Dating Revelation

Last updated on: May 9, 2013 at 5:29 pm By Peter Leithart

From Irenaeus on, the vast majority of patristic and medieval commentators have claimed that Revelation was written during the reign of Domitian in the mid-90s AD. There have been a few dissidents, the most famous of which was Epiphanius of Salamis (fifth century), who may reflect an independent tradition in saying that John wrote the book during the reign of Claudius in the 40s. The long-forgotten Apringius of Beja is another. He writes ( Latin Commentaries on Revelation (Ancient Christian... Read more

Status preaching

Last updated on: May 9, 2013 at 5:18 pm By Peter Leithart

Julianus Pomerius, who directed a school in sixth-century Gaul, emphasized straightforward, unadorned preaching. “A teacher of the Church should not parade an elaborate style,” he writes in his The Contemplative Life , “lest he seem not to want to edify the Church of God but to reveal what great learning he possesses.” It is not “the glitter of his words” that distinguishes a preacher but “the virtue of his deeds.” Caesarius was one of his devoted students, and learned the... Read more

Primer on baptism

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 2:27 pm By Peter Leithart

With my views on baptism again subject to scrutiny, I take a moment to summarize what I’ve written on the subject. There is nothing new here. It is what I wrote in my dissertation, The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism , in my book, The Baptized Body , and it is the assumed theology of baptism behind my various incidental writings on the topic. First, we should take the Bible’s statements about baptism as statements about baptism... Read more

Preaching Chronology

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 5:05 am By Peter Leithart

As Stephen recounts the history of Israel to his persecutors, he refers in passing to several chronological details. Abraham’s descendants were slaves for 400 years (Acts 7:6), God appeared to Moses after 40 years of sojourn in Midian (7:30), and another 40 years passed with Israel in the wilderness (7:36). Stephen thus highlights the parallel, already evident in Exodus, between the experience of Moses and that of Israel, the 40 years of the “head” recapitulated in the 40 years of... Read more

Taming the Hunter

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 4:53 am By Peter Leithart

In a 2006 article in Studies in Philology , Sean Benson explores Shakespeare’s use of hawking imagery in romantic relations. Shakespeare “employs the gendered discourse of hawking language in order to make the interspecific leap from the falconer’s training of his female hawk to a husband’s training of his wife. Beginning with The Taming of the Shrew , Shakespeare uses hawking metaphors to suggest that a husband tame his haggardlike wife as a falconer would his bird. What allows such... Read more

Gay Marriage and Statism

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 4:32 am By Peter Leithart

Milbank further argues that gay marriage is not about gay rights per se but instead about the modern state’s continuing expansion of its power and persistent elimination of all rivals. As he says, legalization of gay marriage “would end public recognition of the importance of marriage as a union of sexual difference. But the joining together and harmonisation of the asymmetrical perspectives of the two sexes are crucial both to kinship relations over time and to social peace.” This union... Read more

Impossibility of Gay Marriage

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 4:20 am By Peter Leithart

John Milbank observes that in recent British debates over gay marriage, “legislators have recognised that it would be intolerable to define gay marriage in terms equivalent to ‘consummation,’ or to permit ‘adultery’ as legitimate ground for gay divorce.” In these decisions, “the legislators have been forced tacitly to admit the different nature of both gay sexuality and of gay sociality . But such an admission destroys the assumption behind the legislation and the coherence of what the legislation proposes to... Read more

Law and History

Last updated on: May 8, 2013 at 3:59 am By Peter Leithart

The final installment of Pastor Ralph Smith’s series on Deuteronomy 22-23 is up at the Trinity House web site. Read more

Filming satire

Last updated on: May 7, 2013 at 12:06 pm By Peter Leithart

Zachary Seward thinks people miss the point of The Great Gatsby : “many people seem enchanted enough by the decadence described in Fitzgerald’s book to ignore its fairly obvious message of condemnation. Gatsby parties can be found all over town. They are staples of spring on many Ivy League campuses and a frequent theme of galas in Manhattan. Just the other day, vacation rental startup Airbnb sent out invitations to a ‘Gatsby-inspired soiree’ at a multi-million-dollar home on Long Island,... Read more

Pity the Anarchist

Last updated on: May 7, 2013 at 4:25 am By Peter Leithart

In The New Yorker , Kelefa Sanneh analyzes the paradoxes of the anarchism promoted by David Graeber, the eminence grise of the Occupy movement. According to Sanneh, “Graeber refers to march planners and other organizers as ‘verticals,’ and to him this is an insult: it refers not just to defenders of Kim Jong-un but to anyone who thinks a political uprising needs parties or leaders. He is a ‘horizontal,’ . . . . as he listened to speeches in Bowling... Read more