Monastery of the Holy Cross

I mentioned in my previous post that I would be starting a series of apologetic posts in reference to the ‘new atheism’.  I had intended yesterday to answer some questions from the Galatians series, but after I went back and looked at the questions, it appeared that I had answered them or that Bob had [...]

Another exegetical example in Kahl’s last chapter is somewhat weaker than her observations regarding Paul’s anathema, but nevertheless I found both persuasive.  Her claim is that Paul is also using allusions to the Exodus to frame his argument.  These repeated allusions to normative Jewish categories reinforces the idea that Paul is teaching from within the [...]

Before I complete my review of Brigitte Kahl’s excellent book, I wanted to follow up yesterday’s post with an explanation of the relevance of this long series.  I’m hoping that it has not come across as too ‘academic’, since the central point of this is very important in my opinion, and not nitpicking over interpretive [...]

Brigitte Kahl, in Galatians Re-Imagined, also does some intriguing textual work on Paul’s letter.  I would like to see more, but the book is already plenty long, and perhaps she or someone else will follow the implications of her study to their full conclusions in the interpretation of Galatians.  In any case, two points in [...]

Cassian and Evagrius both see the logismoi (tempting thoughts) as connected to each other, and as I mentioned last week, the division of thoughts into categories is not meant to suggest that we begin by defeating gluttony and then graduate to lust, and one by one work our way to holiness. Rather, these categories assist [...]

“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: ‘The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.  ’I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is; you hold fast my name and you did not deny my faith even in the days of Antipas my witness, my faithful one, who was killed among [...]

Brigitte Kahl’s excellent book Galatians Re-examined suffers at times from a certain overload of academic speech and jargon, along with ’semiotic square’ diagrams which, in my humble opinion, don’t advance the argument much if at all.  But much of the wealth of information is worth taking one’s time to wade through, as she paints a [...]

I sang for six years in the ecumenical choir at Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago.  Dean Bernard Brown, an Episcopalian with High Church leanings–very appropriate to the space–maintained the venerable tradition of learned Protestant Sunday sermons.  All of this was quite new to me, and fellow choristers more conversant in American Protestantism helped [...]

This week I would like to move on to some practical applications and reflections on the beginnings of praktike. We are composite creatures, made both of matter and of spirit. Therefore, sin affects us on both of these levels, although properly speaking, it is only owing to our spiritual nature that we are able to [...]

I took a break recently from translating Paul’s letter to the Galatians because I wanted a bit more time to standardize my choices of words with reference to arguments later in the letter.  In the meantime, I came upon a fantastic book, quite by happenstance (=Providence).  Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished [...]