The life of Aldous Huxley is a parable of the modern age. Descended from Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Henry Huxley and Matthew Arnold, Huxley was part of an elite intellectual class of distinctly Victorian orientation. He was greatly offended by the “mass culture” that he saw developing around him, and wrote of it with prescience: advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify craving — to extend and intensify, that is to say, the workings of that force, which (as... Read more
In Jesus’ “sermon on the plain” in Luke 6 there are a number of cool structures and numerological patterns. The whole sermon is divided into three large chunks, the Beatitudes (vv. 20-27), a section on love of enemies (vv. 27-38, which is marked out by the beginning phrase “But I say to you who hear”), and a section emphasizing the need to act on Jesus’ teaching and not merely to hear (vv. 39-49). Throughout the sermon, the word “do” (Greek... Read more
Noemie Emery is one of the most interesting political writers today. She has a David Brooksish ability to display the inner connections between politics, personality, and culture, all with a sharp historical sensibility. She is not nearly so entertaining a writer as Brooks, but more profound. Consider this superb passage from the September 15 issue of The Weekly Standard , in which Emery argues that Schwarzenegger has the opportunity to revive both the California Republican Party and the Kennedy family’s... Read more
Neil Elliot, in the book mentioned in the previous post, says that “The conspirators who assassinated Caligula included an officer he had sexually humiliated, who stabbed the emperor repeatedly in the genitals.” I recall that Plutarch records something similar about Brutus’s strike against Julius Caesar. Does this suggest that striking at a man’s privates was common to assassination, a way of symbolizing that a man’s power is being cut off? Or does this suggest some sexual relationship between Julius and... Read more
In the midst of some typical and typically inane apology for sodomy, Neil Elliot (in Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle , Orbis, 1994) raises the interesting question of why Paul focuses on sexual immorality at the beginning of his letter to the Romans (1:18-32). His answer is that Paul is summarizing the evils of the imperial house in particular. From Tiberius through Nero (with a brief respite under Claudius), Roman emperors were notorious... Read more
I have found Bryan Spinks book on the sacramental theology of Stuart theologians disappointing. So far, there’s little besides some fairly superficial summaries of the work of individual theologians. Some of these open up interesting angles, but Spinks makes no effort to relate shifts in sacramental theology to larger cultural movements (as do, for example, Miri Rubin, Michal Kobialka, and, grandaddy of them all, Michel de Certeau). Spinks basically does the spade work for such a cultural study of sacramental... Read more
Letter from a Graduate Student Following is a transcription of a letter found in the archives of a recently deceased Professor of Philosophy at a major American university. The original was written in a childish scrawl, and was almost illegible. For reasons that may be obvious, the provenance of the following letter is best left unstated, and any names have been changed or suppressed to prevent embarrassment to the parties involved. Father, I have only a few moments before they... Read more
I read a good bit of Buchan while in Cambridge, and here is a short analysis of one of his best historical novels, Midwinter . Midwinter is an historical novel set in England during the mid-eighteenth century effort of the Jacobite supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie to place their leader on the throne of England. Alastair Maclean, head of his Highland Scottish clan, is the principal character. He is an agent of the Prince who is traveling through England and... Read more
I’ve been wanting for some years to write an article developing the fairly simple point that all texts depend on things that are not in the text for their meaning. Jokes are among the best examples of this. What makes a joke funny is usually something that is not stated explicitly in the joke. If you don’t have the requisite outside knowledge, you don’t get some “partial meaning” of the joke; you don’t get the joke at all. This occurred... Read more
Some impressive quotations from Muller’s Christ and the Decree (p. 36): This is Calvin ( Inst 2.12.1): In discerning Christ’s merit, we do not consider the beginning of merit to be in him, but we go back to God’s ordinance as the first cause. For God solely of his own good pleasure appointed him mediator to obtain salvation for us. And this from Muller: In this crucial link between his Christology and the larger soteriological exposition Calvin does not rest... Read more
Leithart
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