John D. Caputo, a contemporary American philosopher and theologian, is known for his work demonstrating the relevance of Derrida's deconstruction for theology. Vasubandhu, a fourth-century (c.e.) Indian thinker, is a seminal figure in the Mahāyāna Buddhist school known as Yogācāra. Although at first blush an odd pairing, and despite their great differences, these two thinkers share a fundamental presupposition: the priority and centrality of our conditioned condition. Indeed, for them, attending to the ways that we are conditioned makes possible the pursuit of a truth that is beyond our conditioned filters, aspiring to open us to the truth that is unconditioned. For this reason, it is illuminating to read and think Caputo and Vasubandhu together.

In this article I pursue two interrelated goals. First, and more narrowly, I argue that the in Rom 5:1 plausibly refers to Christ's (conventionally translated as “faith” or “faithfulness”) and not to the of Christ followers; and certainly not to the of Christ followers that is specifically “in Christ.” To my knowledge no modern commentator identifies the in Rom 5:1 as Christ's own. Several scholars suggest it in passing, and one presents a partial argument turning on several claims of coherence with his broader reading of Paul. I offer a more thorough case for the plausibility of this suggestion, especially by demonstrating how my reading of Rom 5:1 makes sense as an encapsulation of Paul's emphases in Rom 3:21–4:25.

Among the quotations from Luther's works condemned by the pope in 1520 was the statement that free will is something that exists in name only. In his defense of this statement in Assertio omnium articulorum, published in December 1520, Luther goes one step further. Here he not only declares “free will” to be a concept without factual reference, he even insists that there is no one in the position even to think on one's own, either good or bad, as everything happens with absolute necessity.

Ever since Leopold Zunz inaugurated the critical study of rabbinic literature in 1818, scholars of the school of midrash known as Tanhuma-Yelammedenu (TY) have given priority to analyzing questions of textual history, dating, aesthetics, form-critical issues, and the literary qualities of these texts. This scholarship has focused on questions of form rather than content; for the most part, the distinctive ideas of these texts, their values and theologies, have yet to be explored. In an article devoted to form-literary issues in aggadah, Yonah Fraenkel argues that “indeed there were also changes in the [Tanhuma's] ideas, like their ethical and social values and their overall world view . . . these types of issues need further research.” Unfortunately, very few scholars have responded to Fraenkel's call. In fact, two excellent scholarly works on rabbinic thought have ignored the content of the TY altogether: neither David Kraemer's Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature nor Ishay Rosen-Zvi's recent work, Demonic Desires, engage TY texts. While Kraemer and Rosen-Zvi extensively discuss sixth- and seventh-century Babylonian texts, such as the Babylonian Talmud, they do not do the same with sixth- and seventh-century Palestinian texts, such as many TY texts. These two important studies exemplify how, in a more general sense, late Palestinian midrashim have been conspicuously neglected by scholars of rabbinic literature working on content-based projects.

In T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets an attempt is made to investigate—often in a discursive manner—notions of time, language, and the divine. Yet the poet is hindered by certain limitations: words—as a primary vehicle of expression—collapse under the pressure, frequently sabotaging attempts at true articulation as detailed in the poem's opening quartet, Burnt Norton: “Words strain, / Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, / Under the tension. . .” (V: 149–51). Consequently, the medium of language itself frames an apparent contradiction throughout the Quartets: how a contrived system can represent notions intrinsically elusive and ephemeral. This conundrum inculcates all four of the poems, making them in some ways the ironic frame of their own reference. Despite this inherent dilemma, Eliot recognized that harnessing certain imagery—both animate and inanimate—and exploiting it for its numinous qualities was indispensable to achieving his aesthetic and thematic aims. Such imagery included elements taken from the natural world which pointed beyond their own outward forms to some ideal form that lay behind them. It was an approach motivated in part by what Frye describes as the poet's concern with Heraclitean logos zynos—or a “common logos”—and had as its aim the participation of man in the divine. To achieve such ends, Eliot relied on bird calls, echoes, bones, bells, and other seemingly prosaic phenomena and transformed them into conduits by which revelations might occur. That is, certain central images the poet adopts in Four Quartets—though not endowed with the capacity for human language—are nevertheless engendered with communicativeness of a uniquely numinous kind. Aligned with this notion was Eliot's belief that the way to commune with the past and with the divine was through ritual; by employing common natural objects and investing each with sacramental significance, the poet was able to evoke a temporal link with the ineffable world. It was also a means of reconciling what he perceived as the disjuncture with conventional language. By grounding the effort in an approach reminiscent of sacred Christian ritual and aesthetically portraying a new mode of communication consistent with transformative ceremony, Eliot aimed at the restoration of a past community of values. This highly distinct mode of communing came to represent its own unique type of langue, carrying forward thematic concerns while at the same time detailing a stylistic approach to poetic composition not prevalent in Eliot's earlier work.

Given the multiplicity of legal interpretations and opinions, the question of the place of legal debate within early rabbinic literature of late antiquity—both as textual practice and as hermeneutical and legal theory—has occupied a particularly busy space within recent scholarship. This question centers on several issues of broad significance for the history of rabbinic Judaism and its literature: Does this phenomenon (if we can speak of it in the singular) represent a defining characteristic of rabbinic culture overall, or rather an aspect better attributed to specific times, places, and rabbinic “schools”? Did it emerge and develop internally within rabbinic Judaism, or is it, on the one hand, the continuation of antecedents in the pre-rabbinic, late Second Temple period, or, on the other hand, the result of external influences or pressures (e.g., Greco-Roman or early Christian) of a later time? Does such legal multivocality reflect the actual nature of either/both rabbinic jurisprudence or/and pedagogy, or the editorial choices of the later anonymous redactors of the composite and anthological texts that have come down to us (or, as I shall demonstrate, both)? Finally, what are its hermeneutical and theological underpinnings (as well as sociopolitical ramifications)? While these four questions will frame what follows, it is the latter two that will particularly demand our attention. They will be addressed, whether explicitly or implicitly, in several comparative textual analyses that will constitute the body of this article.

It was Franz Overbeck who, in his attack on Harnack, referred to Eusebius's work as “[that] of a hairdresser for the emperor's theological periwig,” and the eminent historian Jacob Burckhardt who declared Eusebius to be “the most objectionable of all eulogists” and “first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.” The summary judgment of such luminaries has aided the tendency to write off the bishop of Caesarea as a hopeless ideologue. In recent decades, a shift has been underway to recalibrate the picture we have of Eusebius, with robust scholarship arguing in support of his work as an historian and biblical scholar. The aim has been in part to distance Eusebius from Constantine, a proximity that is the source of much of the modern consternation with the bishop, given modernity's own genealogical unease with the relation between religion and politics. Whatever Eusebius's actual relations with the emperor, however, his rhetoric of apparently unequivocal exaltation of Constantine endures. Yet this, too, requires reassessment.

The Soul of the World is based on the Stanton Lectures delivered by Roger Scruton at the University of Cambridge. Much of the book draws upon and elaborates themes developed previously by the author, but in a tone that is “more conversational than scholarly” (vii). This revisiting of familiar themes, however, does not result in a series of rehashed essays carelessly strung together, nor does its tone convey a lack of intellectual rigor. This is not a philosophy-lite text but a carefully crafted and elegant meditation on the prospect of religious belief in the frequently hostile milieu of late modernity.