Bewilderment

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.

Page 61 of 69 · 20 per page

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

  They had been listening to the Old Testament stories, and decided that they too would offer a sacrifice. They examined the animals in their toy ark and finally decided on a sheep with a broken leg . The only thing they would offer was a broken toy they could well do without. That is the way in which so many people would like to sacrifice to God; but only the dearest and the best is good enough for him. (2) Abraham is the model of the individual who accepts what is beyond understanding. To him there had come this incomprehensible demand. It did not make sense. The promise was that in Isaac his seed would grow and grow until he became a mighty nation in which all others would be blessed. On the life of Isaac depended the promise; and now God seemed to want to take that life away. As the fourth-century churchman John Chrysostom put it: ‘The things of God seemed to fight against the things of God, and faith fought with faith, and the commandment fought with the promise.’ For everyone at some time, there comes something for which there seems to be no reason and which defies explanation. It is then that we are faced with life’s hardest battle – to accept when we cannot understand. At such a time, there is only one thing to do – to obey and to do so without resentment, saying: ‘God, you are love! I build my faith on that.’ (3) Abraham is the model of the individual who, with the test, found a way of escape. If we take God at his word and stake everything on him, even when there seems to be nothing but a blank wall in front of us, the way of escape will open up. THE FAITH WHICH DEFEATS DEATH Hebrews 11:20–2 It was by faith that Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in the things concerning the future. It was by faith that Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and prayed leaning on the head of his staff. It was by faith that Joseph, as he came to the end, had in his mind the days when the children of Israel would leave Egypt, and gave instructions concerning his bones. O NE thing links these three examples of faith together. In each case, it was the faith of someone to whom death was very near. The blessing which Isaac gave is in Genesis 27:28– 9, 39–40. Given after Isaac had said: ‘See, I am old; I do not know the day of my death’ (Genesis 27:2), it was: ‘May God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you.’

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

  But what then becomes of the fourth Gospel? It is incredible that the real John should have falsified the history of his Master; consequently the Gospel which bears his name is a post-apostolic fiction, a religious poem, or a romance on the theme of the incarnate Logos. It is the Gospel of Christian Gnosticism, strongly influenced by the Alexandrian philosophy of Philo. Yet it is no fraud any more than other literary fictions. The unknown author dealt with the historical Jesus of the Synoptists, as Plato dealt with Socrates, making him simply the base for his own sublime speculations, and putting speeches into his mouth which he never uttered. Who was that Christian Plato? No critic can tell, or even conjecture, except Renan, who revived, as possible at least, the absurd view of the Alogi, that the Gnostic heretic, Cerinthus the enemy of John, wrote the fourth Gospel1092 Such a conjecture requires an extraordinary stretch of imagination and an amazing amount of credulity. The more sober among the critics suppose that the author was a highly gifted Ephesian disciple of John, who freely reproduced and modified his oral teaching after he was removed by death. But how could his name be utterly unknown, when the names of Polycarp and Papias and other disciples of John, far less important, have come down to as? "The great unknown" is a mystery indeed. Some critics, half in sympathy with Tübingen, are willing to admit that John himself wrote a part of the book, either the historic narratives or the discourses, but neither of these compromises will do: the book is a unit, and is either wholly genuine or wholly a fiction. Nor are the negative critics agreed as to the time of composition. Under the increasing pressure of argument and evidence they have been forced to retreat, step by step, from the last quarter of the second century to the first, even within a few years of John’s death, and within the lifetime of hundreds of his hearers, when it was impossible for a pseudo-Johannean book to pass into general currency without the discovery of the fraud. Dr. Baur and Schwegler assigned the composition to A.D. 170 or 160; Volkmar to 155; Zeller to 150; Scholten to 140; Hilgenfeld to about 130; Renan to about 125; Schenkel to 120 or 115; until Keim (in 1867) went up as high as 110 or even 100, but having reached such an early date, he felt compelled (1875)1093 in self-defence to advance again to 130, and this notwithstanding the conceded testimonies of Justin Martyr and the early Gnostics. These vacillations of criticism reveal the impossibility of locating the Gospel in the second century. If we surrender the fourth Gospel, what shall we gain in its place? Fiction for fact, stone for bread, a Gnostic dream for the most glorious truth. Fortunately, the whole anti-Johannean hypothesis breaks down at every point.

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

  churchman. Already had he hinted from the pulpit at the convention of a general council as a last resort. The letters are still extant which he intended to send to the kings of Spain, England, France, Germany and Hungary, calling upon them to summon a council. In them, he solemnly declared that Alexander was no pope. For, aside from purchasing his office and from his daily sale of benefices, his manifest vices proved him to be no Christian. The letters seem never to have been received. Individuals, however, despatched preliminary communications to friends at the different courts to prepare the way for their appeal.1197 One, addressed to Charles VIII., was intercepted at Milan and sent to the pope. Alexander now had documentary proof of the Florentine’s rebellion against papal authority. But suddenly a wholly unexpected turn was given to the course of events. Florence was startled by the rumor that resort was to be had to ordeal by fire to decide the genuineness of Savonarola’s claims.1198 The challenge came from a Franciscan, Francesco da Puglia, in a sermon at S. Croce in which he arraigned the Dominican friar as a heretic and false prophet. In case Savonarola was not burnt, it would be a clear sign that Florence was to follow him. The challenge was accepted by Fra Domenico da Pescia, a monk of St. Mark’s and close friend of Savonarola’s, a man of acknowledged purity of life. He took his friend’s place, holding that Savonarola should be reserved for higher things. Francesco da Puglia then withdrew and a Franciscan monk, Julian Rondinelli, reluctantly took his place. Savonarola himself disapproved the ordeal. It was an appeal to the miraculous. He had never performed a miracle nor felt the importance of one. His cause, he asserted, approved itself by the fruits of righteousness. But to the people, as the author of Romola has said, "the fiery trial seemed a short and easy argument" and Savonarola could not resist the popular feeling without forfeiting his popularity. The history of Florence could show more than one case of saintly men whose profession had been tested by fire. So it was, during the investiture controversy, with St. John Gualberti, in Settimo close by, and with the monk Peter in 1068, and so it was, a half century later, with another Peter who cleared himself of the charge of contemning the cross by walking unhurt over nine glowing ploughshares.1199 The ordeal was authorized by the signory and set for April 7. It was decided that, in case Fra Domenico perished, Savonarola should go into exile within three hours. The two parties, Domenico and Rondinelli, filed their statements with the signory. The Dominican’s included the following points. The Church stands in need of renovation. It will be chastened. Florence will be chastened. These chastisements will happen in our day. The sentence of excommunication against Savonarola is invalid. No one sins in ignoring it.1200 The ordeal aroused the enthusiasm of Savonarola’s friends.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  My experience as a teenager and the one I had in my twenties were indications of something profoundly puzzling in the way we have all read the gospels. We have assumed some kind of creedal framework, and the gospels don’t fit it. Have we, then, all misunderstood the gospels? Is there an emptiness at the heart of the great cloak of the creedal gospel? I fear the answer has to be yes. Let’s sharpen this up by observing an irony that follows directly from this. To this day, whenever people take it upon themselves to explore the divinity of Jesus, there is at the very least a tendency for the theme of God’s kingdom, coming on earth as in heaven, to be quietly lost from view. It is as though a young man spent all his time proving that he really was his father’s son and left no time or energy for working with his father in the family business— which would, actually, be one of the better ways of demonstrating the family likeness. The gospels don’t make that mistake. It is by his inaugurating of God’s kingdom, in his public career and on the cross, that Jesus reveals the father’s glory. More of that anon. But this is a startling preliminary conclusion. It poses several additional questions for us today: about our discipleship, our preaching, our hermeneutics, and even our praying. The gospels were all about God becoming king, but the creeds are focused on Jesus being God. It would be truly remarkable if one great truth of early Christian faith and life were actually to displace another, to displace it indeed so thoroughly that people forgot it even existed. But that’s what I think has happened. This book is written in the hope of correcting that distortion. The Plot Thickens: Twentieth-Century Scholarly Trends So far I have confined myself to personal observations. But I believe the problem I have highlighted resonates across the whole field of Bible reading, scholarly and popular, in all the different traditions. As an American friend of mine put it, most Western churchgoers treat the gospels as the optional chips and dip at the start of the evening. They are the cocktail nibbles. Only after that do we sit down at table for the red meat of Pauline theology. I suspect— though this would take us too far afield—that this has been the case for much of the past millennium in the West, during the Middle Ages and then during and after the Reformation. That historical story, as I said in the Preface, must wait for another occasion, and probably another writer.

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

  (2) There was the sacrifice of the red heifer . This strange ritual is described in Numbers 19. Under Jewish ceremonial law, if someone touched a dead body, that person was unclean. Such people were barred from the worship of God, and everything and everyone they touched also became unclean. To deal with this, there was a prescribed method of cleansing. A red heifer was slaughtered outside the camp. The priest sprinkled the blood of the heifer in front of the tabernacle seven times. The body of the beast was then burned, together with cedar and hyssop and a piece of red cloth. The resulting ashes were placed outside the camp in a clean place and constituted a purification for sin. This ritual must have been very ancient, for both its origin and its meaning are extremely obscure. The Jews themselves told that, once, a Gentile questioned Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai on the meaning of this rite, declaring that it sounded like pure superstition. The Rabbi’s answer was that it had been appointed by the Holy One and that no one should inquire into his reasons, but the matter should be left there without explanation. In any event, the fact remains that it was one of the great Jewish rites. The writer to the Hebrews tells of these sacrifices and then declares that the sacrifice that Jesus brings is far greater and far more effective. We must first ask what he means by the greater and more effective tabernacle not made with hands. That is a question to which no one can give an answer which is beyond dispute. But the ancient scholars nearly all took it in one way and said that this new tabernacle which brought people into the very presence of God was nothing other than the body of Jesus. It would be another way of saying what John said: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ (John 14:9). The worship of the ancient tabernacle was designed to bring people into the presence of God, but only in the most shadowy and imperfect way. The coming of Jesus really brought men and women into the presence of God, because in him God entered this world of space and time in a human form, and to see Jesus is to see what God is like. The great superiority of the sacrifice Jesus brought lay in three things. (1) The ancient sacrifices cleansed the body from ceremonial uncleanness; the sacrifice of Jesus cleansed the soul. We must always remember this – in theory, all sacrifice cleansed from transgressions of the ritual law; it did not cleanse from presumptuous or high-handed sins. Take the case of the red heifer.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  There is, above all, the well-known John 3:16: “This, you see, is how much God loved the world: enough to give his only, special son, so that everyone who believes in him should not be lost but should share in the life of God’s new age.” But how does that saying fit into the story John is telling? How does it prepare for the final cry of Jesus on the cross, tetelestai, “It’s all done!” (19:30)? Many preachers have turned to that verse for a statement of “atonement” theology, making the point that tetelestai was what ancient Greeks wrote on a bill when it had been paid: “Finished!” “Done with!” “The price has been paid!” There are many ways in which you can extract a “Pauline” resonance from all that. But is that enough? Is what we mean by “atonement” something John was really interested in, and if so how does he express it? Or, to put it another way, what were the main themes John was exploring, and how does his understanding of the cross and its meaning fit into those, rather than into the scheme of thought that we have devised and inherited? In any case, these passages and a few others like them have to be, as it were, prized out of their context. It is assumed that that context—the actual story that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell, in their different ways, of what happened to Jesus after his birth and before his death—is not actually “the gospel” in the same way as the saving death of Jesus and the Pauline doctrine of justification are “the gospel.” That, I think, is the problem to which I, in my Cambridge address, was supposed to offer an answer. And it is the puzzle, I now realize, that has been a major theme of my lifetime. The puzzle of Jesus’s lifetime—what was his life all about?—has crept up on me and become the puzzle of mine. Come fast forward again, another twenty-five years. In 2003 I attended a conference where a well-known Christian leader from another continent requested some time with me. He had been reading my book Jesus and the Victory of God * in the weeks before the conference and was intrigued by it. He wanted to know how it all made sense in terms of “the gospel” that he believed and taught. We had a cup of tea (some British and Anglican stereotypes don’t change) and talked for an hour or so. I tried to explain what I thought I was seeing: that the four gospels had, as it were, fallen off the front of the canon of the New Testament as far as many Christians were concerned.

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Another example where language presupposes that transsexual and cissexual genders are of inherently different worth is the use of the word “pass.” While the word “pass” serves a purpose, in that it describes the very real privilege experienced by those transsexuals who receive conditional cissexual privilege when living as their identified sex, it is a highly problematic term in that it implies that the trans person is getting away with something. Upon close examination, it becomes quite obvious that the concept of “passing” is steeped in cissexual privilege, as it’s only ever applied to trans people. For instance, if a store clerk were to say, “Thank you, sir,” to a cissexual woman, nobody would say that she “passed” as a man or failed to “pass” as a woman; instead, we would say she is a woman and was mistaken for a man. Further, we never use the word “passing” to describe cissexual men who lift weights every day in order to achieve a more masculine appearance, or cissexual women who put on makeup, skirts, and heels to achieve a more feminine appearance. Yet, because I’m a transsexual woman, if I roll out of bed, throw on a T-shirt and jeans, and walk down the street and am generally recognized by others as female (despite my lack of concern for my appearance), I can still be dismissed as “passing” as a woman. The crux of the problem is that the words “pass” and “passing” are active verbs. So when we say that a transsexual is “passing,” it gives the false impression that they are the only active participant in this scenario (i.e., the transsexual is working hard to achieve a certain gendered appearance and everyone else is passively being duped or not duped by the transsexual’s “performance”). However, I would argue that the reverse is true: The public is the primary active participant by virtue of their incessant need to gender every person they see as either female or male. The transsexual can react to this situation in one of two ways: They can either try to live up to public expectations about maleness and femaleness in an attempt to fit in and avoid stigmatization, or they can disregard public expectations and simply be themselves. However, if they choose the latter, the public will still judge them based on whether they appear female or male and, of course, others may still accuse them of “passing,” even though they have not actively done anything. Thus, the active role played by those who compulsively distinguish between women and men (and who discriminate between transsexuals and cissexuals) is made invisible by the concept of “passing.”

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  Because of enforced ignorance, those who are socialized male typically end up mystifying femaleness—meaning that they develop a sensationalized and taboo curiosity about womanhood that is similar to that which many heterosexuals develop toward homosexuality, or that cissexuals develop toward transsexuality. Girls and women suddenly become perplexing creatures who males are entirely unable to identify with or relate to. While one might be tempted to say that the reverse is also true (after all, both sexes complain about not being able to understand the other sex), it has been my experience that most women are able and willing to put themselves in men’s shoes temporarily. For example, I have been struck by how women often wince when seeing images of men who are kicked in the groin or upon hearing stories of men who sustain injuries to their genitals, despite not ever having had male genitals themselves. In contrast, I have never once seen a man have a similar reaction upon hearing about reciprocal accounts of women (like stories about female genital mutilation). Similarly, while most women seem to understand how men “get off” via their penises, men seem curiously unable to imagine what it might be like to be on the receiving end of female sexual stimulation. This is evident in comments I’ve heard men make: that if they had breasts or female genitals they would fondle themselves all the time, as though the only pleasure they could relate to was the sensation of touching female body parts from the outside. The mystification of women focuses not only on female bodies, but on feminine gender expression as well. It’s common for men to describe feminine women as being “enchanting” and “mysterious,” and as having the ability to “cast a spell” over them. In other words, they relegate femininity to the realm of the supernatural—by definition, not natural and impossible to understand. Perhaps no aspect of femininity is more mystified than women’s clothing, which often emphasizes women’s sexuality, and which is designed in color, texture, and style to be vastly different from “men’s” clothing (right down to the shirt and pants buttons, which are conveniently on the “opposite” side).

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “Holy shit,” I said. “This is fucking crazy. So, like, there actually are mer-people? And Sirens?” “Sort of. But not the way you conceive of us. Well, we are sort of the way you conceive of us. I mean, obviously I’m very sexy.” He laughed. “You are!” I said. “Ha, not really. But I mean, we aren’t like the Siren myths and stuff. It’s not like we are trying to kill humans or keep them imprisoned on an island. We aren’t like the way they are in The Odyssey. Homer slandered us. But we do live a long, long time. Youthfully. Hundreds of years. We spend most of them looking like we are in our late teens and early twenties. I think it’s the saltwater. It preserves us in some way.” “So are you mythic? Are you a mythic creature? Is this a joke you are playing? Am I hallucinating you?” But from the look on his face I knew it wasn’t a joke. There was no way the place his skin met his tail could be fake. The gradations were too rough and eerie. There was no makeup or costume in the world that could do that. He really was part man and part fish. Or something. Had I lost it at some point along the way? Was I worse off than I thought? “You aren’t hallucinating, not really,” he said. “I mean, you are kind of hallucinating in the sense that your perspective has shifted. But in a way you were really hallucinating before you met me—in the sense that there was only one part of life you could see. You believed only that which was in front of you. Most people do. Most people believe that which you cannot see or know could not possibly exist. Humans are very arrogant. I don’t think you are arrogant, but I think it’s just your nature to only believe in what you can see.” “I don’t even know what to say,” I said. “I have so many questions for you.” “Let’s start slow,” he said. “Are you real?” I asked. He laughed. “I suffer like I’m real. I have wants like I’m real. I fear that I will be unliked or unloved. Men, women, I think that maybe everyone wants the same thing.” “Men want sex,” I said. “Don’t you?” he asked. “I do,” I said. “Maybe. But I think I mistake it for love, or something.” “How do you know when you’re mistaking it?” “I think when I get high off it.” “Well, why not? That could be love,” he said. “Can’t you get high off of love? I don’t think I want a love that doesn’t make me feel amazing.” “I don’t know if that’s love or something else,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s love if the person disappears.” “I wouldn’t say it’s not love,” he said. “But it’s hard. That is a very painful experience.”

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

  He could at first find no sense in the mysteries of the Apocalypse and declared it to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic," because it deals only with images and visions, and yet, notwithstanding its obscurity, it adds threats and promises, "though nobody knows what it means"; but afterwards he modified his judgment when the Lutheran divines found in it welcome weapons against the church of Rome. The clearest utterance on this subject is found at the close of his preface to the first edition of his German version of the New Testament (1522), but it was suppressed in later editions.27 Luther’s view of inspiration was both strong and free. With the profoundest conviction of the divine contents of the Bible, he distinguished between the revealed truth itself and the human wording and reasoning of the writers. He says of one of the rabbinical arguments of his favorite apostle: "My dear brother Paul, this argument won’t stick."28 Luther was, however, fully aware of the subjective and conjectural character of these opinions, and had no intention of obtruding them on the church: hence he modified his prefaces in later editions. He judged the Scriptures from an exclusively dogmatic, and one-sidedly Pauline standpoint, and did not consider their gradual historical growth. A few Lutheran divines followed him in assigning a subordinate position to the seven Antilegomena of the New Testament;29 but the Lutheran church, with a sound instinct, accepted for popular use the traditional catholic Canon (not even expressly excluding the Jewish Apocrypha), yet retained his arrangement of the books of the New Testament.30 The Rationalists, of course, revived, intensified, and carried to excess the bold opinions of Luther, but in a spirit against which he would himself raise the strongest protest. The Reformed divines were more conservative than Luther in accepting the canonical books, but more decided in rejecting the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The Reformed Confessions usually enumerate the canonical books. Zwingli objected only to the Apocalypse and made no doctrinal use of it, because he did not deem it an inspired book, written by the same John who wrote the fourth Gospel.31 In this view he has many followers, but the severest critical school of our days (that of Tübingen) assigns it to the Apostle John. Wolfgang Musculus mentions the seven Antilegomena, but includes them in the general catalogue of the New Testament; and Oecolampadius speaks of six Antilegomena (omitting the Hebrews), as holding an inferior rank, but nevertheless appeals to their testimony.32 Calvin had no fault to find with James and Jude, and often quotes Hebrews and Revelation as canonical books, though he wrote no commentary on Revelation, probably because he felt himself incompetent for the task. He is silent about Second and Third John.

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

  The realistic and mystical view fell in more easily with the excessive supernaturalism and superstitious piety of the middle age, and triumphed at last both in the Greek and Latin churches; for there is no material difference between them on this dogma.703 The spiritual theory was backed by the all-powerful authority of St. Augustin in the West, and ably advocated by Ratramnus and Berengar, but had to give way to the prevailing belief in transubstantiation until, in the sixteenth century, the controversy was revived by the Reformers, and resulted in the establishment of three theories: 1) the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, re-asserted by the Council of Trent; 2) the Lutheran theory of the real presence in the elements, retaining their substance;704 and 3) the Reformed (Calvinistic) theory of a spiritual real or dynamic presence for believers. In the Roman church (and herein the Greek church fully agrees with her), the doctrine of transubstantiation is closely connected with the doctrine of the sacrifice of the mass, which forms the centre of worship. It is humiliating to reflect that the, commemorative feast of Christ’s dying love, which should be the closest bond of union between believers, innocently gave rise to the most violent controversies. But the same was the case with the still more important doctrine of Christ’s Person. Fortunately, the spiritual benefit of the sacrament does not depend upon any particular human theory of the mode of Christ’s presence, who is ever ready to bless all who love him. § 126. The Theory of Paschasius Radbertus. Paschasius Radbertus (from 800 to about 865), a learned, devout and superstitious monk, and afterwards abbot of Corbie or Corvey in France705 is the first who clearly taught the doctrine of transubstantiation as then believed by many, and afterwards adopted by the Roman Catholic church. He wrote a book "on the Body and Blood of the Lord," composed for his disciple Placidus of New Corbie in the year 831, and afterwards reedited it in a more popular form, and dedicated it to the Emperor Charles the Bald, as a Christmas gift (844). He did not employ the term transubstantiation, which came not into use till two centuries later; but he taught the thing, namely, that "the substance of bread and wine is effectually changed (efficaciter interius commutatur) into the flesh and blood of Christ," so that after the priestly consecration there is "nothing else in the eucharist but the flesh and blood of Christ," although "the figure of bread and wine remain" to the senses of sight, touch, and taste. The change is brought about by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, who created the body of Christ in the womb of the Virgin without cohabitation, and who by the same almighty power creates from day to day, wherever the mass is celebrated, the same body and blood out of the substance of bread and wine.

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

  preserved from the hand of Andreas Meinhard, then a new master of arts. On his way to Wittenberg,1507, he met a raw student about to enter the university, Reinhard by name. The elector had made good use of the opportunities his pilgrimages to Jerusalem furnished and succeeded in obtaining the very respectable number of 5,005 sacred pieces. The collection was displayed for over a year in the Schlosskirche, where Meinhard and his travelling companion looked at it with wondering eyes and undoubting confidence. Among the pieces were a thorn from the crown of thorns, a tunic belonging to John the Evangelist, milk from the Virgin’s breast, a piece of Mt. Calvary, a piece of the table on which the Last Supper was eaten, fragments of the stones on which Christ stood when he wept over Jerusalem and as he was about to ascend to heaven, the entire body of one of the Bethlehem Innocents, one of the fingers of St. Anna, "the most blessed of grandmothers,"—beatissimae aviae,—pieces of the rods of Aaron and Moses, a piece of Mary’s girdle and some of the straw from the Bethlehem manger. Good reason had Meinhard to remark that, if the grandfathers had been able to arise from the dead, they would have thought Rome itself transferred to Wittenberg. Each of these fragments was worth 100 days of indulgence to the worshipper. The credulity of Frederick, the collector, and the people betrays the atmosphere in which Luther was brought up and the struggle it must have cost him to attack the deep- seated beliefs of his generation. The religious reverence paid to the Virgin could not well go beyond the stage it reached in the age of the greater Schoolmen nor could more flattering epithets be heaped upon her than were found in the works of Albertus Magnus and Bonaventura. Mary was more easily entreated than her Son. The Horticulus animae,—Garden of the Soul,—tells the story of a cleric, accustomed to say his Ave Marias devoutly every day, to whom the Lord appeared and said, that his mother was much gratified at the priest’s prayers and loved him much but that he should not forget also to direct prayers to himself. The book, Heavenly Wagon, called upon sinners to take refuge in her mantle, where full mercy and pardon would be found.1277 Erasmus remarked that Mary’s blind devotees, praying to her on all occasions, considered it manners to place the mother before the Son.1278 In 1456, Calixtus III. commended the use of the Ave Maria as a protection against the Turks. English Prymers contained the salutations, Blessid art thou virgyn marie, that hast born the lord maker of the world: thou hast getyn hym that made thee, and thou dwellist virgyne withouten ende. Thankis to god.

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

  He emphasizes the identity of the eucharistic body with the body which was born of the Virgin, suffered on the cross, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven; yet on the other hand he represents the sacramental eating and drinking as a spiritual process by faith.706 He therefore combines the sensuous and spiritual conceptions.707 He assumes that the soul of the believer communes with Christ, and that his body receives an imperishable principle of life which culminates at last in the resurrection. He thus understood, like several of the ancient fathers, the words of our Saviour: "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:54). He supports his doctrine by the words of institution in their literal sense, and by the sixth chapter of John. He appealed also to marvellous stories of the visible appearances of the body and blood of Christ for the removal of doubts or the satisfaction of the pious desire of saints. The bread on the altar, he reports, was often seen in the shape of a lamb or a little child, and when the priest stretched out his hand to break the bread, an angel descended from heaven with a knife, slaughtered the lamb or the child, and let his blood run into a cup!708 Such stories were readily believed by the people, and helped to strengthen the doctrine of transubstantiation; as the stories of the appearances of departed souls from purgatory confirmed the belief in purgatory. The book of Radbert created a great sensation in the West, which was not yet prepared to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation without a vigorous struggle. Radbert himself admits that some of his contemporaries believed only in a spiritual communion of the soul with Christ, and substituted the mere virtue of his body and blood for the real body and blood, i.e., as he thinks, the figure for the verity, the shadow for the substance.709 His opponents appealed chiefly to St. Augustin, who made a distinction between the historical and the eucharistic body of Christ, and between a false material and a true spiritual fruition of his body and blood. In a letter to the monk Frudegard, who quoted several passages of Augustin, Radbert tried to explain them in his sense. For no divine of the Latin church dared openly to contradict the authority of the great African teacher. § 127. The Theory of Ratramnus. The chief opponent of transubstantiation was Ratramnus,710 a contemporary monk at Corbie, and a man of considerable literary reputation. He was the first to give the symbolical theory a scientific expression. At the request of King Charles the Bald he wrote a eucharistic tract against Radbert, his superior, but did not name him.711 He answered two questions, whether the consecrated elements are called body and blood of Christ after a sacramental manner (in

• From How God Became King (2012)

  This has come through into contemporary readings in which “kingdom” and “cross” have been played off against one another. Sometimes this has been done (as in some nineteenth-century “lives” of Jesus) by presenting Jesus’s ministry as composed of two periods, an early period (the so-called Galilean springtime), in which the kingdom movement seemed to be going well, followed by a quite different period, during which, for whatever reason, storm clouds gathered and Jesus found himself compelled to go to Jerusalem to force the issue. Sometimes, without stating any such narrative, different Christians have found that they want to highlight one element or the other, whether the “kingdom,” to validate a contemporary social agenda (and to leave a question mark as to why the cross mattered at all), or the “cross,” to emphasize the mechanism by which God rescues sinners from this world and enables them to go to “heaven” (leaving a question mark as to why either Jesus or the evangelists would think it mattered that much to do all those healings, to walk on water, or to give such remarkable teaching). The anomalies in these views can, of course, be addressed and the shaky structure shored up, whether by inappropriate use of other “orthodox” motifs (so that, for instance, “all those things in the middle” between incarnation and cross can be interpreted, as we saw, as “proofs” of “Jesus’s divinity”). But anomalies they will remain. Forcing other bits of the jigsaw to fit together despite their actual shape may produce a picture of sorts. But it isn’t the one originally intended. The story the gospel writers all tell thus brings together, into close fusion, the two major themes of kingdom and cross. But what sense does this make? How can the suffering and death of Israel’s Messiah somehow bring about his worldwide sovereign kingdom? Or, conversely, what can the establishment of God’s sovereign rule on earth as in heaven have to do with the brutal and unjust execution of Jesus, however “high” a Christology we may espouse? Centuries of atonement theology since Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and the rest have explored ways in which we might say that Jesus’s death delivers us from our sins, but this seems to be an altogether wider theme. That, perhaps, is why traditional atonement theologies have, bizarrely to my mind, failed to draw on the gospels for their primary source material. (Yes, Paul has plenty to say on the subject, but when “biblical” theologies ignore the gospels, something is clearly very wrong.) Again, conversely, traditional kingdom theologies (with an emphasis on God’s liberation of the oppressed and the “option for the poor”) have regularly held aloof from speaking too much about the cross. That, perhaps, is why they have, to their own great loss, not looked to Paul for primary source material. But now that we have, over the past two generations, rediscovered all four evangelists as sophisticated and thoroughgoing theologians in their own right, we can hardly avoid the question.

• From How God Became King (2012)

  So much detail, and yet nothing at all about what Jesus did in between being conceived and born, on the one hand, and being crucified under Pontius Pilate, on the other. Why not? If the aim were to summarize the key focal points of Christian faith, did that imply that that faith didn’t really need, shall we say, Matthew 3–26? Would chapters 1–2 (Jesus’s birth) and 27–28 (his death and resurrection) have done just as well? Was Matthew, and were Mark, Luke, and John for that matter, wasting time telling us all that stuff in the middle? Were they just giving us the “backstory” to satisfy any lingering curiosity the church might have about the earlier life of the one Christians now worshipped as Lord? This problem, as we began to notice in the previous section, resurfaced in twentieth-century scholarship in the form of the question scholars associate with Rudolf Bultmann in particular (though with many antecedents and many followers): Why should the church, worshipping the living Lord, be bothered by the history of what he had done in the past? The answers given by conservative scholarship seem thin and flat. They amount to what we now refer to as arm-waving: they maintain that early converts, eager to worship the risen Lord in the present, wanted to know about the earthly life of this same Jesus. But although that was undoubtedly the case, responding to a request for information doesn’t seem to come anywhere close to describing what the gospels seem to be doing. They do not seem merely to be providing background biographical details. They are not merely “filling in gaps” to help the present faith and life of their readers. They are telling a story, a story that is almost entirely missing in the great creeds of the early church. The same point comes out even more strongly in the Nicene Creed, which developed to its present form by the middle of the fifth century. I quote the second article in its traditional English form: I believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ the only-begotten Son of God; begotten of his Father before all worlds; God of God; light of light; very God of very God; begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; Who for us men, and our salvation came down from heaven; And was incarnate of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. Then we can imagine a deep breath, a dramatic pause, as we wait to see if anything further will be said about Jesus. But no, the creed leaps right over the whole “middle story” and lands once more at the end: And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures; And ascended into heaven; and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;

• From Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity (2007)

  While biological gender differences are very real, most of the connotations, values, and assumptions we associate with female and male biology are not. 10 Experiential Gender There is perhaps no better place to begin a discussion about being a trans woman than with the quote that has become practically synonymous with that experience in the public’s mind: that we feel like “women trapped inside men’s bodies.” This saying has become so popular and widespread that it’s safe to say these days that it’s far more often parodied by cissexuals than used by transsexuals to describe their own experiences. In fact, the regularity with which cissexuals use this saying to mock trans women has always struck me as rather odd, since it was so clearly coined not to encapsulate all of the intricacies and nuances of the trans female experience, but rather as a way of dumbing down our experiences into a sound bite that cissexuals might be better able to comprehend. Unfortunately, the popularity of the “woman trapped inside a man’s body” cliché has become a lightning rod for cissexuals who are disturbed by transsexuality. Some cissexual women, for instance, have accused trans women of being arrogant or presumptuous in claiming that we “feel like women” when, prior to our transitions, we had only ever experienced living in the world as men. Often such criticism is followed with catty remarks such as “How just like a man to say such a thing”—the implication being that our attempts to claim the identity of “woman” are merely (and rather ironically) a by-product of male entitlement. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that I never “felt like a woman” before my transition. Even as a preteen struggling with the inexplicable and persistent desire to be female, I understood how problematic that popular cliché was. After all, how can anyone know what it’s like to “feel like a woman” or “feel like a man” when we can never really know how anybody else feels on the inside? Most people whose physical and subconscious sexes coincide generally fall rather seamlessly into womanhood or manhood; as a result, they take for granted the identity of woman or man. My gender identity always felt more like a puzzle that I had to put together myself, one in which many of the pieces were missing, where I had no clue as to what the final picture was supposed to be.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  She has lost her lustrous, cascading curls and now a colorful silk scarf frames her face. I tell her that I am inspired by her, the way she bounces through the world with such bravery and positivity; she tells me that I do the same for her. I want her to know that I don’t think we are in the same camp, that there is a difference between my heartbroken status and her fight-for-her-life status, that my courage pales in comparison to hers. “To be honest, Laura, I would say it’s pretty even. I don’t know how I would survive being in your shoes.” I am dumbfounded. Sure, it’s a nightmare to have an unfaithful husband, but I cannot believe that someone would prefer to fight a life-threatening illness. When I mention this to a close friend who recovered from cancer years earlier, she surprises me by not agreeing with me. “I get it,” she says. “When you’re sick, you strategize to attack it. You turn to experts to make decisions. In your situation, there’s no clear path. You may have tons of love and support from friends but at the end of the day, none of them can tell you what to do. The unknown is more terrifying to a lot of people than something known and scary.” This must be bad , I think to myself. I have at times tried to convince myself that men (and women too, but mostly men, let’s be honest) have been having extramarital affairs since the beginning of time, and that since it happens all the time, maybe it’s not as big a deal as I’m making it. If I can put it into historical context, I will be fine. Of course it doesn’t feel fine at all, but sometimes I can convincingly rationalize to myself that this is nothing but a bump. Now people around me are validating the worst and scariest of what I feel: that this is just as bad, if not even more calamitous, than I had thought. When I confide in friends, they inevitably ask, how did you find out? It amazes me that no matter how compassionate they are, and knowing this will evoke painful memories for me, they have to know. I understand and have reverse sympathy. They need to believe there was a fatal error I made, or something inherently wrong with Michael, anything to verify their own immunity. I am annoyed that their need to know trumps their wanting to protect me from having to relive the story, but I comply with an answer anyway. This is the story I tell. For weeks, maybe months, I had a nagging sense that something was wrong with Michael. In our 27 years together, he had usually been the first to apologize, asking within minutes of an argument, “Can we be friends again?” He did not hold grudges and moved on from personal and business disagreements with admirable speed.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Was he missing a leg? Was it just a small dick? “I don’t like people,” I said. “I have no friends. I have no one to tell.” This was a lie. I would surely be telling Claire at some point about the pussy-eating in detail and, I figured, probably every inch of his body. As soon as she was better and ready to hear it. It would probably even cheer her up. “Okay,” he said. “But if you don’t like it, there is nothing I can do about it. If you feel frightened by it—by me—I can only go back into the water and swim away. I won’t be able to see you again.” “Come on,” I said. “Would you stop? I won’t not like it. There’s nothing that can scare me.” That wasn’t entirely true, but I believed it. It’s an art to believe your own lies. Some people think you have to actively convince yourself in order to believe your own lies, but in that moment, I just didn’t know any other reality than everything being okay—no matter what he showed me. I knew only that silence and the wanting him to come up on the rock with me. I didn’t think I could be scared of anything. I just wanted him to be with me. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He put his beautiful white arms on the rock and hoisted himself up, then flipped himself over so that he was sitting next to me. Around his pelvic region was a thick beige sash, like an oilcloth. Below it was the wet suit: scaly and coal black, covered in barnacles. At the bottom were what looked like a pair of fins or flippers, of the same color as the suit, connected to the rest of the black rubbery scales. He looked more like a scuba diver than a swimmer and more like a thick piece of cod than a scuba diver. The suit seemed old—like it had been soaking in the ocean for years—with all of the barnacles attached to it, bits of seaweed. It wasn’t sleek or shiny like I had seen on the surfers. It almost looked like the rocks we were seated on. Like he was part of the ocean landscape. The flippers too really looked like fish fins: thick by where I guessed his ankles would be and then fading to a translucency at the bottom. Sheer black. They reminded me of a black bubble-eye fish I had at thirteen who died while my father and I were traveling to visit Annika at college. When we returned home, the fish was floating on her side at the top of the water, the tank stinking. I remember feeling embarrassed and not wanting to show my father she had died. I wasn’t afraid he would blame me for her death, but something about her curvy little body, just floating there, made me feel exposed.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I vacuumed our apartment, polished the dining and wooden end tables, scrubbed the ten linoleum squares that made up our kitchen and bathroom, and left the tiny apartment in its gleaming glory to walk around the corner to the bakery. Once I reached it though, I stopped outside the door leading inside, immobilized as I watched other customers stroll in and out. I could see the glass case of cookies through the window and I felt nothing so much as bafflement: this once made me happy? These crumbling, garishly colored cookies? Jockeying for a spot in line with all the couples pushing overloaded baby strollers? I desperately wanted to be a mother, I wanted to coo over a baby with Michael, saying she has my eyes but your smile, I wanted to know what it meant to feel a life growing inside of me – and these cookies were supposed to bring me some modicum of joy? I didn’t want the crumbs, I wanted the whole bakery. I was disgusted with myself, a simpleton who had been fooled by such a mundane pleasure in the past. Now, standing here on the sidewalk, I have that same feeling of bewilderment. I had thought happiness was still within my grasp and an emotion that I understood – men were mine for the taking just like those cookies had been, lined up on their trays, waiting to be chosen and packed up for home. But I don’t have the fire in me to compete with these strutting women who dominate the streets of my hometown. I suddenly feel used up and spit out, my eyes swollen from my meltdown in the car, my curly hair puffing up in the humidity, my skin coated in a toxic layer of acridness that I am certain will repel anyone who comes near me. I feel, finally, defeated. Slowly, I walk back home, letting Daisy know I can help her finish her errands if she wants and texting Hudson a long note that has been purged of the rage I felt just an hour ago. I tell him I love him unconditionally, am sorry I lost my temper and know we will get through this together. If I can only retrieve one part of my former self, it’ll be to mother the hell out of my kids – that’s the one job at which I absolutely will not allow myself to fail. To their credit, the kids get their emotions under control and our reunification spurs me along. Back upstate, every night leading up to her departure, I cook one of Daisy’s favorite meals and then excuse myself to wipe away a sudden onslaught of tears while the kids murmur to each other, “Is she seriously crying again?” Daisy and I have always been deeply connected to each other, and she is the child of mine who bursts through the door at the end of the day spilling out an endless series of stories.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The very front of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for the most complex functions of human behavior and consciousness, curves all the way around the cranium, making a near U-turn and abutting, with intimate proximity, the most archaic parts of the brain stem, hypothalamus and limbic system. Neuroscience teaches that generally when two parts of the brain are in close anatomical closeness, it is because they are meant to function together. This makes it even more likely that the electrochemical signals will be reliably transmitted. Descartes might have been utterly flabbergasted at such an intimate relationship between the most primitive and the most refined portions of the brain. Here we have the highest pinnacle of what it is to be human “in bed” (cheek to cheek) with the most primal and archaic vestiges of our animal ancestry. Descartes would have found no rhyme or reason to this physical arrangement. Had he ever speculated in real estate, where value is all about “location, location, location,” he might have been even more perplexed. In addition, as next-door neighbors, brain stem, emotional brain and neocortex must find a common language with which to communicate. Maintaining such an intimate relationship is analogous to the task of interfacing a Craig or IBM supercomputer at MIT with an ancient abacus at the Chinese grocery so that they operate together as one unit. Likewise, the lizard’s rudimentary brain and Einstein’s genius brain (the neocortex) must cohabitate and communicate in a coherent harmony. But what happens when this coexistence between instinct, feeling and reason becomes disrupted? Phineas Gage, a railroad supervisor in 1848, was the first well-documented case of such a violent divorce. While he was blasting a tunnel near Burlington, Vermont, a three-foot-long spike called a tamping iron was propelled, bullet-like, through his skull. It entered near his eye socket, penetrating his brain, and exited through the crown on the opposite side of his head. To everyone’s amazement, Mr. Gage, minus one eye, “recovered fully.” Well, not quite … While his intellect functioned normally, the injury altered his basic personality. Before the accident, he was well liked by his employers and employees (the ideal middleman). However, the “new” Mr. Gage “was arbitrary, capricious, unstable and considered by those who knew him to be a foul-mouthed boor.” Lacking in motivation, he was unable to hold down a job and ended up drifting, including time spent in a carnival sideshow. ‡ One longtime associate observed that “Gage was no longer Gage.” In addition, a Dr. John Harlow, his physician, poignantly, described him in this manner: “Gage has lost the equilibrium or balance between his intellectual faculty and [his] animal propensities.” Fast-forward one hundred and forty years to Elliot, a patient of the eminent neurologist Antonio Damasio.