Awesome

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the Atlantic, Matthew Hutson summarizes recent research on the psychology of awe. The executive summary: Awe is good for you. Psychologists have described awe as the experience of encountering something so vast—in size, skill, beauty, intensity, etc.—that we struggle to comprehend it and may even adjust our worldview to accommodate it. A waterfall might inspire awe; so could childbirth, or a scene of devastation. [1] Even if awe’s source is terrestrial, its outcome can be spiritual. In one set... Read more

Saint Nick

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his pre-game New Yorker profile of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, Benjamin Wallace-Wells suggests that Saban is an anomaly, perhaps an outmoded one. He starts with Saban’s hair: “Men who spend a great deal of time on television tend to cultivate hair styles that look ridiculous in any other setting. This is true of game-show hosts and chatty morning anchors; it is equally true of college football coaches. The iconography of coach hair styles has been varied: Jimmy Johnson’s... Read more

China In Africa

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In an interview with Asia Times reporter Doug Tsuruoka, Brookings Fellow and former US Treasury emissary to China David Dollar assesses the scale and impact of Chinese investment in Africa. Overall, Dollar’s assessment is bullish: China stabilizes Africa. “China is basically a stabilizing and positive force in Africa. There are a lot of different aspects to Chinese investment there. One important part is Chinese loans for infrastructure. Quite a few African countries are making good use of these. China has... Read more

Trumpism and Paleoconservatism

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a lengthy, admirably dispassionate New Yorker piece on “Intellectuals for Trump,” Kelefa Sanneh notes that “Trumpism draws on a political tradition that has often been linked to white identity politics.” He draws particular attention to the work of Samuel Francis, who argued that “America needed a President who would stand up to the ‘globalization of the American economy.’ In Francis’s view, that candidate was Pat Buchanan, a former longtime White House aide who ran for President in 1992 and... Read more

May and Postliberalism

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Guardian devoted a long recent editorial to an analysis of the political outlook of British Prime Minister Theresa May. Whatever Mayism might be, it is not an ideology, not Thatcherism, not David-Cameronian modernizing. For May, Toryism is not “a doctrine but as cultural inclination and a social milieu—the parochial heart of Middle England.” Yet the editors think they can discern the outlines of a “postliberal” outlook in May’s politics: “She is evangelical about global free trade but ready to... Read more

Conrad’s Mesmerizing Obscurity

Last updated on: January 13, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Kate Symondson begins her TLS review of recent editions of Joseph Conrad’s letters and his novel Victory with a reminder of FR Leavis’s complaint about Conrad’s “insistence on inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery.” Symondson writes, “Instead of the Victorian preference for pellucid—almost pedantic—hardened detail, mist shrouds and encircles Conrad’s fiction. His narratives move seamlessly, almost imperceptibly, between different perspectives and voices. Dramatic scenes—explosions, collisions, shipwrecks, gunshots—are experienced as sensorial derangements, as they ‘happen.’ We only come to understand what exactly has... Read more

Iustus et Peccator?

Last updated on: January 12, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

From Conflict to Communion, the Lutheran-Catholic commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, offers a summary of Luther’s theology, particularly on the points of dispute between Catholics and Lutherans. They offer the following summary of Luther’s claim that believers remain simul iustus et peccator, simultaneously just and sinners. Though justified by God, “As believers who are in the process of being renewed by the Holy Spirit, we still do not completely fulfill the divine commandment to love God wholeheartedly... Read more

Eucharistic Sacrifice

Last updated on: January 12, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The joint Lutheran-Catholic reflection on the Reformation, From Conflict to Communion, acknowledges that medieval Catholicism was muddled on Eucharistic sacrifice. As a result of a “loss of an integrative concept of commemoration, Catholics were faced with the difficulty of the lack of adequate categories with which to express the sacrificial character of the eucharist. Committed to a tradition going back to patristic times, Catholics did not want to abandon the identification of the eucharist as a real sacrifice even while... Read more

David’s Ammonite War

Last updated on: January 11, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

1 Chronicles 18–20 record David’s wars with immediate neighbors of Israel. The chapters are organized chiastically: A. War with Philistia and Moab, 18:1 B. War with Ammon, Aram, and Edom, 18:2-13 C. David reigns with justice and righteousness, 18:14-17 B’. War with Ammon and Aram, 19:1-20:3 A’. War with Philistia, 20:4-8 There are good reasons to conclude that B and B’ describe the same war. Both involve both Aram and Ammon; in both, David captures 7000 charioteers (18:4; 19:18); the... Read more

Careening Toward Division

Last updated on: January 10, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

As recounted in From Conflict to Communion, jointly produced by the Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Reformation was an academic dispute that careened into a division of the church. Apart from the first four theses, Luther’s 95 Theses did not state his views but proposed statements for debate. He “was surprised by the reaction to his theses, as he had not planned a public event but rather an academic disputation. He feared that... Read more

What was the primary form of transportation in Biblical times?