by Matthew Gaetano The post that follows is a bit unusual. I’m following the thread of different meanings of the word Philadelphia, but the path is rather circuitous. I hope that some of the elements of the exploration here turn out to be interesting. I was recently reading about medieval accounts of the book of… Read More Philadelphia and the Apocalypse
by Joshua Shaw BF Westcott, whom we have introduced in a previous post, compared himself on more than one occasion to a Quaker (see here); the likeness might have died on the surface, as it were, of the comparison (at least for all of us), if he had not written a short essay on the… Read More “By the Spirit Let Us Walk”: Westcott on George Fox and the Quakers
by Matthew Gaetano Isaiah 43 provides the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures for the Fifth Sunday of Lent in several Christian communions. As a student of history, the section from vv. 18-19 is quite arresting: Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it… Read More “Behold, I am doing a new thing”
by Joshua Shaw Eusebius calls Plato’s philosophy — and this is a fundamental move of the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) — a “commentary on” or “interpretation of” (ἑρμηνεία) the Pentateuch. Eusebius is a little sloppy here, since the Pentateuch can mean Moses, or the whole Old Testament, or even, by extension, the authors of the New Testament… Read More Plato’s “Septuagint” and Alexandrian Judaism
by Joshua Shaw There is a lively debate (still ongoing) about whether Eusebius was always a Trinitarian, or whether he is best considered Binitarian (i.e., holding that there are only two persons in the Godhead) in the period prior to the Councils of the 4th century (325-381). The most important witness to the belief that… Read More Eusebius the Binitarian (?)
by Matthew Gaetano Joshua Shaw has been presenting Eusebius’s rich and complex polemic against paganism alongside his dialogue with Platonism. He has illuminated the reasons for the contrast between Eusebius’s approach and C. S. Lewis’s way of defending Christianity. Like many defenses of the Christian religion in the Renaissance and beyond (and in Late Antiquity… Read More The Pagans and the Atheists in C. S. Lewis and Herman Bavinck
by Joshua Shaw In our last installment we gave a brief introduction to Eusebius of Caesarea and his writings, ending with a very brief look at the purpose of Eusebius’ apologetic work the Praeparatio Evangelica (PE) and the beginning of his treatment of Plato (Book XI). In this post we will look further… Read More ‘A Labyrinthine Operation’: Eusebius and His Sources (II)
by Matthew Gaetano Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829), one of the most important early German Romantics, deserves more attention from theologians today. I think that one of the reasons for the problematic shape of “modernity criticism” today is that we at times forget about the critics of Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and others between the seventeenth and twentieth… Read More Friedrich Schlegel, Romanticism, and Catholic Traditionalism
by Trevor Anderson I was born about twenty years after the Second Vatican Council, and came into communion with the Roman Catholic Church about twenty-five years after that, so I have no recollection of what the Catholic Church was like before Vatican II. Likewise, I have no recollection of what the relations between Protestants and Catholics,… Read More Trent and Vatican II: Suggested Principles for Analysis