Eucharistic Meditation for Second Sunday in Advent: Luke 22:20 Martin Luther said that the Supper is the gospel. That’s true in a lot of different ways, but one way that it is true is that in the Supper we see and experience the reality of “God for us.” That’s what Jesus says explicitly in the words of institution: “This is My body, which is given for you.” Why did God the Son take a body? So that it could be... Read more
Exhortation for December 7: Christmas is a few weeks away, and that means food, lots of food, lots of rich food. It means candy and candy canes and nuts and chocolate and more chocolate, always chocolate. It means parties and feasts, and then more parties and feasts. It means drinking and eating. And more chocolate. What are we to make of this as Christians? There are some ?Elet us call them liberals ?Ewho want us to feel guilty for the... Read more
Picking up on thoughts on Romans 2, some additional reflections on Advent, and reading further in Church Dogmatics 2.2: Here is the gospel of election, of the decree, that Jesus Christ was, from all eternity, elected and chosen as the true Israel of God, to ensure that God’s name would be honored among the nations. Read more
A few additional thoughts on Romans 2: 1) As Dunn points out, Paul is clearly lining out a series of oppositions in the latter part of this chapter, much as he does in Galatians: manifest ?Enot Jew ?Emanifest circumcision ?Eflesh ?E gramma /letter ?Epraise from man hidden ?EJew ?Ecircumcision ?Eheart — Spirit ?Epraise from God This indicates that the whole contrast here is between OC and NC realities, between “flesh” and “spirit.” The Jews are those who are in the... Read more
In Romans 2:24, Paul cites Isaiah 52:5 and/or Ezekiel 36:20-23 to describe Israel’s effect on the nations. Israel was called to be a light to the world, to be a priest to the nations, and to cause Yahweh’s name to be honored among the Gentiles. Torah, and all the privileges associated with Torah, were given to Israel for precisely this reason. But they failed to keep Torah, they were not doers of Torah, and therefore the name of Yahweh is... Read more
Sermon outline for Second Sunday in Advent: God For Us INTRODUCTION Last week, we meditated on the fact that God became flesh. This week, we will make that more specific. The incarnation is an event in human history, but more specifically in the history of Israel. When the Son of God became flesh, He became Jewish flesh. And that means that the incarnation is all mixed up with God’s choice or election, of Israel. The Son of God entered the... Read more
Based on a student’s questioning, I’m wondering whether “presuppositionalism” is the best term to describe what Vantillians are after. We don’t, after all, come up with some kind of set of axioms or theological idea “prior” to receiving revelation. We can talk about making the Triune God our “starting point” as much as we want, but faith in the Triune God is not in fact the “starting point” of our thinking (in either a chronological or logical sense). I like... Read more
There’s an intriguing interview with Rene Girard in Touchstone as well. His most provocative comments come in response to a question about his “non-sacrificial” understanding of the death of Christ: “It is not quite true that I take what you have called a ‘non-sacrificial reading of the death of Christ.’ We must establish first of all that there are two kinds of sacrifice. “Both forms are shown together (and I am not sure anywhere else) in the story of Solomon’s... Read more
There’s an intriguing interview with Rene Girard in Touchstone as well. His most provocative comments come in response to a question about his “non-sacrificial” understanding of the death of Christ: “It is not quite true that I take what you have called a ‘non-sacrificial reading of the death of Christ.’ We must establish first of all that there are two kinds of sacrifice. “Both forms are shown together (and I am not sure anywhere else) in the story of Solomon’s... Read more
Phillip Johnson reports on the scandal concerning the peppered moth in the December 2003 issue of Touchstone . It’s a pretty grim story, recently told by Judith Hooper in Of Moths and Men . What Johnson calls the “juiciest” scandal “is that the moths, which are nocturnal, do not rest on tree trunks during the day but prefer to fly up into the branches. The textbook photographs were staged, often by pinning and gluing dead moths in place.” The situation... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In