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.

Is a human being capable of self-government? Christians who defied the Roman government that hounded them as criminals emphatically answered yes. Early Christian spokesmen, like Jews before them and the American colonists long after, claimed to find in the biblical creation account divine sanction for declaring their independence from governments they considered corrupt and arbitrary. Unlike its Babylonian counterpart, the Hebrew creation account of Genesis 1 indicates that God gave the power of earthly rule to adam—not to the king or emperor, but simply to “mankind” (and some even thought this might include women). Most Christian apologists from the first through the fourth centuries would have agreed with Gregory of Nyssa who, following the lead of rabbinic tradition, explains that after God created the world “as a royal dwelling place for the future king” he made humanity “as a being fit to exercise royal rule” by making it “the living image of the universal King.”

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.

Modern medicine owes many of its founding principles to a spiritual heritage. However, passage through the Enlightenment and entry into a secular, pluralistic health context have yielded an estranged relationship between care of the body and care of the soul.1 Scientific medicine now holds the primary role in care of the body while religious communities are solely responsible for care of the soul. The needs of both body and soul are in many respects served well by this specialization and division of labor, but ultimately, of course, human experience is not susceptible to such a simplistic dichotomization. The lack of integration of spiritual and material care of the human person in contemporary life has led to increasingly evident tensions, most notably in the mechanization and isolation of the experiences of illness and dying.2

“Learn to think with pain.”

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.

In Anglo-Saxon as in Christian history, many roads lead to Rome. This has been correctly and at times overemphasized in matters ranging from Augustine to Whitby, from numismatics to law, from banners to Bede. Indeed the Roman road has been so broad and so well marked with recorded miliaria that we may have missed the growth-ridden Germanic by-paths which were actually trod by the tribes in England. But surely the impact of culture on cult is as important in history as the reverse, and the terms in which the newly converted Anglo-Saxons interpreted the Christian religion were shaped by the tribal culture, impregnated, as it was, by the heathenism of the old religion. Gregory the Great's famous letter to the Abbot Mellitus, advising that pagan temples in England be used for the worship of the Christian God that the people “ad loca quae consuevit, familiarius concurrat,” and that the sacrificial animals of heathenism be now devoted to Christian festivals, agrees with the responsa of the same pope to Augustine concerning the choosing of local customs best suited to the conditions of the converted. In a way, this study is a scandalous footnote to that wise anthropological advice, with the intention of setting forth some of the similarities of the old and new religion which allowed a syncretic merging. Thus many features of the Conversion period which have been interpreted post eventum as Christian were undoubtedly seen with other—and familiar—overtones by the Woden-sprung rulers and their people.

In a letter to Paula, in which he includes a list of Origen's Pauline commentaries, Jerome refers to a commentary on Philemon. There is no extant Greek manuscript tradition of this commentary by Origen. There are also no Greek fragments attributed to Origen in the catena commentary on Philemon edited by Cramer from the eleventh-century codex Parisinus Coislin 204. The Codex von der Goltz, which has provided helpful information on some of Origen's other Pauline commentaries, has only two brief, marginal references to Origen on the textual reading of Philemon at verses 10 and 12. The only known portion of Origen's commentary on Philemon that has been preserved is a fragment of his comments on Philemon 5 in Rufinus's Latin translation of In Apologeticum S. Pamphili.

The Examiner reported that throughout the day hundreds of would-be spectators and scalpers charging three and four dollars for tickets gathered on Chicago's downtown streets. The evening plenary session was repeated twice; each time “three thousand men and women were on their feet waving handkerchiefs, clapping hands, and cheering.” Julia Ward Howe “kissed her hand in benediction of the Parliament”; the “Jewish rabbi and the Catholic Bishop asked God's blessing upon its work which is now a part of history.” Christian and Hebrew, Buddhist and Moslem, the Examiner announced, all “spoke for a universal religion, advocated it in fact, and fervently hoped for some such … happy consummation as the outcome of this great and historic gathering.”

Although ʼašrê occurs rather frequently in the Old Testament and shows a fairly consistent formal pattern, the literature on this subject is small and offers no comprehensive analysis. The pertinent statements — usually brief discussions within the context of a wider or different subject — hinge upon three basic insights: 1. that the ʼašrê-formula is a statement made to or about someone which somehow magnifies or extols that person's condition as a desirable one; 2. that ʼašrê is found in a fair number of passages that belong to the Wisdom movement; 3. that there exists some kind of relationship between ʼašrê and forms of blessing. To these undoubtedly correct though seldom precisely formulated observations is added a persistent conviction that ʼašrê stands in an antipodal relationship to hôi/ʼôi, analogous to that of blessing and curse. After a brief survey of lexicographical data and formal characteristics we shall examine the usage of ʼašrê with the aim of defining its relationship to hôi and to the brk-word-group and, finally, draw certain conclusions regarding its meaning.

The question of whether it is permissible for Gentiles to marry Jews appears in scripture itself, which advances divergent views on the subject. Whereas both preexilic literature and the author of Chronicles permitted intermarriage, Ezra and his followers repudiated the practice. This article investigates the status of the question during the Second Temple period, when the impact of a new factor—conversion—further complicated the issue. Given the diversity present even in the Bible, it seems clear that several solutions to the problem would have been viable in the Second Temple period: (a) a total ban on intermarriage; (b) opposition to marriage with Gentiles unless they had abandoned idolatry or converted to Judaism; and (c) retention of the ancient tolerance of intermarriage, even in the absence of conversion.

Joseph Smith, the nineteenth-century Mormon founder, is often accounted for in one of three ways. Either he was a prophet in the almost fundamentalist sense that many Mormons hold him to have been, or he was a charlatan as many others have judged, or else he was a mentally deranged charismatic. In what has been the most influential study of Smith during the last half-century, Fawn Brodie bridged the latter two categories. Brodie alleged that Mormonism's founder was initially a conscious fraud who fabricated his first visionary experience; only gradually, by a series of wondrous psychological acrobatics, did he later come to take himself seriously as one called of God.

The preponderance of pain in human life ranks among the central problems for religious thought around the world. The problem of suffering, as it is often called, has been a compelling reason for abandoning faith. Given the depth of the dilemma that raw and inexplicable pain poses, it is surprising how pervasive voluntary pain has been among the religions of the world. Ascetics, mystics, and martyrs have sought and applied pain—in rites of passage (ordeals) and other forms of initiation—in the service of religious inquisitions (including trials by ordeal), execution of heretics and witches, and others. And of course, none of these has been limited by geographic location or historic time. What is the role of voluntary (“sacred”) pain in human religious life? Is there a single theory that can explain, for instance, the initiatory ordeals of new shamans and Sufi mystics?

There is widespread disagreement as to exactly what Augustine might have meant by his theory of learning, in which Christ, the truth, teaches within. The precise interpretation of Augustine's doctrine of illumination has been the subject of centuries of debate. How is this kind of learning process which Augustine outlines—a process by which the word of God illumines the soul—to be understood? The major schools of thought on this subject have been: the ontologistic version, which regards the immediate presence of the divine light, the continuity between the mind of man and the mind of God, as primary in the act of learning; the ideogenetic version, which regards the activity of the word of God, mysteriously producing ideas in the human mind, as primary in the learning process; and, finally, what we might call the normative version, which understands the metaphor of illumination to refer to the way in which the divine light provides an ultimate standard of certainty by which knowledge is evaluated, rather than describing an inner, psychological process through which the act of learning occurs.

The image of the Good Shepherd was by far the most popular representation of Christ in the Church's first four centuries. In his article on the subject in the Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Henri Leclerq gives more than three hundred examples, dating to the beginning of the fifth century, and his list is by no means exhaustive. In the first half of the fifth century, however, the Good Shepherd suddenly vanishes from Christian art in both East and West, with perhaps a few relatively insignificant exceptions, to be replaced by the images of Christ as teacher and as king—images that had become increasingly important in the iconography of Christ over the course of the previous hundred years. The Good Shepherd did not reappear upon the scene until well into the Middle Ages. What was responsible for its disappearance?

Paul Tillich's theology is largely an attempt to interpret or at least illuminate Christian concepts by using ontological or philosophical concepts. An important part of Tillich's system is his treatment of sin and the fall, a treatment that is in effect an analysis of existence. But this analysis is beset with ambiguities and difficulties. It is my purpose here to clarify and to defend Tillich's existential analysis.

The relative peace enjoyed by the Christians under the rule of the Emperor Antoninus Pius was followed during the next regime by an era of extraordinarily violent and massive anti-Christian movements that probably surpassed in intensity all the persecutions that the Christians endured during the first and second centuries. It is therefore not uncommon to hear the charges that Marcus Aurelius was a persecutor of the Christians; that he deliberately issued anti-Christian edicts; that the persecution under this Emperor was the first that deserved the name of persecution; that the persecutions during his rule had his sanction at least. Subsequent attempts by historians to exculpate the philosopher-emperor for his alleged responsibility — whether direct or indirect — in the persecutions under his rule are only to be expected. In contrast to these latter-day charges the ancient Christian writers, led by Justin, a victim of his rule, Melito, Athenagoras, and other writers of the same period and with hardly any exceptions, put an almost infinite trust in him and simply do not show any belief that he was a persecutor. Tertullian, in fact, roundly declared him to be a protector of the Christians. In spite of their rhetorical tendencies, they must have known better than these later historians. The absence of a clear view and historical interpretation of what happened under this philosopher-ruler is the most regrettable feature of most of the modern commentaries on the Christian problem of this era.

Among recent proposals to give clarity and precision to theological concepts, none is more considered and provocative than that of Gordon D. Kaufman. Kaufman has correctly discerned that the question put to religious belief by the contemporary mood is one which concerns not only its truth but, even more fundamentally, the very meaning of its language. Abjuring the obscurity of much theological terminology and analysis, Kaufman accepts the challenge to clarify the meaning of crucial religious terms in the context of ordinary experience and discourse, an undertaking as refreshing as it is suggestive. While I am fully prepared to accept Kaufman's claim that he has put his finger on a, if not the, crucial issue for present theological reflection, I find myself unable to accept the results of his inquiry. In stating my disagreement with his conclusions, I hope to develop a brief but coherent response to the issues which Kaufman addresses.

Given the multiplicity of legal interpretations and opinions, the question of the place of legal debate within early rabbinic literature of late antiquity—both as textual practice and as hermeneutical and legal theory—has occupied a particularly busy space within recent scholarship. This question centers on several issues of broad significance for the history of rabbinic Judaism and its literature: Does this phenomenon (if we can speak of it in the singular) represent a defining characteristic of rabbinic culture overall, or rather an aspect better attributed to specific times, places, and rabbinic “schools”? Did it emerge and develop internally within rabbinic Judaism, or is it, on the one hand, the continuation of antecedents in the pre-rabbinic, late Second Temple period, or, on the other hand, the result of external influences or pressures (e.g., Greco-Roman or early Christian) of a later time? Does such legal multivocality reflect the actual nature of either/both rabbinic jurisprudence or/and pedagogy, or the editorial choices of the later anonymous redactors of the composite and anthological texts that have come down to us (or, as I shall demonstrate, both)? Finally, what are its hermeneutical and theological underpinnings (as well as sociopolitical ramifications)? While these four questions will frame what follows, it is the latter two that will particularly demand our attention. They will be addressed, whether explicitly or implicitly, in several comparative textual analyses that will constitute the body of this article.