Sacrificial logic

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

According to Debora Shuger’s rich and provocative description, Grotius sets out to give a “demythologized” account of the sacrifice of Christ. He tries to show that penal substitution is rooted in acknowledge legal practices and rules, deriving especially from Roman public law. Toward the end of his treatise, though, Grotius slips into a re-mythologized atonement theory when, in the final section, he places the crucifixion in the context of the near-universal archaic pracice of human sacrifice. In the end, instead... Read more

In Defense of Human Sacrifice

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Defending the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Sepulveda argued that the Indians had forfeited their rights because they violated natural law by cannibalism and human sacrifice. Las Casas defended the Indians not by denying the charges but by defending human sacrifice on the basis of natural law. “Be natural law,” he argued, “men are obliged to honor God, and to offer the best things in sacrifice,” since sacrifice is the best way to worship God. Since “nothing in nature is... Read more

Machiavellian freedom

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In his Discourses on Livy , Machiavelli speculates nostalgically that the anemic modern attachment to freedom is due to the insipidity of modern sacrifice: “When I meditated on the reason why people were more in love with freedom in those ancient times than they are now, I saw it was because they have grown weaker now than formerly, which is a result of the difference in education, this again being based on the difference of their religion from ours .... Read more

Revelation and Ezekiel

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In an article examining the use of the OT in Revelation, Steve Moyise notes the extensive parallels between Ezekiel and Revelation. This is not just a matter of scattered allusions; rather, Revelation overall, and in specific sections, follows the order of Ezekiel quite precisely. For instance: God on throne surrounded by living creatures: Ezekiel 1, Revelation 4 Marking of saints: Ezekiel 9-10, Revelation 7-8 Overthrow of harlot, Ezekiel 16, 23; Revelation 17 Lamentation over fallen city: Ezekiel 26-27; Revelation 18... Read more

Host and relic

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In a 1988 study in Past and Present , Charles Zika examines processions and pilgrimages in 15th-century Germany as sites of conflict between the extra-clerical use of relics and the clerically-dependent uses of the host. Devotion to the host was promoted, he argues, in order to bring lay devotion under the control of clerical religion. Zika writes, “Precisely because the host seemed to assure a religiosity which could be kept within the control of the clergy, its promotion was so... Read more

Beautiful Justice

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Thomas says that Christ merited exaltation. In each of teh fourr senses that His humiliation merited exaltation, there is the same poetic symmetry: His passion and death merited exaltation; His descent merited ascent; his shame merited exaltation; and His submission to human judges merited an exaltation as Judge. What does “merit” mean here? It doesn’t seem to be a matter of strict justice in any normal sense. In human terms at least, the fact that someone humbles Himself does not... Read more

Incarnation and sacrifice

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Christ’s sacrifice was a sacrifice of flesh, Thomas admits, but he goes on to say that it was a suitable sacrifice because it was God’s own sacrifice. The thought appears to be this: The Son takes our flesh, and by His sacrifice (which includes death and resurrection for Thomas) He takes that flesh up into the communion of Father and Son. Our flesh becomes an acceptable offering by being made the Son’s offering to the Father. Because we are united... Read more

Theology and the birth of Ethnology

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In her The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity , recently republished by Baylor, Debora Shuger examines, among other things, how Renaissance writers attending to biblical texts spread out in all directions: “In the Renaissance, discussions of Christ’s agony in the garden unfold into meditations on the conflictual and decentered structures of subjectivity, comparative anthropology unexpectedly surfaces in theological speculations on the Atonement, and passion narratives explore the psychological and historical dialectics of male violence and victimage.” She goes so... Read more

Priesthood and Sacrament

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In his recently republished New Creation , the late, delightful Herbert McCabe defends the priesthood of the plebs as roundly as anyone could want. Citing Hebrews, he claims that “there is an essential difference between the Christian community and the community of the Old Law, or any other religious body.” Israel had a “priestly class” that repeatedly sacrificed, but this is “no longer necessary, for we have one High Priest, Jesus Christ, who has once for all offered the perfect... Read more

Just war and natural revelation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In his Karl Barth and the Problem of War, and Other Essays on Barth , Yoder examines places where Barth’s views on pacifism and war conflict with Barth’s insights in other areas of theology. Yoder gives us a Barthian critique of Barth. One crucial point concerns natural revelation: “The point at which Barth is most completely ‘non-Barthian’ is the point at which, when we ask him what it means for God to speak here and now, he presents us not... Read more