Starting from Dennis T. Olson’s suggestion of the theme of the change of generations as the key to a theological interpretation, this chapter deepens the analysis of this theme and considers how Numbers addresses questions of sin, God’s “visiting the iniquity” on the third to fourth generation, and the possibility of forgiveness of sin.

Starting from the murmuring stories of Numbers (and Exodus), this chapter shows how questions of punishment, responsibility, and intention plays into the book’s treatment of the motif of murmuring.

The Conclusion focuses on the book’s principal arguments and offers thoughts for further reflection. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Macrina the Younger treat the devil as a live enemy in their midst. The devil is central to their respective theological projects and to their visions of the Christian life, appearing in one form or another across the full breadth of their corpora. They utilise a range of biblical, philosophical, theological, and spiritual resources as they respond to the enemy of salvation and as they teach the church to do the same. Reflection on the devil is not simply a strategy for explaining the problem of evil in the world—the devil himself is the problem.

Chapter 6 looks at the ways in which frenzy was weaponized during the many religio-political upheavals of the period. As a figure of speech, it offered rich material for English polemicists, who knew that questioning their opponents’ sanity was more effective than simply refuting their claims. As a literal diagnosis, frenzy also had a practical use: it could silence politically inconvenient people without making a show. This chapter shows how its conferral was used to justify the incarceration of prophets, mystics, and kings. Yet the diagnosis had one serious drawback: it gave its recipients the gift of innocence. Frantic persons were incapable of crime, and could neither be convicted nor punished for their actions. If a recipient later became not just inconvenient but too dangerous to live, any previous diagnosis – no matter how spurious – had to be redacted from the record. This was a problem for the religious polemicists too: the aim was to pathologize ‘heretics’ ‘papists’, ‘puritans’, and ‘sectarians’, not to excuse them from all wrongdoing. Eventually, this chapter argues, that flaw drove Anglican polemicists to abandon frenzy for a new diagnosis: ‘melancholy enthusiasm’.

Taking the biblical parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32) and the “penitential Psalms” as sites for late antique and early medieval investigations of the effect of sin on the self, this chapter proposes that exegetes saw the self as malleable and permeable.  Commentaries and sermons framed the self as sinful but salvageable.  Changing views of agency, responsibility, and remedies produced shifts in representations of communal interests and penitential interpretations of well-known scriptural texts.  Protections against the penetrations and deformations of sin were erected in liturgical rituals and communal prayer.  The universal stain of sin fostered a porous relation between the individual and the community, each bound to the other in a metaphysical, corporate entity encasing all selves.  Christian views of individual autonomy created as well a spatial expanse of the individual interior in which the soul could wander, even become lost.  Emerging from that grim void to salvation was to grasp a lifeline of the penitential words of others, sung in concert, in an activation of universal memory, to transform the self into a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem.

This chapter considers how, between the mid twelfth and the mid thirteenth century, the theme of free will was addressed according to two major lines of investigation: on the one hand, that of the relationship between free will and the different powers of the soul; and on the other hand, the idea that free will should be understood as a process divided into several steps.

This chapter traces basic contours of early scholastic Atonement theories from 1150 to 1250, which integrated insights from Augustine and Anselm on the objective work of Atonement with Abelard's attention to the subjective dimensions of Atonement.

The chapter rethinks the message and purpose 1 John. It casts the epistle as the vehicle of a radical perfectionist theology, in which those “born of God” “do not sin” – a view with parallels in ancient Jewish and Christian thought.

This chapter consists of two parts. The brief first part provides an overview of some of the main issues connected with sin that were discussed by early scholastic theologians. The second part focuses on the problem of the source of evil actions: are they 'from God' or 'from humans or the devil'?

This chapter discusses the centuries-old discourses that condemned merchants as greedy, duplicitous, and usurious predators and damned commerce as a threat to the common good. It also, however, introduces the arguments that emerged during the Middle Ages (mostly from Scholastics) in defense of commerce and merchants themselves, and it traces the signs of a lightening of the attacks on merchants as we enter the period of study in this book.

Finnegans Wake and confession, in both secular and religious contexts, are each examined through the lens of the other. The aim is to ‘de-confuse’ the fusion, thrice repeated in the Wake, of ‘confession’ and ‘confusion’. Eight observations are illustrated through close reading: i) confession directs the text in two chapters, Shem’s in I.7 and HCE’s in II.3; ii) both present as public not private confessions; iii) there is no auricular confession; iv) widespread inadvertent confessions found in the Wake’s ‘fallen’ language, supposedly Freudian slips, are a source of sense-making power; v) any confession is always a qualified confession – blame is always dispersed; vi) there is no torture leading to involuntary confession; vii) the book doesn’t operate within the tradition of classical confessional texts; viii) it knows that confession split Christianity and projects that split onto the dialectical operations of the narrative. The chapter argues for the productive and overlooked potential of ‘syntagmatic’ or narrative approaches that read the text as sequential form, and it suggests that the plurality of narratives undermines theoretical generalizations of the human as ‘a confessing animal’.

Atonement is a critical component of the cultic system described in Leviticus 1–7 and 16. Purification of sin and thanksgiving offerings shape the worship of Israel. This chapter describes the theology of sacrifice and atonement in Leviticus, the specific offerings, and how atonement has been interpreted by later commentators.

The Lost Sheep parable’s straying sheep are comparable to Joseph when he wandered in the wilderness in search of his brothers, who treated him badly. Although Joseph later acted on his own vengeful feelings against the brothers, joyful reconciliation ensued, the positive moment being reflected in the parable. The Lost Coin parable puzzlingly associates a woman’s joy at finding a lost coin in her home with a call for repentance for sin. Evoked are developments in the Judah and Tamar story that include questionable behavior on both their parts and resulted in the birth of Perez, ancestor of Jesus.

The Joseph story has money the brothers paid for grain surreptitiously returned to their sacks, in some sense a loan only but, as it turned out, an act concealing a gift, which led to reconciliation. Topics in the Two Debtors parable covering debt, sin, and forgiveness rework these features of the Joseph story.

The Barren Fig Tree parable is modeled on features of the famine in Egypt to portray the imminent coming of God’s kingdom. The dying tree and dead earth beneath, reminiscent of threatening conditions during the Egyptian famine in Joseph’s time, evoke the prospect of the end of the world in Jesus’ time.