Several of my students have pointed to the link between John 8 and 9. Jesus declares that He is the light of the world in 8:12, but because of the opposition of the Jews and their intent to kill Him, He withdraws and hides Himself – He hides the light from the self-darkened. But at the beginning of chapter 9 He is healing a blind man, giving light to those who will receive it. Read more
Several of my students in a Shakespeare elective have pointed to the way Shakespeare’s use of disguise and deception in comedy plays into his evangelical “lose life to find it” theme. Characters become more fully themselves by quite literally becoming other than themselves. Viola becomes Cesario, but through that otherness fulfills herself as Orsino’s bride – she becomes her master’s mistress. The transformations that take place in the wood of Midsummer first turn the lovers, and Bottom, into what they... Read more
In a paper on the chiastic structure of Midsummer Night’s Dream , a student, Jason Helsel, suggests that two scenes with the mechanicals “serve as a link or portal between the city and the forest.” Nicely put; the path from the city of law and justice to the magical world of the fairies lies through art, and theatrical art at that. Theatrical art is also the passage in the other direction, bringing us from the world of miracle to the... Read more
Jesus describes a violent and tumultuous mission (Matthew 10). They Twelve will display great power, and arouse vicious opposition. They will advance the kingdom, but the violent will try to arrest the kingdom by force, by crosses and killings and exclusions. But the last words of this discourse give us a sense of what Jesus is accomplishing through this mission. (more…) Read more
For Jesus’ first-century disciples, estrangement from family members was a personal and social disaster. They lost their identity, their network of business and personal connections, their social and economic safety net, their prospects for future inheritance. Jesus encouraged His disciples by promising that they would receive far more than they might lose by following Him. If they lost father and mother, or farms and houses, they would receive back a hundredfold (Mark 10:29-30). By following Jesus, they would become part... Read more
Mark 10:29-30: Jesus said, Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that He shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. Jesus tells us that we are... Read more
We think we possess things by holding on to them. We own our house and our car and our cat and our certificates of deposit when we have free and unhindered use of them. If there’s a new lock on the door when you come home from work, you don’t possess our house. We think that everything is like that, but that’s not true. We can possess some things rightly only if we willingly give them away. I don’t possess... Read more
Another hurrah to Rahner. He notes that part of the standard view of grace among post-Reformation Catholics is the notion that grace is “above man’s conscious spiritual and moral life.” It is an object of faith, but it never penetrates to consciousness or experience: “only nature and its acts constitute that life which we experience as ours. We make up from the elements of our natural powers, habits, etc., those acts in which we intentionally direct ourselves towards God’s revealed... Read more
Enough beating up on Rahner for the moment. He has this statement in Nature and Grace : “there has been no ‘chemically pure’ description of pure nature, but mixed in with it there are traces of elements of historical nature, i.e., nature possessing grace. Who is to say that the voice heard in earthly philosophy, even non-Christian and pre-Christian philosophy, is the voice of nature alone (and perhaps of nature’s guilt) and not also the groaning of the creature, who... Read more
Rahner (still working in his little book, Nature and Grace ) distinguishes between “being ordered to grace” and “being directed to grace in such a way that without the actual gift of this grace it would all be meaningless.” He affirms the first, not the second. A created spirit “is essentially impossible without this transcendence, whose absolute fulfillment is grace, yet this fulfillment does not thereby become due.” But the italics (which are Rahner’s) indicate that there is a more... Read more
Leithart
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