Revelation 10 opens with a vision of an angel coming down from heaven. If the angel isn’t Jesus, he is Jesus’ doppelganger: Clothed in a cloud, with a rainbow crown, voice like a lion, carrying a book, like the one the Lamb opened (Revelation 5-7). When the angel speaks, seven thunders peal out their voices. John is about to write what the thunders said, but a voice from heaven stops him. Angel, Thunders, Voice. Then the angel swears that there... Read more
Stephen John Wright’s Dogmatic Aesthetics offers a dogmatic treatment of beauty using the work of Robert Jenson. Though Jenson hasn’t written a theological aesthetics, Wright is correct that Jenson’s work is shot through with aesthetic concerns: “Jenson’s theology is irreducibly aesthetic.” One of Jenson’s fundamental claims is that the relation of Creator and creation is an aesthetic one. In Wright’s summary, “God is the artist, and creatures are the art. God creates by giving voice to creation, yet created beauties are... Read more
Cicero wanted to defend the reality of human freedom against the Stoics. But the issue of divine foreknowledge stood in the way. How could human choices be truly free if God knew those choices ahead of time? As Augustine summarized Cicero’s concern (City of God, 5.9), “if all future things have been foreknown, they will happen in the order in which they have been foreknown; and if they come to pass in this order, there is a certain order of... Read more
C. John Collins has observed that it is common to set Torah and the Wisdom books in opposition to each other. The former is covenantal and specific to Israel; Wisdom is based on observation of creation and history. The contrast is exaggerated at best, and in a 2o09 article is Presbyterion, Collins looks at several passages of Proverbs to demonstrate that they reflect a view of sacrifice that is rooted in Torah. On Proverbs 3:9-10, where Solomon exhorts his son... Read more
Richard Finn begins his Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire with a summary of the Sentences of Sextus, a Hellenstic Pythatorean work adapted to Christian use by Rufinus. According to the text, gifts of money, food, or clothing to the poor was “an activity which met with God’s blessing when rightly motivated, even though the gift itself might appear too small to excite the praise given in classical culture to a large and public benefaction: ‘God greatly favours the person who... Read more
Solomon’s prayer at the temple dedication (1 Kings 8) is a prayer about prayer. It’s a prayer that future prayers will be heard. His petitions take the form: “When Israel suffers from X, and turns to You in Your house, deliver them from X.” Solomon’s petitions for future petitions repeatedly deal with sin and forgiveness. Defeat before an enemy is “because they have sinned against You” (v. 33); drought comes “because they have sinned against you” (v. 35); at the... Read more
In his massive study of Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements , Louis Newman claims that the “Mosaic Books have never held a dominant place in orthodox Christianity; it is only among special groups that the Pentateuch has won adherence,” groups where “literal acceptance of the Code” was “a fundamental doctrine of their cult” (14). He enumerates some these “special groups”: “the Abyssianians have made the New Testament pivotal in their system, but venerated and observed the laws of the Old... Read more
Big law is dying says Benjamin Barton in his forthcoming Glass Half Full. In fact, it’s dying four times over. There’s death from above, death from below, death from the state, death from the side. From above, large law firms have been huge and hugely profitable since the 1980s. It was built, Barton says, on “reputational bonding.” If you’re heading to court to bet the company in a suit, you want the best. And the big firms have established a reputation for... Read more
Dave Eggers’s latest novel takes its lengthy title from the prophet Zechariah: Your Fathers, where are they? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? The novel is inverted Kafka, as if K. had been able to tie down his interrogators and depose them. Thomas, a disturbed and disappointed young man, kidnaps several people and holds them at Fort Orb to question them about what’s gone wrong with the world. Hard work doesn’t guarantee success anymore; the young are not inspired by... Read more
In a NYRB review of Justin Steinberg’s Dante and the Limits of Law, Robert Pogue Harrison pinpoints why the Comedy is so disquieting. Steinberg’s book shows how thoroughly the Comedy is indebted to medieval conceptions of law and punishment, and thus how much Dante’s poem is an effort to restore his own damaged reputation. Dante does this in part by repeatedly displaying the gap between public reputation and moral character: “By revealing this chasm between earthly and divine justice, or between public reputation... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In