Mark 11:15-16: ?And He entered the temple and began to cast out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves, and He would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple.?E We saw in the sermon this morning that Jesus?Eaction in the temple was a symbolic enactment of the coming destruction of the temple. The Jewish leaders had turned what should have... Read more
People often cling to familiar and comfortable things even when they know that clinging to the past will destroy them. Remember Lot?s wife: When fire falls from heaven and starts burning your town, that?s a strong hint it?s time to leave. Yet, Lot?s wife yearned for the doomed world she should have been leaving, and died with it. The Jews of Jesus?Etime had same mentality, as fanatical as contemporary Muslim suicide bombers. The Romans were amazed at the Jews?Ebehavior during... Read more
Eberhard Jungel?s 2001 volume, Justification: The Heart of the Christian Faith (T&T Clark) has a lot of useful material (and some not so useful material). I found Chapter 3, ?The Justification Event?Eto be the most useful. Below, I?ve summarized his arguments from that chapter. 1) Jungel starts with the Aristotelian observation concerning the connection of justice and law: ?evidently all lawful acts are in a sense just acts,?EAristotle said. The OT shares this view: ?For life?s relationships are so ordered... Read more
Michael Caines reviews Peter Knox-Shaw’s Jane Austen and the Enlightenment in the March 4 issue of the TLS . Caines provides a nice overview of the debates concerning Austen’s political views and alleged social conservatism before turning to Knox-Shaw’s particular contribution, who argues that Austen was a child of the Enlightenment: “Through intermediaries such as picturesque theory, Evangelical tracts, travelogues, natural science, or history . . . Knox-Shaw tracks a fruitful dialogue between British empiricism and the greatest practitioner of... Read more
This post is currently missing due to a server crash. Perhaps in the future, Dr. Leithart will re-write it. — Admin. Read more
I caught a few minutes of an interview with Harry Frankfurt on some late night TV show recently. In a venue dominated by stars, the appearance of an Ivy League philosopher was, shall we say, surprising. Less surprising, though, when it became clear that he was speaking on the topic of his recent essay-book, On Bulls*** . Jonathan Lear has a fascinating review of the book in the March 21 issue of TNR . (more…) Read more
My work is cited several times in the recent Mississippi Valley Presbytery Report on the New Perspective and the Federal Vision. Since that Report has been widely cited and discussed, I suppose some response is in order. I am not responding to all of the points where I am cited, but only the ones that I believe are most important. Frankly, I do not know whether my responses will confirm the committee?s assessment of my views, or reassure it of... Read more
Hart has previously discussed various postmodernism options for aesthetics, showing how postmodernism reduces to an ontology of violence or a discourse of the sublime. Now he turns to Nietzsche to ask whether he provides a possible future for thought. III. The Will to Power. Hart suggests that in Nietzsche, the church faces ?a philosophical adversary whose critique of Christianity appears to be as radical as the kerygma it denounces.?EMore than even the ancient opponents of Christianity like Celsus, Nietzsche has... Read more
Robert Alter reviews Mary Douglas’s latest book, Jacob’s Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation , in the March 3 issue of the London Review of Books . Douglas’s book deals with two main areas, the first historical and the second anthropological. Alter finds the first section unpersuasive; from his description, it sounds unfortunate as well. Douglas attempts to show how the Pentateuch fits into the post-exilic history of Israel, specifically how it arose from a conflict between the “separatists” like... Read more
Writing in the 1610s, William Barclay pointed to the astonishing paradoxical benefits of smoking: “Tobacco is hote, because it hath acrimonie; yet, it is cold because it is narcoticke and stupefactiue, it maketh drunken, and refresheth, it maketh hungrie and filleth, it maketh thirstie and quencheth thirst. Finalie, to bring man to health, it changeth as many formes as Iuppiter does change shapes to conuey himself to his Mistresse.” Or, to cite the motto from a nineteenth-century smokers’ magazine, ”... Read more
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