Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen

Solomon Among the Postmoderns

The Baptized Body

1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary

The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter

A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature

Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen

The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism

A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel

Against Christianity

From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution

Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy

Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper

A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament

Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays

Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life

The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

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Hermeneutics: Saussure on languagee and thought

In an article in Poetics Today, Dieter Freundlieb notes that “Saussure argues that ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system’ . . .  While Saussure himself does not specifically address this issue, it seems to follow from his theory that languages ‘carve up’ reality in different ways. How this is done is then entirely arbitrary and simply a matter of relations between units internal to the system.”

That seems right to me, but raises questions about the use of Saussure in biblical studies, where Barr’s challenge to the notion that we can read “worldview” from specific language has been taken to mean that specific languages have no particular effect on the thought of their users.