40 Bicycles

A lot has been said on the blogosphere since I last checked in. I don’t have the time or patience to trawl through everything, so I have just checked a handful of my favourite blogs. The following are just a few of the highlights that I have come across. Andrew Stager’s post, The Semi-Pelagian Narrower Catechism, on Manila Drive made me laugh. A number of the posts from Peter Leithart’s blog that I could access through Google cache were fantastic. Unfortunately, although I was able to read the first few tantalizing lines of a number of his posts on Bloglines, I was not able to access a number of them. While I was offline, Kevin Bush (who runs one of the most useful websites I have ever come across — it gets a plug in Wright’s latest book) e-mailed me one of Leithart’s posts on the subject of “Yahweh’s Field of Battle”. Here is the Google cache of the post. It helps to clarify some of the issues surrounding the concentration of sin in Israel, which Wright has argued for. Much, of course, still remains to be explained. There are many other dimensions of this gathering together of sin. I am convinced that this process operates on many different levels. One of the crucial things that need to be articulated in more detail is the manner in which the giving of the Law is constitutive of an entire new world order, even beyond the boundaries of Israel. The nations must be redefined around Israel in a manner that makes the nations and Israel mutually constitutive — the problem of the world becoming focused in the problem of Israel and the solution, as it is worked out in Israel, impacting upon the nations as a whole. Of course, this is just the ‘one and the many’ problem again. Reading The Eucharist Makes the Church has given me some new idea to play with on this subject. I asked Wright about the manner in which the problem of the world becomes concentrated in Israel and the role that the sacrificial system might play I this after his lecture on “Covenant and Creation” a few weeks ago. He didn’t really have much to say on the issue, largely due to the fact that he needed to leave quickly. I have touched on this issue on a number of occasions in the past (in my posts on the atonement — I, II, III, IV, and in other posts like this and this), but I am still trying to work towards putting flesh onto the bones of Wright’s claims. Matt Colvin has some cool stuff from David Daube on the Passover (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5). He also has a useful post on the character of the Pharisee’s legalism and some interesting comments on 2 Corinthians 3. Michael Pahls has some helpful things to say on the subject of “Hermeneutics, Ecclesiology, and the Perspicuity of the Scriptures” (1, 2, 3, 4). Joel Garver has some excellent postings: Forgiveness and Time; No Shadow of Turning, Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Alex Arnold has written some great material over the last few weeks. The following are some of his particularly interesting posts: Osteentatius; Evangelicalism’s Idolatry; Two Sides of the Wrong Coin. Dennis Hou’s blog, Smilax has just been exalted to the pantheon of ‘Favourite Blogs’. One more thing: I tried to comment on Dave Armstrong's response to my material on transubstantiation just before I stopped blogging for Lent but it didn't work for some reason. My comments can be found in 'post 3' here. I have also started to get spam in my comments — very annoying.