Awe

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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  He wished not to appear as a revolutionist, nor to anticipate the natural course of history, tile ways of Providence.557 But now the rupture was also outwardly consummated by the thunderbolt of divine omnipotence. God himself destroyed the house, in which he had thus far dwelt, in which Jesus had taught, in which the apostles had prayed; he rejected his peculiar people for their obstinate rejection of the Messiah; he demolished the whole fabric of the Mosaic theocracy, whose system of worship was, in its very nature, associated exclusively with the tabernacle at first and afterwards with the temple; but in so doing he cut the cords which had hitherto bound, and according to the law of organic development necessarily bound the infant church to the outward economy of the old covenant, and to Jerusalem as its centre. Henceforth the heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism, but must regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The destruction of Jerusalem, therefore, marks that momentous crisis at which the Christian church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis of Judaism, awoke to a sense of its maturity, and in government and worship at once took its independent stand before the world.558 This breaking away from hardened Judaism and its religious forms, however, involved no departure from the spirit of the Old Testament revelation. The church, on the contrary, entered into the inheritance of Israel. The Christians appeared as genuine Jews, as spiritual children of Abraham, who, following the inward current of the Mosaic religion, had found Him, who was the fulfilment of the law and the prophets; the perfect fruit of the old covenant and the living germ of the new; the beginning and the principle of a new moral creation. It now only remained to complete the consolidation of the church in this altered state of things; to combine the premises in their results; to take up the conservative tendency of Peter and the progressive tendency of Paul, as embodied respectively in the Jewish-Christian and the Gentile-Christian churches, and to fuse them into a third and higher tendency in a permanent organism; to set forth alike the unity of the two Testaments in diversity, and their diversity in unity; and in this way to wind up the history of the apostolic church. This was the work of John, the apostle of completion. CHAPTER VII.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  The psalm is a great lyric cry of the glory of human life as God meant it to be. It is, in fact, an expansion of the great promise of God at creation in Genesis 1:28, when he said to Adam: ‘Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’ The glory of human beings, incidentally, is even greater than the Authorized Version would lead us to understand. It tells us that God has made them ‘a little lower than the angels’ (Psalm 8:5). That is a correct translation of the Greek but not of the original Hebrew. In the original Hebrew, it is said that they are made a little lower than the Elohim; and Elohim is the regular word for God. What the psalmist really wrote was that human beings had been made ‘little less than God’, which, in fact, is the translation of the Revised Standard Version. So, this psalm sings of the glory of human beings, who were made little less than divine and whom God meant to have dominion over everything in the world. But, the writer to the Hebrews goes on, the situation with which we are confronted is very different. Men and women were meant to have dominion over everything – but they have not. They are creatures who are frustrated by their circumstances, defeated by their temptations and surrounded by their own weaknesses. The ones who should be free are bound; the ones who should be rulers are slaves. As the writer G. K. Chesterton said, whatever else is or is not true, this one thing is certain: we are not what we were meant to be. The writer to the Hebrews goes further. Into this situation came Jesus Christ. He suffered and he died; and, because he suffered and died, he entered into glory. And that suffering and death and glory are all for us, because he died to make us what we ought to be. He died to rid us of our frustration and our bondage and our weakness and to give us the dominion we ought to have. He died to re-create us until we become what we were originally created to be. In this passage, there are three basic ideas. (1) God created men and women only a little less than himself, to have control over all things. (2) Through their sin, they entered into defeat instead of control. (3) Into this state of defeat came Jesus Christ in order that by his life and death and glory he might make men and women what they were meant to be. We may put it another way. The writer to the Hebrews shows us three things. (1) He shows us the ideal of what we should be – kin to God and rulers of the universe.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In Italy, Gothic was never fully at home. The cathedrals of Milan, Florence, and Siena are regarded as its finer specimens. Siena was begun in 1243. The minster of Milan was not begun till 1385. It is the largest Christian church after Seville and St. Peter’s. Its west façade is out of accord with the rest of the structure, which is pure Gothic. It is built of white marble and soars up to the clouds in hundreds of spires. Within full sight of the Milan cathedral are the Alps, crowned with snow and elevated far above the din of human traffic and voices; and in comparison with those mightier cathedrals of God, the creations of man seem small even as man himself seems small in comparison with his Maker. CHAPTER XII.SCHOLASTIC AND MYSTIC THEOLOGY.§ 95. Literature and General Introduction. Literature: I.—The works Of Anselm, Abaelard, Peter The Lombard, Hugo Of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and other Schoolmen. II.—R. D. Hampden (bishop of Hereford, d. 1868): The Scholastic Philos. considered in its Relation to Christ. Theol., Bampton Lectures, Oxf., 1832, 3d ed. 1848.—B. Haureau: De la philos. scholast., 2 vols. Paris, 1850.—W. Kaulich: Gesch. d. scholast. Philos., Prag, 1863.—C. Prantl: Gesch. d. Logik im Abendlande, 4 vols. Leip., 1861–1870:—P. D. Maurice (d. 1872): Med. Philos., London, 1870.—*A. Stöckl (Rom. Cath.): Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelalters, Mainz, 3 vols. 1864–1866. Vol. I. covers the beginnings of Scholasticism from Isidore of Seville to Peter the Lombard; Vol. II., the period of its supremacy; Vol. III., the period of its decline down to Jesuitism and Jansenism.—R. Reuter (Prof. of Ch. Hist. at Göttingen, d. 1889): Gesch. d. Rel. Aufklärung im Mittelalter, 2 vols. Berlin, 1875–1877. Important for the sceptical and rationalistic tendencies of the M. A.—TH. Harper: The Metaphysics of the School, London, 1880.—K. Werner (Rom. Cath.): D. Scholastik des späteren Mittelalters, 4 vols. Wien, 1881–1887. Begins with Duns Scotus.—The relevant chapters in the Histories of Doctrine, by Harnack, Loofs, Fisher, Seeberg, Sheldon, and the Rom. Cath. divines, and J. Bach: Dogmengesch. d. Mittelalters, 2 vols. 1873–1875, and *J. Schwane: Dogmengesch. d. mittleren Zeit, 1882.—The Histories of Philos. by Ritter, Erdmann, Ueberweg-Heinze, and Scholasticism, by Prof. Seth, in Enc. Brit. XXI. 417–431. Scholasticism is the term given to the theology of the Middle Ages. It forms a distinct body of speculation, as do the works of the Fathers and the writings of the Reformers. The Fathers worked in the quarries of Scripture and, in conflict with heresy, wrought out, one by one, its teachings into dogmatic statements. The Schoolmen collected, analyzed and systematized these dogmas and argued their reasonableness against all conceivable objections. The Reformers, throwing off the yoke of human authority, and disparaging the Schoolmen, returned to the fountain of Scripture, and restated its truths.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; loved more, and been more loved; laughed more often for having cried more often; appreciated more the springs, for all the winters; worn death “as close as dungarees,” appreciated it—and life—more; seen the finest and the most terrible in people, and slowly learned the values of caring, loyalty, and seeing things through. I have seen the breadth and depth and width of my mind and heart and seen how frail they both are, and how ultimately unknowable they both are. Depressed, I have crawled on my hands and knees in order to get across a room and have done it for month after month. But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness—the intensity it gives to things and the perspective it forces on me. I think it has made me test the limits of my mind (which, while wanting, is holding) and the limits of my upbringing, family, education, and friends. The countless hypomanias, and mania itself, all have brought into my life a different level of sensing and feeling and thinking. Even when I have been most psychotic—delusional, hallucinating, frenzied—I have been aware of finding new corners in my mind and heart. Some of those corners were incredible and beautiful and took my breath away and made me feel as though I could die right then and the images would sustain me. Some of them were grotesque and ugly and I never wanted to know they were there or to see them again. But, always, there were those new corners and—when feeling my normal self, beholden for that self to medicine and love—I cannot imagine becoming jaded to life, because I know of those limitless corners, with their limitless views. AcknowledgmentsWriting a book of this kind would have been impossible without the support and advice of my friends, family, and colleagues. Certainly it would have been impossible without the excellent medical care I have received over the years from Dr. Daniel Auerbach; he has been, in every way, an excellent and deeply compassionate doctor. I owe him not only my life, but an important part of my education as a clinician as well. No one has been more influential in my decision to be open about my manic-depressive illness than Frances Lear, a longtime friend and generous supporter of my work. She has encouraged and made possible my mental health advocacy work and is, in many significant respects, responsible for my decision to write this book. Her support and belief in my work have made a critical difference in what I have been able to do during the past eight years.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  (3) It is unique in its effectiveness. It produced signs and wonders and deeds of power of many kinds. Someone once congratulated the nineteenth-century preacher Thomas Chalmers after one of his great speeches. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but what did it do?’ As the theologian James Denney used to say, the ultimate object of Christianity is to make bad people good; and the proof of real Christianity is the fact that it can change the lives of individuals. The moral miracles of Christianity are still plain for all to see. THE RECOVERY OF OUR LOST DESTINY Hebrews 2:5–9 It was not to angels that he subjected the order of things to come of which we are speaking. Somewhere in Scripture, someone bears this witness to that fact: ‘What is man that you remember him? Or the son of man that you visit him? For a little time, you made him lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honour; you set him over the work of your hands; you subjected all things beneath his feet.’ The fact that all things have been subjected to him means that nothing has been left unsubjected to him. But, as things are, we see that all things are not in a state of subjection to him. But we do see him who was for a little while made lower than the angels, Jesus himself, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of his death, a suffering which came to him in order that, by the grace of God, he might drain the cup of death for every man. IT is by no means an easy task to grasp the meaning of this passage; but, when we do, it is a tremendous thing. The writer begins with a quotation from Psalm 8:4–6. If we are ever to understand this passage correctly, we must understand one thing: the whole reference of Psalm 8 is to human beings. It sings of the glory that God gave to men and women. There is no reference to the Messiah. There is a phrase in the psalm which makes it difficult for us to grasp that. The phrase is literally translated as the son of man. We are so used to hearing that phrase applied to Jesus that we tend always to take it to refer to him. But, in Hebrew, a son of man always means simply a man. We find, for instance, that, in the Revised Standard Version, in the book of the prophet Ezekiel, more than eighty times God addresses Ezekiel as son of man. ‘Son of man, set your face toward Jerusalem’ (Ezekiel 21:2). ‘Son of man, prophesy, and say ...’ (Ezekiel 30:2). In the psalm quoted here, the two parallel phrases which we have translated as ‘What is man that you remember him?’ and ‘Or the son of man that you visit him?’ are different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  It is a voice which comes from God and calls us to God. It is a call which demands concentrated attention because of both its origin and its destination. No one can afford merely to glance without interest at an invitation to God from God. When we fix our attention on Jesus, what do we see? We see two things. (1) We see the great apostle . No one else in the New Testament ever calls Jesus an apostle . That the writer to the Hebrews does so deliberately is quite clear, because apostle is a title he never gives to any individual. He keeps it for Christ. What does he mean when he uses it in this way? The word apostolos literally means one who is sent forth . In Jewish terminology, it was used to describe the envoys of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews. The Sanhedrin sent out apostoloi who were clothed with its authority and the bearers of its commands. In the Greek world, it frequently meant ambassador . So, Jesus is the supreme ambassador of God – and ambassadors have two supremely important and relevant characteristics. (a) Ambassadors carry all the authority of the one who sends them. On one occasion, the king of Syria, Antiochus Epiphanes, invaded Egypt. Rome wanted to stop him and sent an envoy called Popillius to tell him to abandon his projected invasion. Popillius caught up with Antiochus on the borders of Egypt, and they talked of this and that, for they had known each other in Rome. Popillius did not have an army with him, not even a guard. Finally, Antiochus asked him why he had come. Quietly, Popillius told him that he had come to tell him that Rome wanted him to abandon the invasion and go home. ‘I will consider it,’ said Antiochus. Popillius smiled a little grimly; he took his staff and drew a circle in the earth round Antiochus. ‘Consider it,’ he said, ‘and come to your decision before you leave that circle.’ Antiochus thought for a few seconds and then said: ‘Very well. I will go home.’ Popillius himself had not the slightest force available – but behind him was all the power of Rome. So, Jesus came from God, and all God’s grace and mercy and love and power were in his apostolos . (b) The voice with which ambassadors speak is the voice of the individual or country that sent them. In a foreign land, the British ambassador’s voice is the voice of Britain, and the American ambassador speaks with the voice of the United States. So, Jesus came with the voice of God; in him, God speaks. (2) Jesus is the great high priest . What does that mean?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Richard magnifies the Scriptures and makes them the test of spiritual states. Everything is to be looked upon with suspicion which does not conform to the letter of Scripture.1463 The leading ideas of these two stimulating teachers are that we must believe and love and sanctify ourselves in order that the soul may reach the ecstasy and composure of contemplation or the knowledge of God. The Scriptures are the supreme guide and the soul by contemplation reaches a spiritual state which the intellect and argumentation could ever bring it to. Rupert of Deutz.—Among the mystics of the twelfth century no mean place belongs to Rupert of Deutz.1464 A German by nationality, he was made abbot of the Benedictine convent of Deutz near Cologne about 1120 and died 1136. He came into conflict with Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux through a report which represented them as teaching that God had decreed evil, and that, in sinning, Adam had followed God’s will. Rupert answered the errors in two works on the Will of God and the Omnipotence of God. He even went to France to contend with these two renowned teachers.1465 Anselm of Laon he found on his death-bed. With William he held an open disputation. Rupert’s chief merit is in the department of exegesis. He was the most voluminous biblical commentator of his time. He magnified the Scriptures. In one consecutive volume he commented on the books of the Old Testament from Genesis to Chronicles, on the four Major Prophets, and the four evangelists.1466 The commentary on Genesis alone occupies nearly four hundred columns in Migne’s edition. Among his other exegetical works were commentaries on the Gospel and Revelation of St. John, the Minor Prophets, Ecclesiastes, and especially the Canticles and Matthew. In these works he follows the text conscientiously and laboriously, verse by verse. The Canticles Rupert regarded as a song in honor of the Virgin Mary, but he set himself against the doctrine that she was conceived without sin. The commentary opens with an interpretation of Cant. 1:2, thus: " ’Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.’ What is this exclamation so great, so sudden? Of blessed Mary, the inundation of joy, the force of love, the torrent of pleasure have filled thee full and wholly intoxicated thee and thou hast felt what eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has entered into the heart of man, and thou hast said, ’Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth’ for thou didst say to the angel ’Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be unto me according to thy word.’ What was that word? What did he say to thee? ’Thou hast found grace,’ he said, ’with the Lord. Behold thou shalt conceive and bare a son.’... Was not this the word of the angel, the word and promise of the kiss of the Lord’s mouth ready to be given?" etc.1467

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2There is nothing more difficult to attain to than the art of being a perfect guide. Such an art, indeed, requires a real artist, one who has a keen perception for contrasts, and an eye for the large effects rather than for details, above all one possessed of imagination; and Brockett, when he chose, could be such a guide. Having waved the professional guides to one side, he himself took them through a part of the palace, and his mind re-peopled the place for Stephen so that she seemed to see the glory of the dancers led by the youthful Roi Soleil; seemed to hear the rhythm of the throbbing violins, and the throb of the rhythmic dancing feet as they beat down the length of the Galerie des Glaces; seemed to see those other mysterious dancers who followed step by step, in the long line of mirrors. But most skilfully of all did he recreate for her the image of the luckless queen who came after; as though for some reason this unhappy woman must appeal in a personal way to Stephen. And true it was that the small, humble rooms which the queen had chosen out of all that vast palace, moved Stephen profoundly—so desolate they seemed, so full of unhappy thoughts and emotions that were even now only half forgotten. Brockett pointed to the simple garniture on the mantelpiece of the little salon, then he looked at Stephen: ‘Madame de Lamballe gave those to the queen,’ he murmured softly. She nodded, only vaguely apprehending his meaning. Presently they followed him out into the gardens and stood looking across the Tapis Vert that stretches its quarter mile of greenness towards a straight, lovely line of water. Brockett said, very low, so that Puddle should not hear him: ‘Those two would often come here at sunset. Sometimes they were rowed along the canal in the sunset—can’t you imagine it, Stephen? They must often have felt pretty miserable, poor souls; sick to death of the subterfuge and pretences. Don’t you ever get tired of that sort of thing? My God, I do!’ But she did not answer, for now there was no mistaking his meaning. Last of all he took them to the Temple d’Amour, where it rests amid the great silence of the years that have long lain upon the dead hearts of its lovers; and from there to the Hameau, built by the queen for a whim—the tactless and foolish whim of a tactless and foolish but loving woman—by the queen who must play at being a peasant, at a time when her downtrodden peasants were starving. The cottages were badly in need of repair; a melancholy spot it looked, this Hameau, in spite of the birds that sang in its trees and the golden glint of the afternoon sunshine.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Rousseau’s "Confessions," and Goethe’s "Truth and Poetry," though written in a radically different spirit, may be compared with Augustine’s Confessions as works of rare genius and of absorbing interest, but, by attempting to exalt human nature in its unsanctified state, they tend as much to expose its vanity and weakness, as the work of the bishop of Hippo, being written with a single eye to the glory of God, raises man from the dust of repentance to a new and imperishable life of the Spirit.2172 Augustine composed the Confessions about the year 400. The first ten books contain, in the form of a continuous prayer and confession before God, a general sketch of his earlier life, of his conversion, and of his return to Africa in the thirty-fourth year of his age. The salient points in these books are the engaging history of his conversion in Milan, and the story of the last days of his noble mother in Ostia, spent as it were at the very gate of heaven and in

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  If all the loveliness of the tabernacle was only a shadow of reality, how surpassingly lovely the reality must be. He does not describe the tabernacle in detail; he only alludes to some of its treasures. This was all he needed to do because his readers knew its glories and had them fixed in their memories. But we do not know them; therefore, let us see what the beauty of the earthly tabernacle was like, always remembering that it was only a pale copy of reality. The main description of the tabernacle in the wilderness is in Exodus 25–31 and 35–40. God said to Moses: ‘Make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them’ (Exodus 25:8). It was constructed out of the free-will offerings of the people (Exodus 25:1–7), who gave with such lavish generosity that a halt had to be called to their giving (Exodus 36:5–7). The court of the tabernacle was 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. It was surrounded by a curtain-like fence of fine, twined linen seven and a half feet high. The white linen stood for the wall of holiness that surrounds the presence of God. The curtain was supported by twenty pillars on the north and south sides, and by ten on the east and west sides; and the pillars were set in sockets of brass and had tops of silver. There was only one gate. It was on the east side, and it was thirty feet wide and seven and a half feet high. It was made of fine, twined linen and with blue, purple and scarlet yarns. In the court, there were two things. There was the bronze altar , seven and a half feet square and four and a half feet high and made of acacia wood sheathed in brass. Its top was a bronze grating on which the sacrifice was laid; and it had four horns to which the offering was bound. There was the laver . The laver was made from the brass mirrors of the women (glass mirrors did not exist at that time), but its dimensions are not given. The priests bathed themselves in the water in it before they carried out their sacred duties. The tabernacle itself was constructed of forty-eight acacia beams, fifteen feet high and two feet three inches wide. They were overlaid with pure gold and rested in sockets of silver. They were bound together by outside connecting rods and by a wooden tie-beam which ran through their centre. The tabernacle was divided into two parts.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  New Year’s Day will be changed to the birthday of Caesar Augustus for all the cities of Asia Minor. That is certainly an honor, but the reason for it is theologically quite profound. Augustus’s birth was itself a cosmic new creation, “in practical terms at least.” It had saved from chaos and disintegration not just Rome, Italy, and the Mediterranean, but “everything”—“the whole world.” Since his birth started a new world, his birthday should start a new year. A new way had been discovered “to honor Augustus that was hitherto unknown among the Greeks, namely to reckon time from the date of his nativity.” How did the League of Asian Cities respond to the governor’s suggestion? Their reaction was also carved as the second part of the two-part inscription found at Priene. It is a fascinating summary of Roman imperial theology, but as you read it, replace “Caesar” or “Augustus” with “Jesus” or “Christ,” and you can understand Pauline Christian theology as counterpoint to and confrontation with Roman imperial theology. Since the providence that has divinely ordered our existence has applied her energy and zeal and has brought to life the most perfect good in Augustus, whom she filled with virtues for the benefit of mankind, bestowing him upon us and our descendants as a savior—he who put an end to war and will order peace, Caesar, who by his epiphany exceeded the hopes of those who prophesied good tidings [euaggelia ], not only outdoing benefactors of the past, but also allowing no hope of greater benefactions in the future; and since the birthday of the God first brought to the world the good tidings residing in him. . . . For that reason, with good fortune and safety, the Greeks of Asia have decided that the New Year in all the cities should begin on 23rd September, the birthday of Augustus . . . and that the letter of the proconsul and the decree of Asia should be inscribed on a pillar of white marble, which is to be placed in the sacred precinct of Rome and Augustus. Notice all those key claims about Caesar Augustus: “perfect good,” providential “virtues for the benefit of mankind,” “savior,” war-ender and peace-bringer, “epiphany,” prophecy, greatest benefactor of all time, “the God.” But I look in detail at just one phrase: “good tidings.” This is where translation falters a little.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  He came out, killed the goat that was marked For Yahweh , with its blood re-entered the Holy of Holies and sprinkled again. Then he came out and mixed together the blood of the bullock and the goat and seven times sprinkled the horns of the altar of the incense and the altar itself. What remained of the blood was laid at the foot of the altar of the burnt offering. Thus the Holy of Holies and the altar were cleansed by blood from any defilement that might be on them. Then came the most vivid ceremony. The scapegoat was brought forward. The high priest laid his hands on it and confessed his own sin and the sin of the people; and the goat was led out into the desert, ‘into a land not inhabited’, laden with the sins of the people, and there it was killed. The priest turned to the slain bullock and goat and prepared them for sacrifice. Still in his linen garments, he read Scripture – Leviticus 16, 23:27–32, and repeated by heart Numbers 29:7–11. He then prayed for the priesthood and the people. Once more, he cleansed himself in water and dressed himself again in his gorgeous robes. He sacrificed first a young goat for the sins of the people; then he made the normal evening sacrifice; then he sacrificed the already prepared parts of the bullock and the goat. Then once again he cleansed himself, took off his robes, and put on the white linen; and for the fourth and last time he entered the Holy of Holies to remove the censer of incense which still burned there. Once again he cleansed himself in water; once again he put on his vivid robes; then he burned the evening offering of incense, trimmed the lamps on the golden lamp stand, and his work was done. In the evening, he held a feast because he had been in the presence of God and had come out alive. That was the ritual of the Day of Atonement, the day designed to cleanse all things and all people from sin. That was the picture in the mind of the writer to the Hebrews – and he was to make much of it. But there were certain things of which he was thinking at the time. Every year, this ceremony had to be gone through again. Everyone but the high priest was barred from the presence, and even he entered in terror. The cleansing was a purely external one by baths of water. The sacrifice was that of bulls and goats and animal blood. The whole thing failed because such things cannot atone for sin. In it all, the writer to the Hebrews sees a pale copy of the reality, a ghostly pattern of the one true sacrifice – the sacrifice of Christ.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  From this noble line shall be born the Trojan Caesar [Augustus], who shall extend his empire to the ocean, his glory to the stars, a Julius, name descended from great Julus! Him in days to come, shall you [Venus], anxious no more, welcome to heaven, laden with Eastern spoils; he, too, shall be invoked in vows. (1.279–290) Rome’s destiny and Augustus’s divinity were ordained from the beginning by Jupiter, and nothing would stop that heavenly decree from its fulfillment. Augustus, as the new Aeneas, was predestined to “bring all the world beneath his laws” (4.231). Next, that destiny was prophetically foretold by twin proclamations from a dead father to a living son, with one from the Trojan start and the other from the Latin end of the story. The spirit of the dead Anchises tells Aeneas: Glorious Rome shall extend her empire to earth’s ends, her ambitions to the skies. . . . This in truth is he whom you so often hear promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of a God [divi genus ], who will again establish a Golden Age in Latium amid fields once ruled by Saturn. (6.781–794) As this prophecy continues, the new vision of the reign of Saturn’s Golden Age is summed up in these overquoted lines: “You, Roman, be sure to rule the world (be these your arts), to crown peace with justice, to spare the vanquished and to crush the proud” (6.851–853). That ended Book VI of the Aeneid . Then, as Book VII begins, we get another prophecy of Rome’s destiny, but this time at the Italian end of the journey from Troy. The spirit of Faunus, the “prophetic sire” of King Latinus, tells Aeneas: Strangers shall come, to be your sons, whose blood shall exalt our [Latin] name to the stars, and the children of whose race shall behold, where the circling sun looks down [from east to west] on each ocean, the whole world roll obediently beneath their feet. (7.98–101) You will notice two major points in Rome’s destiny: it is decreed by God, and it is cosmic in scope—as befits, of course, the Golden Age or the reign of Saturn. It is about the whole Earth and the entire world. Finally, Venus asks her divine husband, the God Vulcan, to create weapons for Aeneas. On the shield he shows “the history of Italy and the triumphs of Rome” (8.626). This allows Virgil to depict the climax of that triumphant history as “the Battle of Actium”: On the one side, Augustus Caesar stands on the lofty stern, leading Italians to strife, with the senate and the people, the Penates [Gods] of the state, and all the mighty gods; his auspicious brows shoot forth a double flame, and on his head dawns his father’s star.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  In the two short blocks before it reached its destination, the street housed two day-and-night restaurants, two pool halls, four Chinese restaurants, two gambling houses, plus diners, shoeshine shops, beauty salons, barber shops and at least four churches. To fully grasp the never-ending activity in San Francisco's Negro neighborhood during the war, one need only know that the two blocks described were side streets that were duplicated many times over in the eight-to ten-square-block area. The air of collective displacement, the impermanence of life in wartime and the gauche personalities of the more recent arrivals tended to dissipate my own sense of not belonging. In San Francisco, for the first time, I perceived myself as part of something. Not that I identified with the newcomers, nor with the rare Black descendants of native San Franciscans, nor with the whites or even the Asians, but rather with the times and the city. I understood the arrogance of the young sailors who marched the streets in marauding gangs, approaching every girl as if she were at best a prostitute and at worst an Axis agent bent on making the U.S.A. lose the war. The undertone of fear that San Francisco would be bombed which was abetted by weekly air raid warnings, and civil defense drills in school, heightened my sense of belonging. Hadn't I, always, but ever and ever, thought that life was just one great risk for the living? Then the city acted in wartime like an intelligent woman under siege. She gave what she couldn't with safety withheld, and secured those things which lay in her reach. The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grownup. Friendly but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness. To San Franciscans “the City That Knows How” was the Bay, the fog, Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Top o' the Mark, Chinatown, the Sunset District and so on and so forth and so white. To me, a thirteen-year-old Black girl, stalled by the South and Southern Black life style, the city was a state of beauty and a state of freedom. The fog wasn't simply the steamy vapors off the bay caught and penned in by hills, but a soft breath of anonymity that shrouded and cushioned the bashful traveler. I became dauntless and free of fears, intoxicated by the physical fact of San Francisco. Safe in my protecting arrogance, I was certain that no one loved her as impartially as I. I walked around the Mark Hopkins and gazed at the Top o' the Mark, but (maybe sour grapes) was more impressed by the view of Oakland from the hill than by the tiered building or its fur-draped visitors. For weeks, after the city and I came to terms about my belonging, I haunted the points of interest and found them empty and un-San Francisco.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  THE writer to the Hebrews has just been thinking of Jesus as the one who leads us into reality. He has been using the idea that in this world we have only pale copies of what is truly real. The worship that we can offer is just a ghost-like shadow of the real worship which only Jesus, the real high priest, can offer. But even as he thinks of that, his mind goes back to the tabernacle (the tabernacle, remember, not the Temple). Lovingly he remembers its beauty; lovingly he lingers on its priceless possessions. And the thought in his mind is this: if earthly worship was as beautiful as this, what must the true worship be like? If all the loveliness of the tabernacle was only a shadow of reality, how surpassingly lovely the reality must be. He does not describe the tabernacle in detail; he only alludes to some of its treasures. This was all he needed to do because his readers knew its glories and had them fixed in their memories. But we do not know them; therefore, let us see what the beauty of the earthly tabernacle was like, always remembering that it was only a pale copy of reality. The main description of the tabernacle in the wilderness is in Exodus 25–31 and 35–40. God said to Moses: ‘Make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them’ (Exodus 25:8). It was constructed out of the free-will offerings of the people (Exodus 25:1–7), who gave with such lavish generosity that a halt had to be called to their giving (Exodus 36:5–7). The court of the tabernacle was 150 feet long and 75 feet wide. It was surrounded by a curtain-like fence of fine, twined linen seven and a half feet high. The white linen stood for the wall of holiness that surrounds the presence of God. The curtain was supported by twenty pillars on the north and south sides, and by ten on the east and west sides; and the pillars were set in sockets of brass and had tops of silver. There was only one gate. It was on the east side, and it was thirty feet wide and seven and a half feet high. It was made of fine, twined linen and with blue, purple and scarlet yarns. In the court, there were two things. There was the bronze altar, seven and a half feet square and four and a half feet high and made of acacia wood sheathed in brass. Its top was a bronze grating on which the sacrifice was laid; and it had four horns to which the offering was bound. There was the laver. The laver was made from the brass mirrors of the women (glass mirrors did not exist at that time), but its dimensions are not given. The priests bathed themselves in the water in it before they carried out their sacred duties.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  Ecstasy is an altered state of normal awake-consciousness and as such is a hard-wired possibility of our human brain. It is not supernatural but natural; or better, it is a serene negation of that inept distinction. Ecstatic vision and ecstatic audition, ecstatic relocation and ecstatic transformation may be produced by fever or focus, medication or meditation, physical isolation or sensory deprivation. Here, however, is the intractable challenge. The event of an ecstatic trance derives from the chemistry in the brain, but the content of an ecstatic trance derives from the theology in the mind. What entranced prophets saw in heaven validated and empowered what they brought with them from earth. The result combined both the very best understanding of the covenantal God of nonviolent distributive justice and the very worst understanding of the covenantal God of violent retributive justice. The basic message—clear, consistent, and courageous across three hundred years—demanded just distribution on earth or else stern retribution from heaven. What are the metaphor, model, and matrix for that mode of prophetic consciousness—from divine covenant through heavenly council to transcendental complaint? The answer is brilliantly revealed in one single historical incident during the Assyrian Empire’s southward attacks against Egypt in the late 700s BCE . PROPHETIC MATRIX “Thus Says the Great King”ASSYRIA WAS THE MOST powerful and also the most ruthless empire of its time. It used atrocity as imperial policy so that, where terror preceded its army, the army might not need to follow. The curses in its vassal treaties and the actions in its military reprisals were not directed just against rebel rulers and their dynasties, but explicitly against their lands and populations as well. Hezekiah of Judah, seduced by promises of Egyptian support, rebelled against King Sennacherib of Assyria. The biblical account of what happened next is quite extraordinary, with almost sixty verses verbatim across two chapters in both 2 Kings 18–19 and Isaiah 36–37. The date of Sennacherib’s campaign was 701 BCE or, possibly, a second campaign in 688 BCE . I focus here on four major aspects of the opening scene in the drama of Jerusalem’s deliverance from the Assyrian threat. The first aspect concerns speech and text. Having devastated nearby Lachish, Sennacherib sent three of his highest officials, named by their titles, to meet three of Hezekiah’s at the southeastern corner of the city walls to negotiate Jerusalem’s surrender—or else. Sennacherib’s last-named official is identified as “the Rabshakeh,” or vizier. It is he who delivers the imperial message. (Is he a northern Israelite elite-scribe deported to Assyria in 722–721 BCE ?) The full story is related in 2 Kings 18:1–36 (= Isa. 37:1–21), and the Rabshakeh’s address is historically quite accurate. Such diplomatic threats were normal Assyrian imperial protocol—before the military attacked. The Assyrian Rabshakeh carries a letter and reads it to Hezekiah’s negotiators before delivering it to them.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  In Jeremiah’s words about the new covenant, there is no mention of sacrifice. It would seem that Jeremiah believed that, in the new age, sacrifice would be abolished as irrelevant; but the writer to the Hebrews can only think in terms of the sacrificial system, and very shortly he will go on to speak of Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, whose death alone made the new covenant possible. THE GLORY OF THE TABERNACLE Hebrews 9:1–5 So, then, the first tabernacle, too, had its ordinances of worship and its holy place, which was an earthly symbol of the divine realities. For the first tabernacle was constructed and in it there was the lamp stand and the table with the shewbread, and it was called the holy place. Behind the second curtain, there was that part of the tabernacle which was called the Holy of Holies. It was approached by means of the golden altar of incense, and it had in it the ark of the covenant, which was covered all over with gold. In the ark, there was the golden pot with the manna and Aaron’s rod which budded and the tables of the covenant. Above it, there were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat; but this is not the place to speak about all these things in detail. T HE writer to the Hebrews has just been thinking of Jesus as the one who leads us into reality. He has been using the idea that in this world we have only pale copies of what is truly real. The worship that we can offer is just a ghost-like shadow of the real worship which only Jesus, the real high priest, can offer. But even as he thinks of that, his mind goes back to the tabernacle (the tabernacle, remember, not the Temple). Lovingly he remembers its beauty; lovingly he lingers on its priceless possessions. And the thought in his mind is this: if earthly worship was as beautiful as this, what must the true worship be like? If all the loveliness of the tabernacle was only a shadow of reality, how surpassingly lovely the reality must be. He does not describe the tabernacle in detail; he only alludes to some of its treasures. This was all he needed to do because his readers knew its glories and had them fixed in their memories. But we do not know them; therefore, let us see what the beauty of the earthly tabernacle was like, always remembering that it was only a pale copy of reality. The main description of the tabernacle in the wilderness is in Exodus 25–31 and 35–40. God said to Moses: ‘Make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them’ (Exodus 25:8).

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  My purpose in all this is not simply to solve the problem posed in my title How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian, but also to broach the possibility that there is an internal solution within the Christian Bible itself. Two Exploratory ProbesMY FIRST EXPLORATORY PROBE starts in the book of Leviticus, which includes this rather stunning announcement from God: “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants” (25:23). In other words, since the land is life itself, householders are but agents and stewards of God as owner, and they are only tenant farmers on another’s land and resident aliens in another’s country. (It is as if God announced today: Capital belongs to me; you are all doubtful creditors and bad debtors.) It is easy enough to imagine the purpose of taking one’s ancestral land off permanent sale. The theory is that originally God distributed the land fairly and equitably among the tribes, clans, and families of Israel. That distributive justice must never be annulled, and the rest of Leviticus 25 spells out in some detail what must happen if land needs to be sold temporarily, but never permanently. Every fiftieth year was to be the Jubilee Year of liberation, redemption, and restoration. During that Jubilee Year, all rural property sold temporarily through necessity was to be returned to its original ancestral owners: And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. . . . In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.” (25:10, 13) In fact, the buyer of such alienated rural property did not actually own the land but only its produce, pending the land’s return in the next Jubilee Year. The buyer is instructed, “If the years are more [to the next Jubilee], you shall increase the price, and if the years are fewer, you shall diminish the price; for it is a certain number of harvests that are being sold to you” (25:16). It is interesting, by the way, that the Jubilee Year started “on the day of atonement” (25:9). It is almost as if the very necessity of having a Jubilee Year pointed to something sinful that required forgiveness. In any case, all of this is quite clear in theory: land may be sold temporarily but never permanently. So how did that beautiful distributive justice work out in practice? Think of one rather extreme example of its annulment—but possibly a paradigmatic one for very many less extreme instances.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  THE writer to the Hebrews, still thinking of the supreme effectiveness of the sacrifice which Jesus made, begins with a flight of thought which, even for such an adventurous writer, is amazing. Let us remember again the letter’s basic thought that the worship of this world is a pale copy of the real worship. The writer to the Hebrews says that, in this world, the Levitical sacrifices were designed to purify the means of worship. For instance, the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement purified the tabernacle and the altar and the holy place. Now he goes on to say that the work of Christ purifies not only earth but also heaven. He has the tremendous thought of a kind of cosmic redemption that purified the whole universe, seen and unseen. So, he goes on to stress again the way in which the work and the sacrifice of Christ are supreme. (1) Christ did not enter a holy place that had been specially created for worship; he entered into the presence of God. We are to think of Christianity not in terms of church membership but in terms of intimate fellowship with God. (2) Christ entered into the presence of God not only for his own sake but also for ours. It was to open the way for us and to plead our cause. In Christ, there is the greatest paradox in the world, the paradox of the greatest glory and the greatest service, the paradox of one for whom the world exists and who exists for the world, the paradox of the eternal king and the eternal servant. (3) The sacrifice of Christ never needs to be made again. Year after year, the ritual of the Day of Atonement had to go on, and the things that blocked the road to God had to be atoned for; but, through Christ’s sacrifice, the road to God is always open. Men and women were always sinners and always will be, but that does not mean that Christ must go on offering himself again and again. The road is open once and for all. We can draw a faint analogy of that. For a long time, a particular surgical operation may be impossible. Then some surgeon finds a way round the difficulties. From that day, that same road is open to all surgeons. We may put it this way: nothing need ever be added to what Jesus Christ has done to keep open the way to God’s love for sinning humanity. Finally, the writer to the Hebrews draws a parallel between human life and the life of Christ.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Reverend Thomas took his text from Deuteronomy. And I was stretched between loathing his voice and wanting to listen to the sermon. Deuteronomy was my favorite book in the Bible. The laws were so absolute, so clearly set down, that I knew if a person truly wanted to avoid hell and brimstone, and being roasted forever in the devil's fire, all she had to do was memorize Deuteronomy and follow its teaching, word for word. I also liked the way the word rolled off the tongue. Bailey and I sat alone on the front bench, the wooden slats pressing hard on our behinds and the backs of our thighs. I would have wriggled just a bit, but each time I looked over at Momma, she seemed to threaten, “Move and I'll tear you up,” so, obedient to the unvoiced command, I sat still. The church ladies were warming up behind me with a few hallelujahs and Praise the Lords and Amens, and the preacher hadn't really moved into the meat of the sermon. It was going to be a hot service. On my way into church, I saw Sister Monroe, her open-faced gold crown glinting when she opened her mouth to return a neighborly greeting. She lived in the country and couldn't get to church every Sunday, so she made up for her absences by shouting so hard when she did make it that she shook the whole church. As soon as she took her seat, all the ushers would move to her side of the church because it took three women and sometimes a man or two to hold her. Once when she hadn't been to church for a few months (she had taken off to have a child), she got the spirit and started shouting, throwing her arms around and jerking her body, so that the ushers went over to hold her down, but she tore herself away from them and ran up to the pulpit. She stood in front of the altar, shaking like a freshly caught trout. She screamed at Reverend Taylor, “Preach it. I say, preach it.” Naturally he kept on preaching as if she wasn't standing there telling him what to do. Then she screamed an extremely fierce “I said, preach it” and stepped up on the altar. The Reverend kept on throwing out phrases like home-run balls and Sister Monroe made a quick break and grasped for him. For just a second, everything and everyone in the church except Reverend Taylor and Sister Monroe hung loose like stockings on a wash-line. Then she caught the minister by the sleeve of his jacket and his coat-tail, then she rocked him from side to side.