Jesus threatens to vomit the lukewarm from His mouth (Revelation 3:16). That picks up on Old Testament descriptions of the land comiting out the inhabitants. But it also reminds us of the fish that vomited Jonah out onto dry land. That is a “return from exile” image: Jonah, the . . . . Continue Reading »
Jesus threatens to come to the church at Sardis “like a thief” (Revelation 3:3), and later warns the unprepared in Babylon that He is coming liek a thief (16:15). The latter passage indicates what Jesus is coming for: “Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his garments, lest he . . . . Continue Reading »
Before the fall, Adam and Eve were naked and not ashamed in the garden (Genesis 2:25). After the fall, they saw their nakedness (3:7), and their behavior manifests shame, even though the word is not used. In the LXX, the two words “naked” and some form of “shame” are used . . . . Continue Reading »
The church in Laodicea is wretched without knowing it (Revelation 3:17). The only other use of the word “wretched” in the New Testament is in Romans 7, where Paul laments after describing his divided existence under the law, that he is a “wretched” man longing for release. . . . . Continue Reading »
Christian Smith’s How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical to a Committed Catholic in Ninety-Five Difficult Steps is fairly predictable. His criticisms of evangelicalism are on target in the main, and his Catholic arguments are pretty standard. Smith is careful about his audience: He is . . . . Continue Reading »
Mead gives a nicely varnished picture of British establishment and support of its global maritime order. He doesn’t deny that the British broke some eggs, but he’s more interested in the omelet. C.A. Bayly’s superb The Birth of the Modern World: 1780-1914 (Blackwell History of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Mead gives a concise summary of Anglo-American military successes during the past three centuries: “Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that established Parliamentary and Protestant rule in Britain, the Anglo-Americans have been on the winning side in every major international conflict. The . . . . Continue Reading »
Mead responds to the notion that civilizations and empires inevitably decline with this: Arguments about inevitable decline, articulated by Spengler and Toynbee, “looked more probable in the early and middle years of the twentieth century than they do today. Consider the idea that all . . . . Continue Reading »
One of Mead’s main themes is that Anglo-American strategy during the past several centuries has focused on the development of maritime order. In this perspective, the world is single, but divided into different theaters: “The theaters are all linked by the sea, and whoever controls the . . . . Continue Reading »
Walter Russell Mead acknowledges in God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World (Vintage) that balance of power politics is a matter of letting rivals busy their giddy minds with foreign quarrels. Britain was happy to leave Continental fights to Continentals: “Let . . . . Continue Reading »
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