Pietism, historical Jesus, sacred heart

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

Barth brilliantly notes the links between Zizendorf, the quest, and the cult of the sacred heart of Jesus. All, he claims, involve a devotion to the human nature of Jesus as such. Zizendorf’s preaching showed “peculiar interest in the creaturely sufferings of Christ.” And “we have here the precursor in method of the rationalistic portraits of Jesus later in the century.” And, “this undertaking finds its exact material and historical parallel in the Heart of Jesus cult,” which made the... Read more

False humility

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Milbank charges that modern theology is characterized by false humility. Barth agreed with respect to Christology. In the name of a humble refusal to penetrate the veil of mystery around the incarnation, modern theologians have often renounced “beforehand all serious and responsible inquiry for the truth and every attempt to respond obediently to it. For such humility there is rather an incalculable wealth of possibilities, all equally good and acceptable in themselves and in their respective places, but not such... Read more

Cheers for scholasticism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Barth ( CD 1.2) defends the church father’s from Herder’s charges of intellectualism and scholasticism. He sees two objections in Herder’s complaint: a “formal” objection to the meticulousness of patristic Christology, and a “material” objection that the fathers’ categories, especially that of “nature,” turned the incarnation and salvation into a physico-mechanical process. Barth doesn’t find either charge compelling. For starters, he argues cogently that the whole complicated apparatus of patristic Christology exists to support, explicate, and fend off errors about... Read more

Abortion and future history

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:45 pm By Peter Leithart

When we read that ancient tyrants hired magicians to perform haruspicy with the entrails of dismembered infants, we immediately discount the record as propaganda. We know without needing to investigate that similar accusations against Jews in the Middle Ages had become a topos of anti-religious rhetoric. I’m not saying we should believe these accounts, but I wonder: Centuries from now, historians will tell about a civilization that tore apart infants in their mothers’ wombs, or burned them in saline solution.... Read more

Siloam

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:01 am By Peter Leithart

Siloam was a pool (John 9), but Siloam also had a towner (Luke 13:4). That enhances the Edenic setting of the story of the man born blind in John 9. He is not only sent to wash in the water, he is sent to wash in the water by the tower. Tower and pool, mountain and lake, tree and pond, tree and river – all variations on a theme. And the blind man, now seeing, stands as the righteous tree... Read more

Fear and trembling

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Hamann suggests that the fear of God is what energizes: “When one considers how much strength, presence of mind, and speed, off which we are otherwise incapable, the fear of an extraordinary danger inspires in us: then one can understand why a Christian is so superior to the natural, secure man, because he seeks his blessedness with constant fear and trembling.” Read more

Natural theology

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

Hamann hoped for a natural theology that would lead not to “the God of naked reason” but to “the God of Holy Scripture, who would show us that all [nature’s] treasures are nothing but an allegory, a mythological painting of heavenly systems – just as all historical events are the shadow-images of secret deeds and revealed wonders.” The difference between natural and revealed religion is the difference, he says, between an untrained person looking at a painting and an artist... Read more

Heart not my own

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

Hamann, describing the Christian giving his heart to God as a renunciation of ownership of his heart: “Here it is my God! You demanded it, as blind, hard, rocky, misguided, and stubborn as it was. Purify it, create it anew, and let it become the workshot of your good Spirit. It deceived me so many times when it was in my own hands that I no longer wish to recognize it as my own. It is a leviathan that you... Read more

Donkey theology

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

Ken Way of Biola University gave a very interesting paper on the various Hebrew terms for donkeys and mules. He focused on Zechariah 9, which, he argued, has long been mistranslated. It has the largest cluster of donkey terms in the Hebrew Bible, refers to the prophecy concerning Judah in Genesis 49, and should be translated that the ruler comes “on a donkey, even a purebred son of a jenny.” The phrase “son of a jenny” doesn’t refer to the... Read more

Date riddle

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

Al Wolters gave a very thorough and sophisticated explanation of the term peres in the writing on the wall in Daniel 5. I can’t reproduce it all, but one of the cool things that emerged from it was that the weights mentioned add up to 181, and the date of the Persian conquest of Babylon was the 181st day of the year, right after the rising of Libra (the “scales”) and right after the beginning of the civil year. So,... Read more