One of the more intriguing developments in Protestant theology over the past several decades has been the increasing interest in recovering a doctrine of theosis (or deification) for the contemporary church.1 In nearly every branch of the Protestant tree, theologians are making a case for theosis as integral to their theological tradition. There are proposed projects for Lutheran,2 Wesleyan,3 Reformed,4 and distinctively Evangelical5 accounts of theosis, all of which attempt to ground theosis within the overarching model of salvation that their given backgrounds affirm. In light of this, it is not surprising that Jonathan Edwards is touted as a key resource. More surprising is how little is written on Edwards’s doctrine of theosis as such. Instead, the focal point has been on themes in Edwards’s thought that allow for ecumenical bridge-building.6

Over the past several decades historians have turned a critical eye to the complicity of the German churches in fostering poisonous societal attitudes towards Jews on the eve of the Holocaust.1 Emerging from this research has been the disputed relationship between Christian anti-Judaism and the intense race-based anti-Semitism of the Nazi era. Separating the content and motivation of these two forms of disparagement has allowed Christians to remove themselves from the genocidal equation linked to radical, racist attacks on Jews.2 Susannah Heschel’s The Aryan Jesus tackles this issue by examining the historical backdrop and explicit content of racially motivated attacks on Jews by German Protestants in the years preceding and during the Holocaust. Targeting the Eisenach Institute for the Study and Eradication of Jewish Influence on German Church Life together with the Institute’s leader, Walter Grundmann, her findings may well render obsolete any theoretical dichotomy between religious anti-Judaism and racial anti-Semitism.3

Origen, far from being a precursor of “Arianism,” as he was depicted during the Origenist controversy and is often still misrepresented today, was the main inspirer of the Nicene-Cappadocian line.1 The Trinitarian formulation of this line, which was represented above all by Gregory of Nyssa, is that God is one and the same nature or essence in three individual substances and that the Son is to the Father. Indeed, the three members of the Trinity share in the same 2 This formulation was followed by Basil in his last phase; Didymus, Gregory of Nazianzus from 362 onwards; Evagrius; and numerous later authors.3 Origen himself had already maintained both things: that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have the same but are three different and Gregory of Nyssa closely followed him.4 As I set out to argue, Origen’s thought represented a novel and fundamental theorization with respect to the communality of and the individuality of conceived as individual substances, in the Trinity. He influenced not only subsequent Trinitarian theology, but perhaps even “pagan” Neoplatonism. (Likewise, on the christological side, Annewies van den Hoek5 has insightfully demonstrated the importance of Origen in asking—and endeavoring to answer—the question of the unification of humanity and divinity in Christ, and Origen’s influence on later formulations.)

The difficulties with the red cow ritual have long exercised readers of the book of Numbers. The ritual in Num 19:1–22 describes how cleansing from corpse impurity is to be effected. A red cow is burned in a manner carefully prescribed in order to produce ash. Mixed with water, the ash is then sprinkled upon the corpse-impure individual on the third and seventh day of his or her impurity. To some of the rabbis and many subsequent interpreters, the automatic efficacy of the rite appears to be tantamount to pagan magic. In addition, it has long been observed that the red cow ritual has a number of anomalies when compared to other rituals in the Old Testament. The red cow is designated a “purification offering” 1 but is unlike the purification offerings described in Leviticus 4–5 or, indeed, any other sacrifice: the entire animal, including the blood, is burned outside the camp, and the goal of the ritual is the production of ash for the treatment of future and not past impurity.2 Finally, there is what Jacob Milgrom describes as the “paradox of the red cow”: the red cow ritual makes the pure impure and the impure pure.3

A concise study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant Hebraica does not immediately suggest a provocative contribution to contemporary debates about secularization, religion, and politics. But that is what Eric Nelson’s learned yet accessible book about the Jewish sources of early modern republicanism provides.1 According to Nelson, Professor of Government at Harvard University, the distinctive authority of the Hebrew Republic made possible the Protestant development of three central ideas: republican liberty, care for equality, and religious toleration. Nelson’s rehabilitation of the neglected Christian Hebraism of the late Renaissance and Reformation seeks to challenge historiographies which characterize modern political thought in terms of a rationalist independence from theology. These dominant narratives roughly describe a transition from political theology to political science that excludes religious conviction from political argument.2 Nelson invokes (but does not engage) Mark Lilla’s description of “the Great Separation” of religion and politics as one expression of this threshold of disenchantment.3 He also associates this narrative with figures as diverse as Hans Blumenberg, Leo Strauss, C. B. Macpherson, Michael Oakeshott, John Rawls, and Jonathan Israel. The book, therefore, contributes to scholarship that complicates the primacy of the “Enlightenment” origins and character of Western politics. It also raises complex questions about our relation to these origins. Much like Nelson’s own argument about the way Jewish sources helped reorganize accepted categories, his book opens new spaces for scholarly conversation across multiple fields of study. This review briefly raises normative implications of Nelson’s book for scholars of theology, ethics, and religious studies. I examine stronger and weaker versions of Nelson’s historical narrative as well as his gestures at their implications.