And/Or: Virgil is aware that the furor of civil war can be curbed only by an opposing, and more intense, furor. That, as Milbank says, is the way of paganism – peace established only by superior violence against violence. But in those tears Virgil expresses the the painful recognition – perhaps just beginning to dawn in the Roman period – of the costs of a peace won through the blood of victims. Those tears express the sense of waste of... Read more
Virgil is not a critic of empire, but he’s not quite an unqualified celebrant either. He knows the costs, and mourns them. But neither he nor his hero wishes the conquests away. Sunt lacrimae rerum , indeed, but neither the tears nor the things are going to cease. This is just the way things are, and the Roman weeps for the victims he crushes under his boots. Virgil perhaps reflects the Roman penchant for sentimental cruelty, cruel sentimentality, that Shakespeare... Read more
In a review of Harry Frankfurt’s On Truth (a sequel to Frankfurt’s widely read On Bulls*** ), Oxford’s Simon Blackburn offers a neat summary of postmodern notions of truth. He questions the tendency to use postmodernism as a “whipping boy” against whom “many readers may feel that no insult is too gross to heap on it.” He doesn’t find “any recent philosophical movement that could have been stopped in its tracks by pointing out that it is easier to find... Read more
For anyone with $150 of spare change, Cambridge University Press has just published what it’s calling the first-ever complete English translation of Isidore’s Etymologies , one of the most widely studied books in Christendom between 600 and 1600. Read more
Thanks to Chris Morris for suggesting this line of thinking about 1 John 2:28-29. 1 John 2:28: Little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. As I’ve emphasized a couple of times this morning, Jesus comes to us in many ways and many modes. He came long ago to take away sin and destroy the works of the devil. He will come again... Read more
1 John 3:1: See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. Throughout this passage, John speaks about two different genealogies, two different families, two different kinds of people. On the one hand are those who are children of the devil, who hate others like Cain the murderer. On the other hand are those who are children of God, born of Him, who love one another... Read more
We live out the Christian life, John says, between appearances of Christ. He appeared first to remove sin and to loose us from the works of the devil, and He appears again as judge and to transform us into His likeness. But Jesus comes again and again, not just twice. Jesus came through and in the Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus came in judgment in AD 70. Jesus comes again and again throughout history as the King at the right hand... Read more
In 1991, Jody Williams and two other people formed the “International Campaign to Ban Landmines.” During the following six years, the group had entered into a coalition with over 1000 Non-Government Organizations and got 121 nations to sign a treaty to ban landmines, which took effect in March 1999. Along the way, Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s not only the use of NGOs that makes this a classic case of pomo activism. It’s also her relentless use of... Read more
Dee Hock, founder and CEO of VISA Corporation, describes the rise and size of the company: “In 1968 the VISA community was no more than a set of beliefs and a vague concept. In 1970 it was born. Today, twenty-nine years later, its products are created by 22,000 owner-member financial institutions and accepted at 15 million merchant locations in more than 200 countries and territories. Three-quarters of a bllion people use VISA products and make 14 billion transactions producing annual... Read more
Peter Drucker notes that “the distinction between parent and daughter [companies] is increasingly blurring. In the transnational company, design is done anyplace within the system. Major pharmaceutical companies now have research laboratories in five or six countries, in the United States, Great Britain, Japan, Switzerland. They do their research wherever there are research scientists. They produce wherever the economics of manufacturing dictate . . . . A major pharmaceutical manufacturer makes and sells prescription drugs in 164 countries, but all... Read more
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