Leithart
Pastor Rich Bledsoe explores the connections of glory and unity at the Trinity House site. Read more
Pastor Rich Bledsoe explores the connections of glory and unity at the Trinity House site. Read more
Philip Jenkins’s latest, The Great and Holy War, examines the religious dimensions of World War I. On all sides, he observes, it was characterized as a holy war, a comic battle that would culminate in Armageddon and perhaps usher in an eschatological order. In fact it was, as Andrew Preston put it, “Christendom’s ultimate civil war” (quoted, p. 21), the last in a centuries-long parade of inter-Christian conflict. Its effect was to put a final stroke to the secularization of Europe.... Read more
D. Brent Laytham suggests that entertainment falls into the biblical category of a “power,” a good aspect of creation designed to “give, sustain, and enrich life” but one that, in a fallen world, tends to “turn away from God, becoming self-referential and self-aggrandizing” (iPod, YouTube, Wii Play, 27). A power is supposed to be subordinate, but it continuously strives to dominate. Entertainment is such a good that can provide genuine “pleasure and enjoyment, beneficial rhythms, excellence worth attending to, forms... Read more
D. Brent Laytham suggests that entertainment falls into the biblical category of a “power,” a good aspect of creation designed to “give, sustain, and enrich life” but one that, in a fallen world, tends to “turn away from God, becoming self-referential and self-aggrandizing” (iPod, YouTube, Wii Play, 27). A power is supposed to be subordinate, but it continuously strives to dominate. Entertainment is such a good that can provide genuine “pleasure and enjoyment, beneficial rhythms, excellence worth attending to, forms... Read more
J.R. Illingworth explains in Divine Immanence that consciousness, mind, and the human spirit are realized only materially. He is not reductive. Thought is not simply the firing of synapses. But “Our every state of consciousness depends, as we have seen, upon the brain, and therefore upon the blood that nourishes the brain, and therefore on the chemical elements that form the blood. Without oxygen, and nitrogen, and phosphorus, and carbon, we could neither think, nor will, nor love” (31). The human... Read more
The day of atonement (or “day of coverings”) involved a re-investiture of the priest. At the beginning of the rite, he removed his garments of glory (Leviticus 16:3) and at the end of the day he put them back on (16:23-24). Before the rites, he bathed his body (16:4) and again after the rite (16:24), a double baptism that recalled his baptism at his ordination (Exodus 29:4; Leviticus 8:6). (There is a dramatization of this aspect of Yom Kippur in... Read more
The day of atonement (or “day of coverings”) involved a re-investiture of the priest. At the beginning of the rite, he removed his garments of glory (Leviticus 16:3) and at the end of the day he put them back on (16:23-24). Before the rites, he bathed his body (16:4) and again after the rite (16:24), a double baptism that recalled his baptism at his ordination (Exodus 29:4; Leviticus 8:6). (There is a dramatization of this aspect of Yom Kippur in... Read more
It’s now possible to watch an entire season of a TV show in a couple of nights. If you don’t have to get up too early the next day, a long night will do the trick. Robin Sloan argues that we miss something when we binge, and not just commercial breaks. Episodes have creative as well as commercial weight. “Delay, withhold, restrict, release: This is storytelling 101, Scheherazade stuff, and it’s deeper than marketing and distribution. We bring all of our creative... Read more
Many have objected to the Trinity on the grounds of its mysteriousness. J.R. Illingworth (The Doctrine of the Trinity [1907]) responds that natural theology is no less mysterious. Natural theology draws from “the material world and the mind of men,” but both “are baffling.” Nature is perplexing, and so is human history: “When we reflect on the long preparation of the earth for man’s inheritance, or the marvellous mechanism of his body, and still more wonderful powers of his mind,... Read more
Owen Cummings’s brief study of “the Eucharist across the ages and traditions” (Eucharist & Ecumenism) holds many surprises. There are some standard well-known texts – the Didache, Justin’s description of the Eucharistic service, The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. But then Cummings collection goes rogue. He includes a Eucharistic prayer from the eastern church, that of Addai and Mari, a brief analysis of the Eucharistic theologies of Baldwin of Ford and Margery Kempe. Better-known names also appear – Richard Hooker and... Read more
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