Leithart
Some of my thoughts on Jesus and violence over at http://www.firstthings.com/ . Read more
Some of my thoughts on Jesus and violence over at http://www.firstthings.com/ . Read more
Martyred saints under the altar cry out for vengeance (Revelation 6:10). They call to the “holy and true” to avenge their blood. To whom are the crying? We might think that it’s the Father, but Revelation 3:7 makes it clear that Jesus is “the holy, the true.” They want and expect Jesus to judge and avenge martyrs’ blood shed on the earth. Read more
Jesus has keys to open and shut (Revelation 3:7). That makes him a new Eliakim, successor to Shebna as the overseer of the house of David (Isaiah 22). It also makes Him a new Nebuchadnezzar, who locks up the cities of the Negev so that no one can open them as he carries Judah into exile (Jeremiah 13:19). It also makes Him a new Cyrus who opens doors and against whom no gates are secure (Isaiah 45:1). Jesus with the... Read more
I knew posting about zombies would hit a nerve. Ben Graber responds to my post about zombies. The remainder of this post comes from Graber: I would venture a guess that the current interest in zombies reflects a mood that’s been well documented over the last decade. First, the state of perpetual and potentially interminable warfare since 2001 has drawn a whole host of comparisons, both implicit and explicit, to the Vietnam era. In that respect, the basic theme of... Read more
I’ve asked myself that question a lot over the last few years, what with the spate of books and films featuring zombies. Terrence Rafferty asks the same question in a recent NYT piece. He points out that the insatiable, relentless zombies of today are relatively new: “The title creature of Jacques Tourneur’s weirdly lyrical 1943 movie, ‘I Walked With a Zombie,’ doesn’t eat flesh and is entirely unthreatening to the living beings around her; all that’s horrifying is the unnatural,... Read more
Ryan Lizza writes an expose of Michelle Bachmann in The New Yorker . As Joe Carter shows on firstthings.com, the story is full of distortions and misleading claims. Doesn’t stop other journalists. The Economist summarizes Lizza’s piece as is, and so the ball starts rolling. Lizza’s article becomes instant orthodoxy, and soon everyone will think that only a few cranks like the “theocrats” at First Things object. Read more
Bavinck has these wise words about God’s will: “We can make as many distinctions in the will of God (as it relates to his creatures) as there are creatures; the free will of God is as richly variegated as that whole world is. Most important is the fact that God is father to all his creatures but not in the same way.” Ultimately, the “actual will of God is the will of his good pleasure” and “this will is identical... Read more
Bavinck has these wise words about God’s will: “We can make as many distinctions in the will of God (as it relates to his creatures) as there are creatures; the free will of God is as richly variegated as that whole world is. Most important is the fact that God is father to all his creatures but not in the same way.” Ultimately, the “actual will of God is the will of his good pleasure” and “this will is identical... Read more
In a 2004 article in Victorian Studies , Bernard Porter challenges today’s “cultural imperialist” assumption that the British empire pervaded Victorian life. Not so, he argues, for several reasons. One was that there was no single Britain: “this idea that there was only one culture in Britain, or one hegemonic one, which is fairly represented by writers like Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and the rest of the literary ‘canon,’ is unproven, to put it at its best. Anyone who... Read more
Jim Rogers of Texas A&M disputes the analysis of the decline of the value of the dollar that I posted from the Economist a week or two ago. The remainder of this is from Jim: The Economist is a good magazine with very broad coverage hard to find in U.S. magazines. Its one error is to sound more certain (and often more convincing) than it is. So measured by gold, the dollar has lost 97 percent of its purchasing power.... Read more
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