Peter denies Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest and trial. The only other time the verb “deny” is used in the NT, it’s used of “self-denial,” which is immediately connected to “taking up the cross.” There are thus two options: Deny self by professing Jesus, and face the threat of the cross; or, deny Jesus out of fear and self-protection, and avoid the cross. Jesus and Peter provide the exemplars. Jesus denies Himself, submits to the will... Read more
Josh Gibbs writes: “While it might be anachronistic to read it this way (modern Christianity has likely blown the idea of the ‘sword of the Spirit’ way out of proportion), it seems best to me that we understand two entirely different, separate swords in Christ’s statement, ‘He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.’ “Christ’s ministry has established a dichotomy between the violence of man and the violence of God, the power of man and the power of God. Further, Christ has... Read more
Ezekiel is the only OT writer to promise a “new heart” to Israel (18:31; 36:26). He promises hearts of flesh in place of hearts of stone. What has given the people of Judah hearts of flesh in the first place? Ezekiel 14:1-7 gives an answer: They have set (stone – gold and silver) idols in their hearts, and those who worship stone idols become stony. The new heart is a heart that is no longer devoted to stone. Devoted to... Read more
Near the end of his recent Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults , Christian Smith summarizes the argument of a 1995 article by N. Jay Demerath of the University of Massachusetts. Demerath writes, that the widely reported decline of liberal Protestantism may in fact signal its “wider cultural triumph . . . . Liberal Protestant have lost structurally at the micro level precisely because they won culturally at the macro level.” Smith adds, “liberal Protestantism’s... Read more
Athanasius appeals to the baptismal formula to show that the Son must be Creator: If he re-creates in baptism along with the Father, He must have created from the beginning. But this raises the question, Is the Father insufficient in Himself? Athanasius, strikingly, does not answer by appealing to the Father as autotheos but by highlighting the fact that the Father-Sun is never without His Radiance-Word. Thus, “it is impossible, if the Father bestows grace, that He should not give... Read more
Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow Me,” which is to say, “Be willing to die with me.” Instead the disciples flee. But it gets worse. The word “sword” is used six times in Matthew 26:47-56, three times in verse 52 alone. (Otherwise, Matthew uses the word only once, in 10:34). The mob comes out to arrest Jesus with “swords and clubs” (26:47, 55), but right at the center one of the disciples draws a sword. Even though he... Read more
John Milbank throws down a challenging gauntlet to Protestants in the Afterword to The Radical Orthodoxy Reader . He explains Radical Orthodoxy as a continuation of the attack on extrinicism launched by the nouvelle theologie . Barth, he argues following the critiques of Przywara and Erik Peterson, “ignored both the genuine ancient analogical and liturgical-pedagogical structures of Christian theology, rooted in a contemplative practice which transcended the reason-faith divide” and “remained essentially a prisoner of German idealism.” (Note: This is... Read more
Bonhoeffer shows how love of God and love for His creation can be reconciled by using a musical analogy: “God wants us to love him eternally with our whole hearts – not in such a way as to injure or weaken our earthly love, but to provide a kind of cantus firmus to which the other melodies of life provide a counterpoint. One of these contrapuntal themes (which have their own complete independence but are yet related to the cantus... Read more
David Cunningham writes, “What was one a ‘kiss of peace,’ uniting bodies in an almost frighteningly intimate way, now often consists only of a tentative handshake and a mumbled greeting. Of course, this does still provide an opportunity to meet the other face to face, body to body; and so even the most minimal forms of this practice are preferable to its complete omission. But even when the handshakes become hugs and the ‘peace’ becomes a fairly lively affair, it... Read more
In his Adults and Children in the Roman Empire (1989), Thomas Wiedemann remarks on the difference between pagan and Christian conceptions of infant death: “For the pagan, premature death was a disaster because the child’s life was wasted; for Augustine, a child who died prematurely might have had as complete a life as a centenarian. He compares life-spans with musical intervals, or the hairs on one’s head. Some are short, some are long, both may be perfect and complete .... Read more
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