Alpha, not Omega

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In his recent book on resurrection in Judaism, Jon Levenson notes that the objections to resurrection in the modern world usually came from outside religious traditions. Some took an “extreme” position that presupposes “atheism and thus regard nature and its laws as eternal and absolute.” “Religious liberals” take a more modern view: “the modern objections to resurrection associate God with the alpha point, creation, but disconnect him from the omega point, the messianic end-time, which, it is respected at all,... Read more

Radical solution

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

The one thing that is “not good” in the original creation is Adam’s loneliness. And how does God go about addressing that imperfection? He puts Adam into deep sleep, tears out a rib from his side, closes up the flesh, and builds a woman from the rib. The solution to what is “not good” is something like death, and something like resurrection. That’s always the solution. When God sees that something is “not good” in us, in our life situation,... Read more

Europe

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:40 pm By Peter Leithart

My friend Peter Roise has repeatedly encouraged me to read the work of the Asia Times Online columnist who writes under the pseudonym “Spengler.” I’m glad he has, because Spengler is well worth reading. He writes with a historical awareness and philosophical depth rarely found among newspaper columnists. Whatever his own religious commitments (and they are unclear), he understands that religion has a central place in history, including political history. In a recent column, he calls attention to the contradictory... Read more

Richardson’s children

Last updated on: March 13, 2007 at 1:09 pm By Peter Leithart

What is going on in Samuel Richardson’s fiction that can shape such diverse offspring as Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade, and Jane Austen (who loved Sir Charles Grandison )? Read more

Richardson’s children

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

What is going on in Samuel Richardson’s fiction that can shape such diverse offspring as Rousseau, the Marquis de Sade, and Jane Austen (who loved Sir Charles Grandison )? Read more

Quantifiable love

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

In his Inquiry into the original of our ideas of Beauty and Virtue , the Irish Presbyterian moral philosopher Francis Hutcheson suggested an equation for calculating love: “The Quantity of Love toward any person is in a compound Proportion of the apprenhended Causes of Love in him, and of the Goodness of Temper in the observer. Or L = C X G.” Read more

Luther’s hermeneutics

Last updated on: March 12, 2007 at 11:52 am By Peter Leithart

In a 1964 article in Theology Today , Gerhard Ebeling laid out some of the hermeneutical directions found in Luther’s early writings. He focuses on three areas where Luther displays both some continuity with the terminology and problems of medieval interpretation, but also breaks free in significant ways. At the beginning of his early treatise on the Psalms, Luther is still functioning within the constraints of the medieval fourfold method, applying it more “intensively” and more “on principle” than other... Read more

Luther’s hermeneutics

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

Quadriga on the cross

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

The quadriga makes a neat match with Rosenstock-Huessy’s cross of reality: Historical = past Tropological = inside Allegorical = outside Anagogical = future Read more

Skubalon

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

2 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted some discussion of vulgar language on my site. I included some brief, and inconclusive, comments about Paul’s use of skubalon in Philippians 3:8. Classicist Matt Colvin examined and analyzed the use of the word in Greek literature, and concluded that “the word would definitely not have been considered vulgar in the way English ‘sh*t’ is today.” Matt gave permission for me to quote him, so here’s the full analysis (all from Matt): (more…) Read more