Saturday, March 31, 2012

Stealing from churches

"in almost every case where [twentieth-century evangelical] theology has provided guidance for broader intellectual work, that theology has featured insights, not from dispensationalism or other twentieth-century evangelical innovations, but from classical traditions like Anglicanism, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism, Lutheranism, or even Eastern Orthodoxy."

     Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 138.  More poetic are the final two paragraphs on p. 137.

In necessariis, parum ab Evangelicalismo

"much of what is distinctive about American evangelicalism is not essential to Christianity."

     Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 243.

"The tendency of American evangelicals, when confronted with a problem, is to act. For the sake of Christian thinking, that tendency must be suppressed."

     Mark A. Noll, The scandal of the evangelical mind (Grand Rapids, MI:  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), 243.
    
     "Meanwhile, activists condemned the 'ponderous think approach,' wanting to get on with political action already."

     David R. Swartz, "Politics and the fragmenting of the 1970s evangelical left," Religion and American culture:  a journal of interpretation 21, no. 1 (Winter 2011):  102 (81-120).  This is much funnier in context.  Swartz may not have intended it to, but the comedy just builds and builds.  Take this, for example:  "But even after most in the evangelical left had come to a consensus on gender equality, many found dilemmas of gender roles difficult to navigate.  Among Post-Americans, who tried to promote mutuality by sharing household duties, gender conflict nonetheless prevailed.  According to member Jackie Sabath, the 'deep reservoir of conscious and unconscious attitudes and behaviors we had accumulated throughout our twenty-some years of being either male or female' contributed to the collapse of its intentional community" (93-94).  "'our twenty-some years of being either male or female'"?  One gets it eventually, but is tickled at first.  And especially in the context of the narrative of a history of such (in this case not just evangelical but typically leftist) condemnations and ultimata.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The source of a sentence Zacharias Ursinus attributes to Justin Martyr

UrsinusQuemadmodum Justinus ait, Crede & ubique praesentem esse λόγον secundum substantiam, & singulari modo existere in proprio templo.  As Justin said, Believe both that the λόγος is everywhere present according to [his] substance and that [he] exists in a singular way in his own temple.  Zacharias Ursinus, Opera theologica (1612), vol. 2, p. 61 i.e. 65 (Responsio ad quintam Censuram, Quaestio XLIIX, Responsio).

Pseudo-Justinπίστευε καὶ παρεῖναι πανταχοῦ κατ' οὐσίαν τὸν λόγον καὶ κατ' ἐξαίρετον λόγον ὑπάρχειν ἔν τῷ οἰκείῳ ναῷ.  Crede etiam eum ubique secundum essentiam adesse et praecipua quadam ratione esse in proprio templo.  Believe that he is everywhere present according to [his] essence and that [he] is in a certain extraordinary way in his own temple.  Ἔκθεσις ὀρθῆς πίστεως/Expositio rectae fidei 15.  =Corpus apologetarum Christianorum saeculi secundi, 3rd ed., ed. de Otto, vol. 4 =tom. III pars I, Opera Iustini subditicia, Fragmenta pseudo-Iustini (Jena:  1880), 387B (p. 54).
     For more on the  Ἔκθεσις ὀρθῆς πίστεως or ὁμολογίας/Expositio rectae fidei, see Altaner, Patrology (London:  1960), pp. 369-370, 397-398 (where some of the literature on it is cited), and 114 (for the reference to the edition by de Otto); and Quasten, Patrology, vol. 1 (Utrecht:  1950), p. 207 (on the Expositio fidei seu De Trinitate, which falls under the "number of pseudo-Justinian works" contained in the manuscripts).  Very helpful in tracking this down was the version of the following in HTML onlineJohn S. Romanides, "Highlights in the debate over Theodore of Mopsuestia's Christology and some suggestions for a fresh approach," Greek Orthodox theological review 5:2 (1959/1960):  174 (40-185).
     With thanks to Lugene Schemper and Drew McGinnis for the diversion.

     The version in Ursinus without the ampersands:  Crede et ubique praesentem esse λόγον secundum substantiam, et singulari modo existere in proprio templo.