Peter J. Leithart

Natural law arguments often conclude that every human being can know, without the help of revelation, that there is some deity, an ultimate reality, an absolute.Paul says that human beings know “about God” from creation, but also that they “knew God” (Romans 1:19, . . . . Continue Reading »

My latest First Things column sparked some reflections on apocalyptic politics from the Economist’s Erasmus columnist. He moves my observations about apocalyptic philosophy to apocalyptic politics. It comes up in all sorts of places.“Iran’s former president, Mahmoud . . . . Continue Reading »

Roger Cohen is tired of Twitter bashers: “It’s not easy, being of a certain generation, to avoid the dinner conversation that veers into a lament about the short attention spans, constant device distraction, sad superficiality and online exhibitionism of a younger generation geared to . . . . Continue Reading »

“Work is charismatic,” writes Craig Keen in After Crucifixion (80-1). Keen elaborates in a beautiful passage:“What we are given to work upon precedes us, a gift sent our way the first five days of creation, the days when the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, before . . . . Continue Reading »

Progress, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy points out (Christian Future), was originally a plural term. “Les progres” was Condorcet’s phrase. What he had in mind were improvements, new gadgets and machines and gizmos.The singular form of the term came from early Christianity and referred to . . . . Continue Reading »

Sciences today often occupy ruts, separated from each other, each as incomprehensible to non-specialists as languages were at the tower of Babel, and separated too from the larger currents of culture.But it is a myth, Rosenstock-Huessy says (Christian Future), to believe that “sciences can . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank (Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the People) points out that the Enlightenment was not simple one thing: “it can bedivided into (a) a Christian and sometimes post -Christian Ciceronian Stoicreaction against the voluntarism of ‘modern . . . . Continue Reading »

Milbank’s Beyond Secular Order: The Representation of Being and the Representation of the Peoplepresupposes that there is a homology between metaphysics and politics. He identifies four assumptions of modern philosophy: “(1) the univocity rather than analogy of being; ( 2) knowledgeby . . . . Continue Reading »

Richard Beck (The Slavery of Death) quotes some impressive passages from Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death. They’reworthy of re-quoting.“This is what society is and always has been: asymbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customsand rules for behavior, . . . . Continue Reading »

Observing that Christians today “sing songs of orientation in a world increasingly experienced as disoriented,” Walter Bruggemann suggests that the church is in a state of denial:“The church is less an evangelical defiance guided by faith, and must more a frightened, numb denial . . . . Continue Reading »