The Materiality of Hell

Last updated on: April 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

As recorded in the supplement to the Summa, Thomas Aquinas teaches that the damned will rise again with bodies and will be tormented in hell corporeally. This leaves open questions about the materiality of the various biblical descriptions of those torments, and in question 97 of the supplement, Thomas addresses those. Jesus refers to a “worm that dies not” when talking about the damned, and Thomas wonders whether these are corporeal worms. His answer is that the worm is metaphorical.... Read more

In Defense of Kitsch

Last updated on: April 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

We should, Paul Griffiths says (Decreation, 324–5), be careful about the aesthetic judgments we make: “every human creature’s formation in the discernment and delight in beauty is different, and because each of us is badly damaged with respect to our capacity to make reliable judgments about the presence and nature of beauty, we should not be very confident about the judgments we make, and should acknowledge that an artifact that seems to some human creatures crudely annoying, even repellent, may... Read more

Ownership v. Gratitude

Last updated on: April 16, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Our very existence is gift. That means that our very existence involves participation in the life of the giver. Paul Griffiths (Decreation, 200) puts it this way: “the fact that you are is sheer unmerited gift, and what you are is a participant in the LORD.” Sin is the rejection of the gift because it’s a rejection and flight from the Giver. But if our very existence is gift, rejection of the gift involves self-renunciation. And this is just what... Read more

Pedagogy and Counter-Pedagogy in Genesis

Last updated on: April 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Before Yahweh is an object of worship, He is a teacher, issuing an invitation to Adam to eat from the fruit of the garden but prohibiting the fruit of the tree of knowledge (Genesis 2:16-17). After He forms Eve, though, He disappears from the narrative, leaving Eve and Adam to face the serpent’s test “alone.” (He reappears in 3:8, immediately after the fall.) This is part of the divine pedagogy. Jesus does it too: Invite, command, teach, give; then leave.... Read more

Sabbath Joy

Last updated on: April 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The prophecy of Habakkuk closes with a lovely poem of joy in the midst of adversity and lack (Habakkuk 3:17-19). The poem opens with six lines that describe the barrenness of the land. It is a nihil-land; the Hebrew negative lo’ occurs twice (“fig tree does not blossom”; “the field does not make edible-things”), and the term “there is not” (‘eyn) twice more (“there is not fruit on the vines”; “there are no cattle in the stalls”). It’s a fourfold... Read more

Father of Reconstructionism

Last updated on: April 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The name of R.J. Rushdoony, the polymathic Reformed theologian, historian, and activist, has appeared with increasing frequency in accounts of the religious right. There is a small industry in screeds warning of the dire threat of theocracy, and Rushdoony plays the role of the father of all theocrats. It’s a deserved role in some ways. Rushdoony taught that American society (all societies, in fact) should be reconstructed to reflect the legal prescriptions of the “law-word” of God. This could only... Read more

Essence, Energies, and the Presence of God

Last updated on: April 15, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

If the infinite God is to be present within a finite creation, writes David Bentley Hart (Beauty of the Infinite, 204), “the finite must . . . become ever more open, ever greater and more capacious . . . ; and creaturely mutability allows for this.” Hart is writing about Gregory of Nyssa, and adds that God’s presence to creatures is “ineffable for Gregory,” such that “‘presence’ is probably as much as need be said: the parousia of what belongs... Read more

Apocalyptic Mouths

Last updated on: April 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“Mouth” (stoma) appears 22 times in Revelation. Mostly, things come out of mouths, rather than going in. The book is framed by double references to the sword that comes from the mouth of Jesus (1:16; 2:16; 19:15, 21). Jesus’ mouth-sword is the ideal: A word that slays and sacrifices. The horses of Revelation don’t have swords in their mouths, but they have the other feature of cherubic defense: They breath fire (9:17-19). The two witnesses are also fire-breathers (11:5). “Mouth”... Read more

Chiasm of Love

Last updated on: April 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Marion Gibbs and Sidney Johnson present a sensitive analysis of the poetry of Gottfried of Strassburg’s Tristan in their introduction to Medieval German Literature. In the Prologue to the poem, Gottfried captures the contradictory qualities of love with a rich series of antitheses: ir süeze sur, ir liebez leit, ir herzeliep, ir senede not, ir liebez leben, ir leiden tot, ir lieben tot, ir leidez leben (ll. 60-63). (Translation: Loves “sweet bitterness, its dear sorrow, its heart’s joy, its yearning pain,... Read more

The Addict as Modern Prophet

Last updated on: April 14, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Kent Dunnington (Addiction and Virtue) observes that what Peter Berger called “the heretical imperative” sharpens questions about the “right ordering of the goods and activities of our lives.” Our diverse world doesn’t direct us to any particular ends; it deliberately refuses to do so. As a result, “ours . . . is a culture in which the decision to pursue one way of life at the expense of others can only be understood as an arbitrary choice, an existential assertion of... Read more