Tim K

“Even T. S. Eliot, one of the best-known and successful poets of the twentieth century, was a banker. Poetry simply did not pay the bills.”
― Andrew T. Le Peau, Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality

“Biblical literalism did a distinct disservice to Christianity in its identification of the Christian emphasis on the symbol of the Fall with the literalistic interpretation of the Genesis story. Theology need not take literalism seriously, but we must realize how its impact has hampered the apologetic task of the Christian church. Theology must clearly and unambiguously represent “the Fall” as a symbol for the human situation universally, not as the story of an event that happened “once upon a time.”
― Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol 2

“Israel’s participation in the divine covenant in Torah was a daily reality—every aspect of the life of the community was being lived out in accordance with what God had said. It was not primarily a matter of belief but one of praxis. To do the works of the law was the faithful response to a covenant that Israel understood actually to exist. Living “in Torah” was not a likening to something, it was the substance of something—an “enacted reality”: So long as theologians conceive their task as primarily elucidating biblical “ideas,” they will continue to miss the fundamental significance of covenant in the biblical tradition. Covenant is not an “idea” to be embraced in the mind, and therefore religious community cannot be defined with respect to “orthodox” appraisals of that idea. Covenant is an “enacted reality” that is either manifested in the concrete choices individuals make, or not.918”
― Stephen Burnhope, Atonement and the New Perspective: The God of Israel, Covenant, and the Cross

“In these early years Brown wrote regularly on sensus plenior. He discussed especially such passages as the application to Jesus Christ of passages about King David in the Psalms, and the application of “Emmanuel” in Isaiah to Jesus. But as time passed, he began to address three problems about sensus plenior. First, he began to doubt its usefulness. If it required “homogeneity,” how could this be measured? Second, responses to the notion seemed to vary, even among Catholic scholars.52 Third, it seemed to depend on controversial ideas of biblical inspiration.53 Brown therefore tended to discard the term in favour of speaking of “levels of meaning.”
― Zondervan, The Bible throughout the Ages: Its Nature, Interpretation, and Relevance for Today