Sacred and Secular Literature

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

Michael D. Hurley has a fine review of Nicholas Boyle’s Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature in the Feb 11 issue of TLS . While Boyle contests the efforts of Herder and Schleiermacher to reduce “Word to word,” he still emphasizes the continuity between the Bible and other literature. Literature is for Boyle inherently a “site of theology,” since “literature, biblical and nonbiblical, is a place where sacred and secular meet.” All written work is at the... Read more

Jesus and Uncleanness Laws

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

Jesus came to fulfill the law. Jesus consistently flouted the ceremonial laws of cleanliness. How can we put these two statements together? Perhaps the “uncleanness” laws are misnamed. The intention of the laws is not to invent new ways to be estranged and exiled from God. The heart of the laws is instead the mechanism for cleansing, renewal, restoration. They are “cleansing laws,” showing Israel how she can be liberated from death and dirt and enter the presence of God.... Read more

Waiting

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

A student perceptively suggests that first-century Jews had become so attached to waiting for the Messiah that they could not bring themselves to acknowledge the fulfillment of their hopes. Against all that the prophets had taught, they had become tragic, and unfulfilled longings had become (and still remain) the essence of a profound faith. And so on to Levinas and Derrida and the endless deferral both lamented and celebrated in postmodernism. Read more

Exhortation, March 6

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:40 pm By Peter Leithart

God has enemies. You need only pick up the Psalter to discover this. ?The enemies of Yahweh will be like the glory of the pastures, they vanish ?Elike smoke they vanish away?E(Psalm 37). ?Because of the greatness of Your power Your enemies will give feigned obedience to You?E(Ps 66). ?Let God arise, let His enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee before Him?Eand ?God will shatter the head of His enemies, the hairy crown of him who... Read more

More on Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Part 1: Dionysus against the Crucified. Section 1: City and the Wastes. Hart raises the question, What is postmodernism? And he answers by citing Milbank?s claim that postmodern French philosophers, for all their differences, are united in an ?ontology of violence.?EBeginning from a radical historicism and perspectivism, postmodernists move to a metaphysics where only violent difference is transcendent. Postmodernism can be understood within the Nietzschean scheme of Dionysus v. Apollo (or the traditional philosophical opposition of Heraclitus and Parmenides), but... Read more

Some Notes on 1 Kings 20

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

1) Ben-Hadad comes to Ahab with a ?thus saith Ben-Hadad,?Eand Ahab responds more readily to his claim than he has to the claims of any ?thus saith Yahweh.?EAfter consulting with the elders, however, he is told not to ?hear?E(Heb. shema ) the demands of Ben-Hadad. This gives us some slight hope that Ahab will hear the word of Yahweh, and that he will join in Israel?s confession that Israel?s Lord is one Lord. 2) Ben-Hadad threatens Ahab by saying that... Read more

Translation, 1 Kings 20

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

Now Son-of-Hadad, king of ?Aram gathered all his strength Now thirty and two kings with him, and horse and chariotry And he ascended and tied up around Shomron and fought against her. And he send angel-messengers to ?Achav king of Yisrael at the city. And he said to him, ?Thus says Son-of-Hadad, ?Your silver and your gold, to me [are] they. Also your wives and your sons, the good ones, to me they are.?? And answered the king of Yisrael,... Read more

Sermon Outline, March 6

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:01 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION The final three chapters of 1 Kings tell a series of stories about Ahab. We see Ahab sinning in relationship to the Gentiles (1 Kings 20), in relation to a fellow Israelite (1 Kings 21), and finally in relation to the prophet of Yahweh (1 Kings 22). Ahab?s three sins parallel the sins of Saul (1 Samuel 13-15), though in reverse order. Like Saul and his house, Ahab and his house are doomed. Ahab?s sins also parallels the series... Read more

Elijah in Romans

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

1 KINGS 19 AND ROMANS 11 I want to examine, in an exploratory fashion, a Pauline passages that has links to 1 Kings 19. 1 Kings 19 is quoted in Romans 11:2-4, where Paul writes, ?God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in Elijah, how he intercedes with God against Israel? ?Lord, they have killed thy prophets, they have torn down thine altars, and I alone am left, and... Read more

Eucharistic Meditation, February 27

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:39 pm By Peter Leithart

?Elisha returned from following him, and took the pair of oxen and sacrificed them and boiled their flesh with the implements of the oxen, and gave it to the people and they ate.?E The redemption of Israel is not going to take place in any ordinary fashion. It will not be a matter of Israel pulling herself up by her bootstraps, or of a mass revival. Yahweh saves His people through the strange device of narrowing the people down to... Read more