Three times Luke tells us that the Spirit was with Simeon (Luke 2:25, 26, 27). He enters “by the Spirit” into the temple, and there “ses” the fulfillment of his hopes for the “consolation” ( paraklesis ) of Israel. In the Spirit Simeon “sees” salvation, “sees” the light of apocalypse. Simeon is a seer, with an experience that anticipates the later revelation in the Spirit to John on Patmos. Read more
Matthew 26:26-29: And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body.” Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of... Read more
Contentment is a spiritual challenge, but it is also something of a puzzle. Scripture urges us to hope, but how do hope and contentment fit together? How is contentment compatible with work, proper ambition, planning and goals? Am I discontented if I want my business to make more profit next year? Are we being discontented if we pray for healing? Am I discontented if I want to read yet another book? In this as in everything else, God provides the... Read more
What makes us different from the animals? Reason? Upright posture? Heidegger said that the answer is more obvious: What makes us different from animals is our hands. Equipped with hands, we can use equipment, and with our equipment we can build and paint and sculpt and click a mouse make and repair the carburetor. It’s no accident that the first sins of man are sins of the hand. “Do not taste, do not touch,” Yahweh told Adam and Eve in... Read more
It’s frequently said these days that Luther was an innovator in his doctrine of justification. He appealed to Augustine, but distorted Augustine in the process of defending his forensic understanding of justification. Mark Ellingsen ( SJT , 2011) argues that such assessments fail to recognize the richness and diversity of Augustine’s statements on justification. Ellingson notes that in the Enchiridion , Augustine writes that “Christ, then, being made sin, just as we are made righteousness (our righteousness being not our... Read more
In the January 24 issue of The New Yorker, Atul Gawande reports on the work of Jeffrey Brenner, a medical doctor in Camden, New Jersy, who discovered that the toughest patients used an astonishing proportion of the health care dollars in Camden: “He made block-by-block maps of the city, color-coded by the hospital costs of its residents, and looked for the hot spots. The two most expensive city blocks were in north Camden, one that had a large nursing home... Read more
Heidegger argues that we discover nature in use of useful things: “nature must not be understood as what is merely objectively present, nor as the power of nature . The forest is a forest of timber, the mountain a quarry of rock, the river is water power, the wind is wind ‘in the sails.’ As the ‘surrounding world’ is discovered, ‘nature’ thus discovered is encountered along with it. We can abstract from nature’s kind of being as handiness; we can... Read more
Existence precedes essence: the Philosophy 101 slogan of existentialists. Protests from traditional philosophers: No, essence precedes existence. Creationists say both and neither. Essence precedes existence: God decreed what or who everything is before it is. Justification confers a status/essence, and is a pledge of what we will become. Yet, existence precedes essence: We are becoming what we are . We are what we are in God; our “essence” is in Him, and in Him we exist and move and have... Read more
According to Heidegger, Descartes represents an effort at pure idealism. Knowledge comes to a detached subject gazing inward, without any attention to the world outside. Heidegger doesn’t believe that Descartes can do it, since we need some knowledge of the phenomenal world if we are going to connect it to the ideal scheme that is in our heads. Without that connection, we end in solipsism, and insofar as Descartes avoids solipsism, he must be engaging the world outside. Idealism collapses... Read more
Barth points out that God is Lord of the city of man as welll as the city of God, and that God loves and cares for all that He has made. What then does election mean? Barth answers, “He is favorably disposed to the pure only in order that they may be at His disposal for service to the lepers.” Read more
Leithart
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