Peter J. Leithart

In his essay on Augustine in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity , a precis of his Augustine and the Trinity , Lewis Ayres offers two lovely quotations illustrating Augustine’s pneumatology. He begins with one from the final book of The Trinity and follows with one from Augustine’s . . . . Continue Reading »

In his recent An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns (8-9), Bruno Latour gives this pithy summary of the argument of his now-classic We Have Never Been Modern : “I sought to give a precise meaning to the overly polysemic word ‘modern’ by using as a . . . . Continue Reading »

In his contribution to Social Change and Modernity , Jeffrey C. Alexander surveys “differentiation theory” from Durkheim to Weber to Parsons to recent studies. In the end, he admits that “Even in relatively developed countries, the autonomy of the societal community—its . . . . Continue Reading »

In his introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism , Steven Connor suggests that “The most striking difference between modernism and postmodernism is that, though both depend upon forms of publicity, few guides or introductions to modernism appeared until it was felt to be over. . . . . Continue Reading »

That subject heading sounds like a title for a post on cutting-edge Trinitarian theology. Not so. Following Richard Cross, Holmes points out ( The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in Scripture, History and Modernity , 136-7) that Augustine was suspicious of substance as a category for . . . . Continue Reading »

All of God does all that God does. But then it’s only the Son who is incarnated. Both are standard affirmations of classic orthodoxy, and it’s a trick to keep them together. In a brief summary of Augustine’s trinitarian thought in The Quest for the Trinity: The Doctrine of God in . . . . Continue Reading »

Anticipating a number of recent studies, Rosenstock Huessy highlighted the theatricality of the French Revolution: “Not only did the actors try to play ‘the made day,’ but the madness of the Revolution was embodied in an actress who had to play the Goddess of Reason on the Field . . . . Continue Reading »

God is not “triple, or three by multiplication,” Augustine says ( The Trinity ). Nor does He get bigger by addition: “the Father alone or the Son alone or the Holy Spirit alone is as great as Father and Son and Holy Spirit together,” in contrast to bodies that “grow by . . . . Continue Reading »

What’s the difference between the Father’s relation to the Son, one of “begetting,” and His relation to the Spirit, that of “proceeding” (John 15:26). A distinction without a difference, serving only to protect against the conclusion that the Spirit is another . . . . Continue Reading »

Augustine knew of the contingencies of writing and readership. Some people, he says at the beginning of The Trinity (1.1.5) will not be able to understand what he writes, but there are others who could understand but will never encounter his book. That’s “why it is useful to have . . . . Continue Reading »