Aram, Assyria, Babylon

The flood of Gentiles overwhelms Judah in three waves in the book of Isaiah. The first of these is the threat from Aram and Israel, from Syria and the Northern kingdom. Assyria is the rising power to the east, and that power is threatening to overrun the nations to the west of Assyria. The kings of . . . . Continue Reading »

Scientific Typology

In his editorial introduction to Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards Series, Volume 10) (v. 10) (228-30), Wilson Kimnach emphasizes the central importance of typology in Edwards’s thinking. It was not simply a way of harmonizing old and new, but a clue to a . . . . Continue Reading »

Match-maker

In his Notes on the Apocalypse (in Apocalyptic Writings (The Works of Jonathan Edwards Series, Volume 5) (v. 5) , 131-2), Edwards offers this lovely typological meditation on the marriage of Isaac, into which he weaves a meditation on the role of the ministry in adorning Christ’s bride: . . . . Continue Reading »

Creation and God’s attributes

Bombaro ( Jonathan Edwardss Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate , 91-2) quotes these passages from Edwards Micellanies indicating that God would have unrealized attributes if He had not created the world: “There are many of the divine . . . . Continue Reading »

Edwards, Panentheist

1721 was a crucial year not only for Jonathan Edwards’s spiritual formation but for his metaphysics. According to John Bombaro ( Jonathan Edwardss Vision of Reality: The Relationship of God to the World, Redemption History, and the Reprobate , 12), it was from that date that Edwards . . . . Continue Reading »

Double for sins

Revelation 18 calls on the Lord to pay back the harlot city for all that she has done, and elaborates by asking the Lord to return her “double for her all her sins” (18:6). Restitution, it seems, is double restitution. What is the double restitution and why? Apparently, the harlot city . . . . Continue Reading »

Honor and Dame

Honor games are competitive, but the competition is always qualified by the mutual need of honor-seekers. Achilles wants to be the hero of the battle, and that means that Diomedes cannot be. But Achilles’s honor exists only in the respectful regard of other heroes like Diomedes. Honor-seekers . . . . Continue Reading »

True religion

In the 2006 article in Past & Present I cited yesterday, Jonathan Sheehan traces the development of the “criterion of interiority” as a standard for judging true religion from false. One of the crucial developments were arguments like those of John Spencer’s 1685 On the Ritual . . . . Continue Reading »