John ascends to heaven at the bidding of a trumpet-voice (4:1); an angel ascends from the east with the seal of God in his hand (7:2); since and the prayers of the saints ascend to heaven from the censor (8:4); the two witnesses ascend to heaven (11:12, 2x). There are “infernal” ascents as well. Shortly after smoke ascends from the censor to heaven, smoke ascends from the abyss and blots the sun, a cloud that becomes a cloud of locorpions... Read more
When the original creation is set up, there are three zones in the material creation: heaven, earth, and sea. Corresponding to this threefold classification are the three zones on the land: garden, land, world. These are already mapped in the creation before sin, and especially after the fall they are the sanctuary as the place of worship, the land as the place of work, and the world as a place of witness. This Genesis pattern is hugely important for what... Read more
Since Mauss re-discovered the truism that there ain’t no such thing as a free gift, philosophers and theologians have fretted over the broken promise of the “pure gift” – a no-strings gift, a gift without expectation of return. It’s a Kantian deformation of an evangelical hope; but it’s bound to be frustrated, since the evangel is essential to the hope. For the likes of Derrida, the pure gift is a horizon never reached, an unrealizable promise that is as necessary... Read more
Gregg Allison is well-positioned to offer an “evangelical assessment” of Roman Catholic Theology & Practice. Now a professor of theology at South Baptist Theological Seminary, he spent a number of years as a Campus Crusade minister at Notre Dame, has interacted with clergy and lay Catholics over many years in the US and Europe, and studied Roman Catholic theology in both Evangelical and Catholic seminaries. His book aims to be an even-handed assessment, combining “intrigue” at the extensive commonalities between Catholics... Read more
In one of the essays in Word and Church, John Webster acknowledges that there is a danger of “spiritualizing” the church when the “asymmetry of divine and human action” is emphasized. He thinks the claim that Protestantism is pure subjectivism is a “caricature,” but the charge “identifies a potentially disruptive element in the dogmatics we have just outlined. Can a society which is in its essence ‘invisible’ ever be really human – that is, historical, material, bodily?” What must be stressed... Read more
Many things contribute to the fidgety discomfort one feels one reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. There’s our entry into the mind of Gustav Aschenbach, an aging, highly sensitive, very famous writer. There’s the Lolita infatuation he has with Tadzio, a “beautiful” Polish boy whom Aschenbach watches from his beach chair, chases through the streets of Venice, stalks and stares at. Aschenbach justifies his passion as an aesthete would, as an expression of his super-human artistic temperament. He mythologizes the boy... Read more
Alec Wilkinson’s New Yorker profile of mathematician Yitang Zhang is a fascinating character sketch and an introduction to the world of pure mathematics. Along the way, Wilkinson lists some of the wonders and mysteries of prime numbers: “No formula predicts the occurrence of primes—they behave as if they appear randomly. Euclid proved, in 300 B.C., that there is an infinite number of primes. If you imagine a line of all the numbers there are, with ordinary numbers in green and prime... Read more
In the NYTBR, the redoubtable Tom Shone reviews a couple of recent books that explore the borderlands between movies and live. Shone points out the paradox that all movie-lovers experience. We can’t live the movies. “A life lived at a constant pitch of screwball comedy is a recipe for exhaustion. The relationship of most movie couples would not last five minutes beyond the closing credits of the films in which they appear.” Yet we want to dream that we can,... Read more
To punish Israel’s sins, Yahweh threatens to remove “the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water” (Isaiah 3:1). It sounds like a drought and famine, but as the passage goes on, the drought is a drought of leadership. Yahweh will remove bread and water insofar as he removes the mighty man and warrior, the judge and prophet, the diviner and elder, the captain and the honorable man, the counselor and the artisan (vv. 2-3). These roles are... Read more
Exodus and Acts seem to offer different accounts of Moses’ killing of the Egyptian. In Exodus, there’s an emphasis on the secrecy of the act. Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, looks around to see if anyone is watching, then kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. The next day, he has an encounter with two Hebrews in which it becomes clear that the secret is out. When Pharaoh learns of it, he tries to kill... Read more
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