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"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, con
cerning the word of life -- the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it ...." I John 1:1-2 (RSV)

"After his resurrection the disciples saw the living Christ, whom they knew to have died, with the eyes of faith (oculata fide)." Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, III, 55, 2 ad 1, as quoted in D. M. Stanley, Jesus in Gethsemane (New York, Paulist Press 1980).

Monday, June 22, 2015

Word of God and People of God - Rabbi Sacks

What we call the OT has inspired many, even no-nonsense "unspiritual"  intellectuals like Hobbes:

However, if we look at the “birth of the modern” – at figures like Milton, Hobbes and Locke in England, and the founding fathers of America – the book with which they were in dialogue was not Plato or Aristotle but the Hebrew Bible. Hobbes quotes it 657 times in The Leviathan alone.
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This too is the meaning of Isaiah’s remarkable statement: “You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “that I am God” (Isaiah 43:12). In its collective fate and destiny, Israel will constitute the most compelling evidence of divine involvement in human history. It will reach heights of achievement, and sometimes depths of degradation, that have no counterpart in the fate of other nations. As Tolstoy once wrote, “The Jew is the emblem of eternity.”

Jonathan Sacks,  Covenant and Conversation   Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid Books 2010). Although I am not Jewish, I agree with Rabbi Sacks that the  Hebrew Bible and the history of the Jewish people are compelling evidence of God's involvement in human history. 


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