Entangled Trinity

Last updated on: August 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Ernest Simmons’s The Entangled Trinity is an effort to work out the relation of theology and science through Trinitarian theology, and particularly through the concept of perichoresis, which leads into a panentheistic understanding of God’s relation to the world. He uses the metaphor of “complementarity” the quantum idea that what we find in phenomena depends on what we’re looking for and how we look. “Measurement (observation) determines whether we derive a wave or a particle” (152). This leads him to a... Read more

Empowering Medea

Last updated on: August 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Mary Beard describes Ben Power’s production of Medea “impressive.” But she wonders if the modernized version of the tragedy is Euripides. “Euripides’ play is a complex work, raising difficult issues about gender, sincerity, self-interest and responsibility. But, although Medea ends up killing her sons (with all the terrible conflicts that must raise), it is emphatically not a play about domestic crime in anything like our sense of the word. Faithless and self-interested as Jason was, Medea herself was not simply a wife... Read more

Seated on a Horse

Last updated on: August 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Who are the horsemen riding the white, red, black, and green horses that are summoned when the Lamb breaks the first four seals? (Revelation 6:1-8). Perhaps a grammatical/syntactical observation will help. Nowhere in the Old Testament is anyone said to “sit” on a horse. People “ride” horses, or don’t ride, as the case may be (Genesis 49:17; Exodus 15:1, 21; 2 Kings 18:23; Jeremiah 17:25; 22:4). Outside Revelation, no one in the Bible ever “sits” (Greek kathemai) on a horse.... Read more

Apocalypse in the Stars

Last updated on: August 4, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Scholars have long speculated on the astronomical imagery of Revelation. Astronomy plays a big role in Austin Farrer’s Rebirth of Images, and Bruce Malina has written a couple of books on the subject (Social Science Commentary on Revelation; On the Genre and Message of Revelation). He it doesn’t address the Apocalypse directly, Roger Beck’s Brief History of Ancient Astrology adds some further insight. One of the clearest bits of astronomical imagery has to do with the four living creatures that constitute the Father’s... Read more

Lamb and Cherub

Last updated on: August 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When John first sees four multi-eyed living creatures, they are in the midst of the heavenly throne (Revelation 4:6-7). They lead the heavenly worship (4:8), but they don’t seem to act at all on earth. Then the Lamb takes the throne, and becomes the throne (5:6), displacing the creatures. And suddenly they are empowered to summon and speak. As the Lamb breaks the first four seals of the scroll, the creatures take turns summoning horses. Lamb and lion act together... Read more

Covering

Last updated on: August 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a NYRB review of several new books on gay marriage, Edmund White reflects on the price paid by gays for the success of their efforts: “Why did mainstream America come to accept marriage equality? Gay leaders had made a convincing case that gay families were like straight families and should have the same rights. The American spirit of fair play had been invoked. Gays had converted many people to the belief that they constituted a minority—like Jews or African-Americans or... Read more

Darwinian Age

Last updated on: August 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

De Santillana (Hamlet’s Mill, 68) on our the soporific of Darwin: “Our period may some day be called the Darwinian period, just as, we talk of the Newtonian period of two centuries ago. The simple idea of evolution, which it is no longer thought necessary to examine, spreads like a tent over all those ages that lead from primitivism into civilization. Gradually, we are told, step by step, men produced the arts and crafts, this and that, until they emerged... Read more

Age of Bull, Age of Ram

Last updated on: August 2, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Giorgio de Santillana (Hamlet’s Mill, 59-60) gives a brief description of the sun’s precessional “year” as it moves through the constellations of the Zodiac: “The sun’s position among the constellations at the vernal equinox was the pointer that indicated the ‘hours’ of the precessional cycle – very long hours indeed, the equinoctial sun occupying each zodiacal constellation for about 2,200 years. The constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (that is, rose heliacally) marked the ‘place’ where... Read more

Cosmic Myth

Last updated on: August 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Giorgio de Santillana argued that mythology was not historical but cosmological (Hamlet’s Mill, 50): “whatever is true myth has no historical basis, however tempting the reduction, however massive and well armed the impact of a good deal of modern criticism on that belief. The attempt to reduce myth to history is the so-called ‘euhemerist’ trend, from the name of Euhemeros, the first debunker. It was a wave of fashion which is now receding, for it was too simpleminded to last.... Read more

Magus of Britain

Last updated on: August 1, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In an essay written around 1942, John Maynard Keynes beautifully captured the archaic character of Isaac Newton: “Newton was not the first of the Age of Reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual world rather less than 10,000 years ago. . . Why do I call him... Read more