History and Dogma

A special, holiday-themed episode.

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https://jordandanielwood.substack.com/p/on-ghosts

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/article/when-did-daimones-become-demons-revisiting-septuagintal-data-for-ancient-jewish-demonology/01B785D690E3991E86CA0466D0346D1A

Jordan and Charles sail into the Victorines, that 12th-century community of theologians whose foundational work at St. Victor’s Abbey shaped Christian reading for centuries. They talk the “quadriga,” the layered method of exegesis that sees Scripture first as history, then allegory, moral insight, and mystical vision. But they go further, exploring how Hugh of St. Victor built on the literal sense — history’s jagged, half-submerged stones — by fitting to it a second foundation of spiritual meaning.

OMNIA DISCE!

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Fr. John Behr's lecture mentioned in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWnckNR3tmY

Your hosts set their hair on fire and leap into Paul's letter to the Galatians thanks to Jordan's idiosyncratic translation of the same. We learn that prepositions are the key to cosmic transformation, but only if they are filled with Spirit.

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Translation: https://jordandanielwood.substack.com/p/paul-to-the-galatians

Your hosts dig into Gregory of Nyssa like babes in a garden —only to find they’ve stumbled upon a mountain. Or have they plummeted into an ocean? Do metaphors mean anything at all?

Gregory’s essay on biblical interpretation distills the patristic allegorical approach while his vision of divine ascent is hazy with nuptial wine: the soul’s journey to God is not only an enlightening but also an erotic union.

With Origen hovering like a familiar ghost and Song of Songs as the textual vineyard, your hosts light some candles in Nyssa.

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We discussed the text in this edition with a new translation and notes: Richard A. Norris, Gregory of Nyssa: Homilies on the Song of Songs (SBL)

Charles talks with Jordan about two pieces he recently wrote: "Virtue and Vice as True and False Incarnation" in The Other Journal and "Fides quarens Fidem: A Premature Reflection on Teaching Theology Today" in an edited volume. Along the way: conservative and progressive pedagogy, Apple worshiping Mother Nature, Maximus, why and precisely how Jordan and Charles suck, and much more.

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Jordan and Charles intro a new podcast by talking about their friendship, their conversions to Catholicism, their frustrations with easy historicism and easy dogmatism, and Blondel's clarion call to grasp both history and dogma under the auspices of a person who, they all three think, is the enfleshed Logos and the living ground of any meaningful concept of tradition. NO THIN GRUEL!

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