I want to talk about death. No, the flowers haven’t confused me. I’m aware that this is a wedding and not a funeral, but still: I intend to talk about death. What I want to talk about is real death. I’m not using the word metaphorically. I want to talk about the end of life on earth, which each of us will sooner or later suffer. I want to talk about death. Death is an enemy, the “last enemy,” Paul... Read more

A new zombie apocalypse game, DayZ, departs from conventional gaming by introducing permadeath, which is a lot like real death in that it is permanent: Evie Nagy reports, permadeath means “that players have only one life in the game and lose everything if they are killed—as well as a scarcity of survival resources, and a kill-or-be-killed relationship with other players, who often need your supplies to stay alive themselves. There are also zombies.” Dean Hall created the game based on his... Read more

Oliver Ready offers an insightful analysis of Crime and Punishment in the latest TLS. As Ready says, the book’s title creates expectations about its contents: “A ready-made title, Crime and Punishment suggests a ready-made plot. A man will commit a crime. He will be caught. He will be punished. His fate will revolve around the conflicts between freedom and conscience, the delinquent individual and the punitive state. Justice, no doubt, will be done.” What Dostoevsky wrote, however, was anything but straightforward: “At... Read more

Scott Mandelbrote reviews Jed Z. Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold’s Newton and the Origin of Civilization in the TLS, a study of Newton’s efforts to reconstruct the history of the ancient world and his use of historical astronomy to buttress his biblical chronology. Mandelbrote summarizes the background of Newton’s project: “Newton’s interest in scientific chronology was initially sparked by the international discussion about setting the date of Easter and about the adoption of the Gregorian reform of the calendar. This was the subject... Read more

In his recent Our American: A Hispanic History of the United States, Felipe Fernández-Armesto attempts to re-orient the history of the US. As the Economist reviewer explains, “The book takes aim at the founding myths of America that run exclusively from east to west. Those myths begin with ocean-crossings by pious, liberty-loving Englishmen. They dwell on the miracle of the Revolutionary War, in which bewigged patriots defeated vastly larger British forces. The myths end with wagon-trains rumbling across the Prairies and railways... Read more

Phillip J. Long’s study of Jesus the Bridegroom traces the origins of Jesus’ imagery of the eschatological wedding banquet. Isaiah 25 is typically identified as the background, but Long demonstrates that this passage is part of a rich tapestry of expectation. He draws from historical accounts to describe the hints of “coronation” festivity in the story of David, a theme that fits naturally with the Messianic expectation of a Davidic Branch. He examines the tradition of wilderness festivity in the Pentateuch, and... Read more

Religions, Milbank (Beyond Secular Order) argues, do not necessary aim for the ultimate. “Many human religions relate themselves, both theoretically and practically, to a cosmic level which they talce to be less than ultimate – often marked by a mythically narrated violent ‘brealc’ which leaves a reserved space of mystery that is sometimes occupied by a posited but unlmown ‘high god’” (11). This limitation of religion opens up an opportunity for “philosophy” to claim the ground of ultimacy as its... Read more

Balthasar, writes Gerald O’Hanlon (The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar), thought it necessary to re-examine the tradition regarding immutability and impassibility because both needed to be “understood in the context of the liveliness of inner-trinitarian love” (168). He elaborates, “Within an analogical context (which, in attempting to convey the uniquely personal nature of the God/human relationship, could use language extending on a continuum from the metaphorical to the purely abstract) it was possible to... Read more

Rosaenstock-Huessy argues that the feast of All Souls is the source of Western liberty: “Liberty was promised to all souls, liberty, the great promise of Revolution, is first heard in the Occident at All Souls” (Out of Revolution, 510). The feast accomplishes this by inserting death and the Final Judgment into the rhythm of the Christian calendar. Mortals have freedom insofar as they embrace death in life, insofar as they are able to shed old habits, loyalties, patterns of life,... Read more

Tim Judah continues his reporting on Ukraine:  “What we saw in the Orange Revolution, and what we are seeing now, is a fight for the very soul of Ukraine, a country of some 45.5 million people that stretches between the eastern marches of the European Union to the western borderlands of Russia. The protests began when the Ukrainian government announced it would not sign two rather dry-sounding agreements with the European Union at a summit meeting on November 28 and 29... Read more