Who's Dwelling In Shem's Tent?

"The structure of Genesis 9:25-27 is a heptastich which is divided into three parts by the repeated refrain of Canaan’s servitude, a son of guilty Ham:

                And he said,      

                   Cursed be Canaan;

                   A servant of servants will he be to his brother.

                                                                -Verse 25

                And he said,

                    Blessed be the Lord God of Shem;

                   Let Canaan be a slave to him.

                                                                -Verse 26

                God will enlarge Japhet,

                   But He will dwell in the tents of Shem;

                  Let Canaan be a slave to him

                                                                -Verse 27

Now the key issue is this: Who is the subject of the verb ‘he will dwell’ in Genesis 9:27? We concur with the judgment of the Targum of Onkelos, Philo, Maimonides, Rashi, Aben Ezra, Theodoret, Baumgarten, and Delitzsch that the subject is 'God.' Our reasons are these: (1) the subject of the previous clause is presumed to continue into the next clause where the subject is unexpressed; (2) the use of the indirect object of the previous line as subject (‘Japhet’) would require strong contextual reasons for doing so; (3) the context of the next several chapters designates Shem as the first in honor of blessing; and (4) the Hebrew phrase weyiškōn be’oh°lê šēm, ‘and he will dwell in the tents of Shem,’ hardly makes sense if attributed to Japhet, for Japhet had already been granted the blessing of expansion.

The plan of the whole prophecy appears to devote the first strophe only to Canaan, the second to Shem and Canaan, and the third to all three brothers. On the balance, then, the best option is to regard God as promising to Shem a special blessing. He would dwell with the Semitic peoples. The word for ‘dwell’ is related to the later concept of Mosaic theology of the Shekinah glory of God wherein the presence of God over the tabernacle was evidenced by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Hence, the man Shem would be the one through whom the ‘seed’ promised earlier would now come. Had not God said, 'Blessed be the Lord God of Shem’ (Gen. 9:26)? And why did He use this distinctive form of address? Could it not be that the blessing and indwelling were linked? And could it be that they were God’s next provision to earth’s latest crisis?"

-Walter Kaiser, Toward An Old Testament Theology

A Daily Dose Of The Fathers

"A Year With the Church Fathers: Patristic Wisdom for Daily Living" by Mike Aquilina. Order yours today!

The Most Holy Name Of Mary

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. It commemorates the victory of the Christian forces led by John Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and thus preventing the Muslims from conquering all of Europe. 

Our Lady Exterminatrix of Heresies, Ora Pro Nobis!

The Feast Of Blessed John Henry Newman

John Henry Newman was instrumental to my conversion to Catholicism. He was also very influential in leading others during his lifetime to Holy Mother Church. Here are his stats:

636 English Nobleman.

700 British Clergyman.

1100 of their wives and children.

700 professionals.

612 of these young men became priests.

164 of the women became nuns.

For this reason, it brings me great joy to find out that Newman's feast day will not be celebrated on the date of his death, but rather on the date of his conversion to the Catholic Church, October 9!

Bl. John Henry Newman, the Great Converter, Ora Pro Nobis!

Quote Of The Century

‎"The first duty of every Catholic father to the public school is to keep his children out of it." 

-Paul L. Blakely, S.J.

Mary Guides Us To Truth

“Fides et ratio…desires to recover the face of truth. In Christ, ‘the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face” (§12). Thus while the eternal face of Christ is the answer, Mary’s is our guide. The human search for meaning does have a face, a human face. It is not the face of a monk or a scholar, it is not even the face of an angelic doctor; it is the face of a mother, the Virgin of Nazareth. Mary beckons all humans to know the truth of things: to open themselves up to what is, to give themselves to the direction of the Divine, and to rest in the loving knowledge of God. In this, Mary becomes, for all who yearn to know, the perfect model of created wisdom.”

-David Vincent Meconi, S.J., “Philosophari in Maria: Fides et ratio And Mary As The Model Of Created Wisdom” in The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays On Fides et ratio.

Industrialized Sex Rejected

"We should continuously point out that the term pre-marital sex is an oxymoron. Because sex and marriage both perform the function of uniting a man and a woman into one-flesh, engaging in sexual relations is ontologically indistinguishable from marriage."

That is just one of the gems from Joe Carter's excellent article over at the First Things blog.

The Importance Of Nature In A Theology Of Grace

I love it when Pope Benedict XVI agrees with me! I've long stressed the importance of a proper understanding of nature in order to safeguard a proper understanding of grace. If you allow nature to be swallowed up into grace and say that everything is grace, then you actually cheapen grace. If everything is grace, then nothing is. I feel that this is the mistake of de Lubac, Gilson, et al. Below, Pope Benedict elaborates on the consequences of not having a firm foundational concept of nature for grace to build upon, elevate, and perfect:

“There is...a theological concealment of the concept of creation…[where] nature is undermined for the sake of grace; it is robbed of its belongings and gives way, so to speak, before grace. Here we should recall the crucial text of 1 Corinthians 15:46: ‘It is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual’ (RSV). There is a series of stages that must not be absorbed into a monism of grace. I believe that we must develop a Christian pedagogy that accepts creation and gives concrete expression to these two poles of the one faith. We must never try to take the second step before the first: first the physical, then the spiritual. If we skip this sequence, creation is denied, and grace is deprived of its foundation.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’

The Ten Commandments: An Echo Of The Creation

“The words ‘God said’ appear ten times in the creation account. In this way the creation narrative anticipates the Ten Commandments. This makes us realize that the Ten Commandments are, as it were, an echo of the creation; they are not arbitrary inventions for the purpose of erecting barriers to human freedom but signs pointing to the spirit, the language, and the meaning of creation; they are a translation of the language of the universe.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’

Hermeneutics Of Biblical Theology

“Biblical theology will always remain an endangered species until the heavy-handed methodology of imaginary source criticism, history of tradition, and certain types of form criticism are arrested. …Consequently, the suddenness of the description of the Creation, the Fall of  the first human couple, the universal extent of the Abrahamic promise, the priesthood of all Israel, or Isaiah’s depiction of  the new heaven and the new earth ought not to startle us and be judged as impossible. Only the embarrassment of an overly refined spirit of modernity would feel obliged by some prior commitment to a philosophical principle or to a sociology of knowledge to adjudge such textual claims as impossible even before they were found guilty on the grounds of accepted canons of evidence.”

-Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology.