The philosopher and essayist James Mumford (and yes, for those who have heard the rumor, he is the brother of Marcus Mumford of Mumford & Sons fame) recently interviewed me for an article he was writing. The chief topic was the second edition of my translation of the New Testament, and the conversation ranged over a broad variety of topics: the absence of any opposition between grace and nature in the Apostle Paul's thought, as of any opposition between nature and supernature; the social teachings of Jesus in the synoptics, and how thoroughly obscured they can become in traditional translations; the myth of a fallen archangel called Lucifer; the nature of the Logos in the fourth gospel; the meaning of "koinōnia" in the New Testament; the "new perspective" on Paul; the eschatology of the synoptics; universalism; allegorical exegesis; Thomists and fundamentalists; the nature of inspiration in "inspired" texts; and so forth and so on. I thought it a fairly rich exchange for so brief a conversation.
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Besides being Marcus Mumford's brother, I assume this is the same James Mumford who wrote that excellent article for TNA about psychiatry not taking transcendental goodness seriously and the implications for treating depression (esp. of the spiritual kind)?
“You can acknowledge all that and still believe that it is a living growing changing community of witness trying to remember an event that is intrinsically ineffable but that has effects that can be experienced both historically and personally. That's to say there is an authority there but it's a communal authority and it's an authority that just cannot be reduced to propositional claims, simple propositional claims, much less claims of inabrogable institutional magisterial authority.”
Those remarks took me back to Tradition and Apocalypse… the closing sentences of that (exciting) book really are quite wonderful.
Thank you.