Arche and Telos

Jesus says, “I am the arche and telos ” (Revelation 21:6). “Beginning and end” is too colorless, too geometric. Jesus is not the two points at either end of a line segment.

Better to render this more “dynamically” and “organically” (forgive the hurrah words): Origin and destination; initiative and completion; source and goal; plan and execution, planner and overseer; starting block and winner’s prize; dawn and dusk; blueprint and building; call and dismissal; etc.

Jesus is not the ever-receding beginning, or the ever-approaching end, but both source and goal together, not just economically but ontologically. At a stroke, this proves Jenson right.

Next
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Notes on Anosmia

John Wilson

One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…

Empire of Unreality

Algis Valiunas

Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…

The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist

Peter J. Leithart

It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…