Protestant hermeneutics

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

Richard Muller points out the essential continuity of Protestant interpretation with patristic and medieval models: “The Reformers and, indeed, the Protestant orthodox all assumed that the living Word addressed the church directly in and from the text. In other words, they advocated a spiritual and ecclesial exegesis that participated in the same dynamic as patristic and medieval exegesis. This step from exposition to churchly dogma was not, therefore, ruled out on hermeneutical grounds. (This degree of hermeneutical continuity between the... Read more

Eucharistic exhortation

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

Psalm 122:1: I rejoiced when they said to me, Let us go to the house of the Lord. Worship is a journey. Every Sunday, we literally leave home and go on a pilgrimage, for most of us a fairly short one, to this place, where we gather as the house of the Lord. The worship service itself is a journey, and a journey of ascent. (more…) Read more

Baptismal Meditation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:47 pm By Peter Leithart

Matthew 28:19-20: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. As Pastor Sumpter pointed out in this morning’s sermon, baptism is a naming ceremony. In baptism, we are all given the same family name, the family name of the ultimate family, the Triune family of Father, Son, and Spirit.... Read more

Exhotation

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

Freedom is a heady thing, and some of you students are experiencing the rush of adult freedom for the first time. Perhaps for the first time, you are making your own decisions about how to organize your life, what you are doing to do with your day, when your day is going to begin and end, how you are going to spend your free time and with whom. Freedom is one of the important themes of the New Testament. (more…) Read more

Change We Can Believe In

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

Change was virtually the only campaign theme Obama has used. Then he picks Joe Biden as a running mate. Ron Fournier gets it right: ” The candidate of change went with the status quo.” And Fournier adds, ” The picks say something profound about Obama: For all his self-confidence, the 47-year-old Illinois senator worried that he couldn’t beat Republican John McCain without help from a seasoned politician willing to attack. The Biden selection is the next logistical step in an... Read more

Typology and Conspiracy

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:50 pm By Peter Leithart

As a philosophy of history, typology highlights the unintended consequences of our actions, the unintended meanings of our words. Conspiracy theories have no room for unintended events. If something happened, someone somewhere planned it. Typology and conspiracy are competing theories of history. Read more

Typology

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:50 pm By Peter Leithart

Typology is a philosophy of history. It is also a theory of meaning. Typology is a historical theory of meaning, a theory of historical meaning. That Matthew can say “Out of Egypt I called My Son” is fulfilled in Jesus isn’t evidence that Matthew was a midrashist. It’s not merely a hint about how to read the Old Testament. It’s a pointer to the character of history and the nature of meaning. Texts mean the way Matthew says Hosea’s text... Read more

Clever Drudge

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:49 pm By Peter Leithart

Drudge couldn’t care a whit for Hillary Clinton, but his increasingly provocative headlines (most recently, “Diss-Off”) for a story on how Obama never considered Hillary as a veep candidate can have only one result: To get Hillary’s supporters, already cool toward Obama, hopping mad. Read more

Enlightenment and elementary principles

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

Kant regards positive religions or ecclesiastical faiths (including Christianity) as temporary moral crutches that we can shed as we approach the pure natural religion of reason. Christianity’s institutions, sacraments, dogmas, are the stoicheia leading us to enlightenment. Here we see the problematics of Christian sacramental theology, going back at least to Augustine, coming to fruition (or going to seed). Why does Christianity retain all this earthliness? Aren’t we supposed to be in a new covenant? That is the question of... Read more

Changing past and realism

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

Weberman returns to Danto to advance his argument. He notes that Danto shies away from saying that past events change, and suggests that he did this in order to remain a realist about past events; Danto held that “past events are what they are in a mind-independent way.” He insists that his views on the nonfixity of the past are not in conflict with this realism. Danto, he says, works with a dualism between the past-in-itself and the past as... Read more