Complex grammars

Steven Pinker ( The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language ) contrasts the English dative with the same form in Kivunjo, spoken in Tanzania: “The English construction is called the dative and is found in sentences like She baked me a brownie and He promised her Arpege, where an . . . . Continue Reading »

Satan’s house

When the scribes accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub, Jesus answers, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (Mark 3:23, 25). The points seems to be: Even if one accepts, for the sake of . . . . Continue Reading »

Un-Utopian Technology

Despite the Utopian hypes, Fred Turner points out ( From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism , 2-3) that there is nothing inherently revolutionary or leveling about computer technology. Sure, we all have our own devices, but . . . . Continue Reading »

Hidden Economy

When Twitter went public recently, it was valued at $24 billion, with revenue of $535 million. 300 billion tweets have been sent since Twitter began, and that number increases by half a billion a day. What’s curious about this, James Surowieki writes in The New Yorker, is that Twitter uses . . . . Continue Reading »

New Corporatism

Nathan Heller explores the “new corporatism” touted by Apple, Google, Amazon and others in The New Yorker : These companies are “proud models of novel efficiency, and yet, in the same breath, they claim that efficiency isnt their real priority. Brad Stone says that Bezos touts his . . . . Continue Reading »

American Muslims

Kirk Davis Swinehart reviews Denise Spellberg’s Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders in the NYTBR this week. Spellberg “”traces the partial origins of American religious toleration to a single day in 1765 when Jefferson, then studying law at the College of . . . . Continue Reading »

Torah’s Limits

At the outset of his Demonstratio Evangelica , Eusebius makes a case for the limitations of the Mosaic system and the universal applicability of the new covenant in Christ. The case has two remarkable features: First, it is an utterly pragmatic case; second, it is a case made from Torah. Pragmatism . . . . Continue Reading »

Maximal perichoresis

Perichoresis was originally a Christological notion, describing the mutual penetration-without-mixture of the divine and human natures in Christ. It of course became primarily a concept in Trinitarian theology, but, according to Verna Harrison, in Maximus it was understood as an anthropological and . . . . Continue Reading »

Peripheretic Communion

Gregory of Nyssa rarely uses the specific language of perichoresis , but Daniel Stramara argues in a 1998 Vigiliae Christianae article that he uses different language to make very similar claims about the communion that is the Triune God. Specifically, he uses the words periphero and anakuklesis , . . . . Continue Reading »