Catholicity, Orthodoxy, and Lordship
Babel produced different languages calling on different gods; Pentecost produced the firstfruits of a re-united humanity, every tongue confessing in its own way that Jesus is Lord (51).
Contextualization be damned. The Church’s mission is not to accommodate her language to the existing language, to disguise herself so as to slip in unnoticed and blend in with the existing culture. Her mission is to confront the language of the existing culture with a language of her own (52).
Church history provides a compelling argument in favor of infant baptism, but not in the usual way. The argument is not that there is evidence of the practice of infant baptism throughout church history (though there is). The argument is rather that the shape of church history is more compatible with paedobaptist than with credobaptist beliefs.
That is: The church did not appear in history in fully mature form; it is still far from fully mature. Were the infant churches of the apostolic age Christian churches? Did the troubled Corinthian congregation count as a Christian communion? Galatia? We should say Yes, since Paul treated these churches as churches.
Infant churches are Christian churches, immature and inadequate though they may be. Ergo….
Leithart mentioned this morning in his lecture on the Song of Songs that whereas the Bible does not elaborate on the smells of a battlefield nor does it explore in detail the smells of an ascension offering, the Song of Song is replete with descriptions of smell and other senses.
Leithart discusses that each context of the ancient world possessed a distinct ritual and culture and creed. The apostles came into that scene and brought a new ritual, a new culture and a new creed. “The wandering apostle may have no money in his kit; but he came to town with an alternative culture in his back pocket.”
Peter Leithart warns “…that it is significant that the apostle Paul appeared before kings, magistrates, presumably Caesar, and that he preached in synagogues, in stadia and in the temple. Only once, to our knowledge, did he preach to philosophers, and that was a distinctly unsuccessful venture (Acts 17). There is a message in that, both about the proper deployment of the church’s energies and about the hopes for success in dealing with the cultured despisers.”
Leithart, in his foreword to Mike Bull’s DNA of Scriptures, asserts that ” in the Alpha words of Genesis 1, we should be able to discern some clues to the Omega words of the Apocalypse.” Genesis 1 establishes a model for how we understand the rest of revelation. Yahweh is moving the world along with new creation day just as He is moving the world along with each new day in this New Creation.
Without continuity between fathers and sons, the achievements of each generation are undone in the next, and the kingdom cannot not grow. On the other hand, if the sons do nothing but repeat what the fathers have done, the result is stagnation. We avoid this dilemma by striving to the life found in the ultimate family, the Trinity. There is a dynamic between Father and Son. They are not simply identical. And yet there is no breach or competition. The Father promotes the glory of His Son, the Son glorifies His Father, and they are bound together in the mutual love of the Spirit.
Peter Leithart rightly criticizes George Weigel for viewing the church’s political role as one of aiding and abetting “the play of democratic debate…and contributing to the pluralistic give and take of civil society.” The Church is not a helper to fulfill society’s goal, the Church is the new society.
According to Leithart, many Christians have unwarranted fears. Among them are fears of globalization and a “one-world” system. Christians are thinking in terms of christianity and not gospel. Christianity is an isolated system. The Bible never uses the term. However, the Scriptures speak of Christians and the Church. Christianity causes the wrong sorts of fears for the wrong sorts of reasons. Globalization is certainly a threat, but from “the viewpoint of the gospel, globalization is a religious and political trend…Globalists are enemies because they preach a false gospel, an eschatological message of international peace and plenty that will be achieved through liberal political and capitalistic economic institutions.” These systems are counterfeit gospels. They are not a threat because they will take over the world, rather, they are a threat because of their false messages.
Peter Leithart has a habit of reading lots of books and getting the greatest gems from them. I am glad he does it. Bruce Ellis Benson’s Graven Ideologies is a study of various philosophers, including Derrida. According to Leithart:
“Benson says that Derrida emphasizes that all thought is set in a structure of “not yet but still to come.” This is Derrida’s famed notion that final meaning, closure, is forever deferred.”
Naturally for an atheist to defer is not quite a good idea. Atheists have nothing to look forward in this life nor in the life to come. The problem with Derrida’s “already, but not yet” is as Leithart summarizes:
“…he doesn’t believe in any eschaton. As Benson points out, Derrida’s messiah never comes (which leaves Derrida’s theology profoundly Jewish). But if there is an eschaton, then meaning is deferred, but not forever. There will be a day of accounting, a day that will set a final context in which every word and act may be judged.”
