In and Out

Last updated on: December 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Roy Gane’s detailed, technical Cult and Character is a sustained response to Jacob Milgrom’s claim that the purification offers of the Torah did not cleanse the worshiper who offered them but the sanctuary. Gane’s overall argument is convincing, and he makes a lot of intriguing exegetical points along the way. For instance, he compares the sprinkling of blood for purification offerings for the high priest with the sprinkling of blood in the Most Hols Place on the day of atonement. He... Read more

Origenist Atonement

Last updated on: December 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Frances Young (Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers) has a very rich account of Origen’s understanding of the atonement. Recent critics of sacrificial violence have nothing on Origen. Reflecting on the story of Jephthah’s daughter, he wrote that “the Being must be a very cruel one to whom such a sacrifice is offered for the salvation of men.” This wasn’t a set-up for a pat answer. Nothing is pat with Origen. He goes on, “we require some breadth... Read more

Dealing With Wrath

Last updated on: December 19, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Frances Young argues in her Use of Sacrificial Ideas in Greek Christian Writers that the cross is primarily expiatory: It is God’s way of dealing with sin. It is not propitiatory in the ancient Greek sense of placating an angry God. How could it be, she asks, since the cross was God’s idea and action. But then the recognition that the New Testament teaches that “the wrath of God is real and serious” brings her up short, and she concludes from... Read more

Ought We Anoint the Dying?

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Anointing the sick, including the dying, is one of the traditional seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. The Reformers denied that the rite qualified as a sacrament. Formally, this was because anointing did not have a direct authorization from Jesus; more theologically, it was not one of the marks that distinguished the members of the church from others, and so did not count as a “sign of the covenant.” The biblical ground for the practice is James 5:14-15, where James... Read more

Anti-Patriarchal Patriarchs

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Nancy Jay’s analysis of the patriarchal narratives in Throughout Your Generations Forever is vitiated (to use a solid old Calvinian term) by her reliance on the documentary hypothesis. P says this, J and E that. P traces smooth sacrificial descent from fathers to sons; J and E reveal a more conflicted situation. Problems come up as a result. First, because she never deals with the final text she doesn’t offer an explanation of Genesis’s treatment of patriliny and patriarchal hierarchy. But... Read more

Trent and Sacrifice

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Like another, better-known Jesuit, Robert Daly has a disarming way about him. What do you do with a Catholic who is as critical of private Masses as most Protestants? A Jesuit who says things like: “It is common to describe lack of contact with tradition as one of the characteristic weaknesses of Protestantism. Massive adherence to tradition is indeed one of the stereotypical characteristic of Catholicism, and massive rejection of tradition is one of the stereotypical characteristics of Protestantism. But... Read more

Jeroboam in Early Modernity

Last updated on: December 18, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2006 article in Past & Present, Jonathan Sheehan traces the origins of the modern contrast of sacred and profane to seventeenth-century dispute about idolatry. It’s a story of keen interest, but this particularly caught my eye. He’s talking about the role of the golden calf incident in 17th-century debates about idolatry, and writes: “If Aaron’s errors testified to the poisonous effects of idolatry on the mind of the credulous, Jeroboam’s fall testified to its poisonous effects on the... Read more

The Gods of Economics

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Bruno Latour (An Inquiry into Modes of Existence) says that “the entire modern experience has stood up against living under the control of an indisputable metadispatcher. No one can make us believe the contrary: we know that it is false” (469). Except when it comes to economy. Latour wonders how “the Whites, who thought they could teach the rest of the world the ‘pure, hard rationality of economics,’ are still so imbued with that ‘secular religion,’” the belief in a... Read more

Impure Modernity

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his Inquiry into Modes of Existence, Bruno Latour imagines an anthropologist doing field work among the tribe of Science in their natural habitat, the lab. She has been told that the Modern world is separated into interrelated but distinct domains: “Law, Science, Politics, Religion, The Economy.” These must not, she is told, be confused with one another. She is offered a mental map of the terrain and warned to watch the border guards: “When one is ‘in Science,’ she is... Read more

Reshuffling Sacraments

Last updated on: December 17, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a brilliant brief discussion of the Reformation revision of Christian sacramental theology, Philippe Buc (Dangers of Ritual) writes: “The Reformation’s success in sixteenth-century Europe can be explained partly by the skill with which its propagandists mustered against the Roman Church notions basic to the medieval definition of Christendom. They positioned themselves on the side of the spiritual against a putative carnal, and attributed to the enemy a mindless ritualism, recycling for their polemical descriptions of Catholic rites late antique... Read more