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Virgin Birth

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his breezy review of Madonna’s career in Fame in the 20th Century, Clive James captures Madonna’s genius for self-reinvention. She “was called Madonna Louise Ciccone, but in her burning ambition for universal fame she didn’t want to rule out the large section of her potential audience that might have trouble remembering more than one name. Another good reason for calling herself Madonna was that she too was engaged in the miracle of virgin birth, although in her case the miraculous... Read more

Revisionary Metaphysics

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his wise, wide-ranging contribution to Recent Developments in Trinitarian Theology, Christoph Schwobel argues that trinitarian theology necessitates a revision of metaphysical assumptions. “It is,” he writes, “one of the most significant discoveries of the classical disputes of trinitarian doctrine in the early church that the straightforward application of a received philosophical conceptuality to the doctrine of God leads into difficulties.” If the three are three substances sharing an attribute, we are heading toward tri-theism. If only one of the three... Read more

How Adam Came To Be

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Masudi’s 10th-century Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems gives the history of the world from Eden to the author’s own time. His account of early humanity is clearly drawn partly from Genesis, but other accounts are thoroughly mixed in. When God determined to create Adam as a “lieutenant on earth,” he sent Gabriel and then Michael to gather some clay for him to turn into Adam. They failed, so God sent the angel of death, who was so fierce that... Read more

Basic Goods

Last updated on: August 27, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Patrick Lee and Robert George offer a sharp critique of various forms of naturalist defense of traditional marriage in their recent Conjugal Union. Defining human nature as a “pattern,” they argue that “it is not obvious that acting unnaturally is always morally wrong.” Even if “unnatural” is taken to mean “against nature,” there are cases when acting against nature is morally legitimate. An animal’s capacity to nourish itself is a capacity oriented to the good of the animal’s health, but there... Read more

Self-Referential Cinema

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jeff Menne argues that the films of Francis Ford Coppola are films about the business of film, and specifically about Francis Ford Coppola’s place in that business. The film industry that Coppola first entered, Menne argues, is a classic example of “Fordism,” of the mechanization and routinization of work. For Coppola, Ford wasn’t just designing cars, but “designing cities as well,” and Coppola’s ambitions were similarly huge: To challenge the Fordism of the film industry and to reinvent it. Menne doesn’t... Read more

Bearing the Whole People

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

“I along am not able to carry all this people,” Moses says when Israel complains about hunger in the wilderness. “If You are going to deal thus with me, please kill me at once” (Numbers 11:14-15). Yahweh responds by ordered Moses to gather 70 men from the people, on whom He promises to put His Spirit (vv. 16-17). “Yahweh, take my life,” Elijah says, “for I am not better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4). Elijah is distraught because “I... Read more

Feasts

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In his book on Dogma and Preaching, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger reflected on the value of Christian festivity: “A Christian feast . . . means that the human person leaves the world of calculation and determinisms in which everyday life snares him, and that he focuses his being on the primal source of his existence. It means that for the moment he is freed from the stern logic of the struggle for existence and looks beyond his own narrow world to the totality... Read more

City of Peace

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Justin Marozzi’s recently released Baghdad vividly recounts the glory and anguish of a city that was, for several centuries, considered the “most prosperous city in the world.” It’s name has been variously translated as “Gift of God” or “Founded by God.” Founded by the Abbasid Caliph Mansur in the eighth century, the circular city was a marvel of engineering and culture. The area had already been settled by Nestorian monks, and there had been a small settlement before the Nestorians got there.... Read more

Geek Sublime

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

James Gleick’s NYTBR review of Vikram Chandra’s Geek Sublime places the book in the context of CP Snow’s “two cultures.” As programmer-turned novelist, Chandra crosses the cultures, and his book aspires, Gleick says, “to look deeply, and with great subtlety, into the connections and tensions between the worlds – the cultures – of technology and art.” And beyond the two cultures, Chandra tries to capture the mysticism of programming. He writes, “I work inside an orderly, simplified hallucination, a maya that... Read more

Fragrance of Joseph

Last updated on: August 26, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Ishmaelites who carry Joseph to Egypt are carrying “aromatic gum, balm, and myrrh” with them (Genesis 37:25), which are among the goods of the land that Jacob later sends to Vizier Joseph, not knowing he’s Joseph (cf. Genesis 43:11). This has several layers of meaning. As Jacob Hanby, a Trinity House student, pointed out, it contrasts Joseph to his brothers Simeon and Levi, who have made Jacob’s company a “stench” in the nostrils of the people of the land... Read more

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