Isaiah uses the loaded verb bara’ in 4:5, and, as my colleague toby Sumpter points out, this comes after a double reference to the Spirit (cf. Genesis 1:2) and before creation-related references to day, night, and possibly a firmament covering/canopy.
But Isaiah’s “new creation” is coming through judgment. The Spirit is not a soothing Spirit of order, but a purging Spirit of judgment and fire. Creation comes through Word and Spirit; new creation through the Word and Spirit of judgment.
And, of course, the last verses of chapter 4 give us everything Meredith Kline could want from a theology of glory: Creation, tent, glory, Spirit.,
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
The trouble with blogging …
The trouble with blogging, RJN, is narrative structure. Or maybe voice. Or maybe diction. Or maybe syntax.…