Explaining the numerological structure of Psalm 72, C. J. Labuschagne points out that the Psalm has 17 verses and adds, “The 17-word doxology, together with its 2-word conclusion . . . ‘Amen, Amen’ (vs. 18-19), brings the total number of words of the entire poem up to 156 (6 x 26), which was obviously consciously designed. The numerical structure shows that the 1-word heading and the 5-word editorial note (v. 20) do not play any role at all in the numerical structure of the... Read more
Ross Douthat argues that the cultural and religious diversity of Europe and the US is an enemy of democracy: “mass immigration and cultural fragmentation have brought authoritarian temptations back to life.” What to do? Douthat suggests that: The cause of liberal order might be better served by leaders who took a slightly more imperial perspective—not in the sense of imposing policy at sword point, but in the sense of realizing that their societies are so diverse as to require a... Read more
Charles Taylor (Modern Social Imaginaries) observes that one of the great boasts of modernization has been to pacify war-mongering noblemen—to turn swords, if not to ploughshares, at least to shares: “the transition to the commercial stage was understood as having effected the great internal pacification of modern states. This society dethroned war as the highest human activity and put in its place production. It was hostile to the older codes of warrior honor, and it tended toward a certain leveling.”... Read more
Charles Taylor’s Modern Social Imaginaries examines fundamental features of the modern social imaginary, the “ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations.” The transition to the modern social imaginary involved a “great disembedding” from the cosmic and social hierarchies that were once imagined as the frame for individual and social... Read more
In an essay on von Balthasar’s ontology of generosity (in Ordering Love), David L. Schindler calls attention to the dualities we often invoke in “accounting for our experience”: “God and the world; the order of reality and the order of knowing; the soul, or mind, and the body; the self as individual and the self as social; rights and duties; the private and the public; state and society; the human and the subhuman; object (or objective) and subject (or subjective);... Read more
Tight accommodations, high prices, delays and cancellations, abysmal customer service. Nearly everything is wrong with American airline companies. In Europe, by contrast, fares are lower and service is better. Even a brief 1 1/2 hour flight has time for a quick sandwich, a fair sight better than a packet of mini-pretzels. You’d think that some air carrier in the US would step up and make life a bit less miserable. The fact that no one does suggests that the problem... Read more
In an essay on the “limits of the state,” Timothy Mitchell tests several theories of the state and finds them wanting. Shortly after World War II, American political scientists generally abandoned the concept of the state “as a concept too vague and too narrow to be the basis of a general science of politics.” In place of “state,” political scientists spoke of “political systems.” The change of vocabulary didn’t solve the theoretical problems and, after the late 1970s, theory swung... Read more
Revisiting William Cavanaugh’s devastating 2009 The Myth of Religious Violence. The myth of Cavanaugh’s title is a well-known one. According to the myth, religion is a distinct sphere of human life and practice from the rest of human social life, a universal impulse in human beings, and is dogmatic, private, and interior. Since the early modern period, it has been widely believed that because religion is irrational, absolutist, divisive it has a peculiar propensity toward violence. Enduring the horrors of... Read more
The Sam Wanamker Playhouse, a Jacobean theater in the Globe complex in London, seats 340 in three tiers, tightly crowded on backless benches. During performances, the stage is lit by candles burning from six chandeliers. Actors enter and exit within inches of the audience. During Othello a few weeks ago, I watched Iago choke the life out of Roderigo a foot away from me; I was close enough to intervene, but didn’t. It’s hard to imagine where one can have... Read more
We Americans pride ourselves on our religious freedom absolutism. Officially, the U.S. permits all religious expression and prohibits none. In reality, the situation is more complicated, since the scope of “religious expression” has to be negotiated by American courts. Polygamy isn’t protected religious practice, for instance, and a Presidential oath on the Bible does not count as an establishment of religion. Even in the secularized West, the U.S. church-state settlement is hardly universal. Forty-two countries around the globe have blasphemy... Read more
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