Miniaturizing Sin

Last updated on: October 11, 2017 at 4:25 am By Peter Leithart

Peter Brown reviews of Sarah Ruden’s new translation of Augustine’s Confessions in this weeks New York Review of Books. I can’t speak to the translation, but I can speak to the reviewer: Everything Peter Brown writes is worth reading. He comments on Ruden’s decision to translate dominus as “master” (as in master of slaves) rather than as “Lord.” Brown thinks Ruden captures some tonalities that might otherwise be missed, but gently worries that Ruden might underplay “Augustine’s images of the tenderness of God.”... Read more

The Real Proximity of God

Last updated on: October 10, 2017 at 11:16 pm By Peter Leithart

In Introduction to Christianity, Joseph Ratzinger explains how the dogma of the Trinity emerged from early Christian experience. The apostles discovered that “in Jesus Christ one meets a man who at the same time knows and professes himself to be the Son of God. One finds God in the shape of the ambassador who is completely God and not some kind of intermediary being, yet with us says to God ‘Father'” (115). Ratzinger calls it a “paradox”: “one the one... Read more

Speech on the Cross

Last updated on: October 10, 2017 at 11:01 pm By Peter Leithart

As we would expect, Rosenstock-Huessy assembles his grammatical material into a Cross. With the distinction of words and names in mind, we can see how Rosenstock-Huessy describes the function of speech in human life and society in a quadrilateral manner. He develops his point through a brief phenomenology of speech. In Speech and Reality (SR), he begins a discussion of the “four responsibilities in speaking” by describing his encounter with a boy across the fence at his home. He called... Read more

Myths of Purity

Last updated on: October 13, 2017 at 6:27 pm By Peter Leithart

Old Testament purity rules are badly understood, and a host of myths have surrounded them. Read more

Names and Words

Last updated on: October 7, 2017 at 10:02 pm By Peter Leithart

One of the key distinctions in Rosenstock-Huessy’s grammatical sociology is that between names and words. In his brief discussion of this distinction in The Christian Future (CF), he begins with an expression of his horror at John Dewey’s notion that “We have to find another set of words to formulate the moral ideal.” Rosenstock-Huessy says that the sentence simultaneously calls us to action and “paralyzes the action.” Part of the problem is the reduction of moral life to a set... Read more

Rehoboam’s Cities and House

Last updated on: October 7, 2017 at 10:49 pm By Peter Leithart

After the northern tribes abandon the house of David (2 Chronicles 10), Rehoboam settles in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 11:5). He builds cities for defense and for storage (11:5-12), receives the Levites and priests who flee from idolatrous Israel (11:13-17), marries and has children (11:18-23). The chapter moves from land to temple to royal house. It also has hints of a chiastic structure. Verses 5, 11 refer to fortress cities and food stores, and verses 22-23 return to this theme, noting... Read more

Language and Relation

Last updated on: October 7, 2017 at 9:56 pm By Peter Leithart

Underlying Rosenstock-Huessy’s entire discussion of the diseases of speech is the assumption that language establishes relations. In this, Rosenstock-Huessy is again assaulting one of the premises of modernity, namely, the centrality of the Ego, and the consequent notion that language exists so that the Ego can express its thoughts and feelings. Language is fundamentally social and political, and it’s the main medium through which human relationships are achieved. Grammar is the leading social science because language is the leading means of social... Read more

Learning to Sit in the Sun

Last updated on: October 9, 2017 at 8:19 pm By Peter Leithart

My Firstthings.com column last week was about Scottish poet Thomas A. Clark (not to be confused with the American poet Tom Clark). Here are the first few paragraphs: Thomas A. Clark is ambitious. In a short essay on “Imaginative Space,” the Scottish poet describes our “late culture,” which is characterized by “derangement and disequilibrium,” the “constant and inescapable climate of a politics of bewilderment.” He proposes a plan to transform late culture into “one that is fully human.” To achieve... Read more

Purity and Holiness

Last updated on: October 12, 2017 at 7:10 pm By Peter Leithart

Though sometimes conflated, purity and holiness aren't the same thing in the Old Testament. Read more

Logos Enables Dia-logos

Last updated on: October 5, 2017 at 5:22 pm By Peter Leithart

Truth has a bad rap these days. A claim to know truth sounds dogmatic, oppressive, perhaps even racist. Truth-claims shut down dialogue: If you already know the truth, there’s nothing for us to talk about. In his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI took on this hostility to truth head-on. Early on (section 4), he argues that, far from shutting down dialogue, truth is the only basis on which dialogue is possible: “Truth, in fact, is logos which creates dia-logos,... Read more