John 21:15: Jesus said to Peter, “Feed my lambs.” There are two charcoal fires in the last chapters of John’s gospel, and Peter is at both of them. He warms himself by the charcoal fire in the court of the high priest. There he denies Jesus, and when Jesus looks at him across the courtyard he goes out and weeps bitterly. When Jesus rises from the dead, Peter joins Jesus for breakfast beside the sea at another charcoal fire. Two... Read more
Christ is Risen! With those words, we enter a new season of the church calendar. We move from the preparatory, penitential season of Lent to the festive celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. The transition is real, but we can easily misunderstand it. We misunderstand Lent if we think that Lent is defeat and Easter victory, for Lent too is about the victory of the cross. We misunderstand Easter if we think that it leaves the cross behind. Easter doesn’t cancel the... Read more
Mark 14:38, 46-47, 51-52: Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation . . . . Then they laid hands on Jesus and took Him. And one of those who stood by drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear . . . . .Now a certain young man followed Him, having a linen cloth thrown around his naked body. And the young men laid hold of him, and he left the... Read more
Wilhelm von Humboldt gives this profound explanation of the role of language in human life: “Just as the individual sound intervenes between object and man, the entire language does so between hum and nature acting upon him both externally and internally. He surrounds himself with an ambient of sounds in order to assimilate and process the world of objects. These expressions do not in any way exceed the measure of simple truth. Man lives principally, or even exclusively, with objects,... Read more
The Christian Science Monitor reports that Ethiopian hyenas keep Lent: ” In the 55 days before Easter in Ethiopia, hyenas are forced to turn from scavenging to hunting to make up for Christians’ fasting traditions. Observant Ethiopian Christains give up meat and dairy for Lent, and it appears some spotted Hyenas are observing the religious holiday, too, by adjusting their diets to find the protein they can no longer get from trash cans. Members of the Orthodox Tewahedo Church give... Read more
There’s a tiny liturgical movement occurring these days among Reformed churches, and a larger shift happening among Protestant Evangelicals. Critics of the movement rightly raise the question of whether this is simply another expression of American Christian consumerism: It’s the fad du jour, without any solid rooting in Scripture or tradition. That, as I say, is an open question, a necessary caution. Liturgical interest among Evangelicals might in a decade or two go the way of camp meetings and seeker-friendliness,... Read more
Eric Enlow of the Handong University Law School in South Korea sent along these thoughts in response to my musings on Psalm 87, posted here a few weeks ago. The remainder of this post is from Eric. Your interpretation of Psalm 87 as reflecting a hidden ancient history reminds me of Amos 9, which seems to show some significant parallels. Ps 87:4 “I will record Rahab (1) and Babylon (2?) among those who acknowledge me— Philistia (3) too, and Tyre,... Read more
In a 2006 article in Modern Theology , J. Warren Smith offers this summary of the Aristotelian argument for self-sacrifice for friends on behalf of the man of Noble Soul: “Aristotle . . . establishes the relationship between self-love and self-sacrifice. In his words one hears the echo of Achilles’s dilemma: whether it is better to live a short but glorious life or to live a long but mean existence. For Aristotle the answer is clear for the one who... Read more
An article over at the Atlantic web site describes the original purpose of diamond engagement ring: “A now-obsolete law called the ‘Breach of Promise to Marry’ once allowed women to sue men for breaking off an engagement. Back then, there was a high premium on women being virgins when they married — or at least when they got engaged. Surveys from the 1940s show that roughly half of engaged couples reported being intimate before the big day. If the groom-to-be... Read more
In her new essay collection, When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays , Marilynne Robinson suggests that the difference between the Eastern and Western US is that “in the West ‘lonesome’ is a word with strongly positive connotations.’” Wandering the forests of Idaho in her childhood, she would kneel “by a creek that spilled and pooled among rocks and fallen trees with the unspeakably tender growth of small trees already sprouting from their backs, and [think], there is... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In