Sublime

Theologians are often the most cavalier in their treatment of the texts, chiefly because their first loyalty is usually to the grand systems of belief they have devised or adopted; but the Bible is not a system.

What makes the pastoral (or better, the ministerial) remain significant, even up against these transitions, is its ability to host an encounter with personhood. It appears, both in lived experience and the tradition, that divine action comes in and through personhood.

There is, in other words, a clear line all the way from Genesis 11, via Isaiah 40–55 and Daniel 7, to Mark 10, and thereby in turn to Mark 14–15, where Jesus meets his captors, his judges, and his death. He not only theorizes about the difference between pagan power and the kind of power he is claiming; he enacts it.

Relaying the Messages of God

Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy

God, as creator, intends his world to be looked after by humans, and that even when the humans who are supposed to be exercising that vocation are self-serving brutes, the mandate still stands, though they will be judged more severely for what they have done with their commission. Jesus’s affirmation of Pilate’s subordinate but God-given authority

from the perspective of the dominant class in Israel.

Week of Prayer #2: God’s Ongoing Creation

the right questions are finally being asked. There are some generational batons being passed. This is a crucial moment.