Passion of Poetry

Last updated on: January 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Sketching a theological account in support of Reformed ressourcement in their Reformed Catholicity, Michael Allen and Scott Swain appeal to the argument of Reinhold Hutter’s Suffering Divine Things. Hutter tries to avoid both a notion of “strict continuation” between the church and the incarnate Christ and a Barthian “fundamental diastasis” between the Spirit and the church with a pneumatological account. Allen and Swain writes, “According to Hutter, the church with its social and historical doctrinal practices is ‘enhypostatic’ in the Spirit. In... Read more

Purity and the Other

Last updated on: January 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions, Philippe Borgeaud explores ancient comparative anthropology, the ways in which Greeks used other cultures as “mirrors.” Along the way (269-70), he discusses Porphyry’s De Abstinentia, which he compares to Mary Douglas’s classic Purity and Danger. For Porphyry, “purity is defined as an ‘absence of mixture,’ amixia, whereas pollution is the result of such a mixture. It is in order to avoiding getting mixed with that one has to beware of consuming... Read more

Porneia

Last updated on: January 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2011 JBL article, Kyle Harper examines the usage of the Greek word porneia from its classical uses through the New Testament and into the early church. He hopes to specify its meaning, since the usual English translation as “sexual immorality” is “so vague” that it “inevitable threatens to become little more than a cipher for the interpreter’s own views” (365). Harper shows that Greek sexual norms were quite different from later Christian ones. “Adultery” (moicheia) did not mean... Read more

Derived Aseity

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Aseity is the property that describes a being’s self-causation. In theology, to speak of divine aseity is to say that God exists in and of Himself. He is not derived from or dependent upon anything else. He is fully Himself in Himself and of Himself. He is a se. It might seem that aseity is opposed to dependence or derivation of any sort. If a being possesses the quality of aseity, that being cannot derive his existence from any other. ... Read more

Priests of Babylon

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Ancient Babylonian temples were busy places. There were butchers and cooks for the meat, bakers for the bread and brewers of beer. The temple was supplied by farmers and milkmen, fishermen, oxherds, orchard keepers. Some were specialists in setting the table of the god, and others artisans who work with reeds, clay, gold, jewels or wood. There were weavers and there are washers. To entertain the god during his daily meals, there were singers, singers who specialized in lamentations, acrobats.... Read more

Baptism and Justification in Christian Tradition

Last updated on: January 13, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his study of Justification in Earlier Medieval Theology, Charles Carlson concludes that early medieval commentators on Paul did not give any special attention to justification. For most of the early scholastics, “justification” was a synonym for the remission of sins, and prior to the thirteenth century it was not developed into a precise doctrinal formula. They agreed that “faith alone pertains to justification and that it is bestowed by unmerited grace—this point is maintained in its integrity from St. Augustine... Read more

Die Alone, Live Alone

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the end of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, the narrator is on death row for killing an Arab. Death is familiar to him. It is the “black wind” that has blown through his entire life. For Camus’s Stranger, the inevitability of death makes life indifferent. It does not matter whether or not he loved his mother, whether his mistress is kissing another man, whether he murdered an Arab. Nothing matters because he is going to do and the world will go... Read more

Catholic Historiography

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his contribution to Seeing Things Their Way, Richard Muller discusses and commends the recent effort to free church history from denominational apologetics. When the Reformers are viewed in the light of late medieval theology (as in the work of Heiko Oberman), unexpected commonalities appear: “Common ground can be found among late medieval Augustinians; Reformers, like Calvin, Wolfgang Musculus, and Peter Martyr Vermigli, and their Protestant successors; various sixteenth- and seventeenth century Dominicans and Augustinian thinkers; and the Jansenists; not to... Read more

Holy Seed

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Explaining Ezra’s concern about the mixed marriages in the restoration community, Naomi Koltun-Fromm (Hermeneutics of Holiness) writes, “Ezra presents Israel not only as holy but as a qodesh in its own right—a freestanding holy thing, a holy seed, a sanctum. As such, it must be protected (or in this case, protect itself) from desecration. If profaned, Israel loses its special status and would fi nd itself no different from the surrounding people. In other words, Israel would no longer distinguish... Read more

Pure and Holy

Last updated on: January 12, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Naomi Koltun-Fromm argues (Hermeneutics of Holiness) that the concepts of purity and holiness, while normally distinct in the Hebrew Bible, are blurred in some passages where qadash is used in contexts that speak of purity and purification rather than of consecration. In 1 Samuel 21:6, David says that the “vessels” of the young men have been qodeshed, so they are qualified to eat qodesh bread. Koltun-Fromm explains that “By refraining from sexual intercourse for three days the men have not defiled... Read more