Seriously Dangerous

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

There’s much to like in Iain Provan’s Seriously Dangerous Religion. The book presents the Bible’s answers to a set of ten perennial questions about the world, God, sexes, evil, creation, society, hope. He compares the biblical answers to the answers of other religions and worldviews, including Western modernity. Though daunting in size, the book is highly readable. A skilled exegete, Provan’s readings of particular texts are frequently insightful, sometimes arresting. The book has a practical, pastoral, apologetic turn that makes it... Read more

Seriously Dangerous

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Living Theodrama

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Inspired by Balthasar, Kevin Vanhoozer, Sam Wells and others, many theologians are working within a theatrical model of theology and theological ethics. The theatrical turn has some classical roots (e.g., Calvin’s idea of the world as the theater of God’s glory), but recent work has pressed the model much further than before. Wesley Vander Lugt’s Living Theodrama (Ashgate, 2014) is one of the most systematic treatments of the topic. He takes theater as a “model” for Christian theology and practice, by... Read more

Living Theodrama

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Socializing Paul

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Theodore Jennings wants to socialize and politicize Paul. He thinks that highlighting Paul’s concerns for classic political issues like law and justice does better justice to what Paul actually wrote (Outlaw Justice). But then his agenda bumps up against the text. On the catena of Psalm texts in Romans 3, Jennings writes, “some or few are ‘just’ through the doing of the law. But doing the works of the law has proven incapable of producing a just totality or sociality.... Read more

Modern Worship

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy observed that moderns are as inclined to divine service and attachment to gods as the benighted premoderns they mock. He doesn’t mean it as a metaphor: “what is meant here by the inclusive title divine service embraces all sociologists. All sociologists cultivate a form of divine service. . . . Sigmund Freud had an Aphrodite on his writing desk; and already the third or fourth generation swear by the words of the Master. But wherever followers swear by... Read more

Divine Carelessness

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Daniel Gabelman’s George MacDonald: Divine Carelessness and Fairytale Levity spends a lot of time developing a historic perspective on seriousness, lightness, and levity. Dante, Shakespeare, Byron, the book of Ecclesiastes, and a somewhat revisionary analysis of Victorian culture all contribute to the argument. But that is mainly background to Gabelman’s winning presentation of what we really can call George MacDonald’s theology of levity. Though developed mainly in MacDonald’s fairy tales, it’s a perspective on life – better, a feel for life... Read more

Birth of Liberalism

Last updated on: May 8, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Russell Shorto’s Amsterdam is not only a biography of the city, but a genealogy of the “tattered, ancient, much misunderstood word ‘liberalism,’” an Amsterdam-born set of habits. As Philipp Blom sums up the argument in a TLS review, Dutch liberalism was economically motivated: “Dutch tolerance was never ‘nice.’ It was, as Shorto remarks, built not on admiration or even celebrating difference, but precisely on indifference, on letting others live their lives regardless of what one might think of their practices and beliefs,... Read more

Breaking Logjams

Last updated on: May 7, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Doctrinal differences between Catholics and Protestants look permanent and intractable. It looks as if one or the other must simply win the struggle. But doctrinal impasses aren’t resolved by a death-battle between current options. They’re resolved by fresh formulations that synthesize existing concerns, break new ground, solve some difficulties and marginalize others. They’re resolved the way Thomas Kuhn said scientific revolutions occur. If you want to call it a “Hegelian” process, fine. But it’s an empirical Hegelianism. Hegelian syntheses happen.... Read more

Breaking Logjams

Last updated on: May 7, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Three friends refused to bow to a golden image and were thrown into a furnace heated seven times hotter than usual. Who were they?