In the same article, Milbank argues that “dualism and hierarchy are . . . the secret heart of all immanentisms.” The argument is: In 18th and 19th century design arguments, God is “half-immanent” and interacts “on the same plane with what he influences.” This is a dualism between “the creative and designing on the one hand and the inert and the designed on the other.” This is not the result of transcendence, but rather “the result of dividing up the... Read more
In a typically dense article in a volume of essays on William Desmond, Milbank suggests that both Darwin and 18th-century design theories were operating with similar post-Scotist and Newtonian notions of God’s relation to the world. He sees a quite direct analog between the development of Darwinian theory and Newtonian physics: “while absolute space and time and the force of gravity represent the direct presence, this is still manifest in a totally regular fashion expressible by comprehensible laws. There appeared... Read more
Radical Orthodox theologians interacted with Process Theologians at an AAR session. Milbank gave an off the cuff response to the process theologians, starting with common interests among them, which he said were greater than he expected. Among them was their common resistance to the anti-metaphysical trends of modern philosophy, particularly after Wittgenstein. Milbank suggested that Whitehead might in the end turn out to be a more important philosopher than Wittgenstein. He summarized the anti-anti-metaphysical case by saying that those opposed... Read more
Charles Taylor, the 2007 Templeton Prize winner, gave an excellent, though unfortunately poorly miked, lecture at AAR. His theme was “religious mobilization,” which he introduced first by discussing the peculiar modern phenomenon of “political mobilization.” Political mobilization means activating passive political actors. As Taylor developed this notion, he said that political mobilizations have become in the modern world a way of perceiving and describing founding events for political orders. Prior to the modern era, the question “How did your tribe... Read more
N. T. Wright has been getting heat for expressing his political opinions of late, so I wasn’t sure what to expect from his SBL address on “God in Public.” In the event, I found very little to disagree with, much to affirm heartily, and, as always with Wright, much to delight the soul. He started with a challenge to the post-Enlightenment separation of religion and politics. He noted, interestingly, that this separation was linked historically and theologically with skepticism about... Read more
Virginia Postrel has a characteristically informative and entertaining piece on standardized clothing sizes in the December issue of The Atlantic. Clothing sizing, she says, began in the mid-twentieth century when “the U.S. government established and maintained size guidelines, using data from about 16,500 women, including 6,500 members of the women’s Army Corps measured during World War II. The guidelines specified the proportions that defined, say, a Misses 12 or a Junior 7. These standards were always voluntary, however, and over... Read more
Ezra Pound wrote, “The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised literatti – when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and... Read more
At the same SBL seminar, Rusty Reno examined Genesis 3:1, following the traditional interpretation that the serpent is a disguise for the devil. He dealt with the larger pattern of biblical evidence first, showing that the Bible links the devil and the serpent, and links the devil to acts of temptation. The bulk of his paper focused on two themes associated with Satan throughout the Bible. References to Satan signal the universal or cosmic dimensions of a local event; and... Read more
J. Richard Middleton gave an intriguing paper on Genesis 2-3 at an SBL seminar on the theological interpretation of Scripture. He was trying to answer the question of the nature of the first sin, and concluded that the first sin, which led to a proliferation of sin in succeeding generations, was the violation of the limit that God set. Violation of the boundaries that God sets, the failure to respect the radical otherness of the “Primal Other” unleashed boundary-busting sin... Read more
An article in the current issue of Sociological Theory explores the status-hierarchy created by celebrity, a kind of status ignored by Weber in his treatment of status in capitalist societies. The abstract says, “Max Weber’s fragmentary writings on social status suggest that differentiation on this basis should disappear as capitalism develops. However, many of Weber’s examples of status refer to the United States, which Weber held to be the epitome of capitalist development. Weber hints at a second form of... Read more
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