This is the publication of the second talk in the Isaiah Project.  The first can be found on the Elder's You Tube channel and the second one will be published there as well.  Comments would be most welcome as this project is seeking deepen the level in which capable of carryout its exploration of the Isaiah Scroll, which we regard as a central mystery of the Word becoming text. 

We have begun a series of talks on the Isaiah Scroll, this being the second.  

What makes a close reading of the Isaiah scroll so fascinating is that through it, one is able to experience the spiritual effort of a Biblical community responding to their history as it is unfolding.  This is a contrast to other readings of the Biblical text, say of Exodus, in which the spiritual effort is responding to a remote history that is finished, and is being used as a surrogate for their own historical moment.  The latter case is haunted by a vagueness about the past being remembered and about a present seeking answers through remembering.  The events of the 12^th century BCE migration out of Egypt are obscure and the persons doing so in the 8^th century, or the 7th century, or even later, are equal obscure. But in the Isaiah scroll we are dealing with clear verifiable historical events and with individuals whose presence can be clearly felt by us as they struggle to make theological sense of what is happening to them.  This is both exciting and useful for us who are engaged in our own attempt to come to a theological understanding of what we are going through and with our own need for a theological vision of our future. 

In this second talk we will begin by taking on the early part of the Isaiah scroll which begins with chapter 3 and ends with chapter 12.   In our last talk we looked at the splendid Hebrew poem which constitutes Chapter 12, a poem likely familiar to us because we sing it as a hymn or canticle, “Surely is God who saves us.”   Well one might ask, what sort of writer makes use of a poem for closure! This writer has, I will attempt to demonstrate, also opens his text with a poem, namely, verses 1 through 7 of Chapter 3.  We also noted in our past talk that this section of the text references particular dates, 641 BCE, the year king Uzziah died, and again 634 the year in which Isaiah confronted King Ahaz on the road that passes by the Gihon spring on the east side of the city of David.  It also provides enough specific information that we can imagine the date in which this text was finalized, which is sometime after 722, when Samaria, the capital of the Northern kingdom fell to the Assyrians, and some time before the death of King Ahaz, 615, referenced in Chapter 13, and, therefore, well before Assyria lay siege to Jerusalem 701.  The composition of text must happen around 720.

 The core of this text, which one might consider the first installment of the Isaiah scroll, is this encounter king and prophet.  Uriah was king for fifty years, his last years as co-regent with his son Jotham.  His advisors no doubt continued not only during the coregency but also to the end of Jotham reign.  One can imagine the impatience of a new generation to assume power with the young king. 

 Just as one can imagine the anxiety of the school of Jerusalem prophets, to which the equally young Isaiah had been called, had about the capacity of the new leadership to deal with impending crisis that the kingdom faced. 

 With this in mind let us look at the open unit of Chapter 3, which is a poem or at least, poetic prose.

                  האדון הנה כי

              מסיר צבאןת יהוה

              ומיהודה מירושלם

                   ומשענה משען

        מים-וכל לחם-משען כל

 

Isn’t a fact that the Lord,

            Yahweh of the Hosts is removing

            from Jerusalem and from Judah

            the supply, the essential supply;

            all the supply of bread,

            and all the supply of water.

 Note first that adonai is not in its common form, but is modified by the definite article, ה and ends with ון- on, a suffix which intensifying a noun and which is common in Hebrew poetry.  In this case this special treatment seems dictated by a desire for a kind of cadence, 6 beats, then repeated once, and then ending in line of 8.  There is also a consonance which is made possible by the use of the Hebrew participles that are made with the performative מ, m, along with the m ending on the words Jerusalem, bread and water. ירושלם לחם מים.  This brief text rings with the m sound.   

             The text begins in an unusual manner, not in the way one would expect a prophetic statement, but in the manner of a declaration of a present fact.  There are a number of ways to indicate a prophetic oracle, for example, common in Isaiah is the term משאת “harsh prophesy” as at the beginning of Chapter 13 and following.  Another form makes use of the verb נאם  נאם-אדני, “says the Lord,” as can be seen in the editorial insertion in this text, verse 15. Here however we read הנה כי which has been a puzzle for translators.  The first word is the very common word for “because” or the demonstrative “that”.  The second word is the equally common command, “behold.”  I would suggest that this unusual conjunction in this case should be read as a declarative, “Isn’t it a fact.”  Isn’t it a fact that God has taken away the sufficient support of bread and water?  More important than material failure is the failure in governance. Key individuals are missing: hero and warrior, judge and prophet, soothsayer and elder, captain of fifty and the man of esteem, the counselor and skilled crafts man and one who discerns the secrets, literally, what is whispered, rumored about. The new people, on the other hand, disrespect their elders.  “They behave haughtily, the youth against the elder and the base against the honorable.”  In summation, verse 8, beginning with the same כי: key, “In fact Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah is fallen.”

            The attempt to understand these alleged circumstances is colored by the later sieges of Jerusalem’s history, 701 by Sennacherib and 587 by Nebuchadnezzar.  That causes the text to be read as “a judgement oracles (Childes p. 33) forecasting these later traumatic events. An example is translation of Rosenberg, and others, who translate the verb forms, that are clearly past or presently on-going action, as futures: The plain reading of v.4 שרים נערים ונתתי, is “I have (or am setting) youth as princes, and v. 5 העם ונגש, the people are, or are being oppressed.  In the end it is not what someone will do to Jerusalem and Judah, but what they have done to themselves. Their timing could not be worse, for the prophetic school is acutely aware of the rise of the Assyrian empire and the way it was about to transform life in the Levent.  Already they see that Damascus, a long-time enemy, will be overrun and not long afterward the Northern Kingdom bring Assyria to the borders of Judah.

            Having identified this unit as a poem, the question becomes, how did the prophetic school employ such a poetic unit and why did they choose it to begin what is in effect the first installment of the Isaiah scroll? 

            I would suggest that such poetic units were seen as a basis for theological refection.  The reflective process would take place in a gathering of elders/disciples of the prophetic community. It would unfold in a series of distinctive steps.  The first step was to identify a judgment that would be passed, second, the nature of judgment and resulting loss, and third, the element of hope for a future in the context of the loss. The process is substantially theologizing. This being the first instant we will have to wait for confirmation that this pattern as a substantial feature of the Isaiah scroll.  We will not, however, wait long for a second poetic unit which undergoes this process is “the song of the beloved vineyard” the very next chapter, Chapter 5.  For now, in verse 11 of this chapter, let note the “woe,” which states the judgment to come: “Your men shall fall by the sword and your warriors in war. . . (the city’s) gates shall lament, and morn and she shall be emptied out and she shall sit on the ground.”   

             The result is that on that day of judgment there will be seven women for every man and each women will plead to be called by that one’ name in order that their reproach be may be removed.  In the future exercise of this process the result of judgment is the reduction of the population in which the land is emptied, re-wilded.  For example, in 7:21 we read “On that day one will keep alive a young cow and two sheep, and eat curds because of the abundance of milk that they give; for everyone who is left in the land shall eat curd and honey.”  There appears in such a formula a bad news, good news dynamic.  In this case life will go on, marriage and children will happen, and seconding that, “on that day “the sprout of the Lord shall be for beauty and for honor and the fruiting of the land, for greatness and for glory for the survivors of Israel.” Early on commentators identify this as a messianic text, Christian, but also Rabbinic Judaism and even by the late member of the prophetic school itself before it final publication.        

               Thus, it anticipates the “messianic” text which will be found later as in Chapter 7, verse 14 and Chapter 11, verse 1, ויצא חטר מגזע ישי משרשיו. It is significant that while the birth of child is at stake in these examples, the terminology is not the same.  This, I take it, indicates that this is not so much an actual form of messianic expectation as it is a profound faith in capacity of the Davidic dynasty to renew itself.  This translates into a faith in the future which in time becomes faith in the messiah. The future orientation of the Isaiah scroll from beginning to end is a theological revolution, to which we are all heirs.

            The future, in the Isaiah orientation is also accompanied by forgiveness, in this case a washing from “filth” and “blood.” What is interesting with chapter 3-4 is, that these themes that will be found throughout the Isaiah scroll, occur here, one might say, survive here, in a manner that suggest that are an early, if not the original occurrence of these themes.

            We began this section with two questions: How did the school use such a poetic unit and why was it chosen to begin what in effect is the first installment of the Isaiah scroll.  The answer to the first question is that the school used the poetic units as the beginning of their theological reflection. The poetic text held truth in a way that needed to be unpacked, theologically.

            Second it sets out the coming transformation of Levent life by the rise of the Assyrian Empire.  With Chapter 5 and 6 the lay the background for the message that Isaiah would carry to King Ahaz.  It is the foundation story of the Isaiah scroll.

In our next talk we will turn to Chapter 7 and see in what way the event of the meeting prophet and king set the agenda of the Isaiah scroll.

 

 

Isaiah Project: An Annotated Bibliography

 

For those following the Isaiah project this is a current list of my reading. 

 

Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 1- 39, Volume 18A The Anchor Yale Bible, Yale University Press, 2000

-- Isaiah 40 - 55, Volume 19A The Anchor Yale Bible, Yale University Press, 2002

-- Isaiah 56 - 66, Volume 20A The An

chor Yale Bible, Yale University Press, 2004

--A History of Prophecy in Israel Revised and Enlarged, Westminster John Knox Press 1983

 

Brevard S. Childs Isaiah A Commentary, The Old Testament Library Westminster John Knox Press 2001

Childs has served as the reference for our first read.  His commentary references all the critical historical studies of the Isaiah text.  In the end Childs is a canonist, that is after a critical historical approach it is  the received text which counts as reference for church teaching.  It is the basis of a Protestant dogmatic.

 

Blenkinksopp is the basis for the second reading which is currently underway.  He is duly aware of the critical historical studies of the Isaiah text.  He is properly part of the redactionist studies which took over critical studies in the eighties.  In his view editors are as interesting as original authors.  His commentary is more amenable to Catholic systematic.

 

J. Blake Couey’s recently published work: Reading the poetry of First Isaiah: The Most Perfect Model of the Prophetic Poetry, Oxford Press 2015.

                                                                                                                                                                  

Zev L. Farber and Jacob L. Wright, Archeology and History of Eighth Century Judah. SBL Press, Atlanta, 2018.

 

This volume is a collection of a number of essays relevant to the recognition that the 8^th century, the time frame in which the Isaiah scroll had its beginnings, is place for enquires about how the Biblical text has its origins.  It is a value background for the study of the Isaiah text.

 

Israel Finkelstein  The Forgotten Kingdom The Archaeology and History of Northern Israel, SBL Press 2013

 

Finkelstein arguments about the nature of Judah are part of what compelled the study listed above.  Archeology suggests that Judah the southern kingdom is minor organization in relation to the much larger northern kingdom. He argues that with the fall of the Northern Kingdom 722 a large migration took place to the Sourtern Kingdom. 

 

A. J. Rosenburg The Book of Isaiah Volume One and Volume Two A New English Translation of the Text, Rashi and Commentary Digest The Judaica Press 1982

 

I have uses Rosenburg as an access to the Masoretic text of Isaiah and have value of a Jewish commentary on the text.

 

I would welcome any suggestions for this Bibliography.  The Elder of Omaha

 

As the Easter Season of 2024 comes to an end, I am posting two new poems which came as a result of trying to think about the mystery of the Resurrection.  This has been colored by thoughts about the Trinity that have been part of installation of the Icon of Abraham and Sarah Hospitality in the Narthex of All Saints.   In particular around the person of the Holy Spirit whose agency has lack clarification in the Western Church.  In a recent video posted on You Tube, I ask the question where was the Holy Spirit at the Crucifixion?  A dove darkly resting on the cross, as in Fra Lippi famous painting, is little help. 

Lying here in the bed,

          I am ready to be led

          by the Father onto that eternal shore.

          into the nether dark, where times past

          are stored, waiting for the last;

 

          to be joined to the Son

          fine ground flour and baked

          which taken from the oven

          will be fed to a hungering world;

         

          to be swirled in the Wind

          like a bright red kite

          Dancing in the light and

          drawing string across a web

 

          becoming light in his light

          word in his word;

          breath in her breath

          second wind in her wind;

Rising there from the dead.

 

 

Where was the Spirit?

 

Where was the Spirit,

          when the body of the Word

          hung upon the cross?

Brooding, I should think, o’re the growing chaos

          in that body as it was in the beginning.

 

          To the world2023 the cross was the end,

          but to the Trinity it was the door,

          which opened into the depth of the Father’s treasure,

          of all times past.  Receiving now the threads

           of the recent times of that body hung upon that tree,

          where the Spirit new weaves it,

          and into it all past times,

          A New Creation!  Christ Risen from the Dead!

Hear more on the Elder of Omaha You Tube channel, First Thursday May 2024.

 

Footnote for “When I Pray the Book of Psalms”

Page 123 in On Giving My Word

 

“When I Pray The Book of Psalms” was included in First Thursday of February 2024, and came with the promise that the references it makes the Book of Psalms would be published on this blog site, for the curious.  The term Hassidim come from Psalm 149:5 where the word occurs. Hassidim a common term in the Hebrew Testament that identifies a pious person.  It is translated as “saints” KJ, or “Faithful Ones” RSV.  The Wisdom Editor identifies the person or persons who published the Psalms in the form that we currently have them.  They introduced the book with Psalm 1 and closed with Psalm 150.  Psalm from their school were added throughout the book and make up roughly a quarter to the psalms.  Their signature work is Psalm 119 which is an elaborate acrostic, literally a book within a book.  The Performer indicated a number of individuals, minstrel, who actually performed the works in the setting of the Temple or the Court.   Psalm 2 is a good example where the voice of the performer is essential to understand it original sense.  Often the grammar of Psalm is sketchy, and it reminds one that the text was an oral event and passed on as an oral event.  For these performers the text was a prompt as opposed to something to be read. Some actually announce their presence as in Psalm 45.  Suffering Servant identifies himself the author in Psalm 22.  It is the well-known lament quote by Jesus from the cross.  The Levite refers to one of the Levite ministers of the Temple who assisted the more restrict group of priests.  One the major Levite clans identified themselves as “sons of Korah.”  There is a large block of psalm that are attributed to them, beginning with Psalm 42.  Psalm 42 was probably once the opening psalm of a Levite collection.  That collection was expanded at some point with psalms attribute “sons of Asaph.”  The first of these is Psalm 73.  The Shepherd King is, of course, King David to whom a number psalm are attributed and in more generalize sense of authorship the whole Book of Psalm.   Psalm 18:34-35 is an example of where David presence is particularly clear.  The Dethroned King is probably King Jehoiachin who was exiled by the Babylonians.   His lament is found in Psalm 89:38-51.  The Children refers to the exiled Israelite who are the author of Psalm 137.  These are start of those individuals of faith that one will meet when you pray the Book of Psalms.

  

 

A Tanner Sighting

 

            Or better “citing.”  It was spotted in the recent edition of the Anglican Theological Review, Vol. 105.  It occurs in an article, “Toward an Anthropologically Engaged Theology: Implication from Human Evolution for Theological Anthropology” by Matthew T. Seddon.  Seddon has a PHD in Anthropology, the study of human development.  He is a scientist, but he is also an Episcopal Priest functioning in parish ministry.  He is also an academically grounded theologian.  One should not let the big words put you off for this is a very readable essay on the way Theology can and should engage science.  The tradition of theology engaging science has a long history in the Anglican World.  One thinks of Charles Gore book Lux Mundi, published 1888, in which he declared his belief in a Christianity that could court the demands of human reason.  More recently, the particle physicist turned Anglican priest and theologian, the Revd. Dr John Polkinghorne, made a significant contribution to this tradition.  The politicalization of theology in the recent decades, however, has eclipsed this tradition, so it was refreshing to see Seddon essay in the Anglican Theological Review. 

            As he ended his paper, he cites Tanner’s Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Guides to Theological Inquiry) 1997.  His paraphrase, page 423 of ATR, aptly summarizing his paper and its ambitions.  “Furthermore, this understanding indicates that the Imago Dei is not static: it is emergent, and we share in that emergence.  We are and always have been becoming—becoming more fully human—not just in our intellectual, spiritual, and moral lives, but in our very being.  Indeed, our diversity which is in many ways an expression of creativity, reveals that we are supremely creative, which validates the use of theological creativity.”

               The possibility of an anthropologically engaged theology carried out with in the structures of Tanner’s systematic theology is not only imaginable, but it is beneficial to both.    In a sense it verifies Tanner’s claim that her systematic can be tested in experiential theology, be it the life of Christ, the 16^th century debate about grace or a contemporary engagement with science.  A scientific endeavor theological engaged, carried out in systematic like Tanner’s, would have the benefit of a linkage with the moral and meaning for the human endeavor. An objective science has for some time been content to operate without this link, but in the present climate I think that has become quested.

Tanner Talk 2 In What Sense is Tanner an Anglican Theologian?

Taner Talk 2

In What Sense is Tanner an Anglican Theologian 

This is our second talk on Kathern Tanner, and our question is, in what sense is Tanner an Anglican theologian.  The question arises because Tanner identified her chief influences as “the early Greek Father’s … Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, the Reformers, Karl Rahner, Karl Barth and some contemporary figures of Eastern Orthodoxy.”  Anglican theologians are notably absent from her list unless one might be included in the category of “Reformers.”  This impression is reenforced by the general absence of references to Anglican theologians across her extensive writings.

But providing an answer to this question is not easy for it is difficult to identify Anglican Theology and those who are to be counted as its theologians.  The Anglican communion has not been noted for its theologians, but for its preachers, poets, and scholars whose work in the historical fields of scripture, patristics, liturgics, and spirituality, is highly regarded.

Richard A. Norris Jr, a noted Episcopal historian of eighties and nineties, provided his list of Anglican theologians at time when he alleged, “everyone is busy talking about the heart or soul or spirit of Anglicanism.”  He went on to argue that it was odd that the great fashioners and interpreters of that tradition—are almost uniformly out of print and unavailable. He continued with a list, Hooker, Pearson, Maurice, Gore, Westcott, Scott-Holland, DuBose, Temple, and Austin Farrer.”  Not long after that Stephen Sykes, late the Bishop of Durham, in his Spirit of Anglicanism, published in 2008, also lamented the state of Anglican Theology and called for the writing of “a distinctly and self-consciously Anglican systematic theology.”   Sykes, were he alive, would be a far more qualified than I to answer the question of whether or not Tanner has done so.

Given the lack of definitive resource, I will rest on my own sense, that there is,  if unwritten, an Anglican Theology and that it’s distinctive mark is a focus on the incarnation. At the time of my formation, it would have been commonplace to identify Anglican Theology as incarnational.  John Booty, an Episcopal church historian at the time, supports this view.  In a forward to the works of John Donn in the series, Classic of Western Spirituality, referenced William J Wolf, and his book “In the Spirit of Anglicanism.”  Wolf, he tells us, wrote “that an incarnational piety has always dominated Anglicanism. Anglicanism has, in a way, appropriated the feast of the Nativity as a celebration of its own particular ethos.”

Anglicans chose, early on, to put the incarnation at the center of their theology as a means of separating themselves from Western theologies, Protestant and Roman Catholic, which were centered on the question of salvation, on soteriology and opposed to Christology.  These theologies were focused on how an individual is saved: by grace, which comes by means of faith and/or obedience.  These theologies produced a sterile and hostile debate which Anglicans thought was preventing and/or warping the process of change, so urgently needed in the church at that time.

From this choice came three significant corollaries. The first corollary involves history.  With the incarnation, God has assumed history.  This results in the obligation for theology to address history.  Theology cannot, by means of dogmatic claims or ideals, exempt itself from doing history.  The second corollary involves community. The continuation of the incarnation, the saving event, is community, the saving mediation.  The community is the-sacrament!  It grounds all other discrete sacraments and preaching.  The third corollary has to do with nature. With the incarnation God assumed not only human history but also all of the natural world.  It follows that reality itself is a sacrament, at least potentially.  This has been represented by the common Anglican teaching that we live in a sacramental universe.

 Our question then is in what way does this fit what Tanner does. We need to be aware as we look for evidence that the nature of a systematic theology is to be universal. In other words, we should not expect a systematic theologian to wear on their sleeves the stripes of a local identity.  A systematic theology is by definition a search for universal rules to govern theological statements.  It aspires to being outside of the local, not to replace it, but to serve it.

Anglican Theology is essentially local.  It has never been the position of the Anglican Church that it was the universal church.  Its position has consistently been that it was the error of the Church of Rome, a local church, to take its doctrines and liturgy to be universal. A position, it should be noted, that has been greatly modified by Vatican II.  What the Anglican perspective asked was that Rome’s relationship with other churches should be one of mutual respect. 

This is not the same as saying all theology must be local. To the extent that the Anglican Communion has not produced systematic theology, is not to be taken as it is sometimes to be a virtue, but an accident and/or a matter of indolence.  A viable systematic has a role in mediating the relationship between local communities. Our question is then whether or not there is a fit between the rules governing Tanner’s systematic and the substance of Anglican Theology. Does her theology put the incarnation at the center of the theological enterprise?  Does it own the need for theology to be invested in historical enquiry?  Does community precede individual in the mediation of salvation? Does reality itself take on a sacramental role?

We can begin then by noting that the center of Tanner’s systematic is the book entitle Christ the Key, published in 2010.  This provides prima facie evidence the incarnation is the center of her theology. Ahead of its publication, Tanner previewed it in Jesus, Humanity and Trinity, 2001, saying that “This book sketches a  systematic theology that centers on Jesus Christ and the meaning of his life for the world.  (p. 1.}  She further defines this systematic, arguing that it would be based on,

“an understanding that incarnation was the essential means of grasping the Christian matter, from which it follows that Christianity is historical (local not universal), and it is experienced in community by means of being assumed individually and personally by Christ.  Salvation is not something done for us but is something worked in us by means of this assumption.”  

She continues by clarifying how this assumption unites us with Christ: “in hearing the Gospel as an irrevocable call for a transformed life, in being baptized, in being lifted up in the Eucharist to Christ in order to go with him to the Father … to make Christ the center or axis of all that we do with the Spirits help.”

She identifies her Christology with the Christology of Council of Chalcedon and more particularly with the Alexandrian interpretation of the council, frequently citing Athanasius.  (JHT p. 20) Noting that there has been a modern tendency to prefer an “Antiochian” interpretation Chalcedon which emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, and that while “there is evidence of a slighting of Jesus’s humanity by the early Greek or Alexandrian theological traditions,”  she argues that it is less than one might think and that  “working from aspects of this long tradition of incarnational thinking—the early Greek Fathers up through the sixth century, Thomas Aquinas, Karl Raher, Karl Barth and some contemporary figures of the Eastern Orthodoxy – one can recuperate the emphasis in the early creeds on the divinity of Christ.”

The consequence of Tanner’s position is that no doctrine or theological statement is exempt from history.  Inevitably, theological discussion must sort through it history in order reprise the theological element to be relocated in a new historical setting.   This has been an Anglican position from its beginnings whether in dialogue with a Protestant or Roman Catholic orthodoxy. It was also the key issue confronting the Roman Catholic theologians preparing for and counselling the Second Vatican Council.  Chief among these was Karl Rahner.  Dogma was presented as having escaped history by means, among other things, papal definition.  Carefully its doctrine had to be contextualized in its past history which made it possible to re-contextualize in its contemporary history making change possible.  This was the labor of Rahner’s famous “Questions in Dispute,” which Tanner identifies as significant for her own thinking.

When we come to the way salvation is shared with us, Tanner places the initiative with the incarnate Christ.  Christ assumes us.  “We are united with Christ after the fact of our existence as a kind of second creation, a second birth or adoption to be the Son of God’s own in Christ.” 

“Baptized, for example, into Christ, initiates a struggle to shore up our oneness with him: the character and the quality of our union with Christ must be bettered, heightened from weak union to strong, for example, through the repeated performance of the Eucharist in the power of the Spirit.” (JHT p.54)

 

In the Eucharist,” we offer up the things of the earth for the Father’s blessings through Christ so that they become new for our renewed sustenance; we are empowered to do so in and with Christ who has already taken up the things of the earth by assuming our body in all its fragile connections with the natural world.” (JHT p. 58) 

If the Incarnation according to Tanner engages us with history, it also results in community that is essentially sacramental.  This reaches out into the natural world itself, which is understood sacramentally. 

        More could be said, but at this point I am ready to conclude that there is a substantial fit between what we have identified as the marks of Anglican Theology and Tanner’s Systematic Theology. I feel at home in it. More than I would in that of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Wolfgang Panneburg or Karl Rahner. How much Tanner owes to Anglican Theology for her own theology, is not so easily concluded.  As we have pointed out, her writings are silent on this question. Her journey though American academic life would done little to reinforce an Anglican Theology or reward her for referencing it. As a result, we will limit our conclusion to a question, how could she have arrived at her mature theology without it?