Attraction of Authority

Last updated on: April 15, 2013 at 2:29 pm By Peter Leithart

Luigi Giussani ( The Risk of Education: Discovering Our Ultimate Destiny ) say that “we experience authority when we meet someone who possesses a full awareness of reality, who imposes on us a recognition and arouses surprise, novelty, and respect.” Authority in this sense attracts: “There is an inevitable attraction within authority and an inexorable suggestion within us, since the experience of authority reminds one more or less clearly of one’s poverty and limitations. For this reason, we tend to... Read more

Deleuzian theology

Last updated on: April 15, 2013 at 2:16 pm By Peter Leithart

Atheist and immanentist, Gilles Deleuze seems to be fairly useless for theology. But Christopher Ben Simpson is able to mine some ore in his Deleuze and Theology , even for theology proper: “The Trinity is ‘the Christian multiple’ as ‘an absolute that is itself difference,’ names ‘divine difference, gives ‘the trinitarian name of difference.’” He cites Milbank and David Hart who argues that “In God is an Ur-space, and Ur-time – ‘divine differentiation’ of ‘original distance’ and ‘primordial displacement.’ Christian... Read more

Power of Four

Last updated on: April 15, 2013 at 2:08 pm By Peter Leithart

There are four fourfold keys to understanding the gospels, argues Eduardo Olaguer, Jr., in The Power of Four: Keys to the Hidden Treasures of the Gospels : the faces of the cherubim, four groups of Old Testament books, four maps, four treasures of seven symbols. Following tradition, he lines up the gospels with the faces of the cherubim, sometimes with two, thusly: Matthew is man and lion, Mark lion and ox, Luke ox and man, and John is eagle. Each... Read more

For the Life of This World

Last updated on: April 15, 2013 at 8:22 am By Peter Leithart

An essay in appreciation of Alexander Schmemann at the Trinity House site this morning. Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: April 14, 2013 at 7:50 am By Peter Leithart

John 14:12; 16:7: Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father . . . . It is good that I go away. Despite the massive changes coming in the next six months, Trinity Reformed Church will remain essentially what it has always been. You will be sons of one Father. Jesus will be the... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: April 14, 2013 at 7:39 am By Peter Leithart

Departures are funny things in the Bible. No one ever completely leaves. Moses dies, but Joshua, a new Moses, replaces him. Elijah flies to heaven in a chariot of fire, but Elisha is left behind, filled with the spirit of Elijah. Jesus says, I am going away, and in the next breath adds, I will come to you. Paul tells the Colossians, “Though I am absent in the body, I am with you in Spirit.” As usual, “Spirit” needs to... Read more

Flesh of Christ

Last updated on: April 13, 2013 at 5:08 pm By Peter Leithart

Since 1900, it’s been unavailable but before that, “Christ’s foreskin was one of the most popular relics in Christendom” (David Farley, AN Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town ) Catherine of Siena said she wore the foreskin as a wedding ring, being a bride of Christ. Bridget of Sweden had a vision in which the Virgin Mary assured her that the relic was for real. Popes from the ninth through the eighteen century... Read more

LSD and Evolution

Last updated on: April 13, 2013 at 4:57 pm By Peter Leithart

Users of LSD during the 60s were not just out for a joy ride. They were the vanguard of a new race. Jay Stevens says ( Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream , xiii-xiv): “the hippies were an attempt to push evolution, to jump the species toward a higher integration.” He elaborates: “Think of the last hundred years as a symphony, a grand orchestration of crescendos and fugues, a tangle of melodies, one of which, a very faint but... Read more

Epidemics

Last updated on: April 13, 2013 at 4:50 pm By Peter Leithart

The point has been made by many, but few have made it as concisely as Ivan Illich in Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health . Writing in the 1970s, he noted that “during the last century doctors have affected epidemics no more profoundly than did priests during earlier times. Epidemics came and went, imprecated by both but touched by neither”(5). Most infectious diseases began to decline before medical researchers and physicians figured out what was happening and took action: “Tyberculosis... Read more

Objectivity

Last updated on: April 13, 2013 at 4:25 pm By Peter Leithart

We think science is objective. But scientific objectivity has a history, and is a fairly recent arrival as a scientific aspiration. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison observe in Objectivity (17), “Objectivity has not always define science. Nor is objectivity the same as truth or certainty, and it is younger than both. Objectivity preserves the artifact or variation that would have been erased in the name of truth; it scruples to filter out the noise that undermines certainty. To be objective... Read more