Static God?

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Virginia Burrus offers a challenging feminist reading of the first of Athanasius’ Orations against the Arians in ‘Begotten, Not Made’: Conceiving Manhood in Late Antiquity (Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture) . Her attention to Athanasius’ sexually charged rhetoric reveals the underlying structure of Athanasius’ argument. Orthodoxy is linked with a) God the Father begetting (without feminine intervention) a Son of His own nature; b) bishops “begetting” faithful sons. Arius is illegitimate and feminized: a) theologically, his Father does not beget a... Read more

Proverbs 29:1-3

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:03 am By Peter Leithart

PROVERBS 29:1 This proverb deals with a man with a hardened neck. The combination of terms is often translated as “stiffnecked” and typically described Israel. They display their stiff necks when they erect the golden calf (Exodus 32:9; 33:3, 5; 34:9), and their stiffnecked response to the prophets led to the exile (2 Kings 17:14; Nehemiah 9:17). Moses exhorted them not to stiffen their necks but instead to circumcise the foreskin of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:16). Proverbs 29:1a is a... Read more

Dostoevsky, Comedian

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:53 pm By Peter Leithart

Dostoevsky is not usually thought of as a comic writer, but he was a great comedian and satirist. When Grandma shows up unexpectedly at the casino in The Gambler , the novel takes a sudden Woodhousean turn. Feodor Karamzov is disgusting, but hilariously so. His greatest comic creation was perhaps Karmazinov in Demons , a satire on Turgenev. Dostoevsky’s narrator describes the egoism at the heart of Karmazinov’s writing, his tendency to ignore the victims of suffering and concentrate instead... Read more

Intimidation and Anti-Jewish Polemic

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Lee Martin McDonald (in the afore-cited article) suggests that intimidation was one factor in sharpening Christian polemics against Judaism. Jews were, after all, vastly more numerous than Christians: “By the turn of the first century, those who counted themselves among the Christians were probably fewer than 100,000 throughout the Roman Empire, but at the same time the Jewish population was somewhere between six and seven million, which was approximately one seventh to one tenth of the entire population of the... Read more

Parted Ways?

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:05 am By Peter Leithart

Christians often operate on the assumption that the New Testament marked the end of interaction between Christians and Jews. Paul shakes the dust off his feet at Rome, quotes Isaiah 6, and that’s that. The danger that Christians might deconvert to Judaism was over as soon as the New Testament was written. The slightest reflection would show that this is myth not history. If Judaism were no longer a rival to the church in the second, third, and fourth centuries,... Read more

Jewish persecution

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

From Acts on through the church fathers, it was a commonplace among writers that the Jews were involved – sometimes leading, sometimes following – in persecuting the church. Judith Lieu ( Neither Jew Nor Greek?: Constructing Early Christianity (Academic Paperback) ) doubts the evidence. The charges are embedded within rhetorical flourishes that apparently robs them of probative value. Irenaeus, for instance, sees Jewish/Christian conflict as a fulfillment of a type: “Jacob took the blessings of Esau as the latter... Read more

Vineyard and bride

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:50 pm By Peter Leithart

Let us stipulate that the vineyard is the temple and the bride is Jerusalem. That clarifies two passages of the Song. “They made me caretaker of the vineyards, but I have not taken care of my own vineyard” (1:6). True enough; Jerusalem did not care for the temple-vineyard in her midst, but turned instead to the many vineyards (high places) scattered throughout the land. “Solomon had a vineyard at Ball-hamon; he entrusted the vineyard to caretakers; each one was to... Read more

Splendid Vices

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In Putting on Virtue: The Legacy of the Splendid Vices , Jennifer Herdt explores, among other things, the anxiety about hypocritical virtue in early modern ethical thought. How can virtue be acquired – “put on” – and still be sincere, authentic? How can virtue depend on external models of virtue, as in the imitatio Christi , without running the risk of being no more than splendid vices? How do I know that my virtues are not reducible to splendid vices?... Read more

State and nation

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

When assessing worries about American empire, some historical perspective is helpful. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper reminds us in Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference that “Throughout history, most people have lived in political units that did not pretend to represent a single people. Making state conform with nation is a recent phenomenon, neither fully carried out nor universally desired.” Further, the process of turning an empire into a nation-state can be brutal: “In the 1990s... Read more

Already

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:46 pm By Peter Leithart

If hope is directed to things that we don’t yet see or possess (and it necessarily is, Hebrews 11), how can what we also already possess what we hope for? There are a number of ways to answer that question, but Segundo Galilea puts it nicely in his Spirituality of Hope : “The project of this hope into the present generates confidence in God. The theological tradition called it confidence in the providence of God: God will provide us in... Read more