Some notes on Augustine?s Treatise on the Spirit and the Letter . 1) Augustine treats ?letter?Ein 2 Corinthians as a reference to the law itself, which kills. The law kills, however, in the absence of the Spirit: ?the letter of the law, which teaches us not to commit sin, kills, if the life-giving spirit be absent, forasmuch as it causes sin to be known rather than avoided, and therefore to be increased rather than diminished, because to an evil concupiscence... Read more
Robert Reymond claims in his recent systematic theology that Christ’s righteousness is in heaven and not on earth within the believer: “the Christian’s righteousness before God is in heaven at the right hand of God in Jesus Christ and not on earth within the believer. It means that the ground of our justification is the vicarious work of Christ for us, not the gracious work of the Spirit in us” ( New Systematic Theology , pp. 742-743; emphasis in the... Read more
Tuomo Mannermaa, Christ Present in Faith: Luther’s View of Justification . Translated by Kirsi Stjerna. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005. 136 pp. For the past twenty-five years, Luther scholars in Finland have been pursuing a revisionary account of Luther’s theology in conjunction with ecumenical dialogues with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Luther that emerges from their work is quite different from the Luther of Lutheranism. The Finnish Luther teaches that the righteousness of Christ is ours because the living Christ Himself dwells... Read more
Joachim Latacz, Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery . Translated by Kevin Windle and Rosh Ireland. Oxford University Press, 2004. 342 pp. Since I was a young teenager, a memory has haunted my mind, a memory of something I never saw: A man running around the base of a desolate tell, the tails of his Victorian overcoat madly flapping in the howling wind. The man is Heinrich Schliemann, archeologist, entrepreneur, charlatan, the ostensible founder of the... Read more
Lauren F. Winner, Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity . Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2005. 175 pp. Chastity today has almost exclusively negative connotations. Being chaste is not activity; it is avoiding a certain kind of action. Edmund Spenser saw it differently. In Books 3-4 of Fairie Queene , Spenser gave us characters whose chastity manifested itself as flight, but Spenser considered this pseudo-chastity. His heroine was Britomart, the knight of Chastity, whose quest was not merely to preserve herself... Read more
Earlier this year, the Pacific NW Presbytery of the PCA asked me to summarize my views on a number of points that have become controversial. Here is that summary. As a preliminary, let me say a word about how the Confession functions in my theological work. I accept the Calvinistic covenant theology of the Confession and affirm most of its specific statements. I do not believe that the Confession is, or was intended to be, the final word on any... Read more
John Sutherland offers an analysis of the influence of the late Edward Said on film adaptations of English literature ( TLS , March 18). Said, for instance, argued in Culture and Imperialism , from a couple of passing references to the Betram family’s holdings in Antigua, that Mansfield Park was funded by sugar plantations worked by slaves. “Yes, Jane Austen belonged to a slave-owning society.” When Austen’s novel was made into a film in 1999, director Patricia Rozema gave a... Read more
Jody Bottum’s lengthy piece on “John Paul the Great” (Weekly Standard, April 18) is characteristically insightful and elegant. A couple of Bottum’s points stand out. He describes John Paul’s “star” quality, emphasizing “an obvious and easily triggered sort of joy : the ability to please and the ability to be pleased that combine to make a man seem radiantly alive.” He also emphasizes throughout that John Paul’s great contribution was his refusal, especially in regard to the Soviet bloc, to... Read more
J.A. Gray has far and away the most perceptive review I’ve seen of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead in the March issue of First Things . Gray attends to the gaps and reticence of the narrator, John Ames, pointing out that Ames never mentions the name of his young son, to whom the whole book is addressed, or his second wife, and that Ames leaves hints that his congregation never accepted his second marriage and that he might be secretly, unconsciously relieved... Read more
INTRODUCTION Music, including choral music, has been an important element in worship since the time of David. But what is music for? And what is the choir for? The book of Chronicles gives us answers to these questions. THE TEXT ?So they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it. Then they offered burnt offers and peace offerings before God . . . . And he appointed some... Read more
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