Articles varia
- PÉRÈS Jacques-Noël - On ne donne pas de viande hachée au lion. L’enseignement théologique au miroir des Anciens
- HIMBAZA Innocent - « Lekh-lekha » L’appel à Abraham en Genèse 12,1 et les tournures parallèles
- MOREL Priscille - La notion de justice dans l’Évangile de Matthieu : une approche narrative
- ASSAËL Jacqueline - La mort au pluriel ou la mort dans l’âme Sur le pluriel de thanatos en 2 Co 1,10 dans le papyrus 46 et les manuscrits en minuscule
An Ethiopian proverb urging not to serve minced meat to the lion exemplifies the relationship that any education system establishes between master and pupil. The image applies to both: the master is called to provide his pupils with a food nutritive enough for their training ; the pupil is called to be reasonably watchful and alert in order to be justly appraised by the master. As he retires from work after several decades of teaching as a patristic scholar and a Lutheran pastor, professor emeritus Jacques-Noël Pérès reflects on what he learned from his masters and meditates on his own teaching experience at the Institut protestant de Théologie in Paris. He describes it as an attempt to become a joyful master by honoring the legacy of the Church Fathers and the Reformers while remaining attentive to the needs and questions of the present times. He stresses thereby that sciences are not antagonistic to faith, that theologians have still much to learn from the ancients, and how enjoyable it is to teach.
At first, the call to Abraham is formulated surprisingly in Hebrew. His appearance reflected that it is often described as an invitation to a search for self. However, the observation of other Old Testament occurrences shows firstly that this turn « lekh-lekha » (goes to you) is common, and on the other it is used in various contexts . The philological approach led by Innocent Himbaza that specifically examines its literal meaning, reveals that this turn strengthens the link between the acting person and the action it should perform. This is a stimulation of the subject to perform the action conveyed by the verb.
What does Matthew mean by the word righteousness, which translates dikaiosunê? Priscille Morel examines this central notion of Matthew’s theology in the light of several passages of his Gospel, most notably 3:17, 5:20, and 21:32. The reader of the First Gospel discovers that Jesus gives full power of life to justice on the occasion of John’s baptism, that without justice the heavenly Kingdom cannot be entered, and that it is by way of baptism that justice is received. While the quest for justice is an ongoing process, the end of the Gospel provides the reader with the clues that allow him or her to grasp what is at stake: in its very narrative, Matthew’s Gospel is meant both to report and produce a change of mind, a true metanoia.
In the oldest textual witness of 2 Corinthians 1:10 (papyrus 462), and in some manuscripts in minuscule style as well as in the interpretations of Origen and John Chrysostom, it is said that God rescued Paul and his fellows from several deaths (èk tèlikoutôn thanatôn). This puzzling wording is abandoned in most recent translations, which mention but one single death. Jacqueline Assaël argues that Paul does talk about several episodes of psychological death conceived as hindrances in the way of a spiritual life restored by God.
Dossier
- CUVILLIER Élian - Lire et interpréter Jean 11 au XXIe siècle (Avant-propos)
- CUVILLIER Élian - Tombe, excellent état, vue vie imprenable. Une lecture de Jean 11
- FIEVET Didier - Prêter chair à l’absence ?
- ISENMANN Pierre - « Celui que voilà était mort et il est revenu à la vie » La résurrection de Lazare au prisme de l’expérience psychanalytique
- ANTIER Guilhen - « Le dernier ennemi qui sera détruit, c’est la mort » Le christianisme est-il un transhumanisme ?
This article aims at an interpretation of John 11 that respects both the text as it stands, and the rationality of a reader well-versed in the critical approach to biblical texts. After pointing out the main difficulties of the text, the author underlines some of the dead-ends to be avoided in the process of interpretation. Three interpretation keys are suggested, as well as a synchronic reading of the text. Finally, the author considers what happens to Lazarus afterwards in the Johannine narrative. There is no world other than that in which the reader/listener lives, and this is the world in which authentic Life can be experienced; thus Lazarus becomes a metaphor for a possible reality, for anyone who truly listens to the narrative of his resurrection.
Echoing Elian Cuvillier’s exegesis of John 11, Didier Fiévet reads the story in a pastoral care perspective in which the character of Lazarus instantiates at once the reader and the bereaved community. The story invites the reader to dismiss any ontological or metaphysical continuum between life and death, to acknowledge the radicalness of death, but also to give flesh to the absence, i.e. the relation death has suddenly deprived of its mask, the persona. In this process faith welcomes an advent, the tears of Christ, God’s gift of God’s humanity.
In the wake of E. Cuvillier’s commentary of John 11, Pierre Isenmann suggests that the story of the encounter between Jesus and the sisters of Lazarus (John 11) opens the way for other encounters. Like Christ (in John 9), psychoanalysis is not meant to explain death, but to connect it to life. What opens to the true encounter is not a theological compendium but the tears of Jesus touched by Mary’s despair. The question of the resurrection concerns each character at the very place of their meeting. Between consent and refusal, there is a way to play dead in order not to die.
In this essay Guilhen Antier opposes the New Testament topic of the « resurrection from the dead » to the transhumanist project of eliminating death. Paying special attention to Paul’s concepts of death and life (1 Corinthians 15; Romans 7), interpreted in the light of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis as well as Luther’s and Irenaus’s theologies, he shows the issue at stake to be the very question of what makes humans human.