Theoretical words

Last updated on: December 6, 2011 at 9:56 am By Peter Leithart

Eric Gregory offers this wise counsel: “Words do not work the same way in normative theorizing as they do in historical inquiry. It is enough that ‘Donatist,’ ‘Pelagian,’ and “Manichean’ exist as live options in moral, political, and religious discourse – even if Augustine or later storytellers invented them in order to coordinate doctrine with their experience of God in Christian faith and practice. These words, and the narrative scripts they signify, provide broad classifications for a range of commitments.”... Read more

Politics of love

Last updated on: December 6, 2011 at 9:51 am By Peter Leithart

Eric Gregory’s Politics & the Order of Love is challenging, witty, beautifully written. He interrogates various versions of political Augustinianism, especially Augustinianism in relation to liberal order – the Augustinian realism of Niebuhr, a Rawlsian Augustinian procedural liberalism, a virtue-oriented Augustinianism from Elshtain and O’Donovan, and an anti-liberal Augustinianism from Milbank & Co. Gregory’s book aims to defend “Augustinian civic liberalism, with its emphasis on love and civic responsibility,” which he claims “succeeds in exposing weaknesses in Niehburianism, Rawlsianism, and... Read more

Bridal incarnation

Last updated on: December 6, 2011 at 5:43 am By Peter Leithart

It’s often noted, but during this Advent the point struck home with particular force: John begins his gospel with the incarnational gospel that the “Word became flesh and tabernacled ( skenoo ) among us.” God the Word descends from heaven to pitch His tent with men. But that incarnational descent is not, in a sense, completed unti the revelation of the bride. The same verb ( skenoo ) appears again in Revelation 21:3: “Behold the tent of God with men,... Read more

Joyful understanding

Last updated on: December 6, 2011 at 5:36 am By Peter Leithart

When Israel gathers to hear the book of Moses read, the people begin to weep. Nehemiah exhorts them, “This day is holy to Yahweh your God; do not mourn or weep.” Ezra then reads the law, the Levites explain it, and the people go out for a “great rejoicing,” because “they understood the words which had been made known to them” (Nehemiah 8:9-12). Understanding produces joy. How often do pastors, or parents, implicitly assume that if people really understood what... Read more

Cathopolitics

Last updated on: December 5, 2011 at 5:34 pm By Peter Leithart

Figgis notes that all the great questions of political theory from the late middle ages to Locke and beyond were first formulated with reference to the church: “Whatever we may think now, there is no doubt that such words as king, republic, aristocracy, and the maxims of the civil law, were then regarded as applicable to the concerns and constitution of the Church.” Comparison of Locke to Gerson shows “how great is the debt of the politicians to the ecclesiastics.”... Read more

Political ecclesiology

Last updated on: December 5, 2011 at 4:59 pm By Peter Leithart

Figgis again, speaking of the theory of the conciliarist movement: “Speculation on the possible power of the Council, as the true depositary of sovereignty within the Church, drove the thinkers to treat the Church definitely as one of a class, political societies. If it cannot be said that the thought was new, that the Church was a political society, it was certainly developed by a situation which compelled men to consider its constitution. Moreover since the constitution of the Church,... Read more

Alteration of money

Last updated on: December 5, 2011 at 1:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Figgis claims that the French Revolutionaries drew inspiration from Juan de Mariana’s endorsement of overthrowing tyrants, but the revolutionaries would have been wise to heed de Mariana’s arguments against fiat money. At the beginning of his treatise on the alteration of money, he writes: “At the time that there was a great shortage of money in Spain and the treasury was completely exhausted by long and drawn-out wars in many places and by many other problems, many ways to make... Read more

Politics as church history

Last updated on: December 5, 2011 at 1:22 pm By Peter Leithart

Figgis again: “when all reservations have been made, there can be little doubt that it is right to treat the growth of political ideas, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as a branch of ecclesiastical history. With a few exceptions religion or the interests of some religious body gave the motive for the political thought of the period; to protect the faith, or to defend the Church, or to secure the Reform, or to punish idolatry, or to stop the... Read more

Wycliffite politics

Last updated on: December 5, 2011 at 1:16 pm By Peter Leithart

Figgis has his Catholic prejudices, but he’s on to something in this summary of the political ecclesiology of Wyclif, forerunner of teh Reformation: “Scholastic in form, Wyclif’s writings are modern in spirit. His de Officio regis is the absolute assertion of the Divine Right of the King to disendow the Church. Indeed his stated theory is more Erastian than that of Erastus. His writings are a long-continued polemic against the political idea of the Church or rather the political claims... Read more

Eucharistic exhortation

Last updated on: December 4, 2011 at 7:30 am By Peter Leithart

1 Thessalonians 2:19: What is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Is it not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? Advent celebrates the coming of the Son of God in flesh two millennia ago. But this season is not merely a celebration of a past event, however. It is a pedagogy that trains us to hope eagerly for His future coming. But every week’s worship service is part of the same... Read more