 |
|
     |
|
|
|
Writer of Fancy: The Playful Piety of Jane Austen
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
Marriage is impossible. Christian marriage is also impossible, only more so.
Marriage is impossible because it demands that two people devote themselves to each other, no matter what, for the rest of their lives. Christian marriage demands more: Husbands are to be like Christ, wives like the church, and together they are to form one flesh – again, no matter what, for the rest of their lives.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, May 17, 2008 at 6:57 am
Pneumatology was at the heart of what George Marsden describes as the “Great Reversal” in American fundamentalism. A stress on the significance of Pentecost as the beginning of a new dispensation hardened the contrast between old and new covenants, and the contrast of Spirit and law also worked to undermine fundamentalist interest in public theology.
Marsden writes, “The contrast between the present New Testament age of the Spirit and the previous Old Testament age of the law did involve a shift toward a more ‘private’ view of Christianity. The Holy Spirit worked in the hearts of individuals and was known primarily through personal experience. Social action, still an important concern, was more in the province of private agencies. The kingdom was no longer viewed as a kingdom of laws; hence civil law would not help its advance. The transition from postmillennialism to premillennialism was the most explicit expression of this change. Politics became much less important.”
One wonders what sort of postmillennialism was being challenged, if Marsden is correct that premillennialism posed a pneumatological challenge to a legalistic postmillennialism. Postmillennialism should have the most robust pneumatology imaginable.
Against the background of this history, it’s important to recognize (borrowing from Milbank) that pneumatology is not opposed to social theory, but is social theory. Pentecost is a major event in political history.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, May 12, 2008 at 10:14 am
Revelation 1:4: Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne.
What do we have when we have the Spirit? We have everything. This is no exaggeration. He is the sevenfold Spirit who works through the seven days of creation, and throughout the week of history. He is the Gift from the Father and the Son, the Gift above all gifts, the Gift containing all other gifts. All the treasures of God, hidden away in the depths of God from before the foundation of the world, become ours through the Spirit of Pentecost. At Pentecost, God gives us God Himself: What more can we ask? At Pentecost, we receive the seven Spirits of God: How can we possibly say enough about the Spirit?
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 5:28 am
John 7:37-39: Now on the last day of the feast, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 4:57 am
Pentecost is culturally invisible. There are no Whitsunday sales at the department stores, no gift-exchanges around lighted trees, no jolly elf, no crèches, no heart-warming
Unfortunately, many churches follow suit, ignoring the Spirit. We dress our kids up as shepherds, as Mary and Joseph, for the annual Christmas pageant. We put them in armor to be Roman soldiers at the open tomb. But I’ve never seen a kid with a flaming head and speaking in tongues in a Sunday School play. Mother’s Day is more likely to be acknowledged in many American churches than Pentecost.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, May 11, 2008 at 4:48 am
The Spirit is the Spirit of love. He is the love-gift that binds the Father and Son, and is the love of God poured into our hearts. By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, male or female. Each of us is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, to edify the church: One is given wisdom by the Spirit, another knowledge, another faith, another healing, prophecy, tongues, distinguishing of tongues, interpretation of tongues, serving, teaching, exhorting, giving, leading, showing mercy – all by the same Spirit. By the Spirit, the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control spring up from earthy men.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 8:10 am
The folks at First Things have posted a Pentecost meditation of mine on their web site: http://www.firstthings.com.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 1:42 pm
At His ascension, Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, was exalted into heavenly glory where John saw Him “having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.” At Pentecost, which we celebrate in a little over a week, Jesus poured out this sevenfold Spirit on the church. The Holy Spirit is the coronation gift from the Son to His bride, a sign that He has taken His heavenly throne and that she will share it with Him.
But the Spirit is more than a mere sign of Christ’s kingship. The Spirit effects His kingship.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, May 19, 2007 at 1:59 pm
The Church calendar climaxes with Pentecost, before moving into the “off-season” of Trinity. Proper time moves through redemptive history: The Father sends the Son to be incarnate at Advent and Christmas; the Son lives, dies, rises again, and ascends; and He gives the Spirit at Pentecost.
There is a great deal of wisdom in this. The church calendar is theologically instructive. It teaches us things about our salvation, and particularly that our salvation is completed only when the Spirit is sent from the Son who was sent by the Father.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, May 10, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Love, Augustine said, is always triadic, always involves three: the lover, the one beloved, and the love itself. God is love, and this means, Augustine reasoned, that in God there is a Lover, a Beloved, and Love itself. He believed that these correspond to the Persons of the Trinity: The Father is the Lover of His beloved Son, and the Spirit is the love by which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father. The Spirit that comes to the church at Pentecost has been, throughout all eternity, the Spirit of love and union.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, May 15, 2005 at 8:14 am
INTRODUCTION
Pentecost is a new beginning, when the Spirit that hovered over the waters of the first creation forms the church into a new creation (Genesis 1:2). Pentecost is also a reversal of Babel, as the nations divided by tongues are reunited by a miracle of tongues. Pentecost is the ?coming?Eof Jesus to be with His disciples. But Pentecost is also the fulfillment of Torah and the prophetic promise that God would form a people that would keep Torah.
THE TEXT
?Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God. . . .?E(2 Corinthians 3:1-18).
PENTECOST AND SINAI
Pentecost was an Israelite feast before it was a Christian feast. In the agricultural calendar, the feast of Pentecost celebrated the coming of the firstfruits (Exodus 23:16; Leviticus 23:15-21). Israel?s feasts not only followed the agricultural year, but also recapitulated the history of Israel. Passover recalled the redemption from Egypt, and Booths commemorated Israel?s wilderness wanderings. Pentecost, in the third month, fifty days after the Passover celebration in the first month, celebrated Yahweh?s giving of the Law at Sinai (cf. Exodus 19:1). Pentecost was the great feast of Torah.
Torah was one of Yahweh?s chief gifts to Israel (Romans 9:4), and it was a good gift, offered for the sake of Israel?s life (Romans 7:10). But Israel failed to keep Torah, and so fell under the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:12-13). Yet, the prophets held out the promise that Yahweh would one day renew the covenant with Israel and give Israel new hearts so they could follow His commandments (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:25-27). Once Yahweh formed a people that would keep Torah, then they would become instruments for the renewal of the creation, restoring Eden. Ezekiel 36 makes it clear that this restoration comes through the gift of the Spirit.
PAUL?S APOSTLESHIP
After Paul had written the first letter to the Corinthians, some in the church had begun to question Paul?s credentials as an apostle. How could such an unimpressive man, whose life consisted of one apparent failure after another, be a true minister of the good news? Paul spends a good bit of 2 Corinthians defending his apostolic credentials (cf. 1:15-23; 10:1-18; 11:16-33). Paul is not being hypersensitive. He knows that if his apostolic credentials are doubted, then his message is going to be doubted as well. The Corinthians?Econfidence in Paul?s gospel is at stake.
In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul defends his apostleship by referring to the prophetic promises noted above. He claims that he needs no letters of commendation as other teachers might need, since the Corinthians themselves are his ?letter of Christ?E(v. 3). The very fact that the Corinthian church exists and Christians there confess Jesus as Lord and live (however imperfectly) as Christians, is a testimony to the effectiveness of Paul?s ministry. The sheer fact of the Corinthian church is evidence that through Paul?s ministry the Spirit is writing Torah on ?tablets of human hearts?E(v. 3).
PAUL, GREATER THAN MOSES
Paul develops a contrast between his ministry and that of Moses. Moses?Ewas the mediator of a ?ministry of death,?Ethe Torah that prescribed death penalties for various crimes, that tracked the spread of deathly uncleanness with clinical precision, that did not give life but killed. Yet, Paul says, even this ministry of condemnation came with glory (v. 7). If that ministry came with glory, Paul?s ministry, which is a ministry of righteousness, comes with even more glory (v. 9-10). Moses?Eglory faded; the glory of Paul?s ministry does not. This is not because of any inherent superiority in Paul himself. His adequacy is not his own but comes from God. He is adequate because he ministers a ?new covenant?E(v. 6).
Paul describes the superiority of the new covenant through a complex interpretation of the veil that Moses put on his face (Exodus 34:33-35). Moses came down from seeing the glory of God with his face ?shining?E(the Hebrew is ?horned?E Exodus 34:29-30). The people could not look at the glory of His face, and Paul gives us the reason: ?their minds were hardened?E(2 Corinthians 3:14). So long as the Hebrews had hardened minds and hearts instead of hearts and minds of flesh, they could not stand before the glory of God. They could have no face-to-face communion with Him. Paul no doubt means for us to think of another veil as well ?Ethe veil that formed a barrier between Israel and the enthroned glory in the Most Holy Place. That veil too was a result of Israel?s hardness of heart. The Jews of Paul?s day (and ours) still read Moses through that veil. So long as they are living under the letter they are unable to receive Moses.
What removes the veil is repentance, turning to the Lord Jesus (v. 16). The Lord to whom one turns is the ?Spirit?Ewho brings liberty (v. 17). In the context, Paul must be saying that ?turning to the Lord?Esolves the problem of ?hardness of mind.?E When one turns to the Lord who is Spirit, then the mind and heart are renewed so that he can be face-to-face with God?s glory (cf. 4:4-6). The result of the gift of the Spirit is a renewal of the glory of God in man. The Spirit comes to enable us to stand in the presence of God?s glory in Jesus, without any veils, and thus enables us to be transformed into the ?same image?Eof Christ from glory to glory (3:18). This, Paul says, is like a new creation, the shining of light in the original darkness (4:6).
CONCLUSION
The gift of the Spirit brings in a ministry of righteousness, that is to say, through the Spirit hearts are renewed to produce a people that can follow Torah. The Spirit is given to restore the original glory of God?s image to humanity, and to creation.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, May 9, 2005 at 11:06 pm
In a speech delivered on April 29 to the Fulcrum Conference at Islington, NT Wright notes that the Spirit comes to bring God’s future into the present, and that the Spirit also binds together heaven and earth. This reminds me of Jim Jordan’s claim that the Spirit is the divine matchmaker, whose work is to prepare the Bride for her Husband and to bind them into one flesh. Wright is showing the breadth of the Spirit’s matchmaking work, and his speech suggests that past and future, heaven and earth, inner and outer, father and son, etc etc are bound together only by the Spirit of Christ, who binds together the Divine and Human in Jesus. And this further suggests that the various pathologies of modernity - its deliberate cultural amnesia (witness the European refusal to include any references to Christianity in the historical preamble to European Union documents); the clashes between generations and sexes; the lack of intellectual and cultural coherence - all these pathologies bear witness to the fact that our culture is bereft of the Spirit. And this further suggests the need for an Ephraim Radner-like analysis not only of the church but of Christendom.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 3, 2005 at 9:19 am
Peter Vermigli offers this charming and helpful comment on the definition of faith as “substance” (Greek, hypostasis) in Hebrews 11:1: The word “is derived from the verb hyphistamai, which signifies ‘to sustain, receive, not to yield to one rushing blindly.’ Hence, a soldier is called hypostatos if he is trusting and does not turn back to the enemy, but goes up against them and resists them. Thus, in believing there is need of strength and patience on account of the great struggle we experience there. We must resist the flesh, we must over come reason, which strives much against faith. We must also resist the condemnation of our own conscience, of sin, and the wrath of God; there are many other things besides by which the assent of faith is prevented and hindered. How well are these compared, this hypostasis or substance and those things that are hoped for. For God promises resurrection, but to the dead; he promises eternal life, but to the decaying; he calls them blessed, yet they abundantly thirst and hunger and are oppressed on all sides; he pronounces men justified, yet are they covered with sins and filth.”
This is not only theologically sound, but also vivid and pastorally helpful. It offers a “thick description” of the character of faith, and places justification by faith in the context of conflict and warfare, precisely where it belongs.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, February 24, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Barth has some excellent things to say about the Filioque (CD 1.1, 477ff):
1) He notes that Greek theologians as late as the 5th century explicitly affirmed the filioque.
2) He argues compellingly that the original form of the creed not only does not exclude the filioque. The procession of the Spirit is stated as coming from the Father to respond to “Macedonians, who denied the deity of the Holy Spirit, but who affirmed His procession from the Son too, although in an Arian sense, i.e., as the procession of a creature from a creature.” He suggests that if the creed excludes the filioque, it becomes internally contradictory, because it would be saying that the Spirit’s procession from the Son “implies less” than the procession of the Spirit from the Father. But if Father and the Son are consubstantial, then the Spirit’s procession from the Father must be open to the filioque. (Though the historical context is important, this is not a convincing argument. The Father and Son are, after all, consubstantial, and yet the Son is begotten of the Father, not self-begotten; begottenness is not a shared personal property. There is thus no reason why one could say a) Father and Son are consubstantial yet b) the Father alone has the personal property of “breathing out” the Spirit. But Barth is surely correct that the original Nicene in no way excludes the filioque.)
3) He recognizes that one of the key issues is whether or not the economy reveals the ontology: “Even supporters of the Eastern view do not contest the fact that in the opus ad extra, and therefore in revelation (and then retrospectively in creation), the Holy Spirit is to be understood as the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.” but “statements about the divine modes of being antecedently in themselves cannot be different in content from those that are to be made about their reality in revelation. All our statements concerning what is called the immanent Trinity have been reached smply as confirmations or underlinings, or materially, as the indispensable premises of the economic Trinity.”
4) The soteriological implications are profound: “‘And the Son’ means that not merely for us, but in God Himself, there is no possibility of an opening and readiness and capacity for God in man - for this is the work of the Holy Ghost in revelation - unless it comes from Him, the Father, who has revealed Himself in His Word.” Thus, “The intra-divine two-sided fellowship of the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is the basis for the fact that there is in revelation a fellowship in which not only is God there for man but in very truth — this is the donum Spiritus sancti — man is also there fore God.” Without the filioque, “the fellowship of the Spirit between God and man is without objective ground or content.”
5) Without the filioque, there is a tendency to regard the Spirit as the Spirit of the Father even in the ad extra. Thus, “the relation of God to man will be understood decisively from the standpoint of Creature and creature” and thiswill set aside the Son or Word “as the basis and origin of the relation, and it will take on the nature of a direct and immediate relation, a mystical union with the principium et fons Deitatis.” He suggests that denial of the filioque is behind the tendency of “Russian theologians and religious philosophers” to allow theological to collapse into philosophy.
5) Eastern theologians charge that the filioque undermines the unity of God positing two sources in God. Barth says that denial of the filioque destroys the unity of God. First, if the Spirit is not the property of both Father and Son, then they “do not have all things in common, the one being the origin of the Spirit in hte primary sense and the other only in a secondary sense.” Second, “Even the unity of God the Father is called in question if implicitly He is not already the origin of the Spirit as the Father of the Son, the origin of the Spirit from Him being a second function along with His fatherhood. Third, the Spirit does not mediate between Father and Son, and thus the Father and Son lose their “mutual connection in the Spirit.” He thus links the Eastern tendency toward tritheism with the denial of the Filioque.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 7:39 am
Calvin intriguingly says that the Spirit is the power of persistence and growth and life in creation: not merely the agent for the formation of things, but for their persistence. Spirit ensures the temporal endurance of the creature. As Barth summarizes, ?Both the existence of things, created for as chaos (inordinata moles, massa indisposita), and also their nature or form (pulcher ac distinctus ordo), in order not merely to be created but also to be, to persist, needed an arcana Dei inspiration, a vigor imparted to them by God.?EThis vigor is the gift of the Spirit. Thus, what maintains the creation and the individual creature in its identity through time is nothing within the creature itself, no “substance” that endures. Its persisting identity is entirely dependent upon Another, the Spirit. This is why, as postmodernists have found, any search for the substance of identity in the creature must end by dissolving the subject. Postmodernism thus sharpens the choice: Either identity is an illusion and the subject is really a thousand fragments of a subject; or identity is grounded in something other than the subject, something outside the creation.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 7:21 am
Barth argues that the Third Article of the Creed had to be finished before the church could truly wrestle with the doctrine of grace: ?It is logical that this doctrine [of the Spirit] had to be the last stage in the development of the trinitarian dogma. It had to be reached before the doctrine of grace, which then became the distinctive theme of the Western Church, could become a problem, before the struggle and victory of Augustine over Pelatius could take place. The Reformation with its doctrine of justification by faith alone can also be understood only against the background of this specific dogma. Its true and total significance, of course, has never been understood in Catholicism (not even in Augustine), and only very partially even within post-Reformation Protestantism. Modernist Protestantism in its entirety has simply been a regression to pre-Nicene obscurities and ambiguities regarding the Spirit.?E
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, January 29, 2005 at 7:10 am
Calvin uses “regeneration” to describe the process of mortification and vivification by which the sinner is renewed in the image of God. This differs from the sense the word has in later Reformed writers. Melanchthon (Apology for the Augsburg Confession) uses the word in yet another sense: “we are justified by faith alone, justification being understood as making an unregenerate man righteous or effecting his regeneration” (4.78). And “to be ‘justified’ means to make unrighteous men righteous or to regenerate them, as well as to be pronounced or accounted righteous.” Preus explains that justification immediately brings regeneration into the picture “for regeneration is the gift of faith. Justification by faith involves regeneration,” citing Apology 4.117.
The Formula of Concord attempted to clarify, but to my mind muddied things further. Admitting that regeneration and justification are sometimes used interchangeably, the Formula advocated using regeneration “strictly so that the renewal which follows justification by faith will not be confused with justification and so that in their strict senses the two will be differentiated from each other.” Regeneration, the statement goes on, includes “the forgiveness of sins solely for Christ’s sake and the consequent renewal which the Holy Spirit works in those who are justified by faith.” The word is also used in “the limited sense of forgiveness of sins and our adoption as God’s children.” In the latter sense it is true to say that “justification is regeneration.” That’s clear enough, but the latter statement is supported by an appeal to Titus 3:5, where it is said that “Paul uses the terms discriminately.” In short, “regeneration” can refer to the WHOLE of salvation, including both forgiveness and renewal; OR, it can refer to “forgiveness of sins” and “adoption.” In neither case is “regeneration” being used for a permanent, puncticular renewal of the heart by the work of the Spirit, which is the way it’s often used in Reformed theology.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, December 9, 2004 at 7:11 pm
In this morning?s sermon, we will be looking at the role of the Spirit in the incarnation of Jesus, in the redemption achieved by Christ, and in the life of the Trinity. One way to summarize the point is that the Spirit is the divine bond, the ?glue?Eof the Trinity. The Spirit is the love that binds the Father and Son. The Father begets the Son through the Spirit, and that the Son returns His love to the Father in the same Spirit.
But the Spirit?s role as divine glue is not confined to the relations of the Persons of the Trinity. The Spirit is also, as we see in our sermon text, the agent of the incarnation. It is through the Spirit that the eternal Son takes on flesh, and the Spirit is the ?binding agent?Ethat unites the divine and human natures in Jesus. And we are joined to Christ by the same Spirit, the Spirit that joins God the Son to His humanity, which is the same Spirit who eternally joins Father and Son as Father and Son.
Practically, the Spirit is the active agent of all our communion and communication with God, including the communion with God we enjoy each Lord?s Day. Worship is not a merely human act. We worship the Father only by the power of the Spirit, and our worship is acceptable only because of the work of our High Priest in heaven, Jesus Christ.
This gets to one very practical question that has been raised, and quite legitimately raised, about our new liturgy: What can we do to prevent our worship from becoming rote, mere ritual, vain repetition? If the Spirit is the one who enlivens and empowers our worship, the ?solution?Eto soulless, dead worship is continual dependence on the Spirit.
We avoid deadening influences in our worship in the same way that we avoid deadening influences in the Christian life as a whole. The Spirit is the life of our worship, the Lord and Giver of all life. And so the solution is to keep in step with the Spirit and to trust wholly in His life-giving power. As Paul said, ?Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom You were sealed for the day of redemption.?E
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 7:34 am
Who wrote this? “opera sunt necessaria ad salutem, sed non causant salutem, quia fides sola dat vitam” (works are necessary to salvation, yet they do not cause salvation, for faith alone gives life).
Norman Shepherd would be a good guess, except that he doesn’t write in Latin.
Calvin would be a good guess too. But wrong.
It’s that Law-Gospel fanatic, Luther.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, April 26, 2004 at 11:30 pm
I’ve been using Sinclair Ferguson’s book on the Holy Spirit (IVP, 1996) for several years in my theology class, and each time I review it in preparation for class I’m reminded of what a wonderful book it is. Ferguson is well known as a popular writer on Reformed theology and spirituality, and is a known scholar of Puritanism. What’s remarkable about this book is the rich biblical theology. Ferguson makes use of Gaffin’s NT work and the best of Meredith Kline, and includes many of his own insights. I highly recommend this book.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, April 1, 2004 at 9:52 am
Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.
