revisions vol. 5 issue 1, fall 2008

RevisionsA Journal of Christian Perspective vol V, issue 1, fall 2008

Revisions / Fall 20082

RevisionsA Journal of Christian Perspective

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFNicole Fegeas ‘10

EDITORSLi Deng ‘10

Chenxin Jiang ‘09Tsheko Mutungu ‘09

Angela Shan ‘10

EDITORS EMERITI The Rev. David H. Kim

Richard Lopez ‘09John Montague

Andrew Matthews ‘06David Matthews ‘05

Matthew Nickoloff ‘04

CONTRIBUTORSThe Rev. Blake Altman

David D. Chen ‘05Ephraim Chen ‘09

The Rev. Matthew ConnallyZachary Marr ‘09

Opinions expressed in articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or of Manna Christian Fellowship. Manna is a 501(c)(3)

corporation. Copyright, 2008.

The printing of this journal is made possible by gifts from friends and alumni and by a grant from

the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

Revisions, c/o Manna Christian FellowshipPO Box 577, Princeton, NJ 08542

[email protected]

The Mission of RevisionsRevisions is an ecumenical journal of Christian thought committed to the process of “faith in search of understanding.” Through re-visioning the world in light of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we hope to invigorate the intellectual possibility of a worldview centered on the Gospel, both at Princeton University and in the world at large. In developing and articulating distinctively Christian perspectives on the whole of life, we seek to revive the rich Christian tradition of vibrant intellectual engagement with and critical reflection on the social, cultural, philosophical, political, and scientific issues facing a pluralistic university community.

ContentsOne Nation Under God.....................................................................4

Ephraim Chen

Politics and Christianity......................................................................7

David D. Chen

Reflections on Community................................................................8

Zachary Marr

One Voice..............................................................................................10

Nicole Fegeas

Finding Artistic Nuance in Martha’s Solarium............................11

Tsheko Mutungu

The Radical Uniqueness of the Bible.............................................14

The Rev. Matthew Connally

Review: Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown...............................16

The Rev. Blake Altman

Review: WALL-E................................................................................18

Richard Lopez

Art/photography credits: Unless otherwise noted, images are taken from the public-domain online databases. From flickr.com: Front Cover, Ben McLeod; , *clarity*; Page 5, djv2130; Page 8, Joseph.S; Page 16, jeffersonhidayat; Back Cover, Srevatsan.

Revisions / Fall 2008 3

On Saturday, August 16, 2008, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain met for the first time on a public stage. It was a momentous occasion, to be sure, but it was more than momentous to some: it was potentially disastrous. Why? Because this first fo-rum was held in a church, headed by an evangelical minister, Pastor Rick Warren. Did not such a visual blending of politics and reli-gion dance a little too close to that untouchable line drawn between church and state?

These are the situations and debates that cause me to ask the question: should there be a place in politics for religion? Certain-ly many Americans hold that the answer is no, interpreting that to be the definitive position of the legal doctrine of the separation of church and state. But American politics aside, remember too that Jesus himself seems to warn us against mixing of church and state in the Gospel of Luke when He says to the chief priests, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s” (Luke 20:25). And there is wisdom in this statement, for often in the history of mankind we can find abuses of God’s holy name in the realm of politics, one of the most notorious examples of which is seen in the actions of the kings of medieval Christian Europe when they used holy crusades for the purpose of conquest and plunder. These are abuses that use religion not to further His will, but the will of man. Can a politician presume the will of God?

Yet, the Bible also emphasizes numerous times that the Chris-tian faith is not simply a faith of Sundays and sermons. It is a faith that must permeate every aspect of our lives. If Christ is at the cen-ter of our lives than there can be no way for us to follow His teach-ings in one sector of our lives and ignore His teachings in another. Christ must be present in all, and we must assume that all must include politics.

Should there be a place in politics for religion? It seems that as Christians, we are obligated to answer yes. The difficulty comes in defining precisely what that place is. Some of the articles in this is-sue of Revisions do touch upon this question by directly evaluating the place of Christianity in the context of politics, but we at Revi-sions can offer no clear answer to this question. Thus we encourage you to ask it of yourselves and of those around you. Even in charged matters such as these, dialogue can lead to understanding.

From the Editors’ Desk...


Today, discussing religion in public or over the dinner table is awkward for the average American. And within official forums like public schools, federal courts and

Congress, religious expression—specifically, the voicing and practice of Christian ideals—is downright taboo. In fact in recent years, even feeble references to Christianity have been fiercely obstructed from entering the public square. Within 40 years, the United States has progressed from the 1962 Supreme Court Engel vs. Vitale ruling against verbal, voluntary prayer in public schools1 to a 1989 Nebraska court ruling in Gierke vs. Blotzer that prohibited a student from even opening his Bible while at school.2 However, at the time of this country’s founding, public religious expression was protected, not obstructed, by the government. Indeed, Christianity greatly influenced the nation’s founding documents and proved to be a guide for subsequent public governance.

A simple opening example of America’s godly heritage can be found at a traditional symbol of American liberty: Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Note that more than one hundred years before any of the events of the American Revolution took place, many of the first settlers that came to the New World did so either to evangelize the Native Americans or to escape religious persecution and practice Christianity apart from the institutionalized European churches. Nonetheless, Liberty Bell is most commonly associated with ringing during the early days of the Revolution when the American colonists declared independence from Great Britain. What is less well-known is the inscription of Leviticus 25:10 (“Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof”) on the bell, which refers to the year of Jubilee for the Israelites and also corresponds to American efforts for freedom. The first American Congress that met to prepare for the upcoming Revolutionary War with Great Britain in 1774 commenced with a profound, heartfelt period of prayer in which four Bible chapters were read. That time of prayer was led by Reverend Jacob Duche of the nearby Christ Church—a church which had a stained glass window built in 1910 containing Robert Morris, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Rush, John Penn, Benjamin Franklin and others among the many Founding Fathers who worshipped there, as David Barton describes.3

Almost every one of the fifty-five Founding Fathers who framed the U.S. Constitution was a member of a Christian church, and few today know that many of the Founders were outspoken evangelicals in that they emphasized the authority of the Bible

as the Word of God and stressed personal salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ. Also, over half of the fifty-six signers of the 1776 Declaration of Independence received degrees from what would be considered seminaries or Bible schools today. In fact, Declaration signers started the Sunday School movement as well as several Bible and missionary societies, and were also responsible for the publication of many religious works and Bibles. John Witherspoon helped publish America’s first family Bible in 1791; Charles Thomson made the first American translation of the Greek Septuagint in 1808; and Dr. Benjamin Rush published America’s first stereotyped Bible in 1812.4 The educational system and textbooks that supported the childhoods of the Founding Fathers encouraged their Christian faith and eventual support of Christian principles in American government. For example, The New England Primer, a first grade textbook used to teach literacy from 1690 until 1930, taught students the alphabet with verses from Scripture. The back of the Primer had dozens of Bible-oriented questions like “Which is the fifth commandment?” and “What is forbidden in the sixth commandment?”

The importance of Christianity in the lives of the Founders is further illustrated by an account once widely recorded in history textbooks but now largely forgotten—that of George Washington’s miraculous survival of the ambush on General Edward Braddock’s force on the road to the French Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War. In that disastrous battle, more than half of the 1300 British and American troops were shot down, a majority of the officers became casualties, and General Braddock himself was killed. Afterwards, Washington openly acknowledged, “I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence that protected me beyond all human expectation.”5 Even the old Native American chief who specifically singled out Washington for his braves to target during that ambush stopped trying to shoot him when he personally failed after seventeen different attempts, having concluded that Washington was under divine protection, as he told Washington himself when the American came back to visit the battleground later in his life. The old chief told him, “I have traveled a long and weary path that I might see the young warrior of the great battle. [I] come to pay homage to the man who is the particular favorite of Heaven, and who [can] never die in battle.”6

Today’s secularists use the infamous “separation of church and state” principle to call for the complete secularization of

The Founding Fathers never meant to exclude Christian values—the same values they embraced during the founding of

the United States of America—from the public domain.

Ephraim Chen

One Nation Under God


duty—as well as the privilege and interest—of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”8 George Washington’s Farewell Address, once printed as a standalone textbook for students due to the importance attributed to it, has all but vanished from modern textbooks, probably because it contains too much religious content for secularists. But in it, Washington says, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars.”9 Adams, Jay and Washington all provide examples of the Founding Fathers’ desire to preserve the essence of the gospel in the American civil arena.

Properly acknowledging the importance of Christianity to America, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1892 that, “[N]o purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people…[T]his is a Christian nation.”10 John Adams stated that “the general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were…the general principles of Christianity”11 How could the Founding Fathers have been agnostics or deists who formed a completely secular government, as some assert today?

Apart from the Founders’ own words, examining the sources from which the Founders’ obtained their political ideas also reveals America’s original Christian nature. A study described in

all government-related activities. However, this phrase—found nowhere in the Constitution—was written by Thomas Jefferson to Baptist church members to alleviate their fears that the government would limit their religious freedoms. He was by no means stating that government should eliminate Christian expression in public forums; he was in actuality assuring the Baptists that the U.S. government would abide by the First Amendment to the Constitution—that is, in accordance with the original 1789 debates that produced the First Amendment and the other tenets of the Bill of Rights, the government would prevent the establishment of a national, compulsory denomination and would not prohibit public religious expression.

These definitions of the terms “establishment” and “religion,” and this original overall meaning for the First Amendment, were clearly understood during the Founding Era. As such, many public officials had no problem with practicing their Christian faith through civic actions. John Quincy Adams acknowledged this when he delivered a keynote address at an Independence Day celebration in 1837 where he argued that the Founding Fathers had joined the principles that Christ brought into the world through His birth with the secular principles of civil government in an “indissoluble” bond to produce this nation.7 John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, encouraged Christians to hold public office: “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers; and it is the


Donald Lutz’s The Origins of American Constitutionalism found that the individuals most cited in writings during the Founding Era were Charles Montesquieu (8.3 percent of quotations), William Blackstone (7.9 percent) and John Locke (2.9 percent); and the most cited source was the Bible (34 percent).12 When considering that the Bible was also an important source for Montesquieu, Blackstone and Locke,13 we must conclude that Scripture was by far the most influential supply of concepts for the Founding Fathers.

Basic scrutiny of the U.S. Constitution reveals that it does reflect biblical principles. Isaiah 33:22 presents the idea of three distinct branches of government: “For the LORD is our Judge, the LORD is our Lawgiver, the LORD is our King; He will save us” (NKJV). Separation of powers was argued on the basis of Jeremiah 17:9, which states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” The Founding Fathers’ motivation for providing churches with tax-exemption can be found in Ezra 7:24, where Artaxerxes the king of Persia told Ezra the priest that “…it shall not be lawful to impose tax, tribute, or custom on any of the priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, Nethinim, or servants of this house of God.”

The affability between American government and Christianity extended even to congressionally-sanctioned Bible printing. The British ban on printing English-language Bibles in America before the Revolution was eliminated after the American victory over the British at Yorktown. Congress approved of and appointed an official committee to oversee the printing of an English-language Bible by Robert Aitken, a local Philadelphia printer. In 1782, the first American English-language Bible began to be printed with an official congressional endorsement: “Whereupon, Resolved, That the United States in Congress assembled…recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States.”14 Commenting on this event, an 1849 historian named W.P. Strickland rhetorically asked, “Who, in view of this fact, will call in question the assertion that this a Bible nation? Who will charge the government with indifference to religion…!”15

Consider this: during a dark period for young America during the Revolutionary War, John Adams, who would become the second President of the United States, told Dr. Benjamin Rush, his close friend, a fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence and the “Father of American Medicine,” that America would be able to win the war “if we fear God and repent of our sins.” This kind of attitude was prevalent within Independence Hall: the Continental Congress issued fifteen separate prayer proclamations calling for fasting or thanksgiving during the Revolutionary War, employing overtly Christian language.16

George Washington affirmed long ago that “religion and morality” are needed for “political prosperity.” Some today would continue to argue that the prayers and devotion of the early Americans contributed to divine blessings bestowed upon the United States. Consequently, we should recognize the extraordinary extent to which Christianity played a role in both shaping the thoughts and lives of our Founding Fathers and influencing the initial establishment of the government, truly making us “one nation under God.” In conclusion, some room for religious expression in the public square would be in line

with the spirit of America’s Christian heritage.

Ephraim Chen ‘09 is majoring in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He is from New York.

1 Engel vs. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).2 David Barton, Original Intent (Texas: WallBuilder Press, 1999), p. 11.3 David Barton, America’s Godly Heritage (Texas: WallBuilder Press, 1993), pp. 4-7.4 Ibid., p. 9.5 George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), Vol. 1, p. 152, to John Augustine Washington, July 18, 1755.6 Joseph Banvard, Tragic Scenes in the History of Maryland and the Old French War (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1856), p. 154.7 John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport, At Their Request, on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4th, 1837 (Newburyport, MA: Charles Whipple, 1837), pp. 5, 6.8 William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), Vol. II, p. 376, to John Murray, Jr., October 12, 1816.9 George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army. To the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge, 1796), pp. 22, 23.10 Church of the Holy Trinity vs. U.S., 143 U.S. 457, 465, 471 (1892).11 John Adams, Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. X, pp. 45-46, to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813.12 Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Louisiana State University Press, 1998).13 Barton, Heritage, p. 24.14 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774 to 1789 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), Vol. XXIII, p. 574, September 12, 1782.15 W. P. Strickland, History of the American Bible Society from its Organization to the Present Time (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849), pp. 20, 21.16 Barton, Heritage, p. 8.


Politics and ChristianityDavid D. Chen

I always raise an eyebrow when I hear speakers proclaiming the need for America to “return to God”? What does it mean

to return to God?

Recently the political ticker has been focusing on attempts by both McCain and Obama to court evangelical voters: a pow-erful and large class of voters that helped put President Bush in office not once but twice. I always raise an eyebrow when I hear speakers proclaiming the need for America to “return to God”. What does it mean to return to God? Does it mean lobbying to Congress to “protect marriage”? Does it mean pressuring the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade (the case that legalized abortion in the US)?

While these exercises in the democratic participation pro-cess are necessary and (sometimes) good, I think that evan-gelicals tend to put their hope in something false. Yes, America needs to return to God... but the movement to return will not begin in the halls of Congress or within the walls of the court. It will not be a “trickle-down” conversion, nor will it be won through the political power struggles of lobbyists and special interest groups.

If we return to God, we must find him where he demands to be found.

Some two-thousand-odd years ago, a few kings of the Ori-ent learned what this meant. They sought out the Incarnate God in an ornate palace, only to be re-directed to a manger pungent with the smell of animal feces. When God made his phenomenal entrance into humanity, it wasn’t in any way we could have an-ticipated... or would have wanted to.

If we return to God, we must find him where he demands to be found.

When the Incarnate God began speaking with a human tongue and listening with human ears, he did it with a bunch of tax collectors, prostitutes, lepers, and crippled beggars. When he dined and laughed and did great things with people, it was in the presence of the weak, the poor, and the unpretentious. When Jesus chose to be silent and hide the full disclosure of his nature and authority, it was to rebuke the kings, the courts, and the religious authorities.

The modern church is very eloquent in speaking the lan-guage of politics and power, but we are at a loss for words when addressing the weak, the poor, and the humble. I readily identify with the rich and the satisfied, but I am most confused among the troubled and the distraught.

When God asks that I return to him, in which direction should I run? Towards the places of power? Or towards the hun-gry, the thirsty, the naked, the lonely?

When God calls America to return to him, in which direc-tion will we run?

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 1

David Chen ‘05 is currently a medical student at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

1 Matthew 25:34-40


Politics does not promise to bring about content change. Rather, it promises to control, by repression or liberation, organize, and shape its expression to be in line

with a certain ideology.

Zachary Marr

Reflections on Community

WHAT FOLLOWS IS A DISCUSSION ABOUT THE concept of community and its divergent relation to politics and Christianity. Because religious and po-

litical groups are, by their very nature, communities in and of themselves, the task of relating community to Christianity and politics may at first seem trivial. In fact, it is not. Religious and political affiliations shape, organize and structure communities. They affect communities from a position of power outside and above the community—the sphere of ideology, dogma, tradi-tion, ritual, law and its enforcement. Christianity, as a specific religious affiliation, shares this trait; but in addition, Christianity claims to be something more. Christianity affects community in a unique way: the sphere of power that usually lies outside and above the community extends additionally into the community. It promises penetration and transformation of the individual and in doing so grafts each individual organically into a single spiri-tually unified community—what Christians refer to as the “body of Christ.”

Community may be divided into two parts: “content” and “form”. The first layer, the content layer, is what we might call the “spiritual” layer—or for those who are disinclined to use re-ligious terminology, the “personality” layer. It is the less visible of the two parts. Within this layer lie the natural instincts, tastes, preferences, and desires, cultivated or genetic, of a group and the individuals that make up the group.

The second, the “form” layer, is the visible and most eas-ily grasped layer. It is the facade or appearance which makes the “content” of a community understandable and interpretable. Form is evident on both a micro and macro level scale. Macro-level form can be seen in community’s ideological platforms,

rhetoric, and organization. Micro-level form is seen in the physi-cal, ideological, and socio-economic characteristics of the mem-bers of a community. Form is tangible. It is the physical actions and characteristics of a community. To know a community, to claim to understand its content, one must judge this physical sphere of existence—a task to which many social scientists de-vote countless hours.

Form, therefore, is the community’s means of self-expres-sion. And since self-expression is an outward motion, taking what is inside and making it visible, it cannot truly penetrate a person’s content. Like clothing or language, it can only shape our appearance, physical or immaterial—repressing, organizing, or shaping it. It is not an inward motion; instead it is an external stimulus changing an internal state of being. Through political affiliations we get a glimpse of the “content” of individuals and communities—their collective and individual values, desires, personality, etc. But such affiliations can never become part of the “content” of an individual or community. Likewise, in much of their practice, Christian groups pertain to the sphere of form as well, serving as a means for collective and individual expres-sion.

This common ground shared by both politics and Christian-ity is seen in their ritual practices, dogmatic assertions, and the occurrence of quasi-mystical experiences. Christian calendars of key events (festivals, fasts, days of remembrance, church picnics etc.), structures of worship services and sacred rituals (baptism, communion, singing) are as diverse and unique as the political yearly calendar of events (election dates, rallies, days of cele-brations/remembrance), internal party structures, and near ritual practices (chants, singing, inaugural rituals).


Dogmatic divisions are equally as strange and prolific in Christianity (Armenian/Calvanist, Protestant/Catholic, Amil-lennialists/Pre-tribulationist) as in political ideological splits. Some examples are the many branches of communist ideology and their varied expressions in nations such as Cuba and China; the different economic and politic theories diffused in American democracy; and the brands of populist, socialist and democratic politics available in Latin America. Their technical languages share the quality of being equally robust and incredibly difficult to understand for outsiders. We also see in both groups the oc-currence of mystical and quasi-mystical moments. Perhaps most notable is the heavy and very personal emotional involvement of persons with God and political figures.

All of these described aspects of Christian and political communities pertain to the sphere of “form” and are avenues for the expression of certain basic instincts, desires and personality traits. Communities of form are not places that touch the content of an individual, but rather allow for his or her content to be ex-pressed. It is at this point where the difference between political groups and Christian groups is revealed. The difference lies in how they each claim to relate to the content of an individual.

Politics is satisfied to let its claim rest inside the sphere of form. It promises change regulation or deregulation, construc-tion or deconstruction of society and its laws. Politics does not promise to bring about content change. Rather it promises to control, by repression or liberation, organize, and shape its ex-pression to be in line with a certain ideology. It produces practi-cal actions moving towards progress and safety: a new foreign policy or health care system, promises to resolve immigration is-sues, the prospect of safer streets, greater liberty, and the hope of a stable economy. Government has, in most countries, a strong control on many aspects of a society. As a result, it is able to chisel—however ingenious or infamous an artist it may be—the many facets it controls. It beats its raw materials into complex, labyrinth-like machines in hopes of bringing about the goals of its ideology. Dominant ideologies reflect the content of few or many individuals, depending on the democratic character of the nation or group’s political system. If such a suggestion is true, politics becomes equivalent to a reflection and expression of man as individuals and communities.

Depending on one’s belief in man, this can be comforting or deeply distressing. Two facts make this suggestion personally distressing. First, history shows us that a stable political form, one that is not susceptible to eventually decay and dissolution, is yet to be found. Second, communities, even at their best, are all deeply flawed—a fact that is always pointed out by later his-torians.

Now, the question at hand is whether Christianity claims to offer something more then a means of self-expression. I sug-gest that Christianity offers more in two ways. First, Christianity does not settle for self-expression of already existing content, desires and qualities, but requires both their deconstruction and reconstruction. To use technical Christian terminology, humans need “redemption.” Such a claim is difficult to wrap one’s mind around, but it is a claim that Christ, the central figure of Chris-tianity, makes: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”(Matthew 10:39), or in response to a comment made by one of the religious leaders of

his time, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3).

Additionally, in other parts of the Christian Bible we find similar statements: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2:20). Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth…Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge ac-cording to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:1-17, italics added).

In these moments in the Christian New Testament, we see Christianity’s bizarre claim to be able to change the content of man. It is not a promise to improve man or control him, but, rather, to kill him and bring him back to life. Not only that, but it is the promise to unite man to God and to other Christians by inserting, quite literally, Christ into the content of an individual. Its claim is the impossible: that form might be transformed into content, that the ideals offered by ideology might be humanized inside a person, that the divine and perfect might be born inside man.

Second, Christianity offers mankind a community, or per-haps more accurately, a union that is unbreakable, incorruptible and penetrating. According to Christianity, Christ is willing to dwell and to fuse with those who are willing to accept him as Savior. The image is that of branches being grafted into a vine. As a result of this union, Christians, by result of having Christ dwelling within each one, become linked to each other. Ac-cordingly, Christians often refer to themselves as the “body of Christ”—a title that suggests the strange and unfathomable inti-macy of their connection to one another. In contrast, other forms of community fail to unite our internal content in such a way. We are left, ultimately, alone. Even lovers, who are able to penetrate into the layer of conten realize they cannot enter completely into one another after engaging in perhaps the most intimate human act. Death as well as temperament divides. Christianity offers a union that is eternal, an eternity that is born into the present every-day life of its adherents, and a union whose depth and strength is such that many persons are offended and skeptical of its claims.

Zach Marr ‘09 is a Comparative Literature major from Austin, Texas.


Nicole Fegeas

One Voice

They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings. (Isaiah 40:31)

One voice may be the Eagle,a hundred words callinga hundred feathered breaths or a single word unfurling a single spanning sweepto glide swiftly beneath my heartand bear me from my silence,my void.

In this, vacuum cell of my own creation,one voice may resound as a thousand thunders,a thousand tongues tipped with choral might—the Eagle’s plumes bloom from Spirit songto build with every mighty beat,an undulating crescendo to break me freeand bring me high.

I am high on my own surrender,the surrender of my Icarus—I thought to be artisan of my own ascent.Silent,I beat my waxen wings against a fiery sun.

My voice is only one voice,but it is one voice given to One Voice,submitted to One Voice,drawn into One Voice untilI am one.I am one with the Flight,the Height, the Light,one as womb-child is one with mother.My womb is the womb of the Eagle’s wingsand within this I fly,I fly on One Voice.


Tsheko Mutungu

Finding Artistic Nuance in Martha’s Solarium

Just as we may confuse what it means to have a neighbor and what it means to be one, so we confuse relationship with God

with merely relating to Him.

Sometime between 1654 and 1656, Johannes Vermeer, a young Dutch art trader, began to trace the outline of a painting. Vermeer would typically use a lens, similar

to that of a modern camera, to project his chosen image onto the canvas before he began to paint it. With his lens, he would determine the ideal placement of each object and fine-tune his lighting scheme, envisioning how the colors would fuse together before he began.

This historical painting of Christ in the House of Martha and Mary demonstrates the same detailed planning. Daylight streams in from the front, exposing folds in the fabrics of table-cloths and clothing. Jesus sits in a chair on the right, with an understated glow about His head that does not illuminate His face. He looks up to speak to Martha as she places a bread basket on the table beside Him. Mary sits on a footstool near Jesus, her bare feet peeking out from her skirt hem.

Vermeer allows virtually no empty space between the three individuals surrounding the table. Each of them is touching the table. And both Martha and Mary are virtually touching Jesus. In that isthmus of space between Him and each woman persists a nondescript form of contact. And it asks subtle is-it-or-is-it-not questions. Is Martha’s service valued or is it not? Is Mary’s in-activity at Jesus’ feet suitable or is it not? Is Martha’s frustration with her sister and her guest justified or is it not?

According to the biblical narrative, at this moment Martha has just asked Jesus whether He cares that she is serving Him alone. It is a loaded question. From the text, it is unclear whether Jesus is the sole visitor. He usually toured with an entourage. And Luke says nothing about the rest of the normal household. Who knows how many stomachs need to be fed and thirsts need to be quenched. If Martha joined Mary at Jesus’ feet and there were other hungry patrons about, it is likely that they would have many complaints of their own. Her question is a cultural one: a question to Jesus’ sense of etiquette. But it’s also a per-sonal question. Does He care about her? Does He appreciate the invitation she has made to take Him in for the evening and take care of Him? Is He willing to honor her generosity by not distracting the help?

Most sermons on Luke’s account don’t bother with these questions. Martha is the insipid sister, “distracted” by her hos-pitality. Mary is the one with the color; the one who gets the messianic pat on the head. This interpretive framework places Martha and Mary at the end of a narrative arc that begins in Luke 10:25. The movement begins with a teacher of Hebrew law

asking Jesus what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus responds by telling him to love God with all facets of his being and to love his neighbor as himself. The law teacher asks Jesus to define “neighbor”. Jesus proceeds to tell the story of a man from Samaria who demonstrates deep compassion at great per-sonal expense to help a Jewish man who’s been mugged and left for dead. He contrasts the Samaritan with two Jewish characters who choose to do nothing.

Jesus uses the contemporary, ethnic dissociation of Jews and Samaritans to define “neighborhood” as an attitudinal and behavioral construct where the self deliberately chooses to en-gage others with love. Faith in God—and nothing else—forms the basis of this neighborhood with others, insofar as it preempts love of God. For insofar as faith in and love of God breeds self-awareness in the created individual, it makes the individual du-ally aware of God’s other creatures. Passion prompts compas-sion.

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, love of God is im-plicit. Remember, neighborhood is motivated in the theoretical framework Jesus provides as a response to the law teacher’s ini-tial question of what is necessary to inherit eternal life. It is de-scribed in answer to the law teacher’s follow-up question, “And who is my neighbor?” In asking only about neighborhood and not about loving God, the teacher betrays a belief that he already knows what it means to love God. Martha’s story revisits this.

In the broader context of the Gospel of Luke, Martha seems to demonstrate profound neighborhood. By my count, she is one of only a handful of named benefactors of Jesus’ ministry and the first in the book of Luke. While others are clamoring to pros-per under Jesus’ teaching and healing ministries, she invites him into her house and attempts to serve him. But there she is, being chastised by the gospel writer for being “distracted with much serving”. Vermeer gives us a clearer sense of what this means.

What I like most about Vermeer’s portrait is that if you ask any onlooker to guess which of the two people in the pic-ture know each other, the obvious answer would be Jesus and Mary. To the ignorant observer, Martha could be anybody from a household servant to the hostess of a bed-and-breakfast. De-spite her physical proximity to Jesus, and the fact that she is the central individual standing most prominently in the light, she remains somehow estranged. Her outfit is well put together. But it’s fastened so tightly that, strange as it may sound, one is very aware that she is wearing her clothes. She has this practiced, ar-tificial feel to her. And this fabrication, so to speak, creates space


between her and Jesus.Vermeer’s Mary is sitting on a footstool, which seems as

though it was in fact meant for Jesus. She doesn’t seem dressed up at all, a fact underscored by her bare feet. With one hand under her chin and the other on her knee, she exudes familiar-ity. Her skirt is a merely a greyer shade of Jesus’ blue robe. And away from the light source, their garments coalesce.

To the naked eye, the same amount of space, just inches, exists between each woman and Jesus. But where Martha’s fab-ricated feel emphasizes the space, Mary’s familiar feel draws attention away from it. But for Vermeer’s deft touch, we would not be able to tell the difference between intimacy and estrange-ment. Just as we may confuse what it means to have a neighbor and what it means to be one, so we’d confuse relationship with God with merely relating to Him.

Vermeer’s painting elucidates Martha’s solarium by asking a question: what does it mean to neighbor God? He attacks this question as an artist, using this biblical encounter to probe what neighboring God looks like. The circumstantial answer here is not, as many a preacher would have it, that Martha put down her bread basket and sit on the floor with Mary. Such an idea only reinforces Martha’s original problem of prescribing action to mediate relationship, of being too distracted with her service to be a true friend of Jesus. The gospel here is not questioning her specific actions; it is questioning their basis.

In response to Martha’s challenge – “Do you not care that I am working alone? If so, do X” – Jesus reacts by stating His concern about her deep-set anxiety. By showing an awareness of who she is and what she feels beyond that evening’s supper, He proceeds to establish an intimate connection with her. Lack-ing that intimacy, it would matter not what He told Mary to do. The distance between him and Martha would persist, and she’d likely find something else to worry about.

In fact, the irony of Luke 10 is that, if Martha really knew Jesus, she’d realize how low-maintenance He was (Luke 10:7). He and His penniless travelling party were willing to eat what-ever was put in front of them. And the blessing they tried to leave wherever they were hosted was one of peace (Luke 10:5- 6)—the same blessing we see Jesus attempting to give Martha.

The idea projects from the page onto Vermeer’s canvas: no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, no matter how many socio-cultural prescriptions you follow, you cannot close the space between you and God. You cannot love God unless you know Him.

That is what the painting communicates. But though the na-ture of knowing God is a central motif of this piece of scripture, the message of Luke 10 is much more specific to the questions Vermeer’s work asks—rather than what it reveals—about the nature of loving God.

While Jesus inflects ethnic animosity to describe neigh-

www.revisionsonline.orgcomment on art ic les w submit art ic les w learn more

E-mail us at: revisionsonl [email protected]


think the parable of the lost son from the perspective of the son. But Jesus makes a clear attempt to obfuscate the returned son in that parable’s concluding discussion between the father and the “good” son.

Jesus devoted every moment of His life to the look in His Father’s eyes we get at the end of all of his parables. If Martha had listened to him at all, she’d know that His life was about doing everything necessary to bring lost siblings home. And she would heed His call to join Him in that cause. She wouldn’t un-dermine it by turning on His relationship with Mary.

Ultimately, Jesus’ reaction to Martha amounts to a pointed assertion of her estrangement and insensitivity: in her self-pity, she has challenged him to do something antithetical to his very reason for being. And though this does not come out in the pre-cise words Jesus uses, it comes out clearly in the resolve with which He says them to Martha: Mary has something good “and it will not be taken away from her”.

If you get a chance, read through Luke 10 and stare at Ver-meer’s painting. Look at Jesus’ face. Perhaps it’ll change the way you think about things. Perhaps, it will make you realize, as I have, that God’s satisfaction should be the primary motive for Christian discipleship. The only biblical evidence we have of divine anger and distress occurs when God’s children abandon Him. Loving God demands that Christians integrate their lives into the divine franchise of bringing those children home. This is, after all, what we’re called to: the precisely lived-out example Christ left us to follow in His steps.

Tsheko Mutungu is a Computer Science major from Ndola, Zambia.

borhood, the Good Samaritan is not about a Samaritan break-ing a cultural barrier to help a Jew. The two Jewish characters who pass the stranded man by are from the ecclesiastic order (a priest) and the religious class (a Levite). By casting them as unsympathetic, Jesus makes a strong critique of the contempo-rary religious establishment. Their religion creates impenetrable space between them and others.

This syncs well with what’s going on in Luke 10: a con-certed ministry push. In fact, if we think beyond our imposed divisions of scripture, we can take this further back to the first ministry push in Luke 9 right through to the final condemnation of the Pharisees and lawyers in Luke 11. In this section of scrip-ture, Jesus is equipping people for a new kind of ministry. And in order to do that, He’s laying to rest the obsolete paradigm. We see this blazing alteration of ministry workshops and practicals, parables of sowing, descriptions of harvest, instructions to per-severe in faith, and an intensive onslaught against the ecclesias-tic order for “hindering [people] from entering the sanctuary” (Luke 11:52).

Against this backdrop, Jesus’ encounter with Martha illu-minates the connection between loving God and one’s neighbor. Martha’s challenge begins with a circumstantial premise: I obvi-ously care about you; and then the question, “Do you care about me?” Jesus responds in kind, asserting, “Yes, I care about you,” and asking, “But do you care about me?” They both use Mary as evidence of the other’s lack of sympathy. We’ve already consid-ered the form of Martha’s contention. Jesus’ contention, in the language of Luke 11:13, is that if Martha knew him, she’d know how much it delighted him to impart the gift of divine intimacy to Martha. And if she cared about him, she wouldn’t get in the way of that. She’d facilitate it.

This is precisely what the Good Samaritan is about: the de-liberate act of bringing others closer to God. We often forget that the story is a parable. And we don’t look for hidden mean-ing beyond, “Go do nice things for people.” I believe the story is a metaphor for Christian discipleship: identifying those laid bare and helpless in their fallen-ness and using the resources God has given us to reach them. It’s a metaphor for the new faith paradigm being enacted in Luke 9-11. The key argument the parable makes is that the existing religious paradigm was insensitive—and perhaps, not even relevant—to the most basic questions of human life. And the parable also justifies the on-going ministry training by forcing readers to consider how and where the Samaritan has come by the resources he has to help the injured man. Also, the Samaritan makes a promise to come back and check on the Jewish man after he’s left him safely at an inn. And this suggests a rubric for discipleship that goes beyond religious conversion.

The story of Martha and Mary serves as an interpretive stop-gap for the Good Samaritan. It gives us a window into Je-sus’ constitution. In our entire canon of parables, the image we get most is of a father-figure exuding satisfaction after recover-ing something that was lost. In these stories, Jesus communi-cates that this—His Father’s satisfaction—is what He’s about. And with his parables, He constructs a model of discipleship that derives from love of God, rather than deference to or sym-pathy for the “lost”. Just think: we never consider the parable of the lost coin from the perspective of the coin. And we over-


When it comes to who God is and what He has done, the Judeo-Christian faith is the one and only faith that lays claim not to mystical revelations but to historical

events. That is to say that the writers of the Bible do not testify to what angels or visions told them happened in the past, but to what they and others saw happen. As one fisherman put it:

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands…that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you…1

No other religion even tries to make such an audacious claim, for all other scriptures base their versions of history upon secret, mystical revelations.

This does not necessarily make Christianity superior to oth-er religions; rather, it is simply an example (one of many) of its radical uniqueness. Again, the point is that although the Bible records supernatural revelations about the future, when it comes to what God has said and done it the past it rests entirely upon eyewitness accounts.

Now many if not most religions, including Christianity, be-lieve that their scriptures bear witness to their own divine nature. That is to say that God’s Word testifies to itself and when one reads it the truth is obvious. Although this argument is circular, it is not “viciously” circular. To the contrary, it would be irrational to say that when God speaks then His words must be judged and measured against some other authority.

That is reasonable; however, it does not necessitate the ab-sence of evidence. God could tell us that something happened, and, separately, he could also give us evidence for it. That would be similar to, for example, a history teacher telling his students that the Holocaust happened, and, separately, offering his stu-dents many testimonies about the Holocaust from soldiers and victims who experienced and witnessed it.

The point is that Christianity always only relies on such wit-nesses, whereas all other religions depend entirely upon visions, angels, and secret teachings. From the very beginning there were similar claims of mystical revelations and visions about Christ, which eventually developed into what we call Gnosticism or Gnostic Christianity. The Christian church leaders rejected these out of hand and relied solely upon eyewitness testimony, but it is worth looking at them a little more closely to see the differ-ence.

How were the Gnostic Gospels compiled?The Gnostic Gospels are stories about the life of Christ that

originated in Israel during the second and third centuries. But unlike Christians the Gnostics asked for blind faith and offered no evidence whatsoever for their teachings, for the very basis of knowledge (gnosis in Greek) was not historical event or objec-tive fact but instead esoteric and mystical revelations given to the elite.

“These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke, and that Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down,” begins The Gospel of Thomas. “And He said: ‘Whoever finds the meaning of these words will not taste death.’” Similarly, the Gospel of Judas be-gins, “The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days be-fore he celebrated Passover.” We do not have the beginning of the Gospel According to Mary, but in the following passage she relates a conversation she had with a vision of Christ: “I said to Him, Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit? The Savior answered and said, He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind that is between the two that is what sees the vision…”

Gnostics believed secret knowledge trumped all.“We know that Gnostic teachers challenged the orthodox in

precisely this way,” writes Professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, one of the world’s leading scholars on Gnosticism. “While, according to them, the orthodox relied solely on the public, exoteric teaching which Christ and the apostles offered to ‘the many,’ Gnostic Christians claimed to offer, in addition, their secret teaching, known only to the few.”2

And when those private revelations contradict the public accounts, Gnosticism gives the former authority. “It asserts the superiority of Gnostic forms of secret tradition—and hence, of Gnostic teachers—over that of the priests and bishops, who can offer only ‘common’ tradition,” says Pagels. “Further, because earlier traditions, from this point of view, are at best incom-plete, and at worst simply false, Gnostic Christians continually drew upon their own spiritual experience—their own gnosis [knowledge]—to revise and transform them.”3

As the New Testament was being written Christian leaders were already battling against such teachers, and as the church grew it continued to take them head on. “Heresy hunters like Irenaeus [130-202 A.D.] found Gnostics particularly insidious and difficult to attack,” writes Professor Bart. D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina, another leading Gnostic scholar: “The problem was that you couldn’t reason with a Gnostic to

The Rev. Matthew Connally

The Radical Uniqueness of the Bible

[T]he Judeo-Christian faith is the one and only faith that lays claim not to mystical revelations but to historical

events.


sisted in using more than one book. They did this as a direct response to the challenge of Marcion [a Gnos-tic teacher] and Gnosticism. Many Gnostic teachers claimed that the heavenly messenger had trusted his secret knowledge to a particular disciple, who alone was the true interpreter of the message.6

Of course, once again none of the events can be proved, and faith is still required. But it is not blind faith in a mystical revelation about history. The difference is between God doing something and God telling us what he did. The uniqueness of the Christian stance is simply that we have faith that God has revealed himself in history, walking with us. “‘Behold, the vir-gin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:23).

The Rev. Matthew Connally is the English pastor of Princeton Christian Church. He received his M.Div from Trinity Evan-gelical Divinity School.

1 1 John 1:1-32 The Gnostic Gospels. Elaine Pagels. Vintage Books. 1979. pp. 14.3 IBID pp. 234 The Gospel of Judas. National Geographic Society. Commentary by Bart D. Ehrman. Edited by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst. National Geographic. Washington D.C. 2006. pp. 88.5 Luke 1:1-46 The Story of Christianity. Justo L. Gonzalez. Prince Press. 1984. pp. 62-63.

show him the error of his ways: He had secret knowledge that you didn’t! If you said that he was wrong, he could shrug it off and point out that you simply didn’t know.”4

Once again, this blind faith had no basis in reason.

How was the Bible compiled?We can define orthodox Christians simply as those who

adhere to the early Christian ecumenical creeds, including the Apostles Creed (2nd century A.D.) and the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.), and who hold to the Bible and the Bible alone as the sole source of doctrine and guidance. As one of Jesus apostles, Paul, put it: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!”(Galatians 1:8). Paul chastised one of the churches for being gullible on this matter: “For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The apostle Peter likewise warned the churches that there always have been and will continue to be false teachers: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies”(2 Peter 2:1). He told them to hold to the gospel and to nothing else, for, “We did not follow cleverly de-vised myths when we made known to you the power and com-ing of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Peter 1:16).

So the basis for the early church creeds and for all Chris-tian belief lay in asking “What does the Bible say happened?”, for that was dependant upon eyewitnesses. And so, for example, when a physician named Luke went to write an account for a friend of his concerning the news of Jesus, he began by stating his sources:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a nar-rative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewit-nesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.5

Together with the other three gospels—Matthew, Mark, and John—the church saw these as four different views of the same events, perhaps very comparable to how a director will use sev-eral cameras to shoot the same scene for a movie. Although they have variations in style and differ in what details they present and what they emphasize, they weave together into a singular historical record of astonishing depth and complexity (especial-ly when read in light of the Old Testament). In fact, as historian Dr. Justo L. Gonzalez explains, the early church highlighted and was encouraged by the differences.

The early Christians were well aware of these differ-ences and that was precisely the reason why they in-


According to Augustine, God can communicate “things” to fallen human beings only through signs and symbols, not directly. Therefore God must employ words, allegories, parables, and even natural phenomena to communicate his ontology...

The Rev. Blake Altman

Review: Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown

SAINT AUGUSTINE (345-430) IS ARGUABLY THE greatest theologian to grace Western Christianity. All theo-

logical controversies in this hemisphere since his time have re-ferred back to him; proponents on both sides have meticulously combed his writing to ask his advice, a phenom-enon which caused B.B. Warfield to conclude that the Protestant Reforma-tion was a an effort to ex-alt Augustine’s doctrine of man over his doctrine of the church. Both Catholics and Protestants claim him today, and both have some legitimacy in doing so.

The contribution of Peter Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Profes-sor of History at Princeton, to the discussion of Augus-tinian studies through biog-raphy is astounding in part because he did so at only 32 years of age. Soon after its first printing, Brown’s peers declared this book to be the definitive biography on Augustine. Superbly written and widely refer-enced, Brown’s book dem-onstrates the entire spec-trum of his own historical, theological, rhetorical and psychological analysis and skill. His fluency in late antiquity and the Roman Empire also empowers him to insert new perspectives of the doctor gratiae into the annals of historical and religious thought.

The author divides the book into five parts corresponding to the five major periods of Augustine’s life. Part One describes the socio-religio-political milieu of North Africa and Thagaste

into which Augustine was born. Few events are more interesting than those crucial years from 382 through 385 when Augustine parted ways with fashionable members of the Carthaginian in-telligentsia who claimed to be part of a “new Christianity.” Two

years after his father died and the same year Saint Ambrose was ordained Bishop of Milan, Augus-tine had his first conver-sion experience via Cicero.

However, Augustine found his conversion from rheto-ric to philosophy lacking because he felt that “Wis-dom” without “the name of Christ” was no guaran-tee of safety. According to Brown, Augustine turned to the Scriptures in search of the divine name. There he discovered Wisdom, but he had to exchange the mellifluous rhetoric of Cicero in order find him, something he was not yet prepared to do. Manichae-anism offered him both: Wisdom and the name of Christ.

After nine years as a Hearer with the Man-ichees, Augustine grew disenchanted with their excessive literalism and radical dualism. This eventually led him into a time of spiritual skepti-cism. Upon his appoint-ment as city rhetor of

Milan in the fall of 384, Augustine agreed to meet the city’s bishop, Ambrose, as a token of congeniality. This meeting initiates Part Two and sets the stage for nine pen-portraits. Within a few months, Ambrose’s preaching together with the teaching of the priest, Simplicianus, led Augustine to


adopt their hermeneutical presuppositions which qualified an orthodox allegorization of the Old Testament in the light of Neo-platonic philosophy. Part Three covers those vital Donatists years from 395-410. In this section, the author provides an excellent analysis of De doctrina Christiana and Augustine’s devotion to his role as pastor, not merely as theologian and rhetorician. The author begins Part Four a few months prior to Caelestius’s con-demnation at the Council of Carthage in 411, where he is con-fronted by the writings of the Pelagians by Marcellinus through letter, and subsequently finds himself whisked into an unending confrontation from which he never escapes. The Pelagian contro-versy is interpreted in terms of two ideals of the western society of the time. Pelagius defended the Roman tradition of rationality and the universal force of the natural law now given validity as the law of God. Augustine insisted that the law of God merely diagnosed, and did not heal. It was only through the law that humility drew one to the baptismal fount where the Spirit poured out the love of God in their hearts and empowered them by faith to fulfill the law of faith. Part Five deals with the last ten years of his life, where the author extends the controversy through the rhetoric and indictments by Julian of Eclanum. The Epilogue in this reprint edition also uses the newly discovered letters of Augustine to propose new directions of Augustine studies and to substantiate Augustine’s place as the ‘inventor of our modern notion of the will,’ and the one responsible for a decisive shift ‘from the ontological to a psychological approach to religion and culture,’ according to contemporary scholars.

Personally I found the author’s explanation of Augustine’s use of signs and things especially helpful for my own thinking. Augustine defined sign as “a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses.” The “things” themselves were the reality beyond the sign, God Himself. According to Augustine, God can com-municate “things” to fallen human beings only through signs and symbols, not directly. Therefore God must employ words, allegories, parables, and even natural phenomena to commu-nicate his ontology. In so doing, He mercifully provides man with “vehicles for land and sea to reach his homeland, Truth.” The inability of human beings to understand what God actu-ally intends in his written and natural sign is due to humanity’s misapprehension of Truth, which is an effect of the Fall. The author outlines Augustine’s crucial exegetical question: how we can ascend above the Scriptural signa, the signs, to enjoy the experience of the res, the things? While for Augustine God is ultimately ineffable and best experienced by silence, the bishop of Hippo nevertheless defends the necessity of language in spite of its ambiguity by appealing to divine commendation. Notably, Augustine’s hermeneutic in the end is less about “how” to inter-pret Scripture (as though method and procedure are the boundar-ies of proper biblical interpretation) than it is about love, which is the essential component of the Christian, the thoroughgoing characteristic of Christian culture. This is the foundation and ul-timate end of reading the Bible for Augustine. In his mind, the building up of faith, hope and love was the sine qua non of cor-rect biblical interpretation.

Weaknesses in this book are buried under a thousand strengths. However, the author’s assumption that Augustine had altogether abandoned Manichean ideal by the time he was in his

sixties appears a bit naive. Indeed he did not endorse the teach-ings of Mani during his run with Pelagius, but he never com-pletely escaped the influence that Mani’s followers had on him. Julian attacked this very spirit in Augustine after 420. Also it is clear that by 396, at the commencement of his Episcopal career, Augustine was influenced by the Donatists’s exegetical method. Yet the author makes only a passing comment about this.

That not withstanding, this book is still a great introduc-tion to Augustine’s life and theological legacy. The author is completely at home in untangling the web of conflicting ideas in which Augustine moved, and his rhetorical skill causes con-temporary Augustinian scholars to quote him in full rather than to paraphrase. It will continue to remain the standard work on Augustine in the English language. For those who want an ex-cellent biography which will spiritual edify and existentially challenge you, Tolle lege! Take up and read!

The Rev. Blake Altman is the chaplain and associate director of Manna Christian Fellowship. He received his masters of theology in historical theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America.


As the film opens, guiding the viewer through a medley of stars and galaxies, we hear a haunting rendition of “Put on your Sunday Clothes” from Hello, Dolly!. This

appears to be a recovered memory fragment of an exuberant, foolish race of beings. And, not surprisingly, the words from this tune lend themselves to an unbridled, care-free spirit that seems innocent enough but hardly shrewd:

There’s lots of world out there,Get out the brillantine and dime cigars,We’re gonna find adventure in the evening air,Girls in white in a perfumed night,Where the lights are bright as the stars!

Ultimately, the camera leads us into our own solar system, but something doesn’t feel right. Earth comes into view, but it’s no longer the bright blue-green orb that we’re used to seeing. There is a rusty, gray haze surrounding our planet, which turns out to be countless chunks of metal and waste particles. Yes, something is wrong for sure. The camera descends through the smoggy air, and we come upon cites that once were bustling centers of life, commerce, and, tragically, unchecked consump-tion.

All seems forgotten in this lifeless wasteland. But wait. The recovery of mankind’s identity and memory seems to be in the “hands” of a certain Waste Allocation Load Lifter (Earth class), WALL-E. Ironically, as we follow WALL-E through his daily routine—making tidy cubes of waste and assembling them in massive tower-like structures—we learn of his curiosity and longing to recover a lost way of life—or, maybe even life itself. WALL-E somehow retains awareness that there is something more profound about humankind than the collection of material stuff. He deeply desires love and connection with others. Were these things that human beings also once cared about?

As the film continues, WALL-E’s role becomes ever more significant. With the help of fellow robot Eve, WALL-E attempts to bring life itself—symbolized by a plant sprout—back to hu-manity. Man’s condition, as depicted in the film, is certainly dire enough to warrant WALL-E’s redemptive act; residing in the over-accommodating spaceship Axiom for almost a millen-nium, people have become fat with food and diversion but are scarily devoid of “true life.” Just to name some stark examples of this, there is no more face-to-face communication, and food is pathetically consumed through straws. Yet, no one seems to

mind. Each person has regressed to an infantile state of being: “de-evolution” you might say. But the spark of true life that ex-ists between WALL-E and Eve inevitably spills over into some of the people aboard the Axiom, including Axiom’s ignorant but passionate captain.

With Earth now hospitable towards life, everyone aboard the Axiom can return home. But this is complicated by the ro-bots on the ship who were ordered by the president of Buy N’ Large (the WalMart-esque company largely responsible for Earth’s over-consumption) to never return to Earth. This doesn’t stop the captain, WALL-E, Eve, and the other “rogue robots” from thwarting this plan and sending the Axiom earth-bound.

So, we start over, made possible by WALL-E’s near fatal sacrifice for the sake of a hopeless race of people. WALL-E also nearly loses his memory, in the process of giving memory and identity back to human beings. But EVE revives him and the two happily flourish on a newly-inhabited Earth.

The ending is a happy one for us, too. We re-learn agri-culture, city-building, and culture-making. WALL-E has made a way for us. He is an unexpected eco-messiah in the fullest sense. How humble he was, but so full of life and love that he wanted to give it all back to a people in desperate need of it. I can’t help but think that WALL-E, like the One who is Life Himself (cf. John 14:6), would say of his purpose: “I came, that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Richard Lopez ‘09 is majoring in psychology. He is from Rockaway, New Jersey.

The camera descends through the smoggy air, and we come upon cities that once were bustling centers of life, commerce,

and, tragically, unchecked comsumption.

Richard Lopez

Review: WALL-E

revisions vol. 5 issue 1, fall 2008

Documents

christian perspectives

david matthews

s page

djv2130 page

matthew nickoloff

matthew connallyreview

princeton university

ben mcleod page