Ad Litteram

Last updated on: September 21, 2011 at 8:21 am By Peter Leithart

Lewis Ayres gave a wonderful paper on early church hermeneutics at a recent conference at Regent College. Part of the point was to place the early fathers – Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian – in their original context, and ask what they were responding to. Predominantly, they were responding to Valentinian gnostics who read the Bible according to “parabolic” or “enigmatic” methods of reading, derived from the ancient methods applied by Greek critics to Homer. Valentinians used the gospels to... Read more

Bad Translations

Last updated on: September 21, 2011 at 8:11 am By Peter Leithart

The NASB renders Deuteronomy 30:9 this way: “Then the Lord your God will prosper you abundantly in all the work of your hand, in the offspring of your body and in the offspring of your cattle and in the produce of your ground, for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, just as He rejoiced over your fathers.” If you follow the literal translations in the margin, it comes out this way: “Then the Lord your God will... Read more

New Jacob

Last updated on: September 21, 2011 at 7:57 am By Peter Leithart

Genesis ends with Jacob blessing his sons (Genesis 49). Deuteronomy ends with Moses blessing the tribes that have descended from Jaob’s sons (Deuteronomy 33). Moses is a new Jacob, the father of the tribes of Israel as Jacob was the father of the tribal ancestors. As the father of a new Israel, Moses adds to and sometimes reverses the destinies that were spelled out by Jacob. The most striking example is the tribe of Levi. Because Levi joined with Simeon... Read more

Bridal Camp

Last updated on: September 21, 2011 at 7:53 am By Peter Leithart

Deuteronomy 23:14 warns the Israelite army to maintain a sanitation system in the war camp so that Yahweh, who walks in the midst of the camp, will not find any “thing of nakedness.” The very same phrase appears in Deuteronomy 24:1, but there is describes a “thing of nakedness” that a husband finds in his wife, and provides a rationale for divorce. The Israelite army is the corporate fighting bride of Yahweh, and their success depends on their Husband’s presence... Read more

Musical Perichoresis

Last updated on: September 20, 2011 at 9:56 am By Peter Leithart

Jeremy Begbie has pointed out that, though a physical phenomena, music has different spatial qualities than solid objects. Music is present in a place, but it’s not localized in a way a visually perceptible object is. I can give my attention to listening to the sound, but I can’t say it’s “here” or “there” or “not here.” “What I hear occupies the whole of my aural space,” so that the acoustic world, with very slight variations, stays the same no... Read more

Empire and Hegemony

Last updated on: September 19, 2011 at 3:33 pm By Peter Leithart

In his World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (A John Hope Franklin Center Bo) , Immanuel Wallerstein argues that the modern world-system is fundamentally a capitalist economic system, the states being within in. On this model, he explains why the various efforts at modern world-empire (Charles V, Napoleon, Hitler) have failed and why hegemons don’t last. Empires fails because they run head-on into the over-arching capitalist impulse, which Wallerstein defines as a system designed to give priority to the endless accumulation of... Read more

Energies and Essence

Last updated on: September 19, 2011 at 7:36 am By Peter Leithart

Jenson has a neat summary and response to the Palamite distinction between energies and essence. Gregory, he notes, aimed to defend “Byzantine monastic teaching that the sanctified truly participate in God; that grace is not a mere matter of God’s effects upon us or our knowledge of and obedience to him, but is rather his ontological self-sharing with us.” Jenson thinks this is just fine. But, “Palamas thought he should also reserve some final reality of God from creaturely participation,”... Read more

I-Thou

Last updated on: September 19, 2011 at 7:16 am By Peter Leithart

In his Systematic Theology: Volume 1: The Triune God , Jenson ponders why Barth’s Trinitarian theology so often seems to collapse into a binity: “the inner-divine community of the Father and the Son is, explicitly [in Barth], ‘two-sided.’” Since the Spirit is the fellowship itself, He is ” not a partner thereof . . . . the Spirit is not a party to this converse [between Father and Son]. And, indeed, it is at the heart of the ‘I-Thou relation,’... Read more

Sermon notes

Last updated on: September 19, 2011 at 5:38 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION Isaiah’s series of burdens ends with a prophecy against the Phoenician city of Tyre. With its twin city Sidon, Tyre was one of the great trade cities of the ancient world. It will be destroyed, and all the cities that prospered from her trade will lament (vv. 1, 5, 14; cf. Revelation 18). THE TEXT “The burden against Tyre. Wail, you ships of Tarshish! For it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no harbor; from the... Read more

Medieval cities

Last updated on: September 15, 2011 at 12:40 pm By Peter Leithart

Though he doesn’t deny that medieval cities had their forms of oppression and ugliness, Timothy Gorringe argues that the medieval city lived up to its claim: “the city makes one free.” The city was a place to “escape from the oppression of feudal bonds,” and during the twelfth century the cities enjoyed a “communalist revolution” involving urban fraternities and guilds. Later medieval cities were divided into self-governing parishes, “and the city was the union of these districts, streets, parishes, and... Read more