At the beginning of the millennium, the saints sit on thrones and “judgment is given to them” (Revelation 20:4). The phrase is ambiguous: Does this mean “the power to judge was given them” or “they received a favorable judgment from the court?” The context of Revelation doesn’t decide the issue, but the phrase comes from Daniel 7, and that source text provides an answer. The phrase occurs in Daniel 7:22, in the midst of the angel’s explanation of the vision... Read more
Wilfred McClay has neatly summarized the creed, scriptures, sacraments, and sacred places and times of America’s civil religion: “The same mix of convictions can be found animating the rhetoric of the American Revolution, the vision of Manifest Destiny, the crusading sentiments of antebellum abolitionists, the benevolent imperialism of fin-de-siecle apostles of Christian civilization, and the fervent idealism of President Woodrow Wilson at the time of World War I. No one expressed the idea more directly, however, than Senator Albert J.... Read more
Strayer argues that city-states and empires both had their problems, and that “The European states which emerged after 1100 combined, to some extent, the strengths of both the empires and the city-states. They were large enough and powerful enough to have excellent changes for survival – some of them are approaching the thousand-year mark, which is a respectable age for any human organization. At the same time they managed to get a large proportion of their people involved in, or... Read more
Gregory VII won his battle, but lost the war. Joseph Strayer ( On the Medieval Origins of the Modern State (Princeton Classic Editions) ) notes that “by separating itself so clearly from lay governments, the Church unwittingly sharpened concepts about the nature of secular authority. Definitions and arguments might vary, but the most ardent Gregorian had to admit that the Church could not perform all political functions, that lay rulers were necessary and had a sphere in which they should... Read more
Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil : “Philosophers . . . have wanted to furnish the rational ground of morality – and every philosopher hitherto has believed he has furnished this rational ground; morality itse,f however, was taken as a ‘given.’ . . . it is precisely because they were ill informed and not even very inquisitive about other peoples, ages and former times, that they did not so much catch sight of the real problems of morality – for... Read more
A pregnant paragraph from Gellner. He discusses the challenges of specialized education in traditional societies, where specialists are “viewed ambivalently”: “In the end, modern society resolves this conundrum by turning everyone into a cleric, by turning this potentially universal class into an effectively universal one, by ensuring that everyone without exception is taught by it, that exo-education becomes the universal norm, and that no one culturally speaking, shaves himself. Modern society is one in which no sub-community, below the size... Read more
Gellner provides a stimulating description of the interconnection of economic, political, cultural, and intellectual components of “industrial society,” which for him is a virtual equivalent of “modern society.” He begins with the Weberian description of modern society as a society organized by principles of “rationality,” by which he means,first, “coherence or consistency, the like treatment of like cases, regularity,” which is manifested both in bureaucratic government and in laboratory sciences, and, second, “efficiency, the cool rational selection of the best... Read more
Specialization and division of labor is often seen as one of the marks of modern society. Ernest Gellner ( Nations and Nationalism (New Perspectives on the Past) ) notes that the situation is more complicated. There are, he observes, specialists in complex agrarian societies (like medieval Europe), scholastics of great sophistication with a high degree of specialized training. In a sense, he says, they were even more specialized than modern specialists. In modern societies, “the distance between specialists is far... Read more
God’s work in and with Israel is the pattern and prototype for His work in and with all nations. How far can we press the analogy? Babel unified the nations but they were dispersed. Yahweh chose Abram to launch a counter-Babel movement, and over the next half-millennium slowly, achingly slowly, established Israel as a nation in a land. Israel herself was soon broken in two, and eventually shattered into pieces and scattered to the four winds, the empires of late... Read more
John 1:14: The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God doesn’t need the incarnation any more than He needs the world. He would be the same infinitely joyful, infinitely lively and infinitely satisfied God if we had never existed and if Jesus had never been born. God doesn’t need the incarnation, but the incarnation is not alien to God. God is boundlessly good, with a goodness that is infinite love. He is a ring of self-giving love from Father... Read more
Leithart
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