Revelation 19:7, 17-18: Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready . . . And I saw an angel standing in the sun and he cried with a loud voice to all the birds which fly in midheaven, Come, assemble for the great supper of God. Revelation 19 describes two feasts. The Harlot city has fallen, and the Bride is about... Read more
The church calendar teaches us about Jesus, so we can be faithful disciples. In Epiphany, we focus on the manifestation of Jesus, culminating today in His glorification the Mount of Transfiguration. On Wednesday, we enter the season of Lent, when we re-focus on the suffering and sacrifice of Christ. Lent is not just an opportunity to learn about Christ’s sacrifice. It is an annual removal of the leaven of Egypt, and thus a practical expression of our participation in the... Read more
In their introduction to The Culture of English Puritanism,1560-1700 (Themes in Focus) , Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales spend several pages discussing the role of fasting in Puritanism. The begin with Patrick Collinson’s remark that “an anthropologist wanting to describe puritan culture . . . should be led without further delay to teh puritan fast.” Fasting of course was common, and regularized into a schedule, during the medieval period, and though the Reformers “objected to the routinized nature of these... Read more
In reaction to modern or postmodern subjectivism, Christians often pound on “objectivity.” This is often no solution, but only a shift from one pole to another within the same paradigm. In fact, subject and object are not neatly separated from one another. Subjects are objects in the world; many objects have subjectivity. The relation is more perichoretic than antithetical. Too, “objectivists” often display an ironic distrust of objects. One would think that objectivists would think that objects have power to... Read more
The Bride of the Song is blackened by the sun, and she is in the sun because she has been forced to care for the vineyards by her angry brothers and has neglected her own vineyard. This is often taken as an allegory of Israel’s neglect of her calling. Instead of cultivating the vineyard of the temple, or the vineyard of the land, she has cultivated other vineyards. Ellen Davis and Robert Jenson, for instance, connects this with the idolatry... Read more
Yeago again, explaining Maximus’s use of the soul/body distinction in his discussion of Christology. The spirit/soul union is his main example of a “union according to hupostasis . Maximus explains: “the features which mark off someone’s body from other bodies, and someone’s soul from other souls, coming together by virtue of union, characterize and at the same time mark off from other humans the hupostasis made up of them, that of Peter, for example, or of Paul. But these features... Read more
In his Modern Theology article on Maximus, David Yeago helpfully lays out the intentions and assumptions of what he calls Neo-Chalcedonian Christology. The overall aim, he says, “was to interpret the definition of Chalcedon in a manner faithful to the central christological insights of Cyril of Alexandria,” and “the main conceptual device used in doing so was the notion of hupostasis , which had developed into a fairly precise instrument through its employment in trinitarian theology, but had not previously... Read more
Michael Root summarizes the notion of “configurational” understanding, as opposed to a “theoretical” understanding of things, that has been developed by Louis O. Mink: In narratives, events are “elements in a single and concrete complex of relationships. Thus a letter which I burn may be understood not only as an oxidizable substance but as a link with an old friend. It may have relieved a misunderstanding, raised a question, or changed my plans at a crucial moment. As a letter,... Read more
In a lengthy footnote to a brilliant article in Modern Theology on Maximus the Confessor’s cosmic Christology, David Yeago summarizes Maximus’ explanation of how Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer refutes Monothelitism: “According to Maximus, the words ‘let this cup pass from me’ demonstrate that Jesus had a natural human will, which naturally shrinks from what is harmful to its kind But the total utterance, which puts this natural shrinking into the context of a freely willed acceptance of the will of the... Read more
In Isaiah 34:1, the prophet summons the nations to draw near. It seems to be a call to Gentiles, but several things suggest that it is a call to Israel and the Gentiles together. goyim , which begins the verse, is clearly the Gentile nations, but the word translated as “people” ( leom ) in the NASB has a more varied use. In Genesis 25:23, its first use, it is used of Jacob and Esau as two leumim in the... Read more
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