Shane Williamson’s Reviews > Reading Genesis > Status Update

Biblical anthropology begins with an exalted conception of humanity, then ponders our errors and deficiencies and our capacities for grace and truth, within the world of meaningful freedom created for them by an omnipotent God. This seems paradoxical, but sustaining paradox is the genius of the text. (126)

In the Torah the festivals are memorials of the origins and history of the community, that is, of the self-revelation of God in the events that formed them as a people. Like many provisions of the law of Moses, they also distribute nourishment in the course of asserting bonds that always include the needy. (42)

I am proposing here that there is a hermeneutics of self-protectiveness that has disabled interpretation and that has generalized into an abandonment of metaphysics as a legitimate mode of thought. (6)

The Bible itself indicates no anxiety about association with human minds, words, lives, and passions. This is a notable instance of our having a lower opinion of ourselves than the Bible justifies. (5)