Good News of Gratitude

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

Greeks expressed their gratitude, FS Naiden notes (Smoke Signals for the Gods), with sacrifice: “Helliodorus, hellenizing his Phoenicians, says that Tyrians used such a formula after one of their number won at the Pythian games. Returning home with the victor, they sacrificed at the seaside, niketerion and charisterion, ‘thanks for victory,’ although this translation misses the reverence the worshipers would express. Many such sacrifices occurred not after a victory, as at the festival of Artemis Agrotera in Athens, but after... Read more

What Is Protestantism?

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

Alec Ryrie portrays what it meant to be an early Protestant in his Being Protestant in Reformation Britain. As the TLS reviewer points out, this is no longer a fashionable question: “Historians of the early Reformation now prefer to use the term ‘evangelicals,’ in recognition of the fact that the early reformers did not think of themselves as Protestants and often angrily rejected the term when it was applied to them. Nor does the concept of Protestantism add much to our... Read more

Postmodern Truth

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

Tim Crane points out in his TLS review of John Caputo’s Truth that “Aristotelian” ideas of truth are in no way incompatible with the insight that there is a plurality of perspectives on truth: “to believe in truth in this [Aristotelian] sense is not to believe that there is only one truth about the world; there may be many distinct true interpretations, just as there may be many false ones. Believing in truth does not mean believing there is only one big... Read more

Senecan Shakespeare

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

Reviewing Colin Burrow’s Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity in the TLS, Michael Silk refers to Dante’s debt to Virgil, and then observes: “There is surely no counterpart to this in the case of Shakespeare – though one might perhaps consider it (Burrow himself doesn’t quite) in connection with Seneca.” He finds that TS Eliot agrees: “There is in some of the great tragedies of Shakespeare, a new attitude. It is not the attitude of Seneca, but is derived from Seneca. . .... Read more

Best Con

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

Before assessing the Best Picture nominees at TNR, David Thomson reminds us what the Best Picture award is: “First of all, remind yourself that ‘Best Picture’ is not a certificate of value passed down by God. It is a construct, and a con, dreamed up by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which never had anything to do with God or academia) as part of a suggestion that the film business has attempted to make ‘good’ pictures,... Read more

Leaving First Love

Last updated on: February 16, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jesus commends the church at Ephesus for works, toil, and perseverance, for their rigorous testing of pretended apostles (Revelation 2:2-3). But then He lodges a stunning charge: They have left their first love (ten agapen sou ten proten aphekes). What does that mean? Agape in the New Testament typically describes affection or benevolence itself, rather than the object of love, and this would link the charge against Ephesus with the later charge of lukewarmness in the final message to Laodicea... Read more

God Come Near

Last updated on: February 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

FS Naiden ends his Smoke Signals for the Gods with a fascinating discussion of the contrast between Greek and Hebrew conceptions of God (323-4) Greek gods were watchers of sacrifices, watchers of humans “as if attending a play” (322). They passed judgments, but the judgments were never permanent. They were based both on the worshiper’s devotion and the kala of his sacrifice. Even when the god drew close, “gods and humans remained apart,” and this distance “had an anti-eschatological effect.” Greek... Read more

Evangelizing Metaphysics

Last updated on: February 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The translation of the name Yahweh into Greek as ho on, “the One who is,” has been seen as a Platonizing or Hellenizing move. Sean McDonough (YHWH at Patmos, 194) demurs: “God’s declaration of his name, ‘I am who I am,’ served as a natural bridge between Jewish and Greek thinking. The rabbis were willing to explain this in a Greek fashion at times, that God was and is and will be in the future. This is admitted a minor borrowing,... Read more

Love Letters

Last updated on: February 15, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When John sees Jesus in glory (Revelation 1:9-20), he describes him from head to toe and back (vv. 14-16). It’s a wasf, a blazon, like the descriptions of the Song of Songs. Jesus is the Lover, and He commissions John as His amanuensis to write love letters to His bride. We know these letters as the “Letters to the Seven Churches.” John describes seven features of Jesus’ person: 1. Head and hair white like wool 2. Eyes like flame of... Read more

One Voice

Last updated on: February 14, 2014 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

At the beginning of Revelation, the Spirit speaks to the seven churches. At the end, the voice of the bride and the voice of the Spirit become one, speaking a single wish: Come, Lord Jesus. By suffering with the Bridegroom, the bride learns His dialect. She becomes attuned to His voice. She learns to speak with the voice of the Spirit. Read more