Peter J. Leithart

Rosaenstock-Huessy argues that the feast of All Souls is the source of Western liberty: “Liberty was promised to all souls, liberty, the great promise of Revolution, is first heard in the Occident at All Souls” (Out of Revolution, 510).The feast accomplishes this by inserting death and . . . . Continue Reading »

Balthasar, writes Gerald O’Hanlon (The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar), thought it necessary to re-examine the tradition regarding immutability and impassibility because both needed to be “understood in the context of the liveliness of inner-trinitarian . . . . Continue Reading »

Religions, Milbank (Beyond Secular Order) argues, do not necessary aim for the ultimate. “Many human religions relate themselves, both theoretically and practically, to a cosmic level which they talce to be less than ultimate - often marked by a mythically narrated violent ‘brealc’ . . . . Continue Reading »

Phillip J. Long’s study of Jesus the Bridegroom traces the origins of Jesus’ imagery of the eschatological wedding banquet.Isaiah 25 is typically identified as the background, but Long demonstrates that this passage is part of a rich tapestry of expectation. He draws from . . . . Continue Reading »

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 »