Enrique Krauze provides some powerful criticisms of Samuel Huntington’s claims about the influence of Mexican immigration on American cultural identity in the June 21 issue of TNR . Huntington argues in his recent book that there is a core American culture, and it is . . . . Continue Reading »
James Woods perceptively notes that the triumph of theory in literary studies is less the triumph of Marx than the triumph of Freud: “One of the decisive changes that theory effected was to introduce the idea that texts do not know themselves. It is the critic’s business to reveal their . . . . Continue Reading »
Writing on Joyce’s Ulysses just before the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, Declan Kiberd notes the oddity of the ending: “the climax of Ulysses is a meeting between two men, the young poet Stephen Dedalus and the older ad-canvasser Leopold Bloom . . . . The meeting of Dedalus and Bloom . . . . Continue Reading »
Can there be a Creator-creature distinction without the Trinity? It would seem not. For a unitarian theology “distance” is introduced only with the world; for a unitarian god to be at a distance, there must be something to be at a distance FROM. But because “distance” is not . . . . Continue Reading »
Derrida believes the idea of a “gift” is contradictory. As David Hart summarizes, for Derrida, even if the gift is given with no expectation of tangible return, it still cannot be truly a gift, because the gift elicits recognition of the giver, and even the intention to give requires a . . . . Continue Reading »
Hart argues that the beauty of creation should not be seen as competing with the beauty of God; sensible things do not in themselves distract from God, but rather our corrupt desires reduces the things of the world to “inert property” alone draws the sensible world away from God. He . . . . Continue Reading »
OK, I can’t stop writing down remarks from Hart, so here’s another: Nicolas of Cusa remarks that eternal wisdom is tasted in everything savored, eternal pleasure felt in all things pleasurable, eternal beauty beheld in all that is beautiful, and eternal desire experienced in everything desired . . . . Continue Reading »
Here are some more excerpts from David Bentley Hart’s remarkable Beauty of the Infinite . “The Bible . . . depicts creation at once as a kind of deliberative invention (‘Let us make . . . ’) and, consequently, as a kind of play, a kind of artistry for the sake of artistry. . . . . Continue Reading »
Mark Biddle of the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond examines some of the intertextual connections between 1 Sam 25 and the Jacob narratives in Genesis ( JBL 121/4 [2002]). He discovers analogies between Nabal and Laban, Saul and Laban, and of course Nabal and Saul. Abigail is comparable to . . . . Continue Reading »
Timothy Wengert’s article in the Lutherjahrbuch 66 (1999) offers an analysis of the controverted relationship between Luther and Melanchthon. Wengert puts aside psychological assessments of the relationship, and does not focus on theological similarities and differences, which might have the . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
