John describes Jesus’ appearance following a wasf form, listing off His features from white head to face to feet and back to face 1. Head and hair 2. Eyes 3. Feet 4. Voice 5. Hand 6. Mouth 7. Face That list probably has some correlation with the days of creation: White hair is light on the head; eyes are like stars in the firmament; feet rest on the ground that is the footstool; the voice is the voice by which... Read more
Jesus is “like the son of man” (Revelation 1:13), a clear allusion to Daniel 7. He also sports a head of white hair like wool, white as snow (1:14), another clear allusion to Daniel 7. But the two allusions to Daniel 7 describe two different people. The Ancient of Days, not the Son of Man, has the white hair. John sees Jesus glorified to become the Ancient of Days. As Son of Man, Last Adam, He receives a kingdom. But... Read more
Bruno Blumenfeld makes the intriguing comments that “Paul lived in a world in which ethics was the only field of intellectual speculation left to the philosopher.” The polis was dead. But, Blumenfeld continues, “Paul transcends morals and makes his way into the political.” The gospel resurrected the polis , the rebirth of politics. Read more
Traditional treatments of the ordo salutis often assume a firm distinction between accomplishment and application of redemption. Terminology, for instance, is strictly distinguished: Sacrifice, redemption, cross, resurrection are on the “accomplished” side, while regeneration, justification, adoption are on the “applied” side. One of the implications of the work of Richard Gaffin and others si that Paul’s terminology is much more fluid than this. On the one side, Paul uses the language of “accomplishment” to describe the Christian experience of the... Read more
How did Jesus’ death defeat the powers? Jenson, simple-minded in the best sense, says, “Jesus really and straightforwardly did defeat the high priest and the Roman procurator, the powers and principalities of political empire and religious self-assertion. An actual historical conflict occurred between an unholy alliance of Rome and Jerusalem and this lone Jew. Just in that Pilate and Caiphas sought to silence the prophet and rabbi who called them to account before the Father, their power was demonic. And... Read more
Jesus was killed because He forgave, not to gain our forgiveness, says Gerhard Forde. I don’t agree with the second part of that, but the first part intrigues. It sounds like the typical liberal nostrum that Jesus was put to death for being too nice, and we don’t like niceness. Is a Jesus who forgives “crucifiable”? I think so: Fallen human beings, fallen human societies, are defined by their retention of grievances. We want payback; we want revenge. Anyone who... Read more
When Jesus died as a sin offering, God “condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3), with the result that the righteous requirement of the law can be fulfilled in us (v. 4). James Dunn paraphrases: In the cross, God “passed effective judgment on sin.” In Christ’s death, sin is brought before the Judge, and declared guilty. That way of putting it suggests that “sin” is distinguishable from sinners. And that idea is rooted deeply in Paul’s argument in Romans. From... Read more
Romans 3:25 says that God set Jesus forth as a hilasterion to “demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forebearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.” That translation conformed to the “God is just in condemning us all” viewpoint, but the Greek is trickier. Woodenly, it says, “to declare His righteousness on account of the passing-over of before-happened sins.” That still might mean “God had passed over sin, and therefore people thought Him unconcerned with sin; He finally... Read more
In her essay “On Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues that interpretation that seeks the “meaning” of a work of art is always destructive. She says, “It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates dissatisfaction (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it with something else. Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement... Read more
When Daniel appears before Nebuchadnezzar to interpret the dream of the tree, he says this: “break away now from your sins by doing righteousness and from your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor” (Daniel 4:27). This is interesting on several levels. First, Daniel isn’t just interpreting dreams for the emperor. He’s not an imperial toady. Though he is in the imperial administration, he also calls the emperor to repentance. (more…) Read more
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