Post-Enlightenment Apocalyptic

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to Cyril O’Regan, von Balthasar saw Hegel and Heidegger as the great exemplars of post-Enlightenment mis-remembering (Anatomy of Misremembering). Misremembering is not the same as forgetting. To misremember involves a will to overcome forgetfulness, but at the same time distorts what is remembered. Misremembering overcomes amnesia, but overcomes it wrongly. Hegel’s philosophy is a massive effort to overcome Enlightenment amnesia, one that “promises an alternative form of thought which is a singularly powerful system of ‘recollection’ (Erinnerung) in which... Read more

Up From Flatland

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Geography has historically imagined a flat world: “territory, sovereignty and human experience have long been flattened by a paradoxical reliance on flat maps—and, more recently, aerial and satellite images—projected or imaged from the disembodied bird’s or God’s eye view from high above,” writes Stephen Graham in Verical (1). He claims that “the key geographical idea dominating the world from the mid nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries . . . was that . . . the horizontal and global extent... Read more

The Limits of Brotherhood

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Andrew Pettegree (Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion, 201-2) describes the post-Reformation efforts to cultivate a sense of brotherhood and solidarity among Protestant Christians who had rejected medieval rites and practices of kinship. He quotes a “disenchanted defector” who denied brotherhood “to all who did not adhere to their faction,” adding that “such naming became a common characteristic of all the future separatist groups that eventually repudiated the broad church of the English settlement.” He observes that “the traditional sacraments... Read more

From Polemic to Propaganda

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Andrew Pettegree (Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion) observes a shift in rhetorical tone in Protestant-Catholic debates between the early and mid sixteenth century: “While much of the polemical writing of Luther’s day was rumbustious in tone, making liberal use of ridicule and ad hominem attacks, it still vigorously maintained the prospect of reconciliation, or at least a personal change of mind. It could not be otherwise in a church where so many of the first generation of ministers were... Read more

Erotics of Reading

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In the middle stanzas of “Erotikos Logos,” watching someone else reading, Scott Cairns (Slow Pilgrim, 278) writes, “So much, of course, depends upon your own willingness to find something worthy here, even as you bring – as you must – something worthy to the effort. So much of what is worthy wants always to struggle toward agreeable repose, requires grateful coupling of a willing one with an also willing other.” I hesitate to comment. Commentary will be mere paraphrase, perhaps... Read more

Chess and Soviet Man

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2011 New Yorker profile of Norwegian chess champion Magnus Carlsen, D.T. Max digresses to explain the logic behind the Soviet interest in chess: “Lenin, an enthusiastic player, made the game a priority for the new nation. In 1920, Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky, a commissar of Soviet chess, wrote that chess, ‘in some ways even more than sport, develops in a man boldness, presence of mind, composure, a strong will, and, most important, a sense of strategy.’ The Soviets set about... Read more

Constructing Modernity

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Thomas Fabisiak wonders, What does the New Jerusalem have to do with modernity? (Apocalypses in Context). Ask most modern philosophers, and the answer will be, Not much. Fabisiak speaks of the “’rhetorical construction’ of modernity” that takes the form of a dismissal or expulsion of apocalyptic and all its pomp. In short, “apocalypticism served as a problematic ‘other’ of modernity, the shadow in opposition to which philosophers outlined their concepts of modernity, science, and reason, for example. . . .... Read more

Apocalypse Preserved

Last updated on: December 9, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Karl Shuve’s contribution to Apocalypses in Context traces the Christian use of Jewish apocalyptic, especially of the Book of the Watchers from 1 Enoch, which even makes it into the universal canon of the New Testament (Jude). The Watcher story appears in Justin, who “blames ‘every evil’ on the Watcher angels, who in addition to teaching magic to humans begot a race of ‘demons (daimones)’ that constantly torment and oppress them (2 Apol. 5. . . . Indeed, Justin insists... Read more

Faith in a Time of Crisis

Last updated on: December 8, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

King Ahaz of Judah is in a panic. Israel and Aram have allied to resist Assyria’s expansion, and they are pressuring Ahaz to join the alliance. If he refuses, they will overthrow Judah and replace him with another king. The result may be the end of the Davidic line. Isaiah assures Ahaz that he doesn’t have to worry about Israel and Aram (Isaiah 7). The Lord will take care of them, and, besides, Assyria poses a greater danger. But that’s... Read more

Faith in a Time of Crisis

Last updated on: December 8, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

True or False: The fruit of the Spirit includes love, joy, peace, and twelve other qualities.