Just a few exegetical sketches on a couple of oddities I found. This is how the incident at the burning bush is described. “And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall …
No Such Thing As Nor Partaking
Most of our difficulties with understanding the Supper of the Lord stem from philosophical assumptions that we all carry about with us. One of the principal culprits has been the division of the world we inhabit into two parts—the spiritual and mental, the material and physical. But the world is not to be divided up …
Colliding Cultural Disciplines
We are not just entertained by our amusements, we are shaped by them. If those entertainments are worldly, the world behind them is working energetically to press us into its mold, and to make us conform to its wisdom. At the same time, the worship of God is shaping us, and is recreating us so …
Integral Art
“In technique, integral art approaches perfection. Figures no longer are portrayed frontally. Statues come to life. The means of execution remain moderate but are used to marvelous effect. Though visual in form, the art continues, in the ideational tradition, to ignore the vulgar, the debasing, the ugly, the immoral, the eccentric. If something base appears …
Mystical Ratios
“There are many cultural reasons why we fall into this confusion about grading, many of them having to do with the lust for scientific precision that came out of the Enlightenment. Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen …
Agreeing Too Much
[Freud] “never unraveled the crucial mystery of two or more desires that violently disagree because they agree too much, because they imitate each other” (Girard, A Theater of Envy, p. 104).
Fooba Fooba Fooba
In another essay, Westphal is concerned to deal with the ready identification of postmodernism with various political absolutisms, particularly fascism and communism. In “Deconstruction and Christian Cultural Theory,” Westphal argues that such an assimilation is based on a gross misreading of Derrida and Foucault in particular. “So it is that the temptation to lump postmodernism …
Luther the Shrewd
One of the books I read Sunday mornings before worship is Luther’s Table Talk. I love that man. He frequently cracks me up, as he did this morning with his comments about pastoral hubris. “We want to set things straight and make everything right. To this God says, ‘Well, then, go ahead! Be clever and …
Active Obedience As Thematic Structuring Device
And with a sexy title like that, if you can avoid being dragged in then you are beyond all hope. I know that I have been referring to Peter Leithart a bit lately, but that is just the way it goes. This last Wednesday, Peter presented an unpublished paper to the NSA faculty forum. The …
Like A Weaned Child
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Oh Lord, my heart is not haughty. My eyes are not arched and lofty. Neither do I meddle with high doctrine, Truths too great to hold in my hands. Not for me . . . I have settled down, after the sobbing, …