Salty

Last updated on: January 5, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a classic essay on the “Symbolic Significance of Salt,” Ernst Jones neatly summarizes how the natural properties of salt lend themselves to social and religious uses: “Salt is a pure, white, immaculate and incorruptible substance, apparently irreducible into any further constituent elements, and indispensable to living beings. It has correspondingly been regarded as the essence of things in general, the quintessence of life, and the very soul of the body. It has been invested with the highest general significance far more than that of any... Read more

Who Are The Disciples?

Last updated on: January 5, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When we read of Jesus’ “disciples,” we naturally think of the Twelve. But that’s not nearly as clear as we try to make it. Many Bibles include the heading “the first disciples” for the episode in Matthew 4:18-22, but the text never uses the word. Peter, Andrew, James, and John are called to follow, and they do. But they are not called mathetes, and so when the word is finally used for the first time in Matthew 5:1, we aren’t... Read more

Joy of Justification

Last updated on: January 2, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In her contribution to Justification in a Post-Christian Society (52), Christine Helmer summarizes the work of Birgit Stolt, who has examined Luther’s vocabulary of justification: “Through careful linguistic analysis, Stolt shows Luther’s doctrine of justification is not couched in the sterile dogmatic vocabulary of a cognitive appreciation for the distinction between law and gospel, but the word of justification elicits and joy that ‘jumps and skips.’ The affect that characterizes justification is joy, and the emotion is expressed in physical... Read more

God of Promise

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Christoph Schwobel’s analysis of promising (Justification in a Post-Christian Society) opens out into a discussion of theology proper with a reference to Luther’s claim that God identifies Himself in Exodus 3:14 as the God who promises Himself, “so that this promise is God’s essence in relation to which no creature has any essence.” As the God who promises, as the God who is promise, “God [is] the ‘ground of being’” insofar as He is “the telos of being” (21). The... Read more

The Structure of Promising

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Christoph Schwobel’s contribution to Justification in a Post-Christian Society is characteristically grand. Exploring what contribution Lutheranism can make to contemporary society, he focuses on central Lutheran concerns – promise and trust. His explanation of the grammar of promise is densely brilliant: “The central distinction between law and gospel only becomes clear if we distinguish the logic of promise from the logic of prescription. While the law follows the pattern ‘if (. . . ), then (. . . )’ in the... Read more

Portion and Inheritance

Last updated on: December 31, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Israel’s priests did not inherit land. Many lived in cities and they possessed the land immediately surrounding. But they did not get a separate plot when the land was divided. Yahweh said He was their inheritance (Numbers 18:19), and He said it chiastically: A. In the land you will not inherit B. And a portion you will not have among them C. I B’. your portion A’. your inheritance among the sons of Israel. There is a neat movement from... Read more

Catholic in Reformed

Last updated on: December 30, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his study of Calvin’s Company of Pastors, Scott Manetsch estimates that “just under 5 percent of all excommunications” in Geneva were imposed because of “Catholic behavior” (203). By this phrase, he refers to “instances where people voluntarily aligned themselves with some dimension of Roman Catholic faith or practice, such as attending Mass or a Catholic festival, marrying a Catholic spouse, reciting the Ave Maria, fasting from meat on Fridays, fighting in Catholic armies, manufacturing Catholic religious objects, or permitting a... Read more

We Have An Altar

Last updated on: December 30, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate” (Hebrews 13:10-12). The author of Hebrews refers to the regulations of Leviticus 4. The blood of sin offerings for... Read more

It's A Smart Phone World

Last updated on: December 29, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

As a techno-lagger, I came late to the smart phone world. Every sentient adult who has used a phone over the past decade saw everything I’m seeing long ago. Still, it might be worth putting it to writing. Smart phones and other sorts of communication devices have of course vastly increased the possibilities for personal contact. I can Skype with friends across the country or on another continent sitting in my easy chair, and have a real, often deep, conversation.... Read more

Invisible Hand

Last updated on: December 29, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Adam Smith wrote, briefly in several places, of an invisible hand that guided economic life. The work of this invisible hand was to bend self-interested actions to socially beneficent ends. As Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations: “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and... Read more