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Feast of a Perishing World

Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Reflecting on Paul’s Eucahristic teaching in 1 Corinthians 10-11, Theodore Jennings writes (Transforming Atonement, 162): “To see the force of [Paul’s] argument, one need only ask in what ways the manner of assembling as communities of faith serves to demonstrate and exacerbate differences of wealth or prestige, of class, perhaps of gender, or a multitude of other differences, in order to see the import of Paul’s warning and its pertinence across the centuries of Christian practice. In how many ways... Read more

God Reconciles Us

Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jennings observes, as many have, that the New Testament says a great deal about God overcoming our enmity to Him (Transforming Atonement, 127). He overstates his case, because the Bible, including the New Testament, also has much to say about the wrath of God. But his point stands, and that raises the questions: How did humans become estranged from God? Why would we have a “beef” with God? and, How does the cross reconcile us? Jennings’ answers stand out for... Read more

Subversive Meals

Last updated on: May 16, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

I begin with two fundamental objections to R. Alan Streett’s Subversive Meals, a study of early Christian meal practices in the context of Greco-Roman banquets and the Roman empire. First, Streett takes the Roman banquet as the primary context for understanding Christian meal practices. I insist that Judaism and the Hebrew Bible provide the primary context, though acknowledging that Greco-Roman practices are also critical for grasping the full significance of the Supper. This distinction becomes blurry when we recognize that Jewish... Read more

Not the Foundation

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jeremy Treat’s The Crucified King is a salutary attempt to heal the breach in biblical and systematic theology between the kingdom and the cross. The goal of creation is to establish “God’s reign through his servant-kings over creation” (40), and that is what Jesus’ ministry, death, and resurrection aimed at: “Jesus is the servant-king through whom God establishes his reign over all the earth,” and His resign includes “reconciled servant-kings over the new creation” (43). The surprising lacuna in Treat’s... Read more

The Cross in History

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Theodore Jennings doesn’t think that traditional notions of atonement speak to the contemporary world. We are “no longer familiar” with the language of sacrifice, and that is partly because of Christianity itself: “the Letter to the Hebrews is an essay that largely aims at the destruction of the notion of sacrifice” (Transforming Atonement, 5). He thinks the same is true of other traditional notions of atonement. This elicits several responses: Is sacrifice really so foreign to contemporary thought? Does Hebrews... Read more

No Place To Hide

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

As legal affairs correspondent for the Nation, David Cole is no apologist for the NSA. But he argues in his Washington Post review of No Place To Hide that Glenn Greenwald undermines a compelling argument by hyperbole and his failure to acknowledge the limits on NSA activity: “Greenwald’s descriptions of NSA programs can also be misleading. He never mentions, for example, that there are significant ‘back-end’ limits on how the agency can search and use much of the data it collects. These... Read more

Ussher’s Soteriology

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

A recent addition to Oxford Studies in Historical Theology, Richard Snoddy’s Soteriology of James Ussher offers a detailed study of an important but neglected figure. If he is known at all, Ussher is known today as a chronologist. Snoddy’s is one of several recent works that shows the breadth of Ussher’s interests and work. Ussher stands among the “hypothetical universalists” of English theology (on which see Jonathan Moore’s English Hypothetical Universalism), who rejected the notion of limited atonement and “advocated a general... Read more

Pastoral Carnality

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Gordon Lathrop’s The Pastor: A Spirituality is a wise and beautiful book, to be savored slowly. It’s not perfect; it’s marred here and there by a form of lefty Lutheranism. But it’s such a lovely book that it seems almost obscene to review it. I’ll limit myself to quoting a few favorite passages. A pastor is “among symbols, as a symbol” (1). “In a society often starved for meaningful symbolic practice, the pastor may . . . discover that she or... Read more

Potter, Clay, and Divine Repentance

Last updated on: May 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a subtle discussion of divine repentance, R.W.L. Moberly (Old Testament Theology, 122-3) offers this complex reading of Jeremiah 18:1-10. Rather than a contradiction, he suggests that it offers a “striking paradox.” The imagery “strongly emphasizes divine power,” yet at the same time “we have a strong statement of divine responsiveness to human attitude and action.” God is free, “in effect entirely unconstrained in terms of the potter imagery,” yet He “commits Himself to responsive action.” God doesn’t cease to... Read more

Double Imputation

Last updated on: May 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

For some today, double imputation alone grounds the gospel. If Christ’s passive obedience (death on the cross) alone is imputed, then we are forgiven but not positively righteous. We need to have Christ’s active obedience (in life) imputed if we are to be counted positively as law-keepers, as righteous in God’s sight. That’s not the way Paul sets things up: Christ was delivered up for our transgressions and raised for our justification (Romans 4:25). We are positively righteous because we... Read more

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