This is an addendum to my reflections on wings a few weeks ago. Israel is sometimes conceived as a four-cornered land (Ezekiel 7:2), modeled after the four-cornered altar (Exodus 27:2; 38:2) or a four-cornered house (Job 1:19). Israelites are priests; their land is an altar where they make their daily, living sacrifices. Leaders form the corners of the land (Judges 20:2; 1 Samuel 14:38, where the word for “chief” is pinnah, “corner”). This is the source of the imagery of a... Read more
When John ascends to heaven, he sees four (tessares) living creatures, and in the scene in heaven they are mentioned five times (4:6, 8; 5:6, 8, 14). Then the Lamb begins to open the seals, and the four living creatures cry out. The sixth seal reveals four angels standing at four corners holding back four winds. Within the seals section, the number four is used by itself (that is, not as part of a larger number) seven times (6:1, 6;... Read more
Jeffrey Herf begins his study of Weimar and Third Reich views on technology and culture (Reactionary Modernism) with the observation that “There is no such thing as modernity in general” (1). There are instead “national societies,” each of which becomes modern in its own way. German modernity provides a paradoxical illustration. When modernity is described in dichotomous terms, opposed to tradition, reaction, community, technology is always on the modern side of the ledger. But German thinkers simultaneously embraced the technology... Read more
Rosalind Williams Notes on the Underground is an examination of 19th-century narratives about underground worlds, which she sees as prophetic texts: “Subterranean surroundings, whether real or imaginary, furnish a model of an artificial environment from which nature has been effectively banished. Human beings who live underground must use mechanical devices to provide the necessities of life: food, light, even air. Nature provides only space. The underworld setting therefore takes to an extreme the displacement of the natural environment by a technological... Read more
Though not so well-known as the debates over Darwinism, battles over the theological and cosmological import of the second law of thermodynamics played a large role in scientific and religious debates between 1870 and 1910. The debate was carried on partly by long-forgotten figures, but according to Helge Kragh’s 2008 Entropic Creation, it also engaged some of the leading minds of the age: “James Clerk Maxwell, William Thomson, Hermann von Helmholtz, Ernst Mach, Pierre Duhem, Ludwig Boltzmann, Ernst Haeckel, Svante Arrhenius, Herbert... Read more
It’s no surprise that William Kristol is critical of Obama’s response to the murder of James Foley. But some of the reasons for Kristol’s opposition are disquieting (Weekly Standard, September 1). He chastises the President for speaking as a citizen of the world instead of as the American President. Fair enough; there’s not a little hubris in Obama’s implicit claim to be the spokesman for the General Conscience of Humanity. But then Kristol quotes this: “no just God would stand... Read more
It has nothing to do with any twinge of conscience about my coffee intake, but I’m always intrigued by the latest research on caffeine. I’m also always looking for whatever weapons I can find to defend the ancient habit of taking an afternoon snooze. When I see a headline containing the phrase “coffee nap,” my heart skips a little beat. Turns out that drinking coffee before a nap is a better pick-me-up than either coffee or napping by itself. It has... Read more
Christoph Schwobel (Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology, 31-3) claims that because God is the “unoriginate originating cause” of all things created, He is “atemporally eternally present to every creature in every point in time of creation.” Yet, creation is the actualization of God’s “eternal will to be in communion” with creation, then it is also true that “God must . . . be thought of as temporally eternally present for every creature and with every creature at every point in... Read more
Enraged but exhausted in his fruitless attempts to destroy the woman, the dragon takes a stand on the seashore (Revelation 13:1/12:18). It’s a significant place for him to be,. Going back to Genesis 1:2, we have a creation image. At the beginning, the Spirit of Yahweh hovered over the waters and brought a fruitful and orderly world out of the formless and void sea. Here, the dragon is beside the sea, and he also calls up a world from the... Read more
Peter Pomerantsev’s forthcoming Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is a grim, gripping tour through contemporary Russia. It’s a country that transformed overnight from a place “ready to sell anything” to a place where the superrich were able to buy anything they wanted. Pomerantsev says that no place had ever seen so much new money in so short a time. Despite his Russian name, Pomerantsev grew up in England, and the mystique of his British heritage and accent gave him... Read more
Leithart
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In