Simplifying Scripture

Last updated on: October 3, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Adonis Vidu (Atonement, Law, and Justice) focuses much of his attention on the import that the “doctrine” of divine simplicity holds for our understanding of atonement. He denies that simplicity is a philosophical imposition on Scripture, but rather a rule of reading Scripture that preserves the unity of the Bible and the witness of Scripture to the Creator-creature distinction. At the same time, though, Vidu gives fuel to the critics of simplicity with statements like the following. He claims that... Read more

Shepherd-Martyrs

Last updated on: October 3, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

An excerpt from a chapel homily at Tri-City Christian School, Somersworth, New Hampshire. Christians are always called to be witnesses, but in the world you enter your witness will take the form of martyrdom. You are called to be witnesses to the truth of God’s Word in the face of pressures to conform, insults and lies, harassment and public hostility, perhaps even legal threats. As Robert George has said, the era of comfortable Christianity in America is over, and you... Read more

Shepherd-Martyrs

Last updated on: October 3, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Like a Young Kid

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

On his way to visit a pleasing woman in Timnah, Samson is attacked by a lion (Judges 14). He defeats the lion, tearing it “like a young goat,” and then heads on to visit the lady. Does tearing a lion “like a young goat” mean tearing a lion “easily”? Is it easy to tear a young goat? We are supposed to hear sacrificial overtones. Just a chapter earlier, Samson’s parents offered a “young goat” to the angel of Yahweh who... Read more

U2’s Thickening Ecclesiology

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

A decade ago, a critic at Christianity Today worried about U2’s “thin ecclesiology.” Though openly Christian, Bono and his crew have not associated with any church. Writing at The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman argues that the last several decades have bolstered the band’s theology. He connects their chariness about organized religion with their Dublin origins and their penchant for searching, doubt, and not finding what you’re looking for. Genuine as it was their doubt was highly theatrical: “Bono regularly dressed up... Read more

Evangelical Atheism

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

John Gray’s TNR review of Richard Dawkins’s An Appetite for Wonder is the very definition of withering. It should be read in full. As a public service, a few of the juicier quotations: “No two minds could be less alike than those of the great nineteenth-century scientist [i.e., Darwin] and the latter-day evangelist for atheism. Hesitant, doubtful, and often painfully perplexed, Darwin understood science as an empirical investigation in which truth is never self-evident and theories are always provisional. If science,... Read more

Epic Tetris

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

“It’s a very big, epic sci-fi movie,” says Larry Kasanoff of Threshold Entertainment. He’s talking about a movie based on Tetris, the game of falling geometric shapes. The movie is going to be much, much more than geometry. We’re going to learn that “‘Tetris’ is the teeny tip of an iceberg that has intergalactic significance.” The most revealing thing in the little WSJ piece on the movie, though, is Kasanoff’s claim that “Brands are the new stars of Hollywood.” One admires... Read more

Jugation and Hierarchy

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

I summarize and interact with more of Naphtali Meshel’s The “Grammar” of Sacrifice at the Trinity House site, examining his concepts of “jugation” and “hierarchy” in “P.” Read more

Atonement and Theology

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

In his recent Atonement, Law, and Justice, Adonis Vidu examines historical atonement theories in relation to accepted notions of law and justice that were current in the world of the theologians who produced the theories. His book is “an interdisciplinary reading of the development of atonement theory from the perspective of its engagement with intellectual discourses relating to law and justice.” He claims that “atonement theories want to affirm that God preserves his justice in the process of redemption,” but then... Read more

Atonement and Theology

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