The Regions Beyond: Traveling to Solidarity
I know many of you have travel plans now, graduates. Let me however think with you about a different kind of journey. The Berkeley Divinity School motto is usually translated as "into the regions beyond," but the classicists among you will know that there's nothing about "regions" in those five Latin words in illa quae ultra sunt ; The original Greek of 2 Corinthians 10:16 from which it derives likewise refers just to something, or things, "beyond." In context, Paul is here grumbling, in a sort of passive aggressive apostolic way, about a group of competing leaders who had gained sway over the Corinthian Church. It is part of a passage that uses images of space and place metaphorically as well as literally "we will not boast beyond limits but will keep within the field that God has assigned to us, to reach out even as far as you. For we were not overstepping our limits when we reached you; we were the first to come all the way to you with the good...
