Scripture has a lot to say about the blessings of old age. ?The gray head,?Ethe Proverb says, ?is a crown of glory; it is found in the way of righteousness.?E According to another Proverb, the elderly have another crown: ?Grandchildren are the crown of old men.?E The Psalmist says that the righteous will ?still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green.?E As Macbeth put it, old age should be accompanied by ?honor, love,... Read more
INTRODUCTION Last week, we looked at some NT texts that used the ?ceremonial law?Eof the Levitical system as a guide for the life and worship of the church. It?s clear that the apostles did not believe that the ?ceremonial law?Eis ?merely typological,?Efulfilled in Jesus?Edeath and resurrection, but with no further practical import. Rather, precisely because the ?ceremonial law?Eis typological, it continues to have import for the church, which is the body of Christ. This morning, we?ll be extending that hermeneutical... Read more
Jonah obeyed God’s commission, and preached successfully to Nineveh. They all repented in sackcloth. Earlier, though, Jonah DISOBEYED God’s commission, and preached successfully to the sailors on the ship. They all feared Yahweh and sacrificed and took vows. It appears that disobedient evangelism is as effective as obedient evangelism. Or, better, it appears that Israel will bring praise from the Gentiles one way or another. If Israel refuses commission to Gentiles, Yahweh will cause that to turn to His praise.... Read more
In his Teaching Company lectures on Chaucer Seth Lerer notes the ethnic and class distinction between terms for game and animals and the terms for the food produced from the game. Deer, cow, lamb, pig are all Anglo-Saxon; venison, beef, mutton, and pork are all French. The language traces the distinction (also observed by Walter Scott) between the peasants who raise food and the aristocrats who eat. (Lerer’s lectures have some fascinating insights, but they are overlarded with postmodern obsessions.... Read more
Caveat: I am no scientist. If details of the following are in error, please let me know. Brain death is one of the conceptual foundations of organ transplantation. If the person from whom the surgeon takes a beating heart is not dead before surgery, he will be dead after and the surgeon will be guilty of a direct act of killing. For some, the good of organ transplantation justifies a shift from cardiac to neurological definitions of death. According to... Read more
A thought inspired by Oswald Bayer’s Living By Faith: Justification and Sanctification : The doctrine of justification has something ?EI know not what ?Eto say to the postmodern suspicion of “the objectifying gaze.” Justification is fundamentally about the gaze of God, about who is just in the “eyes of God” and how. Justification indicates that we cannot escape the gaze, though we at the same time do (with the postmodernists) escape the condemning gaze of the world. Something here ?EI... Read more
Luther writes: “The Father in divine things is Grammatica, for he gives the Word and is the pure fountainhead from which, if one may so speak, floweth good, excellent, pure speech. Ths Son is Dialectica; for He giveth the arrangement whereby a thing should be set in good order of succession so that conclusion and consecution by certain. But the Holy Ghost is Rhetorica, the orator, for He excellently sustaineth, bloweth, and impelleth, maketh quick and powerful, so that an... Read more
Now the King Shlomoh loved women, Foreign ones, Many. And the daughter of Pharaoh. Moabiyyot Ammanoyyot Adomyyot Tzedniyyot Chittiyyot From the nations which Yahweh said to the sons of Israel, ?You shall not enter into them And they shall not enter into you. Truly they will turn away your heart after their gods.?E To these Shlomoh cleaved with love. Now there were to him women, princesses, 700 And concubines, 300. And his wives turned away his heart. And it was... Read more
Justification is not the end of a story, but the beginning. Consider Noah, who was righteous in his generations, and who was seen/judged righteous before Yahweh. To be justified is to be distinguished from the wicked generation. To be justified is to be preserved when the judgment falls. To be justified is to be set up on Mount Ararat to offer thank offerings. To be justified is to be renewed in the Adamic commission, to enter a new creation to... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In