Face Mask

Last updated on: November 6, 2012 at 4:38 pm By Peter Leithart

Heidegger’s play with veiling and unveiling, of truth as a-letheia can seem pointless, but John Caputo offers this helpful description in Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) (273-4): “What better example of the play of concealment and un-concealment, of closure and dis-closure, than the play of the face? It conceals what we want to hide and un-conceals what we were trying to keep under wraps. And that is because the face is... Read more

Exodus by faith

Last updated on: November 6, 2012 at 6:34 am By Peter Leithart

Yahweh has no sooner promised the land to Abram than we learn that there is a famine in the land (Genesis 12:10). Isaac has to face another famine later, another famine “besides the first famine in the days of Abraham” (Genesis 26:1). And of course Jacob sends his sons to Egypt because of a great famine in the land. When Moses comes along promising to lead Israel to “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8), it’s not surprising... Read more

Metaphorical abuse

Last updated on: November 5, 2012 at 7:14 pm By Peter Leithart

The sixth cause of absurdity in reason, Hobbes says ( Leviathan Publisher: Penguin Classics , 1.5) is “the use of Metaphors, Tropes, and other Rhetoricall figures, in stead of words proper.” Metaphors are lawful in common speech, but “in reckoning [i.e., in reasoning mathematically conceived], and seeking of truth, such speeches are not to be admitted.” Stern stuff. Flip the page and you read this: “The light of humane minds is Perspicuous Words, but by exact definitions first snuffed, and... Read more

Not Reinventing the Triangle

Last updated on: November 5, 2012 at 6:59 pm By Peter Leithart

Hobbes ( Leviathan Publisher: Penguin Classics , 1.4) argues that speech enables us generalize and so to avoid the labor that would come if we had to analyze and assess every new object of knowledge individually: “a man that hath no use of Speech at all, (such, as is born and remains perfectly deafe and dumb,) if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles, (such as are the corners of a square figure,) he... Read more

Yahweh Savior

Last updated on: November 5, 2012 at 3:46 pm By Peter Leithart

Isaiah uses the root yasha’ (save) nearly thirty times in his prophecy. After chapter 43, the participle form is used seven times as a substantive, a title for Yahweh, in statements like: “I am Yahweh your God, your Savior” (43:3, 11; 45:15, 21; 49:26; 60:16; 63:8). Along with the simple verbal uses of yasha’ , the hope for salvation rustles throughout the book. Isaiah own name ( yesha’yahu ) echoes the theme. And in that rustling is a whisper of... Read more

Jesus and Christ

Last updated on: November 5, 2012 at 3:34 pm By Peter Leithart

The fundamental Christology of the New Testament, Barth insists ( The Doctrine of the Word of God (Church Dogmatics, vol. 1, pt. 2) , pp. 15-7), is that “God’s Son is called Jesus of Nazareth, and Jesus of Nazareth is God’s Son.” But this cannot be understood in the sense that Jesus fulfills some prior conception of Son of God, or Christ, or Word of God: “That would be an arbitrary Christology, docetic in its estimate and in its conclusions... Read more

Oath of Joy

Last updated on: November 5, 2012 at 1:32 pm By Peter Leithart

When King Asa of Judah heard the prophecy of Azariah, he “took courage and removed the abominable idols from all the land of Judah and Benjamin” (2 Chronicles 15:8). Then he gathered the people to Jerusalem to re-enter into the covenant with Yahweh, promising to hold to the terms of the Shema by seeking “the Lord God of their fathers with all their heart and soul” (v. 12). That covenant renewal takes the form of joyful singing, shouting, and music-making:... Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: November 4, 2012 at 3:06 pm By Peter Leithart

Isaiah 49:26: I will feed your oppressors with their own flesh, and they will become drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine; and all flesh will know that I, Yahweh, am your Savior, and your Redeemer, the Holy One of Jacob. Isaiah 49 ends with a macabre feast worthy of Stephen King. Yahweh promises to plunder the plunderers and rescue the sons of Zion from those who have taken them captive. And He promises to give Israel’s enemies... Read more

Baptism exhortation

Last updated on: November 4, 2012 at 2:45 pm By Peter Leithart

1 Corinthians 6: Don’t you know that you are not your own? “What is your comfort in life and in death?” begins the Heidelberg Catechism. And it answers, “That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” The Catechism is drawing directly from Paul, who asks: Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Spirit? Don’t you know that you were bought with... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: November 4, 2012 at 2:29 pm By Peter Leithart

It’s easy to be cynical about American politics. It’s easy to think we can safety check out. Many have concluded that politics doesn’t matter. That’s a mistake. Laws and regulations form the institutional and even the physical shape of the world we live in every day, and there is no neutral institutional framework. What does the law punish and reward? What’s permitted? What’s forbidden? These are moral and not just political questions, and the answers our leaders give determine the... Read more