Peter J. Leithart

Matthew’s genealogy contains a summary of redemptive history, a preview of Gentile inclusion, and a foreshadowing of the coming of the kingdom. See my discussion of the genealogy at the Trinity House site . . . . . Continue Reading »

Summarizing the thought of Epictetus, Wright ( Paul and the Faithfulness of God ) points to a passage that he describes as “one of the most remarkable and noble expressions of gratitude for divine favour to be found anywhere outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition”: “Why, if we had . . . . Continue Reading »

As summarized in NT Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God , Seneca can sound like Emerson in his awed response to the haunts of nature: “If ever you have come upon a grove that is full of ancient trees which have grown to an unusual height, shutting out a view of the sky by a veil . . . . Continue Reading »

In his sketch of Greco-Roman philosophy in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God) , NT Wright quotes this wonderful passage from Diogenes Laertius that describes the Stoic method of collapsing the traditional gods into philosophical pantheism: “The deity, . . . . Continue Reading »

Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) concludes his book with a summary of the argument of Ernst Benz, who claimed that a metaphysics of will took the place of classic metaphysics of being first in Neoplatonism and then in Christian Trinitarian theology. For Neoplatonists, it is through will . . . . Continue Reading »

Bringing a long history to its culmination, Kant put duty at the center of ethics, even speaking of a “duty of virtue.” For Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ), this is a development from Christian conceptions of liturgical action, but with a decisive difference: “If in . . . . Continue Reading »

For Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ), Suarez’s De natura et essentia virtutis religionis is a crucial moment in the development of modern notions of duty, particularly in the use to which debitum is put: “The concept of debitum , which in Aquinas is hardly formulated, . . . . Continue Reading »

Habit (Gr. hexis ) is typically understood as a part of a theory of action, or a concept in ethics, but Agamben claims ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) that we cannot understand how the concept works in Aristotle unless we recognize that it’s fundamentally a metaphysical concept: . . . . Continue Reading »

There’s a generation gap between the two sets of counselors that Rehoboam consults when the people ask for relief from taxes and conscripted labor (1 Chronicles 10). The first group is classified as “elders,” and the second as “young men.” The elders encourage . . . . Continue Reading »

Agamben ( Opus Dei: An Archaeology of Duty ) says that the “insubstantiality of the priest, in which ontology and praxis, being and having-to-be enter into an enduring threshold of indifference, is proven by the doctrine of the character indelebile that confirms priestly ordination starting . . . . Continue Reading »