The Sanhedrin condemns Jesus for claiming that He was able to destroy the temple and rebuild it. To them, that was equivalent to claiming God’s power, and had to be blasphemy. Surely Jesus didn’t have that kind of power - never mind that He had spent several years very . . . . Continue Reading »
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 . . . . Continue Reading »
PROVERBS 28:4 Law ( torah ) is mentioned about a dozen times in Proverbs. Most of the uses refer to the torah of a mother (1:8) or a father (3:1), and in these uses the emphasis is on the fact that torah is “instruction” rather than strictly “law” in our sense of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Discussing Barth’s distinction of the “church of Esau” and the “church of Jacob” in the Romerbrief , Michael Horton ( People and Place: A Covenant Ecclesiology ) gets Barth’s weaknesses exactly right. First, “Barth seems to assume that . . . . Continue Reading »
Kinneging points out the ambiguous relationship that traditional conservatism has often had with the market: “No conservative will deny that a system of mutual provision of services, based on a range of evil affects residing within man - which are further inflamed by the unrestricted . . . . Continue Reading »
In The Geography of Good and Evil: Philosophical Investigations (Crosscurrents) , Dutch philosopher Andreas Kinneging argues that the conservative objection to the Enlightenment is not only intellectual but has to do with the will: “It is the view of conation that characterizes conservatism . . . . Continue Reading »
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 . . . . Continue Reading »
Peter describes women as “weaker vessels” (1 Pet 3:7). That sounds like an insult. Is it? First, vessels in Scripture are almost always temple vessels, implements of temple worship. Hebrew 9:21 is one of the NT passages that uses the word in this specific sense. . . . . Continue Reading »
In a couple earlier posts, I’ve commented on the “intrinsicism” in Athanasius. One additional point: Rather than seeing intrinstic/extrinsic as metaphysical opposites, Athanasius’ sees the question in a redemptive-historical, eschatological framework. . . . . Continue Reading »
Athanasius employs much of the same language and makes some of the same conceptual moves in talking about the Son’s relation to the Father on the one hand and the Son’s incarnation in the flesh on the other. The Son is “proper to” the Father’s essence; so too the flesh . . . . Continue Reading »
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