Radicalism and Compromise

Last updated on: September 28, 2012 at 5:21 am By Peter Leithart

Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) condemns both radicalism and compromise. Radicalism sees only the ultimate and dismisses and judges the penultimate; “everything penultimate is enmity towards Christ” (p. 127). Compromise ensures that the penultimate retains its rights and is not threatened by the ultimate, but in so doing limits the claims of the ultimate. Bonhoeffer summarizes: “Radicalism hates time, and compromise hates eternity. Radicalism hates patience, and compromise hates decision. Radicalism hates wisdom, and compromise hates simplicity. Radicalism hates moderation and... Read more

Deputies

Last updated on: September 28, 2012 at 5:11 am By Peter Leithart

Bonhoeffer ( Ethics ) has a superb passage about the “deputy” rather than the isolated individual as the unit of ethical reflection. Everyone, he argues, is a deputy: “The fact that responsibility is fundamentally a matter of deputyship is demonstrated most clearly in those circumstances in which a man is directly obliged to act in the place of other men, for example as a father, as a statesman or as a teacher . . . . The father acts for... Read more

Death to the Copulative

Last updated on: September 28, 2012 at 3:12 am By Peter Leithart

A brief in favor of theology as Queen of the sciences at www.firstthings.com this morning. Read more

Trinity Institute: A Missionary’s Perspective

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 5:56 pm By Peter Leithart

When I first came to Japan in 1981, I was a premillennial dispensationalist struggling to plant a church in a pagan culture. Jordan’s The Law of the Covenant , which I read in 1984, showed me how the Bible could and must be read to apply to cultural issues today. Jordan’s various writings on Biblical symbolism, especially Through New Eyes fundamentally changed the way I read and taught the Bible. Our local church here now practices paedobaptism and paedocommunion, employs... Read more

Grace before nature

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 2:15 pm By Peter Leithart

In Ethics , Bonhoeffer discusses the relation of the “ultimate” to the “penultimate,” God to the world, grace to nature. He admits that being man and being good are “penultimate in relation to the justification of the sinner by grace.” But this doesn’t mean that the penultimate conditions or determines the ultimate. On the contrary: “it would be quite wrong, it would be robbing the ultimate, if we were to say, for example, that to be man is a precondition... Read more

Idols of gold, silver, brass

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 1:48 pm By Peter Leithart

At the end of Revelation 9, we are informed that even the three plagues of fire, smoke, and brimstone did not drive men to repentance. Instead, they clung to their idols. Once idols are mentioned, they are described in terms of both materials and their threefold inability. They are constructed from five different substances here, arranged in descending value, from metals to wood. Their threefold inability: They cannot see, hear, or walk. This polemic has a couple of sources in... Read more

Ashes for breakfast

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 4:49 am By Peter Leithart

The idolater ends up eating ashes, Isaiah says (Isaiah 44:20). In context, that fits with Isaiah’s emphasis on the fact that the idols is made from the refuse of a building project. A carpenter cuts cedar, builds a fire, cooks bread and his meat, and from the leftovers he makes himself a god (v. 17). Ashes are the leftover of a fire, and the god is the residue of his technology. Ashes are also symbols of death, or the lamentation... Read more

Techno-god

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 4:36 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah’s attack on idols elaborates on the tools and technologies that the id0l-maker uses. The smith uses an iron tool and hammer (Isaiah 44:12), the carpenter a measuring line, plane, and compass (v. 13). Several of these words are used nowhere else in the Old Testament, and this is one of the longest lists of tools in the Bible. Having constructed his graven image, the maker bows to it, prostrating himself before the work of his hands (vv. 15). Prostration... Read more

Alternative temple

Last updated on: September 27, 2012 at 4:26 am By Peter Leithart

Idols are substitutes for the true God. But as Isaiah describes the construction of idols in his idol polemic in Isaiah 44, the idol emerges equally as an alternative temple, an alternative “meeting place” between God and man. The echoes of the temple texts are numerous. Isaiah refers to iron and wood workers ( charash ), employing a term translated as “engraver” in the tabernacle texts (Exodus 28:11; 35:35). Carpenters and builders repair the temple (2 Kings 12:11), and in... Read more

Trinity Institute Exists!

Last updated on: September 26, 2012 at 4:25 pm By Peter Leithart

We are now certain that the Trinity Institute exists. It’s on Facebook – www.facebook.com/TheTrinityInstitute Read more

What theme is common in both Psalms and Proverbs?