Clock time

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

When we speak of “clock time” we tend to mean the natural movement of moments. But of course, the clock is a mechanical device, and its measurements of moments is purely conventional. It ignores natural seasonal variations in the length of daylight and night and generally, as Barbara Adam notes, operates “independently of the variations that were the mark of planetary cycles.” Adam sums the the social, political, and psychological effects. (The psychological effects are especially intriguing: You can feel... Read more

Markets and People, II

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

Reader Jay Horne writes in response to my earlier post quoting Charles Morris, “After working on mechanical trading systems for the past several years (and having some success), I would suggest that it is the lumpiness, the human factors, that exactly create the opportunity for success with a mathematical system. I believe Mr. Morris has it exactly backwards. And mathematics is too broad, we’re talking about repeatable, identifiable trades that have a statistical edge of some sort that can be... Read more

Moon to Sun

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

Barbara Adam ( Time ) summarizes the work of archaeoastronomists who have studied the astronomical design of ancient buildings around the world. She says, “Evidence from across the world suggests that the moon was the earliest planetary source of cultural forms of time reckoning and associated rhythmic practices that integrated all the significant levels of existence. Orientation to the sun seems to have been a later development.” A similar move from moon to sun is evident in “relation to the... Read more

Contentious wife

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

Proverbs 21:9 and 19 both speak of the difficulties of living with a contentious woman. Both put me in mind of the post-exodus conduct of Israel, when Yahweh’s bride acted like a contentious woman, grumbling about her good Husband’s provision and care. In response, Yahweh threatened to do what the man in Proverbs 21 does – leave the house. Typologically interpreted, these Proverbs are not only warnings to women about being vexing and contentious, but warnings to every member of... Read more

Nature and Grace in Galatia

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

During a student presentation on Dunn’s article on the New Perspective on Paul, it struck me that there’s a nature/grace debate going on in Galatians and in the Judaizer conflict. Judaizers say that grace has come, but the “cultural” or “natural” (cf. Gal 2:16) form of covenant life remains the same. Grace doesn’t touch nature. Paul says the opposite; the coming of faith/grace means the transformation of nature/culture. Read more

Exercise in interpretation

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:40 pm By Peter Leithart

On the first page of Arthur Phillips recent “ghost story,” Angelica , we read: “The burst of morning sunlight started the golden dust off the enfolded crimson drapery and drew fine black veins at the edges of the walnut-brown sill. The casement wants repainting, she thought. The distant irregular trills of Angelica’s uncertain fingers stumbling across the piano keys downstairs, the floury aroma of the first loaves rising from the kitchen: from within this thick foliage of domestic safety his... Read more

Coming of Age

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

Tom Perrotta has written some popular coming of age novels, not quite innocence-to-experience (since no one is quite innocent even at the beginning) but from experience to greater experience, from adolescent confusions to greater clarity. Everyone seems wiser and calmer at the end. But the comic trajectory is cheaply bought. There is no recognition of prior wrongs, and characters tend to get off way too easily. If you extrapolate a decade ahead, it’s hard to see that the characters have... Read more

Incarnation and Eschatology

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

Barth insists, rightly, that the incarnation doesn’t express any “need” or lack on God’s part, but is rather His free gracious response to the “radical neediness of the world.” Taking on that neediness also means taking up our cause. He comes to maintain and carry through humanity’s cause to victory. This involves rescue and reorientation; He takes up the cause that sinful humans may not even recognize are our cause – the cause, for example, of destroying our efforts to... Read more

Self-righteousness

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

Protestants often claim that our sinfulness is manifest in our efforts to earn God’s favor by our works. That is true, but it doesn’t quite get at the most grievous root of sin. Barth is more penetrating in saying that our sinfulness is manifest in our efforts to usurp God’s place. A sinner who’s trying to earn God’s favor is still acknowledging God as Judge; Barth sees that our sin consists in the fact that we want to be our... Read more

Markets and people

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

Charles Morris (in The Trillion Dollar Meltdown ) says that one of the dangerous trends emerging in the 80s and 90s, and lurking behind the current financial crisis, is the “increased dominance of investment decisions by mathematical constructs.” He admits that “Large securities portfolios usually do behave more or less as the mathematics suggests,” but warns that the math breaks down in crisis: “For shares truly to mirror gas molecules, trading would have to be costless, instantaneous, and continuous. In... Read more