Muslims, Christians, and the Gods

Last updated on: December 23, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The controversy over Wheaton College’s Larycia Hawkins, put on administrative leave because she claims that Christians and Muslims worship the same God, took a higher profile with a Washington Post piece by Yale’s Miroslav Volf. Volf argues that there is no theological justification for Wheaton’s action: “Her suspension is not about theology and orthodoxy. It is about enmity toward Muslims. . . . her suspension reflects enmity toward Muslims, taking on a theological guise of concern for Christian orthodoxy.” Wheaton is, he says,... Read more

Not Like a Nuptial

Last updated on: December 23, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, there are two wedding scenes. The first is the wedding of Claudio and Hero, and it’s a disaster. Claudio has been convinced by the evil Don John that Hero, his finacee, has been meeting with other men during their engagement. He thinks he’s seen another man at Hero’s window on the very night before the wedding. It isn’t true; Hero is as faithful as can be. But Claudio is convinced she has wronged him.... Read more

Hamann, Kant, Enlightenment

Last updated on: December 23, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to Hamann, the guilt of the dependent is not in “laziness or cowardice,” as Kant seems to imply. “No, in the blindness of his guardian who pretends to see, and precisely for this reason must assume responsibility for the guilt of all.” Again, “How can one mock the laziness of such dependents when their enlightened and self-thinking guardian . . . does not even see them as machines, but merely as shadows of his own greatness, whom he in... Read more

Economy on Steroids

Last updated on: December 23, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Economist’s Schumpeter reports on the extreme physical disciplines of top American executives – early rising, strenuous exercise, frenetic pace. Then this: “according to one CEO, several of his peers are now dabbling in mind-boosting drugs such as Modafinil and Ritalin, which aid concentration. This trend is likely to intensify: surveys of American university students suggest that one in six now use mind-boosting drugs to get through their exams, a habit they may continue in their subsequent careers. Once again business... Read more

Restoring Zion

Last updated on: December 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

According to Micah, Yahweh begins to restore Zion by gathering the lame, outcasts, afflicted, all who has suffered the invasion of Assyria and been devastated by the nations. Like a shepherd gathering His flock, Yahweh is going to gather the remnant. In Micah, as in other places in the OT, the “remnant” is literally “those who remain.” The word is used after the Lord has brought a devastating judgment on His people, and then He takes those who have survived, those... Read more

Articulus stantis et cadentis?

Last updated on: December 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

John Webster offers a subtle, careful assessment of the claim that justification is the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae, the article of doctrine on which the church stands or falls (God Without Measure). Webster worries that this slogan can “distort exegetical or dogmatic proportion” (168). That happens, he argues, when all theology “is determined by the forensic idiom of a legal dispute about divine honour and human worship,” which “rists not only narrowing the scope of the divine economy but... Read more

Reversing the Revolution

Last updated on: December 22, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jeremy Neill is currently bullish on the sexual revolution: “If I were a broker and the sexual revolution were a stock, at this point, I would still be urging my customers to buy shares” (Public Discourse). But it won’t last forever. No revolution does. Someday, the children of the rebels will rebel against their parents, and when they do there will be no place to go but “back to where it started: in classical sexual restrictions.” Neill’s analysis rests partly... Read more

Sociopaths, Fantasy and Real

Last updated on: December 21, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Adam Kotsko observes (Why We Love Sociopaths) that contemporary TV is awash with sociopathic character, “ruthless individuals who make their own rules.” These he calls “fantasy sociopaths,” who are capable of maintaining two incompatible positions simultaneously. They are “somehow outside social norms—largely bereft of human sympathy, for instance, and generally amoral” and yet the sociopath is “simultaneously a master manipulator, who can instrumentalize social norms to get what he or she wants” (6). Kotsko says that it is the social... Read more

Tribal Trump

Last updated on: December 21, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Kim R. Holmes argues in an essay at Public Discourse that “The Donald is very much a child of contemporary American culture, including its multicultural offshoot, identity politics. Although he rejects the leftist ideology of multiculturalism, especially the hypersensitivity of political correctness, he is operating well within its value system. He actually represents a new hybrid version of it—a mirror image, if you will, of the very culture he claims to despise.” That is to say, Trump is a tribalist: “He... Read more

Mark of the Beast

Last updated on: December 21, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

GB Caird (Revelation of Saint John, 174-176) offers a neat summary of the options for interpreting the mark. The number appears to be a gematria, a numerical value given to a name, popular in the first century. It is the numerical value of the name “Neron Caesar,” but only if the emperor’s name is first transliterated into Hebrew. The Greek spelling totals 1005, not 666. Greek gematria typically have higher values than Hebrew. Titus is 880, Sabastos 978. He cites... Read more

What does "seek first the kingdom of God" mean?