The launching of Trinity House is very good news for theological education. Its program is at once fresh and innovative and at the same time rooted deeply in the Church’s most ancient traditions. This is no conventional academic institute. Its directors are as much interested in the practice of prayer and the Church’s worship as in the study of the Bible and theology. By linking its offerings to a vibrant urban congregation, it will form students who know by experience... Read more
In a brief discussion, Michael Horton ( Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology , 97) claims that for Robert Jenson “God [is] ‘a fugue, a conversation, a personal event’” and gives this rejoinder: “It is one thing to say that the triune God is three persons . . . engaged in an eternal fugue, and quite another to say that God just is a fugue, a conversation, a personal event . . . . If God just is a conversation,... Read more
DePaul’s Carolyn Bronstein reviews the forthcoming biopic of Deep Throat star Linda Lovelace at the Atlantic . It’s not easy reading: “Linda died at 53 after a Denver automobile accident, but her account of sexual slavery on the set of Deep Throat is preserved in her 1980 autobiography, Ordeal . If Epstein and Friedman stay true to her story, which has always had its doubters, Lovelace will recreate a series of brutal rapes. She spoke about this at a press... Read more
In the NYRB , Steve Coll complains about the depiction of torture in Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty . The film poses as a form of journalism, flashing a “based on real events” in the early frames. Coll doesn’t think it measures up. For one thing, the film all but ignores tensions and debates within the government about the morality and efficacy of torture. Agents from the CIA and FBI both raised strong objections. But “The only qualms any... Read more
The ark of the covenant is a type of Christ, Bede says ( Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians) , 20). It is also a type of the church: “the ark can also be taken figuratively as the Holy Church which is constructed from incorruptible wood (that is, from holy souls). Extended throughout the four quarters of the world, with faith in the holy gospel [the Church] expects from God the eternal crown of... Read more
Bede ( Bede: On the Tabernacle (Liverpool University Press – Translated Texts for Historians) ) neatly contrasts Sinai and the mount of Jesus’ sermon. Moses goes up alone on Sinai “since at that time the Scripture of the law was being committed solely to the people of Israel.” Jesus speaks to apostles and crowds on the mountain because “the grace of the gospel was going to reach all nations throughout the world by the preaching of the apostles.” Pentecost fits... Read more
Jesus’ claim that He will be “lifted up” fulfills Old Testament prophecies concerning the temple, according to Paul Hoskins ( Jesus as the Fulfillment of the Temple in the Gospel of John (Paternoster Biblical Monographs) , 156-7). When “God glorifies Jesus through the events of Jesus’ hour,” it fulfills promises previously associated with the temple (Isaiah 60:7, 13). Jesus’ conversation with the woman in John 4 alludes back to Isaiah 2:1-4, which predicts that the temple mount will rise above... Read more
Chalcedonian Christology, Pannenberg argues ( Jesus – God and Man (scm classics) , 344-5), presupposes an anthropology: “Openness to God is the radical meaning of that human ‘openness in relation to the world’ that constitutes man’s specific nature in distinction from all animals.” He goes on: “only under this presupposition is there no deformation of the genuinely human reality of Jesus when Christian theology asserts that he received his personality, which integrated his life into a totality, from the Father,... Read more
Protestants make the best ecumenists. We aren’t absolutely invested in our traditional formulas, and we are always going back to the great consensus document of the Christian church, viz., the Bible. Conversely and for the same reason, ecumenists in more tradition-bound traditions become more Protestant. It’s no accident that the great ecumenical Catholics of the last century were deep students of Scripture like Congar and de Lubac, not to mention John Paul II and Benedict. Read more
The Jews who clash with Jesus (John 8) claim to be Abraham’s seed ( sperma ) and Jesus agrees (v. 37). When the say that Abraham is their father, Jesus demurs: “if you are Abraham’s children ( tekna ) . . . . (v. 39). There’s a difference between being seed of a father and children of a father. What is the difference? It’s a nature/nurture distinction, but we can be more specific. In John 8, Jesus identifies two characteristics... Read more
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