Joseph Kronick

Louisiana State University, English, Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Public Views

Address: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States

less

Joseph Carroll

University of Missouri - St. Louis

Andrea Peto

Central European University

Giulia Sissa

Ucla

Manfred Malzahn

United Arab Emirates University

Tim Youngs

Nottingham Trent University

Timothy Morton

Rice University

João Pedro Gomes

Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra

Claudia Montero

Universidad de Valparaiso

Viacheslav Kuleshov

Stockholm University

Antonio Donizeti da Cruz

Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná

InterestsView All (6)

Uploads

Papers by Joseph Kronick

The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes IV-VI, 1892-1918

South Atlantic Review, May 1, 1990

Zukofsky, Louis (1904-1978), poet and critic

Lindsay, Vachel (1879-1931), writer

American poetics of history : Emerson and the moderns

The Poet in the Poem

Jon M. Sweeney, ed., Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essential Spiritual Writings

Christianity & Literature, 2018

hope, just like faith, is a personal link with the personal God'' (78). And this God who is, not ... more hope, just like faith, is a personal link with the personal God'' (78). And this God who is, not just my Father, but our Father, loves us and desires our love. As Chre´tien reads certain verses of Saint Paul, he renders clear our penchant to treat God as some sort of given: ''no more than we can presently see God face to face can we catch red-handed, dare we say, his present action in us, and catch hold of it as an empirical datum that we can manipulate'' (84). Such a perception does not, in the end, grasp what hope signifies or for what it desires, groans for, ''intimacy with God.'' The eighth essay delves into the meaning of testimony, witnessing in the New Testament, especially in the Gospel of John. Noting that the word testimony does not itself exist in that Gospel, he goes on to examine the witness that Christ claims for himself, that he is the light of the world. ''One may deny that Jesus is the light, that is to say, that he is the Christ, but the light is by definition what has no need of another witness for itself'' (87). Chre´tien draws upon Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Rahner, with whom he disagrees, to come to some sense of what Christian testimony is. And Chre´tien reminds his readers that the witness does not make the testimony, but the testimony the witness. He calls to mind Saint Peter, a fragile man, who denied Christ three times. A chapter rich in nuance, it tells of the relation of future time to witnessing, of the role of the Spirit, necessary for there to be any true witnessing. The reader may think that coming to some sense of a meaning regarding testimony is to be resolved in the higher spheres of thought. Not so, as Chre´tien writes: ''It is the essence of testimony to be able to be stricken, wounded, mistreated, via the witness who bears it'' (98). Witnessing thus claims the entire individual, sometimes his life, and most frequently his voice. And a voice is heard, but not in a vacuum, for there will be, Chre´tien reminds us, counter testimonies. This will come not only from others, from the lies that will arise, but from our own falseness. ''The very example of Peter and Paul shows that the false witness dwells first within ourselves'' (102). Witnessing to Christ today thus calls upon many witnesses, as it did in the past. The title of this book is an invitation to look again at certain words of the Bible and to do so through the very understanding, the witness, to which Chre´tien adds his voice. Let us be grateful to the translator of this short book for encouraging us to read ourselves in relation to the Bible and in relation to the testimony, in word and in act, which it has evoked through the person of Jesus.

Directory

Joseph Kronick

Uploads

Papers by Joseph Kronick

Log In