Kenneth Minogue provides a superb summary of the case for the Bush foreign policy in the Nov 12 issue of TLS : “the United States is an open liberal democracy with which millions of Europeans are directly acquainted, and it has been our sheet-anchor against both fascist and Communist totalitarianism for a century or mor. It is responding to the unmistakable declaration of hostilities on September 11. Nobody has come up with an intellectually adequate response to these events, ut... Read more
Peter Green, reviewing Paul Cartledge’s new Alexander biography in TNR , cites a “remarkable anecdote told by Theophrastus, who surely had it from Aristotle when the latter was Alexander’s tutor”: “Both Philip and Olympias, he alleges, were scared that their adolescent son was showing signs of becoming a GYMNIS, that is, a ‘femme’ invert, and actually imported a high-class courtesan to straighten out his sexual drive.” Green comments, “If the anecdote is true, it would cast a very interesting light... Read more
John 1:14; 6:55-56: ?And the Word became flesh . . . . [Jesus said] ?My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in Him.?E This morning, we have been considering the incarnation of the Eternal Word of God, the ?en-fleshment?Eof the Eternal Son. The Eternal Son took on human nature, but more than that, took on flesh, ?dilapidated?Ehuman nature, so that He could... Read more
Christmas is about many things, but one of the chief things revealed in the gospel of Christmas is the humility of God. We don?t often think of humility as an attribute of God. If God is glorious and exalted, we think, He must be haughty and proud and self-centered. We think this way because we would be haughty if we were God. Fortunately, we are not. And the gospel of Christmas reveals a very different God than we imagine. It... Read more
This repeats some material from an earlier post. INTRODUCTION In the last several classes, we have been looking at sacrifice as it operated in the OC, both in the Mosaic and the Davidic worship. We have seen that Mosaic worship follows a sequence of purification-ascension-communion, and we have seen that Davidic worship incorporates musical ?sacrifices of praise?Einto this sequence, particularly at the moment of ascension (2 Chronicles 29:20-35). This week, I will examine two aspects of the biblical theology of... Read more
A few reflections on Barth’s discussion of the Trinity in CD 1.1, ch 10. Thanks to Joshua Appel, Josh Davis, and especially Toby Sumpter who clarified several of these points. 1) Barth insists that Trinitarian theology developed not as a qualification of monotheism but as a way of defending monotheism: “Christian monotheism was and is also and precisely the point also and precisely in the Church doctrine of the Trinity as such” (I wonder if that’s as hard to read... Read more
Christians are committed to the notion that the margins may be the center: We believe that a stable in Bethlehem-Judah is the site where a new humanity is born; that catacombs serve as incubator for a renewed empire; that German barbarians are the wave of future civilization; that Africans might have a hand in reviving American Christianity. In this way, Christian historiography shares something with postmodern and postcolonial historiography, over against modernist historiography that insists that the economic and political... Read more
(This is the weakest part.) Postmodern historiography has rightly protested against this kind of bigotry. But in the process, postmoderns have apparently jettisoned the entire idea of a universal history, if not the idea of history itself. For postmoderns, to reduce humanity to a single unit is not only intellectually incoherent, but an act of oppression, an illegitimate placement and labeling of the other and the incorporation of the other into the framework of the same. Jean-Francois Lyotard?s summary of... Read more
This is much weaker, but I think the argument is still clear enough. Of course, in central respects, this proposal calls for a revival of a project that dominated Christian historical writing from Eusebius to the Enlightenment. For Christian theologians and historians, all of human history was enclosed in a Christian frame. Augustine?s two-city scheme encompassed not only the ?sacred history,?Ethe whole history of man, and he, with many others, employed the six days of creation as another scheme for... Read more
This is the first draft ( sans footnotes) of a paper I will deliver in January. The remainder of this draft will be posted on this site. To this day, schoolchildren in Sri Lanka learn about Buddhist ?doctrine?Efrom a Buddhist Catechism first published in English and Sinhalese in 1881. Described by its author as an ?antidote to Christianity?Eand as a bulwark against Christian missionaries invading the East, the Catechism includes such questions and answers as: Q. Was the Buddha God?... Read more
Leithart
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