Is Immigration “Decimating” Us?

Last updated on: March 4, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

David Goldman (Spengler) acknowledges that “illegal immigration is a bad thing, and the social costs of a mass influx of poor and uneducated migrants from Mexico and Central America are significant.” Yet he doesn’t think it is “one of America’s bigger problems.” That is partly because migration has been declining: “Migration actually fell after the 2008 crash because construction jobs disappeared. The best data we have suggest that net immigration from Mexico was negative between 2005 and 2010–that is, more... Read more

Gospel as Atonement Theory

Last updated on: March 3, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a characteristically pithy essay, Robert Jenson has decried the “two paired errors” of traditional atonement theory. On the one hand, the cross is separated “from its future, in the resurrection” and, on the other, from “its past in the canonical history of Israel.” For the apostles, crucifixion is “anything but beneficial” without resurrection, while for Anselm “God and humanity are reconciled when Jesus dies, and the Resurrection tidies up.” Ignoring Israel’s history leaves the impression that “the Creator could... Read more

Tristan and Courtly Love

Last updated on: March 3, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to WTH Jackson’s Anatomy of Love, Gottfried of Strausburg’s version of the Tristan story marks a critical change from courtly romance. Instead of the shadowy, unknown lady of those poems, she is a real character. Isolde is no mere “psychological catalyst” for Tristan, as Laudine is for Chretien’s Yvain. Further, “he rejects totally the idea of love service and the subordination of the man to the woman and substitutes for it a partnership which is based on sexual attraction... Read more

Moses in Chronicles

Last updated on: March 3, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Moses isn’t mentioned in Chronicles as much as he is in Exodus-Joshua. Naturally. But that doesn’t mean that Moses is unimportant to the Chronicler. As James Sparks notes (The Chronicler’s Genealogies), Moses is more prominent in Chronicles than in almost every other book outside the Pentateuch. The Chronicler highlights a specific part of Moses’ career: “This esteem is not, however, for Moses’ actions in the exodus. The exodus itself is rarely mentioned in Chronicles, and Moses is only mentioned in... Read more

Heroes and Hero Worship

Last updated on: March 2, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In Heroes and Hero-Worship, Thomas Carlyle argues that hero-worship is the source of all religion, including Christianity, the form of all loyalty and faith, the foundation of human society. All ranks, he says, “are what we may call a Heroarchy (Government of Heroes)—or a Hierarchy, for it is ‘sacred’ enough withal! The Duke meansDux, Leader; King is Kon-ning, Kan-ning. Man that knows or cans. Society everywhere is some representation, not insupportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these... Read more

Rage Against the Machine

Last updated on: March 2, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Camille Paglia nails the reason for the unlikely rise of Bernie-mania. It’s a strike against the “soulless juggernaut”: “A vote for Bernie Sanders is a vote against the machine, the obscenely money-mad and soulless juggernaut that the Democratic Party has become. Perhaps there was a time, during the Hubert Humphrey era, when Democrats could claim to be populists, alive to the needs and concerns of working-class people. But the party has become the playground of white, upper-middle-class professionals with elite-school... Read more

Death and Resurrection in 1 Chronicles 2

Last updated on: March 2, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

1 Chronicles 2 begins with a list of the sons of Israel, organized not in birth order but by mother. It is chiastically arranged to place Rachel’s sons at the center: A. 6 sons of Leah B. 1 son of Bihah, Rachel’s maid (Dan) C. 2 sons of Rachel (Joseph, Benjamin) B’. 1 son of Bilhah, Rachel’s maid (Naphtali) A’. 2 sons of Zilpah, Leah’s maid (Gad, Asher) But the extended genealogy doesn’t begin with the firstborn Reuben, but with... Read more

2-3-74

Last updated on: March 1, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

During February and March of 1974, science fiction writer Philip K. Dick experienced a series of mystical revelations. The source was an entity known as “Zebra,” which revealed that time had stopped back in the mid first-century and that all time since had been an illusion. Guided by Zebra, Dick suddenly began to see reality for what it was – a Roman overlay over what appeared to everyone else to be a normal modern neighborhood. Dick came to describe the... Read more

Three Forms of Tyranny

Last updated on: March 1, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

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Tyranny is a constant in human history, argues Waller Newell in his forthcoming Tyrants. But the character of tyranny is not constant. Newell analyzes three forms of tyranny. The first is the “garden-variety” tyrant, most common in the ancient world: “These are basically men who dispose of an entire country and society as if it were their personal property, exploiting it for their own pleasure and profit and to advance their own clan and cronies.” Newell acknowledges that it’s “not... Read more

Wilderness Sins

Last updated on: March 1, 2016 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his typological reading of the exodus (1 Corinthians 10), Paul warns the Corinthians not to commit the sins that their fathers committed in the wilderness, specifically idolatry and sexual immorality. By these, and by their grumbling, the Israelites tested the Lord and provoked His anger. These are the same sins highlighted throughout the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. Jesus warns the churches of Balaamites and of Jezebel, who teach the Christians to eat meat sacrificed to... Read more

Who found baby Moses in the river?