Top Highlights

• Cicero may offer a pretty good definition in his book On Friendship when he describes friendship as “accord in all things, human and divine, conjoined with mutual goodwill and affection.”* But the Roman philosopher did not know Christ, and Christians recognize that “accord in all things” is found only in Christ: “Friendship must begin in Christ*, c...
• In the case of the gnostic impulse, this is rather obvious, and generally not a matter of dispute: second-century gnostics treated creation as a fall from the eternal, divine fullness (plērōma), and this identification of creation as evil made gnostics…
• the basic concern is the literal or historical meaning of the text.
• Lectio divina simply means reading the Bible the way it’s supposed to be read—as divine Scripture.
• Origen’s point is that holy books call for holy reading; divine books require divine reading.