Isaiah 34 prophesies about Yahweh’s assault on the nations and their armies. They will be slaughtered, their corpses will rot on the earth, adn the mountains will be drenched with their blood (vv. 1-3). Instead of sacrificial smoke with its pleasing aroma, the stench of corpses will “go up” (v. 3). Even the hosts of heaven will “rot” (v. 4), as the sky rolls up like a scroll. Isaiah shifts the imagery from rotting corpses to a collapsing sky to... Read more
Paul alludes to Zechariah 14:5 in 1 Thessalonians 3:13. Both passages speak of the coming of the Lord with “holy ones.” There may also be another allusion. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to establish their hearts in love and faith, so that they will be “umblameable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all His saints.” Earl J. Richard ( Sacra Pagina commentary) argues that the rare word “holiness” ( hagiosyne ) refers... Read more
Robert Letham is among the best Reformed theologians writing today. His books are deeply researched, up-to-date, his conclusions judicious and balanced; he knows the Reformed tradition, but is not narrow in either his reading or sympathies; he is resolutely Reformed, but makes bold in his recent book on the Westminster Assembly ( The Westminster Assembly: Reading Its Theology in Historical Context (Westminster Assembly and the Reformed Faith) ) to speak of “weaknesses” in the Westminster Standards (e.g., he agrees with... Read more
Is the Son dependent on the Father? Yes; the Father begets the Son, so the Son is Son only because the Father has begotten Him. This is an eternal begetting, and so the Son always was. But the Son’s always-existing depends on the Father. Is the Father dependent upon the Son? Yes; the Father is not Father except as He has a Son. The Father’s always-existing as Father depends on the eternal existence of the Son. The dependence goes both... Read more
One: There is no absolute dualism except that of Creator and creature. Two: While “faith and reason” might be a reasonable discussion, debates on “reason v. revelation” rest on a category mistake. It would be an exaggeration to say that all theological wisdom “hangs” on these two axioms; but much does. Read more
In one of his posthumously published series of lectures ( Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ ), TF Torrance writes of the incarnation as God coming from behind the veil of the law. The law is a barrier, a form of bondage, since it is “a form of self-imprisonment because it is the result of sin and because in sin mankind chooses to have the barrier of the law flung round them as a sort of protection from the... Read more
Did Christ have a human soul? Athanasius asks in his two treatises against Apollinaris. He answers Yes, of course, but the way he answers is intriguing. One argument focuses on the death of Jesus: The body of Jesus died, as everyone acknowledges; but death is separation of the body from some life-principle. Jesus must have had a human soul, or he could not have undergone the sundering of soul and body in death. Ahh, says Apollinaris: But the body was... Read more
Over at the New Atlantis site, Ivan Kenneally gives a brief and damning summary of the contents of emails hacked from University of East Anglia’s Climactic Research Unit (CRU). He writes, “Perhaps the most damning e-mails concern CRU deputy director Keith Briffa’s analysis of the diameter of tree rings in Yamal, Siberia. That research is a major evidentiary pillar in support of twentieth-century global warming and it helped resurrect Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey Stick’ graph of global warming. The scientist largely responsible for challenging Mann’s work, Steve McIntyre,... Read more
When I pick up a book on the OT and worship, I always look for Jeff Meyers’ The Lord’s Service: The Grace of Covenant Renewal Worship in the bibliography. Sadly, I’m usually disappointed. I was disappointed by Thomas Pierce’s recent Enthroned on Our Praise: An Old Testament Theology of Worship (Nac Studies in Bible & Theology) . Meyers isn’t mentioned. Then I look for Jacob Milgrom. Pierce has only three articles by Milgrom in his bibliography, all from the 1970s.... Read more
MC Steenberg’s Of God and Man: Theology As Anthropology from Irenaeus to Athanasius concludes with the claim that for Irenaeus, Cyril, Tertullian, and Athanasius, “it is in and through the human, the anthropos in which the eternal Son is known, that God is disclosed to the creature, and by which the creature comes to know his God . . . . A genuine engagement with the incarnation means that theology is anthropology, since the Theos reveals himself as anthropos ,... Read more
Leithart
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