Il n’y a pas de hors-texte

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:44 pm By Peter Leithart

Hamann can repeat this Derridean scandal, quite literally. As Gwen Dickson puts it, “Hamann’s conception of language as speech as a ‘translation’ reveals that at the basis of his thinking there is no language-world dichotomy; language, after all, is part of the world, and moreover the ‘world’ or ‘reality’ or ‘things’ are somehow linguistically conceived, so that speech is not a first depiction or description or representation but a translation of something that already is a ‘text.’” That “somehow” is... Read more

The Body of the Universe

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

Athanasius insists that the Word is one, while creatures are many. He anticipates the Arian objection that there is also oneness in creation – one earth and one son. But the oneness of the creation is different from the oneness of the Word. Creatures are one “with respect to its own essence,” but no single creature is capable of functioning in isolation from the rest of creation: “none is of itself adequate and sufficient for the service and ministry entrusted... Read more

Humble God

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:44 pm By Peter Leithart

When the Arians claim that the Father made the Son to make the world, they imply that it is unworthy of God to be so directly involved in the details of the created world. Athanasius ( Orations Against the Arians ) sees that the Arian God is prissy, disdainful of making things and so handing the task to the Son. He cites Matthew 10:29 and 6:25-30 to argue that “if it is not unworthy of God to be provident even... Read more

System v. edification

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

Rorty: “Great systematic philosophers are constructive and offer arguments. Great edifying philosophers are reactive and offer satires, parodies, aphorisms. They know their work loses its point when they period they were reacting against is over. They are intentionally peripheral. Great systematic philosophers, like great scientists, build for eternity. Great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open... Read more

Isaiah 33

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:45 pm By Peter Leithart

Some scattered notes on Isaiah 33, the product of listening to students comment on the passage in exams throughout the week. 1) Verse 1 includes an interesting variation on the lex talionis. Destroyers will be destroyed, and the treacherous will be dealt with treacherously. But the justice that the Lord threatens is even more precise than this. The destroyer destroyed when he was not being destroyed, and the treacherous betrayed the faithful who did not betray them. Their punishment will... Read more

Medieval sacred/secular

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

Milbank points out in detail how the sacred/secular dualism was undermined in medieval life: “monasteries were also farms . . . the church saw to the upkeep of bridges which were at once crossing places and shrines to the Virgin . . . the laity often exercised economic, charitable, and festive functions in confraternities that were themselves units of the church as much as parishes, and therefore occupied not unambiguously secular space.” He adds that “the first freely shaped voluntary... Read more

Sadeian liberalism

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

Milbank, summarizing and critiquing the work of Pierre Manent, suggests that “there was, from Machiavelli through Hobbes to Montesquieu and Hegel, a bias toward the primacy of evil.” Honoring good was “the everyday unexceptional reality,” but not “the normative defining one.” Instead, what was considered defining was “the exceptional suspension of normality in the moment of crisis that reveals a deeper truth and on that basis makes founding civil gestures.” The truth is evident especially in “circumstances of pure anarchy... Read more

Liberalism

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:46 pm By Peter Leithart

In an essay in After Modernity? Milbank describes the anthropology underwriting liberal order: “Liberalism is peculiar and unlikely because it proceeds by inventing a wholly artificial human being who has never really existed, and then pretending that we are all instances of such a species. This is the pure individual, thought of in abstraction from his or her gender, birth, associations, beliefs, and also, crucially, in equal abstraction from the religious or philosophical beliefs of the observer as to whether... Read more

Sermon notes

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

INTRODUCTION Jesus is the new Elisha, forming an Israel in the midst of old Israel. That new Israel is supposed to be characterized by humility, brotherhood and brotherly correction, and forgiveness. THE TEXT “Then Peter came to Him and said, ‘Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom... Read more

New Adams

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

Jesus says that whatever the church binds on earth is bound in heaven. The judgments of the church are not merely human judgments but communications of divine judgment. From the perspective of the Old Testament, Jesus is telling the disciples that they have entered into the status of new Adams, with access to the tree of judgment, the wisdom to know good and evil. There is also an echo of the Babel story. The authority of the churches decisions depends... Read more