If metaphysics seems today to have buried its undertakers, then negative theology may soon silence its critics. Having established a significant if sometimes recessive presence in Western theism, negative theology is again an important element in contemporary philosophical theology. While Anglo- American philosophy of religion remains dominated by analytic neoscholasticism, in the last decade a countercurrent has emerged that makes common cause with the apophatic tradition. The Gifford lectures of Stephen R. L. Clark are examples of this development, as are the works of Leszek Kolakowski. Each thinker has attempted to expand discussion beyond the scholastic parameters of the field and make connections with important historical figures who are often neglected in the literature. Neoplatonism has featured prominently this development; as the principal philosophical foundation for apophatic theology in the West, it has been invoked in both its original Greco-Roman guise and its subsequent manifestation within the Abrahamic tradition (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam).

To the men and women of the Middle Ages the figure of Constantine loomed large over the fourth century. Born a pagan, he converted to Christianity and became the first Christian emperor, the convenor of councils, the defender of orthodoxy, the builder of churches, the herald of a new age, the founder of Christian Europe. But to the men and women of the later fourth century, the generation of John Chrysostom, it was not Constantine, but Julian, raised a Christian only to forsake his “hereditary piety,” Julian the pagan emperor, Julianus Apostata, whose deeds were alive in their memory. The age of Constantine was part of past history, but Julian's actions, abortive as they may have appeared to later generations, were still remembered not only by the old, says John Chrysostom, but also by the “young people” of our day.

In the eye of a protracted political storm, the rabbinic sages of the first centuries of the common era preserved and nurtured their Jewish heritage. This was not a univocal heritage, but one of significant diversity. Although these rabbis were fully aware of the divisiveness that had plagued Jewish religious attitudes over the centuries, they turned debate and dissent into their very trademark. Whether in matters legal, ethical, or theological, differing and even contradictory opinions were the norm. A natural result of this rabbinic posture is that the entire rabbinic corpus is anthological. We do not possess individual works of the rabbis, great as they might have been. We have instead catenae or collections of statements. Sometimes they represent real conversations between sages, but other times they reflect an editorial juxtaposition of opposing views. These characteristics of rabbinic literature create a formidable challenge for those who wish to treat rabbinic thought systematically.

Interpreters of Matthew 11:25–30 have fallen roughly into two classes. On the one hand, there are those who have been content to explain the passage solely in the light of the Old Testament, and, on the other, those who have traced in it a common pattern, ultimately deriving from Eastern theosophy, which emerges in Ecclesiasticus 51, and elsewhere, and reappears in Matthew 11:25–30, through the agency of certain primitive Christian thiasoi of a ‘mystical’ type. Not far removed from this is the view that, both on account of style and content, the passage is to be understood in the light of Hellenistic Gnosticism.

W. E. B. DuBois was right when he said, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” That is to say, regardless of your own definition of your own being, you fall into one of four racial groups, namely, yellow, black, white, and red. But you cannot stand in or belong to more than one racial group. But history shows us that some racial groups have been victimized by another or other groups. But I am not interested in what happened in history in human relations — of all racial groups. I am particularly interested in the conditions of my Black existence under the most barbaric and inhuman system of man's inhumanity to man. That is to say, I would like to examine the conditions of my being which is oppressed by another kind of racial group — called “white.” The nature of my oppression is also shared by my brother, Ho Chi Minh, when he said, “It is well known that the black race is the most exploited and most oppressed of the human family.”

These words in criticism of Fra Lippo's vivid and realistic painting of sacred subjects admirably typify the attitude of theology to art. In the ages when the masses were still unable to read, the church took advantage of the work of the painter to impart instruction in the Bible stories. But after all, mere enlightenment is comparatively useless, sometimes even dangerous. It is always inferior to devotion. As long as the masses could be inspired by art to perform more fully their religious duties, so long was art rendering to the church the services that were its due. If the actual facts, even as recorded in the Scriptures, stood in the way of the theological object, they had to be neglected, obscured, or denied. If by a false depiction religious feeling were aroused, there could be no doubt as to the value of such depiction.

In Minucius Felix's Octavius, the pagan Caecilius offers an intriguing critique of the Christian God. Having pilloried Christian faith as trust in a “solitary, forlorn God, whom no free nation, no kingdom, no superstition known to Rome has knowledge of,” he goes on to mock him as a voyeur:

[W]hat monstrous absurdities these Christians invent about this God of theirs, whom they can neither show nor see! That he searches diligently into the ways and deeds of all people, yea even their words and hidden thoughts, hurrying to and fro, everywhere present at once; they make him out to be a troublesome, restless being, who has a hand in everything that is done, is shamelessly curious, interlopes at every turn, and can neither attend to particulars because he is distracted with the whole, nor to the whole because he is engaged with particulars.

According to Goethe, “writing history is a way of getting the past off your back.” In the twentieth century, Protestant theology has a heavy burden on its back—the readiness of some of its most distinguished representatives to embrace totalitarian regimes, notably Adolf Hitler's “Third Reich.” In this matter the historian's task is not to jettison but to ensure that the burden on Protestants is not too lightly cast aside—an easy temptation if we imagine that the theologians who turned to Hitler did so with the express desire of embracing a monster. On the contrary: they did so believing their choice was ethically correct. How could this come to pass in the homeland of the Reformation?

First published in 1934, Walter Bauer's Rechtgläubigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum warned against simply equating the words “orthodoxy” and “heresy” with the notions of majority and minority and with the process of deviation from correct belief to wrong belief. Bauer sought to show that in the first two Christian centuries orthodoxy and heresy did not stand in relation to one another as primary and secondary. He tried to prove that in many regions what came to be known in the ecclesiastical tradition as “heresy” was in fact the original manifestation of Christianity. For example, according to Bauer, the major figures in earliest Christianity at Edessa were the “heretics” Marcion, Bar Daisan, and Mani. In Egypt a gnostic form of Christianity appears to have been dominant before A.D. 200, and in Asia Minor “orthodox” leaders such as Ignatius and Polycarp waged only moderately successful battles against gnosticism and judaizing Christianity.

Calendars, liturgy, and especially festivals offer a convenient vantage point from which to analyze collective identities. They can provide access to group mentalities rather than to the ideas of individual intellectuals, which are often more or less confined to ivory towers.1 Ritual addresses the whole human being—the intellect, emotions, and body—and it does so by establishing and defining relations between the individual, his or her in-group, and the out-group.2 Every collective identity is formed and reformed in a continuous process encompassing exchange with, as well as distinction from, other possible collective identities.3 Sometimes, this construction of a “we” in distinction from “them” is explicit, while at other times it takes place in a more clandestine and encrypted fashion.

Philo of Alexandria's De vita contemplativa (henceforth VC) is one of the philosopher's most debated treatises. Indeed, it raises difficult questions of authorship and interpretation. Much scholarly attention has been devoted to the subject, investigating the authenticity of the attribution to Philo, the identity of the socalled “Therapeutae,” the plausibility of their actual existence, and their possible relation to Christian monasticism and Essenism. In particular, as Jean Riaud has pointed out, in modern times, theological and apologetic agendas motivated the identification of the Therapeutae as either Jews or Christians.

“Learn to think with pain.”

The papal condemnation of Americanism in 1899 and the allegation that Americanism was a practical preface to Modernism has given rise to a considerable amount of literature attempting to determine just what Americanism was. This literature has been unsuccessful, however, in detecting any unity in the apparently isolated and unconnected liberal actions and opinions of the Americanists. These studies give the impression that the Americanists never defined what they were promoting, and that their only program was a series of unconnected actions and opinions which signified a certain “liberalism.” Opinions and actions relative to the Church's relation to social questions, to the problem of Catholic schools, German nationalism within American Catholicism, the founding of the Catholic University of America, and participation in the interdenominational World Parliament of Religions would appear to have little in common. In this light it has been concluded that Americanism was primarily a matter concerning a troublesome French Church.

New Testament interpreters have long puzzled over the meaning of the saying, “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Matt 8:22; Luke 9:60), and although many ingenious solutions have been proposed, none has been generally convincing. It is surprising that Jewish burial practices have not been brought into this discussion. For the burial practices of first-century Jews in Palestine are well known: many tombs have been carefully excavated, and several rabbinic texts explicitly discuss the care of the dead. Yet this information has never (to my knowledge) been brought to bear on Matt 8:21–22. In this paper, I propose that secondary burial, a widespread burial custom among Jews in first-century Palestine, can solve the riddle of these verses. Against the background of secondary burial, both the meaning of the disciple's question and the force of Jesus' response become clear. In particular, it is not necessary to suppose, as many interpreters do, that Jesus was talking about the “spiritually” dead. On the contrary, if the references to the dead are taken literally, the saying sounds both ironic and eschatological.

The little narrative of Paul's flight from Damascus in 2 Cor 11:32-33 holds a promise to the ear of the historian. In the first place, Aretas is the only figure of political history mentioned in an authentic letter of Paul. This fact alone indicates the importance of this text for the chronology of the apostle's life. Second, there is the remarkable parallel provided by the account in Acts 9:23–25. The extent of the agreement is impressive: it consists not only of the general course of events, but extends to the wording, which is partly identical and partly synonymous. The correspondence appears more extraordinary in light of the fact that Acts otherwise exhibits no verbal connections with the letters of Paul. Third, there is the vivid manner in which Paul relates the experience: the mention of a place and a particular person, the detailed description of the circumstances, and the concentrated account of the action, together create a living image of a dramatic event. The clarity and strength of representation suggest that the experience had a special significance. Perhaps, as Calvin postulated, haec persecutio fuit quasi primum tirocinium Pauli (“this persecution was, as it were, Paul's first military service”). The incident left a deep trace in the memory of the early church,9 one that time has not erased: the Damascenes still point to an opening in the wall as the window through which the apostle was let down.

Porphyry of Tyre, the disciple of Plotinus who composed his massive work Against the Christians under Diocletian, has attracted much attention in recent years as perhaps the most formidable intellectual opponent of the early church. Modern scholars continue to be impressed by Porphyry's knowledge, resourcefulness, and the evident respect shown him by such figures as Jerome and Augustine. Because his literary remains are both fragmentary and disputed, moreover, any new information about Porphyry's views is of considerable importance. Just such a discovery provides the occasion for this essay. Among the papyrus codices found in an ammunition dump near Toura, Egypt, during World War II, were several previously unknown works of Origen and Didymus the Blind.

To state that the period dominated by events at Canossa was a watershed in the history of ecclesio-political relationships is almost trite. But it is not so commonplace to state that this same period was also a high plateau in the history of liturgical scholarship. For modern students the picture of investiture by ring and staff represents the struggle between Church and State in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, but it should not be overlooked that the tradition of these tangible instruments was a liturgical act also signaling an intensity of concern for the liturgy and its proper performance and interpretation unequaled since the Carolingian age. Thus it comes as a surprise to many students of ecclesio-political theory to find that a majority of the publicists of the age of the Investiture Controversy whose works fill the three fat volumes of the Libelli de lite of the Monumenta Germaniae historica were avid observers of the liturgy. Peter Damian, Humbert of Silva Candida, Bonizo of Sutri, Bernold of Constance, Ranger of Lucca, the Norman Anonymous, Ivo of Chartres, Sigebert of Gembloux, Hildebert of Le Mans, and Honorius “of Autun” all wrote tracts in which aspects of liturgy were described and explained. And while the political ideas of these publicistic worthies have lost their cogency in modern times, their liturgical scholarship still graces the footnotes of many a modern popular exposition of the liturgy.

Over a decade ago, Hans Walter Wolff observed that there is a bracket around the Deuteronomic Corpus (Dtn) which includes parts of Deuteronomy 4 and Deuteronomy 28-30. The elements of the frame which he isolated and discussed in some detail are Deut 4:29-31 and Deut 30:1-10. He saw the former passage as a late addition to the Moses speech in Deut 4:25-28, regarding the change from plural to singular address as a decisive indication of authorial discontinuity. Several years later, Norbert Lohfink argued in detail for the unity of Deut 4:1-40 from a variety of viewpoints. The broadest in scope was that the passage in question follows the outlines of the covenant formulary in much the same way as do the succeeding chapters of Deuteronomy. For example, like Deuteronomy 5-11, Deut 4:1-24 offers an historical retrospect and a statement of the chief commandment, in this case, the prohibition on images. Deut 4:25-31 then constitutes the curses arid blessing, such as we shall see in Deuteronomy 27-28. Arguing in greater detail, Lohfink noted also a highly specific and integrated rhetorical structure which could hardly result from the linking of originally disparate pericopes. Thus, vv. 1-4 are a plea for attention, followed by a demand for observance of the laws (vv. 5-8), which narrows first into a discussion of the Decalogue in particular (vv. 9-14) and then of its central stipulation (vv. 15-22). As in the text of the Decalogue itself (Exod 20:5-6, Deut 5:9-10), this commandment is followed by a statement of YHWH's jealousy (vv. 23-24). Having laid the groundwork, the preacher begins to speak to the existential situation of his audience. The idolatry he has just stressed is the ground of the Exile (v. 25), which he then describes (vv. 26-28).

That Bede knew and used several Latin versions of Acts is abundantly clear from his own statements. Moreover, his special interest in this book of the New Testament is suggested by the fact that he composed two separate commentaries on it and may have proceeded, in part at least, from the comparative neglect of Acts by earlier commentators. Neither Bede's Commentary on Acts nor his Retractation can be dated precisely, but this much can be regarded as certain, that the former is an early work, while the latter was composed towards the end of his life. Thus twenty years or more may have elapsed before Bede, following the example of the eximius doctor Augustinus, revised errors that he had committed in the Commentary, defended himself against the attack of critics, and added much new material that was the fruit of his ripest scholarship.

On two previous occasions I tried to show how neither Plato nor Aristotle held that God was unknowable, ineffable, and unnameable, how the tentative objections against the unknowability of the ideas raised in the Parmenides and Sophist are answered by Aristotle, how in the extant literature of Greek philosophy prior to Philo there is no conception of a God who is unknowable and unnameable and ineffable, how Philo arrived at the conception of an unknowable, ineffable, and unnameable God, how he may have meant it to be either an interpretation of Plato or something in opposition to him, and how the description of God as ineffable found in Albinus and Plotinus may have been due to the influence of Philo. We may add here that, though Plotinus attributes his conception of a hierarchy of three hypostases to Parmenides as reported by Plato and though it is also to that Parmenides that he may refer by the pronoun “he” in his statement, “he says that it (the One) cannot be spoken (ῥητòν) or described (γραπτóν),” neither the views which he attributes to Plato nor the language which he quotes from him are those of Plato. They are rather those of older interpreters of Plato, and among them Philo is to be included.