Driven chaff

Last updated on: June 7, 2012 at 9:04 am By Peter Leithart

In nearly every passage of Scripture that mentions “chaff driven away,” it’s the wind that does the driving (Job 21:18; Psalm 1:4; 35:5; 83:3; Isaiah 17:13; Daniel 2:35). Yahweh’s Spirit is a wind storm taht drives the wicked away like withered chaff. Isaiah 41:2 is the exception: There it’s not the wind that drives away but the bow of righteousness: Someone (“Who?”) wakes up righteousness from his slumber at daybreak (“from the east”), and Righteousness comes with a pulverizing sword... Read more

Vincent and his canon

Last updated on: June 6, 2012 at 4:51 am By Peter Leithart

Some of my critics have objected to my use of the word “catholic” to describe my “ecumenism.” I would point out that my use of “catholic” is a perfectly understandable one in English. Dictionaries define the word as “all-inclusive” or “concerning the whole human race” or “universal.” To speak of the church’s catholicity it to affirm that the church includes the people of God ever since Abel, all those united to the Lord Jesus by the Spirit. I would also... Read more

It’s a Meal

Last updated on: June 6, 2012 at 3:47 am By Peter Leithart

James Jordan has often said that Protestants regard the Lord’s Supper as a sermon cleverly disguised as a meal, and that Catholics see the Supper as a prayer cleverly disguised as a meal. There are sermonic features to the Supper, and aspects of prayer as well. But Jordan is right that Protestants and Catholics both tend to ignore the obvious: At the Lord’s table, we eat bread and drink wine. That has come home to me afresh as I’ve thought... Read more

Salvation and the Table

Last updated on: June 6, 2012 at 3:34 am By Peter Leithart

One of the respondents to my recent First Things piece on communion acknowledged that the undivided table is intolerable, but qualified that with the statement, “If you assert that an undivided table is more important than defending the table’s main purpose, a means of salvation whereby we receive the true body and blood of our Savior, I would disagree.” But I learned long ago from de Lubac’s Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man that one ought not put... Read more

Gift v. Commodity

Last updated on: June 5, 2012 at 3:54 pm By Peter Leithart

Visser (p. 128) traces the separation of the household from the economy, and the resulting separation of economic relations from social relations. These divisions can be summed up as the division of Commodity from Gift: “In opposition to the invading force of cold, calculating, purely material Commodity relations now stood the ideal of the Gift, freely offered by the giver, unearned by the recipient, warmly expressive of love, tending to arouse gratitude, generative of return gifts, creative of a cycle,... Read more

Touching Home Base

Last updated on: June 5, 2012 at 3:35 pm By Peter Leithart

Visser ( The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude , p. 118) notes, “The mobility of modern life demands . . . that our personal links receive repeated affirmation. The close-knit small social worlds that we create, like islands in the sea of our mass society, are essential to our well-being. The mobile or cell phone fills just such a purpose: people anxiously keep in touch with intimates as though each separation, each outing, means a foray... Read more

Gift and obligation

Last updated on: June 5, 2012 at 3:27 pm By Peter Leithart

In her wonderful The Gift of Thanks: The Roots and Rituals of Gratitude , the incomparable Margaret Visser contrasts the freedom of modern gift-giving with the obligatoriness of gifts in “Gift societies”: “In our culture, once a gift is given, it belongs entirely to the receiver. The giver may have desires as to what should be done with it, but her wishes have no force; the new owner is now responsible, which means he is free to do what he... Read more

From politics to society

Last updated on: June 5, 2012 at 12:27 pm By Peter Leithart

Karuna Mantena ( Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism , pp. 68-70) describes the rise of modern social theory (in line with Arendt, Strauss, and Wolin) as the displacement of politics by society. He disagrees with Strauss and others because he argues that the politics that god displaced was not the ancient politics of Aristotle but the more recent politics inaugurated by Hobbes. Durkheim plays a crucial role in this displacement: (more…) Read more

Inventing Traditional Society

Last updated on: June 5, 2012 at 12:14 pm By Peter Leithart

Karuna Mantena spends a chapter of his Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism explaining the 19th-century origins of social theory. He begins by pointing to what he calls “one of the characteristic features of nineteenth century social theory,” namely, “its tendency to view the historical trajectory of society in binary terms, the modern/tradition dichotomy encapsulating the essence of a number of other prominent distinctions such as status/contract (Maine), Gemeinschaft/Gesellschaft (Tonnies), mechanical/organic (Durkheim), militant/industrial (Spencer), and... Read more

Who’s got the gateway drug?

Last updated on: June 4, 2012 at 9:58 am By Peter Leithart

About a year ago, I was tried by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the PCA on charges of deviating from the Westminster Confession at a number of points. The Presbytery exonerated me of all charges. One of the underlying themes of the trial and the surrounding debates over the past several years has been the charge that my views on sacraments and on soteriology lean toward Roman Catholicism. Some have claimed that my writings and those of my associates and... Read more