My End of Protestantism (the book) deals with a number of the questions Doug Wilson raises in his rejoinder. I’m sure Doug will have more to say if he reads the book, and I’ll try to respond then. Here I limit myself to a few notes. I state a clarification, highlight an irony, expose a rhetorical misdirection, point to Doug’s leading error, and close, in good revivalist fashion, with an invitation. The clarification: I do recognize the gargantuan import my... Read more
John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (The Politics of Virtue, 269) argue that secular critiques of liberalism cannot hit home because “they are incapable of making the key argument that various different faith traditions are able to make—that nature is neither external to humanity, nor should humans ever aspire simply to dominate their own or external nature.” Culture itself “is constituted by the nature/culture tension, then there is, for a meta-critique . . . no critical possibility of deciding that meanings... Read more
John Milbank and Adrian Pabst (The Politics of Virtue, 269) argue that secular critiques of liberalism cannot hit home because “they are incapable of making the key argument that various different faith traditions are able to make—that nature is neither external to humanity, nor should humans ever aspire simply to dominate their own or external nature.” Culture itself “is constituted by the nature/culture tension, then there is, for a meta-critique . . . no critical possibility of deciding that meanings... Read more
Bernd Wannenwetsch (Political Worship, 63–65) denies that in Luther’s theology politics and economics “count as being a preserve of the law.” The usus politicus of the law doesn’t mark “a particular preserve not touched by the gospel.” He needs to emphasize this because “an unduly abridged reference to Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms” can give the opposite impression. Such versions of two-kingdom theology rest on “distinctions, and particularly the distinction between law and gospel.” Wannenwetsch argues that Luther’s teaching... Read more
John is caught up by the Spirit into heaven and sees a throne, cherubim, a sea, seven torches burning. I daresay he knew exactly where he was: In the heavenly temple, specifically in the heavenly archetype of the most holy place, the throne-room of the sanctuary. I daresay many of John’s first readers and hearers would have recognized the location too, even though they could never have been there. They had heard or read about it, all over the Hebrew... Read more
John is caught up by the Spirit into heaven and sees a throne, cherubim, a sea, seven torches burning. I daresay he knew exactly where he was: In the heavenly temple, specifically in the heavenly archetype of the most holy place, the throne-room of the sanctuary. I daresay many of John’s first readers and hearers would have recognized the location too, even though they could never have been there. They had heard or read about it, all over the Hebrew... Read more
“To understand the mind-set of the super-elite,” writes Chrystia Freeland in Plutocrats, “your starting point should be the reality—and their own self-perception—that they, too, lead anxious, overworked, and uncertain lives.” Unlike the super-rich of earlier ages, most of today’s billionaires didn’t inherit wealth, and they aren’t a leisure class. They make money because they work hard. They are the “working rich.” There are perks, mind you, among them the chance to be regarded as heroic, nearly saintly: “the super-elite also... Read more
Plutocrats, Chrystia Freeland’s 2013 book, is about the rise of the “global super-rich” and the ways the global economy squeezes the middle classes in development countries. Freeland argues that “we are living through two, slightly different gilded ages that are unfolding simultaneously. The industrialized West is experiencing a second gilded age. . . . the emerging markets are experiencing their first gilded age.” Take the second first: “Many countries in Asia, Latin America, and Africa are industrializing and urbanizing, just... Read more
Devoney Looser says that Jane Austen’s juvenilia is an exercise in burlesque. Not the strip-tease variety, but not so far from that either: “Where a parody sets out to mimic conventions and make us laugh, a burlesque relies ‘on an extravagant incongruity between a subject and its treatment.’ They are bolder and more coarsely humorous pieces that go beyond silly copies, like turbo-charged parodies.” Austen’s juvenilia consists of “74,000 words of unpredictable snark,” with lines like this from Love and... Read more
Devoney Looser says that Jane Austen’s juvenilia is an exercise in burlesque. Not the strip-tease variety, but not so far from that either: “Where a parody sets out to mimic conventions and make us laugh, a burlesque relies ‘on an extravagant incongruity between a subject and its treatment.’ They are bolder and more coarsely humorous pieces that go beyond silly copies, like turbo-charged parodies.” Austen’s juvenilia consists of “74,000 words of unpredictable snark,” with lines like this from Love and... Read more
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