In his book on the Trinity in German Thought, Samuel Powell gives a remarkably lucid summary of Hegel’s Trinitarian theology. A few of his major points: 1) Hegel worked out his position as a way between the Enlightenment and pietism, focusing on the question of whether and how we can know God. Pietists, he charged, escape into feeling; while the pietists are right to emphasize a moment of subjectivity in religion, they “wrongly come to oppose feeling to thought, with... Read more
The news actually broke this summer, when Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka announced that he had found a technique to transform cultured mouse skin cells into cells nearly identical to embryonic stem cells. As Nature magazine pointed out, if something similar works in humans, a simple skin biopsy could be used to create embryonic stem-cell equivalents “without using embryos or even eggs.”Jody Bottum reports in the online Wall Street Journal on a breakthrough in stem cell research. The whole article is... Read more
In his discussions of gifts, Marion takes both Heidegger and Derrida as interlocutor. In dialogue with Heidegger, he wants to show that the reduction that Heidegger performs does not necessarily reveal Being as the final horizon; he wants to argue that the reduction reveals givenness as the ultimate horizon instead. In response to Derrida, he wants to show that there is a gift that escapes from exchange, a gift that fulfills something of Derrida’s hope for a pure gift. He... Read more
Marion works from both Husserl and Heidegger, and we’ll focus on the latter, as he is slightly easier to grasp. (I am summarizing Robyn Horner’s discussion.) Heidegger begins from Husserl, but seeks to go beyond him. Husserl’s phenomenology was an effort, Heidegger says, to “let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” But that leaves the question open, what is it that phenomenology wants to “let us see”?... Read more
INTRODUCTION Isaiah is the great prophet of the incarnation, but Isaiah is a bit too large to cover during the four weeks of Advent. Micah, though, prophesied at the same time as Isaiah (Micah 1:1; Isaiah 1:1), and the prophecies overlap (Micah 4:1-3; Isaiah 2:1-4) and Micah includes a major Messianic prophecy (Micah 5:2-5; cf. Matthew 2:6). We’ll spend the next several weeks meditating on this mini-Isaiah. THE TEXT “The word of the LORD that came to Micah of Moresheth... Read more
Psalm 128:5-6: The LORD bless you out of Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. Yes, may you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel. We saw in the sermon this morning that the man who fears Yahweh can hope for a fruitful home, a home that recapitulates the garden of Eden within a fallen world. Each Christian home is a small garden where the new creation is taking shape. (more…) Read more
As soon as Adam sins, his marriage is disrupted, as he becomes Eve’s accuser instead of her guardian. In the next generation, sibling rivalry escalates to the first murder. The family is a fallen institution. It cannot redeem. It needs to be redeemed. The story continues throughout the Old Testament. The families of the patriarchs are often riven by rivalry between son and son, wife and wife, father and son. David’s sons compete and kill for the throne, and in... Read more
During one scene of King Lear, Edgar, disguised as Mad Tom, leads his father, Gloucester to the cliffs of Dover, where his father intends to throw himself down to his death. Only Edgar doesn’t go to Dover. He tells his father that he has reached Dover, and Gloucester ceremoniously throws himself down, only to land face-first on the stage. It’s a bizarre episode, but becomes more so when we consider the impression that the scene would make if we... Read more
For the Stoics, as for most ancient philosophers who reflected on signs, signs were examined as part of a theory of inference. A sign was a symptom, and the medical usage is often overt in examples; or a sign is a premise of an argument, from which something unknown can be inferred. For the Stoics, though, this went beyond the realm of logic into the realm of epistemology: Signs were means of disclosing knowledge, mechanisms for the advance of knowledge.... Read more
Cavadini suggests that Augustine’s theory of the inner word is a theory of cultural production, formation, and transformation. First, Augustine’s theory opens space for the person’s transcendence of culture, a space that allows for critique and transformation. But this transcendence of culture does not mean removal from culture. The inner word is a product of will, and since the will is fallen the inner word itself can take perverse forms. Further, the inner word is prior to any particular language,... Read more
Leithart
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