Admiration

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Again, we read of St. Matthew (Mt 9) that, at the call of the Lord he “arose and followed Him.” St. Chrysostom comments: “See the obedience of this man thus called. He neither refuses to obey, nor begs that he may go home to acquaint his kinsfolk of his departure.” And Remigius also observes of St. Matthew that he made no account of the dangers which he might incur from the anger of the magistrates, when he left their business unfinished. Thus, it becomes plain that nothing human ought to deter us from the service of God. We read in the Gospel of St. Matthew (8:21), and again in that of Luke (9:59) that “one of His disciples said to Him: ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ But Jesus said to him: ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.’” St. Chrysostom, writing on these words, says: “Christ spoke thus, not as contemning the love which we owe to our parents, but to show us that nothing ought to seem more necessary to us than the affairs of the Kingdom of Heaven. He would teach us that with our whole heart, we ought to attach ourselves to them, letting nothing, however important or attractive, to be an obstacle in our way. What would seem more necessary than to bury one’s father? What more easy? It would not have taken much time. But the devil is always on the alert to find some unguarded door, and if he perceive a slight negligence, he will cause it to become great cowardice. Therefore the wise man says: Defer not, from day to day. By these words he warns us not to waste a moment of time and, although numberless affairs may be pressing upon us, to prefer spiritual interests to all other things, even to such as are necessary.” St. Augustine says in De verbis Domini: “Your father is to be honoured, yes, but God must be obeyed. Christ says, ‘I call you to preach the Gospel. You are necessary to me for my task. My work is greater than is that which you desire to perform. There are others who can bury the dead. The first thing must not give place to the last. Love your parents, but prefer God to them.’” If then our Lord refused to grant His disciple a short time in which to perform so necessary a duty, how great is the presumption of those who teach that lengthy deliberation is necessary before embracing the Counsels?

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  Although it is likely to be the case, as Marmorstein said, that the view that the righteous suffer here in order to be rewarded hereafter was precisely formulated and emphasized by Akiba, the idea was not altogether new. It seems to be presupposed in a saying by R. Akiba's older contemporary, R. Eliezer. In discussing God's giving the manna to the Israelites despite their frequent disobedience, he comments, 'If God thus provided for those who provoked Him, how much the more will He in the future [le 'atid /abo'J 117 Marmorstein, The Names and Attributes of God, p. 186. Urbach has argued that R. Akiba dissoci ated suffering from punishment for transgression. On R. Akiba's position, see my 'R. Akiba's View of Suffering', JQR n.s. 63, 1973, pp. 332-51. 118 Gen. Rab. 33. 1. There is a parallel in Lev. Rab. 27. 1. 119 See the beginning of section 6. 120 Sifre Deur. 53 (12of.; to 11.26). 121 Sifre Num. rn3 (102; to 12.8b); cf. ARN 25 (ET, p. rn6). See further ARN 39 (ET, p. 162). Tannaitic Literature [I pay a good reward to the righteous!' 122 In any case, this is a relatively small development within the general idea that the suffering of the righteous is to be explained as God's just punishment for their few sins. 123 Having been punished here, they need not be punished hereafter. Thus Israel is compared to a vessel of common earthenware which, having been broken, cannot be 'punished' further. 'Thus when punishment ceases from Israel, it will not return upon them in the future.' 124 This discussion shows again how incorrect the weighing idea is as an accurate reflection of the views of the Tannaim. It follows logically from their conception of the justice of God, and is sometimes stated. But they also thought that God had provided means of atonement which were both thoroughly efficacious and also in accord with his justice. If salvation be viewed as God's activity, then sufferings may be said to satisfy God's just require ment; one is not both punished and damned for transgression. 125 But internally, sufferings are seen by the religious man as moving him to examination and repentance. The Rabbis did not see suffering as God's just punishment for transgression and suffering as God's means of urging man to repentance as in any way in conflict. Both statements spring from deeply held religious convictions (God is just and man is liable to sin and in need of repentance) and both can be expressed by saying that suffering brings atonement. 126

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  the landmaRk woRk that launched an eRa This remarkable book has shaped a generation of scholarship. A new foreword by Mark A. Chancey outlines Sanders’s achievement, reviews the principal criticisms raised against it, and describes the legacy he leaves future interpreters. Praise for Paul and Palestinian Judaism s a n d e R s “Paul and Palestinian Judaism revolutionized New Testament studies. This great book began the serious academic retrieval of Second Temple Judaism as the defining context, in positive ways, of Paul’s life and work. Brilliantly analyzing a broad range of early Jewish texts, Sanders likewise exposed the deep and abiding anti-Judaism afflicting—and disfiguring—centuries of Christian scholarship. Both intellectually and morally, his writing sounded a summons that has reshaped an entire field of study. If, in the forty years since its first publication, things have begun to change, it is thanks to Sanders, and to the enduring achievement of Paul and Palestinian Judaism.” Pau la FRed Ri kse n hebrew University, Jerusalem “E. P. Sanders’s Paul and Palestinian Judaism is a modern classic. It changed the way we look at Paul and the way we look at ancient Judaism. Forty years later, it is still worth reading and worth arguing about.” shaye J. d. c o hen harvard University “For New Testament students still trapped in Billerbeck-and-Kittel scholarship, the book will be revolutionary. For everyone who tries to understand early Judaism or the Christian move- ment that emerged from it, Sanders’s work requires a thorough rethinking of our assumptions.” wayne a. m ee ks, professor emeritus yale University e . P. s a n d e R s is Arts and Sciences Professor of Religion Emeritus at Duke Univer- sity and has taught at McMaster University and Queen’s College, Oxford. His landmark works include, from Fortress Press, Comparing Judaism and Christianity (2016), Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (2016), Jesus and Judaism (1985), and Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983). Religion / New Testament P a l e s t i n i a n J u d a i s m P a u l a n d 4 0 t h a n n i v e R s a R y e d i t i o n P a u l a n d P a l e s t i n i a n J u d a i s m A C o m p A r i s o n o f p A t t e r n s o f r e l i g i o n e . P. s a n d e R s W i t h A f o r e W o r d b y m A r k C h A n C e y Also by E. P. Sanders, from Fortress Press Paul, the Law, and the Jewish People (1983) Jesus and Judaism (1985) Paul: The Apostle’s Life, Letters, and Thought (2015)

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?' One need not accept all that Tolstoy says—some of his facts are not accurately stated—to realize the central truth of his indictment of the present system, which is to understand and act upon the irresistible power of the soul over the body, of love, which is an attribute of the soul, over the brute or body force generated by the stirring in us of evil passions. There is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavours to practise what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention. [19th November, 1909 ] M. K. GANDHI A LETTER TO A HINDUBy Leo Tolstoy All that exists is One. People only call this One by different names. THE VEDAS. God is love, and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him. I JOHN iv. 16. God is one whole; we are the parts. EXPOSITION OF THE TEACHING OF THE VEDAS BY VIVEKANANDA. ITable of ContentsDo not seek quiet and rest in those earthly realms where delusions and desires are engendered, for if thou dost, thou wilt be dragged through the rough wilderness of life, which is far from Me. Whenever thou feelest that thy feet are becoming entangled in the interlaced roots of life, know that thou has strayed from the path to which I beckon thee: for I have placed thee in broad, smooth paths, which are strewn with flowers. I have put a light before thee, which thou canst follow and thus run without stumbling. KRISHNA. I have received your letter and two numbers of your periodical, both of which interest me extremely. The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late. I will try to explain to you what I think about that subject in general, and particularly about the cause from which the dreadful evils of which you write in your letter, and in the Hindu periodical you have sent me, have arisen and continue to arise. The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same—whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality.

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  representing all Gentile sovereignty, will be brought crashing down. Nonetheless, Daniel is not suggesting rebellion. The promised kingdom will only come about long after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Eschatology is deferred. For the present, the Jews in Babylon are quite content in the service of the Gentile king. The political order will be set right in God’s good time. Nebuchadnezzar expresses admiration for Daniel’s god and appoints Daniel ruler over the whole province of Babylon. He does not seem to perceive the threatening character of the prophecy. But then the exaltation of the hero is part of the genre, a stock ending to a tale such as this. We shall see an even more incongruous ending in the story of Belshazzar in chapter 5. Daniel 3 Daniel’s companions, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, play no role in chapter 2, although they are said to be promoted at the end, at Daniel’s request. Conversely, Daniel plays no role in chapter 3. Most probably, these stories were originally independent of each other. The drama of chapter 3 revolves around a demand by King Nebuchadnezzar that all the officials of his kingdom worship a giant statue that he had set up (it is not clear whether the statue represents a god or Nebuchadnezzar himself). Babylonian kings are not otherwise known to have made such demands. The Jews, alone among the king’s officials, are presented with a dilemma, because of the exclusive character of their religion. We do no know of any incidents where Jews were confronted with such a problem before the second century B.C.E. and the persecution initiated by Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria that led to the Maccabean revolt. Since Daniel 7–12 clearly reflects the Maccabean era (168– 164 B.C.E.), some scholars have argued that Daniel 3 comes from the same time. But there are notable differences between the two situations. Worship of a statue was not an issue in the Maccabean crisis. (Later, in the first century C.E., the Roman emperor Caligula provoked a crisis by trying to install his statue in the Jerusalem temple.) More importantly, the martyrs of the Maccabean era were not rescued from death: their hope was for vindication after death by resurrection

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  The aqueduct at Pisidian Antioch was built sometime during the early part of the first century, and it brought ice-cold water from springs 7 miles away at a higher elevation of about 1,000 feet. The route curved a bit along the contours of the land, but to reach the city, it had to tunnel through hills and cross gullies and valleys with arched bridges. The underground vaulted channels were made of rough stone and mortar and accessible through regularly spaced manholes that had ladderlike footholds cut into their shafts, so that workers could climb down and clear obstructions or repair leaks. The bridges and raised sections of the aqueduct were uniformly spaced, shaped arches were elevated with appropriately sized piers, and some of them stand to this day 30 feet above the ground. Once inside the city, the water was put to various uses. Although as yet unexcavated, we can presume that, as at Pompeii, drinking water was fed to elite houses and neighborhood fountains, with excess water flushing sewage through belowground channels. A U-shaped nymphaeum, or fountain complex dedicated to the nymphs or river goddesses and pure-water guardians, is visible today where the water entered the city. Aesthetically it was an oasis-like structure at the end of a long street with bronze statuary, colored marble sheeting, and dedicatory inscriptions that proclaimed the city’s wealth and abundance. At Pisidian Antioch’s other side, just inside the main city gate, water cascaded down decorated waterfalls into a semicircular fountain. It greeted visitors with a soothing sound, but also established an aura of abundance. Its shade and marble walls functioned like an air conditioner on those hot summer days atop the western Anatolian plateau. All that water was controlled, of course, by the city’s urban elites, who managed its distribution as they saw fit—it was taken from the countryside to the city, and there used primarily for bathing and beautification, as the blessings of Roman rule spread to Galatia. Interlude: The Diaspora Synagogue Before turning from the Romanization of all the Galatians by Augustus to the Christianization of some Galatians by Paul, we pause to look at the importance of the Jewish diaspora synagogue. Our theory has been that Paul went to those diaspora synagogues not to convert his fellow Jews, but to convert their pagan God-worshipers to Christianity. This section emphasizes the religio-political and socioeconomic importance of those synagogues as the interface of paganism and Judaism by taking one fascinating example. It is probably an example we might never have imagined unless we had inscriptional evidence for its existence. Synagogue Manumissions

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Nyasaland, which had a pit-prison, and where a man died after receiving over two hundred lashes. Andrew Chirnside reported to the Royal Geographical Society: ‘Flogging with the whip is an everyday occurrence, three lads in one day getting upwards of 100 lashes; and it is a fact that after being flogged on several occasions, salt has been rubbed on their bleeding backs.’ He claimed he had seen a man executed without trial. In 1883 there was a similar case in Nigeria where a woman died after she had been beaten and had red pepper rubbed in her wounds. These cases were rare, and caused uproar. More damaging, in the long run, was the gentle deprecation of missionary work by travellers like Mary Kingsley, whose Travels in West Africa (1897) was a huge success; she hinted that the natives were probably better if left alone, polygamy and all, and she poured scorn on missionary efforts to dress African women in the asexual ‘Mother Hubbard’. In general, though, missionaries were held in high esteem, and reporting on their work was almost universally favourable. The pattern of hero-worship was set by the Livingstone legend, and in the late nineteenth century they provided a new type of hero for European, and still more American, society. Their competitors for fame, imperialists and business tycoons, had their opponents; but to all except a tiny minority, the missionaries seemed harmless as well as valiant. Biographies of well- known missionaries sold in large editions, and formed a special department of literature. S. W. Partridge, the leading performer in the field, wrote no less than thirty-six; and they often had children’s editions. For the Catholics, the missionary became a new type of saint, and even the Protestants indulged in hagiography. There were children’s games, such as The African Picture Game ; What Next?, which had thirty-six cards, four series of nine each devoted to famous missionaries; A Missionary Tour of India, like snakes and ladders; Missionary Outpost, ‘an instructive round- game for children’; missionary jigsaws and painting-books, and, for adults, Missionary Lotto. In Catholic countries there were elaborate money-raising schemes, run by convent schools, by which schoolgirls could buy stamps and ‘adopt’ African orphans. The climax of missionary expectations coincided with the climax of European imperialism, and it was very widely supposed that the entire world would be Christianized in the process of being westernized – that is, incorporated politically, economically, or at any rate culturally, in a system which was still wholly identified with Christendom. It is this optimistic background of global predominance which helps to explain the

• From The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Vol. 4: Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (1984)

  ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, AND APOSTOLIC? 78 he translated some of Gregory of Nazianzus to pay off a debt, he was especially interested in his trinitanan works because of their importance for the debates with the Greeks. His translations of the martyrolog- ical Life of Chrysostom by Palladius and of Chrysos- tom's Sermons on Matthew were accompanied by deepening appreciation for Chrysostom and his teach- ing. But perhaps his most influential translation was that of Dionysius the Areopagite, which he undertook "not only with pleasure, but with the greatest delight" and which he completed despite the "extreme diffi- culty of this work." He was speaking for many of his Latin contemporaries in the fifteenth century when he contrasted the "wisdom and eloquence" of these Greek fathers with the present parlous state of the Greek church. Western theologians, even radical theologians, con- tinued nevertheless to speak of "Greek fornication" and "heresy" and to declare: "The Eastern church is schismatic and void." Although they did attack such distinctive Eastern teachings as the identity of the di- vine light with the essence of God, or the validity of confirmation when administered by a simple priest rather than by a bishop, or the legitimacy of the use of unleavened bread ("azymes") in the Eucharist, the most prominent doctrinal aberration of the Greek church was still its denial of the Filioque, which some were willing to label "impious blasphemy against God the Son." Duns Scotus and others suggested, on the basis of Peter Lombard, that the difference between Greeks and Latins over this matter was more verbal than substantial; and even when the denial of the Fil- ioque was branded as heresy, this could be accom- panied by the observation that it had not been heresy (for example, in the orthodox Greek church fathers) until its explicit condemnation by the Latin church. Aquinas's criticism of the Greek doctrine had itself been subjected to a criticism against which it had to be defended, and his assertion that the doctrine of Filioque was necessary to distinguish the Spirit from the Son was likewise reaffirmed in reply to criticism. As in the earlier stages of the controversy, Western theologians went on taking such passages as the words of Christ about the temporal mission of the Spirit,

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  ANCYRA. Ancyra’s imperial temple to Roma and Augustus, begun under Augustus and completed under Tiberius in 19/20 C.E., was made of marble and, with its imposing size, it was the most visible monument of the city. We return to it once more in our Epilogue. In design and style, it blended several traditions. Although approached by steep stairs and fronted by eight Corinthian columns, both typically Roman, the overall plan was more in the Greek peristyle tradition, in which external columns created a covered walkway around the temple walls. The closest parallel is the great Hellenistic temple of Athena at Priene in Asia Minor, many of whose elements it appears to mimic and which was rededicated to Athena and Augustus. Architecturally, the temple expressed the new Roman monoculture as a blend of East and West, regional and imperial elements. It is therefore no surprise that a Greek paraphrase of the Acts of the Divine Augustus was put on the south and more publicly visible side , while the original Latin, reserved for the atrium’s internal walls, was only visible upon entry into the temple. With its roughly east-west orientation, it opened not, as is customary, to the east and rising sun, but to the west and Rome. That subtle and suggestive message was complemented, of course, by the massive temple’s expensive materials and prominent position, which, like the emperor himself, dominated the city’s landscape. Local Galatian participation in the imperial cult is attested by a remarkable inscription from Ancyra dating to Tiberius’s reign that lists the chief priests of the divine Augustus and the goddess Roma as well as their benefactions to the local population. Celtic-Galatian names predominate in that list, but some have already adopted Greek and even Latin names. Apart from the obvious inclusion of sacrifices, other benefactions drew upon various regional customs. In the Greek tradition, those priests supplied olive oil for the populace: “Castor son of King Brigatus,…olive oil for four months” in 20–21 C.E. They sponsored games in the Roman tradition, namely, blood-sport spectacles rather than athletic competitions in the Greek tradition: “Pylaemenes son of King Amyntas,…gladiatorial spectacles…bullfighting” in 22–23 C.E. and “bull wrestling; fifty pairs of gladiators;…wild-beast fight” in 30–31 C.E. But, also, in the Celtic tradition, they hosted banquets for tribal delegates or entire tribes: “Albiorix son of Ateporix…public banquet; set up statues of [Tiberius] Caesar and Iulia Augusta” in 23–24 C.E. Competition was fierce; the tendency was for later priests to outdo their predecessors. Honors and status were tied to the level of aristocratic generosity, and those also led to greater and greater rewards for the common citizens, all associated with worshiping the emperor.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  112 Berakoth 5a (ET, p. 18). 113 R. Ishmael takes it as a sign of God's mercy that man can redeem himself with money. See Mek. Mishpatim 10 (286; III, 86f. (Nezikin 10]; to 21.30). 114 Psalms of Solomon 10. 1. ~oted from the translation by G. B. Gray in R. H. Charles, Pseude pigrafha, p. 64J. Ibid., 8.30-2 (25-6), p. 641. On this aspect of the Psalms of Solomon, see Buchler, Types, pp. 11 128-95. 116 Buchler, Types, p. 153. 7] Salvation by membership in the covenant and atonement was the first to emphasize the teaching that God makes the righteous pay in this world for the few 'evil deeds' which they have committed, in order to bestow upon them happiness and give them a good reward in the world to come. Just the oppo site is the case with the reward and punishment of the wicked. 11 7 The principal passage is a discussion between R. Akiba and R. Ishmael: 118 Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God; Thy judgments are like the great deep; man and beast Thou preservest, 0 Lord (Ps. 36.7). R. Ishmael interpreted: To the righteous who accepted the Torah which was revealed on the mountains of God Thou showest righteousness [tsedaqah, charity] reaching unto the mountains of God; but as for the wicked, who did not accept the Torah which was revealed on the mountains of God, Thou dealest strictly with them, even to the great deep. R. Akiba said: He deals strictly with both, even to the great deep. He deals strictly with the righteous, calling them to account for the few wrongs which they commit in this world, in order to lavish bliss upon and give them a goodly reward in the world to come; He grants ease to the wicked and rewards them for the few good deeds which they have performed in this world in order to punish them in the future world. In addition to the passages which we cited above 119 to the effect that the righteous suffer in this world but are rewarded in the next, we may cite others. There is an anonymous saying in Sifre Deut. which likens life to two roads, one thorny at the beginning and smooth at the end, the other smooth at the beginning and thorny at the end. If the wicked prosper at first, they suffer later, while the righteous, who suffer at the beginning, prosper later. 120 Another anonymous baraita cites Ezek. 2.10: 'It had writing on the front and on the back': 121 'On the front' [refers to] this world and 'on the back' [refers to] the world to come. 'On the front' [refers to] the ease of the wicked and the sufferings of the righteous in this world, and 'on the back' [refers to] the gift of the reward of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked in the world to come.

• From An Anomalous Jew: Paul Among Jews, Greeks, and Romans (2016)

  An Anomalous Jew presents the figure of Paul in all his complexity, with his blend of common and unusual Jewish beliefs and a faith in Christ that brought him into conflict with the socioreligious scene around him. Bird elucidates how Paul was variously perceived—as a religious deviant by Jews, as a divisive figure by Jewish Christians, as a purveyor of dubious philosophy by Greeks, and as a dangerous troublemaker by the Romans. Readers of this book will better understand the truly anomalous shape of Paul's thinking and worldview. “This is vintage Bird, perhaps with a noticeable tinge of N. T. Wright thrown in as well. In this book we find historically informed, strong readings of the Pauline texts, a deep awareness of the scholarly debates and positions on Paul and first-century Judaism, and overall a substantive and important contribution to situating Paul in his first-century context.” —Joshua W. Jipp Trinity Evangelical Divinity School “Michael Bird argues persuasively that Paul did not cease to be a Jew when he became Christian—and yet his previous Jewish convictions were shaken to the core and trans- formed. Paul remained a Jew, but he became an anomaly to his Jewish contemporaries.” —-Francis Watson Durham University “Even though contextualizing Paul is necessary in order to understand him, Bird argues that Paul nevertheless defies categorization. He was a maverick apostle, an inimitable thinker, and an anomalous Jew. Bird cogently sets Paul within his world, not to domesticate him, but to draw out his peculiarity. This is engaging reading, peppered with fresh insight into the historical Paul. —Nijay K. Gupta George Fox Evangelical Seminary Michael F. Bird is lecturer in theology at Ridley College, Melbourne, Australia. His previous books include Introducing Paul: The Man, His Mission and His Message and The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus, which won the 2015 Christianity Today Book Award for Biblical Studies. Cover art: St. Paul by Andrei Rublev, 1407; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow / Bridgeman Images Cover design: Kevin van der Leek ISBN 978-0-8028-b769-8 Wo. B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING Co. Grand Rapids, Michigan www.eerdmans.com | 9"780802"867698

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  CHAPTER 3The Family BusinessIn the dead nighttime quiet of the farmhouse out in the open land beyond tiny Coggon, Dan pulls a blanket around him as he curls in tight against one corner of the couch in the TV room, and you are reminded what a compact person he is. He wrestles at 140 pounds as a senior, and he wrestled at 119 pounds as a freshman. He has been the same size throughout high school, basically. He long ago mastered the art of maintaining his optimal weight. He knows the difference between a pound of meat and a pound of chips, put it that way. On this night, he makes do with a small bowl of chili and, for a treat, a miniature Tupperware cup of Froot Loops. It’s a cup you might normally see used to keep Cheerios on hand for a toddler—enough for a taste but not really an experience. Doug LeClere sweeps into the house through the back door, having made his rounds on the farm and changed the cattle’s water, testing to be sure it wasn’t frozen solid. Although “farmer” is just one of at least four jobs Doug carries, it is easily the one with the most insistent and immediate demands. As he puts it, “It’s not the kind of thing you can ignore for very long at a time.” Inside the house, Mary LeClere, Dan’s mother, having cleared the table and washed the dishes, pads off quietly to another room, carrying a little dessert with her. Mary long ago learned that if she wanted to enjoy something sweet, she needed to do it out of the sight of her wrestler children. As Dan and his younger brothers, Nick and Chris, lounge on the couch, putting off homework, Doug reaches for a tape and pops it into the VCR. He is looking for some old video of Dan to show, something from when he was a mite wrestling in little-kid competitions, but what appears on the screen instead is relatively new footage, taken within a year or so—and it is not of one of the LeClere boys. It’s the dad. “Where’d that come from?” Doug asks, but it’s clear he is not bothered. He is seldom embarrassed by anything, least of all something to do with wrestling, even if it’s a video of a 40-something adult scrapping around in a weekend all-comers competition. Wrestling is Doug’s identity, more so than farming. Wrestling is his family’s calling card. He was good enough at it in high school to earn a ticket to State, and when you’re a true wrestler, the season never ends. At least that’s what the tape suggests. As Doug describes the location and the opponent, Dan slowly takes notice. At first he appears bemused, maybe even slightly annoyed, that his dad has dragged out one of his own matches; but as the moments pass, Dan’s eyes never leave the television screen.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  schools and universities. This Protestant challenge forced the Catholic world to take education seriously, and this meant a new type of cleric. Yet the way in which the challenge was triumphantly met was largely an accident. The religious struggles of the sixteenth century inspired earnest Catholics to found new religious orders. Some successfully established themselves – the Capuchins (reformed Franciscans), the Theatines, the Somaschi, the Barnabites, the Oratorians; many proved abortive. There was a strongly held view in Rome that a multiplicity of orders was an embarrassment to the Church, and some even urged that all male religious be regrouped in one order, to re-establish the monopoly position the Benedictines had occupied in the latter part of the Dark Ages. Against this background Ignatius Loyola established his new order, the Society of Jesus, in the 1530s. He was a middle-aged Basque from a family of border-chieftains, and his dictated Confessions dismiss his earlier life in one sentence. Like many of the reformers, he was an ascetic and a puritan, and for a time lived as a hermit, growing his hair and nails long, and eating no meat. But he turned the reforming process on its head by translating the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith into the principle of absolute obedience to the Church; this, for him, became the credal hinge, and the certain guarantee of salvation. Moreover, he developed a self-disciplinary technique, known as the ‘Spritual Exercises’, which took the place of the Lutheran ‘conversion’ and could be applied collectively. Loyola was thus a part of the new puritan-reformist movement but an aberration from it. For the Inquisition he was an object of intense suspicion, was twice gaoled by them, and for a number of years he remained on their records as a suspect person. He was also unclear about his aims. He began to collect companions from 1534, but his original idea was that they should work as stretcher- bearers and hospital porters in Jerusalem; then, for practical reasons, the field of operations was switched to Venice. In his long negotiations with the Inquisition and the papacy, however, Loyola revealed himself as an astute operator and organizer – as his successor put it, ‘a man of great good sense and prudence in matters of business’. He insisted on an exceptionally long training for his men during which the principle of total obedience was absorbed. As Alfonso Rodriguez put it, the great consolation of the Jesuit – the equivalent of the Calvinist certainty of ‘election’ – is ‘the assurance we have that in obeying we can commit no fault. . . you are certain you commit no fault as long as you obey, because God will only ask you if you have duly performed what orders you have received, and if you can give a clear account in that respect, you

• From The City of God

  Or how shall he boast of having done a great thing, who has not been prevailed upon by the offer of any reward of this world to renounce his connection with that heavenly and eternal country, when he hears that Fabricius could not be prevailed on to forsake the Roman city by the great gifts offered to him by Pyrrhus king of the Epirots, who promised him the fourth part of his kingdom, but preferred to abide there in his poverty as a private individual? For if, when their republic,--that is, the interest of the people, the interest of the country, the common interest,--was most prosperous and wealthy, they themselves were so poor in their own houses, that one of them, who had already been twice a consul, was expelled from that senate of poor men by the censor, because he was discovered to possess ten pounds weight of silver-plate,--since, I say, those very men by whose triumphs the public treasury was enriched were so poor, ought not all Christians, who make common property of their riches with a far nobler purpose, even that (according to what is written in the Acts of the Apostles) they may distribute to each one according to his need, and that no one may say that anything is his own, but that all things may be their common possession,[216]--ought they not to understand that they should not vaunt themselves, because they do that to obtain the society of angels, when those men did well-nigh the same thing to preserve the glory of the Romans?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 374. 1.) Will you ask, from whom had they learned that such an appearance as a star was to signify the birth of Christ? I answer from Angels, by the warning of some revelation. Do you ask, was it from good or ill Angels? Truly even wicked spirits, namely the dæmons, confessed Christ to be the Son of God. But why should they not have heard it from good Angels, since in this their adoration of Christ their salvation was sought, not their wickedness condemned? The Angels might say to them, ‘The Star which ye have seen is the Christ. Go ye, worship Him, where He is now born, and see how great is He that is born.’ LEO. (Serm. xxxiv. 3.) Besides that star thus seen with the bodily eye, a yet brighter ray of truth pierced their hearts; they were enlightened by the illumination of the true faith. PSEUDO-AUGUSTINE. (Hill. Quæst. V. and N. Test. q. 63.) They might think that a king of Judæa was born, since the birth of temporal princes is sometimes attended by a star. These Chaldean Magi inspected the stars, not with malevolence, but with the true desire of knowledge; following, it may be supposed, the tradition from Balaam; so that when they saw this new and singular star, they understood it to be that of which Balaam had prophesied, as marking the birth of a King of Judæa. LEO. (ubi sup.) What they knew and believed might have been sufficient for themselves, that they needed not to seek to see with the bodily eye, what they saw so clearly with the spiritual. But their earnestness and perseverance to see the Babe was for our profit. It profited us that Thomas, after the Lord’s resurrection, touched and felt the marks of his wounds, and so for our profit the Magians’ eyes looked on the Lord in His cradle. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Were they then ignorant that Herod reigned in Jerusalem? Or that it is a capital treason to proclaim another King while one yet lives? But while they thought on the King to come, they feared not the king that was; while as yet they had not seen Christ, they were ready to die for Him. O blessed Magi! who before the face of a most cruel king, and before having beheld Christ, were made His confessors. 2:3–63. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4. And when he had gathered all the Chief Priests and Scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. 5. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judæa: for thus it is written by the prophet, 6. And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. AUGUSTINE. (non occ.) As the Magi seek a Redeemer, so Herod fears a successor.

• From The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy (selected nonfiction) (2016)

  A certain magazine that had begun publishing his "Resurrection " was obliged to discontinue the story, because of complaints by many of its readers. It was a sad commentary, not on the morals of the writer but on the lack of morals, or on the false modesty, of the readers, for that novel has been declared by eminent critics to be "the greatest and most moral novel ever written." Others again value his realism for whatever spice they might find therein, little heeding the serious purpose for which the story was written. Few know meaning of novel in Russia. At best, few people understand the meaning of a novel in such a country as Russia, where free press, free pulpit, free platform and free speech are unknown, where the novelist attempts to do the work of all of these, under the guise of fiction, the only form of literature that has a chance to pass the eye of the censor. Whole systems of political and social and moral reform are crowded between the covers of a novel, which, if published in any other form of literature, would condemn the author to life-long imprisonment in the Siberian mines. The novelist in Russia does not look upon himself as an entertainer nor as a money-maker, neither is he looked upon as such. He is the prophet, the leader, the teacher, the tribune of the people, the liberator—the emancipation of the Russian serfs, for instance, was entirely due to the novel. He has serious work to do, and he does it seriously. His eye is not upon rhetoric nor upon aesthetics, but upon the evil he has to uproot, on the corruption he has to expose, on the reform he has to institute, on the philosophy of life he has to unfold, and to do that means the production of a novel like "Anna Karénina " or of a play like "The Power of Darkness ." He speaks not to English or American puritans, but to Russians, whose receptivity of strong, plain speech is healthier than ours. Spoke as a prophet and reformer. Such a novelist was Tolstoy. His fiction is as powerful as is the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. It is all sincerity. Nothing escapes him. What the X-Ray does in the physical world that his penetrating eye does in the field of morals. He sees the sin through a thousand layers of pretense and hypocrisy, and he describes it as he sees it. Disagreeable as are some of the subjects of which he treats, there is not a line that may not be read without a blush by the pure-minded. Like a surgeon, who cuts into the sore for the purpose of letting out the poison, he lays bare the wrongs and rottenness of church and government for the purpose of affecting the needed cure.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  9. Bernard’s devotion to the Virgin Marv is expressed in his four homilies, “De laudibus Virginis matris,” and his nine sermons for the feasts of her Purification, Assumption, Nativity, etc., as well as incidentally in other works. It is noteworthy that he opposed the celebration of her Immaculate Conception. His contemporary, Peter Cellensis, says of him: “He was the most intimate fosterling of Our Lady, to whom he dedicated not only one monastery, but the monasteries of the whole Cistercian order.”10. St. Veronica lent her kerchief to Christ to wipe his brow as he was bearing the cross, and when he returned it, it bore the impress of his features. It was exhibited at Rome annually at the New Year and at Easter. Cf. Vita Nuova, xli.11. St. Bernard was the type of contemplation, and the question was even raised whether he had not seen God “essentially” (per essentiam) while yet living.12. The point at which the sun is about to rise.13. The Oriflamme (aurea flamma) was the standard given by the Angel Gabriel to the ancient kings of France, representing a flame on a golden ground. No one who fought under it could be conquered. The golden glow of heaven is the invincible ensign not of war but peace.14. According to medieval angelology, each angel constituted in itself a distinct species. (Cf. Canto xxix.)C A N T O X X X I IBeginning with Mary, Bernard indicates to Dante the great distinctions of heaven. Cleaving the rose downwards into two halves run the lines that part those who looked forward to Christ about to come from those who looked back upon him after he had come. Mary who had faith in Christ before he was conceived ranks as a Hebrew, and John Baptist who, when still in the womb, greeted him and afterwards proclaimed him as already come, ranks as a Christian. The two aspects of the faith embrace equal numbers of saints, the one tale being already full and the other near upon it. Midway across the cleaving lines runs the circle that divides the infants who died ere they had exercised free choice, and who were saved by the faith and the due observances of their parents, from those whose own acts of faith or merit have contributed to their salvation. The children are ranked in accordance with the abysmal but just and orderly judgments of God in the assignment of primal endowment. Dante then gazes in transport upon the face of Mary and sees the rejoicing Gabriel exult before her. He looks upon other great denizens of heaven, and is then bidden to turn again in prayer to Mary that after this so great preparation he may receive from her the final grace to enable him to lift his eyes right upon the Primal Love. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] WITH HIS LOVE fixed on his Delight, that contemplating saint took the free office of the teacher on him, and began these sacred words:

• From In Search of Paul: How Jesus's Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (2005)

  The city’s great Temple to Roma and Augustus has been badly destroyed and extensively built upon over the centuries. But with the help of Josephus’s eyewitness account and bits and pieces of columns and capitals, an estimate of the temple’s onetime grandeur can still be established. It rose to a height between 80 and 110 feet. It stood at the center of the city, in a plaza to which both thoroughfares led, but it was slightly off grid so that its glistening façade greeted sailors turning into the port. A life-sized cuirassed torso of the emperor Trajan (98–117 C.E.) and a seated but headless Hadrian (117–3 C.E.) survive and testify to the continued worship of the emperor in that temple. But Josephus tells us that Herod had originally installed there massive statues of the goddess Roma dressed as Hera Argos and of Caesar Augustus as Zeus Olympios. An important inscription found in 1962 on a stone, turned upside down and reused in the theater’s renovation, refers to a Tiberium dedicated to the emperor Tiberius, a structure Pontius Pilate erected to honor that emperor. Herod the Great obeyed Torah in Jerusalem by rebuilding Zion’s Temple without images or icons. But in nearby coastal Caesarea he was one of the very first to bestow divine honors on Augustus in a temple, a tradition then spreading all across the Mediterranean and that continued at Caesarea for many emperors to come. Finally, after port and temple, came water. Since Caesarea had no freshwater source, an aqueduct, still partially visible to this day north of the ruins, brought water from springs some 10 miles away. Pacifying Celts in Roman Galatia We turn now from Roman urbanization in general to that process for Galatia in particular. In 25 B.C.E., Octavian, just become Augustus, established the new Roman province of Galatia from disparate geographical regions and peoples. What was to become Galatia in central Anatolia had been a relative backwater inhabited in the west by Phrygians caricatured in Rome for their exotic and ecstatic worship of the mother goddess Cybele, in the south by the least hellenized of the fiercely independent Pisidians, and in the center mostly by the warlike Celtic tribes who had wandered there from Gaul in the third century B.C.E. Note, of course, the linguistic linkage between Celts and Galatians: C-L-T becomes G-L-T. Those warrior Celts are well known from the famous statue The Dying Gaul in Rome’s Capitoline Museum. It is actually a Roman copy of the original bronze statue at Pergamum celebrating, not a first-century-C.E. Roman, but a third-century-B.C.E. Greek victory over the invading Celts. For the most part, those peoples lived in small towns, retained a tribal organization, were largely untouched by hellenization, and preserved their own language, customs, and religion.

• From Paul and Palestinian Judaism (40th Anniversary Edition) (2017)

  R. Akiba says: Ye Shall Not Do with Me. Ye shall not behave towards Me in the manner in which others behave toward their deities. When good comes to them they honour their gods, as it is said: 'Therefore they sacrifice unto their net,' etc. (Hab. 1. 16 ). But when evil comes to them they curse their gods, as it is said: [quotes Isa. 8.21 ). But ye, if I bring good upon you, give ye thanks, and when I bring suffering upon you, give ye thanks. [A series of passages is quoted to establish the point.] Furthermore, a man should even rejoice when in adversity more than when in prosperity. For even if a man lives in prosperity all his life, it does not mean that his sins have been forgiven him. But what is it that does bring a man forgiveness? You must say, suffering. R. Simon b. JoJ.iai says: Precious are chastisements, for the three good gifts given to Israel which the nations of the world covet were all given only at the price of chastisements. And they are these: the Torah, the land of Israel, and the future world .... How do we know it about the future world? It is said: 'For the com mandment is a lamp and the teaching is light and reproofs by chastisement are the way to life' (Prov. 6.23). You interpret it thus: Go out and see which is the way that brings man to the life of the future world? You must say: Chastisement. R. Nehemiah says: Precious are chastisements. For just as sacrifices are the means of atonement, so also are chastisements .... And not only this, but chastisements atone even more than sacrifices. For sacrifices affect only one's money, while chastisements affect the body. And thus it says: 'Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life' (Job. 2.4). In a story which follows immediately, R. Akiba makes the point that chastisements lead one to repent and seek God. 109 The story goes as follows: when R. Eliezer was sick, R. Akiba and three others came to comfort him. All but R. Akiba spoke in extravagant praise ofR. Eliezer. R. Akiba, however, said: 'Precious are chastisements.' In explanation, he argued that Manasseh was led to call upon God only through chastisementsY 0 This last point, which has been especially elaborated by Buchler, 111 is one of the two principal motives behind assigning suffering an atoning 107 Sifre Deut. 32 (55f.; f.73a-b; to 6.5). The first part of the saying is different in Sifre from the version in the Mekilta. A form close to that of the Mekilta appears anonymously in Tanl:iuma Jethro 16 (ed. Buber, vol. II, p. 79), while a precise parallel to the version which is found in Sifre appears in Yalkut I, remez 837, near beginning. The Yalkut attributes the saying to R. Akiba. Billerbeck (S.-B. I, p. 906) thinks Akiba should be read in Sifre.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  The first stop on the party’s journey was Erfurt, the city where Luther had studied and had become a monk and where—once he had gone to Wittenberg—bad feelings had been engendered by the Erfurt monks. But now it was a dramatically different story. As Luther’s wagon approached the city, some sixty horsemen appeared to escort Luther and his entourage through the city gates and into the city’s heart. They were led by the Humanist Crotus Rubianus, who had studied with Luther at Erfurt all those years ago and who was now the rector of the university. Once inside the city, Luther must have been deeply moved at what he saw. The Erfurt streets were everywhere lined with admirers. Some had even climbed walls and up onto rooftops to catch a glimpse of this famous figure who had once lived and walked among them. The poet Eobanus Hessus sang Luther’s praises in verse, comparing his efforts in the church to Hercules’s fifth labor—the mucking out of the Augean stables. When Luther preached there that Sunday, the church was so impossibly filled that the large balcony in which an unprecedented number of people stood began to creak, as though about to break. A number of people proactively opted to leap out of the windows before this could take place and now began breaking the panes that they might do so. But Luther was convinced it was only Satan trying to interrupt him, and so he calmed the people, telling them merely to stand still, that the gallery would hold them, which it did. At Erfurt, Justus Jonas, who was on the Erfurt faculty, decided that he too would join this triumphal procession to Worms, and now did so. When they came to Gotha, Luther preached there too. But at the very time that he was in the pulpit preaching, some stones strangely came detached from the church tower and fell loudly to the ground. Once again, Luther was convinced it was the devil. Those great stones had been part of that venerable tower for two hundred years. Why must they come loose just as Luther was preaching the Word of God and making this historic confrontation? Luther knew that the spiritual import of his journey was greatly disturbing to Satan, who would have done anything to prevent it but who could do nothing now but stand impotently on the banks of this river in which the Holy Spirit coursed powerfully on its way.