Bully’s Blog

Peter Leithart writes:

Reflections on a class discussion earlier today about place, our connection to the ground, and gnosticism.

1. Blood and soil are “powers” that can and have dominated human life, and caused lots of human misery.  
2. Jesus overcomes those powers.  We are identified by water and feast, not by blood or color or place.
3. YET (here’s where my thought is undeveloped): Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing.  He pacifies and reconciles powers; He turns them to the purposes of His kingdom (Col 1-2).

The dilemma: How to express the reconciliation of blood and soil without falling back into the old creation, and without going fascist? How to express Jesus’ pacification of “blood” without letting it usurp the place of the water, and how to express Jesus’ pacification of “soil” without letting it usurp the place of the feast?

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A helpful Christological response to my “blood and soil” post from Jack Kilcrease of Marquette University:

“I’m currently working on an article about Gerhard Forde and the Radical Lutherans concept of discontinuity. They want between the law and gospel for there to be total discontinuity.  Granted, this is to overcome Thomism and the belief that a sinner is potentially a saint.  But it also means that God abandons his faithfulness to creation and his word of Law.My solution is take a page from the Neo-Chalcedonians and say that our model should be enhyposthesis-anhyposthesis Christology.

Whenever God engages in a redemptive act it is a miracle. Nevertheless, he does not abandon his old work, but incorporates the old reality into it. He, in effect, ‘enhypostatized’ it into the new.

So too with blood and soil. If Christ has pacified them, then they are incorporated into his new act of creation. This does not mean that they bear their old character, they are merely ‘anhypostatized’ into the new act of redemption. They need not possess their old significance and character due to their incorporation into Christ and his mission.

This does not mean that the old act is potentially the new act of creation/redemption. The flesh of Mary is not ‘potentially’ the God-Man. Bread and Wine are not ‘potentially’ the flesh and blood of Jesus. A corpse is not ‘potentially’ a resurrected body. Nevertheless, all these are incorporated into God’s new act.”

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Mike Bull from Australia sends along some comments on my earlier posts about “blood and soil.” The rest of this post is from Mike:

“Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing. But also, he doesn’t just pacify and reconcile them. He tears them in two, like two goats. Anything made new is something old torn in two as it passed through the veil. Using soil as an example, not just territory/nationalism, I would use the Land/Holy Place to illustrate. Animals were divided to make Canaan new. Canaan was divided both symbolically (two mountains) and legally (by the sword) to make a new Creation. 

Israel was torn in two, as we know, and the old Land of Solomon died to make a new, bigger empire-Land. Eventually even this ‘Land’ was torn in two (by Jesus’ feet). The empire-guardian-Land died to make a bigger world-Land. The feast and the water are the elements that divide and reunite. The old worship dies on the altar of the new. 

Here’s the point. The new Holy Place is heavenly. The new race is heavenly. The new government is heavenly. That is the only place where the new blood and soil are perfectly reconciled and pacified, and we enter into that weekly. We examine ourselves and are torn in two (self-judgment) as we enter and are resurrected at the feast. As the pattern is measured out, the world is torn in two. It becomes new soil.

Race and territory divisions can be overcome in two ways. By the iron and clay intermarriage of Nimrod/Herod (fascism), or the miraculous ‘Jew/Gentile’ (church/state) intermarriage of the Spirit that flows from the Most Holy (worship). The difference being that the Spirit brings death (self-judgment) before unity. Once the link with the Most Holy is broken, true marriage is impossible. Adam/Land must be covered in blood before the heavenly city can be built on earth.

Perhaps there is also the idea that false worship is hard clay, instead of soft clay that can be transformed into the soft, more precious metals of worship. These can be mixed with iron. The true Nazirites have breastplates of Tabernacle metal. If the water and the feast come first (in truth), the blood and soil will be reconciled anyway, changed from the inside out. 

Transformed and in-spired by the Spirit, the national differences and divisions are no longer rivalry but glory. The nations become gemstones in perfect harmony on the bosom of Christ.”