Leithart
I have a Good Friday meditation on beauty at the First AThings web site today: http://www.firstthings.com/ Read more
I have a Good Friday meditation on beauty at the First AThings web site today: http://www.firstthings.com/ Read more
Thoughts inspired by Hans Holbein’s “Body of the Dead Christ”: The Father sees His crucified Son, and says “This is my Beloved Son.” He regards the corpse of Jesus, blue, bruised, scarred, twisted, hands and feet blackened like claws, sightless eyes lolling upward, jaw locked open, and He says, “Behold, My Son in whom my soul delights.” He watches the body clothed and anointed for burial and declares, “I have both glorified My Son and will glorify Him again.” Read more
Under “Downloads” at the top of this page, I’ve just added a paper on combative Athanasian rhetoric that I delivered a couple of years ago at the University of Aberdeen. Read more
In his Church History , Socrates Scholasticus exemplifies the character of the renowned miracle-worker Paphnutius, bishop of Upper Thebes and victim of the Diocletian persecution by recounting a speech he made at Nicea: “It seemed fit to the bishops to introduce a new law into the Church, that those who were in holy orders, I speak of bishops, presbyters, and deaconsshould have no conjugal intercourse with the wives whom they had married while still laymen. Now when discussion on this... Read more
The Economist has the best obits, but they’ve outcome even their usual standards with the March 31 obituary of Lyn Lusi, a Baptist missionary in Congo, who died on March 17. The obit includes this moving description of the beginnings of HEAL Africa, the ministry that Lusi and her husband Jo started for Congolese women: “Their hospital at Goma had been set up in 2000 to train young Congolese doctors. Two years later the building was destroyed by a volcano;... Read more
An exaltation of tweets. To observe Lent rightly, we have to be persuaded that we already stand in God’s favor. Ash Wednesday reminds us to number our days. It helps us gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). We keep Easter to manifest and deepen our prior share in resurrection. We observe Lent to manifest and deepen our share in the cross. As a focused pursuit of the fruits of holiness, Lent is rooted in union with Christ, who is... Read more
The “kings of the earth” who rebel against Yahweh are mentioned at the beginning of the Psalms, and Yahweh’s response is to install His own king on Zion (Psalm 2:2, 6). Then Yahweh’s king drops out of the picture for awhile. Yahweh is identified as King (Psalm 5:2; 10:16) but the Davidic king does not. When the king reappears in Psalm 18:50, he’s in trouble, surrounded by enemies, and has to be rescued by Yahweh. Psalms 20-21 speak of the... Read more
Weinsheimer explains how Gadamer can think of interpretation as “play” while avoiding the bogeyman of an interpretive “free-for-all”: “In playing, we do not stand over against the game; we particular in it. A player who does not get fully involved in the game is called a spoilsport, because toying with or playing at a game spoils it.” In short, games are not “objects” over there that we examine from a safe distance: “taking a game seriously entails belonging to it,... Read more
Joel Weinsheimer ( Philosophical Hermeneutics and Literary Theory ) neatly summarizes Gadamer’s argument that objectivism and subjectivism are the same thing: “Governing itself by rule, objectivity tries methodologically to eliminate bias, prejudice, and all the distortions that go by the name of subjectivity. This Cartesian endeavor assumes that a methodologically purified consciousness guarangees certainty.” And that’s where the quest for objectivity turns subjective: “On one level, objectivity consists in humble self-effacement, but on another, it is marked by a distinct... Read more
Sara Ruth, Parker’s wife in Flannery O’Connor’s “Parker’s Back,” represents a confluence of religious themes. She is an uncorruptible Eve, who won’t be tempted to premarital sex even after accepting an apply from Parker. With her “icepick” eyes, she bores into his soul. She stands for the law, and hence for the Old Covenant. She is an iconoclast who attacks Parker when he returns home with a Byzantine Christ tattooed on his back. Dennis Slattery suggests that in the final... Read more
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