Rituals of Power?

Last updated on: March 3, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Theodore Vial’s Liturgy Wars is a rich and detailed account of the struggle over the change in the baptismal rite in 19th-century Zurich. He picks the knot of this culture war, unraveling the political, theological, and ritual dimensions of the the battle between liberalizing and conserving forces. Vial’s aims go beyond the specific struggle that is the focus of his historical study, and the book broadens out into a critique of ritual studies. He identifies two threads: The first, represented by... Read more

50 Shades of Pamela

Last updated on: March 3, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

John Podhoretz (Weekly Standard, March 2) admits that he giggled his way through Fifty Shades of Grey. The movie. He doesn’t seem in a giggly mood about the novels, which he describes as “the worst books I have every read all the way through.” But Podhoretz spots a very traditional old story in the overheated S&M: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela. He writes, “Grey’s ‘playroom’ is not a playroom at all. It’s a prison, even for him. He is in an endless... Read more

Structure in Spenser

Last updated on: March 3, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The macro-structures of The Fairie Queene become clear if we look at a single book in detail. Book 1 is a good place to start. It is the story of Holiness, focused on the Redcrosse Knight and Una. Redcrosse is called upon to rescue the parents of a damsal in distress, Una, from a terrible monster. Before he reaches this battle, however, he faces a number of other challenges. The book can be read as an account of his spiritual journey,... Read more

Wittenberg Discord

Last updated on: March 2, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

One of the most impressive feats of Reformation ecumenism was the Wittenberg Concord of 1536, signed by Capito, Bucer, and Musculus on the Reformed side and Luther and Melanchthon, among others, on the Lutheran side. Luther admitted that the two groups diverged on various details, but declared, in a deeply emotional moment, “Up this point we shall not quarrel.” It was truly a compromise document. James Kittelson and Ken Schurb described the Reformed concessions in a 1986 article in the... Read more

I Am Welsh

Last updated on: March 2, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

David Hawkes’s TLS review of Marisa Cull’s Shakespeare’s Princes of Wales sums up the influence of Wales on Elizabethan England, and on England’s Bard in particular: “The Bard (the very term has a specifically Welsh provenance) had a Welsh grandmother, Alys Griffin. The man who taught him his ‘small Latin,’ the Stratford grammar school teacher Thomas Jenkins, was Welsh. At least four of Shakespeare’s colleagues in the Lord Chamberlain’s men were from Wales. Welsh characters feature in all the English History... Read more

Accommodation

Last updated on: March 2, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Brian Howell’s In the Eyes of God is a substantial contribution to the discussion of theological language and to our understanding of the workings of biblical anthropomorphism. His approach rests on the “three legs” of “the biblical depiction of the divine-human relationship, divine Speech Acts, and context-sensitive metaphorical interpretation” (57). Metaphor here is understood in a strong sense, not merely as literary window-dressing but as a conceptually rigorous way of knowing and speaking. On Howell’s semantic understanding of metaphor, metaphors have... Read more

Imperial Commune

Last updated on: February 28, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his Revelation of St. John the Divine (171), GB Caird offers this bit of history to illuminate the significance of the beast from the land (Revelation 13:11-18): “In the province of Asia the imperial cult was in the hands of a body known in Greek as the koinon and in Latin as the commune. The commune Asiae, a provincial council consisting of representatives from the major towns, was a least as old as Mark Antony, who found it already in... Read more

Temptation of Tribalism

Last updated on: February 27, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

America is abandoning the last remnants of our historic Christian foundations. This is most obvious in law, where specifically Christian claims are ruled unConstitutional precisely because they are Christian claims. It’s evident in the universities and among intellectual elites, who cannot make sense of a theological argument that claims to be a public argument. Theology is by definition private opinion, dangerous and tyrannical when it demands public assent. What replaces our historic Christian consensus is a patchwork of disconnected communities.... Read more

Confessionalization and Investiture

Last updated on: February 27, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Scott Manetschâ€™s Calvinâ€™s Company of Pastors is a rich contribution to the history of pastoral theology and care in the Reformation era. If you want a detailed, vivid portrait of the training and selection of Genevaâ€™s pastors, their weekly schedules, the liturgies they performed and the resources they had available for preaching, their home life, the outworking of discipline, the on-the-ground differences between Catholic and Protestant cure of souls, Manetsch is your man. His chapter on ordination reviews the early seventh-century... Read more

Communitarian Puritan

Last updated on: February 26, 2015 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

William Perkins is known mainly among Reformed Christians with an affinity for the Puritans. It’s refreshing to have now W.B. Patterson’s substantial monograph on Perkins’s life and theology, published last year by Oxford. After setting the stage with a chapter on the Elizabethan religious settlement, Patterson examines Perkins as “apologist for the church of England,” his soteriological views in conversation with the 39 Articles (especially as expressed in Perkins’s best-known work, The Golden Chain), his pastoral advice, preaching, and the... Read more