Second Blessing

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

In his study of Matthew’s five-discourse structure, BW Bacon mentions commentators who connect the miracles of Matt 8-9 with the ancient idea that there were 10 plagues, 10 miracles by the sea, and 10 miracles in the sanctuary. His main reasin for disputing this interpretation is that the sequence, in his mind, should end with the raising of Jairus’ daughter, since that’s the greatest of miracles. But Matthew, clumsily and as a kind of “afterthought,” includes two additional miracles. Exactly... Read more

The Use of Patristic Exegesis

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Dale Allison notes that Matthew “stipulates that it be interpreted in the context of other texts. This means that it is, in a fundamental sense, an incomplete utterance, a book full of holes. Readers must make present what is absent; they must become actively engaged and bring to the gospel knowledge of what it presupposes, that being a pre-existing collection of interacting texts, the Jewish Bible. The First Gospel is a mnemonic device, designed, to use the current jargon, to... Read more

Jesus and his enemies

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

The Jewish scholar GC Montefiore wrote: “What one would have wished to find in the life-story of Jesus would be one single incident in which Jesus actually performed a loving deed to one of his Rabbinic antagonists or enemies. That would have been worth all the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount about the love of enemies put together . . . .But no such deed is ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels. Towards his enemies, towards those who... Read more

Nyssa on perfection

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

Gregory of Nyssa writes in his Life of Moses: “one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit . . . .Why? Because no good has any limit.” And in his treatise on perfection, he’s more expansive: “one ought not to be distressed when one considers this tendency (toward mutability) in our nature; rather let us change in such a way that we may constantly evolve towards what is better, being transformed from glory to glory, and... Read more

Justification and the Gentiles

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

It’s not a new insight with me, but it came home with particular force recently: Paul says in Romans 3:28 that “we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of Torah.” To suppoose the point, he asks two rhetorical questions, the first expecting a negative and the second a positive answer: “Or is God [the God] of Jews only? Is He not [the God] of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also.” These questions assume... Read more

David Grows Up

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:52 pm By Peter Leithart

David’s house dies and rises again several times in 1-2 Kings: After Athaliah kills the royal seed, Joash rises from the temple; after Samaria falls, the Lord saves Judah from Assyria through Hezekiah’s prayer; after Nebuchadnezzar takes Judah into exile, Jehoiachin is taken from prison and set at the king’s table. Each time the house of David goes through a death and resurrection, David’s house matures, and each death and resurrection takes the house of David a step further than... Read more

Truth

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:50 pm By Peter Leithart

In his recent Simply Christian , NT Wright offers this clever retort to skeptical relativism: “Saying ‘It’s true for you’ sounds fine and tolerant. But it only works because it’s twisting the word ‘true’ to mean, not ‘a true revelation of the way things are in the real world’ but ‘something that is genuinely happening inside you.’ In fact, saying ‘It’s true for you’ in this sense is more or less equivalent to saying ‘It’s not true for you, because... Read more

What’s Church For?

Last updated on: July 30, 2006 at 7:05 am By Peter Leithart

According to an AOL report, Greg Boyd has lost 1000 members of his church because he has refused to promote conservative political causes. According to the report, “he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing ‘God Bless America’ and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.” Who wouldn’t be alarmed at this Baalist conflation of God and country? But... Read more

What’s Church For?

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Father of the Prodigal

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

The Pharisees are the surly elder brother in Jesus’ parable, and surely they expected that the father would be equally surly – greeting his returned son with harsh rebukes and scolding rather than with joy. How did they miss it? Israel’s whole history demonstrated the opposite. Israel’s history revealed Israel’s God as the Father of the prodigal, waiting eagerly for the first sign of his wandering son, ready to break into dancing and singing as soon as Israel appeared on... Read more