A Midrash On Water

(Excerpt) Jews and Christians share a common foundation of Scripture. It is within this common, sacred text that we shall find the source of Grace upon Grace: Living Water. It requires little religious imagination to link the use of water as a purification rite in the Biblical world to the use of the mikveh in the early rabbinic period, and ultimately to the transformative ritual of Baptism as an essential sacramental rite in Christianity. My task this evening is not to trace that course of ritual development, but rather to consider the many and varied texts of Scripture from within which we find water, Mayim, as a central metaphor for God\u27s presence and human struggle. I offer a midrash-an open interpretation of Biblical texts on water, a Jewish understanding of the religious significance of water, for our ongoing interfaith conversation on ritual and liturgy. Midrash is a form of rabbinic literature in which the text is used liked a prism and understanding, like light from many different sources, allowed to shine through the angles of glass, and if we are both lucky and skillful we shall see the bright colors of the spectrum suspended like a rainbow in front of our eyes. Midrash is a discipline of reading and rereading classic sacred texts, always allowing for our reality as readers and the overflowing surplus meaning of scripture to find their own new horizons of understanding

Inspiration and Inerrancy in Scripture

Inspiration in Qur\u27anic revelation is quite different from the Catholic understanding. The incarnational principle through which the human faculties of the inspired writer are active in the very mode of receptivity seems to be understood differently by Muslims. Differences in understanding how the God who speaks is known by his creatures can lead to invaluable dialogue and mutual understanding for both of our Abrahamic traditions

Maria Redux: Incarnational Readings of Sacred History (Chapter 7 of Building a New World)

Noah and the Ark. Jonah and the Big Fish. Mary\u27s yes to the Angel. Jesus\u27s yes in the Garden of Gethsemane. Pilot\u27s no and his wife\u27s please, don\u27t. Lot\u27s wife and her last, homeward look. To whom do these sto- ries belong? And how should we read them, each from our particular corner of incarnate humanity? Here is what my corner looks like: I am a woman; I am a feminist; l am a literary critic; I am a product of Westernized Christianity. I write and read from the space where these words overlap, but what does that mean when it comes to Scripture, to the stories that my tradition holds sacred? Should I be exempted from rereading, rewriting, re-spinning these stories because they are sacred? Or, is it because of their sacredness that I must continue rereading and retelling them

Saved by the Word: The Christian Understanding of the Relationship Between Scripture and Salvation

Scripture and salvation -- from a Christian point of view, both are gifts from God. yet they are not of equal import. For Christianity salvation is fundamental: it is the goal of life, indeed it is life eternal. Scripture, on the other hand, is instrumental: it leads one to salvation. As the Christian scriptures themselves put it: ... the sacred writings ... are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim 3:15b)

explore, Spring 2013, Vol. 16: Sacred texts in the public sphere

Contents: Sacred Texts as Mirror and Medicine: Introduction to Spring 2013 explore; Sacred Text, Sacred Space; A Non-Zionist Drash of Lech Lecha; Living Values through the Center for Social Justice and Public Service; Interpreting and Embodying Sacred Texts in the Public Sphere: A Photo Essay; A Pet Name for My Beloved; Listening to God in Community; An Oddly Satisfying Sacred Text; Sikh Scripture and Inter-Religious Community; My Reflections on MLK\u27s Letter from Birmingham Jail : A Letter to Amara and Anissahttps://scholarcommons.scu.edu/explore/1015/thumbnail.jp

Santo Tomás como exégeta bíblico en su Comentario al Evangelio de san Juan

This article intends to offer a general presentation of the way in which Saint Thomas Aquinas proceeded in his exegesis of sacred texts. The author concentrates on one of Aquinas’ most estimated biblical commentaries, his Lectura on the Gospel according to St. John. Aquinas combines great theological insight with an incipient development of some literary techniques. In his hermeneutics, he emphasizes the priority of the literal sense of Scripture, although this thesis does not lead him to present a purely natural interpretation. The supernatural mystery of God belongs to the literal sense of Scripture. This is why God, as the principal author of Scripture, might have intended to express different truths even within a single passage

Describing Spaces: Topologies of Interlace in the St Gall Gospels

The ways in which ideas of the book intersect with notions of space are manifold from Antiquity onwards. As vessels of ideas and knowledge, books and their use invited spatial metaphors based on notions of collecting and storage which were closely bound to the idea of memory.1 The notion of the book as space surfaces in metaphors of the book as a garden, library or building throughout the Middle Ages. For Christian writers, notions such as the ‘inner library,’ the heart as a library of Christ are central, and they pervade patristic texts.2 Accordingly, the metaphorical realm of books connects the book and the body, and is not necessarily spatial in a dimensional sense. It goes beyond the specific object of scroll or codex, aiming instead at the texts and their use and reception