INTRODUCTION 1 Kings 1 moves from ?King David?E(first phrase of v 1) to ?King Solomon?E(vv 49-53). The first chapter is about the transition from one king to another, but the transition is difficult, rather than smooth. THE TEXT ?Now King David was old, advanced in years; and they put covers on him, but he could not keep warm. Therefore his servants said to him, ?Let a young woman, a virgin, be sought for our lord the king, and let her... Read more
2 Kings 25:27-30 Kings, as we?ve seen, is not only a book about the unfaithfulness of Israel. It is a book about the faithfulness of God. In particular, it is a book about the faithfulness of God to the house of David, a faithfulness demonstrated over and over again in the course of the book. When the house of David is threatened by Athaliah, the Lord preserves Joash; when Jerusalem is threatened by the Assyrians, fresh from their victory at... Read more
Roman Catholics and Protestants have both appealed to Kings to explore the significance of their divisions, and to defend their claims over against each other. For Roman Catholics, Rome is Jerusalem, maintaining the true worship of the temple while Protestants go after golden calves in places like Geneva and Wittenberg. For Protestants, the Catholics are the idolaters, and the pure faith is found in the Protestant churches. These divergent interpretations of Kings provide one perspective on the larger conflicts between... Read more
Von Balthasar argues that Jesus is the archetypal child, who lives in constant dependence on His Father, who clings to “Abba,” who is constantly filled with thanks and awe toward His Father. And from that he develops a theology of childhood. Here’s one excerpt (taken from Stasiak’s book, mentioned above): “To be a child means to owe one’s existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give... Read more
One of the most stimulating works on infant baptism that I’ve found is Kurt Stasiak’s Return to Grace: A Theology for Infant Baptism . Stasiak is a Roman Catholic theologian who teaches liturgics at St Meinrad School of Theology. The first half of the book is a discussion of the debates surrounding infant and adult baptism in the Catholic church since Vatican II. The second part is a theology of infant baptism organized around a theology of childhood and baptism... Read more
INTRODUCTION No area of sacramental theology exposes assumptions concerning sacraments, and indeed concerning the Christian life, like the issue of infant baptism. Modern Christianity is plagued by an overly individualistic outlook, by the notion that religion is exclusively a matter of the heart, by a belief that religion is private, and by an insistence that religion must be chosen (else it is an act of tyranny). These features of modern Christianity are particularly evident in hesitancy about or rejection of... Read more
INTRODUCTION Underlying much of what I have said in the previous lecture is a conviction that sacramental theology must be worked out in the context of ecclesiology. This is not to say that it is at the expense of Trinitarian theology or Christology or soteriology; ecclesiology is an intersection point for all those concerns, as each locus is an intersection for all other loci. But the church is the practical setting for the performance of sacraments. In order to grasp... Read more
INTRODUCTION The Eucharist has often been expounded upon in categories drawn from Aristotelian philosophy, modern phenomenology, or some other non-biblical discourse. While these categories can illuminate certain features of the Supper, it is wrong to think that these categories provide a more ?fundamental?Edescription of the Supper than the biblical descriptions. The Biblical descriptions of the meal should be fundamental. Explaining the metaphysics of the real presence in terms drawn from whatever philosophical discourse does not get us closer to the... Read more
This and the following two posts are lecture notes for lectures on sacramental theology that I’ll be delivering next week. Old hat, but perhaps helpful. HISTORICAL PROBLEMATICS The relationship of the Old and New is consistently a background issue in historical debates in theological generally, and particularly concerning the sacraments. This is one of the underlying issues in the Eucharistic debates between Radbertus and Ratramnus, in the medieval sacramental theology of Hugh of St. Victor and Thomas Aquinas, and in... Read more
Here is a story written by my son, Christian, age 14. Tramps, as you probably well know, are usually not very likable creatures. I say “creatures” because I, myself, have often been in doubt as to the species ?Eor gender ?Eof most tramps that I meet. Tramps, like trolls, eggs, and Picasso’s paintings, can be bad. If you have parents, they have most certainly told you not to speak with strangers ?EI don’t count. I am talking to you from... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In