America and the Outsiders

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

Laurence Moore’s Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans is a study of American religion that is not considered “mainstream” or “mainline”—Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Christian Science, Fundamentalists, Black churches. The goal is not to fill in a gap. The goal is to challenge the assumption that the “mainline” should function as a norm of American religion. American religion—indeed, Americans—have been made, Moore argues, by outsiders as much as by insiders. In a concluding chapter, he explains how toleration has arisen not... Read more

Sunrise, Sunset

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

Before Israel crosses the Jordan, the Lord reminds the three trans-Jordanian tribes of the deal struck with them. Yahweh has already begun to give them the land He promised to Abraham, and Reuben, Gad, and the half tribe of Manasseh will settle there. Before they settle down, though, they need to cross the Jordan to fight with their brothers. After the conquest is done, they can “return to your own land, and possess that which Moses the servant of the Lord gave... Read more

Denominirony

Last updated on: September 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Denominationalism encourages a stance of irony (insincerity, Charles Morrison called it in his 1953 The Unfinished Reformation, 46). We must think our denominational “distinctives” are important, or we wouldn’t be in the denomination. We are willing to use identifying language and markers to associate ourselves with those distinctives–church names, theological terms, uses of biblical texts, liturgical practices. Our identity is bound up with these distinctives. But then it isn’t, not really. If these distinctives were truly of ultimate importance, if we... Read more

Girard and the Gospel

Last updated on: September 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Girard’s theory of scapegoating as the great virtue of explaining how the death of Jesus can remake human society. By refusing to acknowledge sin, Jesus becomes the innocent scapegoat, and thereby exposes the scapegoat mechanism for what it is. That exposure is the good news, and undoes the perverse dynamics of sacrificial culture. That is not quite right though. A potential scapegoat can go to his cross refusing to accept blame, but that may not effect any change on the... Read more

Power, Propaganda, Pack

Last updated on: September 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The saints playing harps and singing on the fiery firmament are there because they are victorious over three enemies: the beast, the image of the beast, and the number of the beast’s name (Revelation 15:2). When we look back at how those three are presented earlier in Revelation, we realize that they constitute three dimensions of Satan’s opposition to the saints. The beast represents the Roman empire; the attack of the beast on the saints is a frontal attack, perhaps... Read more

Blindness and Sight

Last updated on: September 18, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Greek myths valorize blindness. Tiresias is a blind seer, and when Oedipus finally “sees,” he becomes Tiresias, digging out his eyes with Jocasta’s brooches. The bard who sings of the Trojan War in the Odyssey is, like Homer himself, blind. For the Greeks, the sightless are the true seers. Scripture never valorizes blindness. Isaac’s physical blindness is a sign of his moral obtuseness, as is Eli’s (1 Samuel 3:2). Justice isn’t blind; rather, bribes blind judges who ought to have their... Read more

Being Righteous, Being Saved

Last updated on: September 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“To be ‘righteous,” writes John Barclay (Paul & the Gift), “does not mean to be ‘saved.’” Rather, the “righteous” person is one who is “worthy of the divine gift of salvation” (377). God gives gifts to those who are worthy of them. The “righteous” are worthy. God gives salvation to the righteous. This distinction helps pinpoint the conflict between Paul and the Jews/Judaizers: “Since ‘to be recognized as righteous’ is to be considered a worthy recipient of salvation, but not... Read more

Conformed to the Gift

Last updated on: September 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the heart of John Barclay’s treatment of Paul & the Gift is the claim that Paul “perfects” the incongruity of grace. The grace-gift of Jesus is not a reward to the worthy; it is not a gift to those who will make use of the gift. It is a blessing in the midst of curse, a blessing to those who have earned nothing but further curse. The cross pays “no regard to pre-constituted criteria of value” (369). The very cruci-form... Read more

Gospel of the Foreskin

Last updated on: September 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his recent Paul & the Gift, John Barclay arrestingly translates the Greek phrase to euaggelion tes akrobustias (Galatians 2:7) as “the good news of the foreskin.” He elaborates, “Modern Gentile readers, who have never been socialized to consider the foreskin a sign of inferior otherness or repulsive disgrace, generally fail to register the shock of this oxymoronic expression: the ‘good news of the foreskin’ constitutes a stunning challenge to the system of valuation operative in Jewish culture. A central token... Read more

Migrants, Elites, and the Church

Last updated on: September 17, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Peggy Noonan argues in a recent column that “Rules on immigration and refugees are made by safe people. These are the people who help run countries, who have nice homes in nice neighborhoods and are protected by their status.” On the other hand, “those who live with the effects of immigration and asylum law are those who are less safe, who see a less beautiful face in it because they are daily confronted with a less beautiful reality—normal human roughness, human tensions.”... Read more