As a student, Erin Linton, pointed out to me, Herod and Pilate are typical pagan enemies: Their enmity is skin deep, and liable to change to alliance and friendship when it is to their advantage. When faced with a scapegoat, the mimetic rivals become friends. (Just so, the windy plains of Troy are spotted with small reunions: Greek and Trojan fight without resolution, and decide to exchange gifts and become friends.) Meanwhile, the Jews’ implacable hatred for Jesus and Jesus’... Read more
The Brothers Karamazov , like many of Dostoevsky’s works, is partly an attack on Western rationalism. For Dostoevsky, this rationalism is manifested in the insistent question, Why? Why should a father love a son, or vice versa? Dostoevsky’s answer is partly taken from the story of Job: Why should Job love a second set of children after losing a first? Dostoevsky cannot explain why or how; but he (through Father Zossima) simply says, “He did.” I’ve thought the best way... Read more
One possible defense of the iconodule position is to draw an analogy between the use of icons in worship and the use of words in worship. The argument would be basically: 1. Venerating the word “YHWH” is superstitious. 2. But we do worship “through” the word “YHWH.” 3. Similarly, venerating an image is idolatrous, but worshiping “through” an image is not. Obviously, this turns on the assumption that there is an analogy between a name and an image. I don’t... Read more
If you have read a number of books by the same author, or a number of books in the same genre, you have developed a feel for how the plot is developing. When Inspector Poirot begins to suspect the maid early in the book, you know it?s going to turn out to be a false trail. When Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy start off hating each other, those who have read romance novels know that they are going to end... Read more
Psalm 104:14-15 Wine, Scripture says, is one of God?s great gifts to man. Yahweh is the true God of the vine, the true Dionysus. And wine is one of the great gifts of the New Covenant. One of the signs of Israel?s immaturity in the OT was the prohibition of drinking wine in the presence of God: ?Do not drink wine or strong drink, neither you nor your sons with you, when you come into the tent of meeting, so... Read more
Scripture says, ?You shall not bear the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.?E And Jesus said, ?Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you.?E Jesus tells us that someone is baptized ?into the name?Eof the Triune God. Baptism... Read more
According to Jacob Viner ‘s Religious Thought and Economic Society , Protestants were more apt to advocate mercantilism than Catholics, and the differences were rooted in their different attitudes toward the nation-state: “Mercantilism penetrated much less into Catholic than into Protestan theology. Catholic doctrine as such as universalist by tradition, and papal ambitions, ecclesiastical and political, encountered a formidable obstacle in strongly nationalistic policies . . . . Mercantilism, which was nationalist in essence and stressed national objects as against... Read more
According to a web article by J. Paul Rajashekar, “Luther wrote six different pieces of literature on the subject between 1528 through 1542: On War Against Turk (1529); A Sermon Against the Turks (1529); A Book on Life and Customs of the Turks (1530, originally compiled by one George von Muhlbach between 1475 and 1481, with a preface by Luther); Appeal to Prayer Against the Turks (1541); Refutation of the Qur?an (1542, originally published by Recaldo da Montecroce in 1320... Read more
Prophetic Insight, 1 Kings 22:1-40 INTRODUCTION The stages of Israel?s history overlap a great deal. Priests served in the sanctuaries of Israel throughout her history, and Abraham was a prophet (Genesis 20:7). Yet, different offices come to prominence at different stages of that history. And prophets become especially prominent during the time of the divided kingdom (Elijah, Elisha, Jonah), during the crisis of the fall of Israel (Hosea, Amos, Isaiah), and during the exilic and post-exilic period (Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel,... Read more
Ben Witherington III has an excellent review of the errors of Dan Brown ‘s The Da Vinci Code in the May/June 2004 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review . Brown’s book would be comparatively harmless fiction but for the fact that he begins the book with the claim that “all descriptions of . . . documents . . . in this novel are accurate.” Read more
Leithart
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