Peter J. Leithart

If Judah keeps Yahweh’s fast, a new day will dawn (Isaiah 58:8). In the Hebrew, the promise is announced in two tiny chiasms: A. then shall break out B. as dawn C. your light C’. and your recovery B’. speedily A’. shall spring And then: A. and will walk B. before you C. your . . . . Continue Reading »

Nietzsche claims in his Course on Rhetoric that tropes are not ornaments but inherent in language. As Ricoeur puts it, “Language is figurative through and through” ( Oneself as Another , 12). Then Nietzsche says that for this reason language is a lie. But the conclusion follows only if . . . . Continue Reading »

Descartes’s doubt leads to the cogito , but Ricoeur, following Martial Gueroult’s argument in Descartes’ Philosophy Interpreted According to the Order of Reasons I: The Soul and God , argues that by itself the cogito gives us “a strictly subjective version of truth; the . . . . Continue Reading »

In a contribution to The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology , Anton Zeilinger illustrates the “entanglement” of quantum entities by imagining a popular future Christmas toy - the quantum dice: “If we throw the two dice, they will always . . . . Continue Reading »

Modernity, argues Deborah Lupton, was an effort to manage risk. Risk was originally connected with the science of probability and statistics, which developed “as a means of calculating the norm and identifying deviations from the norm” and thus as a means for getting the world under . . . . Continue Reading »

In Adrian Pabst’s interpretation, creation is for Thomas “that event by which the infinity of united ‘definiteness’ is converted into the finitude of composite ‘definiteness.’” That is, creation is not “generality” moving into particularity but . . . . Continue Reading »

Yahweh’s fast is “to divide bread for the hungry” (Isaiah 58:7). Then again, it’s to “give yourself to the hungry” (v. 10). Giving bread is a mode of self-gift. Jesus keeps Yahweh’s Eucharistic fast. Yahweh’s fast is to cover the naked and “not . . . . Continue Reading »

Lewis Ayres is a skeptic and critic of recent efforts to formulate a Trinitarian relational ontology. These often fail to specify the meanings of basic terms - analogy, relation, person, especially analogy. Zizioulas in particular makes a theological mistake by making “person” more . . . . Continue Reading »

Pickstock sees mimesis everywhere. There is a sort of imitation in the way a plant “returns inside itself to draw forth nutrients from the soil, to drink down the rain and transform these, with the sunlight’s energy, through photosynthesis.” Animals copy one another, and . . . . Continue Reading »

Judah cries out to God, wondering why Yahweh doesn’t respond to their prayers and fasts (Isaiah 58). Yahweh responds with the charge that during their fasts they oppress their workers and stir up strife (vv. 3b-4). The response echoes Exodus: “drive hard” is what the Egyptians do . . . . Continue Reading »