Judaizers Left and Right

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

Elizabethan Puritans were regularly denounced as “Judaizers” by others in the English church. After all, they were interested in Hebrew, kept the Sabbath, exhibited what others regarded as a legalistic strain in their piety. During the Laudian ceremony controversy of the 1630s, however, Puritans turned the tables and accused the high church Laudians of being the Judaizers. Picking up a theme from Calvin, they charged that the Archbishop was introducing Judaic ceremonies. Laudians didn’t make it easier on themselves. According... Read more

Yahweh the Teacher

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

Genesis 1 presents a macro-creation, Genesis 2 a micro-creation. The latter follows the former, for humanity is micro-cosmic. The Spirit hovers over waters, and water arises to water the ground. God speaks light into existence, and by the same breath He makes Adam a living soul. Day 1. Yahweh forms a firmament; Yahweh plants a garden east in Eden, a mid-space between the high land of Eden and the lower lands outside. Day 2. He plants trees in the garden, and... Read more

Paul and “Judaizing”

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

In his Beginnings of Judaism, Shaye Cohen devotes a chapter to ancient usages of the meaning of the term ioudaizein. It appears only once in extant classical sources, once in the LXX of Esther, once in Paul, two times in Josephus. Most of the ancient uses are from Greek Christian writers, and “approximately half of the eighty-plus attestations in ancient Christian literature are in passages directly inspired by the usage in Paul” (193). The term can be used in a political... Read more

Gender Arianism

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

Arians say that the Son isn’t eternal God, but a high-level creature. There is a twofold assumption behind Arianism: First, that the Absolute must be un-related. A related Absolute becomes relative to the one to whom it is related. Trinitarian theology rejected this premise and followed Scripture in affirming an eternal, absolute communion of related Persons. Second, that whatever is second is subordinate. Since the Son comes from the Father, He must be lesser than the Father. Trinitarian theology rejected... Read more

Can’t Keep Him Out

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

It is widely believed that if the world is a causally closed system, then God cannot be involved in the world. He cannot introduce new information. William Dembski (Being As Communion) disputes the conclusion. He concedes that “causal closure in a deterministic universe precludes what may be called substitutional intervention. In other words, it precludes God (or any other nonmaterial being) from overriding the causal structure of the world by bringing about effects that would otherwise not have happened” (117).... Read more

World-Making Word

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

The Creator God is a speaker, who speaks to form the formless, dark, and empty void into the structured and glorious cosmos. As images of the world-making God who speaks, we also make worlds with words. Genesis 1 provides a paradigm, an allegory of world-making words. In the darkness, words give light. Words illuminate, make visible. What is dim, unclear, shapeless, inchoate in our experience is illumined by speech. Words make worlds not only by giving light but by distinguishing... Read more

The Primacy of Pattern

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

“When we do science,” writes William Dembski in his Being As Communion (85), “we don’t encounter matter in its raw state nor do we encounter sensory experiences in their raw state. Rather, we encounter certain patterns to the exclusion of others. In other words, we encounter information. The material and sensory features associated with these patterns are secondary. Indeed, those very features are themselves patterned and thus informational. The patterns, or equivalently, the types of information conveyed, are primary.” This implied... Read more

Omnivorous Liturgy

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

We stand, we kneel, we sit, we stand, we kneel. The postures of liturgy write “upon the bodies of those who perform it frequently a habit of acting as an unworthy recipient of a prevenient gift” (Paul Griffiths, Decreation, 232). By developing the habits that the liturgy impresses on us, we become “agents whose bodies and words are conformed to the truth that [we] are simultaneously capable of receiving the divine gift, and utterly unworthy to receive it.” This isn’t the... Read more

Informative Nature

Last updated on: April 6, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

William Dembski’s latest, Being As Communion, sets out a metaphysics of information, and argues for what he calls “informational realism.” Reality is information all the way down, but that information is real. It is reality. What is information? Dembski says it’s “about realizing possibilities by ruling out others. Unless possibilities are ruled out, no information can be conveyed” (19). “It’s raining or it’s not” doesn’t convey information because nothing is ruled out. “It’s raining” rules out the possibility that it’s not,... Read more

More Than Anxiety

Last updated on: April 6, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Laura Pelaschiar’s forthcoming Joyce/Shakespeare collects essays that explore the various facts of Joyce’s use, misuse, criticism, and combat with Shakespeare. She observes that “Shakespeare’s existence in Joyce is tentacular and functions on many different levels: cultural, structural, political, thematic, contrapuntal, imitational, quotational/misquotational, stylistic, lexical, psychological, or psycholiterary.” Joyce’s reception of Shakespeare combined long-standing criticism with growing reliance: “Joyce needed Shakespeare more and more for and within his creative process. This is why Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are more Shakespearean than his... Read more