Slings and Arrows

Last updated on: February 4, 2013 at 7:26 am By Peter Leithart

I’ve spent the last few weeks watching the Canadian series Slings & Arrows: The Complete Collection , which ran from 2003-2006. The series centers on the managers and actors at the New Burbage Shakespeare Festival. Erstwhile Hamlet and former asylum resident Geoffrey Tennant (played by Paul Gross) is creative director; his on-again, off-again lover, Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns) is the lead female actor of the company; the hilariously named Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) is the pathetically ineffectual, numbers-crunching business manager... Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: February 3, 2013 at 7:20 am By Peter Leithart

Colossians 1:22-23: He has reconciled you in His fleshly body . . . if you continue in faith firmly established and steadfast. Calvin once said the way you begin the Christian life isn’t very important. The big issue is not how you got started. The big issue is whether you persevere to the end. Calvin got this from Paul: We are reconciled if we continue in faith to the end. This doesn’t mean we save ourselves. We’re saved as we... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: February 3, 2013 at 6:50 am By Peter Leithart

“It is finished,” Jesus announced. That doesn’t mean His death ends suffering. His pain gives meaning to ours. He suffered so we can suffer with Him and in Him. Jesus didn’t suffer so we can endure afflictions. He suffered so we can rejoice in afflictions, because for those of us in Christ all suffering is folded into Jesus’ conquest of sin and death. You battle and conquer a besetting sin, and Jesus adds another piece of territory to His kingdom.... Read more

Aim of interpretation

Last updated on: February 2, 2013 at 3:47 pm By Peter Leithart

Geertz ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ) has some insightful things to say about interpretation. “A good interpretation of anything,” he says, “takes us to the heart of that of which it is the interpretation. When it does not do that, but leads us instead somewhere else – into an admiration of its own elegance, of its author’s cleverness, or of the beauties of Euclidean order – it may have its intrinsic charms; but it is something... Read more

Counting Cats in Zanzibar

Last updated on: February 2, 2013 at 3:42 pm By Peter Leithart

In his famous essay on “thick description” ( The Interpretation Of Cultures (Basic Books Classics) ), Clifford Geertz argues that anthropology is not about becoming native but learning “to converse with them, a matter a great deal more difficult, and not only with strangers, than is commonly recognized” (13). Its aim is “the enlargement of the universe of human discourse.” This is why anthropologists tend toward the exotic: “Looking at the ordinary in places where it takes unaccustomed forms brings... Read more

Origins of Gnosticism

Last updated on: February 2, 2013 at 6:42 am By Peter Leithart

In the past, writes Rosemary Reuther in Faith and Fratricide (48-49), it’s been common to distinguish sharply between messianic Judaism and the “acute Hellenism” of Jewish apocalypticism and gnosticism. Reuther doesn’t think that works: “apocalyptic and Gnostic modes of thinking” become evident between the first and third centuries AD not only among sects like the Mandaeans and Samaritans but also in Pharisaical Judaism. 3 Enoch provides evidence of the transmutation of apoalypticism into mysticism, “as an underground esoteric tradition among... Read more

Authority of witnesses

Last updated on: February 1, 2013 at 4:12 pm By Peter Leithart

The description of the work of the two witnesses (Revelation 11:5-6) is carefully arranged. The verses are framed by the verb thelo , “desire.” Their enemies desire harm (v. 5); they respond with plagues and judgments whenever they desire (v. 6). Verse 5 describes the fiery justice against those who harm ( adikeai ) them: A. If anyone wishes to harm them B. first comes from their mouths C. and destroys their enemies A’. If anyone wishers to harm them... Read more

First Thousand Years

Last updated on: February 1, 2013 at 12:28 pm By Peter Leithart

My review of Robert Wilken’s superb The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity is available at the Gospel Coalition site. Read more

Memory tricks

Last updated on: February 1, 2013 at 7:01 am By Peter Leithart

Oliver Sacks discusses false memories, forgettings and autoplagiarism – his own and others’. These afflict teachers and writers perhaps more than others: “It is startling to realize that some of our most cherished memories may never have happened—or may have happened to someone else. I suspect that many of my enthusiasms and impulses, which seem entirely my own, have arisen from others’ suggestions, which have powerfully influenced me, consciously or unconsciously, and then been forgotten. Similarly, while I often give... Read more

Good v. Bad Republicans

Last updated on: February 1, 2013 at 4:55 am By Peter Leithart

Reflections on the present and future of the Republican Party next door . Read more