Ad litteram

Last updated on: October 29, 2011 at 8:21 am By Peter Leithart

Does it matter whether we say the events recorded in the Bible happened? Couldn’t we draw the same “lessons” regardless? Not if one of the “lessons” has to do with the pattern of God’s action in history. Whether tropological or allegorical, “timeless” and ahistorical interpretations neutralize the text. Take the example of Revelation. Most scholars today insists that we should not try to tie the images of the book to actual historical events. Revelation instead depicts the realities underlying all... Read more

The Multitude

Last updated on: October 29, 2011 at 5:30 am By Peter Leithart

Many have commented on the lack of focus in the “Occupy X” movement that has spread throughout the world. That’s not surprising, though, if we recognize that the movement is taking its theoretical cues (such as they be) from writers like Hardt and Negri. If, as they argue, we have moved beyond the world of empires into the world of ubiquitous Empire , if Empire is everything and everywhere, then every opposition to anything is by definition opposition to Empire.... Read more

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 4:36 pm By Peter Leithart

Hobbes, Leviathan : “The nature of Power is in this point, like to Fame, increasing as it proceeds; or like the motion of heavy bodies, which the further they go, make still the more haste . . . . So that in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death. And the cause of this, is not alwayes that a man hopes... Read more

Postcolonial/Poststructural

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 12:58 pm By Peter Leithart

Homi Bhabha (in an essay in Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies ) sees the connection clearly: “My growing conviction has been that the encounters and negotiations of differential meanings and values within ‘colonial’ textuality, its governmental discourses and cultural practices, have enacted avant la lettre , many of the problematics of signification and judgment that have become current in contemporary theory – aporia, ambivalence, indeterminacy, the question of discursive closure, the threat to agency,... Read more

In Christ

Last updated on: October 28, 2011 at 11:30 am By Peter Leithart

In his commentary on 2 Corinthians ( The New American Commentary Volume 29 – 2 Corinthians ), David Garland asks what “in Christ” means in 5:17, and answers: “This phrase, ‘in Christ,’ can mean several things that are not mutually exclusive: that one belongs to Christ, that one lives in the sphere of Christ’s power, that one is united with Christ, or that one is part of the body of Christ, the believing community. Paul’s assumption is that being in... Read more

Corpus mysticum

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 12:30 pm By Peter Leithart

It’s remarkable how often de Lubacian themes come up in political discussions nowadays. Kahn: In calling citizens to sacrifice, “Political rhetoric affirms that in the life of the nation, we never die. We are assured of a kind of secular resurrection: he who believes in the nation shall never die. Calling it secular, however, only refers to its institutional form. In itself, it is a form of faith as deep as that of any religion. Political rhetoric is the contemporary... Read more

Theology of the child

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 11:00 am By Peter Leithart

As I suspect, it always comes back to baptism, infant baptism in particular. Kahn: “Liberalism has never produced an adequate explanation of the family, because we cannot understand children” without the framing assumptions of liberalism – its assumption that the individual is the primary unit of explanation and its division between public and private. Liberalism “cannot settle whether the state should protect the child from the coercive influences of his or her family, or whether the private family should be... Read more

Pornographic romance

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 10:37 am By Peter Leithart

Kahn: “No great insight is required to see the movement toward the pornographic in the representations of romance, or the move toward romance in the genre of the pornographic. This is the great secret inside the romantic: romantic lovers are coconspirators in the pornographic moment. The internalization of the pornographic moment is central to the contemporary imagination of the romantic. This is not sexuality domesticated into family and children, but the claim of completion outside of time and language. This... Read more

Erotic politics

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 9:22 am By Peter Leithart

Kahn again, using the story of Abraham to discuss the erotic foundations of both family and political order: “The Abraham story . . . tells us that meanings must be borne directly on the body. The covenant requires circumcision . . . . The flesh must bear the idea; it must appear as a text already named. Instead of man naming the products of creation, man himself becomes a name. This particular mark on the flesh is singled out because... Read more

Clash of globalizations

Last updated on: October 27, 2011 at 9:01 am By Peter Leithart

Kahn again: “We simultaneously affirm an international legal order of human rights; a global order of sovereign states; and a single market that knows no geographic bounds. These are the perspectives of reason, will, and desire. Each can make a global claim, geographically and conceptually. We are replicating at the international level just those conflicts of faculties, values, and perspectives that we have been managing in our conceptions of domestic order since the modern nation-state emerged as a product of... Read more