Violence in tradition

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 6:50 pm By Peter Leithart

From the early centuries through the Reformation and beyond, Christian thinkers distinguished between violence and just acts of force. Justin argued that every “honourable person” would agree that “rulers should give their decision as having followed not violence and tyranny but piety and philosophy” ( First Apology , 2). Tertullian recognized that the lex talionis was given as a restraint on violence rather than as blanket permission ( Against Marcion , 16). For Eusebius, a man who shows no allegiance... Read more

Punishment and Privation

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 6:45 pm By Peter Leithart

In Milbank’s view, Augustine violates his own privative doctrine of evil, which gives no “ontological purchase to dominium , or power for its own sake,” when he allows that punishment might take a purely positive form. For Milbank, “in any coercion, however mild and benignly motivated, there is still present a moment of ‘pure’ violence,” because “externally and arbitrarily related to the end.” A schoolmaster’s cane “has no intrinsic connection with the lesson he seeks to teach.” Eventually, the disciplined... Read more

Not clearing the guilty

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 6:39 pm By Peter Leithart

While eschewing Marcionism, Eric Siebert attempts to distinguish between the textual and the actual God and argues that “ some Old Testament portrayals of God do not accurately reflect God’s character” ( Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God ). But his overt selectivity leads him to split texts into bits and to ignore aspects of texts that he doesn’t like, a point especially evident in Seibert’s treatment of the claim that God “appears to act in self-contradictory... Read more

Texts of Violence

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 6:28 pm By Peter Leithart

In a 2004 article in Word & World , Terence Fretheim claims that several texts of the Old Testament attribute violence (Heb. hamas ) to God. Only one is a convincing example. In Job 19:7, Job cries out against the “violence” done to him. He has just complied that Yahweh “has wronged me” and “closed his net around me”: (v. 6), so the charge of violence might be directed at Yahweh himself. Yet he also charges that his comforters have... Read more

Laws of reading

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 6:20 pm By Peter Leithart

Christina Rosetti wrote a number of books dealing with biblical and spiritual themes. In one, Letter and Spirit , she suggests that it is “a genuine though not a glaring breach of the Second commandment, when instead of learning the lesson plainly set down for us in Holy Writ, we protrude mental feelers in all directions above, beneath, around it, grasping, clinging to every imaginable particular except the main point.” She also discerned violations of the first commandment in “the... Read more

Apuleius

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 2:16 pm By Peter Leithart

Richard Jenkyns reviews Susan Ruden’s The Golden Ass in the current TLS . He highlights the oddity of Apuleius’s Latin style: “He did the things that classic Latin style had eschewed. He liked loosely hanging clauses, symmetries, echoing phrases, rocking rhythms and hints of rhyme. At the start of The Golden Ass , the narrator claims to be a Greek who has learned Latin only in adulthood: that is why his lingo may seem eccentric. And indeed it is a... Read more

Tobit’s Dog

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 2:05 pm By Peter Leithart

In a letter to the TLS , Ohio State’s Hannibal Hamlin celebrates Tobit’s dog: “the only domestic pet in the Bible is the dog in the Book of Tobit. His presence in the story is entirely gratuitous but also entirely positive, keeping his master, Tobit’s son Tobias, company as he journeys, aided by the Archangel Raphael, to find the liver of a giant fish that, when burned, will drive the demon Asmodeus away from his beloved Sarah, whose previous seven... Read more

Paradox of Revelation?

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 2:00 pm By Peter Leithart

Is the fact that God reveals Himself in human language a “paradox”? It might seem so. God is incomprehensible, and always exceeds our conceptualizations and verbalizations of Him. To attempt to render this incomprehensible God into human language, with its limits and ambiguities, seems impossible. Yet God does it. Hence, revelation is a paradox. Sed contra: If God shows Himself at all, He must show Himself in a form accessible to humans. If He is going to speak to humans,... Read more

Lutheran sanctification

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 1:44 pm By Peter Leithart

Lutherans aren’t supposed to have a doctrine of sanctification. Nobody told Luther ( Larger Catechism , on the Apostles Creed, 51-53.): “I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms. I am also a part and member of the same, a sharer and joint... Read more

Theological and Historical

Last updated on: June 7, 2013 at 3:21 am By Peter Leithart

Following some insights from John Paul II, I reflect on the crucial importance of the early chapters of Genesis for Christian analysis of culture at Firstthings.com . Read more