Special Offers

Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Moses the Tactician

Last updated on: February 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Command, Clement of Alexandria wrote, involved “caution, risk taking, and the union of the two,” and these expressed themselves in words, deeds, or word-deeds. Moses was the great model of command, not only to Israel but to the Greeks (Stromateis, 1.24). Moses’ night march through the sea guided by a pillar was imitated by Miltiades at Marathon: “Hippias, the Athenian defector, had conducted the barbarian forces into Africa, and, knowing the country, seized and held the points of vantage. The... Read more

Tertullian’s “Pacifism”

Last updated on: February 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Oliver and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan pithily sum up Tertullian’s argument in De corona militis (From Irenaeus to Grotius, 24): “By concentrating on the particular issue of whether a Christian should wear the military chaplet on ceremonial occasions, it manages to take for granted the more fundamental case against military service. . . . Yet what was the case? Was it to do with the impossibility of shedding blood, even in the service of magistrates whom God had authorized to bear the... Read more

Sacred Violence

Last updated on: February 20, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2010 piece in Theology Today, Leslie Goode summarizes some of the challenges posed to post-Girardian Christian apologetics and anthropology by Kathryn McClymond’s Beyond Sacred Violence. McClymond argues that violence is not a universal feature of sacrifice, and even where it is present it is not necessarily the critical element. The claim that sacred violence is the essence of sacrifice, she argues, ignores much ethnographic evidence to the contrary. This disrupts, Goode notes, that any easy contrast of pagan violence... Read more

Faith, Not Sight

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Faith is the discernment of things unseen. Faith looks for a city yet to come, not made with hands. To any visible arrangement of things, faith stands with Faust in his refusal of “Stay, you are so fair.” Faith says to every human construction, “Good, but not it.” Faith’s reserve means that it keeps its distance, which is the basis for proper critique, which is the basis for progress and freedom. Read more

De-Priesting, Re-Priesting

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When Aaron and his sons were ordained, they were washed, vested, and anointed (Leviticus 8:6-9). When Aaron approached the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, he puts on linen clothes and washes (16:4). There is no anointing, he removes the garments of glory. The ordination rite goes in reverse. Aaron de-priests. At the end of the day, when sin and uncleanness has been expelled by the scapegoat, Aaron takes off his linen clothes, washes, and puts on his priestly... Read more

Like Adam

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Hosea 6:7 has been a Reformed proof text of an Adamic covenant: They broke covenant like Adam. Recent commentary has been skeptical. “Adam” can mean “mankind,” rather than the individual first man. John Davies (A Royal Priesthood, 202) thinks the older interpretation, however “unfashionable,” has something to commend it: “If Hosea has as part of his shared presupposition pool with his readers the story of GEnesis 2, with Adam as the idyllic priest-king . . . together with the notion... Read more

Imago Dei

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Priests have been despised throughout the modern era, but in Scripture the priest is a foretaste of the destiny of the human race. He is a sign of the restoration of the imago Dei. John Davies explains how (A Royal Priesthood, 164-5): “Just as the original creation of the cosmos . . . is incomplete until humanity as the image or visual representation of God is placed in the world as its custodian and vice-regent . . . so the... Read more

On Eagles’ Wings

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Yahweh brought Israel out of Egypt “on eagles’ wings” (Exodus 19:4). John A. Davies argues (A Royal Priesthood) that this is no trite metaphor: “Representations of [eagles and vultures] are found in close association with royalty in both Egypt and Mesopotamia. A series of temple scenes in Egypt depicts such a bird on the central axis of the temple ceiling in successive stages of escorting Pharaoh as he makes his way through to the god in the adytum. The Assyrian... Read more

Playing by the Rules

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Dorothy Sayers once said that the incarnation and atonement prove that, whatever God may be up to with His world, He is determined to play by the rules. Paul would have agreed. Stephen Finlan writes (Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 101), apropos of Paul’s use of cultic terminology in 2 Corinthians 5 that “God’s generosity is unbounded, but it seems that God is bound to use cultic forms—even making an innocent man to become sin—to accomplish God’s ends. The scapegoat mechanism is a... Read more

Care and sacrifice

Last updated on: February 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Finlan doesn’t think there’s any idea of substitution in the sacrificial rites, though there is in the scapegoat ritual (Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors, 91). To see a penal substitution in sacrifice, “assumes something that is never stated in Hebrew texts: that the animal is being somehow punished.” He claims that the contrary is the case: “no abuse is poured on the sacrificial animal as there is on the scapegoat; it is treated with great care and is sacrificed to God,... Read more

405
406
407
408
409

Browse Our Archives

TRENDING AT PATHEOS Evangelical

view all Evangelical blogs