A number of people have raised objections of different sorts to my posts on Protestants and writing. In the nature of the case, I’m not going to resolve these issues with a blog post or two, and it would be passing tedious to answer every criticism of every critic. The objections are mainly of the sort I’ve already addressed a bit here, but let me respond all too briefly to two thoughtful counters. Derek Rishmawy recognizes that my target is... Read more
Esther is a dramatic story of God’s rescue of the Jews, His clever inversion of Haman’s plot, the courage of Esther. It is also an exodus story. Haman the Agagite is a Pharaoh who wants to wipe out all the Jews. Ahasuerus, fortunately, is an anti-Pharaoh who works to protect the Jews, as soon as he discovers what’s happening. The turning point comes at night, when Ahasuerus cannot sleep and asks for chronicles to be read. That night, the fates... Read more
Revelation has several lists of social classes. The first is given when the Lamb opens the sixth seal and the world starts coming apart at the seams (6:12-17). There is another when the land beast imposes his mark on every class of society (13:16). The last comes after the Rider on the white horse defeats His enemies and invites the birds to eat their flesh (19:18). I am interested here in the first and last of those lists. In 6:15,... Read more
Since Harnack, theologians have glibly spoken of Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo as a form of “atonement theory” or a “model” of atonement. According to Katherine Sonderegger, Harnack told the story of atonement theology in terms of a set of “competing ‘models,’ each with schools and eponymous heads”: “Harnack’s nineteenth-century magisterial history, The History of Dogma, set the tone and gave the language for the modern opposition to Anselm’s doctrine: it was an ‘objective model of the atonement,’ he said, set... Read more
Michael Gorman (Becoming the Gospel) points out what Richard Hays has called the “deft word-play” on the dik– root in 1 Corinthians 6:1-11. The word-play is sometimes lost because English translations use different word groups to translate different forms of the root. If we stick to a consistent translation, we come up with something like this: “When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unjust (adikon) instead of taking... Read more
In a 1962 article in JBL, Houston Smith traces the connections between Exodus and the gospel of John, focusing attention on the parallels between the plagues (signs and wonders) performed in Egypt and Jesus’ signs. There are not only parallels between individual plagues and Jesus’ signs but, Smith argues, a parallel sequence. The link of the first plague and the first sign is obvious: Jesus turns water to wine, as Moses turned the Nile to blood. The differences are of... Read more
The New Testament speaks of the “seal of the Spirit” in several places (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). The Spirit marks out believers, sealing them for the day of redemption. The Spirit is the seal, or affixes the seal – a brand, a mark of ownership, a regimental tattoo – to the followers of Jesus. Old Testament uses of “seal” imagery suggest another dimension. When Mordecai is elevated by King Ahasuerus, the king gives him the signet ring that... Read more
In his book, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918, Stephen Kern explores how technological innovations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (“telephone, wireless telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle, automobile, and airplane,” 1) reoriented the experience of time and space. Simultaneous communication seemed to erase space, and rapid transport seemed to diminish time. Kern extends the argument to culture, and sees a complex feedback loop between technological and cultural factors. He also extends the argument to social and political... Read more
In a famous 1949 essay on “Science and Ideology,” published in American Economic Review, Joseph Schumpeter highlighted the role of ideology is scientific research, including economic research. The majority of economists, he said, “are ready enough to admit its presence though, like Marx, they find it only in others and never in themselves; but they do not admit that it is an inescapable curse and that it vitiates economics to its core.” This “balanced” position is the problem, as he... Read more
In an essay form Israel’s Prophetic Heritage, Bernard W. Anderson analyzes the “exodus typology” in what he calls “second Isaiah” (available here). He acknowledges that “there are numerous linguistic echoes of the Exodus tradition” throughout the text, he finds ten places where “the new exodus is the specific subject” (181-2). The passages are arranged in two chiasms. I have changed his numeration to bring out the structure: A. 40.3-5 The highway in the wilderness. B. 41.17-20 The transformation of the... Read more
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