Exhortation, January 4

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

Exhortation for January 4: Sexual immorality has marked all non-Christian civilizations. Leviticus 18 gives a laundry list of sexual sins ?Eincest, adultery, sodomy, bestiality?Eand ends with this exhortation: “Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have visited its punishment upon it, so that the land has spewed out its inhabitants” (Lev 18:24-25). One of... Read more

Paul and Pharisaism

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Does Paul have to deal with Jews who are confident that they are performing the law rightly, and believe that they have something to boast about before God because of their performance? Yes, of course. He’s dealing with Pharisees, of the kind that Jesus satirized in his parable, who boasted before God about his performance of the jots and tittles of the law and who believed that this gave him a standing before God above that of the publican. Unless... Read more

Paul’s Issues

Last updated on: January 3, 2004 at 10:04 pm By Peter Leithart

What are the issues for Paul? To oversimplify, but I hope helpfully: Much traditional treatment of Romans and other letters assumes that Paul is mainly concerned with individual soteriology, while recent Pauline scholarship emphasizes that Paul is concerned about the plight of Israel and the purposes of God among the Gentiles. How to settle a global interpretive question like this? The problem is, both approaches can offer more or less coherent accounts of the letters themselves. So long as the... Read more

Paul’s Issues

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Paul’s Goal in Rom. 1:18-3:20

Last updated on: January 3, 2004 at 9:55 pm By Peter Leithart

What is Paul trying to prove in Romans 1:18-3:20? Here are a few, non-exhaustive, suggestions: 1) He is trying to close “every mouth” and demonstrate that “all the world” is “accountable to God,” and guilty before Him. It is sometimes said in recent Pauline scholarship that this is not a central thrust in Rom 1-3, but that seems to be belied by the concluding statements of 3:19-20. True, Paul could assume from the OT the universality of human sin. However... Read more

Paul’s Goal in Rom. 1:18-3:20

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Celebrants USA

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

This morning, NPR had a report on “Celebrants USA,” an organization of “Professional celebrants” that designs and officiates at ceremonies of all kinds. The report was about ceremonies of “downsizing,” held when someone loses his or her job because of cuts in the size of a company’s workforce. Celebrants USA’s website introduces the organization as follows: “Celebrants are Professional Officiants who Create Personal Ceremonies to Honor and Celebrate Life’s Milestones: Weddings, Commitments-Gay and Lesbian Ceremonies, Renewals of Vows, Baby Namings,... Read more

Books and Culture Reviews

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

A potpourri of interesting reviews in Books & Culture : 1) Gerald McDermott reviews several recent evangelical books on Christianity’s relation to non-Christian religions. He is critical of attempts (Paul Heim, e.g.) to root a pluralist or inclusivist view of other religions in the doctrine of the Trinity, and also criticizes the tendency to shift from sin/alientation to knowledge as the crucial problem of humanity. McDermott is also aware, however, that the church’s confrontation in mission with non-Christian cultures is... Read more

Eroticization of Death

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

At a number of points in his book, Dollimore explores the “eroticization” of death, the tendency of Western writers (and visual artists) not only to describe death as a desirable erasure of desire (or desirable for some other reason) but also to describe death in quasi-erotic terms. This is seen in the “beautiful deaths” found in ancient epic (most especially in Virgil, who has a fascination with the pathetic deaths of beautiful young men), the funeral customs of the Victorian... Read more

Dollimore on Postmodernism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Dollimore has some thoughtful things to say about postmodernism, especially in relation to Lacan: “what I find in Lacan is an overtheorized expression of something more significantly and relevantly expressed elsewhere (in Freud and before).” (He cites specifically Schopenhauer and Montaigne.) “In this respect I believe he is symptomatic of a much wider tendency in (post-)modern theory. But in terms of his influence alone Lacan remains significant for this study. By crossing Freud’s death drive with the philosophy of lack... Read more