as a tomb. The tomb is nothing but the first human monument to be raised over the surrogate victim, the first, most elemental and fundamental matrix of meaning. There is no culture without a tomb, and no tomb without a culture; in the end, the tomb is the first and only [End Page 20] cultural symbol. The above-ground tomb does not have to be invented. It is the pile of stones in which the victim of unanimous stoning is buried.5Moving from its literal, historical meaning in connection with a primeval murder, Girard elaborates the metaphorical significance of the tomb for culture as a whole. As a site serving two functions simultaneously—namely, those of honoring the dead and of concealing a corpse—the tomb... (shrink)

In his 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, Galileo argues for a “principle of limitation”: the authority of Scripture should not be invoked in scientific matters. In doing so, he claims to be following the example of St Augustine. But Augustine’s position would be better described as a “principle of differing purpose”: although the Scriptures were not written in order to reveal scientific truths, such matters may still be covered by biblical authority. The Roman Catholic Church (...) has rejected Galileo’s principle, opting rather for Augustine’s, leaving open the possibility of future conflicts between scientists and Church authority. (shrink)

Although T. H. Green is primarily remembered today as a moral and political philosopher, many of his philosophical concerns owe their origins to the Victorian crisis of faith in which a widespread belief in the literal truth of Scripture confronted seemingly incompatible scientific theories. Green attributed this crisis to the inability of science and religion to find accommodation in the popular version of empiricism widely accepted by educated men and women of his day. In his 371-page introduction to Hume’s (...) Treatise, Green argued that this philosophy was unacceptable, even on its own terms, and that it needed to be replaced with a new philosophy of life, one recognizing that both knowledge and human action are .. (shrink)

A Christian approach to the issues that constitute bioethics is inevitable for us who cherish the truth of historic, creedal, trinitarian Christianity. Scripture teaches and the Greek and Latin Church Fathers as well as the Reformers aver that man, created in the image of God, has an inherent, if vestigial, sense of right and wrong and a conscience however marred by the fall and by rebellion. We must believe that we share this most basic ecumenism with all humanity, not (...) because of rational observation and analysis of nature, but because Scripture reveals it. We who are convinced of the truth of historic, creedal, trinitarian Christianity have a high view of Scripture and hold it to be infallible and utterly trustworthy irrespective of the importance we assign to our specific post-biblical traditional distinctives. This is a narrower but much more vital ecumenism than the first. Faithful adherence to Scripture inevitably manifests itself in remarkably similar priorities and values, often, lamentably, not because of, but in spite of, ourselves. (shrink)

According to Wolterstorff, an accurate genealogy of rights begins, not with the late Middle Ages and the Enlightenment, but with the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The Gospel of Luke, Wolterstorff says, provides especially important witness, and he gives it considerable attention. Wolterstorff's careful analysis of Luke is both lexical and narratological. This paper argues that the lexical data of the Gospel of Luke does indeed lend some support to Wolterstorff's case. But the support is qualified since, in Luke, a critical (...) word group—the dikaio -family—is used in a way that emphasizes relationship to God rather than obligations to neighbor. The most important narratives and teachings of the Gospel lend similarly qualified support to Wolterstorff's genealogy. The paper concludes that while nothing in the Gospel of Luke is incompatible with the observation and defense of human rights, the program Luke sketches has another focus that a comprehensive reading of that Gospel must keep in view. (shrink)

At the time of his death in the autumn of 2017, Robert W. Jenson was arguably America's foremost theologian. Over the course of a career spanning more than five decades, much of Jenson's thought was dedicated to the theological description of how Scripture should be read-what has come to be called theological interpretation. In this rapidly expanding field of scholarship, Jenson has had an inordinate impact. Despite its importance, study of Jenson's theology of scriptural interpretation has lagged, due in (...) large part to the longevity of his career and volume of his output. In this book, all of Jenson's writings on Scripture and its interpretation have been collected for the first time. Here readers will be able to see the evolution of Jenson's thought on this topic, as well as the scope and intensity of his late-period engagement with it. Where other twentieth-century thinkers rely on non-theological, secular methods of scriptural investigation, Jenson is willing to let go of "respectability" for the sake of a truly Christian theological interpretation. The result is a genuinely free, intellectually invigorating exercise in reading and theory from one of the greatest theologians in the last century. (shrink)

Several scholars have claimed that the decline of revealed or Scriptural mysteries in the early Enlightenment was a consequence of the trajectories of Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reformed theology's fideistic stance, it is claimed, undermined earlier frameworks for relating reason to revealed mysteries; consequently, rationalism emerged as an alternative to such fideism in figures like the Cambridge Platonists. This article argues that Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century were not fideists but re‐affirmed Medieval claims about the (...) eschatological concord of reason and revealed mysteries. Furthermore, the article suggests that early Enlightenment attitudes to religious mysteries owe more to innovations in Socinianism and Cambridge Platonism than to mainstream Reformed theology. (shrink)

A very slight reading of Clement of Alexandria is enough to prove how deeply he is indebted to Plato both in respect of language and of thought. Quotations from Plato are to be found throughout Clement's works, and in many cases acknowledgment is made of their origin. In addition there are frequent allusions, which for the most part the student of Plato can easily recognize. Clement invariably shows a profound respect for the Greek philosopher, whom he looks upon as a (...) seeker after truth and as an authority, we may almost say, second only to the Scriptures. A careful comparison of the Protrepticus with the Phaedrus, results of which are given below, will furnish a striking illustration of the close dependence of Clement upon Plato. The Protrepticus is a short work, occupying in space not more than one–twelfth of Clement's extant writings, while the Phaedrus is even smaller in proportion to the whole of Plato. It is remarkable that so much inter-connexion should be found in so small a field, especially when we remember that the references to the Phaedrus represent by no means the whole of Clement's drawing upon Plato in the Protrepticus. There are allusions also to the Theaetetus, Republic, Charmides, Laws and Epistles, and possibly to the Politicus, Cratylus, Philebus, Symposium and Apology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 287-292 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China Original Tao: Inward Training and the Foundations of (...) Taoist Mysticism. By Harold D. Roth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. xv + 275 pp. Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China. By Livia Kohn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. xii + 281 pp. Taoist Tradition and Change: The Story of the Complete Perfection Sect in Hong Kong. By Bartholomew P. M. Tsui. Hong Kong: Chinese Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 1991. 207 pp. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. By Kenneth Dean. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xii + 406 pp. Buddhism in China has many forms: sometimes functioning as a foreign object provoking attraction, rivalry, or persecution, and at other times being so integrated that it epitomized or completed Chinese culture. Although the elite monastic community maintained its distinctive Buddhist identity throughout its history, the story of the various forms of popular appropriation of Buddhist elements beyond the monastic [End Page 287] walls is just beginning to be studied. Probably the most important arena where Buddhism became part of Chinese culture is its mixture with Daoist practice, but only in the 1990s have Daoist studies evolved to the point where the Buddhist presence can be traced and evaluated. The four books listed above are among a shelf-full of new studies on Daoism that offer resources for exploring the complex relationships among Buddhism, Daoism, and Chinese culture.The study of the Inner Training by Harold Roth clarifies a core practice within early Daoism that was later integrated--usually without acknowledgment--as a central practice by both Confucianists and Buddhists, especially Ch'an. In contrast, the definitive study by Livia Kohn of the Xiaodao lun shows a carefully constructed Buddhist attack on Daoist scriptures. During the last millennium, the two most influential integrations of the three religions--Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism--were achieved by Wang Chong-yang (1113-1170) and Lin Zhao-en (1517-1598). Bartholomew Tsui offers an important field study of the liturgical practices of the contemporary followers of Wang as embodied in Hong Kong temples of Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism, while Kenneth Dean provides a massive field report of over one thousand temples of the Xiajiao movement in contemporary Fujian Province that revere the teachings of Lin Zhao-en as Lord of the Three-in-One. All four books provide rich materials for reflecting on interreligious encounter in China.The archaeological discovery of lost Chinese texts has made clear that the Lao-tzu is no earlier than the beginning of the third century b.C.E. and did not exist at the time of Confucius. Harold Roth's book argues that earlier than the book of Lao-tzu there was a movement of internal cultivation that was first expressed in two fourth-century b.C.E. texts, the first seven chapters of Chuang-tzu and a text found among the seventy-six texts in the Kuan-tzu that Roth calls Inner Training. Roth proposes that this latter text constitutes the "original Tao" in the sense that it is the core practice embodied in those thinkers who were grouped together by later historians. Roth observes that the earliest identification of a Daoist school (daojia) by Ssu-ma T'an about 110 b.C.E. emphasized techniques or practices, "not the philosophies that developed along with them and that support them.... Techniques must be seen as a way to define pre... (shrink)

Attempts to explain the authority of Scripture by theories of inspiration and inerrancy are futile. The authority of Scripture resides in its several actual functions, indispensable to Christian worship, thought, and life.

In his 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Lorraine, Galileo argues for a “principle of limitation”: the authority of Scripture should not be invoked in scientific matters. In doing so, he claims to be following the example of St Augustine. But Augustine’s position would be better described as a “principle of differing purpose”: although the Scriptures were not written in order to reveal scientific truths, such matters may still be covered by biblical authority. The Roman Catholic Church (...) has rejected Galileo’s principle, opting rather for Augustine’s, leaving open the possibility of future conflicts between scientists and Church authority. (shrink)

Hsieh Liang-tso was one of the leading direct disciples of Ch'eng Hao and Ch'eng I, the two brothers who were the early leaders of the Confucian revival known as Neo-Confucianism in Northern Sung China. Hsieh was thus among the first to recognize and follow the insights of the Ch'eng brothers as definitive of the authentic Confucian tradition, a recognition that became the conviction of the majority of later Confucian scholars and practitioners. The present book is a focused analysis of the (...) core value of Confucian thought, namely jen, through an investigation of Hsieh Liang-tso's analysis of the Analects of Confucius. Selover argues that Hsieh's handling of key issues in interpreting and applying the Confucian Analects, his experiential reasoning and his deference to scriptural classics and earlier tradition, bear important similarities to the practice of theology in Western religious traditions. The volume also contains a translation of Hsieh's commentary on the Analects, as well as a foreword by the renowned scholar of Confucianism, Tu Wei-ming. (shrink)