I've been doing some reading on the first commandment and its appendix on images (the second commandment according to a different division of the Decalogue). It is well known that images of Christ provoke sharp disagreement among Protestants (though you will find none...
E.J. Hutchinson
“Lest the Human Race Die in Despair”: A Poem on Luther for Reformation Day
The great and good celebration of the Festival of the Reformation is coming up this Sunday, and so for this week's "Melanchthon Monday" I offer you a poem Melanchthon wrote about Martin Luther to his son, Martin Luther. The poem deals with the chief themes of the...
The Order of the Commandments
The order of the commandments in the Decalogue has its own inner logic that writers have described in various ways. Below I have translated Johann Gerhard's discussion from the twelfth locus (On the Law of God) of his Loci theologici. This is followed by a long...
Warm Bodies: Another Melanchthonian Prayer Poem
For "Melanchthon Monday" this week, we've got a new poem--another prayer in verse, this time inspired by the creation account in Genesis 1. Melanchthon's poem consists of three elegiac couplets. My version, in eight iambic pentameters, is somewhat expanded. I've...
An Easter Egg in Plato’s Phaedo
I have a longish post I want to write on Plato's Phaedo. This is not that post. This is a different one. When reading Plato's dialogues, it is tempting to identify every view attributed to Socrates as a view of Plato's, and from there to suggest that Plato wished the...
Natural Law, Naturally Known
For this week's "Melanchthon Monday," a short passage on the law of nature, and our natural knowledge of it, that I have translated from the secunda aetas, or "second period," of the Loci communes. I think it is fair to say that it still surprises a lot of people to...
“Light-Conveying Light Eternal”: Another Greek Prayer in Verse
I had a lot of fun working on the Greek poem last week, so this week's "Melancthon Monday" is once again...not Melanchthon. But, Christian humanist that he was, I don't think he would mind. For this installment, I've again translated a poem from the first book of the...
Check Your (Authorial) Privilege
It is reasonable to suggest that the deep roots of the New Criticism--the position that what matters for the critical task is “the text,” not the author, his biography, his historical context, or his intentions; for the text is a closed system to be understood on its...
“O Cosmic King”: A Greek Christian Prayer in Verse
For “Melanchthon Monday” this week I’m calling an audible; there is no Melanchthon at all. Sad, I know. But I have something for you that I hope will still prove worthwhile. Below is a four-line epigram from the Greek Anthology, the first book of which comprises...
The Tragedy of Politics
In his Parallel Lives, Plutarch links Theseus, the legendary King of Athens, with Romulus, the first (legendary?) King of Rome. As is the case with most of the paired Lives, Plutarch offers a comparison at the end. He notes that both Theseus and Romulus were...