Peter J. Leithart

Might Socrates and Plato have been inspired by God? Why not? asks Edwards ( The Miscellanies, 1153-1360 , #1162). After all, “Inspiration is not so high an honor and privilege as some are ready to think. It is no peculiar privilege of God’s special favorites. Many very bad men have been . . . . Continue Reading »

According to Edwards ( Notes on Scripture , 170-1), the conquest of Canaan sent shocks throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Joshua 11:8 states that Joshua chased Canaanites to Zidon, and they didn’t stop there: “Bedford . . . supposes that great numbers of them made their escape from . . . . Continue Reading »

In discussing the flood ( Notes on Scripture ), Edwards supports the historical accuracy of the biblical account with long quotations from Samuel Bochart’s Geographia Sacra: Seu Phaleg Et Chanaan , Grotius’s De veritate religionis Christianæ , and several other sources: . . . . Continue Reading »

Commenting on Genesis 3:1 in his Notes on Scripture , Edwards digresses into comparative religion to demonstrate that “the serpent has all along been the common symbol and representation of the heathen deities”: “That the Babylonians worshiped a dragon, we may learn from the . . . . Continue Reading »

As Moses recounts the incident with the golden calf, he reminds Israel that he ground the idol to powder and threw it in the “brook ( nachal ) that came down from the mountain” (Deuteronomy 9:21). There was a brook in Egypt (Numbers 34:5), the Nile that watered the land and made it the . . . . Continue Reading »

What are the chances that someone sometime in nearly every ancient culture decided that killing animals was a good way to worship their gods? What are the chances that this would be a near-universal practice without any tradition, any traditio /handing-over, of sacrificial rites? Aren’t the . . . . Continue Reading »

Grotius ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem , 10.1-2) agrees with Socinus that Christ’s death is an “expiatory sacrifice . . . for sin.” He locates the difference in two places - the “target” of that expiation, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Following a long tradition that stretches back at least to Aquinas, Grotius argues that Christ’s substitution for sinners is legitimate only because of the union that He has with those whose sins He bears ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem . . . . Continue Reading »

Socinus argues that in redemption, God is the offended party, the creditor whose debt isn’t repaid by sinful man. As a creditor, he is free to forgive without satisfaction being made. In fact, the idea of debt-forgiveness assumes that no satisfaction is made. Grotius sees this as a category . . . . Continue Reading »

Socinius says that the scapegoat doesn’t bear punishment for the sins of the people. Grotius ( Defensio Fidei Catholoicae: De Satisfactione Christi Adversus Faustum Socinum Senensem , 1.28) disagrees: Citing Genesis 9:5; Exodus 21:28; and Leviticus 20:15, he concludes that in Scripture . . . . Continue Reading »