Modern Art

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

A few quick takes from Daniel Siedell’s excellent God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Cultural Exegesis) : After pointing out that Eastern Christians prefer the flatness of icons to the realistic perspective of Western art, Siedell concludes that this should “remind us that flatness [in Eastern Christian or modern art] is not by itself nihilistic, atheistic, or otherwise anti-Christian . . . . Modernist art is often dismissed by Christian commentators because it looks like it... Read more

Dangerous toys

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

Rose again, criticizing the postmodern assault on reason: “The decision by the intellectuals that reason itself has ruined modern life, and should be dethroned and banned in the name of its silenced others, is comparable to the decision to stop small children, girls and boys, from playing with guns, pugnacious video games, or any violent toys.” She argues that this “brutally sincere, enlightened probity” doesn’t actually stop war and aggression, but aggravates them: “This decision evinces loss of trust in... Read more

Trinitarian love

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

Toward the end of Love’s Work , Rose offers a quasi-Augustinian account of love: ” L’amour se revele en retirer . If the Lover retires too far, the light of love is extinguished and the Beloved dies; if the Lover approaches too near the Beloved, she is effaced by the love and ceases to have an independent existence. The Lovers must leave a distance, a boundary, for love: then they approach and retire so that love may suspire. This may... Read more

Violence deeper than violence

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

Of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas, Gillian Rose wrote, “The separation in their work of the lesson of love or perficient commandment from the actualities of law or coercion suffuses their ethics with an originary violence that has been borrowed from the political modernity which they refuse to historicize.” That opens several pathways for further reflection: (more…) Read more

Analogy of being

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

David Hart ( In the Aftermath: Provocations and Laments ) explains the analogy of being by pointing to the difference between God (whose essence is existence) and us (whose essence in no way implies existence, and who do not even possess our essence, since we become “by losing what we have been”). He notes the “delightful consequence”: “If it is the wholly fortuitous synthesis of essence and existence within us, in becoming, that constitutes our analogy to the perfect identity... Read more

Against the Priests

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Jesus castigates corrupt priests and scribes for oppressing the people of God. So does Luther. So do the leaders of the Enlightenment. Shouldn’t we at least give the last of these credit for getting something fundamentally right? Read more

Constantinian media

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:49 pm By Peter Leithart

Miami priest Alberto Cutie is found in an illicit sexual relationship. A few days later he’s on CBS “Early Show” confessing and explaining what happened. Did his bishop approve the media appearance? “Constantinianism” is, in Yoder’s terms, the church’s peace with the world; as RR Reno has explained Hauerwas, the protest against Constantinianism is a protest against everything that makes the church weightless and invisible. It’s a protest worth making, but it shouldn’t be made only against the church’s relation... Read more

Doing what I do not wish

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

Romans 7 is about the law, and the effects that the law has on someone (Paul) who is living in the flesh. When the law comes, it divided Paul into two, like a sacrifice, killing him and leaving him desperate for new life, which he found in Christ and His Spirit (8:1-4). If Paul is talking about the effect of Torah on people living in the flesh, how is it that so many Christians find that Romans 7 describes their... Read more

Baptismal meditation

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

Matthew 23: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! This is a surprising way for Jesus to talk about Himself and His relation to Jerusalem. At the end of a chapter of vigorous denunciation, Jesus would suddenly turns all sentimental over the city that, by His own... Read more

Paul and the Law

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

Jacob Taubes ( The Political Theology of Paul (Cultural Memory in the Present) ) notes that Paul’s teaching on law is directed not only to Pharisaical and Jewish opponents, but part of a dialog with his whole Mediterranean environment: “the concept of law . . . is a compromise formula for the Imperium Romanum. All of these different religious groups, especially the most difficult one, the Jews, who of course did not participate in the cult of the emperor but... Read more