Hegel writes that the Trinity enables Christianity and especially Christian art to attain a concreteness impossible in Judaism and Islam: “When we state . . . of God thathe is simple One, the Supreme Being as such, we have thereby merely given utterance to a lifeless abstraction of the traditional understanding. Such a God, as He is thus not conceived in His concrete truth, can supply no content for art, least of all plastic art. Consequently neither the Jews nor... Read more
PROVERBS 27:12 As we have seen repeatedly in our study of Proverbs, wisdom is a kind of foresight, an ability to foretell the future, an ability to see down the road. The prudent or “crafty” ( arum ) man can see the evil ahead and does what he needs to do to avoid it. The prudent man is “cautious” and wants to know where he’s stepping before he takes the next step. By contrast, the simpleton doesn’t have the guile... Read more
Henri Pirenne, in his Economic and Social History of medieval Europe, describes the regulation of economic life in medieval towns during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Pirenne is admittedly old news, and perhaps more recent studies have corrected some of his claims. The town government had two main aims: “publicity of transactions and the suppression of middlemen.” Later, Pirenne adds that economic regulations in the towns were “governed by the spirit of control and by the principle of direct exchange... Read more
Ha-Joon Chang argues in Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism that highly developed economies impose unfair and hypocritical demands on developing economies. In particular, the nations that control the international trade and monetary agencies require that developing economies open their markets to imports, drop or lower tariffs, and basically structure their economies after the image of developed free-trade economies. This is unfair, Chang argues, because developing economies simply cannot compete. Koreans don’t have... Read more
A discussion this morning concerning the economic impact of the gospel got me to thinking about Byzantium. What kind of economic system did the Eastern Christian empire, with its centralized state and luxurious capital, have? I found some help in Angeliki Laiou and Cecile Morrison’s The Byzantine Economy. I include some quotations below, particularly on the question of the state regulation of Byzantium’s fabled markets: (more…) Read more
In his lovely book of meditations on art, New York City, 9/11, American culture, Japan, and Christianity ( Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture ), Makoto Fujimura tells the story of Sen no Rikyu, “the sixteenth-century tea master who is most responsible for the development of the art of tea.” Married to one of Francis Xavier’s early converts, Rikyu was deeply impressed when he sent with his wife to a Mass: “This experienced affirmed his vision for tea.... Read more
Toward the end of “On Seeking God,” Nicholas of Cusa has this to say: “when an artists seeks the face of a king in a block of wood, the artists rejects everything else that is limited except the face itself. For the artist sees in the wood, through the concept of faith, the face that the artist is seeking to observe as visibly present to the eye. For the face is future to the eye but present by faith to... Read more
Mary Douglas highlighted the analogies between body and social body in her work on Levitical defilements. Protecting the integrity and wholness of the individual body symbolized the aspirations of Israelite society for a whole and well-protected social body, without intrusions from outside or seepage from inside. At the same time, Douglas sees ethical interpretations of Levitical purity rules as a Hellenic intrusion into Judaism. But why? If the individual body is homologous with the social body, can’t it also be... Read more
Mary Douglas writes in Leviticus As Literature that the word translated as “swarming” or “creeping” should instead be translated as “teeming,” with its connotations of fertility. Israel is to avoid teeming things, Douglas argues, because Israel is to make a distinction between covenant and fertility. Israel is not to hate but to shun teeming things; they are to leave them be. This is initially counter-intuitive: The covenant promises fertility, and central to the covenant promise is the promise of abundant... Read more
Nazirites were separated to Yahweh’s service and devoted to His holy war. Priests too were “separated” ( nazir , Leviticus 22:2). But Israel as a whole was a nation of devoted warriors. That is the whole rationale for the laws of cleanliness, that the sons of Israel will be “nazired” from their uncleanness (Leviticus 15:31). Read more
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