Peter J. Leithart

Coakley ( God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ , 14-15) neatly shows that self-control does not result from a restraint of passion but from the source passion itself, which is the Spirit: “The Spirit’s ‘protoerotic’ pressure, felt initially as . . . . Continue Reading »

Sarah Coakley does some very interesting things in God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ , the first volume of a proposed four-volume systematics. She “risks” writing for a general Christian audience, and her readable, even entertaining book shows that it . . . . Continue Reading »

In a helpful discussion of the justification as a status-creating declaration, Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God , 946-7) once again insists that the righteousness that describes the legal status of the justified person cannot be the same as the righteousness of the judge himself: . . . . Continue Reading »

British doctors have concluded that James Bond is an alcoholic . BBC reports: “Doctors in Derby and Nottingham sat down to read the 14 Bond novels in their spare time.With a notebook at hand they charted every day and every drink.Excluding the 36 days Bond was in prison, hospital or rehab, . . . . Continue Reading »

Criticizing Levinas’s dyadism, Luce Irigaray writes, “He know nothing of communion in pleasure. Levinas does not ever seem to have experienced the transcendence of the other which becomes an immanent ecstasy . . . The other is [merely] ‘close’ to him in . . . . Continue Reading »

Mary Eberstadt thinks that Francis is a Trojan Pope . In his recent encyclical, he denounces consumerism and the “throw-away” culture for its treatment of animals. The Trojans cheer, but Eberstadt thinks that Francis is a sly one: “The bridge between the religious and secular . . . . Continue Reading »

Jesus came eating and drinking. We rarely stop to ask, What did He eat and drink? How was it prepared? Douglas Neel and Joel Pugh, the first an Episcopal priest and the second a retired CPA, both amateur cooks, though to ask, and give their answers in their delicious The Food and Feasts of Jesus: . . . . Continue Reading »

I tweeted, “In Christ’s body, there are no vestigial organs.” One might respond by pointing out that some members of the visible church are dead, some so cancerous that they take over other body parts. We might then say, “the whole body, being fitted and held together by . . . . Continue Reading »

Peter Brown gives thumbs up to Kyle Harper’s From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity : “Not only does it measure the exact nature of the tension between the familiar and the deeply unfamiliar that lies behind our image of the sexual morality . . . . Continue Reading »

Keith Miller has a perceptive review of Geordie Grieg’s book about Lucian Freud, Breakfast with Lucian: The Astounding Life and Outrageous Times of Britain’s Great Modern Painter . He is perceptive on the paintings: “A large irony of Freuds career is that while he was, or seemed, . . . . Continue Reading »