Roth’s Everyman

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

Philip Roth, Everyman . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 182 pp. Paperback, $13.00. When Death comes to fetch him in the medieval morality play, Everyman is abandoned by Friends, Kin, Beauty, and Goods. At least Good Works, purified through penance, accompanies him and gives access to heaven. Philip Roth’s Everyman, the unnamed central character in Roth’s twenty-seventh novel, lacks even this comfort. Estranged from his two sons, envious of his vigorous older brother, three-time divorcee, alternately plagued by regrets and defensive... Read more

End of Christian Europe

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

When the constitutional treaty for the European Union deleted references to Europe’s Christian heritage, many quite rightly protested this remarkable act of self-induced amnesia. But it was really old news. From the time of the French Revolution, “Europe” was redefined, first in France and then throughout Europe, without reference to Christianity. Rosenstock-Huessy says that for the French, Europe means “a field of action for the philosopher, the artist, the thinker, the democrat, the Republican, the soldier and last, not least,... Read more

Life and liberty

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Jefferson claimed that “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.” But this “us” is a very narrow slice of the human race. As Rosenstock-Huessy says, “The obvious weakness of the new-born child, of the old man, of the dependent servant, of the ill or weak-minded man, the bondage of irrational loyalties, even the slow growth of man into independence, contradict Jefferson’s idea that life and liberty were ‘simultaneously’ given to man.” In the light... Read more

Messianic measurements

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

Writing in 1821, John Quincy Adams observed the massive difficulty of introducing metric measurements. Measurement so permeats society that an immediate change in standards would “affect the well-being of man, woman and child, in the community.” He noted, “Weights and measures may be ranked among the necessities of life to every human individual and society. They enter into the economical arrangements and daily concerns of every family. They are necessary to every occupation of human industry; to the distribution and... Read more

Lutheran v. Calvinist

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

Rosenstock-Huessy points out, “For two hundred years the Lutheran patricians in Frankfurt had prevented even their Calvinist competitors from living in the city. Not until 1780, nine years before the conquest of the Bastille, did the Calvinist merchants get permission to build their church in Frankfurt itself instead of in a neighboring village.” Read more

Secularization of language

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

In a 1980 article in the Journal of the History of Ideas Margret de Grazia helpfully described what she calls the “secularization of language” that occurred during the 17th century. Her contribution is to show that the often-noted “linguistic pessimism” of the century arose from the destruction of “the traditional connection between human and divine language.” By the time the dust cleared, “God’s language was no longer considered to be primarily verbal; human words ceased to be related both in... Read more

Deritualized selves

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Lori Branch links the Reformation and post-Reformation attack on ritual with the formation of the Cartesian self: “the Reformation religious subject gradually became less a participant in communal, bodily ritual action, and more and more the Cartesian cogito , an individual, inward-looking possessor of knowledge drawn from evidence and analysis. If the ‘Cartesian moment’ is that moment when . . . the self can be conceived of without the body, it is also the moment when it can be conceived... Read more

Knowledge and Love

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

1 John 4:8 says that the one who does not love does not know God because God is love. This might be legitimately read as: God is love; knowing God therefore necessarily involves knowing love; therefore, the one who does not know love does not know God. But that’s not precisely what John says. He doesn’t say, “The one who doesn’t know love doesn’t know God.” He says, “The one who doesn’t love doesn’t know God.” The test of knowing... Read more

Savior of the World

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

The Son is sent to be savior of the world (1 John 4:14). And it’s only as the only-begotten Son that He can be Savior. This is true in the usual sense that Jesus is the “contact point” between God and man. But it’s also true in a more subtle sense. Jesus saves us by communicating life (1 John 4:9). But is life something that can be communicated? Is life something that can flow out from the Father? Is life... Read more

Only begotten

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

John uses the phrase “only begotten” ( monogenes ) four times in his gospel (1:14, 18; 3:15, 18). (I’m assuming here the controversial point that the phrase does mean “only begotten.”) He uses it only once in his first epistle: God’s love is manifest in the fact that “God has sent His only begotten Son into the world” (4:9). Why here? The pattern in the gospel is for John to use monogenes in contexts where he’s talking about the manifestation... Read more