Hero-less

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

The incomparable Martin Hengel begins The Atonement with a question: Did Greco-Roman culture have categories to understand Jesus’ death as an expiatory sacrifice? He answers with a dense Hengelian catalog of mythic and historical instances of the apotheosis of heroes, death for the fatherland, death for the truth, expelled pharmakoi, and he shows that these deaths “on behalf of” others were sometimes described in sacrificial terms. So, the answer is emphatically Yes. Indeed, Greco-Roman culture had categories for grasping Jesus’ death... Read more

Hope of Heaven and Earth

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

Struggling to articulate the cosmic deliverance of Romans 8, Stanislas Breton (A Radical Philosophy of Saint Paul, 116-7) writes that “heaven and earth . . . are traversed by a visceral yearning orienting them toward and subordinating them to another kingdom, one that is more than human precisely by remaining human, of the children of God.” For Paul eros is of the very essence of all things, and by that driving desires, “living and inorganic beings alike tend toward their... Read more

Purity, Life, Death

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

Fernando Belo’s summary of the symbolic system of purity (A Materialist Reading of the Gospel of Mark, 38-9) is a bit too schematic, but still illuminating. He sees two overlapping systems in the Pentateuch: one of pollution/contagion and one of debt. I focus on the first. Israel’s “symbolic field was organized around three centers, each of which corresponds to one of the three instances of a social formation. All three were centers of foci of consumption: the table, the ‘house’... Read more

The Liturgical Formation of Culture

Last updated on: November 25, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Over at the Theopolis Institute site, I offer some reflections on the liturgical formation of culture through a consideration of the biblical anatomy of human action. Read more

The Grounds of Justification

Last updated on: November 25, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Markus Barth (Acquittal by Resurrection) sharply raises the question of the justice of God’s verdict of justification. How can God pronounce the guilty innocent, the ungodly righteous? Barth raises the stakes by insisting that the justice should be evident to all: “If after the proclamation of a verdict, one party only . . . feels satisfied, while the other party and the public shake their heads in astonishment, the verdict’s rightness and the judge’s justice are rendered suspect” (92). Can... Read more

Paul and the Petty Tyrants

Last updated on: November 25, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Theodore Jennings (Transforming Atonement, 158) observes that “what is visible on the grand scale of imperial political history also lodges itself in the dynamics of quite small-scale communities, including those that may seem to be, and may think of themselves as, and may even in important respects actually be, ‘countercultural’ in respect of the politics of empire.” Jennings thinks that Paul spots the connection, especially in 1 Corinthians, where he sees the church in the grip of competitive and divisive... Read more

Protestant Eyes

Last updated on: November 25, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Protestant soteriology claims to deal with perennial patterns of behavior and belief: Striving for approval from God by our performance, self-righteousness, works-righteousness, pride in our achievements, etc. Let’s grant that these are perennial patterns of behavior, though they will likely take various forms in different cultural settings. That’s not just “grant for argument’s sake”; I grant as true that Luther didn’t invent the various evils they assaulted so vehemently. Still, we need to ask if our theology has kept us... Read more

Anti-Satan

Last updated on: November 24, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The flavor of this is somewhat too Girardian, but still an excellent statement of the Spirit’s anti-Satanic role from Mark Heim (Saved from Sacrifice, 156): “Satan sows discord, flames the mimetic rivalries and animosities among persons that can blow up into social crisis, and then encourages the persecutory sacrifices by which communities beat down and manage these conflicts. The paraclete is an anti-Satan. Satan was a murderer from the beginning. But the Holy Spirit is an advocate with the abandoned... Read more

Barth on Distributive Justice

Last updated on: November 24, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a study of Barth and Hegel on liberation and atonement (Christ Crucified in a Suffering World), Nathan Hieb notes that Barth defends the traditional ascription of iustitia distributiva to God, the justice “by which God distinguishes between right and wrong human action and on this basis approves or condemns” (68). Hieb elaborates, “Although Barth maintains that God’s righteousness is ‘essentially’ God’s mercy revealed through the love and grace of Jesus Christ, he also claims that the righteousness revealed in... Read more

Allegory and Atonement

Last updated on: November 24, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Atonement theology has drawn heavily from Paul, also from the Passion narratives. In drawing on the Passion narratives, atonement theology often makes an allegorical transition from the specifics of the narrative to a more general narrative setting of “all humanity,” even a cosmic setting. Thus, when Jesus says He lays down His life for His friends, His friends become the elect, or the church. But in the gospel, Jesus calls the disciples his friends. Within the narrative, Jesus quite literally... Read more