Because of Hezekiah’s prayer (2 Kings 19:14-19), the Lord delivers Jerusalem, kills 185,000 Assyrians, and sends Sennacherib packing back to Nineveh. That’s what one calls an effective prayer. What made it so effective? Among other things, it is firmly based on the promise and word of God. He makes explicit reference to the promise of 1 Kings 8-9 when he asks the Lord to “hear” and “see” what the Rabshakeh has said in the name of Sennacherib. Hezekiah’s presence in... Read more
Because of Hezekiah’s prayer (2 Kings 19:14-19), the Lord delivers Jerusalem, kills 185,000 Assyrians, and sends Sennacherib packing back to Nineveh. That’s what one calls an effective prayer. What made it so effective? Among other things, it is firmly based on the promise and word of God. He makes explicit reference to the promise of 1 Kings 8-9 when he asks the Lord to “hear” and “see” what the Rabshakeh has said in the name of Sennacherib. Hezekiah’s presence in... Read more
According to Oberman, Luther’s great discovery regarding Scripture was not that Scripture alone can be trusted without question and is the final judge of controversy: “the maxim of sola scriptura . . . was the fundamental principle of the entire scholastic disputation tradition.” What Luther discovered instead was that “the Scriptures contain God’s personal communication which cannot be bypassed through an ontological analysis of God’s being,” which is the process he described as theologia gloriae . Read more
According to Oberman, “Luther’s critique of Aristotle concerns the disregard of that fundamental nominalist axioma , the demarcation line between the realms of reason and faith. Provided that this distinction is respected, Aristotle is not merely useful but indeed to be respected. In a Latin sermon probably preached to the Wittenberg confratres on Christmas Day, 1514, Luther formulates this subtle balance beautifully: ‘Pulchra haec Philosophia, sed a paucis intellecta, altissimae Theologiae utilis est.’” The choices for interpretation the Reformation are... Read more
Oberman sees a crucial shift in late medieval theology from God as being to God as person, and sees Luther as both heir and critic of the late medieval theology proper. Without the earlier shift, “the Reformation breakthrough would be inconceivable,” but this does not mean that there is “unbroken continuity between the discovery of God as Person-acting-in-history and Luther’s discovery of the God of covenant and promise.” Luther thus attacks what he views as the Pelagianism of the nominalists,... Read more
Oberman again: “The experience of the [bubonic] plague may in fact help us understand the fifteenth-century ascendency of nominalism, its innovations in the whole field ranging from theology to science, and its successful invasion of schools and universities, where it was firmly established as the via moderna . What must have seemed to conservative Thomists of that time to be a threat to the hierarchy between heaven and earth was actually a fact-finding search for order by demarcating the distinct... Read more
Heiko Oberman notes the impact of cultural history in his posthumously published book, The Two Reformations : “By moving from established politicla history to cultural and mentality studies, historians reestablished the crucial importance of religion, although they frequently marginalized it under the misleading category of popular religion . . . . Whereas Bismarckian Protestantism was dedicated to the Reformation miracle, with its perception of discontinuity, the best of our social historians have been working toward a paradigm of continuity that... Read more
INTRODUCTION Waltke points to links between verses 8-9 and verses 1-2 of the same chapter: Wisdom and folly are contrasted in verses 1 and 8; the image of the “way” is used in both verses; and the term “upright” appears in verse 2 and 9. These links suggests that verses 8-9 begin a new section, but a section that is building on themes already dealt with in the opening seven verses of the chapter. Waltke suggests that the second section... Read more
Notes on Georg Simmel, “Faithfulness and Gratitude,” printed in Kurt H. Wolff, The Sociology of Georg Simmel (Free Press, 1950). 1) Simmel describes faithfulness as “the inertia of the soul.” Less impressionistically, faithfulness is “the peculiar feeling which is not directed toward the possessor’s eudaemonistic good, nor toward the other’s welfare as an extrinsic, objective value, but towards the preservation of the relationship to the other. It does not engender this relationship; therefore, unlike . . . other affects, it... Read more
INTRODUCTION To wind up our discussion of gift, we will cover three large concerns. First, we will examine Milbank’s work, particularly his essay “Can A Gift Be Given?”, to see how he handles the challenges thrown up by Derrida and Marion. Second, we will take some time to think about the different dimensions of a biblical-theology of gift, or a systematic theology of gift, with the idea that every locus of theology can be fruitfully described in terms of gift... Read more
Leithart
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