Some years ago it struck me how much current political opinion and theory depend on appeals to normative events. We can’t do or say X because of the Holocaust, or because of Fascism, or because of the Civil Rights Act. Events close off certain political and moral options. This mode of argument is far more common on the American left than on the American right, since the latter tends to make appeals to general principles of human nature, or the... Read more
In the current issue of First Things , David Bentley Hart expresses his skepticism of “the attempt om recent years by certain self-described Thomists, particularly in America, to import [natural law] tradition into public policy debates.” He has in mind the idea that “compelling moral truths can be deduced from a scrupulous contemplation of the principles of cosmic and human nature, quite apart from special revelation, and within the context of the modern conceptual world.” He does not think that... Read more
Summarizing the work of Peter Brown, James Davison Hunter ( To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World , 55) points to the crucial connection between Christian attitudes toward the poor and the transformation of Roman society: Prior to Christianity, the poor were those who had no standing at all, since they “belonged to no urban grouping.” Christianity changed that: “When the bishops declared themselves to be ‘lovers of the poor,’ the... Read more
Trinity Reformed Church recently had Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio out to Moscow for a series of lectures on music. They were spectacular, and are now available online at Canon Wired . Read more
It’s a truism of Protestant biblical hermeneutics that, whatever else you might be able to do with allegories and typologies, you cannot use them to prove doctrine. “Allegories are fine ornaments, but not of proof,” Luther said in The Table Talk of Martin Luther . Paul never learned this rule. In the one place where he explicitly indulges in allegory ( allegoroumena , Galatians 4;24), he uses it to draw the conclusion that “we are not children of the bondwoman... Read more
Paul appeals to the Galatians to “become as I, because I also as you” (4:12). In what respect are they to become like Paul? In what respect did Paul become as they? Paul immediately follows with: “you know that through a weakness of flesh I preached to you at first” (4:13). Given the thick connotations of “flesh,” this is perhaps an explanation of verse 12. Paul preached in weakness of flesh, becoming what the Galatians were – that is, weak... Read more
Max Boot defines terrorism as “the use of violence by nonstate actors directed primarily against noncombatants . . . in order to intimidate or coerce them and change their government’s policies or composition” ( Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present ). So defined, terrorism has been comparatively rare before the 19th century. There were the “Nizari Ismailis, a Shiite sect of the eleventh century AD that was persecuted by the rest of... Read more
Josephus is known mainly as a historian of ancient Judaism and the Jewish war. Frederic Raphael’s lucid A Jew Among Romans: The Life and Legacy of Flavius Josephus pays more attention to the life than the work, and presents Josephus as archetype as well as man: “The attachment, in midlife, of ‘Titus Flavius’ to the Latinized equivalent of the author’s original name symbolized the indenture of a Judaean notable to the service of the upstart Flavian dynasty. He would be... Read more
Anselm is commonly charged with portraying the Father as a sadistic child-abuser who demands a death from His innocent Son. In a 2009 article in The Saint Anselm Journal , Daniel Shannon argues that Anselm says no such thing, and that in fact “God did not compel the innocent to suffer nor compel Jesus to suffer and die for humanity.” He bases this conclusion on Cur deus homo 1.9, where Anselm endorses Boso’s distinction between “what Christ did because of... Read more
The Reformers are often charged with diminishing the potency of baptism. The opposite is the case. George Huntston Williams (article in Church History , 1957) notes the gradual “depression and routinization of baptism” in the early medieval period, a process that he says was nearly complete by the 11th century. Baptism diminished as and because penance rose to become “a second plank of rescue after baptism” and “a rite of public humiliation in the presence of the more steadfast believers.”... Read more
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