Why did God create the world in six days? Philo said that 6 is the perfect number, both the sum and the product of its factors, which happen to be the first three integers (1, 2, 3). But there’s more: “We may say that [6] is in its nature both male and female, and is a result of the distinctive power of either. For among things that are, it is the odd that is male and the even female. Now... Read more
For those interested in Reformed political thought, Bill Chellis of De Regno Christi has organized an online discussion of Darryl Hart’s recent book, A Secular Faith . You can find the discussion at a new address: http://deregnochristi.org/2007/03/19/throwing-down-the-gauntlet. Read more
For those interested in Reformed political thought, Bill Chellis of De Regno Christi has organized an online discussion of Darryl Hart’s recent book, A Secular Faith . You can find the discussion at a new address: http://deregnochristi.org/2007/03/19/throwing-down-the-gauntlet. Read more
Muir again: “In [medieval] England taking communion was called ‘taking one’s rights,’ which meant asserting one’s membership in the community, and to suffer excommunication . . . would have meant exclusion from both the universal community of believers and the local community of citizens . . . . Although the ideal of social harmony conveyed in the communion rite may not have been achieved very often in the daily give and take of village life, the occasional ritual experience of... Read more
In the second edition of his book on ritual in the early modern period (Cambridge 2005), Edward Muir describes the 14th and 15th century obsession with “Christ’s carnality”: “As Leo Steinberg has shown, in fifteenth-century Italy thoroughly Christian artists made visual allusions to Christ’s phallus, showing that the god-man had all the attributes of other men. In many paintings the Virgin Mary pointed to the penis of the infant Jesus, and some scenes of the deposition from the cross obviously... Read more
INTRODUCTION Last week, we looked at parents’ responsibility to guard the “inside” of the family from dangerous influences from “outside.” But the family also has a positive relation to the world outside. A healthy family is open in proper ways toward the outside, and is supposed to affect the world outside. THE TEXT “Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh – who are called Uncircumcision by what is called the Circumcision made in the flesh by hands –... Read more
Psalm 128: How blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in His ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the LORD. Some Christians view the Lord’s Table as a place where families gather to... Read more
If you’ve been at Trinity for any length of time, you’ve noticed that many of us kiss each other during the passing of the peace. Why do we do that? The short answer is that the Bible commands it. Five times Paul closes a letter with the exhortation to “greet one another with the kiss of peace.” Few commands are repeated so often. “Love your neighbor as yourself” occurs seven times in the NT, but statistically speaking “greet one another... Read more
In an interview in the March 17 issue of World , Duke’s theologien provocateur Stanley Hauerwas expresses sympathy for the view that killing to protect the innocent is allowable, but refuses to let his sympathy budge him from his pacifist convictions. It is never right to kill “to prevent another from being killed.” If this puts him in uncomfortable position, it’s one he’s williing to accept: “Christian nonviolence is a harsh and dreadful love requiring at times we may have... Read more
The puzzle of the incarnation is often posed as “how could the infinite become finite?” It’s the wrong question. The Son is infinite in all his attributes – His wisdom, power, goodness, truth. But He is not infinite-without-qualification. He is not infinite in the sense that He has no bounds in any sense. As soon as we call Him Son, we are saying He has a Father; and as soon as we say “the Father is God, and the Son... Read more
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