Ground and fired

Thomas Boston (1676-1732) has several meditations on the bread and wine. One of the more outlandish is:

bread is prepared by being ground between millstones and baked in a fire, so Christ was ground between the upper of the Father's wrath and the lower millstone of the malice of men and devils, and then cast into the fiery furnace of justice;

Works, vol 2, 'The Nature of the Lord's Supper'

How's that for a bit of interpretative maximalism / natural symbolism etc.?

Wine is medicine and cheers. etc.

Ooo ooo!

Deep Exegesis by Rev'd Dr Peter Leithart ain't out yet (due middle of Sept.) but it looks very exciting.

Here's the blurb from Amazon:

Seeking to train readers to hear all that is being said within a written text, Peter Leithart advocates a hermeneutics of the letter that is not rigidly literalist and looks to learn to readnot just the Bible, but everything--from Jesus and Paul. Thus Deep Exegesis explores the nature of reading itselftaking clues from Jesus and Paul on the meaning of meaning, the functions of language, and proper modes of interpretation. By looking (and listening) closely, and by including passages from the Bible and other literary sources, Leithart aims to do for the text what Jesus did for the blind man in John 9: to make new by opening eyes. The book is a powerful invitation to enter the depths of a text.

The water and the blood

Toiling away on 1 John for homegroup notes.

There are various theories about what John means by “the water and the blood” in 1 John 5v6-7.

According to John Stott, Luther and Calvin took the water and the blood as references to baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Augustine saw a reference to the water and the blood that flowed from Jesus pierced side after his death (John 19:34-35).

According to John Stott, the most satisfactory reading (which goes back to Tertullian) is to take “water as referring to the baptism of Jesus, at which He was declared the Son and commissioned and empowered for his work, and blood to His death, in which His work was finished.” (p178). The false teachers John is opposing may have held that Jesus was an ordinary man on whom the “Christ” descended at his baptism and departed before the cross. John is thus insisting on the reality of the incarnation and especially of the death of the Christ.

Interpretative maximalists might like to know that Stott is somewhat sympathetic to some place for the other readings:

Having accepted that the primary reference of this verse is to the historical events of the baptism and crucifixion of Jesus, it is not impossible that it also contains secondary allusions, since the past events remain present witnesses (8). 'Water and blood', which occur together in some of the Levitical rituals, are intelligible symbols of 'purification and redemption' (Plummer). ... To these aspects of salvation [justification and sanctification] Jesus himself had referred in the discourses which John recorded in chapters iii, iv and vii ('water') and vi ('blood') of his Gospel. Perhaps John also saw them set forth once in the issue of blood and water from the side of the Crucified, and even regularly in the two sacraments. (p179)

Epistles of John, Tyndale NT Comm., IVP, 1964, pp177-179