Conversion

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Gordon T. Smith’s Transforming Conversion: Rethinking the Language and Contours of Christian Initiation is quite satisfying. He’s got all the right enemies, revivalism in particular, and he wants to sketch out an account of conversion that overcomes all the dualisms that dog the heels of modern Christianity – heart v. mind, body v. soul, individual v. community, personal v. sacramental. He places conversion within a broad account of God’s cosmic action through Jesus and the Spirit, and emphasizes repeatedly that... Read more

Forgiveness and deliverdict

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Justification is (among other things) forgiveness of sins. Justification “justifies/frees” us from sin. Are these two equivalent? What would it mean to say that forgiveness is a deliverance? Forgiveness delivers from future punishment. Forgiveness thus frees from fear of death, which enslaves. Can we say more? It seems so. Sin’s power is the power of the past, the power of the haunted conscience, the power of hopeless habit and addition. Freed from that past, we are able to walk in... Read more

Defining Love

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Thomas Jay Oord’s Defining Love: A Philosophical, Scientific, and Theological Engagement is bizarre. He draws on physical and social sciences in his effort to define love, has a chapter on love and biology and love and cosmology, talks about kenosis a good deal, and concludes with a chapter outlining “A Theology of Love Informed by the Sciences.” For all the talk about kenosis as essential to God’s character, the self-emptying Oord has in mind is always a self-emptying and self-limitation... Read more

Pauline Semantics

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

In his recent Paul and Scripture: Studying the New Testament Use of the Old Testament , Steven Moyise suggests that Paul’s treatment of Abraham counters the “heroic” tradition concerning Abraham by equating “reckoned righteous” with “justifies the ungodly.” How does he get there? Paul “uses a well-known exegetical device (known as gezerah sewa ) whereby a word in one text is explained by its occurrence in another text. Psalm 32.2 is such a verse, using the key verb ‘reckon,’” just... Read more

Engels on imperialism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Writing as Paris correspondent for the Northern Star in January 1848, Engels expressed the opinion that “Upon the whole it is, in our opinion, very fortunate that the Arabian chief [Abd-el-Kader] has been taken. The struggle of the Bedouins was a hopeless one, and though the manner in which brutal soldiers, like Bugeaud, have carried on the war is highly blamable, the conquest of Algeria is an important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilization. The piracies of the Barbaresque... Read more

Mystique of California

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

Jean Baudrillard ( America ) observed that the mystery of California, its mystique and myth, are rooted in its desert setting: “The mythical power of California consists in this mixture of extreme disconnection and vertiginous mobility captured in the setting, the hyperreal scenario of deserts, freeways, ocean, and sun. Nowhere else does there exist such a stunning fusion of a radical lack of culture and natural beauty, of the wonder of nature and the absolute simulacrum: just in this mixture of... Read more

Why Churches Die

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:48 pm By Peter Leithart

One of the themes of Jenkins’s The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died is that Christianization is reversible: Churches die. How to account for it? Jenkins He cites on Payne Smith, a Victorian scholar, who wrote in the introduction to the works of John of Ephesus that “the young Mahomet, repelled in his first inquiries by the idolatrous aspect which Christianity outwardly bore, was rising... Read more

Stoicheia as metonymy

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2007 article in NTS , Martinus de Boer carefully examines Paul’s argument in Galatians 4, armed with the assumption that stoicheia somehow retains its original meaning, referring to the four elements of ancient Greek physics. His conclusion is: “the phrase ta stoicheia tou kosmou in 4.3, a technical expression referring specifically to the four constituent elements of the physical universe, is being used by Paul as a summary designation for a complex of Galatian religious beliefs and practices... Read more

Astral decans

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In the aforementioned article, Arnold notes that “in the Greek Magical Papyri, the term stoicheia is used most commonly in connection witht he stars and/or the spirit entities, or gods, they represent. In a related sense, stoicheia was also used to refer to the 36 astral decans that rule over every 10 degrees of the heavens . . . . Each of these astral decans could also be represented by a magical letter. Given one of the common usages of... Read more

Elemental spirits

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

In a 1996 article in Novum Testamentum , Clinton Arnold argues that the stoicheia (“elementary principles,” Galatians 4:3 and elsewhere) are demons. His arguments in favor of a personal understanding of the stoicheia are strong if not entirely persuasive, but his argument that Paul portrays the stoicheia as entirely malevolent powers are weaker. He notes the “Second Exodus” imagery of Galatians 4; the stoicheia are lords that enslave, lords from which Jesus and the Spirit liberate Jews and Gentiles. But... Read more