Sublime

Tarsicius van Bavel, in a lucid digest of Augustine’s teaching on this topic,54 cites Sermon 341 as a focal text: here Augustine says that ‘Christ’ has three meanings, referring to the eternal and pre-existent Word, to the incarnate figure of the redeemer and mediator, and to the ‘whole Christ’, head and body.

We have to be careful about building theology from the Psalms unless it can be backed up elsewhere in Scripture.

Taylor, who affirms the genius of Durkheim but turns him against himself, shows with this triad how the social function of religion adds to the opaqueness of divine action.

For reflection Genesis 22:1–19

Psalm 16 feels more accessible after we’ve walked closely with David.

He rejects, rightly, any idea that what Jesus found amiss with Pharisaic teaching was ‘pettifogging legalism’. He offers, instead, a category which I would myself, in broad terms, endorse: Jesus was announcing ‘restoration eschatology’.

The therapeutic—that God wants to endorse my life and keep me happy—is contrasted with kenosis, which makes life not about the therapeutic but about the ministerial.