Isaiah prophesies that the Lord will bring Israel out of Babylon as He brought them from Egypt, in a new exodus. He draws on events of the first exodus to describe what will happen again. For example: “I will open rivers on the bare heights, and springs in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land fountains of water” (Isaiah 41:18). Problem is, none of that happens. No one travels... Read more
The church has faced many challenges in her two thousand year history. Bishops and priests evangelized Romans and barbarians. Adventurous monks settled on the frontiers of Europe. Bold missionaries traveled to the remotest peoples on the planet. Never before, though, has the church been called to ministry in a society once Christian but now secular. Never before has she carried out a mission to a post-Christian world. The church is God’s urban renewal project and today the church needs leaders... Read more
Israel suffers the first cycle of plagues along with the Egyptians. Their water turns to blood; their homes are infested with frogs; the dust of Goshen clings to them in the form of gnats. With the fourth plague, Yahweh begins to make a distinction between Israel and Egypt: “I will set apart the land of Goshen, where my people live, so that no swarms of insects will be there. . . . I will put a division between My people... Read more
Thomas asks whether the Father delivered the Son to the Passion (ST III, 47, 3). His answer is Yes, and he gives a proof text: Romans 8:32. But the way he explicates that affirmative answer is worthy of attention. He starts by emphasizing that Christ “suffered voluntarily out of obedience to the Father.” He is not an unwilling victim of the Father’s scheme, but a willing participant. Given this premise, there are three respects in which the Father gave up... Read more
In his classic study of Psychological Warfare, Paul Linebarger offers historical examples of successful and unsuccessful psychological warfare. Milton’s support for the Cromwellian regime calls into the latter category: “Milton fell into the common booby-trap of refuting his opponents item by item, thus leaving them the strong affirmative position, instead of providing a positive and teachable statement of his own faith. He was Latin Secretary to the Council, in that Commonwealth of England which was—to its contemporaries in Europe—such a... Read more
At Theopolis this week, we spent a long time poring over the strange episode in Exodus 4:24-26. Moses is returning from Midian to Egypt, and stops at a lodging place, where “Yahweh met him and sought to put him to death.” Zipporah saved the day by circumcising Gershom, spreading the blood of circumcision on “his feet,” and calling someone a “bridegroom of blood.” In context, it serves, as James Jordan argues, as a preview of Passover. The blood of a... Read more
Harnack didn’t much like Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. Toward the end of his summary and critique in History of Dogma, vol. 6, he pays Anselm a back-handed compliment: “perhaps no one can frame a better, who isolates the death of Christ from His life, and wishes to see in this death something else than the consummation of the ‘service’ which He rendered throughout His life” (70). For all his aversion to Anselm, his summary of the treatise is accurate, and... Read more
Israel’s suffering in Egypt was intense. Israel’s growth spooked Pharaoh. Multiplying and spreading and growing, Israel looked like a threat to Egypt. To protect the system, Pharaoh took stern action. He subjected Israel to hard labor, then had their sons killed, then instructed his people to throw the sons of Israel into the Nile. But the worst suffering was self-inflicted. Yahweh raised Moses from the water to be a deliverer for His people. In Moses, the Lord visited Israel, but... Read more
When Pope Francis met with the Russian Patriarch Kirill met last Friday, it was an ecumenical moment of the highest order, the first meeting in history between a bishop of Rome and a Russian Patriarch. The meeting highlights two of the most important events of the 20th century – the ecumenical outreach of the Roman Catholic Church and the rise of Orthodoxy in the West. Orthodoxy’s “invasion” of the West was partly an historical accident. When Constantinople fell to the... Read more
Raymund Schwager (Jesus in the Drama of Salvation) that human beings are “simultaneously involved in two situations. As responsible for sins, all belong to the great band of those who form an alliance against God’s anointed, judge him, drive him out, and reject him. As victims of their own and others’ sins, they find themselves part of the universal community of those with whom the crucified one identified himself and for whom, through his ordeal of being struck and killed,... Read more
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