Rosenstock-Huessy offers a test for distinguishing between humanism and faith (Die Sprache des Menschengeschlects): Whenever “man” is used in the singular without reference to God, the speaker or writer is giving voice to humanism.The easy liberalism that says “Man creates God is . . . . Continue Reading »
Isaiah pronounces a woe against those who “add house to house and join field to field, until there is no room” (5:8). He warns that the houses of the land-greedy elites will be left desolate (v. 6). We can imagine that wealthy landowners took a page from Ahab, who manipulated public . . . . Continue Reading »
We don’t have to reach back to antiquity to find apologists for bestiality. Midas Dekkers begins his Dearest Pet with some musings that blur the difference between human sex and bestiality: “Back at the boys’ school girls seemed like beings from another planet, so . . . . Continue Reading »
Leviticus is full of numerical designs, often using repeated leitworten to highlight themes in a particular section.Chapter 3, for instance, uses the word “fat” (chalev) twelve times, and the divine speech that lays out the torot for the various offerings (6:1-7:38) uses the word blood . . . . Continue Reading »
Historians do not make the periods of history, argues Rosenstock-Huessy (Out of Revolution, 689ff). The seams of history are made by people who experience upheaval, and commemorate those experiences in monuments, memory, and calendar.Yet the historian has his place, one marked out first by . . . . Continue Reading »
Rosenstock-Huessy offers an intriguing analysis of the triumph of the “French” myth of the Renaissance (Out of Revolution, 699-705).For starters, he gives a bleak summary of Europe between 1450 and 1517, “one of the ugliest and darkest hours of the past”: “The growth of the cities ceased . . . . Continue Reading »
Tim Judah continues his reporting on Ukraine: “What we saw in the Orange Revolution, and what we are seeing now, is a fight for the very soul of Ukraine, a country of some 45.5 million people that stretches between the eastern marches of the European Union to the western borderlands . . . . Continue Reading »
There are two temple sermons in the book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah himself preaches at the gate of the temple (Jeremiah 7), warning that the house of Yahweh has become a “den of thieves” (v. 11) and that the Lord will do to His house “as He did to Shiloh” (v. 14).Later, he sends . . . . Continue Reading »
Psalm 107 repeats the same phrase four times: “then they cried out to Yahweh in their trouble, He saved them from their distress” (vv. 6, 13, 19, 28).There are four forms of distress: Some wander in a wilderness, hungry and thirsty, unable to find their way to a city (vv. 4-5); some are . . . . Continue Reading »
Inequality is a big theme these days. Alister Heath writes to remind us that not all inequality is equal. Some inequality arises inevitably because of disparities of talent, opportunity, risk, etc. Heath focuses on the inequality that arises when people cozy up to power in order to use . . . . Continue Reading »
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