Mead again: He points out that between the Constitution and the Civil War, American Presidents had far more international and diplomatic experience than during the twentieth century: “of the first nine presidents of the united states, six had previously served as secretary of state, and seven . . . . Continue Reading »
In his lively and readable Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World , Walter Russell Mead emphasizes early America’s dependence on foreign trade. A Congressman said in 1846 that Illinois needs “the market of the world” for its agricultural products, . . . . Continue Reading »
Leclerc challenges Young and Motyer’s resort to systematic theological categories in their interpretation of Isaiah 5:16: “the holy God will sanctify Himself in righteousness.” Bringing in notions of holy-as-separate or holy-as-transcendent or even holy-as-divine-attribute misses . . . . Continue Reading »
Like many commentators, Leclerc points out the puns in Isaiah 5:7: Yahweh expected mishpat but found mispach ; tsadaqa but found tse’aqa . But he notes that most commentators miss the connection of this wordplay with the larger context. The problem with the vineyard, after all, is not . . . . Continue Reading »
In his Yahweh Is Exalted in Justice , Thomas Leclerc points out the links between the opening condemnation of corrupt Jerusalem in Isaiah 1 and the vision of a restored Zion in 2:1-4. Both use the combination “word of Yahweh and torah” (1:10; order inverted in 2:3), and these are the . . . . Continue Reading »
In a 2009 article in Biblica , Brandon D. Crowe argues that the phrase “that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit” in Matthew 1 alludes back to Deuteronomy 32:18. In the LXX of the Song of Moses, the verb gennao is used to describe “God’s begetting of Israel, his . . . . Continue Reading »
“Torture and terror are reciprocal phenomena,” says Paul W. Kahn in Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror, and Sovereignty (Law, Meaning, and Violence) : “terror is met with torture, and torture with terror.” That is because “both work in the most primitive register of . . . . Continue Reading »
“The pornographic,” writes Paul W. Kahn in Putting Liberalism in Its Place , “is the ecstatic moment shorn of religion. It stands in the antipolitical tradition of the hierophanic. The sacred too can displace ordinary forms of language. In both, we are rendered speechless, without . . . . Continue Reading »
Gedicks again, on the claim that the Establishment Clause requires the government to remain neutral between “religion and irreligion” and between “belief and unbelief”: “This dictum, present at the birth of contemporary Establishment Clause doctrine inthe Everson case . . . . Continue Reading »
In a 2006 article in the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal , Frederick Mark Gedicks points out the impotence of civil religion in a pluralist society: “The irony of civil religion is that it is supposed to provide a substitute for theestablished church, a means of morally instructing . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
