Augustine asks exactly the right questions: Why did God do things in the particular way He did, when plenty of other options were open? And, why did the writers of Scripture record just these details, from among the infinite details they might have included, and why specific details that are not at all necessary to the story? After a series of Why? Why? Whys? he answers: “When all things are considered in that way and apparently superfluous things are found... Read more
In Contra Faustum , Augustine glosses Exodus 15:27 with this: “the twelve sources watering the seventy palm trees prefigure the apostaolic grace that waters the people in the number seven times ten, so that the ten commandments of the law my be fulfilled by the svenfold gift of the Spirit.” And Gideon’s fleece: “What is the drenched fleece on the dry threshing floor and later the drenched threshing floor with the dry fleece but originally the one nation of the... Read more
PROVERBS 30:18-20 Yahweh is a God of wonders. The first “wonderful thing” ( pala’ , which basically means “to separate” or “distinguish”) that He does in Scripture is to give Sarah a son in her old age, a live son from a dead womb, the wonder of resurrection life (Genesis 18:14). He does wonders again in stretching out His hand to smite Egypt (Exodus 3:20). The wonder here is not only the terrible wonder of plagues and judgments on Egypt... Read more
Christine Yoder argues in an article on Proverbs 30 that Agur’s exhortation to humility and his puzzling observations are deliberately placed at the climax of the book so that the experience of reading the book actually inculcates the wisdom that the book talks about. She sums up the message of chapters 28-29 this way: (more…) Read more
In her The Interpretation of Material Shapes in Puritanism: A Study of Rhetoric, Prejudice, and Violence (Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture) , Ann Kibbey notes some intriguing parallels between Calvin’s sacramental theology and Marx’s concepts of commodity and fetishization: “In Marx’s theory, exchange value is the counterpart of the spiritual presence. Both Calvin and Marx perceive a contradiction between the ordinary use of an object and the value (spiritual or exchange) that it acquires upon consecration/circulation. Moreover, both... Read more
In a letter to Landgrave Philip of Hesse, Martin Bucer said, “On our side [i.e., the Reformers’] some of us have come, in the heat of the struggle, to make constant imputations against our adversaries of which they know themselves not guilty, and of which we shall never be able to convict them.” Read more
Peter Lombard writes in the Sentences , Book 4, “what is offered and consecrated by the priest is called a sacrifice and an immolation because it is a memorial and a representation of the true sacrifice and holy immolation made upon the altar of the cross. Christ died once, upon the cros, and there he was immolated in his own person; and yet he is immolated sacramentally, because in the sacrament there is a recalling of what was done once.” Read more
When Paul’s nephew learns about the plot to kill Paul in Jerusalem, he goes to the chiliarch, who gathers 200 Roman soldiers, seventty horsemen and two hundred spearmen for a nighttime escape (Acts 23:12-23). This is one of several exodus events in the life of Paul, and an especially intriguing one. It’s a night deliverance, another Passover. He’s escaping Jerusalem, the new Egypt. Instead of fleeing the Gentile troops, he’s protected by them. The Roman troops form a sort of... Read more
When Paul’s nephew learns about the plot to kill Paul in Jerusalem, he goes to the chiliarch, who gathers 200 Roman soldiers, seventty horsemen and two hundred spearmen for a nighttime escape (Acts 23:12-23). This is one of several exodus events in the life of Paul, and an especially intriguing one. It’s a night deliverance, another Passover. He’s escaping Jerusalem, the new Egypt. Instead of fleeing the Gentile troops, he’s protected by them. The Roman troops form a sort of... Read more
It’s all in the name. Raskolnikov is from the Russian raskol’nik ,which I’ve seen glossed as meaning “divided” or “separated.” It’s the word for schismatic or heretic. And it is Raskolnikov: A double personality who is alienated and split off from everyone, including the church, and whose crime is to split open the heads of two innocent women. But raskol’nik is also “Old Believer,” and thus the name is a sign of Raskolnikov’s eventual return to his old Christian roots. Read more
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