In a conversation with a professor of mine about a paper assigned by another professor, he and I drew parallels between Roman emperors and  Tolkein's Denethor. Specifically, Denethor claims in his conversation with Gandalf that he is the only bastion against the darkness of Mordor. He, like Rome, builds his power on the claim that Gondor is the only hope for civilization in a terrible struggle against all the powers of ignorance, darkness, and barbarism. Denethor claims to be culture and light, he claims that Gondor is peace. 


"If you understand it, then be content," returned Denethor. "Pride would be folly that disdained help and counsel at need; but you deal out such gifts according to your own designs. Yet the Lord of Gondor is not to be made the tool of other men's purposes, however worthy. And to him there is no purpose higher in the world as it now stands than the good of Gondor; and the rule of Gondor, is mine and no other man's, unless the king should come again."

"Unless the king should come again?" said Gandalf. "Well, my lord Steward, it is your task to keep some kingdom still against that event, which few now look to see. In that task you shall have all the aid that you are pleased to ask for. But I will say this: the rule of no realm is mine, neither of Gondor, nor any other, great or small. But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything else passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I am a steward. Did you not know?"


return of the king, chapter 1


Notice that Gandalf doesn't tell Denethor he's wrong. Not in so many words. He grants that Gondor is a key player, and that the steward is important. Yet he offers a counter-story to Denethor's. The Steward claims exclusivity because without the exclusivity he has no reason to demand what he does of his people. Either he must appeal to a higher authority or he must be that authority. And as we see later, his pride cannot stand the return of the king. Gandalf tells him, quite plainly, that while Denethor must steward Gondor, Gandalf is too a steward, and over a greater charge. Gandalf is responsible for this world. 


Like Gandalf, Christians offered to Rome a story that subsumed their own. Rome claimed exclusive rights to civilization: they were the only source of peace. Christians chuckled and said sure, but only because our Prince of Peace lets you stay there. 


In an interesting twist, Rome when the Christians show up is very much like Gondor when Gandalf shows up. Threatened by a great power in the east (Parthia, one of the only nations to ever defeat a Roman Emperor in battle), they are faced with mounted men from the east (the famed Parthian archers), wild men from the north (the Germanic tribes), and corsairs from the south (there were already pirates basing themselves in the Tunisia). The salvation of Rome, eventually, would come in the form of royalty from the north: Charles Martel's Frankish armies. So all that to say, weird. Or, because it's Tolkein, wyrd. 

Time is what happens when the Holy Spirit comes from the Father to the Son.

robert jenson

via Dr.L's twitter.

First, there was no pristine Christian purity in patristic, or even the apostolic, Christianity. The New Testament is the infallible word of God, but many heard the gospel through the filter of Hellenistic conceptualities that distorted the sound waves. One cannot read Justin the martyr without realizing that he is in a very different thought world from the apostle Paul.

dr. peter leithart, medieval theology and the roots of modernity, in andrew hoffecker's revolutions in worldview, p.145

Mark's whole telling of the story of Jesus is designed to function as an apocalypse. The reader is constantly invited by the gospel as a whole to do what the disciples are invited to do in the parable-chapter, that is, to come closer and discover the inner secret behind the strange outer story.

bishop n.t. wright, the new testament and the people of God, p.395

this is going to be very influential in my upcoming hermeneutic project on Mark for leithart.

this.

some of which is what i've been up to recently. that and talking greek. οἴμοι.

1 Corinthians 10:16-17: Is not this cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ?

Many Christians over the centuries have thought of the Lord’s Supper as a kind of continuing or second incarnation. First the Son gets embodied in flesh, but now that He’s gone away He gets embodied in another material. Nowadays, He dwells among us not in a human body but in bread.

This kind of analogy between the incarnation and the presence of Christ in the Supper has produced all sorts of bad habits. If this is Jesus here on the table, we should bow down and worship Him. We should keep the bread after we’re done, and maybe even preserve a bit in a golden chest so we can go back and venerate it later.

One way to say this is that we should not think of the Eucharist not so much as Christmas – as if the Son were born again in bread – but instead think about it instead in terms of Advent. This table marks a triple Advent: It celebrates the past coming of the Lord; it is the coming of the Lord; and it looks ahead to the coming of the Lord. We commemorate the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; we feed on Him by the Spirit; we proclaim the Lord’s death until He come.

When we view it as an Advent meal, we see that this Supper is about Jesus’ absence as well as His presence; it’s about the future as well as the present. It is a present feast, a feast we celebrate because the Lord has come. But it is not yet a full banquet, because the Lord is still to come.

Dr. Leithart gave this as a Eucharist meditation this morning. convicting, inspiring, and beautiful.

via leithart.com

MINISTRY TO DEATH, MINISTRY OF LIFE

by Dr. Peter Leithart

Pastors are specialists in death. Wherever death is, pastors are: Waiting beside the hospital bed, sharing a couple’s bewilderment over their third late miscarriage, reading Psalm 23 as the earth swallows up the casket.

But the pastor’s ministry to death doesn’t stop with the obvious. As a marriage disintegrates, as two who have been one split in two again, trust and love die, and it’s only a matter of time before hope too is a corpse. The Dow plummets, and before they know what happened a couple on the verge of retirement finds a lifetime of restraint and prudence deleted. A company downsizes, and a man whose identity has been bound up with his work stumbles around to find a new self to replace the one he lost. A child’s apostasy wounds more deeply than death.

Whatever form they take, crises are deaths, and to this we can add all the daily deaths that flesh is heir to. Pastors are wherever death is, and in our world death is everywhere.

In all these circumstances, the pastor brings a word of life. To be a real gospel, good news for a world of death, that word has to be a promise of life on the far side of death – or, more properly, the promise of life throughdeath. A message of life that skirts the edge of the grave is not the gospel of Jesus because it is not the gospel of the cross. The word we speak is good news that the Father of Jesus is faithful even to the grave, and yet again faithful. But it has to be at least about God’s faithfulness to death.

Pastoral ministry has a Eucharistic shape: We offer the Bread of life, but only after the bread is broken, after the blood is poured. The Bread of life is the bread that proclaims the Lord’s death until He comes.

At the beginning of Matthew’s Passion narrative, a woman pours oil over Jesus’ head (26:7). It is an anointing, acclaiming Jesus as King and Priest, but Jesus says that it is in preparation for His burial. Jesus is ordained for the grave, anointed to pass through death and out the other end.

This is the great privilege of pastoral ministry, to follow Jesus into the tombs that litter our world to announce the triumph of life.

via Credenda/Agenda