BAG

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

James Barr directs most of his critical and rhetorical power at Kittel, but he’s got some criticisms of Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich too. Specifically, BAG “is too content to give semantic indications which presuppose, and are intelligible only in terms of, a more modern intellectual and cultural Weltanschauung than that of the NT” Technical theological terms in the NT are defined in terms of “a fairly traditional Christian theology.” Barr cites Bauer’s use of “supernatural” as an example; Bauer defines... Read more

What ekklesia means

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

James Barr is a famous enemy of “illegitimate totality transfer,” but he freely acknowledges that there’s a proper kind of totality. Using the word “ekklesia,” he lists some NT statements about the church (the church is body of Christ, bride, first installment of kingdom, etc.), and says that “the ‘meaning of ekklesia in the NT’ could then be legitimately stated to be the totality of these relations. This is one sense of ‘meaning.’” What he rejects is the importation of... Read more

Obama at church

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

Drudge has a full transcript of Obama’s speech concerning race, which includes this statement about his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, that impressively combines sharp criticism with affection for Wright and his church: “I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could... Read more

Early Higher Critics

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

In his recent commentary on Daniel, Jim Jordan suggests that the modern notion that Josiah and his priests wrote “the book of the law” they claimed to discover in the temple was likely shared by people of Josiah’s time: “The image-users of the high places had always resented the official, God-given worship at the temple, and they doubtless saw the ‘discovery’ of this book as just another ‘protestant ploy’ to destroy their ‘holy traditions.’ The callous rich, while happy with... Read more

For and Against Cromwell

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

Harold Bloom (in The Visionary Company ) writes that just as “French culture has been divided between those who have accepted the French Revolution and its consequences and those who have sought to deny and resist them,” so English culture is “divided between those who have accepted the Puritan religious revolution of the late sixteenth and seventeenth century and those who have fought against it.” (more…) Read more

Trinitarian reading

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

In her book on Joachim of Fiore, Marjorie Reeves notes that Joachim insists on diligent study of both testaments as the means for reaching the Spiritual interpretation: “The relationship is clearly a Trinitarian one: in Joachim’s phrase, the Spiritualis intellectus proceeds from both the Testaments, just as the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.” This means, of course, that Joachim cannot be Marcionite in his reading of Scripture; without the first status we can have neither the... Read more

Nero Revived

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

In the first of his Dialogues , the fifth-century Christian writer Sulpicius Severus said that “there is no doubt that Antichrist, conceived by an evil spirit, has already been born.” He spelled out his expectations for the future: Nero and the Antichrist would come, Nero ruling in the west and the Antichrist establishing power in the East and rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. He will persecute Christians and demand circumcision from everyone. Eventually, the Antichrist will turn against Nero, and... Read more

Prophet and priest

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

According to Weber, personal charisma was the key distinguishing feature of prophetic office, and also the feature that most clearly separated prophets from priests: :”the prophet declares new revelations by charisma, whereas the priest serves to a sacred tradition. It is no accident that almost no prophet has come from the priesthood. As a rule, the Indian teachers of salvation were not Brahmins, nor were the Israelite prophets priests. Zoroaster’s case is exceptional in that there exists a possibility that... Read more

Naming God

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

Feminist theology overtly objects to masculine names for God, but Christopher Seitz says that the debate goes much deeper: “what is at stake in modern debates is not whether God is father or can be addressed as ‘he.’ Rather, what is at stake is whether we are entitled to call God anything at all. The proper question is whether we have any language that God will recognize as his own, such that he will know himself to be called upon,... Read more

Before Abraham Was

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

Jesus’ “I am” sayings are usually linked with the revelation of the name of Yahweh on Sinai But Marianne Meye Thompson notes that there is also a large concentration of “I am” sayings in Isaiah 40-66, which are linked to the new exodus of Israel out of Babylonian exile. This illumines a number of Johannine passages. In John 8, for instance, Jesus charges that the Jews who oppose Him are children of the devil and slaves, and in this context... Read more