Franciscan modernity

Last updated on: December 1, 2011 at 1:38 pm By Peter Leithart

Like many scholars, Louis Dumont ( Essays on Individualism ) traces the development of modern conceptions of social order, individualism, and politics to Ockham: Ockham denied that general terms have any reality: “Ockham goes so far in his polemics against the Pope as to deny that there is really anything like the ‘Franciscan Order’: there are only Franciscan monks scattered through Europe.” As a result, he insists that there is “no natural law deduced from an ideal order of things”... Read more

Free enterprise?

Last updated on: December 1, 2011 at 10:49 am By Peter Leithart

“For centuries England has relied on protection, has carried it to extremes and has obtained satisfactory results from it. There is no doubt that it is to this system that it owes its present strength. After two centuries, England has found it convenient to adopt free trade because it thinks that protection can no longer offer it anything. Very well then, Gentlemen, my knowledge of our country leads me to believe that within 200 years, when America has gotten out... Read more

Actualizing Spirit

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 3:02 pm By Peter Leithart

In his epistle to Serapion, Athanasius gives his most extensive consideration to pneumatology. As in his debates with Arians, Athanasius consistently focuses attention back to the pattern of biblical language, what Anatolios calls the “intertextual scriptural characterizations of Father, Son and Spirit.” For instance: We are made “sons” when we receive the Spirit, and therefore the Spirit is the “one who actualizes our adoption into Christ.” The Father is light, and the Son is the radiance of His glory; the... Read more

Security

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 2:49 pm By Peter Leithart

Athanasius believes that human beings are inherently unstable, just because they are creatures. For Athanasius, the stability of salvation rests, Anatolios argues, in the inner-Trinitarian life of giving and receiving. Explaining the “anointing” of Psalm 45 as an anointing of the Son by the Spirit, Athanasius argues as follows (the wording is from Anatolios): “Salvation is definitively secured when there is a perfect communication between the divine giving of the Spirit and the human receiving of the Spirit, as happens... Read more

Homoousios

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 2:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Anatiolios offers this explanation of Athanasius’ defense of homoousios : “the meaning of the Nicene homoousios is contained in its function as a guide to a certain way of reading Scripture. An immediate hermeneutical consequence of this principle is that efforts to understand this term primarily by recourse to secular usages of ousia and cognate terms are misguided. Neither the council fathers of Nicea nor Athanasius himself were working with any determinate technical sense of ousia or homoousios . Moreover,... Read more

Back to Origen

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 2:31 pm By Peter Leithart

By insisting that “Creator” is a name intrinsic to God’s essence, Athanasius steps back into the problems from which Arianism arose in the first place. Anatolios notes that the debates about “Origen’s speculation that the title ‘Almighty,’ as a designation of God’s eternal being, implies that there was always a world over which God was ‘Almighty’” led to a reaction that emphasized “the absolute priority of the Unbegotten God over against a world that had a punctiliar origin ‘from nothing.’”... Read more

Triune sovereignty

Last updated on: November 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm By Peter Leithart

Khaled Anatolios points out in his Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine that Athanasius charges that the Arians cannot truly honor God as Creator. The reasoning is: “If the Word is Creator and the Word is extrinsice to the divine essence, then the creative energy of God is extrinsic to the divine essence and God cannot claim the title ‘Creator’ as properly his own. To the exact extent that the creative Son is external to the divine... Read more

Living God

Last updated on: November 29, 2011 at 4:04 pm By Peter Leithart

Land of Pharaohs and pyramids, Egypt is about stasis. Israel leaves Egypt and builds a mobile sanctuary. They don’t even remain camped at the Mountain of theophany. They remain the people of Abraham, called ahead to a land they haven’t yet seen. Because Yahweh is a living God. Read more

Payback

Last updated on: November 29, 2011 at 11:00 am By Peter Leithart

By looking for the sources of biblical notions of kipper in texts dealing with bloodguilt for murder, Feder concludes that blood serves as a compensation for the damage done by sin. Sin is conceived as a debt, and the blood of sacrifice is payment for the debt. To explain the logic of the lex talionis for murder, he uses Marx’s notion of “exchange value,” he suggests that “blood retaliation results in an abstraction of the value of the murdered party’s... Read more

Covering and Lifting the face

Last updated on: November 29, 2011 at 9:51 am By Peter Leithart

In discussing “the only non-cultic text with a seemingly concrete object for kipper (Genesis 32:20), Feder argues that kapar doesn’t mean “cover” and he takes the common view that panayv doesn’t mean “his face.” Jacob does not send a gift to “cover” Esau’s “face.” Feder’s analysis of the passage, though, fits neatly into that interpretation. He points out that “face” is used four times in the text: “I will propitiate his anger [cover his face] with this gift that goes... Read more