Ascension and Absence

Last updated on: March 24, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Robert Farneti (Mimetic Politics) observes that Rene Girard refused to describe his project as theology. Farneti thinks Girard was right: He wasn’t writing theology but “a theory of man.” He writes, “Girard’s mimetic theory culminates in a radical rejection of theology, in particular of its claims to articulate a final and comprehensive discourse on the apocalyptic institution of the Kingdom of Christ” (104). By rejecting theology, Girard aims to “defend a more straightforward access to the Gospel” (104). Farneti thinks... Read more

Lord and Servant

Last updated on: March 24, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Like a high priest preparing to cleanse the footstool of Yahweh, Jesus put aside His garments and girded Himself to wash His disciples’ feet (John 13:1-11). The Lord became servant. It was not the first time. He had been the Lordly servant from the beginning, and He would be servant right to the end, all the way to the cross. Did He wash Judas’s feet? He must have done. He doesn’t identify Judas as the traitor until He is finished... Read more

Dostoevsky’s Archetypes

Last updated on: March 24, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Lonny Harrison’s forthcoming Archetypes from Underground suggests that Jung, as well as literary treatments of archetypes (Frye), are useful for understanding Dostoevsky’s characters, plots, themes, and poetics. Harrison makes a good case for the comparison of Dostoevsky and Jung, noting that they both draw on German Romanticism – especially Schelling and Carus – and on Kantian idealism. Like mythic archetypes, Dostoevsky’s world is full of doubles and opposition. “All archetypes have a positive and favourable side that points upward as... Read more

Logic of Impurity

Last updated on: March 23, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

It’s an inventive solution. In an essay on the Logic of Impurity, David Kraemer argues, counterintuitively, that impurity marks something as God’s possession. He argues from the strange anomalies associated with corpse defilement and its cleansing: “The human corpse is, according to the Torah, the most powerful source of ritual impurity there is. It is so powerful that the corpse can render the one who contacts it himself a source of impurity for other individuals or objects he touches. In... Read more

Levitical Pastoral Care

Last updated on: March 23, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Maps and Meanings by Nancy Wiener and Jo Hirschmann aims to apply insights drawn from the book of Leviticus to contemporary pastoral care. The authors lay out the Levitical mapping of reality, centered on the sanctuary, and then focus on the Levitical category of michutz lamachaneh, “outside the camp,” the place where various types of people are placed there – “lepers” and soldiers and others. By examining the experience of dislocation and decentering in Leviticus, and the rituals of reintegration,... Read more

Cliched Truth

Last updated on: March 23, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In one section of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which turned 20 this year, we follow Don Gately, erstwhile expert in breaking and entering (B&E) and addict, to a meeting of a Boston chapter of AA. Wallace gives us several harrowing glimpses into addiction, one of which comes from “John L.,” who shares at the meeting at Ennet House recovery center: ”. . . then you’re in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble,... Read more

Dreamworks

Last updated on: March 22, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Kelley Bulkeley’s Big Dreams is about the big subject of religion, examined from the perspective of our dreaming. He begins with the simple, well-known observation that most of our dreams are quickly forgotten, while “a few are highly memorable.” Any account of dreaming should try to account for this. Taking a page of Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan, he suggests that “instead of treating highly memorable dreams as marginal, make them the center of inquiry. Look at them not as trivial... Read more

Erotic Politics

Last updated on: March 22, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Paul Ludwig (Eros and Polis) observes that “A recurrent feature of ancient Greek political discourse was the assertion that erotic passion was a causal factor in the emergence and maintenance, as well as the decline, of the Greek polis.” But this didn’t make the Greek proto-Foucauldians: “the term eros included the ordinary meanings of love and sexuality but went beyond these to embrace a wide array of inclinations comprising ambition, patriotism, and other aspirations that were properly political in nature.”... Read more

Through the Darkness

Last updated on: March 22, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Holy Week is a passage through darkness, as we commemorate the betrayal, arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. But Holy Week doesn’t end on the cross. Easter dispels the darkness. Good Friday followed by Easter means that darkness and death no longer mark an end, but mark a beginning. It means that the church is never finally dead, for the body can no more die than head. Even if the church dies again and again throughout the ages, its death... Read more

Edwards on Union

Last updated on: March 21, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Ross Hastings argues in Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God that union in the Spirit is the center of Edwards’s theology: “union is a significant driving force in Edwards’s Trinitarian theology, if not its overarching trope, and that his theology essentially tells a ‘from eternity, to eternity’ story of three unions in the Spirit: the eternal union within the Trinity of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, the union in history of the human and divine... Read more

According to Colossians, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge?