Heritage

Whoa! Less than a week between posts?  What is this?  What's happeninnnggg?

What's happening? I don't really know.  But things are happening!  Hence, you get to read a few of the things I've been discovering lately and nomming on as I stumble around the blogosphere--what amazing things you find when you follow a theologian's tumblr!

It is significant for our understanding of the nature of the religion of Israel among the religions of the world that meaning for her is derived not from introspection, but from a consideration of the public testimony to God. The present generation makes history their story, but it is first history. They do not determine who they are by looking within, by plumbing the depths of the individual soul, by seeking a mystical light in the innermost reaches of the self. Rather, the direction is the opposite. What is public is made private. History is not only rendered contemporary; it is internalized. One’s people’s history becomes one’s personal history. One looks out from the self to find out who one is meant to be. One does not discover one’s identity, and one certainly does not forge it oneself. He appropriates an identity that is a matter of public knowledge. Israel affirms the given. -Jon Levenson