Great Transformation, 2.0?

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 6:03 pm By Peter Leithart

We are in the middle of a second “great transformation,” suggests Zygmunt Bauman in Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age (46-7). Industrialization has given way to an “experience economy.” Bauman points to a shift in the metaphors and vocabulary of management theory as evidence: “To convey the rules of their strategies and the logic of their actions, contemporary business leaders no longer speak of ‘engineering’ (a notion implying a divide or juxtaposition between those who ‘engineer’ and that... Read more

Dying for others

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 5:43 pm By Peter Leithart

Jesus lays down His life for His friends. He is a martyr, a witness to death. His death is glorious. In his The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament , Martin Hengel wonders where that notion comes from. It doesn’t seem to come from the Old Testament, where “there are hardly any examples of dying for Israel, the Law or the sanctuary, which are stressed as heroic actions.” On the contrary, the references to dying for... Read more

Just War, Restrained War

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 4:57 pm By Peter Leithart

Roland Bainton divided Christian perspectives on war into three categories – pacifist, just war, and crusade. James Turner Johnson ( Just war tradition and the restraint of war: A moral and historical inquiry ) does not think Bainton’s categories are helpful. For starters, the crusaders considered their wars to be just wars and used just war arguments to defend their participation. On the other end of the spectrum, Johnson points out (as do some “pacifists”) that there is not a... Read more

Monopoly science

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 11:52 am By Peter Leithart

It’s often lamented that science has been politicized. John Brooke ( Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives ) points out that politics does not represent a fall from some pure original science but the point of modern science from the outset: “Science was respected not simply for its results but as a way of thinking. It offered the prospect of enlightenment through the correction of past error, and especially through its power to overcome superstition . . . the motivation... Read more

Materialist memes

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 11:43 am By Peter Leithart

Richard Dawkins has famously proposed that cultural habits are passed on through “memes”: “tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches . . . . Memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (quoted in Sheldrake, The Science Delusion , 183). For Dawkins and other atheists, religion is a meme complex that infects other people’s brains. But why... Read more

Internal creativity

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 11:33 am By Peter Leithart

Rupert Sheldrake thinks science and religion overlap, but he is not an advocate of Intelligent Design. ID assumes a a mechanistic metaphor of the world: “Humans design machines, buildings and works of art. In a similar way the God of mechanistic theology, or the Intelligent Designer, is supposed to have designed the details of living organisms” ( The Science Delusion , 37-8). The problem, he says, is that living organisms are not machines but “have an internal creativity . .... Read more

Christian Imperialism

Last updated on: April 8, 2013 at 9:49 am By Peter Leithart

Rich Bledsoe examines the pointlessness of today’s democratic capitalism and argues for the political and cultural necessity of acknowledging Jesus as Emperor at the Trinity House site. Read more

Faith, Works, Reward

Last updated on: April 6, 2013 at 12:21 pm By Peter Leithart

In an analysis of the work of Meredith Kline, John Frame offers this neat formulation of the relation of faith, works, and reward: “Today we receive salvation by faith alone, apart from works. But that faith must be a living, working faith, if it is true faith (Jms. 2:14-26). As with Abraham, God rewards our trust, even in the midst of persecution and difficulty (Mark 10:29-30). Those rewards are the beginning of the rewards we finally inherit at the consummation... Read more

Marketization of politics

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 at 8:01 pm By Peter Leithart

William Cavanaugh’s presentation at the Wheaton Theology Conference was, as one would expect, challenging and provocative. He asked questions about corporate persons in contemporary law, tracing the background of the idea in the Bible and in medieval thought, but focusing attention on the business corporation as corporate person in market economy. That sort of corporate personality, he pointed out, is very different from the corporate personhood of the church as found in Paul and acknowledged in medieval law. The business... Read more

Mercy and Power

Last updated on: April 5, 2013 at 7:50 pm By Peter Leithart

Anglican Archbishop David Gitari ended his talk at the Wheaton Theology Conference with a neat illustration of the difference between doing mercy and confronting power. He used the example of a factory where many workers were injured. Wanting to help, a church arranged to have an ambulance on call at the factory at all times. That’s mercy. After a time, someone asked, Why do so many people get injured in the factory? No one knew, so someone went in to... Read more