Pursuing Veritas

Reflections by Jacob J. Prahlow
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  • Ep12: Who is God?

    The past several weeks of the Church Debates podcast have been wrestling with the Christological Controversies. This episode wraps up the ancient ecumenical councils by looking at the Council of Chalcedon and the doctrine of the Trinity.

  • Scripture among the Apologists: Method I

    Standing behind this study is concern for determining how to assess accurately what constitutes the citation of one text by another where no reference is clearly indicated.[i] Unfortunately, many treatments of early Christian writings presume an inexact methodology in addressing possible citations in ancient literature, taking either a minimalist or maximalist perspective. For example, Biblia…

  • Scripture among the Apologists: Introduction

    The early followers of Jesus Christ indelibly influenced the subsequent shape of Christian faith and praxis. Contemporary Christian conceptions of God, anthropology, history, eschatology, philosophy, the sacraments, and Christology remain indebted to the beliefs and practices of the first centuries of the Church. An important but often neglected facet of the early Church’s legacy involves…

  • Recommended Reading: November 19

    If you read one article this week, look at A God Big Enough to Heal All Creation by Kevin Maney. For those of you with additional reading time this mid-November (mid-November?!?) day, check out the following selections, gathered from around the blogging world. Happy reading!

  • Wilderness in the Apostolic Fathers

    In “The Wilderness Narrative in the Apostolic Fathers,” Clayton Jefford outlines the references to wilderness traditions and narratives set in Israel’s wilderness found in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. His central contention is that the uncertainty of the ancient Israelite motif of wilderness wandering appealed little to non-Jewish, second-generation Christians who were more interested…

  • Ep11: Is Mary the Mother of God?

    In this episode of the Church Debates series, we ask if Mary is the Mother of God, wrestle with the Marian dogmas, and talk about how the Theotokos controversy impacted the Christology debates of the Council of Ephesus.

  • Reflections on “Nomadic Text” (Part II)

    In this first half of Nomadic Text, Breed does much to complicate a notion of biblical reception history.[1] The problematic nature of borders frames this argument, specifically the murky ways in which biblical scholars often define (or fail to define) the differentiations between the composition and reception of texts. No longer may complicated zones be…

  • Reflections on “Nomadic Text” (Part I)

    As someone planning a dissertation on “reception history” (albeit it somewhat differently defined and undertaken than Breed), Brennan Breed’s concept of reception history and his application in Nomadic Text offer several potentially fruitful routes forward. Foremost, Breed offers numerous opportunities for raised awareness of the issues surrounding the field of reception history. First, he rightly…

  • Recommended Reading: November 12

    Happy Post-Election Weekend dear readers! If you engage one article today, I suggest Confessions of a Repentant Voter by Leslie Leyland Fields. For those of you with additional time to read this fine fall day, check out the selections below, gathered as always from around the blogging world. This week I include a special “2016…

  • The Wilderness and Early Christian Monasticism

    In the sixth chapter of his The Word in the Desert, Douglas Burton-Christie reflects on the influence of eschatology, compunction (penthos), asceticism, and the struggle against evil on the shape of the scriptural interpretation of the Desert Fathers (and Mothers). Highlighting monastic awareness of coming death and judgment (182-3), compunction and the power of scripture…