No Sacraments, No Protestantism

Last updated on: December 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A few weeks back, I published a brief essay on Protestantism and sacraments on the Patheos site. Some of my friends have clamored for clarifications. Hence this post. My claim was that Protestantism cannot achieve its pastoral aims without high view of the efficacy of sacraments. I focused on baptism. Protestantism broke out with promises of assurance: Sinners with tortured consciences could never find peace under the medieval system; but the recovery of the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith alone... Read more

Life in the Spirit

Last updated on: December 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The flesh is weak, vulnerable. We don’t like being weak and vulnerable. So life according to the flesh is reactive. We recoil from pain. We retaliate to protect ourselves. The Spirit resists the reactiveness of the flesh. As can be seen in the Spirit-filled Jesus, the Spirit revels in vulnerability. It neither recoils nor retaliates; the Spirit returns good for evil, and loves persecutors. Life in the Spirit is more vulnerable than life according to flesh. Life in the Spirit... Read more

What Is A Symbolic Boundary?

Last updated on: December 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Symbolic boundaries might appear to be merely metaphorical. They aren’t real boundaries. We only treat them as boundaries. Presumably, what is meant here by a “real boundary” is a fence, wall, or other artificial or natural obstacle that prevents us from moving from where we are to the far side of the boundary. If there’s no physical obstruction, there is no real boundary. That seems a fundamentally materialist position. Human life doesn’t take place in a world of pure matter,... Read more

Spell for Menacing Wildcat

Last updated on: December 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In their contribution to Purity and the Forming of Religious Traditions, Michael Guichard and Lionel Marti recount a spell for getting rid of a menacing wild cat who brings evil omens by growling and moaning in the yard. Here’s the recipe: At night, the victim set up a stoup full of water, and put into it tamarisk, gypsum, asphalt, big and small peas, and left it during the night under the stars. In the morning, it is clay, and he made... Read more

Elemental Life

Last updated on: December 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

After reviewing Greek texts that describe the “strife of the elements,” Eduard Schweitzer summarizes the grim world of the ancients: He stresses “how widespread the conviction was that the four elements, though originally in a harmony of equilibrium, were continually threatening the existence of the world by their ‘mighty strife’ . . . and their unending interchange. . . . Everything within the sphere of earth is unhealthy and mortal . . . , even painful . . . .... Read more

The Thunder-Spirit

Last updated on: December 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

John eats a book from an angel and is told to prophesy (Revelation 10:10-11). But the angel doesn’t commission him as prophet. Rather, “they said, ‘You must prophesy’” (v. 11). Who are they? The nearest plural speakers are the thunders (10:3-4). It seems that the seven thunders commission John to speak, and presumably he too will speak with the voice of thunder. It seems that the seven speaking thunders are Spirit, speaking in the voice of the Spirit. The Spirit,... Read more

Sharing death

Last updated on: December 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Matthias Grebe’s Election, Atonement, and the Holy Spirit is an impressive piece of work. Grebe is as much at home in Barth and Barthian scholarship as in Leviticus and Old Testament scholarship, and the driving question of his book has to do with dogmatic logic that connects election and atonement (hence, he spends some time working through classic Reformed questions about the extent of the atonement). Theological interpretation of the Bible, in dialog with Barth, is an overarching concern as is... Read more

Injustice that Suppresses Truth

Last updated on: December 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Reformed theologians and epistemologists tend to psychologize Romans 1:18-32. God’s character and demands are evident in the creation, but human beings, while knowing God, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Sinners become double-minded, both knowing God and not-knowing, both aware of the truth but denying the truth, and becoming self-deceived in the process. I think that’s there in Romans, but I’m not certain that it’s the main thrust of the passage. Theodore Jennings (Transforming Atonement, 42) points out that “unrighteousness” translates... Read more

Are the Divine Persons Persons?

Last updated on: November 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

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The “personalist” understanding of the Trinity, articulated most influentially in the work of John Zizioulas, has fallen on hard times. Recent scholars have attacked Zizioulas’s idea that Cappadocian Trinitarianism represented an ontological revolution, hammering again and again the distinction between divine and human personhood. Michel Barnes’s conclusion is the most drastic of the lot: “If the word [person] disappeared entirely from English and other modern languages our reading of patristic trinitarian writings would be greatly improved.” In his contribution to... Read more

Soldiers, Martyrs, Choristers

Last updated on: November 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The numbering of the sealed in Revelation 7 alludes to the census events of the book of Numbers. There, Moses initially numbers men twenty years and older, mustering them as the troops that will conquer the land. (The second census, in Numbers 26, includes women and has a different focus.) The 144,000 are numbered as soldiers of Christ’s Spiritual army. They are sealed – for martyrdom, as living sacrifices who will follow Jesus in giving their life blood. But there... Read more