Bruce Wilson quoted me at the Huffington Post Blog the other day. To be precise, he quoted Evangelical activist (not, as Wilson says, pastor) David Lane quoting me, without attributing the quote to me. That’s OK by me. I don’t mind not being quoted in an article with a title that begins “Anti-Gay, Anti-Mormon Hate Group. . . .” Because the quotation keeps getting misconstrued, though, I’m coming out of the closet and owning my words. Wilson quotes this from Between Babel... Read more
In his Spirit of Protestantism, Robert McAfee Brown argues that catholicity was a major concern of the Reformation. From the viewpoint of the Reformers, “medieval Christendom had surrendered the notion of catholicity to a limited and distorted understanding of the Christian faith. And the Reformers, in trying to recapture the wholeness and universality of the faith, were simply trying to be true ‘catholics’” (19). Thus, “it is no part of the spirit of Protestantism to be anti-Catholic.” Reformers and their heirs... Read more
Gentiles contributed materials to every sanctuary in the Bible. But the character of their contributions changes. Tracing the changes displays the trajectory of redemptive history. Pharaoh contributes to the tabernacle unwillingly. Pummeled by plagues, he lets Israel go, and as they go they “plunder Egypt.” Call Pharaoh an “involuntary supplier.” Solomon allies with Hiram of Tyre, who provides cedar and cypress, as well as skilled woodcutters and carvers, to build the temple. It’s Solomon’s project, but the Gentiles contribute materials... Read more
With Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock, Daniel Strange has written a superb book on the theology of religions. The book is careful, patient, methodologically conscious and conscientious, combining biblical and systematic theology with missiological interest. Strange makes extensive use of the Dutch Reformed tradition of Herman and J.H. Bavinck, Cornelius Van Til, John Frame, and Vern Poythress, but his research is broad and thorough. Strange states his thesis several times: “From the presupposition of an epistemologically authoritative biblical revelation, non-Christian... Read more
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott is mistaken in her general conclusion to The Divine Feminine, recently reprinted by Wipf & Stock. She writes, “it is perfectly natural for the Bible to contain a vast predominance of masculine God-language, springing as it does out of a deeply patriarchal culture. . . . Nothing would seem more natural to them than to honor God by exclusively masculine references. And nothing would seem more unnatural to them than to introduce the female and the feminine into... Read more
It’s an old saw, but is it possible to read Augustine’s description of the corruptions of the Roman Republic (City of God, Book 2) without a wince (or a wink) of recognition? “Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it nourish and abound in resources; let it be glorious by its victories, or better, secure in peace; and what matters it to us? This is our concern, that every man be able to increase his wealth so as... Read more
In his forthcoming translation of The Writings, Strong As Death Is Love, Robert Alter argues that the writings are late. We know this because of the type of Hebrew that these books use: “Biblical Hebrew, like any language, changed through time. The temporal distance between the sundry strands of Genesis or the Book of Samuel and these Late Biblical texts is comparable to the distance between Shakespeare and John Updike. Just as in the four centuries separating Shakespeare from Updike the... Read more
You’d think we were living in Jericho, what with all the talk of walls falling down. The Berlin wall is down. Europe has no more borders. Technology ignores the political map of the world. Not to mention all the conceptual boundaries that are being breached. And that’s a good thing, since walls do nothing but segregate and dominate. To build a wall is to commit an injustice. In his brilliant Walls, Thomas Oles argues that the perception of falling walls is... Read more
One of the most profound passages from the Summa quoted in Peter Kreeft’s Practical Theology is this (p. 97), from ST I-II, 289, 5: “Four proximate effects may be ascribed to love, viz. melting, enjoyment, languor, and fervor. Of these, the first is melting, which is opposed to freezing. For things that are frozen are closely bound together so as to be hard to pierce; but it belongs to love that the appetite is fitted to receive the good which is... Read more
Peter Kreeft’s Practical Theology isn’t quite an introduction to Thomas’s Summa. It’s too repetitive, too selective, to be that. It functions better as an introduction to Thomas—a mystical, jolly Thomas not unlike Chesterton’s. Most of all, it’s just what Kreeft says it is, a tour through the Summa that highlights the practical spiritual guidance one can draw from this greatest of scholastic achievements. Kreeft quotes at length from 350+ sections of the Summa, and adds his own explanatory, applicatory glosses. The result... Read more
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