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Ascension

Ascension and Eucharist

It’s a simple point, obviously biblical and creedal: Jesus of Nazareth ascended into heaven as the God-man, and He remains the God-man in all his specific particularity from now to the end. He is Jesus the Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Duh! But Douglas Farrow shows in his…

by Peter LeithartMay 27, 2013
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Theopolis News

Register for Trinity Term Class

You can now register for the very first Trinity House intensive class, "How to Read the Bible," taught by James Jordan and Peter Leithart. There will be a kick-off welcome for students on the evening of Sunday, August 25, and the class will be held at Trinity Presbyterian Church ,…

by Peter LeithartMay 22, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy as Narrative-Law

This series of essays will address the food laws in Deuteronomy 14:1-21. To some, this may seem like a work of supererogation. After all, why should a Christian be interested in outdated “laws” from the book of Deuteronomy? I hope to show that meditation on this portion of Scripture is…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 20, 2013
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Isaiah

Apocalyptic Patience

This essay was first published in 2011 in Credenda/Agenda . Isaiah 24 begins the section of Isaiah known as the “little apocalypse.” It’s a good name for this chapter. It’s a text of terror. The world is coming apart at the seams. The earth is emptied; and not only that,…

by Peter LeithartMay 15, 2013
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Biblical Studies

Anti Anti-Supercessionism

This article was first published in 2010 in Credenda/Agenda . In recent years, mainstream theology has begun to recognize the disaster that followed from the Marcionism of classical liberalism. R. Kendall Soulen is a leading figure in efforts to restore the importance of the Old Testament to Christian theology. In…

by Peter LeithartMay 13, 2013
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Deuteronomy

Law and History: How to Read the Law of Moses

This is the last in a series of studies on Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8. In this series, I have offered an interpretation of Deuteronomy 22:30-23:8 which suggests that a simple surface reading of the text does not do justice to Moses’ or God’s intention, that the larger historical and legal context in…

by Ralph Allan SmithMay 8, 2013

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Conveniens

Bauerschmidt notes that Aquinas frequently argues, especially when speaking of the incarnation, not for “proof” of doctrine but for its “fittingness.” Reason has the role of “manifesting how [the incarnation] fits together (convenire means literally ‘to come together’) with other things that Christians hold true about God.” Perhaps this can…

March 23, 2006

Extra-Augustinisticum

In Epistle 137, Augustine writes: “The Christian teaching nowhere holds that God was so poured into human flesh as either to desert or lose - or to transfer and, as it were, compress within this frail body - the care of governing the universe. This is the thought of people…

March 23, 2006

Thomas on Merit

Commenting on ST I-II, q. 109, Frederick Bauerschmidt says that Thomas uses the word “merit” analogically when we speak of God rewarding human action “since we can act in the first place only because God has given us the capacity to act.” This applies even to Jesus: “even when Thomas…

March 23, 2006

On Seneca, de Beneficiis, Books 1-2

Seneca suggests that ingratitude is the worst of vices, and nothing is more “harmful to society” than ingratitude (I.1). Later in Book I, he lists a series of moral ills that plague society – “homicides, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, ravishers, sacrilegious, traitors” – but concludes that “worse than all these is…

March 23, 2006
Literature

Prospero the Magus

I am grateful to Ralph Smith for references to Frances Yates’ work on Shakespeare’s plays. In an analysis of The Tempest, Frances Yates writes: “It is inevitable and unavoidable in thinking of Prospero to bring in the name of John Dee, the great mathematical magus of whom Shakespeare must have…

March 22, 2006
History

Elizabethan Magic

Educated Elizabethans lived in a world of similitudes. As EMW Tillyard argued, the Elizabethan world picture was constituted by a series of analogous chains of being. The social world manifested and was manifested by the natural world; the universe as a whole resembled human beings; there was a hierarchy among…

March 22, 2006

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