Locke’s project, Locke’s self

Last updated on: December 18, 2012 at 9:13 am By Peter Leithart

In a superb essay on Locke’s “social imagination” in Rethinking Modern Political Theory: Essays 1979-1983 (Cambridge Paperback Library) (21-22), John Dunn traces Locke’s project to a “simple” central concern: “As a whole this thinking can be legitimately represented as the attempt to think through the political implications of a rather chastened Puritan Christianity within the political frame of an inherited constitutional state and in the light of an epistemology which gave great epistemic weight to sensory experience. The resulting theory,... Read more

Men like Mushrooms

Last updated on: December 17, 2012 at 6:25 pm By Peter Leithart

Robert Filmer, Locke’s main opponent in his First Treatise , nails the flaw in Hobbes’s theory concerning the state of nature: “I cannot understand how this right of nature can be conceived without imagining a company of men at the very first to have been all created together without any dependency one of another, or as mushrooms ( fungorum more ) they all on a sudden were sprung out of the earth without any obligation to one another.” This is... Read more

Hobbes on Heroes

Last updated on: December 17, 2012 at 1:03 pm By Peter Leithart

According to Laurie Bagby ( Thomas Hobbes: Turning Point for Honor , 5-7 ), Hobbes sets out to “deconstruct” the idea of honor by collapsing it “into what he calls ‘vainglory’ or harmful ‘pride.’” That’s well and good, depending of course on what we mean by the word “honor.” What Hobbes means becomes clearer in his treatment of martyrdom. Bagby writes, “Hobbes’s views on martyrdom could simply be seen as a part of his overall criticism of other-worldly zeal, which... Read more

Baptismal meditation

Last updated on: December 16, 2012 at 8:45 am By Peter Leithart

A mediation for the baptism of my third granddaughter, June Annwyn Marie Tollefson. Ephesians 5:8: You were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the world; walk as children of Light. It’s a good Sunday for a baptism. In many churches, today, the third Sunday of Advent, is Gaudete Sunday, named for the Introit of the Latin Mass – Gaudete in Domino semper , rejoice in the Lord always. By her baptism, June enters into joy because in baptism... Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: December 16, 2012 at 7:45 am By Peter Leithart

1 John 1:5: This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. We sin because of unbelief, and unbelief is distrust. Adam sinned when he became convinced that God was withholding the fruit of the tree because God was selfishly protective of his rights. Adam sinned because he distrusted God. Every sin is Adamic at its root. We disobey because we don’t believe... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: December 16, 2012 at 7:01 am By Peter Leithart

Advent celebrates the coming of day. The Light that lightens every man comes into the world to break the gloom that hangs over Israel and the nations. Zecharias sings, “The Sunrise from on high has visited us.” Night is past; Dawn has come. You’d think everyone would be glad, but they aren’t. Herod tries to snuff the Light, and so, eventually, do the rest of the Jews. John assures us that the darkness cannot overcome the Light, but it’s not... Read more

Democratic Redistribution

Last updated on: December 15, 2012 at 4:27 pm By Peter Leithart

Athenian democracy was an effort to dislodge political power from the tangles of patronage. Athenians viewed dependence as virtual slavery, and created institutional structures to prevent indebtedness – real and symbolic. Many of these structures ensured rule by the demos in their various citizen assemblies. But that did not, of course, mean the end of inequality. “The distribution of property in Athens was grossly unequal, even among the citizen body,” writes Paul Millett in an essay in PATRONAGE IN ANCIENT... Read more

Is Nyssa a Social Trinitarian?

Last updated on: December 14, 2012 at 12:19 pm By Peter Leithart

No, says Anatolios ( Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine , 232-3 ): “we do not find an extended and focused discussion of the likeness between the unity-in-distinction in the human realm and that in the divine realm as a central theme in Gregory’s theology, certainly not to the extent that we find in modern proponents or even in Richard of St. Victor.” Yet, Anatolios thinks we should not soften the force of Gregory’s use of analogies... Read more

Justice for the poor

Last updated on: December 14, 2012 at 7:08 am By Peter Leithart

Lactantius devotes several sections of the Divine Institutes (6.11-12) to an analysis of Roman benefaction and to a sketch of a Christian alternative. He writes that it is “a great work of justice to protect and defend orphans and widows ho are destitute and stand in need of assistance; and therefore that divine law prescribes this to all.” In the Roman empire, “all good judges deem that it belongs to their office to favour them with natural kindness, and to... Read more

Causality and Characterization

Last updated on: December 14, 2012 at 6:39 am By Peter Leithart

In his brilliant Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine) , Khaled Anatolios notes that some recent theologians have criticized the Cappadocian “reduction” of the distinction of divine Persons “to the order of causality” (232). Speaking of Gregory of Nyssa in particular, Anatolios responds: “such criticism is based on an artificial abstraction of condensed doctrinal formulations . . . from the larger context of these theologians’ engagement with the biblical narrative as a whole. The statement that the... Read more