Justification in development

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

A 2010 dissertation by David C. Fink traces the “confessionalization” of the Protestant doctrine of justification. Fink summarizes his work in this abstract: “This dissertation lays the groundwork for a reevaluation of early Protestant understandings of salvation in the sixteenth century by tracing the emergence of the confessional formulation of the doctrine of justification by faith from the perspective of the history of biblical interpretation. In the Introduction, the author argues that the diversity of first-generation evangelical and Protestant teaching... Read more

Vestigia trinitatis

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Creation science advocate Henry Morris has some interesting Trinitarian speculations at the beginning of his The Biblical Basis for Modern Science . Reflecting on Romans 1, he insists that what is revealed in creation is not just “deity” but specifically the “godhead,” which he interprets as “Trinity”: “Not only does the creation testify concerning God’s eternal power, but our text also indicates that it speaks plainly of ‘his Godhead.’ This term has always been associated by theologians with the Trinity.... Read more

Seuss from the womb

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

David Brooks writes in a recent New Yorker piece: “Fetuses who have been read ‘The Cat in the Hat’ while in the womb suck rhythmically when they hear it again after birth, because they recognize the rhythm of the poetry.” Read more

Economic Trinity

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

BB Warfield points out that the church’s confession of the Trinity is embedded in the church’s conviction that God Himself had appeared as Jesus: “It was in the coming of the Son of God in the likeness of sinful flesh to offer Himself a sacrifice for sin; and in the coming of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, that the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead was once for... Read more

Cosmic Spirit

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Bavinck again on the Spirit’s role in creation: “At the beginning that Spirit moved upon the face of the waters (Gen. 1:2), and He remains active in all that was created.” He expands the point this way: “By that Spirit God garnishes the heavens (Job 26:13), renews the face of the earth (Ps. 104:30), gives life to man (Job 33:4), maintains the breath in man’s nostrils (Job 27:3), gives him understanding and wisdom (Job 32:8), and also causes the grass... Read more

Triune Identity

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Bavinck, pre-channeling Jenson: “What the Christian goes on to confess about that God is not summarized by him in a number of abstract terms, but is described, rather, as a series of deeds done by God in the past, in the present, and to be done in the future. It is the deeds, the miracles, of God which constitute the confession of the Christian.” And: “For the people of Israel, too, the revelation of the oneness of God was desperately... Read more

Net Delusion

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In a recent piece in The New Yorker , Malcolm Gladwell questioned whether Twitter and similar technologies will have the political efects that many presume. Now Evgeny Morozov raises the same question in a book-length treatment ( The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom ). According to the Economist reviewer, Morozov questions the claim that Twitter was key in the Iranian uprising during the summer of 2009. At the time, where were only 60 Twitter accounts active in... Read more

Subject/Object

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In an essay on the philosophical significance of modern science, Heidegger insists that Descartes did not “subjectivize” knowledge or metaphysics with his cogito . Much more the opposite, since Descartes was guided, Heidegger says, by the prior conviction that mathematics provided both a fundamental ontology and a fundamental epistemology. Rather than “subjectivizing” knowledge, Descartes introduced a revolution in the meaning of “subject” and “object.” (more…) Read more

Individualization descending

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

Foucault, from Discipline and Punish : “The more on possesses power or privilege [in the premodern world], the more one is marked as an individual, by rituals, written accounts or visual reproductions. The ‘name’ and the genealogy that situate one within a kinship group, the performance of deeds that demonstrate superior strength and which are immortalized in literary accounts, the ceremonies that mark the power relations in their very ordering, the monuments or donations that bring survival after death, the... Read more

Modernity and Sacrality

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:41 pm By Peter Leithart

In a post several years ago ( http://www.leithart.com/archives/002185.php ) I summarized Foucault’s thoughts on the “architecture of control. It didn’t occur to me at the time that there are intriguing similarities between the process that Foucault describes and the organization of sacred space in antique religious. Perhaps it’s no more than a distant analogy, but perhaps it’s further evidence of Hamann’s thesis that modern civilization is “Pharisaical.” Read more