God is God

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

Paul Veyne ( When Our World Became Christian ) notes the radical difference between paganism and Christianity (which is calls a “masterpiece” and compares to a “best-seller” that revealed a “thitherto unsuspected sensibility”): “Augustus, following his victory over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium, had, as we know, settled his debt to Apollo by consecrating a sanctuary and a local cult to the god. The Christogram that appeared on the shields of Constantine’s army indicated that victory had been won thanks... Read more

Two-Handed Engine again

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

Ahh, but Mark Womack argues that the whole point of Milton’s image of the “two-handed engine” is to leave us uncertain about its specific referent: “The need to define ‘two-handed engine’ has put scholarly minds in a panic, producing a vast body of commentary ranging from the ingenious to the ludicrous. I submit that the panic exists not because critics do not understand the lines but because they do under-stand them . . . . Although no one can satisfactorily... Read more

Daredevils

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:51 pm By Peter Leithart

Stephen Booth writes, “Great works of art are daredevils. They flirt with disasters and, at the same time, they let you know they are married forever to particular, reliable order and purpose. They are, and seem often to work hard at being, always on the point of one or another kind of incoherence-always on the point of disintegrating and/or of integrating the very particulars they exclude-always and multifariously on the point of evoking suggestions of pertinent but syntactically impertinent auxiliary... Read more

Two-Handed Engine

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

Among the cruxes of Milton’s Lycidas is the image of the “two-handed” engine that the apostle Peter threatens against the false shepherds of the seventeenth-century church. Milton writes, “Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing sed, But that two-handed engine at the door, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.” In a 1947 article, E. S. de Beer thinks he figured it out, or figured it out as well as anyone could:... Read more

Sermon notes

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am By Peter Leithart

INTRODUCTION Godly, effective parenting is parenting molded by the Spirit. Effective parents are Pentecostal parents. What does that mean? THE TEXT “I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh . . . .” (Galatians 5:16-26). (more…) Read more

Emanation and Relation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm By Peter Leithart

In his lucid, concise Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham , Russell Friedman contrasts two different medieval accounts of personal distinction within the Trinity, one rooted in personal relations of opposition and the other rooted in relations of origin or “emanation.” He illustrates by discussing the “flashpoint” issue that divided Thomas and Bonaventure, the issue of the place of the Father in the Trinity. For Bonaventure, “the Father is the Father because he generates. The absolutely fundamental reason that... Read more

Hebrew Republic

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:43 pm By Peter Leithart

I didn’t find Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought as revolutionary as some of the blurbs indicate, but it is a very intriguing study. Contrary to the standard story of early modern political thought, Nelson argues that political science was shaped by writers who regarded “the Hebrew Bible as a political constitution, designed by God himself for the children of Israel,” so that “many of the central ideas we associate with the... Read more

Mosaic nation

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

A recent issue of the TLS reviews Bruce Feiler’s America’s Prophet: Moses and the American Story , a study of the influence of Moses on the American political imagination. Everyone from Tom Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and the other Founders to George M.-for-Moses (so described by the Independent ) Bush invoked the example of Moses. In the revolutionary era, Deuteronomy was the most-cited book of the Bible (which was far and away the most-cited book). Franklin and Jefferson collaborated on a... Read more

Barbie and Mainstreaming Porn

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:47 pm By Peter Leithart

The TLS reviewer of Natasha Walter’s recent Living Dolls notes how pornography “has entered mainstream culture to transform girls into animate versions of the sexist and sexy dolls they embrace in innocent delight.” Walter points to the effect of Barbie dolls on American girls. ”When girls aged five to eight played with a Barbie, and were then asked about their own body image, they reported more dissatisfaction and a greater desire to be thin than did girls who had either... Read more

RG Collingwood

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

Simon Blackburn has a somewhat surprisingly admiring review of a biography of RG Collingwood in a recent issue of TNR . Collingwood comes off as very contemporary, very stimulating. In what Blackburn calls a “succinct and perspicuous . . . statement of the public nature of the self,” Collingwood wrote, “The discovery of myself as a person is the discover that I can speak, and am thus a persona or speaker; in speaking I am both speaker and hearer; and... Read more