Von Balthasar puts the nature/grace distinction in simple terms, and ones that resonate with certain strains of Reformed theology: “It belongs to the very essence of the creature that it must indeed be creature, but not a creature who has been exalted to a new order of grace: by nature a creature is the ‘servant’ but not the ‘friend’ of God.” This is ambiguous: are we talking about “creatures” in general or about the specific creature that was Adam? What... Read more
Rahner says that God’s self-gift “can and must” be an “ever astounding wonder, the unexpected, the unexacted gift.” In an extended footnote, he explains that this “can and must” means both that God’s self-communication is in fact unexacted, and that it must be of necessity . On the latter point: “there is no essence of a creaturely kind which God could constitute for which this communication could be the normal, matter-of-course perfection to which it was compellingly disposed.” To which... Read more
Rahner re-describes the nature/grace problem in terms of God’s self-communicating love, which is the final cause of creation and the first intention of God: “Everything else exists so that this one thing might be: the eternal miracle of infinite Love.” (Good Edwardsian supralapsarian, he.) But for Rahner, as for every side of the Roman Catholic debate, this self-communication (or grace, or supernatural fulfillment) is a second stage, something that for Rahner man is created with a capacity to receive but... Read more
Boaz is the type of the bridegroom who marries Ruth in order to raise up a seed for the old and widowed Naomi. James Jordan says Ruth is a substitute bride, because the firstborn seed is her seed, and leads to the redeemer that comes into the world. Typologically: The Bridegroom marries the Moabitess, the Gentile widow, but he does it in order to give a seed to the Israelite widow. All Israel is saved through the marriage of Gentiles... Read more
According to Oliver O’Donovan, Book 19 of City of God “is, at the very least, an essay to demonstrate that moral philosophy must be social philosophy.” The highest good for Augustine is the peace of the city of the blessed, and this is an inherently social reality. Since virtuous action is guided by ends, and this is the supreme end of the city, the moral life is oriented to a vision of uninterrupted social peace, the eternal tranquillitas ordinis . Read more
Reflecting on Simmons’s stimulating article on Malvolio: He points out that by the 1590s, Sabbatarianism had become what Christopher Hill characterized as a shibboleth of Puritanism. Yet, at the time of Shakespeare’s play, Puritanism had also become popularly associated with hostility to jollity and festivity. Make all necessary allowances for the distortions of popular opinion and for the genuine evils of Elizabethan entertainments, and yet one is struck by the fact that a movement know for Sabbath observance could be... Read more
Malvolio is expressly described as a “Puritan” in Twelfth Night , and the description is apt given Malvolio’s stern hostility to frivolous entertainments. Shakespeare is offering a parody of Puritan opposition to the theater. The satire is sharp: Puritans were opposed to the cross dressing inherent in Elizabethan theater (boys playing girls roles), and Malvolio is tricked into putting on strange dress himself, hoisted by his own cross-garters. In a 1973 article in The Huntington Library Quarterly , J. L.... Read more
Boaz calls Ruth “my daughter,” even when they are lying together at night with Boaz’s feet uncovered. The whole book is about the levirate institution, and refracts again and again off the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38. Ruth is a new Tamar, who was “more righteous” than Judah in securing a name for her dead husband(s). The difference in Ruth is that she finds a Judahite greater than Judah himself; Boaz volunteers to raise up seed for... Read more
At the beginning of Ruth 4, Boaz takes a seat at the gate, the place of courts and judgments. The nearer kinsman happens by, and Boaz greets him. Lawson Younger points out that the common translation of his greeting, “friend,” doesn’t capture the Hebrew, which is a farrago, a nonsense phrase implying an anonymous “somebody.” The other kinsman has no name. And he continues to have no name, because he refuses to take on Ruth as bride and raise up... Read more
INTRODUCTION Jesus has already warned that His coming and the mission of the Twelve divides families (10:21), and He returns to that theme at the end of the discourse (vv. 34-36). He is the Prince of Peace, but the peace He brings comes after He brings a sword. THE TEXT “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against... Read more
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