Peter J. Leithart

Darwin writes in Descent of Man of a “pair of land-snails . . . one of which was weakly, [placed by a Mr. Lonsdale] into a small and ill-provided garden. After a short time the strong and healthy individual disappeared, and was traced by its track of slime over a wall into an adjoining . . . . Continue Reading »

Karant-Nunn again, remarking on the hierarchy among the saints that was embodied in certain Protestant eucharistic practices: “The Lord’s Supper itself was not only administered within this ranks milieu but it also set apart, usually as a small group, those who communed. In Lutheran . . . . Continue Reading »

In her The Reformation of Ritual: An Interpretation of Early Modern Germany , Susan Karant-Nunn argues that the Reformation churches ended with a more rigid hierarchy than the medieval church: “The fluid atmosphere inside the late medieval sanctuary, in which people milled about and set up . . . . Continue Reading »

Brian Brock begins his Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture by noting how foreign Augustine found the Bible. Brock doesn’t want to familiarize the Bible: “It is as strange and eternally different from our common sense as is Christ himself.” There . . . . Continue Reading »

Poitier-Young emphasizes that Antiochus IV’s plundering of the temple was not merely utilitarian but symbolic. He removed the lampstand, “a symbol and assurance of God’s sustaining presence,” and thus effected “a symbolic de-creation.” Likewise, taking out the . . . . Continue Reading »

From Notes from Underground : “Man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. But why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well? Tell me that! . . . Can it be that he has such a love of destruction and chaos . . . because he is instinctively afraid of . . . . Continue Reading »

A genealogy of ideas worth pondering: English utilitarians formulate a theory of “enlightened self-interest” as a guide for human and social action. Inspired by the utilitarians, Chernyshevsky formulates his “rationali egoism,” embodied in his novel What Is To Be Done? . . . . Continue Reading »

Portier-Young notes that during the Ptolemaic domination of Palesting, “some families were taken captive and enslaved.” She cites Hengel, who claims that the slave trade flourished under the Ptolemies. Josephus claims that “soldiers sold slaves independently of imperial policy as . . . . Continue Reading »

Josephus ( Antiquities 12) cites this intriguing decree ( programma ) from Antiochus III: “It shall be lawful for no foreigner to come within the limits of the temple round about; which thing is forbidden also to the Jews, unless to those who, according to their own custom, have purified . . . . Continue Reading »

Matt Petersen sends along the following excerpt from Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Creation of Man, ch. 8, concerning hands: “1. But man’s form is upright, and extends aloft towards heaven, and looks upwards: and these are marks of sovereignty which show his royal dignity. For the . . . . Continue Reading »