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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Many commentators suggest that Paul borrows his notion of a Christological Rock that follows Israel through the wilderness from intertestamental commentary on the OT. That may be, but the notion of is already evident in the OT itself. Yahweh after all is the Rock of Israel, and both leads and serves as rear guard for the people.
Isaiah 32:2 hints at the connection between Yahweh the Rock and Yahweh the glory-pillar. Describing the princes who will rule Zion in justice, Isaiah implicitly compares the princes to Yahweh. Like Yahweh, the princes will be “like the shade of a rock of glory in an exhausted land.” The reference is clearly to Yahweh the Rock in the wilderness, and that reference to the Rock doubles with a reference to the Lord’s kabed, His glory. Yahweh is Rock and Glory, the Glory-Rock of Israel.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10:07 am
1 Corinthians 3:9-10a: We are god’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another is building on it.
Paul sees himself as a builder of God’s house, equipped by God’s grace to lay the foundation of the church, which is Christ. He is a craftsman and carpenter, God’s architect and God’s artist, a tentmaker, a wise Bezalel, who received skill from the Spirit to build the tabernacle. What kind of wisdom is this?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, November 13, 2011 at 7:11 am
1 Corinthians 11:18-20: when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. For there must also be factions among you, that those who are approved may be recognized among you. Therefore when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper.
The Corinthian church was a mess. There were factions. One group sided with Paul, another with Peter, another with Apollos. Some claimed to be spiritual and despised the rest of the church as “fleshly.” There were battles concerning the gifts of the Spirit, and heresies regarding the resurrection. Relationships were broken, and these broken relationships were evident even at the Lord’s table.
The Corinthian church was a mess – just like every community since Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree. All human relationships are corrupted by selfishness and manipulation. People use what power they have, and use whatever system they are in, to get their way.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 28, 2011 at 6:30 am
A student, Sam Bussey, offers several sharp intertextual insights into Paul’s discussion of Spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
First, 1 Corinthians 12:2′s reference to “dumb idols” hearkens back to the idol polemics of Psalm 115 and Isaiah 46. Isaiah 46 is in the midst of an exodus section of Isaiah, and the humiliation of Babylon’s idols in that passage draws on Exodus 12:12. In the light of Paul’s use of teh exodus story in 1 Corinthians 10, it is plausible that he is continuing the exodus typology into chapter 12, the humiliation of Gentile idols.
Second, Sam noted the connections between the distribution of the Spirit and His gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 and the spreading of the Spirit of Moses in Numbers 11. Paul is implicitly informing the Corinthians that they fulfill Moses’ wish to have an entire people filled with the Spirit, an entire nation of prophets.
In contrast to the dumb idols, the God of Israel speaks. And in contrast to the mute Gentiles, the Spirit of God forms the church into a chatty company of prophets.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:47 am
In any sizable congregation, there are going to be disputes. Two members go into business, it fails, and they fight about who’s responsible for what. One member borrows the lawnmower from his neighbor and breaks it; who pays? Someone makes a thoughtless comment and damages a friendship.
The issue is not whether there are disputes, but how we handle them. Jesus requires us to be reconciled, and He teaches us to begin privately, one member seeking resolution with another. Disputes cannot always be solved at that level, and so other members or the elders get involved.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 6:56 am
Bruno Blumenfeld (Political Paul: Democracy and Kingship in Paul’s Thought (Journal for the Study of the New Testament)
Similarly, “Paul speaks of himself as an expert in the science of community-building, of politics, and he bears witness to the popularity of the ‘building’ trope.” In 1 Corinthians 3, “Paul speaks of working with God . . . to raise a structure (oikodome) on a foundation (themelion) that is Paul’s alone. Paul constructs a political theory for Christianity. His central practical preoccupation is the community – the founding and building of communities. . . . He draws borders, organizes crowds, sets rules, creates a government, gives a constitution.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, December 31, 2010 at 10:29 am
1 Corinthians 10:14-22 forms a paragraph of its own. Prior to this section of 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is drawing out an extended comparison between Israel’s exodus and wilderness wanderings and the state of the Corinthian church. After verse 23, he draws the conclusion that eating and drinking should be governed by love for the brothers.
Between these two, the paragraph in verses 14-22 forms a rough chiasm:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Given the high view of marriage and sexuality in Scripture, Paul’s instructions to the Corinthians are odd and out of character. Why would Paul think it good for everyone to be as he is?
Jeremiah 16 provides a clue. In verse 2, Yahweh instructs Jeremiah not to take a wife or raise children “in this place,” because Yahweh is bringing distress on the fathers, mothers, and children who are born in doomed Jerusalem: “They will die of deadly diseases, they will not be lamented or buried; they will be as dung on the surface of the ground and come to an end by sword and famine, and their carcasses will become food for the birds of the sky and for the beasts of the earth” (v. 4). In view of the present distress, Yahweh says, Jeremiah ought not marry or have children. Jeremiah would remain unmarried as a prophetic sign of Yahweh’s determination to withdraw peace from His bride (v. 5).
As Paul makes clear in various places, he is an apostle like Jeremiah, not only in being called from the womb but also in his singleness, a sign of the approaching doom on Jerusalem and Judaism.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Paul instructs the Corinthians to defer to weaker brothers, avoiding, for example, meat sacrificed to idols out of concern for a weaker brother’s conscience.
But what happens when we apply a universality principle: What if everybody did? Wouldn’t that mean that the weak end up running the church?
Paul, it appears, doesn’t seem to be bothered by the possibility. That’s partly because he has confidence in the Spirit. But it also appears to be part of his program: The inferior members are accorded greater honor, since the superior members don’t need it (1 Corinthians 12:22-25).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Paul ends 1 Corinthians (16:22) with a neat chiastic sign-off. Anyone who does not love the Lord is declared “accursed” (anathema) and Paul follows this with the cry of maranatha (“the Lord comes”). Anath-ma/mar-anatha.
Substantively, it is a striking phrase. Anathema speaks a harsh word of judgment; maranatha is, as it were, the Bride’s cry for her Lord to come (cf. Revelation 22:17-20). It is, as it were, the last word of the Song of Songs (“Hurry, my beloved,” 8:14). Putting the two together highlights one aspect of the Bride’s hope: She longs for her Lord to whisk her away as love, but she also longs for her Lord to rescue her from all who “do not love the Lord.” Maranatha is a cry for judgment as much as a cry of love.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 5:34 am
1 Corinthians 6:15-17: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be. Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, The two will become one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
1 Corinthians 10:21-22: You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? We are not stronger than He, are we?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, September 9, 2007 at 8:10 am
Paul also makes some observations that hint at aspects of a theology of music. He says or implies several things in 1 Corinthians 14:6-8. First, he introduces a musical analogy into a discussion of speech in the church, implying a parallel between music and language. That analogy becomes explicit as he returns to the argument about tongues in verse 9 – like an indistinct musical instrument, one who speaks in a tongue without being understood is only vibrating the air. We can put the analogy this way: A musical instrument is a lifeless speaker, and a speaker is a living instrument. Or: Language has musicality, and music has a linguistic character.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 29, 2007 at 8:37 am
In 1 Corinthians 14:10-11, Paul supports a point about tongues and prophecy with a bit of linguistics. Meaning, he notes, functions within a linguistic community. Languages have significance (v 10), but only for those who know that significance (v 11). Language boundaries are community boundaries, so that if we speak a language that’s not understood we seem a “barbarian” (NASB; Greek, barbaros). Without common language, speakers remain barbarians to one another (v. 11).
Paul’s is a fairly simple observation, but it shows that Paul had some sense of the communal dimension of meaning. And it also raises the intriguing prospect that 1 Corinthians 14 might be plundered for more insights into language and meaning.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 29, 2007 at 8:22 am
1 Corinthians 7:3-4: Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
These days, Christianity is often characterized as misogynist, bigoted, or anti-feminist. The Apostle Paul, after all, warns women to be silent in the church, tells Timothy that women should not teach or have authority over men, and describes marriage in terms of husbandly headship and the wifely submission.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 8:16 am
Does the “foolishness of God” carry the connotation of “God playing the fool”? As in, God the jester? Is Paul saying that God the jester is wiser than the sages?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, March 4, 2004 at 2:52 pm
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