Earl R. Wasserman (Subtler Language) observes that “Until the end of the eighteenth century there was sufficient intellectual homogeneity for men to share certain assumptions. . . . In varying degrees . . . man accepted . . . the Christian interpretation of history, the sacramentalism of nature, the Great Chain of Being, the analogy of the various planes of creation, the conception of man as microcosm. . . . These were cosmic syntaxes in the public domain; and the... Read more
In an essay on Alexander Schmemann (in Ordering Love, 301-2), David L. Schindler observes that “Creaturely power begins in wonder and gratitude before the inherent beauty of the other. The power of creaturely being originates and consists primarily in the beauty of the Other: it is the attractiveness of the Other become effective in me (the self).” It is a “staggering” truth: “Creaturely power begins in and presupposes all along the way precisely ‘littleness’ . . . , but the... Read more
Mona Charen states the obvious: “There are good and bad arguments against immigration.” In today’s overheated political climate, though, the obvious gets drowned by sensational horrors. The horrors are truly horrific, but they aren’t typical. Charen writes, “I am sympathetic to some restrictionist points, but smearing immigrants as out-of-control criminals is shameful. High rates of immigration, legal and illegal, are not associated with spikes in crime. In our recent history, between 1990 and 2013, the illegal immigrant population in the... Read more
It’s time for “Bluexit,” argues Kevin Baker at The New Republic, a blue-state secession. Here’s the thesis: Blues fund most of the federal government, and are responsible for most of the economic output of the country. Red states receive vastly more federal aid than they pay in, and then they have the temerity to complain about the size of federal government and claim victim status. This is not a winning combination for Blue states, and Baker urges his fellow Blue... Read more
Margo Todd’s The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland is an extraordinarily rich study. One brief note will serve to illustrate. “A visitor to an early seventeenth-century Scottish church had no difficulty seeing the social structure of the community in the arrangement of seats.” The principle was simple: The best folk got the best, most prominent seats. At Kirkwall, the elders insisted that the church retain socially segregated seating to avoid “great incivility and undecentness of the baser sort... Read more
The Chronicler’s description of the free-standing cherubim in the temple’s Most Holy Place (2 Chronicles 3:10–13) is delightfully repetitive and complicated. The repetition is more obvious in the Hebrew, so I provide a woodenly literal translation: A. And he made in the house of the holy of holies two cherubim, sculpted work, and he overlaid them with gold, v. 10 B. Now the wings of the cherubim were twenty cubits, v. 11a C. The wing of the one was five... Read more
Joel Harrington and Helmut Walser Smith summarize the interests of research into confessionalization under three headings: “Research on confessional identity has focused on three processes: the construction of confessional identity as part of early modern state building; the internalization of confessional identity as part of the larger process of the constitution of subjects and citizens; and, in the final period, the instrumentalization of confessional identity and confessional history in the service of a renewed confessionalization (in the case of Catholics)... Read more
Imagine that you have just been given a new technology that allows you to respond almost instantaneously to critics and opponents. Imagine too that you find yourself in a highly charged situation where attacks and counter-attacks are a regular occurrence. The temptation to use the technology to counter-punch is quite strong, and the temptation to counter-punch in the heat of the moment stronger. I am not talking about President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. I’m talking about the printing press and... Read more
The late William J. Stuntz spent his life studying the American criminal justice system. In a 2001 article on our “pathological politics of criminal law,” he lays out the institutional barriers to the fundamental reform that we need. Most descriptions and prescriptions for criminal justice reform assume that criminal law drives punishment. That’s just the premise that prevents us from making headway, in Stuntz’s view: “It would be closer to the truth to say that criminal punishment drives criminal law.... Read more
The “second Reformation” introduced Reformed liturgy and teaching into Lutheran Germany. This was seen by some as a continuation of the Reformation and a purgation of Catholic remnants. The effort to carry on “further reformation” led to disputes with Lutherans. As Bodo Nischan has put it, the hottest debate in German Protestantism in the late 16th century “was the very meaning of the Reformation itself” (“Second Reformation”). One of hot button issues was the fractio panis, the breaking of the... Read more
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