Paul’s sermons in Acts 13 and 17 both employ language connected with the theme of justification that occupies so much attention in Romans and Galatians. Yet Paul uses the same concepts and terminology in ways that don’t seem to fit his usage in the epistles. In Acts 13:38-39, he tells a Jewish audience that forgiveness comes through Jesus the Messiah, and that everyone who believes (pisteuo) is justified (dikaioo) from all the things that the law of Moses could not... Read more
Paul’s sermons in Acts 13 and 17 both employ language connected with the theme of justification that occupies so much attention in Romans and Galatians. Yet Paul uses the same concepts and terminology in ways that don’t seem to fit his usage in the epistles. In Acts 13:38-39, he tells a Jewish audience that forgiveness comes through Jesus the Messiah, and that everyone who believes (pisteuo) is justified (dikaioo) from all the things that the law of Moses could not... Read more
The ruined city Babylon is a city where things that used to happen don’t happen anymore. John’s description is under the rubric “no longer” (ou eti, used 6x in Revelation 18:21-24). In Babylon, music, crafts, milling, light, and weddings have ceased. The old has passed, the new has come, but the new isn’t something to celebrate. Revelation’s other city is also a place of novelty, identified with the new heavens and new earth (21:1), the city over which the Lord... Read more
Theological investigations of Naziism are often dogged by “a subtle methodological difficulty,” writes Paul Hinlicky in Before Auschwitz (2): “the ‘retrospective fallacy,’ sometimes also called ‘presentism.’” As Hinlicky explains, “Unlike the historical actors in church and society during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, our inquiry benefits from certain knowledge of the outcome of events.” This certain knowledge of the outcome, growing from “the soil of a philosophically modern, progressively Christian culture” brings on the moral imperative: “Never again!” Hinlicky... Read more
Theological investigations of Naziism are often dogged by “a subtle methodological difficulty,” writes Paul Hinlicky in Before Auschwitz (2): “the ‘retrospective fallacy,’ sometimes also called ‘presentism.’” As Hinlicky explains, “Unlike the historical actors in church and society during the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, our inquiry benefits from certain knowledge of the outcome of events.” This certain knowledge of the outcome, growing from “the soil of a philosophically modern, progressively Christian culture” brings on the moral imperative: “Never again!” Hinlicky... Read more
Early on in David Downs’s study of Alms and atonement in early Christianity, he offers this striking quotation from Basil. He urges his hearers to keep the commandment to feed the hungry “as you would take hold of a fugitive, securing it from all sides with grasping hands and encircling arms. Give a little and gain much: destroy the original sin by freely distributing food. For as sin came through Adam’s evil act of eating, so we ourselves blot out... Read more
The genealogy of Levi is at the center of the genealogical section of 1 Chronicles. The genealogy begins with Adam and reaches ahead to the restoration from exile. In short, the genealogies survey all of human history, and, with the Levites at the center, it’s as if the human race exists specifically to produce a priestly tribe, a tribe of singers and sacrificers and temple guardians. The section of the Levi genealogy in 1 Chronicles 6:16-30 is straightforward in general,... Read more
Richard II is often cited as Shakespeare’s prime example of a divine-right king, a king by ceremony, the paragon of sacramental kingship. His play depicts the unraveling of medieval kingship and the formation of a new basis for politics. As Alexander Leggatt (Shakespeare’s Political Drama) argues, however, the unraveling starts with Richard himself, who undoes ceremony for the sake of theatrical effect. Citing Allan Bloom, Leggatt notes that “when Richard stops the trial by combat [between Bolingbroke and Mowbray] he... Read more
According to Norman Kemp Smith (Problems in the Cartesian Philosophy), “The great achievement of Galileo and Descartes in physical science consisted in a new theory of motion. Whereas by the Greek Atomists and by Aristotle motion was anthropomorphically conceived, as, like human activity, coming into being, exhausting itself in exercise against obstacles, and ceasing to be—the fleeting activity of a matter that is alone abiding ; with Galileo and Descartes it asserts its full rights. It is, they show, in... Read more
Paul’s criticism of idols in his Athens speech repeats philosophical commonplaces about the nature of God and the difference between God and images, commonplaces as old as Plato and as contemporary as Seneca. But they were philosophical commonplaces. Lane Fox has pointed out that the philosophical skepticism about images was not shared by worshipers: “the identification of god and image was very strong at all levels of society” (quoted by Kavin Rowe, World Upside Down, 35). Rowe thinks Lane Fox’s... Read more
Select your answer to see how you score.
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In