Apocalypse in nuce

Last updated on: April 30, 2013 at 6:19 am By Peter Leithart

Four simple points to guide any sane reading of Revelation. 1) Revelation is a book of the Bible. It is packed with Old Testament language and imagery, and cannot be understood without that Old Testament background. One scholar has suggested that Revelation uses the Old Testament “compositionally” rather than “expositionally” – there is no commentary on biblical texts (as in, say, Romans), but the Old Testament provides the palette from which Revelation is painted. Attempts to explain Revelation primarily by... Read more

Let there be light

Last updated on: April 29, 2013 at 4:32 pm By Peter Leithart

Edison is credited for inventing the electric light, but as Ernest Freeberg notes in his The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America , Edison was part of a transAtlantic network of researchers and relied on capital investments to keep his experiments going. And once he invented the light bulb, it took another set of inventors to put it to use: “When Edison demonstrate his first working light bulbs at Menlo Park in the last days... Read more

Christ Clothed

Last updated on: April 29, 2013 at 4:16 pm By Peter Leithart

Segundo Galilea notes in The Way of Living Faith: A Spirituality of Liberation that sacramentality represents a problem for contemporary spirituality. But sacraments are not the problem. Sacraments, and “the Word of God that shapes every sacrament,” are the solution. As Galilea says, “Jesus, his life and liberation, is found primarily in the Church as sacrament. The Church is the original and privileged sacrament of Christ offered to society as life and liberation. In a certain way, there is only... Read more

A Cusan Modernity?

Last updated on: April 29, 2013 at 3:15 am By Peter Leithart

I summarize some aspects of the work of Nicholas of Cusa at the Trinity House web site. Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: April 28, 2013 at 7:34 am By Peter Leithart

1 Corinthians 11:20: Paul calls this meal the “Lord’s Supper.” We have eaten together about five hundred times. This is the last time I’ll serve at this table as pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, but after I’m gone, you’ll have the same host. Jesus is the host of this meal. He always has been. He always will be. What happens in holy communion doesn’t depend on whom you see standing here. It doesn’t depend on how clever or profound the... Read more

Baptismal meditation

Last updated on: April 28, 2013 at 7:05 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah 11:9: The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. I finished Sunday School earlier today, where I gave an overview of the last chapters of Revelation. On Tuesday, my final graduate and undergraduate classes will both be on Revelation. Last week, I taught my last literature class on Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well . All the stars and portents are aligned, and it can only mean one thing: My... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: April 28, 2013 at 6:27 am By Peter Leithart

Things are changing and all the changes will be great blessings so long as you don’t let the demands of the moment distract you from being the church. Look at this new phase as a fresh opportunity to live up to our name – Trinity Reformed Church. God is Love, and by His Spirit, the Father has united us to His beloved Son, so that we share the Son’s love for His Father. The God who is love takes us... Read more

Society of Yertles

Last updated on: April 27, 2013 at 8:42 am By Peter Leithart

In an essay on marriage and the construction of reality , Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner observe how the modern “crystallization” of the public/private divide has affected the pursuit of identity and reputation: “It would . . . seem that large numbers of people i our society are quite content with a situation in which their public involvements have little subjective importance, regarding work as a not too bad necessity and politics as at best a spectator sport . .... Read more

Sacramental cause

Last updated on: April 26, 2013 at 12:28 pm By Peter Leithart

Thomas ( ST III, 60, 1) is interestingly careful in the way he deals with the notion that sacraments are causes. He asks whether sacraments are signs, and his first objection is grammatical: Sacramentum comes from sacrando , which means “sacring,” and, on analogy with medicando , it refers to causality rather than signification: Medicament comes from the causal participle for “healing,” and thus sacraments have “the nature of a cause rather than of a sign. Therefore a sacrament is... Read more

Determined sacraments

Last updated on: April 26, 2013 at 12:05 pm By Peter Leithart

Thomas asks ( ST III, 60, 5) whether the sensible thing of the sacraments is a “determinate” something. Do we have to use specific things, or may we substitute at will? His answer is that sacramental elements are determinate, and his reasoning has to do with the nature of sacramental causation. Sensible things in general are “endowed with natural powers” and if two things have the same power, the choice between them is indifferent. If two medicines have the same... Read more