I am publishing this draft which continues in the discussion of theology and economic, see  and with the blogs interest in the work of Kathryn Tanner. Particularly relevant is the paper published in the blog Is Tanner Anglican? which argues that "Christ the Key" makes clear that in the end her theology is incarnational. In her book to which the paper responds, we raise the question if her theology is sufficiently incarnation to deliver an analysis that can provide parochial ministry the ground that it need to preach effectively and to engaged constructively is social action in the current economic circumstances of western life. We are with this draft still looking insights and correction, 

 A Response to Kathryn Tanner’s Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Yale University Press 2019

With Gratitude for

Kathryn Tanner and her Gift of Theology

and

Adam Smith and his Insight into the Science of Economics

 

                One must begin with a note of appreciation that Kathryn Tanner not only for her extensive contribution to theology in general but also in applying it to the current state of economics.  Economics is usually given a pass, based on a long-standing division of the sciences.  We won’t interfere with your science, if you won’t interfere with ours. Hopefully her work will jar Christianity to set aside this unholy bargain and make a serious attempt to address the problem economic behavior. Her latest attempt, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism has led to a response in a symposium in Modern Theology Volume 35, Issue 1 (January 2019).  I would add to that with a response from a non-academic, parochial base, in other words, from life in the pastorate.

                In her early work Tanner announced a new agenda for theology, Theories of Culture, 1997. For us who began our ministries in Seventies with Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, 1951, as our guide, this was a challenge. Was Niebuhr’s view of culture and his call for Christianity to be transformative, naïve?  But this challenge was also exciting. We who were active in parish ministry in the Seventies were aware that our impact was limited and that had been eroded in the course of time. Those of us who eschew nostalgia saw the possibility of a new platform for a concern.

                Since then, pieces of that prospect have appeared in Tanner’s works, particularly in God’s Politics, 2022. So, I approached this new title with great expectations as it seemed that it would be yet another step towards that end. My hope, however, has been undercut by Tanner’s choice to address this book to a consideration of “capitalism” and focusing it so heavily on the validity of Max Weber’s classic thesis in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Tanner argues that his thesis of the Protestant work ethic needs to be rebutted. It is not news that the “work ethic,” which Weber identifies as the “spirit” of capitalism was not derived from Protestantism and, that his Capitalism did not have a “spirit!” that is an internal sustaining life principle. She pursues her argument by exposing Weber thesis to the present day “finance driven capitalism.” In this new context the “work ethic” is even more corrosive than it was in Weber’s industrial capitalism. We agree with this as well. But I wonder if “new spirit” is actually be taken as an internal sustaining life principle? Or if Weber’s own criticism of capitalism is given its due.  

                The word capitalism only emerged in the socio-political debates of the late 19^th century. There it was used retrospectively to identify the state of a certain economies, by parties attempting to limit or ascribe privileges and prerogatives of capital as opposed to other factors in an economy. Capital is a component in numerous economies dating back a thousand or so year and spread a which variety political identities. This raises the question of  capitalism identifies a formative culture system either in the pre-industrial world of John Adam, who never used the word or in the world that Tanner describes as “finance driven capitalism.”

                “Capitalism” is simply an ideology. By identify “Capitalism” as a party of her inquiry, Tanner, not surprisingly produces a monologue since, sui genera, it is impossible to engage an ideology in a dialogue! This is a serious limitation since it stands in the way of Christianity, who she would represent, from entering into dialogue with the world. Dialogue is for Christianity is not a courtesy, but an obligation. Faith itself is dialogical, a call followed by a response, making dialogue constitutional.   

                The effect is immediate since each of us is embedded in the world and dialogue is necessary for our own very personal internal wellbeing. I styled myself in the Seventies as a worker priest and yet I have fallen into a comfortable pension made possible by the highly successful Church Pension Fund which has been a master of finance driven capitalism. You, if you are reading this off the internet and even more so if you have this lovely volume in hand, printed by the Yale Press, are likewise embedded in finance driven capitalism that has made this possible. Indeed, you and I are thankful that the philanthropy of a 19^th century capitalist, preserved and expanded by a finance driven endowment, provides a chair of systematic theology at Yale. In the broader picture, since each of us is related to others in the world A monologue leaves a part of ourselves silenced and others outside of ourselves unheard., dialogue in necessary our own external wellbeing as well.  A monologue leaves a part of ourselves silenced and others outside of ourselves unheard.

                The monologue could have been avoided if the subject was not “capitalism” but was with economic science which stems from pioneers such John Adams whose “The Wealth of Nations.”  It is important to remember that his prior work was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” which suggest that it would be possible to enter a dialogue with him since the existence of “moral sentiments” was a presupposition of economic behavior. Economic Science continued to develop with Smith, Ricardo, or Mill and eventually entered the academic world as disciplined behavioral science and which has blossomed into an array of institutes and consultants. Among these there is a wide variety of opinions including those who would not differ greatly from Tanner analysis of “finance driven capitalism. They should be a target for dialogue not simply for what we might tell them, but for what they might tell us.

                After setting the stage in chapter 1, Tanner devotes three chapters to the demonstration that finance driven capitalism is incompatible with Christianity.  In them, Tanner lays out a sharp and insightful analysis of the effects of a finance driven capitalism and then juxtaposes the with a similarly insightful analysis of the values of Christianity. Christianity’s interface with the world is inevitably framed by the relationship between time and eternity. It follows that economics (politics, sociology and other behavioral sciences as well) presents a concerned with the way its relates with the past, present and future.

                The first of these is study of the past, titled “Chained the Past,” which leaves doubt as to where her assessment of the effects of finance driven capitalism will have on the past.  She argues that individuals are driven into debt, and thus they become enchained to the past.  A quick survey of contemporary life would seem to support this. One of the more damming examples is the extent of educational debt.  Enterprise needs educated employees to function but are given a free pass. The cost of education on secondary level is borne by the individual, largely by means of college loans.  This is taken by Tanner to be a value of finance driven capitalism and hence it is not to be dismissed as an unintended consequence or as something with which finance driven capitalism might be concerned as well.  The Christian values on contrary are aimed at “liberation from the past. Tanner evokes the doctrine of conversion to justify this claim. From this point of view “The past is problematized” (50) which is the say it is both to be affirmed and to be repudiated. In the realm of an individual this is delineated by distinguishing the difference between an essential self and a sinful self.”  How this translates into economic behavior is unclear. If economic behavior is simply sinful it would seem to lead to a Manichean understanding of the world, and redemption is an escape. If it is not, as it is well established, then work must have something to do with the essential self, not merely as behavior but as meaning, the latter of which is subject to redemption.

                This raises the question of in what way history is subject to redemption, and it is striking how largely ahistorical Tanner’s analysis is. In this book, it is confined largely to Weber and with that a brief account of monasticism which is relevant to the question of the Protestant understanding of work. Protestantism, she points out, did not create a different set of ends. The enjoyment of the spiritual life was the same as that of the monastic world. The value of work was equally negative.  The difference she argues is that in the monastic world others worked so that a few could enjoy the refinement of a spiritual life, while in the Protestant world that the spiritual life was now longer reserved for the few, but was meant for the many.

                This historical cameo overlooks the fact that the original Benedictine foundations were not hierarchical but consist of 12 monks bound to the land and committed to work, opus, which was divided between the choir opus Dei and the field. Indeed, Weber thesis is an insufficient proxy for a long line of dialogues through which Christianity engaged in dialogue with the principals of economic science, Maurice, Gore and Temple of the Anglican tradition and Reum Novarum in the Roman Tradition, to mention a few.

                Particularly, on the part of Anglicans, the foundation for that dialogue was the incarnation.  These Anglicans were conscious of the fact that a soteriological approach which had dominated western Christian beginning with the Middle Ages and continuing in the Reformation Age was not adequate to do justice to the nature of history or work. Incarnation, they argued, made it possible to lift out history and work that which relates to the essential self which Christianity valued and to enter into the history and work input morality and energy which the world valued. Where Tanner stands in relation to this is unclear. The center of her systematic, “Christ the Key” suggests that she lies in this tradition. But for some reason it is not clear in “Christianity and the Spirit of the New Capitalism” in which she seems to depend on grace as non-competitive presence which in the end is too abstract for the task.

                The second of these chapters, “Total Commitment,” has to do with the present. Tanner contends that finance driven capitalism demands “total commitment” and that as a consequence “workers themselves are to want nothing more than what the corporations ask of them; their own desires are to be brought into complete compliance with finance dominated corporate interests, in order to increase productivity.” (64) While it is possible that employees feel that they are being asked to make a total commitment, especially in the upper levels of white-collar employment, it is unlikely that a corporation actually asks it, though it might be tempted to make use of it. One is tempted to remind corporate business that it is not in their long term interest to do so and quite likely one will find some agreement on the part of the corporate business.

                The third chapter which takes on the future is titled  “Another World.”  Tanner begins, as we are now use to, analyzing “finance driven capitalism.”  She begins by argue that its approach lead to a  “collapsing the present and future into one another.” (135) Finance driven capitalism argues that the future will not be any than different than what we can imagine it to be in the present. Hence it is possible to relieve any angst one might have for the future with rational behavior. “Finance driven capitalism” is aware, however, that this not easy for there are discontinuities in economic outcomes.  For that reason, it has invented “derivatives” which are the means of hedging against future changes. Derivatives, however, simply manipulates who wins and who loses, profiting as it does so. While this ameliorates the problem of the future, it fails to remove it. There is, in the end, no calculation using behavioral data that can provide a forecast of the future which can remove the angst of life lived out under sway of “fiancé driven capitalism.”

                On the other hand, Tanner maintains that “the future that Christian expect remains as radically different from the present as it could possibly be, short of not being a future suitable for human creatures.” (159) The difference defined here seems to ask the reader to exercise their imagination in a starkly abstract manner, the only restrain being stopping short of removing from it a suitable environment for “a human creature.” This formula leaves, at least me, I can’t speak of the world driven finance capitalism, puzzled.   It would be better to say that this future is to be imagined as much “like the risen Jesus as possible.” This, to be sure, would not be an easy task to call the secular world to attempt, but it would not be so puzzling. At the same time let be said it is not an easy task to call upon Christianity to imagine it! To the extent that it can, however, Christianity is force to take seriously the value of temporal existence for its own end.  This requires among other things for Christianity to step out of a monologue and to enter a dialogue with the secular world and vice versa.

            At the end of Tanner’s three studies of past present and future, presenting the dichotomy of the worlds of “finance driven capitalism” and Christianity, she asks, “Which World?”  In this new chapter answers the question in a section titled “A New Christian World.” (198) At this point it is necessary to raise a question about Tanner choice to use the word “world,” and whether alternative “worlds” are the proper way of framing the question. In the language of Biblical Christianity, “world” translates the Greek word kosmos. For example as in the saying of Jesus, John 17, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” and “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” Christians however do not and will not live in a different kosmos, world. Their true future is incorporation in the risen-one who has entered eternity, not without taking what is really real out of this world, the kosmos.

            If “Christ is the key” then it is clear that Eternity has something at stake in time and in human behavior lived in it. This means that it is incumbent upon Christianity to enter into a dialogue, however, uncomfortable or hostile it might be with the secular world. This not clear in Tanner’s prescription which suggests that Christian communities should cultivate: an alternative understandings of value, alternative rhythms of time, alternative visions of personhood, “ and an alternative forms of obligation and mutuality. This constitutes a posture which will cause Christianity to be disturbance or a “disruptive force” in the world. Yes, speaking from the tactics of the Seventies we did this. Back then we spoke of marginality and sought life choices which took us out the economic mainstream. While I have never repented doing so, I recognize that it was a matter of how we felt about ourselves rather than anything that was registered in the secular world. We did not, however, let that replace what we saw as an effort to “transform” culture as was suggested to us by Richard Niebhur “Christ and Culture.”

            Tanner intends to move on from Richard Niebhur but it does not seem that this posturing will do much if anything to change the economic order, sadly it may not even trouble it.  This leaves the question of how she can speak of different world without making Christianity into a culture, to be lived “above” the existing order, in Richard Neibhur’s terms, or worse to somehow brought down so the existing order to be it, the very poles that Niebuhr rejected.

                While I don’t think Tanner intends this, I need her to explain to me how she intends to escape this conclusion.  I would suggest that we need to say clearly that there is only one world and that for the duration of our lives we are part of it.  Posturing seems of little value, a kind of self-serving relief. Agency within it seems possible by means of a dialogue.  While this is not easy or comfortable, I argue that it is possible if we focus on economic science as a partner and can listen as well as tell. 

                It is true that dialogue with the behavioral sciences has been bleak, but dialogue with the physical sciences has proved fruitful in resent past. On the one side we have theologians such as Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne and on other we have a scientist such as Marcelo Gleiser, astrophysics and recipient of 2019 Templeton Prize.  His books “The Island of Knowledge” and “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe” are profoundly open for dialogue. Dialogue with behavioral sciences should not be so much more difficult, save, of course, for some vested presuppositions about humanity held by both sides. The beginning can come when the behavioral sciences, as the physical science already have, recognize that it rest on presupposition, about which theology might have something to say and when the theological sciences recognizes that the behavior sciences have some to say to it.

                In conclusion, I would say that “Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism” succeeds as a monograph that sets aside Weber thesis of a “Protestant Work Ethic,” but it falls short of providing a much need basis for the homiletic and agency needs of the parochial church. The promise made in her Theories of Culture offered the hope that such a dialogue between theology and the behavioral science could be reopened in the 21^st century which would answer that need.  To my knowledge that remains the best hope. The critique of this response should not be understood as an attempt to disqualify Tanner, but an encouragement for her, and academic theology in general, to fill the promise of location the life of Christianity in contemporary setting.

 

 

 

 

Economy and Theology

This brief piece opens a new area of discussion, prompted by Kathryn Tanner's recent books: The Economy of Grace, 2005 and Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism, 2019. In the series we will look at Tanner's attempt to subject the secular field of economic the theological analysis. Since we are not part of an academic structure this means that we will be interested in what way such a theological engagement yields for the pastoral ministry.  

The Economy of Grace

                One might likely object that this is an oxymoron, but the tension is precisely what makes this title worthwhile. The use of the word economy to signify the behavior of markets and enterprises of secular communities only appeared in the mid‑17th century. The term originates from the ancient Greek word to signify the behavior of a household. Long before its secular us, it has a lengthy history of theological use. For this reason, we should be comfortable using it to explore the nature of behavior in the House of Grace, that is, in the Church. 

                We might make a begin by looking at the parable of the parable of “the Laborers in the Vineyard” found in Matthew 20:1–16. It is not uncommon for homilists to belabor the apparent issue of inequity contained in the parable, but John Chrysostom famously embraced. In an Easter homily, his opening remarks were based on the parable. His success was so stunning that it counties to read at Easter, particularly in Orthodox Churches, where it has become part of the liturgy!

                John used the parable as a way for greeting worshipers who had come the Paschal Liturgy: “If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast.” He goes on to welcome those who have wrought with fasting from the first hour and he continues on, hour by hour, until he comes to the end. “He gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.”

                How is this fair? Grace is superabundant so that what is given to one, the eleventh-hour person, takes nothing from what is given to the first-hour person. Should that first hour person complain, he shall surely be told: “Friend I do you no wrong,” by no less than God himself!

                A homilist will do well in asking his congregation to practice the economy of grace. He will error, however, if he poses it as an alternative economy to the secular economy, the economy of scarcity, least he starves or eats at the expense of others.  He may be so bold as to challenge the secular economy, to respect the economy of grace, least it loses its foundation, its arche and its end, its telos both of which are framed by grace.

               

 Parochial Theology

As a follow up on my earlier post in which a argue the case for a Parochial Theology, I am posting a brief homily which I preached at a midweek Eucharist commemorating George Herbert, 1593-1633. I do so because I think that his writing were an early contribution to the body of Parochial Theology. 

  A Brief Homily Preached at A Week Day Eucharist, Feb. 2026

 + George Herbert was born in 1593. The Herberts were a wealthy lot, not nobles, but important commoners who participated in English government.  His father served in the parliament and held various governmental functions as did his elder brother.  He went off to Trinity College at Cambridge, the academic bastion of the English Reform, intent on becoming a priest. Recognized for his rhetorical skills, King James recruited him to service in parliament and in the governance of the kingdom. Which he did until James’s death in 1624, when he was ordained a priest and took on a rural parish, in southwest England. The parish was about 8 miles north of Salisbury Cathedral. It consisting of two churches St. Peter’s Fugglestone and St. Andrews, Bemerton, the later serving as his residence.   

The importance of this move is made clear if we recall that the reform of the English Church, at the time less than a hundred years old, was largely focused on political issues played out in public forum and on ideas debated in academic circles! Something that was broadly true of the 16rh century reforms across the board. At this point, we might register the thought that we could very well say the same about our own church in the 21st century.

One might suppose that George Herbert's action was an escape, but in truth it was a choice to take on the frontier, namely, the life of the parish church! After all, the Gospel is neither politics or ideas, but a Life. Herbert went out intent on living that life.

He wrote an essay called “The Country Parson” in which he described the role of a priest in a parish setting.  He added a second title, “Priest to the Temple” which makes it clear that his essay was the blueprint of what he intended to do. During the ministry that followed he wrote poetry that captured his daily prayer life as a priest. This body of poetry is quite stunning, theologically and poetically. As late as the 20ieth century T. S. Eliot pointed to his poetry as a foundation for modern English poetry.  Theologically, because he identified poetry as a basic media for English theology.  In the poetry of the “Temple” he indicates a commitment to the liturgical life, for example, he commends the observance of Lent:

Lent

                                                                Welcome dear feast of Lent                                                                                                                                         Who loves not thee                                                                                                                            He loves not Temperance and Authority                                                                                                                      But is composed of Passions

 and he ends the “Temple” with his oft quote poem on the Eucharist:

Love

                                              LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
                                                               Guilty of dust and sin.
                                              But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                                                                From my first entrance in,
                                              Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                                                               If I lack’d anything.

                                              ‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
                                                                Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
                                              ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                                                               I cannot look on Thee.’
                                              Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                                                                ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

                                              ‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                                                               Go where it doth deserve.’
                                            ‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’                                                                                                  ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
                                              ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
                                                               So I did sit and eat.

This concern for the liturgical life contrasts with the concern of the public and academic reform focused politics and ideas for which it had little value!  

Suffice it to say at this point, that when I began my priestly ministry over 58 years ago, my blueprint was “The Country Parson.” And that today, a day does not go by in which I do not ask ‘Holy Mister Herbert’ to pray for me. Indeed, today, “I ask “’Holy Mister Herbert’, pray for us.” 

My Isaiah project has moved on to Second Isaiah, a text that divides between anticipation 40-48 and responding to a changed situation 49-55. This later section contain 3 of the 4 Suffering Servant Songs and clearly they are not anomalies but tied the central theme of the text. Sixty years ago in my formation I made a great effort at trying to understand these Songs which are so deeply embedded in Christian doctrine. So it is fascination to a close study them at this late point in my life an would like to share my results and would welcome comments.  I have done this with the help AI which has made possible to put my ideas into a shareable text. I whole own what follows. 

 Jeconiah in Exile and the Origins of the Suffering Servant Tradition

The Suffering Servant Songs of Isaiah—42:1–9; 49:1–6; 50:4–11; and 52:13–53:12—have long been interpreted through the lens of later theological appropriations. Their meaning has been shaped by post‑exilic hopes, Second Temple messianism, early Christian readings, and centuries of doctrinal development. Yet these later layers often obscure the most immediate historical and theological question that confronted the community that first received these texts: What becomes of royal agency when the king is in exile?

This question, I argue, is the generative soil from which the Servant tradition grows. The Servant Songs are not abstract meditations on suffering, nor are they originally messianic predictions. They are a theological reflection on the crisis of kingship embodied in the figure of King Jeconiah, deported to Babylon in 597 BCE. The prophetic imagination of the Jerusalem tradition—already deeply invested in the meaning of royal office in Isaiah 9 and 11—continued its work in exile, rethinking kingship under conditions where political power was impossible. The result was a profound transformation: the emergence of the servant king, and through him, the vision of a servant people.

1. The Crisis of Royal Agency in 597 BCE

Jeconiah’s exile created a theological emergency. In the Davidic tradition, the king was not merely a political figure; he was the bearer of divine judgment, the guarantor of justice, and the visible sign of God’s covenantal commitment. When the king was removed from the throne and placed under imperial control, the question was not simply political—Who rules Judah?—but theological—What is a king when he cannot rule?

The prophetic school that shaped Isaiah 9 and 11 had already articulated a vision of kingship grounded in divine agency rather than military might. In exile, this tradition confronted its most severe test. The king could no longer act as king. Yet the office could not simply disappear. It had to be reimagined.

2. Political Strategies of Exiled Kings—and Their Limits

Historically, exiled monarchs have adopted one of two strategies:

• Machiavellian strategy: intrigue, manipulation, alliance‑building, and attempts to reclaim power through political maneuvering.

• Soft‑power strategy: cultivating nostalgia, symbolic presence, or international sympathy.

Examples such as Haile Selassie and King Farouk illustrate these approaches. But neither strategy was available—or theologically appropriate—for Jeconiah. Babylonian control was absolute. Political scheming was futile. Nostalgic symbolism was insufficient.

The prophetic imagination therefore turned to a third possibility: a theological strategy.

3. The Servant as the Reimagined King

Isaiah 42:1–9 introduces a figure who bears unmistakable royal features—chosen by God, endowed with God’s spirit, commissioned to bring justice to the nations. Yet this figure does not rule. He serves. He suffers. He embodies divine judgment not through coercion but through obedience.

This is the theological answer to the crisis of Jeconiah’s exile:

When a king cannot rule, he can still serve.

When royal power is stripped away, royal vocation remains.

The Servant Songs develop this theme progressively in Isaiah 49–55, a section responding to the Persian victory in 540 BCE. Suddenly the exiled community faced the real possibility of returning to Jerusalem. Yet the physical and economic challenges of such a return were immense, and the emotional difficulty of detaching from seventy years of Babylonian life was no less daunting.

The prophetic school in exile addressed these challenges through three further Servant Songs, in which the royal servant is no longer Jeconiah himself but his theological successors:

• Isaiah 49:1–6 expands the Servant’s mission to Israel and the nations, echoing the universal scope of royal responsibility.

• Isaiah 50:4–11 presents the Servant as teacher and witness, steadfast in suffering.

• Isaiah 52:13–53:12 culminates in a vision of redemptive suffering that transforms the community.

These texts are not about a generic righteous sufferer. They are a theological re‑articulation of royal agency under the conditions of return from exile.

4. From Servant King to Servant People

Once kingship is reframed as service, the people themselves are drawn into this vocation. The king becomes the prototype of a community whose identity is no longer anchored in land, temple, or political sovereignty but in obedience to God’s word.

This shift explains a historical puzzle:

Why did Judah survive exile with its identity intact, while other conquered nations—including the northern kingdom—did not?

The answer lies in this theological transformation:

• The king became a servant.

• The people became a servant people.

• Memory became vocation rather than nostalgia.

• Identity was preserved not by power but by purpose.

The Servant Songs thus encode the spiritual logic that sustained Judah through seventy years of displacement.

5. Later Appropriations and the Clouding of Origins

Subsequent interpretations—whether messianic, national, or christological—are not wrong, but they must renounce claims of exclusivity if they are to honor the originality of the tradition and the many collateral appropriations that followed. In a sense, Isaiah 42:1—composed some twenty years after Jeconiah’s death and in very different circumstances—is itself the first appropriation.

These later readings build upon a tradition whose original function was to address a concrete historical and theological crisis, yet the Servant figure proved capable of imaging divine agency in new historical contexts.

By recovering Jeconiah’s exile as the generative context, the Servant Songs can be read not as mysterious predictions but as a profound reimagining of kingship—one that reshaped Israel’s self‑understanding, enabled its return in the fifth century, and continued to live on through successive historical transformations, including our own, in a rich variety of ways.

This opens a new area of discussion, to which I have long been devoted. It has been made possible though AI, which I embrace a remarkable tool that has quickly presented thoughts that I have sustained over many years.

                 I found that I was by then, 
                        so into living theology in a congregation, 
                        and writing it on human hearts 
                        that I did have the heart to do what was required 
                        in order to qualify for living theolog in academia 
                        and doing theology in classes so transient 
                        and in books so problematic, largely un read. 
                I left the editorial work undone and went on.  

                                                                                                from On Giving My Word, 2022, p. 45

Toward a Parochial Theology: Recovering the Local as a Theological Venue

Modern Christian theology is often mapped according to its venues. Scholastic or academic theology arises within the university, shaped by dialectical reasoning and conceptual precision. Monastic theology emerges from the cloister, formed through contemplation, ascetic practice, and the rhythms of communal prayer. Yet a third venue—arguably the most ancient and the most neglected—remains underdeveloped: the parish. A theology rooted in the life of a local community, shaped by its liturgy, its stories, its struggles, and its shared discernment, may be called parochial theology.

The term parochial has suffered from a modern narrowing. In common usage it suggests small‑mindedness or provincialism. But its etymology tells a different story. The Greek paroikia refers to dwelling near, living alongside, being a resident alien. Early Christian communities understood themselves precisely in this way: local, embodied, provisional, and yet deeply theological. To recover the older sense of parochial is to recover the parish as a genuine theological locus.

A historical precedent for such a recovery can be found in the Devotio Moderna. Emerging in the late medieval Low Countries, this movement occupied a space between monastic withdrawal and secular life. The Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life lived in towns, under parish priests and civic authorities, committed to prayer, work, and the sanctification of everyday life. Their spirituality was neither speculative nor cloistered. It was practical, interior, communal, and deeply embedded in the rhythms of ordinary Christian existence. In this sense, the Devotio Moderna anticipated a parochial theology: a mode of theological reflection arising from the life of a local community rather than from the academy or the monastery.

By contrast, modern pastoral theology—at least in its dominant forms—has drifted away from this communal grounding. Over the twentieth century it absorbed the language and methods of psychology, especially through the rise of Clinical Pastoral Education. Pastoral identity became increasingly therapeutic, individualized, and client‑centered. Doctrine, liturgy, and ecclesial life receded into the background. The pastor became a quasi‑counselor, and pastoral theology became a discipline concerned primarily with the interior life of the individual rather than the shared life of the parish. In losing the parish as its venue, pastoral theology lost much of its theological depth.

A parochial theology offers a corrective. It restores the parish as the primary site where Christian life is lived and where theological meaning is generated. It treats the liturgy not as background ritual but as the community’s interpretive center. It understands doctrine not as abstract propositions but as the grammar of a people’s shared life. It takes seriously the stories, wounds, hopes, and histories of a particular community. It is neither anti‑intellectual nor anti‑monastic; rather, it insists that theology must also arise from the lived experience of the people of God in a specific place.

In this sense, parochial theology is not a narrowing but a nearness. It is theology that smells like the sheep, theology that listens before it speaks, theology that emerges from the life of a people dwelling together in faith. It retrieves the ancient sense of paroikia—a community living alongside, dwelling near, seeking holiness in the midst of the ordinary—and reclaims it as a vital theological venue for our time.

 

Stephanie Rumpza, Phenomenology of the Icon, Mediating God through the Image

One who comes to this book to deepen their understand of Byzantine iconography will find the opening chapters on Phenomenology a heavy lift. As those who come to this book test the capacity of phenomenology to make a case religious art will find its closing chapters a descent into, God forbid, prayer! Regardless, I would commend this book as profoundly worth the effort it takes to read it. Which is not to say that the text itself is a problem as Rumpza’s narrative skills are engaging, but that its analysis is deep.

                What the framework of phenomenology does for Byzantine Icon, is twofold.  Firstly overcomes the divorce between art and the icon.  The recovery of icons which is rather recent. Rescuing them from a long season of decline not a little to coping western art and limitation to enclaves of piety led to an attack on the realism of western art as idolatrous and as art that in general was spiritually irrelevant.  This schism is bad enough confined to art, but it bears on life itself.  Secular life is separate from spiritual Life which means poverty for the former and irrelevant for the latter. Secondly it open the encounter with an icon by means of a language which can take to in the very foundation of being human. In terms of phenomenology that is “response” to “call,” the call to thinking/being/conscious.

               The book deserves to be discussed and I hope this contributes to that possibility. If you would like more information see "Review in Depth" Anglican Theological Review  vol 7 issue 3 Summer 2025. Page 294 "A New Frontier for Iconography" by Lance Green St. Paul MN

 

Source Criticism, Joel S. Baden, Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2024

A Brief Review.

Anyone who has approached the Bible, particularly the first five books of Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch, is aware of its complexity and of “the bumps in the road” in making one’s way through it. But only specialists are aware of the vast body of sophisticated scholarship that has been devoted to it. Baden would like to take you through it, particularly that western scholarship that began with the Renaissance’s “return to original sources” and which gained momentum in the Enlightenment and in the succeeding age of Romanticism that has shaped Western life.  The core of the attempt was to uncover the sources of the Bible, in particular of the Pentateuch.  Throughout the 19^th and 20^th century, German university scholars had a dominant role in this pursuit.

Baden’s book is intended to be an introduction for “nonspecialist.”  I think that it is essentially the open lectures of a course on the Hebrew Scripture as one might find in a seminary or theological school as “required,” I would hope, for a candidate for MDiv or MTh degree. Each chapter ends with an exercise in which the method discussed the chapter is applied to a text, Genesis 26:10-29.  no less than six times, illustrating what effect each method had for interpretation. I would highly recommend it to anyone attempting a study of the Bible, particularly whose ministry would be based on it.

Overall, Baden demonstrates how much this scholarship was biased by in presuppositions, as he admits is true of his as well.   The classic body of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch in particular was largely Protestant. As result, its read set aside the ritual for the ethical, the latter being the original source and former being the latter corruption.  It was also true that it had a social orientation link to the German quest to construct a common “volk” out of their, up to then, diverse population. So, the source material that they identified in the Pentateuch as its foundation was the formation of a people. Bandon’s critique is not so original, but it does have the additional dimension of disclosing just how deeply anti-Semitic it was. He also makes clear that the source method they employed replaced the text by the source, where source criticism for him should be the means own the text.

By the middle of the 20^th century, their source theory, which claimed that the Pentateuch was the result of four documents, J, E, D and P, was widely accepted.  There were some significant new efforts which raised questions about how complete this analysis was. Baden identified Gunkel, Von Rad and Eichorn as scholars that raised new questions, but it was the general consensus that these would be answer within confines of the documentary thesis. This did not happen in the seventies, as Baden points out, where an attempt was made to “reimagine source criticism.”  This called for the abandonment the document theory and a new start with what it called the “smallest literary unit” of the text.

The heavy historical exploration was set aside as unnecessary, abstruse or impossible and the text as discreet pieces becomes the source.  The effort is associated with the work of Rendtorff and continued through final decades of the 20^th century. This led to the assumption that documentary theory had been made irrelevant. The problem, as the exercise at the end of chapter 5 shows, ends in fragmentation with an endless number of possible solutions.

In his final chapter, 6, “A Return to Sources,” Baden provides his solution to how Pentateuch studies should proceed.  He argues that while the classic sources did not exist as documents there did exist a more diverse set of sources.  Identifying these sources does not give one a basis for replacing the text, but a means of giving the text its meaning.  It will be interesting to follow Baden’s effort to carry out his methods as it promises to be more helpful to the student of the Pentateuch than the sterile reductionism of the most recent period which seemed only serve personalist use of the Biblical text, be it the Pentateuch, the rest of the Tanach, or the Christian testament.

I would close with a personal note.  My formation took place in the sixties when the document theory was solidly entrenched, at the very institution, YDS, that Baden serves as Professor of Hebrew Bible.  Of course, many of us who went form there in pastoral ministries followed the rule that much of what they had learned was best left behind, but some of us felt called to carry it into our ministries. I taught source theory in the parishes that I served. In fact, the Episcopal lay curriculum, EFM, included it in its first year. My experience was that this did not put off the laity but energized them in regard to scripture.

I carried from seminary some experience with Scandinavian scholarship and an introduction to Gunkel, Von Rad and Eichorn so I anticipated a continued development of source criticism.  As my pastorate was coming to an end, I noticed in my rear-view mirror that sources criticism was coming apart to my dismay.  So Baden’s work excites me. I am short on time, so I don’t expect to be around to catch the new wave, but take great solace in calling his work to your attention,

Michael J. Tancreti, MDV Berkeley YDS 1967

aka The Elder of Omaha
                            

 

 

          I realized in my awakening this morning that some heaviness made me reluctant to get up. Then I remembered that it was “Thomas Sunday.”  Oh, if it were only possible to sleep through till Monday.  Not that have anything against Thomas, the beloved twin, it is just that in the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter there is elephant around which our homilists carefully walk.  I mean, Jesus breathing on his disciples and saying "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

               Tell me, my fellow homilists, how do you walk around that! The resurrection is the foundation of the Church’s office of reconciliation. It is, i admit an uncomfortable office, but one that is nevertheless ours.  You will have read or at least listened to the collect which declared that God, in the Paschal mystery has established the new covenant of reconciliation. The lesson from Acts: God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.  

               How is this so? With resurrection, the consequences of human sins are undone.  And how great these consequences are which we habitually pass on for some other time or place. An ocean is too small a metaphor to capture their immensity. But in the resurrection the unwanted brother stands before you. Just as in this Gospel, it is recorded that the betrayed stood before the betrayer. It is for that reason that they of all persons could walk out of that room and dare say your sins are forgiven.    

Isaiah and the Resurrection

A Poetic Theodicy

Chapter 26:7-21

 

 

 

                               מתיך יחיו                                May your dead live

                     יקומון נבלתי                                                       May my vessel rise up  

         עפר שכני ורננו הקיצו                                                             May those who dwelling the dust

     טלך אורת  טל כי                                                                                     rejoice and sing.

   ;תפיל רפאים וארץ                                                                            for the dew at light is your dew.

               עםי לך                                                                                         Go, my people,             

      בחדריך בא                                                                                                               come into your room

 בעדך דלתיך  וסגר                                                                                                                 close your door behind you.

 רגע-כמעט                                                                                                                                          for short time rest

      זעם-יעבור-עד                                                                                                                       until the wrath has passed.

 

                In his Anchor Bible commentary on Isaiah, Joseph Blenkinsopp claims that the earliest reference to resurrection in the Hebrew scriptures comes in the 26^th chapter of the Book of Isaiah.  This is a remarkable claim since it is commonly assumed that the earliest references to resurrection are to be found in the late Biblical material, Daniel 12.2, if not later yet in the apocryphal books such as the 2 Maccabees. My deeply felt conviction that this is true, however, rests not on authority, but on my own close read the Hebrew text of Isaiah.  Let me take you to the 26^th chapter of Isaiah and see if in the end, you might agree.

                The text takes us to Jerusalem where a prophetic school is laboring to reckon with their world, what we would call the Levant, in or around the year of 705 B. C. E. By then, they are in the second phase this reckoning.  The first phase began with a crisis triggered by the ascension of a new king, Ahaz, which was troubled by the ascendancy of the Assyrian Empire and the pressure from the kingdom of Aram, Damacus, and the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  They were insistent that the Southern Kingdom join them in their resistance to the Assyrians.  The prophetic school’s counsel delivered by a youthful Isaiah was to not fear and not to join Aram and the Northern Kingdom. By 705 it had proven to be valid council.  They had refined and recorded their position in a text, what we know as chapter 3-12 of the Book of Isaiah, completed somewhere in and around the year 730.

                Jerusalem, due in part to its isolation in the rugged hill country of the south and due in another part to their judicious behavior, had escaped a direct attack. From that vantage point they watched the world around them violently oppressed.  Fortified cities were crushed by the Assyrian army, Tyre, Gath, Megiddo, Damascus, Dibon, Ashdod, and lastly Samaria, their neighbor forty miles to the north in 722 B. C. E. Death and deportation surrounded them. Moreover, this reign of terror had continued for thirty years with no end in sight. With that, the prophetic school was forced to reappraise their theological analysis of what was happening and to recast their message in terms of perseverance. Recall that its early prophesies implied fulfillment would come “by the time this child knew or said this or that.”  that is, “not long.”  Now they needed to be amended to “however long.”

Part of the school’s strategy was to amend their existing text, 3-12. The added text would be a recognition of new developments, and it would reposition their theology with an orientation that embraced the posture of waiting.  By the time they turned to the composition of this poem, they had already composed a substantial thread of new material beginning with what we call chapter 13 and which advanced through a series of study on the suffering of the peoples around them, from Moab to Tyre.  Their working draft now constituted a text that we would recognize as more or less chapers,15-23.

            This new composition was to be a poem which would address the problem that we know of as theodicy, justifying the ways of God. As such it would be a restatement of the Prophetic School’s fundamental theology which they had pioneered at the beginning the Assyrian crisis some thirty year before.  When this poem was finished It would take its place as the 26^th chapter of the Isaiah text as we know it. 

                The poet, perhaps Isaiah himself, now a mature elder of the school, began the poem with a statement which asserts the justice of God’s ways.  “Truly the ways of God are just.” To this initial supposition, he adds a second: waiting for God “is the soul’s desire.”  This is what we would call a transcendental, a precondition of mind/consciousness which points the mind to waiting for God.  With this the argument for theodicy is set. 

                The poem will end as it began, with a re-statement of theodicy.  “God goes forth from his place, מקום, to visit punishment on the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth and the earth would reveal the blood within it and it would no longer cover the slain.” Even as we wait for it, it is underway!

                Between these two statements of God’s justice, the poet places an intensely personal confession.  The universal desire of soul’s, is immediately modified by the poet with an assertion: “My soul’s waits for you in the night, O God, … My spirit seeks for you.”

                With that a conversation with God begins in which the poet reviews the condition that he and his companion find themselves.  Yes, he concedes we are aware that “Fire will consume your adversaries.”  And we know that their dead will not live, and their shades/corpses/רפאים will not rise. We understand that by means of all this suffering, the peoples of the earth, Isarel included, will in the end learn their lesson.

                But You, God, need to understand that the life of the poet and his companions is like that of a pregnant woman approaching childbirth.  We writhe, cry out, and are in pangs.  Thus far, however, we are like those who deliver wind and nothing of substance or human.  The metaphor of childbirth has already established a place in the Isaiah text, where it stands for suffering that has an end and a purpose, but here childbirth is underlined as prolonged and seemly futile labor.    

                At the end of his confession the poet cries out: “May your dead live.” Clearly this is a reference to the above assertion: “Their dead will not live.”  But note the twist from “their” to “your,” third person to second person.  These dead belong to God, for they are God’s people, Isreal. Then another twist, their shades/corpses/רפאים will not rise is changed to my body, corpse, vessel/נבלתי. In the first instance the plea shifts from the third-person plural to the first- person singular, my body. In the second, the poet does not repeat the רפאים, nor uses the crasser term for a corpse, פגר, but chooses instead נבלת.  The word he chooses means a vessel, an earthen vessel, think of Paul’s reference in II Corinthians. Or more commonly a fool, a weak thing, a wicked person or even a harp, musical instrument. The poet is not, of course, dead and his reference to himself seems purposely diminutive, something like when the English poet Gerand Manley Hopkins in a poem about resurrection refers to himself as “poor jack stuff.”  The poet has also done something with the word rise/קום by way of an augmented form, קומון. This suggests that he wants his audience to understand the word is meant not metaphorically but actually.  He continues: “Let them awake and sing.” Referring to the dead, he now adds a comforting metaphor.  It shall be like that which dwells in the dust is moistened by the dew that comes with the light of day.

                The voice in the poem now changes.  God responds and speaks to the poet, the poet’s audience and to all his dead: “Go, my people enter your room, lock the door behind you, hide for a little moment until the wrath passes.”

                With this note of compassion, we return to the magisterial voice of the poet in which he restates the proposition that God’s actions are just and God is even at this moment acting to bring that about. God is on the move. “God goes forth from his high place, מקום to visit punishment on the iniquity of the inhabitants of the earth and the earth will reveal the blood within it and earth will no longer cover the slain.” The extension of the theme now includes a reference to the slain.  Their blood will testify against the iniquity of their slayers, and the rising of their bodies will confront them in a way that justice will be done.

                It is not irrelevant to the question of theodicy that a concept of resurrection has emerged in this poem. That it has produced the first/early thought of resurrection should not surprise us as resurrection is essential to theodicy. Without a resurrection, theodicy remains an abstract idea which is easily accused of white-washing the reality of evil.  Apart from theodicy, resurrection becomes a part the candy of afterlife speculation, open to the charge that is a distraction from everyday life. To the poet, on the contrary, it is what allows everyday life to be meaningful and dedicated to justice.

                And theodicy, itself, is not irrelevant to the Isaiah school’s conviction that Yahweh is the one transcendent universal being.  The school’s thoughts were driven to the question of theodicy as soon as they made the move from a local God with limited agency to a transcendent God with universal agency. This raises the issue of death in new way. It is no longer satisfactory to be buried with one’s ancestors and to continue to have an existence in the local community which has defined you. Local communities in an imperial age have a way of ceasing to exist and large blocks of people are deported away from the burial place of their ancestors. The universal transcendent God creates a crisis! 

                With this incredible poem at the heart of the Isaiah text, we do not have an answer to the crisis, so much as we have the notification that we are on the way to one.

 

 

Notes:

 

The fifth stanza, 19-21 is marked with exceptional poetic skill, beautiful imagery, and profound sentiment.  It strikes me as a proper way to begin my own remembrance of the dead.  מתיך יחיו 

 

14- the dead מתים shall not live, the dead  יםפא ר will rise. .. a sentiment that is dramatically reversed in 19.  The intervening text compares the waiting for deliverance as the pangs of pregnancy which is failing to deliver.

 

19-21 are interesting, but cryptic verses which form the conclusion of Ch. 26.  Its interpretation turns on how רפאים which is read in the Rabbinic tradition as רפה which translates as “slackers.”  But while it shares the sense of being weak, it has its own meaning as a euphemism for the dead.  Isa 14:9

,  שְׁא֗וֹל מִתַּ֛חַת רָגְזָ֥ה לְךָ֖ לִקְרַ֣את בּוֹאֶ֑ךָ עוֹרֵ֨ר לְךָ֤ רְפָאִים֙ כׇּל־עַתּ֣וּדֵי אָ֔רֶץ הֵקִים֙ מִכִּסְאוֹתָ֔ם כֹּ֖ל מַלְכֵ֥י גוֹיִֽם׃

Sheol below was astir
To greet your coming—
Rousing for you the shades
Of all earth’s chieftains,
Raising from their thrones
All the kings of nations.

Is 14:19 corpse carcass פגר

 

Pr. 2:18 יקוצו-בל רפאיםת the dead shall rise up.  26:14 ינוח רפאים בקהל 21:16.

The Talmud contains discussions about resurrection, reflecting its significance in Jewish thought. Here are a few examples:

1.      Pesachim 68a: This passage discusses God's promise to resurrect the dead, emphasizing divine power and the belief in life after death.

2.      Ketubot 111b: This section explores the idea that only the pious will merit resurrection, though it also considers a broader definition of righteousness.

3.      Sanhedrin 90a-92a: These pages delve into the concept of resurrection, including debates among sages about its nature and scriptural basis.

These discussions highlight the centrality of resurrection in Jewish eschatology and its theological implications.

Sanhedrin 90a-92b

(צֶדֶ״ק גַּ״ם גֶּשֶׁ״ם קָ״ם סִימָן) שָׁאֲלוּ צַדּוּקִים אֶת רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל: מִנַּיִין שֶׁהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מְחַיֶּיה מֵתִים? אָמַר לָהֶם: מִן הַתּוֹרָה, וּמִן הַנְּבִיאִים, וּמִן הַכְּתוּבִים. וְלֹא קִיבְּלוּ מִמֶּנּוּ.

The Gemara records a mnemonic for those cited in the upcoming discussion: Tzadi, dalet, kuf; gimmel, mem; gimmel, shin, mem; kuf, mem. Heretics asked Rabban Gamliel: From where is it derived that the Holy One, Blessed be He, revives the dead? Rabban Gamliel said to them that this matter can be proven from the Torah, from the Prophets, and from Writings, but they did not accept the proofs from him.

מִן הַתּוֹרָה, דִּכְתִיב: ״וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל מֹשֶׁה הִנְּךָ שֹׁכֵב עִם אֲבֹתֶיךָ וְקָם״. אָמְרוּ לוֹ: וְדִילְמָא ״וְקָם הָעָם הַזֶּה וְזָנָה״?

The proof from the Torah is as it is written: “And the Lord said to Moses, behold, you shall lie with your fathers and arise” (Deuteronomy 31:16). The heretics said to him: But perhaps the verse should be divided in a different manner, and it should be read: “Behold, you shall lie with your fathers, and this people will arise and stray after the foreign gods of the land.”

מִן הַנְּבִיאִים, דִּכְתִיב: ״יִחְיוּ מֵתֶיךָ נְבֵלָתִי יְקוּמוּן הָקִיצוּ וְרַנְּנוּ שֹׁכְנֵי עָפָר כִּי טַל אוֹרֹת טַלֶּךָ וָאָרֶץ רְפָאִים תַּפִּיל״. וְדִילְמָא מֵתִים שֶׁהֶחְיָה יְחֶזְקֵאל?

The proof from the Prophets is as it is written: “Your dead shall live, my corpse shall arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in the dust, for your dew is as the dew of vegetation, and the land shall cast out the dead” (Isaiah 26:19). The heretics said to him: But perhaps the prophecy was fulfilled with the dead that Ezekiel revived. No proof may be cited from that verse with regard to any future resurrection

 

Ketubot 111b

 

אָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר: עַמֵּי הָאֲרָצוֹת אֵינָן חַיִּים, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״מֵתִים בַּל יִחְיוּ וְגוֹ׳״, תַּנְיָא נָמֵי הָכִי: ״מֵתִים בַּל יִחְיוּ״, יָכוֹל לַכֹּל — תַּלְמוּד לוֹמַר: ״רְפָאִים בַּל יָקוּמוּ״, בִּמְרַפֶּה עַצְמוֹ מִדִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה הַכָּתוּב מְדַבֵּר.

§ Rabbi Elazar said: The common, uneducated people will not come alive in the future, as it is stated: “The dead live not” (Isaiah 26:14). In other words, those who were already considered dead in their lifetimes will not come back to life afterward either. This idea is also taught in a baraita: “The dead live not”; one might have thought that this is referring to everyone, i.e., none of the dead will live again. Therefore, the verse states: “The shades [refa’im] rise not” (Isaiah 26:14). This teaches that the verse is speaking of one who weakens [merapeh] himself from matters of Torah.

אֲמַר לֵיהּ רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: לָא נִיחָא לְמָרַיְיהוּ דְּאָמְרַתְּ לְהוּ הָכִי, הָהוּא בִּמְרַפֶּה עַצְמוֹ לַעֲבוֹדָה זָרָה הוּא דִּכְתִיב. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: מִקְרָא אַחֵר אֲנִי דּוֹרֵשׁ, דִּכְתִיב: ״כִּי טַל אוֹרוֹת טַלֶּיךָ וָאָרֶץ רְפָאִים תַּפִּיל״, כׇּל הַמִּשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּאוֹר תּוֹרָה — אוֹר תּוֹרָה מְחַיֵּיהוּ, וְכֹל שֶׁאֵין מִשְׁתַּמֵּשׁ בְּאוֹר תּוֹרָה — אֵין אוֹר תּוֹרָה מְחַיֵּיהוּ.

Rabbi Yoḥanan said to Rabbi Elazar: Their master, i.e. God, is not pleased that you say this of ordinary Jews. Rather, that verse is written about one who weakens himself and succumbs to idol worship. Those who commit this great sin do not merit to be resurrected in the future. Rabbi Elazar said to him: I teach it from a different verse, as it is written: “For Your dew is as the dew of light, and the earth shall bring to life the shades” (Isaiah 26:19). Rabbi Elazar explains: Anyone who uses the light of Torah, which is called the dew of light, the light of Torah will revive him; and anyone who does not use the light of Torah, the light of Torah will not revive him.

כֵּיוָן דְּחַזְיֵיהּ דְּקָמִצְטַעַר, אֲמַר לֵיהּ: רַבִּי, מָצָאתִי לָהֶן תַּקָּנָה מִן הַתּוֹרָה: ״וְאַתֶּם הַדְּבֵקִים בַּה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם חַיִּים כּוּלְּכֶם הַיּוֹם״, וְכִי אֶפְשָׁר לִדַּבּוֹקֵי בַּשְּׁכִינָה? וְהָכְתִיב: ״כִּי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵשׁ אוֹכְלָה״?

Since Rabbi Elazar saw that Rabbi Yoḥanan was grieved over the distress of common, uneducated people, he said to him: My teacher, I have found for them a remedy from the Torah so that they will merit life in the World-to-Come, as it states: “But You who cleave to the Lord your God, are alive every one of you this day” (Deuteronomy 4:4). But is it possible to cleave to the Divine Presence? Isn’t it written: For the Lord your God is a devouring fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24)?

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