The variety and flexibility of Thomas’s terminology regarding Christ’s passion and sin is remarkable. In ST III, 49, 1, he asks whether Christ’s passion liberates from sin ( liberati a peccato ). Christ’s death brings freedom. Then he shifts gears. Objection 2 says that “Christ’s Passion could not cleanse ( mundare ) us from sin.” In objection 4, he writes of “forgiveness” ( remissio ). At the end of the Respondeo , he concludes that Christ’s sufferings have divine power... Read more
Christ’s death fulfills the figures of Israel’s sacrificial system ( ST III, 48, 3). It exceeds them in being the sacrifice of human flesh for humanity. But it’s not just reality in relation to figure, but is itself a figure, a “sign for of something to be observed by us.” Thomas cites 1 Peter 4:1: “Christ, having suffered in the flesh . . . that now [you] may live the rest of your time in the flesh, not after the... Read more
How could Christ’s death be a sacrifice, since “those men who slew Christ did not perform any sacred act but rather wrought a great wrong”? ( ST , III, 48, 3). Christ’s passion is no sacrificium but a maleficium . Thomas answers by stressing the voluntary character of Christ’s death. Augustine said that “Christ offered Himself up for us in the Passion,” and Thomas adds that “this voluntary enduring of the Passion was most acceptable to God, as coming from... Read more
Did Christ effect salvation by way of redemption? Thomas asks ( ST III, 48, 4). It’s a question about salvation as payment . The first objection states that Christ could not have saved by way of redemption because no one buys or buys back ( emit vel redimit ) what already belongs to him. Sed contra : 1 Peter 1 speaks of Christ purchasing us with His blood. By His passion, he released from the bondage of sin and also... Read more
NT Wright has argued for some time, beginning with The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology , that the “one seed” who is Christ (Galatians 3:16) refers to a corporate reality, the single family of Abraham who are collectively called Christ. He points out that “seed” in Genesis is a collective term, and argues that Paul’s point is to emphasize that the one God always intended to have a single, unified family, rather than a... Read more
In Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age ,Victor Mayer-Schonberger explores the reversal of memory and forgetfulness in the digital age: “Since the beginning of time, for us humans, forgetting has been the norm and remembering the exception. Because of digital technology and global networks, however, this balance has shifted. Today, with the help of widespread technology, forgetting has become the exception, and remembering the default.” He cites Google tracking of search queries as an example: “In the... Read more
In his exhaustive study of Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible: The Social and Literary Context , David Instone-Brewer notes that “Cruelty and humiliation were . . . recognized as grounds for divorce and are related to emotional neglect in the Mishnah” (107). Both husbands and wives could be charged with humiliating and abusing a spouse. After specifying some cases, Instone-Brewer writes, “These acts of cruelty, which individually seem so petty, can mount up to an intolerable marriage. The grounds... Read more
Wright ( How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels ) claims that “the creeds were remarkable, a unique postbiblical innovation to meet a fresh need. They have functioned as the badge and symbol of the Christian family . . . for a millennium and a half. They are more than merely a list of things we happen to believe. Saying we believe these things marks us out as standing in continuity with those who went before us... Read more
In his recent How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels , N.T. Wright argues that many forms of atonement theology detach the cross from its proper context in the gospels – that is, the context of God’s coming kingdom. He finds that many “devour works” that deal with the life and death of Jesus ignore the fact that in Jesus “Israel’s God really did become king of the world” (241). Putting the cross back with the kingdom... Read more
The first of Pastor Ralph Smith’s multi-part series of studies on Deuteronomy is up on the Trinity House site. Ralph is the Pastor of the Mitaka Evangelical Church of Tokyo. Read more
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