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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
Michael Fox writes that “The equality of the lovers and the equality of their love, rather than the Song’s earthly sensuality, are what makes their union an inappropriate analogy for the bond between God and Israel.”
That would be persuasive, but for the massive reality of the incarnation. In the mutuality of the Song, we have one of hundreds of hints in the Old Testament that God’s love and promises to Israel could only be fulfilled by Yahweh-in-flesh. The Song depicts the yearning of Israel for just such an equal relation, a yearning fulfilled when the Son takes flesh like the bride to become one with the bride.
The Song gives an erotic answer to Anselm’s question, Cur Deus Homo?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 8:51 am
As Zizek explains Hegel’s answer to the Anselmian question, it is a political question: “why cannot we conceive a direct passage from In-itself to For-itself, from God as full Substance existing in itself, beyond human history, to the Holy Spirit as spiritual-virtual substance, as the substance that exists only insofar it is ‘kept alive’ by the incessant activity of the individuals? Why not such a direct ‘desalienation,’ by means of which individuals recognize the God qua transcendent substance the ‘reified’ result of their own activity?”
Why can’t the Lord simply send out His reconciling Spirit and bind everyone in sweetness and love? Why the “deviation” through the cross? Why is that socially necessary?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, January 22, 2010 at 9:09 am
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, John says. We often think that the Word is concealed behind His flesh. But that is the opposite of the truth. In the Old Testament, Yahweh was hidden within the temple veils, but in the incarnation He comes out of hiding.
This is what John says in the next sentence: The Word became flesh, and we saw His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father. The flesh of Jesus isn’t a protective shield between us and God. Rather, through the flesh, God Himself comes near to touch His creation, to touch us.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 3, 2010 at 6:49 am
Christ is the “living will” of the Father, says Athanasius. Rowan Williams glosses this with: “since Scripture makes clear that the Word is the understanding and purpose of the Father, then to claim that the Son exists by an act of will is absurd: he is the Father’s conscious, purposive act. Deny this, and you end up with the gnostic picture of an indeterminate divine void, which might turn out to be anything, at the source of being; unless you say that the Father’s expressed though or will exists in virtue of an innate thought and will that must be in some way different from it . . . which negates the essential scriptural idea of the Son as simply and directly the reasoning act of the Father.”
Have Reformed treatments of God’s will absorbed this point sufficiently?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 2:46 pm
God does not have accidents, says Augustine, and virtually every other theologian since. It’s the corollary of God’s simplicity: He always is what He is, nothing added or taken away. God cannot lost any attribute without losing His being as God.
But then along comes the incarnation. God the Son takes a body. What shall we call that? It is not of God’s essence, since He did not always have a body and since He essentially has no body. The Son’s body certainly seems to meet the definition of an accident. As S. Marc Cohen succinctly puts it, “for a non-substance F to inhere in a substance x is for F to belong accidentally to x.” That’s what the body (x) does in the Son (F).
And the body of the Son also fulfills other criteria of accidents. Cohen again, explaining the asymmetry in the mutual dependence of substance and accident (whose mutuality Aristotle never explores):
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, December 28, 2009 at 12:48 pm
This night is different, O Lord, from all nights. On this night, You opened the womb of the virgin Mary, so that she brought forth the seed of the woman, the new Isaac, the firstborn of Israel, David’s Son, Immanuel. On this night, Your Word, the eternal Light that lightens every man, began to shine from within our flesh.
Therefore, let the sea roar and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands. Let the mountains sing together for joy before the LORD.
For You have come to judge the earth; You judge the world with righteousness, and You will judge the peoples with equity.
Amen.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, December 24, 2009 at 7:01 pm
In the early twentieth century, the virgin birth became a litmus test of orthodoxy. Fundamentalists affirmed the virgin birth; modernists denied it. The debate was about miracles: Fundamentalists believe that God can alter the normal pattern of creation and make things work differently.
We at Trinity are fundamentalists, but the virgin birth is not just about the reality of miracles. After all, God had given miracle children many times before, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to Manoah and Elkanah. The virgin birth is different, and that difference is the heart of the gospel.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 7:05 am
A. N. S. Lane summarizes some themes of Barth’s treatment of the virgin birth: “Barth saw in the virgin birth the expression of a wider truth that is fundamental to his theology. It shows that ‘human nature possesses no capacity for becoming the human nature of Jesus Christ, the place of divine revelation’. While it does become his nature, this is not because of any attributes that it already possesses but rather because of what it suffers and receives at the hand of God. The virgin birth, therefore, is a further denial of man’s natural capacity for God, a favourite theme with Barth. It contains a judgement upon man, rot because he is a creature but because he is a disobedient creature.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, December 19, 2009 at 6:24 am
INTRODUCTION
“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul says (Philippians 4:4). How? Scripture teaches that the Lord’s presence is our joy. We rejoice because the Lord has come, and is coming.
THE TEXTS
“I will leave in your midst a meek and humble people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord. . . .” (Zephaniah 3:12-20); “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4-20); “And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said to Him, ‘Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?’ . . .” (Matthew 11:2-19).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, December 7, 2009 at 5:52 am
In one of his posthumously published series of lectures (Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ
Until the incarnation, “God’s mighty saving intervention” when He reveals His righteousness: “then at last God steps out from behind the law, from behind the veil which Moses wore on his face, from behind the veil of the holy of holies, for God unveils himself immediately. He comes to man and apart from law reveals his righteousness to humanity directly in Jesus Christ, cutting through all distance and abstraction, all law and religion, and sets men and women before him face to face.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 26, 2009 at 9:53 am
Did Christ have a human soul? Athanasius asks in his two treatises against Apollinaris. He answers Yes, of course, but the way he answers is intriguing. One argument focuses on the death of Jesus: The body of Jesus died, as everyone acknowledges; but death is separation of the body from some life-principle. Jesus must have had a human soul, or he could not have undergone the sundering of soul and body in death.
Ahh, says Apollinaris: But the body was separated from the Word in Jesus’ death. That doesn’t work, Athanasius argues, because it means that the Word does not really go through death. If death is the separation of soul and body, then the Word must pass through that as much as He passes through any other human experience. Passing through the separation means that the Word must remain with both soul and body even in their separation. The Word takes on the whole of human existence, and that means when the human nature He has made His own gets ripped in two, He can’t stand back and watch; He needs to pass through that rupture of His own humanity. Only by suffering the whole of human death in His humanity can the Word overcome death.
The upshot is that, according to Athanasius, if the Word withdrew from the body in its death, He would not have been able to redeem humanity from death. He must cling to His assumed humanity, cling to soul and body when they go their “separate ways,” cling to soul and body through death so that He can reunite them in an eternal life, so that this mortal can put on immortality.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 1:28 pm
INTRODUCTION
During Advent, Pastor Sumpter and I will be alternating preaching, and we will be preaching on the lectionary, that is, the passages that make up our Scripture readings for Advent. All these passages are about the Lord’s “coming,” and thus all shed light on the meaning of the incarnation, the Lord’s coming in the flesh.
THE TEXTS
“Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. . . .” (Zechariah 14:1-11). “Therefore, when we could no longer endure it, we thought it good to be left in Athens alone. . . .” (1 Thessalonians 3:1-13). “Then He said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. . . .” (Luke 231:10-34).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, November 23, 2009 at 6:23 am
We live in an age when many of our relationships are mediated through a screen. We email family members in the next room, and often know more about the lives of Facebook friends than we do about the people who live next door or who sit next to us at church.
This is not an attack on technology, but a reminder of how radically counter-cultural Sunday morning worship is. Here we spend an hour and a half – sometimes a bit more! – with actual people, listening to people talk and read out loud, sharing the presence of God and of each other.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, November 22, 2009 at 6:46 am
Athanasius argues: The Son assumed flesh, and its terrors, especially the terror of death. The goal was to overcome death and terror, but the Son did this by suffering those terrors Himself.
We will be delivered from death, and not just in the future. Athanasius points to martyrs to demonstrate that life is already victorious over death: “from that most enduring purpose and courage of the Holy Martyrs is shown, that theGodhead was not in terror, but the Saviour took away our terror.”
Life is already triumphing in the flesh, not only the flesh of Jesus but the flesh of martyrs.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 1:04 pm
The eternal Word, being proper to the Father’s being, cannot advance. Yet, Scripture says that Jesus advances in wisdom and stature. Athanasius appeals to the incarnation: He is advancing humanly. But, as always, what the Word does in the flesh is done for us:
“Neither then was the advance the Word’s, nor was the flesh Wisdom, but the flesh became the body of Wisdom (tes sophias soma gegonen he sarx). Therefore, as we have already said, not Wisdom, as Wisdom, advanced in respect of Itself; but the manhood advanced in Wisdom, transcending by degrees human nature, and being deified, and becoming and appearing to all as the organ of Wisdom (organon) for the operation and the shining forth of the Godhead.”
The Son took flesh to make flesh “transparent” to God.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, November 19, 2009 at 5:23 am
Athanasius notes that before the incarnation humanity was under the dominion of false gods, enslaved to corruption and idolatry. The Word took flesh to deliver us from that slavery, and the form of that deliverance was an act of worship: “in this body offering Himself for all, He might deliver all from false worship and corruption, and might Himself become of all Lord and King.”
This is fitting enough to satisfy Anselm: False worship inverted by one single act of sacrifice.
Augustine and Aquinas say similar things. Alongside the satisfaction theory, we might place a “liturgical” theory of the atonement.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 9:44 am
Why the incarnation? The eternal Son enters humanity to stretch it to its limits, and beyond. By becoming flesh and living and dying and rising in flesh, the Son makes it big enough for God to dwell in.
More precisely, the Spirit: The Son stretches out the flesh He assumes, so that it becomes capacious enough to receive the fullness of the Spirit, ultimately to enable human bodies to become Spiritual bodies.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, November 6, 2009 at 10:41 am
All history, Hegel says, is the death and resurrection of Jesus, the God’s embrace of negativity and death and their sublation in the resurrection. This movement of incarnation, death, and death-nestled-in-resurrection is, moreover, the pattern of thought. As Hegel says,
“‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn, expressing an awareness that the human, the finite, the weak, the negative, are themselves a moment of the divine, that they are within God himself, that finitude, negativity, otherness are not outside of God and do not, as otherness, hinder unity with God. Otherness, the negative, is known to be a moment of the divine nature itself. This involves the highest idea of spirit.”
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 8:19 am
Athanasius’ treatment of Proverbs 8 is not convincing as exegesis, but as a piece of theology it is brilliant. When Proverbs says that God “made” and “created” His Wisdom (in the LXX), it doesn’t refer, Athanasius says, to His nature but to His incarnation. The Son of God is created as Son of Man.
That’s incarnation with a capital I. The eternal Son enters time; the sovereign Lord becomes servant; God the Son becomes man. And, Athanasius says, the Creator is created as creature. Being created is not alien to being eternal Son.
The Son becomes all that we are yet without sin.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Athansius of course thinks the Arians are wrong because the Son is eternal. But one of his more intriguing, and satisfying, arguments is based on the biblical notion that the Son is the one through whom the “ages” came into being (Hebrews 1:2).
Athanasius says, “every interval in the ages is measured [by Him], and of all the ages the Word is King and Maker, therefore no interval at all exists prior to Him.”
Since the Son is the measure of all intervals, the Lord of ages and bodies of time, there cannot be any “once” before He was. How can there be an Arian “once” (pote) before the One who created all “onces”?
Pushing back a step: How can there be an “interval,” temporal or spatial, between Father and Son if the Son is the Lord of ages?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, October 16, 2009 at 12:47 pm
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