Nature/Supernature

Last updated on: August 1, 2011 at 4:05 pm By Peter Leithart

Verhey has a nice discussion of the nature/supernatural distinction that locates the difference in eschatology. He points out, for starters, that “the regularities of the world we name as ‘natural laws” are not regularities of a self-contained machine but rather then ways God ordinarily works. As God acted freely and purposefully in creating the world, bringing things into existence and endowing them with causal powers of their own, so God acts freely and purposefully in sustaining the creation, sustaining things... Read more

Genetic determinism

Last updated on: August 1, 2011 at 3:47 pm By Peter Leithart

Ted Peters points out the duplicity of genetic determinism: “The growing myth of genetic determinism blows first in one direction: if we are programmed totally by our DAN< then what we think is human freedom is in fact a delusion. Then the myth blows the opposite way: if we can apply our best engineering technology to DNA, then we can gain control over nature and guide our own evolutionary future. The genes determine the future; we want to determine the... Read more

Mastering nature

Last updated on: August 1, 2011 at 3:44 pm By Peter Leithart

In his discussion of the “Baconian project” in his recent Nature and Altering It , Allen Verhey makes the common-sensical, but often ignored, observation that mastery of nature doesn’t necessarily mean improvement: “Knowledge, in Bacon’s view, is power over nature, and the myth is that mastery over nature inevitably brings human wellbeing in its train.” Despite the recognition that science and technology is sometimes folly, “the mythos persists, establishing an ethos of confidence in technology to remedy our problems, including... Read more

Greek Mythology

Last updated on: August 1, 2011 at 4:33 am By Peter Leithart

If there was any doubt before, it has become very clear in recent scholarship that Greek mythology is indebted to Ancient Near Eastern predecessors. The most massively detailed treatment of this point in recent years is ML West’s The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth , from which the following points are taken. We start with the obvious: In Mesopotamian, Ugaritic, Hittite, and Greek mythology, “the gods appear as a society of individuals, some... Read more

Eucharistic mediation

Last updated on: July 31, 2011 at 6:52 am By Peter Leithart

Philippians 3:7-8: Whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ. Because He was the very form of God, Jesus did not cling to equality with God. Because... Read more

Baptism meditation

Last updated on: July 31, 2011 at 6:23 am By Peter Leithart

Hebrews 12:7: God deals with you as with sons. One of the privileges of membership in the body of Christ, one of the privileges sealed and effected by baptism, is the privilege of double-fatherhood. Today in baptism, God the Father marks your son as His son; by his baptism, Ezekiel receives an enduring sign that He can call the heavenly Father his Father. Isn’t one father enough? No, it’s not. (more…) Read more

Descent of Poiesis

Last updated on: July 30, 2011 at 1:13 pm By Peter Leithart

In his introduction to Plato: Timaeus (Focus Philosophical Library) , Peter Kalkavage writes that Timaeus’ “likely story . . . depicts making, poiesis , as an activity that starts with the highest things and proceeds to the lower.” In that is contained all the pathology and pathos of Western philosophy and theology. If poiesis is a descent, then the move from mind to matter is a descent; the move from conception to execution is not fulfillment but failure; the move... Read more

Egyptomania

Last updated on: July 30, 2011 at 11:03 am By Peter Leithart

The purportedly Egyptian writings of Hermes Trismegistus, understood as an obscure historical figure in the time of Moses, played a crucial role in the Renaissance. Collected together in the Corpus Hermeticum, it was published in 1463 in a translation by Marsilio Ficino and reprinted 22 times over the following century and a half. In the work of Renaissance thinkers, it combined with neo-Platonic influences from Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus. Frances Yates, the most prominent historian of Renaissance Hermeticism, claims that... Read more

Aryans and Hellenists

Last updated on: July 30, 2011 at 9:27 am By Peter Leithart

Summarizing the work of Martin Bernal, Assmann says that “the Philhellenic movement in German Romanticism was inextricably combined with Judeophobia and Egyptophobia. This new image of Greece was instrumental in shaping a new image of Germany. The ‘Aryan myth’ had a big share in this retrospective self-modeling, along with Herder’s concepts of national genius and originality.” Gives one pause. Read more

Exodus and Antiquity

Last updated on: July 30, 2011 at 7:31 am By Peter Leithart

Reading the biblical account of the exodus, we think of it as a local conflict between Egypt and Israel, Yahweh v. Pharaoh and his gods. It was not. It was Yahweh’s massive intervention in the ancient world, and remade the whole religio-political landscape. So argues Egyptologist Jan Assmann ( Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism ). Assmann is no fan of monotheism, which, in his mind, breeds intolerance and violence. But he sees the decisive character... Read more