Status Updates From Delivered from the Elements...

In Chapter 7, Leithart (1) enters the pistis Christou debate on the side of subjective genitive, (2) enters the penal substitutionary debate on the affirmative side, and then (3) skillfully and imo convincingly brings the two together.

Jesus, the faithful High King (David’s greater Son) is the penal substitution for Israel, taking the wrath she deserves as her one-flesh Husband. His faithfulness unto death saves us.

Leithart provides in chapter 4 one of the most useful systematic treatments on the biblical understanding of "flesh" I have ever encountered.

Too briefly put, "flesh" is (now) godless mortality driven by the fear of death into protectiveness, segregation, violence, and virility to both guard and extend itself.

Thus illuminating circumcision: the removal of flesh by the deliberate cutting of its most potent symbol.

A successful theory of the atonement:

1. Historically plausible: a meaningful interpretation of all events
2. Inevitable: end of an obvious trajectory with strong explanatory power for what came before
3. Levitical: fulfillment of ritual, especially sacrifice
4. Evangelical: arises from within Gospels
5. Epistolary: makes sense of words, sentences, arguments in Apostles' letters
6. Fruitful: leads to church history

"The common contemporary rhetoric of conflicts between religion and politics obscures the reality. Conflicts are never between politics and religion. Conflicts are always between rivals that are both religious and both political."

"Justification," being declared/proven right, must be placed within the ongoing war between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, on which depends the destiny of the cosmos over which mankind has been placed.

Jesus and all who are "in Him" were justified by His resurrection, and with it, a cosmological regeneration began in which the curse of death and the power of Satan is being turned back day by day.

Leithart spends the last few chapters providing a taxonomy of today's socio-religious landscape outside the Church. He has three designations:

1.) Those still living under the elements (e.g., tribal and more ancestral religions)

2.) Those "on the boundary" whose religion has been Christianized (e.g., Buddhism, Islam, etc.)

3.) Galatianists who were once Christian but have slid back into a world under the elements

Jesus died and rose to become the cornerstone of a new temple, but prophets and apostles constituted the rest of the foundation (Eph 2:20). The OT is a typological account of Christ's sufferings and glory AND of the apostles' preaching of repentance and forgiveness to the nations (Lk 24:46-47). The first martyrs were not only objects and beneficiaries of Christ's atoning work. In Him, they were subjects of salvation.

The Davidic King was Yahweh's son (2 Sam 7:14), the representative of Israel, Yahweh's corporate son (Ex 4:23). Jesus was that King (Rom 1:3-4). This enabled Jesus to take the penalty that Israel deserved and so release Israel from the capital punishment for her blasphemy (among other transgressions). All who are joined to Christ (the head) by baptism are joined to Israel (His body), Abraham's seed (Gal 3:29).

Jesus' life is marked by a series of trials complete with witnesses, statements, prosecution, and defense ending with the climatic trials of Jesus before the Jews and Romans.

However, it wasn't Jesus who was on trial. It was the world (John 12:31), sinful flesh (Rom 8:3), and the political and spiritual ruling authorities and powers (Col 2:15). As at Eden/Babel/Sodom/etc., God came down to judge and bring justice.

In the third chapter, Leithart offers a fictional tale of a Jew traveling through Egypt, Babylon, and Greece to bring home his point of slavery to the elements (purity, temple, sacrifice, priest).

These fictional narratives are one of the remarkable things he does in just about every one of his books.

"The common contemporary rhetoric of conflicts between religion and politics obscures the reality. Conflicts are never between politics and religion. Conflicts are always between rivals that are both religious and both political."

"The 'veil' is perhaps the best single symbol to express the unavoidable, head- on and mutually exclusive claims of Christianity and Judaism."

"Even if stoicheic institutions had not been abused, they would become useless once the promise of the Spirit was realized, once the Abrahamic promise came to fruition. Once the gate of Eden is opened again, there is no need for sacrifice; the cherubim lay down their flaming swords and let those who are in Christ enter freely."

"Jesus' one act of obedience broke through the curse of the law to establish a new regime of life. Even those who do not respond to the faith of Jesus in faith live in a world under new management, under the Lordship of Christ and the reign of the saints."

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from (Christ's) faith to (our) faith; as it is written, 'BUT THE RIGHTEOUS WILL LIVE BY FAITH.'" - Romans 1:16-17

The advent of faith is not the advent of belief but of Jesus, the faithful one.

What would the culture of Torah look like if Yahweh were to come out from his house, mingle with the crowd, eat with sinners without the safety-veil of temple barriers? What if purification were given directly by Yahweh rather than through the mediation of purity rites? What if sinners were made clean and holy by the sheer force of God's holy presence, the Holy Spirit?

Sacrifice is a "gate liturgy," a liturgy of return and access, designed for worshipers who are in the flesh, excluded from full enjoyment of the presence of God.

It enacts distance as well as proximity. Worshipers themselves do not draw near to Yahwah but send surrogates, animals who act on their behalf. What happens to the animal spiritually happens to the person.

Slain, cut up, turned into smoke to be consumed.