Perichoretic imagination

Last updated on: April 16, 2012 at 2:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Gadamer waxing (Hegelian and) perichoretic (quoted in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 159): “Life is defined by the fact that what is alive differentiates itself from the world in which in which it lives and to which it is bound, and preserves itself in such self-differentiation. The self-preservation of what is alive occurs in that it takes into itself things that are outside it. The fundamental fact of being alive is assimilation. Differentiation is thus... Read more

Coherence of history

Last updated on: April 16, 2012 at 1:52 pm By Peter Leithart

As Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 150) explains, Dilthey like every other theorist of historical hermeneutics is haunted by the Hegelian ghost he tries to escape. For Dilthey, the problem is to prove the coherence and unity of history. He points to experience: We don’t experience atoms of life but life as a coherent flow. Problem is, it is hard to see how that works at a macro-level: We don’t experience history-in-general at... Read more

Historicism’s dilemma

Last updated on: April 16, 2012 at 1:16 pm By Peter Leithart

Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , p. 144) neatly summarizes the dilemma of anti-Hegelian historicism, influenced as it was by the hermeneutical theories of Schleiermacher and later Dilthey. Here’s the problem: Historicism rejects the Hegelian notion that history has a definable end. But hermeneutics works in a circle or an oscillation between parts and whole. If, as historicists tend to say, history is a kind of “text,” then its parts have to be understood in... Read more

Understanding understanding

Last updated on: April 16, 2012 at 12:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Gadamer ( Truth and Method (Continuum Impacts) , p. 180 ) says, “We begin with this proposition: understanding means, first of all, understanding one another. Understanding is first of all having come to a mutual understanding. People understand one another immediately for the most part, or they communicate until they reach unity and agreement. Understanding, then, is always coming to an understanding about something.” Seems pretty colorless, but Weinsheimer ( Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Reading of Truth and Method , pp.... Read more

Animal Orchestra

Last updated on: April 16, 2012 at 11:34 am By Peter Leithart

The NYT Book Review has a fascinating review of Bernie Krause’s The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World’s Wild Places , which argues that “the healthier the habitat, the more ‘musical’ the creatures, the richer and more diverse their scores. Sound complexity is a measure of health. Animal music plays various roles: Krause writes that “gibbon male songs, while rarely repeated, nevertheless follow strict rules of modulation and delivery in order to successfully attract females,”... Read more

Eucharistic meditation

Last updated on: April 15, 2012 at 6:00 am By Peter Leithart

Acts 2:43-45: They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers. Then fear came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles. Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. “There shall be no poor among you,” Yahweh told Israel. Yahweh promised to bless Israel in the land... Read more

Exhortation

Last updated on: April 15, 2012 at 5:27 am By Peter Leithart

We steal because we think we don’t have something we need or should have. We don’t have enough money, the right kind of electronic device or blouse, our favorite candy. We steal because we believe good things are scarce. Sometimes we steal intangible things. Our co-worker or friend has more respect than we have, more honor than we think he deserves. So we gossip and slander to strip away his glory. When we steal intangibles, it is still because we... Read more

Easter Octave Homily

Last updated on: April 14, 2012 at 8:01 pm By Peter Leithart

“Where have you been for the past week? You must be the only one in town who doesn’t know what happened.” Cleopas and his friend were rushing to get out of Jerusalem. Three days before, the Romans had captured their teacher, tried him, and crucified him. They knew what Romans did to disciples of disruptive Jews. Cleopas and his friend hid in the city for three days, then decided it was safer to run. There was a little town seven... Read more

Taking the entertainment industry

Last updated on: April 14, 2012 at 10:38 am By Peter Leithart

As Young notes ( In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom As Public Liturgy in Early Christianity (The Pere Marquette Lecture in Theology, 2001) , p. 12), the early Christians had their own way of taking over the Roman entertainment industry: Martyrs “invaded those spectacles and turned them to their own purposes, as athletes in games they did not invent, and as officiants in sacrifices they set up against the sacrificial civic religion of the Romans.” Read more

Training Camp

Last updated on: April 14, 2012 at 10:36 am By Peter Leithart

In her 2001 Pere Marquette Lecture Robin Darling Young ( In Procession Before the World: Martyrdom As Public Liturgy in Early Christianity (The Pere Marquette Lecture in Theology, 2001) , pp. 1-2 ) notes that martyrdom in the early church highlights the clash between “opposing religious societies” that “represented two distinct societies’ divergent sacrificial systems – one customary, the other a new interpretation of an ancient and exclusive practice dedicated to making a sacrifice to the God of Israel.” Christians,... Read more