1 Timothy 3:16: By common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed in the flesh, was vindicated in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. As Pastor Wilson has emphasized this morning, pagan civilizations are essentially satanic, founded on accusation and scapegoating. Pagan civilizations are unified against a common enemy, the one guilty man who must die for the sake of the people. Once the... Read more
What is the cross? For John, the cross is not the humiliation of the Son. The cross is His glorification. Jesus told Nicodemus that the Son of Man would be lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness. Jesus was referring to the event recorded in Numbers when Moses put a bronze serpent on a pole to heal Israelites who had been bitten by poisonous snakes. But Jesus was also alluding to Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man. (more…) Read more
In a couple of books, David deSilva interprets the letter to the Hebrews in terms of Greco-Roman clientage and patronage systems. I have my suspicions about social-science interpretations of the NT, but deSilva’s work is illuminating. In a brief study of honor and shame in Hebrews, he writes that “The bond between client and patron, or, one should add, between friends who share mutual beneficence, is thus truly the strongest bond in Greco-Roman society. Where the sanctity of gratitude is... Read more
Far from destroying ancient notions of moral luck (the notion that we must have good fortune to be ethically good), or following Stoicism in pulling back the moral into the inner soul, Christianity, in Milbank’s view, “embraces moral luck to such an extreme degree that it transforms all received ideas of the ethical.” Summarizing John Bowlin’s work on Thomas’ ethic, Milbank says that Christianity “generalizes and extends moral luck as providential grace and so offers good fortune to all. The... Read more
In an essay in Being Reconciled , Milbank describes postmodernity as “dissolving of fixed limits” in several respects: “(1) the blurring of the nature/culture divide; (2) the merging of public and private; (3) the mode of the information economy; and (4) economic and political globalization.” He argues that “postmodernity, like modernity, [is] a kind of distorted outcome of energies first unleashed by the Church itself.” Postmodernism in particular as the “obliteration of boundaries” is a distortion of the initial energies... Read more
Tertullian wrote “The Passover provides the day of most solemnity for baptism, for then was accomplished our Lord’s baptism, and into it we are baptized . . . After that, Pentecost is a most auspicious period for arranging baptisms, for during it our Lord’s resurrection was several times made known among the disciples, and the grace of the Holy Spirit first given . . . . For all that, every day is a Lord’s day: any hour, any season, is... Read more
The sequence of assertions in Titus 3:5-7 is intriguing: God saved us according to His mercy By the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Spirit poured out on us through Jesus So that being justified by grace We might be heirs of eternal life. Let’s stipulate that the “washing” is baptismal. What’s intriguing here is not only that the washing is connected to the gift of the Spirit of Jesus, but also that the gift of the Spirit... Read more
Paul determined to know nothing but Jesus and the cross. Was that enough? To answer that question, we need to answer another: What is the cross? The cross is the work of the Father, who gave His Son in love for the world; the cross is the work of the Son, who did not cling to equality with God but gave Himself to shameful death; the cross is the work of the Spirit, through whom the Son offers Himself to... Read more
DG Hart gives this summary of Nevin’s views on the church as ark: “In Nevin’s scheme Christian salvation played out really and concretely in history, in the form of the church, and ways not simply an abstract covenant transacted in the Godhead before all time. With Christ and his presence in the church, a ‘new order of life’ had entered human history. As such, those who were baptized into the church stood ‘in correspondence with the powers of a higher... Read more
It has become common among NT scholars to insist that Jesus was crucified by the Romans. This is certainly true in the sense that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, and also highlights the important political dimension of Jesus’ death. It is also true, as the hymn expresses it, “I crucified Thee.” But the apostles were not squeamish about blaming the Jews, specifically the Jewish leaders, for Jesus’ death: (more…) Read more
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