Mark S. Massa’s The Structure of Theological Revolutions: How the Fight Over Birth Control Transformed American Catholicism is a study on two levels. On one level, it is a study of the responses of select American moral theologians to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on contraception, Humanae vitae (hereafter, HV). On another level, it is a second-order reflection on these theological responses, using them as data, as it were, for a theory about how theology changes or does not change over time. The book certainly succeeds on the first level. I am not sure, however, that that success translates easily to the second level. To the extent that it is possible, I would like to work with these levels successively, even if, for Massa, the two are accomplished simultaneously, since the narration of the “brilliance” (passim) of the individuals treated is tied to the narration of how each of them radically broke with the paradigm of natural law that Massa claims is enshrined in HV.

The place of interfaith dialogue in Orthodox Judaism has been the subject of extensive discussion. This article offers a reading of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's and Rabbi Irving Greenberg's stances on interfaith dialogue that situates them in a Jewish philosophical context. Some scholars have argued that Soloveitchik's refusal to engage in Jewish-Christian theological dialogue must be understood historically; others have argued that his opposition to such dialogue must be understood halakhically. This article, building upon the view articulated by Daniel Rynhold in his 2003 article that Soloveitchik's stance on interfaith dialogue must be understood philosophically, posits that in order for Soloveitchik's stance on interfaith dialogue to be fully understood, it should be studied bearing in mind the influence of Hermann Cohen upon Soloveitchik's religious philosophy. This article, which demonstrates the direct influence of Franz Rosenzweig upon aspects of Greenberg's thought, further argues that in order for Greenberg's stance on interfaith dialogue—as well as his interfaith theology—to be completely grasped, his positions upon these theological matters must be studied with the awareness of Franz Rosenzweig's influence upon his thought. The reading offered in this article of Cohen and Soloveitchik and of Rosenzweig and Greenberg does not purport to minimize the irreconcilable differences between these thinkers; nonetheless, it believes that the substantial resemblances—and, in the case of Rosenzweig and Greenberg, the direct influence—between the views of Christianity held by these pairs of figures are significant and suggest a reconsideration of the role of philosophy in the story of American Jewish theology.

This article argues that Henry David Thoreau believed in the essential unity of the five senses and privileged each as a source of wild and divine knowledge, which, when combined, created a full picture that might result in a true approximation of God in and beyond nature—the hallmark of Thoreau’s fundamentally incarnational theology. Thoreau treated each sense not only as a source of divine knowledge but as a site of theological discourse: for touch, the relationship between sin and grace; for smell, the conundrum of an eternal divinity acting in historical time; for taste, the efficacy of sacraments; for hearing, the possibility of continuing revelation; and for sight, the ability for human beings to actually see God. The senses were the practical entry point to Thoreau’s theological system, which was concerned with the discovery and redemption of internal “wildness” and reconnection to the mysterious, divine source of that wildness, to the unaccountable in nature.

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose (CA) owns a small but important collection of unpublished Coptic papyri and parchments. One notable papyrus preserves a unique text in which the practitioner invokes an unnamed female figure to help a woman protect her “purity,” “virginity,” and “marriage.” Although the specific context behind the text is not altogether clear and the appeal for virginity in marriage is curious and without parallel in other magical texts, one possibility is to see the text in light of the Christian practice of celibate marriage whereby a male and female entered into a non-sexual marriage.

Edward L. Greenstein, who has recently published a most accomplished translation of the biblical book of Job, gives an indication of the extent of the labor required to produce such a translation: “I have been deeply engaged by the challenges of the book of Job—its themes, literary affiliations, language, and poetics—for over four decades” (xvii). That Greenstein has more than endured what he rightly characterizes as “this intimate endeavor” (xvii), including especially “the painstaking work of original philological investigation” (xviii), demonstrates that he is not only a long-suffering “scholar of difficult language” but indeed a “lover of words,” and of the work of words (ix). Further proof of his love lies in the stated altruism of his goals (xvii). He has aimed “to make good sense of the text of Job” and “to convey something of the text’s poetics” (x, xxxvi). That is, he has tried to recreate in English something of the theological and literary genius of the ancient Joban writers, better than others have done previously. And fellow students of Job and lovers of words, including the present author, owe a debt of gratitude to Greenstein for his labor of love and this work of translation. For, true to his goals, the still enigmatic biblical book begins to make (stunning) good sense and, here and there, lays bare more of its (sinuous) literary genius in Greenstein’s new translation.1