Nature, Grace, Church

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

How does de Lubac’s interest in nature/grace fit into his ecclesiological concerns? It might seem that his effort to integrate nature and grace could support the juridical notion of the church expressed in Vatican I. Operating on a strict nature/supernatural distinction, one might see the church as an “invisible” body that has virtually nothing in common with “natural” societies. When the two are integrated, and nature is infused with supernature, the natural structures of society might be seen as perfected... Read more

One Church

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

James Carroll’s account of Constantine ( Constantine’s Sword ) is riddled with half-truths and distortions. He’s not nearly as bad as Dan Brown, but he’s bad. But the howler (thus far) is this: Christians had tried to work out how Jesus is God without coming to a consensus, but what had “eluded . . . finely tuned, passionate minds as variously engaged with the question as Irenaeus, Origen, and Arius – would now be imposed by imperial fiat. Unity would... Read more

Silver Linings

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:01 am By Peter Leithart

Obama may be just as dangerous as some of my friends say he is. He certainly will do all he can to re-secure abortion rights, advance gay rights, enact counter-productive legislation on health care. His goals are all the more worrisome given the executive powers he inherits from the Bush administration. I have no sympathy with his agenda. But it’s not all gloomy: (more…) Read more

Hamann and Hitler

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

Betz sharply, and rightly, dismisses Berlin’s suggestion that Hamann’s “irrationalism” is the deep source of National Socialism: “let is be stated at the outset that Hamann was a friend of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn; that he denounces the persecution of the Jews; that he called Judaism the ‘bodily mother of evangelical Christianity’; and that he passionately defended the election of Israel against what he considered to be the anti-Semitic implications of the natural religion of the Enlightenment .” He... Read more

Dark Sayings

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

Why does Hamann write so “darkly”? Betz suggests that in part “it should be seen as a calculated attempt to show up the Aufklarer , i.e., to show that they are not as bright as they think, indeed, to force upon them a confession of ignorance, in order that they might thereby be made more disposed to the light of faith they (in Hamann’s view) sorely lack.” That worked, and didn’t. Everyone who read Hamann commented on how difficult he... Read more

Test of manhood

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:56 pm By Peter Leithart

Lessing on Hamann: “His writings seem to be tests of manhood for those who claim to be polyhistorians. They truly require a little knowledge of everything.” This from John Betz’s After Enlightenment: Hamann as Post-Secular Visionary , fresh out from Wiley-Blackwell. Read more

Highly exalted

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

NT Wright explains the meaning of the exaltation of the Son (Philippians 2): “It is the affirmation, by God the Father, that the incarnation and death of Jesus really was the revelation of the divine love in action. In giving to Jesus the title kurios , and in granting him a share in that glory which, according to Isaiah, no one other than Israel’s God is allowed to share, God the Father is as it were endorsing that interpretation of... Read more

Numerological structure

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:09 am By Peter Leithart

The numerological structure of Philippians 2:1-2 is intriguingly complex. Verse 1 is explicitly structured by four conditional clauses, each introduced by “if” ( ei ). But this fourfold structure is crossed by a list of five nouns: paraklesis , persuasive address ( paramuthion ), koinonia , bowels, innards. And the first three conditional clauses hint at a Trinitarian structure: Christ is explicitly mentioned in the first, the Spirit in the third, and in between we have “persuasive address of love.”... Read more

Religious toleration

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

During the 1870s, Bismarck’s Germany embarked on a legislative program that aimed among other things at secularizing education and resulted in a religiously pluralist Germany. This might look like progress in liberty and toleration, but the whole process was driven by anti-Catholic hatred and prejudice, and by fear about clerical dominance of the state. It was a move expanding state power under the cover of the liberal goal of freedom. In December 1871, the “pulpit law” that made it illegal... Read more

Sanders and Borg on Jesus

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

Sanders’s work on Jesus is flawed by an odd adherence to conclusions the premises of which he rejects. In Jesus and Judaism he concludes that Jesus expected some kind of cataclysmic intervention by God in the future, yet also insists that he is suspending judgment about the form of intervention and its sequel (1985: 154). In the next paragraph, however, he says that scholars emphasize the present aspect of Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom in order to mute the “problem... Read more