In his Protreptikos (2,22) Clement of Alexandria rages against the contents of the mystic chests used in the rites of the mystery religions. Among other items he lists such things as cakes, salt balls, the serpent, and adds as though an afterthought, “the ἀπόῤῥητα σύμβολα of (Γ)-Θἐμις, ὀρίγανον a lamp, a sword, and a κτεὶς γυναικεῖος, which is a euphemism used in the mysteries for the female parts.” What was the association of these objects with (Γ)-Θέμις? What evidence might Clement have had for such an association?

Though often remembered for something he never said, Tertullian did contribute a few bold lines to his own caricature. Take for instance the famous, “Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?” It has come to symbolize Tertullian's wholesale rejection of philosophy. In fact, his indebtedness to the matter and methods of his classical heritage is profound. Today, by the same token, his ability to coin a striking phrase is earning for Tertullian yet another reputation he does not deserve. In the first book of De cultu feminarum, a withering attack on female fashions, Tertullian invokes the curse of Eve by means of a cruel and impressive metaphor: “Tu es diaboli ianua,” he writes; “You are the devil's gateway.” At once provocative of timely indignation and attractive as a foil, this single utterance is alone responsible for perhaps as much popular notoriety as Tertullian has ever been afforded. The following is offered in the hope that a more extensive examination of his attitude toward women may serve both to correct such misconceptions as have been drawn from the famous “gateway passage,” and also to clarify some of the ambiguities inherent in the Frauenfragen for early Christians.

Although he considered himself set apart from the world, a man through whom the Spirit revealed a higher truth, Jones Very has consistently provided his critics with an irresistible challenge to classify him historically in a tradition that would explain his unique poetry and personality. Histories and descriptions of American Transcendentalism usually list him hesitatingly as a peripheral member of the movement, but Very seems to worry recent historians in much the same way he worried Emerson and the other members of “Hedge's Club,” who were both attracted and repelled by his spiritual intensity. His association with Emerson was undoubtedly a fortunate historical accident for him—Emerson both encouraged him in his poetry, valiantly tried to give him editorial assistance, and used his influence to find a publisher for the only collection of poems Very was to publish in his lifetime. Yet this close personal association has helped to perpetuate the historical assumption of Very's ties with Transcendentalism. This assumption, both when it has been affirmed or vigorously rejected, has obscured the kind of objective reading that is necessary to our understanding of Very's poetry and his place in American letters.

In Kierkegaard's hands the story of Abraham and Isaac is clearly a story about the relationship between the life of sacrifice and the religious life. By leading us on to deeper and deeper levels of sacrifice, he aims to make us grasp the essential nature of faith and, with it, the right relationship between the individual and God. He does this by means of a dialectic involving Abraham's response to God in contrast to (1) the other possible responses he might have made, and (2) Kierkegaard's own response to what he believed was the divine command to break his engagement to Regina Olsen.

Because the notions of finitude and temporality often get associated with the concept of “existence,” theologians have sometimes found cause to worry about what we are doing when we assert the existence of God. Perhaps the most radical expression of this worry occurs in Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology where he claims, paradoxically, that “God does not exist.” Despite the fact that the remark appears in a book written both within the tradition of, and about, Christian theology, Tillich spends considerable effort trying to convince us why the affirmation that God does exist must be stricken from Christian discourse. Tillich tells us, for example, that “however it is defined, the ‘existence of God’ contradicts the idea of a creative ground of essence and existence.” Therefore, “to argue that God exists is to deny him.” Not only would it be “a great victory for Christian apologetics if the words ‘God’ and ‘existence’ were very definitely separated”; indeed, theology “must eliminate the combination of the words ‘existence’ and ‘God.’” In short, “it is as atheistic to affirm the existence of God as it is to deny it.”

In the continuing debate over the question of the independence of morality and religion there is a set of issues pertaining to the relation of moral obligation and the expressed will of God which would benefit from some further conceptual clarification. Most often the debate amounts to a defense of one form or another of the following alternatives: either it is true by definition that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an expression like “ought to be obeyed” means “willed or commanded by God” (in which case morality is entirely dependent on religion) or it is only a contingent truth that whatever God wills ought to be obeyed because an antecedent moral judgment as to the goodness of God's will is required for its assertion (in which case morality is entirely independent of religion). It is my contention, however, that so long as the debate is carried on in these limited terms we will necessarily be dissatisfied with whichever way the argument goes, for neither alternative can be made fully to harmonize either with our common moral and religious sensibilities or with the facts of our moral and religious usage.