Proverbs 24:1-7

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION Back in 22:20, Solomon writes that he has written “excellent things” to his son. Waltke, following other commentators, suggests that the word for “excellent” is better understood as a number, thirty. Thus, Solomon asks rhetorically, “Have I not written to you thirty sayings?” Those thirty sayings are contained in the following chapters, from 20:20-21 through 24:21-22. Waltke suggests they are arranged in groups of ten, and the first at least roughly follows the Decalogue. 24:1 begins the 20 th... Read more

Offense of Christianity

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

Jones again, commenting on the different treatment of Jews and Christians by the Roman government: “The Jews were a race who practised the traditional worship of their ancestors, and had at an early date, while still a political unit, obtained from Rome legal recognition of their peculiar practices. With their great respect for ancestral custom and legal precedent, the Romans therefore tolerated and even privileged Jews. Christians, on the other hand, were innovators, starting a new cult which, on the... Read more

Political religion

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

A.H.M. Jones notes that most of the considerable religious fervor of the third and fourth centuries was devoted to other-worldly, escapist religion. That makes the triumphalism of Constantine’s Christian faith all the most striking. Constantine regularly expresses the belief that service to the Supreme God, the Christian God, will guarantee the success of his empire. He was attracted to Christianity partly because it proved to be so effective in this world, because it was a political religion in an age... Read more

Purity and objectivity

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

Proctor again, summarizing a 1938 article on “Science and the Social Order” from Robert Merton: “the ideal of ‘pure science’ serves a dual function in modern society. On the one hand, the exaltation of pure science represents ‘a defense against the invasion of norms that limit directions of potential advance and threaten the stability of scientific research as a valued social activity.’ The ideal of purity is instilled early on in the scientist; science ‘must not suffer itself to become... Read more

Revival of purity

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

Proctor yet again, describing the division of political economy into separate disciplines of sociology and economics in the nineteenth century: “Social theory in the eyes of the young sociologists might strive to become scientific, but to do so it must abandon its craft or practical-political origins and restrict itself to problems of pure theory. In the second half of the nineteenth century, one begins to see something new in the social sciences. Social science treatises begin to boast of being... Read more

Artifice and nature

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

Proctor again, speaking of Renaissance science: “In the science of the moderns, there arises a curious reversal of the order of art and nature. Art becomes the standard against which nature is judged. Francis Bacon’s ‘nature in distress’ – nature distraught by experiment – is as genuine as nature left alone. ‘The artificial,’ writes Bacon, ‘does not differ from the natural either in form or in essence, but only in the efficient.’ Art improves on nature: art is ‘nature with... Read more

Pure knowledge

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

The drive for purity in knowledge is an ancient one. Robert Proctor ( Value-Free Science? ) sees this impulse in Plato and Aristotle. For the former, knowledge is pure “in the degree to which it makes no appeal to practical arts. Thus Plato criticized Eudoxus, Archytas, and Menaechmus for trying solve the classical problems of geometry – squaring the circle, the trisection of the arc, and the doubling of the cube – using the mechanical instruments available to any Greek... Read more

Anarthrous God

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

CK Barrett argues in his John commentary that the anarthrous theos of John 1:1 (emphasized by Arians everywhere and at all times) shows that “the Word is God, but is not the only being of whom this is true; if ho theos had been written it would have been implied that no divine being existed outside the second person of the Trinity.” Read more

Word came, saying

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

After Genesis 15, the next time the “word of God came . . . saying” is in Samuel. The word of God comes to Samuel, saying that Saul is rejected (1 Samuel 15:10), and again comes to Nathan to deliver the promise to David (2 Samuel 7:4). The connection of Genesis 15 and 2 Samuel 7 is important, for the latter passage specifies the “seed” promised to Abram in the first passage. He comes again to Gad, David’s seer, to... Read more

Word of the Lord

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

“The Word was God,” says John. Where’d he get that? Genesis 15:1 is the first place where Scripture uses the phrase “word of Yahweh” ( dabar-YHWH ), and already here the use of the phrase hints that the dabar is a person. The word of Yahweh “came” to Abram (15:1, 4); and the phrasing of both verse 1 and 4 suggests that the word of Yahweh is the one speaking to Abram in vision. Hebrew introduces speeches, including divine speech,... Read more