Gratitude

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 Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  Uh-oh, thought Ernest. But he held his head high and faced the oncoming Merges. “Yes, I heard you. I heard your, ‘ Geh Gesunter Heit .’ And I know what that means—didn’t you know that I speak good German? You blessed me. Even though you didn’t imagine I would hear, you wished me to go in good health. And I am moved by your blessing. Very moved. I know what I’ve put you through. I know how much you want to liberate this woman—not only for her sake but also for yours. And yet even after your tremendous effort, and after your not knowing whether you were successful in redressing the wrong, even then you still had the grace and the loving-kindness to wish for my good health. That may be the most generous gift I have ever received. Good-bye, my friend.” “Good-bye, Merges,” said Ernest, watching Merges stroll away, more perky now and with a graceful cat gait. Is it my imagination, he thought, or has Merges grown appreciably smaller? “Perhaps we’ll meet again,” said Merges, without breaking stride. “I’m considering settling in California.” “You have my word, Merges,” Ernest called after him. “You’ll eat well here. Roast crab—and cilantro—every night.” Darkness again. The next thing Ernest saw was the roseate glow of dawn. Now I know the meaning of a “hard day’s night,” he thought as he sat up in bed, stretched, and contemplated the sleeping Artemis. He felt certain that Merges would now depart from the dream dimension. But what about the rest of the cat curse? None of that had been discussed. For a few minutes Ernest considered the prospect of being involved with a woman who might, every so often, be sexually ferocious and voracious. Quietly he slipped out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs. Artemis, hearing his footsteps, called out, “Ernest, no! Something’s changed. I’m free. I know it. I feel it. Don’t go, please. You don’t need to go. ” “Be right back with breakfast. Ten minutes,” he called from the front door. “I have an urgent need for an extra-seedy bagel and cream cheese. Yesterday I spotted a deli down the street.” He was just opening his car door when he heard the bedroom window go up and Artemis’s voice. “Ernest, Ernest, remember I’m a vegan. No cream cheese. Can you get—” “I know—avocado. It’s on my list.” 5 Double Exposure “So that, Dr. Lash, is why I feel like giving up. There are no men out there. And if they’re still unmarried in their forties, then obviously something’s wrong—creeps, rejects, diseased—some other woman didn’t want them and threw them out. Cleaned them out too. The last three men I’ve gone out with had no retirement. Zilch. Who can respect them? Could you? I bet you’re putting plenty away for your retirement, huh? Oh, don’t worry, I know you’re not going to answer that. I’m thirty-five.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  183 “Justification by Grace Through Faith” earlier example from medical technology. In a heart transplant, a person’s old and damaged heart is totally removed and replaced by a new and undamaged one. It is possible that the new organ may be rejected by the body, but there are medications to help prevent this. What God did in Christ and what God thereby offers to every- one is an identity change, a character replacement, a Spirit trans- plant. God’s own holy Spirit, the Spirit of nonviolent distributive justice that is God’s own self, nature, and character, is offered freely and gratuitously to all people. It is what Paul calls a charis and we translate as a “grace.” It is a free gift offered without any prior con- ditions demanded by God or prior merits expected of us. Indeed, how could either of those even be imagined ? Also, to continue the analogy, the medications against the rejection of God’s Spirit transplant are called prayer and meditation, worship and liturgy. Paul calls that process of Spirit transplant “God’s just-making” or “God’s just-ifi cation” of the world. But what is truly extraor- dinary is not so much that the divine Spirit transplant is freely offered by God, but that it is freely offered to friends and enemies alike—yes, even to God’s enemies—according to Jesus: “For God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righ teous and on the unrigh teous” (Matt. 5:45). That absolute grace—offered even to God’s enemies—is what Paul could never forget, because he experienced it personally at Damascus. It was precisely when he was, as he told the Philip- pians, a “persecutor of the church” that God empowered him to live in Christ (3:6). It was precisely when he was, as he told the Galatians, “violently persecuting the church of God and . . . try- ing to destroy it” that God’s Spirit transplant took place within him (1:13). It was precisely “while we were God’s enemies,” as he told the Romans, that “we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son” (5:10).

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  We have approached it on strict exegetical grounds, coming cautiously into the passage from either end, where the emphasis, from 2:17 on and then again in chapter 4, has been on the divine covenant, the divine promises and purposes to and through Abraham and his family. Coming to the passage this way, we have then worked inward, to find the notions of a new Passover combined with a new sin-forgiving act accomplished through the blood of Jesus. Though the emphasis of the whole passage fits, of course, with the specific argument of Romans, this combination of themes is so strikingly similar to the combination we find in the various accounts of the Last Supper that it is hard to suppose this to be accidental. This is not the place to ponder the question of how these various traditions came to be as they are. That would in any case be a matter of speculation. But it seems to me striking that in summarizing the meaning of Jesus’s death for the purposes of his own present argument, Paul finds himself in the same territory as the gospel writers—and in the same combination of themes as he himself deployed when writing 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. It looks as though we are here in touch with some of the very earliest Christian reflections on the cross, rooted in the intentions, teaching, and dramatic actions of Jesus himself. And here, as there, we come back once again to the point. In this event, all the early Christians tell us, the living God was revealed in human form, in utter self-giving love, to be the focus of grateful worship, worship that would replace the idols and would therefore generate a new, truly human existence in which the deadly grip of sin had been broken forever. Conclusion: Redemption Accomplished, Revolution Launched Now at last we see how the difficult detail of Romans 3:24–26 makes exactly the point that is needed granted the argument that runs from 2:17 through chapter 4. Israel had been faithless to the divine vocation to bring blessing to the nations; but Israel’s failure is dealt with in the proper way, by the reality to which the Day of Atonement had always pointed. The Messiah, in his faithful death, had very specifically accomplished the purpose for which Israel had been called.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  (Paul summarizes his argument in similar terms in Romans 15:8–9.) Paul is at pains to stress that this unveiling of God’s covenant justice is an act of free grace: those who believe are “by God’s grace . . . freely declared to be in the right” (3:24a). God is under no obligation to do this. God is in nobody’s debt. This too is covenant language: the “grace” of God in Paul looks back to similar language in scripture, indicating both that God has made promises out of his own loving purpose, not out of constraint, and that when he keeps them it is out of pure mercy—a point that Paul emphasizes when he sums up the whole argument in 12:1. And this mercy involves God’s being true to himself, his own character, purposes, and promises. But throughout the Second Temple period the divine covenant faithfulness was seen in a double light. This was summarized in Daniel 9, but it goes back, through many generations, texts, and traditions, to Deuteronomy 27–32, a passage to which Paul returns not least in the later exposition of the divine faithfulness in Romans 9–11. Faced with Israel’s idolatry, God’s covenant faithfulness would require him to let Israel reap the consequences, which would mean exile. But that same divine faithfulness would then mean restoration. And this coming restoration, the liberation from oppressive pagan powers, would be the new Exodus. The original Exodus was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham (Gen. 15:13–16), so the renewal of the covenant would mean the newer, greater Exodus, this time involving the forgiveness of sins. That, famously, is the emphasis of Jeremiah 31:31–34, and also of Isaiah 40– 55, to which we shall presently return. The framework for these six crucial verses is therefore set. The events concerning Jesus unveil and display the covenant faithfulness of Israel’s God. The scriptures themselves and the surrounding context in Romans indicate that this will mean God’s dealing with idolatry and sin and fulfilling his Israel- shaped purpose for the world. This, in outline, is what Paul thinks he is saying in this passage. The Messiah’s Faithfulness to God’s Purpose for Israel The Israel-shaped purpose, to which Israel itself had been faithless, has been fulfilled in the Messiah himself. That is the point of Romans 3:22, and this is why I take the contested phrase pistis Christou here (and often elsewhere) in the sense of the “Messiah’s faithfulness.” Thus I read v.

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

  Objection 3: Further, no one does a work of mercy on some one’s behalf unless it profit him. Now burying the dead is reckoned among the works of mercy, therefore Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii): “Tobias, as attested by the angel, is declared to have found favor with God by burying the dead.” Therefore such like burial observances profit the dead. Objection 4: Further, it is unbecoming to assert that the devotion of the faithful is fruitless. Now some, out of devotion, arrange for their burial in some religious locality. Therefore the burial service profits the dead. Objection 5: Further, God is more inclined to pity than to condemn. Now burial in a sacred place is hurtful to some if they be unworthy: wherefore Gregory says (Dial. iv): “If those who are burdened with grievous sins are buried in the church this will lead to their more severe condemnation rather than to their release.” Much more, therefore, should we say that the burial service profits the good. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii): “Whatever service is done the body is no aid to salvation, but an office of humanity.” Further, Augustine says (De Cura pro Mort. iii; De Civ. Dei i): “The funereal equipment, the disposition of the grace, the solemnity of the obsequies are a comfort to the living rather than a help to the dead.” Further, Our Lord said (Lk. 12:4): “Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.” Now after death the bodies of the saints can be hindered from being buried, as we read of having been done to certain martyrs at Lyons in Gaul (Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. v, 1). Therefore the dead take no harm if their bodies remain unburied: and consequently the burial service does not profit them. I answer that, We have recourse to burial for the sake of both the living and the dead. For the sake of the living, lest their eyes be revolted by the disfigurement of the corpse, and their bodies be infected by the stench, and this as regards the body. But it profits the living also spiritually inasmuch as our belief in the resurrection is confirmed thereby. It profits the dead in so far as one bears the dead in mind and prays for them through looking on their burial place, wherefore a “monument” takes its name from remembrance, for a monument is something that recalls the mind [monens mentem], as Augustine observes (De Civ. Dei i; De Cura pro Mort. iv). It was, however, a pagan error that burial was profitable to the dead by procuring rest for his soul: for they believed that the soul could not be at rest until the body was buried, which is altogether ridiculous and absurd.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  The normal Greek word for “sin,” namely hamartia, means “missing the mark”: shooting at a target and failing to hit it. This is subtly but importantly different from being given a long and fussy list of things you must and mustn’t do and failing to observe them all. In the story the Bible is telling, humans were created for a purpose, and Israel was called for a purpose, and the purpose was not simply “to keep the rules,” “to be with God,” or “to go to heaven,” as you might suppose from innumerable books, sermons, hymns, and prayers. Humans were made to be “image-bearers,” to reflect the praises of creation back to the Creator and to reflect the Creator’s wise and loving stewardship into the world. Israel was called to be the royal priesthood, to worship God and reflect his rescuing wisdom into the world. In the Bible, “sin”—for which there are various words in Hebrew—is the outworking of a prior disease, a prior disobedience: a failure of worship. Humans are made to worship the God who created them in his own image and so to be sustained and renewed in that image-bearing capacity. Like many scholars today, I understand the idea of the “image,” as in Genesis 1:26–28, to mean that humans are designed to function like angled mirrors. We are created in order to reflect the worship of all creation back to the Creator and by that same means to reflect the wise sovereignty of the Creator into the world. Human beings, worshipping their Creator, were thus the intended key to the proper flourishing of the world. “Worship” was and is a matter of gazing with delight, gratitude, and love at the creator God and expressing his praise in wise, articulate speech. Those who do this are formed by this activity to become the generous, humble stewards through whom God’s creative and sustaining love is let loose into the world. That was how things were meant to be. The purpose of the cross is to take us back, from where we presently are, to that intended goal.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  It had changed the world. I think they were right. This book is my attempt to explain why. This is, of course, a “popular” book in the sense that I have not provided the detailed scholarly apparatus with which an argument like this might be supported. A fair amount of that is contained in my earlier works, particularly in the large series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God , published in London by SPCK and in Minneapolis by Fortress Press. Within this, the scene is set in The New Testament and the People of God (1992); the material about Jesus and the gospels is explored in Jesus and the Victory of God (1996); and the material about Paul is expounded in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013), together with the articles reprinted in Pauline Perspectives (same publishers, 2013), particularly the more recent pieces on Romans. Other more popular works flank the present book, for instance, Evil and the Justice of God (London: SPCK; Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2003), Justification (same publishers, 2009) and Surprised by Hope (London: SPCK; San Francisco: HarperOne, 2007). The heart of the present book is, however, substantially new, and represents a development and in some cases a significant revision of positions I have taken previously, for instance, in my commentary on Romans (in the New Interpreters Bible , vol. 10 [Nashville: Abingdon, 2002]). The present book began as a series of extracurricular lectures at St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews, organized by Dr. Andrew Torrance. I am grateful to him and to the audience of colleagues and students who came regularly, asked sharp and difficult questions, and continued to wrestle with the issues. I make special mention here of one student, Dr. Norio Yamaguchi from Japan, whose own probing of the first-century meanings of Passover, on the one hand, and the Day of Atonement, on the other, kick-started some of the trains of thought that I have tried to follow up here. Dr. Yamaguchi is not, of course, responsible for what I have done with these ideas, but I probably wouldn’t have started to ask some of the key questions if he had not nudged me into doing so. I also thank Bishop Robert Forsyth, from Sydney, Australia, for his help in the initial brainstorming for the lectures and cheerfully absolve him too from any responsibility for the ways in which my ideas have developed. The same is true also of my colleague Dr. David Moffitt, whose own work on the Letter to the Hebrews and on the understandings of sacrifice in the ancient Jewish world and in the New Testament have been extremely stimulating. Though they come from very different angles, Dr. Michael Horton, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Dr.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You’re not my life—I see you only two hours a week; my husband died only two weeks ago—why do you press me about my feelings toward you? —This is crazy. . . . All these questions about the way I look at you, or the way I walk into this office—they’re too trivial to talk about. Too many big things are going on in my life.” On the contrary, Irene immediately grasped what I was trying to do and throughout therapy seemed grateful for all my attempts to engage her. Irene’s remarks about my “improvising” therapy were of great interest to me. Lately I have found myself proclaiming, “The good therapist must create a new therapy for each patient.” That is an extreme position, more radical even than Jung’s suggestion, many years ago, that we create a new therapy language for each patient. But radical positions for these radical times. The contemporary managed-care movement in health care poses a deadly threat to the field of psychotherapy. Consider its mandates: (1) that therapy be unrealistically brief, focusing exclusively on outward symptoms rather than on the underlying conflicts that breed those symptoms; (2) that therapy be unrealistically inexpensive (which is punishing both to the professionals who have invested the necessary years for in-depth training and to the patients who are forced to consult inadequately trained therapists); (3) that therapists mimic the medical model and go through the charade of formulating precise medical-like goals and conducting weekly evaluations of them; and (4) that therapists employ only empirically validated therapies (EVTs), thus favoring brief, apparently precise cognitive-behavioral modes that demonstrate symptom alleviation. But of all these wrongheaded and catastrophic assaults on the field of psychotherapy, none is more ominous than the trend toward protocol-driven therapy. Thus, some health plans and HMOs require that the therapist follow a prescribed plan for the course of therapy, at times even a schedule of items to be covered in each of the allowed sessions. The profit-hungry health care executives and their misguided professional advisers assume that successful therapy is a function of information obtained or dispensed rather than the result of the relationship between patient and therapist. This is a grievous error. Of the eighty bereaved men and women I had studied in my research before seeing Irene, not one was like her. None suffered the same constellation of recent (and cumulative) losses—husband, father, mother, friend, godson. None had been traumatized in just the way she had by the earlier loss of a dearly loved sibling. None had had the interdependent relationship she had had with her husband. None had watched a spouse deconstitute, bit by bit, cruelly devoured by a brain tumor. None had been a physician who understood all too well the nature of her husband’s pathology and its prognosis.

• From The First Paul: Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church's Conservative Icon (2009)

  The first is grounded in what we know about Jesus. Bread—meaning the material basis of existence—mattered greatly to him. His message was about the kingdom of God, highlighted among other places in the Lord’s Prayer. Immediately after the petition for the coming of God’s kingdom on earth is a prayer for bread: “Give us this day our daily bread.” God’s kingdom—Paul’s life “in Christ”—includes bread. Bread—the material basis of life—was central to Jesus’s passion. There is no reason to think that Paul dropped this emphasis. A second reason is the economic fragility of ordinary people in the urban environment of Paul’s activity. Their income came from work and ranged from a bit more than what was adequate for subsistence through an adequate amount to a less than adequate amount. Few would have had any significant savings. This meant extraordinary vulnerability to loss of work, whether through illness or accident or a drop in demand for their labor or skill. We imagine that the people in Paul’s communities took care of each other: if some couldn’t work or find work for a period of time, those who had enough would share with them. The language of “new family” implies as much: members of his communities had the same obligations to each other as did members of a biological family. Third, there is indirect but persuasive evidence that Paul’s communities were share communities in two post-Pauline letters (that is, letters attributed to Paul, but not among the seven letters of the radical Paul). In both cases, the issue is “freeloaders,” a problem that often occurs in share communities. Some people are attracted to such communities because it’s a good deal—they will be taken care of. This is the context for a text from 2 Thessalonians: When we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should not eat. For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. (4:10–12) This text has sometimes been quoted by Christians to justify a conservative economic policy: those who do not work should not be taken care of. But it is not a heartless command that anybody who does not work, regardless of the reasons, should starve. Rather, the text reflects that in these share communities some were abusing the practice. It means, in short, that if you can work and you’re not willing to, perhaps not even trying to look for work, then you are not to receive the benefits of the share community. The need for such a command demonstrates that these were in fact share communities.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Humans are made to worship the God who created them in his own image and so to be sustained and renewed in that image-bearing capacity. Like many scholars today, I understand the idea of the “image,” as in Genesis 1:26–28, to mean that humans are designed to function like angled mirrors. We are created in order to reflect the worship of all creation back to the Creator and by that same means to reflect the wise sovereignty of the Creator into the world. Human beings, worshipping their Creator, were thus the intended key to the proper flourishing of the world . “Worship” was and is a matter of gazing with delight, gratitude, and love at the creator God and expressing his praise in wise, articulate speech. Those who do this are formed by this activity to become the generous, humble stewards through whom God’s creative and sustaining love is let loose into the world. That was how things were meant to be. The purpose of the cross is to take us back, from where we presently are, to that intended goal. Because, of course, we have all failed in this vocation. When humans turn from worshipping the one God to worshipping anything else instead, anything within the created order, the problem is not just that they “do wrong things,” distorting their human minds, bodies, hearts, and everything else, though of course that is true as well. In addition—and this is vital for grasping the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion—they give to whatever idol they are worshipping the power and authority that they, the humans, were supposed to be exercising in the first place. Worshipping things other than the one true God and distorting our human behavior in consequence is the very essence of “sin”: the Greek word for “sin” in the New Testament means, as we saw, not just “doing wrong things,” but “missing the target.” The target is a wise, full human life of worship and stewardship. Idolatry and sin are, in the last analysis, a failure of responsibility . They are a way of declining the divine summons to reflect God’s image. They constitute an insult, an affront, to the loving, wise Creator himself. The Great Playwright has composed a drama and written a wonderful part especially for us to play; and, like a spoiled and silly child, we have torn up the script and smirked our way through a self-serving but ultimately self-destructive plot of our own.

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

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 46. in Joan.) For this Blood moulds in us a royal image, it suffers not our nobleness of soul to waste away, moreover it refreshes the soul, and inspires it with great virtue. This Blood puts to flight the devils, summons angels, and the Lord of angels. This Blood poured forth washed the world, and made heaven open. They that partake of it are built up with heavenly virtues, and arrayed in the royal robes of Christ; yea rather clothed upon by the King Himself. And since if thou comest clean, thou comest healthfully; so if polluted by an evil conscience, thou comest to thy own destruction, to pain and torment. For if they who defile the imperial purple are smitten with the same punishment as those who tear it asunder, it is not unreasonable that they who with an unclean heart receive Christ should be beaten with the same stripes as they were who pierced Him with nails. BEDE. Because the bread strengthens, and the wine produces blood in the flesh, the former is ascribed to the Body of Christ, the latter to His Blood. But because both we ought to abide in Christ, and Christ in us, the wine of the Lord’s cup is mixed with water, for John bears witness, The people are many waters. (Rev. 17:15.) THEOPHYLACT. But first the bread is given, next the cup. For in spiritual things labour and action come first, that is, the bread, not only because it is toiled for by the sweat of the brow, but also because while being eaten it is not easy to swallow. Then after labour follows the rejoicing of Divine grace, which is the cup. BEDE. For this reason then the Apostles communicated after supper, because it was necessary that the typical passover should be first completed, and then they should pass on to the Sacrament of the true Passover. But now in honour of so great a Sacrament, the masters of the Church think right that we should first be refreshed with the spiritual banquet, and afterward with the earthly. GREEK EXPOSITOR. (Eutychius Patriarch.) He that communicates receives the whole Body and Blood of our Lord, even though he receive but a part of the Mysteries. For as one seal imparts the whole of its device to different substances, and yet remains entire after distribution, and as one word penetrates to the hearing of many, so there is no doubt that the Body and Blood of our Lord is received whole in all. But the breaking of the sacred bread signifies the Passion. 22:21–2321. But, behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table. 22. And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed. 23. And they began to enquire among themselves, which of them it was that should do this thing.

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  Too many of us never learn to self-soothe, which is unfortunate, because only when we can soothe our overstimulated, undernourished nervous systems does pleasure become possible. There is no specific technique that can turn bad sex into pleasurable sex. There is no new angle or position that can rehabilitate your relationship with pleasure. But there are so many little practices, little shifts in perspectives that can open our bodies up to pleasure—to “orgasmic yeses,” as adrienne maree brown calls them. Conjuring my friend before masturbating did, in fact, help me relax enough to feel pleasure in my body. Telling a sexual partner, “Hey, could you lighten the pressure and pick up the pace,” did, in fact, help me enjoy myself enough to approach the preliminary stages of pre-orgasm buildup. I’m not claiming any one trick will unlock explosive orgasm and save your marriage, or even that either of those two goals are worth pursuing. Rather, I hope this ragtag assortment of tools can help you figure out the type of sex you want to have, the type of sex you don’t want to have, and how to pursue the former. It’s a practice—sex, pleasure, all of it. We can resign ourselves to bad sex because the practice feels too tedious; resigning ourselves to anything is our birthright. But our enjoyment of sex matters. Good sex matters. Bad sex matters. Your pleasure matters. And our lives begin to change when we honor what our bodies want, because pleasure is not only a change agent, it’s a fundamental human right. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWriting this book during the pandemic took everything out of me, and I couldn’t have finished it without the support of such a smart, generous team, starting with my agent, Sharon Pelletier, who tracked me down in 2017 after I wrote a truly deranged piece about eating at the Times Square Olive Garden ten days in a row. Thank you for believing in me and always responding to my Jenna Maroney–esque emails with kind words and crucial perspective. To Sarah Grill, thank you for being the best first-book editor a deeply neurotic person could ask for. Your patience, humor, and eye have been a lifeline to me during this process, and I am so grateful to have found a home at St. Martin’s.

• From Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How to Stop (2023)

  Once a week, she visits a trauma-informed sex therapist at a nonprofit practice. After over a year of treatment, she can now recognize that her teenage relationship was abusive—and how it warped her relationship to sex. She’s also developed a comfort with talking about sex that is invaluable for communicating with her partner. In addition to weekly sex therapy appointments, she now goes to couples therapy once a month with her partner, too. “We’re having sex more often, and it’s often better,” Katie said. “Though ‘better’ is nebulous—I more mean we’re hooking up and I’m not being triggered by it. I’m so grateful for it.” At the end of each session, her therapist gives her exercises to practice at home; some land, some don’t, but they all provide useful information. Because she is sometimes triggered by sudden, surprise touch, it could be triggering when her boyfriend initiated sex, and one exercise helped enormously with this: Katie said to her boyfriend, “Instead of coming in hot, and putting your fingers on my boobs or on my vagina, it’s helpful if you start on my knee and push down with a lot of pressure for a while,” she told me. “He’ll do that for five to ten minutes and slowly try to work his way up. We tried it while we were making out: he puts his hands down at my knee, pressing kind of hard like a massage, and he moves up a little bit at a time. Over ten or fifteen minutes, by the time he was close to where my underwear was, I was experiencing arousal! I felt anticipation that was positive for maybe the first time in my life.” While Katie’s sex therapy is primarily individual, it’s common for couples to visit a practitioner together. I spoke with one thirty-two-year-old nonbinary person, Alex, who went to a sex therapist with their girlfriend a few years back. Like Katie, their girlfriend had experienced serious trauma that was interfering with their sex life, though Alex hadn’t known about the trauma part: all Alex knew was that they were feeling sexually unsatisfied and incompatible with their partner. Alex had a high sex drive, while their girlfriend was demisexual. (According to the Demisexual Resource Center, demisexuals desire sexual activity far more rarely than the general population, and only when there’s a strong emotional connection.) Two years in, before they resorted to sex therapy, Alex attempted to break up with her. She talked them out of it. Alex floated the idea of seeking professional sex help, but it took six more months for them to go through with it. The couple saw their therapist for about a year. While the relationship ultimately ended, Alex found the experience illuminating—not only did it improve their sexual openness during the last months of the relationship, but it also shifted Alex’s personal relationship with sex itself.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  leCtUre 5 | aBraham, the father of three faiths 29 Sacrifice of Isaac, Caravaggio The Meaning of the Story In Islam, the story is almost identical. The only difference is that it is the other son, Ishmael, and the events take place not in Jerusalem but at Mecca. Commemoration of this story is the central element of the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca required of every Muslim once in their lifetime. Christian tradition very quickly read this story through the lens of Jesus’s death. The first Christians, as Jews, knew this story very well. Christians naturally read this as foreshadowing God willingly offering his son Jesus, who, like Isaac, ends up alive at the end of the story. In one sense, this is allegory, but in another sense, they merely applied what they had always learned reading the story as Jews to a new situation. For Israelites, the story reinforced the kind of faith Abraham had. It was also a reminder that God provides. Understanding the old testament 30 Questions to Consider YWhat are the issues one must grapple with when applying the land promises to Abraham today? YIf God knows he’ll tell Abraham not to kill Isaac at the last minute, how is he not a brute playing mind games? Suggested Reading Freedman, “Divine Commitment and Human Obligation.” Thompson, The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives. MOSES AND THE EXODUS LECTURE 6 Exodus is the second book of the Old Testament and the second book of the Pentateuch, or Torah. The Exodus is also an event, the act by which Moses—or God—brings the Israelites out of Egypt, which occurs in Exodus in chapters 12, 13, and 14. This lecture addresses key events in the escape. The Burning Bush The call of Moses occurs in the episode of the burning bush. This takes place after a baby boy is found f loating in a basket. He is given the name Moses and raised in the pharaoh’s court. He discovers his Hebrew identity and f lees Egypt after killing an Egyptian. 6 Understanding the old testament 32 He is living in the land of Midian, where he’s married a Midianite woman, when Chapter 3 begins. It states: Now Moses was tending the f lock of his father-in-law Jethro, priest of Midian. He led the flock into the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all af lame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses and the Burning Bush, sébastien Bourdon

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  distinguished group of colleagues is headed by my wife, Mary, who pastors in prophetic ways. It includes a growing number of women who have been my student colleagues at Eden Seminary. I am growingly aware that this book is different because of the emerging feminine consciousness as it impacts our best theological thinking. That impacting is concerned not with abrasive crusading but with a different nuancing of all our perceptions. I do not think that women ministers and theologians are the first to have discerned the realities of grief and amazement in our lives, but they have helped us see them as important dimensions of prophetic reality. In many ways these sisters have permitted me to see what I otherwise might have missed. For that I am grateful—and amazed. Walter Brueggemann Eden Theological Seminary Lent 1978 The Alternative Community of Moses A study of the prophets of Israel must try to take into account both the evidence of the Old Testament and the contemporary situation of the church. What we understand about the Old Testament must be somehow connected with the realities of the church today. So I shall begin with a statement of how I see our present situation and the task facing us in ministry. I will not elaborate but only provide a clue to the perspective from which I am presenting the subject. The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act. This enculturation is in some way true across the spectrum of church life, both liberal and conservative. It may not be a new situation, but it is one that seems especially urgent and pressing at the present time. That enculturation is true not only of the institution of the church but also of us as persons. Our consciousness has been claimed by false fields of perception and idolatrous systems of language and rhetoric. The internal cause of such enculturation is our loss of identity through the abandonment of the faith tradition. Our consumer culture is organized against history. There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now. Either way, a community rooted in energizing memories and summoned by radical hopes is a curiosity and a threat in such a culture. When we suffer from amnesia, every form of serious authority for faith is in question, and we live unauthorized lives of faith and practice unauthorized ministries. The church will not have power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation. This is not a cry for traditionalism but rather a judgment that the church has no

• From The Pillar of Salt (1953)

  But I felt grateful to Ginou who was always so charming and flirtatious, because she had chosen to dream about me, of all people. I was ready to believe Mina’s story, and there probably existed, between Ginou and myself, points of contact that had never occurred to me but that she had discovered. Moreover, I was ready to develop a crush on any one of these girls, leaving it to circumstances to decide why it should be one rather than another. Of course, I would never have dared to approach Ginou on my own, but she had now opened the way and I was already upset and grateful. All the desperate tenderness that I had repressed in my heart was concentrated on her. Within a couple of days, without my having said another word to her, she already began to assume, in my eyes, all the qualities of a great love. Still, I had to undertake some kind of courtship, though it might be much easier than I feared. After all, she had more or less taken the first step when she had dreamed of me and mentioned me to Mina. These arguments served to give me the necessary courage and made it all the more easy for me. Besides, it was summer, the season that was in every way most appropriate for this kind of situation. Two days later, as I was swimming beside her, I suggested to Ginou that we take a walk together along the beach at five o’clock that afternoon. Her eyes glistened with sea water as she expressed some surprise, perhaps candidly, but in any case already disarming as far as I was concerned. “Why don’t you suggest that the others come along too?” I mumbled: “I thought it would be more fun if we were alone.” “O.K., if you say so,” she concluded.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  Peter’s response is to repeat, briefly, the point made earlier. The underlying thrust of what he says is not simply, “We know about Jesus, so we have to go on talking about him,” but “What has happened through Jesus and the Spirit is the fulfillment of Israel’s prophecies”; in other words, the court cannot accuse the disciples of being disloyal to Israel’s ancestral traditions: The God of our ancestors raised Jesus, after you had laid violent hands on him and hanged him on a tree. God exalted him to his right hand as leader and savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the holy spirit, which God gave to those who obey him. (5:30–32) Once again, therefore, we have the statement of the goal of the gospel: the new world in which “forgiveness of sins” has released Israel from its bondage. Here, as throughout Acts, we begin to see the way in which this theme enfolds within itself the idea of the renewed human vocation. “We are witnesses,” equipped with the Holy Spirit to play an active role in the new divine purposes. The next time “forgiveness” is mentioned in Acts it comes in the wider context of the welcome of non-Jews. When Peter goes to the house of Cornelius in Acts 10, the summary of his gospel announcement, which in other ways stays very close to the passages we have just looked at, adds the note of final judgment. This appears to be seen by Luke as an important part of the message to non-Jews. And now the “everyone” clearly takes in these non- Jews too: He commanded us to announce to the people, and to bear testimony, that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets give their witness: he is the one! Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name. (10: 41–42; see also 17:31) The final mention of this theme in Acts is in the sermon of Paul in Pisidian Antioch: Let it be known to you, my brothers and sisters, that forgiveness of sins is announced through him, and that everything from which you were unable to be set right by the law of Moses, by him everyone who believes is set right. (13:38–39) This leads directly to the point at which the gospel opens up explicitly, still exactly in fulfillment of scripture, to include the whole world (13:46–47). Paul and Barnabas, faced with angry rejection of their message by many of the Jews, declare that to deny this good news is to judge oneself “unworthy of the life of God’s new age.” They therefore turn to the Gentiles and quote Isaiah 49:6: “I have set you for a light to the nations, so that you can be salvation- bringers to the end of the earth.”

• From The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (2014)

  Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, and Al Pesso read my paper on the importance of the body in traumatic stress back in 1994 and then offered to teach me about the body. I am still learning from them, and that learning has since then been expanded by yoga and meditation teachers Stephen Cope, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Jack Kornfield. Sebern Fisher first taught me about neurofeedback. Ed Hamlin and Larry Hirshberg later expanded that understanding. Richard Schwartz taught me internal family systems (IFS) therapy and assisted in helping to write the chapter on IFS. Kippy Dewey and Cissa Campion introduced me to theater, Tina Packer tried to teach me how to do it, and Andrew Borthwick-Leslie provided critical details. Adam Cummings, Amy Sullivan, and Susan Miller provided indispensible support, without which many projects in this book could never have been accomplished. Licia Sky created the environment that allowed me to concentrate on writing this book; she provided invaluable feedback on each one of the chapters; she donated her artistic gifts to many illustrations; and she contributed to sections on body awareness and clinical case material. My trusty secretary, Angela Lin, took care of multiple crises and kept the ship running at full speed. Ed and Edith Schonberg often provided a shelter from the storm; Barry and Lorrie Goldensohn served as literary critics and inspiration; and my children, Hana and Nicholas, showed me that every new generation lives in a world that is radically different from the previous one, and that each life is unique—a creative act by its owner that defies explanation by genetics, environment, or culture alone. Finally, my patients, to whom I dedicate this book—I wish I could mention you all by name—who taught me almost everything I know—because you were my true textbook—and the affirmation of the life force, which drives us human beings to create a meaningful life, regardless of the obstacles we encounter. AppendixConsensus Proposed Criteria for Developmental Trauma DisorderThe goal of introducing the diagnosis of Developmental Trauma Disorder is to capture the reality of the clinical presentations of children and adolescents exposed to chronic interpersonal trauma and thereby guide clinicians to develop and utilize effective interventions and for researchers to study the neurobiology and transmission of chronic interpersonal violence. Whether or not they exhibit symptoms of PTSD, children who have developed in the context of ongoing danger, maltreatment, and inadequate caregiving systems are ill-served by the current diagnostic system, as it frequently leads to no diagnosis, multiple unrelated diagnoses, an emphasis on behavioral control without recognition of interpersonal trauma and lack of safety in the etiology of symptoms, and a lack of attention to ameliorating the developmental disruptions that underlie the symptoms.

• From The Day the Revolution Began (2016)

  I also thank Bishop Robert Forsyth, from Sydney, Australia, for his help in the initial brainstorming for the lectures and cheerfully absolve him too from any responsibility for the ways in which my ideas have developed. The same is true also of my colleague Dr. David Moffitt, whose own work on the Letter to the Hebrews and on the understandings of sacrifice in the ancient Jewish world and in the New Testament have been extremely stimulating. Though they come from very different angles, Dr. Michael Horton, Dr. William Lane Craig, and Dr. Jack Levison have given me the benefit of their experience and insight, and even though we still disagree about many things, I hope we can still continue to learn from one another. The Reverend Peter Rodgers, continuing a scholarly friendship of nearly half a century, has been a constant encourager and a discerning critic. Special mention must be made of Dr. Jamie Davies and Max Botner, my research assistants at the start and finish of this project, who have helped in numerous ways, not least in thinking through the complex and interlocking questions I am dealing with. The book formed the basis of the lectures and seminars I gave at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, during a memorable week in May 2016, and I am especially grateful to Mike Cope and his colleagues, who organized that week, and to the university president, Dr. Andy Benton, and his colleagues for their warm welcome and hospitality. A similar set of lectures was given at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in June 2016, and I am very grateful to the principal, the Reverend Dr. Michael Lloyd, and his colleagues for their hospitality and encouragement. I must also thank a much larger company from around the world who have supported this work in prayer, in e-mail messages, and sometimes by personal meetings and crucial discussions. Thinking and writing about the cross is difficult at several levels, and those who have upheld me through the process have earned my deep gratitude. My grateful thanks as ever to Mickey Maudlin at HarperOne and to Simon Kingston from SPCK for their wise and careful editorial advice and to their respective colleagues for seeing another of my books through the press. My family, and particularly my dear wife, have as usual sustained me throughout this work. Speaking of family, Leo Valentine Wright was born on May 1, 2016, as his grandfather was arriving in California to give the Pepperdine Lectures. This book is dedicated to him in the hope and prayer that he may come to know for himself the truth and the love of which I have tried to write. N. T. Wright St. Andrews July 2016 SCRIPTURE INDEX The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created.

• From The Prophetic Imagination (1978)

  VI It remains for me to express thanks in connection with this second edition of the book. The impetus for the second edition has come from K. C. Hanson of Fortress Press. Beyond the impetus, Hanson has done the major part of the work in preparing the new edition. He has done extensive work on updating the body of the text, supplying new notes, and preparing the bibliographies at the end of the new version. Without him I would not have gotten this second rendering completed, and so I am deeply grateful to him. In addition, I am as usual grateful to Tempie Alexander, who has done her usual careful and discerning work. I suppose it is fair as well to acknowledge the decades of readers who have read, used, and responded to this book, as well as kept it in circulation. I have the sense, along with the readers, of being engaged with life-or-death questions of mission that must now occupy us. Walter Brueggemann Pentecost season, 2000 1 . Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 b.c. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1979). ↵ 2 . Robert R. Wilson, Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980). ↵ 3 . Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality, OBT (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978). Trible’s more recent book, Rhetorical Criticism: Context, Method, and the Book of Jonah, GBS (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), presents the method in more programmatic fashion. ↵ 4 . Paul Ricoeur has famously distinguished among “the world behind the text,” “the world within the text,” and “the world in front of the text.” ↵ 5 . Among the more important recent discussions of the issue is Garrett Green, Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination: The Crisis of Interpretation at the End of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). The key issue in imagination is the extent to which it is reflective of a given and the extent to which it is generative of a new given. Green is cautious on the matter but in his most recent book seems to move a bit in a more constructivist direction. ↵ 6 . Frederick Asals, Flannery O’Connor: The Imagination of Extremity (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1982). ↵ 7 . Ibid., 198–233. ↵ 8 . Ibid., 213. ↵ 9 . Ibid., 215. ↵