Monday June 22, 2009 at 8:38
2 notes“Ajax and Hector fight to a standoff on the windy plains of Troy and then remove their armor and exchange gifts to formalize a friendship. Plutarch’s treatise “How to Profit by One’s Enemy” breathes a similar spirit, though in more philosophical idiom. Classical enmity is functional, strategic, temporary, and superficial. For ancient heroes, enmity always plays out under a canopy of basic agreement; battles are fought under the egis of a code of honor to which both sides adhere, but there is no battle over the code. The Bible teaches an enmity that goes to the bone. For the Christian there can be no compromise with the enemy, but only battle until victory. Can one imagine Moses combating Pharaoh through nine plagues and then calling it all off and moving back into Pharaoh’s palace? Can anyone imagine David and Goliath fighting to a draw and then going off to share a pint? We might as well imagine Jesus dining with the devil after his temptations in the wilderness. Pagans are happy to incorporate any new god into the pantheon, including Jesus; but Paul asks, What harmony has Christ with Belial? Far from deleting enmity from history, Christianity immeasurably and fundamentally deepens it.”
— Peter Leithart, in a comment from here
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preciseandtowering
reblogged this from
wesleyhill
and added:
I’d only add that since those OT stories are partly typological in that they portray God’s war against sin, this fact...
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wesleyhill
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