Go Spurs!

Last updated on: May 30, 2012 at 2:00 pm By Peter Leithart

Over at Slate , Matthew Yglesias explains why Americans don’t take to the San Antonio Spurs, in spite of the Spurs’ apparent commitment to American values of teamwork, leadership, excellence, loyalty, hard work. Yglesias thinks it exposes the American character: “we are, ultimately, a nation of hypocrites that prefers drama queens, bad boys, and flukes to simple competence and success.” The Spurs’ “competent, businesslike success gives us nothing to work with. Kobe Bryant’s egomaniacal play, LeBron James’ absurd television special,... Read more

Gratitude Ethics

Last updated on: May 30, 2012 at 1:30 pm By Peter Leithart

Patrick Fitzgerald argues in an extensive and careful analysis of “Gratitude and Justice” in a 1998 issue of Ethics that recent philosophy has treated gratitude as too narrowly an issue of justice, asking the question “When is gratitude owed ?” Fitzgerald argues compellingly that there are plenty of cases when gratitude may not, in strict justice, be owed and yet may be ethically good and psychologically and personally beneficial. He focuses particularly on expressions of gratitude that seem anomalous to... Read more

Plato, Aristotle, Christ

Last updated on: May 28, 2012 at 2:57 pm By Peter Leithart

In his stimulating new volume, Metaphysics: The Creation of Hierarchy , Adrian Pabst offers a fresh (to me) assessment of Plato and his differences from Aristotle. Focusing on the problems of individuation, he argues that Plato offers a “relational” metaphysics that affirms rather than undermines materiality, and that Aristotle rather than Plato is the more dualistic. Neither, he thinks, is able to give coherent answers to certain metaphysical questions that are answered by the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and... Read more

Peter and the Rock

Last updated on: May 28, 2012 at 2:12 pm By Peter Leithart

In her Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (pp. 190-191), Robin M. Jenson notes that in some early Christian iconography, Peter was substituted for Moses in the scene of the striking of the rock: “In the fourth century . . . the composition of the scene was radically transformed; rather than Moses, it showed the apostle Peter as the rock-striking, staff-wielding wonder-worker. Viewers may easily identify Peter from his unique portrait type (a low forehead, square... Read more

Sermon notes

Last updated on: May 28, 2012 at 6:55 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION After the “Passover” deliverance from the Assyrians (Isaiah 37), Isaiah hears a voice announcing a new exodus (Isaiah 40:3, 6). Yahweh returns through the wilderness to Zion (vv. 3-11). THE TEXT “‘Comfort, yes, comfort My people!’ says your God. ‘ Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her, that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.’ . . . (Isaiah 40:1-31). (more…) Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: May 27, 2012 at 6:41 am By Peter Leithart

Isaiah 38:3: Remember, O Lord, I beseech you, how I have walked before You. We saw in the sermon today that Hezekiah’s prayer is a memorial. All prayer is anamnesis, an appeal to God to remember something – His promises, His great acts of the past, our loyalty to the covenant. This table too is an anamnesis, a memorial: As often as we eat this bread and drink this cut, we show forth and memorialize Christ’s death. This table is... Read more

Baptismal meditation

Last updated on: May 27, 2012 at 6:30 am By Peter Leithart

Matthew 3:11: John said, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. When John baptizes Jesus, the Spirit comes down as a dove and rests on Jesus. Pentecost fulfills the baptism of Jesus: Because He is filled with the Spirit beyond measure, Jesus overflows to pour and breathe and give the... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: May 27, 2012 at 6:11 am By Peter Leithart

Jesus ascended to become our defender, who lives to pray for us. At Pentecost, Jesus poured out the Spirit, who also intercedes for us. Our prayers to the Father are confirmed by the testimony of two divine witnesses, the heavenly witness of the Son and the earthly witness of the Spirit. The Son is the Word, but the Spirit who searches the deep things of God and the deep things of man communicates when words fail. Paul says, the Spirit... Read more

Grace and Gratitude

Last updated on: May 26, 2012 at 1:48 pm By Peter Leithart

JW Hewitt sums up the difference between Greco-Roman and Christian conceptions of charis in a 1925 Classical Weekly essay. Greek religion, “which discovered no impassible gulf between god and man, the relations of man to man and god to god were supposed to hold between man and god.” This means that “as man’s own moral nature develops and he comes to recognize the duty of gratitude, and as, parallel with this, his view of the gods and of his relation... Read more

Hezekiah and Babylon

Last updated on: May 26, 2012 at 9:41 am By Peter Leithart

In the past, I have taken the story of Hezekiah and Babylon (2 Kings 20; Isaiah 39) as a sort of “fall” of Hezekiah. On further consideration, I don’t think this is sustainable. The episode seems to have another function in Isaiah, and I have concluded that there is no condemnation of Hezekiah from Isaiah or Yahweh. In the final episode of the narrative section of Isaiah, Hezekiah gets a visit from Merodach-baladan, king of Babylon. He hears of Hezekiah’s... Read more