Gastronomic epistemology

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Lisa Heldke writes, “For theories like Descartes’ [which] conceive of my body as an external appendage to my mind, and see its role in inquiry as merely to provide a set of (fairly reliable) sensory data on which my reasoning faculty then operates to produce objects of knowledge. But growing and cooking food are important counterexamples to this view; they are activities in which bodily perceptions are more than meter reading which must be scrutinized by reason. The knowing involved... Read more

Transubstantiation and humiliation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Kereszty acknowledges that recent theologians have objected to the “reification” of Christ’s presence in some scholastic theology: “They insist that the sacraments are a personal encounter between human beings and Jesus Christ himself.” Talk of a change in the elements will “deprive the Eucharist of any intelligibility and distort Jesus’ personal presence into a quasi-materialistic ‘simple being there.’” Kereszty doesn’t consider these objects wholly unfounded, and admits that sticking with the New Testament means seeings “sacraments in a personalist perspective:... Read more

Why music?

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Listen to the first four minutes of the first movement (Andante grave) of Prokofiev’s Cello Sonata in C Major, and ask yourself: Woudln’t you be content if these four minutes summed up the story of your life? Read more

Medieval Degeneration

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:10 am By Peter Leithart

In his Wedding Feast of the Lamb , Roch Kereszty briefly summarizes some of the ways that the Eucharist degenerated in the late medieval period: “Instead of stressing the building up of Christ’s body the church as the ultimate effect of the Eucharist, the Late Middle Ages saw the Eucharist primarily as spiritual nourishment, healing, and consolation. The proliferation and multiplication of Mass stipends necessitated reflection on the relationship of the one sacrifice of the cross and the many sacrifices... Read more

Arguments from Prophecy

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

Faustus complained that arguments from prophecy led only to vicious circles. ”Believe in Jesus because of the prophets, he imagines a Christian telling a pagan. ”I don’t believe the Hebrew prophets,” the pagan replies. ”But Jesus endorses the Hebrew prophets,” the Christian rejoins. Laughing, the pagan turns away. Augustine disagreed. Prophecies were persuasive because one could see the fulfillment. We might expect Augustine to launch into a detailed analysis of how the prophecies of the Old Testament were fulfilled in... Read more

Wars of Decontamination

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

Following the lead of Natalie Zemon Davis, Mack Holt writes that the French “Wars of Religion” were truly religious wars, but then adds that “religion” has to be understood in a sixteenth century sense. He denies that “three generations of French men and women were willing to fight and die over differences of religious doctrine, whether it was over how to get to heaven or over what actually transpired during the celebration of mass.” Religion at that time should be... Read more

Canonization and charism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

Weber argued that “Most, though not all, canonical sacred collections became officially established against secular or religiously offensive augmentations as a consequence of a struggle between various competing groups and prophecies for the control of the community.” Christianity fixed its canon, he argued, “because of the threat to the piety of the petty-citizen masses from the intellectual salvation doctrine of the Gnosticism.” Weber’s view of canonization rests on his more basic contrast of charisma and consolidation, which relies (as Milbank... Read more

Use of Argument

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

Austin Farrer commented, in an essay on CS Lewis’s apologetics: “though argument does not create conviction, the lack of it destroyed belief. What seems to be proved may not be embraced; but what no one shows the ability to defend is quickly abandoned. Rational argument does not create belief, but it maintains a climate in which belief may flourish.” Read more

Nationalism as Religion

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle claim that nationalism is a religion. In particular, American civil religion is a religion, sustained by violence and blood-letting, focused on the sacred “totem” of the American flag ( Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (Cambridge Cultural Social Studies) ). If so, why do we expend so much industry to deny that it’s a religion? What interests are served by the denial? In an article on the same theme, they... Read more

Catholic America

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

William Cavanugh notes ( The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict ): “although Jefferson was responsible for the complete separation of church and state in Virginia, Jefferson wrote in the language of medieval Christianity about the preservation of physical things associated with the creation of the declaration: ‘Small things may, perhaps, like the relics of saints, help to nourish our devotion to this holy bond of Union.’ Of the desk on which he drafted... Read more