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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
In a superb Biblical Horizons lecture, Jeff Meyers pointed out that Jerusalem’s Jews become more intensely hostily to the gospel through the course of Acts. Priests and the council attack the apostles at the beginning, but let them go with a warning. Finally, they join to stone Stephen, and the action moves away from Jerusalem for most of the book. Finally, Paul returns to Jerusalem in the final section, and everyone’s become ravenous: He is arrested by a bestial mob in the temple, forty men take a vow to kill him, and the Jews are plotting to use Roman power to destroy Paul.
Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles is a provocation to jealousy in the sense that it aims to turn the Jews to Jesus so they can share in the riches of the fulfilled promises to Abraham. But Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles is also a provocation to zeal. Jews become zealots in the full sense of the word because of Paul’s ministry.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 at 11:50 am
We miss some of the radical force of Peter’s declaration in Acts 10:28 if we don’t keep OT distinctions of holiness and purity in mind. They are not the same category. Holiness is the opposite of common, pure the opposite of impure or unclean. One can be pure without being holy; “pure and common” is the baseline state of an Israelite, who might become impure through various bodily processes or through contact with dead bodies, unclean meat, or virulent forms of uncleanness. He can become “holy,” though, only by a sanctifying rite like ordination.
Peter says he no longer regards Gentiles as unclean. They are no longer considered impure per se. By itself, that only means that they are not defiled or defiling; they might well be common. But Peter adds that he doesn’t regard any man as “profane” (koinos) either. The only alternative is that he regards them as holy. He is declaring that the Gentiles are not merely cleansed but sanctified, not merely pure but saints.
But Peter seems to go even further than this. He is speaking to Gentiles who want to join with Jews as disciples of Jesus. But Peter’s declaration is very general: God has shown him that he is not to categorize any man as common or unclean. Peter has the freedom to associate not only with saints, but with human beings in general. Peter’s thus announces the foundation for mission and ministry: No man is unapproachable and untouchable, whether because of race, moral condition, belief or unbelief, economic status or physical perfection. Peter treats them all as “neither common nor unclean.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 5:26 am
When Peter speaks to the men from Cornelius, he reminds them that for Jews it is unlawful to “join” or “come to” men from any other nation. Both verbs are significant.
“Join” can have a political sense; to join a community is to become a polites, citizen, of that community. This is what the prodigal does when he is in the far country (Luke 10:11). In 1 Corinthians 6:16-17, however, the word is used in a sexual context: Any man who “joins” with a harlot is one body with her, Paul says. We should instead by “joined” to Christ in spirit. (A form of the same word is used in the LXX of Genesis 2:24 to describe the “joining” of a man and wife.) For Jews and Gentiles to “join” together, then, is for them to form a single polity, or, more intimately still, a single body. Peter is saying that Jews were once prohibited from becoming one flesh with Gentiles by sharing unclean flesh; now that flesh has been cleansed, Jew and Gentile are united in one table, one flesh.
“Come to” is not a technical term. It can also have a sexual connotation (cf. LXX of Exodus 19:15), but can also be used in liturgical connections (cf. LXX of Leviticus 9:7). It can also be used of aliens who “come to” join together with Israel (Leviticus 19:33). Hebrews uses the verb several times in a liturgical sense (4:16; 10:22; 12:18, 22). Though not as sharply defined as “join,” this wor might imply that Jews and Gentiles, once forbidden to make the same liturgical “approach” are not joined in a single liturgical community.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 5:15 am
Luke uses the terminology of “salvation” in a variety of ways, but Joel Green has argued that forgiveness, release, rescue, and healign are all directed toward the one end of creating “a christocentric community of God’s people.”
The church is the end of God’s saving activity. Incorporation inot this community that witnesses to the Risen Jesus is salvation.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 12:19 pm
At His death, Jesus “delivers” or “hands over” (paradidomi) His Spirit (John 19:30). The Spirit that was with Jesus flows to others because of His death.
The same thing happened to the Spirit-filled Stephen. No one can overcome the wisdom and Spirit with which he speaks (Acts 6:10). Up to his death, the Spirit has been operating in Jerusalem, but as soon as Stephen is put to death, the Spirit starts falling on Samaritans (ch. 8), persecuting Jews (ch. 9), and centurions (chs. 10-11). When Stephen’s flesh is torn, the Spirit is unleashed.
The unleashing of the Spirit in Luke-Acts turns not on the death of Christ per se; the Spirit is unleashed when saints like Stephen begin to “fill up what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Colossians 1:24). Not Jesus’ death alone, but Stephen’s mingled with Jesus’, rend the veil and release the Spirit from Jerusalem.
Unraveling this thread from Luke-Acts would lead to what I’d call a “historically plausible” account of the atonement.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 11:37 am
When Paul’s nephew learns about the plot to kill Paul in Jerusalem, he goes to the chiliarch, who gathers 200 Roman soldiers, seventty horsemen and two hundred spearmen for a nighttime escape (Acts 23:12-23).
This is one of several exodus events in the life of Paul, and an especially intriguing one. It’s a night deliverance, another Passover. He’s escaping Jerusalem, the new Egypt. Instead of fleeing the Gentile troops, he’s protected by them. The Roman troops form a sort of glory cloud, a host, around the apostle, who rides in the center on a horse of his own (v. 24).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 10:35 am
Luke is often opposed (as in Badiou) as a pro-Roman conservative over against the radical Paul.
Rowe suggests an alternative, and far more convincing, reading of the politics of Acts: “On the one hand, Luke narrates the movement of the Christian mission into the gentile world as a collision with culture-constructing aspects of that world. From the perspective created by this angle of vision, Christianity and pagan culture are competing realities. Inasmuch as embracing the Christian call to repentance necessarily involves a different way of life, basic patterns of Graeco-Roman culture are dissolved. The pagans in Lystra, Philippi, Athens, and Ephesus are understandably riled: the Christians are a real threat. . . .
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 12:47 pm
“Be my witness” – so says Jesus to Paul.
Witness of what? Paul never met Jesus in the flesh, didn’t see the crucifixion, didn’t go to the empty tomb. Jesus came to Him in a flash of light and a voice. Is that it?
Kavin Rowe (World Upside Down: Reading Acts in the Graeco-Roman Age
Paul was not a witness to the death of Jesus, but to the death of the “witness” of Jesus. To put it differently, what Paul has witnessed is not the death of Jesus but the death of Jesus in the suffering of His disciples.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 at 12:36 pm
Traveling by sea to Rome, Paul encounters a storm, plunges into the sea and then arrives at Malta. He is an unreluctant Jonah, cross the sea westward to call a Gentile empire to repentance.
But why the unusually detailed travelogue in Acts 27? Sidon, Cyprus, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Myra in Lycia, Cnidus, Fair Havens, and on and on: Luke provides a step-by-step record of the trip. The closest analogy is Numbers 33: “the sons of Israel journeyed from Ramseses, and camped in Succoth. And they journeyed from Succoth, and camped in Etham. . . . And they journeyed from Etham, and turned back to Pi-hahiroth. . . .” Paul is not only Jonah but Israel journeying to the promised land of . . . Rome!
There are a couple of ways to view this analogy.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 6:09 am
To her credit, Brigitte Kahl (in Horsley, ed., In the Shadow of Empire) recognizes that Acts gives a fairly sympathetic portrait of Rome. In the various episodes where Paul is suspected of subverting the empire, “Acts makes every effort to draw as favorable a picture as possible,” not only of Paul’s ministry but of Roman officials: “Many times Roman officials testify that Paul is no threat to Roman rule.”
It is not to her credit, though, that Kahl then attempts to show that Luke reinvented the story of Paul in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple as a way of providing security for Christians who might be under suspicion:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, April 20, 2009 at 2:41 pm
It has become common among NT scholars to insist that Jesus was crucified by the Romans. This is certainly true in the sense that crucifixion was a Roman form of execution, and also highlights the important political dimension of Jesus’ death. It is also true, as the hymn expresses it, “I crucified Thee.”
But the apostles were not squeamish about blaming the Jews, specifically the Jewish leaders, for Jesus’ death:
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, April 14, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Acts 2:23 is often cited as a central text in understanding the doctrine of foreordination; it is seen as demonstrating in a particularly explicit way the compatibility of foreordination and human responsibility. God predetermined the cross, and yet those who put Jesus to death are “wicked.” A marginal note in my NASB suggests an alternative understanding. The “godless men” at the end of the verse refers not to the Jews’ godlessness but to “men without the law” (the Greek is ANOMON); that is, Gentiles. Thus, the passage says that Jesus was delivered up by the predetermination of God, and the Jews nailed Him to the cross through the hands of Law-less (read “Torah-challenged”) Romans. The predetermination in view would seem to be the same predetermination as is found in Romans 9-11: God’s predetermination that Israel would fall.
This doesn’t eliminate the force of the verse for the doctrine of predestination. We can still say that the Jews sinned when they sent Jesus to the cross, and that this sin was predetermined. But the verse does not explicitly describe the Jews as “godless” or “wicked,” and the only thing that the verse explicitly says about the Gentiles who nailed Jesus to the cross is that they are “lawless” in the sense that they are not Jews.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, August 3, 2004 at 5:40 pm
Jerome Neyrey has an interesting article on Acts 20:20 in the current issue of JSNT. He examines the cultural background to Paul’s use of the phrase “in public and from house to house” by examining various expressions in Greek and Latin writers that correspond to modern “public” and “private.” These, in turn, are gendered spaces; women are covered and inside (and their sexual organs are “private) while men engage in activities in the agora, the fields, and in public (and their sexual organs are also “outside”). The binary “shame/honor” cuts across these divisions as well: It is shameful for a woman to be uncovered or out in public and it would likewise be shameful for a man to be “indoors” when all his fellows are outside (cf. Paris at the beginning of the Iliad, whisked away from the battlefield to the bedroom with Helen). Paul’s statement that he has proclaimed the gospel in public and in houses refers to his open (“political”) proclamation before kings and in public spaces, and to his “private” ministry in synagogues (considered as private spaces) and in house churches. In Gentile public spaces, Paul is allowed to preach without restriction, while in both public (temple) and private (synagogue) spaces the Jews restrict his speech. Neyrey claims that for Luke, as for other ancient writers, certain cities and spaces were considered honorable, and thus Paul’s claim that he preached in public is a claim to honor. This is an intriguing contribution to recent efforts to recover a fully “political” Paul.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 5, 2003 at 2:28 pm
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