Holy Synagogue

Last updated on: December 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a NYT piece on a recent Galilean artifact, Isabel Kershner writes, “Experts have long believed that in the period before Herod’s Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, synagogues were used as a general place of assembly and learning, something like a neighborhood community center. The more formal conception of a synagogue as a sacred space reserved for religious ritual was thought to have developed later, in the Jewish diaspora after the Temple had been destroyed.” The artifact, known as the... Read more

Redeeming Time

Last updated on: December 10, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Human beings are temporal creatures, but our experience of time isn’t merely of the relentless tick-tock of clock time. Time has quality as well as duration. We can spend an hour waiting for a late bus, or we can spend an hour absorbed in a book or a lively conversation. By the clock, it’s the same time, but our experience is very different. Our experience of duration is very different. Time is always socially shaped. The present isn’t the knife-edge... Read more

Language in Time

Last updated on: December 9, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The overall aim of Rowan Williams’s recent The Edge of Words is to explore what the phenomenon of human language might have to say about the reality of God. Along the way, he has much of interest to say about human language itself. He observes, for instance, that “we cannot ever simply say the same words twice with absolutely precisely the same meaning” (67). “There’s a mouse in the house,” I say. And then you answer with the same words: “There’s... Read more

Worshiping Angels

Last updated on: December 9, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Twice toward the end of Revelation, John falls down to worship an angel. Both times, the angel redirects his worship from himself to God. The two scenes look the same, but Austin Farrer notes a progression (A Rebirth of Images). In the first instance, John falls to worship, and “immediately the heavens open, and he appears in whom God must be worshipped, riding the white horse, and called Faithful and True” (p. 73; Revelation 19:11). In the second instance, there... Read more

Obama, Fukuyamian

Last updated on: December 9, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At The Atlantic, Peter Beinart explains why Obama doesn’t think that terrorism is a threat to our way of life: “Unlike Rubio, he considers violent jihadism a small, toxic strain within Islamic civilization, not a civilization itself. And unlike Bush, he doesn’t consider it a serious ideological competitor. In the 1930s, when fascism and communism were at their ideological height, many believed they could produce higher living standards for ordinary people than democratic capitalist societies that were prone to devastating cycles... Read more

Christ of Friday and Sunday

Last updated on: December 8, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his stunning exploration of Revelation, A Rebirth of Images, Austin Farrer explains the calendrical arrangement of the book. Revelation is arranged, Farrer argues, in six days, beginning with the Easter Christ and ending with the “Advent, the Rider on the White Horse, the victor of the great battle” (67). These are the first and sixth days of John’s week, and so the Christ of Revelation is the Christ of Sunday and Friday. That, Farrer reminds us, is who Christ always... Read more

Steph Transcendent

Last updated on: December 8, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Writing at fivethirtyeight.com, Benjamin Morris argues that Stephen Curry is the three-point revolution. This isn’t just the normal 3-for-the-price-of-two calculation: “Curry isn’t a product of the math; he’s so good that he has his own math. Indeed, the math is so far in Curry’s favor that the Warriors — and even basketball in general — may not fully understand what they have yet.” Morris’s article offers some complex statistical analysis to support his enthusiasm for Curry. He tries to assess how... Read more

Fruitful Waste of Time

Last updated on: December 8, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Melinda Selmys (Slave of Two Masters) knows that TV-watching is “the classic example of ‘wasting time,’” but she doesn’t think there’s any reason why TV time is wasted time: “A person could watch the same show over and over again and still choose to claim something new out of the experience on each occasion: They could analyze the dialogue in order to make a study of speech patterns. They could learn to imitate the different characters to amuse their friends... Read more

How God Fixes Things

Last updated on: December 7, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The cry has come up from our national journalogians at the NYT and the Daily News: “God isn’t fixing this. No more prayers. Let’s get some action.” If God – the living God – were to get busy fixing things, they may not like the way He goes about fixing things. He isn’t a safe and distant God. He doesn’t stay politely above the fray. He takes sides. For some, this is appalling. For believers, it’s the ground of our hope. Early... Read more

Momanomics

Last updated on: December 7, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In her collection of essays on money, Slave of Two Masters, Melinda Selmys devotes several pages to the celebration of motherhood and its unique economics. Taking her cue from the curse of Genesis 3, she argues that men have always “lorded” over women by claiming all important human achievements for the male sex. Selmys’s response is withering: “What men chose for themselves is not the better part of human achievement but the more ostentatious part.” But what men forget, she says,... Read more

True or False: Eve was created from Adam's rib.