1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
So here's mine. This was the book at hand (I'm at work so I didn't even have a chance to pick a "cool" book from my shelves. I suppose I could have used one of the medical texts here at work, but no, I'm not typing up a paragraph of medical jargon about catscans of lesions of the lung). This particular book was in my bag because I need to copy two chapters to distribute to my students. The three sentences from page 123 in the book make up a full paragraph in the text:
This more fully anticipatory side of Christianity bore resemblance to certain dominant elements of Judaism, which thereby continued to structure the Christian vision. The experience of evil pervading man and nature, the deep alienation between human and divine, the sense of grimly waiting for a definitive sign of God's redeeming presence in the world, the need for fastidious adherence to the Law, the attempt to preserve a pure and faithful minority against incursions from a hostile and contaminating environment, the expectation of an apocalyptic punishment--all these elements of the Judaic sensibility emerged anew in the Christian understanding. That tone of religious vision was, in turn, reinforced and given a new context by the continued delay of Christ's Second Coming, and by the Church's historical and theological evolution accompanying that delay.
Richard Tarnas
The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View
You're it.
