Sterilizing Marriage

Last updated on: March 31, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his powerful manifesto, Nation of Bastards, Douglas Farrow argues that the Kulturkampf in which we find ourselves began in the early part of the 20th century with “the promotion of sterilization, eugenics, and the contraceptive mentality.” In short, it started “as an attack on children,” more horrifically in the legalization of abortion: “No account of same-sex marriage that ignores this prior defiling and searing of conscience can hope to be fully plausible, nor for that matter any account that... Read more

Son of Pain

Last updated on: March 31, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Sara Japhet (I and II Chronicles) notes the “unusual” structure of the etiological story behind the name “Jabez” in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10. Typically, “an aetiology offers an explanation for a given datum (commonly, but not always, a name) by recounting the causes from which it arose and demonstrating a positive connection between datum and causes” (109). The brief story of Jabez does the opposite, since “its core is contradictory rather than causal.” He receives a name that puns with the... Read more

Breaking the Contract

Last updated on: March 31, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Ryan Leif Hansen (Silence and Praise) describes Roman imperial religion as a social contract that bound the gods, the emperor, and the Roman people in a stable, peaceful order: “Cultic ritual, sacrifice, and the related economic exchange were integral for sustaining the order of the cosmos, an order administrated by the gods and Caesar. . . . The sacrificial and economic system functioned like a social contract: the gods sustained the world and the people sacrificed. The continuity of this... Read more

Art of Politics

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 7:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his reflections on Carl Schmitt, Paul W. Kahn (Political Theology) contrasts Enlightenment political rationalism to Schmitt’s political voluntarism. Kant stands as the representative of the rationalist tradition: “For Kant, the question of freedom was that of how a subject could determine his own action in a causally determined world. The free subject, he thought, must give himself the principle of his action. He must be self-governing rather than governed from without. As a rational agent, moreover, his act cannot... Read more

Humiliation, Exaltation, Priesthood

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“You are fairer than the sons of men,” says the court poet to the king in Psalm 45:2, using a word that is more typically used to describe feminine beauty. But the king’s beauty is masculine. He is fair because of the grace that pours through his lips – the grace of his royal pronouncements and decrees. He is majestic by virtue of the sword that he straps on his thigh. His beauty is political, even judicial, and military. The... Read more

Gender Totalitarianism

Last updated on: March 30, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Gabrielle Kuby argues in her wide-ranging book on The Global Sexual Revolution that the goal of the sexual revolution is to introduce a new anthropology that will serve as the basis of family law, social norms, and human self-identity: “Modern and post-modern man have emancipated themselves – from God, from nature, from the family, from tradition – woman from man, children from parents, and individuals from themselves sa man and woman. They stand naked, restrained by nothing and defined by... Read more

Speaking Methodist

Last updated on: March 29, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Morris Davis’s The Methodist Unification is a study of the reunion of the Methodist church following the Civil War. Davis pays specific attention to the racial politics of the reunion, which formed a black-only national conference, segregated from the white churches. Davis interprets this move against the broad background of American Methodism, adopting Russell Richey’s taxonomy of four Methodist “languages”: popular or evangelical; Wesleyan; Episcopal or Anglican; and republican. Crucially, Davis argues, the last of these became the dominant language... Read more

The Divine Poet

Last updated on: March 29, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Matthew Bates (Birth of the Trinity) points to Hebrews 1:8-9’s quotation of Psalm 45 as an example of “prosopological” interpretation of the Old Testament. The Logos or Spirit speaks in the persona (prosopon) of the poet of the Psalm, and the interaction described in the Psalm is intra-divine conversation. As Bates summarizes, “A person designated ‘God’ is directly addressed in the psalm. This person possesses the royal scepter, rules with justice, and most crucially has been anointed by a second... Read more

Miracle of Hitler

Last updated on: March 29, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

University of Erlangen theologian Paul Althaus reacted to the German election of 1933 with enthusiasm: “Our Protestant churches have greeted the turning point of 1933 as a gift and miracle of God” (all quotations from Robert Erickson, Complicity in the Holocaust). Althaus wasn’t alone. A Protestant newspaper warned against finding faults with the Nazis: “We get no further if we get stuck on little things that might displease us, failing to value the great things God has done for our... Read more

King and Queen in Psalm 45

Last updated on: March 28, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Psalm 45 begins as a song of praise by a court poet for a victorious king. Halfway through it turns into an epithalamion. As a complete poem, it a rollicking ol’ romance. After the opening promise to compose a “made-thing” (Heb., ma’asah) for the king, the poet celebrates the king’s victory. He rides out with sword and bow, fighting for truth, justice, and, rather surprisingly, “meekness” (the Heb. word is connected to words for “poverty” and “affliction” – it appears... Read more

How did Judas signal who Jesus was to the soldiers?