Some notes on Book 3 of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone . Having established that there is an evil principle at work in humanity as well as a predisposition to good, Kant begins book 3 with the claim that morals is always a matter of warfare and battle. Freedom from the dominion of evil can only come by fighting the evil principle. As free beings, we are bound to the evil principle through our own fault, but Kant... Read more
Austen’s great-nephew Lord Brabourne perpetuated the Victorianized Austen in his edition of Austen’s letters. He found Regency England far too frank and coarse for his tastes, and removes Austen’s occasional comments about the seeming perpetual pregnancies of her sisters-in-law and other acquaintances. And for Austen’s comment concerning a party that she “was as civil to them as their bad breath would allow me,” he substituted “was as civil to them as circumstances would allow me.” Read more
In his Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England , Roger Sales tells about the formation of the “Austen industry.” The industry, Sales claims, started nearly as soon as Austen was in the grave. Her brother Henry’s memoir, published the year after her death, offers a conventionally pious and domestic Austen that is at odds with the satirical spirit of the novels. When her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, published his memoirs some decades later, he followed the same recipe. Sales’s... Read more
INTRODUCTION As we follow Jesus’ commandments, we become agents for advancing God’s reign and His redemptive righteousness. Marriages are transformed into life-long partnerships in ministry, and our words are become truthful. THE TEXT “Furthermore it has been said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery . . . .” (Matthew 5:30-37). (more…) Read more
1 Corinthians 6:15-17: Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be. Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, The two will become one flesh. But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 1 Corinthians 10:21-22: You... Read more
Honor was a chief value in the ancient world. For Jews, Greeks, and Romans, any violation of honor – by insult or attack – had to be avenged. Men – and this was a masculine ethic – had to defend their honor or endure a shameful reputation for weakness. Honor ethics have infected Christian thinking for centuries. Medieval knights and early modern courtiers were often as concerned with honorable reputation as ancient warriors. At one time, dueling was fashionable within... Read more
For ancient Romans, Shadi Bartsch argues in her The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire , sight was not merely passive and receptive but active. Gazing with the evil eye meant sending out “little bodies” out of the eye that “penetrate the body of the victim through his pores, and especially through his eyes,” and this puts the internal harmony of the body into disarray. Strangely, phallic images were sometimes used to... Read more
This time from Tertullian, in his treatise on the veiling of virgins. Christian women, he says, ought to “go about in humble garb, and rather to affect meanness of appearance, walking about as Eve mourning and repentant, in order that by every garb of penitence she might the more fully expiate that which she derives from Eve – the ignominy, I mean, of the first sin and the odium (attaching to her as the cause) of human perdition.” (more…) Read more
Speaking of his sexual sin in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Reuben blames women for being too enticing: “For women are evil, my children, and by reason of their lacking authority or power over man, they scheme treacherously how they might entice him to themselves by means of their looks.” He has this on heavenly authority: “An angel of the Lord told me and instructed me that women are more easily overcome by the spirit of promiscuity than are... Read more
In the final “General Remark” in Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone , Kant deals with means of grace. Baptism, he claims is the “first reception of a member into a church” and therefore “is a solemnity rich in meaning which imposes grave obligations either upon the initiate, if he himself is in a position to profess his faith, or upon the witnesses who take upon themselves the care of his education.” But it is not a means of... Read more
Leithart
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