Freud and Lacan

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Louis Althusser offered this helpful description of Lacan’s structuralist revision of Freud: “In his first great work The Interpretation of Dreams . . . , Freud studied the ‘mechanisms’ and ‘laws’ of dreams, reducing their variants to two: displacement and condensation. Lacan recognized these as two essential figures of speech, called in linguistics [respectively] metonymy and metaphor. Hence slips, failures, jokes and symptoms, like the elements of dreams themselves, become signifiers, inscribed in the chain of an unconscious discourse, doubling... Read more

5

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Boethius says in his De Arithmetica that the number 5 represents an infinite circle: “For 5 times 5, which makes 25, starts from 5 and ends in the same number, 5. And if you multiply that by 5 again, the end turns out to be 5 again. For 5 times 25 makes 125, and if you multiply by 5 again, the answer will end with the number 5. And this always happens up to infinity.” Read more

Scripture’s eloquence

Last updated on: December 6, 2006 at 5:06 pm By Peter Leithart

De Lubac cites this passage near the beginning of his Medieval Exegesis : “The eloquence of Sacred Scripture takes many shapes, and its meanings are many and varied. For this reason someone has said: He compares things that are celestial with things that are earthly, so that likenesses that we find well-known and familiar may provide a field of play for the things that incomprehensible greatness veils from our understanding.” Read more

Scripture’s eloquence

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

Sadnesses

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

In his study of the influence of medievalism on postmodern theory, Bruce Holsinger briefly reviews the reception of de Lubac’s work: “a number of his books were officially withdrawn from institutional libraries across the Catholic world, hundreds of copies of the just-published Corpus Mysticum lay rotting in a Lyons warehouse, and from that point on any writing he produced on any subject had to pass through a censor approved by Rome.” Read more

Sermon Notes, Second Sunday of Advent

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

INTRODUCTION Jesus’ birth was announced by angelic choirs. It was also greeted by shepherds, to whom the angels first announced the birth of the Christ. Why would the news go to shepherds first? THE TEXT “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city .... Read more

Eucharistic meditation, First Sunday of Advent

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:39 pm By Peter Leithart

John 7:37-38: Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If any many is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture says, from his innermost being will flow rivers of living water. Let me remind you once again how we will be celebrating the Supper today and for the foreseeable future: The elders will be taking the bread and wine first, and... Read more

Exhortation, First Sunday of Advent

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

When Jesus ascended into heaven, He poured out His Spirit on the church. According to Paul, He also gave gifts to men. These gifts included apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, given to the church to equip the saints for their work of service. Paul gives us this picture of the church: The Spirit flows from Jesus the Head, through the teachers and leaders of the church, out to the congregation, so that each member can participate in the ministry... Read more

Philosopher or poet?

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

The doctrine of accommodation (which is rife in the tradition, as basic to Thomas as to Calvin) says: When God speaks in His natural voice, He speaks like a philosopher. He speaks like a poet in Scripture because He’s dumbing it down for humans imprisoned in a sensible world. Scripture, however, indicates that God’s natural voice is that of a poet. If Scripture speaks in poetry rather than philosophy, how could anyone have ever discovered that God’s natural voice is... Read more

Ritual and Ceremony

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

The terms “ceremony” and “ritual” became sneer-words nearly as soon as they were introduced into English and other European languages, according to Edward Muir’s Ritual in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2005): “Around the turn of the sixteenth century, as Thomas Greene has persuasively shown, ‘a kind of crisis confronted the commercial, performative sign.’ This crisis in confidence in the efficacy of ritual can be seen in what Green calls the ‘curious destiny’ of the word ‘ceremony.’ Erasmus employed a Latin... Read more