Diverse identity

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

Challenging a “solitarist” view of identity, Amartya Sen ( Identity and Violence ) writes, “The same person can be, without any contradiction, an American citizen, of Caribbean origin, with African ancestry, a Christian, a liberal, a woman, a vegetarian, a long-distance runner, a historian, a schoolteacher, a novelist, a feminist, a heterosexual, a believer in gay and lesbian rights, a theater lover, an environmental activist, a tennis fan, a jazz musician, and someone who is deeply committed to the view... Read more

Liturgical satire

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

Jordan also cites an article from Hector Avalos arguing that the repetition of the lists of musical instruments and Babylonian officials in Daniel 3 is intended satirically. Avalos writes: “[Henri] Bergson argued that simple mechanical iteration is a great source of comedy. When humans act as automatons or in an absentminded manner, they become subjects of comedy . . . . The four mechanical iterations of a lengthy list of musical instruments in vv. 5, 7, 10, 15 mirror the... Read more

Political numerology

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:04 am By Peter Leithart

Jim Jordan points out that Daniel 3 lists seven ranks of Nebuchadnezzar’s officers, and also seven kinds of musical instruments. The numerical link perhaps points to a connection of musical and political performance, musical and political “orchestration.” Further, the word for “mighty man” (the Aramaic equivalent of gibbor ) is used twelve times (suppressed in most English translations, but found in veres 8, 12 [2x], 13, 20 [2x], 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27). And the story, of course, shows... Read more

Shakespeare’s portrait

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

Bill Bryson’s recent Shakespeare bio begins with some delightful descriptions of extant portraits of the bard. The Droeshout engraving, Bryson writes, “is an arrestingly – we might almost say magnificently – mediocre piece of work. Nearly everything about it is flawed. One eye is bigger than the other. The mouth is curiously mispositioned. The hair is longer on one side of the subject’s head than the other, and the head itself is out of proportion to the body and seems... Read more

Substance metaphysics

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

William Alston challenges Trinitarian critics of substance metaphysics, arguing that they have misrepresented classical notions of substance: “there is absolutely no justification for saddling substance metaphysics as such with these commitments to timelessness, immutability, pure actuality with no potentiality, and being unaffected by relations to other beings. To see this, we only have to recall that the Aristotelian metaphysics of substance was developed for application to finite created substances, particularly living organisms. And these are far from ‘invisible, unchangeable, eternal,’... Read more

God’s freedom

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 11:42 pm By Peter Leithart

Dumitru Staniloae has this to say about the asymmetry between the economic and ontological relation of Son and Spirit in Orthodoxy: “from the order in which the divine persons are manifested in the world Catholic theology infers an order of their relations within the Godhead, and admits no freedom for that divine order by which the persons are active in the world, for – according to this view – divine acts in the world must strictly reproduce the order in... Read more

Blind obedience

Last updated on: September 6, 2017 at 10:48 pm By Peter Leithart

According to Balthasar, the Father’s abandonment of Jesus on the cross leaves him without any knowledge – he enters a state of absolute unknowing, and in this state remains faithful and obedient to the Father. As Levering explains it, “Jesus only moves to the pinnacle of obedience (the pinnacle of union with the Father’s will) by simultaneously entering the abyss of not-knowing. The highest obedience – the highest charity – is that which obeys without (conscious) knowledge or hope.” Levering... Read more

Thomas and moral influence

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

Explaining the fittingness of Christ’s passion as the means for salvation, Thomas says “In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love him in return, and therein lies the perfection of human salvation.” The “second” reason is that Christ by His humble obedience “set us an example of obedience.” Only in the third place does Aquinas get to the view that Christ’s passion is a symmetrical response to Adam’s fall. Read more

Thomas, gift theologian

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

Thomas is not typically viewed as a theologian of gift, but Matthew Levering argues that Thomas teaches that the Trinity is a communion of gift-giving. Thomas says in a comment on John 5:20, “because the Father perfectly loves the Son, this is a sign that the Father has shown him everything and has communicated to him his very own power and nature.” The Father communicates all He is and has to the Son, so that the begetting of the Son... Read more

Sermon Outline, Second Sunday After Easter

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

INTRODUCTION Jesus has done works of power in the cities of Galilee, but they refuse to repent (11:20-24). They are too wise to receive God’s revelation through Jesus, too proud to take on His yoke. THE TEXT “ Then He began to rebuke the cities in which most of His mighty works had been done, because they did not repent: ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been... Read more